| 2022/11/28 |
| Not much happened until very recently, big
they are two really big things so I thought I should talk
about them. Sometimes I browse local marketplaces to see
what they have, even if it's something I don't need. Well
I found some housewife selling a 25 pack Verbatims for
half the price I bought my 10 packs, no way I'm gonna find
a deal like this ever again. The problem was they are
printable discs and I didn't know if they are meant to be
burned differently or something, but apparently not so it
was a no brainer, I just had to buy it. Looking through
lists again, there are still some games I would like to
try so I'm sure they will be enough, and maybe I could
have a few as backups because some of the shitty quality
discs that came with my Xbox
360 barely
wanted to work recently. But the most important news is
the launch of Insignia. A few years ago I heard about this
project which wants to bring back Xbox
Live, but I
thought it's never gonna happen because so much time had
passed. But then they announced the closed beta starts in
November and you can sign up and register your Xbox
so I did immediately lol. I didn't even had the stock
dashboard installed lol so I had to find my softmod disc
again but I could test the connection and it worked. Then
the day came and I was waiting for my invite code but I
didn't recieve one. I tried the codes they posted on
Twitter too but they didn't work anymore. But at the end
of the day I finally got my invite and I managed to create
a gamertag, with the name I've been using in games for
like 20 years, which is so basic it's usually claimed
everywhere else but here I could have it lol. Man I was so
excited I don't even remember which game I tried first, it
might have been Midtown Madness 3, which came with
my Xbox and I played it a lot based on how much
shit I unlocked lol but I barely remember it. And it has
all these game modes that you can't play alone, like being
a cop and chasing other cars, or trying to take some gold
to a place before other cars, it's actually a lot of fun.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour seems to be one of the
more popular games which is weird lol, I actually bought
it back in the day because I loved this series and I
wanted to play all of the games (Call of Duty 3 was
one of the first games I burned for my Xbox
360), but it's
such a terrible game lmao but still I'm having fun with
this one too (on the first day I actually killed that
Modern Vintage Gamer guy in the game lmao). I downloaded Counter-Strike
too, I've never played it but it's a multiplayer only game
(with bots too), it's a bit weird like I don't think you
can zoom in your weapon but this can be fun too. Unreal
Championship is pretty cool too, I'm not the best
but I'm not the worst either lol, it's really fast paced
compared to other games. I could finally try out MechAssault
too a few days ago and I was right it's a lot more fun in
multiplayer lol, and Crimson Skies: High Road to
Revenge which is awesome and much better than the
singleplayer (it's weird that barely anyone wants to play
these games). It sounds like online multiplayer just makes
everything better but that's not true, Whacked!
felt exactly like the same and XIII is actually
worse, the gunplay is terrible I can barely hit anyone for
some reason. And then the next Monday they added my
favorite games, Star Wars: Battlefront and Star
Wars: Battlefront II! I can't believe I could
finally experience them online on Xbox (I played
them on PC
before but it sucks there), and I knew decades of playing
these games would prepare me lmao because I'm dominating
everyone lol. It's so much fun even though they are kinda
laggy. I just hope people will keep playing, it's already
hard to find games with enough people. There is another
way to play online with XLink Kai which is like system
link through the internet, but it fucking sucks I have to
disable the router and the computer firewall just to
launch it and the only game people play is Halo 2,
and just Slayer with shotgun and energy sword on that
shitty snow map over and over again, so fuck that. |
| 2022/04/06 |
| Well here is a new update: I bought a PlayStation Portable. I'd
been trying to find one for a couple months, I almost
bought one but it was in a really bad shape without a
charger. Most of them are quite expensive and I just can't
justify spending that much money. But a week ago I found a
wallet when I was walking home, and I found the guy and
contacted him. He gave me a lot of money for returning it
(and turned out he is a boss and said if I ever need a job
just call him and he will hire me instantly lmao), and the
next day I randomly looked up PlayStation
Portable online sales and someone was
selling a 3004 in my city for really cheap and in a
really good shape. I felt like this was a sign and bought
it later that day. And it came with a charger and a 64GB
memory card which is like the largest you can use I
believe. It also came with 2 Need for Speed games
on UMD but I'm not gonna use that when you can just play
games from the memory card lol. Seriously I can't believe
how cheap it was, they go for like twice this much at
least. So just like with the TV and the PlayStation
2, the best solution is always just waiting
for months for the right one to pop up. It didn't come
with an USB cable, and it turns out it needs Mini USB
which I thought I don't have. But I realized I had this
card reader and I can probably insert the card and just
copy the games to it, and I was thinking where could it be
when I realized it's outside somewhere in a bag lol. When
I found it I immediately realized it has a removable Mini
USB cable so I didn't needed it anymore lol. For some
reason though it doesn't want to charge the console, but
it's a really old one so I will buy one and see if it
works, but it's not a big deal because it copies files and
the charger works great. And seems like the battery lasts
for a long time too so that's great. When I wanted to
download games I quickly realized I only know a few, and I
was worried if it was the right choice to spend my money
on it, but as I went through a list of games I found so
many I want to play that it's definitely worth it lol. As
for the first game, MediEvil: Resurrection would
be an obvious choice, but as it is a remake and I just
played the original on PlayStation
a few months ago, I would rather wait with it a year or
more. Apparently it can play PlayStation
games too, so I might use it for the games I don't want to
waste a CD for if that shitty emulator doesn't work well.
And it has some interesting homebrew games and emulators
too, but I need to read more about them later. So finally
I have all the consoles I ever wanted,
hurray! And about the lack of reviews, I just don't have
energy to type all that shit anymore. I need to return to
the style of my earliest ones, where I just wrote a few
lines about the games. Luckily I took notes of all the
games I've played so I can always write them later. |
| 2021/08/26 |
| A lot of things happened in the past few
months: first of all, could barely play anything thanks to
the insane heat we had all summer. It was worse than ever,
and as I said said earlier I fucking hate summers in
general but with this heat it was unbearable. Every couple
weeks it got cold enough for a day or two so I could play
a little bit but that was my entire gaming in the last 3
months. Seriously, fuck all global warming deniers,
especially those retarded Americans, just because you
don't see it happening in your country doesn't mean it
isn't noticable somewhere else in the world. Finally it
looks like the heat is gone and it's gonna stay cold. Just
in time for my new acquisitions... There is a lot of them:
I got a new 80 something cm Samsung LED TV, which looks so
much better than my older HDTV which was really small and
the black colors were kinda fucked up on it. Then I also
found a 72cm Sony Trinitron CRT I was looking for, which
is really hard to find, especially because almost all of
them seem to be those shitty 100hz TVs and this one also
has an NTSC mode which I really wanted. My other CRT was
too small for my eyes and the picture was all fucked up
and it looked really fucking awful with black bars
everywhere on my PlayStation
2 for some reason. This one isn't perfect
either, the geometry isn't the best (especially
horizontally) but I improved it a little bit in the
service menu, it's still much better than the previous one
though. But the colors looked pretty bad and the picture
was blurry as fuck, I was worried until I found out that's
how it looks on larger TVs with composite lol. So the next
step was finding new cables. The TV has RGB and S-Video
inputs, I use my Xbox the most so it was the
obvious choice for the better picture (and it's a 1.6, the
older models can't output RGB colors correctly!). I only
wanted official cables, and it took a while to find them
used on the German eBay for cheap (I used the "family
member in Germany" glitch to avoid the expensive shipping
cost lol). When I turned on the Xbox with the
Advanced SCART Cable I couldn't believe how beautiful it
looks: the colors are soooo vivid and everything looks
sharp as fuck, it's fucking incredible. The Sony S-Video
cable was a big improvement too, but the colors aren't
that noticeably better, however the awful blurriness is
gone. And finally: I wasn't sure if I should use my PlayStation
2 to play PlayStation
games, it seemed like buying the console was cheaper than
buying a game, a memory card and new CDs, and I was scared
I will fuck up something by taping down the ribbon cable
and the sensors. But I couldn't find one for cheap, they
are more expensive than a PlayStation
2 for some reason lol. Recently I found an
official memory card for cheap, I was trying to bid in the
last minute but apparently a lot of people want one lol so
the price went up like crazy in the last minute bidding
war. At the same time I found a German Tomb Raider II
copy from the same seller, and I decided to go all in on
that one. My winning bid just came in 2 seconds before the
auction ended lmao, and it was pretty cheap. So I got the
original game, next step was finding a memory card. It
turned out it's also possible to use non-official cards
with a trick, so I bought the cheapest one I could find
(it was sold by a guy who used to write in a gaming
magazine 20+ years ago, I recognized his name). So now all
I needed was some CDs, so I bought 20 of them for really
cheap. The final step: the taping mod. It was a bit messy,
especially fixing the ribbon cable, but I managed to tape
down everything. When the CDs arrived, I was really
excited to try it out. I burned a game, put the Tomb
Raider II disc in the PlayStation
2 and turned it on while holding a button
to boot up PSXLauncher. I opened the lid, and the disc
wasn't spinning, so my sensor taping was successful, and
no scratches either by the ribbon cable! I put in the CD,
then pressed X and the PlayStation
logo showed up and the game booted up perfectly! At first
I wasn't sure what to do with the memory card because the
game only wants to save to Slot 1, but apparently you can
just remove the FreeMcBoot
memory
card
during
the game, so it recognized it
and formatted it, so everything works! I'm
really excited to discover some new games, I
know I also have the Nintendo 64 emulator but I
just didn't really find any game that looks that
interesting to me, I pretty much only use it to
play something like Diddy Kong Racing, Mario
Kart
64, or F-Zero X. I will take
another look at some point, but right now I'm
more interested in discovering the PlayStation's
library.
I
think
I already know what's the first
game I'm gonna play, but I also need to figure
out how to play different region games. |
| 2021/03/04 |
| Couple new acquisitions: I had this shitty
bootleg chink HDD Transfer Kit I bought more than 10 years
ago, I used it to transfer title updates to my Xbox
360. Now that
shit died, so I bought another one on eBay: that one
wasn't working either, what a suprise (their shitty
tracker didn't show it was delivered so I just said it
never arrived and I got my money back lmao, fuck that
country and their cheap shitty products). After doing some
research it turns out you can copy any game data from USB
flash drives if they are formatted by the console first. I
don't remember if this was a thing a decade ago, I
remember there was an update that allowed games to be
installed on them, that's probably when it happened.
Anyway I bought a 16GB SanDisk flash drive, it was really
cheap and I found a coupon that made shipping free. I had
a smaller one (2GB) I could easily use for title updates,
but I need it to play installed XGD3 games (for some
reason if you start playing a music from your flash drive
then you can start those games without any errors, I have
no idea who discovered this but bless him lol) and I
actually found out some Xbox
Live Arcade games and
DLCs were DRM free, and after some deep googling I found
them on various different sites. So I'm gonna play some of
the DLCs too for games like Dragon Age: Origins, Borderlands,
BioShock Infinite etc. Speaking of BioShock
Infinite, I finally found a copy really cheap and I
bought it, so I got my second and last original Xbox
360 game lmao.
It had a shitty sticker on it from the store that sold it,
I managed to peel it off, I hate when they do that shit.
And so the biggest news: I bought a PlayStation
2. I was looking at some games
recently I would love to try out, and I was doing some
research to see which models are the best and how to
softmod them. At first I wanted to buy a fat model
because you can add a HDD (and I just think the
originals are always the best looking), but it needs a
network adapter and there is no way I could find one
used in this country with it. Slims have ethernet
ports but I didn't want to buy discs for it, because I
know how unreliable the lasers in these consoles were.
It turns out you can connect the console to your PC and run games from there. And
there is a new method called FreeDVDBoot where
you just need to burn a DVD and you can softmod
the console with that. So I was looking through
some local sites every once in a while but they
cost more than what I wanted to pay. But I
checked it again last week, and I found the
exact model I was looking for, with original
memory card and controller (most of the time I
see them with shitty bootleg ones), without a
modchip on a local eBay like auction website,
starting from zero, whoever has the biggest bid
wins when it expires. It felt like a sign, I
knew I was gonna go for it. I had a price in my
mind I was willing to give for it - basically
half of what I usually see on these sites, and I
thought if I'm lucky it might be just enough,
because in this shithole people are so dumb they
still think this is the 2000s and you need a
modchip to play pirated games, they ain't gonna
waste money on original games. So I was getting
ready for a bidding war, checking the auction
every day. There was a lot of bidding for a
while then it slowed down a lot, there was only
one bid on the last day, I thought it's gonna be
an intense last minute battle. But minutes
before it ended it was still the same price. So
I put my bid on it, refreshing it like crazy
every second to see who is gonna battle with me.
No one did. I won. For almost half of what I
wanted to pay maximum, for the third of other
consoles with modchips (there was actually
another auction like this but that console had a
modchip, of course the price was higher on that
and there were still a couple days left). Lmao.
So I had the DVD and FreeMcBoot and OPL on my
flash drive ready. When the console arrived, I
couldn't believe how tiny it is. It looks so
cheaply made, no wonder they made so much, the
way you put the disc in it is just ridiculous.
It didn't want to read the DVD, but it came with
an original game (XIII, which I'm not
gonna play there, I have it on Xbox) and
it had no problems reading that, so I thought
great, I can go and buy another DVD. I looked at
the disc and saw these circular scratches, and I
saw them on the game too. Apparently it's a
common problem with Slims, caused by the shitty
ribbon cable. But I just kept trying over and
over again until it just read the disc, and I
could install the softmod and the program needed
to run games from the PC.
I set up everything today, downloaded a game to see if
it works and it played the game! I think I'm gonna
clean it first and try to tape down the ribbon cable.
And tape down the sensors too, because apparently
that's what needed to play PlayStation games with softmod (there is a way
to do that with an emulator, but it's not
compatible with the game I want to play the most,
and the model I bought is the only slim that can
play them without issues). I need a memory card
and an original game to play burned games, so that's
not
gonna
happen
for
a while. I never really cared for
Sony consoles, I think I only played on a PlayStation
2 once at some kid's
house, I couldn't believe how bad Star Wars:
Battlefront looked compared to my Xbox
version, and that's a common thing for multiplat
games, so I'm still gonna play most games there.
But there are a couple exclusives I really want to
play, like the Ace Combat games, Ico
or Shadow of the Colossus for example. The
controller is fucking awful though, the analog
stick placement is retarded, and those R and L
buttons feel so bad compared to triggers. Also
it's so small, it's weird to hold it with my big
hands, I hope I can get used to it. I think I'm
gonna make a list of games I want to play first, I
probably gonna start playing on it after that (I
already know the first game is gonna be Ico).
I
also
need
to
find a Sony Trinitron TV,
because on this cheap shit I have the picture has
a shitty black bar on the right and it isn't
really centered. I have this issue with some Xbox
games too, I hope I can get lucky with a TV too. |
| 2020/10/16 |
| So I bought another pack of Verbatims right
after the last post, but more than half of them were
coasters and that made me really mad because I can't waste
my money like that. I checked on Amazon how return works,
no way I would have sent it back but after writing my
complaint they gave my money back in a gift card and I
didn't even have to send it back! What I did was I bought
another pack with it lol and seems like they all work so I
got one and a half pack for one's price, pretty good deal.
I also bought another one from a local website recently
because
they had a discount and I didn't even have to pay for
shipping and that's just a deal I couldn't miss. And
because I found more games I'm interested in than discs I
had it was perfect timing. Now I really can't think of
more games to play so this was probably the last one I
bought. I didn't really play much in the summer because
the heat was just unbearable and my room was really hot
too, so there were times I didn't turn on my Xbox
360 for a
weeks, and never more than just 30 minutes. I hate summers
so much, my body just breaks down if it's more than 20
degrees, I can't breath or sleep, I'm sweating all the
time, the fan is constantly on and it doesn't even help
that much, and I'm just in my underwear for months. And
no, I'm not fat and I've never been fat, I was skinny most
of my life but now my BMI is perfect. It got really cold
recently and I can finally play more which is awesome. |
| 2020/05/31 |
| Lot of things happened on the Xbox 360 front: I wanted to fix the USB flap on the faceplate then I realized I should clean out the console too. It was so hard to open it, I was so scared I'm gonna break something. Also it's ridiculous but that small plastic thingy that broke off was still in there lol, so I glued it back on and when I was trying it out a couple times it broke off and now I can't find it! Anyway the console was really dusty, this was the first time it was opened since 2012 I believe. Suprisingly the heatsinks barely had any dust on them, but the fans looked terrible. Here is a PHOTO of how it looked (it's missing the spiderwebs and dead spider that were on the back of the DVD drive lol). I'm way too scared to replace the thermal paste, hopefully that won't be a problem. And it shouldn't be: I always knew it's a Jasper, but I never knew it's the Kronos revision, which are the most reliable ones (yes, more reliable than the Slim and E models!). It was really suprising because it was made in early August, which makes it one of the earliest Kronos consoles out there, pretty cool. Anyway I cleaned it up and put it back together. It was still loud when I played from the disc, but I don't have to do that anymore because I finally finished Alien: Isolation. Also I was checking the Verbatim price on Amazon to see if it goes down a bit and I noticed there were only 10 something left, so I had no choice but to buy another pack. The problem is I'm not sure what games to burn. I burned 9 so far, one disc was a coaster but that turned out to be a good thing actually (unless I'm gonna need another disc in the future lol), I will tell why when I finish playing that game, it's such a ridiculous story! There are some games that can't be burned with a normal drive and there are two of them that I'm interested in. One is Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, which became the first retail game I've ever bought lmao. I have like 60+ games and this is the first one, crazy (I don't care what people think about piracy, I've always been poor and I'm not gonna miss out on things because I was born in a shithole with no opportunities). It was cheap and used, and it looks so awesome so I had to do it. The other game is BioShock Infinite, but I'm not sure about this and I don't have more money to waste. I will finish the first game on PC which I stopped playing years ago too and decide, but I don't remember liking it that much. Also I organized the way I think I'm gonna be playing games: I'm trying to pick games based on release date (the earlier ones first), and play not more than 3 games on Xbox at the same time. One would be a shooter, then some kind of adventure game without guns, and maybe some other short and easy game inbetween the two. On the Xbox 360 it would be 2 games max, an easy game that I can just play randomly (I feel like that's gonna be EDF for a while) and then something else, either a game I haven't finished or an earlier title. The reason why I left so many games unfinished is because new titles were coming out around 2010-11 when I was still playing something else, then I stopped for a new game and circle continued. I'm watching longplays on YouTube to catch up with them, and of games that I played on PC and didn't like but I have the sequel which should be a lot better. Well, I hope I can put together a list of games that I want to burn soon. |
| 2020/05/02 |
| Man it's crazy how many games I've left
unfinished. Games I just stopped playing 5-10 years ago
and it feels like just a few years. I think I'm not gonna
play anything new on Xbox
360 until I
finish at least some of them. I played a little bit of Alien:
Isolation, I was so excited for that game because it
feels and looks like the first Alien movie. I love those
sci-fi movies with futuristic analog technology so fucking
much. Alien, Star Wars, Blade Runner. God I just love that
so much and this game is full of it. I don't even know why
I stopped playing, I remember it was ridiculously
stressful though. I'm gonna rewatch the missions I've
played just to remind myself what's going on, I remember
the alien got blown out of the airlock and there was
something about androids but not much else. At least I
remember something, I will have to start a new game with Red
Dead
Redemption because I forgot everything. This
might have been the only game I've played on a 720p TV
with HDMI cable, and the last Xbox
360 game I've
played (with the exception of Earth Defense Force 2025,
which I've only started playing recently). Every other one
I played on my shitty CRT with
composite cable, I didn't even know there is a graphical
difference. I played Ace Combat 6's tutorial just
to try it out and it looks so gorgeous. Also I discovered
so many cool games I would like to play, mostly RPGs. I've
never really been into that genre, I mean fantasy RPGs,
but I'm playing Fable: The Lost Chapters and I'm
enjoying it. It's gonna take a while to get there, these
games take a long time to finish so I hope I will have
more DVDs by then. |
| 2020/04/23 |
| Finally my Verbatim discs arrived. This is
the first time I ordered something from Amazon and it took
them a week just to ship it because of that stupid virus.
Who the hell buys food from Amazon anyway? I guess I
should talk about this virus as the great happening of our
time: it has no effect on my life whatsoever lmao. Well
except for going out less to buy food. I understand that
we can't overwhelm hospitals (especially in this shithole)
but the panic is ridiculous. You know what else is
ridiculous? People going crazy because they have to stay
home. They have access to all the movies, music, books,
games, whatever in the world through the internet but
that's boring, they gotta go out and socialize lmao. "All
of
humanity's
problems
stem
from
man's
inability
to
sit
quietly
in
a
room alone." What a great quote. Anyway
I bought 10 discs, I thought about buying the 25 pack but
I went with the cheaper option because it should be enough
for the games I really want to play. Here is a few of
them: Perfect Dark Zero: I remember when it came
out and I thought it looks good, but I've never played
the original and I'm gonna do that first on my Nintendo 64
emulator. Ghost Recon Advanced
Warfighter: I remember seeing it in stores and in
a magazine I bought and I was obsessed with it. This is
probably the Crimson Skies of my Xbox
360 lol. Syndicate:
I don't know much about it but I thought it looked
awesome when it came out so I gotta try it out. Lost Planet: Extreme
Condition: I actually thought about getting
this ages ago but it didn't look interesting enough,
but after reading more about it I want to play it. Ace
Combat
6: looks like a really good flight sim
and I can't wait to try it out. |
| 2020/04/16 |
| Last night before falling asleep I was
thinking about making a website where I post about the
games
I've finished playing. I've flirted with this idea for a
while after lurking on /retro/, and I used to have one
almost 2 decades ago but I forgot everything and I'm too
much of a brainlet to do real coding so I'm using
SeaMonkey. Recently I rearranged some stuff in my room and
put my old Xbox and my Xbox
360 to more accessible
places. I got really into the idea of playing older games
again (new games just suck, everything is either DLC
ridden cancer or half assed early access indie garbage,
and I'm kinda stuck in the past and still think the
graphics on 10-15 years old games look great) so upgraded
my old Xbox with a newer softmod and bought a
bigger HDD, as for my Xbox
360 I ordered some
Verbatim discs. As for why consoles, I just don't like PC gaming that much and I
have an
ancient toaster that would make it harder anyway (although
I want to play a few games there too). I've downloaded so
many games (including a Nintendo
64 emulator with 212
games
for my Xbox) it's gonna take years to go through
all of them (I have a bad case of simulation sickness, I
may talk about it later but I can't really play more than
30 minutes or an hour or I will get a pretty bad
headache). But whenever I will finish a game I will write
my thoughts about it, but no ratings because that's lame.
I don't like attention so I don't want to write those on
imageboards but I like the idea of leaving my thoughts
behind as a time capsule, maybe some day someone will find
it and read through it, I like doing that with old
websites although it always makes me sad (some other time
I will tell why). I may post about personal stuff too but
I'm really paranoid about that, my family never left me
any personal space and always wanted to get into my
private life and ruin shit and that kinda fucked me up. |
