Well, I said I'd eat my hat if this happened, but I don't have a hat... I'm really kind of amazed. And sad. And miffed. I feel let down. Things will work out, though. They're just a company, even if I liked them a lot, and their name was one of my nicknames... Buggrit. Millennium Hand and Shrimp. Check out this article here... From the article, it sounds like this will be good for them, but I can't help but question what will happen. We'll see. We... Will See.
Monthly Archive for June, 2000
SCSI is not Magical. Read This Page for the punchline, along with a couple of other jokes about everyone's best friend, SCSI.
New Transformers in Japan. Maybe I'll stumble across some at AX.
Following a link about the rumor of Microsoft buying Bungie (It's a Rumor. No worries. While it'd make sense for Microsoft to try, they'll never suceed, because Bungie is a private company and would never sell out. And if they did, I'll eat my hat.) I ended up at a Mac News site called As the Apple Turns. As it Turned out, it's a pretty cool site offering some nice opinions of the kind that seems to be less common in the Mac world these days.
Okay, this is kinda funny, but kinda scary at the same time. Though it's reassuring to know that if San Francisco ever were hit, we probably wouldn't feel a thing, because it'd be nice and instant and all... Check out MapBlast!, if you've got the stomach.
If you're concerned about the privacy of the email you send, then GPG (The Gnu Privacy Guard) is your answer. This site contains a nice explanation of basic GPG use and management and how to configure pine to use gpg.
IGNDC has this nice little essay explaining why the Playstation 2 won't destroy the Dreamcast this October. However, it does fail to mention the backwards compatability of the PS2, which is always a wildcard worth remembering. I still won't be buying a PS2 until there's an app that I need (FFX), frankly. And I agree that Sony rushed. Enjoy the read.
And besides, it's $300 out of the gates. Admittedly, there is a DVD player in three too, but I've already got one, and Nintendo and Sega both hit the $200 price mark on launch. So it goes.
- Platform: Game Boy
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Rating: 4 of 5
Now, I know you might be asking yourself something like "Pokemon? What in the hell?" But give me a second to explain. You see, Pi and Ben and everyone down in Bakersfield first got hooked on Pokemon, and after observing them go through several rounds of Pokemon Stadium, I found myself being drawn in. It's a dark and viscous cycle, I know, but I couldn't stop myself. And here's what I found.
Pokemon, while it basically has no story whatsoever, has many innovative features which combine to make an incredibly addictive game. Hmph, who woulda thought.
Now, as I mentioned, there's basically no story -- Your goal is to become the number one pokemon trainer in the world. And it's a game boy game, so the graphics and sound, well, suck.
But what it lacks in graphics and sound and story it makes up for in Gameplay. You see, your goal is to capture these little creatures and train them to fight better, and you then go around your little world fighting pokemon other people have trained. And off the top of my head, I can't think of a single thing that I'd like to change in the way the game works. It's just that well put together. A few interface issues mar the speed of play, but they're all sidestepped with Pokemon Stadium, and hopefully Pokemon Gold and Silver will address these things... Though from a technical point of view, I understand why they were made the way they were.
Oh, this game is an amazing time suck, by the way. I think I spent around 80 hours on it my first time through, and if you start playing with friends that number is only going to go WAY up. I'd wager 200 hours wouldn't be out of the question if you had a group of five or six people you played with via Pokemon Stadium.
And now that I've mentioned Pokemon Stadium 3 or 4 times, I'll plug it as the ultimate Pokemon Yellow/Blue/Red accessory. If you're going to play Pokemon, I'd actually recomend playing it entirely through the transfer pak and Pokemon Stadium with your N64. It smooths over those annoying interface things that I mentioned earlier and makes the game go much faster. In many sense.
- Platform: Sony Playstation
- Publisher: Square Soft
- Rating: 3 of 5
The original reason I picked up Saga Frontier II was because I was in Bakersfield for Spring Break and I didn't have anything else to do. That, and I thought the hand painted graphics looked incredibly beautiful... That is, until I saw the graphics of Legend of Mana...
I wasn't particularly blown away when I first started playing it, and I played it more I wasn't any more impressed, and thus it went. It's a decent game, but it's not great. It's not horrible, either.
The most notable problem, I think, is that for a long time the game is relatively easy. This, combined with a high random enemy encounter, makes for a very tedious game. So tedious in fact, that after 12 hours I shelved it and moved on to other, more captivating games. I feel bad about shelving it, because I was digging the story, but the game play just bogged my enjoyment of the story down way too much.
So, speaking of story, here's kind of how it goes. The whole thing is presented in a very episodic manner, which makes for very little backtracking, and forces you along a couple of rails for the entire course of the game. You have a few options here and there as to what scenario to play at any given time, but if you play too much along one line of story, things get a little disjointed, making for an even more confusing story. Things aren't helped any by the lack of any clear indication of what year it is before you actually look at the time-line. However, when all of these pieces of story come together, it assembles into a very well knit work which I was really enjoying, even if the dialog was a little stiff in its translation. It's a pity I couldn't tolerate the monotonous game-play.
As for the graphics, which were the main reason for my picking this game over a number of other games, I found myself being left breathless by Doctor Jeckyl while combating Mr. Hyde. You see, the hand painted backgrounds are simply stunning -- From the snowy peaks to the foggy valleys, every inch of this game looks great. Except for the battles, where the sprite based nature of the characters really sticks out, and the very flat 3d objects used for backgrounds have textures mapped onto them which are a complete departure from the rest of the game. To make matters worse, most of the battle effects were distracting flashes of light, and frequently more powerful attacks looked less powerful than some of the most basic attacks. But, as I mentioned before, the over-world in its entirety is simply amazing.
So, in summary, I would have loved this game if it'd been just a few puzzles combined with the story. That is, take out every combat sequence in the game and let me just immerse myself in a semi-interactive tale of royal infighting.