Xenon first screenshots revealed!

Hey, everybody! Today is October and the leaves are changing color – yet, I do not see neighbors very well, therefore, it must not be Fall yet. I believe fall is when all of the leaves start turning color. That means we all have to add 1 hour to your clocks. Anyways, the first Xenon images are leaked! It seems that Microsoft will hold their unrevealing of “Code: Xenon” to the world at the Game Developer’s Conference 2K5. As you can see, the new first batch of Xbox 2 titles look very similar to movies – like mine almost, but has great cost. My computer cost $2300 and Microsoft will sell Xbox 2 at approximately $300. My point is for playing games – you get a great deal on technology here. It’s true everyone. Either spend money on a high end processor, 512 MB of dual channel RAM and a 256-bit Radeon 9800 XT or Geforce 5900 FX (your pick) or buy the simple “insert disc in console and play” Xbox 2. Most people like consoles for this reason. I am unique in that I own all the consoles and a nice PC. The gamer who likes to spend all his money in one place may like to choose one console every generation. The average gamer has about 10 games for his gaming platform. Serious gamers may have twice to three times that much. Most people would be buying every new Playstation on the market every 5 years. Let me tell you a story:

Xenon/Xbox 2 demo shots










The year was 1999 and N64 is nearing the end of it’s life. Much hype talk about owning a Playstation 2 is about both in cyber space and the real world. Then Sega announces the Dreamcast which is coming out in 3 months to be precise 9/9/99. It has four worthy launch titles, Sonic Adventure, Soul Caliber and Sega Rally Championship 2, and NFL 2K. Of course, the Dreamcast came out in December 98 in Japan. So knowing that it’ll have 3D Sonic the Hedgehog in high-res (at the time looked pretty spectacular) – I go out and buy a Dreamcast for 199 dollars at Toys R US with a copy of Sonic Adventure. Back when our computer was a Pentium-133 piece of crap, I was aching for some high resolution games – and Christmas was coming up fast. I said to myself, “I know what I want – maybe I can buy a Dreamcast for myself than ask for a PC for Christmas.” If I remember correctly, in September 1999, AMD just came out with their ‘powerful’ Athlon Thunderbird Processor that could do high-res with the 16-bit video card and 128-MB SDRAM.

Micron P-133

Windows 95
16 MB of SDRAM
Pentium Classic @ 133 MHz
5 GB hard drive

Compaq Presario 5900z (state-of-the-art at the time)

Windows 98SE
128 MB of SDRAM
Athlon Thunderbird @ 650 MHz
20 GB hard drive
Nvidia Geforce 256 16-MB GPU

At the time, I couldn’t imagine how I was going to fill up 20 Gigs of space (every game back then was only on 1 CD). I soon got everything I wanted on it with space left over. To my surprise, Unreal Tournament ran in high resolution. It didn’t look quite as good as Dreamcast, but was quite close. Then 2 years later right before I got an updated Compaq Presario with better hardware, I bought myself a Gamecube. The only reason why I got a Gamecube was a found out that Dreamcast was dead around that time.

Second discussion is how fun videogames are to buy – but it’s even better if I buy it a year after they come out. I save 65% most of the time on those games. That might force most budget conscience people to get 1 console and 5 games at the most for it. Playing games is just to pass the time…and the game doesn’t even need to be the best of the best to be fun. Then there are those “Oh my God! I have to have this game” customers whom buy several times a month to get the next best game everyone else is playing. This month it’s Fable for Xbox owners. Fable was supposed to be that Revolutionary Xbox RPG 4 years in the making that’s suppose to be the #1 RPG for Xbox. Even though it’s #1, Fable hasn’t quite met that revolutionary status given too it by many magazines and websites 2 years back.

I believe those people who want “the next best game” finally realize that those games can be easily attainable 8 months later at a Game Stop for only $20 or less. There is me, whom is more apart of the online community who only buys the best games available (by review score) so that he/she can discuss the game online with friends on message boards or Gamefaqs.com. At least that is the way I see it. The bad turnout is those people are usually run out of spending money really fast.

I’d finally had a chance to play Super Mario RPG. Okay, it’s not the first time. The graphics are really good though. No complaint there. It seems simple compared to RPGs of today (Final Fantasy X, Xenosaga, Grandia, Tales of Symphonia). I hear that most of the game’s most talented artists keep everything simple such as it was with Super Mario RPG. Being simple can sometimes outweigh the complicated which is why retro gaming is making a come back and is which why I bought a NES, SNES and Genesis within the last year. I thought I would have loads of fun playing the games in their original form. I was sorta right. It was fun for a while – but it didn’t last like I thought it would. I still have this image in my head that newer is always better which in most cases is true – new is better!

I am going to continue with my third discussion. I was reading a little on FIFA and it stands for Federation International Football Association. It has “football” in the name. As I spoken in my last entry there are several footballs, Chinese football, our football, soccer, and probably another one. Okay, let’s take the obvious two, football and soccer. FIFA Game Rule History

The NFL rules have never changed since the early 1980s when football didn’t have salary caps and the rule that football players had to have more protection. This is killing me to announce this, but the perception of football is contact sport. In elementary school all kids wore those stupid belts with plastic strips to pull off. This was also used in capture the flag, but it basically took the contact out of football. I don’t know if schools keep doing it – but it would ensure no injury amongst students. Recess could be played with a standard football, knowing the rules weren’t as necessary as knowing which way to run. Score a touchdown was always the focus. I never played the game during recess.

Here is Wikipedia’s definition of American Football:

“American football, known in the United States as simply football, is a competitive team sport that rewards players' speed, agility, tactics, and brute strength as they push, block, tackle, chase, and outrun each other, trying to force a ball further into their opponent's territory for one hour of game time, which translates into three to four hours of real time.”

For people who aren’t in the USA here are the top organizations: NFL (professional football), NCAA Football (college football), NFL-Europe (pro football in Europe)

Here is Wikipedia’s definition of soccer or football (whichever you prefer):

“Football is a ball game played between two teams of 11 players, each attempting to win by scoring more goals than their opponent. A goal results when the ball passes over the goal line between the goalposts and under the crossbar. Football is played predominantly with the feet, but players may use any part of their body except their hands and arms to propel the ball. The goalkeeper is the only member of the team allowed to handle the ball in the field of play.”

Yeah, I know - there is no need for examples but here they are anyways for good posture: MLS (American Pro Soccer/football), FIFA (international football), Canadian Soccer Association and 50 more.

Finally, my fourth discussion - about the new axis of evil. I haven’t visited a Russian news site for a long while so I just thought I check out their national issues. They are the largest country in the world. 900 years of conquering territory must have its positive turn-outs – but sooner or later they got what was coming to them (a revolution, a civil war against Georgia, and a lot of confused citizens all in a 14 year period). Pravda.ru states “USA declares Russia, Iran, and North Korea as the new axis of evil.” I would think that the site is not happy with that. See in Russia - there is a Communist party and Democratic/Republican party running for president each election. If the communist party gains the President of Russia title, the country will turn into the USSR for 5 years, but if the democratic/republican party win the title - all is good. That’s one of Russia’s key problems. Russia is known as an Industrial Federation Republic. It was once an Industrial Socialist Republic. Ya, I don’t think Russia could go through with it – they enjoy all the “free trade with other countries” benefits too much to go back to their old ways. If the communist party won the next presidential election, the first thing to go would be everyone’s Internet privileges. Russia’s also troubled by US’s interests in “securing” nuclear ballistic missiles left over from the USSR. They don’t agree nor disagree with the friendly proposal. If you haven’t heard about it on the news this week, our government key worries is to disarm every nuclear ballistic missile on Earth that’s outside the USA. Doing our part would be to disarm half of existing nuclear ballistic missiles in our country. This would be simple if not for the fact that we have 10 times as many as the Russians do. All these missiles are underground surrounded by 20 inch thick reinforce concrete. Radiation wouldn’t get very far and worst case scenario could result in contaminated water and soil within 50 miles radius. The missiles transported by truck receive full military escort and are tracked by global positioning.

Day at Randy's

Howdy! I’m back with more small chatter. This articles main topic is how fun it was at Randy’s house. First of all I wanted to burn him a Sims 2 DVD. I thought well I enjoyed it why not let him enjoy it as well. Graphics were really good. You can make out the character’s faces. Textures are nice. I had the burn speed on 1x which was a little bummer for me. Didn’t notice it until the DVD was 60% done. Burn process took almost an hour to do. It soon was dark out because we live in the upper atmosphere of the world when it almost snows. Right now it’s too warm to snow – but give it 2 or 3 weeks and it will. Nights get down to around 60 degrees. Randy had his girlfriend over. He asked me when I was getting one. I answered, “I really didn’t need one.” I was going to say my girlfriend is my computer, man. Sometime crazy like that, but I didn’t. His girlfriend asked something stupid (she didn’t think so) “So are you going to play football or NFL?” she asks. She was talking about Soccer because she knew I was brought soccer over.) She calls soccer - football and football - NFL. And I answered, “This is the US we call football soccer” Then she said, “No it’s football.” My point is I called her stupid. She’s only a high school student. Who ever doesn’t know what soccer is must be stupid. She got confused and I felt guilty so I apologized calling her stupid. Anyways, we played ESPN Football 2K5. Randy agreed with me that ESPN Football 2K5 had better graphics, better music selection, and tighter controls than Madden 2005. He even likes the cheer leaders in my game than in Madden 2004. The cheerleaders were a bit more detailed and all of them were wearing mini-skirts which gave them the “edge”. There is nothing like low-poly cheerleaders in a football game to make you pissed off. They also, to my surprise, do a lot of movement with their cheerleader dance—thing they do. Score one for Sega for even caring! The control is really good although my friend doesn’t think so.

After ESPN, I put in Winning Eleven Soccer 7 for PS2. It’s supposed to be the best soccer game in existence. EA Sports franchise may have gotten into the Guinness’s Book of World Records as most realistic 3D soccer simulation, but I have to disagree on this footnote. WES7 is pretty much makes FIFA (EA Sports) look small compared to it’s superior graphics. Xbox owners never fear – Winning Eleven 8 International is coming to Xbox as well as PS2. The Xbox controllers have less buttons than the Dual Shock controller which might be a problem. WES is made by Konami and published by Konami. I played him and the first game was really cool. He scored a goal in the first half (Argentina) against me (England) and I scored on his goalie in the 2nd half in which we didn’t score in the first or second overtimes. He’s mastered the goalie shootout and beat me more times. Interesting enough mine kept hitting the goal post in which it should of when it…meh. But all is good! The game did this on purpose because I had the joystick all the way right for this too happen. Never happened to Randy. After Soccer, we watched Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Randy never seen this movie. He doesn’t even like RPGs. He thought the movie was good though. Only cost me 10 bucks at the Toyriffic. I told him that it’s like Final Fantasy 10 FMV for 1.5 hours. Didn’t answer. There is a lot of razzle dazzle in the game! Like the Japs say it …… razzal dazzle. I read some reviews and the reviews all basically say that the movie comes from a game and has no real story. The animation is meant to look real – which if it was that case they would use real actors right? Wrong! This is a technical achievement – would have one Academy Award for special effects if most movie critics hated it. They didn’t see it was way ahead of it’s time – just like 2001: A Space Odyssey. Instead they gave the awards to Shrek, a kid’s movie. Three years after the film was made, Shrek and Shrek II come close but not beyond The Spirits Within. Yet I can see that it’s not a brilliant movie and has it’s flaws – it’s a fantasy movie like the name applies. Maybe Final Fantasy means (fantasy adventure) at the end of phantom’s existence. Squaresoft actually used Maya (which is a modeling program), and applied the highest resolution models to this movie. The movie was staffed by 100s of character design talent, background artists, movie script people, etc. At least Square didn’t have to pay the actors as much to voice act the whole movie. The voice acting was done in a studio like any cartoon. (watch the screen and speak at the same time – really this is how it’s done) The graphics engine if you will is Square Picture’s graphics engine is called “Scooby” (like Scooby-Doo) or “SQuare Batch Processing.” Most character’s averaged out about 300,000 polygons. And most interesting to me is probably the most obvious is the programmers used American (white and black people) instead of Asian. The game takes place in post World War III in year 2065. World War III wasn’t a fight against man or territory, but instead the existence of man as a species.

If you techies find this interesting I found this off Arstchnica which had an exclusive technical discussion about the film in general.
The movie technical specs :
• Number of Sequences = 36
• Number of Shots = 1,336
• Number of Layers = 24,606
• Number of Final Renders (Assuming that > everything was rendered once) = 2,989,318
• Number of Frames in the Movie = 149,246
o Average number of shots per sequence = 37.11
o Average number of rendered layers per shot = 18.42
o Average number of frames per shot = 111.71
o Estimated average number of render revisions = 5
o Estimated average render time per frame = 90 min
• Shot with the most layers = (498 layers)
• Shot with the most frames = (1899 frames)
• Shot with the most renders [layers * frames] = (60160 renders)
• Sequence with the most shots = (162 shots)
• Sequence with the most layers = AIR (4353 layers)
• Sequence with the most frames = (13576 frames)

“Using the raw data (not the averages) it all adds up to 934,162 days of render time on one processor. Keep in mind that we had a render farm with approximately 1,200 procs.”

Another Interesting note in the movie making is to turn off all the hot pixels, the whole film went through a “smoothing process” eliminating artifacts (what ever they are) from the film. Pixar (which created Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monster’s Inc for Walt Disney) has it’s part in this movie as well. Pixar actually let Square use their software, “Renderman”, to help render the movie. I couldn’t imagine how powerful the processing movie they needed to render the movie.
Anyway, I read Randy like a book. He wanted to beat me in all those games and say that he was better than I. I, of course, attempted to prove him wrong. Hey, I wonder since it’s a CGI movie that it’ll automatically look better when it’s released on HD-DVD, which is going to start appearing in 2005. What’s stunning about Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within is Square-soft broke even on production at Home Box Office and DVD/ VHS sales. They didn’t make as much money as they would-have hoped, but a profit none-the-less! Finally, what I agree with the film is the film isn’t realistic. You’re talking about computer animation not real life. It’s a cartoon really. Cartoons move and talk like humans too. This is just a very high resolution life-like computer animated movie that acts and feels like Earth AD 2065! Ever watch Titan AE? AE stands for “After Earth.” That was an animated film also based on futuristic Earth although the movie was animated (I call it American Anime or Western Anime), it did have computer generated background effects with it.

His computer was down – it was in a sense, a worthless piece of crap. The OS had boot-up errors. He wants his OS up and running and it has the blue screen of death on after the Windows boot logo. AKA someone’s been deleted System files O_o. Randy won’t admit it though. Randy’s computer data is screwed – but he thinks there is a way out. I told him there is a way He won’t tell me what happened. I told him I could get it too work for him. He’s a stubborn little fella. I wanted to help get his data back. Secret…KNOPPIX :)

Source: Interview

MRAM to replace dynamic RAM in 7 years!

We know how that computer technology is advancing rapidly. In fact, it was nearly a year ago I got almost the fastest computer out with a monster GPU along with it. Now there is two ways I can go with this – the super computer route or the consumer route. I decided to go the consumer route partly because I already wrote an entry on Super Computers. It’s not how fast computers are getting as much as how small you can get them. The most obvious thing is lap tops – a miniature desktop computer. I mean I’ve seen this neck and neck. Laptops now come with a Pentium 4 at 3GHz and 1 GB of RAM which was pretty much how fast my XPS was a year ago. Computers soon are used in videogame consoles. In 2000, a PS2 essentially had to raw data processing power of a 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3 CPU. The Xbox actually uses a modified Pentium 3 at 733 MHz, 64 MB of SDRAM, and a 128-bit Geforce 3 to power its graphics. The Xbox costs less than the less technically superior Playstation 2 (it was 3 before LOL!). I don’t think a shelved Geforce 3 had a 128-bit cache in it besides the Xbox version. PC graphics surpassed Xbox graphics in summer 2002.

- Best New Technology of 2004 -

MRAM (Magnetic Random Access Memory) This one I find the most interesting. This RAM uses magnets to store large amounts of data in its memory banks temporary which of course is good for graphics applications. This will soon make electronic pulse SDRAM and RDRAM obsolete. It also has better power usage making this RAM more efficient than SDRAM or RDRAM. I don’t know if MRAM is made for Super computers now-a-days or what’s the case. Super Computers would benefit for this new RAM and be able to do a lot more in less time. Wikipedia states that MRAM will start appearing in home PCs in 2005. Remember this is only the first generation. Two months away – I remember when it was mid 2003 and I got out of high school. Maybe my next PC should have 1 GB of MRAM in it?

Basic Advantages:

1. Boot up computers without BIOS boot-up processes (which isn’t that big of deal)
2. Because it’s very cheaply made, MRAM will be so small current technology in PCs will not be able to compete very well from what the net says
3. In the works for 30 years
4. First successful MRAM chip built in 1998
5. Major leap from Dynamic RAM
6. Random Access Memory based on the same technology used of DVDs and CDs only they are ROM or read only memory.
7. First Generation can store 128 GB/sec and 40 MB per/second
8. Beats the crap out of SDRAM technology so badly it’s not even funny anymore.
9. Probably will be 1 to 2 years before products start using magnetic technology
10.) First Generation will use .18 micron technology.

Just think about Magnetic memory – think in the future you can burn data to a magnetic circular media more advanced than DVD (like a hard drive) only saved concretely. Okay for the average person – it would like a 10,000x DVD-RW drive. Pretty cool huh? That would make your portable DVD player have twice the battery life. Some people disagree with it. MRAM seems very cool and all but it takes 6 seconds to boot up my computer if you count at a normal pace and not really fast. Much like the issue with Playstation 3 I think the only reason I’ll need CDs in 3 years is if I want to play older games. Unreal Tournament 2004, Doom3, The Sims 2 come on DVD now and there is hardly any slow down playing DVDs on DVD-ROM vs. playing CDs on DVD-ROM. By the time that most games are on DVD format, everyone will have DVD-ROM faster than 8x reading speed which is the minimum anyone would want to read game discs.

One thing I don’t understand about MRAM is that every computer today needs a BIOS to recognize optimal drives, hard drives and operating systems, PS2 ports, video card.

In an MRAM chip, only a small amount of electricity is needed to store bits of data. This small amount of electricity switches the polarity of each memory cell on the chip. A memory cell is created when wordlines (rows) and bitlines (columns) on a chip intersect. Each one of these cells stores a 1 or a 0, representing a piece of data. MRAM promises to combine the high speed of static RAM (SRAM), the storage capacity of DRAM and the non-volatility of Flash memory.

- 2nd best computer technology of 2004 -

BD disc (Blu-Ray) – This new media can store up to 25 GB on one side. However, if it’s dual layered than it can store 50 GB. This new technology is developed by Sony and Panasonic and a 1x BDRW can burn 36 MB / second. First customer device with this new technology probably will be Playstation 3. The discs can be made cheaper than DVDs and the drives can read data 10 times as fast. Single layer "BDs" will come in 23.3GB, 25 GB and 27 GB storages. It looks like 23.3 GB disc will be the most common amongst PC drives to prevent piratacy of 25 GB and 27 GB BDs. Besides compression wise - I bet anyone could fit 25 GBs worth of data on a single 23.3 GB BD. The PS3 will use a Blu-ray drive to run it's software. This doesn't mean that all games have to be on BD and can continue to support DVDs like Xbox and PS2 have done for 4 years. These high priced BDs are already out.



I found interesting news also on BD movie's video-codec. Since BD-ROM players will be unique might as well support a new video codec as well. This new codec is called VC-1 and it's developed by Microsoft. It's suppose to be as compressed as DIVX or XVID except all quality will be very high resolution. It will do a better job at compressing high def video than MPEG 4 probably can. BDs can be made less expensively than DVDs are, but knowing that techicially they hold much more than DVDs - BDs will sell twice as much at Best Buy or CompUSA whereas online stores can sell them a bit cheaper. BDs are coming out next year to the masses! Yay!

Company alliance developing Blu-Ray includes :

Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Thomson Multimedia

Concept Art




One thing I did do is update I.Q.B. to version 2.0.6 which I worked on October 08th. As usual I like to search Google for Xbox 2 specs impressions. I already know the real specs were leaked onto the Internet since June. One thing is true – Microsoft likes to loose money on CPUs because a 3.5 GHz CPU will cost them a lot of money. My point is I’ve bought 25 games for my Xbox and even though 2/3 of them were pre-owned, I probably paid Microsoft their debt to make my Xbox with new games. I bought Fable, Rallisport Challenge 2, and Tony Hawk Underground totaling 120 dollars when I bought them new.

Well here are some Photoshop concept art of Xbox 2 and Nintendo Revolution I found off various places so I shrunk them into a much smaller size and posted them on my server.

Is Nintendo Nitro the official name for Project Revolution? It’s only a rumor, but it’s funny because I mentioned “Nitro” as a possible Xbox 2 name in my “Will Videogames play PC games?” post about a month ago. It originally was supposed to be the ‘real’ name for Nintendo Dual Screen. Strangely, I’ve gotten 145 hits within a month on that entry. Not to common for me. Something about that post must interest people. I’m guessing they all want to see my ‘real’ videogame collection images, but I’m not sure since the title was about pc games playing on videogame consoles. I posted something 5 months ago listing every videogame I have and it since then became the most popular post on my blog.

Share your comments on this MRAM deal or comment how realistic the Xbox 2 photoshop art is. I think the concept is really cool. I like the second picture.

Bought a Genesis today at Toyriffic

I bought a Sega Genesis today. Added more old school to my collection. This so happens to be today’s topic. Let’s see, I asked a Toyriffic personnel and Super Nintendo was bigger than Genesis. Genesis also had a bigger life by 1 ½ years as many people know. Sega’s main mascot was Alex the Kidd before Sonic was became their big mascot. Yes, according to him, Super Nintendo was THE top competitor in the 16-bit era. Sega was 2nd best until 1993 when Sega pulled ahead for a bit, probably because they released Sonic 3 and Shinobi 3. For 100 dollars I got a Sega Genesis version 3 in good condition, Contra Hard Corps, Contra III, and Sonic 3. For 10 more dollars, I could have gotten a 2nd X-Box. The thought passed my mind at home and than again when I’d got back home. Toyriffic didn’t have Shinobi I, II, or III. O-well. All I wanted was Contra Hard Corps. I knew what I was getting because luckily I had the ROM. It’s pretty good game I think. For some reason I got farther on CHC on the emulator then playing with a Genesis controller. I hope I got a Genesis for the right reasons and not just to add more games to my collection. Yes, I was playing Contra Hard Corps for 3 hours after I got home. The sad part is there is no one I can share my opinions on any of my games. I feel really bad about it.



Here are the conditions of the Sega Genesis and software:

1. Genesis – condition 8 out of 10 – no problems playing the games although the RF input has to be tight against the console for anything to show for some reason. Some scratches too.
2. Sonic 3 – condition 7/10 – This has been a rental game, but it was free with purchase, game works great though, but looks like it’s been played a lot.
3. Contra Hard Corps – condition 7.5/10 – also a rental game when I bought it. Plays well. It looks like for Hard Corps – the publisher Konami, manufactured the game as well. Cost 16 dollars
4. Contra 3 – condition 9.0 – looks very nice – no visible scratches on the cartridge, but the sticker looks slightly worn around the edges. 25 dollars.

I learned that the prequel to Contra 3 wasn’t Hard Corps, but called C2 – Contra for Super NES. The original was published for NES. The later games for Playstation and PS2 aren’t very good, but the originals are a lot better. I don’t hate my decision though.

Games I want for Genesis are:

1. Gunstar Heroes (side shooter made by Treasure which makes one of the top 5 games out for Saturn, Radiant Silvergun, a very hard game to find)
2. Alien Soldier (side shooter made by Treasure after Gunstar Heroes was released)

I saw Shadow Hearts Covenant at the Toyriffic. I really wanted it, but decided to go forth with my Genesis purchase. For some reason, it wasn’t at Target or could have been sold out. I might buy this next time because I’m into RPGs. I read the reviews and I usually trust IGN or Gamefaqs and learned that this game is a dramatic improvement over Shadow Hearts. The RPG takes place in an alternate 1911 at the beginning of World War I. It’s based on anime (which I don’t think I support – but it’s got an awesome weapon system from what I hear). I don’t know much about it except some people say that it’s one of the best RPGs out for PS2. This is hard to except because I haven’t heard about this game coming out until it was out.

There is another game called Sly 2 I want but it’s not as important as SHC. I’m getting a little old for platform games although this one is truly as good as the best which is Rachet and Clank. I got far in Rachet 1, haven’t played Rachet 2 though which is too bad. The first game was very fun until I got stuck - it probably was very simple too. I deleted the game save so it may be too much trouble to start over.

Will the top game for PS2 always be Final Fantasy X or Madden Football 2005 long after PS2 is dead? Square-soft always comes out with a better Final Fantasy every year with better visuals, better game play, iffy music (review sites say it’s better when in fact SNES had some of the best tunes), but to make up for it - breathtaking FMV and fully voiced in-game cutscenes. I only completed Final Fantasy X one time through and played half time through 2 times. It was really good, and the ending was alright for anime, but I don’t think I will play it again for another year. We might see Final Fantasy XIII on Microsoft Xenon as well as Playstation 3, but it’s only a rumor ever since Square-Enix announced a game in development for Project Xenon. There has been new news according to Gameindustry.biz the Xbox technology team is developing a heavily modified Virtual PC X86 emulator so that it would emulate XBOX games and is great news for future Xbox 2 owners. If Xbox 2 becomes a hit (MS states that their in this for long term), the development team labor and research will more than pay for itself.

Random thoughts

To begin my Friday, I had a lab project to do with a group and I showed up at WITC at 12:30 like I was supposed too, but I drove in a frickin rain storm which probably has everything to do with why no one showed up to complete the lab project due Tuesday. So the night before I did my own project, it wasn’t very difficult. Like most storms, the wind shield fogs up and I need to put on some heat to prevent this. I was going to go to the Gamestore at around 4PM, but I wanted to be sure what I was going to spend my money on. Later today, I might invest money into a Genesis version 3. I don’t know but I might get Shinobi II Revenge of Shinobi. Genesis is 40 bucks anyways. I already have copies of that popular hedgehog trilogy for Gamecube. Sonic on Nintendo – this isn’t right – did Sega finally sell out? Ya, it may have been a bit of a culture shock when he first appeared on Gamecube though. At least I know I had to stare at the box for 10 minutes first time I saw it. I guess I could also buy Contra Hard Corps or Alien Soldier at Toyriffic. Still have to decide whether or not I want to support a 12th platform or not. I was thinking of owning that “other” 16-bit platform even before I bought SNES earlier this year – but because I favored Mario over Sonic, it sorta reversed my final decision. Why do I pick Genesis after all these years you ask? Different games and Sega published games for that matter. I could just as easily spend money on the other 11 platforms I have. In fact, I doubt I’ll go forth with owning a 12th platform this month.

I thought this would be a great topic for today. The topic is can anyone imagine a videogame console without Japanese animation? Even Xbox has it. Today, I had a discussion with my cousin via MSN Messenger. He normally doesn’t like to run the discussion so I have too or there would be no discussion. David is in the Navy and he’s in Japan (14 hours ahead of me) I asked him “Why does Japanese imports always have anime or hendai” in them?” He wouldn’t ask that. I say anime look bad. Okay? Metal Gear Solid is based on Solid Snake, a commando anime character with attitude. So the plot is why are these Japanese culture-related “R” films or “M” games have animation that look similar to Pokemon or Sailor Moon? I do understand that it all started with Astro Boy in the 1960s until the mid-80s when it exploded. In Game Informer Magazine, half the page contents are focused on anime or hendai themed games of some sort. America should be against this. To most people it’s just another form of animation. To me it’s the Japanese imposters trying to over-throw the American game industry and who knows what else. They are – seriously! They want all of the game industry to belong to them! We must boycott Japanese imports. It’s bad enough we have G4-TECHTV showing their Anime Unleashed block 4 hours every day (I was a fan of TechTV, not G4-TechTV), but then why is Metal Gear Solid 2 so popular then? I don’t completely know why computer geeks like anime? MGS2’s game play is better than 95% of games out there on PS2, and it’s voice acting is unmatched from what I read off IGN. Solid Snake sounds very professional. It does sound like a Hollywood film. I can say this because I own the game too. My cousin got me because I told him to download Cowboy Bebop episodes off Kazaa. The truth is I haven’t seen that on Cartoon Network for months and forgot all about it. Really - I did! I know many of you could care less about which I should do, but I either support Japanese animation or am I totally against the whole thing? I want to say I’m against it, but I would loose all my RPGs that I play off and on. I’m an anime hater RPG fan that plays Japanese imports anyway. See, I’m not afraid to admit it. For some strange reason I like Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball. In this case “graphics” has double meaning. The game is technically advance over 90% of console games out there, and there are virtual babes on the scene, but nothing to wet my pants over. I would only wet my pants when Half-life 2 comes out – oh yeah - I almost did when I first ran Doom 3 on my home PC. Agree with the extreme polygon ratios – damn, it’s like 300% that of any PS2 game. Yes, it’s true if I set it too near MAX everything. But still though – no one can deny Doom 3 is currently state-of-the-art in graphics and a step ahead of 9 out of 10 games out for PC today.

I’m trying to imagine PS2 without anime or hendai would be like:

Erasing all RPGS off the system including Final Fantasy, Star Ocean, Grandia, Nippin Inchi titles, Suideoken games, Kingdom Hearts, Dark Cloud, Tales of Destiny, .Hack, Xenosaga, Shin Megami Tensei games, Shadow Hearts
No Devil May Cry
No Castlevania
No Dead or Alive 2
No Soul Caliber 2
No Resident Evil games
No Zone of the Enders
No Front Mission
No Fatal Frame franchise
No Virtua Fighter
No Shinobi
No Nightshade
No ridge racer
No Tekken

And then trying to imagine Xbox without anime or hendai would be like:

Erasing all the 3D fighting games
No Panzer Dragoon games
No beach volleyball games from Tecmo
No Japanese games whatsoever and there aren’t that many to begin with

My second discussion about this was when David and I use to play Sonic 2 and Jungle Strike on Sega Genesis. I bought him Sonic 3D Blast for his birthday which means we played within a year of the next generation consoles’ debut. I know now that Sonic 3D Blast was the worst Sonic game ever name. Oops. I was a little confused because I saw Genesis version 3 on the shelf so as a kid I didn’t realize that Saturn, N64, or Playstation were out. I know Genesis has been died for 8 years – some say 10 years ever since Sega brought Saturn to stores. This was before I owned any electronic game console of my own. This is SEGA though. I told him that if SEGA made a Dreamcast 2, I would buy it. That’s the climax. Now SEGA games are scattered across 5 platforms (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Gameboy Advance, Nokia Ngage) In 1999 and 2000, he and I played Dreamcast like most would normally play Playstation 2. I was shocked that Dreamcast would be short lived. In fact, I was going to buy the successor to Dreamcast if there ever was one.

I found out some interesting polls on which console is better:

PC Engine place 1st
Xbox place 2nd
PS2 place 3rd
Gamecube place 4th

For Xbox, the best thing that it has a hard drive to store game saves and the worst is the bulky controller. 75% of the poll suggests that the Xbox controller is too big to play on and the Gamecube controller is very oddly configured. The real answer here is how to make a controller as close as the PS2 controller (Dual Shock 2) without getting into a law suit with Sony. The biggest disadvantage of PS2 is that it’s graphical GIGA-FLOP power, but the best advantage is the variety of good games out for it. To give you an idea of how much 1 gigaflop is – the Dreamcast could do a maximum of 1.2 Gigaflops like in games Quake III Arena, Sonic Adventure 2, Grandia 2 or Skies of Arcadia that really show the consoles abilities. The PS2 can do about 6 gigaflops. Gamecube’s advantage is often seen that it comes out with the best 1st party titles of the 3 competitors. The worst part is that it can not play movies which are totally out of whack since the Panasonic Q DOES exist, and this wouldn’t be the case if the most wasn’t referring to the norm. PC Engine is preferred to the best because it has the most games (which is kind of unfair in this sense) I would think that this answer is illegal although it is true according to a few polls on the net.

The way I see it is I’m never buying new again. Used Xboxes are not only less expensive, they come with the previous user’s game saves most of the time. The only time I should buy new is if I collect them and want an unopened Xbox to show off when it is antique. I buy to play it – not for showcase. Therefore, buying used doesn’t bother me.

This is Ian signing off.