The Basil Blog

“Should I get a DSi?”

or

“Is Basil a big ol’ Dragon Quest geek?”

I regret nothing.

Daryl Surat is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than me at Street Fighter 4.

I’m going to have to really play this game a ton more so I can reclaim my honor.

In other news my desk broke so I’m posting this from my laptop.

Tomrrow is Christmas, so you should celebrate it right!

With 8bit remixes of Christmas Carols. 

8-Bit Jesus: Classic Christmas Songs in the Style of Classic NES Games.

Doctor Octoroc has taken both classic NES tunes and Xmas tunes and smushed their styles together into awesome chiptunes. It’s really great.  I mean, Carol of the Bells is cool… But Carol of the Belmonts is awesome.  And if you want to download it, it’s free! But if you donate $15, he’ll send you a professionally-pressed audio CD of it as well! And in case you are worried it won’t go to a good cause, it’s going to help fix his poor puppy. 

But yes… You should download it. It’s the season.

So I’ve been playing the new remake of Dragon Quest IV for the DS lately, and been having a blast. It does some really neat things, like breaking up the game into five chapters, each with it’s own mini-plot to develop the charcters you’ll meet later on in the main quest. It’s kinda like episodic gaming before there was the idea of epiosodic gaming. And Chapter 3 introduces of of the most awesome charcters in gaming (at leats for me) since Mario: Torneko Taloon.

You see, he has but one dream in the world, and that is to be the most awesome richest arms merchant EVER.  And you know that may seem like a bad idea in today’s world, in the DQ4 world they areabout to be taken over by a Dark Lord of Evil and monsters raom the land terroizing eveyrone. So the idea that people could use a good weapon is a pretty good one. Too bad you gotta work for SwordStop. 

Our hero in this mini-arc doesn’t start off as a arms merchant, oh no. Instead he has to work his way up from being a sales associate. What this translates into as far as the game goes is for the first few chunks of time you play the game as one of those weapons sellers you always meet to upgrade your stuff through the game, only this time you are on the other side of the counter. You have to wait by the counter for people to come in, browse your wares, then they’ll make a selction. Sometimes they’ll want to pawn off some random other weapon they’ve probably stolen from Wal-Mart or something and this is where I got to gleefully tell them “No, I don’t want your ratty-stupid old weapon.” Every time. Every. Wonderful. Time.

… Retail has not made me bitter, at all. Once you have spent a few in-game nights and days working you’ll make enough money to start buying some weapons and armor yourself and pretty soon you’ll start to hear rumors of treasure and stuff. That’s when you get to set off on your own, and say “Screw you retail I get to go fight dragons and stuff for MY riches!” Only Torneko would do it in some awesome Irish dialect.

Yeah, the man is totally my hero.

I keep meaning post on LJ, like everyday, then something inside me stops me from doing it. I have no clue why, but that’s okay because I’ve now kicked reason to the curb and am now posting an entry! Hopefully it won’t be the last one for a month! Er anyway…

Hello world!

So AWA happened and it was pretty awesome. I’ve covered most of what happened to me via my podcast, but in short I had a blast and it was great seeing people I only get to see once a year or so. Though sadly I also missed out on a few people I wanted to see but missed, but there’s always next year right?

Somehow ending up on the podcast roundtable was definitely the highlisght of the con for me, though Anime hell was great this year too. Last years while fun was not quite as good as previous years, he totally brought it back around for this year. Also seeing the last bits of the Ouran High School Host Challenege was something that had to seen to be believed. While I can safely say it was Not For Me, for eveyrone there it was very much for them and they looked like they had an amazing time*. But yeah, AWA was fun.

Has anyone out there played Time Hollow for DS yet? It’s kinda like Phoneix Wright meets The Butterfly Effect. It’s pretty fun.

And also on the DS front, I’ve been playing Dragon Quest 4 as of late. Man, as much as people knock the DQ series for never changing, DQ4 is pretty revolutionary in some respects. Maybe I’ll expound on that on a later post because this is starting to get a little long…

*Oh wait, I’m not supposed to say nice things about that anymore. Oops!

So it looks like Tycho of Penny Arcade agrees with my thoughts on Christian Rock DLC for Rock Band/Guitar Hero: World Tour. And I don’t even talk to the guy!

But seriously, I think it would be a really good idea. Guitar Praise is going to have a few hurdles to jump for it to do well. Mostly the first is going to be by it’s very nature it’s a tad excludatory. Some people are going to dismiss it outright simply because it’s “Christian Rock.” Some people are going to think about getting it and decide not to because they feel that it wouldn’t be “cool.” Others may buy it then ignore Rock Band/Guitar Hero: WT instead. But as downloadable content for existing music games, it would be inclusive. You can have your cake and eat it too. It could also be a boon for those that only like certain bands, because you could buy what songs you’d like  à la carte.

It would also help jump another hurdle, in that usual range of quality of “Christian” video games tends not to be very good.  Mostly I think this is because the companies thtat make these games just don’t have the budget to really make these games the way they should be. And there is a chance that Guitar Praise could suffer the same fate. But as DLC Harmonix and Neversoft would be the ones making the note charts and whatnot, ensuring that the songs you buy will play well.

Now will this ever happen? I think it’s possible. Harmonix certainly seems to want to push the envelope on DLC as far as they can go, and turn the Rock Band platform into the playable equivalent of iTunes. As they keep constantly adding in more and more music, I’d imagine Christian music would have to eventually follow suit. When that might happen though, I couldn’t say. Maybe the simple existance of Guitar Praise could spurn them to include it sooner than later? You never know.

Man, I should probably get some sleep.

(Image: Penny Arace)

Guitar Praise, the latest game from Digital Praise (actual motto: "Glorifying God Through Interactive Media"), is being described as "Guitar Hero for Christians." Wrong. Guitar Hero is Guitar Hero for Christians. Guitar Praise, coming to PC and Mac next month, is for Christians who don't want to play a music game unless the songs are all about Jesus and stuff. - Chris Kohler from Wired.com (Game|Life) - Original Article

So there you have it, yep. Also heres the MTV’s Multiplayer Blog’s picks for more songs for the game. Also on the Multiplayer blog, Brett Ratner Wants To Make A ‘Guitar Hero’ Movie. Oh yeah!

I mean, either way, I’ll be sticking to  my Rock Band, thanks. So if they are serious about this whole Christian Rock thing, they should talk to Harmonix about getting some DLC happening.

Oh yeah.