January 30, 2008

Tea Society of a Witch

Waaay way back in time, more than 25 years ago, the big thing in video was laserdisc. I owned one of the original Pioneer 1000 players, and had a really large collection of LD's before I finally gave up on the format.

In addition to being far-and-away the highest quality way of getting video into the home (leaving contemporary videocassette players in the dust) the LD format made possible a degree of experimental stuff. One of the early experiments was a series called "Mysterydisc".

It wasn't really any too good, actually. But it was interesting. You got to watch live video segments and make branching choices, leading to one of 16 possible endings. They were murder mysteries, and at the end you were given a menu that contained a formula. It was sort of a "Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the candlestick" kind of thing, only that wasn't what it was. You'd pick one from column A, multiply its choice number by 100; one from column B multiplied by 10, and one from C added to the sum. Then you'd add a base frame, and use the laserdisc remote control to key in that frame number. The resulting frame would either say "Right" or "Wrong".

The acting was a bit hammy, but the one thing I do remember in particular is that the first one included Lea Thompson in her very first acting credit. (It amazes me to this day that she was able to survive having "Howard the Duck" on her resume and still go on to a long and successful acting career.)

I kind of hoped that's sort of what Tea Society of a Witch would be like, only better. I was expecting a DVD version of those "make your own story" books, branching fiction, where you make choices, move to the pages you're told to, and then get to read more. In this case what I was hoping for was a lot of animation in a non-linear story telling mode.

I didn't get it. This was an interesting experiment, but now I know what they're about and I won't be getting anything else like it.

The biggest disappointment is that there's very little animation. I thought I'd get the kind of stuff I got from anime. What I actually got was lots of static frames where almost the only thing that ever changed was the facial expression of the girl on the screen, plus changing subtitles.

I also rather hoped I'd get full screen images. You'd think they'd take advantage of the whole video frame, wouldn't you? They didn't.

The actual image area is 540*400. That big pink frame is static all the way through the DVD. So where do they put the subtitles?

On top of the image area, of course! Wouldn't want to obscure the view of the all-important frame, after all!

There are some segments where the characters move around, after a fashion. They're top-angled view, and the characters are itty-bitty-tiny, and they're 3D rendered. Individual characters stand maybe 12 pixels tall, and the only way you can tell which is which is by hair color. The only actual animation in any classical sense in this is occasional transitions of facial expressions. There are a small number of image poses for each character which consume literally thousands of frames of the DVD, differing only in which facial expression is placed on top of the static character art.

What this looks like is someone videotaping playing a low-res console dating game. Which, more or less, is the truth. This was a Dreamcast game and they took the art and script and made a DVD out of it. The original was eroge, but this version is scrubbed clean.

I didn't play it. I had a bad feeling about it, and wanted to find out if I would be wasting my time. So I ripped the DVD and scanned through it with Vidomi. That's how I know all this stuff. And I also know that the raciest it gets is one "accidentally go into the bath when she's in there" that doesn't show anything except her back, because she's hugging a towel. ("She" in this case being the redheaded one.) Best I could tell, the reward for winning is a kiss. (In the original it would then have gone on from there, presumably.) The box says it's suggested age 17 and up, but I'll be damned if I know why. Suggestive situations, maybe, but nothing happens in this that doesn't happen a dozen times a night on NBC, CBS and ABC.

What I somehow thought I'd get was interactive animation. What I actually got was a semi-interactive limited slide show. All of the character art for the entire DVD could be fit on two floppy disks.

Definitely not recommended.

UPDATE: Pete responds. He suggests I should try PC games instead, if I'm interested.

But I'm not interested. I already know what those are like. The reason I got this DVD is that I hoped it would be different.

There was another laserdisc called something like "Kid Disc" that I owned. It had a bunch of games, and two of those were interactive adventures based around live action film. You'd watch for a while, and then reach a stop (they could encode a stop on laser discs) and you had to pick a choice and then branch to it. The story I remember was something about a girl going into a ghost town. Most of the branch misses involved someone in a gorilla suit jumping her and chasing her in fast motion. (I just remembered that the other was about a haunted house.)

That's the kind of thing I was looking for -- but it would be expensive to do. At the very least you'd have to produce maybe three episodes worth of animation to create a decent animated game, and I get the impression that the market just isn't there.

The main difference between modern PC games of this kind and Tea Society is that the modern games are somewhat higher resolution, and the art is a bit more varied. But you don't get a lot more actual poses. The total number of art frames they draw for a game may be on the order of 200, not counting backgrounds. That's not animation.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 05:23 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 1062 words, total size 6 kb.

1 The one substantial exception to this is "School Days", and its sequel "Summer Days". Both games feature full animation, with a quality level equivalent to medium-quality anime.

(And unlike the School Days anime, you're not forced into the bad ending.)

Of course, these are very much the exception, not the rule.

(You should, however, check out Starlight Episode Zero. Not because it's a visual novel, but because it should it should hit some of the USS Clueless buttons.)

Posted by: renpytom at January 30, 2008 09:52 PM (vkkAp)

2 Everyone has different likes and dislikes. I'm quite sure that I am not interested in this. (Just as I'm not interested in AMVs.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 30, 2008 10:21 PM (+rSRq)

3 I played Starlight ep.0. It's quite nice even by comparison with Hourglass, but it's short. And it is not animated outside the basic movements (e.g. a salute). BTW, correct URL: http://www.adorablerockets.com/?p=714

Posted by: Author at January 31, 2008 12:40 AM (cFJHG)

4 This was very much my reaction to Tokimeki Check-in and Jewel Knights, when I decided to check out the genre.  Still, I have to admit to being intrigued enough to reload Toki recently, and worked through to a different ending.  JK, as I've previously reported, is garbage.

One odd thing I've noticed; I have to turn the music off, or every frame will take several minutes to load. The voices are ok, but the music doesn't like my sound card.

Posted by: ubu at January 31, 2008 04:11 AM (kMka0)

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