From the Ledger of the Apothecary

March 18th in the year 18 of our Lord the Goddess - Our town remains under siege. The fowl archmage Domminous sent his minions to raze our crops a fortnight ago, and despite the best efforts of our stoutest warriors, vile creatures decimated our foodstuffs. Needless to say, my shoppe has been ill-trafficked since. Who has the gold for an apothecary's humble curatives and medicines with the price of bread as it is? 

There was but one disturbance at my shoppe today. A spiky haired malcontent, along with a small group of his preposterously dressed friends entered shortly after midday. Having never seen them before, I felt it my duty to investigate, with our town in such distress. They told me tales of their adventures. Upon hearing their unbelievable stories of magic and heroism, I burst into uproarious laughter! These runts told me their aim to defeat Domminous and free the town from his tyranny! It is good to laugh in times as Goddessless as these. 

I sold them 4 curative herbs for my usual rate. 

March 20th in the year 18 of our Lord the Goddess - Oh, Goddess be praised! Our unlikely saviors were the very angst-riddled young men and hot underage women I had dismissed in this ledger not two days ago! Domminous has been riven from the crypts beneath our town, banished across the sea! How I lament my unbelief in these heros! How I lament my crisis of faith in the Goddess! 

I sold them 8 curative herbs at my usual rate. 

April 13th in the year 18 of our Lord the Goddess - It has been difficult, but our little hamlet has nearly rebuilt all the thatch huts damaged in the great siege of Domminus. The crops have been replanted, and my little daughter is not afraid of our pet Dzrogoid any longer. 

Oh, I forget myself! I saw those young malcontents that saved our little village just last lunar month! They told me they were "grinding" nearby. I sussed that this must have been slang for "hunting," as they produced numerous Rungaard hides to sell me. Young people! 

I bought 14 hides at my usual rate, and sold one regeneration potion and 18 curative herbs at my usual rate. 

September 8th in the year 18 of our Lord the Goddess - Although our crops were hastily planted late in the season, they are coming up as thick and hearty as I've seen in all my years. Thank the Goddess! 

Although I am pleased to see our little town as hearty and healthy as it is, I must admit that it is not good for business. Why, my only customers this year have been those heroic adventures that rid our town of pestilence and cast the vile archmage Domminus aside! If only they returned to our quaint little hometown...

I would sell them all sorts of magicks and potions at my usual rate. 

February 17th in the year 19 of our Lord the Goddess - The sky has been blotted black and the island of Islaterra is floating in the sky above our little hamlet. The world is doomed. 

Those adventurers came back today, and I sold them 80 mondo curatives and 4 restoration potions at my usual rate.

 
Not that it matters. The era of Man is ending and the era of Death has begun!

 
February 18th in the year 19 of our Lord the Goddess - My dour disposition has besmirched my ledger yet again! Another miracle at the hands of that spiky haired young lad and his fair lasses! Islaterra is back in the sea, the sun is back in the sky, and (not to be too self-centered) the large purchase of curatives and restoration potions yesterday has filled my coffers! 

Our town threw a large celebration to honor the adventurers, and although we are not as important as cities like Unberpang or Quar the heros deigned to feast with our mayor and participate in a parade. My little one ran next to the enigmatic leader of the group during the festivities and handed him a doll made out of her own hair. 

He handed her two gold slivers - my usual rate. 

COLUMN: 'Jumping Really, Really High': There's Only One Way to Go: Up!

['Jumping Really, Really High' is a semi-annual column by professional jumping enthusiast The Dude From the Legend of Kage - pronounced "KAH-GAY" - the protagonist in Taito's seminal arcade and NES title Legend of Kage. In this installment, Dude From Kage comments on the recent innovations in super huge jumping on display at E3 and dispenses some advice for newcomers to the genre.]

The humble jump is a most basic action to perform in a videogame. For many players of games, older ones in particular, jumping is the action performed more often than any other, if we were to add every single jump ever attempted together. That is to say, you've jumped over more things than you have shot with guns, ducked under, punched, hit with sword, and so on in your gaming career.

There is a sensible reason for this. In 2D space, which I have spent my entire career occupying, the jump is the most elegant solution to many design problems creators and players face. Although you in the 3D space may not spend your days jumping constantly to avoid obstacles, you have a major ability unavailable to me - lateral movement. When confronted with a pit in real life, you can just step around it or find an alternate path to your destination. Ninjas and wizards are more difficult to circumvent, but if you attack the problem with patience and dedication, there is nothing those fiends can do to you. I envy this.

What works in real life does not always translate well to your 3D games, of course. The potential for getting lost is a real worry in 3D, and the confusing wireframe maps and tiresome need to control the camera must make finding destinations difficult! I am lucky insofar as my destination is always hundreds of feet to my left or thousands of feet above that river in the second stage. Those ninjas must have taken my gal in one of those two directions; there's no other place for me to go.

In addition, your 3D games are dauntingly complicated. Your playstation or Xbox controller has 8-16 buttons (depending on how the D-pad is utilized) and two analog sticks. Many contemporary games require you to use all of these buttons to do anything neat. Two buttons for my throwing star and sword attacks and a working d-pad to jump 90 feet into the air -- that was all The Legend of Kage needed to be fun. Okay, it could have used tighter controls. Any level design wouldn't have hurt. Otherwise, though -- perfect.

However, videogames are in three dimensions today, with obvious and awesome exceptions like The Legend of Kage 2 - coming to America soon on your DS! This shift briefly put a damper on the jump, because in realistic 3D space, one in which objects appear to have depth and weight, things could look very silly and cheap if no laws of physics get obeyed.

As the main hero in the Legend of Kage, however, the humble jump was merely a starting point. After all, I could uncontrollably leap like 90 feet into the air, throwing ninja stars in 8 directions, limbs akimbo. Indeed, my jumping was truly a marvelous thing to behold.

I am ashamed to admit that I grew cocky in the past 15 years, certain that my record for "most ridiculous jump height" was safe forever. Until 2007, my closest competition was Mighty Bomb Jack, but his crippling addiction to eating things he found on the floor of a castle shattered his hops, his health, and his dreams.

However, in the wake of Crackdown's massive success, a whole slew of 3D superhero games is 'acoming this way: Prototype; Infamous; Spiderman Friend or Foe; Mirror's Edge (sorta) and I'm sure a lot of other dumb games I haven't heard of yet -- games with big jumps.

As an expert in the field of jumping, I have some advice for the developers of these types of games:

• IMPRECISE CONTROL TO ENHANCE VERISIMILITUDE - So you know when you jump off, like, a tree branch forty feet up in the air in The Legend of Kage you have absolutely no way to gauge your landing spot? Definitely keep that mechanic in your 3D games. That's what makes it cool.
  
• DESIGN LARGE, ARBITRARY ENVIRONMENTS TO TRAVERSE - Don't worry if the layouts don't make any sense -- force players to move in unintuitive ways. They'll love you for it!
  
• WORTHLESS SWORDS - What kind of jumping game would empower the player with something like a useful melee attack? A jumping game with no balls, that's what.
  
• EPIC CINEMAS - The Legend of Kage was one of the first Nintendo games to open with a cinema. In it, my girlfriend or mother or sister or whatever gets kidnapped by an evil blue ninja. There's no dialog. There doesn't need to be. Remember: whoever plays your games is going to want motivation and production values.
  
• PUT SOME AWESOME KABUKI WIZARDS SOMEWHERE - Those things were awesome.

Listen to my advice and you're game will be remembered 23 years later. It may not be remembered fondly, but it'll be remembered.