I’ve got a lot of catching up to do before E3 hits. Did you know Activision isn’t even attending this year? WTF is that about? Or are they back in it now? Shit, this is what I’m talking about. I’ve got a lot of reading(/watching (the 1UP show)) to do! Sometimes I grace something with the source of gonintendo.com and shutter. There were a couple of times I would be ahead of them, but now it’s just scary. Could I ever catch up to these people? Match their persistence? That RMC guy is one crazy M.F.-er. Alright, I shall scour the internet, tonight! I will hopefully be back on my shit before July… and get some daily DJ practice in somehow.

Beginning with the days before graduation, I went on an all-out blitz to complete Earthbound before graduation. For about 2 and a half days I did nothing but play Earthbound… well, I also ate and slept. Point is I played a shit load of earthbound to where I was going a bit crazy. In fact I’ve been having some crazy dreams that I can’t seem to elaborate on. Trust me though, they’re crazy. Sadly I didn’t finish Earthbound before graduation, the last part of the game was hanging me up. More specifically those f^cking Nuclear Reactor Robots spawning everywhere.

After the graduation ceremony I went to Lucille’s which is one of those generic BBQ places with lots of random crap on the walls. However not only is their food better than the average - generic BBQ place with lots of random crap on the walls - but they had a badass blues cover band playing live with a band member whose middle name was actually “guitar”. I kid you not.

When I got home I received a call from my friend Tyler who said I should come over and “party” with him and his friend. I use quotes on “party” because our ideal party is one with lots of video games, soda, and various chips(likely Doritos). It was here that whilst (ironically) not paying attention and stuffing my face with Doritos that I got around to the last part of Earthbound up to the final boss. Then I beat the insane last boss and finished the game in complete awe. Tyler then remembered he had to work early that very morning so I ended up walking home at 5AM. I kinda felt like a zombie… who needed to brush his teeth.

The next day I went to a few other “parties” which was sort of surreal. I was really tired so that probably had something to do with it.

Couple days later I got everything sorted out with Sierra College… I’ll spare you the details, but it was really complicated. I’m just glad I’ve got classes to take coming this fall.

Bought a microphone(more on that here), stand, and some Midi cables. What do I need midi cables for? For my… wait for it… keyboard! Yes that “surprise” item I bought during the mega-garage sale event a couple weeks ago was a 48-key keyboard. A complete steal for 22 bucks though it required dragging home a mile and a half or so. Heck, that wouldn’t have been so bad if I didn’t have my bike to drag along as well. That was awkward - but so worth it. With midi I can make it sound like any synthesizer I can emulate on my computer. Now I have to teach myself Piano… I have some books on it somewhere.

Last Saturday I got a car. Yep a car. I’ll make a post about it later or something it’s too ugly to take pictures of now(getting detailed soon). My uncle really trashed it.

aaaand so that’s basically what I’ve been up to.

Just for the hell of it, here’s this:

But mostly bad ones.
(I might reflect more on that after I have my graduation ceremony later this week)

Within the last days of school I finished filming my broadcasting project(not actually finished on the last day, as the schedule was really wonky). Now I just need something to import it and edit it all with. However I did manage to take some random pictures here and there with the video cameras since pictures can be directly saved onto my SD card instead of the archaic miniDV tape. I’ve even uploaded some of the pictures to my flickr account.(in 16:9!)

I would buy a miniDV camera or something, but I’ve been strapped for cash since last year. I bought the turntable using money I had in my bank account which I usually never do. I consider withdrawing a bad habit so up until then I had never actually withdrawn money from my bank account and don’t plan on doing it again until I get a job.

Speaking of looking for a job I have been searching for one since April or so - with no luck. Now that school is over though I’m going to be a bit more aggressive with the whole thing. It’s not going to be easy with this economy. There are probably plenty of experienced people out of work looking for any job they can get their hands on.

Progress on Earthbound is slow but steady. I’ve been playing it almost 2 and a half hours each day with the exception of this weekend and Monday so far. When I was in the town of Threed I contemplated making a blog post as if I were right there with the zombies or something:

Hey it’s NPC here vacationing early in the town of Threed! Zombies seem to have invaded the town before I arrived - and after my travel agent sold me this vacation package. Every now and then I have to smash a zombie with a baseball bat to protect myself. In short, the nightlife here is dead…. or would that be un-dead?

Yea I just think Zombies in general are funny. Ever since I saw Peter Jackson’s “Braindead” I’ve been pretty much desensitized to all horror films.

Yet Metroid Prime still freaks me the fuck out.

Last but not least I promised I would post up my first turntable mix if I thought it was “decent” and sure enough I have one which qualifies. I can’t link the thread I made on the DJforums because it’s blocked to non-members, but I reposted it all at inanity. Complete with a screenshot of the comments left at the DJforums which I find inspiring. I must add the music I use isn’t for everyone. Which reminds me, I actually drove a person in broadcasting crazy with my music one day. That is actually what sparked the idea to start filming the type of project that I made… unfortunately he didn’t flip out again despite my best efforts.

Better picture here

This time it was by complete coincidence. Last Saturday there was a mega-garage-sale event in my part of town - basically a bunch of people sold crap in front of their homes simultaneously - and I originally planned to take this time to hunt for some records. Well that didn’t go so well, but I did find these awesome headphones for the irresistible price of $1.75. After some cleaning(these things still smell like the 70s) and some research googling, I learned these cans are actually quite collectible. This thread here at head-fi.org explains the details of why these headphones are somewhat desirable. Basically, these are practically the first headphones to have full rage of sound: high and low frequency response. Plus they look hella tight.

I bought one other thing from a garage sale, but I’m keeping that a secret until I’m fully ready to reveal it. Hint: I need some midi cables.

Besides some last minute school work not much else is going on. I have been playing Earthbound for about an hour a day though. Classic RPGs are hard to sit through these days…

Oh and I have a very ambitious(more so than a game review) broadcasting project in the works. Sadly, filming will commence up until the very last day of school so I’m going to have to figure out a way to import it all and edit it outside of broadcasting class. Perhaps my friends could help me with this. I don’t know, we’ll see.

Rearranged my gaming set-up in the other room. Main difference is that I’ve moved the snes into the same cabinet as my Gamecube and started using its AV cables for the SNES. GC games will now only be played on my Wii, sure, but I’m still keeping this baby for the Gameboy player. I am more of a handheld guy after all. The GC gameboy player is vital for long Gameboy RPGs like Summon Night and Yggrda Union. Who knows when I’ll get back to them though. Main reason why I set up the SNES in it’s new home to begin with is because I’m prepping for some serious Earthbound gaming.

While cleaning/rearranging all my systems I decided to check out the new “Nintendo channel” on my Wii. It’s pretty awesome, for me it’s a great and lazy way to stay on top of the latest Wii/DS releases. Most of them at least. The two main features of this channel are: The streaming video, and… I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time… drum roll please…. DS game demo’s! Yay! Both are pretty well thought out. The Wii streams video surprisingly well at a pretty decent quality(thought it varies on the publisher) and even has a nice full screen option.

“Thanks to WiiFit we can now crush our opponents with our bare hands! Both in sales and real life! Uhahaha!” - Miyamoto

The DS demo’s are a step in the right direction for Nintendo’s online. It’s very convenient because now I don’t have to download and patch walk into a store and use their download station, or buy a copy, to test out the latest DS games. Hopefully with the realization that a “full” Wii game can be developed within the Wii’s memory limitation (and downloaded via Wiiware), that regular Wii game demo’s will be made as well. A bit of a stretch but Iwata did hint at expanding the Wii’s memory, so it could happen. You never know.

Not sure if any of my limited readers remember this, but I once posted a video of DJ Terrence Parker using a Phone handset with 1/4″ TRS jack on the end of it to cue records. Well a couple weeks later I asked my parents if they ever see one laying around in their office about to get thrown away or something, that I would like to have it. Sure enough…

Last week I picked up my copy of Persona 3 FES (despite no PS2 yet) and then decided to check out my local dimple records store. I was already out and about and needed some more vinyl.

I didn’t expect much from Dimples knowing this area probably isn’t the best place for electronic music but I was actually surprised to find they failed to meet even my lowest expectations. I spent a good amount of time searching their entire vinyl collection where I found only two “dance/electronic” records. I might have considered buying one of them had both not been ridiculously overpriced. I was just floored when I saw how freaking expensive everything was in that store. After that, I came to the conclusion that if I looked through their entire “Techno” CD collection I may just be able to make this my last visit ever. I don’t think they’ll improve or get anything new that may be of interest anytime soon. So once again I found something that mildly sparked my interest but was priced ridiculously high (around 25 bucks for this one very old and used CD I wanted). I considered haggling but seeing as everything had a bar code on it and the cashier looked kinda light headed I decided it would be best to just forget about this place and leave. I’m going to have to set up something so I can order online or maybe even make a visit to the bay area.

Computer-wise I’ve updated to the new release of Ubuntu (Linux), called: “Hardy Heron”. Which I mistakenly called “Hardy Hardon” the other day…(hardy… hard… on) yea… uh… whoops lol. Didn’t even notice/think about that till just now. That’s like that time I kept calling Dennis Kucinich “kruschev”. Anyways, the update is not so great in that it completely abolished everything I had set up in compiz, the auto-drive mounting I had configured, and now refuses to read one of my NTFS partitions. Strange considering it reads another NTFS partition on the same drive. At least it has… potential. I think I’ll login and update it tonight to see if anything has been fixed for me.

I’ve been staring at NeoGAF’s tutorial on how to sign up for NicoNico web-video service for a couple of months now. Finally came across enough links on neta michelin to give me a reason to sign up and did so with relative ease. It’s quite interesting because despite the vastness of youtube I think NicoNico still beats it in terms of exclusively-Japanese content. Anything from anime, to video games, to even video option - it’s all there in full length glory. Not just stupid 10min clips at a time. Quality varies on the source but overall I say it’s much better than youtube. So I suggest giving it a shot if you’re into that kind of stuff, but don’t count on anything being subbed… oh yea and there’s video-overlay comments. That’s lots of fun. If you don’t like them (or just way too many) you can turn them off too which is nice.

In other news, I have two goals for this month of may: one is to meet my pledged miles for this years’ bike commute month(25 miles should be easy enough), and beat my friends’ copy of Earthbound. Hopefully I can beat Earthbound within the month or two, before graduation.

(I’m Ness -P4)

Yea… I have broadcasting in the morning(8AM-ish) so I wasn’t exactly on top of my game.

Not sure what I’m going to do with the other footage I recorded, a good video review would require a good deal of game footage and editing. No one likes bad video reviews, those are the worst. More footage however requires lugging around my Wii. Don’t let that small size fool you, the Wii is heavier than it looks. Or maybe it’s the power brick, cables, and controllers in tandem with the Wii that weigh me down. Another problem is I can’t say no to a good multiplayer Brawl once I have it all set up. Especially when people start bringing their own controllers. I still have a good 5 min of game footage, menus, and whatnot. Maybe I’ll film myself without the wii and just talk. Then do some editing here and there with game footage weaving in and out. We’ll see where this goes, I may bring in the Wii covertly after a week or so. After all it may be my final project so why not put lots of effort into it?

Ok, if you’ve read the second sentence of this post you’re probably wondering what my new hobby is…

Yes I bought myself a turntable (Technics sl-1200M3D) and mixer (Stanton RM-3s). I bought the mixer a day or two after the turntable when I learned playing back a turntable without an amp or mixer (has preamp and ground connection built in) is useless. The guy who sold me the turntable (Zach) was cool though. Turns out he runs an internet radio station called XTCRadio. Cool dude, gave me a great deal. This also marks the first time I’ve ventured into Sacramento alone. Let me just say google maps is your friend. The guy who sold me the mixer was much more local (here in Rocklin) and much less competent. Which is to be expected from Rocklin. Sure he was nice, but he almost sold me the mixer without a power cord… and he had raiders posters… and an SUV (explorer) with chrome rims(or should I say rimz). Then he told me: “hopefully you’ll have better luck with spinning than I did, I gave up after five hours“. I’m like: “wat“. Especially since he told me he bought everything new. Great deal on my end, getting new equipment for the price of used is awesome.

I need some more vinyl and cables before I can record anything, but when I do I will post it! Or maybe the one after that, it depends. I think I’ve got the basics, it just needs lot of refining to make a “smooth” mix.

I didn’t get around to too much gaming besides the occasional Bangai-O: Spirits and Armed Police Batrider. Which I’ve been meaning to write about. I haven’t written about any arcade games for a long time! Blasted forums, distracting me from everything. I have lots of spare time in Broadcasting class though (with no internet connection! Can you believe that Dennis?), I might do some video capturing for the hell of it. If I feel ambitious and not like an ugly creepy person, I might even turn it into a video review. Though the capture card is interlaced only so it’s kinda crap quality.

In the realm of computers, I’ve finally got my hands on some quality Taiyo Yuden CDs. Such a bad-ass find. More details here, but I’ll post the underside color comparison here:

-Sony “music” CD-R. (Actually a Taiyo Yuden disc)

Notice the beautiful blueish-green dye?

-Sony “supremas” CD-R (actually a piece of crap)

I kid, it works just as well… for now.

I’m also happy about finally getting my EMU-1212m sound card working in Ubuntu GNU/Linux. I had to go through a lot of crap to get the driver installed. Luckily Mike stepped me through most of the process until he found this thread on the Ubuntu forums which laid it out pretty nicely. Before I was using my on-board realtek sound chip which was supported out of the box(being very common on motherboards) but every now and then didn’t feel like playing sound from any flash objects. This new alsa driver for my 1212m not only works all the time, but plays everything I throw at it with no errors. I can even look at a primitive mixer by typing “alsamixer” in the terminal! woot!

Ok I’m tired. School tomorrow.

Allow me to shove everything else aside…

*shoves*

There we go, now lets get crackin’.

Bangai-O on Dreamcast was silly, bizarre, and of course lots of fun. To n00bs of Bangai-o it may seem boring, difficult, and somewhat confusing at first (ex: “why am I destroying these houses?”). Then you discover the magic… of… the R button. Missiles galore! Keep in mind with this move the more enemy fire surrounding your hit-box the more missiles you’ll send back. In the Dreamcast version you could send up to insane amounts… I don’t even know the limit. The highest I think I got was 400 or so.

With the DS version, it’s pretty much the same idea with less missiles. This isn’t to say the game dosen’t have AMAZING animation and explosions - just less of them. In fact when you fire off the missiles at the right time in this game, instead of getting more missiles, you get these enlarged low resolution missiles. I laughed the first time I saw it(”holy crap! lol!”). Even with that the sprites are so much for the DS it starts clipping and slows the game down. Usually if this happens you’re probably about to complete the stage anyways so it’s not a real problem.

Along with the classic missiles and primary fire, there’s three new moves. One is sort of a charge/ram that allows you to blow through enemies, destroyable obstacles, and move certain blocks. Sometimes a level will have random soccer(football), baseball, and basket balls in them. You can ram into these and start a chaotic chain reaction using the game’s impressive 2D physics. Hint: Use this to your advantage to destroy a whole bunch of enemies or certain objectives. Thank me later. The second is this beam-sword-thing that seems pretty useless to me. Yea… unless I’m missing something here. The third is the ability to stop time for about 4 seconds max or so. Pretty useful if you want to fly in and destroy a target/objective that’s covered with tons of enemies.

I haven’t tried every mode in Bangai-O: Spirits yet, I’ve only completed the short story mode. Which this time is only made up of about 17 short tutorial missions. The rest of the stages are in a separate mode which are more scenario/objective based than the Dreamcast version. You could almost call Bangai-O: Spirits an action puzzler, which certainly fits the DS platform quite well when you think about it.

Well besides this preview I don’t think I’ll review this one… I do recommend purchasing it when it releases here in the states though. *thumbs up*

Speaking of purchases, I’ve caved into some internet peer pressure and preordered a game I won’t be able to play for quite some time.

Or at least until I can buy a cheap PS2, which may not happen for awhile. I still want the game on hand until then since I know it’ll disappear from store shelves fairly quickly (and quietly). Now that I think of it, I should probably track down a copy of Luminous(1) for PSP as well… oh boy, I need a job. Maybe I should apply to Gamecrazy?… hm… what would I put on my resume though?…

Nick Cecchi - previous occupation(s): Saving the world from General Gray, and Gold silver. Also is responsible for the downfall of General Morden’s regime. High score: 768730

Ah spring, my favorite time of year here in Northern California. It’s warm, but not too warm. Weather like this makes you want to go outside and get some exercise. Cycling is my preferred method of recreation, along with inline skating, but I got tired of being called “fruit boots” so I got rid of them(that and I outgrew them). Yea I’m actually brave enough to type that, mainly because I actually find it humorous myself.
You know what though?(rant about skates in 3…2…1… )
I love skates. I miss them so much I might just go ahead and buy myself another pair despite the negative reputation. Screw the haters. The feel of gliding across smooth cement and asphalt is unparalleled. I remember I used to play roller hockey for a couple of years too, that was loads of fun. The program fell apart though: One city stopped competing, our coach went on to do something else(ice hockey I think), and I was left being the oldest one around(at 14 or so). Still wanting to skate I tried to get into “aggressive” skating. For various reasons I grew bored of it, at least the skates looked cool and performed well.

(great skates)

I never posted about my bike, have I? For summer school last year my mom bought me a really nice bike to transport myself - bittersweet obviously, but I’m not complaining. It’s a beautiful bike, probably the most (single) expensive thing my mom has ever bought me. Check this beast out:

It’s a sweet ride, don’t think I’ll be selling this thing anytime soon. I’ll spare you the specifics, just go here if you’re curious.

On a gaming note, I’ve been honing my SSB:Brawl skills with my local Smash Brothers champ. He’s crazy good, I don’t think I’ll ever be half as good as him. I’m (sadly) going to be busy with homework this spring break. If I can catch a break I might try my hand online. Maybe hand out my Friend code here and there… we’ll see.