Retro Diary - 23/9/12 - "HA! Beat THAT!"

Monday 17th September 2012

I've completed Sleeping Dogs today! It was an epic game! I really hope they make a sequel!

I got a 6-pack of AA Batteries because my TV remote needed new batteries as it wasn't working, or so I thought, they don't work, so that means the remote is broken, so I can't play any console games until either the TV gets fixed, or I get a new one. The batteries I got came with a free download of the London 2012 game for the PC, well, a demo of the game, but you can only get it through getting the batteries, so I did that, gave it a shot, and I have to say, I wasn't entirely impressed, the game seemed average.

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Wednesday 19th September 2012

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD is now on PC!!!
Sure, it's only a download game, sure, it's a remix of an old game, and sure, the reviews aren't brilliant, but it's the first time in years a new Tony Hawk game has come on a platform that I have!
It's been years since I've had that feeling of getting that new Tony Hawk game near Christmas time! Just to get that feeling again, I might just get it!

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Friday 21st September 2012

Before I write anything, Happy 5th Birthday Gamerstorm!

I've been trying out this thing called "Game Gain", which is supposed to improve performance for your games, I've tried this before, on Stranglehold, but didn't see any difference, but that was a bad game to test it on, as it ran on 60+fps normally. Since I have a lot more games that can't run 60fps on high settings, I thought I'd try it out again, and I actually noticed a slight increase in performance, nothing major, but it's impressive how they improved performance at all with the same specs as before.

My Copy of Space Station Silicon Valley for N64 has arrived, too bad I don't have a working TV to use to play it, I ordered the game before I found that my TV is broken...

I've tried out the F1 2012 demo, because I found that along with FIFA and PES 2013, people were buying F1 2012, so I thought if there's a demo, I'd try it out, I really enjoy Codemasters' racing games, not just because you can select Scotland as your country, they're genuinely fun games, and also I like F1, not the sport itself, as it more for the money, at least these days, but I have a lot of F1 games so I thought combing the two, it should be good.
Initially, at the country selection for your profile, it was at "United Kingdom", I thought, "That sucks!", but then I found you can still select the countries in the UK, so that's good, but why anyone from the British Isles would choose the UK, which isn't a country, over their actual country, is beyond me.
I've only tried the tutorial stages of the game so far, and first impressions are good, like all Codemasters games I've played on PC, it's very well optimised, it can run 1080p on high settings on my PC easily, and the game itself is quite fun from what I've played.

As if by a miracle, my TV started working again! So I had a shot of Space Station Silicon Valley, and it's great fun, but after seeing the first cutscenes, I had to make this!:

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Saturday 22nd September 2012

Pro Evolution Soccer for PC has arrived today!

I've just opened up the box, and the manual and disc look really cool!:


The manual is also in full colour! Which I haven't seen in years! It feels so good to not be reading in black and white:




I've played the game itself, and it's the same fun game as last year only... the same, it controls and plays the exact same! Oh well, Hopefully next year's game will be different/better with their new Fox Engine...

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Sunday 23rd September 2012

It's PS2 week this week.

I played a couple of levels of Transformers until Giancarlo and/or Steven came in.

Then I played a couple of games with Giancarlo.

Then we played Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam.

Then we played a few fights of Mortal Kombat Armageddon.

Then we and Steven played a few games on Timesplitters 2, then me and Steven played two levels (Wild West & Atom Smasher) in Co-Op Mode.

Then we played 4, (yes, 4!) games of Horse in Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder, The first two Steven had won, then we decided to change the handicaps around (usually I'm set to lowest and he's set to highest) and I won that time, so in the final match, we set both of our handicaps to +5, and it was good fun, we were both equally matched, I say that, I mean he still annihilated me... Although the horse name then was "YASSS", making me a YASSS, YASSS!
It's 17-8 to me, he's catching up, I see this as good, I love a balanced battle.

After that, we had to go.

Next week is Xbox week.

Article By: Cobra!
Help Provided by: Steven (CobrbDB)

Retro Diary - 16/9/12 - "Great shot, CPU! Oh, CPU, you idiot!"

Monday 10th September 2012

I was a G-Force after college today (No surprises there.), and I bought 3 Sega Saturn games, Sega Worldwide Soccer 97 and 98, and Virtua Fighter (1).

I saw a model 1 Mega Drive with a Mega CD attachment, it had no price tag, so I asked at the counter how much it was, and she said if it works (they had yet to test it), they said it might be £60 for both, which sounds really good. I liked it up on ebay, and to buy model 1 Mega CDs on their own on eBay costs £240! I'm getting that Mega CD out of G-Force as soon as I can! I know the guys won't be interested in getting it before me, I trust you guys, but you're wanting it, I'm not overly fussed, the race will be on!

I came home to be greeted by 2 parcels! One that looked like one that a strategy guide book would go in, and the other was actually pretty big, but it had Japanese writing on it, so I knew exactly what that was!

The guide was the Sleeping Dogs strategy guide that I ordered alongside the game, I only do that to games I really want.

The game was Digimon Tamers Battle Spirit 1.5 for the Wonderswan Colour, the box was actually taller than a Black & White Wonderswan game, it was actually the size I initially expected them to be, the rest of the box was just paper and bubble wrap, it seems the Japanese aren't big fans of the environment.

I've played Battle Spirit, and it's brilliant, even better than I hoped! Visually, it looks amazing, just like a GBA game!

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Tuesday 11th September 2012

It's worth mention first, R.I.P. to those who died in 9/11, it's been 12 long years.

Remember when I said I saw a Model 1 Mega Drive+CD there and said it might be £60 once they're ready to sell it? Well, I went back there today, and they had it for sale for £100, but it came with 2 6-button controllers and 3 games, technically 4! I was a bit sceptical at first, but they mentioned that they do a 3-month guarantee, which isn't too much, but with an old console, you'd be lucky to have a guarantee on it at all, it also means if it breaks within those 3 months, you can take it back and get a refund, which sounds alright. They also mentioned that chances are, it'll go in a couple of days, they rarely come by, hard and expensive to find on eBay, and it's on high demand.

Believe it or not, £100 is a good price for a Mega CD, To buy one on it's own, without the Mega Drive itself, any games, or controllers, would cost you a whopping £240! and that's not including delivery! £100 doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

So I decided to get it, if it doesn't work, I could just take it back, so I might as well give it a try.

As I bought it, they were explaining to me some things I would need to know about the Mega CD, like that it uses it's own power, that the reset button opens the tray and start closes it. I knew all of this, but it was awesome that this shop hires people who know what they're talking about. Unlike a certain other store...

The console works perfectly, although the display is a little off, but it turns out it was the Mega Drive itself with that problem, because I get the same display quality when playing a cartridge game, which of course doesn't require or involve the Mega CD.

The games I have for it at the moment aren't that great, except for one, I got Prince of Persia, Jaguar XJ220, Cobra Command (Which, sadly, sucks! ='(), and Sol-Feace, which is actually pretty fun.

Now that I own a Mega CD, that opens doors for me to try out those really bad FMV games, like Night-Trap! I can only get Sonic CD, with the proper music the EU/JP version had, as opposed to the US one Gems Collection had.

I downloaded and tried out the FIFA 13 demo for the PC, I downloaded it from Origin, because, where else? The game's just as fun as FIFA 12, maybe slightly better.

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Wednesday 12th September 2012

I got Space Invaders for the PC today out of CEX, expecting it to be just like the PS1 version, only supporting bigger resolutions, sharper graphics and a much higher framerate, well, only 1 of the 4 are right...

Transformers for the PS2 arrived today, and it's just as good as it was when I first played it years ago!

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Friday 14th September 2012

Black Mesa is finally out!

I've been looking forward to it for years, and I'm not disappointed, it's a great game!

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Sunday 16th September 2012

It was a Mystery Console this week, I didn't reveal it until my cousins had finished their lunch and came in, it was the Sega Dreamcast, to make up for thee fact we didn't really play it last week.

Steven brought back my copy of Stranglehold that I let him steal, after he completed it.

Me and Steven started things off by playing Chu Chu Rocket!

Then we had a few games of Metropolis Street Racer, Steven and Giancarlo had a game as well. I changed my name from "CobrbDB", which I probably put it there for a joke, the misspelling came from Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii, to "Cobra!". Steven changed his nickname from "Steven" to "CobrbDB", which is practically his new nickname, and we changed Giancarlo's name to "Ya555555555", which is mostly what he uses these days.

Then me and Giancarlo played Virtua Fighter 3TB.

Then me and Steven had a game of Virtua Tennis.

Then we played Virtua Tennis 2, Giancarlo joined in after us realising you can have 3 players, the game was just pure madness! I think we have found our new favourite multiplayer game, at least on the Dreamcast!

Then me and Steven had a game of Horse on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, we played on the Skatestreet level, the "horse" was "RJIBYAHHBZ", Steven lost, with me having "RJIBY", 15-5 to me!

Then we played Le Mans 24 Hours.

Then we played Sonic Adventure 2, our- well, my favourite! We had a race on the Go-Karting, which he won out of us 2. We had a couple of shooting battles, We both won 1, then we had a 2 races, again, we both had a win.

Then we played Ready 2 Rumble, our reality that live and Australia, and they were watching us play this, he loves to watch boxing, we had 2 game, I think we both won 1 game each.

At this point, we were aiming to have played all of the game we had, we almost done it before, but this time we had much more time, we it was possible.

Then we had a game of WWF Attitude.

Then we had a race of Sega Rally. Which I lost!

Then we played Sega GT.

Then we played Mortal Kombat Gold.

Then we played Re-Volt, we had a race, which he won, somehow...

Then we played NBA Showtime, we had no choice to play as a team, and we lost by 10 or so points...

Then we had a game of WWF Royal Rumble.

That was us played all of the games, so we celebrated by playing some more Virtua Tennis 2! We played doubles, both of us on separate teams, but most points were by either the CPU being good, or them making a stupid mistake!

It turned out that we missed a few games, we played some UFC, the graphics were fantastic for a Dreamcast game, it looked stunning, but the gameplay kind of sucked.

Then we played another horse game on Tony Hawk's Skateboarding, this time, the "horse" was "GLQTEZWZY", for some reason, we could change it this time, last time, we had to stick with "horse".
Steven got GLQTEZWZY, but I ended up getting a G, was this the glimmer of hope Steven needed? Nope, He got a Y right afterwards, I win, 16-5!

Finally, we had a game of ECW Hardcore Revolution, which I won.

That was certainly an active week, next week is PS2 week, WWE All Stars time!

Article By: Cobra!
Help Provided by: Steven (CobrbDB)

Retro Pick-Ups: A Sega Mega CD!

Remember when I said I saw a Model 1 Mega Drive+CD there and said it might be £60 once they're ready to sell it? Well, I went back there today, and they had it for sale for £100, but it came with 2 6-button controllers and 3 games, technically 4! I was a bit sceptical at first, but they mentioned that they do a 3-month guarantee, which isn't too much, but with an old console, you'd be lucky to have a guarantee on it at all, it also means if it breaks within those 3 months, you can take it back and get a refund, which sounds alright. They also mentioned that chances are, it'll go in a couple of days, they rarely come by, hard and expensive to find on eBay, and it's on high demand.

Believe it or not, £100 is a good price for a Mega CD, To buy one on it's own, without the Mega Drive itself, any games, or controllers, would cost you a whopping £240! and that's not including delivery! £100 doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

So I decided to get it, if it doesn't work, I could just take it back, so I might as well give it a try.

As I bought it, they were explaining to me some things I would need to know about the Mega CD, like that it uses it's own power, that the reset button opens the tray and start closes it. I knew all of this, but it was awesome that this shop hires people who know what they're talking about. Unlike a certain other store...

The console works perfectly, although the display is a little off, but it turns out it was the Mega Drive itself with that problem, because I get the same display quality when playing a cartridge game, which of course doesn't require or involve the Mega CD.

The games I have for it at the moment aren't that great, except for one, I got Prince of Persia, Jaguar XJ220, Cobra Command (Which, sadly, sucks! ='(), and Sol-Feace, which is actually pretty fun.

Now that I own a Mega CD, that opens doors for me to try out those really bad FMV games, like Night-Trap! I can only get Sonic CD, with the proper music the EU/JP version had, as opposed to the US one Gems Collection had.

Retro Pick-ups: A whole bunch of stuff

I was a G-Force after college today (No surprises there.), and I bought 3 Sega Saturn games, Sega Worldwide Soccer 97 and 98, and Virtua Fighter (1).

I saw a model 1 Mega Drive with a Mega CD attachment, it had no price tag, so I asked at the counter how much it was, and she said if it works (they had yet to test it), they said it might be £60 for both, which sounds really good. I liked it up on ebay, and to buy model 1 Mega CDs on their own on eBay costs £240! I'm getting that Mega CD out of G-Force as soon as I can! I know the guys won't be interested in getting it before me, I trust you guys, but you're wanting it, I'm not overly fussed, the race will be on!

I came home to be greeted by 2 parcels! One that looked like one that a strategy guide book would go in, and the other was actually pretty big, but it had Japanese writing on it, so I knew exactly what that was!

The guide was the Sleeping Dogs strategy guide that I ordered alongside the game, I only do that to games I really want.

The game was Digimon Tamers Battle Spirit 1.5 for the Wonderswan Colour, the box was actually taller than a Black & White Wonderswan game, it was actually the size I initially expected them to be, the rest of the box was just paper and bubble wrap, it seems the Japanese aren't big fans of the environment.

I've played Battle Spirit, and it's brilliant, even better than I hoped! Visually, it looks amazing, just like a GBA game!

I've yet to try out the Sega Saturn games, so if you'll excuse me... I'm going to play Sleeping Dogs!

Retro Diary - 9/9/2012 - Happy Birthday (NA) Dreamcast!

Monday 3rd September 2012

I've ordered a Wonderswan game off eBay late last night, after realising I had some money, it's called Digimon Tamers Battle Spirit v1.5, and it's for the Wonderswan Color. Just thought I'd tell you.

My first day back in college, and I bumped into one of my old high school friends on the train, he says he goes to the college I go to now, which is awesome. We were talking about a few things, mostly games, and My Little Pony, because he recently became a brownie, not that I have a problem with that, he can like whatever he wants.
He mentioned to me how it's weird that sometimes our opinion changes drastically about a certain thing, one time you might hate something, but later on, you might love it, and he was right, that's the case with me and games like Mirrors Edge and Grand Theft Auto IV, I hated them when they came out, but once I actually played them, I fell in love!

I came across another friend of mine, it's been years since we saw each-other, first thing he said to me was that he got a Dreamcast, good on him! I see he's still as into games as I am, that's good to know. We were talking about Dreamcast games for a good while, then we talked about the Max Payne games, funnily enough, the original game was planned for the Dreamcast, but that was cancelled.

I finally have a Wonderswan!
It has arrived today, and wow! it's tiny, it's smaller than I expected even after seeing one of it's games! Here's a size comparison between it, and a Game Boy Color:

Also, a size comparison between the console, and a box for one of it's games:


Of course, being that it came from Japan, the text/writing on the parcel was in Japanese, however, it was just a sheet of paper stuck on the cardboard, so I took it off, and there was another one, took that off, and there was another one, took that off, and they were all off, but then the last sheet of paper turned out to be two stuck together! Did they really need 4 sheets!? Since I have a thing for , I guess you could say, Exotic parcels/packages, I decided to hang them on my wall!

I've had a go on Klonoa: Moonlight Museum on it, everyone seems to think this game is mediocre and only for collectors, I partially agree with the latter, as it rarely pops up on eBay, and when it does, it goes for over £30, which is ridiculous for any Handheld game. However, once you get past the first world, which is dull and boring-ish, I'll admit, it really gets interesting in my opinion, you get new monsters and block that you'll recognise from the other Klonoa games, and makes the game a little more interesting and fun!

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Tuesday 4th September 2012

Anyway, last week at that shop, I saw a copy of RC Revenge, boxed with manual for only £2 because the case was cracked, but I didn't get it because I ordered it from Amazon. That copy didn't arrive, and I got a refund for it, so I decided to visit the shop again if I get the chance, and get it if it's still there, it was!
I also found 007 The World is Not Enough for the PS1 there, it looks completely different from the N64 version, so I wanted to get it, because I love the 007 games, and wanted to get something new, well, new to me. It was £5, so I thought why not, at that price, it must be in pristine condition, the disc, I mean, they take out the discs when displaying them to avoid theft.

I also saw Viruta Tennis 2, I got the first game from there last week, loved it, so I thought why not get this one, it was also £5, the same as it is on Amazon, not too bad.

After that, I went to CEX, I found Resident Evil 4 for both Gamecube and PC, the PC version being £3 and the Gamecube version was £12, I also saw Theme Hospital for about £2.50, I was going to get them, but the line that particular day was massive, and I was killing enough time as it was, so I thought forget it, I would probably get them all cheaper on Amazon anyway, if not, I'll get them the next time I'm there, which I guess will be Thursday, when I go back to college, I'm off tomorrow!!!

When I got back home, I got 2 parcel today! I got Max Payne for PC and 007 Agent Under Fire for the Xbox!

I played a few matches of Goldeneye Source with my cousin, Steven, it was almost as fun as the original! There was funny moment we had, in a match where the weapons were set to explosives, I threw a bunch of remote mines in a certain spot, and Steven fell right into the trap, I detonated them just as he was running over them, I found that hilarious, truest me, it's funnier than I'm making it sound...

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Friday 7th September 2012

Max Payne 2 Arrived Today, I haven't installed or even opened it yet, I'm waiting until I complete the first game.

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Saturday 8th September 2012

Sleeping Dogs, Inversion and 007 Everything or Nothing Arrived today!

Sleeping Dogs is fantastic, I'm very addicted to it!

Inversion, however, isn't quite up to that level, it seems it's another shoddy PC port, you have no option to turn off Motion Blur or Depth of Field, why don't games give you the option any more!? No one likes these effects, sure, some don't mind, but there's a difference between that and actually liking them. All they do, is blur out the game and slow it down, they're not good for anything! I know no one's going to listen to me but, developers, get some common sense, and don't use these effects! This is one of only 3 PC games Namco have ever released, and they all have this problem! I love Namco, but they're not cut out for PC games!

I expected Everything or Nothing to be just like Nightfire on consoles, only improved further, but nope, they've ditched that engine, and gone third person, why? It never works, only Blood Stone years later got it right. It plays just like 007 From Russia With Love, which was okay in multiplayer, but was kind of rubbish in single-player, trust EA to screw franchises up, eh? Luckily Activision got their hands on the 007 licence and got things right again!

As you probably imagined, I was playing Sleeping Dogs all day.

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Sunday 9th September 2012

It's the 9th of the 9th, the Dreamcast's birthday! Well, the North American Dreamcast anyhow... but it was the perfect excuse to bring along and play the Dreamcast!

Well, that was the plan, but my brother brought his PS3 as well, and we, or rather they, were mostly playing that.

When Steven came, he gave me back my copy of 007 Blood Stone for the PC... just thought I'd mention that.

Me and Giancarlo were playing Virtua Tennis and Virtua Tennis 2, and a game of Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, that's it.

Then for the rest of the time there, they were just playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band on the PS3.

That sums up today in a nut shell, next week, I'm not sure what we'll do.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be playing some Sleeping Dogs...

Retro Pick-ups: Virtua Tennis 2 [DC], RC Revenge [PS1] and 007 The World Is Not Enough [PS1]

On the way home from College, I popped into both G-Force and CEX.

When I was at G-Force, I saw a couple of Japanese tourists, or at least I think they're Japanese, I can tell they weren't Chinese, I doubt they'd be in game stores, so they were either Korean or Japanese, either way, it's the first time I've seen Asian tourists here in Scotland. I could tell they were tourists, because they were speaking a foreign language to each other.
Apparently, we get Japanese tourists in Scotland all the time, but it's first time I've seen any, why would they come here anyway, I could understand going to the Highlands, I imagine it's nice there, I want to go there myself, but why Glasgow?

Anyway, last week at that shop, I saw a copy of RC Revenge, boxed with manual for only £2 because the case was cracked, but I didn't get it because I ordered it from Amazon. That copy didn't arrive, and I got a refund for it, so I decided to visit the shop again if I get the chance, and get it if it's still there, it was!
I also found 007 The World is Not Enough for the PS1 there, it looks completely different from the N64 version, so I wanted to get it, because I love the 007 games, and wanted to get something new, well, new to me. It was £5, so I thought why not, at that price, it must be in pristine condition, the disc, I mean, they take out the discs when displaying them to avoid theft.

I also saw Viruta Tennis 2, I got the first game from there last week, loved it, so I thought why not get this one, it was also £5, the same as it is on Amazon, not too bad.

All the discs look in fine condition, I've already tried Virtua Tennis 2, and it works just fine. I've yet to try the others, though.


After that, I went to CEX, I found Resident Evil 4 for both Gamecube and PC, the PC version being £3 and the Gamecube version was £12, I also saw Theme Hospital for about £2.50, I was going to get them, but the line that particular day was massive, and I was killing enough time as it was, so I thought forget it, I would probably get them all cheaper on Amazon anyway, if not, I'll get them the next time I'm there, which I guess will be Thursday, when I go back to college, I'm off tomorrow!!!

When I got back home, I got 2 parcel today! I got Max Payne for PC and 007 Agent Under Fire for the Xbox!

Right, I'll be off, I have so many games to play, but so little time...

Retry Diary - 2/9/12 - "CobrbDB! My arch nemises!"

Monday 27th August 2012

YES!!!! For years, I wanted this handheld system called the "Wonderswan", or more specifically, the "Swan Crystal", because that's the last in the line of Wonderswans, so I can play all wonderswan games, that and it has the clearest and best screen.

I ordered (Kaze no) Klonoa: Moonlight Museum for the Wonderswan a few days ago, I forgot exactly when, because I am a huge fan of Klonoa, and this game was rarely comes by, but I found an item on eBay, and got it, despite not having a Wonderswan, that is until now.
I saw a Swan Crystal in eBay yesterday, in that "Crystal Blue" colour I wanted, it was £50, so I made an offer yesterday of £40, and they accepted!

Like I said, I wanted a Swan Crystal for years, but never found one until now, I guess it's true when they say good things come to those who wait...

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Wednesday 29th August 2012

Nothing of note really happened on Tuesday, so I'm skipping to Wednesday.

My and my brother played a few games (or "Duels" as the game calls it) of Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, 4 games to be exact, and I lost all 4, 2 of the games my brother went on medium while I went on easy, he still beat me...

I tried out both the Driver and Dri3r demos on PC, Driver 1 ran great, even on high settings, although coming from a 13 year old game (Jeez! Is it that old!?), I didn't expect any less!

Before I get to the Driv3r PC demo, I have and played the PS2 version, and also played the Xbox version, the PS2 version had a choppy framerate it ran awful! The Xbox version ran more-a-less the same from recollection, maybe a bit better.

I was worried that perhaps this was one of those games that ran at this same framerate regardless of the hardware you're using or what your settings are, like Reservoir Dogs or 007 Quantum of Solace.

Luckily, it wasn't, and it ran beautifully on PC, bye bye Choppiness!

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Friday 31st August 2012

I think I have become addicted to GTA IV, because I've noticed that that's all I've been playing, and according to Raptr, when I play it, every time it's for at least 2 hours straight! Who cares, though, it's a great game!

I am officially done with Nightfire for the PC, not because I've completed it, but because for some reason, at this one level (Elevator Action), it's become so buggy and laggy, that's it's unplayable, seriously! I don't even know how they managed that, since it's all the same engine, it should stay the same for the whole game, but apparently not.

Before this level, it was functional, maybe boring at some parts, and the levels drag on, but it was fine.
However, once I reached this level, it was full of bugs!

For starters, it didn't auto-save once the level started, like the other levels, which was strange, but that's only the icing on the cake. Sometimes I couldn't move, the mouse lags, the aiming sometimes lags, and what I mean by that is that it constantly switched from zoomed in to normal, the camera does a similar thing, for one frame or so aims the opposite direction, some enemies at some times are you can't kill, even if they're in a wide open space, not behind anything, and you're pumping mountains of bullets into them.
Worst of all, and I know this for a fact that's it's unbeatable, there was a part I was stuck at for ages, I consulted the trusty Strategy Guide, and it said I was to use the grappling hook, but guess what... you have no grappling hook! I read back to see if I missed a part where I was to get it, but nope, it didn't mention it until that point...

That's f*cked up! Did EA even play test this level!? Probably not, because hiring play testers would've involved EA spending money...

There are even several patches to the game, but none of them bothered to fix this problem!

Like I said, the rest of the game is fine, so why suddenly now does it glitch out on me.

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Saturday 1st September 2012

My Klonoa: Moonlight Museum game arrived today!

Since it was from America, it came in one of those US parcels, I thought it looked cool, since we obviously don't get them here in Scotland. So I took a photo, here it is:


One thing I have to say about the game, or rather the box itself is.... it's tiny! I expected the box to be a taller version of the Game Boy and Game Boy Colour boxes! Here's a size comparison:


See what I mean?

Unfortunately, I still haven't got my Wonderswan (otherwise I would've mentioned.), so I can't try it out...

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Sunday 2nd September 2012

I decided to bring the N64 over the Dreamcast (I was struggling to choose between the two) to gran's this week.

I was going to show my cousins my Wonderswan, but it hadn't arrived, but as mentioned earlier, a game I ordered alongside it did, so I just brought that and showed them that.

I mentioned also about the US parcel, and me and Gaincarlo had a little interesting conversation about, you could say, Exotic parcels? Well, he mentioned he ordered a Zelda: Minish cap off of eBay, and the seller was from Hong Kong, so his parcel was has a lot of Cantonese writing. I kind of hope my Wonderswan will come in a parcel that's got Japanese writing on it, being that it's from Japan, it probably will.

I played a mission on Mission Impossible.

Then me and Steven played WWF Attitude, had a few games, funny to play as always.

Then we played Goldenwhy! (Goldeneye), we had 2 games of that, I won 1, and he won the other.

Then Giancarlo joined in to play Perfect Dark with us, we had a few games of this, I was played a guard with Shigeru Miyamoto's head! Steven took the alias as "CobrbDB" referencing a typo I once made in a game, although I forgot which, maybe Steven could tell me... Throughout the time we were playing, he got the most kills, so I declared CobrbDB as my nemesis!

Then me and Steven played Riiiiiidge Racer 64, then after a few races, Giancarlo joined in.

Then me and Steven played Tony Hawk's Skateboarding for the N64, we had a game of horse! Instead of horse, though, it was "EQUSFEZAA"! I won the match, but he did manage to get a letter or two out of me, and he said that was enough for him! Fair enough, it also made the game look less one sided. Even at that, it's 14-5 to me now, the whole thing looks one-sided, and I'll be honest, I don't like that, I hope Steven steps up his game and gets himself a few wins, maybe we'll play the games he's good at...

Then finally, we played the Pokémon Stadium mini games, it was first to 5 wins, and he won...


That's it for this week, next week we're back on schedule, it's PS2 week!

Article By: Cobra!
Help Provided by: Steven (CobrbDB)

Retro Diary - 26/8/12 - The most active Sunday EVER!

Monday 20th August 2012

I downloaded this thing called "Game Room", which is a virtual arcade on Xbox live, however, I learnt that there's also a Games for Windows Live (PC) Version, so I downloaded that to try it out, and it's rubbish, you can't do anything cool unless you're willing to give Microsoft all of your money, this is why I hate free-to-play games...

Quantum of Solace Arrived Today! Thankfully, the lag/stutter that was in the demo isn't here! It's still full of bugs, and it runs choppy on my PC, and no matter what the setting are, it runs the same, and this PC can run Blood Stone on High Settings at 60fps! Once you look past the flaws, it's a brilliant game, it's no wonder it got so much praise back when it came out!

I also got Rugrats: Search for Reptar on PS1 today, I used to have this back in the day, which is why I bought it again, I expected this to be one of those games I loved back in the day, but wouldn't enjoy now, but surprisingly, it's just as fun now as it was back then!

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Wednesday 22nd August 2012

I was at an induction to my college course today, and on the way back, I popped into G-Force, because I had plenty of money left, and wanted to spend some of it on something, because I've run out of things I really, really want.

I found a few things I wanted, and were all cheap too!

The first game was Mission Impossible on the N64, I've recently become a fan of the Mission Impossible series, and I've been tempted to get this game, luckily, G-Force had it fully boxed with manual and inlay for only £5! A Steal!

The second game was Beyblade for the PS1, again, I've been slightly tempted to get this, and this game was only £4!

The final game was Virtua Tennis, this I wanted for a long time, I always heard good things about the Virtua Tennis games, and wanted to give it a try myself. This was only £3!

All 3 games came to a total of £12 roughly.

I remember leaving the store and checking the game, and it had no disc, so I went back in, and they put the disc in, I probably should have mentioned there was no manual either...

I've tried out Mission: Impossible, and it's a pretty good game, one thing worth of not is that it's one of the few N64 games to support widescreen!

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Thursday 23rd August 2012

I got Blur and Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box for PC today.

Both games have a similar problem, registering, the games install just fine, but you need to register the games when you start them, but guess what, servers for both games are down, so I couldn't, thankfully, for both games, you only needed to register the key to play multiplayer, and seeing how both servers are down, that's not a huge loss.
However, because both games are no longer online, it's be hard to patch them, burnout paradise wasn't a big deal, you can download the patches from websites that host patches no problem. Blur, however, you could only download the patches from their servers, which are offline, and the latest update further optimises the game (makes it run smoother), so it was a big deal, eventually, I managed to download the patch after literally hours of research.

Both games are terrific! So much fun, and it's great to know that you can play them after the servers are down and the game has ceased production, because it's already happened!

I've completed Quantum of Solace today, and what a game it was, although the final boss was too easy in my opinion, even for easy mode.

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Friday 24th August 2012

As if by some miracle, I was suddenly able to connect to the Blur servers, and registered my game! Yes! Although no one is online... Oh well, at least I was able to connect to my Facebook account, that has to count as something right?

You'll never believe this, but I was able to connect to the Burnout Paradise servers as well! I couldn't register, because it turns out it used your Origin account, or so I assume, so I did this and I'm connected with that as well, although the thing that kind of annoyed me was that because I did that, I got extra content, I can't help but feel that they took them out for those who can't connect to the burnout servers on purpose, I just have a gut feeling...

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Saturday 25th August 2012

My brother got Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock on PS3 today, I had a shot, and it's a lot harder than it looks!

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Sunday 26th August 2012

It was PS3 week this week, because my brother requested it, well, it was supposed to be, but before he could even take it out of the bag it was in, we had to leave, we were only there for half an hour! Shortest console week summary, ever!

That's it for this week, I hope next Sunday will have more happening, I decided since it's my last week on my summer holidays and until I go to college again, I'm choosing what console to bring, I'm stuck between PS1, N64 and Dreamcast...

After that, the console weeks will go back on schedule, so in case I forget, I'll remind my future self, we're at PS2!

Retro Pick-Ups: Mission: Impossible [N64], Beyblade [PS1] and Virtua Tennis [DC]

I was at an induction to my college course today, and on the way back, I popped into G-Force, because I had plenty of money left, and wanted to spend some of it on something, because I've run out of things I really, really want.

I found a few things I wanted, and were all cheap too!

The first game was Mission Impossible on the N64, I've recently become a fan of the Mission Impossible series, and I've been tempted to get this game, luckily, G-Force had it fully boxed with manual and inlay for only £5! A Steal!

The second game was Beyblade for the PS1, again, I've been slightly tempted to get this, and this game was only £4!

The final game was Virtua Tennis, this I wanted for a long time, I always heard good things about the Virtua Tennis games, and wanted to give it a try myself. This was only £3!

All 3 games came to a total of £12 roughly.

I remember leaving the store and checking the game, and it had no disc, so I went back in, and they put the disc in, I probably should have mentioned there was no manual either...

Anyway, here are photos of proof:

Retro Diary - 19/8/12

Monday 13th August 2012

Batman Arkham Asylum arrived today! It's just as awesome as the demo made it out to be! I've been playing that all day.

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Tuesday 14th August 2012

Quoted from the Retro Pick-Ups video posted that day: I was spending the day with my friend, as a sort of birthday get together, as his birthday was coming up, while we were out, we went to CEX, which a store that people bring old games, CDs and DVDs and they sell them, my cousin, Giancarlo, goes in there a lot, and says it's a great store, so I went in, and disappointingly, it was mostly PS3 and Xbox 360 games, I managed to find a section that had 6th gen console and PC games, so I browsed around that part for over half an hour.

I got 007 Nightfire on both PC and Gamecube, because I heard that the PC version was cut-down from the console versions, but I wanted to try it anyway, it was only 75p anyway, so why not? The Gamecube version was £1.50.

I also got Reservoir Dogs on the PC for £1.50, I'm a big fan of the film, I have it on DVD, have it's soundtrack ripped to my PC (Turns out my dad used to have it, well, we found it at our old house.), and I always wanted to play the game, now was my chance.

Lastly, I got RC Revenge Pro on the PS2, just because I can!

Nightfire on the Gamecube was brilliant, it got every right, it's not as good as Goldeneye, but it's definitely up there! The PC version, however, is actually kind of rubbish, they've changed the game completely! The only thing that remained is the story, and even then, many scenes have changed, everything else is completely different.

Reservoir Dogs was badly optimised and was an extremely shoddy console port, but it's good fun in my opinion, so I'll probably be playing it to the very end.

I've still to play RC Revenge Pro, I want to get and complete the original RC Revenge on the PS1 first

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Wednesday 15th August 2012

I tried out a demo of Need for Speed Underground 2 on the PC, owning it on the PS2 and Xbox wasn't enough for me!

Well in all honestly, I loved the game, but didn't like how it ran slow and looked rather blurry, after realising there was a PC version, it shouldn't have surprised, need for speed originated on the PC and 3DO and every game in the series is available on PC.

It was much better than the console versions in my opinion, it runs much faster, you can turn all the blurring effects off! However, it doesn't support widescreen resolution, but the beauty of PC gaming is the modding community, and low and behold, there exist patches (user created), that make it support whatever resolution you want, so I installed one, and it looks great!

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Thursday 16th August 2012

I got a pack of 3 games today, all Codemasters racing games, all with creative titles, they are DiRT, GRID and FUEL!

The awesome things about DiRT and GRID are that when it comes to selecting your profile, you get to choose your nationally, and you can choose to be Scottish! Finally, games that acknowledges us a separate country! The games are a lot of fun as well, I had a bit of trouble running DiRT at first, but once I was sorted, I was off!

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Saturday 18th August 2012

I got a Need for Speed Collector's Pack today, which contained Need for Speed Underground 1 & 2 and Most Wanted, I've only played the Underground games, I loved them both on the consoles, and it's only made better on the PC because of the higher framerate and the ability to turn off those annoying blur effects, the only downsides to them is that don't support widescreen resolutions, so I get thick black bars on each side, but you get used to it.

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Saturday 19th August 2012

It was PS1 week this week, and Steven couldn't come, and Giancarlo had to move all of his stuff to his new flat, and only had time to play a game for 5 minutes. Basically, like every other week recently, everyone's either not present or don;t have the time.

I played a bit of Jinx and Formula 1, then me and Giancarlo had a few games of Tekken 3, then he played a game of Vib Ribbon.

After that, he had to leave, is it me or are we not playing games nearly as often as we did when I started this?

I'll see next week if we get time to play next week's consoles (I'm leaving it to my cousins), to see if the time and effort put into packing them and setting them up is worth it.

Retro Pick-ups: Stuff I got from CEX.

I was spending the day with my friend, as a sort of birthday get together, as his birthday was coming up, while we were out, we went to CEX, which a store that people bring old games, CDs and DVDs and they sell them, my cousin, Giancarlo, goes in there a lot, and says it's a great store, so I went in, and disappointingly, it was mostly PS3 and Xbox 360 games, I managed to find a section that had 6th gen console and PC games, so I browsed around that part for over half an hour.

I got 007 Nightfire on both PC and Gamecube, because I heard that the PC version was cut-down from the console versions, but I wanted to try it anyway, it was only 75p anyway, so why not? The Gamecube version was £1.50.

I also got Reservoir Dogs on the PC for £1.50, I'm a big fan of the film, I have it on DVD, have it's soundtrack ripped to my PC (Turns out my dad used to have it, well, we found it at our old house.), and I always wanted to play the game, now was my chance.

Lastly, I got RC Revenge Pro on the PS2, just because I can!

Nightfire on the Gamecube was brilliant, it got every right, it's not as good as Goldeneye, but it's definitely up there!

The PC version, however, is actually kind of rubbish, they've changed the game completely! The only thing that remained is the story, actually, I'm going to do a new series, where I play through 2 versions of the same game at pretty much the same time, I complete 1 level on one platform, I do the same level on the other, and compare my experiences and I'll explain the differences

Reservoir Dogs was badly optimised and was an extremely shoddy console port, but it's good fun in my opinion, so I'll probably be playing it to the very end.

I've still to play RC Revenge Pro, I want to get and complete the original RC Revenge on the PS1 first.

Anyway here are photos:

Retro Diary - 12/8/12 - My birthday week

Monday 6th August 2012

I saw the Dark Knight Rises today, and it was brilliant, it's my favourite film this year, and seeing how brilliant all the other films I've seen that came out this year, it's saying a lot!

I've downloaded the Batman Arkham Asylum Demo today, but at first, it didn't work, but I manually installed a patch for it, and it worked just fine, and I loved the demo, I am without a doubt getting the full game as soon as I can, preferably the Game of The Year Edition!

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Tuesday 7th August 2012

I've finished Stranglehold today, and what an epic game it was! As I keep telling you...

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Wednesday 8th August 2012

I went to a Basketball summer training camp with my friend, Jamie, or "Midfield Maestro", as he likes to call himself. I'm mentioning this because he's staying with me for 2 nights after that, when we got home, the first thing we did was play FIFA 12 on the PC, the second thing we did... was play more FIFA 12! Then we played PES 2012 on PC. Then FIFA. Then Fronte Del Basket 2, Then FIFA 12, then NBA 2k12, which he somehow beat me at, his big ego never shuts up about it, then FIFA 12, then we watched some videos, and finally, some FIFA 12! Finally, we watched some Fawlty Towers.

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Thursday 9th August 2012

Both me and Jamie watched some Spongebob Squarepants, just thought I'd tell you that.

We played FIFA 12 all morning, then one of my old friends came up, it's been years since I've seen him, and he hasn't changed one bit! For this purposes of the blog, and since I don't have permission to use his real name, I'm going to call him "Rydo".

The three of us played FIFA 12 and PES 2012 on PC for most of the day, then my cousins came along, and we played a bunch of games, I forgot the order we played them and we played some of them at the same time, a couple played one, while the rest played another, here's what we played:

• Metropolis Street Racer [DC]
  
• Mashed: Fully Loaded [Xbox]
  
• The Sims 3 [PC]
  
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 [GC]
  
• FIFA 12 [PS2 & PC]
  
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 [PS2 & PC]
  
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater [N-Gage]
  

I got a lot of Birthday money today! As well as that, my cousin, Giancarlo, gave me a couple of games he got from CEX, I got The Broken Sword Trilogy on PC and From Russia with Love for PS2.

My mum got my birthday cake, she showed it to me, at first, I expected, since I was 18, it would be about some rubbish about beer/alcohol, even though I'll never drink, I hate the idea. However, it turned out it was a cake modelled into a PS1! Brilliant!

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Friday 10th August 2012

It's my birthday!!!!!!

My mum said she would give me my "Main" present early, it was a 160GB Ipod Classic! I always wanted one of them! What has it got to do with this blog? Who cares!

I got an Atari Flashback 3, what that is, click here.

I got a whole bunch of games and Sims 3 expansion packs, which are:

• TimeShift [PC]
• Grand Theft Auto IV [PC/Games for Windows]
• Dead Rising 2 [PC/Games for Windows]
• Strong Bad's Cool game for Attractive People [PC]
• Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures [PC]
• Sims 3 World Adventures [PC]
• Sims 3 Late Night [PC]
• Sims 3 Generations [PC]

I've been playing them pretty much all day.

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Sunday 12th August 2012

Instead of going to grans this week, since she was at England, along with my cousin, Giancarlo and his family, to watch the closing Olympic ceremony, my cousins came to our house for a barbecue, a perfect opportunity to play some games with Steven, and anyone else who might want to play games.

We played some Atari 2600/Flashback 3 games first, Starting with Combat, then Sprint Master, and finally Maze Craze.

Then we played WWE All Stars for the PS2, we played a few games.

Then we played a 10 minute game of Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64, then unfortunately Steven had to go, he wasn't there for long...

Before he left, I gave him a lend of both Stanglehold and Blood Stone 007, since they were DRM-Free (Well, DRM in the anti-used game sense.) and I completed them, he said he had always wanted to play Blood Stone, but was waiting for a Steam sale (All digital gamers are the same!), so I gave him a retail copy to borrow!

Next week we'll be back at grans, instead of doing PS2 week, I'm brining a mystery console, I haven't decided on what it is yet, so as of now, even I don't know what it is!

Retro Diary - 5/8/12 - "Sega of Antartica!?"

Monday 30th June 2012

I've downloaded the TimeShift demo last week, and it didn't work, no matter what I did, it turns out that it's because my CPU is quad-core, the game was designed for Single and Dual-Core, and the company that made the game went bust, so there is no fix as of yet, I'm going to find a way to run my CPU on 1 or 2 cores to get this game running.

At that time, I cancelled the order for the full game, but just today, the idiots sellers dispatched it, they should have been checking their inboxes...

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Tuesday 31st July 2012

Since it's Dreamcast week this week, I decided to play a game on said console right now to make sure it's in full working order, so I popped in Metropolis Street Racer and had a game or two on it, and the Dreamcast was working perfectly fine, thankfully. (Touchwood.)

Me and my brother watched Batman Begins on Blu-Ray, never seen it before, but I've seen The Dark Knight, and Batman Begins was brilliant, in fact I thought this was better, but that's just me, everyone else seems to beg to differ.

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Thursday 2nd August 2012

I finally got the TimeShift demo to work! Although if I wanted to play the game now, every time I do, I have to change my CPU to run on single or dual-core, reset my PC to make the changes, play the game, make the CPU run on all cores again, and reset again, it seems like a lot of hassle for just one game, I'm trying to find a better solution.

I watched a bit of The Dark Knight on Blue_Ray with my brother, but I wanted to go to bed about half-way though, seriously, that film is way too long!

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Friday 3rd August 2012

I was going to see the Dark Knight Rises in theatres today, but me and my brother had a row (that he started, honestly), over a stupid sock, sound ridiculous, right? Well, tell my brother that...

I asked about the TimeShift situation on Yahoo! Answers, and I only got one answer saying that the method I did was the only way to get it to run, but mentions that the game is worth it, I decided that I'd only play it then if there's nothing else to play... then I realised that, that's kind of what happening right now, I want to play something, but don't have a game at my disposal to play, except maybe Stranglehold, but that didn't occur to me at the time, so I decided to set my CPU to dual-core, reset my PC, and played through the demo, and holy sh*t, was it awesome! I might go as far as to say it's one of the best FPSes I've ever played! Seriously! I'm glad that full game has been dispatched, and arrived!

I played a bit of Soldier of Fortune on the Dreamcast, again, to check if it's functioning properly, and it still is!

I found out that Telltale games made a game based on Wallace and Gromit called "Wallace & Gromit: Grand Adventures" and, like most TellTale games, had a compilation of all episodes (Yes, all 4!) on a physical DVD, so I decided to try out the demo of episode 1 before I get the full game(s?), and like all TellTale games, it was brilliant, so I'll be getting it for my birthday!

I've decided to watch the rest of The Dark Knight, and it was just as awesome as the first time I watched it! While I was watching it, I thought I wouldn't make through the rest of the film in one sitting and that very soon I was going to turn it off for another time, but nope, I sat still, and watched it.

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Saturday 4th August 2012

I tried out the demo for Batman: Arkam City for the PC, just to see how it ran because according to both Game Debate and Canyourunit, I don't meet the recommended requirements and wouldn't be able to run the game on high settings, I put all setting on high, and it ran just fine! In fact at some points it goes up to 60fps! Maybe my CPU and RAM make up for the graphics card... ?

I played a bit of Le Mans 24 Hours to check if my Dreamcast was still in full working order, so I did a simple 3 lap race, which lasts about 10 minutes, and it was working perfectly fine the whole way though!

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Sunday 5th August 2012

It's Dreamcast week this week, however, for most of the time, we were just watching the Olympics.

I played a bit of Shenmue II, progressed a tiny bit further, as in I now know what to do and where to go, hopefully I won't forget that, because I don't play it often.

Me and Giancarlo played a few races of Metropolis Street Racer.

Then we played a game of Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, which I surprisingly dominated, only got knocked down once, whereas he got knocked down constantly.

Then me and Steven played Metropolis Street Racer we played a few normal races, then we had a shot at "Pursuit", where within a time limit, one player has to catch up with the other, I was the one running away, and he was to catch me, and I lost...

The we had a few games at the Kart races on Sonic Adventure 2, then a few Sonic/Shadow action stages, then we decided to give the Dreamcast a rest, as it was getting too hot.

As we were playing those game, I mentioned to them, that apparently there exists a Sega of Antarctica, no, you did not misread that, I mean that continent at the bottom of the world that has virtually no population.

There's no website about them, but they are a few articles floating around recently about them addressing a rumour around SA3.
It's probably fake, I mean obviously they wouldn't gain anything from having a division in Antarctica, but I'll probably pretend it's real for a joke.

After the Dreamcast got it's "rest", all 3 of us had a few games of Chu Chu Rocket.

After that, Steven had to leave. Then me and Giancarlo played Virtua Fighter 3 TB.

Then finally, we played Re-Volt, we had 2 races, I won one race, he won the other.

Next week is PS2 week, what games do I have that we play on PS2?... Oh yeah, WWE All Stars!

Retro Diary - 29/7/12

Sunday 22nd July 2012

After I posted my Retro Diary last week, me and Steven had a game of Left 4 Dead for the PC, we completed the 2nd chapter.

After that we were going to have a game of Goldeneye Source, but neither of us could get a server running or join any public ones, so we couldn't...

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Monday 23rd July 2012

Trials 2 arrived today! The case seemed tatty, and the autorun was in a foreign language, but the game itself was in English, and it was lots of fun!

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Tuesday 24th July 2012

I've just been playing Sims 3 and Blood Stone 007 today. However, I've discovered This thing called Raptr, which is one of those databases for games for a signature/widget, but this one automatically updates your status, and the games you've been playing by connecting to your Steam, Games for Windows Live and/or X-fire accounts, I connected all 3, so whenever I play a game, this widget (Located on the right of the page), will automatically update, it even saves my signatures. It also supports Xbox 360 and PS3 games, and you can also add old games, but you'd have to manually track how long you play them, which makes sense, there's no other way of telling it.

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Wednesday 25th July 2012

I got Hard Boiled on DVD today, and what a film! I can definitely see why so many people love it! Although considering it was made in 1992, a year after Terminator 2, it seems behind it's time in terms of video and audio quality, that doesn't affect the awesome gun scenes and exiting plot of the film!

I saw Ice Age 4 in the cinema, it sucked, but while we were waiting for the picture to start, which was just under an hour, we went to an bowling alley/arcade, which happened to be near the cinema, I played Razer Storm, a shooter and Dead Heat, a racing game, they were both pretty fun.

I completed Blood Stone today, the game was kind of short, and I thought the ending was disappointing, I won't be spoiling anything.

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Thursday 26th July 2012

I started playing Stranglehold, it seems for a while, my goal currently is to beat Mirrors Edge, Blood Stone and Stranglehold, and I've completed the former 2, so I'm at the last stage of this "Goal" of mine.

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Friday 27th July 2012

I was playing a bit of Street Fighter X Tekken just there, I was playing in normal mode, much harder than the easiest difficulty I usually do, and flipping heck was it intense! Especially at the last battle! I was frustrated at a game for the first time in ages, but when I finally finished I, it felt so satisfying! I also unlocked a good few achievements on he way, so something came out of it...

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Sunday 29th July 2012

It was N64 week this week, I was bringing the N64, and Steven brought along extra games and controllers.

I've forgotten the order we played the games, so bear with me.

We (Me, Giancarlo and Steven) first had a game of Goldeneye, usually we do Licensed to Kill Slappers Only, but this time, we did a normal gun match, makes a nice change, and it was fun as always, even if Steven dominated the match.

Then me and Steven played 1080 Snowboarding.

Then the three of us played 007 The World is Not Enough, like Goldeneye, we just did a normal gun much, or rather a few.

Then we played Super Smash Bros, I was, as always, last place, except surprisingly the last match.

Finally, me and Steven had a quick game of Perfect Dark, and we didn't even finish it, because we had to leave.

When I got back home, my download for the Borderlands free weekend was done, and surprisingly, my PC struggled to run it, well, it struggled doing 60 fps, it can run on all high settings at 30+ no problem, but why do 30, when you can do 60? I played around a bit to get the game as awesome looking as possible, whilst running fast, I took out all post rendering effects and dynamic shadows and Bam! 60+ fps!

I have to say, I love the cel-shaded graphics, I'm an absolute sucker for those kind of graphics! I also loved the game's RPG elements, and interesting characters. I'm definitely getting this game!

Then I played more Sims 3 and that was it.

Next week is Dreamcast week! One of my favourites!

Retro Diary - 22/7/12 - "Slow."

Monday 16th July 2012

I faced my brother in another few games of FIFA 12 on the PS3, he was Classic XI, which is a team for 11 of the best football players who ever lived, and I was Celtic, I beat him in both matches we played, with the scores 9-3 and 11-5 respectively.

The latest issue of "Retro Gamer" arrived today, which means my subscription is back! In June, my subscription ran out, and I didn't have the money to renew it, so I made a new one, because I'd have money for it in July, and I was right!

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Wednesday 18th July 2012

I just ordered another bunch of stuff off Amazon, a couple of which actually being stuff... packs! For The Sims 3! I'm getting High End Loft and Fast Lane stuff for my Sims 3, because I love cars and technology, mostly gaming related! I'm also getting both Pets and Ambitions expansion packs. I ordered a whole bunch of other stuff, which I most likely reveal once they arrive in the coming days... In the mean time, time for some more Sims 3!

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Thursday 19th July 2012

My Street Fighter X Tekken Strategy guide arrived today, great, now all I need is the game, take a wild guess what platform I'm getting that on...

Blood Stone 007, Left 4 Dead 2 & Plants vs. Zombies have arrived today, I got Blood Stone 007 because it was the last game by Bizzare creations before they went bust, and I loved them, so I thought I'd pay tribute and get their last game, and through ordering it I realised an advantage to being a PC gamer rather than a console gamer, is that even in retail, PC games are considerably cheaper, sometimes even with pre-orders! When I ordered the game, Blood Stone for the PS3 and Xbox 360 were about £15 each, the PC version was £5, booyah! So far, I love the game, I'm glad I got it!

I played the heck out of Left 4 Dead 1, so I decided to get the 2nd one, although I've been busy with Sims 3 and Blood Stone, I'll get around to it eventually...

Before I kind of mentioned it, did you know that you could get Plants vs. Zombies on a CD? Unbelievable, right? I got the Game of the Year Edition, again, I've been busy with other games to play it, but like L4D, I'll get around to it...

I got all of this, but no Sims 3 Ambitions? I ordered it with free one-day delivery, and it hasn't arrived on it's time limit!...

Oh wait, hold on, it's here! For some reason it arrived later than my other stuff, weird, but I'm not complaining... I'll go play more Sims 3!

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Saturday 21st July 2012

Yesterday, all I played was Sims 3 and Blood Stone, so that sums up Friday, however, it seemed that I was so in trance into them yesterday, that I missed yesterday's post, although at the time, I thought I didn't receive anything, because I wasn't expecting anything, according to Amazon, nothing I ordered was estimated to arrive yesterday or today, but it turns out, just about everything arrived!

I got my Sims 3 stuff, I got Street Fighter X Tekken, I got a switch box for all of my AV consoles, so swap jobs should be a thing of the past, and I got my Mirror's Edge strategy guide! Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be playing some games...

I just encountered a game on MDickie's Facebook Page called "Wrestling Revolution", I downloaded it for the PC, it's free by the way, but the game is absolutely awful! Every aspect about it is bad, I suggest you steer clear at all costs, there are much better free games out there, and even better Flash exe's, including Mdickie's own Flash Stuntz, and even his flash conversion of Sure Shot.

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Saturday 21st July 2012

I just got my PS1 packed up, and my auntie is going to pick me up to grans, or so I've been told, so I decided while I waited, I'd play some games, I played a bit of Sims 3, then I went on to complete Mirrors Edge, it's a great game in my opinion, I wouldn't say it lived up the hype, but it's still great.

It was PS1 week at grans today.

Steven had a game of Vib Ribbon, 2 actually, one on Normal, and one on Hard, he managed to pass both.

I then had a game on Normal, then Giancarlo had a game on Easy, the coward!

Then me and Steven had a few races of Firebugs.

Then we had a few games of "Cops and Robbers" on Driver 2.

Then we had a few races on Wipeout 3: Special Edition, most of which Steven either got destroyed, or ran out of time, what I love about Wipeout 3, is that it's straight out, it doesn't try to dumb it down or be nice, it just said Steven was slow, his part of the end stats didn't display any time or "DNF", it just said "Slow", brilliant!

Then for the first time in ages, we had a "Horse of the Week" game on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, the "horse" was "UFNFXPWDTC", my handicap was set to the lowest, and his to the highest, to assure a more fair match... I still beat him, I didn't get one letter!

After that, we left, next week is N64 week, it's been far too long since we had a game of Slappers!

Retro Diary - 15/7/12 - "Are the biscuits retail or digital?"

Wednesday 11th July 2012 - Saturday 14th July 2012

I'm back from my holiday in Italy, and at first it was boring, because I had no access to my games, but after I got used to it, I started to enjoy it a little.

While I was there, I bought a few PC games, there's something I'm jealous at Italy for, over there, you actually get free full games with magazines, I got Metro 2033 with a Italian PC magazine, the full game, with the DVD case in everything, for about €5, and it works fine, it's the full game, and even though it's Italian, you can install the game in English, so I of course did that.

I'll be honest, though, the game is kind of boring, for one thing, it's one of those games that forces anti-aliasing, motion blur, depth of field and bloom effects, I don't like those effects, they blur out the game for me, but if you want the high quality models and textures, like I do, you're going to have them turned on as well, because you can't manually edit these, you can only have what they give you, which blows!
Also, the game has all the stereotypes that any modern FPS parody has, a needlessly complicated story, players with gritty voices and seem to have tourette syndrome, and you can only do actions when told to, the the environments and dull and colourless.
To be honest, I'll probably keep playing to get more of the story, because as needlessly complicated as it is, I'm kind of intrigued by it, and want to find out how it unfolds.

While I was at Italy, I also came across a GameStop, for those who haven't heard of it, it's an American store, but it also had it's branches in Europe, except, for some reason, Scotland.
Anyway, over there, for €10, you can get 3 PC games, and it pretty much applied to all of them, which was awesome, well, it was a 3 for 2 offer, but most games were about €5 each, so it was about the same.
So I got a good few games from there, most notably Mirrors Edge, which is a great game in my opinion, and also Call of Duty: Deluxe Edition, which has both the Game of The Year Edition of Call of Duty and the United Offence expansion pack, and a game, which my mum picked out for me, because I took to long (heheh....) and she picked out a Basketball game, which, was only released in Italy, it was called Fronte Del Basket 2, for what it was, it was a pretty good little game, it's not nearly as good as the NBA 2k games, but it's still alright for €5.

I also found a reason to get Impluse, which is one of Steams main competitors, which was, up until Origin, the biggest, because I got a game called "Demigod", which was made by Stardock, who also made Impulse, and it installed Impluse with it, and if you create an account, you can update the game and get DLC for it, similar to Steam games, so I made an Impulse account, I'm sure you can guess what it is...

When we got back to Glasgow, I was greeted with a package, which was my copy of Stranglehold for the PC! Games for Windows to be pedantic, it was the Game of Windows range, it was a US copy, but of course, PC has no region lock, so it installed and played just fine, or should I say, beautifully? It ran at 60+ fps at high settings, so it looked and played brilliantly!

I finally completed the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D! Although with the New Wolf mod attached, the ending doesn't work, so I just watched it on Youtube. I also completed Episode 3 of Doom, I just have episode 4 to do, and then it's on to Doom 2!

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Sunday 15th July 2012

It was Saturn week this week at gran's.

Me and Giancarlo played a few matches of Virtua Fighter 2.1, then after a while, Steven took over, and while we were playing, we were having a Digital vs. Retail debate, just as a chatter, it wasn't like an argument or anything, it was like normal chatting, we both agreed at the end that both had their ups and downs, which I can accept. We then ended up making fun of them, for example, when Giancarlo mentioned there are biscuits being put out, I asked, for a joke, "Are they Retail or Digital?", and when Steven took one of the game to have a look at it, I said for a joke "I don't want you're Digital Download hand all over my Physical games!".

Then me and Steven had a game of Daytona USA, which I accentually quit... we declared him the winner, as he was in front when it happened.

Then we had a race of Sega Touring Car Championship, we've pretty much made of an in-joke where while we play this game, we randomly slowly say/shout "Slooowdooooown!", because the game kept slowing down.

Then we had a quick game of Sega Rally Championship, before the game, I showed him the famous game over screen, then when we had our game, I unfortunately won... (The "You Win!" text is in red and "You Lost!" is in green, which implies that losing is good!)

Then we played the sequel of the game that redefined the fighting genre, Rise 2: Resurrection! Which in all fairness, is a good game, and he had fun playing it, well, at least I did.

Then we had a few games of Sonic 2 in the Sonic Jam collection.

Then me and Steven had a half match of Sega Worldwide Soccer '98, when the first half ended, Riccardo took over, I won that match.

Then me and Riccardo had a rematch, which he beat me 6-4!

Then me and Giancarlo played a few matches of Fighters Megamix.

After that, we left.

At home, me and Riccardo had a few games of FIFA 12 on the PS3, 3 to be exact, all 3 matches I was Celtic and he was Chelsea, I won all 3 matches, with the scores 4-3, 9-6 and 9-3 in order, I written them down for the "Sliders Challenge" page.

Next week is PS1 week, time for some Vib Ribbon!

Retro Diary - 1/7/12 - "It's challenge, challenge, chalenge!"

Monday 25th June 2012

My Wolfenstein 3D PC collection (Wolfenstein 3D + Spear of Destiny) has arrived today... but they didn't work... However, I got the games working on DOSBox, which odd as they're supposed to be Windows ports, but at least I get to play them! As I mentioned last week, it came with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, which works just fine on my PC, so that's good!

I also got my Brick Buster game, which is a lot of fun, considering it's a budget game.

I got my PC back!!!! ASUS have actually fixed it! It feels so good to be sitting back at my desk!

Yeah, despite my attempt to upgrade the PC, which would've voided the warranty, they fixed my PC, it seems to them the warranty doesn't matter, either that or they don't mind people upgrading PCs, ad they make graphics cards and all, and on their help website solutions to problems sometimes involve "removing recently installed hardware", they can't be referring to USB devices, otherwise they'd of said "devices"...

Anyway, I'm not complaining, my PC works fine (touchwood), so now I can play games in stunning HD (No really, 1080p resolution) one again!

Just in case, I'm only going to upgrade my PC once the warranty has run out, that way, even if it breaks, ASUS won't fix it, my mum apparently know someone who could fix it for me, sop it's not a problem, hopefully...

I tried out Trackmania Nations Forever on the PC, and WOW is it a massive improvement, on my laptop, it ran at 30fps on low settings at best, but being how beat my PC is, I can run it highest settings at 60+fps, and it looks beautiful and runs beautifully!

I also tried out The Wrestling Channel 4: Fight! on it, same things, only it doesn't look as good, it still runs fantastic!

However, I wanted to play FIFA 12, but as usual, Origin is being sub-par, it was saying I didn't own EURO 2012, when I clearly bought it.

It turns out, and I wasn't told until I closed it and opened it back up that I needed to update it, it wasn't until I did, when it finally installed EURO 2012.

The problems didn't end there, though, I wanted to get saved on EA servers (yeah, great start), to my PC, I had to restart Origin 5 times before it successfully synced, and even then, it took 2 hours to do so, this is what you get when the evil overlords of gaming go cheap with everything...

After all that, I finally played the game, and everything was in order, although it took longer to load my data, I blame an update, because every other game I tired played the same as before. So I played the Italy vs. England EURO 2012 challenge, and then quite because I wanted to play other games.

Then I played a Co-Op Session of Portal 2 with my cousin, Steven, at first it thought it was my first time playing, because it showed the beginning intro which you only see when you first play Co-Op, so I tried restarting it to see if that was a one time thing, thankfully, it was, it loaded my data the second time, unfortunately, at that time, there was something wrong with the Portal 2 servers, because both me and Steven were both lagging like crazy and kept disconnecting.

After that, I saved up money for the past week or two to get a much of PC games for my new PC, so I ordered a bunch of games, including the Sims 3, Trackmania United Forever, and Stranglehold.

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Tuesday 26th June 2012

I played my brother in FIFA 12, and I kept scoring against him, and he was scoring against me as well, I wasn't counting the score, but when I looked at it after I scored a goal, I realised I was beating him 10-4! Ooft! I'm a lot better at FIFA than I thought!

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Wednesday 27th June 2012

3 game I've ordered have arrived today, Toy Story Mania, Toy Story 3 and Dreamcast Collection, all on PC. Also, my Stranglehold strategy guide arrived, although I've yet to receive the actual game...

Toy Story Mania came as a surprise when I found out about it, I thought the game was a Wii exclusive casual mini games game, and I was right, but I found out a year or so later, only in Europe, they made a PC version, I usually wouldn't have bothered with it, but since I was getting Toy Story 3 for the PC and this was less than £5 brand new, I thought "What the hey!", and ordered that alongside Toy Story 3 and a bunch of other PC games. I got it, and it sucks even more than the Wii version, half of the features don't work in this version, and by that, I mean basic things you have to do, such as shake the Wiimote/mouse, that doesn't work on the PC version, and it's just overall boring to play, but I suppose for £5, I shouldn't be complaining...

Toy Story 3, on the other hand, is brilliant! I've played the PS2 and Wii versions beforehand, and really enjoyed them, so I thought I'd get the PC version, because usually, PC versions of games are the best if you have the right hardware and a decent controller, and I had both (I use the Xbox 360 controller with wireless receiver!), and I was right, the PC version, is the best version at least from the versions I've played, it had a great Toy box mode much like the Wii version but has more and the game runs much faster, 60++ fps!

As for Dreamcast Collection, I wasn't going to get this one either, since I hate collections of old games, I think they abuse the original systems and deplete any value they have... but since the PC version of Dreamcast collection was only £1 brand new, I thought I might as well.

However, just like Toy Story Mania, I was disappointed with this one, it took, literally over an hour to install for starters, then I tried out Crazy Taxi, the controls were confusing as heck, and you couldn't change them, and most importantly, they ruined it by replacing the music, I understand Sega may no longer have the licence to use Bad Religion songs, but if that were the case, they shouldn't have bothered at all, it's just not Crazy Taxi without Bad Religion, they aren't any improvements in the game anyway, it's not even in widescreen like they claimed, it's in letterbox mode, they aren't any widescreen resolutions, so just stick with your Dreamcast original.

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Thursday 28th June 2012

Ultimate Quake on PC and Twisted on the 3DO have arrived today!

Unfortunately, I've been having problems with both at first. With Twisted, my 3Do stopped outputting sound, although I soon realised it was playing sound, just very quietly, and found out when the system warms up, then it plays the sound at normal volume, strange, but at least I know what the problem is exactly, now to find out what causes it and how to fix it... oh yeah, and Twisted worked perfectly, so I can just throw my broken burnt CD away, I have a genuine properly, working copy now!

Quake Live was a slightly different story, Quake 1 installed and played perfectly fine, but Quake 2 and 3 didn't install at all...

With Quake 2, it turns out all "install" did was move content of a certain folder into a folder in Program Files, so I just did that manually, and it worked... sort of, I could only play it windowed, however, I found out about a source port called "R1Q2", which fixed this problem, so I installed it, and it worked perfectly!

Quake 3 Arena was a weird one, the install didn't work at first, but I could run the game off the CD, but if I were to do that, I'd have to insert the CD key every time I start it, so I decided to try it again in compatibility mode, and it worked!

Remember when I got Wolfenstein 3D and it only worked in DOSBox? Well, it turns out there exists a source port called "New Wolf", which not only makes the game work on Windows, but also supports higher resolutions, a bigger screen, and it runs much smoother! I've applied it to both Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, which, by the way, I found out if you cope the folder from the CD to your hard drive, you can make the game work without the CD, so I did that.

I've also discovered GZ-Doom, which is an extension of Z-Doom, it improves it even further, supporting higher resolutions, and makes 3D models out of the doom levels, so you can look up and down without it looking awkward! There are also tonnes of little things that make GZ-Doom that much better! I've also found some Doom PWADS, one is called "Call of Dooty", which makes fun of modern shooters! Another is "Doom Center", which is a town, it has a bowling alley, and an arcade, in the arcade, there's a duck hunt game which you can play using doom itself, it's pretty awesome!

I've played a Co-Op session of Portal 2 with Steven again, this time, with the server up and running like normal!

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Friday 29th June 2012

The Sims 3 arrived today! I'm just about to play it...

...I've had a go, and it's absolutely brilliant, it's very addicting!

I've had a game of FIFA 12 with my brother on the PS3, a few, actually, and I've beaten him in pretty much all of them, one of them was completely mad, full of shots that ended up hitting the post and bar, one, in particular, my brother explained in detail, I had to wait for 5-10 minutes for him to type it.

EA claimed that you can pre-order FIFA 13 Ultimate Edition for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC, so I thought "Great! A PC version, I'll be getting that!", but guess what? No store have the PC version for pre-order, not even EA's very own Origin! EA: Trolls of the century!

I've been playing more Sims 3, and I was so into it, I didn't realise the time, so when I finished, when I stopped playing it, it was 1:15am!

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Saturday 30th June 2012

Trackmania United Forever had arrive today, and it's awesome!

I've played another (partial) game with my brother at FIFA 12, we only play for about 10 in game minutes, until he left, neither of us scored...

We played a full game of FIFA 12 later on, we both did random teams, he ended up with Arsenal and I ended up with some Portuguese team... We played another game afterwards, I believe it was an El Classico

Also, I'm going to make a new feature of my blog. It'll be similar to "Horse of the week", but it'll be with my and my brother, and we'll be recording the scores of games we do, there's a twist, which, chances are, like Horse of the Week, we'll soon stop exclusively doing that, is that we'll be using sliders for our games...

My friend from college, Jamie, got the Sims 3 as well, just a day after I did, which is pretty cool, we've added each other of the community website.

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Sunday 1st June 2012

It was 3DO week at grans this week...

I played a bit of Starblade and Need for speed first of all to get the sound on (It's quiet until it's been on for 5 minutes.), then when my cousins came in, we had a game of Twisted! Giancarlo technically won it, I say technically, we didn't finish it, but he got the furthest.

We had to leave after that, we brought our cousins up for the Euro 2012 finals (Spain vs. Italy), before the game, I played a bit of Sims 3, then my and Giancarlo played a match of Mortal Kombat Armageddon on the PS2, and then we played a race in the Motor Kombat mini-game.

After the Euro 2012 game, I showed Steven GZ-Doom, and a cool custom wad, which makes fun of modern FPSes, called "Call of Dooty", then I showed him Trackmania United/Nations Forever, and he said me might download Nations, as it's free, then he had to go.

I showed Giancarlo the Sims 3, and he said it looked like a lot of fun to play, and said he might get it, awesome, 2 people I know will (hopefully) have it!

After that, he left.

I'm going on holiday to Italy tomorrow, so there won't be a Retro Diary next week, but the week after, I'll be adding a lot to this site, like the Sliders feature with me and my brother being added.

Next time at our grans, it will be Saturn week.

Alright, see you in a couple of weeks!