Gaming forums

When I’m in a gaming mood, I often look at several game forums for gaming news and discussion. Sometimes, I find out about games, etc., that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise, and sometimes, I find people discussing game-related issues that are of interest to me.

And then, sometimes, I find people who just seem to want to argue or who take this all perhaps a bit too seriously.

Today, I was reading the Sega-16 Genesis Does! forum, and I came across a post in which someone asked about the best beat ’em ups for the Genesis. Since this is one of my favorite genres, I decided to read through the thread. While doing so, I noticed that many people mentioned games like Golden Axe and TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist. At the end of the thread, a poster gave his list, and he stated that he was including some hack ‘n’ slash games. I decided to post after him, stating that I was surprised that so many people included what I consider to be hack ‘n’ slash games as beat ’em ups. Along with this, I stated some features that, to me, differentiates the two.

The next three posts in the thread attempt to call me out as being wrong. The post immediately following mine attempts to use the features I posted for beat ’em ups to show that these features are in hack ‘n’ slash games. To do so, however, the poster changes some of my wording. Really? How does anyone try to get away with that, considering that the original text is immediately above in the previous post?

I’m not certain why, but this really annoyed me tonight. Maybe I’m getting old, and I’m not quite as interested in arguing over points that have no real importance as I did 10+ years ago. Maybe it’s the fact that someone tried to change my wording in order to make his point. Maybe it’s because I’ve wasted time both responding on that forum and then composing this blog post 🙂

Anyway, I’m going to be doing a bit more posting here soon. Yesterday and today, I’ve been working on modding my SNES. I am performing a region mod and a mod to switch between 50-60 Hz internally, and I’m changing the exterior of the system to make it Zelda themed, which includes a custom paint job and an illuminated Tri-Force. Should be pretty cool, if everything functions once I’m done.

The joy of Craigslist

Recently, I’ve been searching for a cheap Playstation 1. I never owned the system, as I was a poor student during that generation and what free money I had went toward a Nintendo 64. Once I bought my Playstation 2 in 2001, I no longr needed to pick up a PS1, since the PS2 could play PS1 games. However, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve become interested in purchasing a good, used PS1 so that I could try modding the system. I finally found a seller on Craigslist who had two PS1s and was selling them for $10. I thought that $10 was a good price for a system, so I contacted him. When I went to pick them up, I realized that he was selling both systems for $10. I don’t think I could have found PS1s anywhere else for $5 a system. The guy was also selling a N64 with eighteen games, again for $10. Of course, I took everything.

After cleaning everything, I tested the systems and games out. It turns out that one of the PS1s is not working, and the N64 keeps telling me that there is no controller plugged in. I’m going to take both of these apart and see if I can fix them. However, all of the games work flawlessly, and only six were duplicates of games I already owned.

And this, ladies and gentleman, is why I love Craigslist. It’s often a much, much cheaper way of picking up gaming stuff than relying on eBay, etc.

Anyway, I’ll report back on the PS1 modding once I get into it. I’m a novice when it comes to soldering, etc., so we’ll see if I can manage to do it without destroying my newly acquired system.

100% completion

I have never achieved 100% completion on a sandbox game. Generally, I am only interested in completing the main missions in the game, often not even bothering to finish all the side quests, unless they will provide me with items that will make completing the main missions easier. I just don’t have a lot of interest in scouring the entire map in order to find every little secret, as the game ceases to be fun and becomes work.

For the first time, I’m trying to get that elusive 100%. I’m playing Brütal Legend, and right now I’m at 93% and have completed all the main and side missions. I still have 38 serpents to free and 8 hidden metal objects to raise. I’m trying to do all of it without consulting an online guide, but I’m not really sure if I’m going to be able to hold out, as it’s getting to be very time consuming.

Do people really enjoy finding everything in a game? For even the games that I absolutely love, I’m not so gung ho that I feel I need to scour every virtual inch of terrain.

On collecting video games

Recently, as my video game collection surpassed eight hundred games, I had to ask myself . . . why? Why do I continue to compile a large library of games, considering that I will likely never complete all the games I currently own within my lifetime? It does not seem to make sense, yet even as I acknowledge this, I continue to search online for deals and bargains. I own numerous systems, including all the current-gen consoles, and at some point, I will likely pick up the consoles I missed in the past (the Jaguar may be the next on my list).

I suppose that I do not want to miss out on any good games, so when I see an opportunity to snatch up some at a decent price, I can’t resist. I could try to argue that video games are my investment, but that would be a lie, plus video games tend to make a lousy investment (unless you were fortunate enough to pick up a title like Panzer Dragoon Saga at a discount price back in the day).

It is almost like an addiction. I’m at 809 games now, according to my list on Gamespot, and I have no doubt that , at some point, I will break the 1000 game barrier.

Madness.

Brief YouTube rant

If you’ve read through any of the reviews I have here, you likely noticed that I include a video clip at the end of each. These clips range from gameplay footage to game intros to endings, but I always like to include something to give the reader a little taste of the game. I have hosted all of my videos on YouTube and have had no problems, for the most part. However, there is one issue that has been annoying me for some time.

YouTube has a system set up to protect ownership of content. One of my videos (my video showing the end movie sequences to God of War) was flagged. I assumed that a representative from Sony had claimed ownership of the video. That would have been fine with me, since they do own the rights to that material. That is not the case, though. When I check the copyright information YouTube has for the video, it says that IGN is the content owner.

What?

Unless there is some sort of agreement between Sony and IGN of which I am unaware, the rights to this video have wrongly been attributed to IGN. My video is still available for view, but now there are ads in the sidebar and at the bottom of the video window. And to whom does the revenue for these videos go once YouTube takes its cut? Yep, IGN.

I suppose that it shouldn’t be a big deal to me to whom the money goes, but considering that I took the time to capture the video, edit it, and upload it, only for IGN to profit from it, I’m a little miffed. Though YouTube has a dispute process, since I really am not the content owner, I can’t seek to rectify this that way.

I considering removing the video, but that seemed somewhat petty, so I’m leaving it up. At some point, I may decide to seek alternate hosting for the videos for this site.