Lag.Blag

Cex Barnsley!

2012-02-22T17:34:00.000Z

Now that we've found out about the amazing shop that is Cex, we visited our local one and guess what they had?

Assassin's Creed Revelations (360) - seeing as I've just finished Brotherhood, I obviously needed this.
Daemon Summoner (PS2) - hahaha we noticed this on some Amazon listing where it was ridiculously cheap so I just picked this up on a whim, it will probably suck
Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command (PSP) - seeing as I've just finished Space Marine, I obviously needed this.

Also got some films/TV stuff.

Indiana Jones Trilogy Boxset - these is good films
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - uh yeah, Emily
Babylon 5 - First Season - I want the whole thing eventually, but this is a good and cheap first start

Woo :D

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

2012-02-21T12:05:00.002Z

So in this game you decapitate like a million orks and then shoot a bunch of chaos. That might seem a bit obvious but the distinction is actually important.
The first half of the game is about wading in, throwing grenades, sniping the rokkit launcher dudes, dodging nob attacks, stunning and executing enemies. In short, it's hectic, and somewhat hard. The game gives you a bunch of different weapons and lets you change them pretty often and it all adds up to an interesting experience. By the end of the third chapter you'll be drained but confident that you can beat all the orks, so the game changes it up.
The second half of the game is about hiding behind cover and shooting everyone from as far away as you can manage. Huh. Sounds like every FPS made in the last few years. This unfortunate change is because the Chaos marines use the same strategy as your own marine buddies do, i.e. dig in and shoot. There are also the Sorcerer units which laser beam you if you stay out in the open for too long, but they make a nice satisfying -pop- when you hit them with a charged Plasma shot, so they're okay. The melee dudes run at you and engage you in some pretty one-sided combat; if you don't have the Thunder Hammer, it's going to be pretty tedious to wear them down. If you do have the Thunder Hammer, you only have your Plasma Pistol and Bolter to go on, and that makes fighting the Chaos horde a lot harder. I guess this section is meant to make you choose between raw melee power and actually-being-able-to-shoot-people-worth-a-damn but the choice is hollow because the Plasma Rifle is too good.
The finale is pretty badass and befitting the whole game, and the ending cutscene made me smile because I basically knew it was coming, but it fits the W40K world very well.

All in all I did enjoy this game. It's a lot of fun and it is definitely intense. I like this take on the W40K game but I'm still, STILL waiting for an honest recreation of the board game in video game format. Not that I expected this to be it; Space Marine excels at what it set out to do, namely: let you tear off Ork faces.

Birmeetup

2012-02-17T08:23:00.003Z

Yes I know I still haven't made a post about AGDQ2012, shut up.

Yesterday it was decided that 6 people shalt meet in the most holy town of Beth- Birmingham. Emily and I, Dan and Emma, Mike and Kerry. We had a lot of fun freezing to death in a French restaurant which had no idea what service was, and also walking around the various video game shops. Thanks to the magic of GPS mobile phones, we also managed to find Cyber Candy which sells sweets from various exotic countries such as, uh, America.

Sweetie haul:

Applehead - the box proudly proclaims '25¢' but it was probably slightly more than that
Oh Henry - what is this
Jolly Rancher (tropical blends)
Jujubes
Mentos (liquorice mint, strawberry liquorice)
Lifesavers (fruit tingles)
Pocky (Chocolate) - hers
TimTam Originals - hers?
Twix PB - I have to try this apparently
Whatchamacallit? - also have to try this apparently

Gamie haul (thanks Cex!):

Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (PS2) - mainly because I know it's hard as balls and might be one of the last games I ever manage to finish
Final Fantasy IV Complete (PSP) - kinda wanted this for a while, I like the idea of having all the old FF games on my PSP.
Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2) - I knowwwwww but apparently the actual game part of it is quite good
Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) - was surprised they had one, well worth getting, it's the special edition with the postcards and whatnot

Birmingham itself is pretty neat, although they should probably clean their maps a little. And maybe update their signs.

Novo Anna

2012-01-01T02:03:00.000Z

So it's almost new year's and I'm spending it in a hotel room with my darling wife and also Emptyeye and Silver, the couple we roomed with at the first Awesome Games Done Quick. We've played games, drank stuff, ate stuff and might branch out into playing games sometime later if we feel like it.

This year has been pretty damn good and seeing as AGDQ2012 starts in about 4 days I'm pretty sure next year will be great too. Happy New Year.

We're the Kids in America

2011-12-27T00:47:00.000Z

So Christmas just happened, here's the loot rundown.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP)
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP)
Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles (DS)
Rhythm Paradise (DS)
Geneforge 1-5 (PC) thanks Dave!
Frozen Synapse (PC) thanks Void!
grey jumper
various marvel characters t-shirt, glows apparently?
batman t-shirt
2 big bags of Beef Jerky
deep pan chunky choc pizza!!!1
bag of chocolate coins
vimto skedaddles
2 Hershey's chocolate bells
A SCIFI BOOK I FORGOT THE NAME OF by John Bear
XNA 4.0 Developer Guide
some kind of book about sci-fi myths
Origami Calendar, i.e. a fold to do every day
Cats Calendar!!!!!!!!!!!!!21

Aside from that, I'm now in America with Emily! We're here to see the in-laws and also so we can attend Awesome Games Done Quick 2012 and raise a ton of money for charity.

A Visit to the Matriarchy

2011-12-19T00:10:00.000Z

I've been away this past couple of days down south a little, to where (most of) my mother's family lives. It's a lovely area, right next to the Forest of Dean. It's been some time since I was there (at least 8 years or so), seeing everybody change in small ways was quite interesting and I'm glad I went. Of course, Emily got to see the other half of the family and enjoyed it plenty too!

Now that's over, back to Quake practice.

Honung

2011-12-10T11:08:00.001Z

Today a package arrived covered in Swedish stamps and I'm now a proud owner of some genuine home-grown honung!

Quoth the label: "En naturprodukt utan tillsatser. Förvaras svalt."

This cool gift comes courtesy of one Daniel Wikell, better known as moooh to Speed Demos Archive. I'm sure it'll be of great use for quite some time.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

2011-12-05T07:47:00.001Z

I didn't play the base MvC3 because I was waiting for this one, so, what do I think?

It's still crazy fun like MvC2, but the inclusion of now-standard features like the mission combos gives some way of actually learning to play it without resorting to wikis and forums. Some of the mission combos are also hella flashy and fun to do, so they're worth the thumbstrain. The last boss fight against Galactus is hilariously over the top and plays out just like it should. There's lots of pretty hard achievements to get, too, so this one will be out for a while.

I'd write more but this is a pretty good description; it's like MvC2. If you liked that, get this.

Anypet (Dream)

2011-11-19T10:45:00.002Z

So for some reason I move out into the country (I think it's someplace in China or Tibet) where a distant relative of mine lives in a very old farm. I often notice the farm has lots of animals around (not too unusual) but the variation is crazy, with lots of birds I've never seen before and also llamas and giant horned turtles etc. One night I'm helping out in the big barn on the property and it suddenly gets dark so I decide to sleep there. When I wake up the next morning there's a huuuuuuge bright pink cat cuddled up to me so I decide to keep it as a pet. Stuff like this happens again and again, with yet odder animals being found, and I come to the conclusion that this barn is some kind of... portal to THE ANIMAL PLANE or something.

I decide to set up an exotic pet shop and have it built on the farm. People come from pretty much everywhere to see my crazy stock so I make a website for it and I get ridiculous amounts of hits and orders. To fill quotas I start training some of the animals to do the catching for me. I dinstictly remember watching a large parrot nudge a smaller bird into a cage and closing it for me. Clever parrot! Also a grizzly bear very daintily picking up a jerboa or something and brushing its fur for some reason.

My well-trained animals hit the headlines and a circus director comes to ask me if he could use them in his acts but I say no because I don't want them mistreated or anything. For some reason this provokes him to have my distant-family-member-who-I-don't-remember-at-all assassinated so I buy the land with my newfound wealth and live there forever cataloguing the stranger and stranger animals that appear from my barn.

Tekken 6 (360)

2011-11-13T13:03:00.002Z

I recently grabbed Tekken 6 because I wanted a new PSP memory card to replace that infeasibly small one, and decided to buy a game at the same time. I've wanted to see how the series has come out for a long time; the last game I played was Tekken 4 which I kinda enjoyed, but the massive focus on wallhits was annoying. So, how's 6?

Pretty similar. Wallhits are still important but juggling is far more so; even the standard AI will take time out to juggle the crap out of you if it hits a launcher, so one hit turns into a lot of damage quickly. It's still a fun game to just pull out and play, though. Everyone has a zillion moves as ever.

The main difference in 6 is the addition of the 'Scenario Mode', which has a horrible and nonsensical plot tied together with voice actors all speaking different languages for no apparent reason but all able to understand each other perfectly. Alisa has to have some of the most horrible visual design I've ever seen (and I've played Final Fantasy 10/12/13) but the campaign is actually pretty fun once you get used to the strange hybrid controls. I mostly played through with Lei instead of Lars because Lars is an idiot. The optional stages are a large leap in difficulty, especially the well-named Nightmare Train which took me over 2 hours to beat.

You also unlock a crapload of different clothes for your character to wear by playing Scenario, although most of them are just palette swaps. The potential is there to make people look rather dashing or completely stupid, which is always welcome.

Haven't tried online play yet.

PlayStation Blues

2011-11-07T20:23:00.003Z

My PS2 which I've had since 2002 gave up the ghost yesterday, so I went on a mission to find a new one. Fortunately I didn't have to go far, because GAME actually had a preowned PS2 slim for only £30. Holy cow, what a find!

So yeah, finished Disc 2 of Final Fantasy VIII for Emily today. Funny how you get given a massive plot dump then you immediately fly over and kick the crap out of the one person who everybody loved in the space of about 15 minutes. The garden fight FMVs are still as spectacular as I remember. Disc 3 finally explains all the Laguna crap that's been happening so Emily might appreciate that one a bit more.

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines

2011-11-05T11:07:00.002Z

I recently remembered that Emily actually owned a PSP, so I decided to grab Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines to try it out. Unfortunately she has some kinda what-the-fuck 30mb memory stick in it, so I can't download any system updates, so that bit will have to wait, but here's stuff about the game.

Have you played the original Assassin's Creed? It's that, but everything is scaled down. Instead of a whole city being one map, it's split into areas (for obvious memory-constraint reasons), all the animations are just from AC1 with some frames taken out, the sounds are very similar except for some reason Altaïr's voice actor is different. The controls are also slightly different; due to there being no right analogue stick, you have to hold the L button and then press the face buttons to control the camera. Not useful in a chase situation, but it's a fair solution. Also there's some kind of buying upgrades system based on coins you pick up which are in hard-to-reach locations, like flags. Makes Altaïr into an unstoppable badass by the end I'd wager. Auto-block?! Enough of the technical side.

The plot seems kinda random, what with Maria somehow being useful to the Assassins despite hating them fervently and whatnot. There is the whole "now the templars hate me too" thing, but I don't think it sticks very well. The world is still excellently fleshed out as I would expect from this franchise. I'm enjoying it so far, bare though the experience is. Climbing up shit is still fun, even though EVERY wall in this game is climbable. There's also a simple achievement system full of stuff like "stab 50 guards" so that'll be done in no time. I've heard the game is pretty short and I've spent perhaps 3 hours on it so far, so who knows, another 7 before it's done I guess.

It did only cost me £10!

Dungeon Defenders (PC)

2011-11-01T17:17:00.001Z

So I bought Dungeon Defenders very recently because a few other SDA members wanted to get the group pack thing. I had it on my wishlist ever since it got announced more than a year ago and now that it's out, here's my thoughts.

It's pretty good. I tried playing the little mage dude in single player for a while and I'm not sure he's very good on his own. Either that or I just don't know how to use him. His secondary attack is an AoE pushback which makes no sense if you want to use it for damage, I guess the push is more important. Then I went online and made a Huntress and ever since this niiiiice weapon dropped I've just been standing behind other people's traps and shooting stuff until it dies. I'm not sure focusing solely on character stats rather than trap stats is a good idea, but well... guess I'll find out. I suppose it just means that all the defense points go to my allies who will presumably have put some points in stats so they can better use them. I'll just stand around going pew pew pew.

Not a massive surprise, but it would be more fun if I had 3 other people to yell at frantically. Playing with randoms on the internet has actually been a pretty good experience, strangely. I guess I'll play some League of Legends now to remember how that usually goes.

Rolling

2011-10-31T21:30:00.005Z

Haven't been playing a single game heavily recently; I tried to continue my playthrough of Final Fantasy VIII for Emily but my PS2 refused to play it last time I asked, but I also have active games on Assassin's Creed and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. I want to finish the first AC again mostly to get everything fresh again for when I start Brotherhood, and FFCC is just because I like it and I want to show Emily how pro I am when the second GBA arrives so we can play together.

Nothing else interesting to say, really. Did some more Quake speedrun practice, got a 30-minute realtime run, which is not exactly impressive to a seasoned runner but it fits into my time slot. In fact, it leaves me 5 minutes to finish the secret levels in case whatever extra donation total we decide on is met, which is probably enough. It's just so annoying to keep on running and running and come up very short on the great Connor Fitzgerald's record run. Also I spent 4 minutes trying to get the jump on e3m1 this time, haha.

Oh, also Bruce has been really talkative today, lots of nice chirps and cheeps and burbles.

NINTENDO!!!

2011-10-20T22:42:00.000+01:00

Nintendo seem very set on preventing Emily and I from playing games together. First we tried playing the free Four Swords Anniversary Edition together from DSiWare, but apparently our DSs don't want to talk to each other because they're speaking different kinds of English or something I guess?

Then we had the bright idea of getting an extra Gamecube->GBA Link cable so that we could play Four Swords Adventures together! And guess what, her US copy of the game refuses to talk to my EU Gameboy Advance.

I love interoperability.

Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 (DSiWare)

2011-10-18T21:54:00.002+01:00

So I played a little more of this dungeon crawler. The exit from Abyss 3 led to a boss chamber. The boss himself was pretty trivial (I got some Minotaur dude that walked around really slowly getting peppered by my arrows) and afterwards he dropped some B-rank axe and let me exit. This reset the entire dungeon and regenerated it, so the areas are different (and longer) and the monsters are tougher (well, more HP/damage). Drops also seem to have been similarly scaled. My save file now says 'Clear: 1', but there's also these 4 star slots which aren't filled in. Kinda sad that I'll be listening to this one piece of music for all the dungeon floors in the game... I hope it changes at some point; the dungeon tiles are the same but slightly recoloured, too.

So now I've played a little more, I can give some kind of judgement on it. It's fun, not particularly profound, would be much better multiplayer. I wonder if Chapter 2 is more of the same or an improvement on the formula. I'll try a little more Chapter 1 before grabbing it.

Edit: Ok, got 2 clears. Now the tileset is white and I forgot to check if the music changed. The game is just throwing good items at me now, and I just got my first S rank item - a ring which prevents all status effects. Damn useful, and it makes using Soul Siphon a LOT less randomly painful.

The Epic of Bruce

2011-10-17T15:46:00.001+01:00

It's weird to legally own a living thing. Now in proud (joint) possession of a yellow budgerigar, who was almost immediately named Bruce. He's kinda crazy right now, but given a while hopefully he'll settle down and start squawking pieces of eight or something, that's what birds do right?

DSiWare Acquisitions + Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 (DSiWare)

2011-10-16T21:19:00.003+01:00

Emily randomly made me buy some stuff from DSiWare, so my results of this are Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 - From The Abyss (200pts) and Castle Conqueror (500pts). Haven't played the latter yet, but here's some reports about the former.

It's fun! You run around and hit stuff, it's fairly easy at first and gets harder. The stealing-skills-off-enemies thing is a cool idea, though considering how often you get bad results by using the siphon spell it's rather annoying. I'm unsure whether it's a good idea to just kill things or siphon them if you're low on health... siphon can get you HP back (a somewhat random amount? is it based on enemy hp when you siphon?) but it can also poison you, which is death unless you have an All Green. Killing stuff often makes them drop nothing or an irrelevant item, but sometimes a health potion which restores quite a lot. Ho hum.

Also weapon types seem horribly balanced so far. Sword is fast and therefore beats a lot of enemy attacks, axe is slow and only has a 2-long combo, but hits for more. Spears have a 3-combo but they only attack straight forward, which is incredibly annoying. Haven't seen a bow yet. Rods only attack once but they give a magic bonus or whatever, which seems hard to use currently because my spells do very little and take forever to actually cast.

There's already a 'Chapter 2' of this game released, which I'll grab if I have fun with this one. Emily has some more films to review if she'll finally get round to it. :)

Stuff

2011-10-10T09:51:00.000+01:00

Not much vidya game playing has been going on lately; been doing boring domestic stuff and buying new things to take up space in my place. Once we have more floorspace and a little extra order has been imposed on say, the contents of certain rooms, it'll be back to throwing controllers through screens again.

Final Fantasy and Willow

2011-10-09T14:44:00.002+01:00

I still don't hate Zell.

In other news, we watched one of our "must watch" films this week--Willow, starring Warwick Davis and Val Kilmer. I had been interested in the movie for a long time, thanks to a poster my dad got for free and hung up inside my sister's room. My sister and I always wondered about it, but we never rented it for some reason. When HMV had Willow on sale, I had no choice but to pick it up.

I really enjoyed it! Paul had seen it before, when he was a little kid, but didn't remember much of it. I'm so glad we decided to buy it; I'm sure I will want to watch it again.

Final Fantasy VIII (PS1)

2011-10-07T09:24:00.002+01:00

Hah, I knew it! I knew I'd forget about this! Anyway.

I'm replaying Final Fantasy VIII so that Emily can see the game behind the hype/nonsense/"Don't think twice for a second" and make her own mind up about it, like I did for FF7. So far things have gone less than smoothly, with my party dying regularly against bosses because I spend too much time in critical, haha. I actually game overed against Elvoret for Pete's sake, but I managed to clutch it out with solo Zell versus Gerogero at least. Now I have 100 Curaga on his HP-J though, so the game is going to be a breeze for some time.

For some strange reason we're naming characters after Wind Waker people and GFs after various types of candy. I may stream our playthrough at some point just to see audience reactions, maybe not.

Anyway I'm up to the "why are Galbadia trying to use the radio tower" part, so it's just about time to show Emily Zell's majorest fuckup in this game. I WILL make her hate Zell!

Four Swords Anniversary Edition (again)

2011-10-04T04:43:00.001+01:00

Slightly interesting news: If you want to play The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition on DSi/3DS and your handheld is a different region from your partner's, you're out of luck. Multiplayer simply refuses to work on my and my husband's DSis. It doesn't make much sense to me, considering the only way to play co-op is locally, but oh well...

That said, I did get through the basic single-player campaign today. Having never played the game before, I was pleasantly surprised. The puzzles were nothing too special, but they were still quite fun, although there were some points where having another person play with you would make things work much more smoothly than switching back and forth. Having played the single-player mode of Four Swords Adventures on the GameCube, this did surprise me a little, but left me with no real trouble. I just wish I could play the game with Paul.

Where the game truly shines, though, is the "Realm of Memories": this new section riffs on The Legend of Zelda, Link's Awakening, and A Link to the Past in a fun and great way. The puzzles are also more challenging here (still nothing too brain-breaking; this is a Zelda game, after all), and personally, more fun. I'm nowhere near being finished with the game--I do want to find all the treasures in all the areas, and unlock as many techniques as I can!--but I can see myself coming back to it even after I complete it.

FLIM

2011-10-04T02:27:00.002+01:00

There's around eleven trillion films I want Emily to watch, and around the same amount she wants me to watch, so we've decided to get 10 a month or something. HMV is going to love me and my money soon.

Amélie - one of my favourite films
Being John Malkovich - this film is very weird
Bicentennial Man - robotic Robin Williams
Die Hard Quadrillogy - technically four films, though you could pretend it is one very long, terrible day
Drunken Master - a very drunk Jackie Chan
Fight Club - still great
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - she wanted it
Gladiator - kills tigers and doesn't afraid of anything
Liar Liar - pretty sure this is funny
Willow - zelda

Going to be fun.

Four Swords Anniversary Edition

2011-10-02T23:37:00.004+01:00

I can't believe this happened, but Paul wants to play a Zelda game.

We just got The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition for free on the DSi, and he is the one begging me to play it! I suppose I have had more influence on him than I've realised. Also, this means that one day I may get him to play Wind Waker. Muahahaha.

Now that I'm back in England, I can finish another playthrough of Wind Waker myself! However, I might wait until I play some of my new games first.

Back Home

2011-10-02T11:20:00.001+01:00

Emily and I are now very tired but back at my place. IT BEGINS

Acquisitions Special

2011-10-01T14:55:00.001+01:00

Uh, okay, before I leave, Good Old Games currently has two games for free that you might be interested in.

Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar - hehe, oops. It's free! Well, now I have the DOS and NES versions, I guess?
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars - Director's Cut - I haven't played the first in the series though I have finished the second game. I'd expect a fun if not particularly amazing adventure game.

You like games? They free. Get.

Returning to England

2011-10-01T14:43:00.000+01:00

I've been here in New York for nearly 2 weeks now, and a lot has happened. Now I'm taking my new wife back to England in anticipation of lots of cooked breakfasts and co-op speedrunning.

I leave for Philadelphia in about 8 hours, and then on to Manchester some time after that. See you all later.

Populous (DS)

2011-10-01T13:55:00.001+01:00

I was pleasantly surprised to find Populous had been ported to the DS while randomly browsing my local game store one day. It's a reasonably faithful port; you drag the land up and down to change it, and while the interface can only be worse than the original DOS game, it works. The stylus is necessary, but the d-pad and L button are also very useful and using all three at once for longer than about 30 minutes gets painful. Obviously the DS is designed with short bursts of play in mind though.

So, the game. It looks nice; the GUI is very similar to ye olde dos gamme, and the spells are refreshingly familiar, though the 'choose which deity you are' thing looks half-lifted from Populous 2, which is not a bad decision at all. It seems kinda short; there's 4 sets of levels named 'Tutorial', 'Level 1', 'Level 2', and 'Bonus' and single levels within these sets have a time limit, so it has a pretty well-defined upper time investment. Unless you lose the levels, of course.

This port also has FMVs for some deity spells; while I'm not a fan of this kind of japanese stuff, they look okay and they are quite brief. Also a break from the dragging up/down action is welcome; despite the usually slow pace of Populous, on the DS with its slightly different mechanics games tend to be more frantic. Losing when Armageddon is declared at the time limit is possible, it happened to me today!

So far I've done all of Level 1 and Tutorial.

Acquisitions Special

2011-09-30T20:28:00.001+01:00

Nintendo just put up The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition free on DSiWare. While I'm not exactly a Zelda fan, it's free and also has local coop so I can play with Emily. It's downloaded and awaiting play when we have a spare hour or so.

Super Mario World (SNES)

2011-09-30T15:23:00.001+01:00

Oops, forgot to do the "hold reset while turning the power off" thing, so SMW didn't save. OH WELL.

Getting a little better. The slidyness is still weird and I really don't like how the game pauses when you pick stuff up, or indeed when Morton tries to land on you, jerk. Cape is top tier, nerf now.

As you might have guessed, got up to Vanilla Dome AND ACTUALLY SAVED THIS TIME so that's what, a quarter finished? We did some extra exits but not that many so if you're talking 100% apparently the title screen says 18% done. Despite being coldridden Emily still rocks my socks at this game. Let's see what she's like in DARKSTALKERS?!

Ill Englishman in New York

2011-09-30T15:12:00.000+01:00

Despite the title I'm not too bad, Emily however has a pretty bad cold and now a sinus infection. She uses up more tissues in an hour than I do in a year. Pray for her antibodies!!!

SDA Marathons

2011-09-29T22:23:00.000+01:00

We at SDA aren't happy to merely sit around in our parents' basements playing games. Occasionally we get together and do charity marathons; so far I've been part of two of them.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2011 - This was an in-person event that was 5 days long, with a wide range of games. I ran Morrowind for this, and though it didn't go too well, I had a great time getting to know people I've only ever seen as screen names on a forum. We're planning another event at the same time and location next year, look for us from January 4th.
Japan Relief Done Quick 2011 - This was an online event, 4 days long and full of people from all over the world streaming at their strongest games. For this I ran Klonoa 2, and did quite well, beating most of my practice attempts. Because I finished ahead of schedule, I also ran Commander Keen for fun, and though it wasn't very fast, a lot of the people who were watching got a retro kick out of it.

I'm also going to Awesome Games Done Quick 2012 to run the game that started it all, Quake. This is a difficult game to run and although it's less than half an hour of gameplay, it's intense and full of tricks small and large. I'm also doing Magicka, a 4-player action RPG hit from earlier this year. It'll be a lot less serious, we'll be killing each other a lot etc. Going to be a lot of fun, and I hope we'll get even more viewers (and donations) than last year. This year it's for Prevent Cancer Foundation once more; last year we raised more than $52,000 for them.

Super Mario World (SNES)

2011-09-29T22:16:00.001+01:00

I am really terrible at Mario. I kinda remember finishing Super Mario Bros. when I had my first NES back in the recesses of my memories, but I'm pretty sure I never finished SMB3, and I only briefly played SMW at the school creche thingy.

Emily and I played a little hot-seat SMW and I performed really badly, haha. There's something about the really slidy controls and the fact that there are four buttons (seriously, Mega Drive only had 3, and in Sonic they all did the same thing!!!!) that just makes me die, a lot. Also why can't you let go of the 'grab' button to drop stuff, he just kicks it like a jerk. Damn you, Mario.

Anyway, only played briefly today, and got to Donut Plains 2. Two switch palaces completed.

Speedrunning

2011-09-29T20:34:00.000+01:00

As a member of the website Speed Demos Archive I'm interested in both playing games quickly and watching others do the same. I've been a member for a long time; the site used to only house demo files for Quake (hence the name) and I have quite a number of those up there to watch. However the majority of the site focus is off Quake now, with many people submitting runs for good, bad, new and old games. You can see the world record run of Super Mario Bros. there, among currently 662 other games. Sometimes we have multiple categories for one game, such as finding all the secrets or using the hardest difficulty.

My current non-Quake contributions to the site stand merely at a couple of different categories of run for Arcomage, but I have many other runs in the works. I'll talk about those soon.

Acquisitions Update

2011-09-29T20:19:00.001+01:00

There's a second Jay St. Games store near here at a different mall, so I had to go check that out too. Here's my results.

Jay St. Games - $56.12 (2011-09-29)

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PS1) - I found it! It wasn't cheap, but I'm glad I own this. There's been a couple of very bad speedruns of this submitted to SDA, I plan to make a decent one and finally get it added to the site lineup.
Bard's Tale (NES) - Lag.Bro asked me to look for this and they had one copy, snapped it up. Similar to Might & Magic.
Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat (PS1) - Haha, I remember this game fondly for being very difficult and the reason we upgraded the family computer to Windows 95. The PS1 interface might be worse, but it'll be much easier to record. Hopefully.

Not bad at all! Klonoa was a massive $40 by itself, but it was worth it. Klonoa 2 originally cost me £45 and I bought it completely at random, and it has turned out to be an excellent purchase, still providing me entertainment today.

Emily also bought a few things in all three of our Jay St. trips, if anybody is interested, I'll make a list of her new stuff too.

Ultima: Exodus (NES)

2011-09-28T18:26:00.001+01:00

So I chuck this thing in my new NES and spend a while humming and hawing while I design a party based on vague assumptions about the game's classes. Emily and I team up with Marc and Jess for a truly formidable combination of DotCom and Dziesomethingski power. Ended up with Wzrd/Pldn/Ftr/Clrc.

You start on the world map? Wow... okay, walk into nearby village. Look at all the shops, every party member starts with 100g and that's enough to buy everyone a Mace, but I can't use them. Three Maces it is, I guess I'll keep most of my money ready for buying money or so on.

Holy crap I opened a treasure chest and it poisoned everyone. That's 400g down the drain just to cure everyone! About this point I looked in my spell list and noticed 'Open'... which negates chest traps. Okay.

Grinding seems easy. Everyone except Marc has a spell which can devastate an entire enemy party. However, experience is only given to the person who gets the kill, which means Marc is levelling slowly... I'll have to let him get a lot of hits in. Thankfully mana regenerates pretty quickly, so I can just powerheal him.

Got everyone to level two and also a bunch of gold... bought two Spears for Marc and Emily to use. Armour is really expensive... have to work on that soon, Cloth seems to give barely any protection, and Leather is quite a big investment. Wandered around a bit more, found a town called Dawn...?

Dawn is cool, it has a TON of stuff I can't afford yet, and it disappears when there isn't a double new moon. Unfortunately my game for today ended here because I stole everything from the general store and then got massacred by guards. Naturally I rolled with this, being a battle-hardened WRPG player. Lord British resurrects Marc and I realise I only have enough gold to resurrect two people. Hrmmm... I go to the hospital, and guess what, both resurrections fail! I now have two piles of ashes instead of corpses, which can't be fixed as far as I know.

Exodus is really mean. I'll finish it though, I swear.

Acquisitions Update

2011-09-28T16:17:00.001+01:00

My collection has grown a lot lately, here's a rundown.

Good Old Games - D&D Pack, $34.31 (2011-09-22)

Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone - I don't know anything about this game.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard - or this one!
Temple of Elemental Evil - or this one. Though I think this is like the old Gold Box games?
Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga - I've played this quite a lot before, perhaps even finishing it, not sure. It's an excellent series. This release also contains Tales of the Sword Coast, a small expansion which adds more adventuring stuff and some items/classes.
Baldur's Gate 2 Complete - I'm not as familiar with the second game, though I have played it before. Looking forward to completing it and the expansion.
Icewind Dale Complete - Similar to Baldur's Gate, with the exception that you can make 6 characters and rampage around with them. I spent more time writing custom AI than actually playing this game.
Icewind Dale 2 Complete - Not played the second game at all, but I assume it will be similar in style and quality.
Planescape: Torment - I've heard much (good) about this, though I've only played briefly. Very intriguing premise, and the non-Forgotten Realms setting is refreshing.
Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition - Played extensively in the past, though I never owned the expansions, so those will be good. They both start you out at higher levels, iirc. Don't know anything about Kingmaker.

This a really great deal at ridiculous price, I signed up for GOG purely to buy it.

Jay St. Games - $72.29 (2011-09-23)

Darkstalkers 3 (PS1) - Love this game, though it is a weird hybrid port between various arcade versions. It includes all characters, which makes it pretty unbalanced, but fun. There's also some stat-building mode which makes it completely nuts.
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (DS) - From what I've seen this is a japanese tactics RPG. Here's hoping it's better than Fire Emblem.
Solstice (NES) - Follin! Also the game isn't bad.
Legacy of the Wizard (NES) - This game is incredibly difficult to finish, not because of pure difficulty, but also the need to change characters and such. Should take a while.
Ultima: Exodus (NES) - Old-school western RPG based on D&D. Merciless difficulty.
Ultima: Quest of the Avatar (NES) - The start of what made Ultima great.

Not a bad stash, and some fair variation in genre.

Jay St. Games - $65.84 (2011-09-27)

Might & Magic: Book One (NES) - Dungeon crawler of ridiculous size and plot. Will take forever to finish.
Plok (SNES) - Follin! I remember this game very fondly from my childhood, even though I didn't have a SNES. Used to play it in the afterschool creche thing.
Shadowrun (SNES) - When I was younger there was a combination roleplaying/cardgaming club that my brother and I went to regularly. I played a fair amount of Shadowrun RPG there, and I know this version is quite close to the original. Looking forward to doing quests for a dog.

I love you Jay St..

I'll be more heavily playing these gems (and also streaming them live) once I get back home to England. Look out for me and subscribe - http://twitch.tv/lagdotcom

Introduction

2011-09-28T15:10:00.000+01:00

So I finally signed up for a blog. I used to have a LiveJournal years ago, but that's full of stuff I don't really want to read anymore. Also, I got married a few days ago and I think this is an appropriate time to start anew.

To that end, I'm sure I'll forget about this really quickly. If I don't, I'll fill it with inane comments on video games that everybody already worked out decades ago.

See you again soon.