september 25, 2002 Culture Game Nick Hogg OP Contributor a PlayStation.« Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation Vs Zeon Publisher: Bandai Genre: Fighting, Action Players: 2 ESRB Rating: T After 25 years of Mobile Suit Gundam, we finally get a good game that isn’t a shameless franchise exten- sion. If you were unaware of previ- ous Gundam games, you didn’t miss much, as most relied on the name brand to pull in people as opposed to game play. Basically, Federation VS Zeon is a tweaked port of an arcade version, with extended game play. The game engine makes this a robot fighting game that plays like a slower version of Virtual On, with multiple targets. The game play is intuitive and easy to pick up in a couple of min- utes; the auto lock feature provides some accuracy with the mobile suits- ranged weaponry. Each mobile suit has a close range weapon, akin to what they had in the anime, and when close combat is initiated there are some great-looking panning camera angles to showcase the beam sabre action. Game play can be bro- ken into two distinct sections; land Anime Review Excel Saga: The Weirdness has Begun Nick Hogg OP Contributor VT oO VY Satfedassk Excel Saga Volume #1 Released by: ADV Films Running time: 125 minutes © page 14 Excel Saga is a parody that puts most sketch comedies to shame, leaving no boundary uncrossed and nothing left undone in the search of laughs. This series takes everything that has been done before in anime and mixes them together in one hilarious package. Simply put, Excel Saga is the Monty Python of anime. The video quality on this DVD has to be the best ADV has ever pro- duced. Clean and crisp, I'd be hard pressed to find anything noteworthy to complain about. Great audio tracks, both Japanese and English audio tracks are in two channel sound, but are mixed well enough to be used on surround sound. The menu is very interesting; it’s a game boy display with the buttons leading to the various features. It’s actually one of the better menus to come out of ADV, and shows vast improve- ment over their previous efforts. There was a solid selection of extras included on this disk. First, almost stages and space combat stages, which play out like night and day in comparison. The space combat stages involve you flying around in your mobile suit within a large cube of space. There is no limitation on how you fly. You can even fly around upside down if you want, and each space stage is filled with space colonies, solar panels, angry battle ships, and various types of space debris. The land stages are a little less complex, but still fun none the less, with various locals ranging from the Himalayans to Seattle, to some air- craft carriers in the middle of the Atlantic. The one problem, or asset depend- ing how you look at it, is that the mobile suits are not balanced. Some suits are far superior to others when it comes to combat. This gap in abil- ities only really shows through in the versus mode, but isn’t that notice- able in the campaign or arcade mode. Now campaign mode is an extra, was the fact that the FBI video piracy warning was replaced with a message in the tone of the show. As with most anime on DVD, you get clean versions of the open and close credits. And the most interesting feature by far was the vid-notes, which are basically a pop-up video style reference that comes on when- ever anything abstract needs to be pointed out. This ends up being really interesting because of the amount of references in Excel Saga, even the biggest Otakus’ are going to learn something from these. As the show begins we are intro- duced to the recent high school grad Excel who, after about twenty sec- onds of her skipping, singing badly and knocking over other students, is hit by a truck and killed. In walks Great Will of the Macrocosm, who mentions that this is no way to start a show and brings Excel back to life. After a few more deaths, the show gets underway. We quickly learn that the other press enormous slew of short missions you perform with a garage full of MS. The arcade mode is a run-through of all the game stages; this can be done as a two player co-op as well. And the versus mode is where a lot of people will spend a lot of time, espe- cially if you ever wanted to see if a Zaku could beat a GM. The graphics look good although its nothing overly amazing, but it gets the job done. And as for the sound, it’s pulled right from the anime with the original English voice acting cast from Mobile Suit Gundam. The music seems a little dated, but it’s from 1979 so it’s to be expected, although it fits rather well with the vintage sound effects. Overall this was a fun game, with lots of replay value, and it’s got one of the largest assortments of mobile suits, including everything from the Arguy to the RX-78 to the Z’gogg. Excel is the only member of the organization ACROSS, lead by the mysterious Lord Illpalazzo. But unlike most organization leaders who strive to rule the world, Illpalazzo knows to start small and is working to take over the city of FE With a giant sword in hand, Excel sets off to kill Koshi Rikdo, the cre- ator of the manga Excel Saga is based on—who happens to be the first of the world’s corruption that must be purged. Each episode is set out in a different genre, including an over the top military action flick, and even a romance episode done in the style of a dating simulator. There is also an Alien invasion film with some of the most disturbingly cute creatures this side of Pikachu. This is a do-not-miss, with comedy done so well while managing to be complete- ly absurd. Throughout the viewing, I almost expected someone to inter- rupt the action and yell, “And now for something completely different!”