I moved to a new apartment last month, which meant taking down my 5.1 surround sound system and mounted speakers and disconnecting my five video game consoles, DVD player, VCR, switchbox, and 36" CRT TV. I knew this day was inevitable, and at one point I wondered if it would be easier to leave the sound system and entertainment center, which had been assembled in that room, where they were for the next tenant, and start from scratch in my new home. Of course, my budget wouldn't allow for that, so it all came apart.

Fortunately, this move had not been anticipated a mere three months earlier, when I completely rewired my setup to a) have five consoles connected simultaneously instead of four (I used to have connected only one from each manufacturer: Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft. Now I can have both my backward-compatible Wii and N64 side-by-side); and b) upgrade my Wii connection from composite to component. Given that recent surgery, I was familiar with what needed to go where and was able to recreate it in the new setup without much difficulty.

Since this reconfiguration also affected my DVD player, you can read the full details of what hardware was needed and why on my film blog, Showbits.

Title	:	Parasite Eve
Platform	:	DVD
Directed by	:	Masayuki Ochiai
Publisher	:	ADV Films
Rating	:	17+
Review by	:	Ken Gagne

Video games have proven a dubious source of inspiration for films. Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy, two well-known video game series, reached the silver screen this summer with moderate success. Video games and movies do not always inspire each other, though, but sometimes simply share the same source material. 

Parasite Eve was a PlayStation game released in 1998 by Square, the same company that brought us Final Fantasy. It was based on a Japanese novel by Hideaki Sena, as was the 1997 Japanese film Parasaito Ivu, which is now available to American audiences on DVD under the name Parasite Eve. The disc features the original Japanese audio track with subtitles. 

Both adaptations propose a popular hypothesis: that mitochondria, the energy producers of the human cell, were once separate organisms. 200 millennia ago, mitochondria and our cells entered into a parasitic or symbiotic relationship. The question is: what if the mitochondria wanted to be free again? 

Though both the movie and the video game are based on the same source material, I suspect the movie is closer to the original novel, whereas the game is simply "inspired" by it. Deviation from the source should not be taken as a flaw, however. 

Set in New York City and starring police officer Aya Brea, the video game opens on Christmas Eve at an opera house, where the star singer mysteriously sets the audience aflame. Officer Brea proceeds to face a week of deformed animals, strange occurrences, and mysterious flashbacks that lead her to a final showdown with a massive mitochondrial monster threatening to destroy the city. 

The movie takes a slower, more subtle approach to the threat. Other than the title, there are two Eves in this movie. Kiyomi (Riona Hazuki), whose name is the same Japanese character as her birthday, Christmas Eve, is married to the scientist, Dr. Toshiaki Nagashmia (Hiroshi Mikami). The doctor is researching mitochondria, which is inherited from a mother's cells. Toshiaki dubs humanity's first ancestor to have such symbiotic cells "Mitochondria Eve." 

When a sudden accident leaves Toshiaki with a difficult decision to make, he turns his grief into a newfound obsession over his work. His dubious practices and experiments produce a mitochondrial being with the abilities to change shape (think a more transparent Odo from Deep Space Nine) and cause people to spontaneously combust. 

Both game and film adaptations feature lackadaisical endings: the game, with a repetitive, anticlimactic climb of the towering Chrysler Building; the movie, atop a hospital where love proves the strongest energy of all. 

I generally find movies to be more dramatic than games due to the total inability of the viewer to control what's happening. Yet Parasaito Ivu, despite not being a bad film, fails to involve its audience. We feel strangely detached from the girl suffering from kidney failure; the surgeon who lives in shame after a failed operation; or the mourning, depraved widower. The lack of activity in the first hour of this 120-minute film does not help matters. 

Meanwhile, the video game has a plot that progresses slowly but steadily, combining the feel of both the book and cinematic renditions of the story. For example, a scene that occurs halfway through Parasaito Ivu serves as the opening for Parasite Eve. 

Movies often draw fans of their video game counterparts, but in this case, players of Parasite Eve will find little of the game's appeal in the film.

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This article is copyright (c) 2001, 2007 by Ken Gagne. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed without permission.

Original publication: Sentinel & Enterprise, 10-Sep-01

Title	:	ReBoot
Platform	:	DVD
Publisher	:	Mainframe Entertainment, Inc.
Distributed by	:	ADV Films
Rating	:	Suitable for all ages
Review by	:	Ken Gagne

Ever wonder what happens inside your computer? ReBoot, possibly the first Saturday morning cartoon to utilize solely computer-generated animation, first gave us a look inside the digital realm six years ago. Its third and most recent season is now being released on DVD by ADV Films. 

Set inside the computer Mainframe (also the name of the show's animation studio), ReBoot personifies computer programs and processes into a battle for good and evil. The evil virii, Megabyte and Hexademical, and "game cubes," inputted by the unseen user, are only a few of the threats constantly thwarted by the heroes: Bob, a Guardian from the supercomputer; the entrepreneur Dot Matrix; and her little brother, Enzo. The show uses technical terms as common lingo: a nanosecond is forever, "low density" is an insult, and something that's awesome is "alphanumeric." 

ReBoot: Season III comprises sixteen episodes, divided among four 4-episode discs. Each is a short story arc unto itself. The first disc picks up where the second season cliffhanger left off, with Bob, the show's protagonist up until then, gone, lost in the World Wide Web, leaving young sprite Enzo and artificial intelligence AndrAIa to defend Mainframe. These first four episodes are what viewers of earlier seasons would come to expect: wacky games, conniving villains, and devious plots. 

It's after the first disc that Season III becomes entirely unlike its predecessors. The second disc begins ten years later and features an adult Enzo and AndrAIa, who, in their own version of "Sliders", have been trapped outside Mainframe, hopping from system to system to find a way home. The eager, young boy we once knew has been replaced by a gun-toting, one-eyed, tattooed renegade. 

Being away from home for ten years has made Enzo cynical, and even viewers will find themselves longing for the familiar locales of Mainframe. One episode finds our heroes in an odd, random amalgamation of Star Trek and the Legion of Super Heroes; another is based on the old television series "The Prisoner". ReBoot has always been unpredictable, but in a familiar way; but with each new system Enzo reaches, we have no idea what to expect. 

But as the season continues, some fine storytelling occurs. The third disc takes place in the Web, while the fourth and final disc brings our heroes back to Mainframe in a series of climatic conflicts that will have fans on the edge of their seats. 

Every episode features top-quality computer animation, but it's the show's quirky sense of humor that makes it such a hit. Though the characters in Season III may be darker, the situations in which they find themselves are no less zany. The show's producers fill every episode to the brim with inside jokes, obscure references, and other gags to reward the careful watcher. 

It's curious that ADV Films decided to release only Season III of ReBoot in DVD format. The earlier episodes are less continuous and easy to pick up and watch without having seen the previous episodes. However, with a fourth season currently in production, it's possible ADV decided to allow viewers to catch up to where the new episodes will begin in as few discs as possible. 

Though collectors and enthusiasts will appreciate having ReBoot on DVD, both will be disappointed in the lack of significant extras included on the discs. The character tests and concept sketches are only a few seconds long each, and contain none of the amusement that can be derived from any moment of a finished episode. Character bios provide a few interesting details on the disc's special guests, while trailers advertise ADV's other DVD titles. 

ReBoot is a television show and was not originally recorded in 5.1 sound; the DVD audio is in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo with English-only tracks. 

ReBoot is a fun and gorgeous cartoon for all ages. Anyone who missed ReBoot the first time around should try to catch the first seasons in reruns on Cartoon Network and the latest episodes on DVD; not only are they worth viewing, but Season IV is something you'll want to be prepared for. 

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This article is copyright (c) 2001, 2007 by Ken Gagne. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed without permission.

Original publication: Sentinel & Enterprise, 05-Feb-01

Title	:	Space Ace
Platforms	:	DVD-Video
Publisher	:	Digital Leisure
Review by	:	Ken Gagne

There was once a clear distinction between movies, computers, and video games, the latter two still in their infancy. It was surprisingly early in the Eighties that these media began to merge. Before "An American Tail" and "The Land Before Time", Don Bluth and cohort Rick Dyer produced a game that, though simplistic in gameplay, was technologically years ahead of its time. Using a laser disc, they placed a movie-quality animated feature in an arcade cabinet, and allowed gamers to decide how the movie would play out. 

In Space Ace, the evil commander Borf has developed an Infanto Ray, which reverts its victims to helpless children. His first move is to kidnap Kimberly, the girlfriend of the meddlesome hero Ace, and to hit Ace with the Infanto Ray. In the clumsy body of a child, with temporary bursts of physical maturity, Ace must save the girl, save the world, and beat the bad guy. 

Space Ace, like its predecessor Dragon's Lair, has been rereleased in DVD-Video format by Digital Leisure. DVD-Video games can be played on any DVD (Digital Video Disc) movie player, using the remote control. There's no need for a separate computer, DVD-ROM drive, Internet access, or joystick. 

The game plays like a movie with players controlling Ace's reaction to events. Every two seconds or so, an object on the screen will flash, and Ace must move in that direction. Pushing the wrong button, or no button, spells instant doom. 

There is a brief pause after these events as the DVD player reads the input and plays the appropriate reaction sequence (either continuing with the game-movie, or playing a death sequence). The length of this pause depends on the DVD player: the older (or cheaper) the unit, the longer the pause. Slower machines (especially older Sony players) may have trouble reading the input quickly enough, in which case the game can be played in "slow" mode, which grants two seconds to make each move. 

A diamond appears in the lower-right corner of the screen when it is time to input a move. The button pressed appears in the diamond: yellow if correct, blue if incorrect. This provides a process of elimination for finding the right move to make. It also eliminates the timing factor of the arcade original in which it had to be guessed when to make a move. However, the diamond often appears moments before the flash, leading players to make rash, unfounded, fatal decisions. 

Space Ace lacks the humor of its predecessor, Dragon's Lair. Ace talks often enough to know that, for some reason, we don't like him, whereas Lair's hero, Dirk the Daring, mutely and comically bumbled through the castle. Ace's death sequences are rarely funny, with his lines falling flat, but Dirk would always find a way to go out with silly style. 

The audio component has not translated well to DVD. The quantity of speech and background music would normally make for a more captivating experience, but the constant pauses between input and execution precludes that possibility. It's hard to be attentive to actors being cut off in mid-sentence and music cresting as often as it is quelled. 

The game disc provides several extra features outside the game. For fans of both the game and movie aspects, Space Ace can be played as a movie with no player interaction. Roughly three minutes of uninterrupted audio and video give novices a glimpse of future stages, and some hints of what actions to take to get there. For historian buffs, exclusive newscasts and interviews with the game's creators are included on the disc. These clips from the 1980's focus more on Dragon's Lair and the people behind the games than on Space Ace itself. 

Space Ace was simple to begin with, and it hasn't changed for the Nineties. With the same gameplay and new historical footage, this release appeals more to fans of the arcade original than it does to the current generation of gamers. Space Ace is a short, mildly-amusing game, and an innovative way to use your DVD player. 

Space Ace is incompatible with Toshiba 2109/3109 and most Samsung and Aiwa DVD players. [note: in late October '99, Digital Leisure informed me that Toshiba has fixed this problem; "apparently all units shipped beginning in the summer have the new firmware. Customers with older versions of these model players can contact Toshiba and have their unit updated to the new firmware" which requires the unit physically be sent to Toshiba for the update.]

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This article is copyright (c) 1999, 2007 by Ken Gagne. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed without permission.

Original publication: Sentinel & Enterprise, 06-Sep-99