The death of me

Sharkey has, rather impolitely, called me out on a terrible character flaw. Right to my face! But it’s true. I have a horrible, terrible, no good, rotten weakness for making stupid puns and pun-like jokes. I’ve been living in denial all these years…. even though my name is in the back of a couple of ancient Xanth books as a pun contributor.

Look, I’m sorry. I was young and stupid and lived in Texas. I didn’t know from “culture” back then.

Anyway, now that I’m working on the US version of Pokémon Pearl, I realize that I’m in my punny element. (It’s super effective against good taste!) It’s a game about collecting hundreds of monsters and personalizing them all, which includes assigning them a name, the space for which has been bumped up from five characters in the Japanese version to ten characters in the US. And herein lies my downfall. I will be catching ’em all. But not to complete my pokédex, oh no. No, my obsessive compulsion stems from a desire to come up with as many ridiculously pun-laden names as possible. My hard-hitting starter Turtwig is now Slamfibian. And my electricity-powered Shinx is now Denba, which is shameless if you know the Japanese word for electricity and realize how much a Shinx looks like Kimba. Yes, I’m making bilingual puns with a language I don’t fully understand. Yes, I realize that means I don’t deserve a happy life.

I am getting one anyway, though, because Mega Man ZX Advent looks like it recaptures everything good about MMZX but fixes up all the problems. The map, for instance, is actually quite good. And the ability to become your enemies (rather than simply mimic their abilities) is delectably Jungian. I think. Anyway, it looks good.

Star Force, on the other hand, looks merely decent. But back on the first hand, our Infaune interview got off to a rocky start but turned out to be absolutely great, so you’ll see that sometime or another. A few weeks from now, I’d guess.

Finally, the producer of the current Mega Man games has Zero’s hair and, as Ray noted, dresses like a Battle Network character. A track jacket over a shiny, metallic, padded shirt? Good lord.

Tragically, I was not able to ask him about the picture I posted the other day; it was difficult enough to talk to him about the games over the noise of all the trapeze artists. And here you people thought the term “media circus” was just an expression.

26 thoughts on “The death of me”

  1. Part of my reaction to this post is dread that you were ever interested in the Xanth books, and a morbid curiosity to check out the books that have your name in it. Of course, they’re both mostly caused by this nasty cold I’ve come down with.

  2. “Mega Man ZX Advent looks like it recaptures everything good about MMZX but fixes up all the problems. The map, for instance, is actually quite good. And the ability to become your enemies (rather than simply mimic their abilities) is delectably Jungian. I think. Anyway, it looks good.”

    Insta-buy.

    I love “Slamfibian.”

  3. bilingual puns are so much fun. when i played wow, i had a gnome character named “shin.”

    and yay for mmzx. hopefully i won’t utterly fail the last stage this time.

  8. You contributed Xanth puns? Too funny (I think I’d read this before, but I forgot). I only have Night Mare anymore, and I’m not sure if he credited punnists back then.

  9. Is the first transformation like a gazelle-reploid form? It’s…interesting looking. It doesn’t have a lower jaw though.

  13. Apropos of nothing, I listened to the latest podcast today. Does anyone else think that Jeff character sounds an awful lot like the Wifebeater Mothra heard at the end of the Master System episode?

  14. And not just any cracker, but rock star Tom Petty!

    (The heartbreakers were Mega Man 3, Mega Man X6, and the last three Mega Man Battle Network games)

    JR

  15. this is totally off topic, so i guess it might get deleted.. but on the latest 1UP Show, ~25:50 you can see Parish in the foreground doing something on his phone? while his colleague his interviewing someone. Was the Capcom event that boring?

  17. Re: the phone, I was checking my work email while waiting for my Inafune interview to start.

  20. Nobody’s said it yet, and I guess someone has to, so… “Parish: Verb. To die or be destroyed through excessive punnery.”

  22. Hey, she’s a good looking lady. Can’t fault a woman for trying to maintain good looks and stylish dress despite her advancing age. Wait, that’s Inafune? Ooooh.

    Well, who knows. Maybe all that lady-dressin’ in Dead Rising finally got to him. Spend an hour traipsing around that Goddamn mall in a pink dress and see if your gender identity remains intact.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve smudged my lipstick.

  23. That’s not Inafune, it’s Takeshi… something. I can’t remember. Hoshinouri? Anyway, does this look like a dude who has been developing games for 20 years? He looks way too healthy and happy.

  24. Oh, phew. Settles my biggest curiosity, anyway, which was mostly “Where the fuck did he get all that hair since I last saw him?”

    Kinda disappointing, though. I was sorta hoping that we’d have another notch on the list of Japanese developers who have gone batshit insane.

  25. I still think that one entry you did that was a parody of a typical passage or two of Piers Anthony is one of my favorites of your comedy writing. And it cheered Michelle up in the hospital, after all.

  26. If the producer dresses like a Battle Network character? then I can only imagine how he plans to burry himself in? A Shiny high tech sunglasses case?

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