Replay value

It's no secret that my favorite games I played while growing up were the Final Fantasy series, and I have recently gotten the urge to play them again.

The problem is, I don't have the systems that play those games anymore, and I won't be spending any money to get them. That means I need to find another way.

The solution? Emulation. A program that enables your computer to emulate that game system, and this allows you to run roms of the games, or copies of the original game made into files that are playable on the emulator.

I was originally going to get an the various emulators for the different systems that the Final Fantasy games have been released on over the years, but I remembered that all the early games were later re-released on Playstation, and figured that only having to deal with one emulator would simplify things.

So I went online and found that the preferred emulator, called the epsxe. There is a little setup involved with configuring plugins, but I this guide walks you through it enough to get you started, and then you can mess with settings from there. I would suggest downloading the file pack near the top of his guide, which includes all the necessary plugins so you don't have to go searching for them.

Next I needed some game files, and after a quick Google search I found this site. It had everything I needed, and not only do the downloads go pretty fast, but there aren't a bunch of ads you have to follow in order to get them like I've seen on other rom sites.

I figured I'd start with FF4, one of the games in the series that I remember the least, and then work my way up. I got the game working and all, and have now made it about 3/4 of the way through the game. It's been great, and there is so many memories it brings back, but also so much that I had forgotten about.

There is one drawback to having chosen to use the PSX emulator over the original system the games were released on, and that is the sound. For some reason the emulator doesn't play back the sounds correctly. It seems that the sound plug-in doesn't know how to deal with looped music or multiple sound files at once.

What ends up happening is any music playing will play through fine on the first loop, then it cuts out and just repeats the first note until you enter an area with different music. I also have no music during battles, just the sound effects. It's frustrating, and I've been tweaking the sound plug-ins to find one that works but I haven't had any luck so far.

Now that I'm so far into the game I really don't want to start over again, but part of the nostalgia is gone because that battle music was a big part of it for me. If there is anyone out there that has a solution for this I would love to know.

Other than that it's been great, and I'm looking forward to beating this game and moving on to the next. I expect this to keep me busy for a good while.

New car

It's been a while since I've posted. I've been focusing mainly on my WoW blog, and there hasn't been much to update about recently anyway as far as geeky stuff goes.

That being said, I finally went out and got myself a new car. Well, not brand new, but it's new to me at least.

I had a post a while back about hybrid SUVs. I didn't end up getting one. Instead I went for a Subaru Outback Sport. It's smaller, still keeps my gas mileage low, and with all-wheel drive it also does well in snowy weather, which is why I wanted a 4wd SUV in the first place.

The trouble wasn't actually finding a car as I expected. I ran into a huge road block when I went to get a loan to pay for it. Being young I sort of expected to be turned down just applying on my own, but I also had a lot of trouble having my dad there to co-sign for me.

He has great credit, is a home owner, and has been using the same bank for over 30 years. Despite all that, because of the fact that he doesn't have many credit cards, they still didn't want to approve the loan.

We ended up having to threaten to change banks before they finally gave in and approved us, provided we gave them copies of our most recent paystubs to show we actually make what we say we do (which I would have expected to have to do anyway).

I understand the state of the economy, and it is probably a big reason why banks are hesitant to give out loans, even to people with good credit, but just the fact that they don't factor in all the details is what made it so frustrating.

The only information they use to check your eligibility is your credit score, income, and monthly expenses. There is nothing about your history with that bank or anything else that might help turn things in your favor. I was a little disappointed about that.

Either way, I eventually got the loan and made it just in time to buy the car I wanted before the guy sold it someone else who had offered to buy it the very next day.

I'm very happy with it. I paid a lot less than the car was worth with all the extra features it had, but the guy just wanted the base blue book value without those options since he got it at an auction and paid even less than I did.

I'm still getting used to it, but it's a huge step up from what I was driving before, and will last me a long time.

Rock Band 2

It's finally here! Rock Band 2 came out this past Sunday, and I grabbed it later that night. I also had my ION Drum Rocker set show up on Friday, and was able to set it up and a play a song or two on Sunday night before going to bed.

Alright, it's pretty much the same as Rock Band so far. There are some new game modes to play around with, but as far different colored bars scrolling down the screen telling you which buttong to hit, it's not much different.

I haven't had time to try everything out, but it looks like I'll have to unlock all the songs to make them available in free play mode. I love that I was able to transfer over the songs from the original (minus three), and I pretty much bought all the DLC that I wanted, which isn't nearly all of it.

The Drum Rocker set is great. It's taking some getting used to as I set it up a little differently than the old Rock Band set. The best thing is how much room you have to customize where each pad is. I basically set it up as close to a real drum set as I could.

I moved the red pad (snare) to where a snare drum would be in front the two toms and not so far off to the side. I moved the yellow cymbal (hi-hat) to the right of the snare and above. I really want to actually learn to play drums from this, and I figure setting it up this way will make it that much more realistic.

Another cool thing is while the cymbals and drums are the same colors, playing them in free mode they put out the correct sound. The green cymbal is a crash, but the green pad is a floor tom. I'm not sure how they did it, but it's a subtle addition that makes the game that much better.

Right now I think Rock Band really has the edge in the market for these games. The definitely have the superior software and song selection. Guitar Hero had the better hardware, but now that Harmonix is letting third-party manufacturers make official hardware as well, I think they will take that edge away.

I will be getting Guitar Hero: World Tour when it comes out regardless, but it's really just for the songs, I don't expect it to be superior in any way. Sure you can make your own songs, but I don't see that being a major draw for too many people with how much time it probably takes to do that.

Right now I'm having a lot of fun, and looking forward to unlocking all the songs so I can play them whenever I want.

DRM this

Spore was released earlier this week, and I was really anticipating going out and picking it up. The idea behind it is really cool: you evolve a species through various stages and end up traveling around the galaxy visiting (or attacking) other civilizations. There's more to it than that, but I don't want to get into that.

What I was unaware of, until seeing the angry reviews on Amazon, is that the game uses a very strict and invasive DRM (Digital Rights Management) system. The reason the system is put in place is obvious: they don't want people pirating the game. The problem is that it not only doesn't do it's job, as the game has already been pirated, but it also causes many more problems for people who actually buy it legitimately.

First off, it needs to login to the servers and verify every 10 days, which means anyone out there who bought the game to play single player and doesn't have an internet connection won't be able to play.

Second, it is limited to 3 installs, and if you want to make any installs after that you have to call and plead with them to let you do it. I don't know about you, but between hard drive failures, upgraded computers, and failing hard drives, I'd have to call in for a new install after a year, and according to them you are guilty until proven innocent, and that's how you will be treated.

This also creates the problem of how you're going to play this game years down the road. What if EA goes out of business, or they stop providing support for this game? How are any of us supposed to play it anymore? I just started playing Warcraft II again, and that game is over 10 years old. Many people like to go back and play old games, and this DRM system basically makes that impossible in the future.

Lastly, on top of the DRM it also installs SecuROM, which is basically malware, and is pretty much impossible to uninstall without reformatting. The problem is this software doesn't seem to be made for all hardware configurations and will can go so far as to disable your software if it finds something it doesn't like. That's a little scary for those of us with custom built PCs.

The biggest problem is all these rules had to be discovered by consumers. EA never explained how the DRM works, they just included it in the game and let everyone who bought it find out what they can and can't do. That's pretty ridiculous, and even if it is one of the most innovative games to date, I can't support something like that.

I by no means think protecting the games your company produces against pirating is a bad thing, but they way they have done it with this, as well as Mass Effect, is the wrong way to go about it. Make security measures that let legitimate customers play without being restricted and make it hard on the hackers. What they have done is pretty much the exact opposite, and until they fix it I won't buy this game.

Apple disappointment

All I wanted to see was a higher capacity iPod Touch. That's it. I have a lot of music, my iPod was stolen from my car a few weeks ago, and I decided to wait to buy a new one in hopes the iPod Touch would have it's capacity upgrade to bring it up to par with what I need.

No dice.

They made them thinner, and lowered the price. Well that's cool and all, but it's not what I was looking for. If they could put the same capacity in a smaller package, why not leave it the same and increase the capacity? I suppose most people don't have enough music to fill 32 gigs, so why bother adding more?

I might end up getting one anyway. I could get a classic, but then I don't get the touch screen, wi-fi, applications, and games. The touch has so many more features that it's almost worth losing the capacity, I'm just going to have to pick and choose what to put on it.

Decisions, decisions. I'm not sure what I want to do at this point.

RTS phase

One of my favorite videogame genres is the RTS (real-time strategy) games. Namely Warcraft, Starcraft, and Command & Conquer, and all the ones that continue those franchises.

It all started when my uncle brought over a free demo of Warcraft II he had gotten. Not sure if it was from work, came with some other game, or he just happened to see it in a store, but it included the first few levels of each campaign, and it was awesome. I knew I needed the full game at that point.

Eventually I got it, probably as a birthday gift or something, proceeded to play it non-stop. At that point I didn't have many cool computer games, so this one got my undivided attention. I was pretty young though, and the computer I was using wasn't all that great, so between my limited concept of strategy and the lag my computer caused, I found the game pretty difficult.

That didn't stop me from playing though, and I managed to get pretty far in the campaign before I hit a difficult level I just couldn't get past.

Then came Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Still running on a very outdated computer, I managed to become pretty good at this game. It had a lot more options for defending your base, and not having to worry so much about defense I could concentrate on building up an army and taking it to the enemy. I tried the campaigns, but this game really had me hooked on skirmishes and just seeing if I could beat the computer.

Starcraft came next, and I got this pretty late, after the expansion had already been released. I finally had a computer that could handle it, and the fact that it had three factions just made it so much better. Plus they were very different from each other, and that meant you couldn't just win by having more units. I don't even want to think about how many hours I spent on that game, lets just say it was more than enough.

It was a while before I thought about playing another RTS game. Sure more came out, but I had a lot of other games to concentrate on and just sort of forgot about the genre.

That is, until Warcraft III came out. I managed to download it and beat the entire campaign within a couple weeks of its release. The only problem was I didn't have a valid CD-key to play online, so after beating it I sort of lost interest.

In the past couple years I decided I wanted to go back to those older games and go through the campaigns. The problem is, with all the new Windows versions, my old DOS games no longer run on my computer. Luckily Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition was released, solving my problem there, and also allowing online play. Along with finding a downloadable copy of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and a DOS emulator, I can play through the original wars, all the stuff I see mentioned in WoW but I never got to see.

Even more recently Command & Conquer: The First Decade was release, which included every game from the franchise that had been released up until that point. I managed to scoop that up and now I have a whole lot of games to get through before I'll be satisfied, although I'll probably burn out on it before I finish.

Right now I am looking at checking out the latest Command & Conquer 3, which has been out for a couple years, but still looks cool. I've heard some bad reviews about it, but I might get it anyway.

At the moment I am working my way through the campaign of the Warcraft II expansion and it's great. I love the simplicity, and I think as I progress through the games and the increasing level of complexity it won't come as such a shock as it would if I had just started with one of the new ones.

If you've never played any of these games you really should. They pretty much set the standard for RTS games, and are so much fun to play you'll get hooked even if you aren't that good.

The new Microsoft Ad

I think most geeks out there can agree that Seinfeld is one of the greatest sitcoms ever. Now he's doing commercials for Microsoft, and strange commercials at that. What does buying discount shoes have to do with a software company? Well lets look a little deeper.

The commercial basically revolves around Jerry Seinfeld seeing Bill Gates buying shoes at a discount shoe store. After some dialogue about churros, Gates decides on a pair of shoes, and how they become very comfortable as you break them in, even if they do fit tight at first.

Meanwhile a Mexican family sees the transaction and notes that they are the same shoes they wear. It ends with Jerry and Bill walking to their cars and Gates hinting at a computer made of cake.

What does it all mean? Well from what I can see, Microsoft is trying to market to everyone. Using the shoes as a metaphor for Vista, saying that it takes some getting used to before you become comfortable with it, just like a new pair of shoes.

Having the Mexican family comment on the shoes makes Microsoft (Gates) seem like just a normal person, who buys discount shoes just like the rest of us. They're trying to play off of Apple's ads that make Macs look like something cool people buy, and instead making Microsoft look like the way to go because they are good and affordable for everyone.

The computers made of cake thing is just hinting that Microsoft is still working on some cool stuff. I'm pretty sure making computers out of cake wouldn't be a good idea.

The only problem with this commercial is that Vista is still terrible. It doesn't take years to break in shoes, it takes a few weeks at most. I've had Vista for over a year now on my laptop and not only is it the probable cause for my hard drive dying, but it crashes pretty much daily.

My girlfriend wanted to use the laptop the other day, but she was sitting too far away for the power cord to reach. She asked me to unplug it, and I said it would probably be better if she just moved closer since it freezes half the time when I unplug it. Well she didn't wanna move, so I let her unplug it and sure enough, it froze up.

Did Service Pack 1 correct this problem? Nope. Has it corrected any of the other problems I've been having? Not really. I'm still trying to figure out how the company that made Windows XP, which runs so smoothly, managed to come out with such a troublesome operating system on their next attempt.

Will I get a Mac for my next computer? At this point it's looking like a yes. I don't base my choice of computers on commercials and what they tell me, I base it on performance, and right now Mac is in the lead. Of course an operating system made specifically to run on certain hardware is going to have less problems, but XP proved a conglomeration of parts can still run a good OS just fine.

Unless Microsoft manages to fix Vista, I'm gonna have to go with a Mac for my next computer. Now if only I had an extra $2000 to blow on a new computer...

New Apple device rumors

As has happened in the past couple years, it is expected that Apple will be introducing new iPods and MacBooks in September. What I'm counting on is a higher capacity iPod touch. Last year I got one of the brand new iPod classics, mostly because I have a lot of music and the touch has a relatively low capacity in comparison.

I've heard mention of a redesigned nano, and probably a revamped touch which will be cheaper than the current one, but in only a few places have I seen mention of a higher capacity touch.

What everyone is speculating about is a new MacBook. So far it is mostly a more affordable version, but there are those who are talking about a touch screen laptop. It does sound like a cool idea at first, but if you think about it, I don't think it would be all that convenient.

First, we sit close enough to computer screens already, why force users to sit close enough to touch it? I know my eyes get tired enough having to stare and a screen all day, I don't want to be forced to be right up against it in order to use the computer.

Also, having to lift your hand to touch the screen would not be very comfortable. Using a mouse can make your wrist sore as it is, but making your whole arm sore after a day of work seems like a bad idea.

The only way to make this work would be for Apple to make touch screen computers pretty much the same as the ones that are already out there. They would need to make the screen flip around and be more like a notepad so touching the screen would be more like writing on a piece of paper, but then the keyboard can't be used anymore if it folds down on itself, so they would need some way to make that accessible as well or it wouldn't be practical for work applications, which causes the problem of having the screen not upright when you are typing and thus hard to see.

Apple seems to want to cater to everyone, not just a little niche like those other notepad computers are made for. A touch screen on a computer seems like a really cool idea, and if you've ever played with an iPhone it would seem an obvious next step, but there are a lot of hurdles to jump to get it to the point that it would be practical for everyone. A lower price MacBook seems likely, but a touch screen doesn't seem the way to go on anything bigger than an iPod or iPhone just yet.

Bad Drivers

When I first started driving, my mom gave me the best advice. She said , "Assume everyone else on the road is an idiot, that way if they do something stupid it won't surprise you."

I still assume this every time I drive. Every time I pass by a driveway I am prepared for the car sitting there to pull out right in front of me, I never drive directly next to anyone when there are two or more lanes, mainly so I have somewhere to go if something happens in front of me, but also so they don't forget to look and try to change lanes and hit me.

Despite being cautious about all this it still astounds me how bad people can be at driving. Even some driving rules that I always thought were common knowledge are unknown to many drivers. Do you know how many people don't know how to determine right-of-way at a stop sign? Even worse, I can't tell you how many times cross traffic making a turn, with no stop sign, has stopped to let me go instead even though I do have a stop sign. I know you're trying to be nice and all, but it's taking more time trying to decide who will go first than it would have taken if you had just gone ahead and made that turn and I had waited.

I was driving the other day on my way home from work. To turn in to my apartment complex I have to make a left turn at a stop light. Simple enough, and when I come up to the intersection the left turn light is red so I stop, and all is going as it should be. Traffic going straight through the intersection has the green light, and since when I pulled up to the line my car activated the sensor the light for oncoming traffic turns red a little later and now it's my turn to go. I noticed a few cars coming the other direction that are turning into the complex as well, only they are making a right turn obviously because they are coming from the other direction. Well now they have a red light, so I am making my turn, but when I get halfway across the intersection I see another car making the right turn, only they didn't stop, didn't even bother to look until they were halfway through it and then saw that I was turning and stopped abruptly. I managed to catch the look on the driver's face as I drove past, as I had the right-of-way, and she looked very surprised and confused. I assume the look on my face was a look of 'what the hell are you doing?'

A few days later I was driving with my girlfriend, making the same turn, and mentioned the incident to her and how I saw people make those right turns on red lights all the time without stopping, although that was the first time they almost hit me while doing it. She said a lot of people don't know you have to stop... Wait, what?! I thought they just didn't feel like stopping, just like we all speed even though we know we're not supposed to, but are you telling me that a rule of the road that should be common knowledge to everybody is unknown to so many people? Did you know that rule? Basically a right turn at a stop light is treated like pulling up to a stop sign. You have to come to a complete stop before you can continue on to make the turn. She even mentioned a few people she knew that had never heard of that rule, and while I was contemplating just how cautious I needed to be while driving, I realized that maybe I don't assume people are stupid enough.

Don't even get me started on freeway on-ramps. If you aren't up to speed with people on the freeway by the time you merge on, you're doing something wrong. So that lady that was doing 40 the other day when I was behind her on the on-ramp, don't think I was being an asshole when I passed you once we got on and gave you a look, I just really don't want to be hit from behind by other cars on the freeway because you don't know how to accelerate correctly.

Rock Band Blues

I'm sure by now you've all heard about the game Rock Band, the one where you can play videogame instruments along with the songs in the game including guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. I used to have it, then my house was broken into and they stole it, along with other things. It's easily replaced, and normally I would just got pick up another copy, but a few weeks ago they announced that Rock Band 2 would be released in September, and that they would have much better instrument peripherals along with it, as well as being able to transfer your songs to it from the old one. This puts me in a bit of a dilemma. I could buy the game again now and when the new one comes out just buy the disk and not bother with the instruments, or I could wait for the new one and buy the bundle that comes with the newer, upgraded versions of the instruments, which not only look better, but work better too.

At this point, since the release is less than 2 months away I have pretty much decided to wait it out and buy the new one while buying the disk for the first one to transfer the songs over. But wait, there's more. Another company (ION) is also releasing a much higher quality drumset around the same time the new one comes out and it looks awesome. Not only that, it will be compatible with a real electronic drum brain so you can switch out the Xbox360 portion and use it as a real drumset, which is even more awesome.

I guess it's not so much a dilemma anymore because I have already decided. I will buy the new game disk, the old disk, the ION drumset, and hope the other new instrument peripherals are available at release. It won't be a total disappointment if I have to wait for the other instruments though as I pretty much play the game for the drums, but part of the fun of the game is being able to play with other people so I want that option available to me.

I guess I never realized how much I missed the game until I started listening to the radio again and was hearing all those songs I had played along with getting played. Now I have to change the station when that happens because it starts making me depressed that I can't go home and start jamming away to the song anymore, and won't be able to for a couple months still. I can't wait for Rock Band 2 to get here.

The hybrid SUVs

Up until recently I thought the idea of a hybrid SUV was sort of silly, even stupid. Sure you get better gas mileage, but compared to the close to 40 mpg that the hybrid sedans are getting, you only get about 25-27 mpg in the SUV. I have a truck right now that gets about the same gas mileage as that, although it's a 4 cylinder, but I've loaded it up pretty good and can still get up to speed on the freeway. It was my thinking that we need to get off the big SUVs altogether and focus on smaller, more efficient cars.

I've been contemplating getting a new car for a while, and was pretty set on a truck, but while I have been trying to save up to get one, my house got robbed and I ended up having to spend the money I saved replacing what I had lost in the robbery. This gave me some more time to think about what I was looking for and not just finding a replacement for my old truck, which I love, but I'm finding I don't use it as a truck enough to justify getting another one. I have been wanting to get something with 4-wheel drive because I take trips up to the snow during the winter and don't want to have to rely on other people getting me there anymore. This severely limites my options to trucks, SUVs, and a very small selection of AWD wagons (like Subaru has). Most of these cars also come with at least V6 engines standard, and that pretty much automatically means it will be getting worse gas mileage.

I was recently talking about this with some friends and it was at that point when someone suggested I take a look at hybrid SUVs. I hadn't even thought of it until that point, and I was still a little skeptical, but I figured I'd give it a shot and look into it. After looking at some of the options that are out there, and there aren't many, I'm starting to think this would be a great fit for me. I don't drive a lot, but with the gas prices the way they are, and not likely to go back down, I think I could pay a little more now and save a lot more in the long run. The problem is there are a very limited number of hybrid SUVs available, and I would really like to have more options to choose from.

As it stands, I am really looking at the Toyota Highlander Hybrid. I have a Toyota right now and have had very little trouble with it as compared to the stories I have heard about other people and their car troubles. I really trust that buying another Toyota would provide me with a long lasting car that I can rely on for a long time. I had hoped to find Honda coming out with a hybrid SUV as well, but while there are rumors, there is nothing concrete saying that they will have them available anytime soon. What I would have really liked to see one of the smaller SUV models in hybrid form. While the Highlander isn't huge, it's still bigger than what I think I actually need, but there's also no guarantee that waiting will be of any help as they may not bother making hybrid versions of the smaller SUVs. I still have some saving to do before I will be ready to make the commitment, but unless something else comes up in the near future, it's looking like the Highlander will be the way to go.

Problematic PC's

I was always all about PC's. Ever since I was little, playing shareware games on my dad's IBM 386 computer where he first had to teach me to use DOS so I could use it by myself. The school computers were Macs, and I couldn't stand them. None of the games we played were cool, just learning games, and the games I wanted to play couldn't be loaded onto them because they weren't compatible. Fast forward almost 20 years and I buy a new laptop from a custom PC building company after finally deciding I could use an upgrade. See, I built my old computer myself, about 6 years ago, for less about 600 bucks, and while I did upgrade the video card and RAM about halfway through its life, I could still run most of the high end games on it up until then, just not with the high-res graphics settings. I never had many problems with it, no crashes, hard drives never went bad, except sometimes the motherboard would reset and underclock the processor, but that was easily fixed.

Along comes my brand new laptop and I'm excited. I got Windows Vista on it because it's the new thing and I don't see any reason to get XP when it will be outdated soon. I load up my games on it and start one up, and I'm amazed at how great they look now. Vista is cool, has lots of functions that are new and fun to use, but for some reason even though my processor is faster and I have more than twice the RAM of my old computer, it takes forever for the thing to boot up. Not only that, but every time you want to install something you have to confirm that yes, in fact, you do want to install it like 3 times. It just seems like overkill to have all this stuff added on to the operating system when it's just gonna slow it down. The main reason you buy a new computer is because it's supposed to be faster than your previous one, but that wasn't really the case. Luckily it ran all my games way more smoothly and I just had to remember to boot it up, do something else for a few minutes, then come back when it's ready.

Then the problems started up. The computer would freeze up and I'd have to do a hard shut down, or it would shut itself down for no apparent reason. Sometimes I would start it up and the screen wouldn't come on, but I also couldn't hold the power button down to do a hard shut down so I'd have to unplug it and take the battery out to get it to turn off. I don't really know what to blame these things on, but last week my hard drive died. Just completely died. I started it up and it couldn't read the hard drive, so I thought maybe Vista had crashed and I just needed to do a system restore. Got out my system restore disk that came with the computer and went through the process, only to find my hard drive had nothing on it anymore. Pretty annoying since that meant I lost all my music, but nothing on there I can't replace, so I just told it to reinstall Windows and I'd start again from a clean slate. Halfway through installation though it stops and tells me it can't find the installation sources. That's not a good sign, but it tells me to restart the installation so I do, with the same results, and I continue a few more times before I give up and call tech support.

See, I ordered from a smaller computer builder company because most of the big PC manufacturers are way more expensive because they throw a bunch of useless software in with each computer to make it cost more, plus they don't close to as many customization options. The problem with that is the small companies don't have much in the way of tech support. On their website it says they provide 24/7 service, but I can't imagine them having more than a couple guys sitting there answering phones in between fixing other computers. This led to me calling 3 or 4 times a day for 4 days, getting put on hold for 15-30 minutes at a time and basically getting frustrated at the fact that all I needed was a few minutes to explain the situation and for them to send me a new hard drive to replace my bad one. Finally on Sunday I made it through and he told me I should have a new hard drive by the end of the week, which would be great if that happens, but with the holiday I'm not sure it will. At least for now I can at least rest easy knowing I'm not stuck with this problem and unable to do anything about it. I still don't know if Vista caused the crash or if the hard drive was slowly dying already and finally decided to kick the bucket, it did seem that the unannounce shutdowns were coming more frequently the past month or so though. Needless to say I will be backing up all my files to an external hard drive from now on though.

The moral of this story? I don't really know, but for me I guess it was that the computer you build on your own will cause less problems than one built by someone else.

Boring TV

I feel so out of my rhythm after moving. Before my previous house was burglarized it was pretty normal for me to come home, work out, then watch TV the rest of the night while simultaneously on my laptop either gaming or just surfing the web. The biggest problem is that my big TV was stolen along with all my latest generation of gaming stuff, but luckily they left the retro gaming stuff alone, probably figuring it isn't worth anything (when in fact it's worth much more to real gamers based on rarity alone). Anyway, now that I've been downgraded to a little 23" TV that's been around for about 12 years, I'm finding regular TV much less enjoyable. I don't really know why the size of the TV would make any difference, so I can't really say that's the cause, but I'm just finding the multitude of reality TV that's around now to just be too much. I watch a few of the shows, but some of them are just horrible.

Hell's Kitchen is at the top of the list right now for network reality shows. I find cooking to be very interesting, I think mainly because I know so little about it and I will probably never be any good at anything besides grilling meat. I was never a huge fan of the Real World, but I do find myself watching it sometimes, although I don't exactly keep up with it, so half the time I'm clueless as to why one or two of the characters aren't around. I also liked Rock of Love, but I can't say why. I'm not a Bret Michaels fan, nor a fan of Poison at all, and I hate most of the other reality mass dating shows, but I think I can at least stand to watch this one because the girls aren't nearly as irrational or annoying, and most of the fights are over things that should be fought about.

Aside from those I love watching some of the Discovery Channel shows, namely Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch. Those are just some great shows, and Mike Rowe just knows exactly what to say in the situations he gets put in, with comments that are both comical and insightful. I think I like Deadliest catch just because I'm glad I don't have to do that for a living, but I like to watch people who do.

Besides those I don't watch much. Most other shows that I do watch every week had their season finales already and won't be back again until this fall or later. I do still watch reruns of Seinfeld, King of Queens, and Scrubs, but those tend to play the same 10 episodes over and over and it gets old really quick. Lucky for me I'm getting my new TV delivered this weekend, and now I'm finding I'm not really sure what I'm gonna be watching on it. Maybe the fact that I will be able to see the details on the screen again will renew my interest, because if not I will have to replace the game systems I lost and start playing again. I really just want Rock Band back.

Check this out

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

Awesome site. Being a white person, this might be more funny than if I wasn't, and while many of these may not apply to me directly, the fact that I'm white means I know lots of white people that it does apply to. I suggest starting from the beginning, but you can pretty much read them in any order you want, and if you're also white I can guarantee that you will find this funny, even if it pisses you off that it's so sarcastic toward you.

The millenial generation

Apparently there is a name for the generation that was born between around 1981 to 1995, meaning we were still in pre-college schools at the time of the new millenium, and we have been called, of course, the millenial generation (or generation Y). I happen to be a part of this generation, and have read a few articles on the characteristics that I am being lumped in as having. For the most part I agree with the assessment of this generation, either from my own characteristics or those of the majority of people that I know that are around my age.

The first attribute is that we are exceptionally tech-savvy, and I have no doubt that this is the case, mainly because we grew up with fairly sophisticated electronics and had to learn to use them. This wasn't only because we needed them, but I found that when my parents would buy a new electronic device, it was usually my job to figure out how it works because they didn't have the time or patience to deal with it. Then I would either teach them the basics or they would tell me what they wanted and I would do it for them. For the most part we have this attribute out of a need to help others more than for ourselves, although at this stage in my life I am using the skills more for myself.

Another characteristic that I found interesting was that there is a general lack of loyalty to an employer which mainly stems from the fact that we believe we are valuable enough to them that if we don't like the job we can find another employer to be valuable to. This one I blame mainly on the way we were brought up, not only by our parents, but by the public school system and the pressures they put on our teachers of how to treat us. We were the kids that got trophies at the end of the soccer season, even if we were in last place. We got awards like "most improved" and "most enthusiasm" even if we contributed the least to the team's success. It wasn't our fault, we didn't decide to reward mediocrity, it was because of the pressures of society saying every child should be treated equally. That and the fact that parents of this generation could never accept the fact that someone else's child was better than their's at anything. It's amusing to me that parents thought this was doing their child a favor by never pointing out their flaws, when in fact I expect it will be the downfall of many in this generation when their flaws are pointed out by others later on in life. I also hated losing a ball game because everyone had to get equal play time when it could have easily been won if they had sat out more, of course when I made the varsity soccer team in high school I rarely played and hated it, but we did win. Hmmm.

One attribute I want to add to the list is that we are also exceptionally good at getting wires untangled. I can't even tell you how many times in my life I've had to figure out how to get a wad of wires from a tangled mess to a nicely placed and separated set of wires. The most common occurence was with game system controllers, but this also occurs in wiring for computers, stereos, televisions, and almost anything else that has multiple wires. Now all the game systems have wireless controllers, and I expect most electronics will be using wires less and less in the future, meaning the next generations will never be faced with learning this skill. It's always fun to watch someone try to untangle wires when you can tell they have no clue as to how to go about it and all the mistakes they make that you made years ago and learned from to become the expert that you are.

Just plug it in

Well I moved into a new apartment a couple weeks ago and last night I set up my stereo. I also ordered a new TV because right now I'm stuck with a little 19" LCD that's all the way across the room and I really need something bigger. While shopping online I saw all these bundle deals for TVs that come with a DVD player and installation service and they give you a discount for it. Now it's nice that they have sales like that, but I already have a DVD player and I can set up a TV myself, but I was sort of interested in seeing how much they would charge for the installation if someone were to get it. To my surprise, the cost of installation of a TV was $200!! How could it cost that much? You plug in the power, plug some cords in the back and you're ready to go. Takes 10 minutes, and even though you are getting a discount, the installation cost kinda cancels out a good chunk of that. I do realize that some people are behind in the times and might not know some things, but seriously, it really isn't that hard. They have everything color coded so you know which wire to plug in where, and the input name is right by the plugs so you know what to set your TV to.

Now there are installation fees I understand. I just had my cable service installed and the guy had to set up some stuff in the main phone room in the building, then test out my connections with some voltage meters and such, all of which I don't know how to do. Then again, the installation was free. Hmmm. Also, if you're rich and want some kind of home stereo system set up. You know, they kind where you have speakers in each room and outside, all connected to a central stereo? Yeah, I don't have all the equipment to do all that, and even if I did it's just something you want done by professionals because any mistakes that are made could be costly. I can even understand bringing in your computer to a retailer to get it fixed, although it really bothers me how much they charge for things as simple as wiping your hard drive and reloading the operating system. Computers aren't all that straightforward sometimes, and while I always fix mine myself, there are people who don't know how to save a file without help, trust me, I've met more than one.

But back to TV setup. It's not really even installation, it's putting the TV where you want it, plugging in a few cords, maybe turning it on and showing you what each input goes to, and thats it. Not worth $200, I wouldn't pay more than $20 for that, unless it's a big TV and there are lots of stairs to climb, then maybe I'd go so high as $40. Needless to say, I didn't get installation for my new TV, and delivery is free. Little do they know I live on the third floor and the stairs have some pretty narrow turns, it's not gonna be fun carrying a 56" TV up that, glad I don't have to do it.

Storytime

Not really, but I thought I'd touch on some of the type of books I like to read and maybe I can get some suggestions for other books I'd like based on what I write here.

For the most part I really enjoy sci fi books (go figure), and fantasy to a certain extent. Through middle school and most of high school I stuck exclusively to the Star Wars novels that were created as sort of a continuation of stories to go in the Star Wars universe. Some of the novels took place before the movies, some during or in between movies, but most are set to take place after the last movie and while they are written by different authors, the authors read each others' books and make sure the stories don't contradict each other. It's pretty interesting what kind of stuff they come up with, and you get to know various characters much more intimately, but I pretty much finished all I wanted from those. Once it strayed from the main characters and started focusing on Han and Leia's kids I lost interest, but I read almost every single one up to that point.

A must for sci fi fans is Ender's Game, and while it is a great book on it's own, there are sequels that are great as well that continue the story of not only Ender, but of some of the other children he competes with in his training.

Another great series is the Otherland books, a four book series that should not be read by anyone with a bad short term memory because it follows so many different storylines that it's easy to lose track. It incorporates not only sci fi elements such as advanced computers and virtual reality, but the author also uses his great knowledge of various other literature to create worlds that the main characters have to travel through on their way to find out the answers they seek.

I have of course read the Lord of the Rings books, no surprise there, but it is worth it to state that these are a must.

I have been recommended to read the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin and the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. I also plan to read another series by Tad Williams (author of the Otherland series) called Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Right now I have a pretty good idea of what I will be reading for a while, but I would like to get some other recommendations for the future, so suggest anything you think I might like based on what I have listed and I will look into anything that sounds interesting. And for those of you who enjoy sci fi books and have not read something that I listed above, I would highly recommend anything up there.

It's not that simple

Sometimes I really wish life was like it is on TV shows. In this case I would like it to be like CSI. See, a little over a week ago my house was broken into, my big TV was stolen, along with my XBox360, Wii, and all the games that go with them. I filed a police report and gave them names of suspects as I thought it might have been people my roommate knew, but without anything more to go on they can't do anything about it. We also found fingerprints on the back window where they broke in, and when the cop told me they were very clear and should be easy to match I got pretty exicited that they might actually be able to get the guys who did this (I know it was more than one because my TV was a 55" and impossible to move by yourself). Then the cop said they check prints by priority based on the severity of the crime, meaning murder, rape and such would take priority over something like burglary, but priority is also based on the quality of the prints, so mine would probably be pretty high up with the other burglary prints. Well that makes sense, so I answered the rest of his questions, had him take down the serial numbers of what was stolen and he left.

Now if things were like in CSI, they would have somebody checking all these prints trying to match them in their computer program that scans the entire database and finds matches, and it would only take like 10 minutes per print. Given this is the only knowledge I really have of how this stuff works, I figured a few weeks, a month at most, and they would either match the prints or find out they aren't in the system, either way I would have an answer. Well I called yesterday to check and see if there were any updates and the officer asked if I had any proof that it was any of the suspects we had given him before, but of course I don't, so I asked him about the prints. He proceeded to tell me the same thing the other guy had said about the priority thing, but this one said for burglary it could take up to 6 months to make it to the top of the list and get checked. Damn, I guess it takes a lot longer to match prints in real life than it does in CSI, but I guess that makes sense. I know computers are fast, but to check every print on file in just one city would take a while, and while I doubt they check against the entire country unless they have to, just checking the county must take a long time, and for how many crimes actually happen out there, my little burglary crime has a long way to go to get those prints matched. But the officer also told me he'd see about looking up the records of those few names of suspects we gave him and seeing if the prints matched, which apparently they haven't done yet.

Up until I had this information I thought it might be a good idea no to replace the stuff I lost yet in hopes that they would find the guys soon and I would either have it back or be reimbursed or something, but it doesn't look like that's gonna happen. So if any of you know of any good deals going on for TVs or game systems then let me know, I'll be looking to replace what I lost in the next few weeks assuming those prints don't match any of the suspects.

To BSG or not to BSG

Actually that's not the question, because I think everyone should see this show. If you don't know already, I'm talking about the new Battlestar Galactica. Sure it plays on the Sci Fi channel, and it is technically a sci fi show, but it's also one of the best dramas on television right now. The storyline is great and keeps you guessing at what's going to happen next. I've gotten quite a few people hooked on this show, some of them hate the sci fi genre with a passion, but this isn't your typical sci fi with laser guns and such. The show goes beyond just the cool special effects and advanced technology and gets into the heads of the characters. After the events that happen at the very beginning of the series, no one truly trusts each other, not even married couples, and the show explores this, the enemy uses it to their advantage, and the situations these people are put in never have an answer that is clearly better than others. So if you think you'd like to see a drama with elements of sci fi, politics, war and psychology then you should really check out this show.

Now on to the elitists who will deny this show is any good because they are too busy comparing it to the original series and how different it is. Guess what? It's not supposed to be the same. What would be the point of doing it at all if it was exactly the same show with different actors? I think almost all of the bashing this show gets is for exactly this, and while I understand the original show was a breakthrough in its time, this new version is a breakthrough of its own. I suppose I see their point though, I mean, if someone were to decide to recreate the Star Wars movies I think I would be pretty pissed, but while they would never compare to the originals, I would still give them a chance to prove themselves. It's hard to set aside your bias in a situation like that, and it probably wouldn't entirely go away, but you have to try to see past the fact that it's a remake and just see that it's a quality show.

So anyone out there who hasn't seen this show, rent or buy the DVDs, set aside a few weekends and just watch it from the beginning, then when you're caught up you can watch the latest season as it comes out. This isn't just for geeks, this is for everybody, get to it.

Trek your pick

OK, we all know that Star Trek is just about #1 on the list of "shows that geeks watch." Take your pick, any show in the series is basically a soap opera for us geeky sci fi fans, just like professional wrestling is a soap opera for rednecks. Everybody has their pick of which series they like best, and it can be because of the characters, the story line, or whatever else you look for in a show. I have also found that Star Trek likes to have a formula for their shows, and while it is a fairly loose formula, we see it pop up in some way every time.

One of the main ingredients of this is the way they emulate cultural biases, but in this case it is not just humans that have differences, but alien species as a whole. In fact, race never comes up as far as humans go, but there are many conflicts that arise out of cultural misunderstandings and ways the characters have to deal with them. This is where the formula I was talking about comes in. Now I don't have much experience with the original series (shame on me) every series since TNG has had the outcast, the character that doesn't fit in with everyone else but wants to. In TNG it was Data, DS9 had Odo, Voyager had the doctor, and Enterprise had T'Pol. Each one of these characters were basically one of a kind on their respective ships, and until we met Lore, Data was the only one in the galaxy. These characters were always struggling with trying to be more human (or in Odo's case more like a "solid") and even through all their efforts, the moral of the story was always that while they want to change, they find out they can be happy just the way they are.

Switching topics abruptly, my favorite of the series' would have to be DS9. It isn't quite as cut and dry as the rest of the shows. A Federation controlled space station which not only contains military officers, but is mostly inhabited by civilians of various different worlds and sits in front of the most strategically important wormholes known to the quadrant. The problems that arise aren't the same as on a normal ship like in the other shows. There is a lot of history with the station and the area of space near it that is revealed throughout the show, and eventually they all face a new enemy in the Dominion and have to go so far as to join forces with the Romulans to fend them off. I find it the most interesting of the series', with a great variety of characters, and it leaves the show open to much more with military interaction, with civilians, diplomatic situations with allied governments, as well as many religious and spiritual conflicts. I love the other series' as well, but I just feel DS9 has more to offer than the others and after watching it all the way through I found I miss it the most.

Anybody else like a different series better? Why? No wrong answer here, but I'd like to find out some other views on the show.

The Great Debate

I've talked only about videogames so far, and I'm gonna try to switch it up to a different topic. This topic has been debated for years among gamers and I want to share my take on it. This topic is, of course, whether to buy a PC or a Mac.

Up until recently, if you wanted a gaming rig, you pretty much had to buy a PC. This was mainly because game manufacturers didn't always make their games Mac compatible, but was also because Macs just didn't come with the hardware to run games as well as a PC. The big change was made when Apple decided to start using Intel processors in their computers rather than their own G4 and G5 and such. This opened up many possibilities for them, including being able to use the high end video cards that PCs are able to use. They are also much better able to run Windows emulation software, which can give you a Windows-like experience even though you are actually on a Mac. In this way they have made themselves more gamer friendly, and from what I have read from many of the avid WoW bloggers, they use Macs to play and I haven't heard too many complaints coming from them.

Now in the past there would be no debate for me. I have used PCs all my life, I grew up on them, from DOS to Windows 95 (which I didn't get until '97) and now to Vista. Last year I bought a new laptop for myself, sort of as a gift to myself for graduating college and finding a job, not to mention my monthly earnings are about 5 times what they were when I was in college. At the time I didn't even consider getting a Mac, it just wasn't on the radar for me at all, and mainly because of the bias I have had all my life. My mom does all her work on a Mac, but she uses lots of graphic design programs that I really have no use for, and Macs tend to run those better. She also has a lot of files she can't afford to lose, and Macs tend to be much more reliable so there isn't too much worry about crashes and crazy problems popping up. I didn't really care, I'm not into graphic design, I wanted something that will run my games, and I knew a PC would, so that's what I went with, and of course I got it installed with Vista because it was new and seemed cool.

Fast forward to now and I hate Vista with a passion. It takes forever to boot up, and I can't touch it while it is loading up all those damn startup programs or it might interrupt it while it's connecting to my wireless network, which if it doesn't do off the bat I have to restart because I can't manually make it connect after that. It also freezes...a lot. Want to know what makes it freeze the most? Unplugging the power cord. Aren't you supposed to be able to plug in and unplug laptops when you want? Not this one, there's pretty much a 50% chance it will freeze up when I decide to unplug it and take it somewhere else.

On the positive side, it runs games great. The only thing that ever makes me lag is my internet connection if someone else in my house decides to use up all the bandwidth downloading something. Otherwise I never have problems, even with all the resolution and detailing options turned up to maximum. I am also very used to using a PC, and while I do know Macs somewhat, there are those differences that keep me from making that move.

The debate comes in now that Macs are more capable of running the games that only PCs could run previously. Many games that are released are compatible with Macs, and many of them don't even require you to buy a different version of the game anymore, which is a big step in changing the pattern. I don't need a new computer right now, mine is top of the line for now, but looking to the future I could see myself buying a Mac when my current computer becomes obsolete. I've actually been taking a look at the new iMacs and I think those are at the top of the list for choices for my next computer. I like having a laptop because it's portable and I can move it around easily, but I don't really take my laptop out of the house much so I think an iMac would be a pretty good computer for me since I really only carry it up and down the stairs.

Anybody else have any opinions on this or know any details I may not be privy to that would change my mind on this? I know Vista will get better as they put out service packs, but the fact remains that Macs are still more reliable and are generally not prone to viruses, and that's a big plus for me.

Retro Time part 2

To continue the discussion of my early gaming influences, lets move on to the PS2. Once again I never owned one of these, but my friend did let me borrow his for a while when he first bought an Xbox. In the little time I had it I managed to beat Final Fantasy X. I know, it seems like those are all I play, and maybe that was true for a while, but that was the last one I played. Now that I don't have that PS2 anymore I kinda want to buy one for cheap and get FFXII so I can get through that too, but I'm not sure that's ever going to happen. The only other game I really played on PS2 was GTA3, but that didn't last very long before I had to give it back.

I would move on to Xbox here, but I never got one. I know, I know, I missed out on all those games, especially Halo and KOTOR, but I didn't have much money at the time so gaming systems were a pretty low priority for me.

I did, however, buy a GameCube, and that thing got a fair amount of use. First game I had was Animal Crossing, and I pretty much played that until I was bored out of my mind with it. Once I paid off all my debt there really wasn't much left to do that interested me, so I gave it up. Next up was Mario Sunshine, and while not as groundbreaking as Mario 64, it was still a fun game that I managed to get through pretty quickly, although I didn't unlock everything. Finally they came out with Metroid Prime and I grabbed that up quick. I had been waiting for another Metroid game to be release, and since the N64 never got one I was starting to wonder if it would ever happen. The game was pretty fun, and I made it all the way through, except I missed one missile pack and I can't figure out which I missed, so that bummed me out. Now we come to the only fighting game I really play, and that would be Smash Bros Melee. I'm terrible at most fighting games, but when all you have to do is button mash I tend to be pretty good, and I of course unlocked everything. The only other games I played regularly were the Mario sports games (golf, tennis, soccer), and while Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker was fun, I watched my brother beat it and decided I didn't need to go through all that work too.

I suppose that moves us on to the Wii. At this point I wasn't into gaming as much as I used to be, and for the longest time I only had the Wii Sports that comes with the system. A little later I bought Zelda and Metroid, but I don't think I ever made it more than halfway through either of those. I have some plans to beat the games I have right now, but it's gonna be tough finding time to do it. All I know is Mario Kart will be first up and we'll go from there.

Xbox360 would be last on the list of consoles, and is also the last console I bought. So far the game I've played the most by far is Rock Band. This game is ridiculously fun, and even though you find yourself playing a handful of songs over and over, I never get tired of drumming, even though if you stuck me in front of a real drum kit I probably wouldn't be able to do much. I also played a little bit into Mass Effect, but that game just overwhelms me with how big it is, I'm a little intimidated by it. I also played through the Halo 3 campaign on co-op, and that was fun, but I haven't played online much. I'm gonna have to overcome my reservations about these games and just play them, they were great from what I could tell.

Last but not least is the PC, and this one is gonna take up a lot of space so get ready to read, a lot. I was very young when my dad first let me on the computer, an IBM 386. I think it had a 8Mb processor, probably about 4Mb of ram, and a hard drive so small it would make today's computers laugh. I had to learn DOS to use it because I don't think Windows was even out yet. Anyway, besides the learning games for kids, we also had a game called Captain Comic. It was a very early side-scrolling game where your character can run, jump, and shoot. The object was to collect certain items and those would lead you to the next area, until you finally reached the goal, pretty simple, and for a little kid it was as fun as any videogame could be. My dad would also bring home shareware from work, including Commander Keen and a couple of the Hugo games. These were basically free games that would usually come with new computers, but the offices my dad visited had no use for them so he would take them. The first RPG-like game I played that I think got me into them in the first place was Hero's Quest. You had a choice to be one of three types of characters and while you could move your character with the arrow keys, you had to type in any other actions you wanted to perform and it was very particular about what words you used as it only recognized certain phrases. It was a great game for the time, and provides lots of puzzles to keep you busy.

Moving on to post-Windows 95 games, the first one that comes to mind is Warcraft II. My uncle actually suggested this game to me, and I was blown away when I started playing. The campaigns were very challenging, and this game pretty much got me to realize that besides RPG's, RTS games were my bread and butter. Not too long after I picked up Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and the expansions, and was once again blown away. I'm not really sure what it is about those older RTS games, maybe the simplicity and the challenge it presents when trying to defeat an enemy that has units that don't differ from your own by much, but they were a blast to play. Next on the list is a game you may or may not recognize, and if you don't you should check it out because it is very unique and addictive. This would be Heroes of Might and Magic. I guess it would be classified as a strategy game, but it is much more than that. You basically have characters called heroes that command your armies, and you move them around but they are limited to a certain number of moves per day. Your army can be recruited from castles you own and the numbers of units replenish at the start of each week. Usually the goal is to take over all enemy castles and defeat all their heroes to win, but the computer AI in this game is very smart and makes the game very challenging. They also had a multiplayer option that let you take turns on one computer. It made the game take forever, but playing against a couple other people made it much more fun. I also played Heroes 2 and 3 and both were well worth it.

And now that we get to the more current games, Starcraft is the first that comes to mind. This game is probably one of the greatest RTS games of all time, and for good reason. I never did make it through all the campaigns, they were just too hard, but the online play was where it was at. Besides the normal mode you could also play maps that others created called 'Use Map Settings' maps. These maps let the map makers program in events and such that let them make something totally different than the normal mode game. I can't tell you how many hours I spent trying make my own maps, not to mention how many more hours I spent playing other maps, it really did set the standard for future RTS games. Next up is another game I played for countless hours, and just happens to be made by Blizzard as well. I'm talking, of course, about Diablo II. When I first got this game I didn't have an internet connection, but despite that it was probably one of the best games I ever played. When I finally got internet and was able to play online is when it really started taking over. I was on there constantly, always looking for the best items, trying to trade other players for stuff I wanted, it was too addicting to give up. I finally stopped playing for a while and my account got deleted due to it being inactive for too long, so when I decided I wanted to play again I found all my characters were gone and I decided it was probably for the better. Of course not too long after that I found myself a sweet little game in Max Payne. I really think the biggest draw of this game was the 'bullet-time' button you could push to go in slow motion like in the Matrix, but it was a fun game anyway and I beat it in about 3 days, so it was on to finding a new game after that.

This brings us to my current gaming obsessions, and number one on the list is, of course, World of Warcraft. If you haven't heard of this game, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog. I bought it about 3 months after its release and have only recently stopped playing, making for about 3 years of playing, give or take a few months. I don't think any other game has taken up more of my time than this one, and it basically caused me to neglect any other games, hence my lack of games on the newer consoles, and I didn't even play much compared to others, it was just that the limited time I did have to play games I would dedicate to WoW, so the other games took a back seat. Only one game took my attention away for a few weeks, and that was the Half-Life orange box, namely Portal and TF2. Very cool games, and if you don't want to spend the money on the whole package, both can be bought separately now. I beat Portal in three days, including the extra challenge levels, but it was still a very good and fresh game, I just wish it was longer. TF2 held my attention for a while, but WoW soon sucked me back in.

I know I left out a bunch, but I think I got the main games in there. If you haven't played or heard of any of these games I would suggest you check them out. Anybody else have some retro games that you think people should know about?

Retro Time

Let's talk about the games that brought us to this point. You know, the games we spent endless hours on, only to be replaced by newer games and forgotten, sitting in a box or drawer somewhere, probably never to be played again, but there was a time when you couldn't get enough of it. I'm going to go through this by platform, starting with early platforms first and moving my way up, we'll see how much I can remember off the top of my head and how much I leave out when I read this next week and realize I left out something very important.

First off is the NES, which I never actually owned until way after it was obsolete. I actually got this from my uncle when he decided he didn't want it anymore, and it worked out great. I went to this little game store that sold used games and found myself staring face to face with Final Fantasy, the game that started it all, and it was only 3 bucks, so I grabbed it, along with both Zelda games for NES and a few others to round it out. At that point I had already played through various other FF games, but to see where they started out was a real treat. Took me a while to get through it, since half the time you don't get any clues of what you are supposed to do next, but I finally beat it and it was a fun experience.

Next is the SNES, the very first console I ever owned, and the very first game you get with it is Super Mario World. I can't tell you how many hours I spent on this game, with many of the levels having alternate goals that unlock different paths, this game kept you occupied for a good long time, especially if you had to beat every single level and unlock everything. Next up is Super Metroid. Once again this is a game that can be beaten without collecting every item, but where's the fun in that? After those games I got into the RPG genre, and that started with Final Fantasy III, or VI if you want to be proper. I managed to learn every single spell with every character before I finally beat the game, despite the fact that for the final dungeon you can't even bring everyone with you. I don't want to think about how many hours that took, but I know it's something ridiculous. Last up would be Chrono Trigger, my all time favorite SNES game, and maybe even favorite game in general. Not only did this game provide a great experience the first time through, but once you beat it you could start a new game, but with your characters carried over from the previous game, thus meaning they were already at a high level when you start out again. This may seem like cheating, but the whole point is that there are multiple endings that can only be achieved in this mode, one of them requires you to use only the main character to defeat the final boss on his own, so it provides a lot more than just a one time through game.

Moving on to N64, the next system I bought, and once again a Mario game, this time Mario 64. They somehow managed to make an awesome 3D Mario game right off the bat, and once again it took many hours to find everything this game had to offer. Yes, I collected all 120 stars, met Yoshi on top of the castle, and all that, and it took forever, but it was quite the accomplishment. Next would be the FPS game that would change the genre forever. I'm talking about Goldeneye, which not only had an awesome single player, but the multiplayer had me bordering on addiction. Proximity mines in the Complex was a legendary fiasco. I'm pretty sure I spent an entire summer break having friends over every single day and playing Goldeneye for hours at a time, and we still couldn't get enough of it. That is until the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out. I pretty much spent all my single player time on this game, and finally made my way through it in between Goldeneye sessions with my friends. And not a moment too soon because Banjo Kazooie was next up. This was another platform game, and I'm really not sure why I liked it so much, but this game, along with Banjo Tooie and Donkey Kong 64, took up a lot of my playing time. They were challenging, but fun to play, and that's exactly what draws me to these games. Last I have to mention Perfect Dark, or for me it was Goldeneye 2.0. Made by the same people, this game wasn't quite as solid in the single player, but the multiplayer replaced Goldeneye for me and my friends. First off, you could drop down from ledges, something you couldn't do in Goldeneye for some reason. They also carried over a few of the Goldeneye multiplayer levels, which is what we played mainly, and there were some really cool weapons to choose from.

So lets talk about Playstation. Actually I never owned one, but my friend did let me borrow his for a while so I could play Final Fantasy VII. Now I still say FFVI was better, but out of the rest of the FF games, this one comes the closest to being as good, it just would have been nice if the memory card didn't get erased twice while I was close to the end, forcing me to start over. I also managed to beat FF8 and 9 while I had the system, as my main reason for borrowing the system in the first place was to add those to the FF games I have beaten.

Next post I will move on to more recent games, except when I get to PC, where there will be many games from various eras, some of which you may have never heard of.

Mario Kart Wiiiii!!!

As you may be able to tell, the new Mario Kart for the Wii is a fun game and I would recommend anyone with a Wii to get it. I had actually written a post about this last Friday, but it somehow got flagged as a spam post, not really sure why, but it was removed by Blogger and I didn't feel like writing it again at the time. Now I'm gonna make it a little shorter than it was, and I will try to make it not seem so similar so it doesn't get flagged again.

Ever since the original Mario Kart on the SNES I have made sure to buy each one that has come out since, and not only that, I have completed each one as well. This new one will be different though, as there is a lot more you have to do to finish the game, and it's looking to be much more difficult. In the former games it was just get gold in each cup and you won, now there is a grading scheme from A to F that rates your performance, so you can win gold but get a C ranking and it won't count for much. There are also 8 cups now rather than the usual 4 that I have come to expect. The first 4 cups are like any of the other games, brand new tracks that are sure to take a while to master. The other 4 cups contain all retro tracks, meaning tracks from previous Mario Kart games, and while some of them are from versions only released on the handheld systems that I've never played, it is fun to see the older tracks on there that I've raced on so many times before, especially the SNES tracks, and they even kept the music the same. With 8 cups each containing 4 tracks that adds up to 32 different tracks to race on, and should make for lots of play time.

The other thing I like, and I have noticed they are doing this with all the newer Mario sports games, is how much there is to do in order to complete the game and unlock everything. There are many unlockable characters and karts, and some of them are no easy task. Not only do you have to get gold on all the cups, but many require you to complete the cups with a certain rating as well, often better than an A score, which I wasn't able to accomplish on some of the 50cc tracks, let alone the more difficult ones. So far I have gotten gold on everything in 50cc, unlocked King Boo and Diddy Kong, and have moved on to get gold on two of the 100cc cups so far. It's looking like this game will have more than enough for me to do before I grow tired of it.

One last note is the multiplayer options. I consider the Wii to be mainly a multiplayer game system, as the games tend to be much more fun with more than one person playing. The problem is if you have friends that aren't comfortable with their gaming skills, they tend to not have fun playing when it means they lose all the time. Mario Kart has somewhat solved this problem by introducing a team racing mode. In this mode racers are split up into two teams, and your team points are added up to determine the winner, so you can do poorly as an individual but your team can still win. This instills a sense of accomplishment, even to bad players, if their team wins, even if they didn't do that well, because they contributed to it. I think this will get more people involved in the game and make for a fun time for everyone.

I highly recommend this game, especially if you like inviting people over to play, and the fact that you actually turn the wheel to control your kart just makes the game more fun for everybody.

Blown out of the water

As you may or may not have heard, GTA IV was released last week and set record sales for release day at $310 million and release week at $500 million, blowing Halo 3's sale record of $170 million on release day out of the water. Not only was this game highly anticipated by gamers, but it is also highly controversial with many conservative people and organizations. If you've been following any of those idiots who think videogame content leads to people taking part in similar behavior in real life then you know the name Jack Thompson, the lawyer who pretty much tries to take a stand against any violent game, and GTA IV just gave him more firepower. Another group that has made a complaint about the game is MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), although their beef is that the game allows you to drive while intoxicated, which is not such a broad hate for the game, but still assumes we are zombies that will only do things that videogames influence us to do.

Now the biggest controversy so far is the "Ladies of Liberty City" video and what the player is doing in the game in that video. The video shows the player go into a strip club and get a lap dance, as well as pick up hookers, have sex in the car, let them out, and then shoot them. Now the fact is that when you make a video like that and someone like Jack Thompson gets a hold of it, he's going to twist it in his own way and make it seem like that is what the game is all about and convince non-gamers to agree with him. The point is that anyone judging a game by this little video is an idiot. There is never a situation in the game where you have to have sex with a hooker and then kill her as some sort of mission, or drive drunk for that matter, but the game does allow you to do this on your own time. Unlike the fairly linear games of the 80's and 90's, the newer games have a lot more side content, other activities in the game that don't affect the outcome but give you something else to do to keep the experience going.

Another complaint I've heard about the game is that it should be rated AO (Adults Only), for people over 18. I understand that the game can get graphic, but it's also rated MA, meaning for people over 17, the equivalent of a rated R movie, and I would consider that a fair rating. First of all, how is upping the age cutoff by one year going to make a difference? Secondly, it would seem to me that ratings on games should mirror our movie rating system. I haven't played through everything in the game, but from what I've seen there is no nudity, and the violence and swearing is nothing worse than what you'd see in a rated R movie, hence the rating seems to hold. You think this game glorifies crime and violence? Go watch the Godfather, or Goodfellas, or any other gangster movie and tell me those don't do the same. Hell, some of them won academy awards and you're going to tell me that because it's a videogame it should be judged differently?

Games are not marketed to just kids anymore, despite what some may choose to believe. All those kids from the 80's and 90's are adults now, many of whom still play videogames, and the industry knows that and makes games that appeal to adults. The fact that kids have access to these games is not the fault of the programmers, it's more the fault of the parents who don't supervise well enough or just don't care. I worked at a Blockbuster Video for 3 years, and more often than not it was the parents renting the games, and they didn't seem to care what the rating was. I remember a kid handing his mom the Playboy Mansion game to rent and she didn't even give it a second glance, just put it up on the counter along with her movies. I even brought up the fact that it was a Playboy game and would have Playboy content, but she just said her kids have been or will be exposed to it at some point anyway, so why try to stop it.

The last point I want to make in this rant is that assuming people are going to perform the same acts of violence they see in a game is ignorant at best. If you're going to make this assumption then do some research to back up your claim. The argument is that these violent games cause increases in crime. Now I don't remember where I found it, but someone made a graph of crime trends over the years and added in release dates of videogames. Do you think it showed increases every time a game was released? Nope, actually it was the opposite. Ever since the original Doom came out violent crimes have been on the decline, and the release of the GTA games has yet to cause that to change. I think the anti-GTA people have it all wrong. It isn't that the game is going to cause non-violent people to commit violent crimes, it's that it gives an outlet to people who could potentially commit those violent crimes. Violent games don't turn people violent, that mindset comes from a different set of circumstances altogether, and GTA won't change that. What GTA does is give a place where violent people can let out their aggression on virtual people and still get enough satisfaction out of it that they don't go out and do it to real people.

I'm not leaving this open to debate. Any comments disagreeing with me will be read, but won't change my mind. I have heard of violent crimes that people try to link to videogames, but the fact is those people were capable of those crimes, videogame or not, and they may have even committed the crime sooner if not for the game. That about covers it I guess, just wanted to get my thoughts about it put into words. Next post won't be a rant.

Opening Day

After keeping a WoW blog for a few months I decided to broaden my horizons. If that isn't geeky enough for you I don't know what is, maybe a blog on various geeky things? The idea is that while I do like geeky activities, there have been mixed reviews on whether I can actually be considered a geek. This blog will pretty much be a place for me to talk about random geeky stuff ranging from videogames to anime to computers and everything in between.

First some background. I am a graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in civil engineering, a major that requires a lot of math and science before you even get to start some of the basic engineering stuff. I still have my original NES system, as well as every Nintendo console released since (except Virtual Boy). I also have XBox360 and many PC games. My desktop computer is about 6 years old, but I built it up from scratch and it only cost me $600 at the time, and after upgrading a few parts since then it still runs many of the newer games just fine, although at lower resolutions. I also have a 9 month old laptop that I ordered from a smaller PC builder company, not one of the big ones like Dell or Compaq, I wanted mine fully customized and without all the extra crap those other companies throw in to jack up the price. I like being able to surf around online and watch TV at the same time. I download anime fansubs to my laptop, hook it up to my 55" hi-def TV and watch them in surround sound almost every night. You'll find out all my other geeky activities as you read this blog, but that's the basics.

Look forward to some geeky rants, reviews, and discussions in the near future, and don't tell my girlfriend about this blog, I don't think she'd understand. Crap, is it not geeky to have a girlfriend?