For the purpose of convincing myself not to buy any new games, here's a list of all the games I have sitting around that I haven't played yet, but which I fully intend on playing through:

Labels: games, PS2, PS3, Wii

I spent some time playing FF VIII today. I think the last time I played it was about a year ago. For some reason, I go through long stretches where video games don't really interest me at all (or I just don't have time for them). Then, I get on a kick where, for a few days, I really get into one game or another.

Labels: games, PS2, PS3

All the talk about the 25th anniversary of Tetris last week got me feeling nostalgic. Tetris is one of my favorite games of all time. I think I first played it on my Amiga back in college. I'm pretty sure the version I played on the Amiga was a freeware knockoff, but it was a straightforward implementation of the basic Tetris game. I later played it a lot on my original black & white GameBoy.

So I decided to look for a version of Tetris I could play on my PS3 or Wii. Surprisingly enough, there doesn't seem to be a version of Tetris out for the PS3. At least not anywhere in the download store, as far as I could tell. On the Wii, though, there's a relatively new title under WiiWare called Tetris Party. I was actually kind of hoping there'd be a Virtual Console version of some old version of Tetris from the NES or something, but no luck.

I kind of vaguely decided to buy Tetris Party on Sunday, but I hadn't used my Wii in so long, the batteries in the controllers were completely dead. I left them charging overnight, then put them back this morning, turned on the Wii, and went through the obligatory system update that was, of course, waiting for me. Then, tonight, I had to go through the silly ritual of buying more Wii points, so I could spend them on Tetris Party. Eventually, I got to the point of buying & downloading the game.

In a nutshell, it does, indeed allow you to play good old, regular, Tetris on the Wii, in glorious 480p. With cheesy music, and your Mii of choice dancing around on the side of the screen. I could probably do without the dancing Mii, but it's a pretty good implementation of Tetris, and there are a lot of oddball variations I can try out later, if I get tired of regular Tetris.

Labels: games, Wii

I'm really enjoying Pain (the PS3 game, not actual *pain*). This add-on looks like it'll be fun:

Labels: games, PS3

For no good reason, I thought I'd write a post on what I've been doing with my PS3 so far. I haven't played MGS4 yet. I'm waiting until I have a good block of time to get started on it. (Maybe after I finish Final Fantasy 8.) I've spent a lot of time messing around with Pain, which is a downloadable game that came free with the PS3/MGS4 bundle. It's a lot of fun. Basically, you shoot a guy out of a slingshot and try to cause as much damage as possible, both to the guy and his surroundings. Very cathartic.

I felt like I needed to go out and actually buy at least one game for the PS3, so I went to Best Buy and bought Orange Box today. The main reason for buying it was to get Portal, which is a nifty little puzzle game with a twisted sense of humor. And an end-credit song by Jonathan Coulton. I've already started playing it. Supposedly, it can be finished in just a few hours, so I may be about half-way done. (Or maybe not. I'm usually slower than average with these kind of games.) I'm not sure if I'll bother with any of the other games in Orange Box. I'm not that interested in online multi-player stuff like Team Fortress 2, and I'm not sure Half-Life will be my cup of tea. I guess I'll try it out at some point and see if I like it.

Labels: games, PS3

I just listed some old video games on eBay. I only wanted to put up a few simple listings quickly, so I just used eBay's most simple listing method, pulling in item details based on UPC. This method backfired on me, though. Every one of the games I listed wound up with "Gran Turismo 2" in bold letters above the stock box art photo. That was the first game I listed, so I guess some bug pulled it from page to page as I was listing stuff. While you can revise listings on eBay, it seems that you can't fix something that's wrong in the standard layout that's generated when you pull in an item description. Very frustrating.

I tried the eBay online chat support, to see if I could get it straightened out. In the end, I'm not even sure if I convinced the support rep that anything was wrong. I think she thought I was just too stupid to navigate the "revise your item" page. Oh well. Everything else in the listings is right, so I just added a line to the description asking people to ignore the "Gran Turismo 2" heading.

These are old PS1 and PS2 games that nobody's likely to want anyway. I just thought I'd toss them up on eBay to see if I could find them a new home rather than tossing them in the garbage.

In looking through other listings for PS1 games, in particular, I was surprised to see some games going for more than they originally cost. Apparently, the "black label" version (vs. the "greatest hits" version) of some of the old games is considered collectible. I guess that's no stranger than some of the stuff that makes certain comic books more collectible than others (price variants and so on).

Labels: ebay, games

I've had my PS3 for a few days now, and I thought I'd share a few random observations. First, if you hook up a PS3, and then start to get an incessant buzz coming from your TV, you've probably got a ground loop problem. This thread at the Sony forums describes the problem quite clearly. I solved the problem easily by using a cheap three-prong to two-prong adapter from Home Depot. Still, it was kind of annoying working through it and figuring out what was going on.
I do like the PS3 in general, and I think that now is the time to buy one if you've been holding off. When it launched, I wasn't too excited about it. It seemed overpriced for what it could do, and there were a few questions about stuff like backward-compatibility that hadn't been answered yet. The 80 GB MGS4 bundle I bought hits the sweet spot in terms of functionality and value. It's got WiFi and wired Ethernet. It's got a reasonably large hard drive. It's got a reasonable level of backward compatibility with PS1 and PS2 games. And it's maturing in terms of the software that's out there for it. The downloadable stuff on the Playstation Network is pretty good. There are a few great games out for it -- GTA4, MGS4, and a few others. And, like it or not, Blu-Ray has won the battle with HD-DVD.
I'm just starting to experiment with all the stuff the PS3 can do. I've watched a couple of regular DVDs on it, and it works fine as an upscaling DVD player. I've watched a few downloaded 720p movie trailers on it, and those look good too. I haven't actually watched any Blu-Ray discs yet, but a friend gave me a copy of Ratatouille, so I'll be checking that out soon. And I subscribed to Qore, which is kind of fun.

Labels: games, PS3

While waiting for my new PS3 to arrive, I decided to dust off the PSP and play around with that a bit. I discovered that my battery could only hold a charge for about 10 minutes, which makes it pretty useless. I ordered a new battery from Best Buy, along with a new 2GB memory stick. My old memory stick was 128MB, and cost more, I think, than the new 2GB one. So, I now have enough room to copy some reasonably long videos down to my PSP, though there's really not anything I'm interested in watching on it right now.

I also spent some time today playing Final Fantasy VIII on my PS2, which I haven't touched in a long while. I did make some progress -- I got past Norg, for whatever that's worth. Despite the fact that I started this game in 2003 or thereabouts, I'm still determined to finish it at some point!

Labels: games, PS2, PS3, PSP

So I broke down and ordered the PlayStation 3 80GB Limited Edition Metal Gear Solid 4 Pack from Wal-Mart this morning. It looks like it's sold out now, so I guess it's good that I ordered it in the morning instead of waiting until I got home from work. I probably won't get it for a couple of weeks, but that's fine. I'm still really not that excited about the PS3, or MGS4 in particular, but it ought be fun to play around with. MGS has always been kind of a weird franchise, and I do enjoy the distinctly Japanese oddness to be found in MGS. And of course I'l use the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, though I'll always be a little bitter about Blu-Ray beating out HD-DVD.

Labels: games, PS3

Hey, is it time to pick up a PS3 yet? If I can get my hands on this bundle, then maybe.

Labels: games, PS3

I downloaded a game called Chuzzle to my new phone yesterday. It's a pretty cool puzzle game from PopCap. Very addictive. The SLVR is the first cell phone I've owned that's actuallly usable for gaming. I'll probably download a few other games at some point.

Labels: games

I feel a little silly for posting so much Wii-related stuff over the last couple of weeks, but not silly enough to stop doing it, apparently.

• It looks like getting a GameCube WaveBird controller is probably a better idea than buying the Wii Classic Controller. It's wireless, and it should work with all GameCube games and (I think) all Virtual Console games. (And it's not impossible to find.)
  
• I started messing around with the Wii's ability to send and receive e-mail today. It's not a tremendously useful ability -- I've already got at least a half-dozen e-mail addresses, and it's really not a problem to check any of them from my living room. But it's kind of neat to be able to send & receive e-mail on a game console.
  
• Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was in stock at Best Buy today. They had the strategy guide too, which I must say is the thickest game guide I've ever seen. (This may have been the "collector's edition", so that may explain the extra thickness.) I managed to resist buying them, by reminding myself that I haven't finished Final Fantasy VIII, and I still have FF IX and X on the shelf. I just read a very positive review of Zelda, though, so I'm going to just have to keep reminding myself: I have no time for another gigantic fantasy RPG right now!
  

Labels: games, Wii

I stumbled across 2old2play.com today, a web site for "older gamers." I guess that's me, what with me being nearly 40 years old now. I actually haven't been playing video games much lately -- too much other stuff to do. I am kind of curious about the PS3, but not enough to pay $3000 for one on eBay. I'm still playing PS1 games. I'm curious about Final Fantasy XII, too, but I won't go looking for that until I've finished FF VIII, IX, and X first, I think.

Labels: games

I picked up on Final Fantasy VIII again today, after a long break. It was a good day for videogaming; lots of snow, and not much else to do. Looking back through old blog entries, it appears that I started this game about two years ago, November 2003. I guess I don't need to be in any hurry to get a PS3 or XBox 360, since I'm still working my way through PS1 games. I still have FF IX to play, too, before I get to FF X, the first PS2 FF game.

Labels: games

After going quite some time without touching my PS2 at all, I recently started playing Final Fantasy VIII again. I think I started this game around Thanksgiving 2003. I just finished disc one today. It's a four disc game, so I should probably finish up in 2008 or so.
And I just found out that my PSP shipped today and should probably show up some time next week. Yay!

Labels: games, PS2

So much for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Back to work tomorrow! I did a whole bunch of Christmas shopping this weekend, plus I mailed out my Christmas cards, started Final Fantasy VIII, and I even made some progress with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Labels: games, PS2

I just finished Final Fantasy VII. I had started playing in January 2002, so that makes it almost 2 years that it took me to complete this thing. I may start Final Fantasy VIII tomorrow, or I may decide to take a break from gaming for a while and read a few books instead!

Labels: games, PS2

I've been back on a bit of a PlayStation kick for the last week or so. I picked up Final Fantasy VII again and picked where I left off, which is probably about halfway through the game. I hadn't played in quite some time, but I still seem to know what all the buttons do. I got a little curious tonight about when exactly I started this game. I went back through all my old blogs and found out: I started playing on January 23, 2002, or thereabouts. So that's more than a year and a half, and I'm still not done. Looks like I'll be finished around December 2004 at this rate. Oh yeah, the play time indicator on the save screen says I've got a little over 30 hours in. Man, am I getting my $20 worth out of this game. And I've got FF 8, 9, and 10 sitting on the shelf for when I've finished this one!

Labels: games, PS2

I started playing Final Fantasy VII a few days ago. Okay, I know it's 5 years old, but it's fun. Let's see if I can get through it any faster than I got through Chrono Cross -- that one took more than a year!

Labels: games

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