Splurge

Teddy Boy and Zillion for SMS; Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and Journey to Silius for NES; Chakan and Panic On Funkotron for Genesis; Jurassic Park, Killer Instinct, Super Punch-Out, and Tetris & Dr. Mario for SNES; as well as NBA Showtime, the "Sonic bundle" pack-in of Sonic Adventure with the Sonic Adventure 2 demo, and a second copy of Soul Calibur for Dreamcast.

Bullets

Recent Purchases:

• Samurai Shodown Anthology (Wii) (No SSVS!? Boo!)
• Sonic Gems Collection (GC) (It was $5)
• Gauntlet Legends (DC) (It was cheap, and I had credit to spend)
• Space Channel 5 (DC) (My copy was in a sorry state; traded it in)

Current Windows 7 dilemma:

• Ardour (Linux; FireWire Solo relegated to acting as a pre-amp)
• Cubase (Industry standard, good personal experience so far)
• Sonar (Supposedly great product and hardware support; 64-bit)
• Pro Tools (...But 8 still doesn't officially support Windows 7)

Cleaning-up.

I finally sold the second Power Mac G4. I ended-up dropping the price to $100 from $125, but that ain't too bad; essentially, this means that I got my dual 1GHz Power Mac for $25 :)

I ragequit NHL 07 again... This time I was up 2-1 with just minutes left in the game when the same passing issue showed-up. My player was in the neutral zone, and instead of passing to the forward at the opposing blue line, he made another backward pass, this time to an opposing player who scored on the ensuing rush.

Anyway, I recently picked-up Draconus and Zombie Revenge for Dreamcast, Mr. Bones for Saturn, and Thunder Force III for Genesis. I plan to get Darius Gaiden for Saturn this evening.

7

The new workstation at work only came with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Professional, but my 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate disc arrived the other day, so I tried to install the latter using the product key from the former... No dice; SKUs don't match :(

I did get Windows 7 Ultimate installed on my trusty old Athlon XP 3200+ machine though, and it runs wonderfully :) There were only two issues, one was easily solved (had to manually set the WLAN service to "automatic"), and the other involves patience (Pro Tools 7.4 doesn't work with Windows 7). Because of the Pro Tools issue, I'm strongly considering going back to Vista for the time being.

My time with Windows 7, on the whole, has been swell. In terms of superficial everyday use, it's Vista with a streamlined taskbar (sporting some nifty new features) and a few different settings windows, and that's just fine with me.

Ragequit

I've gotten back into NHL 07 on PSP (with the latest roster update), and my Leafs are kicking ass; something like 15-2-0. That record and the player stats aren't out of line with some of the other teams though (e.g. Pittsburgh is 9-2-1), so I don't feel too bad about how well things have gone so far. I did, however, quit toward the end of the third period of a recent game against Buffalo. I was down 3-1, and the game had been so one-sided that it was ridiculous. Buffalo players we're literally diving to create penalties (the replays didn't help their case), and the refs were falling for it. Until mid-way through the third period, PIMs were something like five to one in their favour, and all three of their goals came on the powerplay. The last straw was when one of my players passed the puck slightly backward to his left, at my goalie, who promptly spun around and put the puck in his own net... The problem was that I was trying to pass to a player at the blue line. Not cool.

Not bad, not bad...

New workstation at work: Dell Vostro 220s

• Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 Cache) CPU
• 3GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM
• Intel G45 Chipset
• Intel GMA X4500 HD GPU
• Dell E2010H (20" widescreen) LCD
• Windows 7 Professional 32-Bit

...Definitely an upgrade from what I had before :)

Points

Got me some XBOX Live points and grabbed Shadow Complex along with a bunch of Foo Fighters and Nirvana songs for Rock Band. Shadow Complex is a sweet Metroid clone, but I fear it may be a little short; one solid afternoon of play, and it looks like I'm already half-way done.

I finished The Darkness the other day; my opinions of the game have not changed since my last post.

Next is prolly gonna be LostWinds: Winter Of the Melodias, or Wario Land: Shake It!

Oh, and my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate is in the mail :)

News

Nintendo sent me a whole new Wii with a new one-year warranty. They paid for the service and shipping, and covered the taxes. That was a very nice gesture from them, especially considering that the Wii malfunctioned a month or so after its original warranty had expired. I didn't ask them for anything; just sent an e-mail indicating that I was an unhappy customer. They assured me that the issue was not the result of a design defect, but I won't be leaving the thing on standby anymore, just in case it melts again. It was funny that the replacement system came with an insert that told me to re-synchronise my controllers and mentioned that they had updated the system software for my convenience... Except that they hadn't updated my system software ;)

Anyway, I sold my 867MHz Power Mac, and am close to selling the 800MHz one as well. If all goes well, I'll have made my $300 investment back, which ain't bad when you consider that $300 got me three Power Macs and I'll get to keep the best one. Speaking of the best one, a friend came through with two 512MB sticks of PC133 RAM, so my dual 1GHz G4 is now maxed-out at 1.5GB of RAM :)

I want to write more about Brütal Legend, but I've yet to collect my thoughts on the subject. Rest assured that it is a spectacular original game and well worth anyone's time. I've completed 100% of the single-player game since my last post, and have been participating at the Double Fine forums, so expect more here on the subject in the coming week.

Upon finishing Brütal Legend, I popped Psychonauts into my 360 and was promptly sucked right back into that world for the better part of an afternoon; there's a reason it's one of my favourite games of all time. There is an annoying bug with the 360's backwards compatibility with the game though; when you pause, the main character's texture colour scheme gets all messed-up, and the only way to fix it is to quit to the game's menu and load your last checkpoint. Not a game-breaker, but definitely annoying. I wonder if the "XBOX Originals" version on XBOX Live does the same...

Playing Psychonauts got me all nostalgic, so I dug up my copies of Beyond Good & Evil (Windows, XBOX, GameCube) and did some research in hopes of figuring out which is the penultimate version. Apparently the GC port is rarest, and missing some language options and concept art, but was supposedly the lead platform during development. The XBOX version has shorter loading times and the best graphics of any console, whereas the Windows port can be even quicker and smoother, but may have some annoying bugs and DRM... So which do I keep?

Finally, I'm almost finished The Darkness on XBOX 360, and I'm pretty disappointed. This game has solid source material, a well-written script performed by quality voice actors, and some truly unique gameplay mechanics... But it's all so disjointed that the experience ultimately falls flat. Much of the music is horribly out of place (some of sounds more like something from a fantasy game than an FPS featuring a violent anti-hero prowling the streets of modern-day New York), the Darkness powers are poorly managed (why can't I use them all at once? The colour scheme suggests that this may have been the case at some point in development), the free-roaming aspect and side-missions are unambitious and ultimately unnecessary (effectively breaking any narrative flow), and major plot points are either poorly-explained or glossed-over completely... Seriously, the fact that the protagonist has creepy, bloodthirsty monsters protruding from his body is really only noticed by one other main character, and even then, only in passing; the big transformation scene when the Darkness first manifests itself just kinda happens and is promptly forgotten; key scenes in your character's internal struggle are left to chance instead of logic (wander around until you find something you can interact with)... I could go on, but you get the idea. The Darkness isn't a broken game, and it's pretty enjoyable at times, but I just can't get over the fact that it could've been so much better... Ditch the free-roaming aspect and tell me a good story.

Bedtime

Brütal Legend was fantastic. I'll write more when it isn't 6:00am :)

Trades

I traded Panzer Dragoon, Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic CD, Sonic R, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Virtua Fighter 2, and Virtual On (all for PC), as well as Crash Bandicoot (PSX "Greatest Hits") and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (XBOX) toward Super Pitfall (NES), SonSon II (PC Engine), Crash Bandicoot (PSX, not "Greatest Hits"), Pitfall 3D: Beyond The Jungle (PSX), Fable The Lost Chapters (XBOX, not "Best Of Platinum Hits"), Pitfall: The Lost Expedition (XBOX), Klonoa (Wii), Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (Wii), Muramasa: the Demon Blade (Wii), Fable II Limited Collector's Edition (360), and King Of Fighters XII (360).

Oh, and I may be getting somewhere with Nintendo on this overheating Wii issue... Stay tuned.

Brütally Honest

Brütal Legend kicks ass. I love the story, the acting, the graphics, the cameos, the controls, the varied gameplay, the exploration... It feels like the natural evolution of Tim Schafer's work; from cutting-edge point-and-click adventure games; to Grim Fandango, which incorporated a more action-oriented control scheme into the adventure genre; to Psychonauts, which masterfully meshed the adventure and action genres together like no other before it; to Brütal Legend, which further expands upon adventure/action hybrid ideas with an open strategy element akin to games like Sacrifice and Overlord.

The major gripes I've heard so far have had to do with pop-in and inconsistent frame rates, navigation ('I need a mini-map', 'the waypoints may lead me into an obstacle'), and genre confusion ('you got your half-assed RTS effort in my adventure game')... But any pop-in or stuttering I've run into so far has been negligible and in no way makes anything unplayable, navigation is pretty straightforward (if you get lost, the map screen is very helpful; but like Psychonauts, exploration is a huge part of the fun to be had here), and the RTS elements are an intriguing addition to what is still primarily an action game. It seems to me like a lot of people were caught off-guard (myself included) by the heavy RTS infusion to the single-player game, as previews would have us believe that such aspects were more of a multiplayer thing... The resulting backlash seems to be one of confused criticism.

I do have some legitimate complaints though. Scene transitions can be abrupt, and trivial yet funny voice clips can get cut-off, never to be heard again. Certain aspects of the game (minor plot points, new skills, new types of enemies, stuff like that) are not fully explained, though their uses and meanings aren't exactly esoteric, so it's not the end of the world. Finally, things seem a bit easy... For example, I lost all of my men to an unexpected and unexplained environmental effect during a battle and was killed shortly thereafter, but not before reaching a checkpoint. When I respawned, I was at the checkpoint with a full complement of men; men who most certainly did not survive to reach that checkpoint with me... Regardless, Brütal Legend seems like a game worth spending some quality time with in order to savour its unique nuances and creative ideas; the rewards far outweigh any issues you may run into along the way.

So, Need For Speed ProStreet on PSP, eh? Yeah, good times. Great graphics, genuinely fun sim gameplay, lots to do, plenty of replay value... And asshole AI that has no qualms about sending you into a spin, as well as a broken garage system that doesn't let you sell old cars or get money back for downgrading... Unless I'm missing something there? Still one of the best racers on the platform, no question about it. I wonder why it seems to have been so overlooked by the press...

Finally, the e-mail server at work went down over night, and now I'm fixing it and developing a new storage strategy to better utilise our limited storage resources... Wheee!

$2!

I tracked down a copy of Brütal Legend after work yesterday (the used record store had two copies left; everywhere else in the area was sold out), but didn't get a chance to play it until this morning... Since I had to go into work, I've only played through the intro and have yet to hit the RTS aspect of the game that supposedly throws the quality of the whole experience into question...

I also noticed copies of Shining Force II (Genesis) and Super Off Road (SNES) ~$2 each at that same used record store, so I grabbed them as well. Super Off Road needed a cleaning, but I didn't notice that until I'd already tested it and popped ActRaiser back in... At which point ActRaiser wouldn't start properly, and then erased my saved progress. I only had like two more levels to go! D'ah well, I guess that just clears my schedule up a bit for Brütal Legend :)

I finally got around to sitting down with Gran Turismo and MotorStorm: Arctic Edge on PSP, and was promptly confused. Just about everyone's been talking about how pretty Gran Turismo is and how ugly MotorStorm is, and I think they got it backwards. GT runs at an amazingly high frame rate, but it ain't the prettiest game on the platform; Need For Speed: ProStreet looks way better. MotorStorm looks pretty great too, so I'm just kinda scratching my head here... Anyway, GT's a hardcore sim that takes a lot of practice to master. MotorStorm is big, dumb, visceral fun that's great in short bursts, but gets kinda repetitive if you try to do it all at once. ProStreet (quickly becoming one of my favourite racers on the PSP) is somewhere in the middle, but definitely more toward the sim side of the spectrum.

The Saga Continues

I got the other G4s cleaned-up and ready for sale, but I'm not gonna post them 'til I max-out the RAM in the dual 1GHz machine and redistribute the leftovers. I found two new low-density 512MB sticks on craigslist for $40, but they don't seem to like Macs, or at least QuickSilvers :\ I'm gonna see about swapping at one of the local surplus stores...

On a happier note, I'm pretty comfortable with the following selection of Mac software:

• Connect360
• Flip4Mac WMV
• NTFS-3G
• Perian
• Rember
• Safari
• StuffIt Expander
• Toast
• Transmission

...I think that pretty much covers my needs.

Anyway, I read a post on a message board about an old Sonic clone from Data East on the Genesis called High Seas Havoc. I don't think I'd ever heard of it before then, but it looked promising, so I checked out a nearby shop and they had a loose copy for cheap. Good times :)

My ship has come in!

I got the dual-1GHz QuickSilver 2002! $160 on craigslist! The case is a little banged-up, but otherwise, it's been great so far! I'm gonna see about selling the other two, and maybe swapping the case from one...

Anyway, on to the better news! I received the following in the mail today:

• BC Racers (32X)
• Blackthorne (32X)
• Primal Rage (32X)
• Star Trek Starfleet Academy (32X)
• T-Mek (32X)
• Toughman Contest (32X)
• Pitfall (Jaguar)
• White Men Can't Jump (Jaguar)
• Cool Cool Jam (NGPC)
• Gals Fighters (NGPC)
• Puzzle Link 2 (NGPC)
• Actraiser 2 (SNES)
• Blitz w/overlay (Vectrex)
• Cosmic Chasm w/overlay (Vectrex)
• Solar Quest (Vectrex)
• Starhawk w/overlay (Vectrex)

Can't wait to sit down with all of it... And now I only need Night Trap, Spider-Man: Web Of Fire, World Series Baseball, and WWF Wrestlemania to complete my domestic 32X collection... Such a nerd :)

Jinx

If all goes well, I'll have a dual-1GHz QuickSilver 2002, with 1GB of RAM, a GeForce4 MX, an 80GB HDD, a Super Drive, and an original Apple mouse and keyboard by the end of the day... I had been considering an upgrade card from Newer Technology or Sonnet (1.6GHz~2.0GHz, single or dual G4 CPUs starting at $200 US), but this will do just fine.

While I'm here, I guess I'll mention that I'm almost done ActRaiser, and I picked up NHL 09 and NBA Street: Homecourt for 360 (less than $20 for the pair), as well as PO'ed for 3DO... Good times :) Oh, and I enjoyed the Wet demo. Not enough to make me drop $60~$70 on the game, but enough to keep an eye out for it in the bargain bins.

So very, very stoked...

I sat down with the Brütal Legend, Forza Motorsport 3, and NHL 10 demos last night, and oh man...

NHL 10 seems pretty swell, but I think I need to spend a good few hours with it before I'm really comfortable with all of the control options. I didn't notice anything particularly game-changing over previous iterations though, and the Leafs haven't convinced to spend $60 this season... Yet :) I hear NHL 2K10 is is a much more comparable product this year, so I'll be giving that a shot as well.

Forza 3 is gorgeous, and it felt totally intuitive. I'm really tempted to pick this one up, even though I still have plenty left to do in Forza 2.

Brütal Legend though, oh man... It sucked me in immediately. The writing is the key, and it was spot-on hilarious right from the beginning. The graphics are better than I expected, and the gameplay, while a little too God Of War-esque for my liking, was varied enough to keep me riveted. I will buy this game upon its release next week.

Is there really a need?

I've been trying to figure out which PSP Need For Speed game is the best...

Underground: Rivals is a pure arcade racer; Most Wanted: 5-1-0 adds police; Carbon: Own The City adds a really lame narrative, teammates, and an open city to drive through; ProStreet throws everything previous out the window and makes a really impressive sim that is particularly challenging and looks gorgeous; Undercover is an hideous atrocity; Shift is like Rivals except that it doesn't occur exclusively at night and has some decent weather effects that significantly affect the gameplay.

So which is the best? I dunno. Aside from Undercover, they're all pretty solid. ProStreet is the most impressive of the bunch, but is it worth our time now that Gran Turismo is available? Rivals and Shift offer a lot of fun, but with games like Ridge Racer and MotorStorm out there, do they offer anything unique aside from the tuning aspect? It seems like 5-1-0 and Carbon are the two that really carve a solid niche for themselves, but even then, they have a lot in common with the PSP Burnout games.

Personally, I've had the most fun with ProStreet, with Shift/Rivals and 5-1-0/Carbon taking second or third, depending on whether I want to race mindlessly or race mindlessly with the police.

Moving on, I now have Leopard installed on my Mac, and while it feels a little sluggish compared to Tiger in the visual effects department, it's running really well. I can't wait 'til I find more RAM and a better video card for this thing; the best I can find right now for a reasonable price is a 64MB GeForce4 MX...

Son Of FrankenMac

I got the leftovers pieced together, and now my unexpected second Power Mac G4 is in business... Albeit with a noisy CPU fan and a damaged speaker. Anyway, it's running Mac OS X 10.4.11 on an 800MHz G4 (no L3 cache) with 320MB of RAM, a 16MB AGP ATi Rage 128 Pro, a 30GB Maxtor HDD, and a CD-RW drive. Not sure what to do with this one yet...

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.