A Random Rant
You know, talking about Final Fantasy had made me think about something I usually try to avoid thinking of: hardcore fanboys. Surely the Final Fantasy franchise is guilty of having a lot but just about anything has at least one or two. What really irks me about them is they have a tendency to talk about whatever they are embracing in particular and not shutting up about it. I'm sure all of us, myself included, are guilty of gushing over a game, movie or whatever every now and then, but at least most of us do not talking about it all the time. The worst fanboys are the ones that not only talk about their passion nonstop but the ones who aren't willing to tolerate criticism regardless if it is actually constructive. Granted, the main source of criticism tends to be other fanboys bashing each other creating needless flame wars usually consisting of (to quote a highly common example): "Gamecube sucks" "no Playstation sucks" "well, you're gay for liking the gaycube" "nuh-uh, you're gay for liking the gaystation" "hey, you guys are both gay because X-Box is the best." I suppose it's best to point out now that most of the flame wars are waged between 12-year olds or people with the mentality of them who most likly think they are being exceptionally clever, but now I'm going on a tangent. The point is, fanboys can actually drive people away from perfectly good things simply because they annoy other people to death. The really sad fanboys are the ones that embrace the hopeless causes or the things that really aren't that good, like the WonderSwan. What? Never heard of the WonderSwan before? Well then let me enlighten you with a little bit of gaming history.
The WonderSwan was handheld console developed and marketed by Bandai designed to compete with the then new, Game Boy Color and the Neo Geo Pocket Color (never heard of that one either? I'll tell the tragic tale of that another time). It managed to outlast SNK's handheld effort and even capture eight percent of the ten percent of handheld gaming market Nintendo didn't own. It managed to do so largely because Bandai managed to secure a deal with Squaresoft to receive remakes of the original Final Fantasy 1-3. That is one of the three things that actually makes it noteworthy in the history of gaming. The other two thing are the fact it was the last creation of the late Gunpei Yokoi, better known for the creation of the Game Boy and the Metroid game series, and the fact some of the system's games required you to turn it vertically in order to play some games. That's about it. Given the fact that many of its games were in fact Gundam Visual Adventure Novels (which is a really fancy name for what amounts to either a "A Choose Your Own Adventure" type of affair or a dating sim) and Square later brought their remakes stateside on other consoles, it's no surprise that it never made it stateside. What is surprising was that I managed to find a hardcore fanboy of the WonderSwan. To give you an idea of how deluded this fan boy is, take a look at this review of one of the only WonderSwan titles of note, Rockman and Forte. Now if your opinion of the game came solely from reading that review you'd think it was the best thing to grace a handheld since Tetris, but if you actually look at what he's talking about then you'll get a much different picture. Now, I will admit that I've never touched the game myself so I'll leave the issue of play control out but I have seen the sprites so I can say the reviewers comment about the game doing "...a magnificant job of replicating one of the better looking Super Famicom games" is a little erroneous, and I'm not talking about that typo either.
Now, here's what Megaman looks like in the SNES version of Rockman and Forte. Please take not that these are also the same sprite featured in Megaman 8, a game that came out on 32-but consoles. Now take a look at Megaman in the WonderSwan game, not quite the same aren't they? A better example is to compare Bass from the SNES with the WS version. Still need more convincing? Okay, how about this: the review implies that the game is a port when that's is actually very for from the truth. Here's the boss lineup from the original game compared to the lineup from the WS game, notice some differences? To give you an idea of just how lame those bosses are, the names are as follow from top to bottom: Aircon Man, Clock Man, Compas Man (sic), Dangan Man (he's supposed to be a bullet, for those of you with dirty minds), Konro Man (who bear a strong resemblance to those fire-tossing enemies back from Quick Man's level back in Mega Man 2), Kosumo Man and the group is lead by none other then Quint from Mega Man II. What? You don't remember him? That's because he shows up in Mega Man II for Game Boy, where he's supposed to be an evil clone of Mega Man from the future (but not the future Mega Man X is from though) or some such nonsense. This gives you basically a bunch of reject robot masters led by a third-string villain; the only thing they manage to do right (or wrong, depending on your opinion) is that they're not part of a new sinister plot by Dr. Wily. I'm serious, Wily does not appear in this game at all for reasons unbeknownst to man. Still of the opinion that they could be worse? Look here and see the ugliest looking met in all existence and yes, I do realize that strip is sideways but it's supposed to be that way. It's no wonder that Mega Man fans consider this game to have the ugliest sprites of the entire series with the exception of the PC games. Note: don't click on the previous link unless you want your eyes seared by some of the ugliest sprites in existence. Of course, if you're reading this now then you've probably already clicked on the link. Perhaps I should have put this warning before the link? Oh well, hindsight is 20-20 or so they say.
So in conclusion, hardcore fanboys can be and frequently are stupid, glorifying things that don't really deserve it (and perhaps a year ago you'd see that statement followed by "like Final Fantasy VII, zing!" but not now). Apparently, not all of them are willing to stick with their passion all the way since a look at that site's front page shows how much care its gotten (note: site might not work in Firefox). On a related side note, why did they pick that name for the site? Did the webmaster know what it even meant and thus was trying for some bitter irony? Or were they just being stupid?
Also, I feel it is my duty to link to the site whose images I directly linked to since direct linking to someone else's webs pace is technically bad. So feel free to go to Sprites Inc. where you can see sprites from just about every Mega Man game in existence, and Mega Geable which is a very funny comic and a better sprite comic then Bob and George is currently (just do yourself a favor and follow the author's advice and skip the first 65 comics).
-James
The WonderSwan was handheld console developed and marketed by Bandai designed to compete with the then new, Game Boy Color and the Neo Geo Pocket Color (never heard of that one either? I'll tell the tragic tale of that another time). It managed to outlast SNK's handheld effort and even capture eight percent of the ten percent of handheld gaming market Nintendo didn't own. It managed to do so largely because Bandai managed to secure a deal with Squaresoft to receive remakes of the original Final Fantasy 1-3. That is one of the three things that actually makes it noteworthy in the history of gaming. The other two thing are the fact it was the last creation of the late Gunpei Yokoi, better known for the creation of the Game Boy and the Metroid game series, and the fact some of the system's games required you to turn it vertically in order to play some games. That's about it. Given the fact that many of its games were in fact Gundam Visual Adventure Novels (which is a really fancy name for what amounts to either a "A Choose Your Own Adventure" type of affair or a dating sim) and Square later brought their remakes stateside on other consoles, it's no surprise that it never made it stateside. What is surprising was that I managed to find a hardcore fanboy of the WonderSwan. To give you an idea of how deluded this fan boy is, take a look at this review of one of the only WonderSwan titles of note, Rockman and Forte. Now if your opinion of the game came solely from reading that review you'd think it was the best thing to grace a handheld since Tetris, but if you actually look at what he's talking about then you'll get a much different picture. Now, I will admit that I've never touched the game myself so I'll leave the issue of play control out but I have seen the sprites so I can say the reviewers comment about the game doing "...a magnificant job of replicating one of the better looking Super Famicom games" is a little erroneous, and I'm not talking about that typo either.
Now, here's what Megaman looks like in the SNES version of Rockman and Forte. Please take not that these are also the same sprite featured in Megaman 8, a game that came out on 32-but consoles. Now take a look at Megaman in the WonderSwan game, not quite the same aren't they? A better example is to compare Bass from the SNES with the WS version. Still need more convincing? Okay, how about this: the review implies that the game is a port when that's is actually very for from the truth. Here's the boss lineup from the original game compared to the lineup from the WS game, notice some differences? To give you an idea of just how lame those bosses are, the names are as follow from top to bottom: Aircon Man, Clock Man, Compas Man (sic), Dangan Man (he's supposed to be a bullet, for those of you with dirty minds), Konro Man (who bear a strong resemblance to those fire-tossing enemies back from Quick Man's level back in Mega Man 2), Kosumo Man and the group is lead by none other then Quint from Mega Man II. What? You don't remember him? That's because he shows up in Mega Man II for Game Boy, where he's supposed to be an evil clone of Mega Man from the future (but not the future Mega Man X is from though) or some such nonsense. This gives you basically a bunch of reject robot masters led by a third-string villain; the only thing they manage to do right (or wrong, depending on your opinion) is that they're not part of a new sinister plot by Dr. Wily. I'm serious, Wily does not appear in this game at all for reasons unbeknownst to man. Still of the opinion that they could be worse? Look here and see the ugliest looking met in all existence and yes, I do realize that strip is sideways but it's supposed to be that way. It's no wonder that Mega Man fans consider this game to have the ugliest sprites of the entire series with the exception of the PC games. Note: don't click on the previous link unless you want your eyes seared by some of the ugliest sprites in existence. Of course, if you're reading this now then you've probably already clicked on the link. Perhaps I should have put this warning before the link? Oh well, hindsight is 20-20 or so they say.
So in conclusion, hardcore fanboys can be and frequently are stupid, glorifying things that don't really deserve it (and perhaps a year ago you'd see that statement followed by "like Final Fantasy VII, zing!" but not now). Apparently, not all of them are willing to stick with their passion all the way since a look at that site's front page shows how much care its gotten (note: site might not work in Firefox). On a related side note, why did they pick that name for the site? Did the webmaster know what it even meant and thus was trying for some bitter irony? Or were they just being stupid?
Also, I feel it is my duty to link to the site whose images I directly linked to since direct linking to someone else's webs pace is technically bad. So feel free to go to Sprites Inc. where you can see sprites from just about every Mega Man game in existence, and Mega Geable which is a very funny comic and a better sprite comic then Bob and George is currently (just do yourself a favor and follow the author's advice and skip the first 65 comics).
-James