Geek vs Life

You know, while we may get a lot of cool games coming out in the US, compared to Japan, we get the shaft (well, at least if you play RPGs). I mean, how many times does a game come out in Japan, and then in the US, only to be re-released or whatnot with bonus stuff, or there’s gaiden (side story) games that come out, and we never see any of it.

Let’s see… there’s a GBA Star Ocean game that never came out here (we never got Star Ocean 1, either). We never get the mobile games, like Xenosaga’s Pied Piper or the Final Fantasy VII ones. Rereleases? You mean, like the International Final Fantasy games, Kingdom Hearts’ Final Mix games, the PSP ports of Suikoden I and II, Star Ocean, and Star Ocean 2, the DS version of Xenosaga Episodes I and II…

But wait! Atlus loves us! You see, there are apparently loose ends that were left in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. So, in Japan, they came out with FES, an expansion to the game. You could buy just the expansion, or you could buy the set of both of them.

This was over a year ago. And Persona 3 is really hard to find in the US. But, just today (although it’s been speculated for quite a while), Atlus announced that Persona 3 FES would be coming out stateside. And not only that, but they’re not giving us just the expansion, they’re packaging it together. For $29.99.

Yeah. $29.99. For the re-release of an insanely popular, hard-to-find game.

Like I said, they got it right.

I remember watching movies in my teenage years, wishing I could be as cool as their main protagonists.

I wanted to be radio pirate like Will Scarlett (Christian Slatter) in “Pump Up The Volume.” I wanted to be a rebel like John Bender (Judd Nelson) in Breakfast Club. I wanted to be singing on a float and outwitting everyone like Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

Now, despite being way out of my teenage years, I want to be Charlie Bartlett in the film that was aptly named after him.

A very well off and enterprising kid, Bartlett (Anton Yelchin from Hearts of Atlantis) is expelled from his umpteenth private school and is sent to public school. In hopes of being socially accepted, he tries to council kids on their problems and prescribes them common anti-depressants such as Xanax and Xoloft during his lunch break.

Everyone becomes happier and people finally like Bartlett. But problems arise when he starts dating the principal’s (Robert Downey Jr., “Iron Man”) daughter (Kat Dennings, “40 Year Old Virgin”). Father and authority issues pop up, and Bartlett’s seemingly easy ride to the top of the social chain hits a few speed bumps.

The movie has a very classic style to it, so making comparisons to classic 80’s movies weren’t hard. The film feels like it was released a few decades too late, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some movies just have that immortal “watch it anytime and it still feels fresh” vibe to it and this one is definitely worth a weekend matinée.

-Originally published by the Shoreline Community College student paper, the Ebbtide-

The dust has cleared and one winner was left standing as Toshiba announced earlier today that it would halt production on it’s line of HD-DVD players.

With Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer and JVC backing the Blu-Ray, it was pretty much just matter of time before HD-DVD spun it’s last cycle and went the way of the Betamax.

The news follows the announcement last week that Netflix, Walmart and Best Buy were going to phase out the use of the HD DVD format. With fewer and fewer options when it comes to finding the format in stores or even studios who would release movies that way, Toshiba has made the right albeit hard decision.

Implications of the HD DVD demise reaches even further than just the movie sales market, the video game market will feel the shockwaves of this as well.

For the first time since its launch, the PS3 beat the Xbox 360 in sales last month. 269,000 PS3s were sold versus only 230,000 for the Xbox 360. Now the Wii outsold both of them with a staggering 375,000 units sold. The thing is, the Wii is not a factor or even interested in the next gen DVD player war. If it would have been, we might have gotten a different announcement today. This all seems trivial but becomes rather imprtant whe you consider the “built-in” factor. The PS3 comes equipped with a Blu-Ray player whereas the 360 needed an attachment to be able to play HD-DVDs.

Although the truth of the matter is that for most gamers, what matters the most is the games that the systems play, not the format of movies that you can watch on them. How the demise of the HD DVD format will actually affect the console war is yet to be seen. Microsoft has yet to issue a comment on what will happen with the HD-DVD accessory and whether it plans on creating a Blu-Ray accessory in it’s stead. If things would have ended differently, the PS3 would have suffered a disastrous set back because of it’s inability to back track.One thing for sure: Microsoft can if it wants to. If 360 sales drop further, market analysts speculate that a Blue-Ray 360 accessory could hit shelves as soon as Xmas 08.

-Originally published by the Shoreline Community College student paper, the Ebbtide-

Arguably one of the best Role-Playing Games ever released on any console, a sealed copy of Chrono Trigger for the SNES is now worth it’s weight in gold.

More to the point, the sealed copy was purchased from eBay for $1217 on February 4. That’s 1210 double cheeseburgers at McDonalds, 608 2 dolla’ lov u lon’ time, 243 pack of Camel Wide Menthols, 121 $10 lap dances, 60 copies of Brain Age, 20 copies of Dynasty Warrior 6, 4 Wiis, 3 Xbox 360s or 2 PS3s.

Is it worth it? When asked on whether he planned on keeping the game sealed for freshness, the buyer declined to comment. You lucky bastard.

In other news, as of writing this (Feb 20), the most expensive game listed on eBay is Gamma Attack for the Atari 2600 which is being sold for $499,999.99. Apparently the game is one of only 20 ever sold. Is it real? Is it fake? Is it worth 500K? You decide. Personally 250,000 2 dolla’ lov u lon’ time sounds a whole lot better.

Yes, I put “X”, and not “Brawl”. Why? Because that’s what it says on the spine of the game case in Japanese. And yes, I’ve gotten a chance to play it (all hail friends who import).

First off, I played using the GameCube controller, because I was told it was easier than the Wiimote. I didn’t argue, I’d rather have a controller anyway. In vs. mode, the gameplay plays pretty much the same as Melee. A few of the characters (such as Zelda, and the Pokémon Trainer) are a little harder to use because they have transformations/change-ups that play similar to other abilities/special attacks, and you might do one when you’re trying for the other.

Adventure Mode, while I didn’t play it myself and only watched it, is AWESOME. I never played Adventure Mode in Melee, but I did in the original, and the original has NOTHING on this. In this game, you don’t get to choose who you play as, at least not initially. There’s a very solid story that progresses through the very long game. At 75% complete, the game I saw was already over 7 hours.

In the game I saw, all but 4 characters had been unlocked and were available for use. Two of the four characters not available were Purin (Jigglypuff) and Sonic, and I’m not sure of the other two.

The reason you only get a limited number of characters to choose from, though, is because of the way the story works. There are multiple sets of characters who end up together (I think my favorite party is Samus and Pikachuu), and while the story is focused on them, you can only play as members of that party. The cutscenes you pass can be viewed at any time, including alternate versions of them (there’s at least one scene where you choose what happens between two options).

Anyway, the game is really awesome, and I highly recommend checking it out.