Linkstew

I've played a lot more of Tactics Advance since my first impressions, and it being the marathon game that it is, that means I've got plenty of time for second impressions:

• In my first impressions I complained about how annoying it was to not be able to see how a given piece of equipment would alter a character's stats. Well, it turns out if you hold start, it will show you how the equipment impacts the stats. Thank god.
• For some reason, I overlooked the fact that a character can equip two different Action "A" ability sets simultaneously. This is an important game play point, because otherwise a character is locked into the abilities of whatever job he is currently assigned. But nope! A character actually gets A abilities from both his assigned job, and one other selected job set.
• The first time I saw an extra character named "Foobar," I thought it was cute and laughed a bit. But by the third time I'd seen an extra named "Foobar," it began to lose its charm.
• The game time clock says I've been playing for 30 hours and 8 minutes,, and 72 missions. Of course, the 30 hours doesn't take into account either (on one hand) all the times I fell asleep while playing only to wake up and just turn the game boy off in the middle of a battle, or (on the other hand) all the times I set the game boy down in the middle of a battle, only to come back to it awhile later and finish the fight. I don't actually know if it balances out or not.
• Finally, it's been a long time since I muttered something like "This game is a lot of work" about a game I was still actually enjoying. But seriously: a lot of work. And you know you're in trouble when you start seriously considering writing software to help you play the game more efficiently.

The most notable thing I can say about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance so far is that it's put me to sleep about 7 times so far.

The intro to the game goes for at least 30 minutes before you can save the game, and closer to an hour if you're a slower reader. The first time I played the game, I fell asleep before I could save it. The second time, I got to save the game, but when I started the third time, I couldn't remember anything so had to go through the intro a third time before anything stuck. Variants on the same thing happened several times after that, where I'd fall asleep in the middle of a mission or forget what I was supposed to be doing, and just had to restart from the last saved game.

In addition to the slow pace of the game, there are a few other issues with the game. You're rather suddenly dropped into things with a fairly steep learning curve, and this isn't helped by the fact that equipment interfaces leave a lot to be desired. When shopping for equipment, you're only told what jobs can use that equipment, meaning you have to remember what jobs all of your characters have. Worse, when you're shopping, you can't tell if any given piece of equipment will improve your character's stats. And when you're actually equipping items, you also can't tell if the stats are improved -- the only way to tell is to note your original stats, swap items, and then see if they improved.

But, this isn't nearly as damning as it might sound. All those times I fell asleep, I was admittedly pretty tired, and playing right before bed. And the interface problems -- while annoying -- can be worked around without too much effort. Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that this game is not for the casual gamer -- anyone interested in this game is going to need to invest a lot of time reading things and learning the intricacies of the gameplay. If you're a fan of Final Fantasy and strategy games, check this out. Otherwise, I'd steer clear.

So there I was, playing Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, when I noticed that "Hey, there are an awful lot of Medusas flying at me (in the "Room of Illusion," very early in the game, right after you first meet Death). With no randomness to their flight path whatsoever.

And then I remembered, "Hey, if you hold down B, Juste will just hold out his whip, allowing you to jiggle it around and hit enemies."

And putting 1 and 2 together with creative use of a band aid box and a cell phone [2], my Game Boy is now sitting beside me with an infinite number of Medusas flying right into Juste's whip (at 3 experience points a head), earning me as many levels as I want to take the time to ... let the game earn for me.

Blah, talk about taking any difficultly out of what is already reputed to be an easy game. Of course, I don't have to take advantage of this, but when I see a programmer who did something as stupid as this, I feel obligated to exploit it. It's not cheating if it's just right there in the game, right?

[1] The Belmont you play in this Castlevania.

[2] Just for the record, rigging the GBA SP to keep a button pressed is much harder than it was to rig the old GBA to keep a button pressed, thanks mostly to the partially recessed buttons.

Cnet's Top 10 Must Have Gadgets

Man, I know I'm a gadget geek, but I'm almost embarrassed that I own the top 3 items on this list, and own one more if you count my TiVo series one.

It's been more than two years since I got my Game Boy Advance, and in that time I had a lot of fun with the system. But as time passed, my ability to enjoy playing games on it diminished as I was often forced to sit in uncomfortable positions with a light shining brightly over my shoulder. So my primary reason for wanting a GBA SP was obviously the lit screen, and the other features were neutral in my mind. So, here's the bullet point version of what I think of of the SP:

• The lit screen definitely delivers as advertised, and I'm now free to play my games whenever and wherever I want. It's bright enough that it can even double as a flashlight when I'm walking down the stairs in the middle of the night.
• I was a little skeptical of the durability of the new hinge-based design, but now that I've fallen asleep on the SP a few times, it seems to hold up just as well as its predecessors. And when I shut the case before I fall asleep, the screen is even protected. Overall, a win.
• In contrast, it turns out the new metallic paint jobs aren't nearly as durable as the solid plastic colors of the original GBA. I've already got some scratches on the top of my SP that I have no idea where they came from.
• I'm amused to note that Nintendo made the same design decision that Apple did on the older PowerBooks: If the SP is closed and you're looking at it, the "Nintendo" logo is right side up. But if the SP is open and you're playing it, the "Nintendo" logo will be upside down to an observer.
• On that note, once I find my Apple stickers in my still unpacked boxes, I'm going to see if one will fit on the lid of the SP to cover the scratches, to make it look like a mini-PowerBook. =) Of course, then I'll have to decide if the Apple logo should be oriented PowerBook G3 or PowerBook G4 style.
• Though they don't say so anywhere I could find, "SP" is probably supposed to stand for "Super Portable." However, it's nowhere near as "super portable" as some of the micro-cellphones you can buy these days, and really, I don't think it's that much significantly more portable than the original GBA. I'm pretty sure it's thicker, and it's at most half as wide. Anyway, the point is, if you're worried about the size, it's small enough.
• In the other direction, though, is it too small? I don't think so. I even think that the L and R buttons may be a little easier to press than on the original, thanks to having more room to grip the longer body of the SP. However, I haven't played any L and R button intensive games yet, so I can't say for sure how comfortable it will be in the long term.
• As for the rest of the buttons, though I believe the primary buttons and dpad are a little smaller than the GBA, they're still easy to press. However, if you have big fingers, I could see problems with accidentally pressing A when you mean to press B.
• All of the buttons are recessed into the body of the unit (to keep them away from the screen when it's closed), and while this isn't a problem for the primary buttons, the start and select button can be difficult to press even for my not-too-big fingers. If your fingers are much bigger than mine, I suspect you might finding yourself using the eraser of a pencil (or maybe your fingernail or your pinky...) to press start and select.
• The volume control changed from being a dial to being a slider, and I think I liked the dial better. With the slider, I feel like I'm going to accidentally slip and turn it all the way up or all the way down every time I use it.
• Speaking of which, I'm still irritated that the SP doesn't have a headphone jack, and that EB claimed that Nintendo doesn't even make an adapter when I bought my SP. Also, reference this Penny Arcade strip.
• As for the position of the game slot on the bottom when playing classic games with bigger cartridges that stick out of the unit, it is a little irritating, and does prevent you from resting your hands on a table or your lap in certain cases, but it's not really that bad. And most games you'll be playing will probably be GBA games, anyway.
• I do kind of wish the unit had a way to put itself to sleep when the lid shuts, but I suspect that would require some software support that obviously isn't there in old games. At the very least, it would have been nice if the light and sound would shut off when you close the lid. Oh well.
• And the rechargeable battery pretty much kicks ass. Admittedly, it doesn't seem to last as long as a pair of AAs did in the GBA, but I'm playing with the light on full time, I'm not wasting batteries this way, and I can charge the unit without having to stop playing. Pretty much yay.

To sum up, the GBA SP is an overall win. It does have a few flaws in that the paint scratches easily, there's no headphone jack, the start/select buttons are kind of hard to press (but no worse than the Gamecube's stupid Z button), and classic Game Boy cartridges stick awfully far out of the bottom of the unit. But overall, if you're debating between buying a $70 GBA or a $100 GBA SP, the extra $30 will be well spent on the SP instead of another game in the long run. Consider that you'll save on the cost of batteries and glasses and it pretty quickly adds up.

In case you didn't figure this one out for yourself, you'll definitely want to wander around with a bunch of Zigzagroons in your party for awhile. Their "pickup" ability will fairly often pick up all kinds of useful items -- in particular, it's pretty much an infinite supply of things like Ultraballs and Rare Candies and PP Ups and Nuggets (which you can sell for a lot of money to buy everything they don't pick up). All they have to do is be in your party, and every few battles you can just skim the items they've picked up.

I'm a little upset by this, because it kind of unbalances the game. In color and metal, you had to ration your money and your pokeballs, so you could only catch so many Pokemon before you ran out of money and had to move forward in the game to find more trainers to fight. But with this change, it's possible to just spin your wheels and keep catching more and more Pokemon and making more and more money without actually advancing in the game at all. At the same time, it's very convenient, and it certainly makes my life easier.

On a slightly unrelated note, I really need to get over this incorrect chain of logic: Birds eat fish, and birds fly, and fish live in the water, therefore water pokemon are weak against flying attacks. Because it's wrong, and I know it's wrong, and yet I keep trying to attack water Pokemon with flying attacks.

15 Must-Have GBA Games

Yeah, this is a pretty good list. I either own, have played, or want to play about 2/3 of that list. In particular, I'm currently grooving to Pokemon Ruby and Wario Ware, Inc: Mega Microgame$!

Though Nintendo likes to tout their connectivity features in the form of the Game Boy Advance Link Cable and the GameCube/Game Boy Advance Link Cable, I don't feel like people are actually worrying about those features when they buy Nintendo products, or even using those features at all.

What gives me that idea? Well, though one of my old roommates and I both had a GBA for a year, and though we each had several of the same games, we never played multiplayer games against each other. Why? Because we were too lazy to ever bother to buy a link cable. And of all the people I know with GBAs, none of them have a link cable, either. In fact, I'm the only one I know who even has a Game Boy Advance / GameCube link cable.

The solution? Nintendo just needs to bite the bullet and start bundling a Game Boy Advance link cable with every GBA SP they sell, and more importantly, a GameCube/Game Boy Advance link cable with every GameCube they sell. That way, there are no extra items to worry about buying to be able to take advantage of Nintendo's connectivity advantage, which will encourage people to buy games which take advantage of those features, which will encourage developers to make better use of those features.

Of course, it'd be even better if the next generation of these devices had wireless connectivity features built in, but I'm not optimistic about the chances of that happening.

Buy a GameCube, get the Game Boy Player FREE

Oh, an excellent counter to MS's and Sony's price cuts. "Get access to games for two systems for less than the price than the competitors are charging for one." Pity there's no good way for me to take advantage of this.

I was inspired to write this article on a train ride back in February, and that's where I wrote most of it, too, without any internet to do any research. So of course, as soon as I plugged in I found articles like this one from more than two years ago, and I'm once again reminded that there's not an original thought in my head. But, I already wrote these 1,000 words, so here they are:

In my day, I've owned PDAs, mp3 players, a few Game Boys, a digital camera, and a cell phone. These days, I only carry my cell phone, my laptop, and my iPod with me regularly. The bulk of these devices is a reason that I stopped carrying some of them regularly, but it's not the primary reason.

At one point, I had wireless internet on my Palm V thanks to OmniSky (are they dead yet?). It was nice for what it was, but even then it seemed obvious to me that that was merely a temporary solution. Today, convergence is the name of the game, with more and more cell phones providing PDA functionality, and some are even providing gaming functionality.

It seems fairly obvious to me that the mobile devices (including cell phones, PDAs, game players, and to a lesser extent mp3 players and cheap digital cameras) are rapidly approaching a convergence. I won't be at all surprised if the more popular devices are going to be the ones that provide more features.

For that matter, the home entertainment market is hurtling towards convergence, too, with my PS2 able to play DVDs and connect to the internet.

Nintendo currently dominates the portable gaming market, with its Game Boy line being the only real contender. However, Nintendo has said on multiple occasions that they are a game company, and were only interested in supporting gaming with their devices. Witness the lack of DVD functionality in the Gamecube as a prime example of this. Generalizing this behavior and putting it in terms of what I've been talking about, it's unlikely that Nintendo is going to be very receptive to the convergence trend. In fact, I would be honestly surprised if Nintendo hopped on that bandwagon, and bundled phone or other features into the base Game Boy configuration. Sure, Nintendo may reintroduce peripherals like the Game Boy Camera or the Game Boy cell phone connector, but accessorizing is more Nintendo's habit than converging. (Because there's more money in accessories!)

Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony and Microsoft (and others) attempt to compete in the portable gaming space not with a dedicated game system, but rather, with a gaming platform piggybacked onto other devices, with the most likely target being cell phones. Heck, Nokia's upcoming N-Gage is just the first in what I expect to be a string of gaming platforms piggybacked on top of other devices. And I think, with that strategy, it is likely that someone will overtake Nintendo's dominance in the portable arena, primarily because I don't expect Nintendo to embrace the convergence that their future competitors will be offering. The more popular devices will be those that offer more features, so people will buy phones that also happen to be able to play games, and since their phones support the games, they'll buy the games for that platform.

So convergence of portable devices is coming, and I expect piggybacked platforms to have a pretty significant impact, but I'm not actually happy about that. And it's not just because I'm a Nintendo fanboy. No, I'm not happy about this because I subscribe to the philosophy of "do one thing and do it well." Witness my love of UNIX as proof of this. So I'm not happy about this convergence that I'm expecting because I'm afraid that we're going to end up with a sea of devices that do many things half assed. My iPod plays music incredibly well. My Game Boy plays games well. My phone answers calls well. My CellularGamePod, on the other hand...

I don't mind convergence. It's not a bad thing, and for people who can't afford multiple devices, it's probably a good thing. But I think a better solution that could be more significant than convergence in the long run is the idea of a "Personal Area Network."

• Components of a "Personal Area Network"
• A cellular link node for network/internet access. This could be a cell phone, a computer, or even a PDA with a wi-fi card installed.
• Bluetooth (or another, ideally less "nasty" protocol) to allow devices to communicate with each other. This would also enable network access for non-networked nodes in the network.
• An auto-discovery protocol. Preferably Rendevous, but (if I recall correctly) JINI might also do the trick.
• Some standard protocols for sharing standard data between devices.
• Then, add devices to yourself as you see fit. Some of these devices could be devices which offer more than one service.
• And most importantly, all of your data is stored on your local devices -- not accessed through the network.

The advantages and uses of such a PAN innumerable. You could access the contact list on your iPod with a borrowed cell phone to make a quick phone call. You could connect your laptop to the net using your cell phone or a friend's. Your Gamecube and Game Boy could talk to each other for connectivity. Two Game Boy owners could play each other without need for a cable. Take a digital picture and email it to a friend through your cell phone, or store the picture on your camera as identification, without using a shitty camera-phone. And on.

Basically, some devices would "offer" services, and other devices would "request" services. Phones both offer and request contact data. My Game Boy requests net. My laptop would offer and request a lot, depending on its current configuration (I'd certainly want my laptop to offer net if it were plugged into a cable modem, instead of messing around with a cellular link). And my iPod could offer music and conacts (though bluetooth doesn't have the bandwidth to stream music -- just one of many reasons this would ideally use a better protocol than bluetooth).

When my phone connects to a device offering contact data, it would browse that data remotely and not save a local copy, unless the owner of the data allowed it (though if the owner doesn't want you to download the data, he probably wouldn't let you browse it in the first place) and the browser of the data requested a copy of the data. This protects the owner of the data, and keeps each device from getting cluttered with data unnecessarilly.

I probably shouldn't be emphasizing contacts so much, because that's an example of pure data that should arguably be availble just from "the network", but that's a topic and an argument for another article. Better applications for this PAN technology are probably things like the digital camera services and the net services I described above.

The biggest unsolved problem in the sketch of a PAN I described above is security, but I can imagine numerous possible solutions to that problem. The first solution that popped into my mind was giving each piece of hardware a hardware based keypair. Don't make any way to get the "private" key from the hardware short of tearing the hardware apart and working some EE magic. Then make a "known_hosts" for your PAN, and your PAN can use something akin to ssh host key verification to allow access to your network. Of course, firmware upgrades would always have to be supported in case of flaws in the protocol... Something a little better than having to manage a "known_hosts" would be cool, but like I said, this is just one solution of many. And heck, for all I know, bluetooth might already have some way to do secure ad hoc networks, but I'm on a train right now without a PAN, so I can't connect my laptop to my phone and check. =)

I'm sure most of these ideas aren't very novel, but the entire vision is still my ideal future of digital devices. I wish I could do more than just hope things turn out this way.

Heh, I was just rereading my post about my plans to buy a Game Boy Advance SP, and I glanced at the top of the page and noticed that the random tagline du jour was "Buy a new Game Boy, for the fun and the fashion."

How appropriate! In case you don't know, that's a line from Stuck in the 90s by Moxy Früvous, off of the fantastic (with a few exceptions) album Bargainville.

Which suddenly reminds me! Also on Bargainville is the Gulf War Song, which you should at the very least go read. It was written in response to that other gulf war, but it's just as appropriate today.

I decided to buy a Game Boy Advance SP yesterday. This might seem a little strange after my initial comments on the SP, but I've got a number of reasons for making this decision:

1. I've been playing The Wind Waker, and I wanted to take advantage of its GBA connectivity. The problem is, the chair I sit in when I play games has a really bad light situation, so I can't see my GBA screen without moving to another seat.
2. I want to play my GBA in bed. The problem is, in bed, I roll around and lie in many different positions, most of which are not conducive to having any light shining on the screen. I put up with this for awhile when I first got my GBA, but lately it's been so irritating that I just haven't been playing it.
3. I'm out of AA batteries, and I don't want to buy any more. The SP has a built-in rechargeable battery.
4. In his SP mini-review, the editor of GameFAQs said "it's instantly revitalized my interest in the GBA," which is what I'm looking for.
5. And what finally tipped the scales was the fact that yesterday was my birthday, and I wanted to buy myself a present.

The problem was, I got to the EB Games on Telegraph about 5 minutes after they closed last night. So today I went back, and they said they only had them in stock for people who pre-ordered. D'oh.

As long as I was out and about, I also went by the EB Games on Shattuck, because hey, as long as there are two of them, I might as well exercise my options. Unfortunately, the clerk there told me that they had sold their last three earlier in the day. Triple d'oh!

But, there's good news to be had from these misadventures! The clerk at Shattuck also mentioned that they'll buy back my old GBA for $30 towards the SP. Sure, I might be able to sell it for a little more on eBay, but by the time I factor in the time-is-money equation, and consider the convenience factor, I think it's definitely worth it to sell my old GBA to EB Games.

Once they have SPs in stock again, of course...