Entries Tagged 'General' ↓

I have decided that next week will be the end of my commercial freelancing career. I won’t stop writing completely, but with a return to both work and study, I cannot commit to regular pieces and commercial pressures. I’ll still continue to produce content for this blog and Retro Gaming Australia, however. I have been writing about games in some capacity for 10 years – now I can worry less about being on the cutting edge, and play games for fun.

Decided to pull my finger out and get started on the projects I wanted to work on this year. The first one is a retro gaming community site with a forum and blog. I’ve registered the domain www.retrogamingaus.com for it. Once the domain is ready, I can start work on that.

The intention behind the site was to establish a local community hub for fans of older consoles, where they can discuss the games of yore with folks who share their interest, and hopefully foster some sort of trading forum so we can get the things we want, in the condition we want, without dealing with the undesirables of the world.

My other project is working on cutting down my substantial gaming backlog. I would like to see the backlog fall under 400 by the end of the year. It’s currently 424, and there are some easy games on there to get it down – the trouble is just making sure new games don’t pile up. Not that it will be a problem with my lack of income for the first six months of this year.

Managed to fail keeping this up to date like I said I would, but it is still my intention to do so, especially now that my freelance work has hit the skids and I’m essentially back to studying. I think I can also attribute some of the blame toward having left Uncharted 2 to become my main present for Christmas, despite the fact it’s one of the most important/critically acclaimed titles of the year.

More reviews will be incoming, hopefully we can build something out of it here. Site most definitely needs a facelift. I’d like to do audio and video things, but I need training and other (preferrably competent and reliable) people to work with on such ventures.

It’s been a month since I’ve done anything on there, the reason being that I’ve been in a bit of a flux over whether I should continue to write. My position at Games On Net, though always historically a freelance one, has been marginalised to the point where I do not expect that my services will be required by the editor in 2010.

That’s kind of a problem to someone who was once deriving a livable income from the site, so I’ve had to re-examine the prospect of returning to full time accounting, which I will be doing mid next year. First, I have to catch up on multiple CPA subjects, which I cannot do while working full time.

At this point in time, I have no intention of stopping writing. It’ll remain a side endeavour while I work full time, but I am seriously considering just continuing to review games on this blog, and hopefully for a few other sites if I can build some better contacts.

I’m thinking 500-1000 words in length with a rating from zero to four stars. I feel five stars gives reviewers too safe a middle ground where they can slap every average game into that 3/5 rating with soft justification.

I still have the intention of producing some sort of video review show, but I think that will have to wait until I have the money to invest in a proper camera.

Copped it again. Not sending this one in for repair since it’s out of warranty – going to hold out until the 23rd for the pricedrop + Halo 3 ODST bundle. In the mean time, I can use Charly’s machine to get my work done.

Time for some quick capsule reviews in the mean time.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
The Layton sequel brings more of the same sorts puzzles and mystery solving – fortunately it fantastic the first time around and works well again here.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Battle of the Androgynous Sissy Boys with a decent fighting system and solid RPG elements surrounding it. Jarring difference in the quality of character conception between the first six Final Fantasy heroes and the later four.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Latest Caped Crusader outing is one of only two games he’s in that doesn’t make me want to puke. Succeeds as both a Batman product and a video game due to high production values (including the involvement of the animated series crew) and some fantastic gameplay that makes players feel like Batman for once.

Too many games are released with the subtitles Heroes, Origins and Legends. I propose that we outlaw these subtitles. To appease the poor sods in marketing who rely on these titles, I suggest consulting a thesaurus.

How about an example. Instead of Origins, why not use Genesis, Alpha or Emergence? They convey the same thing, but sound cooler, and haven’t been run into the ground.

As promised earlier in the month, I’ve taken pictures of everything we picked up in our video game collecting adventures this month. Well, except for this month’s review code and the copy of Empire: Total War Charly bought me as a present.

Before we get started, I should probably discuss our methodology. I personally have five rules for collecting at the moment. First of all, games need to, at minimum, include the game, original case and manual (and in the case of Japanese games, spine cards) in a good condition without external damage or large numbers of stickers. Where possible I like to also have cardboard inserts. Secondly, if we are buying replacement items (in cases where original is an inferior version or incomplete), the original must be sold to subsidise the replacement. Third, absolutely no first party Nintendo 64 games from the UK/Europe. They were sold with this horrid black border around them until 2000 – I have a Wave Race 64 from there, though it only cost me about $5 complete. Fourth, any consoles we buy need to be complete with manuals – packing materials would be nice too. The fifth rule is more of a word of advice and encouragement in the event we miss something we want: Unless it’s a prototype, you will always see it again.

We’ll start with Dreamcast this month. I didn’t put too much focus on it because I’m still looking for a more official/better boot disc than the Utopia one. I grabbed Giant Gram 2000: All Japan Pro-Wrestling 3 and Shenmue Chapter I: Yokosuka from Play-Asia, new for $US9.90 each.

Somewhere along the way, Game Boy Advance became my primary focus for this month. I’ve basically decided that now is the time to get on top of the GBA – most games are still available new or in very good condition at a reasonable price (excluding Tactics Ogre and Ninja Cop, which we want).

- Astro Boy: Omega Factor – $14.85
- Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge – $20.50
- Bubble Bobble: Old & New – $11.78
- Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance – $30.00
- Kuru Kuru Kururin – $14.50
- Mario vs. Donkey Kong – $20.50
- Metroid: Zero Mission – $36.09
- Phantasy Star Collection – $18.04
- Pokémon Emerald – $20.50
- Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon – $31.59
- Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 4 – $41.00
- Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation – $7.00
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES Classics) – $23.50

All of the games were purchased from eBay. We found a really nice seller in the UK who is the best packager I’ve seen. Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation is missing its insert, and came flat packed, but that’s forgiveable for the price. Shining Force replaces the cart only I grabbed for $3 at EB in January – hopefully I’ll make a small profit on that. I was disappointed that I didn’t see a single Circle of the Moon or Aria of Sorrow this month, but their day will come.

Game Boy Color got a lot of attention earlier in the month, but I think that was mostly luck. I gave up on mint condition Metal Gear Solids several times this month due to high asking prices. I want it, but I’m not prepared to go above $40.

- Donkey Kong Land – $10.00
- Donkey Kong Land 3 – $10.00
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX – $36.00
- Mario Golf – $8.50
- Perfect Dark – $13.20
- Pokémon Gold – $31.00
- Wario Land III – $16.15

Charly got the two Donkey Kong Lands from a private seller on PALGN, a very good deal indeed. Still need the second game and the Japanese release of DKL3, which was a GBC cart, rather than a GBM. Pokémon Gold is my last acquisition for the franchise – Charly will be handling those from here on, since she decided she wants every Pokémon release. The only disappointment from GBC was Mario Golf, which although cheap has a massive Harvey Norman price sticker on the back.

GameCube got a little attention this month. Some of our purchases were PAL, so they reside in Charly’s domain. This is Nintendo Puzzle Collection, a Japanese only release of Dr. Mario, Panel de Pon and Yoshi’s Cookie, which came with a GBA/GCN cable, allowing you to download the games into your GBA’s RAM for travel play. It is our first Japanese GameCube title. Also picked up on the GameCube front this month was Mario Party 6 and Mario Party 7 for the GameCube in their original boxes, complete with microphones, in perfect condition.

I originally wasn’t going to give any time to Nintendo 64, because it’s in the middle of a price spike bought on by Ruddbucks and the sudden pike in interest in older Nintendo stuff it has caused. I thought now would be a good time to get a converter cartridge for playing US and Japanese stuff, since Charly was eyeing off a Paper Mario, and I’m not really prepared to drop $120 on an Australian version when I can get a US one for half that. Same goes for Resident Evil 2.

- Passport III Plus – $US19.90
- Mega Man 64 – $US18.90
- Resident Evil 2 – $US29.90
- Star Wars: Rogue Squadron – $AU30.00

I was stoked to find Mega Man 64 and Resident Evil 2 (US versions) new and sealed at Play-Asia, so I grabbed them along with a Passport cart. Unfortunately, Resident Evil 2 uses a fixed internal tray, so it got squished along the way. I grabbed Rogue Squadron to complete the series, and because nobody had bid on it yet.

I’ve always wanted a top-loading NES, and I had been watching one for about a week when this one popped up in far better condition with a copy of Metroid thrown in. The other auction was rapidly approaching the $130 this one was priced at, so I jumped on this, and the other one went for about $140. We grabbed this mostly for playing US NES stuff at the moment, but need to organise a CRT solution first.

My PSX wanted list is gigantic (over 140 games), because it’s essentially a lost generation for me. This month I just decided to focus on completing the good part of the Crash franchise, picking up #2 for just $5.24, and Racing for $18.06. That’s way below their market value, especially for the black label versions.

Somehow my PS2 wanted list also became massive, despite the fact I already own over 100 games between my retail and promo collections. This month I decided to keep it subdued to franchises, but I did miss getting the two Castlevania games for under $30.

- Black – $10.00
- Metal Gear Solid: Essentials Collection – $45.00
- Onimusha: Warlords – $6.41
- Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny – $5.50
- Ratchet: Gladiator – $16.50
- Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters – $23.00

I’d always wanted Black, but I stumbled upon the auction of this LE tin edition with about an hour left and no bids. Since then the asking price has jumped about 5 bucks on the standard, and no more of these have popped up. MGS Essentials I grabbed just to have NTSC versions of Metal Gear Solid 1-3, and because the art is pretty (bad Charly habits rubbing off). I was stunned to get the first two Onimushas so cheap – if you throw in the third (which is only worth about $15 alone), the trilogy can go for over $80. Before this craze started, I wasn’t too keen on completing the Ratchet collection, but these came up at reasonable prices, so I jumped on them. Maybe I’ll give Size Matters another chance now that it has actual camera control.

Charly’s pretty box art thing rubbed off on me bad enough to grab the PAL version of MGS Portable Ops (though for under $25). It does contain a few extra missions and characters, so I can live with it. Portable Ops Plus I originally didn’t want, but grabbed to complete the Metal Gear collection (much to Charly’s annoyance, as she’d wanted to buy it for me before).

Speaking of Metal Gear, I spotted this bad boy late on Friday afternoon for $100. They usually carry a price tag between the original $170 and over $250, so I grabbed it immediately. Now I own three copies of Metal Gear Solid 4.

A defection to the world of the PC and Nintendo in the late 90s caused me to miss the Saturn, but I got into it a few years ago before losing interest. This month I decided to get into it again.

- NiGHTS w/ Analogue Controller (US) – $32.00
- Guardian Heroes (US) – $73.04
- Sonic Jam (PAL) – $17.48
- Virtua Fighter Remix (JP) – $14.11
- Fighting Vipers (JP) – $12.68

Guardian Heroes is probably my score of the month, I could have wound up paying a lot more for it. Sonic Jam started the Saturn spree – bought it purely for the 3D Sonic World section and the turbo spin in Sonic 1. Fighting Vipers I grabbed purely for the hidden character Pepsiman.

These SNES consoles were scored for $15.00 each at the local tender centre. Got a little annoyed that the nearest tenders were so low. The second SNES’s box was bent out of shape in our inspection – that turned out to be the loose copies of Super Mario All Stars and Super Mario Kart.

Just one SNES game for me this month – Super Mario Kart in amazing condition for $40, less than I paid for my original copy in the 90s, and in better condition.

This poor beat up copy of Illusion of Time perfectly illustrates my point about how poorly Australians treat their games. Got it for 10 bucks at the Tender Centre, but it’s sticky and the box is probably worth chucking. Should be a profitable acquisition, at least.

Friend of mine is packing up and moving to Brisbane, so he sold me a lot of stuff. This Xbox lot was $40, most of the games are new or still sealed, with the exception of Halo 2, which although not played much, took a bit of abuse.

Grabbed a copy of Gears for Charly to play with me in co-op, and gave up on ignoring Burnout Paradise. $40 for the pair, which is decent.

Same friend wanted rid of his virtually unplayed Halo 3 Cat Helmet edition, and I needed a copy for Charly to play. $60 was a really good deal, even if it is monstrously ugly and stupid.

It was a very expensive month all up – I spent $2k by myself, and Charly bought a bunch of other stuff not pictured here. As such we’re taking a 3 month hiatus from eBay, and will probably manage future expeditions much more wisely.

Photos by the lovely Charly.

I realise I haven’t posted my article links for about three weeks. I’ve been all around the shop, catching up with friends, writing reviews and playing awful games. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow.

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing more content specifically for this blog. My time is usually dedicated mostly to Games On Net, but I guess I have a few things I’d like to say that the audience over there basically doesn’t care about, which judging by The Warp Pipe’s recent ratings is basically most recent topics. People like to celebrate the old Easy Mode columns, but they were really just written with little regard for who they offended and the content was not quality – it was entertaining, but totally immature. Writing good quality material is hard, and getting people to read it is harder than that.

The lovely Charly and I have been resumed our quest to collect all of the classic video games we want or are remotely interested in. Yes, we’re totally sad hording types – there are already close to 1000 physical video games in our joint possession, and we want more more more! Anyway, I thought we could use my adventures in game collecting as decent blog fodder – it’s not the sort of thing that will draw people in, but I’m sure the four of you that read this blog might find it worth reading. I’ll probably post some sort of regular ponderings, followed by what I’d say will be monthly haul pictures.

At this point in time, Charly and I have generally stuck to eBay for our collecting. Toowoomba isn’t the best place for hunting for classic games – one of the pawn shops just closed recently and Cash Converters is aware of what everything is worth now (though you couldn’t tell from their trade prices). We haven’t checked out the Cash Shop (Russel St. parking is terrible), the flea markets or any garage sales yet, but the general feeling from what other local collectors have said is that good finds are extremely rare here.

There are quite a few things bothering me about the classic gaming market in Australia at the moment. The first one is the condition of people’s games – Australians seem to have little to no regard for the condition of their personal effects. We have a minimum standard for all of the games we want – they must be complete without rips, bad stickering, case cracking, scratches or excessive smooshing of outer cases. Some consoles seem to lend themselves well towards maintaining their original condition, but anything pre-GameCube by Nintendo does not. It’s almost impossible to find complete NES, SNES, GBX, N64 or GBA titles in good condition here – tons of cart onlies, lots with ripped boxes or labels or no manuals, and the scourge of them all, names written in permanent pen.

These poor quality items clog up eBay Australia something chronic. We’ve had a lot of luck getting stuff from the UK and US, but the extra postage costs really start to build up. I’ve not always been a saint with the condition of my items – a few of my pre-teen owned Mega Drive games are missing manuals, but I just can’t understand how people can treat their stuff so badly.

Worse than that seems to be the quality of sellers on eBay. I’m of the opinion that eBay needs to hire moderators to evaluate the accuracy of listings, because some of the shit that pops up on the site is just…yeah. Cart only games are not “mint” or “like new”. Games that sold over a million units are not “rare”. eBay takes absolutely no action against overseas sellers selling blatant fakes/copies of Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS games, making it difficult to ascertain which ones are actually legitimate (hint: they never put OFLC logos on them).

The “bad economy” seems to be pushing more people towards eBay in the hopes of grabbing a quick buck, which has pretty much forced the price of everything up. Two years ago you’d be hard fetched to see bidding for a cart only NES game start at more than $5, but now the site is flooded with them starting at $15 or buy it now for $30. I know that the invisible hand of the market will fix this up, but it’s kind of irritating in the meantime.

We’re actually taking a bit of a break from eBay while we wait for things to calm down (and the bank accounts to recover). I personally have a tendency to rush to get things done to get them out of the way, and hunting down the 1,400+ that are on our list is not something that can be accomplished in a month, especially in the condition we desire. It can be difficult to decide exactly when you jump on an item due to the condition factor – if it’s in acceptable condition and you buy it now, you start beating yourself up when you see a better one down the line. Patience is a virtue, I guess.

I’ll post a summary with pictures of what we bought near the end of the month.

Was busy yesterday, so I didn’t get time to do this.

I noticed this week that The Simpsons (in the states, at least) debuted with a new intro. It made me feel physically ill, because it shows front-and-center many of the things that make the show bad. Lifeless and sterile animation, too many minor gimmick characters, lousy character expressions and couch gags that defeat the purpose of the couch gag. The only thing it doesn’t show is the lousy writing and phoned-in voice acting.

Reviews
Skate 2 (PS3) at Games On Net

Features
Coming Attractions – 11/02/2009 at Games On Net
The Warp Pipe – Fighting Back at Games On Net

I don’t post much about my personal life in this blog (because it’s boring), but I thought I would reflect a little on the year just passed.

2008 was not pleasant. It was not by any means the worst year I have had, but it is on the list. I knew from the first day of the year that it would not be easy, and I was right. Many of the difficulties arose as consequences of decisions I made in 2007; moving to Melbourne, trying to forge a career as a writer, and starting a relationship. The relationship and career will continue strong into 2009, but we will leave Melbourne behind in February.

Melbourne is often ranked as “the world’s most liveable city”, or a close second to Vancouver. The inner city is beautiful, with plenty of things to do, a rich sense of culture and a unique identity. Venture more than 20km east out of the centre of the city, and you hit what is best described as the crust of the primordial soup. Many of the people living in this region are reprehensible – racist, sexist, of limited intelligence and self control. These are the types of people that need to be told how to live, and be oppressed by the law, because they generally believe the rules to not apply to them. They make life difficult for other people who are just trying to get by. So I take great pleasure in leaving these people behind, though I do believe I would have enjoyed my experience in Melbourne much more had we lived in the city.

Living with someone else’s family is very difficult – moreso when you do not explicitly pay for the privelage. Charly’s family are, at their core, good people, but I never integrated well into the household. Much of this I attribute to life in the household after we moved to Chirnside Park and the youngest sister’s boyfriend moved in. Her parents take a relaxed attitude to parenting – truancy was never punished, and often encouraged. They allowed two sixteen year old kids to live together, and allowed them to quit school without any plan to pursue employment or development, so they basically sat in their basement playing MMORPGs all year.

The result of the boyfriend moving in was a distinct increase in the noise level of the house, constant arguments and a general uneasiness at all times. Trying to build a new career is not easy, but doing so when you are unable to concentrate nor feel that it is your place to tell people to quell the noise is quite a difficult task.

Constant noise and the inability to concentrate blew out the amount of hours I would spend working, which began to strain my relationship. The family always liked to weigh in behind my back on the status of the relationship, and give their opinion where it was not warranted. I knew that things were not the way that they were supposed to be, but I was working my hardest to keep myself afloat down here so that we could still be together, and that we’d have a future. As the year went on, I put more effort into the relationship, and things now feel right.

I owe a lot to the people who run Games On Net. They originally put me on as a news writer, with the intention of maybe doing a couple of reviews on the side. I am not particularly interested in video game news, but after time, they allowed me to focus on an opinion column, complimented by a couple of reviews each month. They increased their rates to the point where I could earn a liveable wage through them, and let me take on all the work I need, and provided excellent support throughout the year. I’m looking forward to resuming work in January so we can continue pushing our way to the top.

2009 is a developmental year – I intend to continue to shape my new career while honing my craft, continue to save for a house of my own, and make myself healthy again. I always have projects that I want to work on, but it’s safe to say I just need to focus on carving out a good life for myself and my significant other.