Damn dirty upgrades - June 20th, 1999 - Drew Cosner
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. Don't say I didn't warn you. :)
I want you all to know that I'm trying to be rid of my procrastinating ways. I was off to a good start yesterday, and then today I had to go and blow it. I decided to upgrade to the wonderful world of anything faster than the piece of crap I had, and as usual the estimated time of completion was equal to the actual time of completion minus approximately 4 hours. Yes, I suck. I know it. Just read the column now, you big meany. | The battery's dead, Jim | Matt Blackie talked about how FF4 wasn't to be included in FFA, and he states why do people who already own the cart need it. Well, like myself, many people's cartridges now have dead batteries. I can't even play my FF2a anymore because no matter how much I save, it doesn't because the battery backup is dead. Thats why I want FF4 to be released. Reijin |
Yeah, that's a definite problem with those older SNES games. In fact, I've noticed that most SNES games start to get a little weird in some manner or another after a while. My Zelda III resets at the slightest movement, and everytime I try to play my copy of Yoshi's Island, I get a message with a stern warning as to the illegality of reproducing SNES cartridges. | I killed Teddy. | Is that Teddy Roosevelt? |
Yes. | Kiss some Butz | Greetings, GIA letter-answering type person fellow human person guy. Just a few words on the Final Fantasy Anthology. First of all, Matt Blackie's statement that the only people who carewhether or not (probably spelled that wrong, who cares) FF4 was included inthe Final Fantasy Anthology are the ones who already own it is deadcheesing wrong. How many people out there own FF4j? Hands in the air. Okay,that's eleven...twelve...fourteen people. I don't own it, yet I'd welcome achance to play it, as I'm sure would plenty of other gamers. What are the odds of being able to find a copy of FF4j anywhere now? Forall of us who either didn't manage to snag a copy when it first came out orgot into RPGs too late to get a copy, FF4j in the Anthology would have beena godsend. Slow loading times? Who gives a crap-a Final Fantasy fan withenough patience to spend sixty hours leveling up so you'll be strong enoughto make it through a dungeon and one hour actually going through thedungeon in FF1 (which I was lucky enough to find a copy of...whee) probablywouldn't care if they had to wait a few seconds for something to load. And second of all, Square screwed up big time when they decided to changeButz's name. I love that name. Butz Butz Butz. I'd buy the CD just to beable to play as a guy named Butz. Butz Butz Butz Butz Butz. -Matt Linwong, the Paradox Penguin P.S. Square needs to bring back WarMech in a game. You know, that robot onthe bridge leading to Tiamat's room in FF1.And they need to make more gamesstarring giant robots. They wouldn't need a plot or anything, just giantrobots. I'd buy it. Butz Butz Butz Butz Butz. |
A large percentage of the RPG community today never got a chance to play FF2, it's an inescapable fact. Personally, I wouldn't mind a little choppiness and the like just to get a chance to play through FFIV without having to beg to borrow it. And since I have a policy of spilling Pepsi on foreign technology within my home, none of my friends seem to eager to lend me any of their games. Go figure. The only arguments against including FFIV in the anthology can be knocked over about as easily as a piece of cardboard propped up on an empty cereal box. As a general bastard, I can understand the business in it. They'll be saving time and effort, and to be honest, releasing a box set of older games in today's graphic-humping, 3D lovin' marketplace is a might bit of a risk. As a gamer, I'm kind of upset about it, but I'm pretty used to this sort of thing anymore. Cest la vie, eh? P.S. Your fascination with the word "Butz" worries me. Seek help. I can refer you to the psychiatrist who's seeing me. Every Wednesday I meet him in a dark alley by his car, he pulls out a pen and pad, listens to my problems, and then uses his proffesional knowledge to prescribe me just the drugs I need to help my condition. The sessions themselves are free, but for some reason the drugs are really expensive and I have to snort the powdery looking stuff up my nose. I really hate that. | That server has a real attitude | I am sitting here wondering what is going on over there at the gia. Itused to be that I could make my way over to the GIA and read my latestnews. Or, if I felt like it, I could type in www.thegia.com\psx and geta complete listing of all the articles you have on playstation games ina nice, easy to read, graphical, safe for the environmnet package.Today, when I tried this trick, I was assulted be a cold, heartless,text-only listing of your playstation games. what happened? I mean, weall exept change, but shouldn't we expect change for the better? -Mr. Shagwell |
Now that the GIA has gotten bigger and moved onto a sexy new server, we have to worry about potential risks. Listing the directory in the manner you speak of is a big ol' hack waiting to happen, so we've had to put our foot down. Besides, AK doesn't want anybody stumbling into his secret gay porn directory. P.S. Dude, I wish this was what I did for a living. I've had jobs that sucked so bad they could take the barnacles right off the hull of a freight ship. Maybe someday, maybe someday. | All the wrong cards | Lately I've been running into problems with my Playstation memory card.Whenever I try to load a saved game of Tactics Ogre, more then half thetime it says "Failed to load" and bounces me back to the main menu. If itfails to load twice in a row, the entire game freezes and I must reset.Also, when I play Suikoden, occaisonally I'll get the message "Failed toopen file" whenever I try to load or save a game. One night it got so bad Ihad to try it 9 times before it finally let me save. But the thing when itlet me save, I noticed I had a free memory slot where as before my card wasfull. I shrugged and overwrote my old saved Suikoden game. I then went tothe memory card menu and discovered one of my Tactics Ogres files wasdeleted and that now I had two identicle games of Suikoden saved when Ialways told it to overwrite my old one, thus having only one game saved ata time. This is starting to get ridiculous and I don't want to discoverthat my card is going to decide to delete another saved RPG file on its ownwithout my knowledge. My question is do memory cards have life spans? Ibought mine in the spring of '97. It's an official Playstation card, not ageneric one. FABIO |
First off, I should mention that Tactics Ogre is known to be extremely buggy with saves. I'll also add that from my experience, older PSX memory cards are about as stable as a cinder block balanced atop an active game of Jenga. It sounds like your card is about to die on you, so if I was you I'd get all your info onto a new card before it's too late. As a fellow gamer, I'd personally recommend a Dex Drive. Not only is it incredibly stable, you'll never have to get another memory card again. | They all look the same to me | Hey letters guys, Is it just me or is the trend towards having identical characters reallydumb? So manygames lately have had characters with basically equivalent abilities --for example, theonly difference between the characters in FF7 is in what Limit Breaksthey can useOr look at Suikoden -- everyone's pretty much the same in that game.With the emphasisin RPGs shifting towards the story, wouldn't you'd think more RPGs wouldgiveeach character unique abilities to fit his/her pesonality? For examplein Final Fantasy 3(US), all the characters had their own special attack. From what Ihear, FF8 is more likethat, but is this the only upcoming game where each character has theirown speciality? - The blatantly false deceased flamingo and a big bag of spray cheese |
You'd think as the storylines in RPGs moved towards greater complexity, the more developed characters would have greater distinction. I think most people would probably be with you on this one, but let's see what everybody thinks. So everybody, what do you think about it? Send all your comments on the subject to Allan to deal with, heh heh heh. | Legal name change | Someone wrote in complaining about FF5's name changes. I agree that these new names ("Bartz"...ha ha ha) are pretty stupid, but there is a way to remedy things. It doesn't even involve corporate blackmail, tactical nuclear weapons, and/or orbital particle beam platforms. It's simple: use the in-game renaming system! It won't fix Exdeath, but it'll get the normal characters. Unless, of course, you couldn't rename anyone but Butz in FF5 (I forget...it's been awhile). In that case, I'll offer a great deal on the aforementioned particle beam platforms. -Kevin Cogger |
That would be a waste of a perfectly good excuse to bitch and moan, though. | More SNES rumination | Yes, a hand-held SNES wouldn't be a bad idea, and wouldn't be thatdifficult or expensive to make. However... the principal shortcoming ofthe Nomad and TurboExpress (and the Master Gear adaptor doe the GameGear) was as a result of taking a library of games designed to be playedon a screen that was much larger than the one you'd have to be using.As a result, graphics suffered and text was usually unreadable. So, as a result, even if such a device did exist, the likelihood that anytext-heavy SNES games (read: any RPG, and then some) could be easilytranslated/rereleased for it is practically nil. Granted, one could still make a "portable" snes with a larger screen (Ithink 6" would by a practical minimum), but larger displays are, ofcourse, both costly (putting the price easily above $400) andpower-hungry. And it would hardly be "hand-held." -Anson |
Not necesserily. Anybody who's seen the Turbo Express can attest to the fact that a sharp, high resolution screen on a handheld is more than possible. And Nintendo has certainly proven to have a mastery over battery life like no other company. That price is pretty inflated, really. I don't think even the Turbo Express ever cost that much, and that was several years ago. The price for the technology involved has dropped since then, no doubt. Of course, I'm not some big silicon valley insider or anything of that nature, so feel free to write Allan and tell him why I'm wrong on some account. I love abusing Sundays. | Lousy panhandler | Drew,Two questions for you. First, can I have $40? And second, When is Soul Reaver shipping? -The deceased flamingo who hides out in the darkest corners of your soul P.S. No, seriously, can I have $40? |
Supposedly Soul Reaver comes out the 26th of this month, but according to a dirty panhandler with a lisp who once met Mister T, it's probably going to be delayed yet again. On any account, expect to see it sometime this summer. P.S. Sure you can have 40 bucks. You just aren't getting it from me. Closing Comments This has been a test, and only a test, of the Double Agent Emergency Broadcast System. Had this been an actual column, you would feel strangely at peace and removed from reality as your eyes glossed over and a lifelong coma set in. We now return you to your regularly broadcast columnist. -Drew Cosner, the man with the golden gun. |  |
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