Ginger or Mary Ann?

It’s the question that plagued generations before us. Anyone who watched Gilligan’s Island for an extended period of time has asked themselves the question. It’s more than just an issue of who is hotter. Ginger and Mary Ann represent two different personalities. The question is reflective of one’s self.
When doing that questionaire in my previous post, the questions came up of what we want in (presumably) the opposite sex. It was hard to answer them accurately, hence the vague responses. I was watching Evangelion again last night, and I began to wonder; what is our generation’s Ginger vs Mary Ann debate? It’s hard to come up with one, especially because there has been such a divide among kids of our generation. Some kids would bring up something stupid like Paris Hilton or Nicole Ritchie, even though they are both ugly, stupid spoiled whores. Watching Eva, it made me immediately think of two matchups. Rei vs Asuka, and Tifa vs Aeris (or Aerith). Each matchup represents something different.
Rei is, in terms of the plot around her, probably a more important character to the overall story of Evangelion. Asuka is much more important to the development of Shinji’s character, as both a source of negativity and an object of lust. In terms of looks, Rei is more voluptuous and her facial expressions are usually subdued, while Asuka is rail-thin, leggy, and frequently in a state of anger or aggression, which may turn some people off. While I like Misato more than either of them, I’d have to go with Asuka on this one. I personally think Rei is just a tad hotter, but Asuka is just infinitely more interesting. She’s such a fantastically deep character. Rei gets kinda boring. Also, there’s the whole mother thing…
I think the Tifa-Aeris debate says more about you, though, than the other debates, especially because of the gigantic contrast between the two. Tifa is busty, scantily clad, flirtatious, and, sometimes, a bit ditzy. Aeris is dressed conservatively, despite having a nice body (from what we can tell), and  is sometimes shy but predominantly cute.

SPOILERS… ALTHOUGH IF YOU HAVEN’T BEAT FF7 BY NOW YOU ARE A KING BITCH AMONG BITCHES

    I think killing Aeris was something that almost needed to happen, assuming Seppy had to kill someone. I don’t think we would’ve felt the same remorse if Tifa was killed. Like some people argue about Kurt Cobain killing himself, Aeris dying was the best career move she could’ve done. She became a martyr. She sent Cloud on a Laser Mission to destroy Sephiroth and he went on to do so without prejudice (although we can assume Seppy was public enemy no. 1 before he jammed a masamune into Flower Girl’s spine). That all being said, I’m a Tifa guy. I like the outrageous personality over subdued. The body certainly helps, but Tifa is, like Asuka, just an infinitely more interesting person.
There are other debates I can think of. Excel or Hyatt (Excel), Chun Li or Cammy (Cammy), Heather Mitts or Jenny Finch (Mitts), Kournikova or Sharapova (Kournikova for now… we’ll see what Maria looks like in a few years, though), and Saria or Malon (Malon). I’m sure there are more…

And yes, I do understand that it’s truly pathetic to speculate on sexual preference over animated or digital females. But hey… that’s what I do.

King of the SCUMM-Time World

About three years ago, I was in a manic LucasArts adventure game binge. I played through the original Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and Loom. All of these games were easily downloadable off “Abandonwarez” websites. This was in preparation for the fourth Monkey Island, which was one of the games I anticipated more than any other (outside of Yoshi’s Story and Metal Gear Solid 3). I also played through most of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, but I got caught in a rare rut in a SCUMM engine game, where you reach a point where you cannot continue because you forgot an item. I had only seen it in Loom, causing me have to restart the game. I took special care to remember to earn that spell that time.
A few nights ago, I had a strange dream. Keep in mind, my dreams, if I even remember them, are trivial. Nothing important happens. Nothing happens, period. It’s a typical bizarro dream where nothing of any consequence would happen, and thus is unlikely to be interpreted by Freud or any other psychologist or dream dictionary. This dream was simply the gameplay of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, or least what I remembered of it. I was discouraged by my dead end and didn’t play it again, but I had enjoyed the experience.
So, inspired by the dream, I decided to give it another shot. The problem is, LucasArts has become almost Nazi-ish in their enforcement of copyrights. If the game is still sold by the publisher, it is illegal to have it for download. They have every right to enforce it, but I don’t want to pay for it… even if they are great games. I searched Google for about 2 hours, trying to find one site that the man hadn’t come down on. I finally found one, and saw they had the original Monkey Islands as well, so I downloaded all three.
They all finished quickly, but alas, nothing is that easy. The sound didn’t work. At all. No music, no sound effects. Damn. I remembered a lot of these games had a sound configuration utility included, but not in these downloads. I had lost all hope. That was Monday night. I thought about it some more today, when I was forced to watch the Nutcracker in my music class. I wondered if I could find that utility. When I got home, I searched for “SCUMM sound”. Didn’t find what I was looking for, but I found one better. A SCUMM virtual environment. A DOS emulator that was made specifically for LucasArts point ‘n click adventure games, that automatically assigned all necessary sound channels. I was very happy. But my excitement did not end there.
I looked for my old Sam & Max CD (well, not “my”… Andrew Grignon let me borrow it and I never returned it… that’s a common trait of mine). I had played through the original DOS version with subtitles, but I had always wanted to play the CD version so I could get the voice acting and higher quality MIDIs. Every computer I had tried playing the CD version on, however, wouldn’t play the voices. When I tried to use the aforementioned configuration utility, it gave me invalid messages. I chalked it up to a scratched disk and threw it in that stack of CDs that I like to come back to every 2 years (games like X-Wing Alliance, Jedi Knight, and Rogue Spear). I tried it on this SCUMM emulator… just for curiosity.
BAM!
Voices!
I was very happy again. I now have 4 SCUMM games to play through again, which should keep me busy. Of course, I didn’t need any reason to be busy. I’ve been on La Pucelle hiatus, I haven’t opened Phantom Brave, and I barely got started in Snatcher, one of Hideo Kojima’s first games, even after I spent a few days trying to find an MSX emulator. Ahhh… fun times in videogame land.