November 2000

11/26/00 10:00 PM
I have been blessed today. I asked my parents to ask my grandma if she still had her Atari. Well it turns out she did. Not only that, but she had two of them. A 7800 and a 2600. Unfortunately in a fit of somethingorother, she went and gave all the games to good will. Alas I will probably never see any of those titles again. Well I did get one Spiderman game. Tomorrow I plan to go out on a quest for some games in hope of aquiring James Bond, River Raid, Chopper Command, Winter Games, Frogger, Q-Bert, and anything else that looks cool. I'll havre to add an Atari section to the revies page, then maybe start doing html reviews with pictures.

11/22/00 3:45 PM
Generally Final Fantasy 9 seems pretty decent. I rather like the abilities system except I find that sometimes it takes forever to figure out who needs to learn what and aslo I've got a huge stock pile of weapons built up from fear that if I sell them I will imidiately wish I had them to teach my characters more skills that I will never really need to know. Also it's hard to keep them fully equipped with the best stuff since I end up having ot buy weaker items I don't need just for the skills they might give me. One thing that would have helped was the ability to see what skills an item will teach before buying it, though there probably is a way to do this tht I've overlooked. In the older games I'd just upgrade everyone to the best items they can use every three or four "levels" of armor. Anyway this game also has taken the series for a big U-Turn in the use of items in general. I mean, in the begining you had to use quite a few items to heal and whatnot, then by Final Fantasy 8 the characters didn't have armor or anything, and heal potions were not as useful since you could heal pretty easily since all characters were magic users. Now you are sometimes lucky to have any magic users in your party and when you die in battle there is no reviving with 1 HP afterwards so Pheonix Downs have taked a huge upwards leap in the usefulness department. Also I have yet to find a place that sells Ethers, so magic can't be use all the time. You'll be dead in the water if you use your most powerful summon every battle you hit. These are all good points mind you.
Oh yes, and Black Waltz No.3 is a bad ass motha fucka. No. 1 was so weak that Zidain could beat him alone and No.1 had a partiner too. No.2 Was so pathertic because it wouldn't attack Garnet, so essentially you'd never die. But No.3. Oh baby he was a killer. And he jsut keeps refusing to die.

11/19/00 1:30 PM
Soon it will be Thanksgiving break. A chance to catch up on Final Fantasy 9 I suppose. Or I could play Strider all week since I bought it yesterday. The original NES Strider mind you not the new Strider 2 on PSX. It has a real Bionic Commando only with a sword feel to it. I was alos suprised to find I already own a copy of Golgo 13 last night when I went to rearrange my games drawer to accomidate the new game. Sometimes I feel like I sould be doing something a bit more useful or some whit but usually such moments of dilusion pass quickly. I would play Shenmue more but I've gotten a bit into FF9 now and I really hate trying to play two complicated games at once. Plus Shenmue seems like it has an interface that will take some time getting used to. Not like the interface of say Fear Effect, which was a piece of shit interface that one could never possibly get used to, but more like th einterface of say Turok, which seems wierd at first but then works well in the end.
But it won't be all fun. You see the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year. For Christmas that is, and seing as one of my jobs is at a Toy Store, it means we open early, and all employees have to work ten hour shifts. So I get to get up at 3 in the morning to go work till 3 in the after noow, then Saturday I get to work again from 8AM to 11 PM between my two jobs. Maybe I'll get lucky and end up off on Sunday.

11/17/00 10:00 PM
Look at all the stuff! Isn't it great. A bunch of neato pack in dealies. Actually if the sequal is as good as the first game it woul dbe good enough for me. I put my pre order in for this game way back in like July or something, wne I though it was supposed ot be out later that month. Well I finally stopped asking the Babbages employees after about the 6th or 7th week of delay. And the game still isn't out, nor do I think it even has a set release date yet. Which is actually good, cause now I've got Final Fantasy 9 and Shenmue. As for those two. FF9 is better then the previous two PSX titles so far, at least FF8 anyway. FF8 just didn't get me hooked as well, the main characters seemed kind of boring and the draw system is kind of stupid. FF7 was actually pretty good. Both were rather downers though. I mean, FF9 has had several silly little joke points so far that just make the game more fun to play. I mean everyone in the world DIES at the end of FF7, how depressing is that?Oh, sorry for the spoiler, though technically it's not a spoiler since we don't actually KNOW FOR SURE that everyone dies, it's just my personal speculation. Besides chances are if you haven't played it you never will. I did complete Sonic Adventure today, at least the regular game, I don't think I'll bother trying to get all the Sonic Emplems. I fell for that trick once in Mario 64, all I got was a chance to meet Yoshi for 100 lives. Like 100 lives is useful AFTER you have done everything there is to do in the game.
Anyway, as I was saying, Big the Cat is pretty dumb. The fishing games are slow, his levels are short, and generally he has like no point in the overall story of Sonic. He's not even related to the other chatacters in anyway. Sonic, Knuckles and Tails obviously go together. Amy is Sonic's girlfriend or whatever, and Gamma is a minion of Robotnick. Then we have Big. And his pet Froggy. At least he only has like 4 levels, his end boss was incredibly easy. Also I may have to do something along the lines of a Dr. Robotnick versus Dr. Wiley. They both fly around in little flying saucers, make robots, and fight blue nemesis. Besides the blue hero of each game have red sidekicks (Knuckles and Proto Man) they don't always get along with.
For some non gaming news, I was planning on working on a transformers kitbash of G1 Mirage from Beast Machines Mirage, a relatively simple repaint and slight modification, but I've hit a stumping point on finding a head. Oh well, I'll fin done sometime, maybe after I play with this cat, and drink this cola, and play with these toys.

11/16/00 Sometime PM
Oh man, first I forgot to update, then I made an update and didn't upload it. Well this is a two for one day again.
So anyway, this about sums up some of my thoughts on Shenmue. Ryo seems easily distracted. And like most console "RPGS" (which is something I should write about for here) it's not really very RPGish in that you can't actually do whatever you want. I was talking to this little girl (in th egame) about this cat she found and I was thinking "Whatever, so your sister saw the black car huh? Where can I find her?" and Ryo on the screen just keeps going on like he's interested in the little girl and the cat. I also got Final Fantasy IX. It's great so far for the most part. The music actually leaves something to be desred. It isn't that its bad, it just all seems so slow. The little Orco wizard kicks ass though. And the original White mage outfit shows up too.
Anyway, Big the Cat is stupid.

11/11/00 Sometime PM
Ok, now I have a new excuse for not updating. I broke down and finially bought a Dreamcast. This actully says a lot for Sega. You see, Compared o the SNES, I was generally unsatisfied with the Genesis. My opinion of Sega was lowered even more with the numerous periferals for the Genesis. Then the Saturn up and died like nothing next to the PSX, like the Game Gear previously tot he Game Boy. There was a time when I would have said the following "Why the fuck doesn't Sega just give up and die already?!". Now there are like a dozen interesting looking games for Dreamcast, and it has a very inviting price tag esspecially next to some other game systems (PS2 - $300, X-Box $200, Game Cube - $???). Now I suppose the Game Cube could be great but then, Nintendo is slacking extremely lately. It seems like my evil opinions of Sega are all manefesting themselves onto Nintendo now which says a lot for Nintendo sine I was once fiercely loyal to Nintendo. I honesly don't think the PS2 is going to kill Sega, or anything. It's hoigh priced, and peoiple seem generally unsatisfied with it or at least not satisfied enough that I've been hearing too much about it. Currently I don't think anyone is actually playing the PS2 they are all just floating around on Ebay being sold and resold dozens of times. Anyway there was all this hype before it was released and now bam, who cares. I don't even get asked anymore at work if we have any PS2s in stock and we hardly sell any games for it. It's not like it's anymore powerful than DC anyway, both are 128 bit, so the PS2 can play DVDs, big deal, so can my PC, and it was better graphics (probably not actually). Basically I look at the PS2 games available now and say, who cares they all look boring. Metal Geatr Solid 2, and Final Fantasy 10 and 11 are all like a year away, so who cares about PS2. Oh right, and I did add some other content, in honor if the Dreamcast I've added a review of Sonic Adventure to the reviews page.
Oh and I severely need to fix the Formula sun page. Geocities' change in file location pilocies or whatever (they became case sensitive see previous updates) has crippled the page.

11/08/00 11:50 PM
NOTE: The following was originally going to be posted a few days ago with a few pictorial links thrown in, but then I became preoccupied with a few other things and it's starting to get a bit stale, so I'm just throwing it up now.
Ok let's see... Roll's father dissapeared years ago on this strange island. Then She meets this guy, who she thinks she has seen before, who has AMNISIA and just happens to have plans for a rocket thing designed by her father. Gee, I WONDER WHO THE GUY IS! Er, anyway, Mega Man Legends is pretty cool. Seems a bit better then the first, the plot seems more intense anyway, though, I didn't ever actually beat MML1. But heck It helt like forever before I got to even play the game after the pregame into and the "after you push the start button" true into. Without spoiling too much (since the game seems to suggest it at regular intervals of 5 seconds each) the plot seems ot have something to do with Roll's parents. Tron still cracks me up though. I'll have to remember to pick up a copy of that Tron Bone game before it becomes hard to find. Seeing T (not Tron) Bone dressed in that suit get up too. Pretty crazy stuff. They need to center more ont he Bones than the Caskets. The Bones are hilarious. I was overjoyed to finally run into a bunch of Servbots just for the chance to kick them around (I spent more time doing this than I should have).

11/05/00 9:50 PM
I'm feeling so proud of myself or something. Or whatever. I created this (please excuse the resolution) someone once suggested it was a good idea to scan things at 300dpi then scale them down, well it's now like 1/16th the original size and it looks all jagged). Not only that but I have 3 more that go with that one and 4 more in the series! For a total of eight panels. Though only one is inked. This one would have dialogue but I decided to leave that for the finished product if it ever comes, which knowing me, probably never will. Anyway, I've been feeling like doing a web comic ever since I started reading all these other comics. I guess that means I'm just being trendy but who gives a fuck what others think, well except for my loyal readers, I ALWAYS CARE WHAT YOU THINK, DON'T LEAVE ME YET! Anyway, I was initially going to have short run comic called "Wurk" about a guy (coincidentally not unlike myself, imagin that) working a shitty job at a Subshop (in no way related to Subway. Then after i expired all the bad customer jokes I could come up with, or at least until I quit, I was going to have the main charater go off of a short sabacle or something then off to college. Instead I think if I do it I'll just have him go straight to college. That is what the first panel there is, the first panel in a four panel strip (which is turning out to be almost one panel too many, but I think it'll be better in the end). The panel is of our hero entering his dorm room for hte first time and should contain the comment "Ah, home away from home". I would go into more detail but I don't want to spoil anything incase I actually end up doing something with this. Plus I probably need to work on shaping up the chaacters (no s really so far) a bit but I figue that will jsut com with time. Anywho, I've once again taken something that may have been original and clever ( the fast food strip) and made it something that in the end is rather unoriginal (a strip about a college guy who is obsessed with computers and video games). I guess I'll ahve to come up with a new name since the college strip was supposed to be called "After Wurk". Maybe I'll have to call it Off to Skool" or something else. Oh and all the misspellings in the titles are just to make it sound more l33+ or however that is spelled than it (and I) really am.

11/05/00 8:10 PM
OK, there is something disheartening about playing through a long and complicated sequence of a game, then dying right at the end and realizing you forgot to save. Let's put it another way. On Deus Ex, I fought off a dozen mechs and guards, to infiltrate the enemy sub base, snuck in through the vent shaft and fought off several spider drones, made it onto the ship, snuck through much of the ship without being detected all while setting explosives all over the ship, then made it off the ship before it sank, then made it back up into the vent shaft and while climbing like the last ladder left to get to the roof and to my getaway chopper, I was sliced in the back by a huge vent fan which instantly killed me. I mean, this is like Indiana Jones goes through all the traps of the anchient temple, then trips on his shoe lace and breaks his neck as he is stepping back outside with the treasure. And sure I COULD use a cheat and skip past the whole segment, but then I'd miss a whole slew of good items and information.
Also when infiltrating an enemy base it's a good idea NOT to open any doors marked "Warning: Mech Storage". That is unless you REALLY want to fight some mechs.
Also the lack of updates the last few days has come from being sick.

11/01/00 10:30 PM
Wow look at that, four updates in one day! Anywho, don't get me wrong on the music thing. There are actually many bands that I simply will not download MP3s of because I know I like the bands and I know when I have some extra cash I'll just buy the CDs. Exaples, I don't download music by AC/DC, Green day, The Offspring, Hole, Garbage, Pink Floyd, and a few others I'm sure tht I'm not thinking of. There are a few exceptions I suppose. Offspring has quite a few singles on movie soundtracks, which I actually just made MP3s of myself since my brother had the CDs, but then soundtracks are different because it's not all one band.
Also I feel so incredibly burnned out on everying. Maybe I'm working too much or something. I havn't had the chance to play SIMS or U of I I don't know what I'll do. Probably just go insane or something.
One last thing. Windows sucks, I bring up a window, and it crashes. What a piece of shit.

11/01/00 4:00 PM
One way or another Napster is going to die. I read an article in todays paper about it. Aparently the whole lawsuit against them is probably going to end up being settled by Napster turning to a "member based" pay-per-download thing. I garantee they will loose much of thier user base the day this change is implemented. I know Napster will be quickly removed from my coputer when it does. I guess it's back to old fasioned methods like: using mIRC or other "people communications devices", or doing web searches and sifting through a hundred porn sites and adds to find a webpage with links to a bunch of music. Now you may be wondering "why not just support the artists and buy the CD, that's why the RIAA and whomever are mad about Napster. Ok well one, I've read several articles written BY ARTISTS explaining how much thye end up getting fucked over and don't actually make much money, and two every time I buy a CD anymore, something that is ever increasing in price, or more, before, when I bought CDs before, they would usually end up being ALL CRAP. I have CDs I have NEVER LISTENED TO after the first time. On the other hand I listen tot he last many CDs I've bought a lot, and completely through. At least half f my last CD purchases were NAPTER BASED, that is, I d/l the music first off Napster then decided i wanted the CD. I don't know, the whole thing is stupid. The real excuse is before Napster and a CD burner, I'd just borrow CDs from a friend or check them out from the library and tape all the music I like, basically I don't have money for CDs, so in the end, I'm just evil, sorry.
Fortunately the news article also "advertised" several Napster alternatives. I wonder how Gnutilla works.

11/01/00 12:20 AM
I really must appologize for broken links. Geoshities is being REALLY FUCKING RETARDED for some reason. Aparently a link to "/kitbash/prime.html" is not the same as "/Kitbash/prime.html".

11/01/00 12:05 AM
I've reworked the kitbash page. I put the more major ones on thier own pages and reworked the code for the main page. Maybe I'll have to make up some thumbnails for it or something in the future. Oh and vote Nader. because a vote for Ralph Nader is (get this) a VOTE FOR RALPH NADER!