So far during the past 12 months I distinctly made the decision to not purchase a particular incarnation of two different games and this choice has paid off both times. Of course there have probably been at least 10 such decisions that I’ve regretted but I try not to think about that.

First of all, I did not buy Persona 3. I didn’t buy the japanese version, I didn’t buy the american version of Persona 3, and I did not buy the japanese version of Persona 3 FES. I did buy the american edition of Persona 3 FES for ridiculously cheaper than the other 3 options would have cost me. Upon receiving the game I promptly opened it up to make sure it was there, read the manual, and have let the amaray case collect dust up to this point but it will be there just as soon as I start playing games again. Which might be as soon as I can hold a controller again, which might be never.

Similarly I did not buy Flight Plan’s Japanese PS2 game Poison Pink though I was mightily tempted to get it along with and then after beating Dragon Shadow Spell, also by Flight Plan. Now it turns out that the game will be released by Atlus in america as Eternal Poison. They probably thought that “poison pink” sounded too gay for their core audience. In this case the savings is only monetary as I am not especially confident that I’ll prefer the game in english rather than japanese, but that savings is significant as it would have ended out costing me between 70-90 USD  total for a new copy of the japanese version yet a new copy of the american version will probably only end out costing me 50 USD. I will almost assuredly buy it when it comes out, whenever the hell that will be. Before Persona 4?

Well, it seems like the PS2 is holding on to life even longer than the Super Nintendo or PSone. But I have to ask myself why, out of all the japanese SRPGs that Atlus could have localized for release in the US they chose Poison Pink. It strikes me that considering the american market Dragon Shadow Spell might have been a better choice. On the other hand Atlus has more of a track record for “darker, more mature” (presumably) games like PP and the Shin Megami Tensei series (including the persona and avatar tuner series) and DSS, while a fairly solid game in general with shreds of darkness and interesting plot points, is pretty much fluff. It’s also marginally older and if my own experience with it means anything, particularly unpolished, especially the town/exploration part and the lack of amother fucking status and set-up menus outside of (pre-)battle. I suppose that another consideration, as to why they chose a Flight Plan game rather than an Idea Factory (the Neverland series of games et al.) or perhaps Banpresto (there WAS a shot that they’d localize Original Generations on the PS2 and its Gaiden) game, is that Atlus USA does have an established relationship with Flight Plan having previously also localized some of their (Banpresto Produced in japan) Summon Night games for hand-held systems (Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, probably not PSP, not sure if there are any summon night games on psp) and perhaps those have performed well for them. hmm… Now that I think about it, now that Banpresto is formally part of Namco Bandai perhaps namco bandai didn’t want their competitor in japan (it could be argued that atlus and banpresto formerly did not directly compete against each other but namco and atlus certainly did) to profit off of their product even if it meant that they themselves would not be able to profit from it (japanese companies think that way). That actually makes more sense the more I think about it because Namco is the company that originally had the Megami Tensei series and they sold the rights to it to Atlus in the early 90s/maybe late 80s and Atlus turned it into their signature brand. I’m sure that someone at Namco remembers that and resents it. But really, business is just money, if you put feelings in with money you only get money troubles.

Well so saying all of that, Atlus has distinguished itself in my mind as the only game company left that I buy games from just because they’re from that company. As opposed to how I buy Super Robot Wars games because they’re super robot wars games but usually don’t touch a banpresto/namco bandai game (other than Tales series games which have started to suck as well) otherwise because they suck. I used to be that way about Square before they tried to diversify and released a bunch of crap games which made me wary, and now after their merger with enix I feel like their stuff is more flash than substance although sometimes that flash is worth it (final fantasy XII was fine, dragon quest 8 was alright for dragon quest).

OK so that trivia about the megaten series wore my otaku senses out for the day. Now I will return to speculating on whether or not I’ve wrangled a 100% in the math course I was taking in spite of only getting 100% on < 1/3 of the assignments. I did however only get below 95% on a handful of assignments, I got 98% on the part of the grade that counted for 70% of the grade, and the teacher had said that she was willing to bump grades up a bit if people did exceptional on the final. So I thought “if a b+ to an A then whey not an A to an A+”? And messaged her, which I have not gotten a reply to yet, to see if she’d be willing to take my grade from a 99 to a 100 if I could get 100 on the course final exam. I would never have imagined being able to do that at the start of the course but I got 100% on most of the quizes and the last regular test so hey we’ll see how that turns out. Of course the institute has a retarded policy about not letting you have a copy of your final exam even though they let you keep everything else you do so I have to wait for it to be cleared before I find out what my grade is and can request a viewing. “request a viewing”, you’d think I wanted to look at a historical text.