According to the ESRB, it looks like SNES version of Street Fighter II Turbo is heading to the Wii’s virtual console. I purchased the original Street Fighter II (The World Warrior) for the virtual console not too long ago. Some people are pissed that they bought the first one not realizing that SF2Turbo would be out so soon. Aside from the fact that both are fun and solid fighting games, they both have nostalgic value to me, and I will gladly get SF2Turbo when it comes out.
I was thinking about it and the funny thing is that I never actually owned SF2Turbo before, at least not the US version.
Back in August of 1993, a friend of mine (Rodney) was in Dallas to see a band. The day after the show he stopped by a video game store in the area and they happened to have an import copy Street Fighter II Turbo for the Super Famicom (SNES). Due to import pricing, this game cost $100. He called me from the store and told me about it. Within an hour, I had rounded up 100 bucks and some gas money. Then another friend (Chris) and I were off. We made the 2.5 hour drive from Wichita Falls Texas to Dallas in what seemed like no time. Normally, that drive sucked (though not as bad as the drive from Wichita to Austin) but at that point in time I didn’t care. I was too excited. After we got to the store, I happily handed over $100 dollars and we were on our way back. The drive back was grueling. The 2.5 hours seemed to take for ever then. Here Chris and I had the coolest game on the planet and we couldn’t play it yet. After we got home it was pure video game nerd bliss. In then end, I spent 5 hours round trip and $50 extra for a game that was:

• In a language that I couldn’t read.
• Scheduled for a U.S. release 8 days later.

Ahh… good times.

There have been a lot of screenshots posted lately for Ouendan 2. This one below made me especially happy.

As you can see, in the bottom right hand corner is the Japanese text スキップ. In Roman characters, that’s written sukippu, which is the Japanese phonetic spelling for the English word skip.
Woohoo!
I wasn’t all that worried that they wouldn’t add this in sequel since it was added to EBA, but the inability to skip the intros was really my only complaint with the original Ouendan.

Exactly 1 year ago, I smoked my last cigarette. It’s weird but it doesn’t suck nearly as bad as I thought it would. Supposedly, I’ve saved $1200.00. I haven’t spent that much on DS games though so I think I’m slacking.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who has supported me. Especially Sarah.

So it’s been confirmed that there will definitely be an Ouendan 2. Sweet!
I don’t know if that means there will be an Elite Beat Agents 2 or not, but Ouendan 2 is a perfect start. I simply cannot wait until this comes out.
The company behind Ouendan and EBA, iNiS, had a panel at Game Developer’s Conference that’s going on this week. In addition to talking about Ouendan and EBA, there was the hint of a Wii game in the works. I have no idea what that would be like or how the controls would work but if its anywhere near as fun as their DS games then I can’t wait to see what it will be.

Source

I finally finished The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I actually hadn’t played it in a few months. I stopped playing before xmas and then got obsessed with other games afterwards. Part of me wants to agree with my friend McMaster and say that I remember liking the Ocarina of Time just a bit better but I think that the two shouldn’t be compared. They both rock in their own way.

In the end, I spent about 84 hours on the game. That may seem excessive to some people considering I am still missing 3 bugs, about 15 poe souls and that I only caught about 10 fish throughout the whole game. But as I explained to a friend of mine, when I play Zelda games, no blade of grass goes uncut, no jar unbroken, no cracked wall unbomed.

I ended up getting myself a Wii at launch.
The original plan was to go to a local Toys R Us that was having a midnight launch. Even thought they had taken preorders, they were supposed to have some surplus. I was going to go out there and try my luck with the extras after midnight. If that didn’t work out I was going to go home and then get up early and go by the near by Target, Best Buy and non-midnight launching Toys R us, which all opened 1 hour apart (8, 9, and 10 AM respectively). The actual plan was a little different. I drove out to the midnight launch TRU only to see a line that was wrapping all the way behind the building. I decided to pass on even getting out of the car and went home to regroup.
Click to read more …

So I finally finished Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I had only played the first two cases up until recently, when I got sucked in and just played through the rest of the game. It’s pretty text heavy but still a lot of fun. There were several times I actually laughed out loud.

Unfortunately, this game is hard to come by in the US (in stores at least). If you can’t find a reasonably priced domestic copy online, then there is the option of importing it for cheap. Supposedly the Japanese version of the game has the English localization built in and you can switch the language at the beginning. The sequel to this game is supposed to have this option too. With that in mind I decided to go ahead and just import the sequel, which was released today. It’s being shipped via 5-10 day air mail but for a grand total of just $32.50 (game + shipping), waiting 5-10 days is a lot better than waiting until Q1 2007 for the domestic release in my opinion.

So I’ve changed themes again. Hopefully this one isn’t as visually offensive as the last one. I took the Elvgren theme and just swapped out the images. There’s a tiny bit more work to do but this is pretty much done so don’t expect another update for a few months. :p

I quit smoking last week. Actually 1 full week ago. It is bizarre. And difficult.
Here’s something cool that Sarah found for me. It’s called the quit meter.

May 6, around noonish, in Plano Texas.

fiancé.
finance.
wife.

We’re leaving for the airport in a minute. Depending on our access to the interweb, I will update here when I can.

As you can see above (yes I know it’s tacky and ugly, I don’t care), I have been playing a lot of Battlefield 2. I have been very excited about this game coming out. In fact, it was the main reason I wanted to get a new computer. I must say, I am very impressed with it. The only thing I was worried about was how the fighter jet missile system worked. I had heard that the jets would have heat seeking missiles and I thought that that would take all the fun out of dog fighting. Turns out it’s not all that bad and you can avoid the missiles with flares and evasive maneuvers. One cool addition is that all the jets have bombs and heat seeking missiles. This makes it a lot more fun to be a pilot because after you shoot down the other team’s jet, it will be a while before it repsawns so you can go around and bomb things. Talking about this is really making me want to play so I’m going to do that now.

My Dad came to visit me and Sarah in California last week (finally). I say finally because it was like pulling teeth to get him to come out here. He always wanted to put it off for one lame reason or another. A few months back I made him state a deadline of when he will come out. Being January, he said he would come out by the end of May. I let my nagging slide until the end of April and he finally gave in.
He arrived in San Jose around noon on Saturday. The first order of business was to go to Wal-Mart or Target and get him some tennis shoes. As we have warned other people who have come to visit, if you want to see a lot of stuff while you’re here, you will need comfortable walking shoes. Next we headed to In-N-Out for some of their yummy burgers. After that we headed home.
There was a small list of things my dad wanted to do while he was here. He wanted to see, and touch the ocean, hike on a mountain, see one of the long declining city streets of San Francisco, go to China town, ride a cable car, ride the train, and go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We did a few more things than just that, but those were his requirements. Oh he also wanted to go to Alcatraz but those tours have to be booked a month or two in advance and my dad is incapable of planning that far ahead.
We decided that for the first Saturday he was here, we would try and keep things local for laziness sake. So that evening we decided to take him up to Stanford and walk around the campus since it’s really pretty and generally fun to wander around and look at stuff… and pretend that I could even dream of hoping to afford to be a student there, not to mention get in. That’s about all we did Saturday.
There are pictures here.
By the way, you’ll notice after seeing a few pictures of my dad that he apparently has a favorite photo stance. He stands like this in a lot of pictures. I don’t know why. I also don’t know why he kissed the totem pole.
On Sunday we went into the city. We were going to kill two birds with one stone and ride a cable car up and down a steep hill. Bam… vacation machines we are. Then we went to the Ferry building for food. I paid 16 dollars for a Burger, some fries, and 2 drinks. Yum. After that we went to check out China town. Dad said he wanted to get a few souvenirs and China town is the place for that. Actually that’s about all it is good for. But you have to go there at least once. Then we headed to union square and I stopped off at the Lush store for more shampoo bars. The girl looked at me funny and asked, “You want four of the same kind?” We decided it was time to head back to the car and go to Mount Tamalpais, which is a pretty cool mountain overlooking the city and the bay.
The next day was Memorial Day. That day was the day that dad got to play good touch, bad touch with the ocean. We went to a beach in Santa Cruz and hung out there for a while. Dad wanted a picture of him standing in the ocean, so when we went to take the picture the water dropped back and he wasn’t standing in it any more. So I told him to back and get in the water, but then the water came back in suddenly. That’s when the ocean played bad touch with my dad. After wandering around the beach for a bit, we got back in the car to head to Monterey to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium. That was pretty cool. Lots of huge fish and stuff. And penguins too. That was all for day 3.
Sarah had to go back to work on Tuesday but I had taken the day off. So that morning my dad and I got up and went into San Jose to see the Winchester Mystery House. I wasn’t sure if it would be cool or not but once we got going on the tour it was really quite interesting. The pictures in the gallery don’t really do it justice. It’s one of those that you have to be there to appreciate the weirdness. Once that was over we need some SmackDonalds® for our weary bellies. Then we headed off to Big Basin Redwood state park. I really like this place. Its got huge trees and it has been almost deserted to the two times I’ve gone. They have some really cool hiking trials you can take too. We hiked on this one trail that was about 3 miles. But it took a while because it seemed most of it was going up the side of a mountain. It was really pretty though, and a lot of fun just being in the wilderness. We got back into Menlo Park around 6PM. Sarah got home about 30 minutes later and that’s when we decided to make my dad cook us tacos. They were yummy.
The next 2 days I had to go to work so they were spent recuperating. Well my dad recuperated, I had to go to work. I came home and asked my dad what he did and he told me he just slept all day. That would have been nice. Thursday was about the same except I don’t think my dad slept the whole day.
I had taken Friday off and Sarah was taking a half day. So that morning my dad and I got up and got on the train to head to Mountain View, where we were going to meet Sarah for lunch. After eating we came back home and sat around for a few hours. Then Sarah took us on a drive along the coast and we ended up at Pigeon Point Lighthouse. It was really cold and I had just gotten my hair cut so that’s why I look so frozen in the pictures. It was really pretty though and we all watched the sun set. After that we went to the British Pub style restaurant in Half Moon Bay for dinner. The next morning we got up really early and took my dad to the airport. Then Sarah and went and got some breakfast and went back home and back to bed for the rest of the morning and afternoon.
All in all my dad coming to visit was awesome. I think he had a pretty good time and he better come back again if he knows what’s good for him.

Another plastic massacre.

Yesterday was mine and Sarah’s two year anniversary. It’s weird; it doesn’t seem like that long. Sarah rocks. Anyway, we went out to dinner at this place by our apartment that has the best macaroni and cheese ever. As usual, we both got stuffed. Mmmm… anniversary macaroni.

Well we finally named our cats. The one on the left, blue kitty, is now known as Boomer. I was going to name him Cylon after the baddies in Battlestar Galactica, but decided the dork factor was a little too high with that so I took the name of another character from that show, who happens to be a cylon.
The one on the right, red kitty, got the name Boris from Sarah. Unfortunately, the root of the name Boris does not originate from Battlestar Galactica. Sarah just likes the name and so do I so all is good.

We got two kitties today. Since we let them out of the bathroom they’ve hardly stopped running around. I took this “action shot” of one them while it was chasing a toy. It looks like this kittie rode the short bus.

This cat’s name is “Blue kittie.” The other one has a red collar. Can you guess his name? Needless to say, we need some names for them and are taking suggestions in the comments of Sarah’s kittie post.

My brother Mike, shown below in a randomly selected photo, made the Dean’s list this semester. He said it’s the first time he’s made good grades in college since he took a course on beach volleyball. I asked him, “But didn’t take a bowling course?” He replied, “Yea, but our grades were based on our bowling scores.” So yes, he got academically punished for sucking.
Anyway, congratulations Mike.

So my company had their Christmas party last night. I was a lot of fun. I (and a lot of other people) got pretty tanked. The party was held in the Green Room at the San Francisco War Memorial. Very cool place. Sarah and I got dressed up. She wore a cool new dress that she bought for the occasion and I wore my default suit, blue shirt, and black tie.
The drink situation wasn’t that cool, for me at least, considering I only like liquor. They had lots of beer and wine though. We were told that we would only get two drink tickets. This prompted some of my coworkers to plan a “pre-game” party. Sarah and I and a lot of other people got hotel rooms at a hotel that was nearby where the party was at. My company had gotten us a special rate at this one hotel so it was cool because all of us were at the same one. Two couples got their rooms right next to each other so they could open up the door between them and that’s where the pre-game was held. I bought a flask and filled it with good old Seagram’s 7. I took what was left to the pre-game for other people to drink. Turns out we were the some of the first ones there so I ended up drinking all of the community whiskey. Oh well, you snooze, you lose. After an hour or so, we walked the five or six blocks to the party. There was this really cheesy and crappy band playing covers of popular songs. I wouldn’t have minded it so much except it was extremely loud. Everybody else showed up and lots more drinking took place. Turns out the bar tender guy could have cared less whether or not you gave him a ticket so the beer and wine people got plenty to drink. I however only ordered cokes with ice. Then whiskey would some how magically appear in my cup. It was a Christmas miracle! Like I said, everybody got pretty tanked. It wasn’t long before the rumors started spreading about people making asses of themselves. For example John Doe from sector 7G had apparently started dancing heavily (read dry humping) on a certain female director of a department. From what I heard his friends drug him off before it got to bad. Around 11:30, when the party was officially over, our group had to be told to leave so we gathered outside the building deciding what to do from there. Most people wanted to go to a club and keep partying. That sounded fine until they mentioned the $20 cover charge. At that point, me and a few others started saying that heading back the pre-game room was a really good idea. We finally talked everybody into going back. Once we got back I had another drink and then Sarah and I decided we were tired and bailed. It was an awesome, fun, and drunk night. I liked my first company Christmas party.
Oh Sarah and I did take our camera but the battery died after the first picture so I wont have any pictures to show until I get to work on Monday and get some from a coworker who had his camera handy.