Obscusion B-Side: Not-Quite-Limitless Potential: Playing Half-Life 1 & 2 on Comparative "Potato" Consoles

Normally, something like Half-Life would be the furthest thing from a subject I'd cover over here. After all, this series from Valve is one of the most influential video games of all time, both for the first-person shooter genre itself as well as gaming as a whole due to its revolutionary storytelling techniques via the exclusive usage of scripted sequences instead of cutscenes, its excellent gameplay that mixes together traditional FPS gameplay with a heavier focus on environmental puzzle solving & the like, and its habit of being on the cutting edge of technology via its game engines, whether it was GoldSrc for Half-Life in 1998, Source (& Havok, for the physics) for Half-Life 2 in 2004, or Source 2 (& VR, in general) for Half-Life: Alyx in 2020. Without a doubt, Half-Life is one of the most important video game franchises of all time, and the games themselves are some of the best I've ever played. These games have been picked apart to no end by countless other people online, so what can I possibly provide in that regard?

Well, as Stephen Colbert will sometimes joke on The Late Show, the answer... "is potato".

In tech speak, a "potato" is a piece of hardware that has much-too-low specs compared to what someone is trying to utilize it for. In terms of gaming that would equate to trying to play a game on a computer using hardware that likely isn't even quite up to snuff with the minimum requirements, but you're still curious about just what'll happen if you boot the game up regardless; I mean, there's a mod for Doom 3 that lets it run on Windows 98 & a Voodoo2 card... and it's amazing. This is because PC hardware is an ever-evolving thing, while their console brethren are (for the most part) fixed architecture, and it wasn't until the seventh generation in the mid-00s (at the very earliest) that the gap between the two truly lessened, as console manufacturers started to simply rely primarily on PC-based hardware to power their machines. Therefore, when a PC game from the 90s got ported to console at the time it was often a case of having it play on a comparative "potato" when put against the PC tech it was designed to work with. In that regard, Valve has been rather conservative when it comes to releasing its games on console, & that's doubly so when it comes to Half-Life, as the first game only saw one official console port released (for the PlayStation 2), while Half-Life 2 only saw "two" (for the Xbox, & later Xbox 360/PS3 via The Orange Box). Therefore, on this 20th Anniversary year of Half-Life 2's original release on PC, I want to see how well these amazing games still hold up when played in their most potato-y of forms.

For Half-Life 2 that means revisiting it on the original Xbox, which is actually how I first played the game back in the day, but before that we should revisit the original Half-Life & for that it means playing something that wasn't actually released... at least officially.

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1996 (Part 1)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"While 1995 was easily the Jaguar's most prolific year in terms of releases, and in all honesty most of it was either excellent, good, or even just decent, the final four games released for Atari's flagging console in this year wound up being a pretty lackluster send off... but there's still another 12 games left to cover, and while 1996 won't exactly be anywhere near as prolific as 1995 was, it's going to be a bumpy ride, nonetheless."

The original Atari, Inc. was founded on June 27, 1972 by Nolan Bushnell & Ted Dabney. On May 17, 1984, ex-Commodore co-founder Jack Tramiel founded Tramiel Technology solely for the purpose of buying the home console & computer division of Atari, Inc. from current owner Warner Communications, renaming the company Atari Corporation on July 1. Over the course of the next 12 years Atari Corp. tried its best to stay relevant in the gaming industry, whether it was the various Atari 8-bit computers during most of the 80s, the Atari 7800 to combat the NES & Sega Master System (plus reviving the iconic 2600 as a budget-priced alternative), the Atari Lynx to combat Nintendo's Game Boy, and finally the Atari Jaguar to combat the Super Nintendo & Sega Genesis. It is now the start of 1996, and Atari Corp. is finally making its first public showing that it's leaving hardware behind entirely. Namely, during Winter CES, Atari Corp. announced the formation of Atari Interactive, a division which would focus on PC software, with ports of Tempest 2000, Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods, Baldies (an RTS game by Creative Edge Software that actually first launched on the Jaguar CD on January 3, the day after this announcement) and FlipOut! planned as the first releases from the division, while further releases were planned to include Missile Command 3D, Return to Crystal Castles, Interactive Rocky Horror Show, and Virtual War, the last three of which were games that had not been previously released before. Unfortunately, due to a certain event that we'll get to in a bit, Atari Interactive never actually released anything, though the name of the division itself would see actual use a couple of years later.

But none of this is about the Atari Jaguar, which still has some games scheduled for release, despite Atari Corp. being essentially done with the console by this point! Luckily, a week after Winter CES happened two new Jag games would see release... and, believe it or not, they're both ports of good games!

There are only two pairs of games released for the Jaguar left that saw release on the same day, and both happened in 1996. The first pair came out on January 10, so let's start with the obvious bigger name of the two: NBA Jam: Tournament Edition. Released in April of 1993, NBA Jam was an arcade cabinet developed & distributed by Midway that acted as a spiritual successor to 1989's Arch Rivals. Both were 2-on-2 full-court basketball games that emphasized rough play & wild action, but Jam differed by being a properly licensed NBA product, so it featured all of the teams seen in the 1992-1993 NBA season, though some major names were not included due to licensing rights, namely Michael Jordan & Gary Peyton (though Midway produced special cabs for those two that featured them as their own team), and after the initial arcade release Shaquille O'Neal, Dražen Petrović & Reggie Lewis were also removed, the former due to Shaq following Jordan's lead with licensing, while the latter two sadly passed away after the initial arcade cabs went out. NBA Jam would go on to be a massive success, becoming the most popular arcade machine that year & even outperforming Jurassic Park's box office. The game also singlehandedly turned voice actor Tim Kitzrow into a legend through his iconic announcing heard throughout. In February 1995 Midway released NBA Jam: T.E., which added in updated rosters & new ballers (including five "rookies" from the 1994 NBA draft, including future legends Jason Kidd & Grant Hill), some minor new mechanics (substitutions & more baller attributes), & the titular "Tournament Mode", among other things; I can't even go into any detail regarding the hidden characters, because it's just insane. Jam saw release on pretty much any console hardware it could at the time (with few exceptions, like the 3DO & Neo Geo), with the Jaguar port by High Voltage Software (the studio's final Jaguar game to see release) being one of the very last, alongside the PC port. How does it hold up, and does it at least start off the Jag's 1996 on a good note?

Silent Knight Sho: Never Say Never Again... Unless It's "NEVER END"

In Issue #49 of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1990 the final weekly chapter of Masami Kurumada's Saint Seiya was serialized, bringing an end to a 246-week run across a solid five years; the actual finale to the manga would appear in the December issue of V Jump the following month. Despite it being the biggest success in his entire career, becoming the first of his works to both get adapted to anime & released internationally, it still eventually suffered a loss in popularity & found itself cancelled before Kurumada could fully tell the entire story he had planned, though he was at least allowed to finish the story arc he was on. However, this now also meant that his past two works for Jump, Otoko Zaka & Saint Seiya, had both gotten cancelled, and with a career that dated back to the mid-70s it's arguable that Masami Kurumada was possibly feeling a bit outdated to the then-current Jump reader base.  After all, by the time Seiya got cancelled the only Weekly Jump mangaka still around in 1990 that dated back to the 70s, alongside Kurumada, were Osamu Akimoto, Akira Miyashita, & Yudetamago, and the latter two only just barely, as both made their serialized debuts in mid-1979. Therefore, instead of jumping straight into a new series Kurumada decided to instead take advantage of Jump's Seasonal Specials, publishing a baseball one-shot titled Aoi Tori no Shinwa in the 1991 Spring Special, before following it up three specials later with a continuation in the 1992 Winter Special. Despite seemingly wanting to make it into a proper serialization, Aoi Tori no Shinwa never went beyond those two connected one-shots... and here's where hearsay comes into play.

If you look around online, the general rumor is that after putting the kibosh on Saint Seiya Shueisha told Masami Kurumada to simply recreate Saint Seiya's success by making something like it, despite having just cancelled the series the publisher seemingly wanted Kurumada to replicate. However, that's generally worded as though Kurumada's next manga came right after Seiya, ignoring Aoi Tori no Shinwa's two-off existence & instead wanting to portray Shueisha as being incompetent. But, like any good rumor, there may still be a nugget of truth behind it, because Kurumada's next serialized manga would very much look immensely similar to his biggest hit. Therefore, it is entirely possible that Shueisha (or, at least, his editor at Jump) did request that Kurumada try to create a "new Saint Seiya", but instead of coming off like pure incompetence it likely would have been due to the fact that Kurumada was nearing a solid 1.75 years without any real/proper serialization, which would surpass his prior record of just slightly over a full year, that being the gap between Sukeban Arashi & Ring ni Kakero. This was close to the roughly two whole years between the end of Fuma no Kojirou (late 1983) & the start of Saint Seiya (early 1986), so it's entirely possible that Shueisha was thinking that a new generation of Jump readers would be around to enjoy a new take on what Kurumada had hit big with previously & make it their own, similar to how Kurumada had Saint Seiya reuse ideas, names, & terminology from his older works for that then-new generation. I mean, by mid-1992 Shonen Jump was filled with a new breed of manga that didn't even exist when Saint Seiya's final weekly chapter first appeared, with the only remnants of the 80s & earlier being Kochikame, Dragon Ball, Rokudenashi Blues, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, & Magical Taruruuto-kun, and that last one was only five weeks from ending; Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai did debut in the tail end of 1989, but that's more a technicality. To be perfectly honest, if "Just make a new Saint Seiya for the 90s" truly was Shueisha's idea for Kurumada by mid-1992, I can actually see the logic in it.

Ring ni Kakero, in Masami Kurumada & Others' Words: The Author's Notes & Afterwords (feat. shumpulations) Part 2: Volumes 10-18

It's been a while, but shumpulations & I are finally back with the second round of author's notes & afterwords from the original 25-volume tankouban release of Ring ni Kakero, which came out between 1978 & 1983 in Japan. In the first round back in January we checked out what came with the first nine volumes, which included some of Masami Kurumada's earliest short messages to his readers & longer messages written mostly by professional boxers of the time, all of which had been WBC and/or WBA champions for their respective weight classes at one point or another, with three of Kurumada's fellow Jump mangaka pulling up the rear for that chunk. This time around, though, we'll be seeing the inverse as Volumes 10 to 18 will mostly be featuring Jump mangaka writing the afterwords, with only three being written by those from outside of the industry (& one of them isn't even a boxer!).

So let's not dawdle about any further & see what messages we have in store for this second chunk of volumes! Which mangaka will poke fun at Kurumada? Which boxers will get to tell their personal stories? Will Masami Kurumada himself retroactively put his foot in his mouth due to now-old-fashioned ideals?!

Volume 10 of Ring ni Kakero came out on February 15, 1980, right as the World Tournament had ended in Weekly Shonen Jump, which saw Kurumada essentially "kill off" all five members of Golden Japan Jr., despite the final page of that arc literally telling readers to look forward to a new chapter the following issue; weekly serialization can be a hoot. As for the author's note for the first double-digit volume of the manga, Kurumada thinks back to when Guts Ishimatsu (who wrote Volume 3's afterword) won the WBC Lightweight Championship in 1974 & something he had heard Ishimatsu did the moment he became champion: Telling off everyone who didn't believe in him:

"It's an old story, but I heard that when Guts Ishimatsu won the World Title, he turned to the audience and yelled, 'You idiots!'. It was his way of paying back the world for not recognizing him. For a young man with no money, no education, and no parental support, such a moment where one can say that to the whole world must come rarely, if at all. Incidentally, I think a manga artist is one of the few professions where you get to say 'You Idiots!'"

As for Volume 10's afterword we have mangaka Mitsuyuki Takashina, better known in Japan by his pen name, Kontaro. While not really known at all abroad, Kontaro is known in Japan most for his gag manga, particularly his first big hit from Shonen Jump, 1975's 1・2 no Ahho!!, which was a nonsensical comedic baseball series. By early 1980 Kontaro was actually more or less done with Shonen Jump, as neither of his later works (1978's Ruse! Ruse! & 1979's Kuroki Taka) made it beyond short runs, and in 1981 he'd debut his other well known work, the salaryman manga Isshokenmei Hajime-kun, in Young Jump. Kontaro is also known in Japan for being the man that Tadashi Sato (Moeru! Onii-san) & Tomokazu Sato (Ghost Mama Sousasen), no seeming relation, were assistants for, & Kontaro is also the uncle to modern-day J-pop/rock singer Saasa. Kontaro is still making manga to this day, most recently reviving his first hit in 2020 with Kaettekita 1・2 no Ahho!! as an online serialization for Comic Gakuen. For Volume 10 of RnK Kontaro, as a member of the "Daimanzoku" baseball team he, Kurumada, Osamu Akimoto, & Satoshi Ikezawa formed (see Part 1 for more details), recalls when he first met Kurumada back in 1975, how Kurumada's physical demeanor shattered his preconceptions of what a mangaka looked like, and how Kurumada himself slowly achieved the "major" success he was experiencing come 1980... as well as making a playful jab at Kurumada's own physical stature, or slight lack thereof; this actually isn't the only time we'll see that last one, too:

Watanabe, Kurosawa, & Kumagai: 2004's Inadvertent Samurai Trilogy

While the ninja is arguably the most iconic thing to come from Japan when it comes to worldwide pop culture, I think it's more than fair to say that the samurai is a very close second. While the real life samurai that existed for around 700 years between the late 12th century & late 1870s were not always quite like what they are now often portrayed as in modern pop culture, there's no doubt that there's a lot to like in the general (romanticized) concept of the samurai. Stalwart & loyal in fealty to their respective lords, honorable in battle due to them following the ideals of bushido, and kicking all kinds of ass while wearing armor; of course, there's also the inverse concept of the samurai, which can be just as accurate, at points. Naturally, there have been tons of anime that involved samurai in some way or another, and some even feature the word "samurai" in their titles.

The following aren't really all that accurate to what the actual samurai were like, but they were essentially an entire year's primary representation of that concept, at least on TV.

Throughout 2004 three TV anime debuted & aired in Japan that all had titles starting with the word "Samurai"... and all three were not only unique from each other in their conception, but all three also went in wildly different directions. One is today considered an all-time classic (& would otherwise never be covered on this blog), another is still fondly remembered today as a cult-classic (at the very least), and the last is easily the most forgotten of them all yet is a reminder of the early efforts some American anime companies made in becoming more of a direct part of the anime industry itself in Japan. This is, essentially, 2004's Inadvertent Samurai Trilogy. From a personal standpoint, 2004 is the year where I truly went full bore into anime, and that meant that I indulged in both fansubs as well as official releases, but the former was how you had to watch brand new anime as it came out in Japan; simulcasting was nowhere near existing back then, since YouTube didn't even exist yet! In those early days I watched the fansubs for two of these shows as they came out, while the third one (due to its very creation, essentially) wasn't something I saw until it got a physical release in English. Now it's been effectively 20 years since all three of these shows debuted in Japan (& I entered anime fandom), so I'd like to look back at these three "samurai" & see how each one holds up after all this time, as well as how each one befits the concept of a "samurai".

Is the whole "Inadvertent Samurai Trilogy" thing just an excuse to allow me to write about at least one anime that I'd never cover normally here? A little, sure, but I legit just find it neat that there were three TV anime in 2004 whose titles all started with "Samurai", so it's a fun little excuse, at the very least.