Steam store – Official website – Wikipedia entry

Some game genres are so rare, it’s a miracle when a new game releases in that style. I personally call this genre: stealth tactics. The actual genre is Real-Time Tactics, but I find that name doesn’t really cover this (sub)genre. If you have ever played games like: Commando’s, Desperados, Robin Hood – The Legend of Sherwood or Shadow Tactics… You know what sort of game I’m talking about. A game features a rag tag group of heroes. Each hero has unique abilities. They must get through big groups of enemies. They do this one by one to progress the group’s goals. The game I want to talk about today is called Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. This was the last game by the studio Mimimi. Is this game the swansong to close down this studio, or is it a game that’s better left forgotten? Before that, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below. A comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article.

Promises of amazing treasure

In this game, you play as the crew of a special pirate ship named the Red Marley. Each main member of the crew has a black pearl in their chest, granting them unique supernatural abilities. These unique abilities come at a cost of being cursed to a sort of undead status.

The Red Marley’s captain fell in battle, and now the Inquisition is after the biggest treasure of the ship. Now, the Red Marley’s crew doesn’t want this to happen. So they do everything in their power to avoid this from happening.

The story in this game doesn’t take itself too seriously. The story is written like it’s a Saturday morning cartoon. A story arc can be contained in one or a handful of episodes, but always has an ending. While almost everything in the story ends well for the main cast, the story and writing never looses its charm. I felt like I was transported back into the time I woke up for the weekly Pokémon episode. I knew that the main problem of that week’s episode would resolve by the end. Still, I kept rooting for the heroes.

One of the biggest reasons I kept rooting for the main characters is because of the voice actors. Their performances are extremely well done. They bring a lot of personality and life to each character. They make the characters stand out like real, actual people. This script must have been immense, since the characters sometimes react on the actions you preform with other characters. There are 8 main characters, and more if you buy the DLC packs. If you start counting how many unique voice lines that bring to the table… And that’s the tip of the iceberg. The enemies for example, when they come together also have unique dialogue between them.

It’s possible to write an article by itself about the world building, story and voice acting in this game. I can also assure you that when I write this article, I’ll keep gushing about it all. A great example is how the save & load function fits into the story. It enhances the world of this game. Yes, you read that correctly. When you save, you store a memory in the Red Marley. When you load one of your saves, the Red Marley uses its powers to restore that memory. Your characters also respond to your saving and loading action and this brings even more charm to this game.

In these types of games, the replay value is quite high. Especially since you tackle all missions in various ways and each playthrough is going to be different. In this game, it’s taken even a step further. You can choose the order to revive your crew. You can also choose the order to finish the missions of that chapter. I can assure you that your playthrough will look nothing like mine.

The main quest is quite enjoyable to play through. I actually became really immersed in the world of this game. At the moment, I’m playing through the final missions of the game and the DLC missions. I’m having a blast. Thankfully, I can easily start a new playthrough of this game. Then I can experience it all of it over again and take a totally different route. And maybe I can do the little side quests and pirate tales as well. Since, that’s content, I haven’t gone into too much yet.

Your playthrough of this game will take you somewhere between 27 to 37 hours. That is, if you want to beat the main story and DLC’s. But, if you want to fully finish this game… Oh boy, then you’ll have a game that’s close to 80 hours on your hands. I already mentioned the crew tales. But there are also mini-challenges you can go for during the missions to earn badges. Let’s not forget the achievements you can earn. Well, most of the achievements are related to the main campaign.

Now, I have one complaint about the badges in this game. Earning some of these badges is extremely tricky. Sometimes, you don’t get all the information you expect to. For example, there is a badge on each map for using all the landing spots of that map. But guess what, there is no easy way to see if you already used a landing spot or not. It’s a shame that some badges work like that. Especially since some of these badges make you go out of your way to play in an unique way. A more challenging way to spice up your normal routine.

Apart from bragging trophies, these medals don’t really add up to much. But, I honestly don’t really mind that. Since, it’s fun to gather these medals and have some bonus challanges during my playthrough. It keeps me on my toes and it’s really enjoyable.

Mindblowing abilities

I’m still quite impressed at how balanced this game is. Each character has their own unique abilities. It’s best that you always have a character with an ability that can move guards from their position. If you don’t have that, the game will actually warn you. You are going to make it extremely challenging for yourself.

Personally, I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and your decisions actually matter. Before starting each mission, study the map well. Try to remember each map as well as you can. Since you are going to revisit each map at least once or twice. It’s extremely important to choose the correct landing position.

You would think that the game will be a bit boring if you always bring the same crew into missions. But, the game rewards you using different characters for missions. You gain more vigor if you play with certain crew members during certain missions. If you earned enough vigor, you can upgrade one of the unique abilities of your characters. This upgrade will give you more and better tools in your arsenal. Now, these upgrades can make the game much easier. You can always turn off the upgrades while on the Red Marley.

In the introduction paragraph of this article, I quickly explained how this game works. So, let me tell you the gist of it. In this game, you go from mission to mission, completing various goals in each one. These goals can range for example from rescuing an informant or stealing an artifact. In each mission, there are various enemies patrolling the area. Your goal is to find the weakspots in their patrols and dispose of the enemies without getting spotted.

Now, getting spotted isn’t the end of the world in this game. Depending on where you are spotted, it’s possible to escape and hide somewhere. You just have to avoid taking damage, since your health is limited, and you can’t heal during the mission. If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to get swamped or overwhelmed with guards. Especially when a guard with a bell spots you, the traces you leave behind or sees a dead body. When this happens, you have a limited amount of time to kill that guard before the bell is rung. When the bell is rung, more guards will emerge from nearby barracks and swarm to the location.

On top of that, there are also some unique enemy types outside your regular patrol goons. The first type I want to talk are the Kindred. These annoying buggers bring something quite unique to the table in this genre. Kindred are always connected with each other. If you don’t kill these all at the same time, they will revive each other. But, this is only the start of your troubles.

You also have Prognosticar. And let me tell you, these are even more challenging. To defeat these enemies, you need to have two units ready. One unit needs to be spotted or attack the Prognosticar. Since as soon as that happens, your unit gets trapped. This trap will go on and damage your unit until the unit either dies or is rescued. When the Prognosticar is using his trap, he can be attacked and killed. But do it quick. The trap is damaging your unit. You are also stuck in place. This situation is dangerous.

It also matters if the mission is taking place during day or night. The big difference is that in the daytime, the enemies have a bigger field of view. During the nighttime, some enemies will carry a torch on their patrol. This gives more light to other units. They can spot you sneaking by if you aren’t careful. There are also various torches dotted around the map, and you can put them out. The enemies can’t stand torches that are put out and will go out of their way to light them again.

It’s also important to know if an enemy stops in their patrol to talk to another enemy. Since if you kill one of them, the other enemy will start looking for them. They will start running around and if you weren’t careful, will find your tracks and spot you.

Learning those little mechanics is essential in this game. Never forget the tools you have in this game! This ranges from the abilities of each character to how for example view cones work. There is something called view cone surfing. If you want to dash to another place past some enemies… Understand that a full color in the view cone means they will spot you right away. Stripped sections of the view cone will cause you to be unseen if you crawl by. Also, it takes a few moments of you being spotted and the alarm being raised. You can run quickly enough past an enemy. Alternatively, you can run from view cone to view cone. It’s possible to get past unseen.

If you are afraid that you will get overwhelmed by all the information of all the little mechanics, don’t worry. The difficulty curve in this game is perfect. This game also has solid character tutorials. Each character tutorial guides you through 2–3 rooms, teaching you the abilities of each ability and their unique use cases. At the end of each character tutorial, you get a puzzle room. Putting to the test if you can use that character correctly. During the game, you can always open your logbook from the pause menu, where all tutorials can be watched again.

This brings me to the abilities of your characters in this game. If you have played similar games, you’ll recognize certain abilities and others will be quite new and unique. Now, some of these abilities will have a unique spin to it. For example, your sniper only has one shot. But, when you retrieve your sniper bolt… Your sniper can shoot again.

There are also extremely unique mechanics, like your Canoness has very fun abilities. She can pick up dead bodies in her canon to launch them at enemies to knock them out. But, you can also pick up allies. You can fling them over a group of enemies. This will give them a better hiding spot. Or your Ship Doctor, she can create one hiding spot out of thin air. Or your navigator, she can stop time for one enemy, allowing you to easy sneak by. And your ship cook can throw a special doll. This doll allows him to teleport to that location. He does this as soon as you click the button. Oh, and if you place that doll on an enemy, it sticks to that enemy.

You might be annoyed that I somewhat spoiled things in the above paragraph. But I have only told the tip of the iceberg here. I have left out several characters in that little summary and they have mindblowing abilities as well. Each map is created in such a way that it doesn’t really matter which characters you take into battle. Since you can finish it using any of your characters.

The Swansong of Mimimi

When Klamath and I started streaming Commandos, I wanted to play a similar game. One I haven’t played through. Since I first started playing through Desperados III again, and that was beaten in a few days. Since, I really enjoyed Desperados III, I bought the next game from the studio.

As somebody who enjoyed Desperados III quite a lot, I was happy to see things return in this game. I can’t tell you how much I love the speed up button. While I wish you can adjust the speed of it… The slow wait can be annoying. Sometimes, you have to get an enemy right where you want them. On top of that, you also have the showdown mode. With the press of a button, you can stop time and plan out your units their next move. Once you press the enter key, either still in showdown mode or not, the actions will be executed. It still feels amazing when you execute a well timed attack to take out difficult set of enemies.

Something that’s extremely useful is how you can rotate the camera in this game. Sometimes an enemy walks behind a building or some rocks… So, if you can’t rotate the camera, you wonder from where you are taking damage. Also, the ability of outlining the enemies, ladders and hiding spots help with that as well. As you can see from my screenshots, I always play with that feature enabled.

Sadly, there are a few ladders that don’t get an outline. Most likely since the developers forgot to put a certain tag on them. I remember one in Angler’s Grave, at the top right. It’s not too far from one of the mission objectives, the informant. Thankfully, these very minor oversights rarely happen. Overall, this game is extremely solid and blast to play through.

The controls are extremely solid. I had to get used to one thing. To execute certain actions, I had to hold the left mouse button instead of just clicking. This sometimes tripped me up but a quick reload fixed that problem. I only have one minor complaint about the controls. Depending on the camera angle, there were rare moments where your character refused to go to a location. I suspect it has to do with where you click. Your unit always wants to look for the shortest way to reach where you click. Sadly, this trips something up in the pathfinding and your unti refuses to go to their destination. Thankfully, a quick camera movement can fix these moments. And also, I’m glad that these moments are quite rare.

Something that’s even more rare are some minor visual bugs that can happen sometimes. Sometimes an UI-element refuses to dissapear. I had that happen twice, when I shot an enemy holding down an exit rift with the Canoness. The stars indicated that the enemy was dizzy. They hovered above the enemy’s head after the rift opened. Even after I killed the enemy, these stars remained visible. There are sometimes minor visual bugs happening like that. Thankfully, they are extremely rare and sometimes are quite funny. One time, one of my units was standing perpendicular on a ladder when I stopped it going up the ladder. The only annoying bug was that I couldn’t retrieve two bodies. They lay in a remote part of Angler’s Grave. It was almost impossible to get rid of two bodies. Maybe, it’s possible. I don’t know, I honestly gave up and earned the badge of hiding bodies on a later revist.

In such a big game it’s to be expected that sometimes things can go wrong. But it surprises me how little goes wrong and how polished the overall game is. Scrolling through the patch notes of this game, I noticed that the developers fixed many issues. They also added a lot of new content to the game. The last update to the game was even a modding tool for this game. These mods go from chaging your character models to adding new maps. I think I’ll play around with the mods after I have fully beaten the game. I’m extremely close, since I’m in the final missions of the game.

Now, earlier I talked about the UI. The UI is quite easy and helpful. There are several unique icons to inform you where certain things are. For example, where you left the paper doll when using the ship cook. There is only one thing in the UI I dislike. And that’s the list of save games. You get a little screenshot of the location of the save and a time stamp. And that’s it. You can’t give a special name or note to them. So if you are looking for a certain save… you either need to make notes OR just go through all them until you het it.

It’s the only real complaint I can give about this game. There is just a lot that this game does right. Like how you can scroll to zoom in or out. When you scroll again at the max zoom level, you see a live map. This map shows where all the enemies are. The only minor complaint I have about the map is that ammo chests aren’t marked on there. Also, quick note on the ammo chests… Almost every character has the same visual for their gun. Now, if another visual appears above the ammo chest, it doesn’t matter. The ammo chests are never character specific.

Visually, this game looks breathtaking. The attention to detail in this world gets a big thumbs up from me. The world really feels alive and somewhat real. The little animation details for example when an enemy stops at a prison cell to talk to inmates… This is just amazing. The immersion level is even higher with that.

The soundtrack is very catchy and a joy to listen to. It made certain moments in the game even more thrilling. The music has been created by Filippo Beck Peccoz, he also created the music for Desperados III. The soundtrack really fits the game like a glove. I’m so glad I bought the soundtrack DLC,. Now I can add the music to my music library to play while I’m at my dayjob.

This brings me to the sound design of this game. The sound design of this game is amazing. I’m playing this game with a good headset and I don’t think this game is playable without sound effects. A great example is, when you get spotted. You not only get a great visual hint of a yellow line turning red of the enemy spotting you… You also get some sound effects informing you that things are about to go down. On top of that, the sound effects add so much extra impact on taking down enemies. This makes it even more rewarding when you finally take down that one pesky enemy.

One thing I haven’t talked about yet is how flexible this game is. I have touched upon that by talking about how you can only choose three out of 8 characters per mission. And you are encouraged to experiment with different combinations. Now, when you open the options menu, you’ll be blown away. You can change almost everything. The controls like the shortcuts for abilities can be tweaked to your liking. You have quite a lot of control to tweak the volumes, the controls, the visuals… Even tweak certain game mechanics to your liking. Don’t like the save reminder? You can turn that off.

There is still another thing that boggles my mind that was added in this game. You can create a custom difficulty. The only complaint I have there is that the UI fails to explain the differences. I find it challenging to understand all the settings. You get a short explaination about the setting, and then you have a slider you can set. But, what’s the difference between 1 and 2 on the slider? That’s something the UI doesn’t really tell.

When I was writing this article, I kept looking at my notes and thought: “Oh, I forgot about that.”. There are just so many things in this game. The fact that in some missions, you must kill enemies in unique ways. In one mission, you have to lure enemies to a certain location. You need to do this 4 times. You do this instead of killing them. It’s a breath of fresh air. You’d think that having only a handful of maps would make this game boring and repetitive, but no. The maps are not only large but also used in extremely interesting ways. Revisits of a map make it easier to start, but each area is used in a mission. So, there is still a lot of challenge in the revisits.

Oh, there is one more thing. The question if you should buy the DLC’s or not. Let me just tell you this, I bought the game on sale with the DLC’s included. I’m so happy I did! Since the additional content in the DLC’s adds so much more to this game. They come highly recommended.

Now, I have left out a few things for you all to find while playing this game. This article is already getting quite long. I want to leave some things as a surprise for people interested in playing this game. I think it’s high time to wrap up this review and give my conclusion and final thoughts on this game.

Conclusion of this treasure hunt

The negatives:

-Unable to add notes to quick saves.
-Some minor (visual) glitches can happen. Thankfully, they are rare and rarely/never gamebreaking.
-The UI of custom difficulty could have been executed better.

The positives:

+ A masterclass in it’s genre in terms of gameplay.
+ Extremely flexible with options.
+ A modding tool.
+ A love-able cartoony story.
+ Amazing voice over work.
+ Superb soundtrack.
+ …

Final thoughts:

When I started playing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, I had extremely high expectations. Mimimi blew me away with the amazing Desperados III. With this swansong of a game, they not only met my expectations, they blew them out of the water. This game showcases the achievements of passionate people. These individuals are dedicated to creating the game they love.

It didn’t take long before I fell in love with the cast of this game. The charm drew me into the world of this game. Apart from some minor things, it’s hard to find things to critique about this game. The only thing I can critique are small bugs that barely impact the gameplay of this game. This game really feels like a finished product and it’s a thrill ride from start to finish.

If you really want to find things this game does wrong… You’ll either need to be extremely nitpicky or just have the game not clicking with you. If you find this game too easy or too difficult, just tweak the setttings to your playstyle and voila.

If you enjoy games like Commandos or Desperados… You’d do yourself a disservice to not check out this game. Give the demo of this game a try, and see what you think. I wouldn’t be surprised that this game sinks it’s hook into you like it did with me.

It’s a shame to see that this game studio closes. Thank you to everybody who worked on this amazing title and I hope to meet your work in other games. This final game you all created together is a real piece of art. It’s a masterclass in game development and shows how well you know the community for games like this. I’m so happy that this game exists. Since it wouldn’t surprise me that I’ll play through this game several times now.

Before I ramble on and on about this game, I think it’s high time I wrap up this article. Otherwise, I’ll keep praising this game to high heavens and back. So, with that said, I have said close to everything I wanted to say about this game. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then… Have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 100/100

Wikipedia page – Official site – Official microsite

I love how the store credit system works on the Nintendo eShop. When you purchase games, you get golden coins that you can use as a discount for other games. If you have enough coins, you can even buy the game outright. One of the games I have bought with this system is Trinity Trigger. From the description, it sounded like an interesting and unique action JRPG, and I’m always interested to play new and unique games. Especially since key staff on this game worked on amazing games like Chrono Cross and the Mana series. Now, is it any good and should you pick up this game, or is it a game that you should skip? Well, in this first impression I have after playing 1/4th of the game, I want to tell you my opinion so far. I’m also curious to hear your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below. And with that said, let’s dive right into Trinity Trigger.

Just A Bit More

In this game, we take on the role of Cyan. Cyan is an average boy from a small village. He is also a treasure hunter that one day learns he is chosen by the God of Chaos as his Warrior of Chaos.

In the fantasy world of Trinitia, there are two main Gods. The God of Order and the God of Chaos. In ancient times, they used to wage war for control of the lands. Now, they chose a warrior each to represent them and fight the other warrior to the death for dominance. Cyan doesn’t know what that even means, but it might explain why he has amnesia, those weird dreams and that special glowing mark in his eye. In search for answers, he sets out on a journey, and that’s how this game starts.

When this game was originally teased, the main setup for this game was to create a game and story that was nostalgic to those who played old school JRPG’s. A lot of talent who worked on other big titles like Xenoblade, Pokémon and Bravely Default II were working on this game as well. I always find it dangerous to mention these things, since it might set the expectations of players way too high. What if this isn’t going to work out or when the story just doesn’t hit the mark?

You can never predict how the chemistry is between people, and it’s possible that they are unable to work together. But, it’s also possible they hit it off big and make something extremely unique and special. I remember how a game like World’s End Club could have been so much more with two amazing directors behind it, Kazutake Kodaka from Danganronpa fame and Kotaro Uchikoshi from the Zero Escape fame. Yet, that game was decent but could have been so much more if it had more depth and polish.

If I’m honest with myself, Trinity Trigger falls into the same boat then World’s End Club. Take the story, for example. When I started playing this game, an amazing world was being setup and I started to get interested and immersed in this new world. But, it didn’t take long before I noticed that this game hits all the familiar story beats you expect from a JRPG. But the biggest issue in this story is that it doesn’t do anything special during its journey. I have already visited a couple of towns and each time it’s the exact same basic premise that happens.

The best way I can describe the story is that it’s unoffensively bland. It does what it’s supposed to do, but nothing more. It’s a shame, since the amazing voice cast behind this game brought this game to live so much. I have nothing to critique there. The only thing that can be a bit annoying is hearing the same grunts over and over again while you are fighting in the dungeons, but that’s part of the course in JRPG’s.

Playing it safe

For some people, having a bland story in a JRPG’s is a dealbreaker. But, I can handle that if the main gameplay loop is enjoyable. In this game, you go from town to town and explore the town dungeon to become stronger and get new unique abilities.

The battles in this game aren’t turn based like in other JRPG’s. This is an action JRPG, after all, so you have to dodge and time your attacks well. You can even choose to ignore battles if you want to, apart from scripted fights or boss battles, that is. The combat system is decent and does the job. The only complaint I have is that your stamina drains a bit too fast, making your attacks quite weak against enemies. So, you have to use other mechanics like having better damage when you dodge roll an attack in time.

After each dungeon, you unlock a new weapon that has a slightly different playstyle. You can choose between which weapon you use on the fly with a weapon wheel. It works quite well, and it’s fun to figure out which enemies are weak against which weapons. Especially the bosses, since hitting them with the right weapon creates even more damage.

During your exploration, you can find hidden chests with items. Underneath the mini-map, you can find a counter with how many hidden treasures are still left in the area. I find it quite enjoyable to explore the whole map to find these hidden treasures. Some of the hidden passages are hidden away extremely well, and finding them was a blast.

Something I also really enjoy is that you can easily choose between which character you control. Some characters have unique skills and being able to quickly switch between them is amazing. Since, some enemies have a long range attack, and then it’s a blast being able to switch to a character that can use a bow to take them out more easily.

Enemies also drop various items that you can use to craft items in shops or at special stations. And crafting these items actually cost in game money. The amount you have to spend for crafting is a lot lower, but this is a mechanic I’m hesitant about. It would have been quite a lot of fun to be able to craft healing items during your exploration. Maybe these healing items were less effective than the potions you can buy in the shops. But then again, it might break the balance of the game and make you a bit overpowered.

You can only carry so many potions and to be very honest, I never really had problems with a boss battle or a dungeon when I was stocked up on potions. When you don’t do anything crazy and keep your stock high and manage your stat boosting items well, this game becomes quite easy. So easy in fact that boss battles become an endurance test and extremely repetitive.

Each boss battle has the same basic premise. You have to dodge their attacks and use the right weapon to break the shield of the boss. In most cases, this is the newly unlocked weapon. After you have broken the shield, you can damage the boss. If you have broken the shield 4 to 5 times, and kept hitting the boss, you have beaten the fight.

Now, the dungeons play like your typical The Legend of Zelda dungeon to a degree. There is one main theme and puzzle mechanic for you to solve. Once you reached the final room of the dungeon, you fight a final boss and progress in the game. When I think about it, the structure of this game resembles 2D Zelda games here and there. And maybe, the structure of a Zelda game would have fit the game better than an action JRPG. Since, I wouldn’t be surprised if players drop this game and call it repetitive. Since, it really is. I tried to play this game in longer sessions, but I started to feel bored after playing it for an hour or two. Yet, I kept enjoying myself with the game while playing it on my 30-minute train ride from and to work.

Middle of the Road

The more I play this game, the more I feel like this game could have been so much more. The basic foundation of this game is rock solid, and I barely have anything to critique there. Like the controls and the UI for example. The controls are extremely responsive and a blast to work with.

Now, the other characters are AI controlled. Overall, the AI does an okay job following you and aiding you in combat, but it can do some brain-dead actions as well. One of the dungeons where it frustrated me to no end was the ice dungeon, where your AI allies slid into the spikes every single time.

Visually, this game looks pretty decent. There is quite a lot of detail put into this world and the underused area exclusive mechanics are quite a lot of fun to play with. For example, I love how in the forest area the mushrooms can have different effects depending on the color. Especially the one that allows you to light up the area.

But then you have moments where some textures are bland and look like they are from an earlier generation, creating a mismatch. And on top of that, some battle animations can’t be canceled. And the final attack of the bow is just silly. Yet, if a certain attack is in progress, you can’t switch weapons. This is something that annoyed me quite a lot as well.

The soundtrack of this game is quite enjoyable. It fits the atmosphere of the game like a glove. Overall, this orchestral soundtrack is a joy to listen too. But, there are some tracks that are a bit too short and the rather repetitive melody isn’t it doing any favors. Thankfully, these tracks don’t appear to often so I don’t mind it too hard.

The sound effects are pretty good too. I’d recommend that you use the option menu to tweak the sound balancing to your liking, since the basic sound balancing is a bit off when it comes to the balance between sound effects and music. I had to lower the music a little bit so I could hear the important sound effects better during battles.

This game really feels like it’s walking the middle of the road here. My biggest complaint with this game is that it lacks depth in almost every aspect of the game. And it’s just that lack of depth that’s hurting this game. This game has a lot of great idea’s like how easy to read the UI is, but it barely does anything with the stat boosting items.

The game also has local co-op, but I don’t see a reason why to play this game in co-op. There aren’t enough elements to justify for me to have a friend over and play this game. It’s just too bland for that. It’s a shame, since if the combat system was more in depth, it would have been an amazing feature. Now, it’s just another ticked box of features this game has.

Just like how some of the monster design is amazing and sometimes even looks somewhat creepy. They also telegraph their attacks quite well, so you can easily dodge them. Dodging attacks in time is quite important, since you can do special attacks or even more damage. Now, you also have your typical enemies like your slimes and bees, but they look unique and fit their setting quite well.

To be honest, this game is the perfect entry game for young childern to get into roleplaying games. I think that if you have played other more expansive JRPG’s, you will notice the cracks this game has and feel mixed about the game like the whole reception is for this game.

This brings me to the price. To be honest, I wouldn’t pay the full price for this game. The asking price for this game is 40€. And if you want all the DLC, it’s even more. Around 50€. Now, I don’t recommend buying all the DLC apart from the one that comes with the Deluxe edition. The other DLC is just a one time booster pack you can buy to make the game even easier than it already is.

The asking price is too high for this game and it’s length. This game can be beaten in 15 hours and it doesn’t really have replay value. I personally feel that 25€ would have been a better price for the base game and Deluxe edition should have been 40€. If you are interested by this game, I’d buy it if it were on sale. While this game isn’t doing anything new or innovate, it still manages to be enjoyable.

I’m happy that I gave this game a chance. While I expected a lot more from it, I don’t think it’s a bad game. I can totally understand why people don’t like this game or drop it. Since, it’s a very basic middle of the road JRPG that could do something unique but doesn’t. Now, the Japanese publishers of this game FuRyu have developed a game that became the basis for another larger game (The Legend of Legacy feels like the basis for The Alliance Alive). Maybe this game is creating the basis for another larger and better game.

If that’s the case, I’d love to see more unique puzzles in the dungeons for a start. The dungeons were so easy to beat and didn’t provide too much challenge. Maybe some puzzles were only the unique dungeon weapon has to be used to progress or even exit the dungeon.

I’d also love to see more expansion on the armor and stat items. I felt they barely had any impact in this game and I often forgot you could change the stones in your equipement to increase the damage output in certain cases or decrease the taken damage in certain cases.

The biggest thing I’d love to see improved is more depth in the game. Develop the town more and make them more memorable, instead of just a stop to stock up on supplies to go to the next dungeon. The side quests were introduced too late into the game.

I could go on for a while giving examples of what they can expand or improve, but I want to avoid that you get the impression that this game is bad. This game is decent, but not great. That’s the best way to describe this game. I’d recommend it to younger players who want to give an action JRPG a try. If you are in love with the action JRPG games, I’d highly advice you to lower your expecations. I’d compare to that animated summer blockbuster movie that everybody forgets about in a few months. It didn’t do anything memorable but it a fun time while it lasted. It’s a great snack inbetween games for me and I’m curious to see what the developer does next. Since, the potential is there.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about the game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

We are now entering the era of my blogging.  Not quite this blog yet, but an earlier blog I was writing that was not about video games.  Written under a different pseudonym, it was mostly to annoy some relatives in Nevada county by picking out amusing entries from the police blotter published in the local paper.

In the midst of that I recorded several entries about the big move that our new leader Mitch had been demanding.

I am going to repost what I wrote at the time, trusting my memories that were contemporary with the events more than my vague recollections of things that happened nearly 20 years ago.

In these posts I refer to our new CEO as “Tim” rather than “Mitch” because he was our CEO as I wrote this and I wanted to avoid being fired in the extremely unlikely scenario where these posts were revealed and pinned on me.

Some imagery the evoke feels

I have made some minor edits to correct awkward phrasing, typos, and my usual subject/verb mis-match issue.  Otherwise, this is 2006 me speaking, trying to tell a story that had been in progress for a while.  But at least I was about 18 years closer to events at that time.

• The Company Move – Part I – Posted July 21, 2006

Approximately five years and four month ago my company signed a five year lease on the building in which I work. The bubble had burst on the web frenzy, there was no more frantic Y2K buying to prop up the industry, my remaining stock options were under water and doomed to remain so for all eternity, and our director of facilities, in a move that some speculate lead to his being let go eventually, managed to lock in the sky-high monthly rent on our crappy building for another five years. (With increases incrementally over the five years to be, you know, fair to the landlord.)  [This was demanded by the CEO, who I have covered in a previous post.]

So while 7 of the 10 buildings in our complex ended up empty, we still paid the internet frenzy era going rate for office space in Silicon Valley. We would hear in quarterly result meetings that the mill stone of the rent hanging around our neck was keeping us from being profitable. Occasionally some optimist would approach the land lord of the day (the complex turned over owners 6 times during our lease, although I don’t know if you should really count the bank repossessing the property as an “owner”) to try to negotiate some reduction in our rent, as though the owners could see some advantage in cutting off their minimal revenue stream.

Three years ago we got a new CEO. We will call him Tim. The new CEO, a former Next and Apple Exec and an neighbor of Steve Jobs, hated our building from day one. He had degrees in the “science” of Sociology, so he would bemoan the lack of “warmth” and “energy” in the building. He wanted more “buzz” and a better sense of “collaboration.” However, he was also pretty sharp when it came to business and got us to a point where the quarterly results meetings included a complaint about how much more profitable we would be if it were not for this 60,000 square foot drain on our bottom line, so we cut him some slack on the touchy-feely stuff. After all, not many of us were overly fond of the building at any price, and having the CEO tell us it was a bad building only built up our dislike.

About two years ago, Tim started to talk up his vision of a new building for us. While nobody was keen on his disdain for offices (a view shared by our engineering VP, who likes to sit in his huge office and tell fond stories of working at HP after college where nobody had an office) or his vague quest for more “warmth,” he did also talk about better locations (which, in the end, meant closer to his home), better facilities, exercise rooms, cafeterias, and carpets that did not leave a bad smell on your hand should you accidentally touch them. Basically, he wanted something that we would admit to working in with out duress being involved.

Around February 2005 Tim announced that we were going to begin looking in earnest for our new home. Tim told us how “A” level real estate was available at a fraction of what we were paying per square foot for our, at best, “B-minus” space. We were happy. We got whispers from our CIO, a very competent guy under whom the responsibility for facilities rested, about the places he and Tim visited. Some nice places in in the north county area where we would share a cafeteria and have access to a full gym, one on Moffett (north), one on Charleston (even further north), and another place on Sand Hill Road (cripes, too far north!).

Tim lives in Palo Alto (and is a neighbor of Steve Jobs) and so he concentrated on locations between his home and our current office in Santa Clara. That meant we were moving north. At the time a Dilbert cartoon ran about his company moving and the fact that the new location was close to the CEO’s home was purely coincidence. I still have this cartoon in my office.

About a month and a half later, Tim said at a company meeting that the search for a new building was being postponed. No landlord wanted to commit space to a company that was a year away from moving. At the six month mark, however, landlords would begin to entertain our interests, so the search would begin in earnest in September.

• The Company Move – Part II  – July 24, 2006

September arrived and we begin asking about new buildings again. More whispers about places in locations not far off from the past list, though at least Sand Hill Road was no longer on the agenda.

We were told in October that the hold up on getting ourselves signed up with one of these locations was getting a letter of intent passed through the legal department of our parent company. Still, we had enough time to get things setup, get access to the building, begin the move in early February so that come April 1, 2006, we would be free of our old building.

The legal excuse continued until early November when it was announced that we were being sold by our parent company to one of our biggest competitors. [This will get a post of its own.] This is the real reason nothing has gone on since September.

We are told that we won’t be able to sign a lease until the deal is closed because our parent company doesn’t want to be on the hook for anything and the buyer won’t sign anything until we belong to them.  We are assured that the deal will close by the end of November, first week of December at the latest. After that, we can get on with our moving plans.

January 1, 2006: The deal closes.

During the second week of January, the Director of Facilities for our new company shows up. I will call him Smithers. He comes in and talks to us enthusiastically about moving. He is going to send out a survey for us to take so he can get our input. Some of us go talk to our old CIO. He has been given a nice severance package if he stays for a given duration and has been relegated to an advisory role. He tell us that all of his work has been tossed and that Smithers is here to start from scratch.

Smithers takes his survey and then talks to us about the results. He, at least, does not have a vested interest in moving the building closer to his home and through some very faulty calculations, declares that in our current general area is the best place, commute-wise, for our office to be located. We can see on his chart that he has left off the people in Fremont and a couple in Gilroy who would skew the whole thing south, but at least in the same area means nobody’s commute gets worse.

Smithers says he is going to hire a real estate rep out here (having let go the one we had been working with for five months) and that said rep will meet with the departments to find out their needs. Smithers will be off in the UK finishing up moving the one of the company facilities out there.

Departments without a lot of inherent infrastructure… people who can do their jobs at home on a laptop… remained unconcerned. My boss, who is directly responsible for a lab with 180 servers and the entire infrastructure for our software build system, was starting to get nervous. We got together our space requirements and delivered them to the real estate person who is working with Smithers.

She goes off to do her thing. She comes back and asks if a place that is all offices is okay with us. Well, Tim is gone, our VP isn’t opposed, so we say sure, why not. Despite the fact that I keep hearing different people claim that “such-and-such a group doesn’t like offices” I have yet to find anybody at our location who would choose a cube over an office.

Smithers gets back and tells us that they need to get some stuff together and signed, but we should be ready to move at the end of February. That gives us a month of buffer on the back side. That also doesn’t give us much time to get our crap together for the move.

We get shown the new location, the 7th floor of the Sun building off of Great America Pkwy, right next to Birk’s. [Which is still there!] We got in electrical people, cabling people, moving people, an architect, and started laying out how this was going to happen. We promised extra money to the contractors to get stuff done in time for the move. We cannot have any down time! We put in rush orders on equipment for the new place. We spend lavishly because timing is everything!

January 30th, moving boxes arrive. People begin packing up their cubes and offices. My boss packs up nearly everything in his office the day the boxes show up.  I put together a few boxes in my office and haphazardly toss some stuff into them.  I have collected a lot of junk over the last eight years and I suspect I won’t miss most of it if I just toss it.  Certainly my binder of S1 company rules, including the notorious “how to answer the phone memo” won’t be any loss to me.

We put up a floor map of the new building in an empty office. We let people pick their offices. Only a few of us have been to the new building, but people are getting excited. New stuff, the promise of a better building, something we were told we deserve, and everybody gets their own office makes us feel good.

I am one of the people who has been to the new building. The offices are 7’x9′ and have sliding glass doors with ‘privacy stripes’ on them that look like they are etched into the glass from a distance, but are in fact stickers. If you took out the desk and put in a double bunk and a toilet, it would be about the size of a prison cell. I am asked to stop using phrases like “Orwellian” to describe the new place. My boss wants me to be more positive and I have to admit that yes, the place looks cleaner, nicer, and it lacks the distinct smell our building has had since the second floor men’s room plumbing gave out last May, and that on the 4th of July we can all watch the fireworks at Great America.

About the second week of February we are at the point where we can do no more without regular access to the building. We get the real estate lady to let us in to do some planning, but we need to have the place opened up for us to get electricity in place, air conditioning routed, labs build up, networking done.

Then the word comes down. We are working out some issues in the contract. It will be a little more time before we move.

• The Company Move – Part III – July 26, 2006

Time passes.

Responses to questions about the move are few and far between.

Equipment begins to arrive. We find places to stash it. Routers, switches, a KVM control system for the new lab, 19 enclosed racks, power strips, and huge new servers are now sitting all over our building, waiting for a home.

People start digging through boxes for items they need. Two people who went on long vacations and expected to come back to a new building have to set their computers back up in their old locations.

March blows in. We are told that we will be “GO” to move on March 20th. Access to the building is just waiting on one more signature.

At this point I have to speculate. We are told that the hold up is that the owner of the building has to sign something to let Sun sub-let the 7th floor to us. Sun has no employees at all in this building, the company having pretty much collapsed into a shell of its former self with the end of the dotcom boom, so there is just a big sign on the outside.  But it has managed to sub-let the first six floors.

My theory is that, somehow, Sun screwed over or otherwise pissed off the building owner while sub-letting the first six floor because the owner is dragging his feet big time. The first agreement of intent needs the signature of the building owner, but if the owner ignores it, the agreement will be considered signed after thirty days. The clock on that started running on March 1st.

On March 30, the agreement of intent is considered signed. Now we can move onto the details of the lease.

However, it is now April 1st and our own lease on the building we are in has expired. We are now paying month-to-month which, according to our agreement with the landlord, means paying DOUBLE our current, already way over market rate per square foot.

Smithers goes to “negotiate” with out landlord to try and get that number reduced. Hah. I can’t imagine what a landlord with seven empty buildings can see as the advantage to lowering the income he is getting. Still, through some inducement, he gets them to change it to a day-by-day lease, so we have an incentive to get out sooner, but the price is the same.

And things grind on at the new building. The owner is coming up with all sorts of restrictions and such to add to our lease agreement. We have to change back any construction we do on our floor when we leave. We cannot change the air conditioning. We can change the air condition (because it turns out Sun owns the A/C units) but we have to put back all the ducting as it was when we leave. We have to submit plan and permits for all of the work we want to do (but we don’t have access to the building yet!) We cannot have a floor loading of greater than 50 pounds per square foot. This technically means that I, and some of my co-workers, will not be allowed to stand on the floor in our new office. Others will merely forbidden to stand on one foot.

And these are only the items that made it to me and I was not plugged into the process at all.

Meanwhile the contractors are pissed at us, and justifiably so. We promised them work, made them accommodate our schedules, and now, two months after our proposed start date, we are still stringing them along without paying them a red cent.

On or about April 13th, Smithers, under heavy pressure from his boss and the CEO to finish up this move, decides he needs a plan B.

• The Company Move – Part 4 – August 25, 2006

[I had delayed updating the story because we hadn’t moved yet when I wrote the July posts, but delayed the next installment due to unwarranted optimism that I would be writing the final entry soon.]

Deus Ex Machina?

Our current landlord shows up. He tells Smithers that we can have the top floor of the building behind us, which can be completely refurbished, and he will even throw in some money for custom construction and improvements, all for only twice the price per square foot of the Sun building. though he will lower our day-to-day rent to that price as well, as soon as we sign.

This is a Plan B on a silver platter for Smithers and he jumps at it like a hack writer on a mixed metaphor.

This change of plans will mean:

• The company will save a lot of money on rent in the short term, as the Sun deal shows no sign of being resolved any time soon.
• Rather than an office for everyone, only managers will have offices. Everybody else will be back in cubes.
• The move date will be some time in July. [Remember, I am writing this at the end of August.]
• We have to start from scratch on design and planning
• We will end up in a twin of the building we have been told is crap for the last two years.
• We have to find a new place to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Morale is down on the whole subject as one would expect.

All Smithers has to do to come out of this smelling like a rose is get the deal signed and get us moved in July. The duration of the work to get the building in shape for us is estimated to be about eight weeks. That is the estimate he is giving us, anyway.

April becomes May. Again news is sparse. All we hear is that the Sun deal passed another deadline that allowed us to walk away without losing any money.

May becomes June. A company-wide note goes out to announce that Smithers has decided to pursue other career opportunities, which is what you say when you fire somebody in management.  They don’t get fired or laid off, they go to a farm upstate or some such, like the employees would be sad to hear that incompetence was being justly punished.

June becomes July. A new guy is hired to take over the move. We shall call him Sanders. Sanders talks to all the departments to make sure that everybody is happy with what they will be getting in the new building. Not knowing how Smithers had built up a history of empty promises while ignoring everybody for the most part, he opens a can of worms. Jokes start about not packing any Halloween decorations because we will be hanging them in our current building.

July becomes August. Sanders is busy trying to incorporate suggestions as well as design and color scheme ideas. There is a plan to get better cube material and furniture. A committee is formed to review chairs and partitions. Jokes about Thanksgiving decorations begin to circulate.

August nears its end. There is no hiding that nothing is going on at the new building. We can look out the window and see it. We also learn that the previous eight week estimate was “very aggressive.” Jokes about New Years Eve in our current location start.

• The Company Move – Part 5 – September 7, 2006

We have not heard anything about the move for a while. One can look out the window of our building and into the building we have been told we are moving into and can clearly see that nothing is going on. No work is being done.

Still, we have been spending time picking out cube furniture. Or at least the people who will be sitting in cubes have been participating in that process. There were several different types of chairs to consider and the color and texture of the cube walls and how much desk space people need in cubes.

Managers have picked out or have otherwise been assigned their offices on the big chart that shows how the new building will look when we move in.

We have become used to the idea of the new building. The offices promised to everybody in the last building choice have been mostly forgotten and people are becoming involved with the issues involving the building in our complex.

And then last week an announcement comes out of HQ. They have acquired another company. This company is only a few miles from our location.

The first question in my mind: How will this affect the move?

Details begin to crawl in over the following week. HQ wants all of us in the same building. The new company is small, but not so small that we can all fit in the space allowed by the building behind us. The new company has their own building in a nice location and lots of space because they used to be a much bigger company until they fell on hard times.

They also have tiny cubes with half height walls. This tidbit has not yet made the rounds as it came from a scouting report made by one of the managers. And the cube material is all pretty much new and there is a ton of it, so we won’t be tossing it out to buy new cube walls. We cannot afford to toss it out anyway as this will complicate things with our current landlord which is going to cost us.

And then the question comes around from Sanders, the director of facilities, “How can we get you guys moved into this new building by the end of the month?”

I keep thinking this story is almost over, then some new twist occurs.

Let the wailing begin.

• The Company Move – Side Track I – September 15, 2006

There have been a lot of ripples caused by our ever impending move. At least one was to our benefit.

Back in February when we were planning for the Sun building, when it was thought that everybody would be sitting in a 7×9 office, accommodating people and their belongings was a concern. (It is again, now that we are all going into 6×8 half height cubes, but that is another story.) We gave serious thought on how to cut down on wasted space.

One thing that came up was monitors. All of us in engineering had 20-21″ CRT monitors sitting on our desks. Some people had two or three. They take up a large amount of real estate on your desk, and nobody’s desk was going to get any bigger. There was also some concern about the amount of heat generated by a big CRT in a 7×9 office.

As part of the plan to get us into smaller work areas, we asked for an LCD monitor for everybody in engineering. As it turns out, at HQ, a new standard LCD monitor had just been designated, the Dell 2001FP, a 20″ 1600×1200 native resolution monitor.

A pallet of these monitors arrived in late February. All of engineering got one. There are still empty 2001FP boxes sitting around like it was Christmas last week.

These are nice monitors. They are nicer still if you have a video card that supports DV-I output. The company was not going to pay for that, but a couple of people, including myself, had spare video cards at home with the necessary output.

So for the last seven months or so we have benefited from the move in at least one way. Well, most of us have. One engineer said that 1600×1200 isn’t enough resolution and he stuck with his 21″ CRT running at a very tight resolution indeed. He wears glasses and sits very close to his monitor and I do not wonder why.

• The Company Move – Side Track II – October 4, 2006

It had been a tradition at our old company over the years to have a “yard sale” to get rid of old equipment. The usual suspects in the sale were computer systems that were 3-7 years out of date, lab equipment, some older network gear and the like. Occasionally office chairs and other furniture were included. Mostly it was junk, but there have been some gems including a very nice HP oscilloscope complete with all probes and the manual which I bought then donated to a local high school.

Of course we are now part of bigger company with headquarters in the South. The company is ISO 9000 certified and has a process for everything. Everything it seems, except documenting and publishing processes so that those of us not based at HQ can figure out how to get things done. And even when you can get documentation on a process, it always assumes knowledge you probably do not possess if you need to read the document.

Of course you know, if you have been reading here for a while, that we are going to be moving to a small and less expensive location. Some day soon if we are not careful.

We used the upcoming move as an excuse to clean shop here. In a couple empty areas of our building we collected over three dozen 20″ monitors (because we have all those new LCD monitors I mentioned in a previous entry), five dozen Pentium III 500-850MHz systems, a few early Pentium IV systems, four Sun servers, a dozen giant, rack mount Compaq multi-processor (PII or PIII) servers, a few dubious laptops, and a variety of printers, routers, and other stuff that could only charitably called “junk.”

Nothing terribly exciting, really. I have better junk, or enough junk, at home already, depending on with whom you speak.

My boss ended up in charge of this sale, mostly because nobody else would take the job. He spent some weeks trying to get somebody in HQ to okay the sale. Finally, with the cooperation of other local managers, he set the date for the sale for a Friday in late April. The Thursday before the sale an email went to everybody at our location that the sale would be at 3pm the following day.

The next morning, in response to the many inquires, an email finally arrived. It was from the company controller. Nothing ccould be sold without the express permission of the office of the controller. Before the sale could commence, the controller needed have a complete list of all items in the sale.

An email went out to everybody located out here saying, “Yard Sale Postponed.”

Being very organized, my boss already had such a list, complete with asset tags and serial numbesr, for the items our department contributed. Other departments did not have anything resembling a list. Still, we had segregated the stuff by department, so if we had to sell theirs at another time, so be it.

The controller, when asked about pricing of the items for sale said he did not care about that, but that any money from the sale had to be sent to HQ to be accounted for. (Thus ended or usual plan which has traditionally been “Fund a lunch time BBQ out back with the proceeds.”) He said that facilities would set the prices.

Facilities, of course, had no interest in pricing anything and left that to us. Facilities did say, however, that we would need to collect sales tax.

My boss asked the controller about sales tax. The controller was not interested in sales tax, but directed him to some other accounting group.

My boss sent an email to this other accounting group asking about sales tax and if we could just charge round numbers ($5, $10, and $20) and then take the tax out later rather than having to make complicated change for each transaction.

The OAG (other accounting group) came back and said that charging round numbers sounded like a fine idea and certainly we could take the tax out after the fact. And, by the way, if we chose to sell anything for under its current market value, the purchasing employee’s W2 at the end of the year would have to be adjusted to indicate the financial benefit from such a transaction.

Market value? I guess this keeps companies from selling business jets, homes, and cars to their senior execs for cheap, but what is the market value of a 4 year old Pentium III 700MHz with an 18GB SCSI hard drive and no operating system? (All of the Windows operating systems were licensed under our MSDN agreement, so we had to erase them before we parted with the machines.) It has zero value to the company, we have depreciated it as a capital expense over the last few years. And how attractive does a $20 PIII system look if it might mean that it changes your W2 at the end of the year?

And while we were pondering this gem, an email came in from OAG2 (or is that OOAG?) who had been directed by the controller to account for all of the items on our list in the list of assets they have for our location. OAG2 sent us a spreadsheet with all of the purchase orders for the last six years listed and asked us to please indicate which item from our inventory matched up to which purchase order.

Our local accounting group never bothered to associate an asset tag or serial number when putting together this spreadsheet. But then, all of the local accounting people handed over their data to HQ as they got laid off at the end of March, so we cannot blame them. The list of purchase orders only showed vague items, like “computer systems” or, sometimes, just the vendor in the description field. There was no possible way that these two lists could be reconciled.

So my boss was just about ready to call the whole thing off and call up the computer recycler we had lined up to take away the remains and have him come over and cart off the whole lot. But even that needed to be approved.

I suggested shipping everything to HQ, since we cannot part with the stuff without approval, but he thought I was making a joke.

Silence followed. Not a word more came from HQ. This is not an unusual situation. HQ is frequently unaware of our existence.

Then, a few weeks later, an email showed up from the controller. The sale was approved. My boss just had to hand over any cash to our local HR representative.

Sale on!

In the end, very little of the stuff was sold. The dubious laptops were purchased for the boy scouts. A monitor or two was picked up. There was no mention of market value or W2s. No inventory reconciliation was demanded.

I think somebody did threaten to ship everything to HQ.

A week later the computer recycler came by and carted away all of our left over junk. And one of our coffee makers! Damn them!

• The Company Move – Resolution – May 2024
  

I never did end up posting a final entry about the move, though I can assure we did, in fact, move.  We schelped our stuff from the corner of San Thomas and Walsh, where NVidia now resides, our old building just a memory, to downtown Mountain View and the old PayPal building at 303 Bryant.  It was a nice enough building, certainly better than our wretched old space at 2840 San Thomas.

The series so far:

• Hanging on the Telephone
• Calling the Mall
• Finding Friends with the Popcorn Lady
• Jenny and the FCC
• What Your Area Code Used to Say About Your Location
• I Get a Modem then Start a BBS
• Tech Support at the Village
• Dominating the PowerBook Modem Market
• The Death of eWorld
• The Great Dial Tone Drought of 96
• When the Modem Business Ran Out at the Village
• The Village Attempts to Move Beyond Modems
• Anecdotes from the Village
• Usenet Newsgroups Part I – I find some Usenet Archives on CD-ROM
• Usenet Newsgroups Part II – What is on that CD and Why Your Hard Drive isn’t a Database
• Usenet Newsgroups Part III – Founding, Fame, Influence, and Foreshadowing
• From the Village to the Island
• YoYo Mechanic
• The Great Failure of Residential ISDN in the US Market
• Set Adrift from the Island
• Thinking on Enterprise Software
• Stock Options and the IPO
• Into the Telephony Subsystem
• Rambling about Speech Recognition
• Web Banking, The Acquisition, and the Start of the Great Decline
• The Special Business Unit