Moving On

Albert Camus once said "Without work, all life goes rotten. But when the work is soulless, all life stifles and dies."

I've recently come out of employment. And if you've been following my tweets, you can probably guess that it wasn't the best parting of ways. Or that it wasn't my choice.

Well, I suppose it was. I took the job for granted and I vented about it in the wrong places more than I really should have. I've been at this particular job for a year and a half, and it was exactly that; a job. I didn't want a career. I just wanted to write. And because I don't have kids to support, I guess I felt like my job was getting in the way of my writing. They did what they had to do.

On one hand, I'm actually kind of glad. Every day I woke up and said to myself "What's the point of me coming in? I'm not doing myself any favours." or "I'll spend the day tweeting, reading scripts, and browsing TV Tropes. It's not like any of this matters."On the other hand, I should have handled it better.

So, what now? Well, I've wanted to spend more time on my writing, more so since I discovered Swanwick. I had actually been making plans to leave, go to university, and do a creative writing degree. Well, that hasn't changed. I still want to do that. The corporate world is no place for a resentful writer with a Peter Pan complex. I think I need a few years to practice some self-discovery.

Yeah, I had it coming. Yeah, you're nodding as you're reading this. This probably isn't helping my cause, but I have to talk about it.

Anyway, I'm going away for a few days to help mull things over. I'll still be writing and blogging about other ideas.

Han Shot First

I feel a disturbance in the Force. And by that I mean that there's a new Star Wars film coming out this weekend. One supposed to be the origin story of Han Solo.

I'll talk about Solo once I've seen it, but for now, I'd like to talk about one of the most controversial scenes of the franchise: Who shot first? Now, this has been debated to death, but I'd like to talk about it anyway. Mainly because I'm bored at work, which technically means I'm getting paid for this.

Anyway, let's give a summary of the scene from the original Star Wars: Han Solo was a smuggler in the employ of the crime lord Jabba the Hutt, but ended up being in debt to him after a botched job forced him to dump his cargo to prevent it from being seized by an Imperial boarding party. In the Mos Eisley Cantina, he is confronted by Greedo, a bounty hunter in Jabba's employ, who corners him at gunpoint in the booth and tries to shake him down. Han tries to talk his way out, discreetly drawing his gun under the table, and ends up shooting Greedo. That was all well and good, but then in 1997, the special editions were released, and it was changed so that Greedo shoots and misses, and then Han returns fire.

So, what's the issue? Well, first of all, it looks terrible. Han's head digitally shifts to avoid the shot, but the idea of him casually dodging a shot fired at close range is kind of hilarious. It's like Joe Perry in the Livin' on the Edge music video playing his solo in front an oncoming train and then stepping off the track before it hits him.

Alright, that's not my main issue. That would be the fact that the scene is supposed to establish Han's character as a morally-ambiguous anti-hero, and I can't help but feel that Greedo shooting first kind of detracts from that. In fact, that was how George Lucas justified the change. He reckoned that Han shooting first would make him too cold-blooded. It's likely that he was worried about the re-release getting a PG-13 rating, which didn't exist in 1977. Personally, I'd be fine with Han being cold-blooded, as it provides some contrast between him and the more moral and idealistic Luke Skywalker. In fact, I've actually read the script for the film (specifically a fourth draft dated from 1976), and it states that Greedo does not shoot.

The whole scene is actually based on a scene from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in which Tuco is having a bath and is confronted by a one-armed bounty hunter. As the bounty hunter gloats, Tuco shoots him, revealing he had hidden his gun in the suds made by the bath salts, saying "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." I couldn't have said it better. And if we're talking about westerns, Unforgiven discusses the notion of quick draw gunfights that the person who shoots first is rushing and will most likely miss. But that scenario doesn't work in Greedo's favour, as he already had his gun drawn.

This has been debated for over 20 years. Before I go, I'd like to share some of the funnier studies I've read:

1. One was made by a lawyer in California, who reckoned that because Greedo had Han cornered at gunpoint and announced an intent to cause harm, Han acted in legally justifiable self-defence. 
2. Harrison Ford himself was asked about it on Reddit, and simply said "I don't know and I don't care."
3. Finally, Paul Blake, who played Greedo, actually spoke out in favour of Han shooting first, because he looks like the world's worst henchman if he shoots and misses at close range, but goes out with a little more glory if he gets gunned down.

That's about it. Granted, I have the 2004 DVD version of the original trilogy, where Greedo still shoots first but it's a little smoother. But I'd still like to see the unaltered trilogy get released at some point, and I'm certainly not the only one who feels that way.

Anyway, I'd best sign off. Happy writing, and may the Force be with you.

SNES Classic - Super Castlevania IV

Well, I promised that my next write-up would be Super Castlevania IV. The only problem is that I haven't beaten it yet. Maybe I bit off more than I could chew with this one.

The story is simply that Count Dracula has been resurrected and is seeking to invade Transylvania with his army of monsters. It's up to Simon Belmont, hailing from a family of long-time monster hunters to stop him. Armed with his trusty whip and a variety of sub-weapons, he leads a one-person assault of Dracula's estate.

I never played the NES Castlevania trilogy, but I hear they have a reputation for being some of the hardest games on the console. Super Castlevania IV is no exception. You have the ability to whip in more than one direction, meaning you can take out enemies while staying out of reach, but I find the platforming really tricky. The timing required for the jumps needs to be precise, and when you keep getting it wrong, it is just infuriating. But the biggest issue I have is the knockback effect whenever you get hit. If you're in an area with a lot of platforms, any hit is essentially an instant death because you get knocked off.

At the time of writing, I'm currently stuck on The Clock Tower. Now, to be fair, it is the penultimate stage. But I'm slowly getting sick of being stuck on the same segments, or clearing them and then getting killed immediately afterwards, meaning I have to do them all over again. Well, it beats working, and I do get some feeling out of it.

Annoying deaths aside, it's still a great game. There's a foreboding atmosphere, and a diverse array of worlds before reaching the castle. If you can make progress without dying, it feels fantastic (especially because you keep your sub-weapons and whip upgrades if that's the case). And the soundtrack is both chilling and triumphant; it threatens you with all the monsters you will face, but will make you want to thrash them into oblivion.

I'd love to be able to beat this game, but that's unlikely to happen in the near-future. I might need to buy some spare controllers.

Update 20/05/18: I have managed to clear the Clock Tower and make progress through the following level to the Room of Close Associates. There are three bosses you have to fight before facing Dracula, and I'm stuck on the third one (The Grim Reaper).  Fortunately, the game is generous enough to provide a password that allows you to skip the bosses you've already beaten at this point.

Update 22/05/18: Finally beat Dracula. It's his most epic death since Peter Cushing killed him with the candlestick holders in the Hammer film.

SNES Classic - Kirby Superstar

As well as beating Super Metroid last week, I also managed a play-through of Kirby Super Star (released in Europe as Kirby's Fun Pak). This was one game I definitely played a lot as a kid, and it still holds up.

I'll start by looking at the basic gameplay. Kirby is a round, pink, balloon-like...thing, with a big appetite and a childlike nature, who goes on numerous adventures. He can inflate himself in order to fly, and fights by inhaling blocks or enemies and spitting them out. On top of that, some enemies can be eaten, and then Kirby can mimic their abilities. For example, Knuckle Joe is a martial artist who attacks with punches and kicks. If Kirby inhales him, he will become Fighter Kirby, and will attack with punches and kicks. He can also sacrifice this ability to spawn a helper; in this case, an allied Knuckle Joe who can be controlled either by the computer or by a second player. I think this might have been the first game I played to feature a co-operative mode.

As for story, the game's something of an anthology. The main games are as follows (Put the kettle on and get a comfortable seat, this will take a while):

• Spring Breeze: A villainous penguin called King Dedede has hoarded all the food in Dreamland, and it's up to Kirby to teach him a lesson. Intended for beginners, it's fairly linear. There are three levels, each with a boss at the end, before the final stage in which you confront Dedede.
• Dyna Blade: Kirby is going after a large and mysterious bird called Dyna Blade, who has been ravaging Dreamland's crops. Featuring a Super Mario Bros 3-style world map, there are four levels (not including the final stage), along with two secret areas with ability banks. The levels have a goal rather than a boss, and finish with a bonus game which can provide extra lives.
• Gourmet Race: Kirby learns of an area of Dreamland which is abundant in food, but King Dedede has arrived first. The rivals must race to collect as much food possible. There are three stages, and you can either race against Dedede across all three, or run the individual stages in a time trial.
• The Great Cave Offensive: Kirby is out rambling when he falls down a hole and ends up in a vast network of caves, which happen to be full of treasure. This game uses a Metroid-style open world, with save points scattered around, along with mine cart travel between areas following boss rooms (my favourite of which is the Computer Virus). The goal is to get as much treasure as possible and find a way out (I only managed to find half of them).
• Revenge of Meta Knight: Kirby's other nemesis Meta Knight seeks to invade Dreamland, and Kirby attempts to infiltrate his flagship, the Halberd. This is a linear one, with nine levels, but they now feature a time limit. You also get some humorous dialogue between Meta Knight and the Halberd's officers.
• Milky Way Wishes: The feature presentation, in which the sun and the moon are fighting, throwing Dreamland or Popstar's day and night cycle into chaos. Kirby's friend Marx suggests that he makes a wish to the "comet" NOVA, but to do so requires seven stars from seven neighbouring worlds. One of the big changes here is that Kirby cannot copy abilities from the enemies here. Instead, he finds "copy essences" around the place and can store them. There's a boss at the end of each world, but they're recycled from the earlier games in the collection, but there's still a great final stage which you don't expect.

There are also two mini-games:

• Samurai Kirby: A reaction-based game in which you must wait for a signal and then hit a button to defeat a series of increasingly faster opponents.
• Megaton Punch: A timing-based game in which you must punch a bigger crack in the planet than your opponent.

Finally, if you beat all the main games, you can unlock The Arena, which is simply a boss-run with a single life and limited health pickups. I'd do that but I've got other games to get through.

Anyway, I'm pretty much up to speed now, so my next write-up will be whenever I beat the next game. I've decided that this one will be Super Castlevania IV.

SNES Classic - Super Metroid

After beating A Link to the Past, I decided that my next play-through was going to be Super Metroid. Oddly enough, I never actually played this one as a kid. I'd never even heard of it until Samus Aran was advertised as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Following on from that, my first taste of the Metroid series was Metroid Fusion for the Gameboy Advance.

Anyway, let's start with the story. The famous bounty hunter Samus Aran had been recruited by the Galactic Federation for a special mission; travel to the planet Zebes and destroy samples of the parasitic Metroids which had been seized by a group of pirates in a bid to develop biological weaponry (Metroid for the NES). Later, she is sent to the Metroids' native planet of SR388 to eradicate the species (Metroid II for the Game Boy). This culminates in encountering a final Metroid which thinks she's its mother. Unable to bring herself to kill it, she instead delivers it to Federation researchers. However, as she leaves, the facility is attacked by the pirates who steal the Metroid. Not wanting the creature to fall into the wrong hands, she travels back to Zebes to battle the pirates again.

Gameplay involves a combination of platforming and run-and-gun shoot-'em-up action, all of which takes place in an open-world featuring jungles, underwater caverns, volcanic areas, even a haunted spaceship. There is a lot of exploration involved, but access is initially limited by doors and other obstacles, requiring certain abilities or equipment to bypass, such as the Speed Booster or the Grapple Beam. The vast world often requires a lot of back-tracking. This, combined with the haunting atmosphere of the world, creates one of the most immersive games I've played in recent years.

Metroid is also one of the first franchises I've come across which actively encourages speed-runs. I don't really go for that kind of thing, and my play-through only yielded about 60% of the total items - I didn't even find the Spring Ball which allows you to jump while in Morph Ball form. Ultimately, I beat the game in about 7 hours - most of which was spent on a (thankfully optional) wall-jumping sequence or fighting the Space Pirates' (literal and metaphorical) dragon, Ridley. I cite those as the most frustrating parts of the game.

That said, I think Super Metroid is a contender for one of the best games on the Super Nintendo.

Until next time. I'm signing out.

SNES Classic - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

After beating Super Mario World, I had to decide what to play through next, and eventually settled on Nintendo's other biggest icon: Link, and his instalment on the Super Nintendo.

The game opens with Link, or in my playthrough "..." (The Hylian with No Name), having a mysterious dream involving a call of distress from Princess Zelda. He wakes up to find his uncle leaving home, geared up for battle, only to be found mortally wounded in a tunnel beneath Hyrule Castle. His uncle obviously had the same dream, as he was trying to rescue Zelda as well, and gives "..." his sword and shield before expiring. After rescuing Zelda and finding sanctuary, "..." learns that the wizard Aghanim has taken over the kingdom and is trying to break a seal to a mythical Golden Land by using maidens descended from the sages who originally made the seal.

Anyway, "..." is told to seek out the legendary Master Sword, which requires three pendants found in three different dungeons in Hyrule. Unfortunately, upon finding it, Zelda gets found and taken back to the castle, where Aghanim sends both her and "..." to the Dark World, the Golden Land corrupted by the evil overlord Ganon. The quest then changes to rescue Zelda and six other maidens from the Dark World dungeons.

I think that formula has been in place for most of the Zelda games which followed, but here it was fresh and new. Gameplay features plenty of hack-and-slash action, but there are strong puzzle-solving elements too. Each dungeon features a special item, and a boss which is often fought with that said item. There often is a frustration factor (usually involving the Wallmaster enemy), but there is a still a strong element of fun challenge which keeps me going.

Anyway, I've pretty much said what everybody says about this game. But before I go, I'd like to discuss some parts I find odd.

For example, there's a person in the village who has sealed his brother in his room after they had an argument. You end up using a bomb to open the door. Link often gets a lot of flak for going into people's houses and breaking their pots to steal money, but this aforementioned person sounds downright psychopathic.

Another part involves Link being turned into a pink bunny if he enters the Dark World without the Moon Pearl. It's stated that the Dark World transforms people based on their personality. So, does that mean Link is as harmless as a bunny? I doubt that. OK, he won't kill thieves who try to rob you, but he doesn't hesitate at killing soldiers who think he has kidnapped Zelda and are possibly under one of Aghanim's spells.

All in all, this one took me about a week to complete.

SNES Classic - Super Mario World

As promised, I've decided to do a series of posts about the SNES Classic games I've been playing through. To start with, let's look at Super Mario World.

I've already talked about Super Mario World on this blog here, but I'd like to discuss things in more detail.

If you weren't a Nintendo fan growing up, here's the rundown: according to the game's manual, Mario and Princess Peach were going on holiday to Dinosaur Island when Peach (naturally) gets abducted by Bowser. Mario later meets a dinosaur called Yoshi, who is trying to rescue his babies from the Seven Koopa Kids.

Gameplay is the familiar yet fresh side-scrolling platforming action which Mario does so well. Mario can jump on enemies to defeat them, but he can also pick up Fire Flowers which give him a ranged attack, or a Cape Feather which gives him a melee spin attack and the ability to fly. Yoshi serves as a mount, and can eat enemies, some of which give him special powers.

The game starts out with the somewhat linear Yoshi's Island, Donut Plains, and Vanilla Dome, but the journey becomes more divergent in the Forest of Illusion and Chocolate Island. Some levels have secret exits, which can lead to Switch Palaces or alternate levels. There are also maze-like ghost houses (which serve as checkpoints), and the truly challenging castles in which you face the Seven Koopa Kids. I especially like the cutscenes after defeating the Kids, which shows Mario destroying their castles (which spawned the hilarious Mario's Castle Calamity series on Newgrounds).

Personally, I went for a standard run-through, which constituted about 68% completion when I checked. Granted, I did unlock the Switch Palaces and a Top Secret Area (a hidden arsenal), but I do recommend finding those. Even if you do, there is plenty of harrowing challenge. And that's not going into the insanely difficult Special World which would precede the dozens of ROM-hacks which are known to be even more difficult.

There's a two-player mode as well, in which players take it in turns to beat the stages.

Super Mario World is still one of my all-time favourite games, and still holds up after more than twenty years.

Anyway, I'll be back soon to talk about A Link to the Past.

What Am I Working On?

Not my drawing skills, for one

It's been a rough couple of months in terms of writing. I've already said repeatedly that I haven't written much, on account of having a numbing full time job and wasting time with the help of a Super Nintendo Classic.

So, what exactly is it that I'm trying to work on?

My main WIP at the moment is a series of pirate stories following the adventures and misadventures of two wandering scoundrels: a romantic, thrill-seeking libertine called Isiah Kestrel, and a cynical runaway slave-turned mercenary called Jacob Scar. I've got numerous stories on the go with this pair, but they're pretty much first drafts to help develop them for a piece I'm currently revising. But I love working with them, and want to see them get into all kinds of trouble. I've recently decided to give the series the working title 'Gentlemen of Fortune', but I still mostly refer to the stories as 'Kestrel and Scar'.

In addition to this, I've recently started planning a more experimental WIP called 'The Bayfalls'. This one I can see as a fantasy sitcom, following a dysfunctional family of Dungeons & Dragons-style adventurers. I've bounced the idea around on Twitter, and it seems to have a lot of potential, but it's going slowly, as heroic fantasy and comedy are genres I don't really write in. Granted, there's humour in my work, but it tends to be tongue-in-cheek. On top of that, it doesn't fit my regular writing style, so I'm trying to write in script format - which I'm also not familiar with. So, this is something which is very much out of my comfort zone.

As for blogging, I figured that since I've been spending too much time on the Super Nintendo, I might as well write about the games I've been playing through. I've also been thinking of doing another Top Ten in the near future, looking at characters who work as duos. I'm just looking for ones I can really write about.

Anyway, watch this space, and happy writing.

A Quarter-life Crisis

Yep. I've been procrastinating again. April's a busy time with year-end accounts prep, so I haven't written much lately. Especially because I've had a hankering to play Super Mario World since I talked about it in my top ten favourite video games last year. So, to indulge a quarter-life crisis, I decided to pick up a Super Nintendo Classic Edition.

I grew up with the Super Nintendo, and had heard that they were sort-of re-releasing it as a dedicated machine with a selection of games pre-installed. Last week I caved in and bought one, to revisit some of the gems I played (or watched) as a child, along with a few I'd missed out on.

OK, it was a bit of a rocky start on the technical side. The console has uses HDMI input, but my TV upstairs doesn't have a port for that. My PS4 is connected using a HDMI to DVI converter (which doesn't have sound output), while connected to a soundbar. I thought I could do the same with the Super Nintendo, but there isn't a way to connect to the soundbar. I had to buy a new TV. There also isn't an A/C adaptor for the power supply, but you can just use any that has a USB port (like most phone chargers now).

Anyway, technical details aside, I was eventually able to set it up and play some Super Mario World. Then a day later I had to stop because I'd finished it. Well, not 100% but I beat Bowser (on my last life too). It feels great to be able to play the old games with the original controller, rather than downloading emulators and plugging in and coding an Xbox 360 controller. I've also forgotten how challenging these old games used to be.

At the time of writing, I've managed to beat Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (for the first time). At the moment, I'm playing through Super Metroid. I actually missed this one as a kid, but it's so immersive with a massive world to explore and a lot of back-tracking involved. I'm actually trying to resist the temptation to keep playing it even as I'm sitting here writing this post.

Well, that's about it. Now I can say that I've got some writing done this Bank Holiday weekend.

Happy writing.