I realize, going into this, that I am most likely wasting my breath. About .000000001% of the population reads this blog, and of that percentage, maybe half of those readers will agree with what I am about to say.

Still, if something upsets me as much as this does, then I feel that I have to write about it. Perhaps there are more of you out there who care about this than I originally thought.

Anyway.

Final Fantasy IV for the DS comes out tomorrow. Graphically, it’s most stunning installment of this game to date. I love the character designs. Each character is drawn pretty much exactly as I pictured them. Back in the day when this game was first released, you only had a tiny sprite and Amano’s very loose character artwork to go by. I think that might have been a nice way of me saying that I don’t think that Amano’s art style works with the very cartoony final fantasy iv, but i’m not sure. I’m not dissing his art style, so please, no hate mail.

Here’s where the problem comes in, and it seems more and more games are doing this lately. A feature of the game was taken out that many people, creative people, have come to love. And it’s bad enough that it’s been taken out. To add insult to injury, the character who changes your name is in the game, his name is still Namingway, and when you speak to him for the first time, you even have false hope of changing Cecil’s name. But then he goes on to say “Oh yeah, I don’t do that anymore.” and that’s that.

Many people will argue “Well, the game has voice acting, what did you expect?” to which I would immediately counter: It’s a handheld. I own a handheld system so I can play it at the movies while I’m waiting for the film to start, or while I’m waiting in line for something. I actually had to play Crisis Core while sitting on my couch at home because of how many voiced scenes there were, thus defeating the purpose of a handheld or “portable” game, in my opinion.

I could take the argument a little further, citing games such as Star Ocean for the ps2 and Tales of Destiny 2 for the playstation, which creatively let you name your characters through the status screen if you had voice acting turned off. This is a way for people like me to get their naming fix, and people who don’t give a damn about naming things to… well… keep the names that are dealt to them.

There are other games, like Shining Force for the Genesis, which allowed you to name your first guy, and if you cared enough, you could hold A and start after naming him and name the rest of your squad. These are things that I did, but I’m not sure how many others cared enough to do this, and maybe I am a dying breed.

Before you start to think that I am crazy, allow me to explain why I like to name my guys.

I like to put myself into the game. My life, my characters, my experience. I find myself enjoying a game 100 times more if Jeremy and Sara are fighting the evil Sephiroth, rather than Cloud and Tifa. When Sara, Karl, Robbie, Reed and Patton travel to the moon, i feel for the characters much more than if Rydia, Cecil, Edward, Rosa and Edge are doing the very same thing.

I personally thought that namingway was a great way to change characters names. If you liked the in game names or just didn’t care, you could just bypass this character and be done with it. This, to me, was fine. I will say this. All four saves on my Final Fantasy II cartridge were filled with games. Each game was that of a different friend of mine. In each game, my friends changed the names without question. So, perhaps it ISN’T just me.

To conclude this particular point, let me say this: I find myself less inclined to take a chance on a Role Playing Game if I know I can’t put myself into it. I also find it silly that a handheld with no spoken dialogue (final fantasy tactics advance2 for instance) forces you to use the default names. I don’t want to, so therefore I will miss this tactical adventure, unfortunately.

On the other side of the coin, I find myself playing mediocre games just for the naming aspect alone. The minute the game is remade and the naming aspect is gone, I find myself caring less and less about it. Case in point, I purchased La Pucelle Tactics only to find that each and every monster had a stupider name than the next and it could not be altered. While Bones Pizza is a funny and cool name, I never got any random names that were that cool, and so, I gave the game away the next day.

All of this being said, it seems that the future of me being a gamer girl is bleak. I still love games like Katamari Daimacy and Loco Roco, but am finding myself drifting further and further from the RPG genre. I play the Nippon Ichi games for the naming aspect before any other aspect. I don’t know what I’ll be doing ten years from now and that scares me. I don’t want to turn into one of those old people who doesn’t play video games anymore. I want to be 80 and playing video games, but it seems that there are just fewer and fewer for me to play.

Every once in a while a game that seems like it was made just for me, like Drawn To Life, comes along, but this comes along once in a blue moon.

Anyway, we’ll see tomorrow if I actually go and buy final fantasy iv ds or not, but I am inclined to think I will not. If a text hacking utility happens to come out for it sometime soon, then, hells yes I’ll play it, but as for right now, unfortunately, I think I’ll pass.

Ghosts.

That’s right. Ghosts.

Let me explain.

Today I was working on fixing a neighbor’s computer, which had become INFESTED with viruses. I don’t mean just a few. I think the report said it had something like 10 Trojans. Anyway… I thought she had a DVD burner, so I thought to myself “Aha! I’ll save myself some time and get all of her pictures off in one fell swoop”.

It was at this point that I opened the drawer where I usually keep my DVDs. A spindle sat there, collecting dust, with one red dvd left on it. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? I, at this moment, thought to myself “oh yeah, that’s right, I need DVD’s, i’m out.”

Another thought occurred to me immediately after that. I had purchased an entire spindle of DVDs a month earlier. I bought them on June 1st, to be exact. I remember that day because my father was away on vacation and I had a few errands to run while he was gone and some stuff to do in the house, and I picked them up while I was out.

Anyway.

These DVDs were not in the DVD drawer. Curious.

They were not in any of the other drawers. Even more curious.

They were NOWHERE in my room. Really weird.

They were NOWHERE in the house. What the hell! ?
It was at this point that I ran through the house ripping open drawers and cabinets in search of these stupid things, leaving no stone unturned and no corner unsearched. These things were nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. I searched again and again and again and came up empty. I even checked my DVD archives that I keep of my photographs to confirm that there were new ones in there just so I could be 100 percent sure that I bought DVDs.

Anyway, at this point, I’m pretty certain that there is a very vengeful ghost out there who is very much against writeable media. I think he came into my room in the deeeaaaad of night and stole the cd’s. Perhaps it happened on friday the 13th. That was last month. It makes sense…

Anyway, here’s some photographic evidence that I found in my room. Something fishy is definitely going on here! If anyone sees this guy, tell him to give me my DVDs back!

In all seriousness… these dvds absolutely disappeared. I have a pretty much photographic memory and i can’t for the life of me remember where these are. It’s very strange that they aren’t in my room. If I happened to lend these to anyone, or give them to anyone to burn me something, please let me know, cause I’m really trying hard to find an explanation as to how an entire spindle of dvds vanishes into thin air.

If no one knows what happened to these for real, I’m going to start believing that it actually IS some sort of ghost!

maybe hollywood could make a horror movie about it. It could be about a guy who ignores the FBI warning and copies a whole bunch of DVDs. Suddenly, he is haunted by the ghost of a man who lost his job because no one bought dvds anymore because this other guy just kept copying them and GIVING them away. And then this poor unemployed man got crushed by a truck carrying these burned DVDs. OOh! OOH! and they can call it something like “FBI Mourning” … get it?

All right, it is quite obvious that it is past my bed time.

If anyone can think of a solution for my missing dvd problem, please let me know. Or, if a Hollywood studio would like to make my wonderful idea into a movie, also let me know. I figure we’ll cast John Krasinski as the lead, just cause he’s nifty. And then probably Donny Osmond as the ghost, cause he scares the hell out of me.

And Paris Hilton can play the part of the DVD truck.

Edit: I found the DVDs today. It is amazing how stupidly I hid these. I placed them in my father’s closet with my spindles of already burned dvds. I searched this location several times, looking for GOLD dvds. But I was crafty in my ways. I placed the last unburned RED dvd right on top of them, so each time I searched his closet, I would just see this red one on the top and overlook it. I opened each and every spindle to make sure that I didn’t do something like this. I did NOT open the spindle in question because it was nigh IMPOSSIBLE to get open, because it was a different kind of case. So, in conclusion, I am a flaming idiot and my dvds were not taken by a ghost.

Damn. Better luck next time I guess. ^_^

Well, guys, the first comic is online. The second one is in the works. The site is still technically in beta cause Tony and I have some things to finish, but it’s live and you can read the comic. I”ll try to have the next one for next month.

http://www.kappacino.com/wishfulfillment

hope you guys like it. ^_^

WTF?! I’ve never seen anything like this! It’s apparently called something like a red and blue leaf hopper or something. I was looking for four leaf clovers before, and he was sitting right on one of the clover leaves, just to give you a sense of how small these are!

Remember that part a few entries ago when i said “it’s time”? …

Well, that time is June 22nd, 2008.

yes, I realize it’s super present day, and I realize that it’s also my 30th birthday, so I couldn’t think of a more fitting day to do this.

On June 22nd, I will launch my comic. It’s online in a seeeecret, it’s being proofread, and it should be ready to go by then. Knowing my luck, though, i’ll say a day and then that day won’t end up working out because the tubes have exploded or clogged or something. Afterall, the internet IS just a series of tubes. In fact, I am having my own personal internet delivered to me by my staff TODAY!

Anyway… this is my dream, guys. This is something that i’ve wanted to do for a long time. When next sunday comes, I’ll have a new link up on my Kappacino website and I will probably post something here, directing people to the comic. I plan on trying to update almost every month, but work and life might get in the way.

I do promise this though. I will be better about this than i have about everything else I’ve ever done. I tried so hard to be interested in all the stuff I did and remain interested, but as I have stated numerous times, they have all been distractions from what I’ve really wanted to do, and that is this comic. Unless I die in a moose attack or bear mauling, I WILL FINISH THIS COMIC!

And, in a strange turn of events, I have changed the name of the comic to something that I think is very fitting. It is now called “Wish Fulfillment”. Everyone will see why when they read it. It’s about crystals and ghosts and … I’M SO EXCITED ! WAAAH!

It’s a strange feeling… one I really can’t describe. I’ve talked about this comic since like 10th grade, but I’ve never had the means to do this before now. And it could be really bad, and everyone could totally hate it… but that’s a chance I’m going to have to take.

Anyway, thanks to Tony (for programming the site) and Larry, Pat and Fatt (for helping me brainstorm) and the unexplainable power of Mark’s grandma’s garage… I’m going to be getting the best thing I could for Super Present Day … ^_^

my wish… fulfilled.