Now I did it...



Yes, that's right, I broke down and bought a Daxter PSP Slim bundle! I had been considering it for about two weeks now and yesterday I finally made my decision to get it. I ended up getting a sweet deal on it through the use of some Best Buy Reward coupons. The girl at the counter let me use the 10% off a video game coupon as well as three $5-off certificates, so the Daxter bundle ended up being cheaper than just the Core PSP Slim package (it ended up being about $164 for the bundle).

I've only fooled around it for a little while; played with some of the settings, downloaded the latest software update, and played a few minutes of Daxter.

Daxter is sweet; the dialog is hilarious, and I absolutely love the Jak series. Being able to find out what took Daxter two years to save Jak will be very interesting.

So far, I'm very pleased with my purchase. The system has a lot of nice features and everything looks slick.

Clichéd unboxing photos:

So I was in Costco earlier today picking up a case of Sam Adams Octoberfest when I saw this:



WTF, Costco sells arcade cabinets now!? I checked out the info on the box (they actually had 3 or 4 of them!) and and it said it included over a hundred games. I took some shots of the game list and typed them up here:

1942
Asteroids
Battlezone
Berzerk
Burger Time
Centipede
Golden Tee Golf II
Joust
Mega Man
Millipede
Missle Command
Moon Patrol
Robotron
Space Invaders
Street Fighter II CE
Tempest
1943
10-Yard Fight
Alpine Ski
Anteater
Arkanoid
Arkanoid 2
Asteroids Deluxe
Armored Car
Black Tiger
Black Widow
Bubble Bobble
Burnin' Rubber
Calipso
Captain Commando
Chack 'n Pop
Cheyenne
Clay Pigeon
Cobra Command
Combat
Commando
Crack Shot
Crime City
Crossbow
Crystal Castles
Defender
Elevator Action
Fax
Final Blow
Final Fight
Frenzy
Ghosts N Goblins
Ghouls' N Ghosts
Gravitar
Great
Swordsman
Hard Hat
Hit 'N Miss
Jungle Hunt
Karate Champ
Kung-Fu Master
Liberator
Liquid Kids
Lost Tomb
Lock 'N Chase
Lunar Lander
Lunar Rescue
Magic Sword
Mega Twins
Minefield
Moon War
Mouse Trap
Nastar
New Zealand Story
Popper II
Plump Pop
Puzzle Bobble
Qix
Rainbow Islands
Rainbow Islands Extra
Rastan
Red Baron
Rescue
Return of the Invaders
Section Z
Shootout
Showdown
Side Trak
Son Son
Space Duel
Space Invaders DX
Spectar
Speed Coin
Street Fighter II
Super Breakout
Super Burger Time
Super Qix
Targ
Tazz Mania
Tumple Pop
Venture
Warlords
Waterski
Who Dunit
World Class Bowling
Zoo Keeper

You can't see the price in that shot, but it was $1999.99. Fucking sweet.

More pics:

With the release of the new PSP Slim (aka PSP-2000), I've taken a serious look at what's available for the system and was pleasantly surprised at what I found.

When the PSP first launched in March of 2005 in the US (has it been over 2 years already!?) it met my interest with a resounding “meh”. While the system looked pretty (and touted a ton of features) there were zero games (my interest in Lumines is recent) that interested me (sounds just like the PS3…). Just look at the launch title list:

1. Ape Escape: On the Loose
2. ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails
3. Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower
4. Dynasty Warriors
5. FIFA 2005
6. Gretzky NHL
7. Lumines
8. Metal Gear Acid
9. MLB
10. MVP Baseball
11. NBA
12. NBA Street Showdown
13. Need for Speed Rivals
14. NFL Street 2 Unleashed
15. Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory
16. Ridge Racer
17. Smartbomb
18. Spider-Man 2
19. Tiger Woods PGA TOUR
20. Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix
21. Twisted Metal: Head On
22. Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade
23. Wipeout Pure
24. World Tour Soccer

Just about every game on that list, with few exceptions, is a sequel to a PS2 game or a port of one. Now there is nothing terrible or wrong with that, but there should be at least a few launch titles that stand out from the rest. Even the games that weren’t ports or sequels didn’t even seem the tiniest bit interesting to me. Maybe it’s the genre of the game or the way it was presented, but not a single launch game made me say “damn, I really want to play that.

The same thing could be said for the Nintendo DS. I didn’t get on the DS bandwagon till the DS Lite came out and by then the system had a decent back-catalogue of games to choose from along with some great ones lined up. For whatever reason, the time it took for the “good games” to come out has been much shorter for the DS than the PSP.

That said, after being out for two years the game library is finally starting to fill out with some key titles already out and some being released in the near future. With the PSP Slim release I took a look through the systems catalogue of games (and ones on the horizon) and found the following that actually interest me:

• Brave Story: New Traveler (RPG)
• Mega Man Powered Up (Action/Platformer)
• Daxter (Action/Platformer)
• Lumines (Puzzle)
• LocoRoco (Platformer)
• Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters (Action/Platformer)
• Jeanne D'Arc (Strategy RPG)
• FFVII: Crisis Core (RPG - not released yet)
• Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of The Lions (SRPG - Not Released Yet)
• God of War: Chains of Olympus (Action – Not Released Yet)

Ten games! While that not seem like many, it’s a great start for someone buying a new console (for anyone curious, I have around 10 DS games, so this is a good number for me to make an investment).

So what’s holding me back? Time and money for one. There’s only so much of both, and I have a stack of games I still need to get to for my PS2, ‘Cube, and DS, many of which are RPGs. Another thing is the hardware itself. The system has notoriously slow load times for a portable system due to its use of UMD discs. This really puts a damper on the idea of the “pick up and play” aspect of portable gaming. I understand that the system is basically a PS2 in your hands and that the PSP Slim has helped alleviate this some, but when load times are, supposedly, getting into the 30-second mark, that is a little ridiculous.

Coupled with the load times is the systems poor battery life; the battery lasts, depending on how you use your system, from 3-5 hours (for comparison the DS gets about 15 on a charge). In all honesty, this isn’t as big a deal as the load times is, but being able to play a game for an entire trip on one charge would be a great thing and it’s something I think about every time I see a PSP on the shelf.

Really, though, its all about the game selection, which I previously pointed out, is much better than it was even 6 months ago. With the release of Crisis Core in Japan, the PSP Slim has sold over 500,000 units in such a short time – about a week. This can only be a good thing for the system. With the Japanese install base growing it may convince game developers to create more games for the system (like SquareEnix, Level-5, etc). Things should be looking up in the PSP game department with each success the system has.

So where do I stand? The system has some minor issues, that’s for sure, but there are a bunch of games I want to play for, so the question comes down to is “Do the games outweigh the consoles drawbacks?” I’m still on the fence, to be perfectly honest. Even with the new PSP Slim bundles (two hundred bucks grabs you a new slim console, game, movie, and memory stick – a good deal considering the original PSP was two hundred dollars by itself) that are coming out and a growing list of games I want, I am still hesitant to drop the money on it. Maybe its because of my current financial situation or the constant negative image the system has that is keeping my from purchasing, I’m not sure. Hell, it could even be that I just want to get through the stack of games I have before I drop 10 games onto it. Regardless, the PSP Slim is definitely something on my radar and I do look forward to getting my hands on one at some point in the near future.

Picked up the latest Zelda adventure from Toys 'R Us on launch day along with the game guide (it was free with the purchase of the game). I had been eagerly anticipating this title for a long time; a new Zelda game is easily a cause for celebration! I'm only about 4 or 5 hours in so far, but from what I've played, everything is great so far. Controls are fantastic (though the roll move is still giving me problems); combat is quick and fun, and movement is extremely simple. The cell-shaded look fits perfectly on the DS (though during up-close shots the pixels really become noticeable). Nintendo really did an excellent job with the sound on this game; sound effects are great and the music is wonderful (it brings a smile to my face to hear the Zelda theme crop up every now and then).

One thing that surprised me was the quality of the dialog. Only a couple hours in and I've already laughed out loud at some of the things the characters say. The dialog feels (and sounds) natural, like it was something these people would say even if they weren't in a game.

All in all, Phantom Hourglass, in my limited experience, has been a blast. I can't wait to get further into the game!

At least that's what Sony UK boss Ray Maguire thinks.

"So it was a big decision," he said of facility's removal, "and we know it is a very emotive subject as lots of people think that backwards compatibility is high on the agenda and yet few really use it."

Commenting on today's news of the new 40GB PS3 model, he felt that now that there are more games out for the Playstation 3 (and even more in the near-future) that backwards compatibility is less important than when the PS3 launched.

"As we come to our first Christmas with the PlayStation 3 there's going to be about 65 games in the marketplace, so we feel now that there's sufficient choice in the marketplace and that we're still better off using that money that we'd put into backwards compatibility in either investing in new games or using that money to help support bringing the price down so that people can get into the franchise"

So because there are going to be a "decent" amount of games to choose from, that means a gamer isn't going to want to play any PS2 games on their PS3, which by the way STILL has games coming out for it? It sure sounds that way.

(quotes via Eurogamer)

This is most certainly news to me, but based on a new Kotaku post (and some searching), it appears that the name Nintendo when translated means “Leave Luck to Heaven”! Pretty sweet if you ask me!