Remote Fantasies

It's not exactly a secret that the PSP has struggled a little since launch, in the face of some stiff competition from the DS. It's lacked killer games and has seemed a little unsure exactly what it's for. Is it just a games machine or a full portable multimedia device? I've held off buying one until last week, and the thing that finally pushed me over the edge was the release of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. Being something off an FF nut, it was the final little bit of temptation needed.

First impressions of the machine are very good. It looks good and feels nice. UMD is a bit strange, and it currently lacks internal storage (will be remedied when my 8Gb memory stick arrives in the mail) but overall it's a nice little machine. Even K liked it. It's certainly no iPhone (or iPod Touch even) but it is a nice little bit of kit.

But one thing on it has really, really impressed me because it's really, really cool. It has a feature called Remote Play that lets you link via wi-fi to your PS3. You can then use the PSP to remotely control the PSP. You even see what you'd normally see on the TV screen on the PSP's screen. But the really cool thing is that you can play PS1 games on the PSP over wi-fi. They can be either ones that have been downloaded from the PS store onto the PS3's hard drive or even ones that are actual PS1 games inserted in the PS3's drive.

I tested this today. I stuck the original FFVII in the machine and turned it off. I then got the PSP and used it to remotely turn on the PS3, and then selected the game. I was then able to play FFVII directly on the PSP! It was amazing. I think I'll be able to use this as an excuse to play through the game again! All the streaming video works fine. The game works fine. It's all magic!

And the most amazing part (untested) is that you can also do exactly the same thing over the actual internet!

I haven't worked out a way to change discs over the internet yet though.

The Pop-Singer Fear of FFX2

I finished Final Fantasy X. Good story as always, buy not one of my favourite games in the series. Both levelling up and progressing in general seemed extremely linear, and there often seemed to be far too many uniteruptable cut-scenes.

None of this has stopped me going straight into it's sequel, Final Fantasy X2 though. Not even simple things like how the sun is out, orPortal is unopened on my shelf. First impressions are... er?? Yuna's now not a summoner but a... pop-singer? That's odd. I'm going to need a little more time here.

FF Film

In a continuation of my bid to work my way through the entire Final Fantasy Canon, I watched Final Fantasy: The Spirits within this afternoon. I quite enjoyed it. Storywise it's a bit odd and doesn't really have anything much in common with the FF games apart from there being a character called Cid. There's always a Cid. But there aren't any chocobos and I didn't spot a single crystal. It did feel like they'd tried to cram too much story into the running time - I'm not sure that what's there actually makes a lot of sense.

In a nutshell, ghosts from a destroyed planet come to Earth and kill everyone. And they can only be defeated with either a) a really big space gun (that the bad man wants to use) or b) eight "spirits" that need to be collected (that the nice girl wants to use).

But where it really excels is the quality of the computer animation. Given that it's already seven years old (the film came out in 2001) I thought it looked astonishing. There are times when you really forget that it's not real people and locations there. I'd love to see what they could to with today's technology.

It's so good that it's quite easy to watch and not worry too much about the story. Just enjoy the geek factor.

And I'm really looking forward to FF XIII on the PS3...

FF Update and Dead Pigeon

I'm sure most people in the world are eagerly following my quest to finish all the Final Fantasy games. Last night I finished FF VI (on the GBA), leaving only I, II, X, X2 and maybe XI. I feel like I'm making progress. VI was excellent - easily the best of the 2D games but (though probably not as good as any of the 3D ones). I'm taking a short break from them now to work through Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxies and probably a few others that'll be around in the next few months. And all the Christmas drinking too.

I'm sure I never used to see many dead pigeons but since I got back from America I've seen at least three. I'm suspecting there may be some kind of pigeon turf war going on as the one I saw today looked like it had been shot through the head.

It was on the corner near the Moat House and was lying on the floor clearly dead (but not squashed or anything). Under it's head was a pool of pigeon blood. If it had been shot with a gun by a pigeon rival, this is what I imagined it would have looked like.

The conversation probably went:

Pigeon 1: Cooo!
Pigeon 2: Cooo!
Pigeon 1: Cooo!
Pigeon 2: Cooo!
Pigeon 2: *Bang*
Pigeon 1: Coooooooooo! *bleeeeeed*

So a warning to all Yorkians - if you see a pigeon flying towards you, take cover. It might be armed and angry.

Final Fantasy and some Historical Maths

And tonight I finished off Final Fantasy V. Now just I, II, VI, X, X2 and maybe XI to go. It's quite a good one, but seemed relatively easy. Maybe I'm just getting good.

On the subject of Roman numerals, apparently DIVIDIVI is the only proper Roman numeral number that is also an English word (it's some kind of tree - pushing it a bit, if you ask me). I thing ID should count but for some reason 499 is actually CDXCIX.

Idiot Romans.

Another one bites the dust

I finished Final Fantasy IX this afternoon, wahey! Just I, II, V, VI, X, X2 and maybe XI to go. Halfway through the end sequence I had to pause it to pick up a friend from the train station. When we got back I watched the rest.

I think she was impressed. Ahem.

Fantastic!

The traumas are over - I've finished Final Fantasy VIII! Second time around it has only taken me about two weeks to play through it - better than I'd hoped for!

Not sure whether to tackle IX or X next...

Final Fantasy Trauma III

I'm quite annoyed. My Final Fantasy VIII trauma is continuing.

The PS2/PS3 memory card adaptor thing arrived today. To cut a long story short, it didn't seem to work well and I've also ended up wiping all my old PS2 save games off the memory card. Inc both my Guitar Hero saves. And even worse, after fiddling a bit longer I now seem to have irreparably corrupted the PS2 memory card.

Luckily I had a couple of old PS1 memory cards knocking around which mean I can now move to plan D: start the whole bloody game again on the PS2. Not ideal. But hopefully it won't take me quite as long to play through the second time since I should have a much better idea what I'm doing. Grrrrrr.

It's kinda funny though. And tragic. But funny.

I will finish this game!

Some quick updates

My Final Fantasy traumas continue. I found a second copy of it on eBay easily enough and won it for just £5.50 plus P&P. Not too much of an expenditure.

It arrived over the weekend and I picked it up from the sorting office this evening. I eagerly inserted disc 4 into the PS3 and... This one doesn't work either! Grrrrr! It does seem to work ok in the PS2 though, and so does my original copy now. Which is odd.

I have no idea what's going on.

So now to plan C. If I can play it on the PS2 instead, that's what I will have to do - but first I need to move my saved game. I think can do this using a special accessory that lets the PS3 use old memory cards. I don't have one of these already so I've had to order one from Amazon (another ten pounds - this is starting to get expensive now). Fingers crossed it will do the job...

I also bought a GBA copy of FF VI from eBay for just four pounds. However, when it arrived I became a little suspicious. The blurb on the box was peculiarly badly written - it was much more repetitious than normal. Then, a dead giveaway, the instruction booklet didn't contain any instructions, just what seems like text (quite professionally) copied from a website preview of the game.

So it's fairly obviously a pirate copy and there are a few other, more subtle, details that give this away too. Looking back at the listing it's also kinda obvious now that it's a bit dodgy. The seller has lots of other GBA games for sale, all very cheap given that they are "new". The spelling is not great. And the pictures are not photos of the box on someone's table like normal, but are electronic versions of the box art.

I reported this to eBay using their online Pirate Reporting System but I haven't heard anything from them and the seller still seems to have loads of items listed.

I don't think I'll play the game, even though it seems to work ok. I've heard reports that pirated GBA games can be temperamental in terms of game saves and the last thing I want to risk (esp given my FF VIII traumas) is getting many hours in and then losing the save. Grrrr again!

Finally, some better news: We got the official results of last week's staff relay and my team ended up 15th out of 54 with a time for the 5k of 19 mins and 15 secs. We were happy with that.

Final Fantasy Trauma

I bought a second-hand copy of Final Fantasy VIII on the PSone some months ago, and have been playing it for a while now - I've clocked up around 45 hours of play so far. It's a good one - interesting story and although the Junction system for levelling up etc seems bizarrely unusual and confusing at first, once it clicks it's actually quite fun and versatile.

But today I had a bit of a trauma. It comes on four discs and I reached the end of disc three this afternoon. It saved my game and then prompted me to change discs - I did this and then a message came up saying "wrong disc". I checked it and it was definitely the right disc. But it still wouldn't work. It also wouldn't work when I loaded it up from scratch. I tried it in the PS2 but that wouldn't do anything with it either. The disc seems to be well dud. It is not damaged in any obvious way but I guess it must just be mis-manufactured or something.

So this a problem for me. I don't want to have spent so long playing something only to have to stop at the final gate. I could take it back to the shop, but I don't have the receipt (or indeed any proof I bought it) and in any case they would be unlikely to have another copy (it's quite old now).

My solution is eBay. I reckon I should be able to pick up another copy for about a fiver based on what I've seen on there at the moment. All I then have to do is hope that the new fourth disc will work. If not, I'm well buggered.

Fingers crossed...

Final (Fantasy) Countdown

I finally finished Final Fantasy XII yesterday, after clocking up around 65 hours of gameplay (plus all the times when I died before saving). That feels like quite a lot of hours to have constructively used playing a single game. It was good though and long. Sometimes the story was a bit hard to follow because a few of the characters look the same and a lot of them are heavily into that shades of grey thing. But maybe that's just me being stupid.

I think the first FF game I played was on the old black and white gameboy many years ago. It was called Final Fantasy Adventure or Legend (it was a long time ago!) and I later learnt it wasn't even strictly a FF game - it was a completely different Japanese game that had its name changed for an English language release. There were a lot of confusing name changes that went on back then, but they're all well documented now and I suspect anyone who cares would have spent many hours reading up about them on the internet.

The first proper FF game I played, like I suspect was the case for a few million other people, was FF VII on the old original Playstation. It was fantastic. Great story, long, lots to do and apart from the odd particularly irritating boss, was always fun. I especially liked the way it had FMV that seamlessly merged into the game's pre-rendered backgrounds. It's an effect that still looks bizarrely impressive today. I never saw it happen on any games outside of the series. Also, the main character had fantastically inspirational hair.

Then for some reason I missed the next two games (imaginitively titled XIII and IX) completely and don't even particularly remember them coming out. I think it must have been after my Playstation kicked the proverbial bucket. I also missed the first two PS2 games, X and X2, because I refused to buy a PS2 until they brought out the little cute slimline tonic version.

But just in the last few weeks, I have managed to find all four of these games! I was especially excited to see the two for PS1 (in the same shop at the same time!) as they're much harder to track down.

And FF III has been reworked on the DS. And I've ordered FF IV for the GBA from Amazon. And I think FF V is also coming out on the GBA. I also have Final Fantasy Tactics Advance knocking around somewhere which I'd like to finish at some point.

So if you don't see me until Christmas... you know why.

If you've never played a FF game before, I'll summarise what happens.1

1. Introduction
2. Fight something (by choosing "attack" or occasionally "magic" off a menu)
3. Level up
4. Fight something
5. Level up
6. Fight something
7. Level up
8. Sometimes fight something three or four times because it's a hard bastard and you haven't repeated steps 3, 5 or 7 enough.
9. Repeat steps 2 to 8 for approximately the time it would take you to have a full and rewarding real life.
10. Finish it.

But it's all good clean fun and the stories do tend to be good. And what better way to use my shiny new PS3 than by sticking mostly old PS1 games in it :-)

Week Off

I have a week off work, but no significant plans for it. I'm not going away, repainting, touring York or doing any of the other things that can be done in a week. What I think I will do instead is play Final Fantasy XII (not to be confused with Final Fantasy X2, possibly the silliest named game ever). I'll do this on my sofa and I may shower first. I may not. You can do things like that when you don't have to go out.