2/26/05

Sno 'nuff, the compression utility I was using was to blame for Cave Story's problems.  After downloading WinRAR and using it to extract the game's files, I've had no issues with it whatsoever. 

It was a bit of a hassle to get the game to work (at least at first), but I must admit that it was worth the trouble.  People have compared Cave Story to the later Wonder Boy games, but the vast selection of guns, along with missiles that are extremely powerful but must be regularly replenished, reminds me a lot more of Metroid and its sequels. 

Its lineage may be open to debate, but there's no question that Cave Story is a very endearing game.  The square-headed, simply drawn characters have a look that's abstract, yet surprisingly expressive... kind of like the characters in a Hello Kitty cartoon, or the weirdest bosses in Treasure's classic Gunstar Heroes.  Some of the stars of Cave Story might be just a little too strange for their own good, like the giant suitcase you battle thirty minutes after the game begins, but overall, I like the quirky visual style. 

I'm also enjoying the gameplay... it can get a little repetitive, but the large selection of weapons, coupled with an excellent English translation courtesy of the fine folks at Aeon Genesis, will give you more than enough incentive to keep coming back even after you've blasted the thirty-seventh square elephant.

You can get a copy of Cave Story for yourself at this address.  Be sure to follow it up with this English patch by Aeon Genesis... there's a lot of text in the game and you'll need a translation to know where you'll need to go next.

2/23/05

I think I figured out why I haven't been able to get Cave Story to run on my computer.  I used an ancient .LZH program written in DOS to decompress the file I'd downloaded, and while there weren't any apparent errors during the extraction process, I never had any luck getting the program to run properly.  I've tried running Cave Story on two different machines without success, so I have to assume that the fault lies with the decompression utility I was using, and not the file itself.

So why would I use such an old file unzipper when I could download something native to Windows that offers more features?  I dunno... I'm just stubborn, I guess.  I resent that people insist on using forty seven million different compression formats when ZIP has been around for nearly ten years, and has since been accepted by many as the industry standard.  Sure, sure, the other formats offer a higher rate of compression, but any time you save by downloading a file in a funky compression format will just be spent searching for a utility that can handle it.  Isn't it enough that I already have ZipCentral and 7-Zip on my computer?  Do I really have to congest my start bar with even more programs?  I'm sorry, but it's just annoying.  My advice to anyone out there uploading files... unless you're sending entire DVDs through BitTorrent, don't force people to bend over backwards to comply with some flavor of the month decompression format.  You know you're just going to abandon it in a heartbeat for the next esoteric format that shaves a whopping three bytes from the size of your files.

Anyway, MAME: Full Access is finished, and it's looking mighty good if I do say so myself.  I've made some changes to the format to differentiate it from, ahem, other MAME review columns, and I think pitting three games against one another, rather than reviewing them seperately, gives MAME: Full Access the kind of competitive spirit that was missing from my reviews on Digital Press.

2/17/05

I've really been getting into computer freeware and shareware lately.  Maybe it's because the games are dirt cheap, and maybe it's because they're usually the kinds of immensely fun 2D action titles we never get to see on game consoles anymore.  I'm not sure, but one thing I do know is that I just can't get enough of them.  I had a lot of fun with the Jets 'n Guns demo, and I was extremely impressed with what I've played of BreakQuest... it really is the pinnacle of the evolution of Breakout games.  Every issue I had with the otherwise enjoyable Arkanoid series has been addressed in BreakQuest... even that pesky last brick you can never seem to get rid of is no longer a problem, since the game eventually throws you a weapon if you can't take the brick out on your own.

However, there are some games that just don't want to start on my computer, like the critically acclaimed Cave Story (Doukutsu Monogatari).  It doesn't matter how I adjust the options in the configuration menu... whenever I try to run the game, I get this aggravating error message:

It'd be impossible for anyone short of a master cryptologist to decipher this gobbledegook, but I imagine that this is what my increasingly glitchy computer is trying to tell me:

2/14/05

Whoo... I don't feel so good right now.  I think I might have strep throat or something.  Sorry for the lack of updates, but I just haven't felt up to working on the site.  I'll probably spend more time drinking tea and sleeping off this infection than anything else.  Some way to spend Valentine's Day, huh?

There's good news, though.  The first installment of MAME: Full Access is almost finished... I just have to do a little research and write the introduction and it'll be ready for publication.  In the meantime, regular contributor John Roche and Fight The (Video) Power author Mickey Tveter have graciously supplied the Blitz with new content.  John's got a review of Power Rangers: Dino Thunder on the cartoon page, and Mickey's cooked up a response to the response to his hilarious feature chronicling his experiences on the short-lived video game show Video Power.

2/4/05

I'm on an updating streak today!  Submitted for your approval is a new entry in the Fighter's Misery feature, and John Roche's opinion of the weird pseudo-cartoon Tom Goes to the Mayor.  Finally, there's a new review at the bottom of this page.  And to think I'd originally intended that space for daily game reviews... yeesh!

Finally, you'll notice that the Full Spectrum logo is gone.  I haven't updated the premium content in nearly a year... frankly, I never had much incentive to do it, since practically nobody was sending me donations.  What will more than likely happen is that all the premium content I had written in the past year will be distributed throughout the main site.  It's so old that I doubt the people who paid for the content will be too upset that it will be available for free from now on.

Replacing the Full Spectrum link is a progress bar for my book, Awesome NES.  Each green section represents a letter of the alphabet whose licensed NES games have all been reviewed.  I've been bouncing around from letter to letter, so the progress bar isn't entirely sequential.  Also, "Z" seems to be missing in FireFox, and I still haven't found a way to make it show up.  I don't think I'll ever understand the way that browser does things...

2/2/05

You could only imagine my surprise when I discovered that MAMExpose, the column I had written for Digital Press before its editor saw fit to stab me in the back, is still being published on that site.  Seems that Low Blow Joe thinks that it's perfectly fine to continue using the concept I'd created without my involvement or consent.

If you happen to visit that site regularly, just keep in mind that the bastardized version of MAMExpose that's currently being published on Digital Press is not written, endorsed, or even tolerated by me.  It's a phony, and a cheap imitation of my work.  If you want genuine coverage of the world's most popular arcade emulator from the mind behind the real MAMExpose, keep reading the Blitz.  We'll have something for you in a month that'll blow away anything Sans-Testiclese has to offer.