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Wait to see the screenshots at the end!

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Posted by Roy in Games, Geeky | No Comments

I was neglecting the NDS a bit, so I decided to look for some fun homebrew stuff to do with it. Here are some I tried (You’ll need some sort of flashcart to use these. Mine is an R4.):

• Pocket Physics - a neat little toy app that allows you to draw diagrams on the touch screen that would then become affected by physics. It’s a bit like a free-form The Incredible Machine that’s portable. It’s a bit of work to get a nice physics model done, but there are some available for download, you can just view the work of others if you want.
• Colors! - a painting/sketching app for the DS, you can create images that have a painting feel to them
• ScummVM DS - SCUMM was the adventure-game engine that drove a lot of the point-and-click adventure games of the 80s such as the Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion games. Provided you have a copy of those games, ScummVM DS allows you to play all those old games on your DS!

There’s a whole world of homebrew apps/games out there to explore, these were just the ones I could try out in one sitting. Try this post from 4-color-rebellion for some recommendations.

For more details, you can also check out the recently concluded Homebrew Week at DS Fanboy.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to help Guybrush find Big Whoop…

Posted by Roy in Games | No Comments

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates is an action-RPG by Square Enix. The original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles came out on the NGC. Ring of Fates is a different game for the NDS, though I guess it’s sort of a spiritual successor. I finally managed to get some NDS time and finish this game last night. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Roy in Games | 2 Comments

On my way home today I passed by Megamall as usual, and there was a Scrabble tournament going on. I stopped for a few minutes and watched. I realize a lot of people would probably find watching Scrabble games boring, seeing only two geeky people spelling out words at random, not even making any sense. But watching the Scrabble games brought me back to a time when I didn’t have the internet to keep me up at nights.

Scrabble is a game close to my heart, me and my brother Kerwin practically grew up with the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Roy in Daily Life, Games | No Comments

Eagerly awaited, the fourth installment of the Ace Attorney series has arrived, with a brand-new leading defense attorney. Of course, not one week after I got my copy, I’m done. It kept me up at nights and made me come in to work late; well worth it.

To those who are not familiar with the Ace Attorney games, it’s hard to explain the appeal of the game; with all the thinking and reading to be done, it’s definitely not exciting to watch. Anyone who’s finished one of them knows what it is though. There’s that feeling you get when you all the testimony and evidence finally come together, and you figure out how it was done but you still have to figure out how to prove it!

Detailed review (and spoilers) follow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Roy in Games | No Comments

During a recent out-of-town trip I observed that despite the abundance of digital entertainment available (what with all the NDS and PSP owners bringing the goods, not to mention some people bringing a Wii), some people still got together to play some face-to-face IRL games. I’m talking the types of games that are not easily translatable into digital format and will probably remain so for quite a while.

One such game is known locally as “Killer-killer”. Obviously a local name due to the Filipino’s penchant for repeating words in a single term, I have no idea if it is known by other names elsewhere or if it exists outside this country at all. (As you can imagine, “Killer-killer” is not a very easy search term.) For the purposes of posterity, I will record the details of the game here.

In this game, a group of people sit around in a circular formation, such that each person can easily see each other’s face. A good number of participants would be around 6-8, although more can play with a few rules adjustments (we played with around 15 people on the night in question).

Each player is given a role, usually written on a scrap of paper and drawn randomly. The players don’t know each others’ roles. The following roles are available in the game:

“Killer” - the titular role obviously. The Killer’s objective is to assassinate a particular other role, usually named the “Judge”. The Killer kills people by winking at them silently, and tries to avoid getting caught by the Police. Other players who notice the Killer winking at them must declare that they have been killed. Once the Killer has killed his mark, the game ends and the killer wins.

“Judge” - the assassination mark, his only objective in the game is to stay alive. If the Judge is killed, the Killer wins and the Policeman loses.

“Police” - the law, his objective is to catch the Killer, either by catching him red-handed “killing” someone, or if the Killer attempts to “kill” the Police, the Police may immediately arrest him. Once the Police catches the Killer, the game ends.

“Doctor” - an important role, his objective is to “Heal” other people who have been “killed”, by winking at them as well. The person who has been healed usually declares something like “I’m alive again!”

“Victim” - other players are usually assigned randomly-named roles but have no gameplay significance; their only purpose is to delay the Killer in his hunt for the mark.

When playing with more people, the game can be balanced by adding more Killers and Policemen as needed.

The game is best played with a group of people who know each other well and are comfortable staring into each other’s eyes. It’s a game of concentration, bluffing and deception that is probably close to impossible to accurately translate into a digital game.

And because I just now noticed that Wordpress now allows me to tag posts, I will tag this one with a term I coined just now: “meatspace-games”

Posted by Roy in Daily Life, Games | 2 Comments

Despite the fact the allure of Final Fantasy Tactics PSP, I was still decided on finishing Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. This was only the second game in the series that I was playing, although I had greatly enjoyed Advance Wars: Dual Strike, so my hopes were high for Days of Ruin.

Pros:

- Still Advance Wars, battles are fairly good and challenging enough

- New units: Bike - infantry on wheels, can capture as well; Flare - helps in Fog of War situations; Carrier - revamped from the AWDS Carrier, this one can now create its’ own Seaplanes; Antitank - a ranged unit that can counterattack, strong against Tanks, surprisingly; Duster - a hybrid air unit that has a weaker ground attack than a Bomber, and weaker air attack than a fighter

- COs and CO Powers greatly weakened, allowing for battles which don’t swing entirely on the back of CO power usage

Cons:

- No hard campaign? No unlockables? Without the unlockables, I’m not inclined to play through the trial maps, since there’s no incentive. (I may still do it at some unspecified point in the future, but when faced with the possibility of playing Final Fantasy Tactics instead…)

- Too few COs and not enough variation

- The whole “darker tone” thing they have going. The game is now set in a post-apocalyptic world. That would be fine, I have no problems with it. Except I liked the old one!

All in all, the game is ok, although I miss the COs from AWDS.

Posted by Roy in Games | No Comments

I had been planning to do this for a while: it’s my first Wordpress Plugin! Over at Roy on Magic, I often have to write out decklists and such, so I wanted to have an autocard feature similar to the one used at MTGSalvation. After a quick five-minute search I couldn’t figure out how they did it, so I just wrote the plugin myself. Actual effort was around 3.5 hours, most of it struggling with PHP and Regular Expressions. :p

Details and download are at http://www.roytang.net/wiki/index.php/MTG_Autocard_WP. Hopefully someone else will find it useful.

Posted by Roy in Games, Projects, Software Developer | No Comments

Bought one last week, had not had time to log it until now. It was not so much planned and maybe a bit more of an impulse buy. Something like a cellphone conversation with my brother who’s standing in a store in Singapore pressuring me with “Well? Should I buy one or not?” I don’t like pressure, so obviously I just said, “Ok, whatever!”

The inevitable question arises: which one is better, PSP or NDS? A friend asked me if they have different types of games, and I tell her that the NDS has more fun/casual games, while the PSP has more action-oriented stuff. So I guess it really depends on your taste.

The NDS is a fun piece of equipment and I had enjoyed it so much I bought a 2nd one when I saw a cheap price, yet lately the PSP has been garnering more attention from me. Two obvious reasons: (a) it’s new and (b) Final Fantasy Tactics, most likely my favorite game of all time is available on the PSP with rewritten dialogue, added characters and added battles. Whether it’s better than the NDS in the long run is hard to say, as Ace Attorney 4 - Apollo Justice lies in the short distance.

Also, the presence of Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max on the PSP, along with the inevitable need to learn Tekken: Dark Resurrection so I can beat up the guys at work is a strong incentive to buy a 2nd PSP. But I’m not that rich/impulsive. Not yet.

After the end of the lifetime of the PS2, I had been thinking that I may never again play console-style long games in the vein of Final Fantasy, but the PSP can possibly bring me back into that fold. PSX-style games on a handheld is huge, as one of the biggest drawbacks of playing on a console was needing to be stuck in front of a television to play those games. Amusingly, most of the games I have on the PSP now are ports/remakes of Playstation-era (or earlier!) games, which shows my preference for older games. I’m not even aware of what other games are available now - FF Tactics takes up way too much of my mindspace.

I need to go play some more…

Posted by Roy in Games | No Comments

Despite it’s age, I’ve only recently gotten around to loving Advance Wars: Dual Strike on the DS. It’s just the sort of game I enjoy: challenging enough not to bore me but not so difficult that I give up in frustration and has enough extras to keep me coming back. A bit of a learning curve though, and probably not for casual gamers. I beat the normal campaign last week (just barely - winning on Day 28 of a 28-day target), and I’m hoping I can finish the hard campaign before the release of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin next week.

Also, I was getting bored with my desktop wallpaper so I decided to look for some AW:DS wallpaper, but the official site (linked above) had apparently shoved them off somewhere in favor of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin stuff. Instead, I called up the wayback machine to get the official wallpapers. I might as well offer them here, since wallpapers for the game are hard to find: Advance Wars: Dual Strike official wallpapers.

I ended up not using them after all though. My new desktop wallpaper is here.

Posted by Roy in Games | No Comments