sometimes they rock and roll
sometimes they stay at home and it’s just fine
this sword’s on fire
this sword’s on fire
this sword’s on fire
this sword’s on fire

Goodness knows I’ve worked hard the past 26 years to make a name for myself. And it’s felt great coming to the aid of New Age spa owners, suburban party planners, and young couples looking to save money by making their own wedding invitations. But only now, by appearing in your movie, have I been given mainstream, high-level recognition as a serious typeface. And for that, I thank you.

An open letter to James Cameron from Papyrus.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi:
A. Has amazing hair.
B. Is a kick-ass mahjong player.
C. Can pilot an F-15.
D. All of the above.

Please visit the Gaming Intelligence Agency for all your Dreamcast2 launch news.

I love time loops and I hate The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Correction: I’m indifferent towards the Haruhi anime; it’s the fans I hate. So this summer’s Endless Eight arc has been like Christmas every day. Some background:

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is about a high school girl, Haruhi Suzumiya, and her high school club, the S.O.S. Brigade. Except not really; Haruhi, unbeknownst to her, is a Godlike-being with the power to recreate the universe on a whim, and the other club members are actually robots/time travelers/Espers/dimension shifters sent to this point in time to study and/or placate her. If this sounds like an interesting set-up, you’re mistaken; what should be It’s a Good Life: The High School Years just turns into so much unflavored moe. The anime is based on a series of light novels, giving fans a convenient list of things to complain got left out.

Endless Eight is a 30-page short story about a two-week time loop at the end of August, right before school starts. Haruhi, you see, doesn’t want summer vacation to end – she’d rather enjoy the Obon festival, go to the beach, visit hot spring, etc. – anything with a costume change, basically. And because Haruhi gets what she wants, the S.O.S. Brigade has endured these two weeks over 15,000 times – almost 600 years. The key to breaking this loop turns out to be one of the characters finally doing his homework. But until he learns to hit the books? (Bell)

The first episode of the Endless Eight arc was a straightforward adaptation of the short story. Everyone has fun in the sun, a few characters are suspicious this might have happened before, nothing is resolved, and Kyon fails to do his homework. It’s not until the next episode that things start to go awry.

It’s the exact same episode as last week. The same script, the same characters, the same scenes, the same ending. Nobody learns anything new. No one is any closer to uncovering the secret of how to break out of this time loop. It’s just last week … this week.

Except – and this is the greatest “except” in the history of both anime and time loop fiction – it’s not. The script has been re-envisioned by a new director. The characters have been redesigned with new outfits. The show has been reanimated from scratch. Even the voice actors have rerecorded all their lines. By another way of thinking, it’s a completely new episode — albeit, one with absolutely no new content.

Episode three does the same thing. So does episode four. Fans, amused at first, have turned sour. They were looking forward to seeing the The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya arc animated, and at the rate KyoAni is burning through episodes, that’s never going to happen.

Five, six, seven, eight.

After two months, it ends. A once-thriving fanbase has been reduced to ashes and tears. Most have long since declared the series anathema; the few that toughed it out are filled with self-loathing at their capacity for abuse. Nobody knows why Endless Eight continued as long as it did. Intentional sabotage from within? An producer with an unchecked artistic bent? A misjudged thought experiment? Tens of millions of yen and thousands of man hours were spent … on what, exactly? It’s over, now, but nobody knows for sure.

Endless Eight is beautiful.

Buy Time Gentlemen, Please!

One of the sad facts of the game industry is that good writing – either original or localized flavor – is pathetically undervalued. Usually, a hapless artist or programmer (or worse, Orson Scott Card) is tasked with stitching some sort of plot together 18 months into the project – well after the levels, weapons, boss fights have become immutable and the characters models are etched in Mayan stone. This method works about as well as having your customer support department do your voice acting.

It’s a shame, too, because quality writing is the single cheapest way to improve a game. Compared to the cost of getting actors into the recording studio, fixing the writing up front is pennies on the dollar. This lack of focus is even more depressing when you look at the modern games that people love and adore – Valve’s Half-Life and Portal; 2K’s Bioshock; RPGs from Bioware, Obsidian and Bethesda; even Call of Duty 4. Yes, these games have a lot going for them, but the experience is held together by their stories – and their stories were written by writers. A good writer probably draws half the salary of a mid-level shader programmer, and yet it’s always seen as something “someone else can do.”

Well, someone else did do it, and they did it for as near to free as makes no odds. Ben and Dan’s Time Gentlemen, Please! is quite possibly the funniest adventure game I’ve ever played. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I really mean that. It’s funnier than any of the recent Telltale games. It’s funnier than Psychonauts and Grim Fandango. I would even say it’s funnier than any of the classic LucasArts titles – yes, I know; but like libel, it’s not blasphemy if it’s true. The Infocom Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game might be funnier, but it got to practice its material on the book, TV and radio circuits, first. Portal might be funnier, but it’s so short and scripted that it deftly avoid most of the problems caused by making humor interactive.

Anyway, even if it’s not the funniest game I’ve ever played, it’s certainly the snarkiest. And the…Britishiest. And hilariously, gloriously, adultly profane. This is the uncomfortable, soul-searing humor of Brass Eye and Peep Show. To complete the game, you must instruct protagonist Ben to do horrible, terrible things to animals, people, even his best friend Dan. It’s the same ludonarrative tension found in Shadow of the Colossus, only instead of slaying ancient beasts of wonder and beauty, you’re using objects with other, entirely inappropriate objects. You will do these things, laughing and cringing all the while: you are an Adventurer, which means the Needs of the Adventure trump social niceties, consequences be damned.

Time Gentlemen, Please! is 8-10 hours of the best old-school, LucasArts-style adventure gaming this side of 1993. It’s even improved on the old formula in a few subtle but important ways. First, there’s the OCD amount of text – any object (including Dan) can be used with any other object, any on-screen location, and any NPC for a unique response. Hilarious and informative in equal parts, this mountain of non sequiturs keeps the game from ever getting dull – you’re always laughing, being nudged towards the correct solution, or both. There’s a “magic map” which warps you to any in-game location, completely eliminating tedious backtracking. There’s a text speed slider.

Hell, there’s a racism slider. The game frequently references classic adventure gaming tropes without descending into navel-gazing fanboyisms. There’s a text adventure parody. There’s a SCUMM parody. There are puzzles with WITS, FISTS, and TEAM solutions. There’s an inventory transmogrifier. This game is $5. There’s a free demo too but this game is $5.

This game is simply a delight and would be a steal at ten times the price. It won’t be long before some forward-thinking studio asks Ben and Dan to help them turn their next title into a triple-A multimillion seller. But until that happens, you have a choice: either you buy Time Gentlemen, Please! right now or you are responsible for the death of gaming and can never complain about anything ever again. And I know how much you like complaining.

I recently learned of It’s Better With Your Shoes Off, a collection of cartoons first published in 1955. The author, Anne Cleveland, spent several years living in Japan in the 1950s with her husband, a British trader. She took her experiences and turned them into a series of charming cartoons that poke good-natured fun at the daily foibles of living in Japan as a foreigner. Though out of print now, the book was relatively successful at the time and went into nearly twenty printings.

The artistry is really top-notch, with a clean and dynamic line, and the humor, while slightly dated by the accompanying text, is still easily understood, frequently hilarious, and thankfully free of racial stereotypes. Copies can be easily found online for less than $10 (including shipping). Any foreigner who has spent time living in Japan would absolutely love a copy of this book.

Mike Lynch has scanned in several pages at his blog. Check ‘em out!

Israeli arms manufacturer x Bollywood promotional video = Dinga dinga dee

Shaq is very good at Scrabble. One of his Scrabble words is SHAQFU. That’s fine for now, but once ShaqFu.com has completed their holy mission of cleansing the Earth of all copies of the game, no one will know what SHAQFU means. (c.f. “Scrabble With God“)

The Scott Pilgrim movie rounded out the rest of its principal cast this week, moving it from “probably happening” to “almost definitely happening”; pre-production means nothing in this town. Most of the new cast seems pretty spot-on, and I’m even willing to forgive Michael Cera in the lead role, as long as he expands his range — and puts the past few months of karate lessons to good use.

Director Edgar Wright (Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) posted a picture on his blog of the movies he brought with him to Toronto. Judging from that photo, he intends to make a kung-fu anime musical concert character-driven superhero exploitation film.

…I’m so glad the director understands the source material.

Panera Bread got in a legal tiff with rival upstart Qdoba Mexican Grill. Panera, you see, had a sandwich vendor exclusivity clause with a certain shopping center. They felt that allowing Qdoba to open a franchise there would violate this clause…because a burrito is a sandwich.

Panera, in court filings, argued for a broad definition of sandwich, saying a flour tortilla qualifies as bread and a food product with bread and a filling is a sandwich.

The court eventually ruled in Qdoba’s favor – thank goodness. Had the precedent been set, I shudder to imagine what other foods Culinary Activist Judges might start to classify as a sandwich:

• A bread bowl is a sandwich. The bowl is the bread, the soup is the filling. Definitely a sandwich, albeit a soggy one.
• Nachos are a sandwich. If burritos are a sandwich, Q.E.D. Same ingredients, different layout.
• Sushi rolls are a sandwich. A cylindrical, starchy roll stuffed with rice and meat? Sounds like a burrito, and thus a sandwich, to me.
• Poutine is a sandwich. Haven’t you ever heard of potato bread? Don’t think you can escape the Sandwich Police just by serving it as fries.
• An ice cream sandwich is a sandwich. It’s right there in the name.

What else is – or almost was – a sandwich?