Euphoric Blog

I really want to play The World Ends With You, but I can’t spend any more money on entertainment until I start making money again. So if I want to play it I’m going to have to downsize my present DS collection. Other than the Japanese games that I can’t trade in anyway, there’s:

Animal Crossing– can’t say I’m playing it anymore, but my cousins are and it may become fun again if I can meet them over the wifi.
Pokemon– not playing it, but so many other people have it I know as soon as I turn it in someone will ask me if I have it so we can play together
Rocket Slime — Yeah, I’d trade this in. But I want to finish it first.
Kirby’s Canvas Curse — Not far enough to trade it in, and it’s kind of a rare game I think so I should hang on to it.
Hotel Dusk — I may want to play this again when I have completely forgotten it. Or play it to get the perfect ending.
Etrian Odyssey– I’m not very far into it, only at the first FOE. But I don’t want to get rid of it. Sometimes I feel like level grinding or map making.
Lunar Knights–debating giving up on this one. It got to a point where I didn’t know what to do and even looking it up on GameFAQs didn’t seem to help. And the anime cuteness was starting to get to me. It was an excellent game until I got stuck though. Maybe I could go back to it and finish it.
Picross– Haven’t finished all the puzzles yet, and even after that I think you can get more over the Wifi. And it’s fun. I want to keep it.
Planet Puzzle League–Ditto. Plus the multiplayer would be awesome if I could convince anyone to play with me.
Lost In Blue–I might get rid of this one. I’m not sure whether I want to finish it or not. I’m tired of watching the kids die over and over again. And having to remake the same tools over and over because they keep breaking. Maybe if I go through it with a walkthrough I can find an efficient way to finish it.
Super Monkey Ball– I need to work my way through the single player mode to unlock the multiplayer stuff that is the reason I got it in the first place. I really just wanted to play Monkey Fight, and they make you unlock it!
Jam Session– Yup, I can get rid of this one. The DS is not a guitar. And if I want to play music on it, Daigasso is way more fun and succeeds better as an instrument.
Duck Amuck– is such a guilty pleasure. It’s a broken game but I love fiddling around with it. There are still a few mini games I haven’t found yet.
Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles: Rings of Fate– Too new to get rid of. And surprisingly fun and challenging.
Professor Layton — Likewise new, but if I finish it I probably will get rid of it. I can’t see the puzzles being fun a second time through.

And this is completely ignoring Taiko Drum Master DS (which I might want to import anyway) and Guitar Hero DS, and Mario Kart DS which I always meant to pick up. Sigh. So many games so little cash and time.

I also really wish I was playing Persona 3: FES on the PS2, but even if I had it I can’t play my PS2 right now because the TV at this apartment doesn’t have it’s remote and it’s impossible to switch it over to the external channel. I was lucky to finish Psychonauts before the switch. I bet that’s what it is like in Hell– You get all the latest entertainment equipment and a giant plasma screen TV, but no way to switch to the external channel to play video games on it.

I saw Iron Man last weekend and thought I should blog about it, but there really isn’t much to say. Yes, it is worth paying to see in the theater. The explosions are jolting, there’s lots of action, and desert settings bore me on video but are great in the theater.

Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor, especially when he gets to play himself. He’s a rich womanizing jerk with a drinking problem, and yet somehow you love him anyway and want him to win. It *is* easier once he’s gotten a second disability and had an epiphany about the actual disservice to humanity his company is doing, but even before all that you like him because he’s clever. And America loves a clever man who succeeds, even if some of the success was handed to him at birth.

Then there’s all the nationalistic Afganistan propaganda pasted over the comic’s original Vietnam propaganda. Some of that leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I much prefer the attitude about war expressed in Doctor Who– namely, there’s always a choice and if you are *really* clever you can win a war without building bigger, more deadly weapons; in fact, sometimes you can win wars without any weapons or killing at all. And avoiding weapons prevents the whole “What if the bad guys steal our uberweapon?” scenario, which is the whole problem that keeps the Iron Man comic going. But, yeah, still go see Iron Man, because it’s well executed and it won’t be half as much fun on video.

Now that I’ve told you a lot of stuff you already know, I will write about something that you were less likely to already know about, outside of the summer blockbuster Hollywood machine and completely free to experience.

John Smith is an English avant-garde filmmaker who started making films in 1972, and The Girl Chewing Gum is one of his best and probably best known films. It contains footage of a somewhat busy urban street with people going about their daily lives… as Mr. Smith calls out direction of their actions, their entrances and exits.

As the film goes on, the people, cars, and mise en scene behave together in ways that are increasingly improbable and then impossible to direct. It is revealed that just out of the inital shot is the Odeon theater and a lot of the people passing by are going to a show there. Then the “director” reveals that he isn’t really there at all and starts narrating about his actual surroundings. And at the end he returns to describing the action we are watching, but as though the people are characters in a film and there is a plot going on that we get only a glimpse of. It’s as though there is a movie going on around us, but we are only observing it casually as it parades past us.

This is the sort of art I’d like to make. Effects are minimal, just a bit of subtle editing of audio and pausing the action entirely at one point. But it takes viewer expectations and turns them completely around, bringing the magic of cinema into the mundane existence we are all living. And it keeps a sense of humor going throughout. This film is like a Viewmaster containing slides of the world shot through my eyes. It also in effect teaches people how to imagine and see things imaginatively, in case they forgot or stopped around age 12. Great drama is everywhere if you just stop to look for it and don’t ignore your sense of poetry.

Yes, you do have 10 minutes for this.

You can watch the film here: On Google Video

And there is more information about John Smith here: Bio Info

Oh to be alive in the late 60s when cameras apparently fell into your lap if you knew where to look and stock footage was practically given away as well because most people didn’t think that it could be used outside of Hollywood.

Well, yay. I finally have a blog installed on my site. I have been blogging for years on LiveJournal, but I wanted something more professional looking that I could have more control over. Also, I needed a more focused blog where I write with goals in mind. I’m still going to keep my blog as euphoriafish on LJ, and it’s lots of fun as a daily exercise and way to keep in touch with people. But here I will be able to better keep track of how often I am writing about the game industry and my own personal creative efforts.

Personal To Do list for this site:

* Debug links that don’t go anywhere.

* Upload the stuff from my senior show and some of the stuff on my DeviantArt account.

* Add another writing sample to that page.

* Finish the About Me page.

*Go through my art again, redetermine what my top 10 are.

*Re-do the Gallery in RoR as I learn that.