Semjaza

If aliens exist, I don't know. I'd like to think they'd have better things to do than come here and turn cows inside out and abduct rednecks though. Otherwise, I think will all be pretty disappointed when they finally show themselves to everyone.

Alright, I got mine. Cobalt, like I wanted. Apparently, it's far less popular than Platinum... so that worked out. Pretty much every store I went to basically sold out completely though by the end of the night. I'll give my own little impressions, even if it repeats some of yours heh. First, Desbreko... there is a black model. It's known as Onyx (which got mistranslated to Devil's Kiss - which is like 10 times cooler, but whatever heh). Sadly, every country [i]except[/i] the US is getting this model. Japan had it at launch, and so will Europe for some odd reason. Anyway, I got my box at Target for $99 even. They even gave me a free game: Driver 2. No idea how good that is... I really wish they kept the really small Japanese style boxes, but whatever. I was somewhat worried that I wouldn't get to try it out until I charged it, but to my surprise it was fully charged in the box (most rechargable things like this don't seem to do that, such as my Minidisc player's batteries or my digital camera's). [u][b]The Light[/u][/b] So I popped in Pokemon Sapphire and tried it out. If you're outside, it's somewhat hard to tell that the light even turned on... But when it is on, it makes the screen way more easy to see. I wasn't expecting a difference in well lit conditions, but it definately helped. Pokemon looked great. There is a slight color washout, but you soon become accustomed to it. Black seems to be hit by it the most, but it's not as bad as I expected. The lighting is basically completely uniform, so you don't have to worry about certain areas being brighter than others. The game that seemed the most affected by the light was Mario Kart Advance. While it still looked good, it seemed as if ever color in it was slightly muted by the light... Especially blues. I tried out some Gameboy Color games, and they were actually visible enough to play! Anyone that tried GBC games on a GBA knows that it makes those games extremely dark... And games like Dragon Warrior 3, which had very dark nighttime areas were nearly impossible to see. The light completely fixes this issue, and the colors seemed just as vivid. I'm sure this will be addressed with upcoming games. For example, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance lets you choose from three color options when you start it up: GBA, GBA SP and Gameboy Player. It adjusts itself accordingly. Hopefully all companies will now take the SP into account. [b][u]Comfort and All That[/b][/u] I was worried that the SP would feel horrible. It's the same width as a GBC when you hold it, and the bottom half where your hands go is even thinner. I always used to have problems with the GBC/Gameboy Pocket on the D-pad side, as there isn't much room to move your thumb around. After a while it would hurt, although I got used to it. This game up with the SP for a minute or too, but I quickly adjusted. The first thing you'll notice is that the buttons are completely changed, as well as their feel. The buttons are now a bit stiffer. They aren't any harder to press down... but they have a clicky feel to them, much like a cell phone's buttons. I find them to be 10 times more precise than the original GBA buttons, especially the D-pad... Pokemon Sapphire is far more responsive now. The L and R buttons are on the corners of the unit. You have to press them with the insides of your index finger, rather than the tips. They are so much better than the GBA's L and Rs... Usually after using them on the GBA my fingers would feel horrible, but it hasn't been an issue on here. They have a nice amount of action on them too, and could possibly be mistaken for analog buttons because of it. [b][u]The Battery[/b][/u] I've not looked at the battery, but it's lithium ion. Supposedly it lasts about 3 years, after which you can order a replacement from Nintendo. When the unit was first announced, there were all these stories about how if the battery breaks, you have to ship the entire unit to Nintendo. This isn't the case. In fact, you can open the back with a simple phillips screwdriver. Nintendo will sell you replacement batteries for only $15 each if you call them. They aren't on the Store website as of yet. I'm sure 3rd parties will make them available someday. You charge the unit through a new port on the SP, which apparently can be used for other things (such as headphones, more on that later). Apparently, Nintendo finally used their patent on a collapsable plug. Other companies do this now, but Nintendo's seems a bit more sturdy and goes about it slightly differently. You'll see what I mean when you get one. Not sure on the recharge time, but I imagine it can't be more than 2 hours (that's how long my digital camera takes, and that thing eats batteries... so it might take even less). It lasts 10 hours with the light on, and 18 without. [b][u]Sound[/b][/u] The speaker is now located in the center of the unit. Sadly, it's still just one speaker, but what can you do. It seems noticably clearer than the GBA speaker though, which is obviously a good thing. Instead of a dial, the volume is now controlled by a sliding switch. If you want to use headphones, there is a catch. The SP has no headphone jack. You have to buy a little converter. Nintendo sells these on their site for $4.50, and they plug into the same port you charge the system through. There are 3rd party ones available at stores like Gamestop right now. --------------------- Overall, I'm happy with the thing. It's way easier to see, it's more comfortable and it's a lot more repsonsive. It's what the GBA should have been in the first place. I tried the E-Reader, GC cable and link cables out on it... Everything works just like it should (only thing that won't is Kirby's Tilt and Tumble, since games go in the SP the opposite direction). I should mention this is my second SP. The first one had a pixel on the screen that was always white, so I exchanged it. Everyone, bring a game with and test it out before you get too far from the store... just in case.

Well it's finally almost here... A couple days away from the sequel to what I think is the best PS2 game in existance: Frequency. I know a lot of people blew the game off. The commercials, even though I thought they were great, didn't even remotely show what the game was about. No places rented it. Sony more or less forgot about it, other than them packing in an addon disc for it with the Network Adapter so people could play it online. Amplitude is online from the start thankfully, which should be great if I can ever find a network adapter. The Tempest-style tube has been replaced with something that's more like a street... It's hard to explain, but apparently it works well. My only complaint is the musical selection. Frequency was more or less full of smaller groups. Amplitude just seems to cater to the masses with some tracks that I am absolutely dreading to play through. Pink?? Blink 182??? P.O.D.???? I know some people here like these bands, but I don't... and really, it's hard to imagine there being much to conduct for a Blink 182 song. They don't have SFX and other synth sounds that made up a good deal of the songs in the original. Anyway, here is the track list... has some decent stuff. No one seems to know the exact amount of tracks on it, but this is the best list I found: Baldwin Brothers - Tumbleweed Blink 182 - Rock Show Chris Child ? Shades Of Blue Dieselboy ? UNKNOWN TRACK Freezepop - UNKNOWN TRACK Garbage -- Cherry Lips Herbie Hancock ? RockIt Logan 7 ? Uptown Saturday Night POD - UNKNOWN TRACK (Remix?) Quarashi -- Baseline Run DMC -- King of Rock (remix by The X-excutioners) P!nk -- Respect BT -- Kimosabe Slipknot -- I Am Hated Game Boyz -- Push David Bowie -- "Everyone Says Hi" (remix by Metro) Symbion Project - UNKNOWN TRACK Weezer ? Dope Nose DJ Q-Bert - UNKNOWN TRACK (Unconfirmed Artist) Styles Of Beyond -- UNKNOWN TRACK (Unconfirmed Artist) I am rather annoyed by the inclusion of Garbage, and the removal of Curve. Curve is a far better band, and anyone that knows anything about Curve knows that Garbage completely ripped them off. Oh well. Glad to see Freezepop too, but one of the guys works at Harmonix (they make the game)... so it was expected heh. Also, yay for Bowie. Anyone else interested in this?

Did you do that at EB? Are they still giving $40 for a GBA traded in towards SP? I won't be needing my GBA once I get an SP, so might as well get something for it heh.

Well, today is launch day. I'm hoping on being able to get one today, but I'm sure most were sold out this morning. Oh well.

The thing that makes no sense...? NO ONE HAS PLAYED NINJA GAIDEN YET. Someone should have caught that right away lol. It's not out anywhere, and no one in the press has played it. They've seen movies and demonstrations, just like we have. Anyway, this is Team Ninja we're talking about. I think DOA is a poor man's Virtua Fighter, DOAX I have little to say of... Thanks to this, I don't expect much from Ninja Gaiden other than great graphics and shallow gameplay. After watching all those movies of it... Nothing reminds me of the old Ninja Gaiden games even remotely. It looks like DMC with a ninja, and I can't say that excites me. The hero in Shenmue is Ryo, not Ryu. Ryu is the name of a guy in Street Fighter, a guy in Breath of Fire... But before all those, there was a Ryu in Ninja Gaiden in the arcades and on the NES. Tecmo always made Ninja Gaiden, just as they've always made DOA. In fact, it's the exact same guy. They share last names and everything (Ryu Hayabusa). His appearance in the DOA series was more or less a cameo.

It's not really, really [i]new[/i]... It came out in September of 2002. I'd guess you guys would have to have it by now, as I think he toured there already, but I'm not sure heh.

I'd say it's a bit of both. Some people like pushing their beliefs and agendas onto everyone else... And because they somehow manage to get backing from more people like them, they wind up making a loud of enough noise to get things changed. I think a lot what happens is usually a result of the libraries and such just not wanting to have to deal with these people. I don't know a lot about library fundings and such... But apparently a lot around here have a hard enough time getting books as it is. I'm sure they don't want to deal with moronic protests and complaints on top of it. So I guess all that freedom of speech stuff just gets overridden for the time being. We have a massive library downtown that is several stories high... I've never had a hard time finding anything there. They even have Satanic-centered stuff that almost all other libraries won't carry... plus the Necronomicon, etc. Obviously, all the other books you mentioned are all kept there as well. So I've never really had to deal with missing out on a book if I needed or wanted it, personally.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Charles [/i] [B] Wouldn't it be cool if Sephiroth actually had some lines this time? lol [/B][/QUOTE] He most likely will be fully voiced by Lance Bass, so no. That would definately not be cool. On the other hand, I sure won't be buying this game after the first... so guess I'm safe heh.

I don't care for Cold. I remember them putting their CD out around the same time of another band I was looking forward to, Professional Murder Music. Of course, everyone went with Cold and I was stuck listening to PMM by myself heh. I still have yet to meet another fan of them, while Cold enjoyed some popularity... although they kind of just came and went rather quickly. The only reason I ever really cared about Cold was because Chris Vrenna supposedly produced for them. He's an ex-NIN member, the only member of tweaker and does various remixes and produces bands like Jack Off Jill and Scarling, in addition to that CD. No idea if he produced the new one though. Someone told me I should check this one out a few weeks ago, but I never bothered. I guess I will tonight heh.

This was announced [i]months[/i] ago, and I don't know why it took EGM this long to realize it. Even the price was given. From what I've read, yes it's another stadium game. It also has that cancelled Pokemon party game, known as Pichu Brothers, integrated into it for the minigames apparently. I wouldn't hold my breath about it being online though, but it could possibly have LAN support since Nintendo seems so big on that lately (which could possibly lead to some sort of hacked online battles, like Xbox had with Halo... depending on how Nintendo sets it up). Then there is Genius Sorority, which was founded by some ex-Dragon Warrior programmer... It's heavily rumored that they are actually making the game everyone has wanted instead of Stadium, a REAL Pokemon RPG for GC. Who knows if this will come to pass, but it's more than just a simple hope like most of the rumors for this game that have existed for years now it seems.

I liked Midnite Vultures, but it was a mixed bag to keep it short. Sea Change is different in many different ways, and in my opinion is among his best work. It's really stripped down compared to his other releases. Glad to see some people are interested :)

Kazaa Lite ++ is the best version, it's not the same as normal Kazaa Lite. Only people who are weird and like spyware use the normal Kazaa now :p PSP can be gotten at nearly any computer centric store. It's not very expensive compared to Photoshop. I still say you should try Gimp. It's free, it's open source and it's almost as good as Photoshop. Then you don't have to worry about all the legal issues either.

Everyone just talks about manga in Anime Lounge. I don't know that there are enough threads on it to justify another forum.

Games are almost never released Monday. Everytime Nintendo announces a new game, they claim a Monday release date. I drive around going to 10 stores trying to find it. Nothing. They all tell me Tuesday at the earliest. Tuesday is the day that new releases come out for games, music and movies. So that's the day I'm going to go try and get my copy. A lot of department stores won't be selling the game til Wednesday or Thursday though, which is why you hear dates like the 26th. It's still possible that it will be there on Monday. I've heard that EBgames.com is already shipping the games. So maybe this will be the one exception to the rule. After trying to get Eternal Darkness, Pikmin, SSBM and SMS on a Monday though... I can't say I'm optimistic lol.

This is backtracking and rephrasing of things that were said before. I will not take any more of these wild allegations! Enjoy your game. I need to buy it still.

All this from a guy who was trying to convince me that it would never be worth it to get this game after GGX.

I guess when it just starts getting slightly warmer here... and we suddenly have a ton of rainstorms. I don't like Spring for the most part. It's okay on colder days when it rains, but that's about it. I like it cold and wet outside. Warm is bad.

Yeah... I'm thinking that's what he is saying as well. The best comparison is when the Gaming Section had GTA and Mario sections. Instead of posting in the main Nintendo and Sony forums about these games, it diverted all posts on the subjects to the subforums. Because of this, there were far less posts in the Nintendo and Sony forums (mostly because those were both big games at the time). At the same time, the GTA and Mario forums never really got that busy either due to their limited subject matter. So when you divide something up too much, you just encourage a lot less posting and quality, I think. I don't go in there that much, but I hardly think it's a big deal to sort through the various RPGs in there the way it's set up.

It's possible that they just took the offer to get some exposure. Makes the most sense to me. A lot of smaller bands seem to do that, based on concerts I go to... But most punk bands seem to stick together sound wise, so who knows.

You just squished the font down... If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, hold down CTRL and spin the wheel in either direction to change the size. That's the easiest way to fix it.

I think the real issue is that all this is destroying TV programming. I don't need complete 24 hour coverage on EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL, especially when it's basically a reporter taking 15 minutes to say "There's nothing new happening here, check back later." And this is going to go on for weeks. Can't they just report breaking news or something? If I miss the Simpsons for a few weeks, I'm going to start my own war against the TV stations here.

We've all been talking about this sort of stuff in the thread I posted in here a few lines down. No one suggested this though, and it seems like a decent enough idea. At the same time, I think a lot of people just wouldn't bother doing it. In terms of loading, once the image is loaded into your cache, it stays there. It's not any extra loading, no matter how many times they post in that thread. Text in sigs takes up so little actual memory that it doesn't even really matter. So, for example, only using your sig in your first post on the thread, and never again, won't really lessen anymore loading for anyone... It would make the thread shorter though. And so, the only issue I think there is in general is the argument on [i]length[/i], and I think addressing that (like I was in my thread) is the best route to start with.

Well... I've only played Blue previous to this. So a lot of the differences I might point out, might have been in G/S/C. Anyway, I'm having a really good time with it. The bad points...? I guess that really it just isn't much different story wise. It's still you randomly leaving home to collect badges. Characters in town have basically nothing of real interest to say to you, other than what Pokemon can do what. So much has been added to the Pokemon personality and customization, but nothing has been done story or character wise. They really should work on that I think. The graphics are good. They aren't amazing, but they are far better than screenshots led me to believe. There are a lot of nice little animation details in the world maps... Your character is reflected in bodies of water, puddles splash and ripple if you run through them, you leave footprints in sand. Sure, that's nothing super impressive, but all the little details add up and make the graphics a lot more interesting than they could have been. The fights are still mostly animated the same. The Pokemon mostly just sit there and shake or whatever else when they attack. They do look far better than they did on Blue though, especially the closeups. There are now two on two fights... I've only done like one of them, but they are set up pretty well and seem like they could be a lot of fun, especially 2 player. There are apparently 4 player fights (one Pokemon for each person) later on. That's about all that comes to mind offhand. I thought the European countries get it in like two weeks from now? Not so bad heh.

Honestly... yeah, it's illegal. At the same time, how would we ever get to use it otherwise? We have no money. Personally, if I ever get to a point where I am using Photoshop for my own profit, then yes I'll pay for it. For the time being, I just can't. The trial lasts 30 days, and that's not exactly much time. If you really want to be a good kid and pay, get PSP. It's only like $80 at the store. It does some things better than Photoshop, and some things not as well. Otherwise, you can get Gimp. It's free, and is almost as good as Photoshop as well. Look in a search engine for that.