The abyss of the darkness

So I'm using my Surface 3 as my main machine. After some work I've been able to do a bit more recording for Beyond the Beyond but ePSXe 1.6 won't load ISOs for me. The recording I've done has been in ePSXe 2.0.5. I wish I could say it went smoothly but there have been issues with zoom (necessary to read at high resolutions on this screen) and the emulator still has a bit of stutter for no clear reason. I'm about halfway through update 90 as I type this and then comes the hard work of a dungeon crawl that I've started. Got a bit confused on one of the puzzles so I stopped recording to work on it.

It's been some time since my last update and the reason is that I didn't have an internet connection for four months. NaNoWriMo went fine. I checked in on Thanskgiving with 80k words and finished the month with 100k words. I didn't get to update my word count after Thanksgiving though. Bummer! Did I write a complete novel? Ha, ha, ha! Of course not! I never manage to do that. Then I spent a whole bunch of time working on things that never get mentioned here instead of anything for Beyond the Beyond.

So I started my day with a hardware failure with my work machine. (I still have my Surface 3 but that has certain limitations.) I might be able to bootstrap parts to get it working again but I can't make any promises. Money is extremely tight here so buying hardware is out of the picture.

Just thought I should put up a notice in case.

So, as anyone who has followed my work over the last few years might guess, I've played quite a bit of the Sega CD game Dark Wizard. I do love the game despite its many flaws. Today though is a post on how information about obscure games like Dark Wizard is often inaccurate. Specifically I'm talking about the game's Wikipedia page. (Go ahead and read it if you haven't. It's short.)

I'm going to quote some parts of the article and explain where they... aren't quite accurate.

"His anger towards Gilliam and the kingdom of Cheshire grew, and he used his knowledge of forbidden spells to summon four demon generals to conquer Cheshire while he attempted to free the dark god Arliman."

I'll ignore the rather run-on nature of this one sentence and how it should be broken up into two or three separate statements. No, what I want to point out is that Velonese does not summon the "four demon generals" as if he opened a gate and four demons answered the call. He literally creates them from his own body. Velonese performs a ritual that separates four ribs from his immortal body and each transforms into one of the demons. They are a part of Velonese which is why he is able to command them as well as why he can resurrect them with the Call Undead spell.

The game's english manual agrees with this. On pages 3 and 4 it states "Velonese used his forbidden knowledge to summon four elemental demons from his own body and ordered them to wage war on Cheshire while he made preparations to break the seal on the Jewel of Darkness and free Arliman."

So close Wikipedia. So close.

"There is no canonical link between the four characters and their stories, and Armer IX, while seemingly the rightful heir, does not appear to exist in the other three scenarios."

This statement is simply wrong. Amon only appears in his own scenario but other vampires take over the town of Loa in every scenario with the same plan of increasing their number. Amon is presumably somewhere in the world keeping a low profile. The other three rulers as well as the lieutenants of the four scenarios do appear. They're civilians going about their lives in their various towns. Finding them all is actually something of a treat. They don't fight because in those alternate stories their paths diverged and they ended up not being motivated to serve the king, embark on adventure, seek revenge, or what have you.

Armer IX can be easily found in the other scenarios. He's in the tavern in Cheshire Town which is right next to Cheshire Castle. If a member of the Holy Army enters and talks to people he'll walk up and insist that he's the rightful ruler of Cheshire. He even does it during Amon's scenario when Armer VIII is thought to still be alive! This isn't some esoteric thing either. It's well known among the fanbase.

On a final note Armer VIII is called Wynrick VIII in the game's english manual. His son is named Armer. No numbers after that name. He's just simply Armer. However there's no Armer in the internal file names of the battle sprites. There is, however, a WENREEK____. It's file MLUNI096.BIN and yes that file is Armer IX's battle scene sprites. I checked. Somewhere along the line Wenreek/Wynrick got changed to Armer but didn't propagate all the way down the line by the time the manual was written.

Anyone who knows anything about Wikipedia has probably already heard how inherently unreliable it is as a source. (Check the citations!) My point in writing this entry is just to point out a couple of errors as someone who doesn't know everything about the game but has definitely played it enough to spot such blatant errors.

This is just a short update to note that there won't be a new installment of Beyond the Beyond on Sunday, July 3rd or Monday, July 4th. I don't actually do anything to celebrate that holiday here in the U.S. but I have been busy with Shining Force 2 and have been occupied with other matters. When Beyond the Beyond resumes it has to cover some of the last updates in Marion and Bandore then grinding before we can move on to near endgame stuff.