A proud Atlus ho since 1999

It's been rainy all week, and we never got the nice weather we were promised yesterday. Bleh. Rain is nature's bukkake.

Still, happy birthday to rathershady!

I've pre-ordered Digital Devil Saga in order to get the soundtrack CD and collector's box for it and its sequel. (I could live without the cheesy cardboard "controller armor," but whatever.)

Other upcoming games I'd like to pick up: Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, which is a perfect fit for Nippon Ichi America to release (even though they're not the original distributor) and candy-cute enough to make me want it badly; and Wild Arms: Alter Code F, the remake of the fun but forgettable Wild Arms which hopefully infuses the original game with some actual personality and originality.

I also want the new Cowboy Bebop game. It's cel-shaded, and looks fantastically like the series; they've got the same voice actors as the anime series; Yoko Kanno is doing the music; and apparently it's going to answer some of the mysterious little questions of the series. :D

Also, I used to love "Spy vs. Spy" in MAD Magazine, so I'm hoping the game they're doing based on it is good. (I remember loving the NES game they did based on it.)

...Oh my God, they've done a video game of The Warriors, that crap '70s movie about gang warfare supposedly based on an ancient Greek incident. (As if The Godfather: The Game weren't enough.) Can you dig it?

You know, I love how GameStop just pulls release dates out of their collective ass.

Edit: Also, I forgot to mention this the other day, but apparently the Women's Center event with Jen and Amy made it into Ms. magazine. We have arrived!

Edit 2: The pictures from the picture post are coming, believe it or not - I'm going to try to post them this afternoon.

Synchronicity is fun!

A funny story:

I'm working on research for my thesis, and two of the sources I'm looking at are Pearl Buck's biography of her father and mother, who were missionaries in China during the Boxer Rebellion. Pearl Buck, if you aren't familiar with her work, was a major Nobel-winning novelist back in the thirties and forties, and wrote books such as The Good Earth (which apparently Oprah is repopularizing through her book club).

As I was leafing through the one about her father (Fighting Angel), I noticed on the "Other Works By" page that she'd also done a book, All Men Are Brothers, that's translated from the Chinese. Its source is listed as Shui Hu Chuan. It sounded quite familiar, so I Googled it and found out that as it happens, I'm not unfamiliar with the story.

However, I generally refer to it by the Japanese reading of the characters: "Suikoden." XD

Edit: Here's a copy of her Nobel lecture, in which Shui Hu Chuan is mentioned prominently. Interesting factoid: Apparently the title, which translates as "The Tale of the Water Margin," refers to the watery margins of the robber group's lair in the middle of the lake. (Sounding familiar to any of you Suikoh0s?)

Edit 2: Apparently there's a martial arts film version of the story available as well. XD