Pwning Pokemon

July 26th, 2010 · gaming

I talk about and I talk about and I talk about and I barely write about it. Ages ago (in internet time) I mentioned ‘discovering’ a Pokemon Pandora’s Box. Prepare to see the word ‘Pokemon’ a lot. Here’s the long version:

I have several different Nintendo DS units. They are all homebrew enabled, of course. I wish I could locate my presently AWOL launch DS since I have oddly fond memories of nearly setting my hand on fire doing a hardware mod for it for a Call For Help segment. It’s ok, it was only my right hand. I at least had the sense to protect my left! Anyway, I still have my imported Ice Blue DS Lite and my new DSi XL. Back in the old Blue and Red days, I also had several GameBoys. What can I say? It’s a bad habit. I totally forgot that I’ve had MultiConsoleSyndrome for so long! I also presently have two PlayStation 2s, two Wiis (neither are black, though), two PlayStation 3s (ok, one is borrowed since I’m never using the new firmware at the cost of OtherOS), and three Xbox 360s. Only two work. And I gave one of those to my brother. Anyway, with Blue and Red and many GameBoys, my brother and I could hook up the cables and trade any old time we wanted. This was mostly for version-specific Pokemon and to evolve ones like Graveler to Golem and Kadabra to Alakazam. When one of us wanted to start a new game, we’d also stash as many Pokemon as we could on the other person’s game, to be returned later. Most handy. Obviously this is not some super secret trick we discovered. It was merely a perk to having a gaming buddy and can be done for any Pokemon game. This, finally, brings us to Heart Gold and Soul Silver. Owning both carts is pretty unnecessary for obtaining other version Pokemon, thanks to the Global Trading System, but very useful for backing up your Pokemon like I just described. Before you can trade locally with other people, you need to play through the first 40-60 minutes of the game so that you can get to a PokeCenter AND get some Pokeballs for catching the useless Pokemon to trade. My SoulSilver would trade a high level Rapidash for a Rattata from the first route and, voila, I can restart on SS without losing anything I can’t get back later.

Now comes the actual ‘discovery’ that I’ve been playing with the last little while. I was backing up locally with all of my own Pokemon. Were people doing this online with ROMs? Yes, yes they were. Places like GameFAQs often have save files available to download, showing off files with 100% completion or certain time-limited bonuses for people that missed out the first time around. And, specifically for the DS, there are places online that also help you convert said save files into a format that works for your available tools. Hmmmmmmmmmm. I had to check it out.

OMG, IT’S FULL OF POKEMON
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Some gifts arrived early!

July 25th, 2010 · gaming

I received DQIX as an early birthday present and, LO AND BEHOLD, look what else I found in my travels ^_^

 

And to think it only took four years to get a hold of a copy of Powered Up! Sheesh. It’s not a Canadian copy but I really don’t care about that. It’s fun to see a box with no French on it once in a while. It’s amazing how much more space that leaves there to actually tell people about the game instead of just the standard “Here are 3 PR quotes in English and French with two random screenshots. Hope that was all you wanted.” Ok, you got me. Every box in the world does that :)

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Loooong Day & Night (look! it’s tomorrow!)

July 21st, 2010 · gaming

it happened and I am proud of it.
 

It’s 4:20 am EST and life is good. It won’t be four hours from now when I start to pay the price for Tuesday but I’m going to go ahead and call it ‘worth it’. I spent the day/night/morning researching and testing something that I’ve wanted to do for a while. With _____________ coming out later this year, the timing is ripe for these videos and written guides. As opposed to the usual obscure Japanese and European releases that are usually responsible for causing these bouts of hyper-happy, these segments will actually be useful for mainstream and hardcore gamers alike. Heck, there’s even painless educational value for good measure! Filming starts next week. I don’t feel much like typing, let’s do a video:

 

If I had a Banjo, I’d be Steve Martin’s Ramblin’ Man. You knew I had to link that particular version. The video went direct from my Logitech 9000 Pro to YouTube and the audio seems to be rather unhappy with that fact. Hmm. Perhaps that will sort itself out after more processing? And, back to Muppets, my “I need to work faster” theme seems to have paid off ;)

Yes, you’re right, I have no idea how I’m going to relax enough to sleep soon. I could always go Pokemon collecting… And, yes, I do put my Pokewalker on my shorts when I play DDR. Now you know.

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Revenge of The Most Annoying Sound In The World

July 20th, 2010 · gaming

It’s killing me. I know I’ve been quiet lately but that’s because I’m borderline ready to go snapshow at any moment and it’s less fun to write about how I dream of going all Office Space on the thing making that noise. I have been gaming, at least. Since there wasn’t going to be a whole lot of sleep at night, when I prefer it, I played a chunk of DDR last night and that’s always been a great stress buster for me. Unfortunately, it also has one of the most annoying sounds in the world: the announcer. You can’t turn him off but at least you can turn him down!

I played a lot DDR Universe back in the day. HATED IT. Buggy piece of crap. I know I wrote a ton of entries about how so many achievements with quest mode were borked beyond repair and even deleting my save and starting again wasn’t helping. And still sucked. No more for me even though I still own it. I’m on DDR Universe 2 now. I own Universe 3 but I thought I’d go in order to see the improvements. Universe 2 is definitely better. That was really obvious since they couldn’t possibly be worse than the original. I’m still not a fan of the track lists for the first two. I grew up with the PS1 and PS2 versions and it would have been nice to see some classics come back in a non-point costing DLC form. There are a few remixes of Castlevania and Contra tunes but it’s not the same. I love jpop and I know they were going for more mass market appeal with a ton of licensed Western tracks but they really really could have done better than Walk Like An Egyptian and Safety Dance. At least Safety Dance was an obvious choice that probably had to happen at some point :)

DDRU2 has a completely non-broken quest mode and that’s a huge plus. Song unlocks happen in certain locations instead of randomly whenever the hell it feels like it once in several blue moons and that’s what it’s all about. Why the hell they have the ugliest islands and cities in the world with 80s fashion everywhere is still, however, a mystery. There’s some 70s suits thrown in there for good measure. It’s like someone said, “Oh, we need to include American-style content? No problem!” and then watched a bunch of horrible old movies and tv shows and went with that. Ew. I’m on the last island for quest mode and that will get done today before I go achievement whoring in the vanilla game by completing all the songs for score. Challenge mode, as always, can kiss my behind. I didn’t like them on the PS2, either. Some are just so arbitrary and random and not fun. Just listen to the first minute or so of this to see what I mean.

 

If you can do all of their challenges, you are truly amazing at DDR. That does not make their requirements any less insane!

I will not be getting all 1000 gamerscore points in DDRU2 even if I use a controller, something that I just can’t bring myself to do in DDR. I can live with that since there aren’t too many games I 1k, anyway. DDRU3 will follow this in a few days and I’ve been told that it really is the best of the bunch. Much to my surprise, I’ve been told to stop ignoring the Wii DDR games since they are the closest to the games I am looking for. If I can find them cheap, I’m so there.

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Evo and Lego Rock Band

July 15th, 2010 · gaming

These two shall be forever linked in my mind. See, this past weekend EVO consumed my life so I thought I would find a way to be productive during it. Productive Procrastination is my uberskill — see: playing DDR while fishing myself super rich in Final Fantasy XII — and this was a perfect opportunity to combine two more good things into something even more awesome.

I wrote a little about Evo in an earlier post I did want to do a quick follow-up post now that it’s over. I also want to highlight that I linked only a small part of Silrin’s Playing To Win series and he has generously posted the entire book online for people to peruse. I know I’m definitely going to look it over again when I’m taking my all-too-brief vacation around my birthday.

Gotta kick it off with w.h.rad’s fabulous post that everyone should read. It was too bad that the stream died during the closing moments of the SSFIV finals, but they’ve posted all the videos on their YouTube channel, evo2kvids. I tend to keep in touch with the community through SRK, http://shoryuken.com/, but I’m happy to add more bookmarks to my list if you guys have suggestions.

As one who loves to dwell on decisions that game designers make, I was thrilled to see the character variation in the top eight! Endless shotoclone matches for days and days can grind anyone’s enthusiasm. Go go Rufus in the finals, no less.

This year Evo presented a women’s invitational for SSFIV. I missed a little of the beginning but I was happy that they put it on the stream at all. Half of the commentary was alright. That’s really all I’m going to say about that. There were noticably less combos going on but these girls were fierce and would sooooooo kick my ass. Lots of zone work, too. Still very fun to watch.

They also had a a Marvel vs Capcom 3 Exhibition. <3. I can't believe I'm excited about this since I skipped the second one entirely. So many infinite combos and it just didn't make it fun to play random people. They still take skill to pull off (most of them), but not my cup of tea.

 

Aaaaaaaand I’m gonna stink at 3 but I hope to have some fun with it. My biggest drawback is that I love low tier characters.

If I learned nothing else from Evo, it’s that the ever-wonderful Seth Killian‘s favourite word is shenanigans :)

Now, how does Lego Rock Band tie into all these fighting shenanigans? Because.

pwning the LBR Marathon
 

For the achievement whores out there, don’t stress the stars and the fans and the money. Just get to the end of the game for the marathon sets and you’ll blow away all the requirements in one go. Well, ok. You might need to grind out a few more stars if you didn’t play a little in every venue first.

I’ve been making due with my original Rock Band one instruments from way back yonder and, well, they’ve had better days. This is what happens when your friends need to be in some state of intoxication to be willing to game with you. It’s annoying, believe me, but sometimes I was pretty desperate for people to play with. My guitar? I have to press yellow a certain way or it will take blue with it and/or get stuck in. Not too much fun for harder difficulties. The drums? I hope you wanna smack them real hard. Mic? Still works. Hard to break. I just don’t know 90% of the songs so doing vocal for a first playthrough would be an exercise in frustration. Instead I just set guitar to medium and played through almost the entire game with peripheral vision. I’m serious. Evo on my tablet, LRB on the tv. It was perfect! Medium is not exactly strenuous and I still 5-starred most songs and increased my gamerscore in the process. Good times.

Lego Rock Band is really my favourite of the series (before 3 comes out, anyway). There’s not a serious note in it and the experience is so much better for it! When I get new instruments (and friends) I will definitely go back and get those last pesky achievements for the full 1000. Woo.

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