On the left is the original Pikachu graphic. On the right is the Pikachu graphic from Leaf Green on the Game Boy Advance - and how I saw it in my mind back when I was playing Blue on the Game Boy!
This week I finally got around to enabling homebrew on my PSP. It was very easy, mostly thanks to my PSP being one of the old “Phat” models. I eventually found some suitable emulators and some questionable software – It was a bit tricky thanks to the gamut of sites that are mostly keywords designed to send you round and round in circles, hopefully luring you to click on their adverts for some revenue. But still, as the title says – I’m currently playing key Nintendo franchise Pokémon Leaf Green on my Sony PSP. It’s funny – I know this version is enhanced, I know the original ones were on the black and white Game Boy (I played Red and Blue when they first came out in the US), but this full colour one is exactly how I remember the game! I’m told that the graphics used to be that horrid shade of “Game Boy green” and black, and the monsters themselves were ugly, pixelated things, but I generally remember them as vibrantly coloured, beautiful creatures.
It’s been a delight so far. I’ve went with Bulbasaur as my starter, caught a Pikachu, beaten Brock, bought a Magikarp, beat up Misty, put the Magikarp in day-care (by the time I get back it’ll be a Gyarados, surely), traded a Nidoran♀ for a Nidoran♂ and am still wondering what to replace my awful Mankey with. Something will turn up. Other classics I picked up are Sonic, Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Bubble Bobble, Wario Ware and some lovely Megadrive shooters: Biohazard Battle, Thunderforce III and Thunderforce IV, but none have grabbed me in the same way as Leaf Green has. When I do get a job, I may well pick up a DSi XL and one of them new Pokémon games – I hear there are Black and White versions, packed full of new features on the way.
This week I signed up to Twitter (about a year and a half after everyone else in the entire fucking world, but there you go). It’s been great so far, and thanks to me being quite selective about who I follow, it’s not been entirely full of inane, pointless chatter. Initially I signed up in the hope that it would keep me informed of things that are happening as I always seem to be the last to find things out (hence “Always late to the party”), but I’ve been sidetracked by my favourite comedians, who now mostly fill my stream with genuinely funny observations or tiny little Twitter-sized jokes. I also follow people I know from the internet like Stu, melatonin and strawdonkey, but having a conversation on Twitter is quite difficult, and trying to follow someone else’s conversation is just downright impossible. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, I’m still new to it after all.
Jane is convinced I had one more football shirt that I gave to her, but for the life of me I cannot remember it. She said it was white with red stripes or it had a white and red pattern, and the badge was blue. The first shirt that came to mind was the white and red quartered Rangers away shirt from the early 90′s. The only drawback to that is that I don’t recall ever having owned it! I am bemused by this, I may have to ask my Mum.
Now, along with some other guys on RF, I had set myself a Gamerscore target (get from 38,000 to 50,000) for 2010. What I didn’t realise at the time was that you could actually set yourself goals on TrueAchievements! I set myself two goals yesterday. The first is to get to 50,000 Gamerscore and the second is to increase my Achievement completion percentage to 75%. The cool thing about the goals on there is that you can see how you are progressing – I should have set it ages ago as I quite enjoy stats and charts and stuff.
Also worth mentioning are the Boost List and the general helpfulness and clarity of the Achievement listings. If you put a game on your Boost List, it automatically puts you on a list that can be seen by other gamers who want to boost that particular game. It could be for things like trading wins on Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (let’s face it, I’m never going to win 20 matches on that game – it’s just not as smooth as Super Street Fighter IV), or serious challenges like going for the 10x Multiplier Twins and Millionaire Twins on Mutant Storm Empire (something that requires two people). The Achievement listings themselves are very clear, and most have individual guides specific to that individual Achievement, so rather than having to wade through a long walkthrough, you can just find the one that’s giving you trouble and find some advice.
So, that URL again: http://www.trueachievements.com/ If you like getting Achievements, take pride in your Gamerscore, or just like stats, check it out.
Yesterday I posted links to two different subjects on GRcade, just to get a little traffic boost. One link was about E3, the other about Lost.
I was very surprised when I came on and saw that even though E3 is current and Lost finished ages ago, Lost came out on top with 29 hits. E3 only got 7. I think Lost got more hits because it was in Off Topic – more people tend to visit that folder than the Creative Corner. I must admit – I made clicking the Lost link sound a lot more appealing. Inadvertently, but still, if I had to pick which to click, I’d go for the Lost one.
So yeah, it’s been changed twice in less than a week now. The prosilverSE style wasn’t suitable, so we went with something a bit more like the old style in terms of layout. Overall, it’s much better, and apart from the code behind the banner being much stranger than I’m used to (and thus proving to be a bitch to alter), everything has gone much smoother on this update.
The new skin, AeroBlue, is courtesy of phpBB Headquarters. Hey, they also do this skin for WordPress. While it would be nice for the forum and the blog to look the same, I’ve grown quite attached to Atahualpa.
Let’s hope I don’t have to do this again for a very long time though, right?
This week I have been mostly writing about Halo 2 and doing up the forum. It’s been a mixed bag in terms of feedback on it – some like the bold new colours, some prefer the muted tones of yesterday. You can’t please all of the people all of the time though. It’ll work out in the end, whether it stays dark blue or I change it to the powdery blue colour.
Doctor Who was ok yesterday. The story was a bit iffy, I felt it was kinda bolted on after they decided they needed to bring the Daleks back. Although Amy Pond in cowboy boots was massive win.
It didn’t take too long from me deciding enough was enough and it had to be changed to it being pretty much finished. As much as I love Mike Lothar’s phpBB2 styles, they just weren’t cutting it in phpBB3. Optimization was an issue, and we were missing out on a load of features that the style just did not support. Sure, the colours are a bit bolder than we’re used to, but I think it’ll be fine once we’ve gotten used to them.
I’d like to thank the following people/organisations for their indirect help. Mike Lothar for the original Nosebleed/Conundrum, CiC for the phpBB3 port, and CyberAlien for the ColorizeIt! application. I may even have to put some permanent links up somewhere just to show my appreciation – not that we get much traffic, but y’know, it’s nice to be nice.
All I need to do now is sort out the top image and put a link to here on the index somewhere. I’m glad it was straightforward and there were no major problems. Shit-loads of minor ones, but nothing major.
Last night was the last time Halo 2 will ever be playable over Xbox Live. Personally, I didn’t attend (I got rid of Halo 2 ages ago – I never envisioned a time when we’d play it again), but I have spent the time being devoted to Halo 2 in other ways. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack (thanks again Orca, Secret Santa 2005), it’s telling of the iconic quality of the music that “Heavy Price Paid” is still used in Halo 3. I’ve been re-doing the forum, which is kind of a homage to Halo – I’d like it to be functional before Reach comes along. I’ve also been writing this blog entry, a retrospective of the Epic Win that was Halo 2.
The original, iconic RF! forum banner
Now, where to start? The Summer of 2004, Gamesradar, Halo 2, blah blah, the full version can be found here. This isn’t about RF! though, it’s about Halo 2. It was my first real experience of modern online gaming. Xbox Live itself was a revelation, with a unified friends list that was compatible through all Xbox Live enabled games, voice communication (well, apart from Powers to begin with) and smooth, high speed online gameplay. Then there was Halo 2. The Halo series was, and still is, the nicest First Person Shooter to control, it’s just so smooth and responsive. The Bungie FPS’s just feel so good. The engine underneath it all was solid. There was a satisfying recoil in the meaty weapons, both visual, aural and through the controller. The maps were (mostly) interesting and fun to play in. The icing on the cake though, were the in-depth stats available on Bungie.net. I spent almost as many hours on there poring over wins and losses as I did at my Xbox, making those wins and losses. Compare it to my previous experiences of online gaming (Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast) and you can see, this truly was next-gen.
The rules for RocketBall, summed up in one simple image
Here are some random moments of RF! Halo 2 history that still stick out in my mind to this very day.
“When you spawn, you will find you have a Shotgun and a Sword”. The time all the Elites played in character – “Capture the Sacred Icon my Brothers! Burn the Heretics!”. Orca telling us not to worry, and that “they can’t arm it” – only for the opposition bomb to explode, losing us a round. RF! winning the “Best Thread Ever” on Gamesradar. Dante’s Peak. Cubeamania flying to the top of Headlong and never coming back down. Orca arming his SMG. Somehow managing to run myself over in a Warthog by going over a tiny hill on Coagulation. Dante blocking the grav-lift on Headlong. Dawn Of The Dead on Headlong (box yourself in under the stairs!). Dawn Of The Dead on Foundation (To Room 4!). Dawn Of The Dead on Waterworks (yeah, where the fuck is everyone?). Elites clearly being the same size as Spartans. Boosting a Wraith into a pillar on Burial Mounds hoping to see The Giant Master Chief. The time we were just standing and chatting up on top of one of the bases on Coagulation, and Jane just assassinated Grumpy for no reason. Destroying XBM at Halo 2. The various “Dress up as Orca for our Anniversary” evenings. Some French guy telling me to “Go and play Rainbow Six Black Arrow, you noob”. The incredible gametypes: Tony Martin, Ghosts of Mars, Snipe 1-flag, ASDA Flag, Heartbeat, Take The Turret, and so many more I cannot hope to remember.
Maybe you have some of your own? Make a comment here, or post them on the forum – go on, share.
The less initiated among you may be wondering what all these images peppered around are – they are cherished memories, each one. Could Reach be our Renaissance? Check out the Halo 2 image gallery which is elsewhere on my blog – they are mostly of the time we had a “Photocall” – loads of Furies showed up and Orca took pictures of his TV with his camera – and there are a few other random ones on there too.
Halo 3 just wasn’t the same. I’m not sure why it didn’t gel as well as Halo 2 – was it the lack of clan support? The maps not being as good as they were in Halo 2? Bastardising Dawn Of The Dead by making a proper Zombie gametype? By all accounts, with The Forge, screenshots and saved films, it should have been better. Still, Halo Reach is looking like it may recapture the brilliance of Halo 2, and it’s not long ’til we get a taster in the form of the Multiplayer Beta. Fingers crossed, eh?
Thanks crazy barefooted guy from this post! You secured me a couple of foot fetish “barefoot” searches. It was also pretty fortuitous that I smoke, as the word “cigarette” secured me some fag fetish clicks. I must also thank the guy or gal who clicked through because of the “lol cat doomsday” search, if only as some kind of proof that I did get traffic before I mentioned Karen Gillan.
Basically, they were annoyed that there are certain disparages within the Gamerscore points system (some easy Achievements in easy games award the same amount of points as hard Achievements in hard games), so they award more Achievement points to Achievements that are harder to obtain than easy ones. The formula is simple: it’s based on how many people have an Achievement compared to how many people have played the game.
You can find out a whole manner of interesting facts about the games you have played and the Achievements you have earned. For example, my best Achievement in terms of ratio is the TCAF Pilot’s Commendation from Project Sylpheed, my highest ratio on a Live Arcade title is 2.634 (Lumines Live! – which is strange as I 200/200ed it the day it came out – why do people find Lumines so difficult? My years of mastery on the PSP version probably helped…), and the game I really should have more Achievements in is The Darkness, which I gave up as a bad job before I got too far in. Not only that, but they also offer in-line guides for certain Achievements and anyone can contribute a review for any Xbox 360 game, both of which users can easily publish themselves. You can also set yourself goals, display Achievements you are proud of in your Trophy Case, and quickly and easily advertise that you are wanting to boost multiplayer Achievements in specific games.
How long does it take me, roughly, to download the latest episode?
About an hour.
How much time do I spend clicking links here and there reading about the latest rumours, the latest theories, the answers to the questions, the in-depth commentaries by people who read far too much into it?
Much, much more than 1 hour and 45 minutes.
I’m really enjoying season 6 so far, even though it’s gone far beyond plausible and is now firmly in the realms of make-believe. Hey, it was always a little bit silly, but now it’s full blown madness – and I like it more this way.
In light of my comments on the old reviews I republished as part of my 5 year anniversary thing, I thought I’d expand upon the reasons why I don’t write reviews anymore.
First, I don’t think I’m very good at writing them, so I don’t! Secondly, I don’t feel that the writing style of a traditional review really suits me. Personally I prefer to write what I did like about a game, what I didn’t like about a game, and then expand on that. Sadly, I don’t see this in most reviews I read on the internet, and in some magazines these days. In most reviews I get the feeling that the person writing it is acting as if he or she is the centre of all knowledge on the subject, there can be too much authority in the tone of their writing at times, and that their opinion is to be taken as fact, not opinion. This is also a reason why I tend to keep away from “discussion” topics on some of the larger forums I frequent, as these “factual opinions” often clash, and it’s not pretty.
I don’t feel as if my opinions matter more than anyone else’s, and I certainly don’t feel that my opinion would be authoritative enough to write a review for a website or magazine that currently adopt this reviewing style. I would rather concentrate on my thoughts, feelings and experiences while I am playing the game, my journey through it – I do this on the forum, and encourage others to post this way rather than offer up useless insights like “This game is shit” or “This is the best game ever”. Every now and again I encounter a game that moves me, be it in a good or bad way, and I feel compelled to write in a more formal fashion, going into more detail, which usually ends up on here.
Whatever you’d call this formal write-up, I don’t know for sure. Perhaps it would be classed as a “review”, but I do hope that you wouldn’t immediately associate it with the current trend of “my opinion is fact” , written by self-important “authorities”; it’s just my thoughts on a game that made me want to write about my experiences with it. I do realise that any reviews out there are generally nothing more than the authors thoughts on something, and I’m not saying they’re all bad, but as I mentioned earlier, it’s the attitude behind the words that makes them worthless in my eyes.
