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Number Nine:
Together with my classic old friend Justin Freeman, I embarked on an adventure one dark day this June. That adventure involved playing the ever-loving hell out of Sony's Jak II demo disc. That demo disc was something of an E3 anomaly, as it was handed out to pretty much everyone only on day one. I managed to get one before anyone dreamt the thing would be rare. So rock on, me.
I fired up this demo disc one early May morning. I'd gotten home late for some reason I won't get into for unobvious reasons. I got home, and I felt like playing a videogame. I looked over my prized collection, and nothing struck me as worth playing. I remembered my bag of E3 things, and figured I'd get into some of those demo discs I'd received. With about half a relish, I dug around, and came up with only Jak II. I hit up Justin Freeman on AOL Instant Messenger, and told him, "I have this Jak and Daxter II demo disc." I gave some raw impressions as I blew through the first level and opened up the second. I then died six times in a row, something I haven't done in any game since Ikaruga.
A four-hour chat followed as Jak II almost defeated me philosophically. The stage that was taxing my ass was the "Strip Mine," a harsh and sick and evil son of a bitch of a level. The problem involved a jet-board and a lot of ramps. It was a devilishly tough challenge, and Justin Freeman went to bed about an hour before I actually finished it, and was then rewarded with a freeze-glitch.
I then wrote a short something about the experience, cleaned up the chat transcript, and turned it into an article which got me a whole three emails, one of them offering to buy the disc from me for ten dollars. Shortly after the publication of the article, Brandon updated this fine website's front page, and my odd little rough gem was pushed away.
(The same thing happened with a quirky review I wrote of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," as well as a response to a 60 Minutes documentary co-penned by myself and Chris Kohler -- see if you, dear reader, can find those missing pieces!)
I was in Los Angeles again when several emails came from members of the Jak II team. A few weeks before the game's release, the team was curiously looking up hype on RottenTomatoes.com, and my article was the only one they found listed. It then, as one developer put it, "Tore through the office", and, as another explained, "Slayed" them. One gentleman asked me how serious I was about my challenge to "Play your dastardly game, and beat it, and review it like it deserves to be reviewed," and I said I was as serious as my wallet allowed me to be.
Weeks later, I was back in Tokyo. I had just finished writing an article for a certain French magazine when my Filipino neighbor brought me a package. It was US Certified Airmail. It was from Santa Monica, California. It was Jak II.
I no longer own a US PlayStation2. So this creates a problem.
The game sits atop my Japanese DVD-player at this moment. Atop it rests a //.hack Outbreak demo disc signed by Bandai uberproducer Daisuke Uchiyama. That disc was gotten on day three of E3 thanks to one Chris Kohler -- well, Chris Kohler, legendary punk-rock singer Hiroto Kohmoto, and a lovely PR lady named Linda. Making a connection between the first three letters of Chris' last name, Hiroto's last name, and the fact that the PR/translator's name was both words of Kohmoto and The Blue Hearts' 1986 punk-rock anthem "Linda Linda," I began to sing in an odd little voice. This prompted Daisuke Uchiyama to become my best friend on earth.
I wrote about the experience, and even attached a video of myself, Kohler, and Uchiyama singing that infamous song. Uchiyama professed to having so much fun in the making of the video that he swore to pay me back at karaoke someday.
In 2003, I infected some influential portion of the gaming world with my style, and I like that, even if it only amounted to me receiving two games I can't play. I even like it that there are whole boards on certain web forums devoted to writing capsule reviews in "Tim Rogers Style," and I don't mind that these people do this because they wish I was dead. The truth is there's no such thing as bad publicity.
[next: number eight: the last days of madame virtual reality love.]
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