History Lesson

A thought occurred to me while watching a TV show today: what did Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, namesake of my high school, do?

Why did I have that thought? No idea. Possibly because Sherlock Holmes takes place in the past?

So I went to Wikipedia, as one does here in the future. Here are things that I learned:

1. Simcoe was a fairly effective military commander for the British during the American Revolution.
2. He  tried to establish a Loyalist free black regiment, but was offered command of the Queen's Rangers so he did that instead.
3. He pushed for abolishing slavery in Upper Canada, but the 1793 Act Against Slavery was compromised, so any current slaves remained slaves until death.  It *did* prevent new slaves from being introduced, banning importation - the only new slaves were children born to female slaves, although the kids would be freed when they turned 25 with sufficient provisions from their prior owners to ensure they wouldn't have to be supported by the government. Slaves were finally emancipated in 1834 along with most of the slaves in the British Empire (excepting Ceylon (Sri Lanka), St Helena, and the territories of the East India Company).
4. He moved the capital of Upper Canada from Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) because it was too close to the USA, separated only by the Niagara River. He picked out a nice spot on the water to start a city, renaming that body of water the Thames River and the site London to match the British capital.  He was then overruled by Governor-General Carleton and had to use his second choice, a site on Lake Ontario near the Rivere Taronto, which he named York. He also renamed the river to the Humber.
5. He had Yonge Street and Dundas Street built. Yonge Street was built along the logging route connecting Lake Ontario and Lake Taronto (which he renamed Lake Simcoe after his father). Dundas connected York and London.
6. In 1797, he was in charge of the British forces in St-Domingue (Haiti) where he was fighting to take the island from the French - and re-establish slavery, as it would have served the British agenda. Slavery had been abolished there in... 1793.
7. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief of India in 1806, replacing Charles Cornwallis who had died shortly after arriving in India.  Simcoe died before leaving for India at the age of 54.

Non-Simcoe things:

1. There are two Lord Mayors in Canada; one is the head of Niagara-On-The-Lake in recognition of its status as first capital of Upper Canada. The other is Wayne Gretzky, honorary Lord Mayor of Brantford.
2. There is only one Lord Mayor who's status was granted solely by the city council: Wayne Gretzky again.
3. When York was incorporated as a city, it was named Toronto because of the negative connotations that were associated with "dirty Little York."

A trip to the library for Simcoe's biography is in store for tomorrow, I think.

Dragon Questing

So I haven't forgotten this, I just haven't been doing it.  So many other things! Mass Effect 3! Skyrim! Borderlands 2! Super Mario 3D Land!

I dunno.  Clearly I'm not hardcore enough to maintain something like this. I just don't find it as much fun, y'know? I rarely finish games (although I've beaten the last boss of 3 of the 4 I listed above...).  I do have thoughts on something I could try - building something akin to the Atari 2600's Adventure to see what making a video game is like. Maybe throw down 100 dollars and become a PlayStation Mobile developer and get myself committed to doing something. Still, may not happen.

773 Hours

Here's an article from Giant Bomb about someone 1000 times more dedicated than I am.

Well.  More like five times, to be honest. Partially because the security on my wireless at home is not WEP, the only thing a DS game can handle - but even then, it'd be closer to twice as dedicated at the outside.

Update on Dragon Warrior coming soon - I've been playing Witcher 2 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D in the interregnum, but I'll be going back soon.

Not-Me: Retronauts

1up.com's Retronauts podcast will be doing a Dragon Quest episode. Alas, their call-in time falls when I'll be out, but I'm looking forward to listening to it.

Dragon Warrior, part the first

There are so many copies of Dragon Warrior for the NES out there that there's a reasonable chance you're familiar with the basic story: DracoLord has kidnapped Lady Lora, and the player character, a descendent of the great hero Loto, must go to save her.

And those of you who are familiar with the NES game are now thinking, "Wait, those aren't the names." First thing I noticed too, and I started with Dragon Warrior III on the NES. As mentioned in the introductory post, the game was re-localized for Game Boy, tossing out the delightfully evocative NES translation with a more direct translation which retained the original Japanese names. "Thee" and "thou" were out (not necessarily a bad thing), as were Dragonlord, Gwaelin, and Erdrick among others. Apparently this was a request taken from Enix's forums; if true, it is another sign the internet signals the end of civilization. Square Enix has since gone back on this, and Dragon Quest IX refers back to the original NES localization. Or perhaps it was Nintendo? They published both Dragon Warrior on NES and Dragon Quest IX, after all... and it seems like Nintendo always does an impecable job localizing, favouring the intention of the text rather than the words in the text.

The game isn't a very long one, but I haven't gotten too far in it yet, having not yet fought a boss. After the King gave me my quest, I went to the town and bought a stick and a leather shield to defend myself, and then set upon grinding money to upgrade my gear before setting out in earnest. Along my grind I entered a cave, expecting to fight more enemies - it was empty except for Loto's tomb, which exhorted me as his descendent to find the three artifacts he used to save the world. When I made it to the next town, Garinham, I was finally informed I should head to the tomb. In Garinham I buy the copper sword and leather armor and set out for the next town, going east.

There's little preventing you from exploring the world beyond how tought the monsters get; monster difficulty is basically indicated by the number of bridges you cross. On the Game Boy, at least, this seems to be more of an approximation. All the grinding I've done means I go through the town of Kol, and the south to another island containing the next town, Rimuldar, before I am killed for the first time.

Death does not mean Game Over in Dragon Quest, it means resurrection with half your gold. This fairly light penalty (particular in 3 and later games, with the advent of banks where your gold, while not accessible, is safe) has undoubtably contributed to its popularity among Japanese people from all ages and all walks of life. Still, it's enough that I grind my way to 800 gold and buy the iron shield in Gorinham before returning to the island. There are only three shields, which makes the iron shield the second best shield in the game despite the fact that I have yet to fight a boss.

On my way back to the island, I take a detour and find an old man guarding a chest containing the rain staff. He'll give that to me if I bring him the Silver Harp, proving my worth as a hero and descendent of Loto. He doesn't say where I can find it, but I do know Gorin, who founded Gorinham, was a bard, so I can guess. Alas, it is presumably in the big locked building in Gorinham, so I'll need keys. And keys can be bought in Rimuldar. Once there, I buy a full complement of keys. A key can be used once, but you can carry up to six at a time, and there are locked doors all over the place. I unlock every door everywhere I've been (except Gorinham, where I need to go), eager to take what's been locked away. A guard tells me a real hero wouldn't steal from the chests he's guarding; I take what's in them and there are no apparent consequences. Another guard says that because I made it past a barrier - floor panels which do a lot of damage when you walk on them - I'm probably ready to go to Gorinham. It makes me glad I waited and unlocked all those doors, although I didn't gain a level doing it so I was already good enough. I grind my way to 1500 gold (with a slight detour when a Wolf Lord kills me - it shouldn't have happened, but I was playing sloppy) and buy a Steel Sword, and prepare to return to Gorinham.

Despite my slight distaste for the new translation, I'm still enjoying myself. The few clues given as to what you need to do next are sufficient, and finding the clues shows off the game dialogue's charm. Next time I'll speak a little about the player character's stats and the battle system, along with whatever the heck I end up doing.

Dragon Quest Marathon

So: The Dragon (Quest|Warrior) Marathon. Unlike Nick's Final Fantasy Marathon, these are mostly games I've never completed so it will be fairly straightforward: beat the game, move onto the next one.

The Dragon Quest series has always had three main contributors: designer Yuji Horii, character designer Akira Toriyama (known mostly for Dragon Ball), and composer Koichi Sugiyama. The first game is Horii's attempt to bring cRPGS like Wizardry to the masses. He achieved his goal in Japan, although it was less well received here as Dragon Warrior in North America, selling less than Nintendo expected and eventually getting given away with subscriptions to Nintendo Power; however, that didn't stop the next three games in the series from being localized and brought over the Pacific.

Those aren't the versions I'll be playing. I don't have an NES and they're not on the Wii's Virtual Console. They were also re-released for the Super Famicom in Japan - also not the versions I'll be playing, for the same reasons as the Nintendo version and the additional detriment of my inability to read Japanese. The ones I have are:
Dragon Warrior I&II, for Game Boy/Game Boy Color - a compilation and re-localization of the first two games, based on the Super Famicom versions.
Dragon Warrior III, for Game Boy Color - again re-localized and based on the Super Famicom version.
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen, for Nintendo DS - also re-localized, but this time based on a PlayStation version of the game.
Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, for Nintendo DS - the first of the games to originally come out for Super Famicom, this one is based on a PlayStation 2 version. The Nintendo DS port is the first English version of the game.
Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation, for Nintendo DS - also the first English version of this Dragon Quest game.
Dragon Warrior VII, for Sony PlayStation - the first of the games to not be a re-make! Also, technically my brother's and not mine.
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, for PlayStation 2 - the game which signified Square Enix finally claiming the Dragon Quest trademark in North America.
Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, for Nintendo DS - probably the best game I played in 2010, and certainly my favourite.

Other games may be added along the way: a few spin-offs are also available in English, and there's one non-Dragon Quest game I'm considering including. I've already started playing Dragon Warrior, so the next post will cover the beginning of that game.

New Plan

So obviously I didn't keep up with PlayStation posts. I've got a Twisted Metal post that is half-written and also terrible because I can't give either a good personal anecdote or proper game analysis for it - Heck, when I went to play it I ended up switching to Twisted Metal 2. A half-written Wipeout post is going to be retooled and will eventually see the light of day - talking about Wipeout the game isn't working for me either, but I still have some things I'd like to write about it.

In the meantime: I'll be copying my friend Nick's Final Fantasy marathon, but doing Dragon Quest/Warrior, because I like those games a lot, but haven't completed very many of them. There will be a setup post for that with more details before I begin it; currently I'm waiting on the package bringing me the first game.