Taylor Swift

Worth the obsession: writer/photojournalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach:

“She had the same effect on me as she had on everybody: this strange mixture of man and woman . . . not at all like a living being, but like a work of art.”

Yama is a longtime fixture of the Harajuku streets fashion scene. She has her own unique sense of style and has an effortless cool that just works. She works at the famous independent Harajuku footwear shop Tokyo Bopper.

Yama’s hair is styled into a top bun tied with a scarf bow. Her animal print coat is vintage, and she’s wearing it over a Theatre Products skirt. She keeps warm with a gray scarf and pearl mittens. Her structured bag features metallic details, and her pointy bow flats are from Unbilical.

Yama’s favorite shop is Tokyo Bopper in Harajuku.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Turn your child’s bathtime into a rave! Just don’t tell them what happens in an actual bathroom at a rave, or about anything else from the 90′s, until they’re adults.

This week's RSS feed is supported by Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe, an awe-inspiringly great comic series covering history from the big bang to the 21st century. (Volume 2 is where I learned about the Romance of The Three Kingdoms.) Books One, Two, Three, Four, and Five are all fantastic! (What's the deal with these links? Click here for info.)

Hagar the Horrible, 2/4/14

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a Chinese historical novel written in the 14th century about the 3rd century collapse of the Han Dynasty, contains a number of fascinating stories both historical and legendary. One of my favorite (probably fictional) episodes involves Zhuge Liang, a Daosit mystic who was also chief advisor to Liu Bei, one of the warlords fighting for supremacy as the Chinese Empire came apart. Liu Bei had made an alliance with another general, and their joint armies were camped across the river from their rivals; Zhuge Liang had earned the suspicion of Zhou Yu, a general in the allied army:

Zhou Yu was jealous of Zhuge Liang’s talent and felt that the latter would become a threat to his lord in future. He assigned Zhuge Liang the task of making 100,000 arrows in ten days or face execution for failure in duties under military law. Zhuge Liang promised that he could complete the mission in three days. With help from Lu Su, Zhuge Liang prepared 20 large boats, each manned by a few soldiers and filled with human-like figures made of straw and hay. Near dawn, when there was a great fog, Zhuge Liang deployed the boats and they sailed towards Cao Cao’s camp across the river. He ordered the troops to beat war drums loudly and shout orders to imitate the noise of an attack. Upon hearing the noise, Cao Cao’s troops rushed out to engage the enemy, but they were unsure of the enemy’s strength, because their vision was obscured by the fog. They fired volleys of arrows towards the sound of the drums and the arrows became stuck in the straw figures. The boats changed direction when one side became loaded with too much arrows so as to restore balance. In the meantime, Zhuge Liang was enjoying wine with Lu Su inside the cabin and they returned to camp when the fog cleared. By the time they returned to camp, Zhuge Liang had acquired more than 100,000 arrows and Zhou Yu had no choice but to let him off.

So Hagar’s idea definitely has a respectable lineage behind it! However, due to the extremely hardcore nature of Viking culture, the arrows to be used will be plucked not from straw mannequins but from his warriors’ own mangled flesh.

Hi and Lois, 2/4/14

Boy, Hi and Thirsty sure look like they’re having a blast in panel one, don’t they? We can all see why they’re avoiding their wives and families for some boisterous bro time, just hanging out together and staring silently into the middle distance. “Last call,” says Thirsty, expressionless, as they prepare to gulp down their enormous cocktails and step out into the night.

This post originally appeared as "Fun History Facts Tuesday" on The Comics Curmudgeon, which is the best blog on the Internet.

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Naval architecture for lizard men.

Our 2012 Puzzle Game of the Year was so insidiously engrossing that economies collapsed, nations fell, and ancient religions were forgotten. 10000000 was that good. It was the perfect alchemical combination of that oft-attempted pairing, the match-3 and the RPG. Magic.

Creator Luca Redwood was quiet for all of 2013. I spoke with him on occasion and he’d tell me that he’d been hacking away at a big update to 10000000. But he also had a new baby and I figured that it might be a while before he had anything to show.

Well today he does.

You Must Build A Boat is a full-on sequel to 10000000, one that adds a new game layer to the proceedings. Between the puzzle-matching runs, you’ll be exploring a strange land in a choose-your-own-adventure style, collecting resources to build the titular vessel, and capturing monsters and recruiting allies to crew it. You’ll be able to import your save game from 10000000, which will unlock “special benefits”.

You Must Build A Boat (like 10000000 before it) will be a premium-priced game, but because Redwood promised a free update to 10000000 that has now morphed into the sequel, he’s going to be making YMBAB completely free for the first day of release. Don’t worry — I’m not going to let you forget.

There’s no release date yet but Redwood plans to have a playable demo for GDC, so it stands to reason that the game will be out this year on iOS, Android and PC. Redwood has put up a page for You Must Build A Boat and he’s on Twitter as well. Keep an eye on those for more details. I certainly will be.

Minami’s monochrome outfit caught our eye in Harajuku. We found out that she is 19 and she’s a student. Her ombre hair has been colored with pink and aquamarine on the ends, and her bangs are streaked with dark blue.

She is wearing a resale coat over a Monomania top and resale skirt. Her backpack (with colorful zippers) is from WEGO, and her platforms were a resale purchase. She is also wearing a ruffled scarf, gold rings, and nail art.

Minami likes to shop from Monomania and resale stores, she told us.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

This 17-year-old student is Iwamatu, and she is wearing a cute sailor-inspired look with red braided hair.

Iwamatu’s navy coat was bought resale, and her dress is from Kinji. She accessorized with a heart shaped bag, cute plastic rings (including a teddy bear & “Sweet”), star earrings, and buckle loafers.

She told us she likes the Harajuku shop Bunkaya Zakkaten and the music of Hanae. Iwamatu is active on Twitter if you’d like more info and pictures!

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Kara Swisher wrote her book AOL.com in 1998.

In those days, the industry faced an epistemological crisis. The consumer Internet was new and ill-understood. A company worth billions at that time might have been worth nothing a year later. There was simply a limitation to what could be known. Neither the critics nor the advocates really had a good platform for justfying their behavior.

What’s poignant is how little has changed. Consider, for example, the very first paragraphs in the very first chapter, which might as well be about Instagram or Snapchat:

Chapter 1: the canary in the coal mine

The truth is: nobody knows.

And, because most often they do not know that they do not know, no one will ever tell you that truth.

Some people don’t know because they are too hopeful and sometimes because they are very greedy. Some are profoundly stupid or are a little too smart.

But in the spanking new world of the Internet, nobody knows because everyone and everything has just been born.

Which is why Steve Case found himself on May 8, 1997 cruising on the calm waters of Lake Washington in Seattle on a boat carrying him and more than 100 other chief executives toward the 20,000-square-foot, $40 million home of Bill Gates.

Case was definitely not supposed to be there–if you had paid heed over the years to a variety of learned Wall Street pundits, savvy journalists, pontificating technology consultants, and waspish naysayers in Silicon Valley. And the computer online service, America Online Inc., which he had built into the world’s largest, was just one tiny step away from falling right over the precipice.

The dirge had been endless: AOL was nothing. AOL was history. AOL was dead.

Yet there Case stood–perhaps the liveliest corporate corpse one might ever meet–chatting with American Airlines head Robert Crandall, kibitzing with a cadre of Microsoft’s top executives, and joking with Vice President Al Gore.

The company names might have shifted, but the thrust of the question is the same: what does success mean if a company worth billions today can be worth literally nothing tomorrow? Even 15 years on, it’s hard to say.

This is not Pile – this is Krill – it is just about Pile –kind of. Deviously disguised as a Pile-worship concept album, this EP contains some seriously introspective and compelling tunes. That is the genius of Krill, as they have mastered the art of creating songs that are both utterly silly and tremendously thoughtful all at once. If you question that genius, just listen to “Turd”, which aptly compares feelings of confused stagnation and indecision to being an eternally un-flushable piece of poop. The inability to commit is a relatable notion, making this a genuinely meaningful song about poo. None of these songs take themselves too seriously, filled with odd humor and dog imagery and other Krill-isms, but they also have an interesting dysfunctional edge, lyrically capturing a lot of doubt and existential panic even at their most upbeat.

The release can’t be pinned into one genre, dipping into garage and punk and pop and rock, and the result is a perfect medley of bursting aggressive energy and mellow jangly interludes. Krill continues to share their distinctive sound, driven by singer/bass player Jonah Furman’s intriguing strained, crooked vocals, the choppy, grungy guitar style of Aaron Ratoff, and the grounding stomping drums provided by Ian Becker. This release is as clever instrumentally as it is lyrically, and if Krill continues to create more of these addictive forlorn anthems, some band is sure to be inspired to fail to write a concept album about them too.

So if you like casual grungy tunes or melancholy poop songs or you are just a whale that ended up in the wrong place, this EP is what you should be listening to. It is coming out where many cool things come out, on Exploding In Sound Records, and can be pre-ordered in digital form or on some fancy black and white vinyl.

The post Krill – Steve Hears Pile in Malden and Bursts into Tears appeared first on The Boston Hassle.

Eeek:

The product of this research is the first (top) chart. Blue indicates songs by artists of color, even if those artists were only featured on the song; red indicates the same thing except that it excludes features by artists of color. Note the sharp peak in the early 90’s (new jack swing! hip-hop! r&b power ballads!) as well as the notable dip around 2000 (white bubblegum pop!). As for the aughts, artists of color in general are, evidently, disappearing from the upper echelons of the Hot 100; furthermore, even when there is a slight uptick in their presence, it’s when they’re musical sidepieces.

But I think critics who have pointed out the Billboard Hot 100’s recent lack of diversity are getting at something that’s certainly racial but that is a deeper, hairier issue than a simple assessment of skin color. The issue seems part of a larger problem of R&B and, to a lesser extent, Hip-Hop’s relevancy in the Top 40 landscape. That is, traditionally black music by black artists does not have nearly the same kind of traction it did in the early-to-mid 2000’s, let alone the early 90’s. To assess this, I looked at the proportion of top 20 songs from the year-end Hot 100 chart that also peaked within the top 50 of Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.

The whys we can’t answer; that black R&B and solo rap hits are experiencing hard times on the Hot 100 is undeniable.

“On a lonely Christmas Eve, a man and a woman are trapped in an elevator. As the darkness threatens to engulf them, how will their relationship develop…?”

Kurayami is a Romance/Horror Thriller PC-98 Visual Novel made by the now defunct and obscure “Melody”, slightly more known for creating the Assault Suits Valken clone “Night Slave” (which is now a cult classic due to reviews on several websites)

The PC-98, once an obscure platform, exploded in popularity along with the Touhou franchise once knowledge of its origins was spread. Sadly, the “narrative” that has formed around the content of the PC98 games is as follows: “The PC98 has a handful of good games, but is mostly filled with bad pr0n adventure games.” Games such as Falcom’s PC98 offerings (such as the roots of the popular Legend of Heroes series) are lauded, while vast amounts of games are already written off before anyone even had the opportunity to play them.

Well, over at this blog, I always find it pointless to write about things that are already popular and well-regarded. Is there really a point in websites and articles telling you that Mario is a great platformer? It’s far more interesting to look at obscure and niche things and showcase them. Then maybe one day the PC98 will finally gain the reputation of being “that platform with fantastic pr0n adventure games” that it finally deserves.

The premise of the game is pretty simple: two people are trapped in an elevator. They proceed to learn about each other in the course of awaiting rescue, but with hopes of survival slim, will the revelations of their lives and past lead them to anguish, despair and destruction, or will they choose to strength their bonds of friendship and love instead?

Despite the rather unambitious nature of the game, Kurayami manages to use the limitations of the PC98 very well. The music is suitably moody, creepy or joyful as required, and the writing and sound effects combine in a way in order to create an extremely unnerving mood for a psychological thriller. And yet, the game also manages to be rather heartwarming at times. Juggling two completely separate moods effectively with nothing but chiptunes, text and a still image is quite the accomplishment for a videogame, if you ask me.

The decision to focus solely on a small-scale and original concept is a rather interesting decision, as 5 months later, the famous classic Japanese Adventure game Yu-No: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world was released.

Yu-No features a gigantic game world to explore for its time, along with puzzles to solve and was a very long game that could last for more than 50 hours. Kurayami, on the other hand, lasts around 20-30 minutes on a playthrough (although searching for the “true” or “happy” ending would take significantly longer), which seems almost laughable to consumers back in the day.

But perhaps the creators of Kurayami was, in a way, ahead of their time. The emphasis on “bigger”, “more” and other feature creep has hurt many games over the years and it is only now that indie developers are showing up to create smaller, but extremely tight and focused experiences. In this regards, one could argue that games like Kurayami are the forefather to modern “artsy” story-telling games such as The Stanley Parable, only 15 years before their time..

However, for those who require much more play time in their games, Kurayami does throw the players some curveballs. While the player is led to believe that there is only one scenario, the first time you complete the game with the “Happy” ending, two more characters and their respective scenarios are unlocked…

And after you beat those? Even more scenarios are unlocked… and this time, things get almost meta. In these new scenarios, characters and art assets are “reused” but the context around them are entirely changed.

Character dynamics are different and even the tropes of the story are played with: Perhaps in one scenario, the characters make a heroic escape from the elevator through the emergency hatches a.l.a an action movie, but in others attempting such action is foolish, leading to tragedy. Or maybe in one scenario the heroine may be a complete stranger to the player character, while in another they were his childhood friend or long-estranged ex-girlfriend. Perhaps instead of a romance story, it is a Twilight-Zone like story of a man who is reunited with the spirit of his dead daughter through chance, freeing him from his guilt of not saving her life many years in the past.

And the surprising thing is how well it works out where you can believe that the girl in glasses may be named and look the same in 3 seperate stories, but end up being different characters due to many other factors such as the plot and backstory.

(Interestingly, all of the main heroines in the game are named “Mari”, albeit written in different forms (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji). Minor characters in their backstories also always draw from a pool of common names, such as “Sanae” and “Shuuichi”)

It almost reads as a commentary on the accusation that the VN genre is “stale” and “unoriginal”, especially in modern times where the belief is that the story setting of VNs that take place in “high school” seem to have over-saturated the market. But despite the fact that assets are recycled, as it turns out, it’s how you handle what you have that can lead to many possible permutations of what people think as just a singular concept.

Of course, perhaps all of this is just baseless analysis. It could entirely be possible that the company just had an extremely small budget/resources and had to make do with what they had. Still, “Death of The Author” and all that: they did manage to turn out something interesting and that’s what really matters.

PC-98 images of this game are commonly floating through the web, but to my knowledge, I believe most of them are bad rips or corrupt dumps that always crash at certain points (and good luck trying to find an actual PC98 diskette in this day and age!). A Windows version exists with “upgraded” CD DA music tracks, but it’s even rarer, though the game seems to be available on several Japanese virtual software services. As usual, I do prefer the PC-98 aesthetics though!

If you can somehow land a copy of the game though, prepare yourself for an interesting, experimental story-telling experience.

Kris Thompson has worn a path through the local scene’s back lawn with time spent in BOBB TRIMBLE’S FLYING SPIDERS, THE PREFAB MESSIAHS, ABUNAI!, CONCORD BALLET ORCHESTRA PLAYERS, NISI PERIOD, THE LOTHARS, and TWILIGHT TIPI. Currently, The Prefab Messiahs are mixing some new material (their first in 30 years!) with Doug Tuttle and Jesse Gallagher. 

[pic above: Kris (left) and Bobb Trimble, at a video shoot for Bobb's "Armour of the Shroud" video (photo: Karina DaCosta)]

As always, I was totally swamped by great new sounds from all over this past year. This assortment is a drop in the bucket — but it all sounded boss, so dig on the sights and sounds. Sorry to be a bit short on the verbiage — but the noise is what counts, yeah?

[Oh -- a year from now I hope to include a debut entry by the fantastic trippy Thai assemblage Khun Narin Phin Sing. Check out these two vids of theirs, and like 'em up on FB. Also looking forward to a full-length from LA dude Morgan Delt, who had a bitchin single out in 2013. And, the debut long-player from Russian kraut-psychers Polska Radio One.]

Alpha order by group name here…
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- CHROME – Half Machine From the Sun: The Lost Tracks ’79-80 (Pledge)

Very exciting to have these previously-unfinished tracks from the early 80′s discovered by Helios Creed and gussied up this year with (we assume) group founder Damon Edge’s blessing from beyond the grave. It presents a somewhat more “rock” orientation than their first few albums, but still retains Chrome’s inspired and unique synth/psych/art-punk character. How great to have their legacy updated by this. Looks like some touring & further recording are being planned too, with Helios having just put together a new Chrome lineup.

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- FUCK BUTTONS – Slow Focus (ATP Recordings)

You’d think that it’d be hard to be distinctive with “heavy noise-drone” by this point, but no. These Fuckers are grinding away with renewed vigor, and sweet buzzing textures. There’s a prominent mechanical/”industrial” feel — although not in the beaten-to-death sense — and just enough atmosphere to temper that to a tasty balance. I missed their 2013 show at Sinclair w/ Lichens… dagnabbit!…

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- HERBCRAFT – Astral Body Electric (Woodsist)

This makes it three years in a row for Herbcraft on my Hassle list. What can I say? They’ve got my blissed-out kosmische number dialed right in. Recorded by Doug Tuttle during their 2011-2012 quartet phase, and mastered by Matt Valentine with his spaced-’n'-dubby “Spectrasound” techniques. These tracks are multidimensional tapestries for heady flights — and “devotional” in the best sense of the word — so take yer mind/spirit connection for a swim in this sturdy ‘Craft.

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“>HOOKWORMS – Pearl Mystic (Weird World)

This Leeds UK band is somewhat mysterious, with the members only ever giving their initials — because apparently they don’t want anything to distract from the business of bringing the noise. The mystery is reflected in their dark and cavernous sounds, which veer from detached introspection to propulsive grit & menace. My bud Tom Gilmore saw them at the Liverpool Psych Fest back in September…the lucky dawg.

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LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE – Corruptible Faces (Captcha)

Originally from Gudalajara, Mexico, they’ve since popped up to CA — and did I hear they’d even moved to Chicago now? Anyway, it was great catching them in a JP basement back in June and picking up this killer LP of theirs. A combustible fuel mix of woozy psych & shoegaze ensures immersive listening, and Mr. Obsolete isn’t afraid to kick in some over-the-top distortion to kick things up to the next cloud level.

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MIND SPIDERS – Inhumanistic (Dirtnap)

These Dallas punk-blasted power-poppers have elements of garage psych, Ramonesy blast, glimpses of 80′s synth menace, and — in this clip — some Marc Bolan (T. Rex) swagger. Give ‘em a fair shake, and they’ll end up hitting your Rock sweet spot over and over.

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MOONRISES – Frozen Altars (Captcha)

Chicago’s Steve “Plastic Crimewave” Krakow — he of the hand-drawn Galactic Zoo Dossier zine — has assembled what’s perhaps his trippiest aggregation yet. I was lucky enough to take in a live set of theirs (with Herbcraft) downstairs at Deep Thoughts JP back in May. Their excellent LP is a transporting and dimension-shifting affair — by turns hazy, churning, ethereal and ecstatic.

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TELSTAR SOUND DRONE – Comedown (Bad Afro)

Telstar Sound Drone shares a couple of member’s (with fellow Danes) Baby Woodrose. They’re a distinctly more spaced-out affair, yet still with a full and exhilarating propulsiveness. If you love great psych-rock like Spacemen 3 or The Telescopes, you’ll lap this up greedily.

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WHITE FENCE – Cyclops Reap (Castle Face)

White Fence, headed by Tim Presley (also of Darker My Love), is one of the most distinctive and refreshing bands in the current blowed-way-up neo-garage scene. With a breezy & uncomplicated small-studio approach, they conjure a sound that’s truly unique — like reverbed-out Monkees/Syd Barrett collaboration demos, with an occasional George Harrison-esque solo rips. The band’s live approach is necessarily a louder/fuller beast, and they were one of the more raucously joyous acts that I caught at the most recent Austin Psych Fest (May 2013).

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WIRE – Change Becomes Us (Pink Flag)

Although having hit some monumental post-punk and experimental rock highs, Wire haven’t kept me in constant sway during their 37-year(!!) career. But then again, who could? Change Becomes Us is composed of new recordings, but ones for which they revisited their 1979-80 scrapbook of unused songs and ideas — including songs from that time that they’d played live but hadn’t ever “properly recorded.” The results are a real treat, finding the band firing on all pistons with engaged creativity. Let’s hope this vibe spills over onto their next project too.

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PS – Thanks to everyone who checked into these releases I was on this year…
BOBB TRIMBLE – The Flying Spiders in Brooklyn (Burger Records)
THE PREFAB MESSIAHS – Devolver (reissue, Burger Records)
ABUNAI! – Universal Mind Decoder (reissue, Krauted Mind Records, Germany)

And FYI… most of my (non-vinyl) listenings are captured here for embarrassment and posterity

The post 10 ‘Did You Miss These?’ Albums of 2013 by Kris Thompson appeared first on The Boston Hassle.

Excalibur is named as Arthur's sword going back to Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1130s) and Welsh legend, but it's not until the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin (c. 1230-1240) that he's specifically said to have gotten it from the Lady of the Lake. This scene, including the sunset and the Lady's glove, is directly inspired by the concluding scene of John Boorman's Excalibur (1981). Oh, yes. You're getting schooled on this one.

The comparable shot at the conclusion of the Boorman film. It makes sense to begin the game with this shot, since the game takes place after the death of King Arthur.

• "Arthurian literature" consists of more than a thousand books, chronicles, short stories, ballads, poems, inscriptions, sculptures, and plays written over a period of about 1,200 years. Even in the Middle Ages, Arthur was pan-national, with stories appearing all across Europe and beyond.
• We're not really sure Arthur was a real person. The first known text to mention him was written more than three hundred years after he lived. The best evidence that we have for his existence is that a bunch of other historical figures were suddenly named "Arthur" in the sixth and seventh centuries, as if they were being named after someone famous.
• If he did exist, he was probably a British general who fought the Saxons in the late 400s or early 500s. He almost certainly wasn't a king. (Unless you believe in the "Riothamus" connection, which I'll leave you to read on your own.)
• Everything else we associate with him--the Knights of the Round Table, Camelot, Lancelot, Guinevere, the love triangle, Avalon--are creations of writers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some is grafted from ancient Celtic mythology, some simply invented by French court poets.
• The Holy Grail exists entirely within Arthurian literature. It first appears in Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval (c. 1180), but it's a dish and has no connection with Jesus Christ or the Last Supper. It doesn't become the "Holy" Grail until Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie of around 1200. It's not mentioned in any non-Arthurian texts until the 20th century. Indiana Jones and his dad were searching for something that 12th-century French poets invented as a plot device for Percival.
• The earliest other figure tied to Arthur is Mordred. A passage in the Annales Cambriae (c. 970) mentions the cryptic "Battle of Camlann" in 537, "in which Arthur and Medraut fell and there was death in Britain and Ireland." The text mentions no relation between them and does not even say they were on opposing sides.
• "Excalibur" is mentioned as "Caliburn" in the earliest Arthurian stories and is called "Caledfwlch" in Welsh legend. It probably comes from the Latin chalybs--"steel." Although it is often associated with the Sword in the Stone (an element that appeared in later French versions of the legend), in about half the sources that mention the Sword in the Stone, it is a different weapon. Arthur pulls it from the stone but later discards it when he receives Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that the creators of Spirit of Excalibur did their homework. The manual comes with a three-page "historical overview" of Arthur's time and his place in history, followed by a seven-page "survey of the myths of Arthur." The scholarship in this section is quite good, although it gets a few facts wrong, particularly its statement that "the first documented record of Arthur comes to use from Geoffrey of Monmouth's [Historia Regum Britanniae]." This isn't quite true. Geoffrey's book dates from the 1130s, but there are earlier references to Arthur in the Historia Brittonum (c. 830) attributed to Nennius and the Annales Cambriae (c. 970). Certain Welsh legends, though based on texts that post-date Geoffrey, probably pre-date him in origin. There are several others. It is correct, though, that Geoffrey's text has the first full account of Arthur's life.

I also have to admire the game for being a bit ballsy on the theme. You'd think in a game called Spirit of Excalibur, they'd bet the bank on Arthur himself and feature him front-and-center. That's not the case. The game takes place amidst the chaos after Arthur's death, and again the back story is notable in the attention that it pays to its various sources, starting with the opening sentences: "It is the year 539 in Arthurian England. Arthur has been killed at the battle of Camlann, and his realm is in ferment." The "England" part aside (and to be fair, Malory has no problem calling Arthur the King of England), the date can only be based on the Annales Cambriae, which places Arthur's death at 537. If the creators had just relied on Malory as the source, his date of death would have been closer to 500 (Malory says that the Grail Quest started in 479).

Looks like the developers went with 14 seats for their version of the Round Table. The number given by various texts ranges from 13 (Didot-Perceval) to 1600 (Layamon). No source that I can find gives exactly 14.

"You are the Crown Regent, Lord Constantine, King Arthur's successor as leader of the Knights of the Round table." Constantine was first given as Arthur's successor in Geoffrey of Monmouth, and he seems to have been based on a real king of Devon and Cornwall. He doesn't appear in many versions of the Arthurian cycle, but he does appear in the big ones (Geoffrey, Wace, Layamon, Malory). He is notably the son of Cador of Cornwall, who was the son of Gorlois of Cornwall, the king that Uther Pendragon cuckolded to father Arthur in the first place. The legends don't really mention how Constantine became Arthur's designated heir, but I like to think Arthur was trying to make up for the circumstances of his birth.

I'm going to be going on like this for a while, so here's another opening screen shot to keep you interested.

"Much of Arthur's power, however, is not yours to command. Sir Lancelot du Lac, Arthur's great companion, incomparable champion . . . has gone into retreat. He has taken the greater part of Arthur's veterans with him." Now we switch to Malory, who wrote his great work in the 1450s and 1460s. Lancelot doesn't appear in Geoffrey of Monmouth or any of the putative "historical" versions of the Arthurian myth. In Geoffrey, the battle between Arthur and Mordred takes place after Arthur returns from a war against Rome. By the time of Malory's text, the Roman War was pushed to the beginning of Arthur's reign, and the final battle takes place when Arthur returns from France from a brief war with Lancelot (although there's a confusing second Roman War in there as well). In Malory, it is true that most of Arthur's best knights have sided with Lancelot, not because they think he's in the right, but because Lancelot has been their captain for decades, and Arthur's reaction to the discovery of the affair (condemn Lancelot, burn Guinevere) seems a bit extreme.

"To make matters worse, the legacy of Arthur's bastard son Mordred has come back to haunt you. Though Arthur slew Mordred in his final battle, his sons Melehan and Morgolon have grown to maturity and are carrying on Mordred's quest to usurp the throne!" Geoffrey gives Mordred as Arthur's nephew, the son of his sister Anna. Mordred doesn't become Arthur's illegitimate, incestuous son until the Vulgate Cycle of the 13th century. Anyway, I'm most impressed by "Melehan." I had to go online to look this up, but I think the only sources in which he appears by this name are the Vulgate Mort Artu and the Post-Vulgate Mort Artu, which would have been somewhat obscure sources at the time this game was made. Oddly, although many sources say Mordred had two sons, only one of them is ever named. I'm pretty sure the creators made up "Morgolon."

In this general theme, the creators are going back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, who does say that Constantine finished the war against Mordred's sons (who are unnamed). I hope the game doesn't end the way Geoffrey's account does, in which Constantine personally chases Mordred's sons into the church in Winchester and slays them on the altar--a sacrilege that brings down the Wrath of God and leads to Constantine's murder at the hands of his own nephew and heir, Conan. Though I guess it would make a memorable final scene.

From this game's "map" view, you're occasionally notified of individual episodes that take you to the "scene" view.

 
Spirit of Excalibur was created by Robert Clardy's Synergistic Software, and like just about any game with which Clardy was involved, it resists classification. Like War in Middle Earth (1988), from which its interface evolved, it exists somewhere between an RPG, an adventure game, and a strategy game. The interface is a combination of the campaign level and the local level, and the action chugs along whether you're ready for it or not, switching schizophrenically between episodes and themes. Within the first five or ten minutes, you're navigating the highways of Britain on a map, talking with individual villagers, fighting a one-on-one combat against an evil knight, and fielding an army in defense of a castle--all with very little control over when these interludes begin and end.

The game is an RPG in the sense that each character has defined attributes and personal inventories.

 
The game takes place in five "episodes." The first, "The Kingmaking," is a sort-of tutorial in which you face some pretty basic decisions. It begins with Constantine in York, having a chat with King Clariance of Northumberland. I don't know what Constantine is doing in York, so far from the action, but perhaps he was visiting a statue of his namesake, Constantine the Great, who was became Emperor of Rome while visiting York in 306 (both he and his father, Emperor Constantius I, were in the city when Constantius died). Anyway, Constantine immediately hits the road to head towards Camelot to be crowned king.

Some useless advice from a maiden along the way.

On the way, he meets a variety of citizens--a townsman, a monk, a traveler, a friar, a damsel--and gets various bits of information from each. (Each city, no matter how large, has exactly one NPC, it seems.) Your only role-playing options here are to stop and talk or continue on. If you talk, you don't get any dialogue options. The citizens speak their piece and the game continues.

In Lincoln, I find that an evil knight named Lupinus has challenged the noble Sir Villars to single combat, but Villars has been injured fighting some bandits. (I think both names are inventions of this game.) A monk asks me to serve as Villars's champion. I agree and encounter Lupinus in the village.

Ouch, man. That really stings.

One-on-one combat takes place on a Karateka-like screen where you trade actions--attack, defense, use an item, magic, or let the computer fight for you on "automatic." This first fight wasn't tough; I just hit "attack" repeatedly until Lupinus crumbled. The grateful Villars swore fealty to me and agreed to support my claim.

You know who's good and who's bad by our armor color.

The next major episode took place in Leicester, where Sir Gahalantine was besieged by some "Saxon villains." (Gahalantine is a minor knight mentioned only by Malory. By Malory's account, he ought to be with Lancelot in France right now.) I'm given the option to head to the castle and rout the attackers. This is the game's introduction to battlefield combat. Mostly it fights itself, though you can click on individual units and tell them what to do. The units are really tiny, though, and it's hard to tell who's who.

Anyway, I won the battle with no difficulty, and I also got Sir Gahalantine's support. Thus, I continued on to Camelot. The game follows Malory's example by locating Camelot at present-day Winchester. Other sources place it all over the map. There is some archaeological evidence for an Arthurian-era war leader's headquarters at Cadbury in Somerset, about 100 miles to the west of Winchester.

Sir Bedivere met me when I entered the castle and gave me his support, along with several other former Knights of the Round Table. That means a lot, since Bedivere was one of Arthur's most loyal retainers, attached to the legend all the way back to the Welsh Triads, and in Malory the last person to hold Excalibur before tossing it back to the Lady of the Lake.

The game then shows me a map of the lands that I control:

Anyway, this ended the first episode and began the second, titled "The Return of Lancelot du Lac" (spoilers much?). Almost immediately, I hear word of unrest in Scotland, and I've got to send a party to investigate. I have only seven knights to choose from. The game makes a point that I'm having troubling rallying support without a designated champion.

This is an interesting selection of knights. With the exception of Bedivere, the entire lot of them (in Malory) pledged their support to Lancelot when he rescued Guinevere from the stake and carried her off to France. Ector is Lancelot's half-brother, even. Lancelot made them dukes and whatnots of various French lands, so I don't know what they're all doing here. (Dinas, Bellengerus, and Hebes are also all expatriates from the Tristan legends.)

The manual has a glossary listing some basic strengths and weaknesses of each knight, but you really need to get them into a party before you can see specific values. Some have more speed, some more combat ability, some more "nobility" (I'm not sure what that does). The game is a bit confusing, because although it makes you take an initial selection here, it soon becomes clear that I can send any number of these knights, in any combination, to various parts of the map. I chose Ector as the leader the first time. In the legends, he's a decent knight whose adventures are overshadowed by Lancelot's.

Ector and Lavain get ready to head out.

The game then entered into a scenario in which these two knights could walk together around Camelot, talk to various people, and collect items--I guess in anticipation of their journey. Other NPCs in the castle offer to join the expedition, including a friar and Nineve. Various sources have a tough time reaching consensus whether Nineve (or Nimue, Ninniane, and various other incarnations) is the same person as the Lady of the Lake or someone else, whether she's related to Morgan le Fay, and whether her seduction and imprisonment of Merlin is wicked or kind.

I wasn't sure what the advantages and disadvantages of taking the friar and Nineve were, so I took them. It's in this interface that the game seems most like an adventure game. You can select individual characters and have them pick up items, drop them, use them, search, trade, talk and a handful of other actions.

The adventure-style commands available in the game.

There was one room with a key, which let me unlock a door to the castle treasury, where I found a bunch of gold and what sounds like magic items. I'm not sure if I should be looting the treasury, but I distributed the items among my four "party" members.

After that, it was on the road to Scotland! Except that he game map doesn't go as far north as Scotland, so I just headed north. On the way, I met a traveler who told me that a large force of Saxons was gathering in East Anglia.

When I reached London, I switched to "scene" view and found myself talking with Sir Lionel, another supporter of Lancelot (and his cousin), who's supposed to be dead by now whatever source you're reading. Before I even asked, he told me that he wouldn't be able to help Camelot because of the "grave dangers" he was facing--presumably the Saxons to his northeast.

It's at this point that the game has me largely confused. Am I supposed to stay in London and help Lionel, or continue on to Scotland? Does the game have an answer to every possibility that I might choose? Does every other city have someone like Lionel with a problem to solve? Was there a compelling reason not to bring the entire round table with me on this quest, to decline to take Nineve and the friar, or to avoid picking up every item in Camelot to take with me? Is there a specific way to play out each scenario, or is Britain my playground? The game will let me return to the Round Table room and select new parties. Should I be sending people all over Britain? It's quite confusing.

Perhaps by next time, I'll have it sorted, though I wouldn't mind any general (non-spoiler) advice from anyone who's played the game. In the meantime, if you're interested in exploring more about the Arthurian legends, here are my recommendations:

• A full-text version (PDF) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. The "Arthurian" section begins in Book VI, Chapter 5 (Page 94 of the linked text) with a description of Uther Pendragon as a boy. The Merlin story begins on Page 108. Uther begets Arthur starting on Page 141; Arthur first appears on Page 149 and dies on Page 193. Geoffrey's depiction of Constantine lasts but a page after that. It's important to note that despite the title, Geoffrey wasn't really writing a history, and no modern scholar takes it seriously.

• T. H. White's The Once and Future King. A moving adaptation of the cycle, based almost entirely on Malory. The basis of the animated film The Sword in the Stone and the musical Camelot, though I recommend neither. White does a fun thing and moves Arthur's reign 500 years forward, making Uther Pendragon a Norman conqueror, but it's not key to the story.

• Mary Stewart's Arthurian saga, starting with The Crystal Cave. She manages to tell a great story while being true (in sometimes very clever ways) to the original sources, particularly Geoffrey of Monmouth.

• John Boorman's Excalibur (1981), the best Arthurian film. It crams as much as it can into a limited time, but the depictions of the key characters are mostly faithful to the legend's origins, if at times conflating things (e.g., Arthur himself is the Fisher King). Particularly notable are the preservation of Percival as the Grail Hero and the inclusion of Lancelot's "insanity" episode. Only the depiction of Gawain really suffers. The movie claims that it's based entirely on Le Morte d'Arthur, but certain episodes are lifted directly from Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

In what seems to be an attempt to spam the entire music industry, a man named Matt Farley has recorded thousands of songs and set them out for sale online. “The Passionate & Objective Jokerfan” is one of his pseudonyms, and he has released ELEVEN albums under this name alone. Using the same, uh, “musical style.”

If you must, listen to “Katy Perry, You Make Good Songs” or probably any song from the album titled “Nice Man Sings Song For The People Songs Yes Now Cover Up.”

He’s got dozens of pseudonyms (The Strange Man Who Sings About Dead Animals, The Paranormal Song Warrior, The New York Sports Band, etc.) but probably the best is “The Birthday Band For Old People,” where he has recorded 17 albums’ worth of songs wishing a happy birthday to a specific person’s name. “Happy Birthday Bart”, “Happy Birthday Brenda”, and so on, over and over.

Orange crush.

Josh M. writes:

Owen, I’m surprised you haven’t covered Third Epoch yet. It’s a space trader like the Star Traders you love so well with a much stronger look. Check it out.

Third Epoch for iOS is a new one on me, I’d never heard of the game. But wow — Josh is not kidding about the aesthetic. The whole game from the menus on down is rendered clean-lined orange silhouettes.

The game is set in a far future where you can apparently opt to play your star trader as a completely non-violent character, as the game boasts of ways to “outsmart opponents in non-destructive combat”. I like that a lot and I’m downloading as I write this. It’s been a while since somebody attempted some idealistic Gene Roddenberry stuff in a mobile game.

Two caveats: first, the game appears to be iPhone-only (iPads were abandoned in the Second Epoch, perhaps?) and secondly, Third Epoch is free-to-play, and I’m not sure how far the monetisation scheme has metastasised through the game mechanics. But it sure looks worth a go.

Third Epoch is made by Canadian devs Blitztream. There’s a trailer after the jump.

Ikumi is a 23-year-old programmer who we met in Harajuku. Her pink hair falls caught our eye and we instantly recognized the Takuya Angel pieces in her outfit!

Ikumi is wearing a H&M coat over a top and skirt from Takuya Angel. Her scarf, purse, gloves (with claws), and leg warmers are also by Takuya Angel. Ikumi’s shoes are George Cox, and she accessorized with several items from 6%DOKIDOKI.

Ikumi’s favorite designers are Takuya Angel and 6%DOKIDOKI. She listens to Gabber music. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.

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This is Daichan, a 20-year-old student with blond hair and an all black outfit who we met in Harajuku.

Daichan is wearing a Lad Musician jacket over a Uniqlo top with Yohji Yamamoto pants. His studded clutch and creepers are from resale shops, while his accessories are Christian Dada: a pendant necklace and a studded bracelet.

Daichan’s favorite brands Christian Dada and Mihara Yasuhiro, and he’s active on Twitter.

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Meet Yuchin, a 25-year-old girl whose pastel ponytail and flags hoodie caught our eye in Harajuku recently.

In addition to her Supreme flag hoodie, Yuchin is wearing a burgundy skirt over leggings and Nike sneakers. She has several piercings and earrings, colored contacts, red nail polish and silver, gold and turquoise rings.

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Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander talks to game developers who also happen to be mothers, about the challenges of balancing work and life, and finding success in a male-dominated industry. ...