I buy Xbox 360 games over Playstation 3 games because of the online community, the ease of joining a friend in an online game, and the achievements. To be fair, I have always liked the speed of the PS3 cross media bar compared to Xbox 360 blades that are ad heavy and extremely sluggish. As for the in-game cross media bar, it is a huge improvement but is still not as good as the Xbox 360 in-game communication system.
I was very excited at the thought of getting trophies for all the Playstation 3 games I own and was expecting to get some trophies that I may have already earned. Apparently, not all games will have trophies and the games that do will require you to play through them from the beginning. I was thinking about buying a few games for the PS3 that I already own on the 360 just as an excuse to play them again, but I doubt I will at this point. As usual, Sony just doesn’t get it. For something that should have been included with the system, the update is extremely underwhelming.
After getting addicted to DiRT for the Xbox 360, I started making a top-down, rally game in flash. Assuming I have the time, I’d like have a ton of tracks and cars as well as online racing/tournaments. It is very unpolished at this point and only has 1 track and 1 car… but here it is after a few hours.
If you are looking for a high definition video camera to mess around with, the Aiptek A-HD 720P High Definition Camcorder is your answer. I was looking for an inexpensive camera to make some videos for YouTube and this does a great job. Anything comparable is much more expensive.
1280 x 720 H.264 Video @ 30fps
Connect to TV/VCR/DVD player to record video, pictures and audio
Charge with USB or AC Adapter without removing battery
5MP CMOS sensor with still images up to 8MP
2x digital zoom with fixed focus
I made my first video which shows my X-Arcade stick w/ Amiga port in action. Unfortunately, the original HD video is too large to upload. It has been compressed multiple times and the aspect ratio has been changed by YouTube.
You may have noticed that it has been a while since my last post. For the last few months I have been putting the finishing touches on a social networking script I wrote. If you are into reading and writing poetry and stories, making friends online, having a public journal, and getting achievements (awesome) for doing it, check out the new members section at Lovingyou.com. If you are not into any of that, you can check out my profile at any rate.
Being tired of my original NES blinking when attempting to play games, I started looking for NES to Famicom adapters to use with my Super Joy III. After realizing the cheapest I could get them was around $25, I ordered an NES clone for about the same price. The clone I chose was the Family Boy 8. It comes with the system, two controllers, and the Famicom-NES adapter for around $30 on Ebay. I actually like the way the controllers feel more than the original NES controller and the NES Max controller.
The only problem I have with it is, if I bump it while it’s on, the game will sometimes freeze. This is due to the way the cartridge sits in the console. Other than that, it works better than my Original NES. It’s a great deal if you are looking to play some of your old NES games without an emulator or the Virtual Console (rip-off).
Synaesthete is an interesting mix of genres. It is part shooter and part rhythm. Imagine playing Geometry Wars but instead of pointing where you want to shoot, you have to press buttons to match the rhythm much like Dance Dance Revolution. If you are interested in trying it out, it can be downloaded for free here. Synaesthete is a finalist for the Independant Games Festival so be sure to vote for it if you like it.
I added an Atari/Amiga/Commodore joystick port to my Xbox 360 X-Arcade stick today… Why you ask? Sensible World of Soccer of course! Although I never played the older versions, I have become very addicted to the recent Xbox Live Arcade release. The guys at sensiblesoccer.de seem to prefer an Amiga joystick over any other type of control method so I decided I would give it a shot. Since the Xbox 360 controller can be used on the PC, I figured this project would also be good for emulation.
The gamepad I used is a wired Xbox 360 MicroCon Game Pad Pro. I had to use a relay (TF2E-4.5v-1-H50 ATF20620) on the left and right buttons because they don’t share a common ground. If you decide to do this and just want a joystick port on the controller and not the X-Arcade stick, you should use an opto-isolator instead of a relay as they are smaller.
1
UP
2
DOWN
3
LEFT
4
RIGHT
6
BUTTON
8
GND
On my controller, pins 3 and 4 go to the following relays which connect to the left and right d-pad buttons. Other controllers may be set up differently. Any button that does not share a common ground needs a relay or an opto-isolator.
I picked up a used Super Joy III a few weeks ago to mess around with. I knew before I bought it the quality would be fairly low and it would not come with the amount of games it promised, but it was worse than I thought. It promises about 76,000 games and comes with around 100. The graphics are a little worse than the originals as well. That being said, it does have a connection to plug in Famicom games. With an adapter, original NES games can be played on it as well.
I was thinking of doing some sort of controller mod with it but it doesn’t seem worth it to me. I am pretty disappointed with the amount of games on it (although I would have known this with a bit of research). Some of the guys at benheck.com have done some interesting things with it if you want to check it out. I might do something with it later on.
During Amazon’s Black Friday sale, I stumbled across what I thought was the most pointless product ever… the Pistol Mouse FPS. It is basically a mouse that is shaped like a pistol. You are supposed to use it in first-person shooters to add an extra level of realism. It was $2.99 with free shipping at the time so I bought it just to mess with or use in a future project.
This thing is surprisingly heavy duty. I expected a flimsy little plastic gun that would barely fit in my hand. It looks and feels realistic enough. Hopefully no police officers are around to shoot me when I’m playing video games. Now for the good stuff…
I used Half-Life 2 to test it out on and it actually worked a lot better than I expected. There are only two problems with it. The big problem is that you have to slide the gun forward and backward to aim up and down. This sounds horrible I know, but it’s not that bad. The left and right aiming is perfect. The other problem, while almost impossible to implement, is a lack of rumble. This is getting extremely picky since most PC games don’t support a rumble feature, and I have yet to see a mouse that has a rumble feature.
Overall, the quality is great. I am not sure if I will use this as my main FPS mouse yet, but I will definitely try it on a number of games. If you love shooters, you should check it out. It is no longer being made, so if you want one you better get it soon.
Marvel Comics has launched a subscription service that allows you to read Marvel Comics online. They already have many comics inlcuding the first run of the original X-Men, issues 1-100 of Amazing Spider-Man, and issues 1-100 of Fantastic Four. The supscription costs $9.99 per month or $59.88 annually ($4.99/mo). Considering it would cost you a fortune to collect all these comics, it is a great deal.
