Category Archives: PlayStation 2

…And some other stuff

Posted on April 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

After beating Kid Icarus: Uprising on Wednesday before school (a totally awesome game that you should pick up if you have a Nintendo 3DS) and spending the next two days trying to figure out what I needed to do to fill up the Treasure Hunt cards for more loot, I went out to GameStop today to pick up Xenoblade Chronicles and fulfill the last preorder I’ll need for a good while. I also got myself used copies of Lock’s Quest, Rhythm Heaven, and Star Ocean: Second Evolution, and got rid of some old games I had no use for in some sort of weird Yu-Gi-Oh-esque summoning ritual.

Xenoblade, as you may or may not recall, is the first of the three “Operation Rainfall” games (a fan campaign to get Nintendo to publish/distribute more Eastern-developed RPGs on the Wii), having been released in Japan and parts of Europe several months ago and finally making its way to the U.S. today. I don’t expect this to sell that many copies here since GameStop and the Nintendo shop are the only places stocking it, but I’m glad that it got here at all. I’ll probably play this one a lot between Warriors Orochi 3 (also surprisingly good; shame about the lack of English dub, though).

Star Ocean: Second Evolution is the PSP remake of Star Ocean: The Second Story, which came out on the original PlayStation almost a decade earlier. This one is supposed to have much better voice acting than the original (which, while not on a level of badness as the first Grandia, made so many battles painful to listen to), but probably isn’t all that different from the first game. I may give that one to my brother if he still cares to play with his PlayStation once in a while.

P.S. Don’t bother trading in your PS2 games toward store credit; you’ll get almost nothing for them. You’ll be better off selling them at a flea market. PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS/3DS, and PSP/PlayStation Vita games are where it’s at nowadays.

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Posted in Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Shopping, Video Games, Wii

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Bye weak, buy week

Posted on October 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

So the Phillies got bounced from the playoffs in the first round against the St. Louis Cardinals after the team’s bats got put to sleep against Chris Carpenter’s pitching. Then on Sunday, the Eagles beat themselves with stupid turnovers and penalties, allowing the Buffalo Bills to just sit, point and laugh. Had it not been for the Flyers shutting out the Devils or the Union clawing their way back into the playoff hunt, it would have been a lousy weekend to be a Philly sports fan.

There was a bright spot to the weekend, though…I got a chance to visit three flea markets and a farmer’s market. The latter was being held at Clark Park, probably not too far from where the “Occupy Philadelphia” protests were scheduled to take place…although I didn’t see anyone with costumes or placards until I went to the first flea market at a Presbyterian church, of all places. I managed to pick up some decent books (including Heir to the Empire, the first of the Star Wars “Thrawn trilogy” books, and a couple of Oscar Wilde plays, because I haven’t read a stage play since 12th grade Honors English and was curious), along with a few relatively current video games (Enslaved, Vanquish, and Data East Arcade Classics) from a game store located in the Drexeline shopping center. Oh, and also Mega Man X Command Mission, because I still need to play that and X8 to complete my collection. I didn’t like X7 very much, but I do intend to finish it one day.

Apparently, someone at the DCCC flea market had a hardcover copy of The Legend of Rah and the Muggles for sale for $1 (yup, the picture’s real, superfluous trademark symbols and all). I’ve heard a lot of silly things about this book, but I didn’t have any idea that it actually existed outside of the “Muggles” lawsuit. I didn’t buy it, of course; why spend money on buying a bad book for collection’s sake when you can laugh at what others have to say about it for free?

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Posted in Literature, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Shopping, Sports, Travel, Wii, Xbox 360

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Now, the PS2 memory card utility has a purpose

Posted on October 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

All right, so it’s four years later than I expected it to happen, but now the PlayStation Store has started to add a handful of PlayStation 2 games to its collection. The first set of games is an unexpected and unorthodox set, as none of them are first-party titles, but still ones that most PS2 gamers would be very happy to see again, as they’re kinda hard to find in stores lately – Odin Sphere, GrimGrimoire, Ring of Red, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, and God Hand.

I’ve played all five of these in the past, but I only bought Maximo because it’s the only game that I’ve never actually owned. My PS2 collection includes Odin Sphere and GrimGrimoire, but I let my brother have Ring of Red and possibly also God Hand, because I think he played them a lot more than I did when we had them. I was tempted to buy those two, but he says he may let me “borrow” God Hand the next time he visits if he finds it.

From the bits and pieces of Maximo that I’ve replayed, it seems to play identically to its disc-based counterpart. I haven’t noticed any significant differences in frame rate or slowdown, so I’ll assume that all of these are straight ports of the original titles. I could only imagine what this means for Odin Sphere, whose file size is a crazy-big 3+ gigabytes, most of which I’m sure is because of the art and animation. Vanillaware games always have a lot of damn good art (see also GrimGrimoire), but it tended to work against Odin Sphere in some places, like the battles against Queen Odette, which would slow the game down considerably. It’s too bad that “perfect emulation”, just like for most of their PSOne Classics games, wouldn’t allow for subtle changes to speed things up since the game isn’t being played on a disc.

Minor complaint/question aside, if you have a PS3, some HD space and at least $10 to spare, then pick one of these games up. It doesn’t matter which one; they’re all good.

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Posted in PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Shopping, Video Games

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The things I do for money and entertainment

Posted on October 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

Yesterday marked the end of an era for me. I sold my Rock Band 2 (PlayStation 3 version) kit at a yard sale, along with the first three Guitar Hero games and two guitar controllers. When I still lived “full time” with my brother and sister, we’d gather around to play them whenever we got the chance. I played the hell out of the GH games, unlocking and attempting to play every song I could for the highest score possible, but once the third gave hit me with “…Fire and Flames”, I jumped ship, thinking that I’d done pretty much everything I could.

Then, of course, the fourth game switched to a “full band” setup to keep up with Rock Band, and the rest is pretty sad history. I jumped on the Rock Band-wagon when I asked my parents to get the second game for me for Christmas. Unfortunately, with so many songs and challenges, I wasn’t sure I’d have the time or energy to play through every last one of them – let’s not even get started on the “Endless Setlist”. And I was right…my band got to Europe, and I just sorta gave up. Now, the only music games that I have in my library are ones that don’t require large and bulky controllers (DJ Max Fever, Rock Band Unplugged, PaRappa the Rapper, etc.)

Meanwhile, my list of “games to play before the end of the year” list is still growing. Batman: Arkham City, Atelier Totori, Dark Souls, Disgaea 4 are just a few of the names on that list, but I’ve had to satisfy my appetite with some of the less-expensive stuff for the time being until I can find an excuse to swing by GameStop or Best Buy or one of those places again, which may not be until January. In fact, I’m trying to finish my game in Atelier Rorona so that I can be somewhat prepared for the events of Atelier Totori. Review scores for Totori have been generally positive, so I’m probably gonna put it on my Christmas list if I don’t buy it myself before then.

I played and beat The Binding of Isaac (made by one or two of the guys who also did Meat Boy and Super Meat Boy) last night, but couldn’t get in on the bonus content after defeating the final boss because CCleaner wiped out my save game. Thankfully, a patch came in this morning that protects it from accidental deletion, but I really wish I could have figured out how to save it myself (like I could with other Flash-based games like VVVVVV). It’s a good game, but not one for the very squeamish, as there’s lots of blood and bile.

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Posted in Computers, Music, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3

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Buying is easy…selling is hard

Posted on August 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

Yesterday, my family held another yard sale. We got the word out by hanging up signs all around our block as early as 8 in the morning. We would have tried to do it on Friday, but the rain and storms would have just washed them away. On that front, I think we did pretty well, but I honestly don’t know how much we sold…there were still tables full of merchandise by the time we chose to end it. I tried to auction off my PlayStation 2 Guitar Hero collection (with the first three games), but to no avail. Nobody seemed to be interested in my computer keyboard/mouse combo, either. I think we might have somewhat better luck if we took our wares to a flea market. More space, more varied clientele, and a better chance of getting our merchandise sold.

We went to the flea market Upper Darby High School today. It looked like there was going to be a big storm early, so we went in the morning to avoid the rain. Luckily, the weather held up long enough for us to get some good stuff. I came away with a couple of Xbox 360 games on the cheap (Saints Row and Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation) as well as Tak and the Power of Juju on PS2 and a handful of Prima Strategy Guides on almost all of the Sims 2 expansions (I didn’t get one for Apartment Life).

The next event is going to happen on September 11. I may try to get in touch with school officials to see how much it would cost to reserve a space. It might be hard for us to fit a table into the car, but if we could pull it off, I think it would totally be worth the effort.

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Posted in PC, PlayStation 2, Shopping, Xbox 360

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