09.09.09

Damn, I skipped this all important date because of work. Anyway, what’s so special with it you ask (particularly the numbers)? Why, it was when the Dreamcast first launched in the US silly (September 9, 1999).

An amazing console backed by an amazing lineup of games, the Dreamcast was one of the best things that ever happened in the gaming industry. Heck, I loved it so much that I actually have 3 working units at home right now (c’mon, their dirt cheap now).

Launching in the US, it went head-to-head with the Playstation’s own Final Fantasy 8. As much as I loved the Final Fantasy series, we bought a Dreamcast instead for Christmas. The first time we laid eyes on NBA 2k and Soul Calibur, everyone at home was floored. It was crazy, truly a generation ahead of everything! All the other games were great and the Dreamcast was just in a league of its own.

So how did it fall so badly? Yep, Sony and their senseless “Playstation 2 will be better than God” banter stole a lot of the thunder. Now don’t get me wrong, the PS2 was a great machine, but it wasn’t exactly the behemoth Sony was preaching. In fact a lot of times, it had a lot of inferior looking games compared to the Dreamcast. If Sega’s console didn’t just die so quickly, I can assure you that it would have been able to stand up against the PS2’s best looking titles.

In the end, for all the true gamers out there, the Dreamcast will always live in our hearts (yes, can you feel the cheesyness haha). Let’s all celebrate this 10th year anniversary by showing our lil friend here some gaming love 🙂

Yu Suzuki Retires As Creative Officer

Yup, you read that right. The main man behind the arcade hits you grew up with such as Virtua Series has officially retired from his position as “Creative Officer” at Sega of Japan.

The creator of titles like Virtua Fighter, OutRun and Shenmue has “retired” from his Creative Officer position at Sega of Japan, Sega announced this week. But the company isn’t done with Yu Suzuki just yet.

While Sega-Sammy notes that Suzuki has “retired” from his role as Creative Officer of the AM Plus R&D department, he’ll still have some influence at Sega. The developer will continue on as manager of that group, in a role that GameSpot, by way of Sega reps, says is of “diminished capacity.”

Source

Man, does this mean that there’s no more hope for Shenmue 3?? For cryin out loud, the game’s entire story has been set in stone already for years I believe.

Halo Legends

Halo mecha-esque anime for the win? Lol, not exactly mecha but some of the spartans seems to have been decked out with your traditional over the top japanese-animation-style designs in this new anime based on the mega popular Microsoft IP, Halo. Coming out late 2009 with the title “Halo Legends”, hopefully they don’t stray too far from the Halo Universe and fill it up with your usual array of generic anime characters and cheesy storylines.

Zeppelin 2gb Ram Sticks

Just bought some new RAM earlier. I currently have 1x2gb ddr2-800 team elite ram on my rig but found out (after installing Windows 7 64bit and playing Crysis Warhead lol) that my system was basically begging for more. So I went out to the local computer shop and found 2 types of ram available. The Godly expensive Geil Evo One 4gb kit and the Godly cheap looking Zeppelin 2GB sticks haha. I figured I wasn’t OC’ing anyway so I went with cheap ones and bought 2 of them (well, at least they had heat spreaders) for a dual-channel config and to bring my total to 6gb (just like triple channel i7 6gb kits haha).

Seeing the specs in the little sticker attached to it, I was hoping there wouldn’t be any issues since they were CAS5-rated ram sticks like my Team Elite ones. Unsurprisingly (given their unknown brand), they were CAS5 only at ddr2-667 speeds and CAS6 at ddr2-800 T_T. So I had to run the Team Elite ones a notch lower at 333mhz, unless I loosen their timings to match Mister Zeppelin here.

The good thing is that I didn’t really feel any performance decrease with the lower speed. It also eliminated my stuttering problems now in Crysis and I could even run it at DX9 64bit now ^^. Windows 7 feels a lot snappier now too, and a lot more responsive even with multiple things going on. Guess it isn’t so bad if you run everything at stock

The Age Old Question: Graphics or Gameplay?? (MTVAsia Blog Contest Entry)

Whether you’re hardcore or just a casual gamer, its easy for any game to catch your attention if the visuals scream pure awesomeness. I mean, just give Crysis one look for Christ’s sake. That game is literally the epitome of graphics today. Despite being out in the market for 2 years now, it still raises the bar in terms of visuals and can drop a couple of jaws every time it’s shown running on the highest settings. But does that mean it provides us the best gaming experience ever?

Try comparing today’s games to those of say, during the Super Nintendo days. What you’ll see are simple sprites and scaling effects versus your usual array of eye-popping high-res textures, light-blinding HDR and quality blur effects. Looks like a win for the games of present eh. But wait a second, why do the old school games seem more playable and, um…..fun? Gamers who were not present during the old-school days might say otherwise, but if you actually were one of those who owned a Super Nes or Genesis back then, you’ll see how life-less games of today have become.

A lot of 16-bit games had the perfect balance when it came to showing off the hardware and providing crazy fun gameplay at the same time. Look at Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3/6 for the RPG side. They both looked amazing for their time (they still do today if you don’t mind sprites) and played fantastic, compared to a lot of Japanese Role Playing Games currently out. How about Sonic, Donkey Kong, Mario World, Super Metroid and a whole lot of other games. All these are still fun to play because their gameplay just keeps pulling you in.

Obviously if I had to choose one, gameplay is the way to go. Mind blowing graphics wear off over time, but good gameplay can provide a timeless experience. Its good that Microsoft and Sony are investing a lot into doing innovations with motion technology (eventhough it looks like they are just trying to take a stab at the Wii’s success). New innovations could lead to better gameplay experiences. Let’s just hope that this doesn’t mean more of that casual trash the Wii’s been throwing out lately.

Where’s the updates??

Apparently, I haven’t been putting too much effort into my blog. I dunno if this is some kind of sickness that plagues first time bloggers (kinda like when I tried making a game with RPG maker XP back then, I lost motivation pretty damn early in its development) but I hope I can make up. If I don’t start posting more articles in the coming days, guess it’s better if I lay off this blog permanently (hopefully things don’t come to this). See you later guys!