The Trouble With Being God

Media Room / Game Setup

Posted by Bill under Videogames

As I’ve mentioned several times recently, I have a plethora of game systems hooked up in my ever-improving media room.  Below are several photos of the setup.  Game consoles currently connected consist of: Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, Nintendo Wii, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Dreamcast, Atari 2600, Atari Jaguar, Intellivision, Playstation 2 and Playstation 3.  I ran out of inputs for the Atari 400 and Atari 5200 (actually, the inputs weren’t the biggest issue - the biggest issue was that I ran out of places to put them without making the area look ilke crap.

More photos are available in my Flickr photostream.  It might take a bit to find them if you click over… I’ll try to put them into their own set when I get more time.

The Dirty Jasper: What It Looks Like

Posted by Bill under Cat Goings-On, This and That

As mentioned in my October 21, 2006 posting, I have invented my own drink, The Dirty Jasper.  In the time since, the drink has been further perfected, but I am hesitant to share the genius recipe with the world.

For now, you will have to settle for a glimpse of this masterpiece.  I am also happy to make you one, should you visit our homestead.

So I Got a Playstation 3…

Posted by Bill under Videogames

Well, Hope and I were looking for a way to save money on our monthly cable bills - and one plan was to cancel cable, keep cable Internet, then buy a PS3 for Blu Ray (so we can still get our HD Movie-watching on) and also get a Windows Media Center PC so we can record 24 while we watch Heroes.

Long story short, we ended up not canceling anything, but going ahead and picking up a PS3.  Since this was last night, I haven’t had much time to monkey around with it, but so far it’s fairly decent.  The Blu Ray definitely looks great.  I don’t know if it’s the HDMI output or the Blu Ray format itself, but it seems to me that the picture quality looks better than my XBox 360 HD-DVD does (that’s running through the VGA, since the 360 doesn’t support HDMI).

As for the game part… I’m not impressed so far.  Granted, I’ve only watched the opening cinematic and played the first few seconds of Resistance: Fall of Man, but Gears of War on the 360 definitely looks better.  As far as gameplay goes, I still can’t comment.  However, seeing as how there’s no force feedback in the controller, I can’t see myself becoming as engrossed as I would otherwise.

Basically what I’m saying is that I really don’t see any reason for someone to go out and buy a PS3 other than the Blu Ray player at this point.  At $600 it’s a steal compared to the minimum $1000 you’d have to play for a standalone player.  So I’m happy with that part of the purchase.  I do highly doubt I’ll use it too much for games, although it will be nice to have around for when some of the exclusives hit it like the new Metal Gear Solid.

Here’s my advice:

If you’re a gamer, get a 360.  It has by far a better online system (XBox Live) and really seems to be on par with the PS3 as far as graphic technology goes… but the 360 definitely has better games at this point, a better controller, and just a better all around experience.

If you’re really not into games, get yourself a Wii.  My best way to describe the Wii is that it’s good at doing a lot of things at a mediocre level.  The Wii control system is definitely cool, and I love having my Wii as a secondary system so I can experience things like Wii Sports… but there really isn’t anything else out there that really takes advantage of the possibilities inherent in the Wii Remote. Maybe there really aren’t any; I guess we’ll have to wait and see.  Either way, mini-game collections like Wario Ware, Rayman Raving Rabbids and Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz really don’t excite me after I’ve played them for five minutes.

Then again, the Virtual Console is great, even though I already own half the games I’m downloading.  I just really like being able to play them with a wireless controller and having them display through a component video output vs. the older crappier video options that were on the original systems.

As for the PS3, I’ll have to spend more time with it.  I am pretty sure, however, that Hope is going to be very excited to learn that we can play one of her all-time favorite games on it: Lemmings.