Also, even though I’ve yet to actually beat the game, I’m having serious second thoughts about speedrunning Flying Warriors. It’s just a seriously cheap game; I’d go so far as to say that Flying Dragon is actually better designed in that regard. I am still going to go ahead and beat the game though, if for no other reason than to add another game to my trophy case, as it were.

That game is Flying Warriors on the NES, a typical Culture Brain title that blends beat-em-up, 1-on-1 fighting game, and RPG. Unlike The Magic of Scheherazade (Another Culture Brain game, and one that I have a run for), it doesn’t do the genre-mashing thing quite as well–in particular, it likes to pull the time-honored NES trick of “constantly respawning enemies near bottomless pits” that enraged so many people when they were younger.

Flying Warriors itself has sort of a Power Rangers-esque vibe to it, only without the humongous mecha–five allies? Check. Transforming into more powerful forms? Check. Martial artists? Yep, that too. If Wikipedia can be trusted, the game is actually a kind of mashup of two games released in Japan, Hiryu No Ken II and Hiryu No Ken III (The first game came to U.S. shores as Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll).

I have even less experience with this game than I did with Chuck Rock when I said “Hey that’d be a good game to run.” I’m really playing through it for the first time right now, other than a brief rental when I was much younger and got stymied by a seemingly impossible jump (As it turns out, the solution requires kind of a speedrunning train of thought: Use a Cyclone Spin Kick to carry yourself to the platform). This time is going better, although as mentioned above, the game itself is kind of frustrating as a whole. Still, I do want to at least beat the game once.

-EE

Phantasy Star II.

Yep, seven years before Final Fantasy VII made it cool to like RPGs in the U.S., Phantasy Star II had quite a bit of hype behind it in 1990 or so. It made the cover of an early issue of GamePro, and an early Game Player’s had quite a bit of coverage too. In any event, seeing the game made quite an impression on little Emptyeye, even though at that point all I got to see was my cousin repeatedly trying (And failing) to kill the final boss. Actually getting to play the game later on only increased my “must have this game” desire.

Unfortunately, I was a Nintendo kid growing up, not actually owning a Genesis until it was all but dead in the U.S. I finally got Phantasy Star II in my early teens, and loved it, especially the ending (Which pretty much confirmed everything a 13-year-old me in the peak of his I-Hate-Everything phase needed to know about humanity).

A couple years ago, I played through the game again intending to speedrun it. I never actually a completed a speedrun, other than a pseudo-test where I got through the game at Level 18. While I still love the game on a personal level, looking at it objectively, it really hasn’t aged very well.

In case you don’t know, when the game first game out, it came with its own full strategy guide. This is because you needed it. The dungeons were huge, and especially in the beginning of the game, you had to do quite a bit of level grinding in order to survive them. This wasn’t quite as much of a problem later on, although the dungeons themselves got even more fiendish. Here’s one of the later dungeons; the black squares are pits, and your two goals are the chests marked Neislasher and Neishot. Have fun getting to them even with the map. The pace of also rather slow, and any characters not in your party don’t level with the rest of your characters. This basically means that several of the characters you get will never be used in normal play.

Despite all these flaws, I still like the game a lot, and might play through it again on stream sometime. Maybe once I don’t have to constantly stress out about So You Want to be a Speedrunner.

Other stuff to improve:

• Actually mentioning the fact that there will be a Q&A earlier than I did.
• Being more aware of what I’m doing with my hands–I slipped one of them into my pocket on occasion.
• As mentioned above, actually knowing my slidedeck a little better.

What did I actually do well?

• I felt like I didn’t really “um”, “er”, etc. at all, although I would need to actually record myself giving the presentation to be sure.
• Similarly, I felt like my actual command of the material was pretty good. If I had to give the presentation without any visual aids whatsoever, I think I could do it.
• Finally, I think I did a good job keeping my head up. In other words, if I actually had an audience, I would’ve been making eye contact with them (Or at least faking it).

Again, I feel like this is really starting to come together. Since I’m now at the stage where I can’t really tinker with the slideshow anymore, this will likely be the final daily update on the panel. I’ll make sure to continue trying to at least make some kind of daily post, though, as that way you’ll keep coming back (And I’ll actually get some value out of the fact that I have the site paid up for the next 2 years). And I’ll continue to update on the panel whenever I actually do something, rehearse, etc.

-EE

Tomorrow will, in all likelihood, come my first “dry-run” of the content with my cool little slide advancer thing that I bought at an Officemax a couple weeks ago. That’ll give me a rough idea of how much time I need for the presentation on its current form. From there, I can ask Don at Gobble-Con for that block of time, and he can either give it to me, or tell me “That won’t work, you’ll have to cut some stuff out.” (I suppose “We’ll actually need you to fill more time than that; can you come up with some more material?” is a third option, but it’s not one I’m counting on, and to be honest, it’s not even one I’d particularly want at this point, although I’d deal with it if it came up).

This is really starting to come together!

-EE

Anyway, my main activity today was overcoming my own ridiculously verbose writing style and asking linner for permission to use his F-Zero X Fire Field run in Japanese (Well, whatever babelfish calls Japanese anyway) as well as English. Hopefully something will come of this.

The other thing I did was finally make the decision to add Level 9 (And about 35 seconds) to my Double Dragon II run snippet. I do still have to redo the title card for it to reflect that update, though.

-EE