Hey, it’s an update!: Planning

I’m planning something new for the new year. I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do, but I’m revamping the blog. My current idea is to choose a more central topic, as this has been all over the place for about 4 months. I don’t exactly know what, but I’ll know soon. Hopefully it will get me writing again.

Fire Pro Wrestling Returns

Long time no post – sorry about that.

Anyway, tomorrow, in the US, releases one of the greatest wrestling games ever conceived – Fire Pro Wrestling Returns (FPR/FPWR for short) on the Playstation 2. The game, valued at between $10 and $20 is one of the deepest wrestling games ever. Only two releases have made it stateside (and I have admittedly only played one), for the GBA. And let me tell you, the first one (I haven’t played the second) was THE best wrestling game I have ever played, console, handheld, whatever.

The gameplay is not button mashing. It involves timing. Match types range from singles matches, tag matches, up to 8 person elimination tag matches, battle royals, exploding death matches, cage matches… There’s quite variety to make quite a few people happy.

While the graphics are 2D sprites, it doesn’t hinder the gameplay at all. In fact, that is what makes this game so great – the 2D, which most people don’t realize, makes everything more fluid than current 3D wrestling games, because the animators had much more control where physics and looks are concerned. That is why it’s so customizable (which will be explained in a minute).

The game comes with over 300 wrestlers. THREE. HUNDRED. Most of them are Japanese, and are under false names (for copyright reasons). But they’re all real, with only their names and some with their attires modified. Notable wrestlers include Hall, Nash, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels (under Curry Man), Sting, and Vader, along with a few other names you may or may not know.

To add to those 300 wrestlers, you get 500 slots for edits/created wrestlers. So you could create entire WWE rosters, TNA roster, ROH roster, WCW rosters AND ECW rosters and you’d still have a load of spots left over. And the edit mode is extremely deep. You can make virtually any wrestler ever and they will look convincing, just as if they were in the game from the start.

To supplement those extra slots, the game features over 1000 moves. Everything from the Tombstone Piledriver, Last Ride, the Canadian Destroyer and the Styles Clash, they’re here. So not only will your wrestlers look great, they will likely have a great moveset.

The customization doesn’t stop at wrestlers. You can create your own belts, arenas, rings, and referees.

The thing that’s really great is if you get a Action Replay. The Japanese version of the game, which many people imported and played in Japanese (the only real problem, aside from mods, was the menu translations), has LOADS of edit packs. Where you can download a save and import the wrestlers into your main save. People compiled wrestlers from WCW, WWE, ECW, TNA, you name it, and posted the saves online. This is the ultimate customization aspect. Just let others do the work for you! Likely, though, it will be a while before a ton of edit packs are released because, assuming the saves can’t be converted to the US/EU versions of the game, people have to start from scratch.

I really hope, if you’re a wrestling fan, that you pick up this great game. Currently, it’s only going for $15 on Amazon and is shipping tomorrow (November 12). Even if you plan on getting SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008 (which I don’t, at least until the price plummets), you can’t go wrong for a $20 game which is considered the absolute best in it’s field.

I’ll leave you with a pretty great Battle Royal, simmed in Fire Pro Wrestling Returns (Japanese version of course). It’s got a bunch of current WWE stars, from Cena to Shawn Michaels to Triple H. But don’t get surprised if someone, at the end, gets the… Well, just watch…

TiVo TiP: 30 Second Commercial Skip

This is a great tip for any TiVo user. Normally, the forward button on the TiVo remote goes to the end of the program, or skips 15 minute intervals. This can seem sort of useless. Well, there’s a hidden feature in TiVo that makes that button much more useful – and likely the original intent of the button. Just input the following code while playing a recorded show (doesn’t work on live TV).

Select - Play - Select - 3 - 0 - Select

You will hear three “Thumb’s Up” sounds. This allows the button to skip forward 30 seconds, making skipping commercials (or unwatchable parts of TV shows) a snap. When I found out about this – about two months after I had my TiVo, it improved my TV watching ten-fold.

Note that this will reset anytime your TiVo is rebooted and you will need to re-input the code.

WoW TiP: Gift of the Narru is Awesome

…In lower level PVE, at least.

I recently rolled a Draenei Mage, currently 32 and loving it. I had already rolled a Draenei Hunter and loved him and especially their racial “Gift of the Narru”, a HoT, mana-free spell. I don’t know how well it works at the higher levels (it scales automatically), but it works GREAT 1-50 at least.

The first thing I noticed was that GotN great for healing pets. I was healing my pet by at least 3/4 of his health coupled with mend pet in hairy situations, and I find it a great alternative (or even great in addition) to bandages. Since I don’t PVP, I’m not constantly healing my pet in battle so it’s really just a fail-safe.

Something that I found a few days ago is that GotN+Ice Block=Win. I was in a hairy situation – I’m frost specced, specifically to AoE (and I picked it up fairly fast, I’m pulling upwards of 6 of my own level and taking them down) – and I had a bad pull. I hit GotN, then Ice Block, and I was healed to 50% of my health by the time it broke, allowing me to continue and take down the rest of the group.

GotN is really awesome for Magi and if you’re planning to roll an alliance mage, I strongly recommend rolling Draenei if only for a little extra survivability.

On a side note, I’m really pissed to hear that Fear Ward is being given to all Priests in the next patch, because I rolled a Dwarven Priest specifically for that racial. It’s also being nerfed down to a 3 minute cooldown/duration, so it’s not viable to put it on an entire party. I wouldn’t have minded as much if it weren’t being replaced with a shitty Damage-related spell and/or Draenei and Dwarves still had the 30sec cooldown/10 minute duration. I wouldn’t have minded at all if they just gave the racial to one or two races on the horde to balance it out, either.

All in all, though, still having fun in WoW.

20 Things I Learned From My NES

Fusion Ring has a pretty hilarious (and true) list of NES-related teachings. My personal favorite?

If at first it doesn’t load, blow.

So true.

The NES was such an awesome system (as I’ve written about in the past) and I still have it to this day (top loader), but it had some problems, the main being the pin connector being a piece of crap. Luckily people are now selling replacements which apparently at least improve the chances of not getting a Blue/Gray/Scrambled Screen of Death. I’m considering buying a refurbished push-down NES with the new pins.

Cause I’m a Blonde!

Video of the Moment

Well, not ME, but…

Internet People!

Video of the Moment

Ah yes, the internet fad age.

OMFG LEIK 4RELZ?

Warning: Rant

I am getting tired of this shortening of words crap. I just saw a texting commercial doing the “awww, they’re talking like they’re typing” joke. I’m just sick of seeing it everywhere.

Sure, there are times when it’s appropriate. Playing an online game, for instance, where timing is crucial, shorting everything can be acceptable. And I can understand shortening messages while using something other than a full keyboard, like a cell phone or a point-and-click gaming controller. But it’s getting ridiculous.

Personally, whenever I can, I use proper English while typing. I think the only time I’ll ever use an acronym is when I’m playing an online game and in the middle of something/in a hurry or typing on a cell. Almost in every other situation I use proper English with full sentences. There is no reason to shorten and/or butcher the English (or God forbid another) language on an internet forum, an e-mail, on MySpace, etc.

Of course, there are a few that I don’t mind, namely the ‘LOL’ and common shortenings, like ‘WPM’ or ‘etc’. Other than that, you will rarely, if ever, see me use ‘OMG’, ‘ICU’, etc in a serious manner.

Unfortunately, the Internet has also rubbed off onto other, proper words. While it’s called “L33T SP33K”, everyone and their dog uses it, and 99% of those users are far from elite (yes, believe it or not ‘L33T’ comes from a real word). Misspellings have become the norm all over the internet. I cringe every time I see ‘like’ spelled ‘liek’ MULTIPLE times. It’s an easy mistype, I’ve done it myself, but people use it as if it’s a real word.

The main purpose to these ‘misspellings’ are to make things go faster, I understand that, but people even use ‘words’ that are the same keystrokes or MORE than the word (or words) they’re trying to ‘Netify’. The lengths of which people will go to be lazy is amazing.

My point is, people, learn to spell. Then learn to type. If you’re typing at 60+ WPM (last time I checked I was around 63 WPM non-touch type), there really is no reason to shorten everything. Just, please, use proper language on the internet (and in everyday life) whenever possible, if only to make it a more aesthetically pleasing place to be.

Bob Ross – Happy Little Outtakes

Video of the Moment

This is pretty damn hilarious.

OMFG HAX #2: HAMSTER HAX!!!

(Click for full size.)