Someday my Plan Want Bin (PWBE 13 Nov 2023)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

I'm not cynical about the Disney empire. I've been to the theme parks
regularly my whole life, which doesn't exactly give me standing as a
neutral observer or anything. But every time I'm there I have the
overriding sense that the whole place exists to serve children. Yes,
it's a money-making real estate venture too, but it's one that's
genuinely trying to enrich lives and nourish young minds. Yes, it's
crass and colourful and too clever by half, but it's also genuine in a
way that you can't really fake without being called out on it.

Play:
--=--

The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails (SW/PS4) - I *think* this is a
Legend of Heroes spinoff? It's an action RPG that takes forever to get
going, because it's doing that RPG character intro thing where it's
trying to win you over with charm and narm and all it's doing is
swapping around which familiar archetype is supposedly the main
character. This time it's Nayuta, who's a proto-Galileo who believes in
scientific principles that the rest of the world hasn't yet proven, and
in pursuit of the truth he's likely to annoy a Catholic church stand-in
and at least two governments that will not be France and not be Italy.
Yes, I bought the PS4 version, because that variation has slower loading
times.

Making Guncon2 Cables (PS2) - So the original Guncon is all one big
piece, with a thin lead that pokes out of the side of the controller
input and gives you just over a metre to connect to the RCA video output
of the original Playstation. That's great if your Playstation isn't any
more than a metre away from the television. The Guncon2 solves that
problem by giving you a discrete USB connector and an RCA video
connector that then neatly hooks into an extension cable that nobody
retains when they sell these silly things secondhand. It looks
sophisticated with its thin wire and T-shaped connector, but really it's
just a uncomplicated Y-connector. And so I've gone and bought $40 worth
of Y-connectors to pair with the male-to-male RCA cables I have
littering my house to enable all the Guncon2 controllers to work
perfectly as designed.

Disney trip (RL) - The boy's first trip to Disney, which is a
considerably less expensive adventure for me given that I can pretty
much drive to the gigantic theme park complex any time I want in less
than a day. It was a Yank bank holiday Friday so we went for two days
at the Magic Kingdom, and if there's any justice I won't come home with
any delightful new viruses since my vaccine booster was timed to
coincide with the highest possible immune response. The kid enjoyed all
the rides he was tall enough for. Some (like the Haunted Mansion) were
done by request and were big hits, others (like the Space Orbiter) were
less entertaining in his eyes. No matter though, as he's coming home
with a pile of memories and an absurd extravagance of new stuffed
animals.

Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin (ARC) - I'm calling this an arcade game
even though it's technically a theme park ride. I got a six-digit score,
which is apparently possible because you can get yourself multiple hits
on the same target for scoring multipliers that you didn't really
deserve. I got an inside view of the mechanisms of the ride because my
mother-in-law came with us to the theme park, which mean they had to
bring the whole thing to a screeching halt in order to roll her mobility
wheelchair thing in and out of a ride conveyance that was a big flatbed
unit intended to meet accessibility needs.

Want:
--=--

Moar light gun games - There were a bunch of one-off game titles that I
just kind of glided over as I shopped, and I'm plugging those holes in
my collection now. Chiefly among the new purchases are Wanted for the
Master System and the Menacer pack-in cartridge. Speaking of which...

Menacer (MD) - I never owned a Menacer light gun, probably because I
correctly divined that it didn't have a lot of software. Certainly the
Virtua gun-stroke-Stunner and the Dreamcast light gun technology were
far superior, but it's weird that I never owned that 16-bit stepping
stone. And it's might uncommon now, so off I go a shopping.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing gaming-related.

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

Balance forward - $5,564

Scrabble (PSX) - $5
Scrabble Blast (GBA) - $4
Scrabble (PSP) - $4
Super Scrabble (GB) - $7
Scrabble (DS) - $7
Wanted (SMS) - $16
Menacer Pack-in Cart (MD) - $3

Total to date - $5,610

-KKC, who is also waiting on his Like a Dragon Gaiden discs.

[Russell Marks]

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

> Play:

Minecraft (PS4) - one of the things I never did on this version was to
visit every area of the fortress I found in the Nether. All I did
previously was visit part of it which spawned enough Blazes to do the
whole rods/powder/stronghold/portal/dragon/credits thing. So I went
back and had a go at exploring the place.

The fortress looked like it'd been generated mostly underground with
only small openings visible from the outside. While the layout did
follow the usual pattern (I think you have a sort of outside area
connected to an inside area by a room with lava in the middle), after
checking all the stairs and passages I didn't find any baddie
generators or chests to loot. Which was odd. I'm still not sure if
this was down to buggy/weird generation or if I somehow missed part of
the fortress somewhere... probably the latter.

Anyway, having done this on the Bedrock edition where baddie spawning
in the Nether just seems comically relentless, in the process I got no
less than *57* Blaze rods (presumably one of each variety) despite
having never seen a generator, as well as three Wither skeleton
skulls, and I even managed to not die for once. So that's something.

> Want:

To try the trial chambers being added to Minecraft, which look pretty
fun and/or deadly. It sounds like these are only in the Java version
for now, and even then only if you enable experimental features, so
this could be some way off still. (I'd also have the usual problem of
just how far I'd have to go to get one to actually generate in my
pre-existing world, though they do seem to be located underground
which should help.)

> Bin:

Getting those skulls meaning that I can spawn the optional Wither boss
in Minecraft, IIRC. Having seen what the fight looks like, I'm not
sure I'll be doing that any time soon.

> Scrabble (PSX) - $5
> Scrabble Blast (GBA) - $4
> Scrabble (PSP) - $4
> Super Scrabble (GB) - $7
> Scrabble (DS) - $7

Personally I always liked Psion's Scrabble for the speccy, which may
or may not have been partly due to the way it would trust anything you
entered as long you suggested it was true. Like ChatGPT in reverse.

-Rus.

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <TDx4N.103400$LJv3....@usenetxs.com>,

Or ChatGPT data scraping, more like. The dictionary is always the weak
point in any electronic Scrabble game, and I've found that the PSP and
DS versions of Scrabble are pretty weak in terms of recognising valid
American English spelling. The OG Super Scrabble on the DMG Gameboy is
surprisingly robust and comprehensive, and the other two variant games
don't really merit any of your time.

The hell of it is that none of these games are really suitable for my
kid. He claims to love Scrabble, but what he really likes is having a
grown-up in the room teaching him new words. You can't really get that
in a handheld game that just buzzes at you if it doesn't know your word.

-KKC, who has way too much to do today.