Category: Otaku

The Doomsday Box

For Christmas, I received a most wonderful item from Doctor Florence (aka. The Great Bear of the Northwest). Specifically, I received this:

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Useless Box“? What is that? All will be revealed…

There’s actually a funny story behind this gift! I had purchased one myself for JBF for Christmas, and when it had arrived I committed the evil sin of covetousness and very nearly ‘stole’ his for myself. My good nature won out though, and it was wrapped and put under the tree. I was super happy when I ended up getting one of my own from SFL! In short: this was a perfect gift 🙂

I made it yesterday. The suggested assembly time was 1.5 hours, but it took me at least double that. During construction I ruined:
– my eyes (due to me needing a new prescription)
– my fingers (due to friction from jewellers screwdriver handles and a soldering iron burn)
– my back (due to bending over the tiny pieces putting them together
But despite the endless and soul-wracking pain, this was one of the most enjoyable builds I have ever done!

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That’s me being a technomancer there, soldering the toggle switch to the PCB. There was actually quite a bit of soldering required, since none of the wires came attached. Here’s the finished circuit:

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You can see a motor, a PCB, a toggle switch and a pressure switch. What could it all do?

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The box itself is made of thick laser-cut plastic, and is assembled using a very clever T-connection system (via nuts and bolts). The machining of the parts is superb, and it all went together smoothly, seamlessly and very easily. Here’s the nearly-finished box:

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And here’s the final product, both closed and opened to show the inside:

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I finished it! I made it with no mistakes, and it worked perfectly first time. As you can see when it is closed there is a just a switch poking out. So what happens when you switch it on? This happens:

Yes my friends, the box – when switched on – switches itself off! It’s only goal in life is to turn itself off if anyone happens to turn it on. The very definition of a useless item…

…and I love it!

My Collection: PSP

I wasn’t planning on doing another of these posts so soon but I got a PS Vita for my birthday. This was the final nail in the PSP coffin (so to speak), so since I found myself packing the PSP away into the ‘permanent collection’ I thought it was a good time to do a retrospective of the many years of enjoyment it has given me.

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In December 2004, Sony released their first handheld console, the Playstation Portable, or PSP. I bought one on launch day in the US, March 24, 2005. It cost me $249.99 and I also bought Lumines, a puzzle game.

At launch, this was an extremely impressive device. It had a beautiful screen, wi-fi connectivity, was the first handheld with an analogue stick and used media with far more capacity than the cartridges Nintendo were using for their Gameboy Advance and DS systems. The PSP also launched very shortly after the DS, and was initially a much more impressive unit. The future looked rosy indeed for Sony.

Furthermore, the Universal Media Discs (UMD) that the PSP used were being used to sell movies and TV shows as well, and Sony wasted no time marketing the PSP as an all-in-one device. Customers showed little interest in buying movies though, and this market was soon abandoned and the PSP was devoted to being a game system.

Within a few years western support for the device as a game system had cooled as well. More and more tier-1 console franchises saw their PSP versions canceled or never announced, and it became more a console for translated Japanese games. In other words, it became heaven to an otaku like myself! The PSP more and more became the console for RPGs, shooters or other quirky games that would have been too risky to release on PS3. I lapped them all up, and I loved the thing.

Some examples:

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R-Type Tactics (2008) – A tactical based shooter set in the R-Type universe. Unique, difficult and very playable!

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Metal Gear AC!D (2005) – The second game I purchased for the PSP was this crazy tactical card game set in the Metal Gear universe. Incredibly entertaining, very replayable and for my money the second best Metal Gear game yet (after its sequel)!

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Patapon (2008) – A rhythm RPG in which you control an army of Patapon’s against many fierce beasts. The graphics are in silhouette, the music charming and the gameplay surprisingly deep. A landmark PSP series (there are two sequels) that I’ll remember forever.

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Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (2011) – If you look back on my list of favourite games of all time, this one (which originally came out for SNES in 1995) is one of them. The best version by far is the PSP re-release from 2011. This game is so packed with content I feel I could play it forever…

Of course no mention of the PSP library would be complete without the recognition of one particular series, and that would be Monster Hunter. Capcom’s juggernaut series was first released for PS2, but didn’t explode until it came out on PSP. Suddenly Japanese players discovered they could easily hunt monsters together via this portable system, and in the years that followed the launch of Monster Hunter Portable (Freedom in the west) in 2006 the sales of the PSP would get a large bump with each new Monster Hunter game.

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I was – still am – addicted to the series, and played them all for many, many hours. To this day, I suspect Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (aka Portable 2g) is the portable game I have played more than any other, with a save file somewhere near 400 hours (not including the ~130 hours on the old savefiles that were imported from previous versions).

In 2007 Sony released a new model of the PSP – called the PSP Slim – that I bought on release day. It was lighter and had a better screen and longer battery life. In 2009 they also released a version called the PSP Go that was digital only and did not include the UMD drive, which meant it couldn’t play any of the existing games unless you repurchased them digitally. This was a tremendously bad idea and unsurprisingly it failed miserably, being withdrawn from the market within six months.

The writing was on the wall for the device in the west even then, and the last few years have seen few new game releases, especially in physical versions. The last UMD-based game released in the west came out last November (I bought it), over a year after the PSP’s replacement device (the PS Vita) was released.

During the years I purchased 102 different PSP games. Here’s a shot of most of my collection:

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The PSP had no lockout, which meant games worked no matter where you bought them. About 15% of my collection is from Japan, Australia or the UK. I also have a decent amount of promotional UMDs (thanks AW!) also strangely some of these don’t work on either of my systems. Compared to my game collection as a whole, the PSP ranks sixth in terms of total games owned.

One of the PSPs strengths – the physical drive – is also a weakness. I haven’t used my original PSP in years, but around the time I purchased the slim model the original was demonstrating loading issues. And in the last year or so the springs on the UMD drive on my slim model have weakened, and occasionally discs take an excessive time loading. Were the PSP to continue as a viable device, I imagine I would have had to purchase a new one soon. I do wonder how playable they will be in the years to come.

For now, everything you see above is being sealed inside the pink storage box and put away. I can thank my PSP’s for nine years and thousands of hours of fun. In my opinion the PSP is one of the best handheld systems ever made.

How Did My Resolution Go?

Last year I made a post detailing what I felt was an enormous amount of books, games and DVDs on my ‘list’ that I felt I really needed to get through. It became a resolution or sorts, to shrink all lists in 2013. How did I go?

Books

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I made great progress in this category, reading the majority of the approximately 50 volumes that were sitting on my shelf this time last year. The only one I haven’t yet found time for is In The Wake Of The Sea Serpents, the 800+ page magnus-opus by Heuvelmans. In addition to those I had this time last year, I purchased and read many new books during the year, mostly manga and fantasy novels. I try and read every single night before sleep at the least.

However – and to my delight since I love books – I have to admit my ‘to read’ list is hardly smaller than it was last year, replenished as it was by a large variety of other books. Heuvelmans tome is now accompanied by 3 other cryptozoology books, and they share a shelf with about 20 novels (mostly fantasy), a handful of manga (not much I am interested in is released nowadays), and a half-dozen or so RPG manuals such as the one pictured above. Add to this a couple of Doctor Who books, an art book or two and four books on video-game and pinball history and I should have enough to keep me busy well into 2014!

Movies & TV

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As with my books, I made great progress on the DVD ‘watch list’ of February 2013. Ultraseven, Lexx, Claymore – all the box sets have been watched. In fact almost every single item we owned last year has been watched months ago, and many more have now filled their place.

In fact, the ‘watch list’ as of today is actually longer than it was last year. Two items alone: the Inspector Morse DVD box set and the Monkey DVD set sum to over 100 hours! Add to these several other anime DVD sets (Spice & Wolf, Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!), another Japanese sci-fi set (Ultra-Q) and about a dozen assorted DVD movies (almost all sci-fi/fantasy) and we’ve got our watching cut out for us.

Games

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As with the other two categories, I made bold strides into my piles of unplayed games. As of today I have:

– 8 unplayed PSP games, only one of which was actually purchased in 2013
– 8 unopened 3DS games, most of which are less than 6 months old
– only 1 unopened Wii U game (Pikmin 3, which I may start playing today!)
– 2 unopened PS3 games (both of which I owned last February as well…)

As you may recall from the blog post a month ago, I purchased much less games in 2013 than I usually do, which allowed me to play a lot more games I already owned. I expect during this next year to ‘finish’ the PSP games as well as possible the PS3. Since I currently have no plans to obtain a PS4, I imagine this section of the list will be much reduced this time next year.

Last time I looked at the piles of unopened/unread/unwatched media and thought “Why do I even buy more stuff?!”. Now I look at the smaller piles and think “I’m looking forward to opening that!”.

In other words, I think my resolution was a success 🙂