Gameboy Player

I've wanted one of these things forever and I was given the perfect excuse to pick one up last week when the screen on my GBA died. I was nearing the end of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, when the picture suddenly faded from the screen. I tried changing the batteries to no avail. It was pretty clear that the old launch model GBA had had it.

The GBP arrived on Friday in great condition, apart from a few scratches. Installing it was very simple, I just needed to take off the cover of the high speed port on the bottom of the Cube, slot the GBP in there and screw it into the console. The two screws are fixed to the GBP so you can't loose them. Of course, the unit itself is no good without the required software, which came on a pretty scratched-up GC disc. I popped it in and booted the Cube, hoping for the best. Thankfully, it all worked fine.

I was really impressed with how well the handheld games translate to TV screen, even old games from the original Gameboy look nice and sharp. The GBP presents the games in the middle of the screen, surrounded by a border in the style of a GBA or you can stretch the picture to fill about 2/3 of the TV screen. The second option leaves you with a smaller border and doesn't really impact on the picture quality of the game too much.

So far, I'm really happy with the GBP and I'm hoping it'll get me to check out some more GB/GBC/GBA games. Even though I've had a GBA for years, I've pretty much ignored it for most of that time. It's only within the last few years I've started to pick a few games for it, but given the fact that I just bought Donkey Kong '94 on eBay, I think the GBP may be working.

GameStop Pickups 24/04/09

I popped into the local GameStop today for another raid on their used PS2 section. It hadn't been turning up too much of late - mostly old football games of various shapes and sizes. But the was plenty of good stuff on offer today - Dark Cloud 2, Destroy All Humans 2, Scarface and even a copy of the somewhat elusive God Hand (at a hefty €29.99 though). I had €24 to spend and decided that it was best put to use thusly:

Everybody's Tennis - €9.99

Looks like a nice, solid tennis game so far. There's more than a whiff of Wii-style inclusiveness in everything from the cute characters, the relaxing music to the menu design. I started off on the training mode, trying to hit panels on the opponent's side of the court, quite fun. The Challenge mode looks to be the where meat of the game is. For my first match I went for a little girl on girl action on the beach (sorry, I'll stop). The AI character put up pretty decent challenge. It's definitely not the lightweight casual game the presentation might suggest.

Second Sight - €6.99

For some reason, I woke up with a question this morning. I don't know what I was dreaming of, but I was trying to think what was the other PS2/Xbox telekinesis game besides Second Sight - Psi-Ops came to me after a while. Anyway, I really liked the TimeSplitters series and I've been meaning to check out Free Radical's other last gen offering for ages. I played the PC version of this on GameTap for a bit last year, but the voices were all screwed up for some reason and I've always found third person games tricky to control with the muse/keyboard combo -no such problems here.

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 - €5.99

It's been forever since I played a Tony Hawk's game and despite the dodgy reputation this one has, I decided to go for it given the budget price. I hear there are a number of ill advised additions that came in with the "Underground" moniker, but so far it seems like business as usual and I was pulling off a string of ludicrous combos in no time. Liking the soundtrack so far too - "That's Life" by Frank Sinatra was a pleasant surprise.

Site Update: Timesplitters 2/Soul Calibur Review...Thing

Today, I've stuck another old college assignment up on my web site. It's a sort of review I did in 2005, comparing two games of different genres in terms of physics, AI and collision detection. I picked TimeSplitters 2 and Soul Calibur II for mine. As well as that, we had to do a walkthrough for the first level of one of the games to prove we'd actually played them first. A move you might think unnecessary in a computing course, but there were a lot more non-gamers among us than I would have ever imagined.

You can check it out, in all its glory here.

deviantART Update 27/03/09

Media

by JiliK - Mar 27, 2009

Backloggery Logo

by JiliK - Mar 27, 2009

Yes, it does happen occasionally. I've put two more bits of art work (sort of) up on my deviantArt gallery last night - an old drawing I did in 2000 (above) and the logo I did for my Backloggery page during Christmas last year. Check out the full gallery here.

Don't Shit Your Pants

I thought I'd share this weird little flash game I came across on my travels. It's a simple text-based adventure game where you're only goal is to take a dump before filling your pants. How lovely. But with a door and a pesky pair of pants in the way, it's not going to be that easy. Do you have what it takes to earn all the game's achievements and become the shit king? Find out here.

More Compilations: Now 47, Shine 7

I hit up eBay earlier this month in search of more Now compilations and after much deliberation, I decided to go with Now 47 from 2000 and in a surprise move, Shine 7, a 1996 entry from the Shine series - a short-lived series of indie compilations released in the mid to late 90s.

Now 47
This wasn't one of the Now entries that I was super excited about getting my hands on, but after giving it a listen, there's actually quite a few decent tracks on here. There's some great tunes from Texas, David Grey, Coldplay and Kylie, possibly the only decent All Saints song ever, a great guilty pleasure from LeAnn Rimes and a nice selection of dance tracks on disc 2, including a excellent Ibiza-fuelled cover of "Ordinary World" by Aurora with Naimee Coleman on vocals. Having said that, the compilation also plays host to that fucking awful musical atrocity,"Who Let the Dogs Out" and there's plenty dodgy tracks from all the usual suspects - Ronan Keating, Steps, S Club 7...you get the idea.

Shine 7
I really only bought this to get my hands on "Whatever" - the ever elusive Oasis single, now too expensive to pick up in it's original format and unavailable to download anywhere. However, there's plenty more to like on here besides that. There's several massive anthems from the time from the likes of Blur, Suede, Pulp and Radiohead and a bunch of great tracks from the likes of Babybird, Space, Placebo, Super Furry Animals and The Divine Comedy. Some of the stuff here was completely new to me - I really enjoyed "Twisted" by Skunk Anansie and Morrissey sound-alike My Life Story with "Sparkle". Of course, there's lots of bland pap from long forgotten acts bulking out the compilation, but you could do a lot worse than picking this up.

Purchases Round-up: January/Febuary

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

As I was finishing up Final Fantasy X-2 and wondering what I'd turn my gaming attention to next, I felt the overwhelming urge to grab this off eBay and jump back into my favourite GTA locale - Vice City. The city, the style, the awesome soundtrack - they're all in place and despite a few shortcomings, it's another enjoyable crime-filled journey through the streets of Vice City.

The game does have a share of minor technical problems - The low res textures on far away buildings have a habit of not being swapped for hi res ones until you're right next to them. When there's too much going on there's the occasional framerate dip where everything moves as if it's floating in molasses. Sometimes all the cars disappear from the road - not helpful if you're stuck in the middle of nowhere and you've just trashed your ride.

I also can't help missing Tommy and his posse from the original VC. Vic is a bit of a sick in the mud in comparison and the likes of Kent Paul and Ken Rosenberg are nowhere to be seen. Thankfully though, all those niggles fade away into the background when you're careering through a sea of flaming Cholo cars with "Living On The Ceiling" by Blancmange blaring out of your speakers - I've missed you, Vice City.

Ghost Squad

I've been half meaning to pick this up for ages. I spotted it for a tenner after Christmas so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I don't have the Wii Zapper or any of the many gun shells on offer for the console, so I had to stick to the remote only. Playing without a gun and with the cursor enabled did feel like cheating a bit but it still proved to be a fun justice-dispensing romp.

As you'd expect for an arcade conversion, it's a bit on the short side, with a full play through possible in under an hour. Each of the three missions in the game offers a choice of paths at various points though, so there is some replay value there and new paths get unlocked as you replay the missions. The graphics aren't great and the voice acting is so bad that it must have been done that way intentionally, but all in all it's a nice, enjoyable rail shooter. I wouldn't pay more than €20 for it though.

X-Files Seasons 2, 3, 4

Although I was a fan of the show back in the day, I didn't actually start watching it until a few episodes into Season 5. How heck did I understand what was going on? I'm not entirely sure I did, actually. :) The Firefly box set had sort of put me in the mood for more TV on DVD and I saw that they were selling most of the X-Files seasons for about €23 on CD Wow, so I decided to start catching up. Sadly, season wasn't in stock, so I had to start off with Season 2.

So far, I'm about halfway through the Season 2 box set and really enjoying it. It is a bit strange watching the closing credits without having some obnoxious continuity announcer talking over them though. I grabbed Seasons 3 and 4 in February, but I've yet to get started on them.