Bilious dialectic 2008-07-04T14:30:06-07:00 j.parish http://www.toastyfrog.com/verbalspew/index.php toastyfrog@gmail.com tag:gamespitenet,2008:verbalspew Pivot Copyright (c) 2008, Authors of Verbal Spew 2008-07-04T14:30:00-07:00 2008-07-04T14:30:00-07:00 tag:gamespitenet,2008:verbalspew.702

I finally got around to taking a photo of my favorite car in the world -- a white Scion I constantly see parked around the neighborhood. Nothing unique about a Scion in San Francisco, but this one stands out by virtue of basically being a mobile shrine to the Little Purple Wonder. Yes, it is an automotive monument to Prince. San Francisco, you are great.

jparish 2008-07-03T22:49:00-07:00 2008-07-03T19:23:00-07:00 tag:gamespitenet,2008:verbalspew.701

I was all fired up to write something irritable about how terrible public transit is in San Francisco -- San Francisco, of all places! The hippiest metropolis in the world. This five-train clog at the tunnel made me walk all the way home up and down frickin' Parnassus Street, so named apparently because by the time you reach the top you feel like you're about to commune with the gods forever. But then it turned out the traffic jam had to do with a dead guy sprawled across the tracks, which had an interesting alchemic effect: It instantly transmuted my irritation to unease. This is pretty much the opposite of the kind of neighborhood where you expect to see corpses in the middle of the street. I guess living among a 90% population of retired Chinese immigrants is less safe than previously assumed.

jparish 2008-07-03T11:43:00-07:00 2008-07-03T00:18:00-07:00 tag:gamespitenet,2008:verbalspew.700

Looks like the site has already begun the switchover to private hosting -- web hosting has migrate, and MySQL should follow soon. I'm not really sure how this is going to work out, though, so please do not hate me if things suddenly go to crap around here. With luck, they'll improve... if they get worse, though, please feel free to complain on the forums. You know, assuming they're still working. Edit: Uh, wow. At least so far, the main site's performance has improved dramatically. Hopefully the same will hold true for Talking Time once the other changes take effect. Dear subscribers, you are awesome and make awesome things happen. Edit again: Man, you guys are resource hogs, apparently. Maybe this isn't going to work out. Edit edit edit: OK, I think I've reached a point where the server is, dare I say it, stable and fast. We're still waiting on the database stuff for the forums, but I think the difference in site performance is already appreciable. Peak GameSpite traffic always comes Tuesday around noon for some reason, so I'll keep running at the current level until then and adjust as needed based on how things pan out after the traffic rush from the weekly updates. Anyway, if everyone goes well, maybe I can start making a reality of some of my Grand Plans. We shall see! Thanks again for the support, and for your patience while I try to sort out what works best.

jparish 2008-07-02T14:17:00-07:00 2008-07-02T13:53:00-07:00 tag:gamespitenet,2008:verbalspew.699

Enough people have signed up for monthly GameSpite support subscriptions that I can afford private web and MySQL hosting for the site. This means, assuming it works out correctly, that the site will become much more reliable, especially where the forums are concerned. Apparently it'll take a few weeks for the switchover, but those irritating Error 500 messages should be a thing of the past, soon. Also, I'm not sure if this is good news, per se, but my review of Chocobo's Dungeon is online. Spoiler: It's good! The game, I mean. I make no claims about the review.

jparish 2008-07-02T11:09:00-07:00 2008-07-02T10:16:00-07:00 tag:gamespitenet,2008:verbalspew.698

What's this? A Chrono Trigger remake for DS? Well, there's only one thing to say about that: Yep, I totally made this happen, just like I did with Mega Man 9 and Wario Land: Shake It. Time for me to bask in the glory-- What? Oh, yeah... sorry. I cheated. I've known about the DS remake for a while, so I was actually making a prediction based on insider info. This makes me the Martha Stewart of the video game press, doesn't it? I'm so ashamed. Still, a Chrono Trigger portable remake. Pretty cool. Not as cool as a sequel would be, though. The more I think about it, the more it annoys me that they're dredging up a 13-year-old game as a full-priced release rather than just putting it on Virtual Console as a prelude to a continuation of the franchise. I'm not alone in this; Queen Zeal has a message for Square Enix, too: Dude, she totally flipped them the bird. Maybe it's not too late, though. Maybe I can put my phenomenal mind powers to work to make the sequel a reality instead. Hrrrrhghh... concentrating... gnargh... Chrono Break! Dang. Ah well, at least I tried.

jparish 2008-07-01T09:09:00-07:00 2008-07-01T08:57:00-07:00 tag:gamespitenet,2008:verbalspew.697

What am I doing at the office at 8 a.m.? No one but marketing even gets here until 10 or 11. It's sort of eerie being alone here -- just me, a museum's worth of stupid collectibles and game swag, and the vaguely dorm-room-like odor that is the trademark of 1UP headquarters. Yum. Looking at a magazine over some person's shoulder on the train this morning (rude, yeah, but it was crowded and I standing and didn't really have much choice), I discovered that Amy Winehouse is only 24. That's probably the most shocking thing I'll learn all week. I figured she was more like 42. But at least now we know what avoiding rehab will do to you. Also, I finally finished Final Fantasy Tactics Advance last night -- by which I mean I stopped playing once I reached the point where three laws are active at once. I toiled through for a few fights until I found myself in a battle against a team of Tonberries while being restricted from attacking, using techniques or hurting animal-class enemies -- meaning that even if I had the abilities that would let me fight them, I'd lose for winning the fight anyway. Much as I hate to drone on about clichéd points of criticism: Seriously? This was someone's idea of good game design? What. Ev. Er. So, I am cleansing my palate with a splash of Metroidvania before going to more ambitious things. Like, I dunno, maybe finally playing Fallout. In the meantime, I'm finally enjoying the fruits of my labor of a few years ago when I completed a 100%-soul run of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow -- now I'm doing a New Game+ hard-mode run where I can just focus on running around using all my powers and not having to worry about the collection element. It's even better than before! Especially since my weapon of choice is a handgun, which gives the whole thing a slight Mega Man feel. What do you mean, that's stupid and nerdy? Of course it is. I'll take whatever little indulgences I can get these days.

jparish 2008-06-30T22:58:00-07:00 2008-06-30T22:46:00-07:00 tag:gamespitenet,2008:verbalspew.696

I can't believe 2008 is already halfway over. It's been a disappointingly crappy year so far; I'd really expected better from 2008. Instead, it seems to be taking a perverse pleasure in undermining my rapidly-plummeting hopes -- every time I think it can't possibly get worse, it does. Take today, for instance: I'd kind of assumed things were about to turn around and start improving, but then the drive recovery people let my girlfriend know that they won't be able to salvage any of the several years' worth of data on her hard drive after all. Oh, and that they'll be charging us a few hundreds bucks for the privilege of knowing that they're useless, thanks very much. This is where I'd normally say, "Well, at least it can't get any worse!" But by now I know better, see. But enough of my lamentations. Have at you! Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases Wow, Vantage Point is out this week. Now there is a movie that deserves an award of some kind! Maybe it could be a trophy shaped like a garbage can overflowing with sewage and the desiccated remains of human hope! Really, the failure of the film to live up to its trailers' potential is worthy of some kind of horrible prize. Someone call the Nobel committee. New Game + | Weekly Game Releases This week's column correctly calls out Magnetica Twist as being similar to Zuma, except actually the reverse is true. If for some reason you feel compelled to own this magnetic-ball game in some form, please support justice and righteousness and pick up Magnetica to support Mitchell (who created the concept) rather than developers that fail to credit their obvious inspirations.

jparish