4/8/02

I'm not sure where I stand on this whole furry issue. At first, I thought they were just a bunch of guys drawing animal characters. Then, I was convinced that they were weird fetishists, chasing a fantasy that could never be realized. Now, I'm back to my original opinion. I don't like that there's pornography in furry fandom... after all, if I wanted to see cats doing it, I wouldn't have had mine neutered. But then again, there's no part of the Internet that hasn't been infested with porn... believe me, I've gotten enough advertisements for get well hung quick schemes without even asking for them to know that this is the case. So right now, I'm willing to treat furry fans with a little dignity. A little more than they're getting from Penny Arcade, anyway.

Well, I'm off to the forum. Since I just changed my mind about something, one of my more argumentative friends will almost certainly be there to invalidate my opinion.

4/5/02

I had to fix some of the pictures on the web site anyway, so I guess I'll post another quick update. I went over to Jeremy's house yesterday and finally got to challenge his girlfriend Pam to a few matches of Capcom vs. SNK 2. She is indeed a very skilled Chun Li player, although I was able to win a match or two against her. I was a little surprised by that... Jeremy warned me that she was able to deny victories to even the most tenacious players in Japanese arcades, and I honestly didn't think I'd be able to do any better than they had. I guess this means I've gotten a whole lot better than I was seven years ago, when I first started enjoying Capcom's fighters (thanks largely to Darkstalkers, which is still one of my favorites). Either that or Pam was throwing those matches. :P

On the way home from Jeremy's, I decided to stop at a pool hall in the Greenville area. There wasn't any particular reason to do it... I just felt like letting the owner know that I was still alive and interested in picking up any arcade equipment he planned on throwing out. So I step inside and notice a handful of old coin-ops near the back, including Defender, Tempest, and Ms. Pac-Man. I don't know if it was the intensity of the games, the Ozzy music in the background, or the arcade atmosphere, but it was the most exciting and enjoyable video game experience I've had in a long, long time. I thought about asking Jeremy to change the description under my name whenever I post on his forum, but now, I think I'll wear the title he gave me with pride. My name is Jess, and I'm an arcade-o-holic. I love the brilliant simplicity, the intense, demanding gameplay, and the high-impact graphics of arcade games. They're the embodiment and the definition of everything that matters most to me about this hobby. Forget the mindnumbingly slow RPGs, convoluted adventure games, and clumsy first-person shooters. I want my heart, mind, and fingers to race as I desperately try to stay alive in the face of hundreds of relentless enemies. To put it simply, I want a REAL video game.

4/4/02

I give up.

Actually, I gave up a few days ago. I tried to hold out... I clung to the Dreamcast far longer than even Sega could. But I had to crumble eventually, and I did just that when I found a Playstation 2 for $200 at my local pawn shop. Now, after years of complaining that Sony was winning the latest system wars without really earning the victory, I own a Playstation 2.

And y'know, I kind of like it.

There are plenty of reasons to like it, too. First of all, it's a great system. You wouldn't have known that judging from its earliest games... frankly, Byron has filled diapers that were more appealing than schlock like Orphen and Street Fighter EX 3. However, it looks as though everyone's gotten used to the system's tough to use hardware, as there are plenty of games available for it and some of them are very enjoyable. Take Grand Theft Auto 3, for instance. Even if you're not comfortable with the idea of stealing cars and flattening their owners with them, you have to admit that it's quite an improvement over the previous games, with more intuitive control and a lot of attention to detail. Then there's Virtua Fighter 4 and Capcom vs. SNK 2, two of the best fighting games around... in fact, some would argue that they ARE the two best fighters ever made.

Secondly, it improves the Playstation games you already have... you just have to be careful about which games you pop in if you turn on options like texture smoothing and fast loading. For instance, texture smoothing will usually draw ugly square borders around sprites, so you might want to think twice about using it with something like Street Fighter Alpha 3. However, that game's 3D counterpart, Street Fighter EX, looks a whole lot sharper when this feature is toggled on. N20, Fox Interactive's excellent yet strangely unnoticed answer to Tempest 2000, looks even more attractive, since it pumps out more detailed polygons that blend together more smoothly than EX.

Finally, there's the DVD compatibility. I hadn't strongly considered upgrading to a digital video disc player until fairly recently. Now that I own the Playstation 2, though, I don't really need a dedicated player... I don't spend a lot of time watching films and don't need any of the advanced features people say the PS2 is lacking. Even without them, it's pretty clear that the DVD format is an improvement over VHS. The picture quality doesn't look any better if you're using an RF modulator, but when you hook the system up to something more sophisticated, like, say, a composite monitor, you'll definitely notice the difference. Furthermore, DVDs offer quick playback from checkpoints on the disc as well as dubbing in other languages and additional footage. The Paramount (ick) comedy Rat Race really benefitted from this, since there were several great scenes featuring Cuba Gooding Jr. that were cut out of the film. With a DVD player, you'll get to watch the cartoony Cuba crack under the pressure as fifty Lucille Ball impersonators act out an episode of the series, complete with Lucy's obnoxious whine. If you rented the tape, however, you'll be cheated out of both this and Cuba's battle with professional wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, two scenes which I personally think made the film better and more complete. Sony's constant, exaggerated hype gave me plenty of reason to doubt the Playstation 2, but it turns out there was something special about the system after all. I definitely prefer it to its competitors, even if it isn't as powerful as the X-Box or as... um... small as the GameCube.*

* Sorry, I'm really grabbing at straws here. What was so special about the GameCube again?