The last few days, I've been playing Final Fantasy VIII for the PSOne, where I'm currently in the middle of Disc 2 out of 4 discs total. Interestingly enough, this game, along with Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X, seems to be in a love-hate relationship with it's devoted fanbase, Some people praise the game like it is the second coming of Nazz from the old cartoon Ed, Edd 'n Eddy, while others lambast it with the fury of 1,000 suns, because of it's level-scaling, a rarely-used RPG feature that makes the game more challenging and prevent dedicated level-grinders from breezing through the final boss of the game. To me, the game is just plain fun!

Earning a 12-dan Black Belt in Complete, Utter Failure

This past weekend, I broke down and decided to sign up for a GameTap account (http://www.gametap.com). Although the number of games with a free acount are severely limited (The next plan up, costs $5 per month), the game that are available are decent. I've been mostly playing Karate Champ, an old arcade fighting game that predates the Street Fighter series by only 3 years. At first, I kept getting my ass whooped by the A.I.-controlled, red uniform-wearing kung-fu master. But after a while, I learned how to defend myself and counter-attack to get to at least the Intermediate level matches.

Announcement of the Belmont-Aran wedding ceremony

This past Sunday night was stream night on The Backloggery (http://www.backloggery.com), where Drumble finally completed his 15% normal run on Metroid: Zero Mission for the GBA, then proceeded to start up a Hard Mode run of Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, also for the GBA. Along with the usual Try4ce and Xavean co-piloting the stream, there were also two special guests--Female Backloggery users Lyndis and Ashen. A word of advice to those wondering--Asehn really is a woman, it's that her voice sounds like a man. I learned that lesson the hard way.

For the last few days, I've been playing Phantasy Star II on the Sega Genesis Collection for the PS2. With my previous experience with the GBA version of the game and learning a lot from playing the Dark Spire for the DS, I figure to ultilize each PC's strengths and weaknesses to their full use. For example, I have Hugh in my party, who is the weakest PC in the game according to most players, can ultilize Techs that will damage all Bio-monsters in battle. There's even one that has a chance to kill a group of them. The way I figure is to get all 8 PCs in the game to at least experience level 30.

YouTube--The Place for Longplays, Speed Runs and Disturbing Video Game Content

For most of the day today, I watched various video game-related videos on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) First off, I watched a longplay of Super Castlevania IV for the SNES. Next was a longplay of the Commodore 64 version of the first Castlevania title (Such things do exist in this world). Later was short clips of various arcade games. Finally, it was three videos of video games so controversial that it even make Jack Thompson President of the United States--The arcade games Death Race and Chiller and the Atari 2600 game Custer's Revenge. Those three games alone are enough to make even Bill Rizer and Lance Bean of Contra fame blush.

Interesting enough, after beating The Dark Spire Sunday morning, I managed tp beat Zelda II: The Adventure of Link on the LoZ Collector's Edition disc for the GameCube. Somehow, I don't remember the final area of the game being this hard, but that's more than likely my GameCube controller being analog, which is something people have played the NES and GBA versions of the game are not used to.

Rej72380's Backloggery Closed for Maintainence

Interestingly enough, I had to do a overhaul of my Backloggery page (http://www.backloggery.com/rej72380) last night, because I just now noticed that you could put the name of compilations in the Compilation field, then insert the actual game into the Game Name field. It took three hours to do this overall, but it was actually worth it.

Cannibals in my Backyard? Skull-duggery!

After doing the overall last night, I decided to play and beat Jungle Hunt on the Taito Legends collection for the PS2 this morning. Originally, I had that particular game listed as "nulled" on my Backloggery page, but after seeing Try4ce's Backloggery page and noticing he got the NES version of Donkey Kong and Hogan's Alley listed as "completed", I decided to follow this example and upgrade Jungle Hunt from "nulled" to "unfinished" and actually beaten it by saving Lady Penelope from those crazy cannibals.