Gaming Memories4, July 31st, 2014

Video Game Memories 04

(oringal post in my gaming blog)

Its Friday, time for a video game memory.

In the 1990's video game magazines exploded in popularity.  Advertisement money was limited for them because their circulation was nothing compared to other magazines.  So the advertisement people got away with all sorts of crap you would not believe.  Here are two of the most memorable for me personally:

I really really found this funny when I was 11 or 12, and remember getting it in my Sega Visions.  Ballz was a game that tried to give the 3-D fighter feel on the 16 bit consoles.  I rented several versions of the game, and found it fun back in the day, but it plays like unacceptable garbage by today's standards.  Still, props for making a memorable, edgy advertisement without needing to apply boobs or shit.

Earthbound sold for crap in the US.  When you see its numbers it commands as a rarity, know that it is really because of its rarity, unlike FF7 or Chronotrigger which both sold MILLIONS, Earthbound did not.  One of the problems was probably the advertisment campaign.  The advertisement literally came with a scratch and sniff card that did not need to be scratched to be sniffed.  For several months the video game magazines all smelled like a gypsy caravan.
July 31st, 2014

July 31st, 2014

Finished FF6 and listened to the live orchestra versions of many songs on Youtube today.  Even more so than any other Final Fantasy, you can't separate the music from Final Fantasy 6 and still have the same experience.  The difference between 6 and the others is that 6's themes and songs tell a story as they play.  The entire game is done like a Victorian play in many ways, right down to the ending Fanfare and Curtain Call that make up the sequence.  Is it the best ending in all Final Fantasy?  Well I cry my eyes out during 7 and 13's endings.  Also 9's is full of the feels too.  10's ending is so good it made the rest of the game better.  Then, even the Final Fantasy I dislike, 8's ending was actually pretty good too.  FF6 is up there with the greats for sure.  I have never finished Final Fantasy 6 and thought at the end(35 hours this play through) that the game was long enough.  I want more.  But if Advent Children, FFX-2, FF13-2, or FF-Revenant Wings has taught me, I should just accept FF6 as this thing in time that I enjoyed, and move on.

I have now had all 4 of the new Lays Potato chip flavors.  Just quickly:
Bacon Mac and Cheese: Great, mellow cheese flavor, but where's the bacon?
Mango Salsa: Where's the salsa?  It needs something to balance the sweet, 4th place
Wasabi Ginger: best mix of salt and sweet in a chip, tastes like wasabi, needs more "hot"
Cappuccino: the great surprise of this year, cinnamon, coffee, malty, good
While I want to give the #1 spot to Cappuccino, and I kind of wish it would win so that something weird and good exists in the world, at the end of the day when I grab a bag of chips to eat with lunch, I would grab the Wasabi Ginger first.  It has this kind of Chinese brown sugar sweet, like Seseme chicken or Mongolian beef, along with its wasabi flavorings.  In the end, I think American will choose bacon mac and cheese, but unlike the garlic cheesey bread last year, I think its good enough to be the winner too.  I swear next year I'm submitting "Apple smoked bacon, Brown sugar cured bacon, cherrywood smoked bacon" so that we can finally have Bacon, Bacon and Bacon chips.

A youtuber I watch frequently had a complaint today that his wife shows him practically every other day a Youtube celebrity gossip site and the horrible stuff they say there.  He then ranted for 10 minutes about how those people are horrible and bad for exploiting people and how miserable human beings have to be to derive enjoyment from spreading that stuff.  And all I could sit there and think was "your wife obviously goes to those sites probably several times a day, your wife is enabling them, and obviously she enjoys the hell out of reading all that bullshit because she keeps going back".  I know this is the truth because the only time Kim Kardashian gets brought up in his channel is when she's talking the latest bullshit gossip from celebrity news sites.