Book and game Jan 3, 2002

Many other people (my friend David, for example), seem to keep LiveJournal entries of things they read/play/listen to/etc., so I figured, why should I be the exception? :)

So. Yesterday I started Vernor Vinge's novel A Fire Upon The Deep, on the recommendation of my friend Kee. I'm about 4 chapters into it now, and it's really good so far. Lots of really cool stuff - evil alien overmind sleeps for billions of years, and now is REAWAKENED!!! to disastrous effect, as well as some other really strange types of alien creatures.

I also started playing the English translation of Tales of Phantasia, a Super Nintendo RPG by Namco, on the recommendation of my other friend David (not the same David as the one above, just so you know, I know many people named David. This tends to be the case when you go to a primarily Jewish university). Tales is a truly amazing game in a lot of respects. First of all, somehow they managed to get a real theme song, with a real SINGER and everything, into a SNES cartridge, god knows how. The graphics are also incredibly seamless for a tile-based game, and just look good in general. And the fighting system… well, you either love it or you hate it, and personally I hate it. But I have to give them a lot of credit for trying something new. I would just like to have control over ALL of my PCs, not just one of them, and by far the least interesting one of the bunch at that.

Regarding the translation, I can't help feel that DeJap (the amateur translation group) took some language liberties - for example, there seems to be quite a bit of gratuitous swearing in this game. Not that I mind. It's actually refreshing to see a console RPG that isn't sanitized for once. Come to think of it, the translation may be a little more literal than I thought. There are a lot of not-so-subtle sexual references in the game (see, for example, Arche sleeping off her drunkenness on the ship to Alvanista and broadcasting her dream to everyone around). Maybe Nintendo's censors aren't as tight in Japan as they are in the US.

Anyway, I'll post more once I finish these things. I've basically just started A Fire Upon The Deep, and I don't really know how far along I am in Tales of Phantasia, not having a progress meter. Whatever. I'm about to enter the Morlia Gallery. Someone who's played this, post a comment and let me know how far along I am.