In the Gaming Life of…

November 3rd, 2007

Hey Guys, I am pleased to announced that the time has come. With the exclusion of one Chinese exam I am on Christmas holidays. So I have 4 months without University life slowing down the site’s progress. I am so pleased, you see although the site has been running nicely over the past few months, deep down I have been yearning to do better. And nows my chance.

The other thing that has been stuck in the back of my mind is how to prepare for such a holiday. I mean 4 months is a fantastically long holiday and I haven’t been playing a lot of games this year. So its finally my time to relive my childhood and play games like there is no tomorrow. Ah the summer time. So over the past month I have been utilizing every scrap of my spare time in order to prepare for this glorious time and this is how I did it.

New High Definition Monitor

Now lets get one thing straight here, I’m not a materialistic guy, I bank about half of what I earn and only ever buy ANYTHING once I know that its perfect for me. But every now and then I treat myself and this is what I did here.

dell high definition monitor

A few weeks ago I bought myself a Dell 24″ LCD monitor to play games and do some design work on. My twin brother has been eyeing down this model for the past 4 months now. Its gotten some rave reviews and has a pile of useful features, including:

Its pretty much the best in its range and is extremely well priced. The week that I bought it Dell had $100 off and then when I called up with some questions they offered a further $100 off. The only issue with the monitor is that I needed to pick up a separate sound bar(speaker) to play audio. I’m not a big sound buff, so this didn’t really bother me. And hey I can to get some long deserved use out of my Sony headies.

So far I have had a few gripes with the monitor but nothing due to the machine itself. I quickly discovered that I couldn’t use it as a screen(or second screen) for my laptop. My working environment is just not set up for that. So (as in the picture before) I have it on that sturdy bench.

Also using two screen of such resolutions would be too taxing on my weak little laptop. Nevermind that I can’t get the resolution past 1280 X 800. Although I gotta said high def images and video look incredible when displayed on the screen(I used my brothers notebook, its a Dell so it was plug and play 1920 x 1200 res).

gaming bean bag and pillow

Now because the monitor is not on my work desk that means that I need comfortable seating to play games. All I currently have is a bleh bean bag and a large cushion. I use the bean bag and leave my brother with the cushion. Its not all bad though, these things can be easily fixed. It also means that I get to finally plant my ass in a bean bag while playing games. I’ve always been envious of those bean bag gamers.

My final gripe is how damn shitty non high definition content looks. This has taken a while for me to grow accustomed to. I have finally adjusted though, I’d need to adjust anyways as I’ll be playing plenty of old games on it (I’ll get to that later).

The Launch of Metal Gear Ebay

Lame title? Yeah I agree. I was very pleased with this one though. As you know, I have recently been on a crusade to hunt down not so easy to find games. I’m not talking Radiant Silvergun here but rather old discontinued rare PAL games. Being PAL its that much harder.

Now you see, despite my fanboyness towards the Metal Gear franchise, I haven’t actually finished MGS2. All because I kept delaying my PS2 purchase(for about 2 years). Its all about that non-materialistic stuff, it just had to be cheaper, God I’m such a stinge.metal gear solid 2 artowork solid snake

After continued frustration with my copy of MGS2: Substance for the PC I decided that I needed the PS2 version. So I went searching with little luck. Until I decided to give eBay a go. Now I had never used eBay before, for some reason I had some rather negative stereotypes about the service. I desperately need this game, so I’d get it by any means possible. So I did some searching and in a few minutes I’d already found a limited edition copy of the game(with Documents of MGS2) going for a great price. So I snapped it up right away.

I had the game for about 3 days before I started playing it. I wasn’t sure if I was going to wait until I had finished my Uni assignments before I started or not. My mind was quickly made up once I got that week’s work hours, to discover a free day or two. And incidently all of my Uni work had eased off then. So I used this time to capitalize on the game. After getting up to the Big Shell from a few previous play sessions I decided that I needed to go all out. So I spent about 19hrs on and off playing the game until it was beat.

The List

So I had began my eBay journey. Now due to my success, my brother decided to follow suit and he started buying games left right and center. In fact eBay really has opened up a whole new slew of possibilities for us and hence my brother and I have decided use eBay to perfect our already great gaming collection.

We’ve had all of your consoles from Commodore 64, Atari, NES through to the today’s consoles. And for each console we have had a neat collection of games to accompany it. But like everyone whom has a passion for collecting, we have some empty spots on the shelf that we want to fill up, of games that we might have missed the first time around. So with the help of eBay we are now going back and filling in those spots.

A long time ago I wrote a poorly written article about how to Play Console Catch ups. My brother and I used this idea to write a monstrously comprehensive list of titles that we wanted to purchase in order to finish off the collection. So we wrote this list of everything that we are after of games on every console released up until now. That includes Wii VC and games for consoles we didn’t quite have just yet.

The other big downer is the NES. Unfortunately we tradgically sold our NES and its 13 or so games years ago. The only console that we have sold. So we are buying it all back and more. What makes it even worse is that we had a 3 in 1 cart featuring Super Mario Bros/Tetris/World Cup 88(has similar sprites to River City Ransom).

When the dust settled our list was a staggering 132 games long. Don’t forget that this includes all games released in the past few months as well. Not just retro games.

In anycase, I have totally forgotten to mention the games that we have picked up so far:

The joy in this exciting venture is that some games are ridiculously cheap, some of the game on that list were just $1. I think that the worse part about this whole thing is that a few of these games I’ve owned/played heaps.

Conclusion

Although it took a while I’m glad that I got all of that off my chest. I thought that it’d be a change of pace from the usual news and editorial based content. Tell me what you think of these sorts of posts as am not sure what to think. I’ll be sure to keep you all up to date on how our little venture goes.

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Ryan Payton Drops a Few Hints About MGS4

October 24th, 2007

Gametrailers and Joystiq both recently interviewed Ryan Payton(an Assistant Producer on MGS4). Although this is a few days old, it won’t stop me from writing about these meaty tidbits that he gave away. I’m just way too excited about this game, its hard to refuse. Lets take a look at the Joystiq interview:

Where the Game is at in Production

Payton states that the latest development build is a step up from the E for All demo. Differences include altered menus and the inclusion of more gameplay elements. At this stage, they are tweaking the AI for the games difficulty, stages and working on scripted enemy events. He believes that the demo is 80% of what the final game will be like.

Payton later continues that because the AI is still not done Konami don’t want to release a demo of the game(via PSN) as they think that people will exploit this. They think that even the demo at E for All isn’t up to Beta stage yet, so they want it to be perfect first, before releasing anything.

old snake mgs4

Ending

He knows what happens for the ending, says that there are no gimmicks. The use of “it’s the final chapter of Solid Snake” and “the final chapter in his life” kinda allures to an ending where Snake dies.

The ending is meant to pay homage to the legend, its meant to be something that people won’t believe and will talk about for some time.

Other Gameplay Modes

Payton states that there will be other gameplay modes beyond the main stealth/action gameplay design. These modes are meant to borrow from other genres and each bit lasts about half an hour. Although the interviewer suggests that this could be some sort of racing component(which sounds very reasonable) Payton declines to comment on these features. He thinks people will be pleasantly surprised by these additions.

Western Game Version

Payton states that Hideo has put him in charge of the western version of the game. So he gets to control difficulty settings etc. So he reckons that the western version will be more difficult than the Japanese version. He wants to focus more around the over the shoulder cam(Resident Evil 4) instead of auto aiming. This judgement is based from the different play styles between cultures.

Opening and Closing Movies

This part was quite interesting, theres little point in my paraphrasing it for you:

“I think that the opening movie and the ending of the game are going to be the two talks of the town. The opening movie is something that has never been attempted, and will never be attempted again. It’s something that could only come out of Hideo’s mind.”

Other Quick Tidbits

Some very interesting tidbits indeed. And in some ways a bit of a relief to know the extent to which the team are putting in for this game. My anticipation is still running at an all time high. I’ll be sure to keep you all up to date on any more significant advancements.

Transcript

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Next Level Games Artists action Skateboard Decks for Charity

October 23rd, 2007

Being into design and awesome artwork I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this article on Siliconera. Several artists from Next Level Games(responsible for the Mario Football games) have decided to celebrate their 5th Anniversary by hand painting several skateboard decks and auctioning them off to charity. Its all part of a silent auction for the BC Children’s hospital foundation.

video game skateboards

So far the price ranges from $50-100 Canadian dollars. So that’s roughly $60-$120 for us Aussies(you are Australian right? :D ). You can make a bit right here. Such great role models these game developers. ^_^

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