A Farewell to Makurazaki

My last trip to the southernmost train station on JR (Japan Railways) has yielded quite a few good things. I got a bunch of my kids to draw pictures of me, they are such a nice collection, I really wished that I had thought of doing it sooner. Searching Book Off (Japan's used media giant) for My Girl by the Temptations, I came across many bargain games and CDs. I was able to pick up an old, old girl band called Princess Princess, as well as a not so old girl band called SPEED. And because the track titles just keep me laughing non-stop, I had to also get MC Hammer's Greatest Hits for two-fiddy. Used games are abundant in Japan, and they present a formidable money sink for me because the Japanese like to keep their shit really, really clean, and near-mint. I am often on the look out for interesting looking Japanese games that probably were left untranslated now that I have a PS2. And I was able to pick up a handful of titles including one were you are a humanoid cat samurai, called Nekozamurai. If you have any interest in anime of have any friends that do, you have probably heard of 'neko' before. But the best find of the week was definitely the PS2 compilation of the old SNK fighter Last Blade and Last Blade 2. I played these back in the day on emulators and they were great titles. When I get back on the same continent I'll get joysticks and invite you all over.

I was also able to finish Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (PH). It was definitely one of the best old-school top-down dungeon crawlers I've run through in quite a while, but I guess I haven't really seen too many games like that lately. PH is VERY REMINISCENT of the SNES Link to the Past. It is a smaller and short game though. With seven dungeons, I think I clocked somewhere around 10 hours. The art style is Wind Waker revisited, and it's really nice. If you have played any of the new Zeldas, the feel of the items and their mechanics will be very familiar. The game's new schtick is the stylus control scheme, which is mandatory and works very, very well. You just point where you want to go, use jabbing or swiping motions for various moves, and switch items using the L shoulder. You get a lot of maps in this game and so you get to draw on them to help you remember clues to puzzles. It's very novel, easy to use, and helps the game move along at a steady pace as long as you are using it, hehe. I used to always forget all the stupid little clues that pop up in games and it always made me think, “WTF? Did they really think I'd go write this stuff down?”

Drawing on the screen is also used to control some of your items, like the boomerang. Makes the game and puzzles feel fresh even to a pretty seasoned Zelda player. Alas, I thought the game could have been a little longer, maybe even a littler harder. I never really felt stuck at any of the puzzles except for this ONE WHERE YOU HAVE TO *******, and the boss fights were all really well-designed, but maybe I've just been fighting too many Zelda bosses, I was usually able to pick apart their weaknesses before I even had to gulp my first potion.

Another note, like Wind Waker, PH also uses a boat and sailing to essentially travel between dungeons and important characters, but I think all the content they put into the sailing part is all extraneous. Most of it is to get more money or to customize your boat, both of which are not necessary to progress the main story and finish the game.