Gameguru Mania

[devilhood]

I have the three parts to the Xenosaga series but I've never got round to actually playing them past the intro bits. I'll get round to it at some point though.
I'm quite found of the soundtrack for Castlevania Symphony of The Night on the PSX as well, or Dracula X as it is known in Japan.
SoTC 2 on the PS3 is going to be delicious
You've moved onto FLAC? you must store a great deal of your stuff on DVD's then, I tend to keep most of the good stuff on my hard-disks.
I usually encode any music I have at 320kbps MP3 PRO, because it preserves a great deal more of the high-frequencies than L.A.M.E. compression, but for any audio bootlegs I keep them as FLAC or SHN (I'm an avid collector of Radiohead's live performances).
You aren't a Remix64 fan by any chance are you?

[Genoism]

ive pretty much quit xenosaga 2...the music drives me insane, the boss fights are totally insanely hard...u actually need to GRIND lvls for hours to be slightly effective....the 'secrety key 2065' to some stupid door that ill never find for some lousy item or a needed skill is utter trash.

The puzzles...oh god...they are the shittiest excuse of puzzles i've ever heard. I dont even call them puzzles, they are time sinks...these people had so little content to add into this game that they could only fill it with time sinks. THATS sad. THe sound effects in addition to the music are TERRIBLE, top that with horrible voice acting and u have little to no inspiration to play the game...i hear xenosaga 3 will explain EVERYTHING that has happened upto then, and the music/sound effects/voice/battle system are improved...maybe ill buy it when its cheap.

[Safer]

Remix64, never gotten around to dwellwe myself into it. But I love OCremix for their Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger mixes.

I store all my stuff on HDD's since my last try to keep DVD's of everything kinda when down the drain... 200+ DVD's and no equipment or capability to keep a good library or storage of dem >_>

Will probably keep them that way till I get myself a nice bluray burner and/or holodisks in a few years.

SoTC 2 is maybe THE reason for a PS3 ... of course we have any other RPG *cough* Final Fantasy *cough* that will go there... Yay!

*boots up amarok and plays: Shadow of the Colossos - Roar of the Earth - The Farthest Land*

[devilhood]

If you want to store your DVD's properly, just get a couple of shelving compartments from Ikea and label each section with stick-on tabs
You can also get specialized spindles with bookmarks to use for them.
I'm not sure if I'd get too optimistic about Bluray as we've yet to know whether or not Sony's format will really evolve into an affordable and long-lasting standard; but I suppose if HDMI really kicks off and more people have it, movies will have to be supplied on Bluray anyways.
SoTC 2 AND Silent Hill 5 though, I'm a huge fan of the Silent Hill so I've been really eager for the sequel since completing the fourth in the series.

[Safer]

Got very little space in my apparment but I'm thinking of putting a shelf on the wall - hmmm... And I think that bluray will be the winner, if any in this next-gen optical storage media chaos that will ensu.

It will probably depend on Sony making it cheap enough - because the capacity is there after all - vastly more storage then the HD-DVD thingy (which I find a bit distubing as Microsoft won't even support it fully by delivering games on...pffft)

Current goal; Get my self a new desk - can't fit a 21", 19", speakers and 17" laptop on it so it needs go in favor something larger

[devilhood]

Price is definitely the issue, with Dual Layer discs still costing between £10 and £15 for a pack of 10, I'd hate to see what price Sony would deem as acceptable for a pack of 10 Bluray discs

[Safer]

As long as it's on the same level as that for a 500GB HDD - which equals a 10 pack of bluray disks at 50GB each, it's kinda useless to buy the 10 pack.

[devilhood]

Yes, prices would have to be reasonably within a comparative range along with HDD's when sold in packs.
I wasn't saying that people WOULD actually buy a 10 pack, but merely exaggerating the annoyance of pricing for such media, because they are essentially consumables and not hefty big external hard-disks.
The amount people store on their system is growing with each passing year, and so is the demand of quality and standards. I could easily see people buying a few packs and then transferring any DVD backed up data onto the new format and creating ISO collections or entire Music Catalogues.
My guess is, in the future, Bluray could possibly be a format that offers the same kind of variety in available size as with a HDD, because Toshiba have already developed a 200GB version.

[Safer]

I'm sorry if my repsonse back there citate you as people WOULD buy a 10 pack - not my intention.

God bless Toshiba

However, I'm sceptical to HD-DVD as it is a simple extention to a exsisting technology, few gigs and then leave it at that and of course point at Sony's overprotection of their new cool format.

Time will tell.

Eitherway - the uprunning years towards 2010 will be interesting inregards of all technology.

[Sabot]

XXXX, well i never had 'rips' of any of those games -in fact the only 2 games i ever zipped up (remember PKZip? i loved that DOS prog were Quake1 and Quake 2 (i ultimately bought them on CD) Besides you COULDN'T own a CD writer back in the early 90's -you were talking about £1-2000 for one!! My first QUAD (yep x4 speed) CD-ROM cost me £140!

Yeah i would love a pic of my 400+ games also but they are impossible to layout in a one-bedroom flat! Besides they are stored away in every nook and crany I just dug them out about 2years ago and counted & jotted them down, then packed away and carried on etc.

Back on topic; yes i too own 'Rise of the Triads' (God mode as the dog was hilarious so to was the magic mushroom effect!), can't remember if i have the box? But i do have the original Doom1 (3 floppies) and box.
As far as hardware goes, i own the FIRST TRUE 2D/3D card which was the Matrox Mystique -all 2mb of it! I then bought the Diamond Monster 3D 4mb -the original 3DFX vodoo1 card which connected by way of pass-thru cable.
Some of the first games i owned which were originaly VGA and were patched to work on the above cards in 3D <cough> LOL were; Tomb Raider1,Mech warrior1,Scorched planet,Carmageddon,Shadow Warrior,EF2000,Dungeon Keeper and Interstate '76 to name a few.
I still have my original *working* Win95/DOS 6.22 dual boot with menu for Himem Sys,Expanded Mem etc Pentium 200,64mb EDO RAM, 2x 1Gig HDDs and the above cards in it.

Safer, 'Homeworld' blew me away! The voices and music were like nothing i had ever played! I eventualy bought 'The Ladder' album for the title track 'Homeworld' by Yes just FOR the title track
I never mentioned Final Fantasy, i never played any of the series since i owned a Mega Drive (or Genesis for you folks over the pond ) But i got Final Fantasy X and X-2 for my PS2. Very unusual to say the least -clever Manga 'film' sequences and HUGELY deep -maybe tooo deep and i wont finishes them?
Some of my all time fav RTS that i played inc 'Homeworld' (not many)
Balders Gate
Command & Conquer
Soldiers Heroes of WW2
Shogun:Total War
Medieval: Total War
Rome:Total War
IS KOTOR an RTS?
B&W1/2
Dungeon Keeper 1/2
Warcraft
Settlers

I may have a few more, but those spring to mind.

My biggest passion was flight sims in the early 90's to approx 2000. Jane's,DID,Microprose,Rowan,Empire,DI even Microsoft!

These make up a huge bulk of my software. I also love SWAT series,Hidden & Dangerous,Raven Shield,Morrowind trilogy,Oblivion,Operation Flashpoint,Wargasm,Silent Hunter 3 and TAW -games that have (had) replayability!

Here's some more weird games that i collected

'Earthsiege 2'
'Creatures' (remember that? Amazing AI teach them to talk LOL )
'Ecstatica', cerificate 18, 1994 (the **WEIRDEST** most violent game i ever owned - a complete collectors title if you can get it!)
'Little Big Adventure'
'Space Hulk'
'Absolute Zero' -another weird collectors title imo
'Magic Carpet' if only for the stereo 3D glasses!
'Fade to Black' -classic!
'Blam Machinehead!' PS2 port clever nontheless.
'Blood' hilarious!
'Toonstruck' The first workable animation and human title that was funny also
'Mortal Coil' for the diabolical voice acting of Dani Behr! LOL but a daring game that probably was the first to allow you to setup 'tactical' waypoint movements for your charcters.

Here's the blurb
"MORTAL COIL
(IBM PC) ( Virgin/Vic Tokai )

1st and 3rd-person perspective real-time strategy/spec-ops game, including:-

shoot-em-up action within a free-roaming environment
Multiple-characters
Ability to set waypoints for characters when not under player control, allowing campaign planning
Thrilling plot with twist in the tale ending -- multiple outcomes plus bonus level
Each character has extensive range of speech
Advanced artificial intelligence for player characters and enemies
My involvement included originating the concept with Tony Jackson, Creative Director at Crush!. Based on Tony's concept "Candy", I wrote the storyline for the game, scripted the six voice parts, negotiated with voice-agents for the vocal talent , and gave voice direction during voice-over recording (including Dani Behr, Brian Bowles, Fiona Allen and Ed Bishop). I also negotiated the funding for the game development, in collaboration with Crush's agent, Jacqui Lyons

I produced the game during development, co-ordinating project scheduling, technical and graphical issues

Mortal Coil received a lot of media coverage. See right-hand panel for some stills from the television show "Live & Kicking" – the segment called ‘Electric Circus’, that featured our game as one of a new breed of innovative game. It scored 90%.

The game was also featured on the television show "Bad Influence" – it highlighted the game’s innovative features, including multiple characters, waypoint settings and replaceable sounds. In the right-hand panel the pop group China Black are shown using this feature on the TV show. The game scored 93%"

Anyway, as you can see i can go on forever practicaly with some of my titles!

[Sabot]

There is a certain 'class' gamer out there xxxx, the problem is they *are* few and far between. The biggest selling games are by and large for the 'masses'. Take 'Ico' for eg, it skipped over 99% of gamers heads because it never had big explosions or guns. It bombed and fizzled out, it started exchanging on Ebay for nearly twice retail !! The result through some sort of 'gamer delayed action' is it was re-released for those sloooow on the uptake.

Games like Giants,Psychonauts,Ico,Shadow:OTC,Sam & Max,Simon 1/2 for eg require input from the gamer -sadly that *is* what is lacking from certain gamers today, the attention span of a goldfish is what i'm saying.

So yes; to sit and play a game that thrills you, because it THRILLED the developer making it, AND because HE/THEY put that much effort into developing it is unique. You wont find many gamers today that can play such a wide genre. It's a case of "play and finish inside a few days, then exchange it" and so on -or cheat their way through.

Take Oblivion for eg I'm 126 hours into it and still not even started the second MAIN quest, why? because that is the *way* i play games. I like exploring to find out what dev's have put in -on the otherhand, some games like 'Farenheit' follow an unusual path (mentaly) and with the 'simon says' buttons -strange that was!??

It's the shallow, catatonic affairs that are called 'games' today that i cannot be bothered with -HL2 episode# is an insult, which sells by the bucket load?????
As long as there are the Creative Assembly,Bohemia Interactive and Bethesda's of this world i will be a happy bunny!

[Safer]

Mmmm... Bohemia... Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis... *remembers how he once got chased for the first time down a hill by a T72*

Also, KOTOR and Baldurs Gate are RPGs just for the record.

Fun to hear about more gamers who won't gobble up and praise every piece of so called gaming-software that is spit out of EA's large backside.

[xxxx]