2 Bit Hacker

Now that it’s after Christmas, I’ve allowed myself to go to the mall again. It’s still busier than I like, but at least you can park within 500’ of the building now. Went on a bit of a shopping spree last night, picking up Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls with my Best Buy gift card. Then we went hunting for Karaoke Revolution 2 for Delia. Neither EB nor GameStop had it, but I got sucked into the used GBA game rack at GameStop and ended up grabbing River City Ransom EX and Metroid Fusion. Those should keep me busy for a good while, though I still want to keep playing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow to get 100% and collect all the souls, though that gets repetitive after a while.

Oh, and I picked up some fuzzy Pac-Man dice for the car. I’ll have to snap a pic sometime in the near future.

Hmm… I meant to write about the weekend back on Monday or Tuesday, but I think my SSH session died and I never bothered to start writing it again.

Last Friday was the Fusion Fest LAN, which I went to along with Slappy, Obs, and Raven.Fish (fellow Fists of Ra) though Raven didn’t stay for long, because he only had his laptop, and didn’t have the power adapter for it. There were a bunch of X-Boxes set to play Halo 2, which I didn’t go anywhere near, and a few people playing DDR. We were mostly there for the PC gaming though, and ended up playing a lot of UT2k4. The actual competition wasn’t very fair, probably because it wasn’t really organized at all, but we had fun anyway, and kicked a lot of ass in Onslaught mode. I don’t understand how these people could be playing UT2k4 without knowning about Onslaught, it’s kindof the whole point of the game. Vehicles are fun! (Also, hitting unsuspecting newbies with the Leviathan’s main gun is fun.)

On Saturday, Delia and I met up with angry_amy and dork_jedi for lunch, probably the last time I’ll see Amy for a while, as she’s now living down in Florida. After that, we wandered down into Mass to fairoriana’s house for Mocksgiving. Apparently it’s a tradition with them to have a Thanksgiving get together with friends before the normal family dinner. There’s was a ton of food and it was all extremely tasty. Lots of people there I didn’t know though, but they all seems like cool (well, cool from my perspective, which means geeky or dorky) people, and I had a good time.

Sunday was Delia’s Women’s Spirit Song concert. Met up with anuttycoffee, Leslie, and Odd Dave for it, along with some friend’s of Amy’s who took over her tickets (since she was on her way to Florida at this point.) I had a good time, and I’m looking forward to Delia’s next performance. Afterward we grabbed dinner with Odd Dave at Margarita’s, then I wanderd down to my D&D game and Delia went to her SFS rehersal.

Later that night, when we normally meet up for Denny’s after game/rehersal, I got a call from Delia. Her car had died just north of the Bedford tolls. Turned out her alternator had died, so I had to run up to Manchester to get her and kittybrat to bring them down to Denny’s. I was greeted with brownies though, so it was all good. Mmmm tasty brownies. The weekend wrecked my newly restarted diet, but I’ve been good all week, and seem to be losing weight again.

In other news, I’ve become addicted to World of Warcraft, though the open beta just ended, so I can’t play again until Tuesday, when the game is released. A bunch of FoR and a lot of non-FoR have grouped together to form a WoW guild, called Solstice Aeternus, and I think this game is going to be a lot of fun once things get going. So far I’m enjoying the gameplay a lot more than Shadowbane, as the levelling is all quest based, rather than standing around killing mobs constantly. Can’t wait for release day…

Back at work after a great weekend of gaming at FoR LAN 9. Delia came with me for this one, getting to meet all the insane people I hang out with online, like the other Fists and the Loftninjas and the various others who always seem to be around. She says she had a good time, which I guess I’ll believe. She did wander over to the DDR pads a few times. I might need to pick up a pad so she can practice for the next LAN. Oh, and she cooked for me on Saturday night, making spaghetti with meatsauce. She makes this kindof weird sauce with chili seasoning and grape jelly added to a normal base sauce. It’s extremely good. I’m glad there are still leftovers.

As for me, I ended up playing a lot of UT2k4, which kicks quite a bit of ass. It’s basically UT2k3 with some of the original UT weapons brought back (like the sniper rifle, depending on the map) and some of the game modes now have vehicles, which is amazing. I think I’m going to run out and pick up a legit copy with my next paycheck so I can play online. We also played a little CS, though not enough to really count for anything. I also noticed some Command and Conquer being played, and there were some consoles set up, mostly for DDR and Soul Calibur 2. I did play a little bit of the new F-Zero on GameCube, but it didn’t last for long.

Oh, and it was at a new location this time, the MOFGA’s Common Ground in Unity, ME. They have a very nice hall there with a huge kitchen and even Internet access, though it was too slow to be of much use.

Anyway, back to normal day-to-day life. As usual, I’m attempting to collect everybody’s pictures from the LAN and get them posted in my gallery. Not much there at the moment, but I’m working on it.

Monday, while killing some time waiting for the dinner group to form up, we wandered into the EB next to the restaurant. One of the better moves I’ve made in a while, as a search of the SNES pre-owned bin turned up Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid, and Final Fantasy III. I, of course, had to snatch up the first two immediately. Probably would have gotten the third as well, but I’ve already got it. So I think that pretty much completely my collection of best games ever for SNES. There were a lot of good games in that bin, I kindof wonder if someone just recently had to dump their collection.

Oh, and last night while killing time at the mall, I picked up Super Mario World for GBA. I’ve wasted enough time playing in on the console, making it portable will probably be dangerous.

Finished up Metroid: Zero Mission the other night in Easy mode, so I figured I’d write up a little review of it. This is one of the most addictive games I’ve played in a while. I remember playing the original Metroid on the NES way back in the day, and I think this was an excellent remake. They added enough stuff to keep things interesting, while keeping enough of it the same to keep the feel of the original. Overall I think they did an outstanding job.

I’m assuming at some point I can restart the game and retain my collected abilities, since there are a number of blocks that cannot be destroyed unless you have equipment from later in the game. I’m hoping that unlocks after beating the game on Normal, which I’m trying now. Beating it on Easy did unlock the original NES game however, which I thought was a very cool thing for them to throw in. I’ll probably try to play through that after beating the remake again.

So I went out and bought the new Castlevania for PS2 today. Been playing it for a little bit, and so far it seems pretty cool. I think I still perfer the older 2D games, like Symphony of the Night. Still not used to the whole 3D thing, though this one seems much better thought out than Castlevania 64 on the N64. I’ll try to remember to write up a bit more on it once I finish it.

Also today, Andrea came by to pick up her gift, a Finding Nemo DVD. Turns out she already bought it a few days ago. Figures ☹ What’s she doing buying things so close to her birthday anyway?

I believe I have discovered a cure to my recent addiction to Final Fantasy Tactics, and it’s name is Soul Calibur 2. I was hanging out with Dan, Tim, and Amanda last night, and we wandered over to the new Target in Nashua, so I decided to pick up SC2. Played it for a bit last night, it’s very nice. The original Soul Calibur was a great game, and I’m glad to see they didn’t mess it up. It seems like there are tons of things to unlock, and they brought back the multiple weapons per character that Soul Edge had. This should keep me busy for quite some time.