Saturday, January 17, 2004


I’ve finished the second part of the game screen guide, this time dealing with setting up Dscaler. I can’t think of much else to cover besides a basic guide to recording movies, and maybe reviewing the two video capture cards I’ve used.
In this week’s Gamespotting, there was an article by a guestspotter called “The Queue” that reminds me of my own situation with buying games and not finishing them, and getting a PS2 and catching up on the games I’ve missed, as well as all the time I had when I was a kid to play games.

Friday, January 16, 2004

The first draft and part of a guide to getting game screens from a console has been written and can be viewed here. This first part deals with buying a card, what to look for, and the advantage of S-Video. Eventually I’ll write about taking good game screens using Dscaler. I went through some pains in my experience with video capture cards for the sake of getting game screens, and there didn't seem to be any resources that I could find about getting game screens from a console, so I thought I’d write a bit about the subject, maybe it’ll make it easier on someone else.

Wednesday, January 14, 2004


I need to organize what I’m going to do with this ‘game’ site, and try to make it less painful for me to update with stuff. The pics I’ve added up top are just a few pics of games I’ve recently played… to decorate the front page with a few images from the last few games I’ve touched. Right this moment I have FFVI from Anthologies running on the Bonus studio menu, and the random music playing is Kefka’s theme. Over and over. Man FFVI was an awesome game with great music.
I’ve definitely got too many games to play now. I won’t be buying anymore games for a while until I finish the bunch I have, at least until Metroid: Zero Mission is released in Feb in time for my birthday. I was at Hollywood Video and they had Paper Mario (N64) for $10 used, so I took up the good deal. I never did end up playing Paper Mario when it was out. While at Best Buy the other day, I picked up the rerelease of Final Fantasy Chronicles, another game to add to my growing pile of games. Best Buy didn’t have Chronicles in stock when I picked up Anthologies a week ago, and I wanted to get both before they (I feared) would be sold out new, because I like my games new. Must not purchase anymore RPGs or Final Fantasy titles for a while… I wish I had looked at the case before I tbought it though, I found out after opening it that the back of the case was cracked, ah well. Hopefully the load times in Chrono Trigger and FFIV won’t be that bad, I’d rather buy the $20 rerelease for Playstation than to hunt down a expensive used cartridge (why did I ever sell Chrono Trigger!?) if the PSone version plays fine.
My sister purchased DDR Max 2 and a dance pad. Pressing the buttons on the pad while ‘dancing’ (more like fumbling around and mashing my feet) is kinda fun, and gives me some exercise. MTV’s Ultimate Video Game countdown had a feature on a girl who lost 90 (or 60?) pounds from playing DDR every day. I would not dare play DDR in the arcades though, too painful to the eyes.

Tuesday, January 6, 2004

Too Many Games!

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I have too many games to play. This Christmas I finally recieved a Playstation 2, opening a large library of games I couldn’t play before, being the devout Nintendo fan that can’t be without the latest games and system and not having much spending money to put towards a second console. Accompaning my PS2 was Final Fantasy X and Mega Man X4. I’ve hardly played enough of FFVII and haven’t played VIII or IX, so I’ve missed the evolution of the series ever since VI on the SNES, but I wanted to play FFX because its suppose to be really good, and its new. I’ve played it for about 45 hours now and I’m nearing the very end. I think I didn’t do so well with finding side quests and navigating the Sphere Grid, and I feel like I’ve played it too much in such a short time. The game is kinda linear in the way you go from one area to the next, and I probably didn’t do enough exploring when I was able to. It’s been a very fun and enjoyable game, with a good story. Mega Man X4 I’ve completed with both X and Zero. I had played X1-3 on the SNES, so the last X game I had played was X3 and I’ve been wanting to play the next one. It’s short like any Mega Man game, but was good with plenty of action, large bosses with attack patterns to learn, and variety with the level designs and choice of using X, who uses his projectile X-Buster weapon, and Zero, who relies on close quarter combat with his saber. It felt good to play a 2-D game again like this. My family was also thoughtful enough to get my a used copy of Earthbound for the SNES, and Sword of Mana for GBA. Both games of which I haven’t played yet (Earthbound a second time anyways) and are on hold until I finish up FFX. I think by the time I’m done with these games, I’ll be sick of RPGs for a while. I never did finish Skies of Arcadia Legends for Gamecube, although I meant to do so eventually. And finally, I picked up Final Fantasy Anthologies which contains FFV and FFVI (a personal favorite I still have for my SNES). Load times are annoying on FFVI, but more bearable with PS2′s fast loading at least. I won’t be playing FFV either until I’m done with FFX and have time.