Back when Persona 3 first came out I grabbed a copy. But as fate would have it, it turned out to be one of only two games I've ever purchased and then never played. Like, never ever played. Just decided one day to give some money to the game developer kinda crazy stuff. So it's been sitting there for quite some time. (The other title was Battlion Wars on the Wii, btw.)

My attention returned to Persona again when I read a snippet about the new trend to take PS2 JRPGs, edit them to the fans tastes, then re-release the title through the internet. The first one of these 'enhanced' JRPGs I came across was 'Persona 3 FES UNDUB/REMIX v1.01'. Even though I only owned the original version I figured it was close enough and downloaded the iso, transfered it to the PS2 HD and I was good to go.

What the editor of the title did was take the US release version, that being the latest release with what would concievably be the newest version of the internal code. Using some homebrew tools they are able to seperate out the media resources, and replace them as they see fit. What they did for Persona 3 was to replace all the US voice acting with the original high quality japanese voice acting taken from the jp version of the title. They then extracted the movies from the jp version and had a pro subbing group do some high quality hardsubs on the videos, then re-encoded them and fed that into the edited version. Then, just for fun, they took a bunch of the original music tracks and replaced them with remixed versions of the music from a remix soundtrack and put those in. What you end up with is what most JRPG players have always been wanting. It's a great experience playing this version. I tossed in the original Persona 3 and really cringed at the US voice work. The remixed music tracks actually do alot to give the game a more modern feel and great atmosphere. And as luck would have it, the game's graphics are pretty good, and some fooling with my TVs settings even manage to get a respectable aspect ration when stretched just so on a widescreen TV.

Looking at what other UNDUBs were out there I also came across XenosagaIII, complete with un-edited FMVs that were in the original release but cut for the US. Since I never finished XenoIII, and the saves are compatible, I thought I would check that one out next and finally finish that trilogy.

The PS2 is still fun to play with. It's an impressive console for all it has done over the years.

I'm playing the new Bionic Commando remake and loving it. It's hard, just like the original, but once you get the hang of it. You know, get into the swing of things. It's a great experience!

And I noticed my current GS rank is 'Bionic Commando' as well, which just seems appropriate!

The following is satire, I think it's satire atleast. No, I don't pirate.

From some random rant aimed at a random admited pirate, I saw this on GS today: "are you happy now that you taking food from someones table"

I would have said:

Yes! I am soooo happy! As a matter of fact, that's the only way I can get off anymore. I spend all day pirating software knowing it is actually removing food from forks en-route to mouths and when the day is done I am able to have sexual relations with my many wives. It is like candy to me, sweet sweet candy.

Once upon a time PC games came on floppy disks and games were expensive. Then CDs came along and the game developers said "Yay!" for there would be no more pirating and they could lower the cost of thier games. But the day did come when most all games came on cd and yet the prices stayed the same!

Later on, as people started to pirate cds, the game companies were all worried because the profits that had been increasing since the media switch were now showing the same pattern as before. But they couldn't raise the prices again, atleast not too much, so what they did was enact the Omega Gaming Sattelite Network.

The OGSN replaces all media by using lasers instead to send games to your home. By simply burning a hole in the roof of your domicile these OGSN lasers use incredible amouts of power to etch the binary code directly onto your eyeball! This, of course, blinds you. Plus, it just started raining and your laser pocked roof is leaking.

The end result is that games become so cheap, we actually give them away to other countries we don't like.