[SamuraiGoomba]

Released in Japan in 2004, Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure (yeah, I don't know why it's an "advanced" adventure, rather than just "advance adventure") has the distinct honor of being one of a few Dragon Ball/DBZ games which is not just alright, but genuinely fantastic in nearly every respect. I love this game. Thanks to the Localization Gods, the US received a proper version of the game in mid 2006, while Europe got their version a good year earlier. Those cocky English.

It's interesting to note that in the localization, several changes were made. First of all, the song at the end of the Japanese version of the game was (I believe) an actual DB song taken directly from the anime. Such is not the case with the US version, which features a musical piece that could politely be termed "elevator music" and rudely termed a pile of crap. In addition to this change, the US version also swapped out the voice actors. Which is strange, because the voice clips are small enough so as to not really be exclusive to any particular language. After all, some guy yells "Kamahama HA!" in Japanese just as well as in English. Not exactly hard to understand. Hopefully I can get my sound working (at present I can't seem to fix the levels), so you can see that.

Anyway, on to the videos!

Viddler: Part One

I apologize for the Darth Vader Breathing in Part One, I've fixed that to not happen anymore (if only to make room for new problems).

*Links to bad quality Part 2 used to be here, but I'll burn in a cannibal's oven before I voluntarily subject any of you guys to video quality that bad again*

And next up, it's a better quality run of Pilaf's Castle! Not only that, but there's all new commentary AND I take an alternate path through the level! Whoo!

By the way, any desync or frame dipping is entirely the fault of Viddler. When I watched the raw files on my Windows Media Player, it looked awesome and perfect.

Viddler: Part 2-1(Better Quality)
Viddler: Part 2-2 (Better Quality)

Updates ahoy!

Part 3-1: Krillin is a Jerk (no commentary) YouTube
Part 3-2: Training Continues Viddler
Part 4: World Tournament IV: A New Hope Viddler
Part 5: Muscle Tower Viddler
Part 6: Horrible Caves Which Suck Viddler
Part 7: Land of Korin Viddler YouTube
Part 8: Goku vs Communism Viddler
Part 9: Fortune Seller Baba Viddler YouTube
Part 10: World Tournament Strikes Back! Viddler
Part 11: These Caves Blow: Part 2 Viddler YouTube
Part 12: Finishing Last Viddler

[Elitist Indie Hipster]

This is good stuff man , maybe when you do your run through we could har the game music. You dont have to though. I really think this is awesome i almost bought this game the other day actually

[SamuraiGoomba]

Elitist Indie Hipster, on 11 September 2009 - 10:14 AM, said:

This is good stuff man , maybe when you do your run through we could har the game music. You dont have to though. I really think this is awesome i almost bought this game the other day actually

Well, that's not gonna work out for that particular video, since I've already finished it. But don't worry, there's tons of post-game stuff to do. Not to mention that if I do any hunting for secrets outside of the main storyline (revisiting levels, say), I might just put that up without commentary. Without spoiling to much, let me just say that there are a lot more voice samples to listen to in the post game, heh heh.

[Elitist Indie Hipster]

right on man. I am pretty excited for this. Loving the game so far, great commentary, really its allllll good.

[SamuraiGoomba]

Well, updates abound. I'm uploading the no commentary run of Part 3 to YouTube as we speak (too big of filesize for Viddler), so hopefully that will be available sometime tomorrow (today, actually). Part 3 is just to show off the music and voice clips. Part 4 is up on Viddler (all the links are in the OP), and Part 5 has been recorded and either will be up on Viddler when you read this, or waiting for me to upload it.

I've got about a week of relative downtime before my college classes start up again, so hopefully the updates will be coming fast and furious over the next week.

[SamuraiGoomba]

Well, YouTube is finally working well enough for me to locate and link to my Part 3-1 (which won't fit on Viddler for reasons of my own stupidity in recording.) I'm putting a link in the OP.

[SamuraiGoomba]

Yes! Glorious day, I have hit upon the secret of actually dubbing my videos! From now on, post production videos will be the name of the game, unless I get complaints about it.

... Now I just have to figure out how to get fix the game audio not syncing correctly. Also, probably going to start working on a YouTube mirror now that I've realized how crap Viddler's quality is.

Part 6: Horrible Caves Level Viddler

Edit: Forgot that I uploaded Part 7 to Viddler already, so I've edited a link into the OP. Tune in for the awesome Korin-touching action. It's less obscene than it sounds.

[SamuraiGoomba]

More updates!

Part 8: Goku vs Communism Viddler
Part 9: Fortune Seller Baba Viddler

Also, I'm starting to feel rather alone here. Is anyone actually watching this?

[Elitist Indie Hipster]

I know i sure have been . Just trying to find time to watch them. Your doing a kickass job though man.

[SamuraiGoomba]

Thanks. Feel free, any of you who are watching this, to point out things you'd like to see or ways you think I can improve. I'm still very new to the technical side of making a Let's Play, so I'm definitely learning as I go.

Anyway, in the interest of productivity, let me delve a little deeper into Dragon Ball, the manga/anime vs the game:

Interesting Tidbit: Over the course of the manga/anime, time passes and Goku matures. At the end of the final arc he's probably about 16-18 years old. In the video game, however, there is no model for an older or adult Goku. For whatever reason, the game ends after the 2nd major story arc of the series, before Goku gets so old that they'd have needed to design a new character sprite for him.

It's not a problem they would have had with Krillin, considering he looks the same at age 10 that he does at age 40. Guy has a glandular problem. Not to mention his apparent ignorance of the existence of Rogaine.

Anyway, this cutting off of the Dragon Ball story means that certain characters won't be introduced, like Demon Jr. Other characters will be present, but we will not fight them or get to play as them. Those of you who are REALLY DB nerds will notice that the Fortune Teller Baba fight includes only 2 of the original 5 contestants that Goku and crew had to fight... Probably because of copyright issues, considering they were Dracula, The Mummy and the Invisible Man.

... Or maybe the Invisible Man IS in this game. You never can tell, can you?

[LeadingMan]

Yeah, I'll fully admit I'm a bit behind on these, but I definately liked the first couple. I'll try to post a more educated comment later. lol

Edit: Honestly the biggest issue I'm having is with the desync. There's gotta be something you can do in post to sync the tracks back up because for the first 4 videos that I've now watched it goes off pretty constantly.

Also, as an added note I really dig your commentary style. Very relaxed and easy to listen to.

[SamuraiGoomba]

Well, the first few videos I was not doing any kind of post-production at all. There was some desync, but probably not as bad as what you're seeing once it's uploaded. I don't know why, but Viddler seems to cause some of these problems. Anyhow, I've started doing post commentary, but really have no idea how to go about editing my videos. I've got Virtualdub, Audacity... A lot of different programs, it's more a problem of not knowing how to use stuff. That said, I think the way I'm doing commentary, I should be able to get the video synced up better with the audio. I just have to be a lot more careful with my timing in Audacity.

I could always switch recording tools. Right now I'm using Camstudio, Audacity and VirtualDub, but I've heard Fraps is really user-friendly. And some people like Camtasia. Is the free version of Fraps sufficient for Let's Playing needs?

Oh, and I'm going to mirror as much of this stuff as I can on YouTube, because Viddler takes my video quality and wipes its behind with it.

[LeadingMan]

So an update that's much more relevant because I'm now almost caught up. Yeah, it's the desyncing issues are pretty much gone once you download the original video which I've begun doing. Also the quality is significantly better, so basically viddler is dicking it up, as per usual.

To answer your question the free version of fraps is pretty much balls. There's a time limit and it may watermark your stuff. Both of which are terrible, not to mention it doesn't work in a lot of emulators. So that's probably a no-go.

You could always torrent the full version. (or buy it like I ended up doing.)

Anyways, these last few vids are great. Only suggestion I might make is to turn down the game volume a tiny bit because it can be hard to hear you talk and there's no real important dialogue or anything we need to hear clearly.

Edit: One last thing, your file sizes are kinda big. 500mb for a 15 minute update is a lot and it takes forever to load. If you can, shrink the bitrate down to around 1.2 to 1.3. For a pixel game the lower bitrate is fine. It's not like this is Crysis.

For example by Blood Omen 2 stuff is only around 250-300 meg and they're 30 minute updates. 10 meg a minute is about the limit you want to reach.

[SamuraiGoomba]

Yeah, I keep messing with the volume options, trying to get the game volume lower and lower. What would probably help would be if I recorded the volume low to begin with in the source video... I'll try to remember to do that. My most recent videos should be a LITTLE better with the audio balance, but it's something I'll continue to work on with each update. It wouldn't be such an issue if not for the MIDI music. It's a lot easier to talk over something like Deus Ex: Invisible War as opposed Super Mario Brothers.

I'm not too inclined to torrent fraps, maybe I'll buy it one of these days. Along with a proper graphics card.

I'm not exactly sure how I would go about shrinking the bitrate. Any suggestions?

Filesize is always a problem for me, mainly because I don't know how to properly compress my videos. I can turn down the quality on my recorder, which does make the files smaller. However, I'm hesitant to reduce video quality too much when I'm uploading to Viddler. All of my novice attempts at compression have ended with unwatchable messes, though (mostly trying to record at a lower FPS, which doesn't seem to work).

Anyhow, I'll try to update sometime later this week or weekend. The weekend should be about the latest.

Oh, and I didn't realize Viddler let people download the source video (just noticed that)! I would definitely suggest taking that route, at least until I set up a YouTube or Dailymotion mirror.

[SamuraiGoomba]

New MASSIVE update! I've got a new YouTube mirror for Part 7, and a double update! Parts 10 and 11 are coming at you LIVE from Spokane, Washington (no, they're not)! We're almost done with Goku's story mode, so stick around for the exciting conclusion, including a plot twist that would make David Fincher jealous (no, it wouldn't).

Once again I see that Viddler has chosen to undo its fly and urinate all over my video quality (which probably wasn't amazing to begin with), so... Bear with me until I upload the videos to another hoster, okay? At least the original file is still there for download.

Part 10: World Tournament Strikes Back! Viddler
Part 11: These Caves Blow: Part 2 Viddler

[Elitist Indie Hipster]

Sorry it took me so long to watch the last episode, but it was good man, i lol'd at the ahnold voice. And i gotta say, those japanese people really need to learn how to spell "okay" instead of "okey"

[SamuraiGoomba]

Thanks! I shall remember your love of horrible accents for future videos.

Just letting you lot know that the bad quality versions of Part 2 are gone, because I scrapped them. They were, quite frankly, unwatchable crap. So now they are gone. The commentary might or might not have been alright, but the video quality... Ugh. The way Viddler likes to stomp on my video quality is bad enough without having poor quality on the source video.

I'm also looking at different ways to record video. Apparently VirtualDub and Windows Movie Maker won't capture video without some other program recording it first, so I might be stuck with Camstudio for the time being. But maybe I can work around its shortcomings, I dunno. I've finally figured out how to get the game audio down to manageable levels, now I need to work on that whole file size issue.

Final video is up! So watch it and give me feedback on how you all want the LP to continue from here, since the game is now technically beaten.

[SamuraiGoomba]

Due to the astounding lack of interest, I'm probably going to only upload maybe one extra Krillin video at most, maybe not even that.

But while I've got your attention (or not), anyone interested in a Zombie Shooter LP? I might be convinced to do one if enough people want to see what the game is like. It seems like a pretty decent choice of game to LP, considering it's short on the talky talky and long on gore-splattered deaths rendered lovingly in old sprite graphics. It's also the only of the "Shooter" series that doesn't have an equip screen or limited number of weapons you can carry at one time. No, you're humping that massive pack of guns DOOM style. Your guy (or girl!) can fit a flamethrower in his/her hip pocket, apparently. It's also the ONLY "Shooter" game where the starting weapon doesn't suck royally.

Also, the number of enemies you face in Zombie Shooter makes the battlefields in the Dynasty Warriors games seem barren and empty.