|
Posted on 10.06.05 by A 47 Danger @ 7:34 am
Future date: November 14th, 2005 The Sony PSP was found dead this morning in a dark ally. The game system was reportedly shot, stabbed, and crushed to death. Dead pixels were no longer a concern for this system as it passed into the eternal void. One suspect is being questioned. The Nintendo DS was taken into police custody shortly before press time. Police report that the Nintendo DS has no alibi for this morning, and is their prime suspect. A longtime rival of the Sony PSP, the Nintendo DS became the first handheld system to play games online against other players. Thist swift and emotionless action could have literally killed the Sony PSP, squeezing the last breath of air from it’s young body. The Sony PSP is survived by it’s wife, PS2. PS2 is expecting their first child, named PS3, early next year. Services for the Sony PSP will be held on November 19th. Please send flowers and regards to Sony Corporate Headquarters. Filed under: A 47 Danger and Humor and Nintendo DS and PSP Comments: 3 Comments |
|
Posted on 09.28.05 by A 47 Danger @ 9:23 am
I finally bought a UMD. I know, I know. Quit cursing my name. It was used, so quit your fretting. Sony isn’t clapping their hands, getting my monies. These monies went right to GameStop. Anyway, a couple weeks ago I picked up Napoleon Dynamite on UMD. It’s an easy movie to pick up and put down at the drop of a hat. The movie is also hilarious. I hadn’t gotten around to watching it on UMD yet. I was saving it for a trip or some other situation. When all of a sudden, something that other situation came up. The straight line winds and the biggest Minnesota power outage in 5 years. There sat my PSP, fully charged and ready to go. We leaped into action. First, I used the menu screen of my PSP to find a flashlight. You see, I had just moved. And my flashlight was packed away in a box somewhere. But the wonderful screen of the PSP lit my way. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of boxes packed with miscellaneous items. Having finally found my flashlight, I found my way to the fridge. Those beers were going to get warm. They had to be consumed. So finally, with beer in hand, I sat down to a personal showing of Napoleon Dynamite. Granted, that didn’t sustain me for 3 days of no power. But that first evening was made livable by my PSP. The PSP should be in everyone’s tool belt. Filed under: A 47 Danger and General and PSP Comments: None |
|
Posted on 09.22.05 by beuks @ 12:00 pm
I’ve been playing Burnout Legends the past few days, going through the Tour and Crash modes, unlocking new events and cars. And unfortunately, it’s started to feel like work. It’s highly addictive work, but at the same time that I feel compelled to play another round, I feel somehow obligated to do so. This is heightened by the need to replay even nominally successful events. In several of the crashes, while a high dollar figure is not difficult to achieve, a high ENOUGH figure is elusive. I’m pretty sick of replaying Fear Factor and Paradise Peril levels trying to chase the gold medal. I’ve gotten within a couple dozen thousand dollars on each, and would like very much to move on. This is compounded by the fact that, while Legends is widely described as a “Best of Burnout” game, it is pretty much Burnout 3, minus crash multipliers, plus the unfun Pursuit mode from Burnout 2. So the crash mode is all the same levels I slogged through a year ago on my PS2, and I never had as much fun with those as I did with Burnout 2’s glorious, wide-open crash events (in which it was not uncommon to do more than $50M in damage). So, if you like Burnout a Whole Hell of a Lot or haven’t played Burnout 3 and own a PSP and are looking for decent games for it, check out Legends. Otherwise, if you have any questions, I’ll be hard at work playing the Leap of Faith crash until I can break $600k. Filed under: Beuks and General and PSP and Review Comments: None |
|
Posted on 09.17.05 by beuks @ 11:11 pm
I bought Burnout: Legends tonight. Looking forward to playing it, I popped it into my PSP. After the PSP loading screen, it said: “To start you must update the system software.” Ok, fair enough. Out to the main menu. Find the System 1.52 update. “The AC adapter is not attached. Please attach the AC adapter, and then try again.” Alright, you’re throwing up a lot of barriers, but I’ll dig it out and hook it up. “The battery is low. Please charge the battery, and then try again.” Fuck you, Sony, I’m going to play Go! Fight! Cheersquad. Filed under: Beuks and Nintendo DS and PSP and Rant Comments: None |
|
Posted on 08.16.05 by beuks @ 8:20 pm
Let me pause and ask a question of Joe here, hopefully to be answered in the comments: remind me, did you pick up Star Soldier in Tokyo? The reason I ask him is that Star Soldier looks like a pretty spiffy little game. It’s a scrolling shooter in the Xevious/Gradius vein, and the hook here is that it is intended to be played with the Gorgeous 16:9 Screen (TM) tipped up sideways, with the d-pad/analog slider end at the bottom. I’ve always been pretty terrible at this type of game, but it does look pretty. The game is a sort of port of the GameCube/PS2 entry in a series that spans back to the original Star Soldier on NES (A creation of Hudson Soft, that first game is available as a Famicom Mini game in Japan).
It is curious and unexpected where we find the next-gen portable market right now. It turns out that despite developers still figuring out how to use the DS, the handful of decent games on that system, coupled with GBA back-compatability (and Nintendogs, oddly enough) has landed Nintendo in a much better position to compete with the PSP’s one killer app, basket of superfluous features, and Gorgeous 16:9 Screen (TM). Filed under: Beuks and General and PSP and Review Comments: 1 Comment |
As A 47 Danger writes below, the PSP game selection in the US is pretty stagnant. Thankfully for us, the little tag on the back of Japanese PSP games that says “for Japan only” is a bald-faced lie. They’ve got several more fun, non-Lumines games available, which may or may not be eventually heading our way. Tellingly, they’re all retreads of one kind or another, but they may nonetheless be worth a look.
Next is Puzzle Bobble Pocket. This is the latest installment in the puzzle series called Bust-a-Move stateside that started in the arcades in 1994, and has been released on pretty much every system since the Playstation and the Game Boy Color. The series has been a pretty serviceable good time all along, although the mechanic of shooting balls/bubbles/tiles up at the mess you’re clearing was maybe done better in the Windows cult shareware game 
Lastly is Taiko no Tatsujin Portable, known to us gaijin as Taiko Drum Master Portable. This hasn’t been scheduled here, and I heartily reccomend giving it a look if you like rhythm games in particular, or the American PS2 port of the arcade version of this game. The bright, bold, cutesy graphics look fantastic on the Gorgeous 16:9 Screen (TM), and the gameplay translates surprisingly well to button-pushing in lieu of expensive-peripheral-drum-smacking. I haven’t figured all of the menus and modes out yet, but there are a couple 1P and a couple 2p modes, including a battle mode based on Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots - awesome. It’s no Lumines (what is?), but it’s the second-best game I’ve played on PSP.| « newer posts | previous posts » |
