Editorials Dragon Ball Z Movie 12 VCD Review 8-10-2001 As most of you know, I am quite a VCD freak (God bless MPEG 1!). I love the things, they are inexpensive, digital, and a fine alternative to DVDs until prices drop. Almost all the Dragon Ball Z movies and some of the episodes have already been dubbed and released on VCD by Speedy Video, a major distributor of VCDs. Naturally, the ability to see DBZ material that won't be show in the States for about 5 years (I wish I was kidding) is very nice indeed. The first one I bought was Movie 8 The Burning Battle featuring the big, bad, Broli. It was great to hear the original soundtrack in, and although the Malasian VAs left a little to be desired (well, a LOT) the script was translated well. The big minus overall was the encoding which wasn't done too well and this led to a lot of artifacts. Speedy's latest release is Movie 12, and I was eager to see if the encoding problem was fixed. Onto the review. Packaging-Like #8, very nice and very crisp. I am not sure, but it may be taken directly from the original Japanese, but either way it is very cool. I do wish there was some kind of insert, but being VCD this is unlikely. I have taken two fuzzy pics of the front and the inside including the CD for your viewing pleasure. Encoding-Well, crap, not a heck of a lot better than #8 although the colors are a little better, which may be due to bettter source material. Maybe DBZ just can't be encoded well at such a low bitrate. Artifacts are almost everywhere during high motion fight scenes and even during regular scenes, too. Blurriness is also a bit of a problem in normal motion scenes as well. I know they can do better, because I have seen some damn nicely encoded VCD. Hopefully, once they begin encoding the regular TV series again and are finished with the movies a better method will have been found. Hopefully. Better than 8, but not by much. Dubbing-Well, the VAs from #8 are the same, they have just been given new roles. As a matter of fact I don't think anyone is in their original roles. Some VAs are hard to understand like Videl's and Janemba's, but most are quite okay. The acting is on par with movie 8 (Paikuhan is hilarious as he realizes he must "shout" at the ice to break it). The truth is that they speak fairly good English, but their accents often get in the way. The translation and script on the other hand... Translation-Uh-oh. We are approaching FUNimation quality translations here. The sheer amount of name and other mistakes in the dialogue is disturbing, especially considering how well #8 was translated. Goku was called Goku at first but eventually became Gohan (?). Gohan became "Goku's brother". Vegeta became Beeta (??). Paikuhan became Piccolo (guess they couldn't tell the difference). Freezer became Fraylay (or so it sounded like, Gohan didn't really enunciate when he said it so...). Enma Daiyo became King of Hell (a little more excusable I guess). Fusion became combine (said one syllable at time like fusion is, so it sounds even worse, Co-m-bine!), and many others. You may think I just heard it wrong, but I know the VAs can pronounce the names correctly (they did in #8) so it has to be a script problem. I am not sure how they dropped the ball on this one. I plan to get more DBZ VCDs to compare how they did with those. Perhaps #12 was just a fluke, but it was a disturbing one nontheless. Music-Nice, VCD quality which is very good. We gotta Power sounds excellent as does the ending theme whose name escapes me right now. Overall a very good soundtrack taken directly from the Japanese which is always nice, heh. Overall-Tough call. The translation is very annoying, and the encoding problem pursists, but if you are a fan of DBZ then go for it. Most VCD retailors have it for about $8, so you can't beat the price. Hopefully, the quality of encoding and VAs will improve and I for one hope the script problem was an isolated incedent. The Fate of Yu Yu Hakusho 6-23-2001 Oh no! That was my first thought when I heard the terrible, terrible news: FUNimation had acquired the rights to distribute Yu Yu Hakusho in America! The series will probably be run on CN similar to DBZ and DB although at FUNimation's pace it is not likely to appear until 2004. For those who don't know Yu Yu Hakusho is a very popular anime and manga about a "spirit detective" named Yuusuke. If you want to know more look it up as it is quite convoluted (like all anime/manga). It was extremely popular in it's TV run and competed quite well with Dragon Ball Z in the ratings (Possibly the reason FUNimation wanted it). We all know how FUNi has bastardized DBZ (well, some of us know at least). They made a dub that was completely unnacceptable, edited footage simply to make money on "uncut" VHS releases, and made a poor attempt to please the otaku by putting out horrendous DVDs (3 eps and extras consisting of adverts? Oh please, the VHS had those and was only missing the Japanese soundtrack). They have made some progress, I will give them that (the DVDs have at least improved a bit), but it was too little, too late. I am horrified at what a YYH (it sucks typing Yu Yu Hakusho a billion times) dub might be like, probably as bad as the DBZ dub was (I have heard their DB dub was ok, but I will believe it when I see it). *Sigh* this is turning into a FUNi rant (which I guess it is at heart). I guess the point is maybe FUNi will wise up and realize that what they did to DBZ should NOT be repeated (God knows enough people have said as much) and if they want to be a "respectable anime company" they should follow Bandai's, Pioneer's and ADV's acts and give the anime consumer what they REALLY want and not try to reach out to a completely different audience and target group entirely. This is what they did with DBZ by transforming a show with adult themes aimed at a group of at least 14+ to a kiddie show aimed at the 7+ crowd (how they did it is an interesting feat in itself). If they can't preserve YYH, well then there is always Viz Comics and in a lot of ways manga is better than anime, anways, hehe. Over and out. True teamplay and online games 6-14-2001 As most of you know I love Quake 2 Weapons Factory. It was a mod I fell in love with over 2 years ago (gawd, I'm old) and still play a bit of. Still the real thrill of the game was playing in official clan matches where pride and record were on the line. Both sides throw their best tactics at each other in an organized attempt to demolish the other side. I have participated in many such matches form my very first match with my clan the Iron Fist Legion (a terrible loss to LOB, 20-40) to my very favorite match with my next clan the Raging Legends (a incredibly close match with LOB this time 2-1, 2-3, and 4-8, we lost again unfortunately), but then when you log onto a public server it a motley crew of players from the newb who just figured out that the mouse and keyboard was the only way to play the game to the pros who were in the top ogl clans. This meant a highly disorganized game where one man army would charge enemy forts, take down a dozen players in 1 on 1 combat but be doomed by a stronger interior defense, all the while more than half his team sits on defense causing a stalemate. It was truly nerve racking and is what drove me away form the pubs for a long time. Q2WF is all but dead now, unfortunately and I have had to find refuge in another mod. I found it in Counter Strike, the most popular online game of all time. It is a bit overwhelming considering there are over 3000 CS servers on the internet but you get used to it and adapt. I am not yet in a CS clan so my experience of the game is from public servers only. The game is fun but quite a departure from WF. It is basically Rainbow 6 with more guns and faster gameplay. You're basically a terrorist or counter--terrorist and you must stop the other from dong their assigned task (rescue hostages, plant bombs, etc.). You earn more money depending on how your team and yourself does and more money mean better guns and equipment. The thing that impresses me most about it is how well strangers on a public server are able to coordinate and organize much bettter than those on the WF servers ever did. Maybe it is the easy to use radio system, or maybe it is the radar in the top left corner of the hud which shows your teammates position. Maybe it is it's intuitive menu system, or maybe it is a combination of all those and more. In any case it a good watermark for other games to judge themselves and a marvelous example of how to do multiplayer online games. Impressive.