The JRPG. An acronym you cannot possibly utter around a non-gaming significant other if you want to get laid in the next week. We all know the stereotypes by now. Pointy-haired androgynous super-teenagers who alternate between angst, incestual love, underage love, and beating up Satan.

Yup. I’m sure there are more jokes in there, but the sad fact is I don’t actually need to make them, do I? You’re all filling in the blanks now about oversized swords and convoluted plotlines. Don’t lie, you’re doing it.

Or watching clever videos about it like this:

Here’s the thing. JRPGs weren’t always about angsty teenagers delving into forbidden love and delivering laughably wooden dialog. (Seriously, listen to laughter in a recent JRPG. I don’t care which one, pick. Junior high drama teachers have higher standards). When Final Fantasy was first released, it was basically an unlicensed D&D clone with a recurring villain and the classic module quest about roaming the countryside in search of loot and assorted macguffins. There are no angsty teenagers in this story. There are no pointy-haired androgynous twats because the NES could not generate such a thing. Instead, you have to go off of that archetypal fighter who hits stuff.

Now, Square kept making a lot of these games, because, you know, Final Fantasy was pretty good. Two wasn’t, so let’s go on pretending that one never happened. Despite Square’s continued releases of it on everything from portable consoles to phones to toasters. Seriously, I don’t know who in Square came up with the crazy job system and kept it going for this long, but it isn’t great.

For the most part, these new Final Fantasies, besides being poorly-named, were rather nice.

Then, this happened.
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Phil Haymes joins us this week and once again brings the class and charm while we talk about Batman: Arkham Asylum, iMech and Dissidia: Final Fantasy!

Thanks for listening!

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SHOWNOTES

00:00-Show Intro
06:38-Drunk Dials
14:15-Mailbag
23:07-iMech Review (iPhone)
29:54-Dissidia: Final Fantasy Review (PSP)
36:47-Batman: Arkham Asylum Review (PS3)
54:42-Retro Review: Robotron 2084 (7800)
1:01:22-Feature Presentation: Philthy’s Guitar
1:21:28-Five Things
1:36:03-The Last Shot
1:37:53-Show Close

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DGR: 08.31.2009

Evening all, it’s been a long time. Due to the Writer’s Strike I have been on hiatus, waiting for justice, inspiration and the correct dosage of alcohol to return. And return I have.

So what have I been doing in the last – say – six months? Well the big thing is that after enough people kept telling me, I decided it was time to write my first album which I started probably around January/February this year and I’m aiming to get fully recorded by mid-2010. I also recently started up my own website: www.PhilHaymes.com which I’m using to promote my stuff, blog about the process of writing an album and learning guitar. The good news is that I’ll also be sharing some of this with the Robot Panic community too.

I’m currently about 30% through the writing of the album, I’ve got a few songs down in rough demo format and an overall structure/tracklist for the album. The title is ‘Bright Shadows and Dark Light’ which is based off of two tracks from the mid section of the album, cunningly called ‘Bright Shadows’ and (yep you’ve guessed it) ‘Dark Light’.

Ok so to give you all a flavor of things to come here’s a couple of videos of some of the rough tracks I’ve been working on:

This first track is lovingly called ‘Giant Enemy Pyramid’ (GEP for short) and it’s the opener for the album. It’s pretty shirt and this is an early version, the current one I have has a much better lead apart as well as a kick-ass synth solo at the end!

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Okay folks, so it seems that at least one person and potentially the PanicBot5000 (it’s never easy to read his emotions at the best of times) kinda liked the F-Zero Guitar vid I recently posted. In order for my ego to get at least partially satisfied I’m gonna give you lot some more.

So the track this time is the Gilgamesh Theme from Final Fantasy V as arranged by the Black Mages, titled “Clash on the Big Bridge”

Yes I’m wearing sunglasses indoors. Not just to fend off the bright light but also to make me look more cool. Rather than playing over the main melody, I added a lower octave harmony part to thicken up the sound. That and I couldn’t resist playing the keyboard solo which almost kinda works. Mostly.

So I made probably a whole deal of mistakes and stuff which is normal, but given that I look so damned cool in those sunglasses I’m sure you’ll all cope.

As you can tell by the amount of sunlight (and my lack of hair), this was not filmed in the last couple of weeks. Right now there’s more chance on me surviving on a diet of pins than there is chance that sunshine will rear it’s head in the UK during ‘summer-time’.

I have several more of these vids in the works and may consider doing requests if you desire. Especially if there is bribary or money involved. For all you guitarists out there, I may even consider a small video lesson or two…

Peace, Love and Good Happiness Stuff,

Philthy

Final Fantasy IV
Format: DS
Publisher: Square-Enix
Developer: Matrix

DGTV rating: 9/10

Review by Phil Haymes