How can one resist? – the PSP

June 10th, 2007

A part of me feels like a fool saying that its hard to resist purchasing a PSP, the other half has already gone out and bought one. I have had a lot of faith in the console but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed with the quality of game releases in the last 6 months. There are enough titles on the system that would warrant me buying one, but only just.

Despite this unfortunate looming problems I can’t help but feel an urgency to buy for 2 main reasons. They are:

1)The two Syphon Filter titles
2)The Final Fantasy Tactics Remake

Now you see, I am a huge fan of the original Syphon Filter games as well as the (true) original FF Tatctics. They are a personal favourite and hold a place in the bottom of my heart.

Only last week at Sony’s Gamers Day Sony announced the 2nd Syphon Filter game for the PSP. Which is absolutely excellent. Supposively Gabe Logan’s partner Lian Xing has gone under cover and has been working against Gabe. This is crazy news!

Check out the trailer:

I felt rather unsatisfied with the GBA iteration of FF Tactics. Sure it was a great game but it had law cards, the graphics and music just didn’t quite fit with the original, the job system had less flow and theres just too much tedious work. I hate that I can’t finish all 300(repetitve battle) missions because I am missing one damn item which I have to go back and repeat one mission in order to (hopefully) get an item to do another mission which may give me the correct item to finish the original mission. UghThe original had the perfect pre-redered animated character sprites(they aren’t really sprites tho as they are taken from bitmaps?), the music that I call ‘Tactics’ music, man that music is just so gorgeous and the gameplay that flows so neatly so that everything interlocks with ease. Uhhh man

final fantasy tactics war of the lions job system psp

Sony have me pinned down on this one. There’s no way that I can avoid these games. No way. Curse you Sony!

Bargain Hunting for Video Games

June 6th, 2007

super castlevania artwork
Yes, nothing beats old school Super Castlevania IV art!

Don’t you just love it when you go out on an early morning and find a quality game for a cheap price? It just feels that much more rewarding when some of that hard earned cash stays in your wallet. Now I haven’t been out looking for bargain for sometime now but that’s not to say that I don’t have a few tricks up my sleeve to help out you fortunate readers.

Rule 1 Wait until the time is right

If your buying thru your department stores then never, ever buy a game at full price, unless:

you are mega rich
you pre-order(and got a special deal)
you pre-order despite no special deal
you absolutely have to buy the game then and there

Now, the trick is to be patient and wait until the game is going out at a reduced line. Nowadays the wait isn’t all that long. You can find new release games drop $30 within 2/3 weeks of release.

The other thing to wait for is sales. Now department stores generally cycle through their specific reduction themes. That is just before easter time camping gear will be reduced as everyone likes to go camping over the easter break etc etc. This eventually happens with games, so hold off until that period comes and take advantage of it. You’ll find out about these sales if you check your letterbox weekly.

Also be weary of the clearance sales, some stores(like the one I work at) can’t stop having clearance sales, be it Stocktake, Christmas, Bellow Cost, Closing Down it doesn’t matter what excuse they make, you’d be stupid enough to not give it a try.

The other things to wait for are price markdowns down on the rrp. That is when a manufacturer releases a budget range of games or a tie in deal with a console. Try and guess when the markdowns will occur and then go for it. I bought my GBA SP about a week before it was put down $40 and then stuck in a few game bundles. It sucks, so don’t let it happen to you.

Rule 2 Vary your sources

The chances of you finding that cheap rare title increases dramatically when you look in places beyond your local shopping centre. Try places that you wouldn’t normally look. Here’s a few ideas:

different game/department stores
the buy/sell sections of the newspaper
garage sales
second hand stores
clearance/closing down sales
try online auction sites
online retailers
import your games
your local community forum trading post

Rule 3 Demand the cheapest

If your going to buy games anywhere then ask if you can get them a bit cheaper, even a few dollars. It always pays to ask. This works even better if you are going to buy a console in the package as well.

Now if you shop at a store where they claim to beat a competitors price, wait until one of their competitors has a good deal and then go and better it at the other store. Demand the cheapest, the mark ups are plain ridiculous.

Rules 4 Give Pre-owned a go

I’m rather against this whole buy pre-owned deal but in reality its not that bad. 2 of my Gamecube titles are pre-owned and they work fine. I picked up TimeSplitters 2(extremely rare and always full price in Australia) for $AUS30 instead of $AUS100+. My brother nabbed Tales of Symphonia for $AUS70 when it goes for $350 on eBay.

Pre-owned games are pretty easy to find these days, in Australia EB and Cash Convertors are fairly popular pre-owned games sellers. You can also buy second hand games down at garage sales or you can even buy some off your best mate.

When you are buying pre-owned make sure to check:

the return policies
the disc/cart condition
everything that’s included

Rule 5 Never stop looking

That is unless you have all of the games you would ever need, but that only exists in fairy tales.

If your a professional bargain hunter then you would have noticed the first error in the opening paragraph. That is I haven’t been out looking for bargain for sometime now and that’s the trick, you never stop looking. Whenever your out and about always have the bargain at the back of your mind. If your out shopping in a place which you normally don’t shop at, check out the local game stores as they may have a gem hidden away for a good price.

Alrighty folks, that should be enough help to at least get you started. If you’ve got any tips/tricks/success stories/whatever then leave me a comment. ^_^

The Official CD-I Reference

June 2nd, 2007

phillips cd-i reference

I’ve been rather intrested in this little system after reading aboutsome of the Zelda games released for it, so therefore I have decided to create this informative thread. If you want to contribute feel free. I am lacking quite a bit of the split between Sony and the rest of the developers.

CD-i General

phillips cd-i console

The CD-i is the console that eventually lead to the Playstation. I am sure that a majority of us have heard about this break up. Where Nintendo wanted a CD drive for the SNES and teamed with Sony, whom they lied to about something and then Sony split, Nintendo joined with Philips and made some rubbishy games based off of famous Ninty franchises.

Here’s the summary of the console as provided by Wikipedia:

CD-i or Compact Disc Interactive is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. CD-i also refers to the multimedia Compact Disc standard utilized by the CD-i console, also known as Green Book, which was co-developed by Philips, Sony and Nintendo in 1986. The first Philips CD-i player, released in 1991 and initially priced around USD $700, was capable of playing interactive CD-i discs, Audio CDs, CD+G (CD+Graphics), Karaoke CDs, and Video CDs (VCDs), though the last required an optional “Digital Video Card” to provide MPEG-1 decoding.

The actual step by step history of the console can be found at the CD-i reference site:History of the CD-I

The brand name debarkle

This can be explained from a snippet out of the Playstation Wikipedia page:

The first conceptions of the PlayStation date back to 1986. Nintendo had been attempting to work with disk technology since the Famicom, but the medium had problems. Its rewritable magnetic nature could be easily erased (thus leading to a lack of durability), and the disks were a piracy danger. Consequently, when details of CDROM/XA (an extension of the CD-ROM format that combines compressed audio, visual and computer data, allowing all to be accessed simultaneously) came out, Nintendo was interested. CDROM/XA was being simultaneously developed by Sony and Philips. Nintendo approached Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on, tentatively titled the “SNES-CD”. A contract was struck, and work began. Nintendo’s choice of Sony was due to a prior dealing: Ken Kutaragi, the person who would later be dubbed “The Father of PlayStation,” was the individual who had sold Nintendo on using the Sony SPC-700 processor for use as the 8 channel ADPCM sound synthesis set in the Super Famicom/SNES console through an impressive demonstration of the processor’s capabilities.

Sony also planned to develop another, Nintendo compatible, Sony-branded console, but one which would be more of a home entertainment system playing both Super Nintendo cartridges and a new CD format which Sony would design. This was also to be the format used in SNES-CD discs, giving a large degree of control to Sony despite Nintendo’s leading position in the video gaming market.

In 1989, the SNES-CD was to be announced at the June CES . However, when Hiroshi Yamauchi read the original 1988 contract between Sony and Nintendo, he realized that the earlier agreement essentially handed Sony complete control over any and all titles written on the SNESCD-ROM format. Yamauchi was furious; deeming the contract totally unacceptable, he secretly cancelled all plans for the joint Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment. Indeed, instead of announcing their partnership, at 9 am the day of the CES, Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln stepped onto the stage and revealed that they were now allied with Philips, and were planning on abandoning all the previous work Nintendo and Sony had accomplished. Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa had (unbeknownst to Sony) flown to Philips headquarters in Europe and formed an alliance of a decidedly different nature one that would give Nintendo total control over its licenses on Philips machines.

The 9pm CES announcement was a complete shock. Not only was it a hysteric surprise to the show goers (Sony had only just the previous night been optimistically showing off the joint project under the “Play Station” brand), but it was seen by many in the Japanese business community as a fatal betrayal: a Japanese company snubbing another Japan-based company in favor of a European one was considered absolutely unthinkable in Japanese business.

After the collapse of the joint project, Sony considered halting their research, but ultimately the company decided to use what they had developed so far and make it into a complete, stand alone console. This led to Nintendo filing a lawsuit claiming breach of contract and attempted, in U.S. federal court, to obtain an injunction against the release of the Play Station, on the grounds that Nintendo owned the name[citation needed]. The federal judge presiding over the case denied the injunction. Thus, in October 1991, the first incarnation of the new Sony PlayStation was revealed; it is theorized that only 200 or so of these machines were ever even produced.

By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo reached a deal whereby the “Sony Play Station” would still have a port for SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive the bulk of the profits from the games, and the SNES would continue to use the Sony-designed audio chip. However, at this point, Sony realized that the SNES technology was getting long in the tooth, and the next generation of console gaming was around the corner: work began in early 1993 on reworking the “Play Station” concept to target a new generation of hardware and software; as part of this process the SNES cartridge port was dropped, the space between the names was removed, and the PlayStation was born.

CD-i Games

Most of the games released on the console were generally of pretty bad quality. Mainly puzzlers, but there were also a few games released based on popular Nintendo franchises. Nintendo themslves didn’t actually make the franchise based titles they were made by Philips Interactive Media. But for now:

Complete list of CD-I games

Mario Games

There was only one Mario based game released on the console, another Mario game was in development but was then canceled. Some details of it can be found here.The other game released was Mario’s Hotel; a puzzle title.

Videos of Super Mario Wacky Worlds

hotel mario phillips cd-i

Details about the game can be found at the Wikipedia page.

Videos of the game can be found at YouTube. Here’s one of the All the game’s cutscenes

Mario Vs Bowser

The Zelda Trilogy

Three Zelda games were released on the console being:

Link: The Faces of Evil
Zelda’s Adventure
Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon

Link: The Faces of Evil phillips cd-i link the faces of evil animated link the faces of evil phillips cd-i
link the faces of evil gameplay screen shot