Baud Attitude

Vista Post #5, also forklifts.

Posted on May 4, 2007 by baudattitude

In the inbox today:

“Thank you for submitting your order for Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit CD/DVD OEM.
Your order has been shipped. You should receive your order within 3 weeks. If you do not receive your order, please contact us via email MSTUPVISTANA@moduslink.com by May 1, 2007, for English language versions of the product and June 1, 2007, for non-English language versions of the product so that we may research your request and ship your order.”

So if you have an Acer and have been waiting for your free Vista, it might be on the way.

This is my fifth blog entry talking about Vista, and I’ll probably do a sixth when the disc finally shows up. I am putting way too much thought into this, so now:

On the topic of forklifts in recent video games:

Ico: Zero forklift content.

Justice League Heroes: I want to say there was zero forklift content, but the game’s design seems like it might have some forklifts somewhere that you could pick up and throw at things. You can certainly toss cars around.

Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 : Zero forklift content unless there’s a gravure scene where Hitomi is driving one or something.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Forklifts present. Not drivable, and certainly not part of the plot, but this game does include forklifts.

Shadow of the Colossus: Zero forklift content.

Shining Tears: Zero forklift content, but it does have a ninja girl with cat ears.

Your daily dose of nekomimi delivered, I’m going to bed.

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Next up!

Posted on May 2, 2007 by baudattitude

It looks like the next game off the stack is Shining Tears. This breaks the “No RPGs!” rule I set when I started this catchup project, but my job hunt is starting to look promising and eBaying stuff is taking up time and I’m having to decide what games I really want to see through.

Shining Tears made the super short list. There’s a few reasons, but it boils down to: I haven’t played a Shining game in an awfully long time, and the series is a significant one for me.

See, back when I met my wife, we were both kind of gamer geeks. We both had a Genesis AND a SNES and a small library of games – with almost zero overlap.

I had the first couple of Sonic games, Phelios, Whip Rush, Street Fighter II, the Ranma fighting games for the Super Famicom, Megadrive Valis and SD Valis, Alisia Dragoon… that kind of thing. Platform games, shooters, fighting games.

She had a couple of games from my genres – Super Star Wars, Jurassic Park, the SNES Ranma game, but the bulk of her library was titles like Final Fantasy III, Phantasy Star 2 & 3, Lufia… in short, she had a bunch of RPGs.

I was not a big RPG person.

They were bloody expensive!

Final Fantasy III was something like $80 – insane!

Most important for the purpose of this rambling post you’re suffering through, she had Shining Force 1 & 2, games I had written off as WAY too complicated just from hearing about them. I knew almost nothing about them except that you could have some ungodly number of characters in an army, but it was enough to convince me that they were too much for me.

Then one day while I was watching her play Shining Force 2, she did something evil and wrong – she handed me the controller.

That’s where the console RPG habit started. I think we actually stopped playing Shining Force 2 and she had me start Shining Force 1 from the beginning, which then became the first console RPG I played through to the end. Eventually we went back to the sequel, and Lufia, and played through at least two endings of Phantasy Star III…

But I haven’t actually finished a Shining game since Shining Wisdom on the Saturn.

So – with the potential of actually getting back to being a productive member of society looming, it’s time I got down to it.

Posted in videogames | 4 Comments

I have to fight what, now?

Posted on May 2, 2007 by baudattitude

I hate saying “another game down” after playing something like Shadow of the Colossus. It doesn’t seem a respectful enough sentiment for the kind of experience the game provided. Nonetheless, I can add it to my “finished!” stack and stop feeling guilty about it sitting on the shelf… though I may try some of the fights again now that I can go directly to the various colossi.

At this point I am tempted to go all fanboyish about how cool the game is, but let’s be honest – if it’s your kind of game, you played it a year ago, if not two years ago, and I am so late to the party that any further praise is really unnecessary.

One of the small advantages of being late to the party – I was able to buy the Greatest Hits version and save 30 bucks in exchange for putting up with an ugly red banner on the packaging.

I can’t say that I’ve done that often – it’s far more often that I buy a game, shelve it, and then get reminded that I ought to try playing that when I see the $20 version hit the shelf. Final Fantasy games, in particular – for VIII, I not only bought the game at full price, I bought a new Playstation because I was told that the game wouldn’t run on a modified Playstation… so let’s say, $200 to buy this one game? And, by the way, I haven’t ever finished it, didn’t even start it after until it had been re-released as a GH title, AND (for double irony!) it runs just fine on the modified Playstation. I could have saved a couple of bucks there is all I’m saying…

This morning’s weight : 190.8

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Acer & Vista Upgrade from Moduslink

Posted on April 30, 2007 by baudattitude

Interesting tidbit from the PCWorld forums for those of us with Acer laptops waiting on our free Vista upgrades.

http://forums.pcworld.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=32036

It seems as though they may start shipping as of May 1. That’s progress, I suppose. Acer taking so long to get it handled is a bit disappointing, but since I won’t be installing it until fall at earliest it doesn’t make that much of a difference for me.

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Things that are good

Posted on April 30, 2007 by baudattitude

1) Shadow of the Colossus is washing away those Buffy related frustrations.

2) Some of the stuff I’ve put up on eBay has sold, been paid for, and shipped off. Less stuff in the apartment! More money in the paypal account!

3) Suchie Pai III is coming out for DS and PSP. This is my favorite mahjong series and it’s been PC-only since the Dreamcast game was released – the Dreamcast game being one of exactly two titles I have that do NOT work with the VGA cable. An outrage, I tell you. Also, in today’s climate it will likely be a more, hmm, “family friendly” mahjong game than previous Suchie Pai games, but it should still be fun. I’m thinking that the DS version is the one for me since it puts the mahjong board on the bottom screen leaving the top free for character art.

4) I have discovered “Lucky Star”, a new and very funny anime series that lots of folks seem to compare to Azumanga Daioh. It’s a little goofier and the characters don’t have a lot of depth yet, but I’ve enjoyed the three episodes I’ve seen so far.

Posted in anime, mahjong, nds, organization, PS2, psp, videogames | Leave a comment

Y Buffy Kant Swim?

Posted on April 28, 2007 by baudattitude

So this week’s games have been P.N. 03 on the Gamecube and Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Xbox. I haven’t gotten far enough into P.N.03 to really talk about it, but I’ve seen a bit more of Buffy, enough to decide to put it aside as not worth finishing.

This is a harsh statement, particularly painful because the game starts brilliantly, the story is enjoyable, and the combat system is simple, but lets you pull off some really cool moves once you dig into it.

The problem is this: In about the second level of the game, you have to fight Spike. Sorry for the spoiler. He’s a tough enough fight on his own, and then you need to face off against a bunch of other vampires while you’re already low on health and short healing items.

This is the only time in the game where you are at any risk of dying to a vampire, zombie, or any form of demon. Seriously. The game throws healing items at you left and right – to the point where I kept having to skip picking up more because my inventory was full. From then on, it’s demon bashin’ fun with Buffy and an assortment of dangerous toys – it’s surprisingly fun to dismember zombies with a shovel or sledgehammer.

What’s left to provide a challenge? The environment. Buffy can’t swim, for instance. Levels have lots of water in them. If you fall into water – instant death. There’s lots of molten metal, too, in one level, but I don’t have any complaints about that, if it weren’t for the next factor:

Buffy is dumb. I mentioned Ico a few weeks ago, and if you’ve played that you probably have a few harsh words for Yorda. Buffy makes Yorda look like a genius.

“Hey, Buffy! In front of you is a bar you can hang on to, and also a pit full of molten metal! When I press the jump button, which will you choose?”

She seems to instinctively pick the lethal option. It’s worse if you have to do any combat near a hazard, because her combat animations tend to chain into each other and you can punch and kick your way right into the aforementioned lethal water.

Even with that, it was still worth playing, until I got to the next-to-last level. This is where the developers thought to themselves, “Wow, this game is actually kind of short. How should we make it longer?”

You get a level that, yes, has a few things in it to fight, but they’re never any real threat. Ignore them. What will kill you here is that the level is a series of platform jumps, where missing any of the jumps means an unrecoverable fall to your death. Miss one jump – or fail to jump off the platform you just jumped TO in time – and it starts you over at the beginning of the level. I will also mention that making Buffy jump in a straight line instead of at a weird angle seems to be a matter of pure dumb luck.

Buffy the fighting-vampires game is a really great game, and I recommend it. Buffy the platform game is a mess. It’s a shame that they come on the same disc.

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The internet is a powerful and terrible thing

Posted on April 27, 2007 by baudattitude

Set the wayback machine to 1997, when the Saturn ruled the earth, crushing lesser syst…

Oh, all right, it was already obviously on the way out in the US and all English speaking countries, but some of us didn’t buy into the whole Crash Bandicoot-is-your-god hype, and for us few, Saturnworld was one of the better news sites. Their URL directs to ign.com now, I suppose that’s better than one of those “buy this domain!” sites.

One day, Saturnworld posted a very bizarre little movie to their site. It featured a bunny-eared, busty, anthropomorphic Saturn console singing about things that were white. Given bandwidth at the time, it was a 160×120 heavily compressed Quicktime movie. And, in retrospect, it wasn’t anything all that special but it was weird and funny enough to stick in my head.

Today, I had the thought – what would happen if I went up on Youtube and typed “サターン” into their search box.

Page 2 of results. Who’da thunk?:

It turns out that it originated from a Tech Saturn Magazine demo disc. I only got one issue of Tech Saturn ever – it wasn’t a really common magazine to find in Los Angeles – and it wasn’t the right issue. I found Saturn Super much more often.

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Nekomimi fan-service

Posted on April 27, 2007 by baudattitude

It seems like about half the hits I get from search engines are people searching on “nekomimi” – so, in an attempt to give my readers what they want, which is not me griping about school or droning on about what 10-year-old game I’m going to play next, here is a picture of a Hazuki figure I bought in Akihabara on our December 2005 vacation. It was one of the ones that comes in a box with no indication of which figure you’ll get, and I was really hoping for the Hazuki-in-big-flouncy-dress figure, but I won’t complain.

Click picture for bigger version.

You know, when I was taking this, I didn’t even notice the nekomimi-Rei figure behind her. Double fan-service!

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Stuff, the accumulation thereof

Posted on April 26, 2007 by baudattitude

There’s one unavoidable fact about being a fanboy – you accumulate stuff.

This is a hell of a lot of fun. I think, for most fanboys, the act of buying something cool is in itself almost as much fun as the owning of whatever you’ve bought.

The slight downside is that you eventually wind up with a Lot of Stuff. And, unless you’re constantly upgrading your living space, eventually the Stuff is going to take over.

I did significantly scale back buying toys and statues and such a few years ago, with fairly good results, and we stopped going to thrift stores looking for cool vintage computer hardware and video games. Both of those slowed the Stuff Onslaught a great deal. Nowadays, most of what comes into our lives is in a DVD case, or a jewelcase, or a book. Those are pretty easy to store… and we’ve bought a LOT of shelving in the last couple of years.

The next step – getting rid of some of the stuff that’s not so easy to manage, while not getting rid of anything I’ll regret – that’s tougher, especially since a lot of it is vintage video game stuff and not-so-vintage toys, and while I don’t want to throw it away, the concept of doing ten thousand eBay auctions makes me gibber just a little.

So… in an attempt to save my sanity… lot auctions. Toss 30 or so Colecovision cartridges in an auction, put it up and pray that whatever I get from it covers the cost of putting it in a box and shipping it wherever it’s going. That kind of thing. Anything that doesn’t even make its minimum bid goes to the nearest dumpster and in so doing helps boost the rarity of whatever it was by just a little bit. I’m doing a service for collectors, really.

My first goals: Reclaim one quarter of one closet. If that goes well, work from there.

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Defining “Success”

Posted on April 24, 2007 by baudattitude

One of the great things about being a guy is there are whole industries devoted almost exclusively to pandering to you.

Hence we get games like Dead or Alive Xtreme 2.

Another great thing about being a guy is not having to feel shame when you buy a game like Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, and one of the great things about having a very tolerant wife is that when the game was released last year, she rolled her eyes and said “we’re getting a 360 now, aren’t we?”

On the other hand, it’s a difficult game to define “beaten” – and lately I’ve been all about finishing games to some level of satisfaction.

Most of the time I consider a game beaten once I get the ending credits and animation, etc. In DOAX2, you could do that by playing through the first day with your initial partner and then sitting next to the pool for 13 days. Not really a challenge.

For stuff like Mahjong games – see above reference to having no shame – I consider them beaten once I’ve unlocked everything, if they have unlockable stuff, or once I’ve played through the story with every character I care about if there’s nothing to unlock. The only Mahjong games I’ve managed to “beat” by the first metric are Super Real Mahjong Premium Collection for the Neo Geo Pocket Color and Super Real Mahjong Dousoukai for the Game Boy Advance. Mahjong is pretty well suited for portable game systems, as an aside.

DOAX2 has unlockable stuff, and to some people the unlocking of it all is “completing” the game, and that is a fair and valid point. The problem is that, if you use an exploit in the original, unpatched version of the game that allows you to get lots of money very quickly, “completing” the game takes a mere 300-400 hours.

If you don’t use the exploit, estimates are in the 1K hour range to complete.

That’s, uh, half a year of a full time job.

I set my sights a little lower.

In the end I decided that I would unlock the achievements for collecting all of Kasumi’s and all of Hitomi’s swimsuits, and call that good. This took 20 hours combined, though after I managed it with Kasumi and realized it was a lot quicker not to mess around with trying to make friends with anyone, I completed Hitomi’s in the last 7 hours of that.

There are 9 playable characters, so math tells me that if I decided to finish the collections for all the other characters (this would give me 180 gamerscore out of a possible 1000, by the way), that would probably take right around another 50 hours and the game’s soundtrack is not worth listening to for another 50 hours – after only 20 hours of it I am about ready to snap. Most of the songs were catchy and upbeat and likeable the first 5 or so times I heard them… I think I heard the same Hillary Duff song at least 50 times, and I can’t take any more of it.

So – DOAX2: Completed (enough)

Now to finish Buffy.

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