Lino's Unwitting LiveJournal
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Lino Demasi's LiveJournal:
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| Monday, February 27th, 2012 | | 1:26 am |
How to Count Games?
I brought home a bunch more games from Rob's this weekend. They are mostly sorted and put away now, aside from a few problem ones I am dealing with. When I finished putting them away, I started wondering about how many games I had. The problem was, that question is somewhat vague. What do you mean by a game? Should I could Final Fantasy Origins as 1 game or 2? The .hack quadrilogy is like 1 big game even though there are 4 titles. There are a couple of games I have 2 copies of for various reasons. Should I could those twice? Would I count an RPG which I made with RPG Maker, RPG Maker II, or RPG Maker 3 as a game? Would I could RPG maker itself as a game? As you can see, this is a very difficult question to answer exactly and it is obvious that it is also an important problem to deal with. Fortunately I've come up with an easy way to answer the question: I have 93" of PS2 games and 51" of PS1 games. You might think at first that this doesn't really answer the question. They asked how many games I have, and I'm giving them an answer in inches - there seems to a problem with the units. What the number represents is how much linear shelf space the games take up. This number is highly correlated with the number of games I have, and it is much easier to measure. Plus, this is the important information for knowing when trying to find shelves to store games on. |
| Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 | | 10:18 pm |
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| Sunday, November 13th, 2011 | | 12:11 pm |
Oh yeah, I bought some more games (Surprise!)
It's been an average week on the buying front. Picked up 5 games on eBay: Kartia, Ephemeral Fantasia, Grandia Xtreme, Baroque, and The Nightmare of Druaga. I'm also talking to a guy that I've traded games from before to pick up 3 more in exchange for magic cards: Drakengard, Drakengard 2, and Jade Cocoon 2. That brings my want list down to 34 games. Just 34 games until I have to change my hobby from collecting games to actually playing them. Woe is me. |
| 11:51 am |
Shining Tears isn't so bad
I've spent a bit more time playing shining tears. While the loading screens are annoying, the game isn't as bad as I was expecting based on the first hour. I now have 7 people in my party, and I choose which one I want to use with my main character for each battle. The other 6 are all different classes (archer, mage, etc.), so I can choose whichever I think is most appropriate for the battle. I can also go back and replay old battles to level up (mostly for the secondary characters, since I only use one in each battle and so they fall behind the main character pretty quickly, which is annoying), farm money or items. The plot is fine too. |
| Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 | | 9:51 pm |
Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana & Shining Tears
I finished AI:EM today. Total play time was around 39 hours. It would have been much less had I not spent so much time on side quests and item synthesis. The game was fun to play, the plot was decent, and the characters were okay. I've moved on to Shining Tears which is an action RPG. So far I'm underwhelmed. The most annoying thing about it are the long loading screens all over the place. Combat is okay though, when it happens. There's been a lot of "Yap Yap Yap" in the first hour and not much fighting. Battles consist of the main character, Xion, and one other character. I've fought 4 battles and have had 3 different partners over these battles. Hopefully this trend will not continue. To be fair, a single battle is fighting (thus far) 20 - 30 enemies in small groups around an area. |
| Monday, November 7th, 2011 | | 12:05 am |
Buying More Games
I've had a busy couple of days. Saturday saw me buying 6 additional games. Magna Carta - Tears of Blood, Mega Man Legends 2, Musashi: Samurai Legend, Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity, Tales of Destiny 2, and Vandal Hearts. Two of the games came from eBay, two from Amazon, and two from someone on the livejournal community videogames4sale. Sunday was a bit less hectic. I ended up not winning about 5 auctions on eBay and winning 1 for Tales of Destiny. I also played about 90 minutes of Atelier Iris. I'm in what I think is the final dungeon, I just need to go kill what I think is the final boss. That should happen some time this week. The game was fun, but I'm looking forward to my next conquest. |
| Friday, November 4th, 2011 | | 11:34 am |
Mega Video Games Update - Part 2 - Games I've been plaiying
The last post I made about games I was playing was when I beat FFI. Since the FF Origins Disc was already in my console, I decided it would be less work in the long run to play FFII next. I definitely don't like this game as much as FFI. The one big thing about it is the character levelling system. Well, to be fair, your characters don't actually have levels. Instead, you gain by using. For example, after you lose a certain amount of HP in battle, your max HP will increase. After attacking physically a certain amount your strength will go up, etc. It seemed the optimal way to level up was to attack myself. The other thing I didn't like is that there were 2 towns that were my base town for the whole game. So I kept going back to the same place. To me this makes it feel like I'm not making any progress. In total, I spent 23 hours beating it, over the course of 5 weeks. Early last week I started Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. It's a pretty good game. It has several unique aspects that set it apart from other games. The first is the mana system. Mana are creatures that you find on your journey that you can attach to a character to boost their stats. They also grant you skills that you can use on area maps, somewhat like arms in wild arms. For example, one of them is a blcok, which you can use to step on to reach higher places. The mana are also used to synthesize mana items. You can draw energy from various items on area maps (sort of like FFVIII, but much much much better) and then use this energy to craft items. In order to do this though, you must have a mana that has the right "alignment", such as fire, holy, etc. There is also another item synthesis component of the game, where various shops will make items for you if you bring them ingredients. IF you change up the ingredients, you can get different, but similar, items. The one thing I dislike about the game is the same thing I mentioned about FFII. Your home town doesn't change, so it can feel llke I'm not making progress in the game. Overall I am really enjoying the game. I think next I am going to play an action RPG. Maybe one of the Shining Force games, which I guess should be Shining Tears, since it was released first, not that they are serial. You can see the list of games I have if you want to make a suggestion about what I should play next. |
| 10:40 am |
Mega Video Game Update - Part 1 - Games I've bought
It's been a while since I've made a post about games I've bought. As such, I have a long list of games that I've bought to talk about. First, I'll just list them all,: ( Games I bought )Obviously I haven't gotten around to playing all of these yet, but I hae tested them all. The first game to talk about is one that's not on any of the above lists: Vandal Hearts. I mentioned previously that it was at Rob's place. When I went to pick it up, I noticed the game disc had gashes on it. Not just scratches, but chunks of the surface of the disc were missing. It loaded fine but when I tested it, but I wasn't sure it would play all the way through. Plus, it was listed as like new condition. I contacted the seller but didn't get a response after a week, so I escalted my complaint to eBay and they refunded the purchase price + shipping. I didn't even have to return the game. A few of the games I bought were from Amazon. One of these was Rhapsody, a Musical Adventure. When I opened the package, it contained a DDR game instead of the actual game. I contacted Amazon, they sent me a prepaid UPS shipping label and I returned it. When I visited Seattle to pick up the stuff, there was about $600 worth of stuff there, since once I had broken $400 due to the dollar I decided there was no point in waiting on other stuff. I brought back a bit over $400 worth and left the rest. Kaitlyn went a couple of weeks later and came back with about $300 worth of stuff for me (more had arrived since I went). Rhapsody was one of these games, so I didn't know there was a problem with it until I brought it home. Fortunately the prepaid shipping label I got worked in Canada. Last night, I won an auction for a copy of Suikoden II. I didn't really pay attention to the auction until 5 minutes before it ended. At this point, I started looking at prices of recent old sales, to see if the price had changed recently. I happened to stumble upon an identical auction by the same seller for the same item. I figured the previous buyer hadn't gone through with the bid. So I looked at the bid history, to see what the second highest bidder had bid, figuring there was a good chance he would bid on this one too. When I looked at the bidders on the current item, I noticed that the guy who won last time was bidding on it again, which seemed weird. At this point, there was only about 2 minutes left on the auction, so I couldn't find out what was going on. I bid on it, and then came home (it ended 5 minutes after my tutorial ended). I looked at things more closely when I got home and noticed that the bidder had made 76 bids in the past 30 days on a total of 28 items, all by this seller. I also noticed that this seler had lots of items that he had relisted and wouldn't you know it, this guy had won all of them and was bidding on them again. I phoned eBay customer support, since they only guarantee an e-mail turn around of 3 days and I wanted an answer sooner. The customer service rep that I talked to said that he found evidence of shill bidding (what bidding on your own items to artificially raise the price is called) and had forwarded the case to the appropriate people. I asked if I should pay for the item that I won and he said that this was ligitimate grounds for not. I sent a notice to the seller letting him know that I would not be buying the item because he was a douche (although I didn't call him a douche in the message, since I didn't want to get in trouble from eBay). Not all the games I got were paid for in cash. Saga Frontier 2, Persona 3 FES, Suikoden III, .hack//G.U. vol. 2, .hack//G.U. vol. 1, .hack//G.U. vol. 3, and Dragon Warrior VII were all traded for. I traded Magic: the Gathering cards for them. I traded for them from 2 different people. One guy I made 2 separate trades. The first batch of my side Rob mailed for me from Seattle to Hawaii. A week after Rob sent them, I sent a package to him from Canada, and mine got there before Rob's did. The one Rob sent bounced around between Washington and California a couple of times before getting to Hawaii. Seems like USPS could use someone to help them optimize their delivery chains. The current crop of Games at or in transit to Rob's is worth $138.47USD. The current games on my wanted list are: ( Games )My cost estimate for these games is $907 - $1157 USD. At current exchange rate (+2.5 fee) this comes to $946.11 - $1,206.89 CAD. Stay tuned for post #2 about games I've been playing. |
| Monday, October 31st, 2011 | | 1:58 pm |
Somebody made a claim, let's test it!
A guy on eBay lamented the fact that PS1 RPGs had up to 4 discs "showing their devotion", whereas PS2 games (which he is implying are inferior) usually only had 1 and "most likely had room to spare." He also used the wrong "there" instead of "their" at one point. At least, I think he did, the whole sentence doesn't really make much sense with either word, but that's not really the point here. I grabbed a few discs off the shelf to test this theory: PS1: FFVIII: 608 MB, 575 MB, 599 MB, 576 MB = 2.3GB. PS2: Suikoden IV: 4.05 GB FFXII: 3.78 GB So, that's 1.5 - 2 times as large, based on my small, meaningless sample. Of course, that doesn't factor in all the content that has to be repeated across all the discs of the PS1 games, such as character models, monster details, how combat works, town information, etc. Of course, the vast majority of the PS1 RPGs I own don't have 4 discs and since I own so many, I'm willing to consider myself an expert on the matter. Edit: I just checked, and of the PS1 RPGs I have, 19 have one disc, 10 have 2 discs, 2 have 3 discs and 4 have 4 discs. |
| Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 | | 6:34 pm |
This is what games look like
I've been collecting playstation games since the release of Final Fantasy VII. It was very slow at first. I was young and didn't have a lot of money. I first started adding to it significantly when I was in Waterloo. I bought a few games at a pawn shop called buynsell in Kitchener and I ended up buying a lot from a guy on Craigslist. The first time he delivered, the second time I had to pick them up. My pace has accelerated recently, since I have money from selling a good chunk (value wise, not volume wise) of my Magic Cards. The pictures are somewhat large, so that you can read the game titles if you want. I shrunk them to 35% of their original size. Well, without further ado, here are the ( Pictures of Games )The main issue I am having right now is one of space. I took over 4 more shelves on the entertainment unit this weekend with my new additions. Under the current system I only have room to comfortably store ~15 more PS2 games and ~5 more PS1 games. |
| Friday, September 30th, 2011 | | 5:25 pm |
eBay musings
I have found that there are two ways to get very good deals on eBay when you're looking for something. One involves some luck, but they both invlove a little effort. Before I tell you about how I get very good deals, let me tell you about how I get good deals. This involves no luck, only some effort and assumes you are not in a hurry to get the item. Suppose you're looking for a game, like Disgaea 2. The first thing I do, is look at the price of completed auctions for the item. Now I'm a bit particular, I only want games in at least VG condition that are complete. So I filter the results to show only games in VG, Like New and Brand New condition, sorted by price + shipping: lowest first. This will give you an idea of what price people have been paying for the game in the past month. Now I look at the prices of the ten or so lowest priced items (including shipping). This becomes my target price range and is noted in a spreadsheet (I use a google doc, so that I have access to it anywhere). I consider getting a game at or below the bottom price to be a very good deal, and anything in the bottom half of the range to be a good deal. Next, I make a saved search for auctions of that item in at least very good condition (Since I'm looking for lots of games, I combine multiple games into a single search, but this doesn't change anything). I'll look through the whole list, and anything where the current bid is below my range gets added to my watch list. I'll check the saved search at least once a day to see if new items have been listed. When an item on my watch list is close to ending (for me, close means < 10 seconds left), I'll make a bid that's at the bottom end of my price range (Making sure to factoring in shipping. If the bottom of my range is $12 and shipping is $4, I'll only bid $8). If I don't win, I'll keep doing this a few times. Eventually, I'll decide it's time to raise my price. The size of my range will determine how much I'm willing to raise my price. For example, if the range is 10 - 12, I'll raise it by maybe $0.25, bit if the range is 40 - 65, I'd raise it by $2 - $3. One other thing I do once I have my range is to check prices on amazon. Sometimes there will be one used copy in VG or excellent (their equivalent of like new) condition below the bottom of the price range. If this happens, *yoink*. As an aside, the current lowest priced copy of Disgaea 2 sold in the past month is $8.39 including shipping. I paid $7.75 for mine. So, how do I get very good prices instead of just good prices? Well, my favourite way is to get lucky. Remember those saved searches I told you about? Well, when I check to see if new items have been listed, I don't just check auctions, I also check Buy It Now (BIN) items. These are two types of BINs. There's auctions with a BIN price added. If nobody has yet made a bid, you can buy the item outright for the BIN price. There are also items that are only BIN, with no auction component. Sometimes, somebody will list an item with a BIN price that is below my target range. These items don't last long, you have to be lucky and check within the first hour or so that it was listed, otherwise somebody else will have bought it. The other way to get very good prices is to ask questions. Sometimes the sellers listing will be incomplete. On a recent auction, the seller's description was "Vanguard Bandits for Playstation 1 as pictured." Now Vanguard Bandits came with a demo cd of another game, so if you are looking for a complete copy, you want that to be included (as well as the manual). The seller's picture only showed the front of the case. So I used the handy "ask a quesiton" feature. Does this come complete with the manual and demo disc? Yes. So now I know the item is complete and worth more than the starting bid. The seller can include questions asked and their answers in the auction description, but he chose not to. So now I have information about the item that the other bidders don't have. The other thing I wanted to mention about eBay was the stupid auction descriptions that people use. The two that I notice the most are "Rare" and "Hard to Find." Now let's be honest here. There are some rare and hard to find games. So let's assume for now that the game listed as rare actually is rare. Who cares? Someone who collects rare games? They already know what games are rare and don't need you to tell them. But the real problem here is not that it's pointless to put it in the title, it's that it's mostly not even true. Here's a recent auction title I saw: "Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria *Hard to Find*" First of all, there are 92 copies currently for sale on eBay. NINETY TWO. But wait, there's more. This game was so popular, there's a Greatest Hits version of it! What does that mean? It means that it sold so well that there was a second release at a bargain price. To become a greatest hits game, a PS2 title had to sell 400,000 copies. That means there are at least 400,000 other copies of this game out there. How hard could it be to find one? Hell, I found NINETY TWO, right here on eBay. That wasn't so hard. So what do I think hard to find means? Well, at the very least, it should mean I can't find it on eBay. If I'm looking for something (to buy, not something like my lost keys), the first place I look is on eBay. It's EASY to look on eBay. If I found it there, it was EASY TO FIND. I mean, it was in the first place I thought to look for it. |
| Sunday, September 25th, 2011 | | 3:26 pm |
The perils of cross border shopping and currency conversion
As I've mentioned before, I have been getting games shipped to Seattle. I plan to pick them up and stay for 48 hours so that I can bring them back across the border tax + duty free. I've been very careful to stay under the $400 (CAD) limit that I'm allowed to bring back. However, $400 Canadian has recently changed from being worth ~$405 USD, to ~$388 USD. This change has put me slightly over the exemption limit. I hope that the currency conversion rate will be back in my favour when I go to pick stuff up. Or, at the very least, not any worse, since I'd guess they would probably wave me through with $405 instead of $400. |
| Wednesday, September 21st, 2011 | | 12:08 am |
Picked up an AMAZING deal on Lunar 2 today. Got it for $54 including shipping. This is the total package. It comes with all the extras. The map, the standees, the pendant, soundtrack. Everything. |
| Monday, September 19th, 2011 | | 3:40 pm |
Need MOAR Games!
With another trip to Seattle in the works, I've gone on another game buying binge. The follwoing games are all in transit to, or possibly already at, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) lost_luck's apartment. AR Tonelico 1: Melody of Elemia AR Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica Atelier Iris 1: Eternal Mana Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm Breath of Fire IV Dragon Warrior VII Legend of Legaia Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon Suikoden III Thousand Arms Vandal Hearts I'm being careful to make sure I don't go over my personal exemption limit, as I don't want to pay tax and duty when I bring these back across the border. I haven't reached the limit yet, I've got room for another 1 - 8 games, depending on which ones I end up finding good deals on next. I maintain a list of the games I am looking for, which can be found at: http://gametz.com/usertab/lmdemasi/tab/AllWanted.html. I keep this list fairly updated. The current list is: .hack//G.U. vol. 1 .hack//G.U. vol. 2 .hack//G.U. vol. 3 Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 Eternal Eyes Front Mission 3 Legaia 2: Duel Saga Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Mana Khemia 1: Alchemists of Al-Revis Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy Ogre Battle Persona Persona 2 Persona 3 FES Saga Frontier Saga Frontier 2 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 Suikoden Suikoden II Tales of Destiny Unlimited Saga Valkyrie Profile Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria Vandal Hearts 2 Vanguard Bandits Wild Arms Alter Code F Wrath Unleashed |
| Friday, September 16th, 2011 | | 5:21 pm |
Final Fantasy
My latest conquest has been beating Final Fantasy (the remake for PS1, which is very true to the original). I chose fighter, black belt, white mage black mage as my party. It took me about 14 hours to finish. This game will always have a certain nostalgia for me as it was the first game I ever bought. I remember finding it in a clearance bin when I was with my family in the US somewhere and buying it for around $10. Playing it at the time, it was an awesome game. I spent hours on it. |
| Monday, September 12th, 2011 | | 9:56 pm |
Musings
I wonder how often the light warriors got laid. The mystic key opens up many doors, right? |
| Sunday, September 11th, 2011 | | 7:52 pm |
This review, like the game, lacks clear direction
Legend of Mana is a unique RPG experience. The plot consists of several dozen mini quests to complete. Some of the quests are related to each other and must be completed in a certain order, others can be completed in any order, or even not at all. The lack of a cohesive plot makes the game feel unstructured and I had a hard time becoming invested in the story, since it didn't feel like there really was one. The combat system was extremely simple. Battles are real-time, but not in a good way (like in Star Ocean). Mashing x will pretty much get you through the whole game. The soundtrack for this game is very good and eventually a story starts to emerge and things pick up. There are also interesting side mechanics to the game. You can raise pets, craft musical instruments, build golems, plant seeds to harvest fruit, and craft weapons. These add a bit to the game, but you can play through the whole game without really exploring them at all if you want. Overall, this isn't the best RPG I've played, but it's not terrible either. The uniqueness of it makes it a must play (if only once) in my opinion. |
| Friday, September 9th, 2011 | | 6:12 pm |
I'm back
Alright, I admit it, I played video games in the past week. But it's okay, since I wasn't actually taking a week off of video games. I was taking a week-long cruise. On the way to the cruise ship I swung by Rob's place and picked up the 12 games that were waiting for me. For the most part everything was good, but one of the games looks like it will be going back. It was advertised as Like New condition, but the box is fraying at the edges, has sticker gunk on it, and lots of scuff marks. Plus, the CD case is cracked and has lots of scuff marks. Oh, and one of the discs has a gash in it, and another has lots of scratches. What kind of idiot thinks this is "Like New?" The other games that I picked up while I was there were: Vagrant Story Wild Arms Dawn of Mana Disgaea 2 Eternal Poison Makai Kingdom Shadow Hearts Steambot Chronicles Suikoden V Tales of the Abyss Wild Arms 5 I played a bit of Disgaea 2 on the trip to pass some time when Kaitlyn was reading and I had done all the reading I wanted to. I am loath to get back to Legend of Mana, but the sooner I finish it, the sooner I can stop playing it. |
| Wednesday, August 31st, 2011 | | 9:25 pm |
No Video Games Week
I've decided to take a week off from gaming. Over the last several weeks, my evenings have been spent almost exclusively on playing video games and making/eating dinner. Plus, Legend of Mana is dragging on and I want a break for it. So for the next week, the PS2 is turned off. Since I won't be gaming, I also probably won't be blogging, unless I score some additional games. |
| Monday, August 29th, 2011 | | 10:28 pm |
Ummmm... what?
Dear Legend of Mana, I don't get it. What am I doing? What's the point? Lino |
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