02.23.07
Peach and Bowser at the altar?
My mother often reminds me, it is admirable that people think about learning other languages, and I ought to be more understanding of such struggles. I am, to a certain extent. It was no easy task for me to learn the basics of Latin and Ancient Greek, and I do have to constantly go back to the basic grammars, seeing that those two languages are definitely ‘dead’ in daily life (of course, unless one runs into the law in one way or another, even the term habeas corpus won’t mean much). But as for the methods involved in the learning of languages… well, I have opinions, as you may have noticed. So another software like もっとえいご漬け (this one for the DS), teaching the player to learn better English usually gets me annoyed, to say the least. Being ‘more soaked in English’ (as the above Japanese blurb translates to) might be the better way, but as it’s not literal, it’s a moot point. I’m sure my views will change a bit if I knew Japanese people would go and talk to foreigners lost in Tokyo and help them out with whatever skill they have, but as that doesn’t happen (many a time I went up to stranded foreigners to help them out, usually to locate the Sony building), I really don’t think all this training is working at all. And anyhoo, if these softwares are so helpful, why can’t they make one for English speakers to learn Japanese? Afterall, the machines can work both ways.
It’s been announced that for the Wii Virtual Console, 4 more companies has agreed to put their games up. And NeoGeo has also agreed from this summer, though their titles are yet to be confirmed. This should make some fans happy. For now, such titles as Yoshi’s Egg (Famicon), Goemon (Super Famicon), Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) are coming out around March.
A new RPG for Xbox360 is coming out in Japan, and boasts ‘a new feel’ to it (14th June, approx. £37). Titled Trustybell: Chopin’s Dream, it’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to come out of Japan – an anime version of the last dreams of a famous romanticised composer. There’s a little boy who does a Robin Hood to feed the poor, and a girl whose fate is sent awry by a gem called Trusty. I did read the 3-page article, but failed to grasp what it boasted about. Still, the screenshots should at least get some attention from the fans of gothic lolita…
19th April on Wii for approx. £29 is the long awaited Paper Mario. The story goes that an even more of a baddy than that Bowser comes along and swallows all but Mario into a vortex. When Peach comes to, she finds herself in the middle of a wedding between her and Bowser – the wedding organized by this stranger. Mind, Bowser’s kid in Super Mario Sunshine called Peach his ‘mommy’, so what’s going on here?
FF XII finally came out here today, so my other half went trundling off to Oxford Street to get it. He says the queues were huge, and there were even some embarassing cosplay type people too. Well, we’ve got it now, so more games to split my time between :)