Web Clips for 7/25/09

Ugh, franchises. Why can't this one just die already? Please vote with your wallet; stop swallowing this shit and begging for more.

The new Nvidia Drivers are out. This is the first release that actually fixed the Left 4 Dead skipping issue for me. The new ATI Drivers are out too, if you've got one of those.

Speaking of Left 4 Dead, playing recently I noticed a TON of servers with this new campaign. I haven't finished it yet, but it's pretty fun, if a little blatantly repetitive. I'm glad a mod is getting so much attention, even on the Valve servers. I also saw some servers with this campaign too. It seems players are taking it upon themselves to provide the DLC everyone was whining about.

A High Definition remake of a game is a good idea in theory. I dare you to complete just one line.

I read a lot of GTD, lifehacks, and different self/life improvement type stuff. A lot of it can be helpful, but there's definitely some bullshit in there.

Web Clips for 7/24/09

Apparently, this is a must-play.

I always tell people not to use PC repair shops, but they never listen.

Propaganda on how Windows 7 will be awesome for gamers. There seems to be a whole bunch of positive stuff about Windows 7 floating around. I honestly haven't tried it yet, but I do remember everyone loving Vista before it was released too.

Ray tracing, someday....

Web Clips for 7/23/09

Consistency: it gets you places.

And 8-bit Wheezer tribute album.

Easily and quickly create an online business card.

This dude gets paid to paint on dirty cars.

So it seems Core i7 has entered the realm of midrange. You could shave about $200 off of this by downgrading the case and hard drive. There's also two video cards there. Though it's still debatable whether i7 is really needed yet (as it's tough to get below $1000 what with the more expensive motherboard and RAM). A gamer will still probably be better served by saving the cash and going with a Core 2 Duo or Quad. Though maybe get a motherboard with room to upgrade.

Web Clips for 7/19/09

Hey, we're also featured at Retro Nintendo.

So, I've not been posting lately, and have been trying to get an article together. I've been too busy, but I don't have a show again for another two weeks, I haven't had anything really article-worthy come to me, but expect shorter stuff and more activity overall from me. I've been playing Trine, though, so maybe something like that.

A slideshow with descriptions from Intel on how they make their CPUs.

Perlmon is the closest thing to CPU-Z for linux.


This shows' new season has begun. Good stuff.

This guy's had practice.

Nintendo 64: The Best Multiplayer Console?

So, full disclosure, I've only ever personally owned two video game consoles: one was the Sega Master System II (which maybe I'll talk about later), and the other was the Nintendo 64. I personally haven't felt the need to invest in any other console since. But unfortunately, last year all of my games and controllers for my N64 were stolen (bummer right?) and I've been unable to play my precious since.

But this summer I've been going through the process of re-buying my peripherals and library of games (and probably picking up a few new ones), because I will be providing the N64 goodness in the living room of an on-campus house come fall semester (which I'm mad exited about). Though I'm not here to ramble on about the N64 being the best console ever (I would never make a claim like that, because it's basically all personal preference/ dependent on the games). Though I do think each console has its strengths and weaknesses, and where the N64 really shines, is multiplayer. Here's why:

~~First off, the hardware, It's designed to work well with multiple people:

~There's four plugs for controllers by default, which is way more convenient than the PS1/2 or any predecessor. Sure, you could buy an adapter, but it's just much more convenient to have four player capability from the get-go. It also means that most games had four player multiplayer support, and developers spent more time refining the multiplayer component.

~The controllers, while a little odd, were pretty damn durable (unless you played a lot of mario party), easy to clean after nights of Mario and Pizza, and introduced some great innovations like joysticks, trigger buttons, and expansion slots. The controller ports also were secure enough, but popped out easily with a good yank, meaning the N64 was immune to overly exited moments, and tripping over the wire wouldn't send the console flying off of the shelf.

~The cartridge system is optimized for multiplayer games. While there were technical disadvantages in the form of small storage size, resulting in stretched, low-res textures (though this was offset by the N64's graphics chip, which was capable of trilinear filtering, making textures smooth). For multiplayer they were awesome. First, cartridges can't be scratched accidentally, and while there were issues (who's never needed to blow on a cartridge?), on the whole they were much more durable than pretty much any other media. They're also much faster, meaning almost zero loading times. Who wants to wait to start up some Smash Brothers or Goldeneye? Not me. Also, the small storage size is much more fitting for a simple multiplayer racing game or fighter rather than a single player epic with large levels or an expansive RPG.

~~Second, It's all in the games, Fu. Let's check out some real multiplayer gems: 

~Super Smash Brothers:

This game redefined the fighter and possibly multiplayer gameplay. The physics of the original stand out to me as being much better than its successors. There's not as many characters as the other games, but damn the original is hard to beat in sheer multiplayer fun. There was a ton of different modes, as well as the ability to fight on a team. The items were fun and varied. I don't think there's any gamer who can't give you a long and hilarious anecdote about a night filled with the original Smash Brothers.

~Goldeneye 007/Perfect Dark:

As well as being genre-defining single player classics, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark had insanely fun multiplayer FPS action. Whether it's the satisfaction (or frustration) from blowing someone up with a proximity mine in the library in Goldeneye, or the shared sense of success that comes with ganging up to defeat that PerfectSim in Perfect Dark, both of these were solid contenders for hours of multiplayer fun.

Mario Kart 64:

The N64 really excels in racers, and Mario Kart 64 is no exception. Featuring a ton of new game modes as well as full 3d environments, four players, and a whole slew of changes that really solidified the franchise, Mario Kart 64 is a blast.

~StarFox 64:

This game is a tad debatable, as it's primarily a single player game, but the multiplayer is certainly nothing to laugh at. Four players can duke it out in the Arwing aircraft, the Landmaster tank, or as a character on foot, with a bazooka. The single player is also really fun to watch, has a lot of replay value, and is pretty short. The levels are short enough to alternate between people. Not all games need to be the centerpiece of the party, and this is where Starfox 64 really excels.

~San Francisco Rush 2049:

Futuristic rocket cars WITH WINGS? Check. Highly detailed futuristic version of San Francisco? Check. Awesome multiplayer race modes? Hellz yea check. Rush 2049, as well as enjoying great success in the arcades, had a whole slew of great ways to play in the home. One of my favorites was battle mode, which put you against up to 3 other players in a large map filled with tons of different weapons including rockets, lasers, gatling guns, and sonic blasters, which sent out a shockwave of sound that killed anything within a general area. There's also stunt mode, where players drive around a map filled with ramps, and use their wings to pull tricks and score points. The more insane the stunt, the more points received. There's a slew of customization options, parts and colors for every car. A racing game that really has a ton of great features for every type of racing fan.

~Pokemon Stadium: Sure now it's a little dated, but this game isn't any less fun. And don't forget all of the awesome pokemon-themed mini-games that can be played by up to four people. There's the Ratatat race, the Sandshrew dig competition, Ekans throwing, and a ton of other awesome fun games. The main battle is no multiplayer slouch either, enabling anyone to battle eachother's pokemon. Who doesn't love to see their pokemon battle in full 3D, with a huge crowd cheering them on and the announcers awesome cheesy lines: "Oh it's Charizard!" "But is it down and out!?" and straight from the game boy: "Critical hit! It's Super Effective" Nowadays everyone's got thier old red/blue cartridges lying around with all level 100 pokemon. Well put them to the test!

~Mario Party: A true party video game consisting of 50 mini-games. Mario Party is not only accessible to everyone, but really, really fun. It's led to 7 sequels, and for good reason. There's something for everyone in Mario Party. Be careful, though, the mini-games tend to be hard on your controller. That's mostly because people tend to get really into them.

~Destruction Derby 64: A greatly enhanced version of it's PlayStation counterpart, Destruction Derby 64 is, again, not your typical racer, there's a ton of game modes, including the unique "bomb tag." Bomb tag starts off with up to four players, and several NPCs. There's one "bomb" that can be passed from player to player by crashing into eachother. Hold on to the bomb to score points, but too long, and you'll explode. There's also straight, last-car-standing, destruction derby. And destruction races, where half of the players start at one side of the track, and the other half start at the other end. There's tons of awesome ways to have fun in this game.

There's just so many great multiplayer games out for the N64. I can't highlight all of them, so I'm going to list some more here. These are all N64 games with amazing multiplayer:

Ridge Racer 64
Jet Force Gemini
Worms Armegeddon
F-Zero X
WipeOut 64
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Gauntlet Legends
Wave Race 64
Excitebike 64
Quake 1
Quake 2
Duke Nukem 64
Duke Nukem Zero Hour
Hydro Thunder
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
San Francisco Rush
Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA
Donkey Kong 64
Mortal Kombat 4
Mario Party 2
Star Wars Episode 1: Racer
Pokemon Stadium 2
Mario Party 3
Cruis'n World
Cruis'n Exotica

Hell. Of. A. List. All of these are truly awesome games. Along with some truly awesome PS1 favorites with graphical updates and new modes. There's also Gauntlet Legends, which is a hugely creative four player co-op action RPG. There's WipeOut 64, and the Quake series, which (while the graphics were better on the PC at the time) gives the N64 some great frag action. There's co-op Duke Nukem, the arcade favorite Hydro Thunder, crazy space racer F-Zero X. Jet Force Gemini allowed for third person combat with dogs and rockets, and Conkers Bad Fur Day's multiplayer was just as creative as the single player.

The N64 was by no means the perfect system, and there's a big multiplayer elephant in the room that I haven't talked about yet: Yes the Xbox 360 (also the PC, but I'm talking about consoles here). What with four player wireless controllers, internet connectivity, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Halo 1-3, Left 4 Dead, Burnout Paradise, Rainbow Six Vegas, and a ton of other great features and games, it's sure giving the N64 a run for its money. Hell, even the Wii has a bunch of N64 games in the virtual console. Still, though, what the N64 did for multiplayer is still trying to be copied today. And certainly during its time, it was the cornerstone of every games party, and every living room that housed it.

WD TV HD Media Player: The Pirate's Media Center

 

So, you've "acquired" digital media. Movies, music, pictures, TV. It's all in different formats and it's all stuck on your computer. How do you sit at home, break out the Doritos, and watch it on your TV? Well, you could drop $900+ on a Home Theater PC, or the cheaper option is to burn DVDs (assuming you have a DVD burner and player) which takes hours to do (encoding time, burning time, setup etc.).

But here's the thing. And the thing is called the Western Digital WD TV HD Media player. It's a little box (just over 6 inches long) with 2 USB ports, a composite TV out, an HDMI out, and a remote.

"But how do I use this thing to fix the issue you bring up?" you may ask. Well, it's simple: Plug any USB drive with media on it into the WD TV, plug the WD TV into your TV, and enjoy.

Yup, it's that friggin' simple, just plug in your external hard drive to the WD TV, and it plays the media on it. WD TV supports a ton of video formats, from .avi files encoded pretty much any way there is to HD .mkv files to .mpegs to .movs. It plays a ton of audio formats as well, including more obscure ones like .flac and .ogg, as well as your standard .gif, .jpeg, .bmp, .png image formats. Plus the firmware gets updated regularly with close ties to the community over at the WD TV Wiki.

It's also really portable, since the device itself is small, everything is truly plug and play, and all you'll have to lug around is your external media. Really, WD TV will accept pretty much anything that can be recognized as a "mass storage device" so even flash drives, SD cards and readers, or cameras can be used.

The kicker: this little box will set you back $100. Though I've seen it on sale at various times for around $70. Still, that's not too much considering I've personally found mine to be the most convenient way, not only to play my digital media on the TV, but to bring it with me everywhere.

Oh, and it's not like the device was designed to be used for pirated media. But hey, neither was Bit Torrent.

The interface is dead simple, and includes the ability to index the media on the drives connected to it, as well as simple file browsing. It's truly an awesome device.

WD TV.

WD TV at Newegg.

Cool Thing of the Week: Widescreen Gaming Forum Wiki

So I've mentioned once or twice that I own a netbook, and despite what all the "experts" say it is great for gaming. All you have to do is go back about 9 years and you have a great selection of classics. The thing is, back then widescreen monitors weren't common, so it's very rare for a game to have native widescreen support. While netbooks don't exactly have large screens, they do have a non-standard 1024x600 resolution, making everything looked squashed. Enter the Widescreen Gaming Forum Wiki. This wonderful site contains entries for hundreds of games, detailing if they are capable of widescreen support, what kind, and how to achieve it. For some it's a simple matter of selecting an option in the menu. Other games require registry hacks- which the site walks you through. Still others have had fan-patches made for them and the links are included. So if you have an older game that you're sick of looking squashed on your widescreen monitor, check this site out.

Review: The "Master Chef" Part 1

My crazy Panamaniac greasemonkey weightlifter uncle decided it was due time his soon-to-be-12-year-old son got a computer for himself. New generation huh? Anyway I convinced him that building a computer from scratch would be a better option than getting one from a store or company. The system would later be named the "Master Chef." The simple reasons you should build your own computer versus buy one are as follows:

• You get WAY more power for WAY less price (usually 2x or more).
• The build will be more stable and the hardware is less likely to fail.
• There are many more configuration options without the worry of breaking a warranty.
• The cool factor, it's a computing codpiece.

Sure you don't get tech support, but when was the last time Dell or HP tech support actually helped you? Don't answer that, it was rhetorical, I know the answer to that, it's never because you motherfuckers call me all the fucking time when you can't find the start menu or can't figure out fucking iTunes. It's FUCKING ITUNES!! GOOGLE IT! .......anyway maybe I'll save that rant for another post. So the short is you should always build your own desktop instead of buying a new one. Yea yea so my cousin was getting one and I offered to build it for him. So I hunted for a lil' bit and came up with this list of parts with which I made a public wish list on Newegg Including the rebates it comes to $803.92. without the monitor thats $633.93. Pretty sexy considering if you want to buy a computer with similar specs and video card it'd cost you around $1,750 with a monitor and $1,300 without. The parts simply explained are as follows: A sexy Cooler Master RC-690 case that came with a 550 watt power supply: I chose it for it's good looks, price (at the time it was $99), included power supply, trusted brand, and good reviews. A decent MSI P7N-SLI motherboard: I probably would've gone with this ASUS model instead, but the price was just a little too high. Wasn't a bad decision though, and I'm a fan of the 750 chipset. 4Gig of OCZ Gold RAM: I haven't had much personal experience with OCZ, but the price was right and I wasn't building a computer for myself. I'd heard good things and this was a good time to check it out. An Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 running at 2.53Ghz: This is where I saved my money. Had I more to spend I would've gone with the E8200, which has a 1333mhz FSB and runs at 2.66Ghz, but it was just so much more money. A Western Digital 250Gb Hard Drive: I don't skimp on hard drives, I've bought this drive before for my builds and have always found it to be rock solid stable, whisper quiet, and blazing fast. I buy exlusively Western Digital because thier drives have never ever ever given me a problem as opposed to other companies. An EVGA GeForce 8800GT 512: I spent a little more for the trusted EVGA brand, but thier customer service is outstanding. A friend of mine busted his from stupid overclocking and they replaced it no problem, with free shipping. This thing hauls ass too, about the 3rd fastest card you can get without going SLI, and for $115 after rebate, I couldn't resist. A BenQ G2000WD 20.1 inch widescreen LCD monitor: It was cheap, had good reviews and color depth, and a decent 5ms response time for gaming. Can't go wrong with BenQ either. And finnally a LITE-ON 20x SATA DVD burner: Honestly it was the cheapest SATA DVD Burner on Newegg. The reviews were fine. I Don't have too much experience with burners and ussually just buy the cheapest no-name brand I can find. I've never had a problem with any drive I've bought. This time though, the cheapest drive was a name-brand LITE-ON. So I guess God is telling me it's time to get a name-brand disc drive. That's enough for this time, next time I'll go through the building process and start detailed reviews. As well as rate the system as a whole and compare it to other...things. Till next time. BOO! scared? Are you ready? Are you ready for this? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?