Captain Bible and the Dome of Darkness

So I have been replaying an old old computer game from my childhood called Captain Bible and the Dome of Darkness. (Whats funny is that you usually only subtitle your title if you are planning on sequels....no such luck, Captain Bible.)

First of all, yes. It is a Chrisitan game. This to many gamers is an instant failing on the games part, but really, it dosnt have any bearing on the game itself. It is exactly what it is...I find it rather funny that people get so up in arms. "How DARE those Christians make a CHRISTIAN game!"....I wouldnt be offended at the existance of a Muslim video game. In any case, it is a limited market, but it does have its market, and for what it is, its pretty good as a game.

It was released in 1994, so think really old pixel graphics style adventure. The story is as follows:

Story

And yadda yadda. (Aww, look, the "save" button is a floppy disk. How quaint.)Basically, a vaugely futuristic city has been covered by a Dome of Darkness and its people imprissoned by demonic robots called Cybers. It is Captain Bible's job to free the prisoners and destroy the Tower of Deception which is creating the Dome.
From here, the gameplay revolves around finding Bible verses and using them to counteract "Cyber Lies". A Cyber you confront will say something like, for example, "God could never love you.", which you would reply with the correct Bible verse from your database. Every level you have to collect the Bible verses, and if you dont have the right one you have to go find it. After that, theres a short battle, and then you continue onwards. Instead of a Boss Battle each level has a Victem, that is a person decieved by some or other Cyber Lie that you have to save. Yes, thats a bit offensive to non christians, but Ill get into that later.

Verses


So of course the main part of gameplay is in Bible verses and memorization. In fact I am sure that most of the verses that have stuck in my mind over the years I have remembered from this game. Playing through it I realised just how influential this game was in my early faith. Its actually quite foundational, in that it does not just throw verses at you, but teaches you what they mean and allows you to use them in a practical manor. In fact a quick run through this game will pretty much teach you all the basics of what Christians belive and why.

And on the subject of teaching, this game never felt like an educational game when I was a kid. I was a terrible student in school, and as such my parents bought me all kinds of educational computer games to try to make learning fun. I cant remember exactly how many math related computer games we had in my house. But as anyone who played games as a kid knows, you always can tell when a game is trying to teach you something. They feel different then a game that is just for the fun of it. This one never actually felt like it was an educational game though. I remember sinking hours into it and not realising that I was learning in the process. It is a rare educational game that can do that.

Battles


The battles are pretty easy. With a few exceptions, most enemies will go down with a single hit, so dont worry about ever dying. Oh you have a health bar (its not health in this, its Faith, and you heal your Faith by praying in Prayer Chapples) but it almost never goes down low enough to matter much. Once you find the verse for the Sword of the Spirit your attacks are unstopable and once you find the verse for the Shield of Faith getting hit barely does anything.

Of course, I played the game on Normal mode, so Difficult might be a bit more challenging.
In every battle, you have three possible actions: Retreat, Attack, or Defend. Complicated battle stratgies, these are not. Your enemies have a certain position they move into when they become vulnerable to attack, you basic winning stratagie is to Defend untill you get the chance to Attack. So the game dosnt win any prizes for its battle sequences, but that isnt really the focus of the game anyways, and when I was a kid, it was exciting enough.

Graphics


The graphics, for a pixel game of the 1990s are actually really nicely rendered. In fact Iv seen much worse pixel art in the pixel art community passed off as great masterpieces. And I have got to admit, I grew up on pixel games. Theres just something about the way they look that is really nice to me. I still perfer pixel graphics over 3D graphics, and since I usually only play handheld games with sprites anyways, thats okay. So I love the graphics of Captain Bible. They arent bad graphics, not for its time and not when compaired to other pixel games. In the end though if you hate pixel rendering youll think the graphics are laughable, but all things considered, its quite good.

(And when compaired to another 1990s game I used to play as a kid, Cosmo, these graphics are superb)

Victems


I think the only really controversial or potentially offensive aspect of the game is the fact that the "Boss Battles" are literally conversations with people who have been Decieved by the Cybers into lifestyles and philosophies that are counter to Christian teaching, in an effort to convert them. Each "Victem" is following some way of life, and using Bible verses, you convince them that they are in error. The 6, in no particular order because with the exception of the first level, you can do them in any order you like,

Other Religion and/or Cult

Fear

Love of Money

Legality

Crystals and New Age

Drug Addict

Now lets be real here. Throwing Bible verses at someone who already does not belive in the Bible, isnt going to convince anyone to convert. That is just silly to think. So if the purpose of these sequences isnt really to learn how to convert people, because honestly, it dosnt work like this, what is it for?

What it DOES do, is teach you what a Christian belives and why. The player themselves are the ones who are looking through these verses. When the man whos strictly into rules rules rules tells you that we are responsible for saving ourselves and working off our own debt, the player has to find the verse that explains why we belive that that is not so. I see these sequences as for a Christians benifit, not for a non Chrisitians benifit.

And actually, it is sort of brilliant if you consider that these are 6 very widespread ways of thinking that as a child can now be exposed to and think about, and by taught not just that they are counter to what we belive, but also the very important why. That way when a kid does encount someone who is obsessed with Money and worldy riches, they dont get caught like a deer in the headlights going "uuuuhhh....yeah, well I never thought of that before..." instead this game equips them to know about the existance of these ways of thinking and why we dont belive they are correct.

Now, I know that many non christians will still find that offensive...how dare these christians actually teach their children that the Bible is right..... whatever. I think that it is every parents right to raise their child as they see fit, and if you are going to raise your kid teaching them the Bible, I say its a positive thing to actually, you know, teach it to them. Dont just say "Hey, dont do drugs JUST BECAUSE", instead it is much more benificall to say "Drugs are bad and here are the reasons why we think so".

All in all, playing this game now, Im struck by how incredibly foundational this game is. It actually deals with a whole lot of hard and deeper issues and deals with them in a way that is engaging and thought provoking.

And for a kid, gameplay is pretty fun too. Not particularily challenging as a game for an adult, but thinking through the verses it presents can be a good excersise at any age.

Its pretty darn old, though. I found a copy for download online, but it is not compatible with any current OS. In order to play it I had to also download a DOS simulator. But, it was definitly worth it :D

Sucker Punch

Just saw Sucker Punch and I was blown away by this film.

Let me first start by saying, this is a very dark, dark movie. This is not a fun mindless action flick. It is violent and has some really kick-ass effects and action sequences, but that is far from all this film has to offer.
The movie is about a young girl who has been abused by her step-father, who after her mother passes away is put into an insane asylum. There she and three other girls plot to escape the cruelty, but to cope with reality, she has retreated into her mind and much of the movie takes place in layers upon layers of mindscape and hallucinations.
The action sequences of, for example, slaying dragons, fighting samurai and battling in war trenches are all inside of her head. This makes for a really interesting movie, and spectacular fantasy action scenes. For much of it, it feels like literally, a live action anime, with absurd but cool moves and choreography and anime style badassery.
But, there lies a depth to the film past the action, as the girls are fighting to survive and escape from the insane assylum (which has become in her mind at least, a brothel. The trick is trying to figure out how much of the brothel is real and how much is in her head)

Not particularily a feel good movie, and it does have a very bittersweet ending, but its defonatly worth seeing, not just for the amazing action and effects but for the harsh coldness of the very dark storyline. It deals with a whole lot of really heavy issues, but for that its worth seeing.
It reminds me a lot of Pans Labyrinth, another very dark movie about a girl retreating into her own mind. Whats real, whats hallucination, reality becomes blurred.

It also has an incredibly good soundtrack, the music works perfectly to bring it all together and make emotions high. Especially that opening, wow.

Miniature

Painted my first miniature today. Its really incredibly tricky, these things are tiny.
It didnt turn out awsome, but its not terrible either, I feel.
I hope to invest in some more of these.

Anime Spring 2011 Season

So its a new season for anime, and here is my list of stuff Im watching.

Digimon Xros Wars
Digimon is still ongoing, since it will likely be around 50 episodes.
Its getting really interesting now, with characters backstories gradually being revealed,
and its living up to the Digimon tradition of having particularily well fleshed out
characters and development.

Gosick
Although the title is a horrible engrish of the word "gothic" which is really laughable,
the show itself is looking pretty good. Its a slick murder mystery goth-loli girl Sherlock and her nervous male sidekick. Visually its very pretty, and it looks like the mystery aspects will be good. Still early to tell.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Cutesy magical girl show. Needed a new show to hit my Shugo Chara! fix, and this is looking...well, okay so far. Its no Shugo Chara! but its got really interesting visuals and a weird psudo-sci-fi future setting, cute costumes and an adorable little critter mascot. Once again, early to tell if its any good, but Ill be giving it a few more episodes.

Starry Sky
A pretty typical bishounen/reverse-harem show, which the fangirl in me is digging. Its pretty shallow fluff, but PRETTY shallow fluff.

I have now finished up with Shiki, Oreimo and Princess Jellyfish and will hopefully be making a post about those soonish.

Insomnia Zine

Preivew page from my zine Im working on on the subject of insomnia!

Magazine Envelopes

I have been making envelopes out of old magazines I got at the thrift shop today. I really really rather love it.
I sent out some mail today that was in plain enelopes from the store, and I bought an extra one to use as a template and have been sitting here making envelopes since. It is so much fun and I cant wait to use these!

Here are some of my favourites:

The Voyage of the Dawntreddar (Slight spoiler warning) + Tangled

Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawntreddar
I didnt hold out much hope for Voyage of the Dawntreddar, based on the fact that I really wasnt terribly impressed with the first two in the Hollywoodised Chronicles of Narnia.
I need to preface by saying that I love the Narnia books, and I also grew up on the BBC version Narnia movies that nobody seems to have heard of.
From a modern standpoint, the old movies really dont age well. The effects are absolutly terrible, but that aside, I appreciate the way they are very accurate to the books in both storyline and the way they protray the characters, which the Disney movies just.... werent.

However, Disney dropped the franchise and Fox picked it up for VotDT, and Fox has done a much better job at it. While Disney decided to gloss over and remove the christian alligorical aspects, Fox largely kept them in. In fact Fox went to the other extreme and the movie came off fairly preachy from a non-christian perspective, with characters repeadedly making statements like "You just need to have faith. :)"
Im sure other critics are going to rip the movie to shreds on that point, but to me it makes sence. I dont think its fair to come down on a christian author writing a christian series for saying christian things.

The movie did make a few silly changes that, clearly the creators thought would make it more dramatic from a cinima perspective. While in the original the journey is mearly to find the seven missing lords, this was apparently not exciting enough, so they took the Island of Nightmares and ran with it, making the central point of the film to find the Seven Swords of Aslan that the Lords carried so they could put them all on Aslans table, thus destroying the spell of the dark island. Well... okay, whatever. I get you needed to make it more exciting to disillusioned modern audiances. But it didnt disrupt the core of the story too much, and wasnt a major distractor.

Lucy and the beautificiation spell was handled...interestingly. While in the book the spell would have merely taken Susan beauty away from her and given it to Lucy, in this version, the spell actually turns Lucy into Susan and erases Lucy from existance.
This appears to make it much more intense and dramatic, but the effect is that it actually dramatically changes what the problem was with this. While in the book, Lucy is rebuked by Aslan for harboring jealousy and vanity, in this movie she is chided for undervaluing herself.

Eustice was brilliantly played. First half of the movie you completly hate the little snot, he plays the part very well. And I have to say, the scene where Aslan turns him back into a human was beautifull. There are aspects of the original movies take on that scene that I still perfer... namely, Aslans calm quiet voice saying "Its not enough.....I must do it for you."
This version instead has no dialoge, and instead just shows Eustice make an attempt at scraping the dragon skin off of himself, and then Aslan tears it off for him. The visuals were actually very powerfull, and I think that it came out well.

And I couldnt write about VotDT without touching on this versions Reepacheep. Reepacheep was everything you would want him to be, loyal, honoral, brave and noble. Both voice and animated beautifully, and his interactions with Eustice were very fun to watch.

All in all I really quite enjoyed this movie. I felt it did its best to but the christian aspects back in while still making it entertaining from a non-christian audiances perspective, and I really appreciate that. Not everyone will be happy that the christian aspects are less glossed over, but I am.
Character interactions and attitudes were also much more in keeping with the original books. I hate to come down on Disney, but Fox just... did it better.


Tangled

Ill spare you the usually "Im getting tired of 3D animation" speech from here on out. The fact is: 3D animation is here to stay, american film has largely abandoned traditional animation, and thats just the way its going to be.
That said, this movie is gorgeous. You can tell that an awfull lot of talent and work went into this. The backgrounds are breathtaking, everything is rendered to perfection. The charcter designs are spectacular... and Rapunzel is just the cutest little long haired sheltered naive heroine ever.

This is I think going to stand the test of time as one of Disneys great classics. The story is very beautifully told, and fits right in with all of the other Disney princesses.
Rapunzel, while being as stated very sheltered and naive, is unique in totally not being helpless at all. This girl will kick some ass with her frying pan, I tell you.
It also includes one of the most memorable animal sidekicks; the cameleon is absolutly adorable and hilarious. Never talks, but my word the animators did some brilliant work with facial expressions alone.

The villainess is very well done, and what was even more interesting is her relationship with Rapunzel, who belives her to be her mother.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys fairy tales and disney princess movies, to anyone who enjoys animation, music, or romance.