So this morning I tried to download another one of those songs that I’ve been dying for and drowning in anticipation for: “Under the Bridge” by a certain band with Chili Peppers that may or may not be Red Hot.

Note that I’m not really the biggest RHCP fan in the world. In fact, I don’t really like them that much at all. Especially over the last few albums, I feel that it’s VERY much turned into a monotonous string of the same music over and over. Does that say something for Anthony’s getting clean? I dunno. But that’s not really what I’m here to talk about.

“Under the Bridge” is one of those new-classic-rock songs, having been one of the most played songs of the early 1990s… and quite frankly, being amazing. I was still a kid/teen in the early 1990s, and so I have the same rememberings and fascination with the song that, perhaps, songs from bands like The Who and such are for an older generation.

Needless to say, I hopped right on Xbox LIVE this morning to grab the song. It’s not like I was going to have any time to play it before work, but it’s the principle of the matter… I like knowing it’s sitting there already on my hard drive, ready to play when I eventually get home (have a meeting with the DJ for our wedding after work today, so my playing is getting delayed even further :P).

Clicked to download. 1%. Ran off to cook breakfast. Came back. 1%. Raised an eyebrow. Sound effect and notice that it failed to keep a connection and I would have to re-download. Huh. Tried again. Same end result. Signed off and back on. All other internets working. Tried again. Same end result.

Here’s hoping we don’t have another Moving Pictures-style “technical difficulties” issue, and it’s all resolved by the time I get home tonight…

Anyone else have any issues? How about you PS3 rockers?

This is a question mostly aimed at Andrew… but you all are free to reply, as well :P.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (DS) and Silent Hill: Homecoming (PS3/360) are both out this week. Are you picking up either of them? What’s your interest level in them? I know you were aprehensive about the new Silent Hill after watching some previews of it.

The art style of Street Fighter IV is definitely something to write home about, but all of us above the age of 20 were still halfway sad to see the (numbered part of the) series finally abandon its 2D roots (yes, I understand Arika and the EX series exist, and as much as I enjoyed it, it’s still an off-shoot… that can be a story for another time).

Holy Hell, SNK/Playmore is totally keeping 2D alive with &%#$ing STYLE.

The King of Fighters XII is looking to totally blow the socks off of us 2D-fighter fans. Game Trailers has the latest preview video up for viewing, and it’s sexy as Hell. This game is going to be an amazing compliment to have alongside all of the 3D fighters we either already have (Soul Calibur IV) or are coming soon (Street Fighter IV).

My history with the KoF series is a little all over the place. I was very casual about it up until around 1998, and then got incredibly hardcore with it (well, “hardcore” for me). After 2000, though, the games all started bleeding together for me… not to mention the bosses got slightly ridiculous both in style and cheapness (seriously, Goenitz… bite me). ‘99 was probably my favorite game in the series thus far. I know a lot of the seriously-hardcore fans have a problem with the striker system, but the specific characters that were in the game, the backgrounds, and the music (oh god, the awesome music!) are what really sell the game for me. I also dipped into the Maximum Impact series, and thoroughly enjoyed 2006 / Maximum Impact 2 despite its transition into quasi-3D.

There’s not much of a point to this entry other than to check in with you all and see what your hype level is for the upcoming fighters… and specifically, KoF. Who’s really digging the updated style for the series? Who’s picking up the American release of ‘98 Ultimate Match on LIVE Arcade, and/or already picked it up on PS2?

I’ve got some more SNK love coming for you soon with some talk about a game I finally picked up for myself on Neo-Geo Pocket Color…

OK, so technically Jeff has already played it (and you heard all about it back on episode two). However, I had never actually played beyond the first five minutes (I thought a full hour, but no, not even…) of Final Fantasy VI, considered by many to be the pinnacle of the series. I’ve had Anthology (PS1) since it came out, and I’ve had Advance (GBA) since it came out… but… never played…

This post is actually two-fold in purpose. The first is like the title says; I started playing the game. However, in order to be playing this game, I had to do one other thing.

I dropped the Pokemon habit.

That’s right, I’m done (again… for now). Despite putting the majority of time these days into Pearl, just the fact that Pearl was in Slot 1 and FireRed was in Slot 2 was enough to keep me from playing anything else on-the-go. Once I started up my new job and had an hour lunch to go off and do whatever I wanted, I was all about starting up a new game.

I decided to make that game Final Fantasy VI, and I’ve been quite enjoying it. That’s not to say that I’m falling all over myself with how amazing it is, but it’s totally perfect for what I need it to be right now. The distance between save points is always just right for a lunch break (something III on DS did amazingly well, might I add). The characters are quirky and hilarious. The music is… well, I haven’t really hit anything yet that’s flooring me, to be honest (yes, I’m playing with headphones so I don’t miss anything). I also understand that the GBA audio isn’t quite up to the level of the SNES, but it has nothing to do with the audio quality; I’m talking strictly composition and arrangement.

I’m just under seven hours into the game, and I just did my second round of split-up-the-team and fight-lots-of-oncoming-soldiers, concluding with Kefka at the end (that shouldn’t be all that spoilerific, I think).

So while I’m enjoying it, there’s nothing knocking my socks off just yet. I know I still need to wait for the inevitable “world beyond the world” realization, and something about an opera scene…

I’m quite petrified of Pokemon: Platinum coming out in the US, because I’m kinda enjoying playing other games for a change…

So my 360 is finally back. Insert huzzah upon huzzah here.

They tried delivering it on Tuesday to the future-in-laws’ place, but no-one was home, so right back on the truck for the next day it went. Thankfully, someone was going to be home all day the following day, and it was indeed scheduled for re-delivery the next day… so I basically refreshed the tracking page all day to make sure it got there on time. Of course, just like the last package I tracked, it didn’t show up as being delivered until half an hour after the fact… long enough for me to get an e-mail confirmation from “home” saying it was there before UPS could :P.

Opening up the box it came in (which was identical to what it went back for repairs in), there’s not a whole lot to speak of. System’s in there, papers in there, card for a month of Xbox LIVE, etc.

I didn’t do my analysis as well as I should have. I’m basically blind. I wanted to know if the system was a replacement unit or if they actually repaired it. If I actually read the papers that came with it, I would have immediately seen that it was indeed a replacement unit. The instructions also give you the process on how to “re-license” all of your Xbox LIVE downloads (more on that in a second).

What tipped me off on it being a replacement unit (like I said, rather than simply reading the papers it came with), was that nice little HDMI port on the back. Ooooh, shiny. Didn’t have one of those before.

I’m not quite sure what this says about the problem I had (initially detailed back here). Does the problem go so deep that they’d rather just give me a whole new system? I guess so. I really think someone should make a site all about the green splotchies problem. I wish I had the initiative to do so. You, over there. Yeah, you. Get right on that.

I couldn’t just crack open Rock Band 2 and play, though. Nooooo, sir. Since it was a whole new system, and Xbox LIVE content is tied to the hardware (in addition to the gamer-card/name), what you have to do is re-license the content for the new hardware. This means you go to your “Download History” and click “Redownload”… on every single last one. Every. Single. Last. One. OK, so you don’t have to do it on demos if you don’t really want those anymore, but for things like actual XBLA games and add-on content that you would like to be able to access either offline or by other users (gamer-cards/names) on the console, you absolutely have to do it.

For material that’s sitting there on the hard-drive, it doesn’t actually re-download it. What it appears to do is check and see if that content’s there, and if it is indeed there, just re-apply the new license to it (the download will hit 1% and then just be done, regardless of the file size). If there has been an update to said content (for example, I think one of the Police songs/packs I had downloaded had a fix applied to it), it actually will indeed re-download the whole thing again (presumably replacing it on the hard-drive, rather than downloading a duplicate).

So I basically went through that process for all my Rock Band downloads (which is… uhh… a lot), and then all my XBLA games (which aren’t a lot, but enough to be obnoxious).

I then moved on to doing the whole Rock Band export thingie from the first game, which lets you play all (well, 55 of the 58) songs from the first game right in the second game. That took a while, so I ironed some shirts for work while it did its thing.

Then I downloaded a whole bunch of songs I’ve missed in the meantime, which ate up some more time (still ironed shirts).

By the time I was ready to finally use my (new) system, it was 10:30 pm, and I had to get my rear end to bed for work the next day. Played through “Hands Down” on expert guitar one time through, mostly just to say “nyah-nyah!” to the console.

So the big guy is back. I wonder if I’ll ever actually get back to DragonBall Z: Burst Limit, or if it’s just a lost cause. If I’m going to play a fighting game, I’m going to pop Soul Calibur IV over in the PS3. Regardless, it’s wonderful to have it home.

Hopefully it won’t die one week after my one-year warranty, again, with a problem Microsoft refuses to publicly acknowledge and fess up to. Grar.

I could have sworn I posted about this game and its price(s) previously on the blog. I even took pictures of it. Guess I never did anything with them. Regardless, as you can see in the below picture, that’s three red stickers placed over each other, indicating a clearance price-drop each time.

Yes, that’s right. Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, the apparent cause of Gerstmanngate, is down to a hilarious $9.98 on clearance at Target.

Holy crap! I checked early this afternoon, and Microsoft’s customer service / repair site said they hadn’t even received my console yet. Log in tonight, and what do I see? Completely skipped step #3 (”Device received at service center”), and went right to step #4 (”Device shipped to customer”).

This is either a wonderful or a terrible thing.

Heading down to Atlanta for AWA tomorrow. Check you funky people there… uhh… if you’ll be there.

At the end of Episode 3 of vgconvos.com the podcast (or whatever it’s called), I quickly mentioned that I had given Mike a gift before the recording. I had, in fact, printed out a photomosaic of one of Mike’s Top 10 favorite games.

This image, if you can’t tell, is the opening screen to Pokemon: Fire Red Version done in photo-mosaic style. It was done using a program called MacOSaiX which is Mac OS X only and was something I discovered with one of my trainees. It’s a phenomenal program where I can not only set whatever size and image I want to use, but I can choose what source the images come from–not just a folder on my hard drive of images or my iPhoto library, but Google image search results and flickr search results. So, this image is comprised of every image Google and flickr found when I put “Pokemon” in the search.

In short, it’s awesome, I printed it out on an 8×10 for Mike, and hopefully he has framed it and placed it comfortably across the toilet and copies of EGM in his bathroom.

Before I get into the meat of this post, please note that when episode three of the podcast first went up, it accidentally had a random 10 seconds of silence before we read e-mails. It was corrected and reuploaded within half-an-hour of its initial posting, so in case you’re looking for a fixed version… it’s up there, now.

So last week I (finally) received the empty box to send back my 360 for repairs (read here and here for more info). In case you haven’t (yet) gone through the process of needing to send back your system, I figured I’d document my own and allow you to live vicariously through me. Don’t get cocky, though… if you have a 360, you’ll eventually be sending it back for one reason or another…!

The box it comes in is a rather plain, white, standard ol’ box. I actually wasn’t even sure it was the right box. I don’t know what I was expecting… I guess something that would hold a lot more cushioning…?

When you open it up, you get some pretty dummy-proof instructions, a plastic bag to put the system into, a styrofoam holder for the console, a return label to place over top of the one that was used to ship it to you, and a piece of packing tape to seal the box back up with. I should point out that customer service explicitly told me to tape a piece of paper with my name, address, and repair number to the system itself, while the included instructions made absolutely no mention of this.

Again, I was rather unsure about the contents, since the box was so small. I was honestly shocked to see that I was going to pack up such a clearly-volatile system with just these little foam inserts. No additional packing-peanuts, or anything like that. Huh.

When it’s all packed up, it is indeed rather snug. I can’t see this compensating for UPS guys tossing boxes around, though, and being that I’m actually PAYING for my repair (no red rings for lucky ol’ me!), I was hoping for something like… oh, I dunno… better packing to keep the system from falling apart to and fro.

Sent my system back last Thursday, and according to the customer service area of xbox.com, they still have not received it. Grr. I knew that if I was going to have system problems, it would be during the release of a game I’m dying to play (Rock Band 2).

In conclusion, Tara was very upset that she was late to the recording session. She was all prepared, and everything. Unfortunately, it was complete, and we were no longer accepting recorded material for the show.

Better luck next time, babe.

Here we are with episode three of the podcast! It’s somewhat strange that episode two went up right before an anime convention, and here we are ready to take off to Anime Weekend Atlanta this week and the podcast is done…

This time around we wanted to talk about peripherals and peripheral-based gaming. Whether it’s the NES Zapper or even all the way through today with the various music games, peripherals have certainly evolved over time. What were some of our favorite ones, and how did they change the industry (if at all)?

In addition to all that, be sure to also read along with our Top 10 Peripheral-Based Games. It’s an interesting list, and probably includes a couple games you had either forgotten about, or WANTED to forget about!

We brought on our buddy Bryce this show to talk things out with us. He’s actually over at Otaku Generation every week doing that podcast, so if you like what he has to say, be sure to check him out over there. We’ll definitely have him back on in the future.

That’s it for us this time around. I’ve personally got a wedding to attend next month (that being my own), so we’ll try to figure out exactly how we’re going to handle the next episode. Maybe it’ll be a short episode, maybe it’ll be even longer… who knows?! Until then, enjoy this episode, and we’ll catch you soon for some more regular blog posts.

 

 Conversation 003: Peripherals & The Top Ten Peripheral-Based Games [142:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download