I've got very sad news today; very sad. It seems that the maker of FCE Ultra, the best emulator for NES, has stopped developing his emulator. This is very sad news, indeed. Hopefully, one day, someone else will take over the project. I don't think that'll happen any time soon, though. As a result, I removed the link to the FCE Ultra site, since there's really nothing to do there.

I don't have much else to say. I'm not in a very good mood to say some good things about the current game I'm playing. There's always next time, though.

I think I found out the recent problem with the site. It seems that the server can't handle all the people visiting my site lately. When this happens, it tries to prevent the server from crashing by giving out a 403 error and blocking access. This sudden surge of people going to my site is no doubt because of that link Arch Nacho and Tortilla Godzilla put up on their site. No, no, I'm not asking them to take it down or anything; I like having so many people visit my site, but I'm just stating why this problem is happening. I'll see if I can get around this eventually. In the meantime, the only thing you can do is check back often. My server takes down the 403 error as soon as people leave my site, which they will do once they get the error.

I'm still playing Tales of Phantasia and I'll probably have a few good things to say about it later, so watch out for that. After this game, I might play Wario World, and then I'll talk about it, too. Actually, I already played very little of Wario World, just as a little demo, and I'm happy to say that, the game is great. I'll say no more, though. At least, for now.

Yep, secret info is great...

Recently, my site has been having some problems. I don't really know what's going on, but there's definitely something going on. Anyway, as a result of this "something," you might receive 403 errors. They usually say something like: "you are not authorized to view this page." I'm trying to fix this problem as we speak, but so far, I've got no lead on way this is happening. In any case, the site will be having problems. This seems to be totally random, though, so check back often.

As many people may have noticed, I've been doing nothing but walking on memory lane lately, playing all these old games I've played before. I am, however, aware of the many new games that are coming out. Actually, this month seems to have the most games I've seen in ages. Here's a few games that I purchased, and will invest some time in soon:

1) Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut. What can I say. It's the best "new" Sonic game out there. Since I hardly ever play my Dreamcast, this port is great. It also has a few extras, so that's good, too.

2) Wario World. Wario's first game outside of the Game Boy and Wario's first 3D game. Hmm, why would I purchase this? Oh, I don't know.

3) Unlimited Saga. Squaresoft made it (or, rather, Square Enix). That's enough for me.

4) Mega Man Network Transmission. It's been a long while since we had an old style left-to-right side-scrolling Mega Man game, so obviously, I have to check this one out. Now, I'm not a fan of this new Mega Man Battle Network series (it's too much like Pokemon, what with the "collect 'em all" nonsense), but this one is different. Although they still have this chip nonsense, it (hopefully) doesn't have such a large impact on the game.

That's a lot of games for me to purchase in a single month. I'll be very busy. This is not including Tales of Phantasia, Lufia 1 and 2, and several other games I want to replay. Yes, very busy indeed.

I have even more swift updates to show you. The emulator called MEKA (for Game Gear) has updated. Since I carry this emulator on my site, I updated the files. I was told that this is the best emulator for the Game Gear, but I'm not sure.

That's not all! Boycott Advance has updated, too. Since I also carry this emulator, I updated the files. I was told that this is the second best emulator for the Game Boy Advance (kind of like SNES9X). That's pretty much it for today.

I finally got around to beating Chrono Trigger once again. The main reason why this took so long was due to how I wasted time not doing anything... or was I?

This is top secret info that I don't usually post on the site, but what I can only say is: interest in the comic has rose immensely. I can't say anything more than that; it's top secret info.

Anyway, so yeah, I just beat Chrono Trigger. Like I said, I wasted my time with some other stuff, which resulted in me beating Chrono Trigger slowly. Not only that, but I wanted to take my time with the game. After all, it was a trip down memory lane. I like to take my trips down that lane rather slowly. It's just a thing I like doing.

The next game I decided to play... which I might regret later... is Tales of Phantasia. Why will I regret playing this great game? Well, since I've beaten it once before, I know what's ahead. What is ahead is as follows:

1) Enemies start off slightly annoying, and later in the game, they become much, much, much more annoying.

2) Enemies are sometimes stupidly hard. This adds to their general annoyance.

3) As a rule, every boss in this game will kill you at least 10 times. It's that bad. The boss just jumps out at you swinging, killing anything in its path, which happens to be... *GASP* you.

4) Your party members are not very useful. They're all casters. This is actually pretty good, since in most RPGs, the AI handles magic and spells much easier than with general movement and attacking. This leaves one glaring weakness, though; once their MP runs out, they're chopped liver. Characters barely try walking out of the way of enemies and bosses. In fact, forget my former comment; they walk into the enemies and bosses.

5) You battle almost every step you take. Top this off with insanely strong, annoying enemies, and you've got yourself a problem.

Those painful memories are still floating around in my head. Let's just hope it won't be as bad this time around.

Yep, I'm never giving out this top secret info... never!

I have yet another swift update for you. FCE Ultra (the best NES emulator around) has updated to a higher version, so I updated the files on the site. Uh... so go download it or something.

I've got a swift update to report today; I added yet another SNES ROM, which I initially had trouble getting to work. As it turns out, I just misunderstood it. Anyway, the ROM is Radical Dreamers. If you didn't know, this was the true sequel to Chrono Trigger. If you've played Chrono Cross for the PlayStation, then a lot of things in Radical Dreamers will seem familiar to you. The game was originally never released to the U.S., but some great hackers translated the game into English. So go download Radical Dreamers right at this moment! It's radical!

Also, thanks to Arch Nacho and Tortilla Godzilla for linking to my site. They're the first ones to actually, officially, do this. Thanks, guys.

The next game I chose to play after EarthBound was Chrono Trigger. I'm playing it right now. I have many fond memories of this game... even though I never actually owned it on the SNES (I did, however, once borrow it from a friend... I had it for maybe a year). I've beaten this game so many times, it's not even funny. It wouldn't be fair for me to review this game, since I love it so much.

The music is great, the graphics are really good, and the animation is spot on, especially considering the time it was made. The music doesn't beat Final Fantasy, but it's still darn good. One of the high points of this game is the animation. Each character is really well animated. This is more so true when considering that this game is an RPG made by Squaresoft, and it was made in a time when graphics weren't that good anyway.

The battles are also unique in many different ways. One, enemy encounters aren't random, so you can see them roaming around the screen. That isn't a big deal in this day and age, because nearly every RPG nowadays has this feature, but considering it was made around a time when such things were only a dream, this was a high point for the game. Another high point to the game (and even this isn't in every RPG; actually, I've never seen any other RPG with this) is that you battle the enemies on the same screen. It uses menu based battles with time bars, like in Final Fantasy, but the battles still take place on the same screen. Yet another great feature of the battles are "techs." Each tech is nicely animated and is unique. They're not just magic attacks, but sometimes different weapon skills, and such. Then there are "double-techs;" two characters use two different tech moves to perform a double-tech. There are even "triple-techs," where three characters can combine their techs. This alone makes the battles very interesting, since having different party members has a bigger impact on battles.

The plot is no Final Fantasy beater, but it's still very good.

One flaw the game has is that there is no main bad guy. The main villain is a monster; a beast. That's it. The second flaw, which isn't a flaw for everyone, is that the game has time travel. It's been seen and done way too many times, but the way it's done here is very different. The only other flaw I can possibly think of is... the battle theme (music) can sometimes get tedious and annoying. Don't get me wrong, the battle music is great, but it's not that good when heard 400 times.

Oh, and one more thing that makes this game so "radical" is the fact that you can use the "New Game +" feature. Basically, this feature lets you start a new game, but lets you keep your level, EXP, items, money, techs, etc, with only taking away items and such that directly affect the plot. This is very fun when you simply just want to sit back, relax, and pay more attention to the plot. Also, this means that you can go back and get things you've missed.

It's a great game, and anyone who's a fan of RPGs, more specifically, Squaresoft RPGs, should play this. One last thing; if everything I wrote so far still didn't convince you that Chrono Trigger is worth playing, then you should also note that a very unique staff made the game. Squaresoft staffers, some people who used to work for Enix, and a (the?) artist behind the Dragon Ball Z anime; all of these people form an ultimate team. They even dubbed it the "Dream Team." That's radical.

I finally acquired all of the ultimate weapons and armor in EarthBound. I also leveled up to 99, beat the game... there's really nothing left to do in it. I still can't decide which game I'm going to play next.

Anyway, you probably don't care about what I'm saying, and you're just reading this to see if I updated anything. If that's the case, then you're in luck. I just added a new SNES ROM. No, not just any SNES ROM. This one is made by Squaresoft, and it's an RPG. This is a really rare one, actually. It's Japanese, but I found a 90% translation of it somewhere, so nearly the entire game is in English. The ROM is... Treasure Hunter G!!! I'll probably get around to playing and beating this game, but right now, I want to play something I've already beaten. It's fun walking down memory lane. So there. Go download it.

I've added two links to the links section. The first one is A Modest Destiny, which is a sprite comic with completely original sprites that are made with lots of skill. The humor is also very good, surprisingly. The second one is Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire. The plot is very interesting and the comic is hand drawn... by pencil, I guess. The drawings are insanely good. Also, there are many puns that will at least make you groan once. If you don't groan once from some of those puns, I recommend you see a doctor.

I beat EarthBound a little while ago. It's a very good game. I recommend that everyone play it. I think only people who've been into RPGs for long would like it, though.

I really don't have much to say today. I've spoken enough about EarthBound, and really don't need to say much more about it. My next target might be: Chrono Trigger, Tales of Phantasia, or Lufia II: The Rise of the Sinistrals.

Also, it seems that the first Wario game outside of the Game Boy, Wario World, is coming this month. Luckily, I reserved it long ago, so I'll definitely get a copy. Hopefully, it'll be a fun game. I'll even settle for a semi-fun game.

I'm basically interested in playing old games once more, though... it gives you a nice, warm feeling, which I'm sure most of you older gamers out there get this feeling upon booting up your SNES and such. Heh, those were the good old days... I still remember the day I went to get my first console, the SNES. I think I was around the age of 3 or 4 at the time. My father took me into the garage section of some store, which I can't remember the name of now, and bought an SNES. Around the same place, I remember seeing a building with a large sign with Mario holding a screw driver in his hand... just like the instruction booklets you get for your SNES games.

I also remember first playing Super Mario World, which was my first game. I clearly remembered that I wanted to watch my father hook the thing up, but I had to do something, and he did it without me. Heh, I was pretty mad. I can't remember if this happened the same time he hooked it up, but I also remember he beat a few levels before I did. Also... I never got past that first water level with the jumping fish... I remember my father beat it for me. Ah, then there was the first castle. Heh, this was funny. I clearly remember me, my father, and mother (or was it just my father or mother? I can't recall it too well...) were all trying to figure out how to enter those little doors. It took us a very long time to figure out you had to press "up" to enter them. Those were the good old days...

Project 64, the best N64 emulator at the moment, has updated. I updated the files on the site, so you can go get that now. Judging from what they have said, there seems to be some major changes to it.

I'm almost finished with EarthBound. I just need to get a few items, do the final event, and beat the boss. I'm already, as it is, very close to level 99 with my entire party, so I'll probably be at 99 by the time I finish the game. Really, that's it for today.

Recently, I've been playing EarthBound. I have many fond memories of this game... 'tis a good game. As many people already know, EarthBound has Japanese humor and is just plain weird. A lot of humor can be based solely on how weird things can be, so that at the end of the day, you just can't help but laugh at how weird things have been. Of course, some people are scared off by Japanese humor, and just having a slight look at such things will make them go, "WHAT THE?!!?! I'm out of here!!!" That said, I was once one of those people, but now I love Japanese humor more than any other humor in the world.

EarthBound also has, surprisingly, very good music. Most of it is just there to enhance the "weird" and "comical" feeling of the game, but some of it is pretty serious, too. Continuing that thought, the game gets a lot more serious towards the end, when your adventure is about to end. Things get complex, death is involved, etc. The final battle is also very deep, in a serious way. I was very moved, the last time I did it.

The plot is pretty interesting, because you just get that "how weird will it get?" feeling. It's also interesting in seeing a normal boy become a hero. You start out as "that boy who is special" and work your way up, from beating the town's bullies to slaying aliens who're about to take over the world. There's a drastic change; the game isn't always set in normal contemporary towns, as it starts going to radical places later.

The game is also very long, at least the first time around. After the first four towns, things start getting supernatural, and you travel to far out lands and such. And that's just the beginning.

EarthBound's true strength is in its humor and weirdness. There are also many little touches that make the game feel more "fun." For example, there are so many different food items in the game (which all recover some amount of HP or PP), not just your basic "potion, hi-potion, and ex-potion." Many of these foods recover lots of different amounts of HP, so it's pretty flexible. It's fun to actually buy hamburgers and pizza, rather than potions and ethers, really. Depending on where you are, which town, what land, different foods are being sold. Some recover the same HP like others, but are just "there" to give a nice feel to the game when purchasing foods.

Equipment consists of such things as bats, frying pans, yo-yos... at least, in the beginning. They seem to really pay attention to where you acquire your items. For example, you'll never buy one of Jeff's guns in a normal store; you must purchase them from some sort of black market. It'd just seem strange for drug stores to sell guns, if you get what I'm saying. The game just has a fun "feel" to it, even though it's exactly like Dragon Warrior, with all the annoying menus and stuff.

Now, the battles. At first, many people will despise the battles for very understandable reasons, such as: you can't see your characters. Battles feel a whole lot better when you actually see your characters go up to the enemy and beat the tar out of them. The more animation, the better. They have Dragon Warrior styled battles, though. Still, if the battles actually had the things we want, the game wouldn't hold that same "feeling" that it already has in its battles. It's hard to explain, but you'll get what I'm saying if you play it long enough.

The graphics are pretty bad, but it adds to how the game doesn't take itself seriously. I honestly can't imagine this game with GameCube graphics... it'd be very difficult to supply the same "feeling" with such good graphics. With all that said, if we just stripped the game of its "bad" graphics, music, text, plot, humor, and just leave the pure, core game play, then we'd have nothing but pure and utter garbage. It's the style that makes this game so great. Unfortunately, not many people are fond of this style, especially us westerners, so not many people like this game. The game also, at times, gets very annoying. Especially later in the game, when normal enemies can easily kill you, even if you're level 99 and have the best gear. This will seriously push off away darn westerners even more. The beginning is also a little difficult for most people, so that might worsen things even more for newcomers.

Other than that, though, the game is pure genius. It's a classic; a very good one at that.

I made a rather small update today. I changed the date on all the news things to a larger font to make it easier to find each update, especially since the lines seem so thin... also, I took away some bold font from certain places, and just replaced it with a larger font. The bold font I've been using doesn't look too great.

I'm making an unexpected update today. It seems that VisualBoyAdvance has updated to version 1.5.1. Like always, I took care of this on the site, so go get it, if you haven't already.

About Lufia: The Ruins of Lore... I beat it. Yep. It was a pretty long game, solely for the fact that each dungeon took at least several hours. Not to mention all the training and money grinding I had to do. The armor, weapons, and etc in that game were very expensive. I kept finding myself battling for several hours to earn enough for a certain armor. This really shouldn't happen in most RPGs, unless the armor or weapon is really good. So good that, in fact, you won't replace it with another one for a very long time.

I've said plenty of good things about Lufia: The Ruins of Lore so far, but nothing bad. To say that the game has no flaws is just plainly wrong; it has many flaws. For instance: the battles. As I said before, the battles were great the first time around; great music (there seems to be two normal enemy themes, one being better than the other), great animation, nice graphics... and that's really about it. One major flaw the battles hold is how sluggish they are. Even with the turbo feature my emulator has, some battles take several minutes. I mean, it does not take that long to lift a sword and slash a fish. The battles themselves don't contain much strategy. Sure, it's alright that normal battles just go hack'n slash, but boss battles need something more. Even with the many abilities I learned from the countless jobs, I still found myself using the same set of abilities, because all the other ones suck. All the spells do minimal damage, even at the beginning of the game. Most skills don't really do much in the way of damage, and instead are just a bunch of useless status effects that don't work on bosses.

Healing spells seem to be heavily unbalanced here. There's your basic weak healing spell, then they skip the "medium" healing spell and go straight to the "major" healing spell, which wastes too much MP. What about the middle of the game, where you need a healing spell that's stronger than the first, but wastes less MP than the second? You're boned there. Then, from there, they jump to a spell that wastes more MP than anything, and heals your entire party to full health. Those are the only three healing spells in the game. I hope you see what I mean.

Other than those flaws, though, it's a decent RPG. I had fun. I'm pretty much done with the game, so I'll go on to play something else. I've only beaten EarthBound once, so that might be my next target, but who knows.

Like I said before, I finished WarioWare with every medal and microgame, so I'm done with it 100%. The new game I'm playing at the moment is Lufia: The Ruins of Lore for the Game Boy Advance. I was going to play both Lufia and Lufia 2 beforehand, but since I've beaten both games at least twice, I decided to play them later.

Lufia: The Ruins of Lore is a very good RPG. The music is fantastic (how can you expect any less from an RPG?) the battles are fun, the plot is not so bad (but pretty subpar so far...), and all the other RPG cliches that make every RPG good.

For some odd reason, it seems that many of the RPGs for the GBA are rather long; as both Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Lufia: The Ruins of Lore have very long dungeons. I want to place a huge emphasis on "very." Obviously, for the RPG lover that I am, this is a great thing.

Other things this game has is very impressive graphics in battle; the animation is particularly good. Each character in battle has literally dozens of frames, and they all move quite nicely. It makes the battles a little bit more "fun." In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, they had Donkey Kong Country type graphics, and thus, the animation didn't make much of a difference, or look so great in there. Since Lufia: The Ruins of Lore is completely 2D with no strings attached, the animation makes a very large difference to your overall enjoyment of the game.

Honestly, I've never seen a 2D image with so much animation before. You see, if they actually made a 2D game for a powerful system like the GameCube, they could make a long game with some very interesting graphical effects, since 2D images waste so little space, even if they look good.

Back to Lufia: The Ruins of Lore, then. The music, as I said earlier, is pretty decent. It's not that great out of battle (except for a few tracks), but it's very nice in normal and boss battles. This is very important for RPGs, as you'll battle a lot in pretty much all of them. I think the battle theme is basically a slightly-better-sounding-because-of-hardware version of Lufia 2's battle theme. Who's complaining, though? Definitely not me.

Sadly, the plot doesn't seem to be too interesting. Really, when it comes to plots, people who've been into RPGs for long have probably seen it all before, and can never be surprised again.

I'm still early in the game, so it might pick up later. So far, though, I only vaguely know why I'm even questing; something about acquiring a Hunter's License in the beginning. What this license does is still a mystery to me. I guess it legally entitles you to hunt monsters, and sell the... "stuff" they drop. After that, you venture to a town. Why do you venture there? Who knows. All I know is, it was not easy getting there. I'm guessing (once more) that you go there to find a new job with your newly acquired Hunter's License to make some dough. You then meet a woman, who gives you a job to do. Once you do this job, the main character gets cursed, and then you're forced to go along with her to remove that curse, which can eventually lead to death, they say. Apparently, removing this curse is directly related to what this woman wants to do, which they directly stated in the game. Something about mysterious stones that need to be placed in mysterious holes which then opens a mysterious something into some land which seals some monster, or "beast." They state the only way to remove the curse is to go there and destroy the monster, which is what this woman wanted to do beforehand, and this will probably save the world somehow.So, yeah, your usual RPG nonsense here.

There's a new job system in this Lufia, which is the simple form of the common "class" or '"job" system in many other RPGs. It's simple stuff, really. To master a job, you must learn all its skills. The advantage of mastering a job is just that; having all the skills. You get to keep the skills regardless of which job you are in. So, what's the point of them once you master 'em all? They each have certain stat boosts, which does not transfer when mastering them. That's the entire job system.

Well, back to Lufia: The Ruins of Lore for me. I fear (not really) that updates will suffer because of this.

I took care of the news archive; I actually found many errors in it. Not like anyone would notice, since no one really goes that far.

I really don't have anything to say. Nope, not much to say here. Nothing at all. Yep, no news today. Can't have something to say all the time, you know. It's just the way things are.

Bwahaha!