Lonely Sheep Play Want Bin (PWBE 6 Nov 2023)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

This is either a joke about that lost sheep in Scotland or a more
generalised joke about the whole of Wales, and I can't decide which one
is funnier.

Play:
--=--

Dead or Alive 3 (XBX) - Ooh, this is the JPN-region release that has all
the content in it. This is true of the EU/UK version too, but here in
the States our disc was notably missing some costumes and a couple of
arena areas and some other options I forget. They released the rest of
it in some kind of 'booster' pack that was available in multiple places,
but my memory is that they never properly fixed it so you could have the
whole game on the 360. The Series X notably doesn't care about region
locks and so now I have two DOA3 icons, one for each region.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes (Wii) - Not the
Ultimate All-Stars release that we got internationally, but the OG
Japanese game that's a one-for-one port of the arcade version, with some
music and character designs that weren't kosher for western licensing.
I've been waiting two months for a JPN-region Wii to arrive from Japan
(for a princely $24 not counting shipping) rather than, you know,
modding one of the Wii units I already have to play imports. It's lovely
and I was able to figure it out right away in spite of the language
barrier and I may never play it again, but I'm absurdly happy to own it.
I do have the US disc lying around that I should make more time for.

Virtua Cop Rebirth (PS2) - Annoyingly, you lot got this in the UK and EU
(as Virtual Cop Elite Edition) but we never got it in the US. This is
the first two Virtua Cop games, remixed and improved slightly, running
on Sony's Playstation 2 and using Namco's Guncon2 peripheral for input.
I don't know that we ever fully appreciated how much the Japanese game
companies were willing to work together to make stuff like this happen.
I am so happy that I got to play this, and that all the hardware to make
it go works perfectly. The Sony Wega screen that I've had for 25 years
is still flawless and bright too. The only thing missing is that I don't
have room in my house to play instead on the 40-inch CRT I have which
expressly exists for this type of game.

Gunvari Collection (PS2) - Did you know that Namco released all three
Point Blank games and the first Time Crisis for PS2 all on one disc?
Well now you do. Sadly it only works with the Guncon2, but that's no
barrier to hours of entertainment with low polygon count, bad English
voice acting and what may be the most unfair light gun game in history.
If people had more disposable income back in the day the first Time
Crisis would have been a coin muncher from the need to memorise all of
the layouts and enemy placement. That's much more staid and somehow more
realistic in the competing Virtua Cop series for some reason and I can't
quite put my finger on why.

Want:
--=--

Project Horned Owl (PSX) - I only learned about this recently, an Alfa
Systems light gun shooter that's considered a predecessor to Elemental
Gearbolt. I'm not sure that it's worth $60 to have though, but I still
want it for completely irrational reasons. Mostly because I just spent
some time researching what light gun games exist (and that I don't own)
and that list is surprisingly short. I thought for sure the PS2 had
dozens, but there are only 16 and half of them were never sold in the
US. Imagine being the guy who bought a PS2 expecting a flood of light
gun games and only being able to have a single-digit number of them.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing gaming-related.

Expenditure:
-----=-----

Balance forward - $4,014

Super Mario Wonder (NSW) - $70
Legend of Nayuta (PS4) - $40
Legend of Nayuta (NSW) - $40
<smalleasilyignoredfont>Lenovo Legion Gen 8 RTX 4070 Gaming Laptop (PC) - $1,400
</smalleasilyignoredfont>

Total to date - $5,564

-KKC, who also has some lovely new storage for his game room.

[Russell Marks]

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

> This is either a joke about that lost sheep in Scotland or a more
> generalised joke about the whole of Wales, and I can't decide which one
> is funnier.

Yes, barring any wooly notion of the material wearing thin, lamentably
it's hard to know how to spin it with sureness.

> Play:

Oekaki Puzzle (PS1) - back on this. My long-term on-and-off-again play
of this is definitely bringing back memories of a certain My Nintendo
Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess completion saga.

Minecraft (PS4) - some exciting growing of sugar cane to convert to
paper to sell to villagers for a measly 5 or 6 emeralds per harvest,
to eventually trade for other things. I should probably look into
automating this somewhen, one problem with that is needing to be
within the simulation distance for things to grow and so on, so if
you're not within 64 blocks or whatever it'll all just stop. Also,
even with four suitable villagers to sell paper to, and my base being
so close to a village that I had to build a wall around it to stop
them sleeping in my bed, there'd still be the issues of having to
manually sell to the villagers (so it'd only really be automated until
it wasn't), and the villagers temporarily refusing trades if you do
too many.

> Want:

Nothing.

> Bin:

Remembering that Oekaki Puzzle is just the first game in a series.

-Rus.

[Russell Marks]

Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

> wooly

Bah. Make that woolly, that and balloon often seem to catch me out.

(I think it's also literally decades past the time when I should have
been using continuous spellcheck in Emacs, at least for Gnus.)

-Rus.