Well well well, to all those who care, I once again have internet (oh boy was it worth the wait as its now faster). I have a new job, in a new city, and im enjoying some new games. I mentioned in my last post that I was going to attend Game On, a history of videogames expo, I mangaed to get there on the last day and suffice to say it was pretty good. There were some great old games, I got to play Virtual Fighter, which was pretty lame actually, and in a sense best of all, Asteroid.



Asteroid blew me away, I had never seen the original machine and I have to say, I still don't know how they managed to create the graphics, the shots you fire in the game are super bright, and it seems to be on a regular monitor, very cool. Anyway, there were many other things to see, I played the original Street Fighter, or as it was quite hilariously titled, Fighting Street. Ken and Ryu have never been so wooden, but it was fun none the less and it was playing on a PC Engine with CD attatchment.


This is the one I played but I didn't take the pic

In addition to that I relived some childhood memories and played SNES Street Fighter 2, and it was as great as I remember. Unfortunately Camera's were not allowed, which in turn makes a liar out of me as I promised photos, oh well.



I also recently purchased MGS4, which was probably a stupid idea because I'm still playing GTA4, and a whole bunch of other unfinished gems. For a person who has never played a MGS game, I have to say that I'm enjoying it, I find it equal parts genuine emotion, retardedly cheesy, and great fun. Plus the graphics, particularly in cut scenes, are crazy good. It's just so camp that I love it, and I am surprisingly emotionally involved in the story and characters even though I often don't know whats going on.



So I really have to finish GTA4, I'm right at the end and its kind of becoming a chore to play, I just want to finish. I just finished the missions from the mafia guy whos in the hospital, I think I'm almost there. In addition to that game I have Assassins Creed, Burnout Paradise, Resistance, Dead Rising, and Rock Band to finish, I'm both horrified and excited at the prospect of finished them.

Ok I think I've ranted enough, quickly though, loving all of the announcements out of E3, I think I need a new PC to play some of the sweetness thats coming, like Biowares latest offering, and lets not forget Diablo 3. And not to seem like a traitor, but the guys a Giantbomb.com are doing a bang up job with thier coverage.

Catch ya all later.

Hooray for the wonderful communications company that is Optus, I love them for completely fucking up my request to relocate my internet account to another Australian city, fanfuckingtastic. Anyway a quick update to the Dtoid community as the seconds tick away on my internet cafe account, I now live in the wonderful city of Melbourne, been here a week and aside from some vomitous pyrotechnics last weekend (drinking) things are going well.

Why am I posting this on Dtoid? well it just so happens that these a videogame history convention happening here in the coming weeks called Game-On, I shall be attending and I'll be posting photos in due time, that is when my internet is back up and running.

"I'm headin out Californie way, I hears they got a whole bunch of Inernet down dere"

Anyways, I look forward to joining the community once more, cheers.

As some of you may have read in one of my last posts, I recently returned from Singapore with an awesome haul of goodies (at extremely good prices), which included the awesome (and currently unavailable in Australia) Rock Band. Some of you may also know (although I doubt it) that me and my wife are moving to Melbourne in a week and a half,so the last few months and weeks have been fillled with packing and fixing up our house so its fit for renting out. In addition to this a good friend of mine who also happened to be a long time gamer buddy, recently returned from world travels (breifly) to catch up with family and friends. So as you can imagine, things have been pretty intense but also alot of fun.


My haul minus Time Crisis 4

So we had our first big session of Rock Band, it was only three player because we only have one guitar, but it was a blast, and I have to say I do kind of get a kick out of owning a game that 99.9% of Aussies haven't played and many haven't even heard of. We started with a quick game fo Time Crisis 4 before going straight to Rock Band which we played for hours interspersed with small doses of Perfect Dark Zero (Shut up all you haters, I like the games multiplayer and me and my old friends used to play alot of Goldeneye on the N64 so we played the facility map) and Skate which is an awesome game. We then later tried to get a WLAN game of RA2 Yuris Revenge working (classic) but one guys computer was not having it so we gave up and played mor Rock Band. Lots of fun was had.



Before I left for Singapore I did some game shopping at JB HIFI (great store) and picked up a copy of Assassins Creed (PS3) and Dead Rising. Assassins is better than I expected, sure it has problems, but its beautiful and I enjoy most of the voice work and each Assassination victims story and motivations for being horrible, all in all its pretty good. Dead Rising is an odd one, its awesome but as one Alex Navarro (former Gamespot, current Harmonix employee) put it, the save system is verging on being broken, and yet its got great characters and story, and its just plain goofy. Walking around in tight childrens clothes with a costume horse head on, bludgeoning zombies with a bowling ball never gets old, also word to the wise, Katanas are extremely effective for slicing up bodies, if the need ever arises.


Zombie killing = awesome

I also feel I have to comment on Capcoms proprietary game engine which I believe they have used for all their current gen games, Its simply beautiful, Dead Rising is a stunning game and it runns amazingly well. I kind of wish Capcom would farm it out to other developers like Epic does with UE3, because I'd love to see what other talented hands (perhaps non Japanese dev teams) could do with the tech.

In addition to all of these awesome gaming sessions, I've also been trying to fit in finishing GTA4 (nearly there, I think), and playing Burnout Paradise (PS3) which I love. Burnout isn't the kind of game I'd normally play but its just so much fun and it looks stunning, more developers should aim for 60fps, theres a pretty amazing sensation of speed in the game.

The other game I picked up in Singapore was a Japanese copy of Folklore. Now its all in english which is great, but for some reason my PS3 doesn't recognise it as the same game as the Aussie version of Folklore that I hired and my wife got quite far in. So we have all these save games that we can't use with the game. Its quite weird because when I make a new save the file goes into the same folder as the other version saves, but the thumbnail is slightly different featuring the Japanese font for the title text, very odd. Even stranger is that in the manual theres a picture of the title screen which has the cool Japanese title font, but when I load it up it has the PAL version font, its like the game is detecting which region its playing in and adjusting the title screen accordingly. Also worth noting is that my box art says Folklore, not Folksoul, strange.



This is the difference in the box art.

This is my copy

This is the Jap title screen

So this coming monday all of my consoles, my TV and games are going into boxes and being shipped accross the country, off to bigger and better things, wish me luck.

I had a play of the BFBC demo today and I gotta say its pretty sweet, and suprisingly seems to have a decent plot and pretty good writing to boot. I especially liked the music at the menu screen, the game has a sense of humour in a serious battle setting, it makes for interesting black humour.

As for the gameplay, its fairly reminiscent of COD4 but with vehicles and destructible evironments, its very fun and the netcode is sweet, I didnt experience lag once, and thats rare. The graphics are nice, especally the character models and textures, but it seems to be running at a lower rez, like COD4. I only played the PS3 version so I can't speak for the 360 version (My live account has expired and I haven't renewed it yet).

All in all it looks very promising and its a rare case of a demo making me want the full game, I'd suggest everyone who likes those kind of games should go check it out.

Ahh the SNES, probably the best most prolific system of our time, not only did it have so many titles, but so many quality titles. While there were many games to rave about on the system I want to talke about three games, the three games that solidified my love of games forever. I had played NES at friends houses many many times before the SNES had come out and had loved it, I remember distinctly being at a mates house and we hired out an import Japanese SNES and Street Fighter 2, one word AMAZING.



It wasn't long before I had a SNES of my own, after much pleading I got one for christmas not long after it had launched in AU, and I got a copy of SF2 and Super Mario World. SF2 took up a huge amount of my time in the first few weeks, playing with friends, trying to beat it with every character, and then on one weekend I popped in SMW and a whole new world of awesome opened up to me. Me and my sister stayed up till the early hours of the morning and made through about half of the game, simply fantastic and one of if not THE greatest game ever made.



That is until I picked up a copy of The Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and let me just say, WOW. This game took over my life, every day after school, every weekend until I reached the final boss, and believe it or not I never finished it until far more recently but that game has stayed with me and i will never forget it.


How aesome was this map? totally awesome thats how.

These three games changed my life and have no doubt solidified my place as a gamer for years to come, in the words of Chad Concelmo, AMAZING!

Hello all, I have returned from Singapore and I bring back with me many treasures. To begin with let me say that as an Australian I pay way too much for games and that some products are not even available so as I go down the list of things I bought I'll say how much they cost me in Singapore and how much they cost here. Oh and I almost forgot, the Aussie dollar is doing pretty well, to the tune of $1.38 Singaporean, now onward to the items.

I walked away with the following

1. Rock Band Special Edition PS3 (for region lock puposes)(not available in Australia yet) $350.00 Singaporean

2. Burnout Paradise PS3 $69.00 Singaporean, about $100.00 AU

3. Folklore (Japanese greatest hits edition) $49.00 Singaporean, about $100.00 AU and with worse cover art.

4. Time Crisis 4 with Guncon $129.00 Singaporean, Not sure how much here, but alot more to be sure.

5. 2x Dual Shock 3's one white one black, both at $72.00 Singaporean, $99.00 AU
(thats insane)

6. PS3 Remote, I think it was about $49.00, I think thats a better price than AU.

Now remeber the Exchange rate, take about 15-20% of those prices, Oh yeah.

Now if any of you are wondering why i only bought PS3 games its entirely down to the fact that they're region free, there were lots of cool 360 games I wanted but theres no real way to be sure that they would work.

This might not mean much to you Americans, but to those of use in EU and AU it means a lot. Here's some pics...


The first haul.


Cool cover eh?





The final haul.



Some arcades in Singapore





Some Covers of some games, some of which ive never heard of (hows the lost odyssey cover, cool).


I just thought this was funny.

So there you have it, if our deprived of cheap games I recommend Singapore, its got lots of other cool stuff too but I pretty much just bought games.