I Say He Made the Right Choice

It's taken me a year but I finally did it! I ripped the ending to Metal Saga and uploaded it to Youtube! This is the first of the game's multiple endings. Since you can earn it within seconds of starting the game I would say it's the best ending. I haven't seen the others, but even if they're equally amusing they are worse because you have to actually play the game to see them, and the game ain't all that great. I think you can speed up the battles, which is wonderful, but the game still felt pretty slow and barren. Not Japan's finest hour when it comes to open-ended RPGs.

Metal Max Returns, on the other hand, seemed pretty neat from the brief time I spent with it. If you dig the idea of an open-ended, goofball, post-apocalyptic RPG you should give this fine translation a shot! Or you could play Fallout, I guess. But Fallout doesn't have tanks.

Fists Can Solve Any Problem

That's a funny screenshot, right? It's obvious the translation team is having fun. A lot of recent translations have been too clever for their own good -- Dragon Quest IV was a new (to me) installment in my favorite series but all the stupid accents and terrible jokes were such a turnoff that I still haven't finished it -- but the kids at Atlus? It's cute when they do it.

I don't know if the game (Tokyo Beatdown) will be any good, but the trailer looks kinda OK. Kinda reminded me of Dynamite Deka or Elevator Action Returns but, y'know, only in a very surface way. I'm sure if I actually played or watched a video of either game I'd be ashamed of myself for writing that. But they all have that goofy macho thing going on, right? Not too far off.

When I first saw the title I got excited, thinking it had to be a localization of another Kunio-kun game or Kenka Banchou, (which may not be that good but any game featuring teenage Japanese biker thugs shooting laser beams from their brains can't be bad) but nope. It's just another game by Success. I say that like it's a bad thing but I'm honestly not sure if I've played a game from them? I must have at some point but I sure can't think of anything off the top of my head. I just know everyone trashes them and I'm lazy so I follow the herd. Are they the guys who release all those lousy SRPGs? I do know they're behind the Dark Spire, which has to be good because I want it to be.

Checking their wiki entry I see a whole mess of games I've played, and they're mostly OK. I know Metal Saga had the funniest ending I've ever seen in a video game, and it occurred 3 minutes after I started playing. And I'd link you to a youtube video of it, but if there is one I can't find it due to the billion fucking Metal Gear Solid music videos. I'll have to rip it myself, or type up a transcript and post it here. It's fabulous.