This Is Not a Version Update Part 1: The Dream

Many games being played at the same time.  This can sometimes lead to disaster.  Unless you are able to organize your time and priorities properly.  Somehow with my crazy life and work I am succeeding in this crazy feat.

At the moment I am playing the following games:

There are more to these, however I have been playing these the most so I will only speak of these to save time.  I am going to split each game up into its own post so as not to make this too long.


Azure Dreams:
Reliving this game from when I first played it in middle school has been fun.  I first rented this game from my local Blockbuster (oh God, those were the days).  I was on a big Pokemon kick and I saw this game for Playstation.  It seemed similar to Pokemon so I decided to try it out.  I am glad that I did.

I kept playing it and playing it, returning it and then checking it out again.  I eventually bought a copy off a kid at school for 20.00 (a good deal now I believe).  After playing it for awhile I decided one day I would attach a gameshark to Azure Dreams to help me out.  The game became a little buggy and I was never able to play properly again.  To say I was pissed off is an understatement.

As the years went by I tried my copy of Azure Dreams on my PS2, which it worked for a little while but then started to glitch up on the opening cutscene.  Then when I got my PS3 I thought "THIS IS GOING TO BE IT".

I was so wrong.  Still with my PS3 I was unable to get through that damn cutscene glitching problem.  I tried cleaning the disc, doing all different things.  Alas nothing worked.

It was not until I finally got my emulator program running on my PC that I was able to do an image copy of the disc that I own to my computer that I finally was able to get through that damn glitch.  Since then I have been smooth sailing with the game.  So many memories are flooding back to me.

To sum up this game that maybe not a lot of people know about, your father dies and when you come of age you are allowed to climb up this tower that has 40 floors.  All floors are filled with monsters, with floors that change to random designs each playthrough.  You have to collect monster eggs and either sell them or hatch them to get monsters to fight with you.  Your level does not mean anything in the game.  You will pretty much always be weak unless you spend a hell of a lot of time leveling up your weapon.  The real strength is with your monsters.  The stronger they are the better your chances of survival are.  It takes many, many journeys into the tower to get just one monster levels up enough to be useful.  It takes more to do at least two.  You can also fuse monsters together to change their element and their magic, as well as give them hidden abilities.  Something for the true completion players.

The other thing you do is gather money to help rebuild the town (to benefit you and others), complete some quests, and to make girlfriends.  Many girlfriends.  Each girl requires different things you need to do to have them fall in love with you.  Once you make girlfriends (funny, in Japan they are your wives, however because the character is 15, you can't get married in the good ole USA at that age, they say) you can get some fan service and see them in their bikinis at the pool.  There is a secret girlfriend, however you won't know who that is until you conquer the tower.  OOOOHHHH  mystery.

I will admit that there are translation errors to the game.  Not surprising.  That the story is ok, but there is definite room for growth.  The fact that you can't enter the tower with more than 5 items is a pain in the ass, but the limitation provides for you to think ahead and take risks.  Things like these are maybe the reason why this is never Game of the Year material, however Azure Dreams is a great game to just play and have fun.  Its a nice "rare" gem of a game that is off the beaten path from the big AAA games.

I find myself with almost my first girlfriend (DO NOT LAUGH.  I AM HAPPILY MARRIED), and at least one monster that may be strong enough to take me all the way to the top, not including Kewne.  I currently find myself working on gathering supplies to fix up the town, but once I am ready to conquer the tower I will probably switch gears real quick.

I do believe that Azure Dreams deserves a remake, or at least a release on the PSN.  It would be real fun to play on a PSP or Vita, that is for sure.  Almost perfect for them in fact.

It's Been a Long Time Since I Saw You Around These Parts

Damnit.

It has been a long time since I have been around these parts.  By these parts I mean this blog and not where you are currently.  That would be a little sketchy and weird.  I swear I am not a stalker.

Work and Life get in the way of things that don't have to pay the bills.  Whenever it comes down to why people start blogs or websites and then abandon or step away for awhile that is the reason.  If this isn't their main source of income then they have to the primary job to pay the bills first.  Then when they have time that isn't dedicated to work, eating, sleeping, spending time with the spouse then they can work on the good ole blog.  That has been the case with me.  

I have been working two different jobs.  My primary one I had to travel with teams, cover special events, then set things up to end the school year with.  When I haven't been working then I have been at home helping around the house, spending time with my wife as she has had a hectic end of the year with getting things settled, and then sleeping.

The past two weeks however I have been away travelling.  I had my national conference for my profession in Las Vegas, so the wife and I flew out there after dropping the pup off at my mother's in NC.  After spending four days in Vegas we rented a car and drove from Nevada to Montana to spend about 3 days with my mother-in-law.  It took a 13 hour drive plus a quick stay over in a motel cause we were exhausted to get there, but we made it.  We had a wonderful time in Montana, especially seeing the mountain and going whitewater rafting down the Gallatin River, but then drove all the way back to Nevada on Monday to fly back to NC.  We drove through Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Montana both ways.  Was so beautiful.  I had to put down my PSP several times to just take pictures.  hahaha

We then got back to my mother's house and spent the rest of the week there just relaxing, catching up on sleep, and spending time with her and the rest of my family that is in the area.  We then came back home yesterday.  It has been a whirlwind for sure.  I think that everyone should try and go through those states in a car.  You really get to appreciate the beauty that is America when you do that.  Its just so breathtaking seeing expanses of green plains and huge mountains, some with snow caps still.  Here is just one of the pictures I was able to take:

MONTANA!!

I decided to sit down after getting back and really work on updating things today, while playing some games.  I have gotten many things accomplished over the past 2 months, and especially over our trip.  I mean, when you spend 24 hours in a car and you drive ~12 hours of that, you need something to do besides just talking and looking at everything around you (p.s. I love talking to my wife.  I was just saying I could talk and click buttons).

So in the past 2 months I have been able to Beat a couple of games.  Mass Effect, Mass Effect, 2, and then over my trip I Beat Parasite Eve 2.  My wife commented that I have been on a roll lately, and I didn't realize it until I sat down and checked my Backloggery that she was right.  I have been blowing through games and that makes me really happy.  After watching all the craziness that went down at E3, plus getting into the beta for FFXIV, I set my mind into overdrive to start getting through games.  I need to get things out of the way so I can justify purchases that will occur in the future.  KHIII, FFXIV, FFXV, a PS4, a Vita, a 3DS; there were a lot of things that I instantly put on my wishlist in my head.  However sitting on almost $1000 worth of unfinished games makes my conscience hurt when I want to buy more.  Plus doing a budget everyday/every month,  I can't validate making purchases on things that won't get completely used.

So I did some upgrading of things.  

First: I got all the games that I already owned on disc off of PSN if I could for my PSP (I had a gift card that really helped me).  This enables me to play more games on the go, or just not in front of a PC/TV.  

Second: I finally got my emulators going for PS and PS2.  I used the bios off my machines, and I only use the discs that I own to play.  This will help me play games when my PS3 is being used, or if the worst case scenario happens with it.  

Third: I am doing my best on not playing series back to back as best as possible.  Sometimes it can make things dragging if I did Parasite Eve, Parasite Eve 2, The Third Birthday.  I would just scream "GIVE ME SOMETHING MORE THAN AVA DAMNIT!!".  So for instance, I beat Parasite Eve 2, and now I am working on Wild Arms and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep on my PSP.  Once I get through KH, I wont' go straight to Chain of Memories.  I will probably move over to FF Tactics, or whatever.

Fourth: I am going to redo my "buying a new game" credit system.  I used to have it based on when I beat 5 games I will buy a new one.  That made sense at the time, but the changes I have planned will make it either harder or easier for me to get new games.  Hell, it could make it the best system.  The idea is to base the credit system not of the quantity of games beaten, but the value of the game.  So if I buy a game for $60 and beat the game, then I will put $60 in the "till" for me to use when I want to buy something new.  A lot of times I will buy a game new, but will work on another game first before starting it.  So I won't be getting lots of money in the till all of the time.  It will take some time to build up credit.  I could change it for new games as well and make it when I Beat a new game (that I know the price of) I only get 75% of the full price in the till. When I Complete a game, then I get 100% in the till.  Now games like Parsite Eve 2, which I have a disc for but I bought the PSN version, I will base it off the price that I bought it off of PSN, which I believe was 5.99.  When I have a game that I bought a long time ago but can't remember the price, then I will use ebay and/or amazon to find an average value to the game.  This value will then be used for the price of the game.

I plan on redoing the List and Completed List page, and I will include values to the games with each one.  Trilogy packs (like Mass Effect Trilogy) I will take the price of the game and then divide it by how many games are in pack.  I will also look into adding a Beaten List Page to go along with my Complete List page, but that will have to do with how things flow.

Fifth: I am taking some breaks to watch things on Hulu and Netflix so as to not burn myself out on my games.  It can take me sometime to figure out what I want to play just because I have so many damn choices.  Once I watch some queued episodes of whatever I have then I can concentrate on a specific entry.

Sixth: I started to do a Breath of Fire series play through on emulator.  I call it my BOFathon.  I won't always do this, however I found that when getting through my much older entries, something like this makes things a little fun.  So expect little many -athons in the future.  I will eventually need to come up with a good list of games for my extra-life campaign (please go and donate!!).

With all of these changes you can expect changes to the blog as well.  I am going to update the format.  Most likely the fishes will be going (I love those guy), but I want to try and clean up the pages some.

You can also expect for entries on the games that I mentioned on this blog to appear, plus other game entries as well.  I will add links in this post for when I make those entries.  I have a lot of drafts sitting in my posts waiting to be updated and worked on.  So don't think I am just sitting around and doing nothing.