Holy Busy!

Latest acquisitions: Gate Of Thunder for TurboGrafx CD (Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, and Bomberman are also included on the CD). I also have Final Soldier, Lords Of Thunder, Super Star Soldier, and Violent Soldier on hold. I picked-up Command & Conquer: Renegade and Diablo: Hellfire on Windows, and they're still great fun after all those years :)

I've also gotten back into Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines on PSP. Playing through Assassin's Creed II and seeing some of the flashbacks really tied the PSP game's storyline into the overall mythos of the series, and I'm feeling much more connected to what's happening. Yes, the graphics and voice acting are a step down from the main entries in the series; and yes the areas are smaller, the population is less dense, and the assassinations are less complex; but it's still pretty impressive to see, given the hardware. Without the story integration, it'd ultimately be a mundane exercise, but alongside the revelations of Assassin's Creed II, it really draws you in quite effectively.

Speaking of Assassin's Creed, I purchased Sequence 13: Bonfire Of The Vanities from XBOX Live after seeing the ad for it on the welcome screen. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I'd purchased that content that I checked-out the XBL marketplace and saw the Bonfire Of The Vanities & Secret Locations option. Having already purchased the advertised version that didn't include the secret locations, there was no way for me to get those secret locations without buying the more complete package (essentially re-buying Sequence 13). I felt misled, so I called Microsoft's customer support. Long story short, the third person to whom I was connected ended-up deflecting my questions with circular logic, telling me they'd really like to help me and that they could, but that they weren't going to. Then they wished me a great day! I assured them that I would not have one. Sequence 13 was fine, and totally worth $4, by the way.

Finally, I'd like to bitch about Epson's nozzle cleaning process on my Stylus Photo R300 printer. Because two of the six ink cartridges (cyan and magenta) were low on ink, Epson's software would not allow me to perform a nozzle cleaning. I had to replace the two low-running cartridges (even though they were not empty, and I was only trying to print in black) just to clean the black nozzle. That's not cool, Epson.

Beyond

I finished Beyond Oasis on Genesis last night, and it was still great after all those years! I'd made it pretty far in the game when I was younger, but can't remember completing it. I wrapped things up pretty quickly (about four-and-a-half hours), at a relatively low rank (48) with only a little over 1000 kills, and 32 of 60 gems... So I guess I have some treasure-hunting to do. The game was enjoyable throughout, if a bit easy, but definitely an original take on a genre dominated by Zelda and full of copycats.

I've since started The Legend Of Oasis on Saturn, and I'm having mixed reactions... The graphics are gorgeous at a higher resolution than the original, there are more frames of animation, a much bigger colour palette, the addition of scaling sprites, and a new CD audio soundtrack. Consider some new key characters and core gameplay elements (like a much less forgiving save system and a revamped weapons configuration), and one might think that this game is a solid evolution of the winning original formula... But the writing is just awful, and the combat is neutered. Sure, it's a similar basic story and many of the same attacks return from the first game, but it all just feels so phoned-in. There's no character or cohesion, and it's glaringly apparent in the lack of any fluidity in combat. Another major change that I'm not too fond of is the lack of any real inventory, so health- and magic-replenishing items are used when touched rather than manually picked-up and managed in anticipation of more difficult areas. You can also only carry either one health or magic potion at a time; meaning you can have either your health or magic refill automatically upon depletion... But because the new system no longer allows you to pick things up, if you have a health potion and accidentally touch a magic potion, your health potion is lost forever. Then there're the tutorial obelisks scattered throughout the land; it would be nice if they didn't wait until the second dungeon to explain fundamental game mechanics that have been changed since the original, especially when those concepts are key to unlocking other new fundamental game mechanics that were only available in the first dungeon. Spending time backtracking in a game with a limited save system is something I only barely tolerate from the Metroid series... I don't like it here either. Perhaps these new design choices will make sense down the road, but I'm just not having the same fun I had with the first game.

On the computer front, I'm inching ever closer to purchasing a Core i7 920-based system; especially with the recent release of Bioshock 2. The novelty of owning a top-of-the-line QuickSilver 2002 Mac as kinda worn-off, but it did allow me to spend some quality time with Mac OS X... So now I'm thinking that a vanilla Mac mini (2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, 160GB HDD) alongside my forthcoming Windows 7 machine might be a solid idea.

Better Than Expected

In addition to Turbo Sub and Xybots for Lynx, Splatterhouse 2 for Genesis, and The King Of Fighters: Dream Match 1999 for Dreamcast, I also snagged Robo-Squash for Lynx, Skullmonkeys for PlayStation, OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast for XBOX, Starfox Assault for GameCube, and an XBOX 360 Chatpad.

I also set-up a free, centralised, web content filtering system using OpenDNS, Freeproxy, and custom GPOs... That was pretty cool :)

An Oasis

The Adventure of Link is incredibly frustrating and Majora's Mask is particularly confusing, so I re-started Beyond Oasis last night and got about half-way through... I love it; I should've done this ages ago!

Also, I'm gonna pick-up Turbo Sub and Xybots for Lynx, Splatterhouse 2 for Genesis, and The King Of Fighters: Dream Match 1999 for Dreamcast after work today.

Feline Naming Conventions

I bought an Atari Lynx II, an official Atari power adapter, Blue Lightning, Chip's Challenge, and Gauntlet: The Third Encounter.

I'd been hoping to pick-up RoadBlasters, Slime World, and Toki, but the place I'd seen them before had sold them since... I'm considering Battle Wheels, Hydra, Robo-Squash, Turbo Sub, and Xybots.