I have moved to site back to Blogger. Read on for what has changed.

If you're using an RSS reader, please update your feed: http://curmudgeongamer.com/atom.xml

Update your bookmark, if you use one, to point to http://curmudgeongamer.com/ (that is, without the index.php).

The old site can be found here. I won't be getting rid of it, but I will be disabling posting/comments.

Just saw this item on IGN which says that a new Japanese model of the PS2 is incompatible with not just the usual problematic PSOne games, but also with some PS2 games.

These aren't all obscure titles eithers. One of them is Tekken 5, released a year ago in Japan, which may sometimes freeze up. There is a list of nearly 40 PSOne games which doesn't work with this new model, either, which seems significantly larger than the list I'm familiar with for the original PS2 hardware. Perhaps the difference is that we're talking Japanese games, and the games I know are North American games, but I'm not hopeful.

I'm supposed to trust these guys to make the PS3 compatible with the PS2 and PSOne? Yeah, right.

The Curmudgeon's been quiet long enough I hope readers will forgive a quick rant. I've now Googled up at least two examples of gaming sites that have published my "letter to the editor" without ever letting me know they'd been accepted, and at least one such letter was simply a message to a review's author -- I wasn't looking for my letter to go up in lights. Certainly they aren't compelled to contact me, but the common courtesy of notification before publication does seem to be a pretty regular practice in newspapers. As much as I enjoy stumbling over a letter I'd forgotten I'd written some four years in the past, this seems to be one more shortcut gaming [virtual] rags are taking in their eternal quest to fall short of being solid journalists.

In the authors' defense, this is becoming a common enough problem that I believe I'm finally waking up to realize the "standards", such as they are, are coming from a bit higher up than the folk sitting in front of Word, and likely a ways up even from the people standing in front of Outlook managing the folk sitting in front of Word. If my impression is correct, there really aren't that many major players in the video gaming news/reviews industry; let's call it the "Clear Channel Syndrome" Grand Theft Auto 3 parodies so well. All the more reason to support your not-so-friendly neighborhood Curmudgeon Gamer type sites, right? /rant

A friend was kind enough to send me his Gamepark 32 to test out. After an evening of playing around, I can see why people prefer the PSP. On the other hand, I can see why the GP32 is appealing, and I'm left wondering: Why is there no middle ground?

Here's what I'm talking about...

Ever wonder what exactly Disney intended to do once they'd saved Steamboat Willie from falling into the public domain? Why, exploit him commercially, of course!

Just check out the screenshots at Games Are Fun to see Willie in action, complete with steamboat. Then thank your lucky stars that Sonny got the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 passed in time!

How much is Steamboat Willie worth? Well, after 18 months the first Kingdom Hearts had sold 4 million copies. It's not a bad guess that the sequel will probably do just as well.

Let this be a lesson to you all: no copyrighted work is ever too old to make you some money.

One thing game makers do to make their linear games seem less linear is tack on multiple endings. Regrettably, the switch you flip to change the ending is often stupidly obscured. (This is related to an older post: Secret Stupidity.) Whenever I run into this situation, I want to sit the designers down and have a serious talk with them about continuity and giving the player the information s/he needs.

I just ran into this while reading up on Ace Combat 2, which I thought I had finished last night. Basically, if you shoot down a particular fighter plane during the so-called final mission, you'll get two more missions to get the best ending. The fighter himself has nothing to do with the extra missions: the next mission's description says that a submarine has been spotted leaving the base and we now need to chase it down and destroy. This is a complete nonsequitur.

I'd rather see a well-written story with a single ending than have multiple endings striving for some holy grail of nonlinearity. (See: Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies.) When most games can't even muster high-school-level writing, it's further depressing to see them hopelessly pursue something even more difficult. There is no extra credit for tackling a harder problem: poor nonlinearity is worse than poor linearity.

I've only enjoyed multiple endings in Silent Hill 2. While the keys to each ending aren't altogether obvious while you were playing, at least each ending made sense. I can't think of any other game in which I thought it was as logical and satisfying.

Final note: I found it humourous that the final battle in Ace Combat 2 is against an enemy base with the code name Intolerance. Was it called that in the original Japanese version?

I started up Ace Combat 2 last weekend and I finished it tonight. It's an enjoyable arcade-style air combat game that you can burn through in about a day, if you're determined.

Do not expect any story: Ace Combat 2 is essentially a sequence of combat missions that gradually increase in difficulty. A couple are difficult enough to border on annoying, but a modicum of planning and strategy is enough to win each on at most the second attempt. You dogfight with enemy planes and strafe the ground targets, then you get a new plane that's faster and more deadly to use on the next mission. It's a formula that's worked for years, and it still works today.

Compared to a lot of PlayStation games, Ace Combat 2 looks very sharp, and the leap from the first game in the series, Air Combat, is amazing. While no one detail stands out as amazing, Ace Combat 2 has only a few rough edges and no glaring graphical glitches, which makes the entire world seamless. I wish every game were this well-constructed. Incidentally, the third game in the series, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, does look marginally better, but isn't the kind of leap we saw from Air Combat to Ace Combat 2. Furthermore, the third game controls like a slug, and I don't intend to finish it.

Which brings me to my theory that Ace Combat games are like Star Trek movies: only the even-numbered outings are worthwhile. Ace Combat 2 is still worth a play, even today, for the arcade feel. Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies is worth the time for both the deeper action game and the unforgettable storytelling. Air Combat (which we can think of as Ace Combat 1), Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, and Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, are all lesser titles.

Now that Ace Combat Zero has been announced, I'm looking forward to another great even-numbered aerial combat game. And if the unannounced game for PS3 is Ace Combat 6, then perhaps we'll get two even-numbered games in a row.

After I downgraded my PSP to version 1.5, I tried out the emulators that have often been held up by others as "the only reason to own a PSP". Of the systems that interested me, only one was worth my time (NesterJ). In the end, I upgraded back to my 2.0 firmware so I could have the web browser. For now, I'm plenty happy with Lumines, Twisted Metal, and Ridge Racer, and emulators come second.

Below are the highlights of my testing.

Along the same lines of my experience fliptopping my PS2, this isn't recommended for the faint of heart. But the PSP downgrader that has been released for those machines which have a version 2.0 firmware does work. I had to endure the shock of seeing a firmware upgrade fail at 99%, but now that my heart has restarted I've been trying out homebrew apps and emulators. Can't wait to try out Quake and Doom...should be good times. Unfortunately, I'm now really feeling the cramped quarters of this tiny 32Mb memory card. Argh.

Now, would someone please just tell me a SNES emulator that plays Dracula XX (JP) at a decent speed, with music and no choppiness? I've been playing my import cartridge for a while, but I'd like to take the game on the road with me.

In just a couple of months Microsoft will start the next-generation with the launch of their Xbox 360. Nintendo has revealed their new Revolution controller, initiating simultaneous drooling and debating. Sony's PS3 showed off a Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer and interactive demo that rivals the notorious Killzone 2 demo.

Is this an industry renaissance? Hardly. It's the same old, same old, you hapless chumps. The videogame press and you have fallen for it again! There still isn't a shred of evidence that anything new and worthwhile is coming out of this lot.

Take Microsoft. What are they leading with on their hot new hardware? Sequels. Most of the games on launch day have the numbers 2, 3, 4, or higher in their names. One notable example uses a fancy Roman numeral, but that's just to draw attention away from the fact that it's the 11th game in the series and, by the by, has been out on two other platforms for over a year. With the release of Kameo and a new Perfect Dark, we'll also get to see whether all that cash spent on Rare was worth it. My money is still on Nintendo getting the last laugh in that deal. And if having the Xbox 360 come in stunted and steroid models isn't a boneheaded play straight out of the Sega playbook, I'll eat my hat.

Nintendo and their wacky new controller? It's neat looking and different, I'll admit. But as the saying goes: it's not the size of the sword, but the skill of the swordsman. Remember that Nintendo is addicted to rereleasing its older games. For every new and original game they release, there will be 9 remakes of games they put out on the Super Nintendo or NES. Now all you fans can go out and buy A Link to the Past all over again! But with spatial controller gimmick! Yeah, you have fun with that.

And Sony? We get a (literally) tired old Solid Snake running around alone toting a gun and hiding up against a wall. Again. Hey, the codec still doesn't work unless he's kneeling! Oh, and there's Otacon. Finally, Kojima doing his usual schtick of busting through yet another fourth wall. The plot will no doubt be just as coherent as the last three games. On the prospect of this I'm supposed to plunk down big bucks for a new system? Forget it.

None of the software companies will be much better. EA will pump out versions of The Sims, Medal of Honor, and Madden. Capcom will repackage Resident Evil and tack on the number 5 (then Code Jughead). Konami will release a new Dance Dance Revolution. Activision will drop another Tony Hawk on us and yet another Spider-man game. Namco? Let's just say the new games will probably feature the words "Ridge", "Calibur", or "Tekken". It'll be just like 2001 all over again! But with shinier graphics!

I tell you, I'm not falling for it. There are literally hundreds of games worth my time that are already out right now for the platforms I own. And they're cheaper too, without that modern $60 price tag. Why bother with the next generation revolution that ... well ... isn't?