Woolstock

One of my best memories from my university days in UK is Woolworths which i found out from bloodbubb1e has recently announced that they will be closing all their retail outlets because of the recent economic crisis. During then i will always make a beeline to their bargain bins in search of PSOne games as they were just opposite from the Electronic Boutique in town. I suppose because of the nature of the store (they sell just about everything from candies to video to music) and their customer base, i always tend to find better bargains in Woolies as opposed to EB and Game.

I remember picking up the first Fear Effect for a mere 7quid which was quite a steal considering obscure hits like Fear Effect don't end up in the bargain bins too often. I know more than one person enjoyed that game as my house mate during that time, who happened to be a british born chinese also warmed up to it and we spent countless hours trying to figure out the puzzles and beat that game, while in the process helping my housemate to learn a bit of chinese. Aah the good ole days of university life.

But my greatest catch at Woolies happened to be Vagrant Story which during that time was only a few months old and was retailing everywhere else for at least 30 quid, the standard price for a new PSOne game. To top it off, it was still in its shrink-wrap for just 10 quid! I know it's hard to understand what's the big deal about that but bear in mind, most new games in UK don't even come in shrink-wraps for some reason. Anyway, i quickly nabbed that copy of Vagrant Story and made my way to the cashier where i thought i was in a stroke of good luck because a young lady was manning the cashier at that time, probably clueless about games as i hoped. That turned out to be the furthest from the truth as this lady was reluctant to sell a new game to me at that price, asking around her colleagues for assistance and getting me all worried as she was holding up the line. I suppose the shrink-warp gave it away that the game was spanking new as i doubt she was aware of how hot this game was, lapping up perfect scores from all the game reviews during then. Ultimately after consulting with her seniors, she finally let me have the game but not before tearing off the shrink-warp and scribbling over the barcode on the back which i should add, she had to dismantle the jewel case to get to. I couldn't possibly describe to you how much my heart ache during the whole ordeal which felt like time had slowed down and was talking forever. But the biggest shame of all is that i have not play the game even till this day, it's lying there in my game collection probably with that lovely lady prints still intact. I suppose sometimes, the biggest bargains of all are really not meant to be.

Another Code

I have two versions of Code: Veronica which i'm contemplating which to play during my RE marathon leading up to RE5. I decided to try RE Code: Veronica on my ps3 since i managed to transfer my old ps2 game saves to my HD after picking up the memory card adaptor recently.

In this brief impression of the 80GB ps3 backward-compatibility with RE Code: Veronica, i'm sad to say that the game doesn't run as smooth as i hoped it would. Core game aside, i briefly try out the unlocked battle mode with umbrella bikini-ed Claire and to my dismay, the frame rate dips where there are more than five zombies on the scene at once. I couldn't tell from the game running but being a gun fanatic, i could tell from the sounds of the automatic gunfire that the game is not running as smoothly as it should. It's not to the point of the game being unplayable but it does get to you if you love the sound of gun-fire as much as i do.

To Sony credit, this was originally a Sega Dreamcast game before being ported to the Playstation2 and Gamecube so perhaps porting the code to run on the ps2 was already difficult enough much less to run on the ps3 with limited backward compatibility. Yet somehow i have a feeling i won't encounter such problems running the Gamecube version on my Nintendo Wii.

Work Killing You?

How do you market an old game to a new audience on a new platform? Capcom seems to have it figured out by releasing a new batch of promotional posters of the upcoming Dead Rising: Chop til You Drop specifically targeting working adults. Kinda refreshing to see the game aiming a different market altogether given the nature of the game and the platform. I had a hard time picking my favourite so you can head over to Capcom Unity Blog for the full set of posters which will be making their way to a video game store near you. Kudos to Capcom, everytime i start to lose hope on this port you reel me back in again. I promised to pick up this game as soon as i'm done with the other red-hot titles that are coming out in these two months.

Press Start

I have heard many great things about the forthcoming Resident Evil 5 but the one that i remember most is what producer Jun Takeuchi said regarding the possibility of a Wii version, that the Wii system can't even handle the openning screen of the game. The past RE games had pretty standard title screen made memorable by the somewhat chilling and rather cheesy voice introduction every time you start or load the game.

This has gotten be something else if it can't even run on the Wii system, i was expecting a rolling demo in the background and all sorts of crazy new innovations on the title screen to showcase the next step in the evolution of the series. When i finally got the demo of the game running on my PS3, all that was presented to me on the title screen is the standard RE5 title screen that you kinda got used to if you watch a lot of the trailers for the game released. There are some subtle blood veins pumping to the center of the 5 logo on the screen but overall the complexity of this title screen that could not run on the Wii system is lost on me. Perhaps i need some game programming knowledge to really appreciate the work that went into the title screen but i would have been just as happy with the old standard RE title screen. Instead Takeuchi got me all excited over nothing while taking a swipe at my current favourite system . This coupled with what Takeuchi said in an earlier EGM interview about having to design on the guns in RE2 and that he felt RE2 had the best balance of firearms just made him drop a few rungs on my list.