10-28-2022 updating this website may not be feasible again before novemeber. do you care? somebody told me you did.
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realizing that a dirk is essentially a dork has profoundly changed my world view.
my first experience with this was in the Batman Nintendo ES game. somebody with access to the instruction manual proclaimed the disk-like weapon that splits into 3 a “dirk.” that really isn’t what a dirk is but sure enough the manual really does call it that. which means batman is pretty much throwing dorks at his foes. imagine how close he must have come to using Burt Ward as a weapon back in the 1960s.
a few years later while playing final fantasy threex my elder brother had the hero Relm use the “sketch” attack against Hidon and totally screwed up the game, resulting in multiplicity of rare items like gem box and illumina, but more importantly HUNDREDS of dirks. which as we know MIGHT AS WELL be hundreds of dorks. think of the damage you could inflict with THAT much unrepentent corniness on your side.
players these days apparently gripe about the heroes Cyan, Gau and Umaro, but at least they have honor enough to REFUSE to use a dirk.
Sabin also doesn’t use dirks either but he also spend s a lot of time rushing bums and in most cases I consider that disreputable.
Although in this specific instance Sabin engages a foe who used to be a regularish person who was SO greedy that he transformed into a lizard, that is not always the case.
(I don’t know what chief programmer Kan Naito is talking about here, I just think the way he says the title at the start is funny)
The sega genesis game Landostoka contains, as a clue, the poemoid
What happens when dorks get dangerous?
I mean that “skeletons” is the correct answer, not that skeletons themselves make wise decisions. You solve the puzzle by ignoring all the skeletons except the one that isn’t white, then beating it up. In skeleton lore, having a dumb color makes you a dork, which is a sin against God requiring your immediate termination. Skeletons have also historically been racist. that is just history. In fact all these skeletons reveal themselves as dorks just by the way they JUMP without extra animation frames to go up stairs, but since that doesn’t come across in a screen shot I cannot for the moment effectively criticize them for that.
initially I misremembered the skeletons here as being knights possibly due to this corny line being permanently enshrined in my consciousness
and consequently referred to knight lore rather than skeleton lore.
This is important because my next point referred to the Ultimate Play The Game game “Knight Lore,” which involves no knightly deeds or insults whatsoever, only slowwwwly traversing a castle named “knightlore” which is itself pretty dorky, without even the assistance of any dirks. instead your fragile traverser becomes a werewolf who seems to be no less fragile but does waste an extra 3-6 seconds of his life and yours changing to and back after the approximate amount of time it takes to walk across 5 room. All times are relative because any moving objects apart from the protagonist in a room slows it down considerably.
this game achieved massive critical acclaim. From dorks.
I cannot confirm a rumor that the werewolf’s appearance and ill-acclimation to video games inspired Paul “TX Critter” Fusco to create ALF, I can merely start that rumor right now.
complete freedom to pick up objects and drop objects, unless touching them destroys you
COINCIDENTALLY, there is another nearly identical game called Batman that involves Batman doing the exact same thing, just in a cave. Batman no longer needs to use dorks as weapons; verily, he can’t use weapons at all and is victimized by everything, for he has become the dork.
Don’t read that. The story is that a bunch of characters you won’t see are somewhere else because batman can’t keep track of his stuff and apparently is so clever that he placed fatal duplicates of his stuff as traps for, apparently, himself, in his own cave
they DARE to make THIS the box art for such a game.
People associate disappointing licensed games with the nes, and it seems like a miracle that Batman got a good one, dorks notwithstanding, but he actually beat the simpsons and ninja turtles to point-missing nonsense by several years
1980s computer software companies were just cranking this trash out. Since Ultimate Play The Game pioneered this isometric interface amidst a crown of minimalist black-void background side-view games people were in awe of it even though the computers of that period were too wimpy to do anything interesting with it, and apart from that Ultimate Play The Game’s developers were more about abusing players than entertaining them. This was made plain when with access to more powerful Nintendo hardware and calling themselves Rare Ltd, a self-labeling improvement, I admit, rather than making a GOOD isometric adventure game they made Roger Rabbit, Wrestlemania and Battletoads instead. Also Snake Rattle n Roll which actually is isometric but I don’t known enough to hate that enough to complain about it. However they licensed Knight Lore to Jaleco who made an even worse version of the game than they did.
I can’t remember what I was talking about. Stay away from video games. They will ruin your life even if you don’t have time to play them anymore.
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Bravus Bimbus sez:
I bet you’re nowhere near dorkly enough to beat any of the old elder scrolls games even if you had the time.
Frimpinheap sez:
I know that I TRIED the first one back in 2014, maybe, and couldn’t maintain the patience to get through the cave or sewer or whatever at the start.
Bravus Bimbus sez:
Oh my,
How embarrassing.
poingoboingo sez:
You want dirks? I’ll give ya dirks. Offhand, I know of several dorks named Dirk. In the British sitcom “Last of the Summer Wine” there was an episode titled “A Bicycle Made For Three” featuring a minor character who called himself Dirk (previously Percy), and was referred to at least once as “Dirkus.” There was also British author Douglas Adams’ character, Dirk Gently of “Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency” which had at least one sequel (featuring not Fafnir but another Norse legend, Thor the thunder god!). There’s Dirk Benedict who played leading roles in both “BattleStar Galactica” and “The A-Team” although presumably not the same character. And to add one more Dirk to the list, let’s not forget the knight Dirk the Daring, of Dragon’s Lair! Finally, I agree with that auction house NPC that moogles do indeed look dorky, except for the moogles in FF12, those were cute. I have nothing to say about Knight Lore except that it looks totally dork-worthy.
Scissors Shrimper sez:
So here’s the essential question: do you consider Landstalker to be “a hidden gem”, or “possibly the worst game you’ve ever played”?
Frimpinheap sez:
I never said that I *wanted* more dirks!
I assumed landstalker was obscure until I saw articles about the death of prolific box art illustrator Greg Martin featuring that game’s picture above all the mainline sonic game illustrations he did, including Sonic Triple Trouble despite its particularly dorky (though dirkless) fist-shaking corner knuckles.
the only thing really WRONG with landstalker is its implementation of diagonal control, requiring players to press two directions at once, rather than simply rotating the cardinal directions that the control pad corresponds with, like was common on the NES. but APPARENTLY not on 1980s computer games like knightlore, which require the player to “turn left,” “turn right” and move forward with individual key presses! ohhhhhwful
Gravity Beetbood sez:
While that is indeed one of the more baffling decisions, if you consider that to be the only thing wrong with the game, I might have to assume you played it without sound, or indeed the final dungeon.
Frimpinheap sez:
I also don’t like Landstalker’s use of what I call the blinkout effect in a few places, but for whatever reason “rpg”-styled games, even silly ones, like to use that to remove objects instead of having them explode. However I understand my objection to that effect to be VERY particular of myself.
I take great amusement from its sound effects and always like Motoaki Takenouchi’s music, even in Granhistoria, sort of. It works better in Landstalker than Shining Force 2 since the area themes aren’t restarting and blasting you with their intros every time you attack a monster.
I have not played through LS in a long time, and an even longer time on a save-stateless system. it is possible I may find some late-game design decisions less forgivable in this age of many more choices, but I do not know what, specifically. I was able to clear it on a real system, though.
Launch Octopardo sez:
I admittedly did not play it at all myself, but I did witness first-hand a friend of mine play it, who had a great deal of optimism going in, on account of many internetsfolk describing it with the aforementioned “hidden gem” designation, only for my friend herself to ultimately bestow upon it the “possibly the worst game I’ve ever played” designation by the end, a title which it held for several months before ultimately being ousted by Valkyrie no B?ken (a masterwork of inscrutability even by NES standards). Another friend of ours, and a great fan of sadistic design in video games, later followed up by taking the Landstalker challenge, and enjoyed it, but only in a self-flagellating, cruel-idea-generating sort of way, and could not in good conscious recommend it to anyone else.
That said, the anti-Landstalking friend in question was, it should be noted, a lady (so was the other, but that’s neither here nor there). And it would seem that Climax entertainment did not intend Landstalker primarily for an audience of ladies, as witnessed by the fact that they would later release a (sadly untranslated) sequel, specifically aimed at the ladies in the audience, titled “Lady Stalker”, in which you play as a lady named Lady. If this seems a bit too on the nose, bear in mind that the name “Karl” means “man”.
Frimpinheap sez:
I am certainly not going to tell anyone else “NO this is QUALITY you have WRONG opinions!” I get, essentially, that sort of response enough when I complained on twitter about the movies my 5-6-7-8 year old niece has watched in my presence. I liked the game on my sega nomad without having any clue what anyone else thought of it. But if some unaccountable doofus had told me it was magnificent I would be extra attuned to all the ways it was not.
But the comparison to nes valkyrie strikes me as hyperbolic, since that game has substantially worse graphics, (possibly including mirrored consonants on the desert whirlos) and no clues about what you are supposed to do, with a single 10 second tune that loops forever if i recall accurately, which I admippedly do not guarantee. I would really need to know specifics about how those games are similar to accept that gripe without griping back at it.
Ladystalker is not a sequel; it has no jump button and I believe it may even have turn-based combat. And, crucially, no involvement from Motoaki Takenouchi. Doubtlessly the marketing department wanted buyers to casually think it was a sequel with the title and the visuals, but it is something else.
He lives in the pit sez:
No, I will not be ok if I don’t see another update before november.
Godkarmachine O Inary sez:
If you think Lady Stalker is not sequey enough, I ask you to consider the case of Landstalker spinoff-from-technically-another-company Alundra, and its alleged actual sequel, Alundra 2, which has no gameplay or story connections to the first game whatsoever (and which, if anything, feels somewhat more reminiscent of Landstalker). This is all the more mysterious since the first Alundra game is named after the protagonist (which surprised me initially; I had assumed “Alundra” would certainly be a place, and everyone else whom we’ve discussed the game with was surprised to learn Alundra wasn’t a place), whereas the protagonist of Alundra 2 is allegedly named “Flint”, although we tended to call him “Clyde”, or, later on, simply “Alundra 2”.
Alundra 2 is also notable for having what I think may be the worst attempts at comedy I have ever seen in all of Videogamedom. They’re truly breathtaking in the degree to which the adopt the outward trappings of humor, but so fundamentally fail to understand the essence of the concept, almost as though aliens trained exclusively on Jerry Lewis films had attempted to devise their own gigglefest according to what they imagined would tickle human funnybones.
It is further worth noting that the act of playing either of the Alundra games may be described using the word “lunding”.
Additionally, the aggregate group of all Stalker and Alundra games, possibly also including Dark Savior, may be collectively referred to as “The Lundstalkers”.
Frimpinheap sez:
alundra 2 I am comfortable trash-talking. i got it as a christmas gift one year, roundabout the umiliphus period, with no awareness of the first game. i did make an earnest attempt at it, but found it frustrating that the game seems to not expect you to be able to avoid damage, and to just rely on your huge hit point pool and collection of recovery items to sustain you, which shouldn’t be a trait of action games. i was thinking more recently (prompted by your messages, wondering what its worst aspects might be) that landstalker is also sort of like that, but since I, personally, found its presentation so much more appealing than Alundra2’s it never occurred to me that those two games might be related. Alundra 2’s view is also zoomed in much too close to give a good sense of what is going on, leading to more damage taken and other screwups. Landstalker additionally doesn’t show numbers when damage is inflicted; Alundra 2 reverses the final fantasy system, wherein enemies have vast heaps of hit points relative to heroes, but the heroes do more damage, which makes them seem appropriately heroic. if i’m doing 7 damage to a boss that does 47 damage to the dork I control, and it hits me way more times than I hit it, and I still win, I feel like I don’t deserve to have won!
I remember thinking the writing wasn’t as funny as it thought it was, but the presence of voice acting can make a huge difference. lost vikings 2 with its unnecessary celebrity sound-alike voices is frustratingly unfunny but the text-only delivery of the super nes version was substantially more effective, for me. I didn’t mind the Alundratew pirate captain’s voice (though I can only specifically recall him groaning then saying “Flint!”) but his associates and especially the princess (i think) who follows Flint around (whom I can only specifically recall saying “MePHISto!”) complaining were less appealing.
another good example might be Robotrek, which in Japan was, supposedly, a comedic game, but the localization just makes it seem like every character has an undiagnosed social disorder. However, since nobody is SPEAKING those lines, and without the pathetic grasps at pathos of fellow Quintetian Illusion of Gaia, i can adapt to how the people talk and find order in it.
I finally played the first Alundra in 2018, maybe, but only for less than two hours, and spent the biggest part of that trying to figure out which person in the first town i had to talk to or talk to again to be allowed to leave. I did reach the first proper “level” but turned off the game when someone else in the room where I was remarked “mmmboring.” I don’t remember if *I* thought it was boring but if I am using a big screen that other people can see I don’t want to BE boring.