It's true, the gameboy advance is the best console out today. It hearkens back to a time when the success of a game depended more on innovative gameplay concepts rather than how many polygons the models and environments were made of. If a game wasn't good, it just didn't do well.
Anyway I got all of those GBA games I ordered off ebay, and they're all awesome. Out of all of them, Advance Wars has probably gotten the most attention. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance kind of changed my opinion on strategy games, they are really awesome, and Advance Wars does it really well.
Final Fight one is better than the SNES version, it has all three characters from the arcade version, and the graphics are better than the SNES. The music sounds like NES music mixed with SNES music, which is pretty common in first generation GBA games (and some later ones, unfortunately), but since it's all remixes from the arcade version, it sounds good in a "NES/SNES remake" kind of way. They turned the subway level music into a techno song but it's still pretty good.
Aria of Sorrow is definitely the best castlevania on GBA. I don't think I'll be able to play Harmony of Dissonance anymore after getting this. The gameplay is closer to Symphony of the Night, the main character fights with knives/swords instead of a whip. The level designs are better than Harmony of Dissonance, it's hard to explain why... they're just more clever with utilizing special abilities and stuff, that's always a plus. The monster soul system is really cool too, and not complicated at all. The complicated card combination system from Circle of the Moon kind of turned me off, I like my special abilities to be simple to understand and execute... that's just a preference of mine though, some people like the complicated stuff and that's why many people say Circle of the Moon is the best GBA castlevania. Graphically and Musically, Aria of Sorrow is a lot better than Harmony of Dissonance. The music in HoD (i'm going to start using acronyms now) sounded almost completely like NES/gameboy music. It was probably the game's weakest point. Aria of Sorrow's music is great and sounds more like a SNES than NES. What an awesome game.
Megaman Zero 3, I haven't played it that much. From what I've played, the graphics and sound are great, sometimes seeming closer to Playstation quality than SNES quality. It's pretty difficult, but not insanely difficult like some of the Megaman X games. The main thing I didn't like was the storyline. I don't play megaman games to read stories, I play them to [b]crush[/b]. I don't care about robot #1 betraying robot #2 or whatever, I just want to kill them with my gun. The intro to this game makes it seem like it's going to be an RPG because there is so much text and talking and cutscenes. You also have to play as Zero instead of Megaman and that's kind of lame too. Bass was the coolest Megaman character though, he could shoot in eight directions, and double jump. He was almost perfect.
welp I'm done with that now, I got first place in forms (intermediate divison) and second in sparring (beginner division). I get hit by those round punches a lot, they're out of my vision and they get me every time, and apparently blocking a kick with a crane stance counts as a point for the other guy, even though the kick was blocked. That happened more times than I care to count. I like continuous sparring a lot more than point sparring.
by the time you guys read this I'll probably already be done with it, but I'm going to compete today. it's 8:30am right now and that's really early. I bought a cup to shield my testicles from getting kicked, isn't that awesome? Also, it's a karate tournament (all styles welcome though) so I'm not that scared, lolz. No actually I'm pretty nervous but we'll see how it goes. Even if I don't win it'll be a learning experience.
i've always known about ebay, since it first started up and people were going crazy over it, but I never trusted people enough to use it. Same with paypal, I had heard about it but I had no idea how it was supposed to work so I never used it. Eventually I made a paypal account because I saw an ebay auction that I really wanted, but I still didn't have the guts to bid on it because I didn't know how paypal worked and I still didn't trust people. When I bought my AKON pass I was forced to use paypal to pay, so I then understood how it works... I was thinking I had to transfer money from my bank account to my paypal account, but it turns out it just withdraws whatever I need automatically.
So, I decided to give bidding on ebay a try. I had done the "buy it now" stuff before but that's kind of just like buying off of gamestop.com or something. The actual bidding is fun and it reminds me of the auction house in WoW. Some people are sneaky fuckers and like to steal auctions right before the bidding time runs out, like in the last 30 seconds. Sometimes you're lucky and nobody notices the auction you're winning or nobody knows how awesome the game you're bidding on is.
Here are the games I've gotten so far in the past couple days:
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - 13 bucks
Megaman Zero 3 - 13 bucks
Advance Wars - 9 bucks
Final Fight One - 11 bucks
I also bought some filled subway sub club cards, but they're actually for my sister. It's awesome that you can buy already filled up cards for way cheaper than it would cost to fill them up. If you eat subway a lot, that's a lot of saved money. Just buy a small drink and give them one of those cards, and you get a free 6 inch sub. That's just awesome.
it's been kind of a busy past couple of days for me. yesterday I went to a martial arts competition, but I didn't compete. All styles were welcome there but the majority of people did chinese martial arts, mainly southern hung gar kung fu (my style) or northern praying mantis. It was really awesome seeing all of the different styles of martial arts, and the sparring was badass. I mainly just went there to do the lion dance though, I just stayed to watch the rest of the events. It really opened my eyes and I am going to start training harder for continuous and full contact sparring. There was a karate guy there that really impressed me, he was a black belt and he couldn't have been older than 17, but he was kicking all kinds of ass and ended up being the champion of the teen divison of sparring. He definitely knew what he was doing, I went up afterwards and give him some props, and we got talking and he said he was going to be in the junior olympics or some shit. Yeah he was a badass, I'm going to train super hard so I can kick his ass once he's 18.
Today, I got to train with Buck Sam Kong (that's a link, JP). He is a true kung fu master, and he is our sigung, which is kind of chinese for grandfather. He is our sifu's sifu, our teacher's teacher. He was very cool, very down to earth, and he always had a smile on his face. Especially when we had been practicing punching exercises for 30 minutes without stopping and he was enjoying a cold bottle of water while we were all dying. I learned about the 12 hands of hung kuen, which is like 12 philosophies of the hung gar style, and we did training on full-contact sparring, complete with punching and kicking each other in the ribs, kicking people in the back of the thigh (fucking ouch), lots of punching and kicking combinations, lots of ways to block punching and kicking combinations. It was a lot of fun although I felt like I was going to pass out afterwards. Now my arms hurt so bad, it's hard for me to lift common household items. I had some trouble with the soap in the shower... my legs are fine though, we didn't really do any forms or stance practice so our legs were spared. I had a lot of fun though and it kind of really pumped me up when I met him, I want to become a badass kung fu master like him now.
it is so fun... after trying out the arena tonight, I realized how truly awesome the game is. it's not as deep as an mmorpg, but it really does a great job at imitating mmorpg style combat. When pvping in guild wars, it feels just like pvping in a regular mmorpg. It's actually a bit more fun, because you have a huge selection of skills, but you can only put 8 of them on your hotbar at a time and you can't change them once a mission starts or the arena fight starts. A lot of thought is required to what skills you should put in your 8 slots, most of the time for me it is really hard to narrow it down to 8 skills, because they're all awesome. Guild wars is a very well done game... but it's obvious that their main focus was pvp combat and combat in general. I've read that there really is no best class or class combination in the game, because all of the skills are so balanced that they are all useful in some occasion. From my experience, it seems true.
So it seems like I've been working a lot, but it's just because I get called to come in every day. I wish I was exaggerating, I really do. Every day, I get called. Whenever there's a day I'm not scheduled to work, I expect to get called. And guess what, it happens, every time. I actually can't recall the last time I was off work and didn't get called to come in. I don't know if it's because I'm a good worker, or if it's just because I'm a sucker who always says yes because I feel guilty if I say no. It's not really a bad thing though I guess, lots of opportunity for more hours... it's not that I don't like working, I've actually been enjoying work a lot lately. I just don't like working every day. I don't like feeling like I'm on call and I don't like feeling guilty because I don't want to cancel my plans for whatever night they call me.
Today I was scheduled to work projection from 1-6, which is a short and easy shift, and then suddenly I'm being asked to stay until 1:30am which isn't really a short shift. I went home at 6pm to go to kung fu and came back at 9pm to break down movies and stuff. I was talking to somebody up there about how I get the pleasure of working in box office tomorrow morning at 10am. Then I am told that I'm scheduled in projection tomorrow at 10am. Apparently I'm so awesome that I can split myself in two and work two different shifts at the same time now. I'm just that awesome.
so my site works, I thought it didn't work for a while but I was just posting drafts instead of publishing it. whoops.
I've been playing wow and guildwars a lot, more recently guildwars. I like it a lot, I don't feel as pressured to play it, so that makes it more fun for me and then I end up playing it more anyway. I'm not done with wow though, but I'm still in the process of absorbing guildwars. From what it seems, the whole leveling process in guildwars is the easy part of the game anyway, the level cap is 20 and after that the main focus turns into PvP, turning it into more of a player versus player action-rpg type game than an mmorpg.
When I get sick of guild wars, my level 30 druid is waiting for me on wow, but it may be a while before I'm sick of guild wars.