Category: Otaku

Semester Winding Down

April 24, 2007

It was just shy of 90 degrees yesterday (Fahrenheit). And yes, that means in under ten days the temperature had risen almost 60 degrees (remember it was snowing just over a week ago). It has gotten cooler now, which is a good thing because it was borderline oppressive yesterday.

The semester is winding down. There is less than two weeks left of classes, during which I have a quiz, an exam, and must give a presentation. So I’m busy preparing. I also have to prepare a poster for a department meeting this weekend, and do a second presentation for a group meeting. None of this is super detailed (or important) stuff, but time consuming nonetheless. I didn’t get a great deal done this past semester with respect to my doctoral work, mostly because for about two months my x-ray detector was broken (the repair company is scheduled to ship it back today), but I’ll be working over the summer to make some progress (hopefully).

Not much other news. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl came out for DS last weekend, and we’ve both started playing them. Only this morning I unlocked the GTS, which is a system, that lets players wirelessly trade Pokemon with players anywhere in the world (the first few trades I browsed were Japanese players). The game includes a nifty world map that will fill up as trades are completed, so you can see just where on Earth your Pokemon originated. Very very cool, especially for a DS game. (Note to Adam: buy this game so we can battle/trade Pokemon)

Here’s a shot of my DS library as of last week. Not as good as I’d hoped because I chose bad lighting. The idea for doing this was born online; it seems to be a good way to show off ones collection (DS boxes tile well together)

With 85 games in total (including Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, not in the above photo) I have more DS games than 18 of my 21 total systems. Only for PS2 (with 109) and Gameboy Advance (with 138) do I own more. However, I have been accumulating DS games at a far faster rate – an average of slightly over 3/month – than for any other game system I have ever owned…

This One’s For Bernard

December 19, 2006

Hideo Kojima is one of those handfull of famous game designers, most known for his Metal Gear Solid series. However he’s also made a lot of other games (the awesome gameboy Boktai series included) and is about to release (in Japan) his first Nintendo DS game:

It’s called Kabutore (geddit?) and is a stock-market simulation game. Players buy and sell and whatnot, and the game apparently contains data taken from the Japanese Nikkei index since 2000, so it more or less simulates a ‘real’ stock market.

It’ll never come to America. But if it does, maybe this will be the straw that finally convinces Bernard to buy himself a DS 🙂

To end today’s post, here’s a shot of the awesome 2D art in the recent GBA release Yggdra Union (which is sitting on my shelf waiting to be played):

Game Boy

December 6, 2006

The year is almost over, and the game-buying year is over. Although I know I will be getting some games for Christmas, I will not be buying myself any more games between now and the end of the year. So it seems perfect time to do my gaming year-in-review.

During 2006 I bought 91 video games, for the following systems:

Nintendo DS (31 games)
Gameboy Advance [GBA] (24 games)
Playstation 2 [PS2] (17 games)
Playstation Portable [PSP] (8 games)
Neo-Geo Pocket Colour (4 games)
Gamecube (2 games)
XBox (2 games)
Gameboy (2 games)
Bandai Wonderswan (1 game)

I also bought 2 systems (a white and a pink DS lite, one of which was for KLS). I also paid for 3 months of a World Of Warcraft subscription during the summer (total: $45).

The average price paid per game was a very low $21.67. That is a record for the 13 years I have been keeping records (I originally started records for tax purposes, now I keep them because it’s a pleasing way to keep track of my hobby). This is partially because I am trending towards playing more handhelds (compare the DS/GBA totals in the list above) and partially because the current crop of consoles are nearing the end of their lifespans and retail prices on older games are decreasing.

The least paid for any single game was Y100 (about 90 cents) for Uzumaki for Wonderswan. The most was $60 for the Final Fantasy 12 collectors edition.

16 games were purchased during my Japan trip.

To date, about a dozen of the games I bought this year are ‘unplayed’. Six of these are still sealed in their shrinkwrap. The principle reason for not playing a game is lack of time, but others include a language barrier (in the case of Napoleon and Magical Vacation, two Japanese GBA games), desire to keep the games ‘collectable’ (my sealed Japanese Wizardry GBA games) or because I am waiting to play them on better hardward (2 recent Gamecube games that I intend playing on Wii).

The game I played the most would be World Of Warcraft (over 1200 hours logged on my character, about 400 or so this year). Runners-up would be Monster Hunter Portable (for PSP) and Final Fantasy 12 (PS2), both with savefiles in excess of one hundred hours. I fully expect FF12 to exceed 150 hours when I am ‘done with it’ (ie. killed the god-dragon Yiazmat and the esper-king Zodiark).

The best game of the year…? A very tough question. I’ll answer this in a future post.

Robot Claw