Dan #22 – Arrivederci, DRE

Well, this is it. This marks my last traditional post on DRE. You’re heartbroken and you’ve got questions, I know. Stop those tears and read on.

I’m not flat-out leaving or anything. I’m just migrating over to a new blog, Board the Platforms. As you may or may not have known, Arc was set to join DRE. That’d make eight people here. Count ’em. Eight people, one blog. Talk about crowded. Granted me and Mach are the only ones who usually update more than once every week or two, but still. That’s a bit too cluttered if you ask me.

That got a train of thought rolling and eventually the idea of starting another damn a group blog came about. Thus, Board the Platforms was born. Myself, Arcadios (Arc), BluFin (Blu), Linkman (Chris) and Zeta. The two main reasons I’m moving from DRE to BtP are 1) I figure this will be in everyone’s best interests (DRE goes down to 6 guys instead of going up to 8, so hopefully that encourages the other DRE ranters to post more now that I won’t be around), and 2) Chris, Zeta and Arc are all long-time friends of mine… and I mean long-time. “Years-before-The-Backloggery” long.

Yeah, I know I could do like Noi and post on two blogs, but I’d rather just stick to one and one alone, otherwise I’d no doubt resort to making copypasta posts down the line. As per Mach’s decision, all the content I’ve provided for DRE will remain intact. Rants, reviews, all of it.

If you’ll think back to the intro of this post, I said “last traditional post.” Mach’s got some ideas cooking for guest articles or something of the sort, so I doubt this is the last time you’ll see my post here period or anything.

Anyway, all that said… So long, DRE. Don’t be strangers, okay?

Dan #21 – General Gaming Update

Yep. Not much on the life front right now, so this update’s all about them vidja gaems.

I’ve beaten a few, removed a few, and I’m about to get a couple more. Not much to do during unemployment but play video games. I haven’t enrolled in college yet, either, so… Nothing to do but hang out at home playing games all day hoping I’ll get a call back for one of the million applications I’ve filled out.

Anyway, ‘nough about that. On to games. I’ll run down some recent changes to my backlog (in no particular order) and go into a tad of detail on each.

Dan #20 – Mario Marathon 2 + Other stuff.

Chances are you heard about the Super Mario Marathon last summer. Three guys, seven Mario games, one weekend, all to raise money for the Child’s Play Charity. Well, they’re back! The same three guys are getting together one weekend this year and putting on a second Mario Marathon, again for the benefit of Child’s Play.

Mario Marathon 2 will start July 11, 2009, at 9 PM Eastern, so bookmark that site and mark those calendars! If you weren’t around for the original Marathon, take it from me, these guys are great. They’re a a very entertaining bunch. If you’re a fan of the Backloggery streams, you’ll most definitely enjoy the Mario Marathon. It wouldn’t hurt to donate, either! Child’s Play is a great organization.

In more personal news, nothing really new on my front. Car’s still messed up and we still haven’t found a solution, but at least my dad can still get back and forth to work using my mom’s SUV. As for my cousin, he’s starting to cope with the accident, I think. I don’t know if he knows what I’m about to say, but I’m not gonna bring it up just in case. It’d only make him feel worse.

The guy that died Monday was only 25. He had three kids: one 9, one 7, one 5. (I think, I might have one of those wrong… But the oldest one was definitely 9. Yeah, he had a kid at 16.) During the funeral, the 5 year old was trying to climb into the casket and was screaming for his dad… Like something you’d see in the movies. I can’t even imagine. I heard about this from my great uncle, who knew the guy and worked with him several times in the past. Hell, the guy helped set up my house. I think I even met him once.

He wasn’t intoxicated or anything. He had just picked up a trailer from someone and he was going too fast. The school’s driveway (which is notoriously known around this area for being EXTREMELY dangerous and why no measures have been taken yet is beyond me) has an entrance and an exit. The entrance is right around a curve, so the guy didn’t see my cousin slowing down until he was right up on him. While I’m on the subject, the exit… You can only see right. You can’t see cars coming from the left because of this hill. It’s VERY dangerous, and this isn’t the first time someone has died there.

Back in 2006, my old landlord’s wife had a wreck in nearly the exact same spot (not under the same conditions, but literally within spitting distance of where my cousin’s wreck was). Killed her and injured one of her three kids. Nothing serious to the kid, but it killed the woman instantly. There’ve also been plenty of non-fatal wrecks in front of that school. I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s notorious in this area for being so dangerous.

Anyway, back on the original topic… I don’t know if my cousin knows all the details surrounding that guy or his funeral, but I’m not gonna be the one to break it to him. For one, it’s not my place, and two, I don’t think it’d do anything more than give him unnecessary stress.

…Right, so, on to less gloomy news! Gaming! I’ve been knee-deep in Grand Theft Auto IV, which is addicting to say the least. I’ve also been working through Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, which I’m also thoroughly enjoying. Still maintaining daily upkeep in Animal Crossing: City Folk. Right now I’m helping PaperLink make a Perfect Town. Quite tedious work, but I get to help a fellow Backlogger in need and I come away with a 2,000,000 Bell profit. Win-win, right?

In closing, I’d just like to note that this post puts me on top of Len in post count. I now have the second most posts of all of us at DRE. I don’t know if that means I talk too much or everyone besides Mach talks too little.

Dan #19 – The Poor Man’s Rig

So evidently we’re all slapping pictures up here of our gaming/computer rigs. Guess I’ll follow along. Of the rigs posted before me, I gotta say I like Mach’s the best, namely because he’s got a whole ‘nother room. He’s free to leave his bedroom in a mess while his 360/Wii gaming room is pretty tidy from what I can tell.

Fair warning, these were taken with my cell phone. I ain’t got a better camera than that, so deal.

And I will say that, while this whole “sharing of rig pictures” thing has shown me yet again how lame and basic my own is, I take comfort in the fact that I’ve probably got the cleanest/most organized room of all of us here at DRE.

Click any of these for full resolution.

Gaming setup overview, minus text.

Now, rather than explain a whole bunch of crap, I’ll just provide a version of that image with labels on everything.

Gaming setup overview with text.

Lower-middle close-up.

DVD player and "Now Playing" stack.

PS2/GCN/Xbox/360/Wii/DS games and a few DVDs. "How small!", you say? Remember, I have more of a Borrowedloggery than I do a Backloggery. 😦

Close-up of the things on top of the TV. Apologies for the blur.

Here's two close-ups since that other one was so damn blurry. Here's Zero and C.C.

...and here's Lelouch and Phantom Hourglass Link.

I said this in the “overview with text” image, but I’ll write it again here just because: The Code Geass figures were gifts from Arc, while the Link plush was a souvenir from Nintendo World when my cousin went to New York for vacation this past summer.

Computer desk! I have the same monitor as Noi!

Sonic Adventure 2 action figure thing and a Pokéball keychain! Inside is a Charmeleon.

Pikachu... plush... thing... that can transform into a Pokéball. Weird, but cute.

Aaand that’s all. Hopefully now you all feel better about your own rigs, sloppiness aside. Oh, Rebel and Zeta made some inadvertent cameos in that last image (check the taskbar). 🙂

Dan #18 – Augh. [Updated]

“Augh.” It’s what Charlie Brown yells when that bitch Lucy pulls away the football. It’s also the only thing I can think of that sums up my thoughts right now.

I’ll start with yesterday. Yesterday wasn’t a stellar day for me. As I said in my last post, I’m expecting a package from Arc containing BioShock, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Well, yesterday was Sunday, so no mail. Add to this that all day I had a light headache which got progressively worse throughout the day, and a toothache to boot.

So, like I said… Not a stellar day.

Now, today. Monday. Mail runs again, but does my package come? Nope. This makes a week since he mailed it and it’s still not here. However, I mailed him a package a day later than he mailed his. His arrived on Saturday. A big “wtf” to the United States Postal Service is in order.

Anyway, big deal. I’m a pretty patient guy — one more day ain’t gonna hurt. But this story doesn’t stop there.

My dad works third shift. He leaves the house at 6 PM. He leaves today, just like always, only to return at 6:15. With a busted headlight. And a dented hood. And a misplaced radiator.

He hit a damn deer.

This is NOT good. The car isn’t beyond repair, but it’ll take money. Money we don’t have. We’re already practically going paycheck-to-paycheck. HIS paychecks, since I can’t find a job to save my life and my mom doesn’t have one either. With this, our “working vehicle” count decreases to one. One vehicle for a family of three. Oh, but the fun doesn’t stop there! Our one working vehicle? Power steering leak. Need like $200 to fix it. You can still drive it, but you have to pour power steering fluid in it before you do.

Oh, and remember what I said. Paycheck-to-paycheck. Fixing either of these vehicles is no small task. Perhaps worst of all is how bad I feel for being so powerless (read: jobless) in this whole scenario. I mean, I know it’s not my fault. Lord knows I’ve been looking MONTHS for a job, but the economy hasn’t seen fit to cooperate.

I’m sure we’ll figure something out, or someone will step in to help us… I mean, we’ve been through far worse than this. I won’t go into details on that, but believe me… We’ve been in far worse conditions than this, and we’ve come through alright.

But for now… Augh. Just… Augh.

UPDATE: …And I thought my past two days were bad. My cousin (the same one I refer to all the time — the one I usually borrow games from) was in a wreck on his way to school this morning. While he and his little brother aren’t hurt too badly, the other driver is dead… I don’t have any more details other than that, except for the fact that my cousin wasn’t the one at fault. Still, this is tragic, and I can’t imagine how shaken he must feel right now seeing another person die right in front of him. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, as well as the other driver’s.

Dan #17 – Wild UNFINISHED appeared!

So I made myself a new Backloggery theme. Rather than being based on a game I’m playing (as has been the case with my last several themes), this one is just based on an old favorite of mine, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It’s nothing special — I took a wallpaper I snagged from /wg/ last night, edited Majora’s Mask out of the moon, and put a giant U in its place. Get it? Hooray for symbolism!

I was talking to Try4ce when I put the theme up, and I said, “In hindsight, this probably would’ve worked better if I… Still had a backlog.” I haven’t had what I’d call a true “backlog”, a pile of Unfinished games,  since October. Mach remarked how my only Unfinished game at the moment is Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (which I had to get a ROM of instead of buying on the VC since I’m broke), which is a pretty odd game considering my theme, banner with an Unfinished medal about to destroy the world and all. On that note, it dawned on me: this theme is far more fitting than I figured it would be when I made it.

Over the course of the next few days, my backlog will have these games as Unfinished.

• Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (SNES)
• BioShock (360, Borrow)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (360, Borrow)
• Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS)
• Sonic Unleashed (Wii, Borrow)

That puts me at 5 Unfinished, which is my personal max. However… Recent /v/ threads, as well as the review posted over at Press X to Win, have my interest piqued in a little freeware game called Eversion. I’m going to give that a shot, and if I like it, I’ll add it to the backlog and see it through, but not until after I’ve taken out at least one of the games listed above.

In a short bit of life-related news, I’m still unsuccessful on my job hunt, and my mom is getting more and more on my case about it. One day next week, I’m just going to drive to town and fill out applications pretty much everywhere even remotely of interest, in person. This online application shit isn’t working out. I gotta know that someone is even looking at these applications. At least that’ll give me a little closure.

In closing, I recently concluded a Master run of Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, by order of my own boredom and the Backloggery’s almighty Fortune Cookie. So… This means that two of my four Master runs are Kirby games. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, I’m a frickin’ HUGE Kirby fan. I’m just thinking my next one will need a little more variety is all.

Dan #16 – The World Ends with Gears: City Folk

Thanks to a couple of good friends of mine, my backlog sees its first non-ROMed game entries since November 12, when I bought Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. One buddy of mine (goes by Linko_16 at Backloggery, but hasn’t gotten around to finishing his page yet) loaned me The World Ends with You (DS) in exchange for Ratchet & Clank (PS2). This is just a borrow exchange, though. We’ll get our respective games back in a couple weeks. In a similar fashion, Arcadios sent me Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii) as a Christmas present and loaned me Gears of War (360) while he was at it. In exchange, I gave him Donkey Kong Country (SNES). Yeah, seems a little uneven to me, too, but that’s what he asked for.

Thanks, you guys!

Now, as for thoughts and progress… I’ve already beaten Gears of War. I started out on Hardcore difficulty because I’m no stranger to shooters, but… Man. I got my ass handed to me. I’m used to run-‘n’-gun style shooters (primarily Halo and Halo 2), and as you’re probably well aware, Gears relies on a “cover” system. That said, I had to dumb the difficulty down to Casual to make any progress. The system took me a while to get used to, but once I learned how to do everything, it became a pretty fun experience.

Overall, Gears was really enjoyable. I gave it 3 out of 4 stars on my backlog. Being only an Xbox Live Silver member, though, I’ve yet to try out the online multiplayer. Not that my internet could take it, anyways. That said, I’m interested in Gears 2, but only for the campaign at the moment.

Next, The World Ends with You. Can you say learning curve? Once you get the battle system down, though, you’re treated to a really great game. The soundtrack is amazing, the graphics are nice, there’s a surprisingly small amount of BELTANZIPPER, and the battle system is pretty exciting once you know what the hell it is you’re doing.

As far as I know, TWEWY‘s main story takes place over three weeks plus one final day called “Another Day”. I’m currently in the second week on Day 3. I was making good progress each night, but then I ran into this bullshit mission you have to complete to proceed, got to playing more GoW, and haven’t touched TWEWY for a day or two. Now that I’ve beaten Gears, though, I’ll pick it back up either tonight or tomorrow.

Finally is Animal Crossing: City Folk. Yeah, it’s more of the same, but I love it nonetheless. Especially considering I never had a copy of Wild World, so a lot of this stuff, like hats, glasses, the slingshot, the watering can, the Town Hall, etc., is all still new to me. That, combined with the new things that were added to City Folk such as the city, makes for a whole lot of things I haven’t experienced yet.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the game is the improved online component, but I haven’t had much luck with it. I’m trying to figure out exactly why, but… No luck. I had a hypothesis that I couldn’t connect to just one person. Any time I’d tried, it’d fail. However, any time I’d connect to a town with either 2 or 3 people in it, it’d always succeed.  My cousin, who shares the same ISP as me, tried joining Try4ce, Spectro and myself tonight, though, and was unable to, thus putting a bullet through the foot of my hypothesis. Argh.

I’m getting Error Code #80430 like it’s nobody’s business. Still, I’ve had at least a few successful connections, while my aforementioned cousin has had zero. If I had to guess what the problem was, it’d be… The ISP. This isn’t true DSL/cable. It’s “wireless”, which is… Bad. If you look up #80430 on Nintendo’s website, that’s one of the possible explanations: A connection that isn’t ordinary DSL or cable. Can’t do much about that, though. Unless the cable company wants to bring service out here, I’m sunk.

In closing, it seems that Sousuke has bought a custom CSS package for DRE! With that, we can do a ton to our layout in the way of customization. It just so happens that a friend of mine (Linkman @ Backloggery) knows CSS and volunteered to help us out, so be on the lookout for changes with the layout in the near future.

Anyway, that’s enough out of me. Later!

Dan #15 – WHAT’RE YA BUYIN’? [Updated Again! Some items removed!]

Update: Sorry, but I’m afraid I’ve had a change of heart for some of these. Kingdom Hearts II and all three of the DS games I were offering are no longer for sale. If you intended to buy any of these, I apologize. I just got to thinking and I changed my mind on wanting to part with them.

Thought I might as well hop on the For Sale/Trade bandwagon. Feel free to haggle on the older games, as I actually have no idea what any of them are worth. These are all open for trades, too, I guess. Comment/PM me on my Backloggery or message me on AIM if you wish to haggle. As I said, I don’t know the value of… any of these, really, so let me know if anything is horribly overpriced.

Sega Genesis ($4 each, no boxes/manuals)

• Bass Masters Classic
• Caesar’s Palace
• Madden NFL 95
• NHL 96
• RBI Baseball 4
• Sonic Spinball

Super Nintendo Entertainment System ($5 each, no boxes/manuals)

• Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball
• Bills VS Blazers and the NBA Playoffs
• Donkey Kong Country (TRADING: Arcadios)
• George Foreman’s KO Boxing
• Mario’s Time Machine
• NHL Stanley Cup
• Paperboy 2
• SeaQuest OSV
• Super Mario World

Game Boy Advance ($6 each, no boxes/manuals)

• Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku
• MegaMan Battle Network 4: Red Sun
• Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits
• Sonic Advance (RESERVED: PaperLink64)

Nintendo GameCube ($15, great condition, box/manual included)

• Soul Calibur II

PlayStation 2 ($12 each, decent condition)

• Ratchet & Clank (Includes A box, but not THE box. Sorry, I bought it used. No manual, either.)

Payments will most likely be, uh… Cash through an envelope. That’s how Sobou and I traded a while back, anyway. I have nowhere around here to cash money orders, and I don’t have a bank account, so… While you CAN pay me through Paypal, I can’t spent it outside the internet. Unless you’re getting, like, $30+ worth of stuff, I’d rather not use that option.

As far as shipping goes… I guess we’ll talk later. I’d like to pay for shipping myself, but I don’t have a dime right now, and depending on what you’re buying, if I subtract shipping out of the game purchase cost, I might actually LOSE money… So be aware of that. I might have to request a couple more dollars for shipping. I don’t want to, but like I said, I’m completely broke right now. That’s why I’m selling any of these in the first place.

Dan #14 – New!

Finally, my backlog is going to do some growing. I’ve pretty much been going one game at a time since I beat all of my Unfinished games back in October, but soon my backlog will see two Unfinished games, as well as one Null time sink.

First, Super Metroid. I’m borrowing this from my cousin (the same one who loaned me Super Mario RPG a while back, as well as any other game you’ve ever seen me say I’ve borrowed in recent months). I was just going to ROM it, but my controller is being wonky, and Super Metroid is one game I outright refuse to play with a keyboard.

I’m not the most die-hard Metroid fan around, but I’ve always been fond of the series. I didn’t hop on board until Fusion and Prime came out, but hey. I got to thinking not too long ago that I didn’t believe I ever beat Super Metroid. I mean, I never owned it, but I’d always kind of thought for some reason that it was something I’d beaten at some point. Not sure why.

I just started tonight, and I’ve already had my first death. It wasn’t to the first boss, but rather a generic enemy after the boss. I was at nearly full health, too. My ego suffered critical damage.

Then you’ve got Animal Crossing: City Folk, which my good buddy/waifu Arcadios is sending to me as a Christmas present. Like basically everyone else on The Backloggery, I’ll be keeping its status as Null, unless I actually do EVERYTHING in it someday, in which case I’ll mark it complete like I did the original AC.

Arcadios is also letting me borrow his copy of Gears of War, which is kind of historic. As famous as the 360 is for its SHOOTAN, I still have yet to play an FPS game on mine… or anyone’s, for that matter. Much obliged, Arc! You’ll get those sexual favors sooner than you think~

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to put in a shameless plug for Noi’s streams. Bored late at night? Noi’s far more nocturnal than Drum/Try, so stop by sometime! 🙂

This post wasn’t very long, so here, have some freaked-out cat.

Dan #13 – Recovery

…I figured someone else would’ve updated by now, especially since Rebel asked me to delay my next post so that he could post his Earthbound review. That was two days ago. So…

You may or may not recall, I had a really horrible day not too long ago, and it ended with me getting sick. Symptoms were runny/stuffy nose, sore throat, and… acid reflux. One of these things is not like the other, etc.. Throw in some sneezing and coughing and you’ve got my condition for the past few days. Thankfully I’m getting better, though. The acid reflux mostly stopped as of yesterday, my nose is getting back to normal (I’m always stopped up to some degree, sick or not.) and my sore throat is slowly fading.

It was weird. I’d drink something to temporarily soothe my throat, but as soon as it went down, I’d burp due to the acid reflux. Literally a second or two after I’d swallowed a drink. It wasn’t very pleasant. This was the first time in my life that I can recall having anything like that. The bad news is that it’s probably going to become a huge thing for me as I get older. My dad has acid reflux pretty much constantly. If you go a full 24 hours without hearing him burp at least 5 times, something’s up.

Hoping I’ll be back to my usual self by this weekend so I can go hang out with my cousin (my usual practice for killing time on Saturday afternoons).

In the way of gaming, both of my current “projects” are coming along nicely, those being a playthrough of Summon Night: Swordcraft Story (GBA)  and a Master run of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GCN). I really like Summon Night. Wish it hadn’t taken so long for someone to recommend it to me. Definitely going to play the sequel a week or two after I finish the first one. Don’t expect a full-fledged Reviewtiful or anything. I’ll either sum up my thoughts in my next rant or do some kind of Reviewtiful Quickie or something like that.

Anyway, I’m nearly 8 hours into SN:SS. According to BluFin, it’s somewhere between 10 and 12 hours long if you’re going for Beat status, which I am. Doing a Complete in this game would require a second playthrough and lots of tedious weapon recipe hunting, which I don’t feel like doing. As for Wind Waker, I’m currently… *shudder*… gathering the Triforce Charts/Shards. Worst part of the game hands down.

Part of my Master run criteria is “no unnecessary upgrades”, and I considered the biggest wallet to fall under that category. That means I’m doing this section with only the 1,000 Rupee wallet. Tingle charges 398 Rupees per chart and the default wallet holds only 200, so you HAVE to upgrade to the 1,000 wallet. Thankfully, though, I’ve already got 4 shards and 7 charts. I’m one island away from the final chart, and I think I have one or two of my charts already translated and just haven’t gotten around to gathering the shards yet. I should be able to wrap up this nightmare today.

Update, you other mugs! Otherwise Disc Read Error is going to become Mach and Dan’s Super Sexy Fun Time Blog. >:O

If you can make sense of the following video, you will win a fabulous prize.