just started playing icewind dale..what an unfun, uninteresting piece of something. super YAWN.

in very much contrast, i’m playing earthbound (again). i played it all the way through on the SNES years ago. i think i rented it first before i bought it.
i was completely hooked on that game. i still remember it as one of the most enjoyable games i’ve ever played. the only bad thing is since i’ve played it before everything is seeming very familiar and the story isn’t as engrossing the second time. i’m still enjoying it though and it still makes me laugh.

written by child me
There are many many many sites already on emulation, but most don’t concentrate on the positive side of emulation, rather, they are based on the aspect of getting free games. I support what sites like SitC are doing, by going by the basis of preserving the videogame culture, so many whose machines broke down or even others that never got the chance to play a classic, get a(nother) chance to play that game they loved so much/heard so much about. Also SitC is somewhat serious about this approach and not just using it as a cover to supply games. Two things I can’t quite agree with though are SNES emulation and NESticle-bashing. First, roughly, the SNES is a dead machine by being surpassed by 32-bit and 64-bit systems, it just sits on the shelf at stores. It does still sit on the shelf however. The fact that it is still commercially available cannot possibly help to prove the legitimacy of emulation to NOA when ROMs are all over the place. It just isn’t the right time for full SNES emulation, give the SNES another year or so and it’s sure to vanish completely. Also I can’t quite understand the hatred of NESticle, it is a great emulator, it shouldn’t be blamed for giving emulation a bad reputation. People ruin a good thing. Well, blah blah ..I just wanted to add my thoughts on emulation for the time being. I’m not affiliated with SitC and I hope they don’t mind me mentioning their site, it’s just the one that came to mind.

2003 commentary
Development of NESticle was abandoned long ago, but it’s still one of the best NES emulators out there. However, the name “NESticle” is pretty much unknown to the new generation of console emulation fans. This is mostly due to the plethora of emulators available that run natively in a Windows environment.

The SNES is of course no longer commercially available. SNES emulation has become perfect (or near) with the emulator ZSNES and in 2nd place – Snes9x. NOA is still as protective as ever of its ROMs. Interestingly enough is that classic game compilations keep appearing on other consoles, the PC, or as a standalone device.

A site called SitC still exists but I’m not sure if it is by its original creators or not. It resembles none of its former glory, which basically was a historical archive of NES ROMs.

And finally my thank you to all the developers of good emulators out there. What I wrote so many years ago has held true as far as someone being able to play a classic game once again for the memories. When I originally owned an NES I had about 30 games or so, the Max and Advantage controllers, the lightgun, and had actually bought the system twice. Nowadays every NES game probably ever made is available to me, but the only ones that really interest me are the ones I actually owned. That is what emulation is all about – nostalgia.

adult me commentary: 2009
ok, first im embarrassed by my little righteous moment there and plus that bit of sycophant behavior towards SitC . but i do remember that being a good site and the point of what i wrote was true. console emulation is all about nostalgia. nesticle was a good emulator i loved it. i use fceu(x) nowadays. also emulator development has to start out at some point. whether the original console is still on the shelf or not. and it’s definitely nice to have non-alpha/beta versions released by the time the console is no longer for sale

more child me
Due to some fine points by BigBrother in ABEN, I’ve altered a little of this. First off, N64 and PSX emulation are not in the near future. Projects have begun on both systems already, but probably won’t be completed in the next 3-5. I, myself, could care less about the emulation of these 2 systems. Why? Of the two computers I have access to, neither have a 3D acceleration card or even come close to the capability of running one of these ROMs. Besides, I plan to purchase a PSX in a year or so (mainly for FF7). The other point brought up was about the SNES, I fully support all the translation and rare game ROMs, since Nintendo has no interest in bringing over games like Secret of Mana 2 and others never released here in the U.S. like FF5. I just wanted to clarify the fact that I’m not against all SNES emulation, just against the ROMs of commercially available games. Mainly because I’d love to possess Chrono Trigger or Illusion of Gaia, but those games are hard to find, I doubt they’re even manufactured anymore (true?). This portion is largely inspired by BigBrother, thanks for filling me in on N64 & PSX statuses.

2003 commentary
My 2 main computers nowadays both have excellent videocards and can play both PSX and N64 games. However, both of those emulators never progressed very far in development. There was a commercial PSX emulator called bleem! for a while but that also died out. Most of the N64 emulators out there can only play a handful of games.

I did end up buying a PSX exactly for the reason I mentioned back then. FF7 was pretty good, but didn’t draw me in nearly as much as the older FF’s. Final Fantasy Tactics on PSX was excellent. Those are the only two games I really played on it. After a while I gave my PSX away to my friend Ram.

After trying the PSX I lost interest in consoles totally and moved on to PC games. RTS games were my biggest interest back then. A couple of months ago I reentered the console world with the purchase of a MS X-Box.

adult me commentary: 2009
ahh more sucking-up, and i’m repulsed by my know-it-all-ism back then. ABEN was of course alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo. as far as i know N64 emulation has to this day not gotten any closer to full featured. ePSXe is a pretty decent PSX emulator.

in 2002 these were my top 10 pc games of all time…
1. Warcraft 2
2. Doom
3. Wolfenstein-3D
4. Quest for Glory 1
5. Starcraft
6. Civilization
7. Quake
8. Diablo
9. Duke Nukem 3D
10. Age of Empires

i still agree with about half of those.

age of empires 3 (pc)
11/2005
i was anxious to play this after seeing some trailers of gameplay. but really it’s more of aoe2 with better graphics and a different timeline. this time around it has true 3d engine as well. i played thru all of act 1 in one sitting. the plot seems thrown together so that’s not motivating me to play it non-stop or anything. act 2 is frustrating, i had to cheat on 2 levels on it to finish them. and this was after replaying them both like 3 times. my gripe is that the units don’t seem to be that well balanced. 5 cannons is like an unstoppable force. the computer of course creates them with lightning speed.

to be continued..

final fantasy II (IV) (snes)
11/2005-12/2005 – status: finished
i never got a chance to play this on the snes it was already a rare find even way back then. i did have ff6 (3) though which is one of the greatest games of all time. after playing it now i wish i did play it when it originally came out. the crappy graphics i don’t mind but story-wise this one doesn’t seem to evolve that much from final fantasy I on the nes. it really feels like it belongs on the nes because it’s not even in the same class as ff6.

the poor english translation doesn’t help much either. i just finished the game today, i had taken a 2 week or so break from playing it. picked it back up again and realized i had no idea what was going on with the crazy storyline. i was surprised by the death of a playable character. disappointed that i couldn’t pick and choose who i wanted in my party. you can see some early character design ideas. edge -> shadow, edward -> edgar, yang -> sabin, rosa -> celes, tellah -> strago. some of those comparisons aren’t really that close of a match while others are almost dead on. i plan on giving the game another chance in it’s better translated form on the gba/psx, and possibly even the fan translated snes version of ff4.

my preferred characters to play were cecil (he was cooler as a dark knight), kain, and edge. finished the game in exactly 22 hours.

update 12/2011:
i’ve been playing a lot of final fantasy I lately and have realized that i was too harsh on ff4. it’s a nice evolution of ff1 with early 16-bit graphics (since the game practically debuted with the snes launch). it has a loose story (like ff1) that is wrapped around completing several sub-quests. and since the north american releases dates of ff1 and ff4 are 1990 and 1991 respectively, i would have been thrilled at the time to have owned and played ff4 when it originally came out. my disappoint upon playing ff4 now was going from a masterpiece like ff6 to then playing ff4. i had my hopes up and expected something just as great, meanwhile, forgetting the time periods these games came out. ff4 came out in ’91 and ff6 in ’94 so it was unfair of me to compare the two.

star wars: empire at war (pc)
4/2006 – status: finished
i just finished the game on medium level as both the empire and the rebels. the game over all is enjoyable but not addictive. i like how there’s both space and land battles. i really enjoy the space battles, land battles become quite tedious and i for the most part auto-resolve them. the master of orion style of planet micro-management seems like an unneeded element of the game. although i like how the space stations can be upgraded. there’s a weak storyline to go along with the gameplay. the game endings leave a lot to be desired. me and ram have tried the multiplayer aspect a few times and we both prefer the space battles over land battles. i personally don’t think the land battles are very well balanced with the units vs. space battles. the only cool thing about the land battles is the ability to have vader or the emperor in your ranks.

i hadn’t played any pc games in forever. so i “fired up” wc3, something i played a few years back when it was first released. i remember the story being great and i still consider it so. i think originally when i played i disliked the limitation of 90 units (which is really less than that because several units consume multiple food sources). i was used to the massive armies you could produce in wc2 and starcraft. but…i think having less units just makes you be more clever, so it’s not such a bad thing. i love the idea of heroes. favorites were arthas as a paladin, thrall, and illidan. arthas as a death knight pretty much sucked.

anyways i finally finished wc3 tonight..spent a full weekend and a couple of nights playing a level or two. the story had me hooked. i played it on normal difficulty. 3-4 of the missions in the game seemed overly hard in comparison to the others. don’t know the exact ones but i know they took place in the night elf and orc campaigns. and i admit on those i used the free money cheat to avoid being overly frustrated. yes i’m weak nowadays…playing a level over 3 times to find the right way to play it isn’t something i’m interested in anymore.

good game of course…i will play frozen throne soon. and just to continue the storyline i’m tempted to finally play WoW…

update: just finished frozen throne. the first campaign took a while for me to get into because i was already tired of playing as the night elves. i enjoyed the alliance campaign more. the blood elves were very interesting, and their change in allegiance did surprise me. illidan is such a freak living in the outland with his pack of weirdos. anub’arak was awesome, and playing arthas as a death knight sucked even more because of his ever-lowering levels. anub’arak makes up for it though. branching off of the forsaken…also cool.

i had to cheat on only one level…which was the last level. i found it impossible otherwise. the bonus orc campaign was very cool..BUT it seemed like it really went on forever. i think it took near 3 hours to complete..i may be exaggerating, but not by much.