For people that need to be "off topic"

[onmode-ky]

I hereby launch only my fifth discussion topic (and only my 867th post) in the entire 15-year time I've been posting at AtariAge.  If this Off-Topic thread is anything like its direct predecessor at PSPMinis.com, it will become pages upon pages full of totally unrelated posts, often with no direct responses but always building out more of our community stream of consciousness.

 

For the first post in this topic, I'd like to encourage others from ye olde PSPMinis.com forum to (in this AtariAge club) revive other threads we used to frequent.  For example, I'd like to ask for a game suggestion right now, but in the absence of a successor to our Game Suggestions thread and with nothing else in particular to talk about in this post, I'm just going to ask right here, right now: I've noticed that 2020 is about to become my first year since owning a PSP in which I'm in danger of having bought 0 PSP games.  While I'd still like to get the obvious don't-have-yet PSP title The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC, that's $30 I don't have in my budget right now, so I'm currently pondering two others from the NA PS Store, Breath of Fire III and Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection, both $10.  Does anyone have any recommendations in either direction?

 

Back in the old forum, I used to end each post (starting sometime in 2015) with "- [YYYY]/[MM]/[DD] GMT" due to that forum's lack of granularity in its post timestamps.  As the years went by, it became really useful to look at my old posts in order to figure out when a then-current discussion had actually happened.  Well, here at AtariAage, we get actual dates stamped onto our posts, so I'll revert to my typical AtariAge signoff method.

 

onmode-ky

 

P.S. I just noticed that, of the PSPMinis threads that Atariboy ported over to AtariAge last year, "For Scrolling Shooter Fans" has way more views than all the rest.  Namely, it has like 3.5x the number of views of the second-most viewed one.

P.P.S. As a reminder of what threads we had at the PSPMinis.com forum, I'm attaching one of my screencaps from its final days.

[JeremyR]

You don't want to play Generation of Chaos. It's basically Dragon Force (for the Saturn), which is good, but then they replaced the combat with something like the 1970s era electric football games, where the playing field would vibrate and the little toy football players would wobble around 

 

I didn't realize Breath of Fire 3 was released in NA. I thought it was only for Europe, because of the rules (in NA) about no direct ports of PS1 games.

[AXM]

The PSP version of Breath of Fire 3 got released in early 2016 in the US, so yeah, don't feel ashamed for not knowing that.

I've heard lots of good things about it, I have not heard lots of good things about Generation of Chaos.

 

About Trails in the Sky SC, it lasted me close to 70 hours to beat -- with all but the most hidden side quests completed and with a lot of talking to NPCs (all of their dialogue changes with every advancement in the plot) -- so there's a good chance that's the only game you'll ever need to buy for the next year.

[onmode-ky]

Hah, "for the next year," as if buying games has anything to do with actually playing them. :P

 

Just to be clear, were you guys talking about Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection in particular, or did you mean the previous PSP game that's just titled "Generation of Chaos" (for which I have just a bonus soundtrack CD given to me by a GameStop employee years ago, but not the actual game itself)?  Pandora's Reflection was made by Sting and is supposedly quite different from previous games in the series--at least, that's what I remember was said of it back when it was released.

 

I could have sworn there was something off topic that I'd wanted to post, but it's not coming to me now.

 

onmode-ky

[AXM]

49 minutes ago, onmode-ky said:

Hah, "for the next year," as if buying games has anything to do with actually playing them.

Haha, that's fair.

 

I'd only ever heard of Pandora's Reflection once in a PSP RPG Tier List video I mostly just listened to a few months ago, I forgot it was a thing.

The guy liked it enough to put it in A tier, and another review I skimmed through also seemed to be favorable, but I still want to reiterate that Breath of Fire III is probably regarded as a classic for a reason. I wouldn't know, I haven't played it -- something that sadly applies to a lot of JRPGs, classics or otherwise -- but still.

 

Anyway, there's no chance these games will be on sale ever again, so there's no real reason to fret. Go with which one interests you the most, an old, traditional turn-based RPG or a real-time strategy game thingie, and buy the other whenever.

 

The base price of Pandora's Reflection in Europe is twenty bucks, which is pretty dumb. Still better than Fate/Extra and the PSP Persona games' (sans the first one) thirty.

Huh, Trails in the Sky seems to have been delisted from the store on my end, but not SC.

[JeremyR]

Ah, I was talking about the original. I didn't realize their was a second, but I'm not a fan of Sting's work.  Game developer, musician, or wrestler. 

 

(Although I am a fan of the Police. But just can't stand Sting solo)

Edited December 30, 2020 by JeremyR

[onmode-ky]

On 12/29/2020 at 2:37 PM, AXM said:

Huh, Trails in the Sky seems to have been delisted from the store on my end, but not SC.

 

Strange.  Were they not both published by the same publisher?

 

23 hours ago, JeremyR said:

Ah, I was talking about the original. I didn't realize their was a second, but I'm not a fan of Sting's work.  Game developer, musician, or wrestler. 

 

(Although I am a fan of the Police. But just can't stand Sting solo)

 

I guess you need to have your Stings in groups.  Anyway, I went and bought Breath of Fire III, and it's been downloaded to my PS3.  Once I've gotten some more work done in Black Rock Shooter, I'll switch Memory Sticks and install BoF3 to the PSP and back it up to Media Go (BRS is on its own Memory Stick--though the Stick also holds backups of save data for my PS1, PS2, and PS3 games--due to the Stick sizes I had back then).

 

This has been a really, really low-volume year for me in terms of game purchases, in large part due to pandemic effects on time allocation.  Here's the entirety of what I bought in 2020:

 

- MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies (PSV, physical)

- Penny-Punching Prince$$ (PSV, physical)

- Journey Collector's Edition (PS3, physical)

- Breath of Fire III (PSP, download)

 

I also added to my PSN account a few PS4 titles that were temporarily free, as well as two games that were free to me because of either Cross-Buy (Journey for PS4--I should note that these PS4 game acquisitions are currently meaningless, since I still don't have a PS4 or PS5) or owning the original version (Dragon Fantasy: The Volumes of Westeria for PSV, an updated version of Dragon Fantasy Book I (PS3/PSV Cross-Buy)).  I think the last time I bought so few games in a calendar year was 2003, which was before I owned any consoles (portables excepted, as I did have my original 1990 Game Boy).

 

Also, 2020 is (now) one of only four years since I first got a PSP in which I bought only one PSP game, the others being 2016 (Angus hates Aliens), 2017 (Cho Aniki 0: Muscle Brothers), and 2018 (Final Fantasy III).  Ha, I just noticed that this means my last two PSP download purchases were both "[x] III" RPGs (2019 had two games purchased, both physical: the first two entries in the Tanteibu visual novel series, to complete my collection of all four of the series' limited editions).

 

Going back to Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection, while looking up footage of the game on YouTube, I discovered that some of the PSN avatars that are free for use to everyone are character portraits from that very game.  That was a bit of a random discovery.  Also, in investigating the relationships between Pandora's Reflection and predecessors Generation of Chaos and Aedis Eclipse: Generation of Chaos, I learned that the games are actually fully sequential in the overall Generation of Chaos series; namely, what we got with no subtitle in North America was actually a PSP remake of GOC IV from the PS2, and Aedis Eclipse was a PSP remake of GOC V from the PS2 (Pandora's Reflection, which is PSP-original, has an Arabic numeral "6" in its title in Japan, with no subtitle).  All of the first five GOC games originated on the PS2, and none were released in North America before the PSP remakes of IV and V.  So, our getting entries IV through 6 in the series on PSP is coincidentally similar to how we got entries III through V of The Legend of Heroes on PSP in North America, and how the first one we got released was IV in both series. :P Both of the IV games even got released here with no number.  It's a conspiracy, obviously!

 

Shoot.  I was building an order at AnimeCornerStore.com, but the two volumes of One Piece that I was planning to get from them to fill holes in my library have apparently gone out of stock, permanently.  Clearance pricing will do that.

 

onmode-ky

 

P.S. Have you guys figured out the multi-quote system that the AtariAge forum uses?  We had no quoting in the late PSPMinis forum at all, but single-quote replying here is pretty straightforward; AtariAge's multi-quote might be less intuitive at first, but it's really handy.

[AXM]

4 hours ago, onmode-ky said:

Strange.  Were they not both published by the same publisher?

Apparently SC was published in the west by XSEED themselves, while FC was handled by Ghostlight in Europe, who also, among other things, published Persona 2 Innocent Sin and 3 Portable on my end.

The latter decided not to renew their license, so it's gone. The same can't be said for the Persona games, which are still available.

Their decision is understandable, I wouldn't have bought it myself back then if FC wasn't in a digital bundle with P2IS and on sale all those years ago, the series wasn't nearly as popular and respected back then as it is now.

4 hours ago, onmode-ky said:

P.S. Have you guys figured out the multi-quote system that the AtariAge forum uses? 

I was just feeling lazy.

 

4 hours ago, onmode-ky said:

Going back to Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection, while looking up footage of the game on YouTube, I discovered that some of the PSN avatars that are free for use to everyone are character portraits from that very game.

Yeah, I was surprised to see that one shy fairy-ish girl there.

Edited December 31, 2020 by AXM

[Atariboy]

I didn't want to ask my local car garage to change a headlight bulb and thought I'd do it myself.

 

Opened the hood and saw a screw in the vicinity of where I knew there was one to unscrew after watching them change bulbs for me. Turned it a dozen times and nothing seemed to happen. Then I brushed some snow away and saw the fastener I actually needed to be unscrewing (Which I didn't have the right type of attachment head for in my socket wrench set).

 

My high beam on that side seemed to be shining on the pavement about 8' in front of the car last night, so I was pretty sure it was an alignment adjustment I had been messing with. Sure enough when I asked today as they put the bulb in, the guy goes "uh oh" and tells me it's the alignment screw. Now I need to go in the dark somewhere and park in front of a building, and try to get it to match the other side of the car.

 

Kind of sad that I couldn't even manage to change a headlight in my own car. Hopefully I'll at least be able to get it back close to where it was when it gets dark out.

 

Edited January 4, 2021 by Atariboy

[JeremyR]

We've all done stupid things to our cars, I think. I remember once time I replaced the spark plug wires on my Mustang and stupidly did not do them 1 by 1, but took them all off first. And they had to be in a specific order

[Atariboy]

Sounds like something I'd do.

 

I went behind a grocery store at a strip mall where it was dark and pointed the car at the wall. It was pretty easy to fix my headlight alignment. In fact it took longer to get the hood open than it did to adjust the headlight I had to realign.

 

Luckily it was the vertical alignment that I was inadvertently turning. It was a simple matter to get it to match the beam on the side that I hadn't messed with. The horizontal alignment though would be a judgement call and I'm sure I'd of been off a bit trying to eyeball it.

Edited January 5, 2021 by Atariboy

[JeremyR]

I can smell gasoline again!

 

Had to buy gas and it was one of those stations where you have to prepay and I always pick too high an amount. Usually they screw me, but I bought a gas can just for this situation. Though the downside is getting some on you.

 

Anyway, I just ordered a new TV. Not as fancy as Axel's , but it's a 50" 4k TV. I just hope it gets here in one piece.

[JeremyR]

Apparently my hopes will not be realized. FedEx seems to have lost it somehow, and they are now out of stock

 

I guess I am not meant to own a 4k TV

[JeremyR]

Okay, cancel that, they found it and it was delivered intact.  Pretty neat. Bigger than I thought. 

 

I bought a couple 4k Blue Rays, Alien and Halloween.  We don't have a big selection at my store.  I never thought that in 2020 (2021) we would have a wider variety of vinyl albums than Blu Rays. 

 

Also have Close Encounters of the Third King and Prince of Darkness coming. The latter is actually why I got the TV in the first place. It's tied with others as my favorite movie. I saw it was coming out from Scream Factory and I ordered it. 

[Atariboy]

Haven't been inside Wal-Mart since March, but I imagine I'm in for a sad surprise when I feel safe going inside again and check out the home video section.

 

I have a small UHD Blu-Ray collection, but can only watch them in 1080p without HDR at this time. I have the Peanuts Holiday Collection (Was a birthday present last December and one of the last Peanuts releases I needed for my collection), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Glory, Jumanji, Home Alone, and three Tom Hanks films. 

 

Much of it is because I generally stick with films from the Golden Age of Hollywood (1930's through the 1950's or so), and not much has happened in that area with 4k Blu-Ray's despite quite a few film restoration projects in recent years doing 4k scans of films. 

 

I did think I'd get The Sound of Music on UHD Blu-Ray last year and all the rumors said it was happening (And a 4k restoration has been done, which I saw in theaters), but then Disney bought 20th Century Fox and for the first time in the era of home video, a significant anniversary year came and went for that film without a new release (Every 5 years has been the norm and 2020 was the 55th anniversary).

 

Hopefully a few surprises remain though. North by Northwest for instance still has draw beyond just classic film aficionados and would be amazing in 4k. Hopefully it's on Warner's radar.

 

Edited January 18, 2021 by Atariboy

[onmode-ky]

My parents recently got a 50" 4K TV, too, a Samsung, I believe.  However, the only 4K content it can display right now are from its streaming apps (namely YouTube, since they don't subscribe to any services), as they have nothing that can play 4K Blu-rays.  Then again, I'm the only one with any 4K Blu-rays, and I only have one, Alita: Battle Angel.  I also have no way to display 3D Blu-rays, of which I have three, Alita: Battle Angel, Harlock: Space Pirate, and Kubo and the Two Strings.  Not that anyone makes 3D TVs anymore. :( I think my best bet for 3D nowadays would be PS VR.  But going back to 4K, I'm not sure it's all that easy to see the difference from 1080 on a 50" TV unless you're up close to it, in the same way as how it's not all that easy to tell 1080 content from 720 content on my 32" TV unless I'm close to it.

 

On 12/31/2020 at 7:42 AM, AXM said:

 

On 12/31/2020 at 3:21 AM, onmode-ky said:

Going back to Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection, while looking up footage of the game on YouTube, I discovered that some of the PSN avatars that are free for use to everyone are character portraits from that very game.  That was a bit of a random discovery.

 

Yeah, I was surprised to see that one shy fairy-ish girl there.

 

I was even more surprised that despite looking so shy, she wears such a skimpy outfit.  Her clothes aren't visible in her PSN avatar.

 

Here's a Yahoo! Japan Auctions listing from November for something I'd really have liked to have gotten, had I known about it at the time--especially since it went for its starting bid of a mere 200 yen!  It's the Duel Maid "Fun Book" (which might be an Engrish-ification of "Fan Book"), which prior research indicated was an event-only item (events as in periodic Japanese fan conventions like Wonder Festival).  I'd only ever seen a single photo of one, and that was 2015--the photo itself that I saw back then was probably from even earlier, maybe 2008 when the Fun Book itself was released.  Well, I assume that was its release date, since the figures illustrated on its cover debuted that year.  There's a second Duel Maid-related publication I'd love to get someday, the doujinshi (fan comic).  Not an official item, but the sample page I've seen from it looked really cool.

 

A few more hours, and it'll be the beginning of a new administration here in the US.  I really hope the day bears no resemblance to January 6th. . . .

 

onmode-ky

[JeremyR]

I'm hoping that Scream Factory/Shout Factory will bring out their whole catalog in 4k eventually.  Sadly, I missed the chance to get the one 3-D movie I wanted, Amityville 3-D. Apparently it's sold out. (But then, only regular Blu-Ray)

 

It's actually annoying how little media companies do with their catalogs. Most old TV shows aren't even on Blu-Ray, much less 4k. And yet everything shot on film could be, since film is way more than 4k in resolution.

[Atariboy]

And a fair number of it already has had modern HD transfers done. CBS and Universal both have done a lot of work in that area. But alas most of it will never be on Blu-Ray.

 

I'm glad though at least a little bit of it has came out on Blu-Ray. Some highlights include The Honeymooners, the first two seasons of I Love Lucy, season 1 of the Andy Griffith Show, all of The Rockford Files (Except for the post series movies, I believe), all of Little House on the Prairie, all of the original Twilight Zone series, and all of The Dick Van Dyke Show.

 

Becomes problematic though in the era of editing on videotape. MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation were all filmed on 35 mm film, but edited into what we saw on tv only after being transferred to standard definition videotape. Some early use of CGI for special effects, the title card, and other bits and pieces only ever existed on videotape for these. So remastering it for HD meant not only a lot of painstaking effort to reassemble each episode from 35 mm film, but also recreating assets that were videotape only.

 

And some stuff was only ever on videotape. WKRP in Cincinnati being a good early example of a prime time network show that wasn't filmed (Although there were certainly much earlier examples, videotape in the US generally was the domain of "disposable" daytime tv when it first started popping up in the late 1950's until 1980 or so). Season 1 of Newhart is another such example.

Edited January 24, 2021 by Atariboy

[JeremyR]

I thought I read something about WKRP being on video tape because it was cheaper to license music that way.

 

Season 1 of Sledge Hammer was shot on film, but then the second season was shot on videotape because of budget cuts

[Atariboy]

I vaguely seem to recall hearing that story as well. 

[AXM]

On 1/20/2021 at 11:20 AM, onmode-ky said:

But going back to 4K, I'm not sure it's all that easy to see the difference from 1080 on a 50" TV unless you're up close to it, in the same way as how it's not all that easy to tell 1080 content from 720 content on my 32" TV unless I'm close to it.

This is an issue Jeremy's also having and I'm not seeing it, even on a smaller screen. I wouldn't say it's night and day -- that's going from a very cheap no-name TV to a mid-range Samsung screen like I did -- but it's relatively noticeable.

Probably the quickest way to check if you can actually notice the difference is by playing one of those countless "showcase" 4K videos on Youtube (of the space kind, underwater kind, nature kind, the like) and quickly switching from 1080p to 4K and viceversa.

We did the same as soon as we bought it and we couldn't believe our eyes. Sure was tough going back to our 1080p-only consoles for a day or two.

[JeremyR]

It's incredibly cold here (5F/-15 C, with it going to get to about -2F/-20 C), so I brought my porch cat (Shadow) inside, because his heating pad for his bed went kaput. Yikes. 

 

Firstly, he does not like being inside.

 

Secondly, Buster likes to fight with him. Fairly serious fights, too, with fur flying. I had Shadow on my lap when Buster jumped on him, but Buster missed and got me instead. Right under the fingernail, which is about the most painful place a cat can get you...

 

I really need to get Buster fixed. He's an incredibly sweet cat to, but he's kinda a jerk to other cats. My other cat, Milly, will smack him down if he harasses her, but Shadow just doesn't fight back.

[JeremyR]

Twice I have gone to bed with Shadow inside, and twice he has somehow escaped.

 

The first time he managed to open the front door. He's a big cat, so not too surprising he was strong enough to pull it open. But the second time, I don't know. I put a doorstop in front of the door. He should be too big to fit through Buster's exit.

[Atariboy]

That sounds odd, you'll have to update us if you figure out how he managed it.

 

I'm glad my former neighbor kitty moved in 13 months ago. Her old "family" has yet to even miss her, but she's happy and perfectly content to be an indoor cat and gets along well with 2 of my 3 other cats (The third one named Gracie took an immediate dislike to her so they're not on friendly terms; But at least she fights back).

 

She'll greet me at the front door, but just to greet me. She makes no effort to try to slip by. And I always thought the name of the dog on Petticoat Junction was silly (His name was Dog), but somehow Kitten just seems to fit her (The name I'd refer to her as when we were still neighbors).

 

I worry once in a while that I stole her, but she sought out this relationship, she decided to spend cold nights on her heated cat bed on my front porch when I discovered that she was sleeping in my cold shed instead of going home (I found out two summers ago that she was terrified of the neighbor's then new German Shepard), and ultimately it was her that decided to go inside the front door and make herself at home and not leave.

 

And despite the neighbor husband (Or perhaps boyfriend in today's world) knowing about the friendship since I asked in the late summer or early fall of 2019 to confirm that she belonged to them (We had gotten close and I was worried about winter being around the corner), he's never once asked if I knew anything about what happened to her.

 

They didn't even miss her, but she has a family now.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Atariboy

[JeremyR]

After further observation, I can only surmise he gets through Buster's exit. I haven't seen him use it, but he's been poking around it, so clearly he knows it's there. Cats can squeeze through things usually as long as they can fit their head.

 

He's apparently gotten used to staying inside. Unfortunately, he wants to sit on my lap all the time. ALL the time. Buster is almost as bad, but at least he's a small cat. Shadow is probably 15 lbs.