7

ENTERTAINMENT FOR ALL

Movie Review

Don’t forget!

Check out the movies at

the newly renovated

Ohmann Theater.

Appleseed

Danielle Mammano, Junior

I finally got around to picking up this movie.

Let me tell you, it is phenomenal! This is an anime

film, directed by Shinji Aramaki, the director of

Bubblegum Crisis

(another great one).

Appleseed

is based on the graphic novels created by Shirow

Masamune, the creator of the legendary sci­fi mov­

ies and series

Ghost in The Shell

.

Appleseed

takes

place in futuristic Earth’s last city Olympus. After the

global war, Bioroids

were created, synthetic

beings with suppressed

emotions whose sole

purpose is to keep

mankind’s unstable,

war­starting emotions in check. Such Bioroids have

no reproductive functions and must undergo a life ex­

tension procedure every year or so, using the DNA

of a great general that was the basis of all Bioroid

creation.

When an attack destroys all the DNA used

to keep the Bioroids alive and her friend Hitomi be­

gins to die because of it, Deunan Newt must remem­

ber her past to unlock the secret to finding Appleseed,

a program that can reactivate Bioroid reproductive

functions and ultimately save the entire race. With the

help of her boyfriend Briareos, who after being mor­

tally wounded is now 73% machine, Deunan slowly

uncovers her past in this sci­fi action adventure.

This particular film is done in a very unique

manner: in the style of

“3­D anime”

. Any readers

who watch

Ghost in the Shell:

 

Standalone Com­

plex

on anime night on

Cartoon Network (every Sat­

urday) know what it is; the animators used it to make

the music video played before each episode. For

those who don’t, 3D anime is basically drawn and

colored like regular, 2D anime, but it is animated with

3D programs. In other words it looks pretty freakin’

cool. With Matrix­style freeze frame fight scenes and

some of the most unique Mech Units (human piloted

robots) I’ve ever seen.

Appleseed

is a must see for

the sci­fi fan.

The pros:

The use of 3D animation gives

more life and brilliance to the film. The detail is fan­

tastic; in some scenes, buildings and explosions look

real.

The cons:

The mouth movements don’t

prominently form the words the characters are speak­

ing and the expressions could be a bit more intense.

The creators being new to computer graphic anima­

tion, I can understand why this is, but I have to cri­

tique it anyway. Deunan looks somewhat bored when­

ever she screams, when her expression should really

change dramatically. The mouth formations have noth­

ing to do with the assumption the movie is dubbed

over; it isn’t. With CG works, they usually go back

and rework the mouth movements to fit English words.

While we Americans have been sloppy with dubbing

old kung­fu movies, we take our time when dubbing

a CG animated film.

Because of the slight flaws,

Appleseed

gets

an 8/10 from me. Definitely a good watch. The

graphics put into the creation of Olympus blew me

away.

Home School vs.

Public School

Stephanie Durham, Senior

Most teenagers today don’t exactly jump at

the thought of going to school each morning, myself

included. But just think for a minute about how you

would feel if you couldn’t. Just think for a minute

about being home schooled. At first the idea sounds

kind of cool. You probably get to sleep later in the

mornings, you don’t really have to get out of bed

and get dressed and you won’t get homework, so

what’s the downfall?

Can you imagine school without homecom­

ing, prom, sporting events, etc. You and your home

school mom don’t have a football team.

A study comparing home schooled teenag­

ers to public school teenagers showed that most home

schooled kids don’t do as well in college as their public

school counterparts. Home schooled kids also don’t

have guidance counselors to help with college stuff.

Where do home school kids learn about diversity and

tolerance? Public schools help prepare kids for the

real world. Home schools really can’t.

Old School Gaming!

This month, as promised, I will look at

Sonic

the Hedgehog

CD for the Sega CD. To start us off,

here is a little back­story. Development on Sonic CD

began in Japan at around the same time develop­

ment on

Sonic 2

began in the US. Most of the major

Sonic 1

staffers were in the US working on

Sonic 2

,

and it’s probably because of this shift in talent that

Sonic CD stands out from the rest of the series. Be­

cause Yuji Naka (the original programmer for

Sonic

the Hedgehog

) had left the company and gone to

its American arm (which was really considered a dif­

ferent company due to the immense hatred between

the two parts), development was handed off to Naoto

Oshima, who was the man behind the concept of

Sonic. This is the main reason why the game is so

different from every other Sonic game. There will

also be two different scores for this game. One for

the European version and one for the American ver­

sion. The European version of Sonic CD was re­

leased a month after the Japanese version and is the

exact same game. The US version, however, fea­

tures a completely new soundtrack. To be polite, the

American version soundtrack sucks. Anyways, on

to the game!

When you see this game, you will be sur­

prised to see how large it is in scope (at first). When

you boot up the game, you see a minute and a half

long anime opening sequence. The U.S. version is a

badly compressed one due to reformatting for U.S.

televisions. After that, you are treated to a title screen

with four levels of parallax scrolling and a fully 3D

Sonic. The actual game graphics are a little disap­

pointing, however, using

Sonic 1

sprites, even though

Sonic 2

had already been out for a year. As a plus,

though, they do have smoother animations. The

back­rounds are quite simply, beautiful, with tons of

things going on, taking full advantage of the Sega CD’s

expanded color pallete. The transitions from past to

future and the comparisons able to be made from

the stages are simply brilliant, and the levels are very

nicely put together.

An interesting gimmick in this game is the use

of time travel. The object is to go back in time and

destroy a machine that, over the course of time, de­

stroys the environment. If you do that before you

beat the boss, you get the

“good future”

. If you get

all

“good futures”

, you get the

“good ending”

.

Doesn’t that sound

“good”

? This also influences

game length. The game is made up of seven rounds

(called

“zones”

in every other Sonic game), each

with three zones (called

“acts”

everywhere else),

each with four time zones (past, present, future, good

future, each with wildly different level designs based

around a central schematic). That’s 84 different lev­

els! Far more than

Super Mario World’

s 60+ dif­

ferent levels but less than

SMW

’s 96 different level

endings.

Logan “T” King, Sophomore

Another gimmick about this game is its save

game feature. It uses the Sega CD’s onboard RAM

to save your game progress, profile options and time

trial records. Very few games had this in 1993.

One thing that may catch you off guard in this

game is the controls. They are very tight, almost too

tight, especially if you have played other Sonic games.

Sonic

changes direction mid­jump, as always, but he

does it instantly, skipping the slow down stage. That

being said, once you get used to them, they aren’t a

problem again. Until, maybe, you play another Sonic

game.

Another thing this Sonic game has different is

the bosses. Unlike nearly every other Sonic game ever,

these bosses are original and not of the

“just hit it 8

times to kill”

fare. Every one asks you to do some­

thing different. For example, in one you have to run

on a treadmill to wear a hole in the bottom of a ma­

chine that Dr. Robotnik is in. When a hole wears

through, you win. In another you have to race through­

out a level with Metal Sonic while Dr. Robotnik shoots

at you with a laser if you fall behind. Very fun with

each one a different challenge.

Now we come to the music. While most of

my Sonic­loving peers regard it as demon spawn di­

rectly from the devil, that’s an exaggeration. It isn’t

quite that bad. The PAL (Europe) version had full

instrumental rock/techno for each level, only resort­

ing to pop in the anime intro (and even then it was at

least instrumental). The U.S. version uses synthesized

pop (not even the techno/rock of

Sonic 2

!) for every

single level plus the intro. It depends on your tastes in

music, I guess, but everyone I know that has heard

both soundtracks always sides with the PAL version.

But keep this in mind: it is enough to drastically lower

the game’s score, in my case, as it should have taken

advantage of the CD medium like the PAL version

did, and it also doesn’t fit three game nearly as well.

So, I know what you’re saying. But, Logan,

how does your über 1337­ness in the way of Sonic

apply to me? Well, in all honesty, it really doesn’t.

But if you manage to get a Mega CD, Mega Drive

and a European TV, in addition to a U.S. Sega Gen­

esis and Sega CD, and a copy of both games for

their respective systems (like I have), compare the

two. I’m sure you’ll agree that the PAL version de­

stroys the NTSC version.

So, overall, I give the PAL version of Sonic

CD a perfect 10 out of 10. I give the NTSC version

of Sonic CD 8.75 out of 10. Game­play wise, they

are perfect and fully equal to

SMW

. They are both

highly recommended and are very different in style to

all other Sonic games of the period. It’s only that the

NTSC (which is far more common in America, be­

ing, you know, the only version sold here) version

has a horrible soundtrack that I can’t stand enough

that I went and paid $350 for a full PAL setup last

year.

Sonic the Hedgehog