Planet Sillicon

Oh yeah, I did it!

By blog on May. 22, 2009.

Huzzah! The other day I mentioned that I went out and bought Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times (what the hell’s with that name? Generic much?) and I have this routine that I go through with all my DS games.

Whenever I buy a new one, I download the ROM for it, because I like to keep the majority of games I am interested in on my R4DS cartridge, which means I can swap between games without swapping cartridges, and my cartridges are kept nice and safe. Occasionally, certain games resist these attempts. Nearly everything from Square Enix does this, and it is really annoying to have a handful of games that I can’t just put on my R4 and go on my way.

So, I download the ROM to Magician’s Quest and guess what. I can’t load it up. This is a coding thing because the R4 isn’t the newest type of cartridge, and because games do this so people don’t bother illegally using the ROMs. Which I am all for, I only use ROMs that I already have the game of. I love games and want to support them!

Anyway. After downloading the ROM, I get the message, ‘The save data could not be accessed. Please turn off power and reinsert the DS card.’ Gah! I hate that! So I look it up online, and figure out there is a way to fix it, by patching the ROM in question with a new arm7.bin. This is one of those tech things I have no idea about. I hate those!

After leaving it and coming back to it for the past few hours, after reading, trying and failing, more reading, I have finally succeeded! I patched that sucker and now I can play! Pity it took so long I now don’t have the time.

Oh well, I have rectified one of the many tech things I didn’t know, that counts for a lot! I should have a list somewhere and cross off those things that I actually figure out how to do. And now, when I have spare time tomorrow, I can be playing my new game, knowing the cartridge is safe and sound.

New DS game

By blog on May. 21, 2009.

When I first got the Nintendo DS Lite, one of the first games I got was Animal Crossing. Unfortunately, after a while, I just fell out of using the game, and didn’t feel like picking it back up. The game could become somewhat repetitive, but it was still fun.

Whilst filling in time, I was meandering over IGN’s latest offerings, and notice this little game. Now, I know the score isn’t that great, 7.5 is usually something I would give a miss. But something about this game just made me want to play it. So out I went and bought the game this afternoon. There was just something about those little bobble heads that I couldn’t resist.

So far, I haven’t had the chance to load up the game, but I noticed that if I really want to play a game, I will completely ignore the reviews of it. This game wasn’t panned or anything, it went alright over on Metacritic, but I am often deterred from a game if it score anything below 8.0.

I always love getting new games, I enjoy knowing that I have the game, but waiting until just the right time to start it up! I have no intention of playing for five minutes and then being interrupted by the needs of daily life, no, when I have a fun little game that I want to play, I wait until every other thing is neatly done and packed away. Ahhh, then it’s game time!

I am currently charging my DS, and when that is done, I will be trying out my new game. I will write about how it goes later this week. It is sort of fun to play a game that you aren’t expecting much from, it would be difficult to be disappointed whilst being easily pleasantly surprised! There is a time and a place for games with high expectations, Fallout 3 for instance was a great game, high expectations and it didn’t disappoint. But there are also occasions that call for a game that is just fun to pick up and play, that you don’t expect much from, save some enjoyable gaming hours. It’s a good feeling to know you have that lined up.

Get the DSi or not?

By blog on May. 2, 2009.

I have a DS Lite, and I am quite happy with it. I have one of those nice red and black ones, and it has stood the test of time well.

Now most of you will be aware of the new iteration of the DS Lite, the DSi. First thing you will notice, is that it is quite a bit more expensive than the current DS Lite. This puts me off right from the get go, but I will look further into this new offering from Nintendo.

What are the features of the DSi? Well, the screens are 17% larger. I’m sorry, is that supposed to mean anything at all to the majority of us? 17%? Are you kidding? Moving on. The DSi also offers a better WiFi connection, as you can actually download games using the the WiFi connection; this is a first and actually is an incentive to me. However, at this stage there is very little actually worthwhile downloading, and what is there takes a very long time. The DSi has an inbuilt camera, this is the big draw card to the new handheld. But, unsurprisingly, the resolution is rather bad. There is also some extra RAM built in there, but most can’t tell any difference whatsoever. You can also use a SD/SDHC card to take memory from 256 MB to 288 MB… but to have this feature, they sacrificed the GBA slot.

I am really not sold on it, I mean, I just don’t care for the camera and that seems to be the big deal with the DSi. I mean, there is also the downloading of games and what not, which is mildly interesting, but I am guessing it will be years before there is even five things I will want to download. As for the loss of the GBA slot, I am not a fan of this. I would rather be able to play my collection of GBA games than have the ability to take less than great pictures and store them on my 32 MB SD card.

So, will I go out and get the DSi? Nope! So far there isn’t one game that I actually want to play that would require the DSi. I don’t know, I just don’t feel like getting sucked into buying this just because it’s there. Now, if there is a gold Triforce edition, then maybe.