Media Create Software Sales: 8 - 14 Aug:
#1: Jump Super Stars: Nintendo: 220,912: new

I broke down and got a game that I initially decided not to. It is not a bad game, and it is super fan-service-y. I like it, very much.

That sounded great. Let me try again.

I went to meet up with a few friends on Saturday at a store I had never been to: GameWare in Baton Rouge. I had heard quite a few things about it, but never been. So I get there and imeadtly notice it is not an arcade, it is a game store with an arcade in back (a bemani-heavy one to boot). After getting just a bit into the store I notice a box for a pink DS. What the hell.

Yes, this store sold imports too. I was shocked at the DS thing, but I figured with an EB in the mall so close that it seemed about right to need something to compete against them. Then I saw Jump Superstars.

I wrote this game off at first. It looked like ass. Why is it that all DS games look worse than they do in action? Anyways, I had heard from a friend that the game should not be written off so quickly if you are a fan of Shonen Jump manga. As a subscriber to the monthly and being in possession of many volumes of the books I looked deeper.

After looking at a list of playable characters (which I initially thought would be small) I decided I needed this game. I could put together an awesome team comprised of:

Jotaro Kujo & Star Platinum
Dio & The World
Rock Lee
Kenshin Himura
Sanosuke Sagara
Hajime Saito
Hikaru Shindo & Fujiwara no Sai
Yoh Asakura
Anna Kyoyama
Hiei

So far I only have Jotaro and Yoh. I guess that to get Kenshin that I need to play through most of the game before I can open him.

I started to play the game FAQ-less. I made it through mission mode of the JP release of Soul Calibur back when it came out for the DC. “I can do this” I thought. Wrong. After I had about 25 serif komas (unlocked manga panesl for characters that are missing the face of the character which you need to put in) I realised that I needed a FAQ.

I just went and took everyone based on their manga (like all of the Bobobo-bo bo-bobo single komas) and then went through all of the serif komas with each manga. Lucily I started with OnePeice, which solved most of them. I should go back and read the One Piece manga that I have so I can get a better idea of these characters.

Anyways, after about an hour yesterday afternoon I got it down to only 3 serif konas. I am going to print out the mission guide FAQ with kona unlock at work today. I mean, it is not really cheating, if you can read Japanese all this stuff is pretty obvious.

Also: I really want one of these:

I just finished 2 of the worst days in my life. Well, ok, nothing seriously or even critically terrible happen, but I was treated like shit at work. So, lets simplify that into, 2 of the worst work days in my life… well in the past 3.5 years anyways, I got transferred from my last job because of bullshit like this.

It is days like the past two that make me say to people “Yes, I will be getting out of the military after 7 years in.”
”But why? You are almost halfway to retirement then. If you stay in you could retire at age 39!”
”Yes, but I hate being in the military. I want to go back to school and do a job I enjoy.”

No one gets me. They look at me as if horns grow from my eyes. My life has never been about money, as long as I have enough to eat and get electricity.

Gaahhh, tonight I shall drink sake and watch some pretensions film. Go me.

For the past 1 and some odd years I have been playing Symphony of the night on and off. I picked up a Greatest Hits version for like $15 new at Sam’s Club. Hell it could have been longer ago. Late 2003 was when it was.

Let’s go back a little further than that.

Back when I was a Junior in High School SotN came out for the PS1. I was working at Blockbuster at the time. I heard tons of great comments about the game, and I remembered really enjoying the first 2 Castlevania games. So I rented the game for free and “beat it” in about 6 or 7 hours.

Too damn easy. Fun, but not Castlevania. Almost though.

I did buy a GBA for the new Castlevania anyways. It was more what I was looking for, but still not quite right. I figured out what was “not quite” with that game a few years later, but that is a tale for a different time. The reason I bring it up at all is because during a conversation about it I found out about the upside-down castle.

This spurred me to track down a copy of it, but ebay at the time (and people selling it used) had super inflated prices. Somewhere in a stock house at Sony⿿s disc pressing factory tons of the GH version of the game must have been missed. All of a sudden the $50 used game went from rare to easily obtainable. Lucky me to come across it.

Slowly over time I picked apart the game an hour or so at a time⿦ for the past 2 years. I never looked at a FAQ or a exposed map and finally, on Tuesday night, I finished the upside down castle with 193.6%.

There was a point for a while that I felt stupid for not figuring out what to do to beat Dracula not Richter. I knew what I had to be wearing to see him, but could not find it. How I missed the Succubus area is beyond me, but I passed it up dozens of times wandering the castle.

The upside-down castle itself was hard. It was good to get kicked in the nuts a few times. It reminded me that Castlevania can be hard. I died more times in the second half of SotN than in Harmony of Dissonance (over 4 run throughs, once in hard and with Maxim) and Aria of Sorrow (2 run throughs, the second was Julius in hard mode) combined.

Overall, the game is good. Damn good. Not quite Rondo of Blood good, but close. Now I need to get an exposed map and find all the things I missed (I was told that over 196% gets a different end). It is weird. I don⿿t feel relieved or anything that a game I have been playing this long is finally done. It is also weird that it took so damn long to finish.

I recently made an executive decision in order to help out The Gamer’s Quarter to pimp my soul out to Ziff Davis. I am going to cross post all game related posts over to there now. I am also going to attempt to do fancy things to gain attention there. I have done some image stuff here, but most is copy and paste work. I am going to attempt to make things look more personal to grab people’s attention to me and TGQ.

I feel like a whore, but interest of the magazine wanes so-o much between issues that it seems like a ghost town at times.

If you have a 1up blog, friend me please: http://shapermc.1up.com/

Just as a side note, we really need a bit of help with designers for layouts of The Gamer’s Quarter.

I finished Riviera: The Promised Land last night. It was a pretty good RPG, and this coming from someone who generally detests the genera.

I got the game for one of the most minor details that it offers: the relationships. I had heard that there were dating sim like elements to the game. I had no idea how small they were though. Most of them are related to not insulting someone’s weight, clothes or looks.

This made me miss more than one item.

But the game was fun. It never felt big. The scope and focus was always tight so that you did not get lost or confused. It took me about two weeks playing here and there to finish it up and my in game clock read at 30:21:00 or something. I know that 5 of those hours were the GBA just sitting off to the side not being used.

But I like the date-sim like elements. I liked the story. It was only half cliched, and humurous about it too. It was like a recipe for a new game: two parts RPG, one part SRPG, one part story, and a dash of date-sim. It worked out, but leaves many aspects of it hard to define. Durring points it almost seemed like it was an evolution of a text adventure.

And then I barged in on them taking a bath.

There was enough for me not to get bored with the game more than once or twice, which usually happens from repeat excercises in random battles. Which, there really aren’t any, that is to say, they are all self inflicted. I never really felt that I was leveling up in the game either. I was training to get proficient with weapons. I hated going into battle and grabbing a weapon I was not proficient with. So I only “trained” when necessary; all battles were significant in some way to me in this game.

The game was also perfect for a portable system. It was simple, most battle were fast, and it was not too long. There are other factors to this that I cannot put my finger on that make it work well for a portable platform. I think some of it was the simplicity of the battles. Probably just an overall simplicity that goes through out the game, even down to how you explore the enviroments.

Lina was my “favorite” character as decided by the game. I stopped choosing favorites towards the middle of the game and just went with natural choices, but I always had a soft spot for Lina’s character.

I got my iPod working again. If you are getting an mp3 player and use a non Mac/Apple PC don’t get an iPod is all I can say.

This weekend I plan to finish another article and mail it to Toups, finish Riviera and watch some movies. I will also play Pop’n Music most likely.

So, yea, I am back from vacation. I am pretty much caught up with LJ entries, mostly just skimmed, but I responded to a few.

My iPod is dead. Well, not entirely. While hauling it a pocket of my laptop backpack I leaned into a cooler to grab a coke. The iPod fell in and then proceeded to scare the living fuck out of me. I let it sit for over 24 hours then tried it. It somehow worked! I used it for an hour then the battery was almost dead. So I charged it. I don’t know how, but later that day I went back into the room and it was not plugged into the wall anymore and in a different location. So… yes, now the buttons and touch stuff don’t work. The library is ok and I can access it from my PC, but I can’t get anything to happen when I hit buttons on it. PISSED OFF. Sometime the apple will come up and it will load or something, but then I still can’t hit any buttons. I am going to see what I need to do to fix this. FUCK!

Other than that I watched Onibaba again last night. I still really enjoyed it. My wife did not. . . I … don’t know what to say. I really want to talk about films that I watch but all I can do is read essays about them afterwards and most of the time those essays are not too great.

Things kind of suck. I have an article I am almost done with that I want to bounce off Toups. I have feel really busy and backed up from my vacation, even though I don’t think I am. My real job is bouncing me around and I don’t know where to. I am also mildly tired of discussing Killer 7 because the conversation always seems to start over every time I talk about it.

Hell, I just complained for most of an entry, sorry.

family
Originally uploaded by Shapermc.

Well I am back. This picture is of my direct family. My family from left to right: Orion (baby), Rick, My Dad, My Mom, Becky (sister), Me, Sara (wife). This was while we were camping in TN, right outside the cabin. You can check my other few photos by clicking the one here and going to my flickr account.

I have not gone back and read everyone’s journals yet, but I will get to it soon hopefully. Please let me know what I have missed since last Wed. by linking me.

So I am about 2 hours away from making an 8 hour drive to Springfield, TN to go camping with my Parent, sister and nephew. It should be fun. I will probably be back on Monday night. I have looked, and it looks like I will get neither cellphone or internet service where I am going.

Don’t blame me, I did not pick the location.

I have resolved to play through Super Mario Bros. 3 if I get the chance while camping. I also hope to make it through the coliseum in Circle of the Moon, one of the things I have never quite accomplished. That aside, just relaxing. I brought 2 books, and perhaps, in some strange campfire moment, I will be inspired to write some things I have had in the works for far too long.

Fair winds my friends!

DUO4
Originally uploaded by Shapermc.

As you can see I got a PCE Duo. I have spent quite a bit of time wanting one, but now I have it and Atomic Robo Kid. I can now play Dracula X: Rondo of Blood on my TV. YAY!

Also I have been spending quite a bit of time with Riviera and Pop’n 11. Both are pretty great games.