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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / The MSTing Of ChronoTrigger!
« on: April 19, 2007, 03:16:26 pm »
While organizing some long-forgotten crap on my HD, I came across a couple of flies I must have downloaded years ago then completely forgot about. One of them was the complete MSTing of Chrono Trigger. I remember it being damn funny and was curious if there would be any interest in my posting it here at the Compendium. The files could use some cleaning up for the sake of clarity and compatibility (it's quite old, you understand), so I really don’t want to spend any time on it if no one is interested in reading it. I've got my own MSTing to attend to, you understand.
The MSTing can be pretty ruthless, as you can well imagine, given the game’s translation. It was clearly written by a fan of CT, though, and well before the release of CC, so there are a few assumptions on the part of the writer that are clearly wrong. It’s like a roast, actually, and you only roast the ones you love.
So, any takers?
The MSTing can be pretty ruthless, as you can well imagine, given the game’s translation. It was clearly written by a fan of CT, though, and well before the release of CC, so there are a few assumptions on the part of the writer that are clearly wrong. It’s like a roast, actually, and you only roast the ones you love.
So, any takers?
2
General Discussion / Iraq War Solutions. America Haters Need Not Apply
« on: December 03, 2006, 02:46:52 pm »
Of all the internet forums I’ve come across in my ‘net wanderings, the members here at the Chrono Compendium are easily among the most intelligent, verbose, and analytically gifted. Exactly what I would expect from those who understand and recognize in innate awesomeness of the Chrono Trigger video game (may it live forever!). And that intellect is not limited to gaming either. Conversation/debates on abortion, civil liberties, religion, etc, have all been handled with a similar (in not superior), level of rationale and out-of-the-box thinking.
So imagine my annoyance to see yet another Iraq War thread that quickly devolved into another “America Sucks!” tirade. Quite frankly, such rhetoric is beneath you, members of the Compendium. No one had added anything new to the topic. Not even Lord J, a member who I disagree with 95% of the time but still respect because, damn it his posts are just an engaging read.
So here is my challenge to you, Compendium: Give me a solution.
America is in Iraq rightly or wrongly. This thread is not to debate the legality of the invasion. That point is pretty much moot as far as this current conflict goes (though we would be wise to examine the lessons learned here for future conflicts). We are there. Deal with it. Post that amount to “America never should have invaded” will be summarily ignored unless followed immediately by the plans for a working flux capacitor, Quantum-leap accelerator, Gate Key, time traveling phone booth, or starship capable of sling-shooting around the sun. This thread is about solutions. What is the best path to take to stabilizing the country, and why do you think so? Should the country be split up among ethnic lines? Should the US announce a withdraw time table? Should we send more troops? Further embedded Iraqi forces with US troops, forcing them to step up a little faster? Lock down the country’s boarders to prevent further meddling from Syria and Iran? Or, conversely, should we open up dialogue with those countries and seek to end the meddling that way? Do all these ideas suck? Have you a better one? Lets hear it.
If you have no suggestions about how to make it better, then I challenge you to shut your freaking pie hole. Thank you and good night. Goddess bless America.
So imagine my annoyance to see yet another Iraq War thread that quickly devolved into another “America Sucks!” tirade. Quite frankly, such rhetoric is beneath you, members of the Compendium. No one had added anything new to the topic. Not even Lord J, a member who I disagree with 95% of the time but still respect because, damn it his posts are just an engaging read.
So here is my challenge to you, Compendium: Give me a solution.
America is in Iraq rightly or wrongly. This thread is not to debate the legality of the invasion. That point is pretty much moot as far as this current conflict goes (though we would be wise to examine the lessons learned here for future conflicts). We are there. Deal with it. Post that amount to “America never should have invaded” will be summarily ignored unless followed immediately by the plans for a working flux capacitor, Quantum-leap accelerator, Gate Key, time traveling phone booth, or starship capable of sling-shooting around the sun. This thread is about solutions. What is the best path to take to stabilizing the country, and why do you think so? Should the country be split up among ethnic lines? Should the US announce a withdraw time table? Should we send more troops? Further embedded Iraqi forces with US troops, forcing them to step up a little faster? Lock down the country’s boarders to prevent further meddling from Syria and Iran? Or, conversely, should we open up dialogue with those countries and seek to end the meddling that way? Do all these ideas suck? Have you a better one? Lets hear it.
If you have no suggestions about how to make it better, then I challenge you to shut your freaking pie hole. Thank you and good night. Goddess bless America.
3
General Discussion / EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE! And here’s how:
« on: September 04, 2006, 08:09:35 am »
So, the other night ABC (one tentacle in the world-devouring beast that is Disney) aired a program called Last Days On Earth. In this show, they got together a bunch of scientists from all over the world to list the top seven ways in which the world could come to an end, from the least likely to the most imminent. Quite frankly, I could care less what most scientists have to say unless they’re Stephen Hawking. Fortunately, the Xaiver-made-flesh of all things physics was also on hand to chime in, lending tremendous credibility to the scenarios presented with out so much as lifting a finger.
Ok, bad joke. I herby hand over 500,000 humor points and a billion cool points. Let’s move on.
The Top Seven Ways We Are All Going To Die
7) Death Of A Star (Nature’s Answer to the Sun Crusher)
Two scenarios were listed for number seven. The first being that the next closet star to Earth explodes, sending out a gamma ray burst. Even though said star is (according to the show) 8,000 light years away, the gamma ray burst would still reach us, most likely with no warning other than the appearance of what seemed like a second sun in the sky. By then, its already too late. The burst wouldn’t kill us directly, but would boil off all of our ozone layer, accomplishing in one swift stroke what mankind has being trying to do since the industrial revolution. Then the UV radiation of the Sun would do us in, killing off plants first of all, and eventually rendering our cells incapable of dividing. Without that ability our intestines would no longer be able to absorb nutrients from food or even water, and we all starve to death, in spite of the fact that we’re surrounded by food and drink. All other signs of our civilization, buildings, monuments, etc would remain, however.
The second scenario is that a star collapses, becomes a black hole, and we all get swallowed by it. Umm.. ooookaaay. I freely admit what I know about black holes is rooted more in science fiction than any genuine understanding of the phenomena, but aren’t those thing pretty stationary? As in: As long as we don’t go flying around their gravitational pull, we’re good? Well, evidentially there are roving black holes out there, just moving about, absorbing all things into eternal nothingness. And should one decide to mosey on our way, it would take the better part of several decades to cross our solar system. Escape would therefore be impossible (where were gonna go anyway? Mars? Venus? We still figuring out how to get back to the Moon!) When it does get within range of Earth, it would evidently suck off our atmosphere first (creating a titanic ‘sucking sound’ according to one scientist), then pull the rest of us in… tearing (or stretching, depending on how you want to look at it) us into little-bitty pieces in the process. Yeah, sounds a bit too out there to me too. But at least ABC had a cool little ‘Earth gets sucked into a black hole’ CGI thing playing out as they described it. And they even got the red-shift that an out side observer would see as an object gets pulled in right.
Sounds scary, but what does the smartest man since Einstein have to say? Hawking didn’t even dignify the black hole bit with a response. He did say that a gamma ray burst was highly unlikely, citing that in the billions of years since the formation of the planet, it has not happened in our corner of space even once. Hey, if he says it, it must be true.
6) Intelligent Machines (Rise of the Machines! Save us, Governor Schwarzenegger!)
I didn’t expect this one to make the list. The possibility of our over-reliance on technology proving to be our downfall seemed much more likely to me than said technology rising up to kill us all. But what do I know? The logic here is we became the dominate species on Earth due to our intelligence. Now, we are creating machines and computer programs to be faster, smarter, better. We have plugged these machines and programs into everything from traffic lights to Air Traffic Control, our stock and trade markets to our nuclear capabilities. It may not run our worldwide economy, but it definitely facilitates the running. And we are constantly making it better. What happens when we reach the point of true AI, when machine intelligence equals our own? Then what happens when they surpass it? At the rate we’re going, it not a matter if its going to occur, it’s a question of what will happen when it does. We don’t share the planet on equal footing with apes, why would truly intelligent machines share it with us? Mind you, this only apples to true AI machines, lesser machines can easily be controlled by programming, limited by Asimov’s Three Laws or something of similar nature. But AI machines, the Terminators and Reploids of our science fiction, would have the ability to make their own choices. And why would they chose to follow an inferior species (us) when they can do a better job in just about anything, and do it faster, easier, and more efficiently?
So are you working on a Mega Man X to save us all, Professor Hawking? Not so much, but his field isn’t robotics anyway. He did say that computers are likely to overtake human intelligence within the next hundred years. So by 2150, The Matrix should, officially, have you.
5) Super Volcano (Just call it Mt. Goku)
A regular volcano, much like a regular Sayjin, makes a lot of noise, explodes, and blows up a city or two. A super volcano, much like Super Sayjin, does pretty much the same thing, only several thousands times worse. When most people think of a volcano, they think of some solitary mountain, picturesque and placid that only occasionally shoots liquid hot death into the air. But so long as they don’t live in the foothills, they don’t have to worry about lava. As long as they are a state or two over, they don’t have to worry about the ash. And for the most part they’re right. Super volcanoes, on the other, hand are so large that they are actually canyons (called calderas in the show) that can be several hundred miles across. There around 40 of them scattered across the planet, with one of the largest being right here in the good ol’ USA (we just HAVE to have all the biggest shit, don’t we?). Where about? Why, right underneath Yellowstone Natural Park. A huge magma chain lies beneath the park. It has erupted before, casing mass extinction some 630,000 years ago, and is overdue for another. When that happens (not if, when) we might get a few warning signs in the from of increased seismic activity and earthquakes, bur no one knows how long it would take to go from that to a full on eruption. And even if we did, what could we really do about it? We could evacuate the park and surrounding area. That would save people from the eruption and lava flow, as anyone within a hundred miles of the super eruption will be instantly incinerated. But the problem isn’t so much the lava as it is the ash.
Toxic, sulfuric ash would be shot into the stratosphere, spreading all over the entire state of Wyoming in half an hour. And from there, carried on the wind, it would spread all over the country with in the week, several feet deep in most places, and much heavier than snow. People outside would be suffocate, people inside would have to worry about the ash accumulation causing their buildings to collapse. Escape and assistance from rescue personnel would be impossible; the ash would immobilize all internal combustion engines, from your motorcycle to the largest jetliners. In a few weeks, the cloud of ash would have spread all across the globe. It would be so thick that it would block out the sun, creating a insta-nuclear winter scenario, minus all that nasty radiation. An “Ice Age that would last for years” would befall the entire globe. World wide famine would ensue, countless millions would die. The good news is that humanity would not be entirely wiped out. Small communities that have banded together and learned how to grow food in such a world would survive, and within perhaps a generation the effects of the eruption would have passed completely. Needless to say our civilization would be completely different as a result.
Eeep, Stephen! It’s the End Of The World as We Know It! Yet, I feel fine. There was no comment from Stephen Hawking for this one, but I am ready to call BS on the super volcano. Yeah, 49 out of 50 US states would be screwed, but calling this one an ELE is a gross overstatement. For one, the whole globe could not possibly be affected in a few weeks. The countries in Europe and Asia (well Africa too, but lets face it, that continent is so screwed up no matter what happens that it doesn’t really matter) would have several months to the better part of a year to prepare their people for the effects of this event, as this all depended on the winds carrying the ash to be a real problem. To say NOTHING about the countries located in the Southern Hemisphere which might not get any ash for over a year or more if at all, and will only have to deal with a dramatic temperature drop. Which, actually might be a good thing, since it would in one fail swoop, undo all the damage we’ve done to the planet with global warming -- but now I’m jumping the gun.
Bottom line, if you don’t live in North America, you’ll be fine. Sorry, Canada.
4)Asteroid. (La=fire. Vos=Big)
“Soon, stones of fire will rain down. Flames shall scorch the land. The burned out plains will slowly freeze, ushering in a long, cruel ice age.”
- Azala, Chrono Trigger
Okay, we all took science in fifth grade, and learned what killed the dinosaurs. And we all saw Deep Impact and Armageddon. A big enough asteroid hits, and we all die. The end. But why worry about it? It hasn’t happened in 65 million years, so we must be pretty safe in our little corner of the cosmos, right? I mean, we must have ages before the next asteroid strike!
Well, yes. If by ages you mean April 13, 2036.
That is when the asteroid dubbed Apophis has a one in a few thousand chance of striking the Earth. It really depends on how Earth’s gravity will affect its orbit on its first go round, on April 13, 2029. On that day, it will be close enough to us to actually dip below the orbits of our communication satellites. That’s pretty freaking close, don’t ya think? But fear not. Apophis isn’t big enough to wipe us out. It would, however, still be a major problem. An ocean impact would create a tsunami hundreds of feet high that could travel at supersonic speeds. Does anyone here fancy Japan at all? L.A.? The Caribbean? Kiss it goodbye. The effects it would have in the event of a land impact were not given. And even if we dodge that bullet, there are bigger things out there. If we can’t deflect or destroy the eventual big one, it would hit the atmosphere at hyper-sonic speeds. A few seconds later, it hits, and we all get to find out what Azala was talking about. The crater at the impact sight begins to form even as tidal waves and earthquakes rock the planet. A mushroom cloud would eject debris all the way up into space, resulting in even worse news. Chunks of the Earth’s crust, shattered and displaced by the impact, would rain back down, even on the opposite side of the planet, a countless multitude if flaming rock. What doesn’t make it to the surface will still burn up in the upper atmosphere, blanketing the globe in fire. Some of the sulfuric ash released by the impact would block out the sun, causing an impact winter, while the rest would rain down into the ocean, raising its pH level to that of battery acid, although any survivors would be more cornered the fact that all vegetation as been wiped from the surface of the earth. The planet could not support life again for thousands of years. After the resulting Ice Age, of course.
So what does the Good Doctor has to say? Again, No comment form the Great One. There really isn’t much you can say about that, I guess.
3)Nuclear War (Shall We Play A Game?)
Number three?! Really? Huh. Ok, lets run with it.
In the 1950’s and 60’s, the USA and the USSR were locked in deadly nuclear arms race. Only the universally understood concept of Mutually Assured Destruction stayed hands of both nations. Of course that didn’t stop anyone from building more and more nuclear weapons. Nor has the fact that America and Russia are currently at peace, (even allies in some instances) prompted either country to stand down form its nuclear strike readiness. The argument put forth in the show managed to somehow gloss over terrorism and the nuclear ambitions if India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea, and focus on the following scenario only. One side, American or Russian, misunderstands something that is said/done by the other side, up to and including the launching of something that might be mistaken for a nuclear weapon. They have around 15 minutes to respond, so they launch their nukes. The first side sides sees the other sides nukes coming and launches their arsenal -- keeping in mind that they never launched anything in the first place. It would only take something like 20 warheads to knock enough debris into the air to cause nuclear winter, and between the two nations there are much more than that. To say nothing about the loss of life from the nuclear strikes themselves or the resulting radiation. America alone has enough to weapons to kill around 8 billion people. There are only 6 billion people on the planet.
No really, Stephen. Nuclear War only made it to Number Three? Professor Hawking acknowledges this one could easily kill us all several times over, but states that nuclear war is not inevitable. All we have to do is control or instincts -namely aggression- with our reason. A-freaking-men, Professor.
2) Plague (Get Down With the Sickness)
C’mon, this beat out nuclear war? Tsk. Fine.
The threat posed by a plague really comes from two sources: nature and man-made. A naturally occurring pandemic, most likely in the from of muted H5N1 avian flu virus is among the top (or at least the most talked about) contenders for the nature side. The flu pandemic of the early 1900’s, before things like airplanes and other forms of quick, mass transit, still managed to kill 25 million people before it burned itself out. If a similar virus were to surface in this day and age where any one person can travel be on the other side of the globe in a few hours, its logical to assume that it can be spread much faster than any real hope of quarantine. Even more so it has a long incubation period, which would allow a person to travel more and affect more people before succumbing to the illness themselves.
Which brings me to the man-made super-bugs. The science of bio technology continues to grow in leaps and bounds, but like any science, the potential for misuse is ever-present. Truthfully, the more advanced the science gets, the easier it becomes to duplicate. And if some one has a mind to kill a large number of people, why, all they would have to do is combine the traits of a diseases like Ebola with that of the common cold to make it as deadly as it is communicable. Then all you have to do it get a group of people infected whom you know well go on to various other places and infect everyone they meet. Like, say, Heathrow Airport. Or an electronic trade show in Tokyo. Or a conference in Toledo. They all you have to do it sit back and watch the body cont rise and the panic ensue. Watch The CDC be overwhelmed by desperate people looking for a cure. Laugh as countries try in vain to close their boarders to keep sick and dying refugees out. Though the program doesn’t make clear how a plague could kill all of us, as opposed to a significant number of us, its still a sobering thought. Man-made plagues have been depicted with chilling realism in books like Stephen King’s The Stand (a superflu created by the US government) and Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders (a super-Ebola unleashed by the President of Iran). Clancy’s version I find particularly prophetic ever since his book Debt of Honor pretty much predicted the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more than half a decade before they happened.
Doctor, doctor, give me the news: Stephen Hawking didn’t have much to say about naturally occurring plagues, but did comment on how a lot of the problems we face are the result of our progress in science and technology. The number of said problems will most likely increase with the development of new technologies and a corresponding numbers of ways things could go wrong. These list of possible misuses and abuse will increase over time, raising the overall threat of a man-made super bug from negligible to a certainty in the next 1000 years. Lets hope the machines have taken us out by then, hopefully right before Yellowstone erupts. Then it will be their problem.
And the number one way were are all going to die is :
1) Climate Change (An Inconvenient Truth)
What can I say about Global Warming that hasn’t been said better elsewhere?
Everyone is on the same sheet of music, EPA, international or organizations, the Pentagon, even NASA. Global warming, now referred to as “Climate Change” is real. Mankind is urging it on. And if left unchecked, it will result in the worst ecological disaster mankind has ever seen. CO2, the most well known of the greenhouse gasses is to blame; scientists have discovered that in times past, whenever the C02 level goes up, so does the temperature of the planet. The Earth naturally undergoes a warming cycle/cooling due to this, but in the early 1900’s, right in the middle of such warming cycle, humanity started producing massive amounts of CO2. Today we produce upwards around 70 million tons of CO2 gas. And like always, the temperature of the earth is following the rise in CO2, to level never before recorded. I don’t have to tell you this, just go outside. Its getting hotter every year. Ocean temp has risen, contributing to stronger and more frequent hurricanes and typhoons. The Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheet are melting, and there is no end in sight. Because of the CO2 already in the air it will only get hotter over the next several decades before it levels off, and that’s only if we stop producing it right now. Should we lose both the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets, that’s 20 feet of sea level rise, enough to take out a lot of southern Florida, and Louisiana (again), as well the nations of Bangladesh, The Netherlands, and possibly Belgium. And that jut two of the threatened ice sheets. To lose more would prompt a massive exodus away from costal and low-level areas, to the tune of 100 million people or more. Ironically, the loss of snow pack due the same temperatures that melted these glaciers would put fresh water in short supply in America, making it harder to grow crops, and ignite conflict and all out war to control what little fresh water remained. You know, like how we do now for oil, only with more desperation. Meanwhile the weather itself would be unpredictable and chaotic. So you have massive, world wide flooding, higher sea level than ever before, wards over water, and an unpredictable climate. The death tolls could easily reach into the billions.
And it is all preventable. The technology exists right now to address and fix the problem.
Don’t believe me? Here’s Stephen Hawking’s exact words on the subject:
“We must address global warming earnestly, while we still can. The Earth is in more danger from human action than from natural disasters. This is not a prediction of doom, but a wake-up call. We have to recognize the dangers and control them. I am an optimist, and I believe we can.”
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You have no idea how long it took me to type all this…
Thoughts? Comments? Something that you feel is missing from this list, or that should be removed from it on account that’s stupid? Personally, I think numbers three, two, and one should be switched. Plague should be three, climate change two, and nuclear war numeral uno. Those three things basically boil down to which of the worst aspects of humanity do you think will wind up killing us off: Our capacity to willingly harm one another (plague), our laziness (climate change) or our stupidity (nuclear war). Out of those three, I’ll take our innate stupidity every single time. “…the Gods themselves” and all that guff.
Think I’m full of crap? Think my take the show is trite? Spot on? Lets discuss.
Ok, bad joke. I herby hand over 500,000 humor points and a billion cool points. Let’s move on.
The Top Seven Ways We Are All Going To Die
7) Death Of A Star (Nature’s Answer to the Sun Crusher)
Two scenarios were listed for number seven. The first being that the next closet star to Earth explodes, sending out a gamma ray burst. Even though said star is (according to the show) 8,000 light years away, the gamma ray burst would still reach us, most likely with no warning other than the appearance of what seemed like a second sun in the sky. By then, its already too late. The burst wouldn’t kill us directly, but would boil off all of our ozone layer, accomplishing in one swift stroke what mankind has being trying to do since the industrial revolution. Then the UV radiation of the Sun would do us in, killing off plants first of all, and eventually rendering our cells incapable of dividing. Without that ability our intestines would no longer be able to absorb nutrients from food or even water, and we all starve to death, in spite of the fact that we’re surrounded by food and drink. All other signs of our civilization, buildings, monuments, etc would remain, however.
The second scenario is that a star collapses, becomes a black hole, and we all get swallowed by it. Umm.. ooookaaay. I freely admit what I know about black holes is rooted more in science fiction than any genuine understanding of the phenomena, but aren’t those thing pretty stationary? As in: As long as we don’t go flying around their gravitational pull, we’re good? Well, evidentially there are roving black holes out there, just moving about, absorbing all things into eternal nothingness. And should one decide to mosey on our way, it would take the better part of several decades to cross our solar system. Escape would therefore be impossible (where were gonna go anyway? Mars? Venus? We still figuring out how to get back to the Moon!) When it does get within range of Earth, it would evidently suck off our atmosphere first (creating a titanic ‘sucking sound’ according to one scientist), then pull the rest of us in… tearing (or stretching, depending on how you want to look at it) us into little-bitty pieces in the process. Yeah, sounds a bit too out there to me too. But at least ABC had a cool little ‘Earth gets sucked into a black hole’ CGI thing playing out as they described it. And they even got the red-shift that an out side observer would see as an object gets pulled in right.
Sounds scary, but what does the smartest man since Einstein have to say? Hawking didn’t even dignify the black hole bit with a response. He did say that a gamma ray burst was highly unlikely, citing that in the billions of years since the formation of the planet, it has not happened in our corner of space even once. Hey, if he says it, it must be true.
6) Intelligent Machines (Rise of the Machines! Save us, Governor Schwarzenegger!)
I didn’t expect this one to make the list. The possibility of our over-reliance on technology proving to be our downfall seemed much more likely to me than said technology rising up to kill us all. But what do I know? The logic here is we became the dominate species on Earth due to our intelligence. Now, we are creating machines and computer programs to be faster, smarter, better. We have plugged these machines and programs into everything from traffic lights to Air Traffic Control, our stock and trade markets to our nuclear capabilities. It may not run our worldwide economy, but it definitely facilitates the running. And we are constantly making it better. What happens when we reach the point of true AI, when machine intelligence equals our own? Then what happens when they surpass it? At the rate we’re going, it not a matter if its going to occur, it’s a question of what will happen when it does. We don’t share the planet on equal footing with apes, why would truly intelligent machines share it with us? Mind you, this only apples to true AI machines, lesser machines can easily be controlled by programming, limited by Asimov’s Three Laws or something of similar nature. But AI machines, the Terminators and Reploids of our science fiction, would have the ability to make their own choices. And why would they chose to follow an inferior species (us) when they can do a better job in just about anything, and do it faster, easier, and more efficiently?
So are you working on a Mega Man X to save us all, Professor Hawking? Not so much, but his field isn’t robotics anyway. He did say that computers are likely to overtake human intelligence within the next hundred years. So by 2150, The Matrix should, officially, have you.
5) Super Volcano (Just call it Mt. Goku)
A regular volcano, much like a regular Sayjin, makes a lot of noise, explodes, and blows up a city or two. A super volcano, much like Super Sayjin, does pretty much the same thing, only several thousands times worse. When most people think of a volcano, they think of some solitary mountain, picturesque and placid that only occasionally shoots liquid hot death into the air. But so long as they don’t live in the foothills, they don’t have to worry about lava. As long as they are a state or two over, they don’t have to worry about the ash. And for the most part they’re right. Super volcanoes, on the other, hand are so large that they are actually canyons (called calderas in the show) that can be several hundred miles across. There around 40 of them scattered across the planet, with one of the largest being right here in the good ol’ USA (we just HAVE to have all the biggest shit, don’t we?). Where about? Why, right underneath Yellowstone Natural Park. A huge magma chain lies beneath the park. It has erupted before, casing mass extinction some 630,000 years ago, and is overdue for another. When that happens (not if, when) we might get a few warning signs in the from of increased seismic activity and earthquakes, bur no one knows how long it would take to go from that to a full on eruption. And even if we did, what could we really do about it? We could evacuate the park and surrounding area. That would save people from the eruption and lava flow, as anyone within a hundred miles of the super eruption will be instantly incinerated. But the problem isn’t so much the lava as it is the ash.
Toxic, sulfuric ash would be shot into the stratosphere, spreading all over the entire state of Wyoming in half an hour. And from there, carried on the wind, it would spread all over the country with in the week, several feet deep in most places, and much heavier than snow. People outside would be suffocate, people inside would have to worry about the ash accumulation causing their buildings to collapse. Escape and assistance from rescue personnel would be impossible; the ash would immobilize all internal combustion engines, from your motorcycle to the largest jetliners. In a few weeks, the cloud of ash would have spread all across the globe. It would be so thick that it would block out the sun, creating a insta-nuclear winter scenario, minus all that nasty radiation. An “Ice Age that would last for years” would befall the entire globe. World wide famine would ensue, countless millions would die. The good news is that humanity would not be entirely wiped out. Small communities that have banded together and learned how to grow food in such a world would survive, and within perhaps a generation the effects of the eruption would have passed completely. Needless to say our civilization would be completely different as a result.
Eeep, Stephen! It’s the End Of The World as We Know It! Yet, I feel fine. There was no comment from Stephen Hawking for this one, but I am ready to call BS on the super volcano. Yeah, 49 out of 50 US states would be screwed, but calling this one an ELE is a gross overstatement. For one, the whole globe could not possibly be affected in a few weeks. The countries in Europe and Asia (well Africa too, but lets face it, that continent is so screwed up no matter what happens that it doesn’t really matter) would have several months to the better part of a year to prepare their people for the effects of this event, as this all depended on the winds carrying the ash to be a real problem. To say NOTHING about the countries located in the Southern Hemisphere which might not get any ash for over a year or more if at all, and will only have to deal with a dramatic temperature drop. Which, actually might be a good thing, since it would in one fail swoop, undo all the damage we’ve done to the planet with global warming -- but now I’m jumping the gun.
Bottom line, if you don’t live in North America, you’ll be fine. Sorry, Canada.
4)Asteroid. (La=fire. Vos=Big)
“Soon, stones of fire will rain down. Flames shall scorch the land. The burned out plains will slowly freeze, ushering in a long, cruel ice age.”
- Azala, Chrono Trigger
Okay, we all took science in fifth grade, and learned what killed the dinosaurs. And we all saw Deep Impact and Armageddon. A big enough asteroid hits, and we all die. The end. But why worry about it? It hasn’t happened in 65 million years, so we must be pretty safe in our little corner of the cosmos, right? I mean, we must have ages before the next asteroid strike!
Well, yes. If by ages you mean April 13, 2036.
That is when the asteroid dubbed Apophis has a one in a few thousand chance of striking the Earth. It really depends on how Earth’s gravity will affect its orbit on its first go round, on April 13, 2029. On that day, it will be close enough to us to actually dip below the orbits of our communication satellites. That’s pretty freaking close, don’t ya think? But fear not. Apophis isn’t big enough to wipe us out. It would, however, still be a major problem. An ocean impact would create a tsunami hundreds of feet high that could travel at supersonic speeds. Does anyone here fancy Japan at all? L.A.? The Caribbean? Kiss it goodbye. The effects it would have in the event of a land impact were not given. And even if we dodge that bullet, there are bigger things out there. If we can’t deflect or destroy the eventual big one, it would hit the atmosphere at hyper-sonic speeds. A few seconds later, it hits, and we all get to find out what Azala was talking about. The crater at the impact sight begins to form even as tidal waves and earthquakes rock the planet. A mushroom cloud would eject debris all the way up into space, resulting in even worse news. Chunks of the Earth’s crust, shattered and displaced by the impact, would rain back down, even on the opposite side of the planet, a countless multitude if flaming rock. What doesn’t make it to the surface will still burn up in the upper atmosphere, blanketing the globe in fire. Some of the sulfuric ash released by the impact would block out the sun, causing an impact winter, while the rest would rain down into the ocean, raising its pH level to that of battery acid, although any survivors would be more cornered the fact that all vegetation as been wiped from the surface of the earth. The planet could not support life again for thousands of years. After the resulting Ice Age, of course.
So what does the Good Doctor has to say? Again, No comment form the Great One. There really isn’t much you can say about that, I guess.
3)Nuclear War (Shall We Play A Game?)
Number three?! Really? Huh. Ok, lets run with it.
In the 1950’s and 60’s, the USA and the USSR were locked in deadly nuclear arms race. Only the universally understood concept of Mutually Assured Destruction stayed hands of both nations. Of course that didn’t stop anyone from building more and more nuclear weapons. Nor has the fact that America and Russia are currently at peace, (even allies in some instances) prompted either country to stand down form its nuclear strike readiness. The argument put forth in the show managed to somehow gloss over terrorism and the nuclear ambitions if India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea, and focus on the following scenario only. One side, American or Russian, misunderstands something that is said/done by the other side, up to and including the launching of something that might be mistaken for a nuclear weapon. They have around 15 minutes to respond, so they launch their nukes. The first side sides sees the other sides nukes coming and launches their arsenal -- keeping in mind that they never launched anything in the first place. It would only take something like 20 warheads to knock enough debris into the air to cause nuclear winter, and between the two nations there are much more than that. To say nothing about the loss of life from the nuclear strikes themselves or the resulting radiation. America alone has enough to weapons to kill around 8 billion people. There are only 6 billion people on the planet.
No really, Stephen. Nuclear War only made it to Number Three? Professor Hawking acknowledges this one could easily kill us all several times over, but states that nuclear war is not inevitable. All we have to do is control or instincts -namely aggression- with our reason. A-freaking-men, Professor.
2) Plague (Get Down With the Sickness)
C’mon, this beat out nuclear war? Tsk. Fine.
The threat posed by a plague really comes from two sources: nature and man-made. A naturally occurring pandemic, most likely in the from of muted H5N1 avian flu virus is among the top (or at least the most talked about) contenders for the nature side. The flu pandemic of the early 1900’s, before things like airplanes and other forms of quick, mass transit, still managed to kill 25 million people before it burned itself out. If a similar virus were to surface in this day and age where any one person can travel be on the other side of the globe in a few hours, its logical to assume that it can be spread much faster than any real hope of quarantine. Even more so it has a long incubation period, which would allow a person to travel more and affect more people before succumbing to the illness themselves.
Which brings me to the man-made super-bugs. The science of bio technology continues to grow in leaps and bounds, but like any science, the potential for misuse is ever-present. Truthfully, the more advanced the science gets, the easier it becomes to duplicate. And if some one has a mind to kill a large number of people, why, all they would have to do is combine the traits of a diseases like Ebola with that of the common cold to make it as deadly as it is communicable. Then all you have to do it get a group of people infected whom you know well go on to various other places and infect everyone they meet. Like, say, Heathrow Airport. Or an electronic trade show in Tokyo. Or a conference in Toledo. They all you have to do it sit back and watch the body cont rise and the panic ensue. Watch The CDC be overwhelmed by desperate people looking for a cure. Laugh as countries try in vain to close their boarders to keep sick and dying refugees out. Though the program doesn’t make clear how a plague could kill all of us, as opposed to a significant number of us, its still a sobering thought. Man-made plagues have been depicted with chilling realism in books like Stephen King’s The Stand (a superflu created by the US government) and Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders (a super-Ebola unleashed by the President of Iran). Clancy’s version I find particularly prophetic ever since his book Debt of Honor pretty much predicted the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more than half a decade before they happened.
Doctor, doctor, give me the news: Stephen Hawking didn’t have much to say about naturally occurring plagues, but did comment on how a lot of the problems we face are the result of our progress in science and technology. The number of said problems will most likely increase with the development of new technologies and a corresponding numbers of ways things could go wrong. These list of possible misuses and abuse will increase over time, raising the overall threat of a man-made super bug from negligible to a certainty in the next 1000 years. Lets hope the machines have taken us out by then, hopefully right before Yellowstone erupts. Then it will be their problem.
And the number one way were are all going to die is :
1) Climate Change (An Inconvenient Truth)
What can I say about Global Warming that hasn’t been said better elsewhere?
Everyone is on the same sheet of music, EPA, international or organizations, the Pentagon, even NASA. Global warming, now referred to as “Climate Change” is real. Mankind is urging it on. And if left unchecked, it will result in the worst ecological disaster mankind has ever seen. CO2, the most well known of the greenhouse gasses is to blame; scientists have discovered that in times past, whenever the C02 level goes up, so does the temperature of the planet. The Earth naturally undergoes a warming cycle/cooling due to this, but in the early 1900’s, right in the middle of such warming cycle, humanity started producing massive amounts of CO2. Today we produce upwards around 70 million tons of CO2 gas. And like always, the temperature of the earth is following the rise in CO2, to level never before recorded. I don’t have to tell you this, just go outside. Its getting hotter every year. Ocean temp has risen, contributing to stronger and more frequent hurricanes and typhoons. The Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheet are melting, and there is no end in sight. Because of the CO2 already in the air it will only get hotter over the next several decades before it levels off, and that’s only if we stop producing it right now. Should we lose both the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets, that’s 20 feet of sea level rise, enough to take out a lot of southern Florida, and Louisiana (again), as well the nations of Bangladesh, The Netherlands, and possibly Belgium. And that jut two of the threatened ice sheets. To lose more would prompt a massive exodus away from costal and low-level areas, to the tune of 100 million people or more. Ironically, the loss of snow pack due the same temperatures that melted these glaciers would put fresh water in short supply in America, making it harder to grow crops, and ignite conflict and all out war to control what little fresh water remained. You know, like how we do now for oil, only with more desperation. Meanwhile the weather itself would be unpredictable and chaotic. So you have massive, world wide flooding, higher sea level than ever before, wards over water, and an unpredictable climate. The death tolls could easily reach into the billions.
And it is all preventable. The technology exists right now to address and fix the problem.
Don’t believe me? Here’s Stephen Hawking’s exact words on the subject:
“We must address global warming earnestly, while we still can. The Earth is in more danger from human action than from natural disasters. This is not a prediction of doom, but a wake-up call. We have to recognize the dangers and control them. I am an optimist, and I believe we can.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have no idea how long it took me to type all this…
Thoughts? Comments? Something that you feel is missing from this list, or that should be removed from it on account that’s stupid? Personally, I think numbers three, two, and one should be switched. Plague should be three, climate change two, and nuclear war numeral uno. Those three things basically boil down to which of the worst aspects of humanity do you think will wind up killing us off: Our capacity to willingly harm one another (plague), our laziness (climate change) or our stupidity (nuclear war). Out of those three, I’ll take our innate stupidity every single time. “…the Gods themselves” and all that guff.
Think I’m full of crap? Think my take the show is trite? Spot on? Lets discuss.
5
General Discussion / And Now For Something Completely Different (.hack Question)
« on: December 27, 2005, 10:21:11 am »
This thread has nothing to do with Chrono Trigger/Cross. Nothing at all. This thread is about the .hack video games. I’m coming here with this question because the members of this forum are some of the most insightful I’ve come across on the internet, even though I disagree with about half of what is said on any given topic. But that’s what keeps me coming back. 
(Of course, the other reasons I’m coming here for this are because the gamefaqs forums are full of a-holes, the 1-up.com forums are the most useless game forum ever coded, an my usual anime/video game haunt, the Shoujo-ai Goddess Heavens, have devolved into an asinine power struggle that is positively Jr. high school-esque in its scope. But I digress…)
After working (note I said working, and not playing) on all four games for the better part of a year and 100 hours of playing time, I finally finished .hack//quarantine yesterday (Btw, am I the only that thinks Skeith was the hardest boss in the whole game? Even the final boss was a joke). I’ve also watched all four parts of Liminality. I have also read .hack//AI buster. I should mention I’ve never seen //Sign or //Legend of the Twilight.
Ok, now that we’ve established all that, here is my question:
What the hell was the point?
I get that Data Bug monsters were using Data Drain and putting players into comas, like Orca and BlackRose’s brother and Seig from Liminality. I still have no idea why they wanted to cause comas. Little help?
I get that Harald had an unrequited thing for Emma, and the whole purpose of The World was to create a ‘Child of the Mind’ if you will (Orson Scot Card reference – look it up) with her by combining her life’s work, Epitaph of Twilight with his mad programming skillz to produce Aura. What I don’t get is why The World was dead set on killing Aura, or at the very least fragmenting her and scattering her to the winds. I think it was mentioned in the last chapter of Liminality that if Aura was ever ‘born’, The World would not longer have a purpose, so it sought to prevent her birth. Oh, and why would Aura need to be ‘born’ if she already existed from the moment you boot up the game???
That brings me to Morganna. Who the HELL is Morganna??? In .hack//AI buster, Lycoris (a flawed early version of Aura) claims that Morganna is “god”. This initially lead me to believe that Harald was Morganna, since he was the ‘creator’ of the game. Upon receiving Harald’s Note, it became clear that wasn’t the case. After having NO other clues as to who she is, the best I can guess is that Morganna is The World, or at least the consciousness of The Wolrd. Am I on the right track?
What was the point to Cubia? I get that its existence was tied to the Twilight Bracelet, sort of its mathematical opposite, the Agent Smith to the bracelet’s Neo, if you will. It wanted to keep Kite form restoring/meeting Aura, and could only be killed if the bracelet was destroyed. Was it merely just another tool at Morganna’s disposal (again assuming Morganna is consciousness of the word The World) to prevent the birth of Aura?
Lastly, why did Aura come between Kite and Corbenik when he tried to land the deathblow on it? Kite afterwards seemed to think that Aura had to "die before she could be born". Wiseman also mentioned something about apoptosis (the main type of programmed cell death - again, look it up). This also makes no sense since Morganna and Aura were clearly both alive through the course of the game. How does her death initiate her birth?
Any clarification on these points are most welcome. I want to make sure I fully understand the game before I allow it to replace Mickey’s Mousecapades as the worst game I’ve ever played.
(Of course, the other reasons I’m coming here for this are because the gamefaqs forums are full of a-holes, the 1-up.com forums are the most useless game forum ever coded, an my usual anime/video game haunt, the Shoujo-ai Goddess Heavens, have devolved into an asinine power struggle that is positively Jr. high school-esque in its scope. But I digress…)
After working (note I said working, and not playing) on all four games for the better part of a year and 100 hours of playing time, I finally finished .hack//quarantine yesterday (Btw, am I the only that thinks Skeith was the hardest boss in the whole game? Even the final boss was a joke). I’ve also watched all four parts of Liminality. I have also read .hack//AI buster. I should mention I’ve never seen //Sign or //Legend of the Twilight.
Ok, now that we’ve established all that, here is my question:
What the hell was the point?
I get that Data Bug monsters were using Data Drain and putting players into comas, like Orca and BlackRose’s brother and Seig from Liminality. I still have no idea why they wanted to cause comas. Little help?
I get that Harald had an unrequited thing for Emma, and the whole purpose of The World was to create a ‘Child of the Mind’ if you will (Orson Scot Card reference – look it up) with her by combining her life’s work, Epitaph of Twilight with his mad programming skillz to produce Aura. What I don’t get is why The World was dead set on killing Aura, or at the very least fragmenting her and scattering her to the winds. I think it was mentioned in the last chapter of Liminality that if Aura was ever ‘born’, The World would not longer have a purpose, so it sought to prevent her birth. Oh, and why would Aura need to be ‘born’ if she already existed from the moment you boot up the game???
That brings me to Morganna. Who the HELL is Morganna??? In .hack//AI buster, Lycoris (a flawed early version of Aura) claims that Morganna is “god”. This initially lead me to believe that Harald was Morganna, since he was the ‘creator’ of the game. Upon receiving Harald’s Note, it became clear that wasn’t the case. After having NO other clues as to who she is, the best I can guess is that Morganna is The World, or at least the consciousness of The Wolrd. Am I on the right track?
What was the point to Cubia? I get that its existence was tied to the Twilight Bracelet, sort of its mathematical opposite, the Agent Smith to the bracelet’s Neo, if you will. It wanted to keep Kite form restoring/meeting Aura, and could only be killed if the bracelet was destroyed. Was it merely just another tool at Morganna’s disposal (again assuming Morganna is consciousness of the word The World) to prevent the birth of Aura?
Lastly, why did Aura come between Kite and Corbenik when he tried to land the deathblow on it? Kite afterwards seemed to think that Aura had to "die before she could be born". Wiseman also mentioned something about apoptosis (the main type of programmed cell death - again, look it up). This also makes no sense since Morganna and Aura were clearly both alive through the course of the game. How does her death initiate her birth?
Any clarification on these points are most welcome. I want to make sure I fully understand the game before I allow it to replace Mickey’s Mousecapades as the worst game I’ve ever played.
6
General Discussion / Final Fantasy: One Gamer's Journey
« on: October 04, 2005, 02:59:13 pm »
Recently in another forum, the possiblity was raised that so-called old school gamers, such as myself, are allowing warm feelings of nostalgia for older Final Fantasy tittles to affect their opinion of the newer, post-Nintendo ones. For example, my favorite has always been Final Fantasy VI, and I hate Final Fantasy X and X2 with a passion that, upon closer examination, I find surprising.
After a bit of soul searching, and as I was playing the PSX FF I remake while feeding my 3-week old daughter one sleepless night, an idea struck me:
Why not re-play every single numbered Final Fantasy (save for XI), in an attempt to see which one is truly the ‘greatest’. I do own them all (well, all that was released in North America, and even then I think I have the ROM for FF3 floating around this hard rive somewhere…)and it will give me something do when Chibi-Silvercry is keeping me up at all hours even after I’ve fed, changed, and held her.
So, I’ll use this thread to keep those who give a flying flip about this grand experiment informed as to my findings as I play and complete each one.
Now for some details as how I will execute this:
I will play each Final Fantasy, I-X2, in no particular order. It is my hope that this will dispel the “Good, better, best” effect when it comes to graphics and music. For this to be successful, each game has to be judged on its own merits, not as compared to the following game.
For Final Fantasy I, II, IV, V, and VI, I will use the PSX remakes/re-releases. It will be easier that way than trying to get my old carts working after all theses years, and the only way I can play II and V in any event.
For obvious reasons (like the fact is doesn’t end, and everyone’s experience with it will be different), FF XI will not be included in this experiment.
Games will be evaluated in the following categories, using a 1-10 rating (1 being Superman 64 caliber Utter Crap, 10 being the Second Coming of Chrono Trigger Excellence.):
Graphics & Sound
Plot
- How I remember it
- How it actually is.
Character Development - (both plot wise and level/ability mechanics).
And Final Word with rating.
*************************************************************
Final Fantasy One Report
Reviving the power of the ORBS since 1990
Cue the victory music, FF I is complete, and my report follows.
Graphics & Sound: Good thing I used the PSX re-release for this experiment, or FF I would have been slaughtered in this category. Sprites were bright and reasonably well done, conforming to what I call the FF IV Standard of sophistication. All in all, not bad. Not great, but not bad.
The music was surprisingly catchy. As this was the first of the series, there are many tunes in this games that repeat themselves in various forms and fashions through other games. The ‘Victory’ theme for example. Or the Airship theme, and of course the traditional Final Fantasy Ending Theme (albeit a much more ‘basic’ version). Be that as it may, an added layer of depth was given to each score to keep it somewhat fresh. Not easy when high replay rate of each bit of music is so high (especially in towns). A big plus is the addition of Boss Fight music, which was lacking form the original release (in fact, I don’t think the concept had even been invented yet). But again, the compositions were nothing that would move you to tears, or get your foot tapping without you realizing it.
All in all, Graphics & Sound get a 5.0 Merely average.
Plot:
- How I remember it: What plot? “Hey, you there. Yeah, you four right there. Be a dear and rescue the princess. Garland kidnapped her because - er - well - as near we figure, he just likes being contrary. Oh? Back so soon? Well, since you’re up, could you restore the light to the Four Orbs? Thanks, you’re a pal. Tell you what, I’ll make a bridge for you and give you this hand-me-down lute. Off you go!”
Let’s be honest: There is next to no story in Final Fantasy I, which (in retrospect) I’ve always thought was kind of ironic as the series as a whole is most famous for its storylines. Of course, not knowing any better when I was but a young Silver-lad, I still found the crumbs of a plotline that did exists more than satisfying at the time. At the time, I appreciated the straight-forwardness of the game. Go to place A where person B tells you to go to location C and retrieve/fight item/being D, so you can go to place E and repeat the cycle. Not unlike Dragon Warrior I, actually, only with more party members and more places to save. This simple flow-chart style of the game was also a blessing, since (as I recall) the game was also very difficult to execute. I can honestly say that I died more times in my first play through of Final Fantasy I than I did in every other Final Fantasy combined (save for perhaps Tactics, which wont be counted in this experiment). I’m not sure if the high difficulty was planed so overcoming each portion of the game would feel more rewarding, providing the same sense of gratification that a plot revelation would provide in later games, or if my game-playing skills just sucked back then. Either way, the result was the same. From beating Garland to … beating Garland again (as Chaos), each of the smaller victories (The Pirates at Proavoka , Astos the Dark Elf, the rising of the Airship, the fall of the Fiends) felt like a huge accomplishment. I even accepted the ending as pretty good, even thought it consisted of nothing more than a picture of a 8-bit horizon and a text window.
- How it actually is: Time to take off the rose-colored glasses of Nostalgia-vision. The PSX re-make of this game went out of its way to add some semblance of a story line to the game, while at the same time honoring the original material somewhat. Some additional dialog was added, mostly in the very beginning and the very end, and a few translation errors (read: Nintendo-driven censorship) were fixed. But at is core; we still have a very basic RPG. You’re good. They’re bad. Go kill them. Here’s a sword and some magic.
To make a short story even shorter, everything that has gone wrong in the world of FF I is all Garland’s fault. He is the one who sent the Four Fiends of Chaos to the future to rob the Elemental Crystals (no longer the Four Orbs in the remake) of their power. They then send Garland back in time when the Light Warriors beat him on their first mission. He then sends them forward in time… and thus time is stuck in a 2000-year loop. Pretty clever, actually. I once called Garland the best villain in FF history because he actually won for 2000 years, a better track record than Yu Yevon (who had Spira under his heel ‘within’ Sin for just 1000 years) Kuja, (who only succeeded in destroying a world that was dying off anyway), and Kefka (who only ruled the world for one short year before he was defeated.). What the game neglects to tell you, however, is why he did all this. In fact, nearly 98% of the game is finished before you are even given a hint as to his true part in it (a plot hole I refer to as the Ultimecia Fallacy). It is only in the ending does the game hint that Garland’s actions were brought about by a ‘misunderstanding’. Thinking some one said the letter ‘T’ over the phone when they actually said ‘P’ is misunderstanding. Manipulating time and draining the powers of the elements so you can live forever as the personification of anarchy is not the result of a misunderstanding. Sorry, Square, not buying it. You really should have tried harder, or just left it alone.
Plot gets a 2.5. And I’m being generous since the rest of the ‘story’ retains its sense of simple satisfaction.
Character Development:
Plot-wise. Ouch. FF I is going to take a big hit here. As far as plot-driven character development and interaction goes, there is none. Zip. Zero. Not a single line of dialogue. No attempt to hint at any of the party members motivation. Not surprising given the time the game first came out, but alas, for this experiment to work, the same criteria must be applied to all games.
0.0. Oh, Discordia!
Level/Ability Mechanics
In a word: Simple. At the beginning you pick four party members out of a possible 6 classes (or ‘jobs’ if you prefer): Warrior, Monk, Theif, Red Mage, White Mage, and Back Mage. The mix is entirely up to the player. Want to have a party of a thief and three red mages? Go ahead. Four warriors? Have at it. Two Monks, and two white mages? Go nuts. I have to say, it was pretty freeing to have a choice for the first time in a long time. Of course some choice are more viable than others.
Fighting monsters gets you experience points and gil. Enough experience and everyone in your party gains a level at the same time, regardless of class (unless a party members had died along the way and missed out on some exp). Money can be used to by spells, and only three can be learned to a particular spell level at a time, so chose carefully.
Halfway through the game, if you complete a simple quest, you can ‘upgrade’ your class, and become more powerful.
Refreshing as the simplicity here is, there is a draw back. Aside from mages, the only thing you can do is fight. Thusly, the Warrior/Knight and the Monk/Master are the best choice for melee. And the Red Mage/Wizard cannot use most higher-level spells. Suddenly I realized that all that freedom I thought I had at the beginning was an illusion. The best party will always be Warrior, Monk, White Mage, and Black Mage. Still, it was nice not to have to worry about switching to my sub-screen and see how much more AP (or whatever) I needed before switching my Materia/Magicite/GF/etc to someone else.
Deep? No. Fun? Yes. 4.0
Final Rating:2.9 [/b]
Ouch. I knew it would be low, but not that low. That zero didn’t help the average much, did it?
I really wanted this title to do better. It’s the one that stared it all, for Cid’s sake. The one that singled-handily saved a software company that otherwise would have vanished before North America ever knew it existed. That means there never would have been a Chrono Trigger, and I for one would not want to live in such a world.
Alas, this simple fact is that there isn’t too much to this game, really. Call it a throw back to a simpler time. Or, perhaps the drab foundation upon which a glittering Dynasty was built. But there one title it can never have: Greatest Final Fantasy Ever.
“Never forget the good and true...
Never turn the Four Powers to the dark side...
And truth will always live in the hearts of the people.
May the ORBS always shine!!...”
Next: Final Fantasy VI.
I put my favorite Final Fantasy under the microscope. It will be a great challenge for both the game and me, but I think I’m up to it. At the very least, this it gives me an excuse to play it again.
Feel free to debate me findings anytime. It will take a while to finish FF VI anyway (Kefka hasn’t even poisoned Doma yet in this play-through), and I’d rather not have the thread fall back in the meantime.
After a bit of soul searching, and as I was playing the PSX FF I remake while feeding my 3-week old daughter one sleepless night, an idea struck me:
Why not re-play every single numbered Final Fantasy (save for XI), in an attempt to see which one is truly the ‘greatest’. I do own them all (well, all that was released in North America, and even then I think I have the ROM for FF3 floating around this hard rive somewhere…)and it will give me something do when Chibi-Silvercry is keeping me up at all hours even after I’ve fed, changed, and held her.
So, I’ll use this thread to keep those who give a flying flip about this grand experiment informed as to my findings as I play and complete each one.
Now for some details as how I will execute this:
I will play each Final Fantasy, I-X2, in no particular order. It is my hope that this will dispel the “Good, better, best” effect when it comes to graphics and music. For this to be successful, each game has to be judged on its own merits, not as compared to the following game.
For Final Fantasy I, II, IV, V, and VI, I will use the PSX remakes/re-releases. It will be easier that way than trying to get my old carts working after all theses years, and the only way I can play II and V in any event.
For obvious reasons (like the fact is doesn’t end, and everyone’s experience with it will be different), FF XI will not be included in this experiment.
Games will be evaluated in the following categories, using a 1-10 rating (1 being Superman 64 caliber Utter Crap, 10 being the Second Coming of Chrono Trigger Excellence.):
Graphics & Sound
Plot
- How I remember it
- How it actually is.
Character Development - (both plot wise and level/ability mechanics).
And Final Word with rating.
*************************************************************
Final Fantasy One Report
Reviving the power of the ORBS since 1990
Cue the victory music, FF I is complete, and my report follows.
Graphics & Sound: Good thing I used the PSX re-release for this experiment, or FF I would have been slaughtered in this category. Sprites were bright and reasonably well done, conforming to what I call the FF IV Standard of sophistication. All in all, not bad. Not great, but not bad.
The music was surprisingly catchy. As this was the first of the series, there are many tunes in this games that repeat themselves in various forms and fashions through other games. The ‘Victory’ theme for example. Or the Airship theme, and of course the traditional Final Fantasy Ending Theme (albeit a much more ‘basic’ version). Be that as it may, an added layer of depth was given to each score to keep it somewhat fresh. Not easy when high replay rate of each bit of music is so high (especially in towns). A big plus is the addition of Boss Fight music, which was lacking form the original release (in fact, I don’t think the concept had even been invented yet). But again, the compositions were nothing that would move you to tears, or get your foot tapping without you realizing it.
All in all, Graphics & Sound get a 5.0 Merely average.
Plot:
- How I remember it: What plot? “Hey, you there. Yeah, you four right there. Be a dear and rescue the princess. Garland kidnapped her because - er - well - as near we figure, he just likes being contrary. Oh? Back so soon? Well, since you’re up, could you restore the light to the Four Orbs? Thanks, you’re a pal. Tell you what, I’ll make a bridge for you and give you this hand-me-down lute. Off you go!”
Let’s be honest: There is next to no story in Final Fantasy I, which (in retrospect) I’ve always thought was kind of ironic as the series as a whole is most famous for its storylines. Of course, not knowing any better when I was but a young Silver-lad, I still found the crumbs of a plotline that did exists more than satisfying at the time. At the time, I appreciated the straight-forwardness of the game. Go to place A where person B tells you to go to location C and retrieve/fight item/being D, so you can go to place E and repeat the cycle. Not unlike Dragon Warrior I, actually, only with more party members and more places to save. This simple flow-chart style of the game was also a blessing, since (as I recall) the game was also very difficult to execute. I can honestly say that I died more times in my first play through of Final Fantasy I than I did in every other Final Fantasy combined (save for perhaps Tactics, which wont be counted in this experiment). I’m not sure if the high difficulty was planed so overcoming each portion of the game would feel more rewarding, providing the same sense of gratification that a plot revelation would provide in later games, or if my game-playing skills just sucked back then. Either way, the result was the same. From beating Garland to … beating Garland again (as Chaos), each of the smaller victories (The Pirates at Proavoka , Astos the Dark Elf, the rising of the Airship, the fall of the Fiends) felt like a huge accomplishment. I even accepted the ending as pretty good, even thought it consisted of nothing more than a picture of a 8-bit horizon and a text window.
- How it actually is: Time to take off the rose-colored glasses of Nostalgia-vision. The PSX re-make of this game went out of its way to add some semblance of a story line to the game, while at the same time honoring the original material somewhat. Some additional dialog was added, mostly in the very beginning and the very end, and a few translation errors (read: Nintendo-driven censorship) were fixed. But at is core; we still have a very basic RPG. You’re good. They’re bad. Go kill them. Here’s a sword and some magic.
To make a short story even shorter, everything that has gone wrong in the world of FF I is all Garland’s fault. He is the one who sent the Four Fiends of Chaos to the future to rob the Elemental Crystals (no longer the Four Orbs in the remake) of their power. They then send Garland back in time when the Light Warriors beat him on their first mission. He then sends them forward in time… and thus time is stuck in a 2000-year loop. Pretty clever, actually. I once called Garland the best villain in FF history because he actually won for 2000 years, a better track record than Yu Yevon (who had Spira under his heel ‘within’ Sin for just 1000 years) Kuja, (who only succeeded in destroying a world that was dying off anyway), and Kefka (who only ruled the world for one short year before he was defeated.). What the game neglects to tell you, however, is why he did all this. In fact, nearly 98% of the game is finished before you are even given a hint as to his true part in it (a plot hole I refer to as the Ultimecia Fallacy). It is only in the ending does the game hint that Garland’s actions were brought about by a ‘misunderstanding’. Thinking some one said the letter ‘T’ over the phone when they actually said ‘P’ is misunderstanding. Manipulating time and draining the powers of the elements so you can live forever as the personification of anarchy is not the result of a misunderstanding. Sorry, Square, not buying it. You really should have tried harder, or just left it alone.
Plot gets a 2.5. And I’m being generous since the rest of the ‘story’ retains its sense of simple satisfaction.
Character Development:
Plot-wise. Ouch. FF I is going to take a big hit here. As far as plot-driven character development and interaction goes, there is none. Zip. Zero. Not a single line of dialogue. No attempt to hint at any of the party members motivation. Not surprising given the time the game first came out, but alas, for this experiment to work, the same criteria must be applied to all games.
0.0. Oh, Discordia!
Level/Ability Mechanics
In a word: Simple. At the beginning you pick four party members out of a possible 6 classes (or ‘jobs’ if you prefer): Warrior, Monk, Theif, Red Mage, White Mage, and Back Mage. The mix is entirely up to the player. Want to have a party of a thief and three red mages? Go ahead. Four warriors? Have at it. Two Monks, and two white mages? Go nuts. I have to say, it was pretty freeing to have a choice for the first time in a long time. Of course some choice are more viable than others.
Fighting monsters gets you experience points and gil. Enough experience and everyone in your party gains a level at the same time, regardless of class (unless a party members had died along the way and missed out on some exp). Money can be used to by spells, and only three can be learned to a particular spell level at a time, so chose carefully.
Halfway through the game, if you complete a simple quest, you can ‘upgrade’ your class, and become more powerful.
Refreshing as the simplicity here is, there is a draw back. Aside from mages, the only thing you can do is fight. Thusly, the Warrior/Knight and the Monk/Master are the best choice for melee. And the Red Mage/Wizard cannot use most higher-level spells. Suddenly I realized that all that freedom I thought I had at the beginning was an illusion. The best party will always be Warrior, Monk, White Mage, and Black Mage. Still, it was nice not to have to worry about switching to my sub-screen and see how much more AP (or whatever) I needed before switching my Materia/Magicite/GF/etc to someone else.
Deep? No. Fun? Yes. 4.0
Final Rating:2.9 [/b]
Ouch. I knew it would be low, but not that low. That zero didn’t help the average much, did it?
I really wanted this title to do better. It’s the one that stared it all, for Cid’s sake. The one that singled-handily saved a software company that otherwise would have vanished before North America ever knew it existed. That means there never would have been a Chrono Trigger, and I for one would not want to live in such a world.
Alas, this simple fact is that there isn’t too much to this game, really. Call it a throw back to a simpler time. Or, perhaps the drab foundation upon which a glittering Dynasty was built. But there one title it can never have: Greatest Final Fantasy Ever.
“Never forget the good and true...
Never turn the Four Powers to the dark side...
And truth will always live in the hearts of the people.
May the ORBS always shine!!...”
Next: Final Fantasy VI.
I put my favorite Final Fantasy under the microscope. It will be a great challenge for both the game and me, but I think I’m up to it. At the very least, this it gives me an excuse to play it again.
Feel free to debate me findings anytime. It will take a while to finish FF VI anyway (Kefka hasn’t even poisoned Doma yet in this play-through), and I’d rather not have the thread fall back in the meantime.
7
General Discussion / Those Who Do Not Know Their History Can Always Cheat:
« on: September 13, 2005, 10:09:54 pm »
A Time Travel Thread!
Ever since my parents dragged me to the premier of Back to the Future, Part 1 [/showingmyage], I have been nuts over the concept of time travel. It became an interest that would grow as I did, ultimately becoming the main reason I ever looked twice at a quaint little game from Sqauresoft called Chrono Trigger.
Time travel can be a wonderful plot device like as it was in Chrono Trigger, or a crutch as shown in countless Star Trek episodes over the last 30+ years, or even an all around bad idea, like in Final Fantasy VIII. So, I decided to create a thread in which we can talk about time travel as depicted in your favorite (or least favorite) movie/TV show/book/game. The floor is also open to the discussion of the possibility of real-life time travel, since science has yet to prove it’s impossible.
I’ll go first:
The Butterfly Effect was surprisingly enjoyable to watch, even if I did have to put up with Ashton Kutcher for 90 minutes. Not often does a movie show the darker side of time travel, how playing with the past can totally screw up the lives of people other than the traveler themselves.
I’d go on, but I relay should get some work done this evening
Next?
Ever since my parents dragged me to the premier of Back to the Future, Part 1 [/showingmyage], I have been nuts over the concept of time travel. It became an interest that would grow as I did, ultimately becoming the main reason I ever looked twice at a quaint little game from Sqauresoft called Chrono Trigger.
Time travel can be a wonderful plot device like as it was in Chrono Trigger, or a crutch as shown in countless Star Trek episodes over the last 30+ years, or even an all around bad idea, like in Final Fantasy VIII. So, I decided to create a thread in which we can talk about time travel as depicted in your favorite (or least favorite) movie/TV show/book/game. The floor is also open to the discussion of the possibility of real-life time travel, since science has yet to prove it’s impossible.
I’ll go first:
The Butterfly Effect was surprisingly enjoyable to watch, even if I did have to put up with Ashton Kutcher for 90 minutes. Not often does a movie show the darker side of time travel, how playing with the past can totally screw up the lives of people other than the traveler themselves.
I’d go on, but I relay should get some work done this evening
Next?
8
Characters, Plot, and Themes / Of Mystics and Demi-humans
« on: August 09, 2005, 02:51:24 pm »
One thing that’s always bothered me about Chrono Trigger, especially since Cross was released, was the evolutionary chain of the Mystics and the demi-humans. I’ve looked around, but I don’t think the Compendium has addressed this issue yet.
In 65 million BC, we see two intelligent races, the humans and the Reptites. They fight for dominion over the planet. Lavos lands. Humans win. The rest is history.
In 12000 BC, Humans are still in charge, albeit in a strict caste-like system. They wake up Lavos. Zeal falls. Moving on.
In 600 AD, humans and Mystics are locked in war… wait a second, back up.
Where did the Mystics come from? I supposed they could have evolved from the creatures found in Zeal or the Mountain of Woe between 12000 BC and 600AD. But that seems a little fast to me. It took humans from Lavos arrival to the Dark Ages to reach Zeal-like heights. Granted they were given a nudge by the Frozen Flame, but that’s still along time. After Zeal fell, contact with the Flame was lost, and mankind had to, in essence, start over. So if the creatures found in the Dark Ages evolved into the Mystic race, how did they do it so fast as to stand on equal footing with humans come 600AD?
Furthermore, where does the Demi-human race come from? Everyone on El Nido either settled there from Porre, or were the decedents of the citizens of Chronopolis. They only think I can think of is that there were Mystics in Chronopolis who were caught up in the Time Crash, and then cross-bred with humans over the millennia to create the demi-human race. Course the problem with that is, strictly speaking, two different species cannot produce offspring together. Of course, that’s never stopped fantasy and/or sci-fi writers in the past…
Any thoughts/suggestions?
(And don’t get me started on the dwarves in CT….)
In 65 million BC, we see two intelligent races, the humans and the Reptites. They fight for dominion over the planet. Lavos lands. Humans win. The rest is history.
In 12000 BC, Humans are still in charge, albeit in a strict caste-like system. They wake up Lavos. Zeal falls. Moving on.
In 600 AD, humans and Mystics are locked in war… wait a second, back up.
Where did the Mystics come from? I supposed they could have evolved from the creatures found in Zeal or the Mountain of Woe between 12000 BC and 600AD. But that seems a little fast to me. It took humans from Lavos arrival to the Dark Ages to reach Zeal-like heights. Granted they were given a nudge by the Frozen Flame, but that’s still along time. After Zeal fell, contact with the Flame was lost, and mankind had to, in essence, start over. So if the creatures found in the Dark Ages evolved into the Mystic race, how did they do it so fast as to stand on equal footing with humans come 600AD?
Furthermore, where does the Demi-human race come from? Everyone on El Nido either settled there from Porre, or were the decedents of the citizens of Chronopolis. They only think I can think of is that there were Mystics in Chronopolis who were caught up in the Time Crash, and then cross-bred with humans over the millennia to create the demi-human race. Course the problem with that is, strictly speaking, two different species cannot produce offspring together. Of course, that’s never stopped fantasy and/or sci-fi writers in the past…
Any thoughts/suggestions?
(And don’t get me started on the dwarves in CT….)
9
Kajar Laboratories / The ‘Polis War
« on: June 01, 2005, 09:48:26 pm »
If you look around the Internet for Chrono fan fiction, you’ll notice several things:
1) Most of them suck. Its brutal, but true.
2) There are roughly 5 “Magus Searching For Schala” fics for every copy of both CT and CC ever sold. That angle has been done to death (I know -- one of them is mine)
3) There almost as many, “Janus’ life as he was raised by the Mystics” fics. And for some reason I cannot (and refuse to) fathom, 75% of these somehow involve Janus & Flea slash. Ummm, eww.
4) No one has any idea if Schala and Kid merged into a single being at the end of CC. Neither do I.
5) Crono and Marle get married (forgivable since the PS1 re-release of CT).
5) Lavos always, always, ALWAYS returns in some form or fashion.
The Chrono fanfic universe has gotten a little cliché over the years (I have yet to read any from this site, so this is not directed at anyone here). One in a whaile, you find a gem, and they are usually set in the Kindom Of Zeal. Lost of rich culture and history there to make a story out of. But there is another time period that has gone ignored. One you never see in any game, but is crucial to the existence of Chrono Cross in particular.
I am referring of course to the year 7600 BC, and the war between Dinopolis and Chronoplis.
We know but a hint of the story. Time Crash occurs in 2400AD, Chronoplis gets pulled back to 7600 BC by Lavos. The Planet then pulls Dinopolis from an alternate future to serve as a counter balance. Draconians and the Dragon God square off against Humans and FATE. FATE wins. The stage is set for Chrono Cross.
But wait, back up a second.
Why did they come to blows? Would they not have more to gain by co-operating? Could not the combined power of FATE (and by extension, the Frozen Flame) and The Dragon God enabled them both to find a way back home? Could the citizens of both cities have co-existed? Did they even try?
Sound like a section of history that begs to be explored. The way I see it, theres a few questions that need answering first:
What was FATE’s purpose before the Time Crash? Was it desgined specifically for the counter-time experiment, or was it simply the 'main computer' of Chronopolis? For that matter, what does F.A.T.E. stand for?
Would the Draconians recognize humans as their ancient rivals? (I’m guessing not)
What is the nature of Draconians society? (This could be pretty much made up by the author.)
Open to suggestions/discussion*. It would be some time before I could get started on writing such a project in any event.
*-Like a better name. "The Polis War" just sounds lame.
1) Most of them suck. Its brutal, but true.
2) There are roughly 5 “Magus Searching For Schala” fics for every copy of both CT and CC ever sold. That angle has been done to death (I know -- one of them is mine)
3) There almost as many, “Janus’ life as he was raised by the Mystics” fics. And for some reason I cannot (and refuse to) fathom, 75% of these somehow involve Janus & Flea slash. Ummm, eww.
4) No one has any idea if Schala and Kid merged into a single being at the end of CC. Neither do I.
5) Crono and Marle get married (forgivable since the PS1 re-release of CT).
5) Lavos always, always, ALWAYS returns in some form or fashion.
The Chrono fanfic universe has gotten a little cliché over the years (I have yet to read any from this site, so this is not directed at anyone here). One in a whaile, you find a gem, and they are usually set in the Kindom Of Zeal. Lost of rich culture and history there to make a story out of. But there is another time period that has gone ignored. One you never see in any game, but is crucial to the existence of Chrono Cross in particular.
I am referring of course to the year 7600 BC, and the war between Dinopolis and Chronoplis.
We know but a hint of the story. Time Crash occurs in 2400AD, Chronoplis gets pulled back to 7600 BC by Lavos. The Planet then pulls Dinopolis from an alternate future to serve as a counter balance. Draconians and the Dragon God square off against Humans and FATE. FATE wins. The stage is set for Chrono Cross.
But wait, back up a second.
Why did they come to blows? Would they not have more to gain by co-operating? Could not the combined power of FATE (and by extension, the Frozen Flame) and The Dragon God enabled them both to find a way back home? Could the citizens of both cities have co-existed? Did they even try?
Sound like a section of history that begs to be explored. The way I see it, theres a few questions that need answering first:
What was FATE’s purpose before the Time Crash? Was it desgined specifically for the counter-time experiment, or was it simply the 'main computer' of Chronopolis? For that matter, what does F.A.T.E. stand for?
Would the Draconians recognize humans as their ancient rivals? (I’m guessing not)
What is the nature of Draconians society? (This could be pretty much made up by the author.)
Open to suggestions/discussion*. It would be some time before I could get started on writing such a project in any event.
*-Like a better name. "The Polis War" just sounds lame.
10
General Discussion / The Hero To None hath Come...
« on: May 31, 2005, 02:25:11 pm »
Not sure if this is the pace to put an intro, but it seemed the most likely. If I'm wrong, sorry.
Greetings all. I am --
(wait for it...)
SILVERCRY!
And yes, I do have to be so dramatic.
Stumbled across the Chrono Compendium website while on my never -ending quest to A) Find Chrono Trigger fanfics that don’t suck, and B) learn and figure out what exactly what the heck happened in Chrono Cross. That game still makes my head spin at times.
Upon finding the Compendium, my first thought was: why am I JUST NOW learning that this place exists? My second though was 'Oh look, they have a forum.' So here I am. Huge fan of Chrono Trigger (obviously) not too fond of Cross (though I tolerate its existence. I'll spare you all my problems with it ... for now). It is still my favorite game of all time, and has been since a 15 year old Silvercry first played it over ten years ago. (In that time, only Xenosaga Episode One has come close to dethroning it, but as of now CT is still number 1!)
Now that I've found this community, you can bet you last Dreamstone that I'll contribute to it any way I can, though the only think I'm remotely good at is writing. I've only written one CT fanfic, then Cross came out and ruined my continuity. *Shrugs*. It happens. Since then I've had a self-imposed 'ban' on writing anything Chrono related, my creative skill is just not up to the task. Though I do enjoy 'borrowing' Chrono elements for other stories. Dalton, for example has basically become my very own Randall Flagg, and Lucca frequents my Kingdom hearts fanfics... or will if/when i ever finish them...
But now I'm rambling. I'll be seeing you all around.
Greetings all. I am --
(wait for it...)
SILVERCRY!
And yes, I do have to be so dramatic.
Stumbled across the Chrono Compendium website while on my never -ending quest to A) Find Chrono Trigger fanfics that don’t suck, and B) learn and figure out what exactly what the heck happened in Chrono Cross. That game still makes my head spin at times.
Upon finding the Compendium, my first thought was: why am I JUST NOW learning that this place exists? My second though was 'Oh look, they have a forum.' So here I am. Huge fan of Chrono Trigger (obviously) not too fond of Cross (though I tolerate its existence. I'll spare you all my problems with it ... for now). It is still my favorite game of all time, and has been since a 15 year old Silvercry first played it over ten years ago. (In that time, only Xenosaga Episode One has come close to dethroning it, but as of now CT is still number 1!)
Now that I've found this community, you can bet you last Dreamstone that I'll contribute to it any way I can, though the only think I'm remotely good at is writing. I've only written one CT fanfic, then Cross came out and ruined my continuity. *Shrugs*. It happens. Since then I've had a self-imposed 'ban' on writing anything Chrono related, my creative skill is just not up to the task. Though I do enjoy 'borrowing' Chrono elements for other stories. Dalton, for example has basically become my very own Randall Flagg, and Lucca frequents my Kingdom hearts fanfics... or will if/when i ever finish them...
But now I'm rambling. I'll be seeing you all around.
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