FrankenMac

Upon returning to my office with the QuickSilver 2002 in tow on Thusday, a coworker of mine noted that he had "one of those" too... And then asked me if I wanted it. I picked it up last night :) His is an older model QuickSilver, but was a little more full-featured than what I'd picked up. So far, I've taken the CPU, RAM, and video card from his Mac and added it all to mine (newer motherboard). I would've taken his Super Drive as well, but it doesn't seem to be working.

As it stands, my QuickSilver 2002 is now running Mac OS X 10.4.11 on an 867MHz G4 (2MB L3 cache) with 640MB of RAM, a 32MB AGP GeForce2 MX, a 40GB Seagate HDD, an NEC 3550A DVD+/-RW, and a USB 2.0 PCI card. I'll be adding more RAM (1.5GB max) as I find it, and possibly upgrading to OS X 10.5... Tracking down a dual-1GHz CPU card would be nice too :) 

The only thing that troubles me with this rig is how much trouble it has running Flash videos. It can do 480p MPEG videos fullscreen without a hitch, but YouTube often looks like a slide show :\

Hindsight

I was in a surplus store yesterday, looking for a specific kind of SCSI enclosure... Without any luck. I did, however, pick-up a pristine Lian Li case for $30, as well as a QuickSilver 2002 Power Mac G4 for $125. Not the greatest deal on the Mac, but I love the design. It was low-end (single 800MHz CPU, no L3 cache) and stripped of all but the bare necessities (256MB of RAM, 40GB HDD, and downgraded to a 16MB ATi Rage 128 Pro video card), but I figured I have RAM and hard drives at home, I could always keep an eye out for a better video card, and maybe I'll stumble across a dual-1GHz CPU upgrade some day. Mostly I just really like the case though ;) Unfortunately, upon returning home, I discovered that I'd given away all of my PC133 RAM! I used to have stacks of the stuff! Damnit! It's gonna cost me in the neighbourhood of $100 to max the thing out if I go new :( I did get Mac OS X 10.4 installed though, and it actually runs pretty well at 1280x1024, so I'm not that upset.

I also picked-up ActRaiser for SNES, and it promptly sucked me in. If not for the free episode of Tales Of Monkey Island that was released on International Talk Like A Pirate Day, ActRaiser would be all I've been playing at home these days. On the PSP front, Dissidia lost my interest with its lame stories and incessant grinding, and Marvel Trading Card Game had my head spinning before I was finished the tutorials.

WiiMelt

My Wii has overheated while in standby mode. There are now visual artifacts on the display whenever it is turned on. I always used to turn it off when I was done for the day, but the idea of having news and weather updates waiting for me before I played was kind of cool. I also liked how the system's light would pulse when new updates were available... I don't like it so much anymore, now that it apparently comes at a ridiculous cost.

Searching the web has revealed that this isn't exactly an uncommon occurrence, so I'll be in touch with Nintendo's service department... Though really, I'd just like to get a new one.

$30 Good?

Trine is good. People keep comparing it to The Lost Vikings, but there're some pretty big fundamental differences between the two games... Then again, I understand the need for some kind of touchstone in journalism, adding historical weight to something new. Anyway, yeah, Trine is good. $30 good? Maybe; depends on whether you really like that kind of game or not. $20 good? Definitely. There's nothing wrong with Trine, but the concept does get kind of old before long, and the game is definitely lacking polish. The menus and loading screens, the way the models animate and interact with the environments, and even the character development in terms of narrative... They all just seem decidedly low-budget. Not bad, mind you; they're perfectly passable. It's just that when I play games like World Of Goo, 'splosion Man, and even Penny Arcade Adventures and see just how slick they are, it gets a little bit harder to swallow the price premium for Trine. I still recommend grabbing the demo and deciding for yourself though.

Picked-up Guitar Hero Unplugged and Dissidia: Final Fantasy for PSP. The former is fun, but then I was never a big fan of Frequency or Amplitude... Dissisdia, like Crisis Core, had me thoroughly confused at first; Super Smash Bros. gameplay and these weird boardgame maps between battles... The tutorials didn't really help either. After settling into the actual game though, things started to make more sense. I like the strategy, but I foresee plenty of grinding in this one. I found the grind acceptable in Crisis Core on account of the storyline and other available activities, and while a lot of that is present here, it feels much less cohesive... Let's see if it drags me in.

Heh, why not...

PS3 Slim Size Comparison

Holy Crap!

3D Dot Game Heroes

Also, I picked-up a copy of ToeJam & Earl for Genesis, and I finished Sonic Adavce 2.

Seriously, it's a Sonic game!

I finished Mirror's Edge (without using any guns). It was really good. I'm not sure what everyone was complaining about when it came out though... Yeah, the cutscenes felt rough when juxtaposed with the super slick game engine, and the main campaign is kinda short, but there's a huge amount of replay value in there. Mirror's Edge really is like a Sonic The Hedgehog game; you can finish it in no time, but if you want to get the most out of it, you practice your routes, scour levels for secrets, and strive for achievements that actually mean something... And it becomes a whole new game. I definitely had to repeat a few sections ad nauseam, but it was usually because I was trying to neutralise every enemy without firing a shot when I should've been running like hell. My only real complaints are the out-of-place cutscenes, some trite dialogue, and the odd environment element that didn't turn red when it should've (that's how the game helps you find a route through the level); otherwise, it was well worth my time, and I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel.

Oh, and I finally tracked-down a copy of Ristar for Genesis!

Summer of...

Everything you've read about XBOX Live's Summer of Arcade titles is true. 'splosion Man is great fun, with its fast-paced mix of platform and puzzle action. Trials HD is gorgeous in its simplicity (and graphics), resulting in an delightfully addictive experience. Turtles In time Re-Shelled is alright, but ultimately disappointing, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is Marvel Vs. Capcom 2.

Moving on, the final battle in Sonic Advance 2 wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to fight the boss that can randomly kill you with one hit and spends two thirds of the battle off-screen... Again! He was annoying enough the first time at the end of Sky Canyon, and now they're making me fight him again? Fuck.

In other news, I picked-up an Epson R300 complete with ink on the cheap off craigslist in order to print on CDs. Ooh, and then I ran into an issue with a computer I was asked to repair in a rush. First diagnosis was bad RAM after failed tests. I got it running properly the same day, but with only one stick. The guy came back wanting to buy more RAM, and so I took it again and looked into things further before spending any money... It should've hit me as soon as I saw the purple PCB of the motherboard; yup, yet another failing ECS product. I swapped-in a BioStar U8668-D v7.1 (had an extra one lying around that I'd saved from the trash), but he had a 2.4GHz "Prescott" Pentium 4 in that ECS board... v7.1 of the BioStar board doesn't support "Prescott" CPUs. So I've donated my P4 2.8Bto the cause and put an old P4 2.4B in my workhorse. I now have two 2.4GHz "Prescott" CPUs (at least one of which overclocks to a stable 3.6GHz on stock cooling) just lying around.

Wax Nostlagic.

I have a soft spot for SEGA's 32X, probably because it was the first contemporary video game system (not counting PCs) that my parents ever bought for me. I'd rescued a ColecoVision from a garbage can, acquired an Atari 2600 in a trade with a friend, and my grandparents had given me a Game Boy when it was first released, but the 32X was when my parents finally broke down ;) They got me a model 2 Genesis with Sonic 2 and a Menacer, as well as a 32X with Virtua Racing Deluxe... I don't think you understand just what a momentous occasion that was in my family.

As I reflect on fiddling with the electromagnetic shields to fit them into the Genesis' cartridge slot, and then suffering my mother's comment of "Don't games on the computer look better than that?" upon seeing Virtua Racing Deluxe, I can't help but feel that it was somewhat of a bittersweet experience. Then again, I got to play an excellent port of Virtua Fighter at home without shelling-out for a Saturn, and at the time, that was more than enough for me. The fact that I also got to enjoy the entire Genesis library as well as sweet 32X games like After Burner Complete, Knuckles' Chaotix, Kolibri, Mortal Kombat II, Tempo, Shadow Squadron, Space Harrier, Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Racing Deluxe, and Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 ain't so bad either... And I'm sure I learned a lesson in there somewhere, making-do with what I had.

What's with the sudden bout of nostalgia? Well, new developements regarding two particular unreleased 32X games have been brought to my attention:

1. A prototype of Virtua Hamster has been dumped! Yes, Virtua Hamster... Seriously, check it out. I always wondered exactly what this game was gonna be like, and now I have a much better idea. There're videos on YouTube if you don't feel like tracking down the dump and an emulator.
2. Videos have surfaced of the 32X-exclusive X-MEN game!!! I remember drooling over screenshots of this thing back in the day, and I recall the alpha/prototype/promo/whatever copy selling on eBay for like $1000 not too long ago... Videos here, and more info here! The ROM has been dumped, but does not currently run on any emulators.
   

In other news, don't pay me to fix your computer, only to remove all of the anti-virus and ant-spyware measures I installed, install your own shitty anti-virus software, get duped by fake anti-virus software that isn't what you installed, and then ask me to fix it again. Ugh.

Should've made the connection sooner...

Mirror's Edge is Sonic The Hedgehog in 3D. It's easy to muddle your way through each game, but the real experience lies in the challenge of mastering a fluid path through each level without losing momentum.

Speaking of Sonic The Hedgehog, I'm on the final battle of Sonic Advance 2.

Speaking of portables, I picked up a copy of Puzzle Link for Neo Geo Pocket Color today.

Speaking of what I picked up today, I also bought a copy of X-Perts for Genesis today. Yes, it's kind of awful (though the gameplay design is pretty interesting), but I don't think I'd ever actually seen a copy of it before and it was under $10.

Oh, and I've finished On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode 2. It was fantastic; a slick mix of adventure gaming and RPGs, less repetitive than its predecessor, and hilariously entertaining. Man, I hope Episode Three gets made. I've since installed Planescape: Torment... Looks like Majora's Mask is gonna hafta wait a little longer.

Might As Well

Used the trade-in value from what I didn't keep of that PC Engine lot toward GunHed for PC Engine, The House Of The Dead: Overkill and MadWorld for Wii, and Ninja Gaiden II for XBOX 360.

Finally got past Sky Canyon in Sonic Advance 2, and Techno Base is proving to be less frustrating. I appreciate the familiarisation required to really master the game, but it does make it far less accessible... I would've preferred fewer ramps that throw the player into bottomless pits during simple playthroughs of the levels ;)

Progress

I finished the single-player campaign of Gears Of War 2. It was great, though the ending did feel a little rushed; still one of the most viscerally entertaining games out there though. So now I've jumped into On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode Two, and it's just as delightfully hilarious and fun as the first one. I think Mirror's Edge will be next.

The Sky Canyon boss fight in Sonic Advance 2 is still frustrating me, as is the final battle in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.

Happy Birthday!

Yes it is my birthday today, and on a potentially cosmically-related note, I purchased something from craigslist last night. I though I was getting a PC Engine, two controllers, Be Ball (Chew-Man-Fu), Berabo Man (Bravo Man), Darius Plus, Obocchama-Kun, and Yokai Dochuki for $80 CDN. What I actually got was a PC Engine CoreGrafx, complete in its original packaging with two matching controllers, a Battle Tap, and all five of those games complete and in immaculate condition!

Realistic average eBay prices are as follows:

• CoreGrafx (boxed): ~$100
• Second controller: ~$40
• Battle Tap: ~$25
• Be Ball: ~$20
• Berabo Man: ~$35
• Darius Plus: ~$40
• Obocchama-Kun: ~$50
• Yokai Dochuki: ~$15

...So a ~$325 lot for $80? Not bad. I'll flip the system, the Battle Tap, and most of the games. I think I'll keep the second controller, Darius Plus, and Be Ball.

My Wishlist

I'd like to get the following Atari Jaguar games:

• I-War
• Iron Solider 2
• Missile Command 3D
• Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure
• Power Drive Rally
• Protector SE
• Ruiner Pinball
• Skyhammer
• Zero 5

...And I guess a copy of BattleSphere Gold would be nice ;) Unfortunately, even without BattleSphere, that's all gonna cost more that I've already put into my entire Jaguar collection. Boo to that.

In other news, I got $25 for the ten remaining PSX games from that lot I mentioned in my last post :)

12 for $20

Found an interesting listing on craigslist; a bunch of PSX games for $20. I got Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout (disc only) NBA Live 99 (no booklet), Rayman (Greatest Hits, no booklet), Spyro The Dragon (Greatest Hits), Tekken 2 (disc only), Toy Story 2, (no booklet) Twisted Metal III (Greatest Hits, no booklet), WWF Attitude (no booklet), WWF SmackDown! 2 (Greatest Hits), and WWF War Zone (Greatest Hits, with booklet, no case).

Oh, and Bushido Blade 2 and Jumping Flash 2!!! Not bad for $20 :) I'm gonna flip the rest, but I've been looking for those last two for a while now... Still need to find the original Jumping Flash though.

Slick Stick

I bought a Dempa Shinbunsha XE-1 PRO HE arcade stick for my Duo-R for $45 CDN. It's a pretty slick stick, feels great, is impressively customisable, sports a built-in five-port multitap, and seems to be going (new) for $55 US + shipping from Japan on eBay. You can read-up on it here.

I've still got a few more interesting acquisitions in the works, so don't go too far...

Follow-Up

Swapped Dracula X discs at the shop (the other case was a little faded and worn) and dropped off the Duo-R pad with them. They said they'd see if they could fix it, or try to find a replacement for me... In the mean time, they've given me an Avenue Pad 6; the PC Engine controller designed specifically for Street Fighter II': Champion Edition. My ire has been assuaged.

Not Fun.

Sonic Advance 2 is reminding me why I loathe bottomless pits. To be more specific, I've discovered parts of the Sky Canyon zone, in both acts, that consistently launch the player at bottomless pits. Both seem like sloppy level design, as one apparently offers no alternative path or means of retreat once you approach it, and the other could've been resolved if a platform had been moved just a few pixels to the right. Not fun, especially considering that you only get three lives to complete both acts and the boss encounter.

Also not fun is noticing that my copy of Dracula X for my PCE CD appears to have been resurfaced. The shop has another copy, and is allowing me to swap for it. Even worse is discovering that the controller for my PCE Duo-R is malfunctioning! Upon closer inspection, something had been spilled on it, it has been opened but not fully cleaned, and two of the screw wells were stripped in the process! Again, the shop has offered to swap it for anther, but they only have PCE, Core Grafx, Duo, and Avenue Pad 6 controllers in stock... No Duo-R controllers! That's whack!

Still Catching-Up

Finished Sonic Advance, and on to Sonic Advance 2. Anyone who's been missing Sonic's 2D glory days on the Genesis needs to play the Advance series if they haven't already. Almost done Gunstar Super Heroes (last boss). Haven't had a chance to sit down with Gears Of War 2 or Majora's Mask recently... Been building-up my PCE/TG16 CD experience though:

• Bomberman: Awesome version of the classic game.
• Bonk III CD: Still awesome, CD audio is a nice upgrade.
• Beyond Shadowgate: This was a surprise; a solid adventure game! Controls take some getting used to, but there's some good stuff here.
• Castlevania: Dracula X: Best game on the system. Possibly the best game on any system... Ever.
• Forgotten Worlds: Great version of a great shoot-'em-up.
• Gate Of Thunder: Another awesome shoot-'em-up.
• Last Alert: Sweet top-down action game with notably gory gameplay and unintentionally funny voice acting.
• Lords Of Thunder: Yet another great shoot-'em-up, but with a medieval/norse theme.
• Fighting Street: Awful game, barely playable, only significant historically.
• Shadow Of The Beast: Some weird kind of action/adventure game with sweet graphics and awful gameplay.
• Shape Shifter: Unique action/RPG, solid gameplay, high production values for its time.
• Super Air Zonk: Yet another great shoot-'em-up, but with particularly weird cartoon graphics.
• Super Raiden: Great port of the seminal shoot-'em-up, with sweet CD audio.
• Valis II: Bad control, boring gameplay.
• Valis III: Huge improvement over Valis II, I specifically like the playable/in-engine cutscenes.
• Ys Boook I & II: Haven't played it yet.
• Ys III: Haven't played this one yet either.

More R!

Loving my PCE Duo-R... There're so many games I guess I just missed my first time around! I've revisited Castlevania: Dracula X (still one of the best games ever), Fighting Street (still awful), Last Alert, Valis 2 and 3, and Ys 1 & 2 and 3, but now I'm also getting into Beyond Shadowgate, Bomberman, Bonk 1, 2, and 3 (I didn't even realise there were CD versions!), Gate Of Thunder, Lords Of Thunder, Shape Shifter, and Super Air Zonk! There's some really impressive and unique stuff on this system... Just way more crap than most to sift through, it seems.

Finished Wario Land 4. Fantastic game with gorgeous graphics, great action, clever twists on the ever-evolving Wario Land gameplay, and a great selection of optional puzzle-solving and mini-game aspects. Can't wait to really dig into Shake It! now :) Gonna keep going on my GBA with Gunstar Super Heroes and the Sonic Advance series before I start looking through my PSP and NGPC collection for something to do on the subway.

Shinobi

Totally forgot to mention that I also picked-up a copy of The Cyber Shinobi for Master System yesterday!

That means I now have the following Shinobi games:

• Shinobi (SMS - 1988)
• Shinobi (PCE - 1989)
• The Revenge Of Shinobi (Genesis - 1989)
• Shadow Dancer (Genesis - 1990)
• Alex Kidd In Shinobi World (SMS - 1990)
• The Cyber Shinobi (SMS - 1990)
• Shinobi (GG - 1991)
• Shinobi II: The Silent Fury (GG - 1992)
• Shinobi III: Return Of The Ninja Master (Genesis - 1993)
• Shinobi Legions (Saturn - 1995)
• Shinobi (PS2 - 2002)

I'm not too worried about collecting the arcade original, all of the console ports of the original, or that werid GBA game... But I am still on the lookout for Nightshade for PS2.

R!

Picked-up Corpse Killer, Slam City, and Supreme Warrior for 32X CD. Now I only need B.C. Racers, BlackThorne, Night Trap, Primal Rage, Spider-Man: Web Of Fire, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, T-Mek, Toughman Contest, World Series Baseball, and WWF Wrestlemania to complete my collection... And Darxide, FIFA '96, and Sangokushi IV, if we're counting imports.

I also snagged Manx TT Superbike, Scorcher, and Three Dirty Dwarves for Saturn.

Then I traded-in my PC Engine + AV Booster, model II SEGA CD, "Light Sixer" and "Short Rainbow" Atari 2600s, second ColecoVision, and three games (my second copy of Missile Command for the 2600, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary for Game Boy, and Doom Troopers for Genesis) for a PC Engine Duo-R... Now I just need to get Dracula X and Fighting Street :)

Wario Land 4 is gorgeous.

Wario Land 4 is gorgeous.

Stuff

While the cataloguing of my video game collection in an attractive spreadsheet has stalled on account of real life and other such responsibilities, I did manage to whip-up the following:

(click for full-size)

I didn't draw any of the icons; I actually have a two-slot Neo Geo MVS, not an AES; I also only have a NA Genesis, SEGA CD, 32X, Saturn, and Nomad; and I couldn't find icons for my "Short Rainbow" 2600 Jr., ColecoVision, or CDX.

Heavy, you say?

I thought I was getting a very used "Heavy Sixer" Atari 2600 for $20 off craigslist. Turned out the guy was just kinda clueless. He notified me that it was the "1978" model before we met, but I went along with it anyway, and now have a very used "Light Sixer" Atari 2600 to go along with my "Short Rainbow" Atari 2600 Jr. that I got for free many years ago. The "Light Sixer" cleaned-up nicely though, and I think I'll flip both of them for a small profit. Don't worry, I'll still be able to play my 2600 games on my ColecoVision Expansion Module #1 :)

Moving On

Finally finished Metroid Prime 2. Ugh. It's not that it was too hard, overcomplicated, or took too long... It's just that the last few sections kinda sucked all the fun and wonder out of the game :\ I went from exploring this enormous world to scouring it for invisible treasure based on cryptic clues. No, I didn't mind doing the same thing in the first Metroid Prime game, but in this case, the bigger world and the whole light and dark version of each area just made things so unwieldy. It felt like they got things just right the first time, but pushed them too far this time.

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD***

Then there was the big, three-stage, boss encounter. Not bad, but man did it suck having to start the whole battle all over if I failed near the end. Of the maybe four or five times I tried it, only once did I stick around for a second go instead of turning the thing off and walking away. Then, after that fight, with a timer counting down and the save station disabled, they throw the real final boss encounter at you! Fuck! Does that mean that if I fail here, then I have to do both battles all over again!? It does not, thankfully, as I discovered when I neglected to rescan the final boss simply because it had moved to the middle of the screen... Which apparently means that it has taken a new form and requires a whole new attack strategy. I didn't figure this out until I was pretty much dead and wondering what the hell was going on. Maybe it changed colour and I didn't notice or something? Anyway, I died, continued at the end of the previous battle, kicked the final boss' ass in no time at all, and watched an unexciting ending cinematic.

***OKAY I'M DONE WITH THE POSSIBLE SPOILERS***

Anyway, really good game, but I'm glad I'm done with it. I really hope the third one's better. Until then, however, I'm playing Gears Of War 2 and having a blast already :)

1982!

I got a Vectrex! It came with two controllers, Armor..Attack, Clean Sweep, Hyperchase, Mine Storm (built-in), Rip Off, Scramble, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and each game's overlay (except for Scramble), all for $150! So stoked! :)

Traded

I traded my Super Mario World and Super Mario All-Stars SNES cartridges for Return Fire: Maps O' Death for 3DO (complete), as well as X-Men (complete with poster) and X-Men 2 (cartridge only) for Genesis.

I'm getting into Wario Land 3 on my way to and from work, I'm itching to get my hands on either the Jaguar or Windows version of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, and I really want to get the last few boss battles out of the way in Metroid Prime 2 so that I can move on to Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode 2 and then Gears Of War 2.

So much catching-up to do :(

Design Docs

Playing with my SkunkBoard and revisiting my Jaguar games has gotten me thinking about game design.

My initial idea evolved into a sort of mascot title; a 2D sidescroller featuring a jaguar as the main character. The focus would be on animation, and so movement would be a huge part of the gameplay; running, jumping, acrobatics, interacting with the environment... Of course, it wasn't long before I realised that I was essentially describing a version of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure in which the player controls the first boss instead of Harry Jr. Still not a bad idea, and some iteration of that may come to fruition.

The second idea stemmed from Ruiner Pinball. That game only begins to experiment with what the Jaguar can do, so I'm thinking a solid 2D pinball game with massive levels, generous use of scaling sprites (zooming-out as the ball speeds up, truly dynamic tables, etc...), and fluid animation (especially on the ball itself). Nothing groundbreaking in terms of pinball, but it could be a real showpiece for the system's 2D capablities.

The third idea would be some sort of adventure game, or at least something story-driven. I figure that since I can't draw worth a damn and my coding skills are supremely rusty, I could try another approach altogether, of a kind the Jaguar hasn't seen much, and see where that takes me :)

Jaguar

Got a chance to play a bunch of Atari Jaguar games I'd been hoping to try...

• Atari Karts: Pretty good! Lacking the charm of Mario Kart, but it's still a fun racer.
  
• Defender 2000: Seems like a safe update to Defender, though it's still frickin' hard, and I can't help but feel that the sprite for the player's ship is too big.
  
• Fight For Life: The makings of a good fighting game are in there somewhere, beneath the ugly textures, silly animations, and misguided camera angles.
  
• Hyper Force: Big sprites, decent art, slow but solid gameplay... So what's wrong here? No character. The animation is so stiff that the game just feels kinda cheap.
  
• I-War: Straightforward 3D vehicle shooter. Decent graphics, bearable slowdown, engaging gameplay, albeit in smallish arenas. Nothing mind-blowing, but there's fun to be had here.
  
• Missile Command 3D: Sweet update to the classic with some really interesting variations on the gameplay. Definitely worth checking out.
  
• NBA Jam TE: Great arcade port.
  
• Phase Zero: Very pretty for its time, shows what can be done with voxels on the Jaguar hardware. I'd love to see a complete game on that engine.
  
• Pinball Fantasies: Standard pinball game; nothing special.
  
• Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure: I've always liked this game, and the Jaguar seems to have one of the best ports of it.
  
• Power Drive Rally: Not quite as much fun as Neo Drift Out, but still a really good top-down racing game.
  
• Ruiner Pinball: Some pretty interesting dynamics here (double tables, sprite scaling), but they're woefully underused and in the end it's not much more than just another decent pinball game.
  
• White Men Can't Jump: Kinda slow, bad camera angle... But there's potential here, as it's reminiscent of Street Hoop on Neo Geo.
  
• Zero 5: Fun, fast, frenetic, and frustrating as hell. This new twist on the shoot-'em-up genre is a gorgeous game; a real showpiece for the Jaguar.

When will it end!?

Holy crap, Wario Land II just keeps going!!! I finished 100% of the levels (all five endings) with 100% of the treasure, and 100% of the picture pieces... And now there's a new mini-game, a new final level, and blinking icons on a bunch of the levels I've already beaten... Talk about getting your money's worth, this game is huge! I'm honestly getting kinda sick of it now ;) Definitely gonna play something else before I tackle Wario Land 3.

I'm almost finished Metroid Prime 2, with just a couple of boss battles left.

I've also gotten back into Majora's Mask and made some progress getting into the Great Bay Temple.

Suhweeet Dawggie!

Finally got a copy of Earthworm Jim Special Edition for SEGA CD!

Credit

Traded:

• Two Street Fighter Anniversary Controllers for XBOX (complete; Akuma, Bison)
• Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for XBOX
• Shinobi Legions for Saturn (disc only)
• Virtua Fighter for Saturn (NFR, disc only)
• Goldstar 3DO (poor cosmetic condition) + third-party controller
• Samurai Shodown for 3D0 (complete, worn)
• Guardian War for 3D0 (jewel case)
• Crash 'n Burn for 3D0 (jewel case)
• Shock Wave for 3DO (NFR, disc only)
• Sample This! for 3DO
• Eternal Champions for SEGA CD (missing booklet)
• Boogerman for Genesis (cartridge only, worn)
• Jurassic Park for Game Gear

Received:

• Space Channel 5 Special Edition for PS2 (complete)
• Shock Wave 2 for 3DO (complete)
• Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World (cartridge only)
• $80 CDN

Not the greatest deal, but then I did pretty much get back what I paid for all of it and I got to support one of my local shops :) Plus I'll get some more back when I trade-in my old Mario All-Stars and and Mario World carts.

I also picked up a D-Link DWA-556 PCIe 802.11n card so that I could stop using that range extender; the connection is now more reliable, but the latency sucks. I'm gonna try putting a switch in the room with the two wired computers and moving the wireless router to a more central location.

Finally, I bought a 32GB OCZ ATV USB 2.0 flash drive 'cause it came with a $40 mail-in rebate... Imagine my surprise when I found out I had to sign-up for a prepaid MasterCard in order to claim that $40 :\

Shitty Game

I got a Japanese (or possibly European) copy of Tails' Adventure for Game Gear from a friend, and swapped it for a North American copy at a local shop. That may have been a bad deal for me, but the game kinda sucks anyway and my collection looks more consistent this way ;)

Anyway, I also finally got around to checking out yet another local game shop, and came away with complete copies of ChuChu Rocket! for Dreamcast, AMOK for Saturn, Shockwave: Operation Jumpgate for 3DO, Fahrenheit for 32X CD, and Eternal Champions for SEGA CD. Still haven't found Ristar for Genesis or Nightshade for PS2, but I do have a copy of The Cyber Shinobi for Master System on its way.

I've made it past the fifth level in Wario Land 3, but decided to find every ending in Wario Land II before I go any further in the sequel.

Finally, just 'cause I'm feeling saucy, how does this look:

• Intel Core i7 920
• 12GB of 1600MHz DDR3 (triple channel)
• Asus P6T
• 1GB Sapphire Radeon HD 4890
• Antec TruePower Trio 650W

Funny thing: That all works out to $1337 before taxes ;)

I guess I should probably look into a new case and monitor, as well as a hard drive upgrade... But those can wait.

Still Busy

Why does Internet Explorer 8 in the 32-bit version of Windows Vista break Pro Tools 7.4? :( Perhaps I'll just upgrade to Pro Tools 8 whenever I get around to building a quad-core system with 6GB of RAM and the 64-bit version of Vista.

I finished the main story of Wario Land II, only to discover that I'd only completed 50% of the game! There're some serious secret areas! I'll check them out eventually, but in the meantime, I started up Wario Land 3... And I'm stuck about five levels in. This one's a pretty distinct change from its predecessors in terms of gameplay, focusing more on treasure hunting via backtracking after acquiring new abilities. I like it... But I also think that Virtual Boy Wario Land is still the way to go.

My SkunkBoard arrived, but I haven't had a chance to do much with it yet. I also learned of a new, more permanent way to repair Virtual Boys that involves NaOH and soldering. I've got a few more things to take care of before I bursh-up on my soldering skills and start researching how to program effective 2D game engines on exotic hardware though :\

Catching Up

Finished the Story mode in Card Fighter's Clash 2. I have ~170 cards, and I'm wondering what to do next... That Marvel Trading Card Game on PSP looks interesting.

Speaking of PSP, I tried Hammerin' Hero (pretty sweet, really hard), Resistance: Retribution (very pretty, weak dialogue, shallow gameplay so far), Phantasy Star Portable (prolly a really good grind RPG, but it didn't hold my attention for long), and Tenchu: Shadow Assassins (pretty good from what I played). Back to LocoRoco 2 it is.

Oh, and how the hell did I miss CPS3 emulation becoming so spot-on!? Holy crap! Street Fighter III, JoJo's *Ventures, and Red Earth in all their arcade glory! Model 2 emulation is apparently pretty kickass now too!? I am so behind :(

Anyway, I picked up a Panasonic 3DO FZ-1 with Star Control II (just the disc and the cover of the manual), Samurai Shodown (complete, I think, but worn), Shock Wave (complete), Crash 'n Burn and Guardian War (both in jewel cases with manuals), and two sampler discs... For $60!!!

Oh, and I also picked up boxed copies of Super Burnout and Club Drive on Jaguar; they're alright.

Been stupidbusy...

Haven't had too much time for games, but here're a few things from the past week:

I think I'm coming up on the last bit of Metroid Prime 2 (six more Sky Temple keys to go), so that'll be nice to get out of the way. It really is a great game, but I'm definitely going with overwhelming on this one. I'm not sure what it is, but it just feels bigger and less streamlined than the first one; I'm gonna blame the light and dark world dynamic... I never did care much for those.

Card Fighter's Clash 2 has been fun, but I think I like the first one better. The sequel has a much more linear and cohesive story to it (drama, character development, plot twists), but I preferred the openness of the first game. What's really killing me about the second game are the reaction cards. Those things can frustrate to no end and draw battles out to the point of tedium. It's a clever evolution for the series and it adds all kinds of new strategy, but I don't think it's for me.

...And I broke down and bought a complete copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for Saturn. $250 CDN.

Rapture

Honestly, between this and this, I'm pretty stoked :)

I'm not sure if this is an upgrade or not...

I put Windows XP back on the work laptop and gave it to a new employee who will actually need to be mobile, so now I'm on a Dell Dimension 3100. It's a 3GHz Hyper-Threading Pentium 4 with EMT64, but only 512MB of RAM... And we don't have any extra DDR2 floating around the building, so it's back to the old 32-bit Windows XP for me too.

Time To Say Goodbe?

Six coins, over 200 cards, over 100 wins, and over 20 hours later, I think it may be time to move on to Card Figher's Clash 2. Yeah, there're still plenty of cards to collect, but that would involve incessant grinding and gambling, as well as finding another NGPC and a copy of the SNK version of the game to trade with... I'll pass, thanks.

Oh man, was that fun though :) Easily one of my favourite games in recent memory, if not ever!

Big Day

Earlier today, I stopped by some of the game places I'd been neglecting lately and came up pretty big! I got a Dreamcast 4x Memory Card; Eternal Champions: Challenge From The Dark Side for SEGA CD; Castlevania: Bloodlines, Gunstar Heroes, and MUSHA for Genesis; Ninja Gaiden for Game Gear; and Metal Storm for NES. I also found a copy of Jack Bros. for Virtual Boy... Kinda. I saw the manual in a shop, and asked the clerk if they had the actual game. He couldn't find it, but the owner said he had it somewhere. I left my name and number, and hope to hear back within the week.

Oh, and I got a working 64-bit Vista disc, and all installed on the Dell laptop flawlessly! That 40GB hard drive only has about 13GB free after all is said and done though :(

Exchanges

I found copies of Ninja Gaiden Black and Super Mario All-Stars for $13 and $5, respectively.

I then exchanged that Shin Samurai Spirits MVS cartridge, and traded-in my second Puzzle Bobble MVS cartridge, my old copy of Ninja Gaiden Black (no manual, rental stickers), and my "Greatest Hits" copy of Crash Bandicoot 2 for Enemy Zero, Sacrifice, and a non-"Greatest Hits" copy of Crash Bandicoot 2.

And it looks like that 64-bit Vista disc I was using on the laptop at work was bad, so I'm trying to track down a working copy.

Keeping busy...

In an effort to have one of each model of workstation in the organisation imaged and ready to deploy in case of failure, I gave up my pretty-sweet-for-an-office-computer Dell Vostro 200 (Core 2 Due E4500, 2GB of RAM, 320GB HDD) and adopted an odd-man-out Dell Latitude 131L (Turion 64 X2 TL-50, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD). Hoping to make the most out of this downgrade (plus I hate laptops), I decided to install the 64-bit edition of Windows Vista... No dice though; couldn't get past the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD" screen. Decided to give Windows XP x64 a go, but it didn't seem to like the SATA controller. I downloaded the ATi drivers and manually extracted what seemed to be the SB600 64-bit Windows drivers, but then it turns out my only options are to slipstream them onto a Windows disc or find a USB floppy drive. Right, so I ended up testing how the 32-bit edition of Vista behaves on our domain. Aside from some issues with our antivirus software, all seems well.

I bought what I thought was an original Japanese Samurai Spirits Neo Geo MVS cartridge yesterday, but it turned out to be an original (and seemingly repaired) Japanese Shin Samurai Spirits Neo Geo MVS cartridge... I already have the North American release though :(

I also picked up a complete copy of Super Wing Commander for 3D0; haven't tried it yet.

Wondering what to do with my remaining 1000 Wii points, I looked into newer WiiWare releases. I narrowed it down to Bit.Trip: Beat, LIT, and Alein Crush Returns, but in the end, decided to go with none... I may just hang on to my points until LostWinds 2 :)

Making a little more progress with that last Virtual Boy I was trying to repair, but I may also have two more from the shop from which to draw parts... I'll keep you posted.

Over 50% of the cards found, and I'm still enraptured by Card Fighter's Clash... Can't wait to get going on the fan-translated NGPC sequel on my PSP ;)

Hrm...

...182.08 works.

Damnit!

I decided to re-install Windows XP on my workhorse PC, and swap-in a 256MB AGP GeForce 7800 GS (which was just lying around for the past few months or so) for the 64MB AGP GeForce3 Ti 200 that was in there. Everything went well except for two things:

1) I decided to install Windows XP SP3 from a redistributable package. Running it from my external drive extracted the temporary files to my external drive. Running it from the D: drive extracted the temporary files to my extrenal drive. Unplugging my external drive and running the package from the D: drive extracted the temporary files to the C: drive... Would've been nice if it just did something sensical like extract the temporary files to the drive it's running from. Weird, but no big deal.

2) The new video card couldn't start with the latest NVIDIA drivers (182.50). I checked the AGP aperture setting, but that was fine. After a few tweaks and driver un-/re-installations with no success, I went with the Windows Update NVIDIA drivers (178.13) and all is well... Grrr.

Catching Up

I downloaded the following XBOX 360 demos overnight and played them today:

Dishwasher: Dead Samurai was surprisingly good! I'd heard it was a hardcore 2D beat-'em-up, and the videos looked pretty cool, but playing it made a huge difference. Aside from the somewhat sparse animation, I don't really have much to complain about (and I do have lots to enjoy) here.

Flock was really slick, but didn't seem like something I'd put a whole lot of time into. It plays like a good game, but not my cup of tea.

Ninja Blade was almost really cool. Easier than Ninja Gaiden, but the quick-time-events? Man, were 90% of them completely useless! Maybe if I see it in on sale...

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena was pretty much what I remembered from The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay on the PC, and I really liked the original.

Wanted seemed like a waste of a demo. It comes across as a Gears Of War-esque action game, but with worse graphics and a much less epic feel to it. I suspect they may have just chosen a bad scene to present in the demo, but much like the movie, it ended up feeling like a great concept with too many important details glossed-over.

Wheelman was fun, but pretty mindless, and thus very easy. Something I'd definitely consider on the cheap, but probably wouldn't give too much thought at full price.

Oh, and my new Universe BIOS 3.0 EPROM came! Thanks Razoola! :)

Sale!

I stopped by a GameStop today, and noticed they were having a sale (up to 50% off new games; $5 off selected used games; two for $8, two for $20, and two for $30 used game deals), so I came away with Mirror's Edge (new), Too Human (new), Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (apparently used, but it was still in the plastic), Project Gotham Racing 4 (used), Condemned 2: Bloodshot (used), and Dead Or Alive 4 (used), all in original cases (not Platinum Hits), all for XBOX 360, for ~$90 total. Not the greatest deal ever, but not too shabby by my estimations. I also considered picking up The BIGS and The Club, but decided to cut myself off ;)

Finally!

BenHeck has done it again!

Also, those copies of Final Fantasy Adventure and Final Fantasy Legend III that I picked up were the Sunsoft re-releases. Has anyone seen the original Square releases anywhere? I haven't seen them since they first came out... Very strange.

Oh, and I decided to give building my own deck in a go in Card Fighter's Clash... Worked out pretty well until I got a bad shuffle and ended up with no SP and a hand full of ACs :(

He's back...

I bought The Terminator for SEGA CD and Devil's Crush for TurboGrafx 16 today. The former is a surprisingly good platformer! I knew nothing of the game until I saw it in a shop and read-up on it afterward. Dave Perry and Tommy Tallarico worked on it? That caught me off guard, but their influences on the gameplay and music are instantly recognisable to anyone who has enjoyed their work before. The latter game is an absolutely amazing pinball title, especially for 1990. It's one of the marquee titles for the TurboGrafx 16, and still holds up as a great game today.

I've been using "Tetris" for, like, ever.

I went through the first 125 pages of the most used iGoogle themes and came up with the following (in alphabetical order) as my favourites:

Tory Burch

JR

Todd Oldham

Tetris

The rest were mostly a mix of bad art, bad layout, and bad palettes, with a relative few solid designs that just didn't really appeal to me.

Honestly, an epoxy?

I have four Virtual Boys at my place at the moment; I'm working on the fourth one (a Japanese model) for a local game shop. One display is glitchy, but the other is dim... I don't think any amount of baking and re-affixing ribbon cables is gonna fix that. The good news is that the problem only seems to be with the display, and those are pretty easy to replace if the shop can find a spare one (they have a few failing Virtual Boys).

I finally got around to checking out this game shop in the west end of downtown Toronto. They've apparently been there for eight years, but I only heard fo them a few months ago. They're not bad; a good selection with many systems represented, but the staff wasn't the most knowledgable (she tried to convince me that a stained cartridge with a peeling label and scratches was in "mint condition"), and the prices were a little high (about $10~$20 more than the really goos places). I did pick up Final Fantasy Adventure and Kid Icarus for Game Boy though.

Ooh, and I just ordered a Universe BIOS 3.0 EPROM! I have a 2.1 EPROM already (came with my MVS), but I'm gonna keep that one as a back up... And find an EPROM burner to play with :)

Finally, I now have five coins in Card Fighter's Clash, and I'm still having a blast. I don't really care about finding every card or arranging the perfect deck though. I'm just loving the strategy involved in the battles, as I've had some pretty epic matches so far.

Host Master

I bought final Fantasy Legend III for Game Boy yesterday. I've had the first two games in the series since they came out, so I figured I might as well complete the collection... I have no idea when I'll get around to playing it though. I also picked up Sonic Advance 2 for Game Boy Advance (my brother can't find his copy, though I'm sure he had one) from a GameStop... Once I got the four price tags off the cartridge, I noticed some kid's initials written on the back in marker. Then I noticed that the game doesn't work. I was able to get to a briefly animated blue screen once instead of a white screen that chirps, but otherwise, no go. Thanks for covering up cosmetic damage and not testing your games, GameStop!

Oh, and I just finished this. I know that it has been out for a little while now, but it's still good fun :)

Whooo?

New Jak and Daxter, though unfortunately not from Naughty Dog or Ready at Dawn. It's actually from High Impact Games, who made the solid but not-exactly-awesome PSP Ratchet & Clank games... But still, it could be good...

Anyway, SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash is awesome, and is the only game I've been playing the past few weeks. I've got ~25% of 300 cards and two coins so far, and I'm just getting started.

Oh, and I answered a craigslist ad selling a "Puzzle Bobble 4 Neo Geo cartridge" (which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist) for $10, which turned out to be a bootleg Puzzle Bobble 1 MVS cart. Regardless, for $10, it's nice to have a back-up for my legitimate MVS cart :)

Portable Gaming and Bad Decisions

I picked up copies of SNK Gals' Fighters (Japanese), Pac-Man, and Pocket Tennis Color for Neo Geo Pocket Color, and then I broke down and bought boxed copies of Supercross 3D and Val D'Isere Skiing and Snowboarding for Jaguar... The two Jaguar games are actually better than I thought they'd be, but if they weren't unique to the platform, I wouldn't've touched them.

Third time's a charm?

I bought my third Virtual Boy the other day.

My first one was bought new, for $30 CDN when Toys "R" Us was clearing them out; it has since begun to display symptoms of bad display connections. I'd fix it, but one of the screw heads is stripped; so now I either have to break, saw, or drill the thing, and I'm in no rush to do any of that. My second one was purchased last year over craigslist, and turned out to be a former rental unit. The eyeshade stunk (so I washed it), the display connections were bad (so I repaired them), and the stand was broken (someone had taped it together, so I left it), but it works great now. The third one was acquired via craigslist as well, but from its original owner. It's in great condition and is showing no signs of bad display connections.

So I'm keeping the first one for sentimental value, as well as the battery pack that came with it and the AC adapter I bought later (which I'll use with the third one). I'm keeping the rental shop's custom travel case from the second one, and possibly the AC adapter that came with it, but I may give the unit (along with a second copy of Mario's Tennis that I have) to a friend.

Home

GNOME was too slow and Xfce was too unreliable with WiFi, so I settled on Windows 2000 for the trip. Had to suffer a 266MHz Celeron running Windows 98 in Prague. Transferring photos from my Canon SD700 IS over Windows 2000 was a bitch. Watching movies on my PSP was rad.

Picked-up a copy of the Capcom Edition of SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash for Neo Geo Pocket Color when I got back,

Oh yeah, and MORE FEZ!!!

Just keeping busy.

I picked up long-cased copies of Daytona USA, Virtua Cop, and Virtua Fighter 2 for Saturn, and traded-in my "Not For Resale" three pack of those titles as well as my NFR Stunner pack-in jewel case of Virtua Cop. I also stumbled across a copy of Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 for Dreamcast and picked that up as well.

Anyway, I'm installing Debian 5.0.0 "stable" with Xfce (previously installed it with GNOME) on my laptop, and then heading off to wander around Europe for a few weeks; should be fun... I've left the guys at work with a bootable 16GB USB flash drive that has Ghost 11.5 and SysPrepped images of every model of workstation in the organisation on it :)

The Legend Of Princess

I'm nearing the end of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Despite employing an overall structure very similar to that of its predecessor, this game feels a lot less streamlined. I've yet to decide whether that quality makes it more epic or more frustrating. There are times when I love Echoes, but other times have brought me dangerously close to putting one of my WaveBirds through the TV...

Moving on, I picked up Drakan: the Ancients' Gates, Gungrave: Overdose, and Stretch Panic for PS2 on the cheap.

Oh, and if this (Jan. 24) is how The Adventure Of Link played, I definitely would've finished it by now :) If I ever get a Skunkboard, I'm totally making a game like that for the Jaguar... Though it'll probably end up looking more like Bloody Zombies.

Trade

I traded that stuff in for Bug Too!, Clockwork Knight 2, and Zoop, as planned, but then they had also acquired a boxed copy of Hover Strike and sealed copy of Flip Out! (yes, there's an exclamation point in the title). Yes, I bought both of them. No, I don't buy everything I see. I passed on loose copies of Checkered Flag, Evolution: Dino Dudes, and Val d'Isere Skiing & Snowboarding as well as boxed copies of Brutal Sports Football, Club Drive, Flashback, Supercross 3D, Syndicate, and Troy Aikman Football :p

Oh, and I bought Painkiller: Triple Dose for $10. I love that game.

Echoes

I came across an old Dell with a Pentium 4 2.8B (2.8GHz, 533MHz FSB), so I swapped that CPU with my 2.53GHz part and gave the Dell a new home with a friend. Personally, I'm impressed that I've been able to get by on 2002/2003 tech for this long! It wasn't until Assassin's Creed hit Windows that I found my self having to drop graphics settings down to truly ugly levels just to get things running smoothly.

Anyway, continuing from my last post, R-Type Dimensions is sweet! I especially like the "crazy" camera angle. Additionally, I'm about half-way through Metroid Prime 2 now.

Moving on, I recently picked up a second copy of Wolfenstein 3d and a copy of Game Guru for 3D0, a second (boxed) copy of Raiden for Jaguar, House Of The Dead 1 & 2 Return for Wii for $15, and a new-in-box Nintendo e-Reader for $15. I'm planning on trading my first copy of Wolfenstein 3d, my loose copy of Raiden, the e-Reader, and my manual-less copy of Bug Too! for Saturn for complete copies of Bug Too! and Clockwork Knight 2 for Saturn as well as a boxed copy of Zoop for Jaguar. I'm expecting at least $60 on the trade-in (which is about what I paid for it all in the first place), so it's all gravy.

Demos

The F.E.A.R. 2 demo is amazing. I'm a big fan of Monolith, I loved the first game, and even slogged through both mediocre expansion packs, so this slick and dynamic update to the original is a wonderful treat. Forget everything else; this is the action title that has me excited more than any other right now.

Legendary, like Fracture, Dark Sector, and TimeShift, is a solid action title that relies on an interesting gimmick that doesn't really carry the game beyond the bargain bin. I really like the setting, so I'm sure I'll play the full version at some point...

Resident Evil 5 is pretty good. It looks like a nice update to Resident Evil 4, but then I haven't been able to really get into a Resident Evil games since Resident Evil 2 Platinum on Windows. I had fun with this new demo, but much like its predecessors (and Dead Space), I just don't see myself spending much time with Resident Evil 5.

Skate 2 felt like Skate, but then I haven't spent much time with either, so I'm just gonna hold off the sequel until I've finished the first one.

I'm currently downloading the R-Type Dimensions demo; this one has me excited out of pure nostalgic goodness, especially since I picked up the original for TurboGrafx 16 not too long ago.

I can't try Halo Wars yet since I only have a silver account on XBLA, but I've been meaning to finish StarCraft and WarCraft III for years now, so I won't be losing sleep over putting off Halo Wars.

Old Stuff

I'm thinking of trying NetBSD on my old Rev. A iMac G3, and FreeBSD on an old 1GHz Athlon system I have lying around.

Redundancy

Our Second Dell PowerVault 110T VS 80 tape drive died last week, so I've been looking into alternative back-up solutions. New tape drives are starting around $1000, but I can pick up used DLT 7000 drives (70GB compressed instead of the 80GB the dead drives supported, but our tapes will still work; our nightly back-up is under 25GB) for $30. The problem is that they're external and have 68-pin ports, whereas our server only has a VHDCI port. The required cables cost more than the drives, and I'm not sold on the reliability of the used drives anyway. The current direction I'm heading in involves nightly system back-ups to an IDE drive in the server (for easy access), as well as to a networked RAID 1 array elsewhere in the building. On top of all of that, I'd like to back-up our most important stuff (databases, mail stores) to a USB drive that isn't always connected to a power source and will be stored off site. Sound good?

Mark Sinclair Vincent

Anyone else recognise Vin Diesel's voice-over work at the three minute mark? :)

A Solution

DRM strikes again...

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player is pissing me off... I seems to randomly decide to not allow me to seek through random video files (its works perfectly at other times), and doesn't seem to want to share my media with my XBOX 360. The latter function used to work, but now other devices don't even see this machine (though it sees them). Apparently it's related to Windows XP SP3, but nobody seems to be offering a proper solution.

Ingenuity

I tried to fix my store-bought Virtual Boy, but one of the screws may be stripped... It's one of the more recessed screws, and i can't seem to get the bit to grab hold of it :( I'm gonna see if I can't find a really thin pen to melt over it.

I played through the demo for The Maw on XBOX Live Arcade, and it's pretty fun as well as very pretty. The visual style of the game reminds me of Kameo, if a bit narrower in scale. Seems like a pretty good deal at 800 Microsoft points, so I may unlock the full game eventually.

I ended up picking up those four Jaguar games I mentioned earlier. Attack Of The Mutant Penguins is surprisingly addictive. It's reminiscent of Lemmings, except that the goal is to kill all of the lemmings ;) As far as gripes go, some in-game music would've been nice, and the early levels can drag on at times. Then again, I suspect things will get much more hectic later on, so those slow parts may be welcome then. Bubsy In Fractured Furry Tails feels a lot like Zool 2, but the hit detection is questionable; coupled with one-hit deaths, things get awfully frustrating very quickly. I've read that the game can be a lot of fun with practice (Bubsy apparently has a few important techniques to master), so I'll give it another chance. The 2Mb version of Cybermorph is a little more polished than the 1Mb version, so that helps out an already solid game. Wolfenstein 3D is a unique port; probably the best-looking version since it has the most high-res sprites, new visual effects, runs smoothly at fullscreen, and incorporates more of a narrative to the experience. It's also visually darker than the 3D0 port (mostly on account of the brown floors), and it has longer levels. My only real complaint is that the controls are a little too floaty for my tastes. The 3D0's shoulder buttons are a godsend for strafing, and the CD soundtrack really makes a huge difference, but both ports of the game are solid. I feel kinda bad for opening factory-sealed Jaguar games, but really, I'd much rather play my games than just collect them.

200°F

I disassembled one of my Virtual Boys, baked the displays, reinforced the bond between the displays and their respective ribbon cables, and reassembled the system... After playing the system (in between leaving it running on various games) over a few hours, things seem to be working properly!

I should be picking up sealed copies of Attack Of The Mutant Penguins, Bubsy In Fractured Furry Tails, and Wolfenstein 3D for Jaguar after work today, as well as a boxed copy of the 2Mb version of Cybermorph (gonna trade-in my 1Mb cartridge). I'm also considering picking up Stretch Panic for PS2.

Also, check out the Puzzle Quest Galatrix demo! Despite having played Puzzle Quest to death on PSP, it took me a few playthroughs to get back into things with Galactrix; it's still a particularly fun and engaging game though.

Solder!

Loving Rock Band 2... That is all.

Okay, no, that isn't all, but it's definitely dominating my time spent gaming! I also downloaded The Colour And The Shape.

I did pick up the Limited Edition of Gears Of War 2 (open box, decent price, had some store credit to burn), but I won't be getting into that until I'm done with Metroid Prime 2.

I got a Game Gear with some games (Sonic 2, Jurassic Park, World Series Bsaseball, and Goerge Foreman's KO Boxing) and an official SEGA carrying case from a friend, but the capacitors are blown (so the screen is dark, audio is faint). It's sad because the system has been kept in pristine condition otherwise, but it's an opportunity for me to brush up on my soldering skills.

A local game shop recently ordered a Virtual Boy-compatible game bit screwdriver bit and hopes to recruit me into repairing their faulty Virtual Boys. I have the bit at the moment and I'm gonna work on my second system first and see how that goes... If I get both of mine functioning reliably, then I may trade one to a friend for a TurboExpress.

In computer news, I defragmented our e-mail store at work, and I cleaned out a spyware infection for the first time in a long time last night. It was a friend's Vista machine, and I found the offending DLLs in the startup list (which led me back to a specific user temp folder). I still couldn't run certain updates (Windows, Defender, antivirus) or visit certain web pages though, so I went digging through the registry and hosts files and the like... But I was overcomplicating things. It didn't occur to me until later to check the DNS settings for his network adapter, and sure enough, they'd been changed by the infection. All is well now.

I think that about covers things for now.

I'm so weak...

I just picked up a used copy of Rock Band for 360 on my lunch break... It was a good price!

Oh, and is it just me, or does this bundle look like a pretty sweet deal (as long as you don't mind playing by yourself and not being able to download new songs)?

People diet sometimes...

So I broke down and bought Rock Band 2 for XBOX 360 last night. I also grabbed some of the free downloadable tracks ("Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" by Stephen And The Colberts, "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton, "Promised Land" by Vesuvius), the Queens Of The Stone Age track pack, "This Is A Call" by Foo Fighters (had some left-over Live points), and the 20 bonus songs that came with the game. I'm still somewhere between "medium" and "hard" with my drumming, and "hard" and "expert" with everything else.

I need to find a higher seat for drumming, but otherwise all is good and fun... Except for the fact that I can't change my character's physiology (height, weight, facial structure), and that clothes that I've purchased for one character can't be transferred to another :\

Hrm...

Phenom II is out, and it looks to be a solid competitor for the price, especially at stock speeds. While it has room for overclocking, it doesn't seem to be much of a real enthusiast part; comparably-clocked Core 2 Quads and Core i7s still win, so the real market seems to be people who want a solid value out of the box (or to drop a new CPU into their AM2+ motherboards). It's a tempting prospect, supporting AMD/ATi, but I think I'd go for a Core i7 920 over a Phenom II 940 Black Edition at this point. The parts are within $5 of each other at the moment, and the i7 looks to offer a better upgrade path. Perhaps AMD's AM3 CPUs will really shake up the current landscape, but we'll hafta wait 'n see on that one.

Hilarious!

I saw the following post in a discussion over at ars techinca:

Microsoft's hot new operating system runs on netbooks with as little as 1GB RAM and a 1GHz processor. Compare that to their last fiasco of an operating system, which could only run on super-powerful notebooks with no less than 1GB RAM and a 1GHz processor! See the difference? There's an "O" in "notebook"!

Not only that, but this sweet hot newness uses an old reliable printer driver model (Type 3 driver) that was introduced back with Windows 2000, assuring compatibility with everything except the crappiest low-end cheap consumer gear with shitty drivers. Compare that with the old and busted nasty previous operating system that used a wacky new printer driver model (Type 3 driver) that took printer manufacturers completely by surprise, especially when they were too busy introducing a new model of $30 inkjet every 3 weeks to read up on arcane Windows 2000 driver models. Microsoft really dropped the ball on that one, let me tell you.

And to top it off, this veritable gift from the gods of programming finally has a sane security model, where applications launched by the user cannot write to system locations without, at least by default, notifying the user that something fishy may be going on. Compare this with the diseased rat kidney of a product that bugged the user EVERY SINGLE TIME the free registry cleaner they downloaded from that Chinese website tried to overwrite ntoskrnl.exe.

THANK YOU MICROSOFT FOR NOT JUST RE-RELEASING VISTA AND CALLING IT "MOJAVE"! We consumers are just a little more discerning than that, now they we have the Internet to inform our purchasing decisions!

EDIT: Full disclosure--I'm a Linux user since 1997 and wouldn't use Windows unless I had to, but the cognitive dissonance around Windows 7 is just deafening.

It's nice to see something not just clever, but so well written!

Better!

Scored a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 (533MHz FSB) for free! No more weak Celeron performance for this guy :)

Yeesh!

Wow, I just got a whole faceload of passive-aggressive admonishment from an executive assistant at work. I'd been asked to format their problematic computer, so I told them what to back-up, to let me know if there was anything they couldn't back-up, and gave them a time frame for the whole process. Unfortunately, the employee in need left early yesterday evening, and I wanted to get the imaging process going before I left for the night. While I didn't leave a note, I did leave further details with a colleague. Anyway, I was confronted today because Office wasn't there (actually, they just didn't recognise the icons on the desktop), Hotmail wasn't there (actually, they just didn't realise that one must actually type the URL of their non-work-related e-mail provider into the address bar of their web browser if it's not in the history), and they had to type entire e-mail addresses in Outlook (their AutoComplete data wasn't transferred over). I apologised for not leaving a note, but kept myself from suggesting that someone whose job involves working on a computer might want to familiarise themselves with working on a computer...

On a happier note, I played a Rock Band game for the first time last night. It was the PS3 version of Rock Band 2, and I sucked. Hammer-ons and pull-offs, regular guitar playing at any difficulty level, singing; it was all kicking my ass. The strange thing is that I sing as well as play guitar, bass, sax, and piano in various bands in real life, so this apparent failure was kinda disconcerting. It wasn't until I picked up the drums that I really noticed how off everything felt (though my friend was getting by well enough). She assured me she had set the delay for her TV, but said she'd try it again. I watched her strum along with the game, and she was anticipating every beat... By about 40ms, according to the game. Once I set the delay with the drum kit, we were both suddenly getting well over 90% on every song. We ended our impromptu marathon session by unlocking Everlong by Foo Fighters. I'm not much of a drummer in real life, but I wanted to see how that last song played on the "expert" difficulty settings... I didn't get very far ;) I did try the song on guitar on expert though, and got 91% my first time through :) So now I'm trying to decide what to do with these gift certificates I got over the holidays. I was leaning toward picking up the Limited Edition of Gears Of War 2 (to go with the Limited Edition of Gears Of War that was bought for me a few years ago), but now I'm thinking that money may be better spent on Rock Band 2...

Software

'cause I feel like sharing, here's my current software setup:

• 7-Zip
  
• AnyDVD
  
• Avira AntiVir
  
• CDBurnerXP
• CloneDVD
  
• ConvertXtoDVD
  
• foobar2000
  
• Ghostscript + GSview
  
• GIMP
  
• ImgBurn
  
• OpenOffice.org
  
• Pro Tools M-Powered
  
• Thunderbird
  
• Windows Defender
  
• Windows Live Messenger

...All on Windows XP Professional SP3 or Vista Business SP1. The really nice part is that it's all free software, aside from Pro Tools (M-Audio hardware discount) and Windows (educational discount).

I'm still undecided between Chrome (fast and lightweight; combined address/search box is great) and FireFox (better compatibility and bookmark management), so I'm still using both.

Roots

I've become engrossed in Wolfenstein 3D on 3D0. It's unfortunate that the new enemy sprites are only two-dimensional and no loner patrol like the PC original (effectively eliminating any kind of stealth gameplay), but it does keep things running at a faster pace. Despite those changes, the gameplay is classic, the CD soundtrack is epic, and the updated graphics and weapons are a nice bonus; it all comes together to create a wonderfully intense first-person shooter that stands the test of time.

Anyway, I found a used 3.06GHz/533MHz FSB Pentium 4 on craigslist, but the guy wanted $100 for it... I offered $30 and to pick it up myself at his convenience, but no dice.

Aw nuts...

So that 2.4GHz Pentium 4 I was talking about last time turned out to be a 2.4GHz Celeron, and the motherboard only supports up to AGP4X so I went with the GeForce3 instaed of the 7800. The thing's functional, but man, does it suck at multitasking! Certain revisions of the motherboard support Prescott CPUs (5.A, 5.B, 7.5), but not mine (7.1). I haven't heard anything back on that craigslist posting about the motherboard, so it looks like I'm stuck with:

• 2.4GHz Celeron
• Biostar U8668-D (PCB 7.1)
  
• 1GB DDR400 (Dual Channel)
• 64MB GeForce3 Ti 200
• 80GB + 160GB IDE
  
• Sound Blaster Audigy

Closure...?

While testing out alternate video cards (an AGP GeForce 7800, an AGP GeForce3, and a PCI ATi Mach64) in my Pentium 4 machine, I noticed one bulging capacitor that is normally obscured from view by anything in the AGP slot... I'm going with bad motherboard as the official cause of all of my recent startup problems. I've since mixed 'n matched things around here to end up with the following:

• Athlon XP 3200+
  
• DFI NFII Ultra Infinity
  
• 2GB DDR400 (dual channel)
  
• 512MB Radeon X1950 Pro
  
• 80GB + 320GB SATA
  
• M-Audio FireWire Solo
  
• Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

So it's a bit of a downgrade from my 3.6GHz Pentium 4 + 865PE setup, but it's solid... And, somewhat surprisingly for older hardware, runs Windows Vista without a hitch! Anyway, I have an old Biostar U8668-D motherboard (533MHz FSB) and a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 lying around here; with a gigabyte of RAM and an old GeForce3 (passive cooling), it should make a solid downloading box.

I hate to see a sweet CPU like my Prescott go to waste, but I just can't bring myself to spend any more money on that generation of parts... Though I did just find a listing for an ASUS P4V8X-MX for $15 on criagslist ;)

And now for something completely different...

I found a copy of the Japanese (and only) Dreamcast release of Capcom Vs. SNK 2 for $20, so I picked that up and set up my official Dreamcast arcade stick... Only to notice that the right-direction switch on the stick wasn't registering light movements. After some disassembly and minor cleaning, and all was well again.

Finally got into a groove with Metroid Prime 2. The game started out slowly and got overwhelming with its lack of direction (I explored every area, scanned every item, and read every log, but I still felt pretty clueless); it wasn't until I spent some quality time in the dark world that things strated to coalesce, and now I've really got a handle on things... I'm not sure if this whole experience is masterful or flawed (or both), but I am ultimately having fun with it.

My Leafs are on a horrible losing skid in NHL 07 on PSP; I went from something like 10-3-0 to 11-11-1. Lots of one-goal losses, many strange penalities (by teammates not under my control), and some really horrible defensive lapses (not unlike the real life Maple Leafs).

I played with my probelmatic Pentium 4 machine some more recently. The issue is not with the SATA controller, and I checked the floppy drive as well. I'm leaning toward video card issues again. I could try reverting to an earlier Catalyst driver, but I'm also looking at tossing in a whole other card and seeing what happens. If it does turn out to be the video card, that'll be awfully frustrating, since this all started within a month of the thing going out of warranty :\

In a slightly different area of technology, I recently picked up an Epiphone Thunderbird and an Ashdown MAG C115-300 EVO II Combo :)

Fuuuck!

Sat down and got settled in so that I could get into Rayman on Jaguar this evening. About 10% of the way through the game, I'd stocked up nine lives. I go to save my progress, and suddenly have zero lives. That doesn't seem right... Especially since it remembered how many lives I had (seven) when I saved earlier.

Cheeky Bastards

So the Sonic Unleashed demo has been out on XBOX Live for a little while now, and I finally got some time to sit down with it last night. The demo only offers one level, and it's a regular Sonic level (the only good part of the full game, according to reviews). First and foremost, Sonic Team's Hedgehog Engine is gorgeous! Seriously, this game looks really good, and the sense of speed is great. The controls ain't bad, and branching paths and various control techniques hint at a lot of replay value. Based on the demo, Unleashed looks the kind of game you can either whip through and enjoy, or memorise and practice to explore and achieve more. Sadly, the demo's apparently not completely indicative of the final product, as these fun levels are broken up by mandatory quest and werehog crap... Grrr; I hate bait-and-switch techniques like that. I'm tempted to just stick with the demo, never play the full game, and fantasise about what could have been... But I suspect I'll buy the full game if I ever find it on the cheap.

In far less disappointing news, I picked up copies of Alien Crush (TG16), Bonk 2 (PC Engine), Skate (360), God Hand (PS2), and The Bouncer (PS2) :)

Showing Promise

New Brutal Legend trailer is out, and it looks rad.

Reading up on the new Wolfenstein game, I've noticed that it seems to incorporate aspects of Soul Reaver, Undying, and Return To Castle Wolfenstein... It's like 2001 all over again :)

Awesome

Minotaur China Shop

Great minds...

While certainly more developed than my little recounting of my time with Crisis Core, The Escapist has just published a really good article that visits some of the same issues I brought up. The author explores some very interesting aspects of the series while using Final Fantasy IV and XIII as touchstones... Definitely worth your time ;)

shahir29

I'd like to draw your attention to shahir29, an active member of the GameFAQs community, and architect of some very nice roster updates for NHL 07 on PSP; you can find his work here, and I must say that I'm pretty impressed with it so far. My current lines on the Leafs are as follows: Ponikarovsky-Stajan-Antropov, Blake-Moore-Stempniak, Hagman-Mitchell-Mayers, Kulemuin-Grabovski-Hollweg, Kaberle-Kubina, Van Ryn-Schenn, and Frogren-White... I've got to do some shuffling with the second and fourth forward lines, but it's nice to be away from the likes of Allison, O'Neil, and Lindros ;) The time it takes to navigate the start-up screens and menus is still painful and half of the soundtrack just plain sucks, but this'll tide me over for a while yet.

Moving on, I traded-in my second copy of PaRappa The Rapper for PSX (at a profit), Jak II for PS2 (Greatest Hits edition), as well as Mercenaries and NHL 2K7 for XBOX, and got Gunstar Heroes for Genesis (complete with case and manual; all in great condition).

Now then, I remember wanting to talk more about Crisis Core, but since the dust has settled, I realise that I've already said just about all there is to say. It is worth noting, however, that the grinding in this game goes far beyond reason. Well before I was halfway through the story, I was nearing the halfway mark of the side missions; that means that my item and materia selections were pretty impressive, and thus the results of my materia fusion experiments were powerful, to say the least. By the time I was halfway through the main plot, my basic attacks were inflicting close to 9999 damage points, and boss fights were over after just a few button presses... The thing is, I didn't spend inordinate amounts of time grinding through the side missions; I'd just play though all the ones I could handle at my level and then move on with the plot when things got too tough. While it was kinda nice to be all-powerful for the second half of the game, it definitely took something away from the experience. The really scary thing is that there was still a whole lot more to acheive and unlock! I guess that's good for replay value, or completists, or MMO players who want to grind on the go... But I think I'm done. So it's a gorgeous game with a silly plot (could've been really good, but cultural differences got in the way and things got convoluted), some balance issues, and plenty to do... Definitely worth your time.

Demonstrative

XBOX 360 demo impressions:

• Banjo Kazooie: Nuts 'n Bolts was pretty and fun to toy around with, but ultimately kinda boring. I never did get into the previous games in the series, so as an essentially new experience, this one didn't hold my attention. The vehicle construction bits were cool, but the tutorials were frustratingly not-helpful and I didn't have the patience to see just how deep they went. It's cheaper than most new releases, and the reviews are generally posuitiove though, so it's likely worth checking out if vehicle construction and world exploration are what you're into.
  
• Mirror's Edge is very pretty, and a lot of fun once you get the hang of the controls and the levels. It's all about practicing until you find a way to flow through the level, which is once of the things I loved about Crackdown and Assassin's Creed... Unfortunately, the full game is supposedly pretty underdeveloped in terms of both extending gameplay and fleshing out a cohesive plot. Hopefully the upcoming downloadable content will solidify things without adding too much mor cost to what already seems to be an overpriced game.
  
• Dead Space sure does feel like Resident Evil 4 in space. I didn't like Resident Evil 4, but everyone else seemed to, so you draw your own conclusions for this one.
• Mercenaries 2, like Mercenaries, is a good Grand Theft Auto clone that has been. transplanted into a warzone. I didn't much care for either, though they didn't seem to do anything poorly.
• Fracture was surprisingly enjoyable. Much like TimeShift, it seemed like a generic sci-fi FPS with an impotent gimmick, but a solid game nevertheless; I might actually be tempted to pick this one up, should I find it on the cheap.

Anyway, I'm now spending my portable time with Killzone: Liberation (very enjoyable), NHL 07 (looking into getting roster updates), and Wario Land II (on the second last chapter). Othwerise, I'm getting into Rayman on Jaguar and I've pretty much given up on Jak 3 on PS2;  I'm near the end of Act II, defending Jinx while he destroys the eco grid (or something like that), and I can't help but feel sad about how fun the first game in the series was and how tedious this one is.

Moving on, I found a copy of Gungrave on the cheap, so I picked that up. It's pretty cool, but it keeps bringing up the pause menu mid-gameplay, even though my thumbs are nowhere near the Start button...

HOLY CRAP!

SO GOOD!!!

Oh, and I bought Street Fighter Collection for Saturn, as well as Kirby's Dream Land (I recently found Kirby's Dream Land 2 for $10) and Battletoads (had it when I was a kid, but sold it) for Game Boy.

Trading Post

Traded the GameCube, accessories, and four games (no books) for a Nintendo 64, accessories, and RAM expansion... Why? So that I could give it back to the friend who gave me the GameCube. I had no use for a GameCube, and she'd mentioned wanting an N64 not too long ago, so it seemed like a nice thing to do. I threw in Donkey Kong 64 (she wanted it, I hate it) and Super Mario 64 (got it from another friend who thought it was broken; fixed it. I already have two copies). She's happy.

Traded the seven remaining SEGA CD games for Burnout Paradise and 1400 XBOX Live points (which promptly went toward the purchase of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix). SSF2THDR quickly reminded me that I suck at SSF2T... But I'm getting better! I've unlocked the super finish, 15 second win, and beat arcade mode achievements, and I'm refining combos and strategies while tackling higher difficulty levels. I'm sticking with Ken for the time being, but I think I should rekindle my interest in Dee Jay some day.

Just as Raiden on Jaguar got me back into shoot 'em ups, SSF2THDR got me excited about XBOX Live Aracde and 2D fighting games again. I've recently spent some more time with Braid, Castle Crashers, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Prince Of Persia, and Pac-Man C.E. on XBLA (and I'm considering purchasing Space Giraffe), and I picked up a copy of Capcom Vs. SNK 2 EO for XBOX, while also getting back into Street Figher Anniversary Collection on XBOX and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 on Dreamcast. Oh, and I'm also prolly gonna pick up a copy of Street Fighter Collection for Saturn (SSF2, SSF2T, and Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold).

At work, I've recently created a SysPrep-modified image for the Dell Dimension 2400s we have all over the building... Formatting computers just got a lot easier around here :)

Panic!

...Our second (older, from long before my time there) server died. It's a 733MHz Pentium III-based Compaq ProLiant ML330 running Windows 2000 Server. My boss informed me that there was no backup, which was bad because that server apparently handled all of our financial data (taxes, payroll, donations). We don't exactly have the equipment to handle that particular kind of failure ready in the building, so they almost sent me home with the hard drives (since I do happen to have the necessary equipment ready there). While it was tempting to go home and take the rest of the day (and potentially all night) doing work that they really don't pay me enough for, I went to the bathroom instead... Upon my return, I went through a six-hour process involving screwdrivers, ancient SCSI drivers on floppy disks, Windows password hacking, various hard drive recovery techniques (ended up getting things workable with "chkdsk /r" in the recovery console), convoluted network data transfers, and a hell of a lot of dust bunnies; my boss was shitting bricks the whole time. In the end, I recovered everything and decommissioned the old server. The data is now on a RAID 1 array and is currently being backed-up to a separate physical drive; tomorrow, I will make an archival copy on tape. The funny thing is that I'd been bugging them to let me do that months ago.

Anyway, I bought a SEGA CD game lot through craigslist on Sunday. I really only wanted Panic!, but the seller wouldn't break up the lot... So, for $50, I got Cobra Command (looks cool, but gameplay's annoying), Dragon's Lair (looks bad, gameplay's annoying), Heart Of The Alien (looks like its predecessor, but the gameplay's way more annoying), NBA Jam (CD music is great, but just about everything else is straight from the Genesis version), Panic! (love it!), Racing Aces (this may just be the worst game I've ever played), Silpheed (great twist on the shoot-'em-up genre), Sol-Feace (another sweet shoot-'em-up), Sonic CD (already had it), Space Ace (looks and plays much better than Dragon's Lair), and Wing Commander (it's Wing Commander), all complete and in great condition except for Cobra Command (just the CD) and Panic! (some damage to the manual). I'll be keeping Heart Of The Alien, Panic!, Silpheed, and Sol-Feace; giving Sonic CD to a friend; and trading the rest toward... Something else? I dunno, we'll see what I can find.

I finally got around to downloading and installing the New XBOX Experience today. It's pretty. The avatars are fine, I guess. Wheee.

I finished Crisis Core; expect a review. I'm trying to decide between Final Fantasy Tactics and Killzone Liberation for my next PSP endeavour.

I scored an official Dreamcast Arcade Stick for $40 over the weekend, and a free GameCube (with four games and a memory card) last night. The arcade stick overwrote my Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 saved data and the start button didn't work, but it was an easy fix (removed the bottom panel, repositioned the switches) and all works well now. I plan on trading-in the GameCube stuff on account of the Wii's backwards compatibilty, but it's still a pretty sweet deal :) I also happened across both parts of the PC Engine version of R-Type (the North American and European versions have all eight levels on one card, but the Japanese release is split over two), but they were each in two different bundles at two different stores that didn't want to sell them individually... I've got a word in with each shop owner and I should hear back from them this evening.

Moving on, did you know that BlackBerrys apparently delete things like old calendar data, text messages, etc... if they're running low on space? Did you know that Windows XP SP3 breaks Microsoft's own Remote Web Workplace, and if you've installed Windows with a disc that has SP3 slipstreamed into it, the usual workarounds don't work? How about the fact that if your VPN server and client both use the same IP address range for internal addresses (e.g. 192.158.1.x) that the VPN will effectively be broken? These are all things that I've learned over the past few days. I'd tell you more, but one of our servers' hard drives just died and it's not part of a RAID array.

To be continued...

I'm lazy

Rather than try to get more cash by selling them myself, I ended up trading in Bloody Wolf, Dungeon Explorer, Legendary Axe, Wonder Boy In Monster Land, and the North American TurboPad (which worked, but was kinda beat-up) for Ninja Spirit and Final Blaster for PC Engine.

1987!

So I did end up buying R-Type for TurboGrafx 16... And Shinobi for PC Engine. I looked into Japan-to-North America converters, and it seems to be much cheaper to just get a PCE. Most of the PCEs I could find, however, were starting around $80! Off to craigslist, where I found a nice little PCE lot for $75 even. I got the console, an AV Booster, power adapter, a/v cables, two controllers, and seven games (Bloody Wolf, Dungeon Explorer, Legendary Axe, Mr. Heli, PC Genjin, Ultimate Heli, and Wonder Boy In Monster Land). All told, similar bundles go for over $250 on eBay! It wasn't an official NEC power adapter and both of the controllers were TurboGrafx 16 TurboPads, unfortunately, but one of the TurboPads has a PC Engine controller plug on the end... Weird.

Anyway, Shinobi on PCE is great, and a few of the games I got are pretty sweet (specifically, Mr. Heli and Ultimate Heli); none are bad, either, which is swell because there're so many horrible PCE games :)

Oh, and I finally found out what the "Vol.xx" numbers on Japanese PCE games mean! Someone told me they were greatest hits re-releases, but I've since uncovered that they're actually release order numbers specific to different publishers and that not all publishers used them.

One last thing: My friend insisted on lending me his PCE game collection as well as his PC Engine CD-ROM², CD-ROM² interface, and all of his CD-ROM games. He has some cool stuff like Fighting Street, Red Alert, Y's I&II, and a few more, but most of them are better on other systems or unplayably Japanese. I'll be giving it back to him shortly ;)

Decisions, decisions...

I picked up Boogerman and Cyborg Justice (Genesis), Shinobi Legions (Saturn), and a Game Gear battery pack last week. The battery pack wouldn't hold a charge (damned NiCad batteries), which sucks because I'd really like to be able to take my Nomad on the subway with me. Finding a proper NiMH battery pack would be ideal, but is proving to be a challenge. I'm able to return the battery pack though, so I'm thinking of putting that credit toward the PC Engine version of Shinobi... But then I'd need a PC Engine. Maybe I'll just grab R-Type for TurboGrafx 16 instead.

I'm hesitant to spend the $25 on that PCI SATA controller I menioned a few posts back, so I'm gonna go with an IDE hard drive first. If that works, then perhaps I'll just stick with IDE. If the problem still exists, however, then it's back to Windows XP. If that doesn't do it, then the Athlon XP comes back.

Oh, and I've successfully migrated our e-mail server at work from an external POP3 connector over our DSL connection into a full-fledged internal SMTP server on its own T1 line, which is totally sweet ;) Now I'm looking into setting up a "catchall" account for non-existant addresses on our domain, but that's looking like it'll involve a bunch of VBScript work and I hate coding... Which is weird because I'm not all that bad at it.

What to do...

Neither the motherboard's integrated USB controller nor the CMOS battery were the culprit...

Gah!

I was sooo close to getting a Jaguar, a Jaguar CD, two controllers, and a hanfdul of games for $100 off craigslist yesterday! I repsonded within a day of the posting, but the guy said it was sold almost immediately :\

Freeing up the seond PCI slot didn't help matters in my problematic computer, so I've since installed a PCI USB controller and disabled the motherboard's integrated controller. Next step is to buy and install a fresh CMOS battery, followed by a PCI SATA controller, and if that doesn't work, then I'll install Windows XP. If that fails to solve the problem, then it's time to bring back the Athlon XP.

Damnit!

I just found out that there's a boxed version of World Of Goo! I'll always go boxed over digital if I have the choice...

Insecurity

I played around a little more with the new router, the range extender, and a D-Link wireless bridge I have hooked up to my XBOX 360, and finally got everything working reasonably well, but had to stop using WPA... So it's back to MAC filters and not broadcasting my SSID until I figure out something more secure that still offers a reliable connection.

I haven't really touched Spore, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, PAA:OTRSPOD-Ep2, or anything other than Crisis Core recently... Until I fired up World Of Goo. What a fantastic game! Phenomenal artistic direction that's reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, Tim Burton, and LocoRoco, while still managing to establish itself as something that is ultimately unique. Oh, and the gameplay is top-notch as well! I studied civil engineering for a while at university, and always thought it was interesting, but not really for me... Now I'm kinda wishing I had World Of Goo all those years ago to spark my interest, or at least that I'd studied harder in my static physics classes so that I could get better scores in the game ;) Seriously, World Of Goo is super-addictive and even offers aptly-named "OCD" goals for each level. Get it.

Now then, back to my computer that doesn't like starting-up properly. After reading all the Nehalem press releases this morning and the subsequent speculations regarding Shanghai, I'm reconsidering even the remote possibility of investing any significant amount of money in a new PC until those technologies start to trickle down into the mainstream. No point in putting down ~$1000 when we're on the cusp of a big step forward, so I'm back to coming up with theories. While the overclocked CPU and video card in the µATX case seem as though they'd be likely culprits, they seem to pass the test well enough. Now I'm thinking it's either the motherboard or the hard drives.  Since the hard drives are relatively new and have been in other computers without issue, they're less likely than the motherboard, especially if the earlier USB issue was with the controller on the motherboard and not the ports on the case. Factor-in that it's an older board with an early SATA controller running Windows Vista, and we may be getting somewhere. A basic PCI SATA controller goes for around $20, so that might be a solid bet to avoid rebuilding. I may also have the FireWire card in the PCI slot that shares an IRQ with the integrated ethernet controller, so that's the first thing to check. If all else fails, I'm prepared to repurpose the Athlon XP 3200+ (swap RAM, video card, hard drives) for the time being...