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...