radioheadrule83
Banned
Late to the party on some of these I know, but I'm sure others weren't even thinking of going to the party at all so here goes:
GC broadband adaptor
This has been an absolute bitch to get hold of in recent months, then out of the blue this weekend I started seeing them around Liverpool (UK). Both GAME stores (the UK's EB) had some, and a couple of the indie stores had em stocked too. So I snapped one up.
Gameboy Player
I have been meaning to pick one of these up for ages. But I sold most of the titles I got at launch for beer money, and thus put it off for a while. In recent weeks I've imported Mario Vs Donkey Kong from America, bought the Mario Bros NES classic, and started playing Zelda, Mario Kart and Golden Sun again. It just made sense.
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II
Also an utter bitch to get hold of now... but I saw it pre-owned and unregistered so I picked this up along with the BB adaptor. PSO Plus should be out soon but I couldn't wait
Rocky
It was £10. I heard it was alright
Spiderman 2
Caved in after hearing moderate-to-positive things about this. I got a £10 off voucher when I went to see the movie so I used that.
Cost: £134 (approx) :O
=========================================
Was it all worth the money?
Yes. IMO. Scroll to each picture for the appropriate impressions.
I'll start with the GBPlayer because that was the thing I cracked open first. Sit's just below the Gamecube (and the modem obviously), you can screw it in with a penny and it feels perfectly secure. It's got all of the in and out ports that a Gameboy Advance has, and the addition of an eject button. To play the games you throw a cartridge in and load the GBPlayer boot disk. It's easy. The first thing I noticed is how bright the games look. Mario Kart seemed to have blinding color compared to how it looks on the actual GBA SP screen. This is true of most games, but they don't really look washed out on GBPlayer like I've seen some people say. It's not really a problem, and newer games have brightness options which were probably intended for GBPlayer. The games in my collection that do this? Mario Vs Donkey Kong and Zelda.
I feel it actually improves how some games are played. For instance, on some parts of Golden Sun - I don't have the time or patience to hike all over the place, formulate good strategies in large battles... Not while I'm on a short train journey, or walking down the street, trying not to walk into people. From the comfort of my home I just feel I can do this better.
The options that appear when you press Z are simple enough, and make the whole thing look like a nice package - but I would have liked more. Surely a system as powerful as Gamecube would have been able to simulate 4 GBAs in splitscreen? Apparently not. But I did have some multiplayer fun with my GBPlayer! Throwing a link cable between my GBA SP and GBPlayer does the trick. The GBPlayer doesn't show the same indication that it's loading data from a Single Pak multiplayer game like GBA SP does, but if you wait it should work. I had a quick game of Mario Kart and the AWESOME Four Swords, which I haven't played since first year Uni. I can't wait for Four Swords Adventures on Cube this September! All in all I'm happy with this purchase and I think it's going to encourage me to buy more GBA games, starting with Metroid Zero Mission and Fusion sometime real soon.
Let's talk about Rocky for a second. It has come as something of a shock to me how much I like this game. I love the movie mode, I love fighting a friend, I love training, I love pretty much everything about it. It's a solid title, and it's probably very cheap wherever you are in the world. I never thought I'd be into a boxing game, but I decided I'd give it a go. Now it's piqued my interest in other games: even ones not out for cube. I'd really like to play Fight Night and others now...
Moving swiftly on. Spiderman 2. How was the first game so bad, and this one so good? I had Spidey 1 on PC, and my friend had it on his cube -- I wouldn't wish such suckage on anyone. But this is actually pretty good! Swinging about feels intuitive and fun, combat gets pretty decent when you buy extra moves, there's plenty besides the actual Spiderman 2 story, the map is huge and very well done. Another solid title! My only complaints are concerning the way the movie impedes on the non-linearity of it all, and some of the voice acting. The random street missions don't really progress or get harder unless you take time out to progress with the story every now and then. I'd rather not be forced to play out the movie's plot to be honest. The voice acting is okay - getting Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina etc was a great move! However, hearing how spidey feels as you're swinging about, for a duration of about 5 mins after every event in the movie-game plot is annoying. All in all though it's a really fun game, and it's increased my hopes for True Crime 2.
Phantasy Star Online. Clip broadband adaptor in bottom, connect to cable modem, turn on game, register - get free month's hunters liscence. Very very easy setup. Quite pleased about that. I'll start by saying that so far I love this game! But I only played a little online last night. The first thing I did was throw myself online to find out a few things:
* Most Europeans don't stay up as late as I do...
* ...people in the US do. So I joined the US Ship.
* US/Deneb/9 where the posters at IGN go (is it Deneb 9?) had quite a lot of people in... and some annoying berk who was saying the same thing over and over again. That or he'd got himself disconnected in the middle of doing so.
* I am a TOTAL NOOB. I couldn't join any of their games because they're all playing on hard, very hard or ultimate modes. They're all level 30-40+. I'd just turned the thing on, so naturally I was level 1.
* I wanted better weapons so I sold everything I had equipped, only to discover that I couldn't buy them back, and all the good stuff was STILL out of my price range.
* Starting your own team, while having no weapons or defensive items, and running on ahead before anyone can join is... stupid.
* Software keyboards SUCK. I need to get a proper keyboard.
Basically I logged off, and started my character off on his own single player game. This is probably the way you're meant to start. You can goto the Hunter's Guild first and take part in Quests for which you'll get money. The first of these is actually battle training, with a bot at your side showing you how bad-ass you can eventually be. This in and of itself was very useful and tought me some stuff that I'd completely ignored in tossing the manual to one side. Doing a few of these will have you leveling up in no time - and you can buy items with your winnings. You can probably do the first (forest) areas with some ease before ever getting to Lvl 10 or anything. You don't have to do this offline of course. There are Hunter's Guild quests online too, including the newer downloadables. I feel that had I done this earlier, I'd of probably been online all night last night and enjoying myself a hell of a lot.
I can already tell that this is going to be one of my favourite RPGs EVER. To look at the PSO boards and news sites sometimes, or see people talking of it here, you'd think PSO didn't have a story. But it does. It has an space/planetary-investigation theme. You are a shipmate of Pioneer 2. The ship is carrying refugees from your dead/dying planet, taking them to a planet called Ragol. 7 years ago - the exploratory vessel, Pioneer 1, had sent word home that the planet was safe and inhabitable. Back to the present, and Pioneer 2 arrives in Ragol's orbit to begin communications with the planet's surface. Something goes horribly wrong down there, and there is a giant explosion visible from space -- communications with the thousands of people on Pioneer 1: is lost. It's up to you to get down there, along with all your online buddies and see whats going on. If you read things on your way around levels or talk to people, you get a deeper sense of the story, even if it doesn't go too much beyond that premise.
So far I'm having an absolute blast, and I'm really interested in how I can build up my character and MAG.
I basically recommend everything I've bought Gamecube owners: Go buy things!
Thom
GC broadband adaptor
This has been an absolute bitch to get hold of in recent months, then out of the blue this weekend I started seeing them around Liverpool (UK). Both GAME stores (the UK's EB) had some, and a couple of the indie stores had em stocked too. So I snapped one up.
Gameboy Player
I have been meaning to pick one of these up for ages. But I sold most of the titles I got at launch for beer money, and thus put it off for a while. In recent weeks I've imported Mario Vs Donkey Kong from America, bought the Mario Bros NES classic, and started playing Zelda, Mario Kart and Golden Sun again. It just made sense.
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II
Also an utter bitch to get hold of now... but I saw it pre-owned and unregistered so I picked this up along with the BB adaptor. PSO Plus should be out soon but I couldn't wait
Rocky
It was £10. I heard it was alright
Spiderman 2
Caved in after hearing moderate-to-positive things about this. I got a £10 off voucher when I went to see the movie so I used that.
Cost: £134 (approx) :O
=========================================
Was it all worth the money?
Yes. IMO. Scroll to each picture for the appropriate impressions.
I'll start with the GBPlayer because that was the thing I cracked open first. Sit's just below the Gamecube (and the modem obviously), you can screw it in with a penny and it feels perfectly secure. It's got all of the in and out ports that a Gameboy Advance has, and the addition of an eject button. To play the games you throw a cartridge in and load the GBPlayer boot disk. It's easy. The first thing I noticed is how bright the games look. Mario Kart seemed to have blinding color compared to how it looks on the actual GBA SP screen. This is true of most games, but they don't really look washed out on GBPlayer like I've seen some people say. It's not really a problem, and newer games have brightness options which were probably intended for GBPlayer. The games in my collection that do this? Mario Vs Donkey Kong and Zelda.
I feel it actually improves how some games are played. For instance, on some parts of Golden Sun - I don't have the time or patience to hike all over the place, formulate good strategies in large battles... Not while I'm on a short train journey, or walking down the street, trying not to walk into people. From the comfort of my home I just feel I can do this better.
The options that appear when you press Z are simple enough, and make the whole thing look like a nice package - but I would have liked more. Surely a system as powerful as Gamecube would have been able to simulate 4 GBAs in splitscreen? Apparently not. But I did have some multiplayer fun with my GBPlayer! Throwing a link cable between my GBA SP and GBPlayer does the trick. The GBPlayer doesn't show the same indication that it's loading data from a Single Pak multiplayer game like GBA SP does, but if you wait it should work. I had a quick game of Mario Kart and the AWESOME Four Swords, which I haven't played since first year Uni. I can't wait for Four Swords Adventures on Cube this September! All in all I'm happy with this purchase and I think it's going to encourage me to buy more GBA games, starting with Metroid Zero Mission and Fusion sometime real soon.
Let's talk about Rocky for a second. It has come as something of a shock to me how much I like this game. I love the movie mode, I love fighting a friend, I love training, I love pretty much everything about it. It's a solid title, and it's probably very cheap wherever you are in the world. I never thought I'd be into a boxing game, but I decided I'd give it a go. Now it's piqued my interest in other games: even ones not out for cube. I'd really like to play Fight Night and others now...
Moving swiftly on. Spiderman 2. How was the first game so bad, and this one so good? I had Spidey 1 on PC, and my friend had it on his cube -- I wouldn't wish such suckage on anyone. But this is actually pretty good! Swinging about feels intuitive and fun, combat gets pretty decent when you buy extra moves, there's plenty besides the actual Spiderman 2 story, the map is huge and very well done. Another solid title! My only complaints are concerning the way the movie impedes on the non-linearity of it all, and some of the voice acting. The random street missions don't really progress or get harder unless you take time out to progress with the story every now and then. I'd rather not be forced to play out the movie's plot to be honest. The voice acting is okay - getting Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina etc was a great move! However, hearing how spidey feels as you're swinging about, for a duration of about 5 mins after every event in the movie-game plot is annoying. All in all though it's a really fun game, and it's increased my hopes for True Crime 2.
Phantasy Star Online. Clip broadband adaptor in bottom, connect to cable modem, turn on game, register - get free month's hunters liscence. Very very easy setup. Quite pleased about that. I'll start by saying that so far I love this game! But I only played a little online last night. The first thing I did was throw myself online to find out a few things:
* Most Europeans don't stay up as late as I do...
* ...people in the US do. So I joined the US Ship.
* US/Deneb/9 where the posters at IGN go (is it Deneb 9?) had quite a lot of people in... and some annoying berk who was saying the same thing over and over again. That or he'd got himself disconnected in the middle of doing so.
* I am a TOTAL NOOB. I couldn't join any of their games because they're all playing on hard, very hard or ultimate modes. They're all level 30-40+. I'd just turned the thing on, so naturally I was level 1.
* I wanted better weapons so I sold everything I had equipped, only to discover that I couldn't buy them back, and all the good stuff was STILL out of my price range.
* Starting your own team, while having no weapons or defensive items, and running on ahead before anyone can join is... stupid.
* Software keyboards SUCK. I need to get a proper keyboard.
Basically I logged off, and started my character off on his own single player game. This is probably the way you're meant to start. You can goto the Hunter's Guild first and take part in Quests for which you'll get money. The first of these is actually battle training, with a bot at your side showing you how bad-ass you can eventually be. This in and of itself was very useful and tought me some stuff that I'd completely ignored in tossing the manual to one side. Doing a few of these will have you leveling up in no time - and you can buy items with your winnings. You can probably do the first (forest) areas with some ease before ever getting to Lvl 10 or anything. You don't have to do this offline of course. There are Hunter's Guild quests online too, including the newer downloadables. I feel that had I done this earlier, I'd of probably been online all night last night and enjoying myself a hell of a lot.
I can already tell that this is going to be one of my favourite RPGs EVER. To look at the PSO boards and news sites sometimes, or see people talking of it here, you'd think PSO didn't have a story. But it does. It has an space/planetary-investigation theme. You are a shipmate of Pioneer 2. The ship is carrying refugees from your dead/dying planet, taking them to a planet called Ragol. 7 years ago - the exploratory vessel, Pioneer 1, had sent word home that the planet was safe and inhabitable. Back to the present, and Pioneer 2 arrives in Ragol's orbit to begin communications with the planet's surface. Something goes horribly wrong down there, and there is a giant explosion visible from space -- communications with the thousands of people on Pioneer 1: is lost. It's up to you to get down there, along with all your online buddies and see whats going on. If you read things on your way around levels or talk to people, you get a deeper sense of the story, even if it doesn't go too much beyond that premise.
So far I'm having an absolute blast, and I'm really interested in how I can build up my character and MAG.
I basically recommend everything I've bought
Gamecube owners: Go buy things!Thom
