Thoughts for: Monday 6th February 2006
FMA Eratta :: [21:47:06]I meant SUB not DUB... Brain wasn't working this morning due to lack of sleep and presence of cat on shoulder. Cat on shoulder is a well documented cause of temporary retardation.
:: [12:39:31]There's a new MK game coming out called MK Armageddon. Near as I can tell it uses the same engine as Deception only with some tweaks. Apparently some work has gone into a new juggling system (FINALLY) and a few new game modes crop up as well, not to mention a customise character option (FINALLY) oh yeah and a new reversal system (hopefully better than the shite they pulled before) plus the added bonus of internet play and character creation. This game has pretty much every MK character I can think of plus some I don't know. Obviously if I don't know the character it is new for the game. Not sure why they need new characters considering the massive amount covered in this game, but you know, sure whatever. Old favourites include Rain, Reiko, Fujin, Sindel, Stryker and others. We are talking well over 60 characters here. Surely that's enough to keep anyone busy. Not sure how high my hopes are for this game because in all honesty MK's forray into 3 dimensions has remained majoritively dissapointing for some time. Deception wasn't bad and has some nice elements but there is a sense of too little too late in a lot of ways. Not to mention that despite the evolution of the characters into the 3d genre the gameplay has struggled to drag itself out of two dimensions. Hopefully these painful problems will be sorted in this game. I will probably by the damn thing based entirely on my MK worship and memories of when it was good. The game will be released in October and will be out for the X-Box and PS2.
:: [10:41:20]Too tired for coherence. Haven't been sleeping much again lately, not entirely sure why. I thought perhaps the cat had been waking me up with her running around but even locking her out of my room I wake up early so I guess it's not her fault. You would think considering my current schedule that I would manage to have a lie in, but I guess noone bothered to explain this to my anatomy. Waking up at half 5 is never fun, especially when you go to bed at the sort of times I do. I think I'm going to have to get some over the counter sleeping pills or something just so I have the energy I need to do all the damn work I need to do. Yeah work. Work sucks. Got a lot of stuff to do really. Got a couple of essays to start, a fuckload of reading to do and an experiment to run. The experiment I wouldn't mind, but I need a very specific sample and lots of people are prone to tell you to get lost if you ask them to participate. Which doesn't really help me considering I need them for my dissertation. I'm hoping to get a lot more participants this week, it's normally difficult for me to do so (when we did our TBP's it was always me that got all the participants) but then again I never did an experiment which takes this long, so getting people to play ball isn't so easy. Then again it's not like I have a choice, so I guess I will just have to do my best. I give them cookies, what more do they want?
Speaking of want, I want a good dub of the rather beautiful FMA movie. Fucking damn that's a good movie. Slightly spoilt by the fact that the dub is fucked up in one place though. If any of you out there have a non-fucked up version of the film then let me know and I can take a copy plus host it so that other people can enjoy it's magnificence too. For those heathen scum amongst you who do not know the jobs of FMA allow me to give you a brief idea of the plot (those of you who do know the joys of FMA skip the italics) -
Full Metal Alchemist is a manga and anime which is highly popular in Japan and has the kind of budget which makes most live action movies jealous. The plot revolves around two young boys, Ed and Al and their journey. Ed and Al live in another world to us; a world where Alchemy is the dominant science. When the young boys mother dies while they are still young they try a forbidden act and attempt to ressurrect their mother using alchemy. This doesn't exactly go well and Al vanishes. To bring Al back, Ed sacrifes an arm and a leg and bonds Al's soul to a suit of armour. Ed then gets his arm and leg replaced by robotic versions. From there on in the two brothers travel the world (and join the military for funding) in search of the legendary Philosophers Stone which will boost their power and allow them to break the rules of alchemy (equivalent trade) which in turn should allow them to restore eachothers bodies"
Now that is a massively over simplified version and only tells you the very very very beginning of the story but that is because you have to see the awesomeness of FMA to truly understand it and nothing I put here can do it justice. Anyhow, back to the point before I go on a massive sidetrack about the anime. The point is I need a non-fucked up version of the movie damn it.
Moving swiftly on, broadband is cool and has sent me on somewhat of a nostalgia trip with me retrieving lots of old cartoons I used to watch as a kid so I can watch them again and see what they were actually like. Turns out most of them were pretty dire but I guess you don't evaluate stuff when your little. Hmm on that note I think I will go try and find Swampthing. Was always my favourite movie when I was a kid (The first one, not the others...) and I have no idea where the video went.
:: [10:24:06]Just started reading the Battle Royale mangas. The first movie is fantastic so I finally gave into temptation and bought the actual mangas. For those of you who don't know, Battle Royale is a story set in the not so distant future in Japan. The generally gist is that due to overpopulation a certain law was passed through parliament, a law commonly referred to as the BR law. Basically one class of schoolchildren is chosen every so often and shipped off to an island where they must play a twisted game of survival. The only purpose of the game is to be the last man standing, in which case you are allowed to go free. Otherwise you die. The entire thing is televised to generate funds for itself and the government and all TV channels automatically switch to it while the show is on.
The manga seems to vastly expand upon this original concept where the film didn't have time to go. This extra background information is everything from very important points about characters and their pasts to highly impressive scenes of combat, moral dilemma, mental breakdown, etc. I have the first 4 manga so far and I can see that I am going to have to buy the others soon. That's why I avoided buying the series in the first place, I didn't really want to get addicted. Ahh well, what can you do? If something is good it's good. They are up to about issue 12 by my count but obviously there's a lot more to go (Japanese stuff always takes forever to get over here because of the bloody ridiculous translation times). Incidentally there is a second Battle Royale movie which I haven't seen. Apparently it's quite dire though. Anyone who has an opinion on the film feel free to let me know. I should be getting a copy of it sooner or later anyhow so I can at least give it a go.