It began with the letter D, long ago. It was the key used to fire to the right of the ship in a grid, in a game I remember being really addicted to for a few weeks. I also clearly remember two or three warnings along the review about how devious the game was to keyboards. Fair enough. I stopped playing after a while, and other than some more pressure on the letter D, which eventually went unnoticed, everything was normal.
One day something needed to be taken from a huge box kept on top of a shelf, above the computer. The huge box is surrounded by smaller boxes and books. It is no trouble to remove everything - the problem is putting them back into place. Among the things around the huge box are the original G.U.R.P.S. book, and a perfectly new, early 90's edition of "Vampire: The Masquerade", inside a protective bag, looking very pretty up there. But the G.U.R.P.S. book is not hard cover. Because of that, and because it is ugly, it is kept behind the Vampire book, which holds everything in place. With the tampering of the delicate balance on top of the shelf, the G.U.R.P.S. book just had to slide one little bit to the front, pushing the Vampire book out of the shelf. The targetting was surgical: the spacebar in my keyboard received a direct hit. It worked, but had been loose ever since.
Years went on, and the K key became problematic. No specific reason, it just did. It comes to prove that I cannot have a keyboard of Brazilian layout: if K is the first key to go bad due to day-to-day use, surely Portuguese is not the main language I type. But life went on.
Then King of Fighters came along, and in my lack of a joystick, the keyboard would have to suffice. If I can pilot a TIE Fighter with a keyboard, surely I can play KoF. Hard punch to L key, hard kick to ; key. Consider how much I spoke of King of Fighters in the last few posts, imagine what these two keys have been enduring. They, too, screamed for help.
Today I needed to type a paragraph. Meanwhile, some small talk on ICQ. Few things were worse than that: I doubt I ever had to retype the same things so many times. After that was done, I did what I should had done eons ago. Screwdriver at hand, the keyboard was open. Time to shake this dust out!, I thought, as I took it in my hands and turned it upside down, and 105 little rubber thingies fell to the floor. "Oh... gods..." They were always glued to the keys in all keyboards I opened. No matter, I would probably have to remove them all either way. I gathered them and went on cleaning the board.
Generations of dust and crumbs of bread and cookies and legs and wings of random insects (some extinct), one intact mosquito, and a myriad of other unidentified pieces of unidentified things. It took some time, and the poor little vacuum cleaner will probably never forgive me, but it was satisfactorily clean at the end. So the other parts were cleaned, and the many screws were put back in place.
The screws deserve a paragraph of their own. This keyboard has only eight external and nine internal screws. My first keyboard, from the time of the 386 - and which lasted until the Athlon, no less - had six external screws, and thirty-three internal very small internal screws. Thirty-three. I always loved that keyboard. I cleaned it many times, but half of them were solely for the fun of dealing with all those small screws.
No funny climax or witty comment in this story. I closed the keyboard, and all the keys are great. The spacebar, no longer loose, is a bit too hard to press, it will take some time to get used to. And it is a bit more noisy, but having back D, K and L is good enough.
Now that typing is almost pleasant again, hopefully I will write some more in here. For example, about the beauty of having a phone number of your own, or how Etienne got his name, and my attempts at programming, or my complete lack of respect for the dumb portion of the left-wing. Or the war. But I suppose I have plenty of time to talk about the war. Heh heh.
I said it was nothing but a product of my imagination.
Having too vivid an imagination has this very troublesome factor associated with it: seeing one element leads to the immediate creation of all the missing elements by the viewer's mind, no matter how far from reality they may be.
I am not in the mood for metaphors and riddles, really. The valkyrie from the previous post is, obviousy, very real, and I saw her next to daily for the entire last year. I did not recognize her because the red hair was not there before. But under rain, in mere seconds, topped with acquamarine gems, who would have cared?
Information is a dangerous tool. One bit of it tends to pull another. Soon a real figure is drawn, replacing the imagined figure; worship becomes regret as deity becomes peasant.
My apologies, Ruby-chan, if this disappoints you.
The test passed me. I will sigh and go west, and remain Galadriel.
Surely I will not remain Galadriel, but I doubt anyone would recognize this altered quote if I altered it any further. I should just return to my comments on petty left-wingers. And boy do I have a bunch on that field... Or maybe King of Fighters? Perhaps I can speak of the war, too. And the government. And sheep. And beautiful shepherdesses in white, yellow and light green dresses, walking barefeet across the endless grass fields of a low mountain range as the morning mist dissipates and the sheep run in all directions, happy to see the first rays of the sun again.
Few minutes ago I was still in ComArte, the school laboratory. For some reason I wanted to go home, and/or go to the mall for lunch (in spite of being zero zero hungry). I also had to be home early, as my father needed the car. People could not decide what they wanted to do, let alone when they were going to do it.
In this while, this is worthy of note: people were browsing through DeviantArt pages, I was not paying much attention. Then there was a comment, "(...) posted on my picture! She draws some very indecent bishonen - and furry!" I chuckled, "Heh, furry", wondering what the hell could furries be doing in DeviantArt, and went back to not paying attention. "Follow this link here, now that one. Look!" It was not directed at me, but I looked anyway. Yaoi ("pfaw"), furry ("hmm"), pink and blue hair ("eh?"), inverted cross ("couldn't possibly"). "See? I said her drawings were indecent!" I looked at the copyright info. "Zer (c) Holly". Heh heh. The world sometimes seems incredibly small.
Onward. That IE window was closed, but people still did not decide to go, or anything else. I grew tired of waiting, and said I was going home. Bye-nyo's said, I rushed to the car under the drizzle that was falling, the kind that makes the day very gray ("Rather Londonish", said a friend today), the kind I love more than any other kind of day. Sidewalk, someone was walking in my direction, holding an umbrella. "White umbrella, must be a girl." The face was hidden. "Yes, body of a girl." A few more steps. "Maybe it is that girl that did not get to sign up for class in time last year and left me to do a group project nearly all by myself?" If that was so, I would have to nod and smile in greeting, nothing out of the ordinary. More steps, I could see the hair. "Red hair... No, not that girl, unless she dyed it. That is a beautiful red, no less; if it is not dyed, she must be a Nordic goddess." I looked at the exposed arms. "Very pale. Yes, the red hair may just be natural. Wow, who can that be, that I never noticed?" Kept on walking, the wind was blowing at my back, so she had the umbrella hiding most of her face to protect herself from the drizzle. "So pale, red hair... Who, who?" Then I passed by her, and for half a second I saw her eyes.
I wrote "Dream Debris" a few years ago. My favorite part is the description of the tavern, but I remember the hardest thing to write was the description of Liada. I just dislike describing people. But Liada was going to be the reason for the entire thing, so she deserved a good description, and she needed to be beautiful. Maybe it was a bit foolish of me at the time to base her on a girl from school - which led me to giving her brown hair. The girl from school had greenish blue eyes. I remember changing that bit. Acquamarine has always been among my very favorite colors - in the case of eyes, it is my favorite color. So Liada had acquamarine eyes - "bluish green". Two big gems that seemed to encapsule entire oceans of the purest water in them. I never remember how I described her hair, but I know well enough that her eyes were acquamarine.
(And an interesting fact: years later, after "Dream Debris" was forgotten by all, and Twila was already a big part of Etienne's life, she mentioned her eyes were acquamarine. Some things are very unnecessary, and seem part of a bad book - but the effect can be so stupidly cute and adorable. And yes, that was a coincidence.)
Either case, I indeed imagined Liada's acquamarine eyes (and Twila's for the matter) could not exist outside the scope of my imagination - and even in that realm it is problematic to find the exact color, for it is not one color, it is the effect caused by a perfect combination of blue and green in very specific shades. Acquamarine. As I passed by the red haired girl, for half a second I saw her eyes.
No idea who she was, I never saw her before (trust me, I would remember it). I also doubt her presence is frequent, assuming that was not a one-time visit - considering it was 11h15 AM when she arrived, I doubt she has any part of the set schedules. Therefore, I doubt I will ever see her again. No, I am not lamenting. Just commenting. I came to believe sometimes the gods decide to impress us, so they place in our ways things that defy reality, things that go beyond beauty, surpass the possible. Pale skin, red hair, acquamarine eyes. Surely, if not a glimpse of heaven presented to me by some friendly deity, she was surely not more than my imagination jumping on me to make me happy for a while - and turn half a second into thirty minutes.
This deserves a post. In fact, this deserves a short post, because the text is very long, and if you spend too much time here you might not want to read the main thing.
A blessing and a curse it is in Portuguese. Maybe it can be Babelfished, but a lot would be lost.
A verdade sobre o MST, por Félix Maier, no Digestivo Cultural. ("The truth about the Landless Movement", for my non Portuguese readers.)
Sensationalist title, no doubt, but very cute.
Enquanto escrevia as últimas linhas do post anterior, o telefone tocou.
Entre os muitos "E aí?", "Como vai?", "Que tá fazendo?", "Tem falado com fulano?", e diversas correções de gerundismos "Não! Não diga 'vou estar imprimindo!'", recebi uma das notícias mais, mais, mais estúpidas e desnecessárias de todos os tempos.
Algumas coisas não precisam acontecer. Por exemplo, quando você está todo atrasado, vai tomar um copo de suco porque não dá tempo de comer um sanduíche, e quando vai mexer com a colher, como faz todo dia, sem problema algum, espirra suco. Tudo bem, acontece sempre, molha a toalha da mesa. Mas justo nesse dia espirra direto na sua camisa.
Ou quando você está indo pela rua despreocupado e pisa num dejeto canino.
Também quando você muda o rádio de estação bem na hora do fade-out da música, então parece que o volume está baixo, você aumenta, e nada; você aumenta mais. De repente começa outra música, o volume no último - e é um pagode.
Você vai comer numa churrascaria, e no final, ao pegar um palito, entra uma farpa no seu dedo; e de todos os palitos do paliteiro, aquele era o único que não estava completamente liso.
Infelizmente não são exemplos muito bons. A notícia que recebi beira o ridícculo, mas não pela pequeneza e mediocridade de um ato, e sim pelo absoluto sadismo de qualquer entidade superior que esteja rindo de nós no momento. Sim, cheguei à conclusão que, se existe um Deus único, ele é um cara narcisista e sádico, e fica colocando infinitas situações absurdas desde a mais irritante, como o suco que espirra na camisa, até a mais devastadora, só pra ver seus brinquedinhos se remoendo de raiva, tristeza, desespero, em diversos níveis.
"Coisa que não precisava acontecer." Falo isso sempre. "Isso é uma coisa que realmente não precisava acontecer." O pior é que acontecem sempre, de diversos tamanhos. Todas completamente desnecessárias: seu único propósito é perturbar uma pessoa específica.
Não é a simples Lei de Murphy. É o mundo conspirando pra rir de você. Como num filme ruim. Se forçar, como numa sitcom. Mas nem nos padrões americanos de humor seria engraçado. Então é só um filme ruim, mesmo. Ou um livro mal escrito. Sim, um livro ruim e mal escrito. Daqueles em que o desfecho é ridiculamente óbvio, em que fica muito claro que toda a situação está sendo armada para o único próposito de ferrar alguém no final e fazer o leitor simpatizar com o personagem, ou rir da desgraça dele. Isso é tão ridículo.
Que coisa mais desnecessária. Realmente.
I met Puppy online yesterday, and mentioned the CD with fighting games I promised him. He did not remember it anymore. Oh, bah to that. I had a debt and I was going to pay. I said I had dozens of Neo Geo and CPS1 and 2 games that would probably work a lot better than PC ports of games, seeing as about half the PC games I tried did not work here, or worked insatisfactorily. He had to leave, and said he would call in about half an hour. "Okay," I said, "I will have it all sorted out by then, hopefully it will be ready to burn.".
It took me another hour to have all things sorted out, really, and the collections completed. King of Fighters 94 to 2000, Samurai Shodown I to IV, The Last Blade 1 and 2 (because they were both so beautiful), Far East of Eden (also very beautiful); Street Fighter and many variations; X-Men Vs Street Fighter, X-Men: Children of the Atom. Plus three PC games (all freeware, mind you).
No call from him in the entire time. I went on with my business, up to the point where I assume it is another stance of our endless "I will call you soon" and never do. Just then, he called. And off I went.
I was surprised to see he had enough free space to hold all the games. Everything copied, I made the three PC games work to a bearable extent - some very slow, some with wrong display. But from homemade freeware games, what can one expect? Then I set up Kawaks. Launched King of Fighters 98. Pahu janai. It took longer to load than it does in Olympus, my sister's computer, which has half its MHz and is one generation older - were the Intel and AMD differences so big a few years back? With some effort, I made the graphics look passable. No oil painting as in Asgaard, but no silly overpixelation or scanlines either. And at a more or less reasonable speed. "Any sexy girls in this one?" he asked. So I picked three sexy girls from the impressive selection screen (which got a "Whoa! That's a lot!" out of him).
Neo Geo settings acceptable, I tried some CPS1. Street Fighter, the very original. It looked okay, one or two little adjustments here and there and it looked just like the original. Finally, it was time to see how CPS2 handled. And that was very, very bad. I had to tweak the whole video and sound config all over again for it to be pleasant to look at and playable. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo worked without much pain. Great, so I went to check if the new settings were good for Neo Geo. Tried launching KoF2k. It started loading. Loaded all the ROMs. Deinterleaved the CPU ROMs. Finally, it began to deal with the graphics ROMs. At this point, he asked me if I had seen "The Ring". He had a dozen doubts, and I had a dozen explanations to give, for the third time in the last week. In fact, I no longer remembered what was important, so I am sure many things went unanswered. Thanks to Valis for explaining most of it to me.
We talked about the movie. Then about other movies. Then about fears. And about what God looks like. And about dreams. And he mocked me about women. And he complained about women that want a stable relationship. I went on nodding, eventually looking at the Kawaks window. No change, in spite of the eternally lit HD light. "Maybe if I close ICQ?" "Yes, please. And... Is this WinAmp3, the hogger? Get rid of it, too. And close the two Internet Explorer windows." All closed, we went on waiting. Minutes go by, nothing. Ctrl+Alt+Del. Half the things we closed were "not responding". Forced them close. The result was a higher pitch sound from the HD. More time went by, Ctrl+Alt+Del again, Winkawaks, End task. Too much. Restart, load KoF98.
It looked stupid and was very slow. So I reset all the configurations that were lost at the forced end of the program, making them something between what worked with Neo Geo and what worked with CPS2. KoF98 looked alright. We were talking about the kinds of games I had brought at the time, so I showed him The Last Blade. He agreed it was beautiful, "Fix the config for this one, -that- is what I will play.". The Last Blade and Samurai Shodown - after a certain version - have modes for each character: Power and Speed, mainly. I told him I preferred Speed, because I liked the skill needed to play in that mode, I preferred games like that. So I loaded KoF98 again and showed him some combos and sequences and defences for Yuri, King and Mary, all relatively quick characters, nothing brutal, all cute, lots of skill required, perfect timing needed for each attack, et al.
Either way, I needed to see how CPS2 looked like again, since I changed the config. It was stupid again, so I tweaked a bit, nothing to big as to not mess up Neo Geo again. I had X-Men Vs Street Fighter running, because I hate Street Fighter Alpha and because I had already shown him Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I made it work and look good, he finally asked me to give it a try. I was using Chun-Li and Rogue, but had lost, so I reset it and handed him the control.
He immediately chose Juggernaut and Wolverine. I noticed Juggernaut occupied half the screen. I noticed how he played. The gigantic thing just did the same thing on the screen over and over, when the enemy approched he got hit. Simple. After beating the first one, he got Wolverine. I looked at his hands this time. He just used a light punch non-stop to charge up, then kept hammering three buttons together and randomly pressing the movement keys. Lots of flashing on the screen. Huge attacks, big lights. He kept mashing the same three keys as if that was the only thing to do. I imagined doing that in King of Fighters. Then there was the big "ka-boom!", and Wolverine had won.
. . . . .
Really...
There are two aspects to extract from this comparison.
First, the games themselves. In KoF, I picked three varied characters, three completely different styles of gameplay. Poor Yuri is considered a bad character, but I like her, so I learned how to play with her, it just takes patience and no desire to take the world apart in a 99 hit combo; King needs all the perfect positioning and perfect button pressing; Mary takes a lot of practice, and a whole lot of good timing. Now his Juggernaut and Wolverine need a constant pressing of three attack buttons with random pushing of the direction buttons. And that - that very "that", yes, the random mashing of buttons - led him to a nearly perfect victory. Therefore, I say I played a game, and he was breaking his keyboard while lights flashed on the screen.
Second, the characters. Yuri, bad character, cute: I like her, I use her. King, elegant, I use her. Mary, somehow both cute and sexy (very rare combination), I use her. Normal people, no monstrosities, no major powers, no iron ball in a chain, no control over fire or electricity, no huge fame among gamers. He got the biggest character, and the most famous character. Because the first was the biggest, and the second was the most famous (and his claws are great brute force).
. . . . .
Maybe my testosterone is below recommended levels? I prefer to believe in Delenn's words, when the Inquisitor questions her.
"So you say you are right!", teases the Inquisitor.
"Yes!", she affirms.
"What if the world says Delenn is wrong?"
"Then the world is wrong!"
And the hundreds of guys playing Iori and Chang and Wolverine are all wrong.
Delenn is from Babylon 5, mind you. The Inquisitor only appears in one episode.
Anyway, as everything was set up to a playable level, and I was getting ready to return home, he mentioned how hooked he was and how he was probably going to skip most of his schoolwork just to play all those games I put there.
"Imagine how many classes were skipped, how many exams were done poorly, how many breakthroughs never happened, because of these games, because the little boy just -had- to go to the arcade shop and try to beat Sagat just one more time."
"Indeed, indeed."
"And now you just ruined my academical life, too, you know. Over twenty games... Do you have any idea what you just did? The hole you threw me into? I will fail this year in school and have to quit my job and break up with my girlfriend."
"It was on your request."
"You're right. Thanks a lot."
And I went home, back to Yuri, King and Mary.
I used the word "excessive" a lot of times today.
(I used it excessively, hah hah!! Oh, pshaw, spare me.)
I remember the last two times I said it outloud. First was when I was left in the kitchen with my sister, the TV on showing the seventy-first hour of carnival in Salvador, Bahia. I took the last sip from my glass and pointed to the remote control over the table. "It is in your hands." A mix of "For the sake of all gods save us from this stupidity!" and "In the name of all that is holy let us watch something else.", topped with a bit of elegance in honor of one of my current favorite fictional women in the world, which will be mentioned soon. I made a small motion with the hand, in response to the puzzled look in her face, and topped it with a smile taken from Operations, that great guy from "La Femme Nikita". She stood up, walked to the TV, and turned it off.
"That was a bit excessive.", I said, as she sat back. "Whew, no, that was just what I needed.", she replied. We went on talking. But before going ahead I throw time back a few hours.
I was on ICQ talking to Rods (no link needed today, right?) about LiveJournal. Yesterday he asked me for some brief info to complete an article on blogs and online journals he was writing. Very brief indeed, it should be, for space was limited. I said I would finish reading what I was reading and put something quick and small together afterwards. So I finished reading what I was reading (whee!) and started writing. If printed, it would be about eight pages. I added an apology at the end, for it being so long, and thought to myself, "This is excessive for the matter at hand, but I say nothing but fact.". Sent it was. Done with that, I paid a visit to GameFAQs to look for any new fancy moves for King of Fighters '98, which for some reason became my favorite of the bunch (even not having Whip and Vanessa; the subtitle "The Slugfest" probably has something to do with it). Found something for the character King, who is a woman in spite of her royal name. What I like the most in the KoF series is that the characters have personality and relate to each other, which does not happen in Street Fighter, let alone Mortal Kombat. King, as well as a male character, believes a fighter must have composture and elegance at all times. Reference completed for the "It is in your hands" mention, time to move forward.
The new move for King was not too complex. A bit more than I like dealing with on a keyboard, but not undoable. It did not take me long to use it. And there went King into a chain of fourteen kicks that included each and every drawn sprite for her. Very, very impressive. Back to the kitchen table.
My sister had turned the TV off and we were talking. "Oh, before you go to bed," I said, "you might want to see this combo I found. King, lots of kicks. That is so excessive it is beautiful.". That was the last time today. The conversation went on about different styles of playing - yes, by now I got her to like the games as well.
Abrupt end of subject.
I was talking about that to use it as introduction to another issue, which ensued after the conversation over the remains of dinner. But I lost interest and suddenly feel tired. Maybe tomorrow. Count not on it.
Oh, bah. So big a post, last one was, and yet I forgot to say some things. Just for the sake of completion, here they are.
In one of the King of Fighters games I downloaded, the name of the team is shown. Yuri is from the "Art of Fighting" team. Art of Fighting is a game for the Super NES. So that is how it went after all - there was Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting. When Alck said she was from some early KoF game in the SNES, he was probably thinking of that one. If I knew of that, I would probably have downloaded the right SNES ROM and spared myself of setting up Kawaks and downloading dozens of Neo Geo and CPS1 and CPS2 ROMs and making SSF2T work on my sister's computer. My memory from Yuri is probably from Art of Fighting itself.
Good thing I did not know that.
On another subject: the green guy with claws and the stupid looking guy whose scenario is a Japanese theatre are both from Samurai Shodown, which I claimed to have played enough. That is true. I liked Samurai Shodown more than Street Fighter, at the time - it looked so beautiful. But it had two problems: first, Street Fighter was much, much easier to find (for renting, in arcade shops, etc); second, most characters had similar commands and looked cute (not implying I find Dhalsim cute - I mean the characters were easy on the eyes). Samurai Shodown, however, had complex commands (for me, at the time - I could barely pull out a quarter circle) and only three characters I even dared touching: Charlotte, the girl with the hawk, and the guy with the wolf. I honestly never paid much attention to the other. And I always had the luck of fighting some standard guy in the initial battles (and often losing right away, too).
Therefore, somehow, after the party at the buffet, I indeed never again noticed those two guys were from Samurai Shodown. There was always a feather or a piece of armor blocking my view of them, in the rare occasions we came across.
Last thought. If I had the means, I would make it so a computer character in a fighting game could not ever use the same attack more than two times within 15 seconds or other space of time. I am perfectly okay with "I lost to Ryu", but I feel like walking away when I see I was "defeated by Hadoken". That is way too frustrating - and the fighter's voice announcing whichever attack he is unleashing for the thirty-seventh time that round keeps echoing in my mind for the next few days.
I will do / post something useful, eventually.
Seeing as too many days have gone by since my last post, I suppose a filler is required before I address the points mentioned for the future (programming, vineyards).
Something interesting happened a few days ago, which put in motion a chain of events with roots back in both last year as well as seven and five and two years ago. Hard to know from which point to start. It is completely unimportant, too, but what the hell.
Seven years ago, that was 1996, I was invited to a party in a buffet. Parties in buffets were the big trend by those years, my generation being the first to taste it. I myself never gave one - who would be there, in the middle of Summer, middle of vacation? Still, I was present in a few. Something I particularly liked in them was the many arcade machines, all set to free-play (no coins!), and with no one older than me to play (and beat me and finish the game).
Specifically, I remember one machine. In fact, so "touched" I was by that one machine that I remember the room where it was. It was against a pillar, which had a wall on the other end. To the left of this wall was a pool of plastic balls, surrounded by a net; to the right, a door leading to the kitchen, and a small window from where you could ask for things. In front of that arcade, in the back of a possible player, was another one. I remember this second one had a nasty goblin of sorts - a green guy with a huge claw - and another guy who carried a staff and whose scenario was a very colorful Japanese theatre. Someday I hope to find out which game that was. But back to the first arcade.
What first caught my attention in it was the fact you did not choose one character, as in the Street Fighter machines I was used to seeing - you chose a preselected team of three characters. I remembered recognizing Terry and Andy Bogard from some Nintendo game I often read about in videogame magazines (my collection was unparalled). There was also a team composed solely of women. Someone came up as I looked at the running demo and started it. The fight was against the female team. On that moment an image got in my mind and never again came out: one girl with very revealing red clothes fighting with fans. For some twist of destiny the party was over before I could take a closer look at the machine, let alone play it. All I remembered from that arcade in years to come was the girl with fans, the groups of three, and the Bogard brothers.
Years went by and I came across Princess Maker 2 by hand of a friend whose nickname in my ICQ contact list I changed to "Puppy". Eight floppies, each containing one piece of the game, from PM2.arj to PM2.a07. Somewhere in them, his daughters, one of which became a General. He was good, I never got a General without cheating. But I did try. I put my little princess in Combat and Fencing schools, and in October, month of the Harvest festival, they always wanted to compete in the fighting event. One of the competitors is a girl with red and white clothes that resembles Chun-Li's, and who fights with fans. Her name is Tao Lianfan. The reference was immediate, of course, but I knew it was at the very best a character based on another, and that would lead me no closer to finding out which game was in that arcade closet at that party.
At some point in the next couple of years I came across (and have no idea where or how) "Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo" for PC. That was the first PC version I had ever seen of a Street Fighter game. It was a very good game, albeit a bit slow in my 586 with its 32 Mb of RAM. None the less, it has been sitting in seven floppies, from SSF2T.arj to .a06, in a case meant only for games - it is the very first game in it. That game was a bit success. My sister and I would play a lot in "hot seat" mode - I came up with very intriguing keyboard setups to allow that. Friends would come over to play it. I was very good with Chun-Li and Vega.
One day, Puppy called me. "I'm bored, you got any games that I might like?" I had the usual selection of mainly original games by that time, all in their boxes. LucasArts adventure games were out, he knew no English and hated games with no action. I refused to have Doom and clones here, even though he really liked Wolfenstein 3D. He did not like Alone in the Dark much. "I got this Street Fighter game, maybe you will like it." I went over there, installed it, made it run with sound. A bit slow, but it was good. He chose Ryu, I chose Chun-Li. He beat me. He chose Zangief, I chose Vega: same thing. He chose Dhalsim, I got Cammy: no deal. He took Ken, I went all out with Bison: beat again. I always sucked at games not bearing the LucasArts logo.
On to last year. My sister asked me to install SSF2T on her computer. I kept postponing it because I knew it would be hell to set up a Plug'n'Play soundcard on pure DOS. In a deal with Puppy, I offered a CD with all the fighting games he could think of; among them there was SSF2T. I downloaded and tried the other games first, then Ragnarok came and Asgaard fried. I put that aside.
January, this year. I was talking to Alck on ICQ, not sure about what. I mentioned that arcade from years ago, "where you choose groups of three (one was all female) and there was this girl with fans". "Oh, that is one of the many King of Fighters incarnations. That girl is obviously Mai Shiranui."
Cursed be me. I knew of King of Fighters, but I knew it for its endless sequels, not the gameplay or the characters. "That is from King of Fighters?" "Yup. And Mai is probably in the wet dreams of all boys who ever played it. Shouldn't be hard to find her, just look for 'mai hentai' in Google. ;)" I chose not to follow the suggestion - Google is not the best place to look for hentai anyway. (AHEM!)
Last weekend before school. I nearly wasted all my vacation, so I wanted to do something useful with the last two days of it. I again looked into Puppy's selection of games. Some worked, some were very good, some were very bad, some did not work at all. It was going very well and I could probably have it done in a few more days. Class would not be a problem unless it brought me something very serious in the very first week. Unlikely.
Few days ago. In fact, last week. After class. Two friends came to me with a very important question that was plaguing them that day (so you can see how much we pay attention to our very important classes). "Who is the girl who taps her butt as a taunt, and from which fighting game is she?" "Heck!", I thought, "I clearly remember something like that! But I have no idea who she is, unless you are talking about Marle in Chrono Trigger." Yes, Marle does it, too, but I knew it was not her. We reached the conclusion none of us knew it, but that really intrigued me: I was very sure I had seen that before. So, that evening, I asked Alck, the guru of all old games. "Any idea who it might be?" He thought for a moment, failed to answer. "I thought it could be someone from Samurai Shodown, because I remember it so clearly and that is a game I played a lot. But I cannot possibly imagine Charlotte in her armor or the girl with the hawk doing anything like that." He nearly jumped on my neck for that one. "Samurai Shodown would never sink that low!" Indeed. And I was very sure it was not in Street Fighter, either - I know Chun-Li and Cammy's movements better than my own. "Maybe it is from some KoF game, but I actually never played any KoF game", I confessed. "Maybe it is, but I don't remember", he replied. Either way, it was too late; I went to bed.
The next afternoon I came across Alck again. "Hey, maybe it was Yuri in some early SNES KoF game." I had no idea there even were KoF games in the SNES. "Maybe as a guest in a Fatal Fury game", he completed. Information recorded, I did not have the time then, so I saved it for the evening.
Evening came, I met Rods online (he was one of the two who came up with the question, mind you). I mentioned Yuri and the SNES games. I said I was going to find out who that girl was, no matter the cost. My curiosity got to him. I made a huge confusion of Fatal Fury, Final Fight, and Pit Fighter; he downloaded some of them and found them horrible. I got one Final Fight and it clearly was not there. So I got one Fatal Fury, and there were the stupid Bogard brothers. The subtitle to the game was "The King of Fighters". No Yuri, but I guessed I was on the right track. Rods went about his other less frustrating business (such as the Orange Game), I remained looking for more SNES Fatal Fury games, or information on where Yuri could be. Sadly, all I got was references to Neo Geo arcades and cartridges, and more Bogard brothers. "Now I am mad." Rods went to bed. I read a review for King of Fighters '98, saying it had nearly all characters from all past versions. I had not seen a King of Fighters game, at least that I remembered, since that day in the buffet party. It had to be an old one, but going through them all was going to be a hassle. I looked for the 40 Mb ROM for KoF98. While it downloaded, Alck came around. "Whoa, you're obsessed." "Yes, I am. I will not rest until I know who that girl who taps her butt is." "You pervert!" Oh gods. "It is a matter of honor now! What do you take me for anyway?" "Well, you are downloading 40 megs just to see a girl tap on her butt?" Gods again. I changed the subject a bit. "But are you sure it is Yuri? I think it may be Mai herself." "Mai? No, surely isn't Mai. I know Mai very well, hehe." "And then I am the pervert?"
Download done. But how to run a Neo Geo game? I remember doing it in NeoRage years before, but that was long gone. A good site mentioned MAME as a possibility. I did not like it. I rushed to Zophar's Domain. Their list of Neo Geo emulators is a bit outdated, but I got the info I wanted. Kawaks it was. Downloaded it. No deal. Got the Neo Geo bios from the first site. Still, no deal. Read the FAQ. "Aaahhh, they must remain zipped and with a specific file name." It worked.
"The King of Fighters!", said the cute voice. "How to play" came up on my screen. I love arcades. F3 to insert coin, that made me laugh. Player 1, Start. Single, Player Vs Computer. No group, thanks. Lots, lots of characters. Yuri! Match started. I won! But I did not see her tapping her butt. It got me worried. Okay, Mai. Somewhere along the fight it occurred to me I should press Start to see what happened. She taunted the opponent. I finished that battled and rushed back to Yuri. New match. Pressed Start. "Kochi kochi!", she said. Then she tapped her butt. Yuri it was. The world was a better place.
Morning. I told everyone in school the good news. Afternoon, I told Alck he was right. He was happy. But I was not fully satisfied: I remembered a girl doing it before the battle started. I had to know in which specific game that happened. So the downloading of the entire King of Fighter series began. As I waited for the big ROMs to download, I went on playing KoF98 for lack of anything better to do. It amazed me to no limit that SNK could create a system as great as the Neo Geo with such beautiful graphics and wonderful animation back in the day of Genesis and Super NES. Finally I understood why all the videogame magazines said it was so regrettable that the Neo Geo never made it in the home market. Now I wish I had one.
Along the playing, I thought, "Maybe my sister will like this". And continued, "But before trying to run something as heavy as this on her little Olympus, I should just install SSF2T there again, as she asked me a dozen times." That was last night. After dinner, I got the seven floppies and knocked on her door. First floppy failed. Second copied. Third failed. I said it was hopeless and went to my bedroom. She went to bed. I tried it on Asgaard. First floppy okay, second okay, third tried... failed. "No, that will not be." I tried again. The drive hit some problem, the noise changed. Then it stopped. I looked at the screen expecting an error message; instead I saw the copied file. The other floppies went without a single problem. I had the game on Asgaard. But I could not play or even test it, for it requires pure DOS to run (and Asgaard runs WinXP). I returned to KoF.
This morning. My sister was out. I went to her room, copied the game there through the LAN. Reboot in DOS. It worked. No sound. I spent the next many hours figuring out how to make a P'n'P card work in DOS without using its original drivers or any other support program (because I found floppies and CDs with drivers for all piece of hardware I ever had, except that sound card). Eventually I came across a homepage that said "to run this specific game in DOS, you may need this little program by Creative". For some absurd reason, he made the program available for download. I downloaded it, copied it to Olympus. Reboot, run program, start SSF2T. It worked perfectly. I made my sister happy.
While looking for the solution to that problem, I realized Kawaks could very well run arcade ROMs, and Street Fighter would fall in that basket. Off I went to download Street Fighter 2 original, Champion Edition, a whole lot of variants and hacks. And while I was at it, I also got X-Men Vs Street Fighter and Darkstalkers. Everything, along with KoF94-97, was copied to Olympus. I hope my sister likes something from the batch. Making a CPS2 game work on Olympus (MMX 233) was no easy task. Then it dawned me - but only after the sound problem was solved. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo is also an arcade game. And there it was, waiting to be downloaded... And it runs so well, so flawlessly in Kawaks. My sister prefers the DOS version, but I do not have the choice. I am happy, no less. Now I have more fighting games than I can deal with throughout the year. And I need to deal with all those Playstation games, too. A curse on school, indeed.
Either way, this trip along the history of Capcom and SNK brought me the bright idea of replacing all the non-functional games in Puppy's list, as well as all the old games that would make me go to his house to configure, with ROMs. That will probably make him very happy, too.
"And they were all blissfully, blissfully happy, for ever and ever and ever."
Whew.
"Damn I'm good."
(I said that today when I made the sound card work. Someone recognized it. I was very impressed.)
Gods, this was a tremendously titanically gigantic post.