Deep in the heart of France the blood of a Gaul runs.
The show can be downloaded here,
or streamed here:
And the track list below:
# - Game - Track - System - Composer
0 - Asterix (1993) - Infogrames Fanfare - SNES / SFC - Frederic Mentzen
1 - Asterix and the Magic Cauldron - Track 4 - C64 - Neil Brennan
2 - Asterix (1992) - Rescue the Indian Princess - Arcade - Matsuhiko Izumi, Mariko Egawa, Michiru Yamane, Junya Nakano & A. Hashimoto
3 - Asterix (1993) - Rome - Game Boy - Alberto Jose Gonzalez
4 - Asterix (1993) - Pirate Ship - SNES / SFC - Frederic Mentzen
5 - Asterix (1993) - Credits - NES / FC - Alberto Jose Gonzalez
6 - Asterix and the Secret Mission - Surfing - SMS - "Katsuhiro ""Funky K.H"" Hayashi"
7 - As Aventuras da TV Colosso - Title - SMS - "Katsuhiro ""Funky K.H"" Hayashi"
8 - Asterix (1991) - Credits - SMS - Takayuki Nakamura
9 - Asterix: Caesar's Challenge - Magic Carpet Mini Game - CD-i / PC -
10 - Asterix and the Secret Mission - Title Screen - SMS - Nathan McCree
11 - Asterix and the Great Rescue - Continue - Genesis / Mega Drive - Nathan McCree
12 - Asterix: The Gallic War - Aquae Calidae - PSX - Doug Boyes and Dave Boardman under the psuedonym 2dB.
I find your heretofore inexperience with Asterix quite Gauling, but I respect the fact that you spent an entire episode on rectifying the matter. You made the right Gaul.
ReplyDeleteAsterix is laden with puns, especially the earlier works, and the English translations are really well done. I do get worn out on the "French making jokes about everyone else" bit, but the comics are very intelligently written, and pretty funny.
Nathan McCree has done some great stuff! I was only peripherally aware of him before today, but I hope you play some more of his music in the future(like Heimdall II?).
Heimdall II! So I WAS familiar with him. I played Heimdall 1 in the very same Vikings episode I mentioned on the show.
DeleteAnd his name did tickle something in the back of my mind, but it didn't jump out at me.
So you are saying the books are worth taking a look at? the UtopiaNemo stamp of approval?
I'd check a book or two out from the library. Asterix is almost all humor and no pathos or real sense of danger(as far as I ever saw); it's similar to those multi-page movie spoof stories they do/did in MAD Magazine. I'm more of a Scrooge McDuck or Gummi Bears or Mysterious Cities of Gold kind of guy.
ReplyDeleteIt might also be that because I'm older, it's more apparent to me that the main characters are always going to be alright by the end of the story. It ruins any sense of peril the authors might have been trying to convey. Not so with stories like Bone and Mysterious Cities of Gold.
But again, the humor is really well done. I know you do puns, and the puns in Asterix are always funny and clever.
I won't rely on Asterix for my drama fix. Got it. But you did remind me about Bone! I never finished that, although I started it as a kid. Maybe I ought to go back and revisit that...
DeleteAnd you are right, I am a sucker for wordplay. But that makes me wonder... are the books just well-localized? It seems that puns wouldn't translate very well.
The localizations are VERY well done, and though a lot of the humor is translation specific, they really try to capture the spirit of the original text, which is also (Osama) pun laden. To quote Wikipedia: "Most of these jokes, and hence the names of the characters, are specific to the translation"...."Even so, occasionally the wordplay has been preserved: Obelix's dog, known in the original French as Idéfix (from idée fixe, a "fixed idea" or obsession), is called Dogmatix in English, which not only renders the original meaning strikingly closely ("dogmatic") but in fact adds another layer of wordplay with the syllable "Dog-" at the beginning of the name."
ReplyDeleteThe whole Wikipedia section regarding the characters in Asterix is really interesting. It gives one an idea about how meticulous the puns are, both in the original, as well as the English translations.
Lastly, FINISH BONE. The art feels a tad more rushed toward the end, but it's still good....but the writing is thoroughly fantastic.
I may actually try to dig up a copy of Bone. I don't remember if I bought it, borrowed it, or took it out from the library. It would have been when I still lived with my parents.
DeleteI hadn't read a comic for many many years until I recently finished Y: the Last Man. That lead to me picking up Saga, the ongoing series by the same author. The time might be right to revisit!
Thanks for the extended education on Asterix and Obelix. I have been loosely aware of their existence for a long time now, but never made any effort to delve deeper into what they are all about. They are the kind of pop cultural icons that are so pervasive that you can't help but know something about them though, even if you've attempted to avoid them. Sort of like if you asked me if I knew anything about Lady Gaga, I would confidently say "no" because I've never made any effort to seek out her music, but if you convinced me to karaoke to her song Bad Romance, I would surprise myself at my ability to belt out ever single last word. Likewise, I somehow knew Asterix was a Gaul, without really being able to tell you what a Gaul is without making a circular statement like "It's that thing Asterix is." I even knew some of the music here, though that's because I'm a fan of Alberto Jose Gonzalez. Again, Asterix just seeps into my memory banks surreptiously without me realizing he's gotten in there. Not bad for such a conspicuous moustacheiod character.
ReplyDeleteI also wanted to comment on Phillip's CD-i to simply share this wonderfully cheesy infomercial for their system:
Phillips CDI:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiNB63slOtjQBozSLo8ngNs1kiQhzQBtJ
This infomercial cracks me up because it's totally ridiculous, but it also makes me weirdly nostalgic for the overstated tech marketing of the '90s. I think the ad might be more enjoyable than anything on the CD-i actually was. I remember the demo units I played in a Media Play store back then really only managed to demonstrate to me the discrepency between the marketing hype and the actual product. Controls for this "groundbreaking interactive media" were just a marginal step above Choose Your Own Adventure novels. Yet, I still feel like it was almost the future.
Ironically I was JUST starting to listen to the SMS OSTs of Asterix when I read this.
DeleteMOVIES? ON A CD?!!1111oneoneone.
DeleteBetter not let Pixeltunes Ed hear you bash on the CD-i. I’m pretty sure he is the sole evangelist for the system. He might ride forth on a wave of podcasts only to bring off-model Zelda and Link drawings down upon you! (That was strained, even for me).
I like to think of the early Laserdisc and CD-i game devs as street magicians using fancy digital misdirection. Or maybe some kind of old timey snake oil salesman. They have a premise that is so basic and bland that the only way to garner attention is by piling on flash. The flash in this case just happened to be “cutting edge” graphics.
And yet, it worked! At least… sorta.
Really the games got plenty of attention, the problem was that they couldn’t hold it. No quarter gobbling in Dragon’s Lair. I really need to get back to my CD-i focus episode plans.
I like your vision of snake oil salesmen hawking Laserdiscs, CD-i and other "interactive" media. I probably shouldn't give the CD-i too much guff because I am actually a huge fan of cheezy FMV games. I'm a sucker for campy crap. My friend (bogusmeatfactory) and I joke that we are like street raccoons sifting through the dumpster bins of gaming history for all the best-worst FMV games.
DeleteSo, I almost bought Asterix and Obelix: Kick Buttix for the PS2 as a result of this episode. I saw it on sale right after listening, but then decided I really didn't need it if it didn't have Alberto Jose Gonzalez in the soundtrack. So you were thiiiis close to turning me into a European comic nerd. :p
I may be giving the FMV games a hard time, but I spent a not-insignificant portion of childhood enjoying choose your own adventure books. So the format works for me too! But the cost of a paperback is a lot easier to bear than a laserdisc and console.
DeleteI have only played the genesis game, I think. I can't speak to the rest of the series' quality or lack thereof ... but! go to the library and embrace that comic nerding. Utopia Nemo sold me on it above.
So the question is, did you ever make it to the library to check out some Asteriix?
Delete
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