Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Anagrams...for your internet nickname!

I spent about 30 minutes playing anagram with my internet nickname. Reason? "CrazedRevenG" is just too long for some services. It's 12 characters, and some things that I can think of only allow 8 characters, and I don't really like putting numbers in my names.

Here's what I thought of.

From CrazedRevenG:

1. grenade (...No.)
2. nerve (Not bad, but still not quite there...)
3. rage (That was what I had originally wanted, but then I came up with something better: )

4. deranged

It's a synonym to crazed.
I am crazed.
I do dumb things.
Like not sleeping.
Why am I still awake right now.


This is what happens when it's summer break, when you have a soundtrack you haven't listened to all the way yet, and when you are on IRC reading along a very enjoyable discussion about setting video game goals, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and other topics.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Milpitas Golfland Excursion, The First (that actually got posted)

DJMAX Technika

What I Passed Today

-First Step
First time: First Kiss TP, Honeymoon TP, I Want You TP, Lover TP
Second time: In My Heart TP, Honeymoon TP, I Want You TP, Lover TP

-Cotton Candy
Sweet Shining Shooting Star PP, Here in the Moment TP, Miles TP, Dear My Lady TP

-Electro
Your Own Miracle TP, Supersonic TP, Cherokee TP, Love Mode TP

-Core Sound (for some reason this wasn't recorded on the internet ranking, but I swear I passed it :< )
Voyage TP, Para Q PP, Landscape TP, Sin PP

-Randomizer
Access TP, Dear My Lady PP, Landscape TP, Blythe PP

-Mission 7: DJMAX Classic 2 (though I do not remember what was on here :s )
-Mission 20: Chain Note Challenge
-March SP (twice)
-April SP (twice)

What I Failed Today

-Heartbeat (several times)
Failed on Colours of Sorrow TP several times. I swear, I have better luck getting Area 7 TP...
Failed on Remember TP. I was tired.

-Customizer (several times)
Failed on Shoreline TP 1st stage and 2nd stage (though I finally passed Shoreline for the first time)
Failed on Son of Sun TP (what's new)
Failed on

-Challenger
Failed Hexad TP. How the hell do you even do the beginning? I am bad at repeats.

-February SP, Supersonic SP killed me. Badly.
-June SP. First time playing Coastal Tempo, ever. The SP was a bad place to start.
-Mission 16: Proposed, Flower Wolf: Failed on PFW TP, I literally failed on the very last note.
-Mission 18: Rapid: On normal circumstances I would have no problems with any of these songs, but it has been a very long time since I last played Son of Sun's PP.



In The Groove 2

What I Passed Today

-Tribal Style Expert
-Liquid Moon Expert
Yay, I can still pass some Expert 10s!

What I Failed Today

-Utopia Expert, I have only passed this song twice on pad: once on ITG1 for PS2 and once on ITG2 at Milpitas Golfland. I hate Expert 11s.



Dance Dance Revolution X

What I Passed Today

...Nothing notable.

What I Failed Today

-Trim Expert. 16 on Expert, but my downfall was putting this song on x1.5. There's a 340 section near the end of the song and it's been a while since I have played this.



DrumMania V4

What I Passed Today

...Nothing notable.

What I Failed Today

-Concertino in Blue ADV. With a nearly broken cymbal, there's no way I can pass this song.
-Die Zauberflote ADV. See above.
-Onihime ADV. See above, except for the fact that I have never passed this song.
-Aithon EXT. The cymbal is very, very bad. I can't even pass a mid-50 because of it. :[



And all that happened from about 12pm - 8:30pm, with 2 hours in between taken out for lunchtime. So when's the next time I get to go to Golfland again? :D

Monday, July 5, 2010

Playing Chrono Trigger for the...sixth time? Seventh time? I lost track.

I love this game. I really do.
But it's the second RPG that I came to know and love as a child and as a result, I got carried away with it. (The first was Super Mario RPG on SNES.)

I've played the original SNES cartridge, the PSX port (Final Fantasy Chronicles, which also came with a "harder" version of Final Fantasy 4), and am currently (or was) playing the DS remake.

As a wee child in his grade school years I never stopped to think about what this game meant. Some of this game's more serious scenes, such as Crono getting obliterated at Ocean Palace, the talk of the Entity after reviving the forest, and the whole world getting incinerated by a monster who had been sapping the planet of energy back when dinosaurs were playing Hide-and-seek with each other, I didn't think much of it.

There was little reason for me to have even thought about these scenes as a child, and to have grasped any meaning behind them.

...
Back to what I wanted to talk about regarding this post.

Endings

For what was originally a standard RPG on the SNES, this game has a lot of hidden things to do.
First and foremost, the endings. All twelve (12) of them. And one bad ending. Two of which are simply "kill Lavos (the last boss) when you are able to", and then ten of them can only be done on a New Game+.

While I'm talking about endings, I just wanted to say that the bad ending for Chrono Trigger is able to produce nightmares for some people. This, and another game that I'm playing at the moment (Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2) have been the only ones where the Game Over movie have been scary and memorable.

The criteria for unlocking each of the ten endings during the New Game+ is a bit obscure for anyone who is not following a walkthrough on the internet. However, I don't think that one would be able to discern that there were multiple endings for Chrono Trigger without first consulting a walkthrough on the internet, or talking to someone who has found New Game+ endings. The timing for killing the last boss during the New Game+ for some of the endings are especially strict, sometimes requiring one to drop whatever they are doing after killing a boss, taking a warp back to the End of Time, jumping on the bucket, and then going to kill Lavos. And then repeating this for the rest of the 9 endings.

Endings are just one of the things that are required for completion. When I played the SNES and PSX ports, the endings were the only thing I considered important. This is because getting the endings on the PSX disc were all that you needed to do in order to unlock the rest of the menus on the Extras menu. So, by unlocking all the endings you unlock all the menus, easier said than done, but definitely feasible. Heck, I've already unlocked all the endings at least four times on the SNES, PSX, and DS ports.

Item Collection

On a typical New Game run, I can get most of the items in one run. I'll miss some of the more elusive items, such as one of Frog's swords that is in the Ocean Palace, in a room that is just plain hard to get to and involves running along the edges of a room to get to the middle of a room where the sword is at. There's no way I can guarantee that I can pick up all the Power/Magic/Speed Tabs in one run, there are just so many. I know I'm close, though, perhaps missing a small handful throughout the whole game. Some of the dungeons where it's hard to see the ground, such as Mountain of Woe, Death Peak, etc etc, probably missing one or two tabs there. Also some places where I go there once and don't go back, I'm probably missing a tab. Tyrano Lair is one, but well, that's different since entry to Tyrano Lair is limited to until you defeat Azala + Black Tyrano.

I've got most of the item locations memorized, though I couldn't tell you where an item was unless I was playing. Aside from item locations being generally obscure to find, there are some dungeons where I just don't want to go through because I'm too lazy to go through it again (Reptite Lair, Giant's Claw, Denadoro Mountains, for example).

And then there are the items you get from Charming. Prior to playing the DS port, I didn't care about Charming. The only items I really cared about were Power Tabs from Ocean Palace's Tubster and Megalixirs from the Zeal battles. On the DS, I frequently charm Golden Studs from Flyclops, Magic Tabs from Aliens (called Ghajs in the remake), Megalixirs from Ruminators (Hydracondas), and various others, including the aforementioned two. (Tubster is Blubber Hulk in the remake.) For some reason I always get the Mop for Crono. It's not like I use it, either. I just have to have it.

In the DS port, there are two bonus dungeons, and with bonus dungeons come new items that need collecting. This isn't such a big problem, but I did have to consult a walkthrough. Lost Sanctum and Dimensional Vortex are irritating as hell. Which is a bit disappointing, since the main reason why I bought Chrono Trigger DS was to experience the bonus dungeons. Lost Sanctum is tedious, while Dimensional Vortex brings a new challenge to the fray, but getting to the challenges requires first going through a map of a previously-traversed dungeon. This means mashing the attack button or spamming the same magic attacks over and over again trying to get through the section.

Bestiary Completion

This isn't a problem for me, with the exception of a small handful of monsters that I have trouble killing. These include the monsters that provide an abundance of TP, EXP, and Gold--Rubble, Turret, Nomad, and Wonder Rock on the DS port. A trickier monster to encounter is the Departed monster, which is a fusion between the Base (yellow-greenish palette swap of Shadows) and Defunct (one of the spear-toting skeletons) in the Northern Ruins. It requires triggering a battle that has both the Defunct and Base, and then hitting the Defunct so that it collapses into a pile of bones, then waiting for the Base to fuse with the Defunct. The Northern Ruins only gives you two chances to find this rare enemy. In all honesty though, unless you are aiming for 100% completion (like I am in the process of), there's no reason to find this monster. Departed hits freaking HARD for a non-boss monster!

Oh, that's right. Magus has not one, but two entries in the Bestiary!

The problems with aiming for a 100% completion for this game

1. Ayla's strongest "weapon" requires her to be at Level 95. This takes me more than 2 New Game+'s, and with that, lots of mashing the A button to advance through the plot, cutscenes, and people talking.

2. The DS port added a new feature called "Arena of the Ages". You raise a monster, battle other monsters, and get prizes for it. Why is this a problem? There are 6 accessories that you can only get through the Arena, and the prizes are all random. Help me.

3. The new items that you get from Lost Sanctum/Dimensional Vortex. And I thought I had nearly completed this game on the PSX port. Lost Sanctum is very tedious, there are many battles that you might go through, and just going through Lost Sanctum means going through one of the maps at least a dozen times. It's very painful. And then getting the items...There aren't a whole lot of new items to collect, but they definitely have spots on the Item Encyclopedia, and since I'm going for 100% completion, that means I have to get them. Looks like some of the Square-Enix folks learned a thing or two about hiding treasure chests on maps where you have to go through a hidden route to get to...because there are a LOT of them in Lost Sanctum and Dimensional Vortex.

Thankfully, none of the new items need to be Charmed from. Actually, only a few new monsters yield anything when Charmed.