Paul J Chi (paulchi@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU)
Wed, 17 Nov 1999 18:39:55 -0500
X-Sender: paulchi@imap.acsu.buffalo.edu Message-ID: <l03130300b458cc1757d0@[128.205.233.138]> Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 18:39:55 -0500 From: Paul J Chi <paulchi@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU> Subject: Jouki Chikuonkan, and other thingsI got the Jouki Chikuonkan today, so I thought I'd share my impressions of it thus far. First, some info: Catalog ID: BVCH 2601~2 Retail price: ¥4,486 Print run: 97.5.2 - 99.5.1 Disc 1: 24 tracks, CD-Extra Disc 2: 27 tracks System requirements for CD-Extra: Win95: 100MHz Pentium, Windows 95 (Japanese), 16MB RAM, 640x480 screen resolution, 16-bit high color, a CD-ROM drive, SoundBlaster compatible sound card, and Quicktime for Windows 2.1.1 (included). MacOS: 33MHz 68040 or PowerMac, KanjiTalk 7.2.1 (MacOS 8.1 worked fine for me), Apple CD-ROM 5.1.2, 16MB RAM, 640x480 screen resolution, 32000 colors, a CD-ROM drive, Quicktime 2.1 (included, but QT 4.0 worked for me), and something else that I can't figure out. Something to do with hardware. ^_^; The CD-Extra isn't anything to get really, really excited about. As far as fan materials go, I'd put the Hanagumi Tsushin and Steam Radio Show above this. As has been said before, you get lots of pictures of the mecha, but nothing about the characters. There are (letterboxed) movies of the Koubu, Jinbu, Syogei-maru, Gourai-gou, and Mikasa, at 320x240 pixels. These movies are nothing new; they're just what you see in the game. The video quality may be slightly better, (it's still Cinepak, though) but the sound might have suffered a little (it's 22 kHz, 8-bit mono). What's new are short movies of most of the enemy mecha: Kamui, Kamui kai, Amaterasu, Kujaku, Fudou Series, Soukaku, Ginkaku, and Wakiji. These movies are 320x240 pixels, about 5 seconds long, and not too thrilling; just different views. It would have been nicer to have clips of the enemy mecha in action, but probably such clips were never made during the production of ST 1. There are also 4 slideshows that you can view with your choice of one of X pieces of BGM. The first slideshow is a montage of images that focuses on the Koubu, the second is a Jinbu montage, the third consists of high-res, 640x480 CG pictures of the mecha and even a Kouma (at least 2 pictures for each mecha, I believe), and the fourth is a montage of the animated clips from ST 1. I liked the CG pictures of the mecha the best. All of the movies can be accessed outside of the CD-Extra program, since they are plain old Quicktime movies. The rest of CD 1 contains mostly small clips of BGM, many of which are only slightly different from each other; not good listening at all unless maybe you shuffle the tracks. In my opinion, the best track on this disc is an instrumental version of Sakura, with a wind instrument (sounds like a recorder to me) as the melody. Good for karaoke! ^_^ On the plus side, at least some of these pieces of BGM seem to be played by real instruments instead of by a Saturn. The second CD is where all the real BGM is, unaltered from the Saturn original. I might have been disappointed if I didn't already know it would be like this. In its own way though, it's kind of charming and quaint. It sure brings back the memories... wandering around the Daiteikokugekijou... "Shouri no poozu... kime!"... and so on. The shortest track is 1 minute long and the average length is 2:46, compared to a short track of 10 seconds and average length of 54 seconds on the first disc. I probably couldn't do a very good job of translating the track titles since they're mostly in kanji, but I think Ming has some or most of the names listed on his Sakura Wars pages. In case anybody is interested in buying it, I got mine from Tokyopop.com. Unfortunately, it looks like they're now out of stock. :/ If there's anything else anybody wants to know about this, I'll try my best to answer. If I got something wrong or left something important out, please tell. ^_^ BTW, I also saw on Tokyopop that a new ST music CD set is coming out on December 22. Does anyone know what this is? A drama CD? I guess the first drama CD that was part of the SP2000 campaign was released last month, wasn't it? Did anybody get it? ^_^