Today, Canada Post will launch a new city in Second Life where there will be a shopping mall where users can shop in front of their computer. I heard this story on the radio this morning and recalled tuning into the Diggnation podcast and remembering Kevin Rose saying that one day he was approached by an individual who presented this idea. In short, Kevin thought this was something that would not be successful. My thoughts on the concept of an online virtual shopping mall are similar to Kevin’s in that it would not succeed if it were a standalone virtual shopping mall accessible through a website. However, this execution between Second Life and Canada Post seems brilliant.

Second Life gamers are the exact audience that a virtual shopping mall caters to. They enjoy “living life” as an avatar in a digital world and having an online shopping mall available in that world just enhances the experience.

From the details I’ve heard, you will be able to stroll through this shopping mall just as if you were to do it in real life. Inspect products in 3D and be able to shop with your online friends as often as you want. When you purchase products, Canada Post will ship them to you. Regardless if you are a user of Second Life, feel free to express whether or not you’d embrace the idea of an online shopping mall in the comments below.

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Since then, Pentavision, the Korean company behind this video game has released a sequel by popular demand. While visiting Play-Asia one day, I stumbled upon the official website of the video game and found out that there was a demo available for download. I now had a chance to see if purchasing this game was worth it.

Although the instructions on downloading the demo are written in Korean, there were enough diagrams so I could get by and get it working.

Here’s what you need to do if you want to try out the demo on your PSP:
(note: You will need to upgrade your PSP’s firmware to 3.11+ for the demo to work. Custom firmware fanatics take note of this)

1. Download the demo file to a location you’ll remember later on.
2. Hook up your PSP to your computer via USB and activate USB mode on your PSP (it’s in the first category to the left)
3. Navigate to your PSP’s memory stick from your computer and create a new folder structure as shown in the following diagram:
   
4. Take the demo file (EBOOT.PBP) you downloaded from Step 1, and place it in the new folder you created (should be ULKS46116-1 if you followed the diagram correctly)
5. Safely disconnect your PSP from your computer (usually you’ll have to eject the memory stick first before unplugging)
6. Navigate to the Game category in the PSP menu and select the memory stick option, you should now see the demo there. If you try to start the demo and it says you will need to upgrade your firmware, you will need to do a system update. If you’re into homebrewing and stuff like that, think about this before you do a system update.

I captured some gameplay video of myself playing the demo in case you want a better preview of what this game is all about. It plays pretty much like beatmania by Konami if you’ve ever played it.

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Nintendo Wii image courtesy of Nintendo

As I mentioned before, the Wii was my pick for upcoming game consoles and it sure did not disappoint. The first day I got it, I was playing Wii Sports with the family for a few hours and it was a lot of fun. Even surfing the internet on it is a blast, there’s so many possibilities with it, such as playing a flash version of Duck Hunt. The Virtual Console is great too, it is still a blast playing all those classic games, I’d like to play Mario Kart 64 which was released just yesterday but I need to find some Gamecube controllers to play it.

If anybody else there has one, feel free to register me, my friend code is 1260 7051 1946 5406.

Edit: I just realized I need your friend code too if you want to add me, so send me an email with your friend code or leave a comment with it.

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I have already made my mind up on which console I will be getting this upcoming holiday season, the Wii is cheaper, innovative and will create a revolution in the way video games are played. The PS3 is also going to be very hard to find when it first launches since only very few will be shipped out since the blue-laser is in such short supply which is a critical part of the blu-ray optical drive. A month ago, it never crossed my mind to purchase a second one, however the PS3 is looking very good as of late. Some may think that the price tag for it is outrageous but now that I’ve read what this machine is capable of, it’s a pretty reasonable price for what you’re getting.

Lately I’ve been reading that Sony has opened up the PS3 and a couple geeks have found it pretty easy to install any PPC distribution of Linux on it and use it as a computer. With all the processing power the PS3 has, $600+ to use it as a computer doesn’t sound that bad. You also have to consider the price of Blu-ray players out there on the market as well, many range in price $1000 and up. The PS3 has Blu-ray built in and it can play video games amongst all the geeky things you can do with it.

Other things about the PS3 that are appealing to me will be it’s graphics, and some exclusive games I will want to play since some of my favourite game franchises from the PS2 will only be continuing on the PS3 (Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry to name a few). Sony has also stepped up and offered to give a one year warranty for the PS3 since many first generation hardware still has a few bugs, that is nice.

However, some of the hype I’ve seen surrounding this console is just absolutely ridiculous.
Take for example this screenshot of eBay I took Friday evening at around 9:00pm:

It’s outrageous because people are willing to pay $1000+ for a pre-order receipt when it’s not even guaranteed that person is going to get a PS3 since they are in such short supply.

Other crazy stories I’ve read on the internet are poor people in Asia waiting in line to just resell them to make a quick buck. The most craziest thing I’ve seen happen in Asia has got to be the one guy that purchased one hundred PS3s to resell:

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I decided to buy it with the good faith I had in Square. I forked over my $15 and before I knew it, I’ve spent over 14 hours on the game and now feel that I got this game at a steal. Right after I purchased this, I checked IGN to see how the review was and it was rated 6.3 overall. Personally, I think this game deserves a higher rating and more attention. The gameplay is really fun (often described as a hybrid between Dynasty Warriors and Panzer Dragoon), which I found surprising since Square was notorious for creating horrible games outside the RPG genre. Perhaps the merger with the minds of Enix helped.

One thing I was disappointed with this game though was the cutscenes. The in-game cutscenes are basically 3d stills with the dialogue typed out at the bottom with some very fine voice acting behind it (no joke, it seems that Square-Enix has a lot of very talented voice actors at their disposal). The FMV (pre-rendered) cutscenes look outdated as well…I mean granted this game is set in medevil times but the CGI behind the pre-rendered cutscenes look like they were done with technology that was cutting edge 5 years ago.

Besides that disappointment in the cutscenes, I am really enjoying the game so far. The ability to hack and slash at hundreds of knights Dynasty Warriors style while being able to switch to another character in a snap as well as being able to call out your fire breathing dragon any time is good fun

Hopefully I finish this game before this weekend…school is approaching.

While on the topic of school, I also received my replacement battery from Apple today. I was worried I would have to go through the first few weeks of the upcoming semester without my laptop.

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In the following post, you will share in my frustration with Sony’s marketing practices. I was a Sony “fanboy”, but with some of the moves they’ve been making lately, I am not pleased.

A while ago, my friends and I got a game night setup. In total there were 4 people so it was a queue for me to bust out the multitap so that we could all share in the multiplayer fun. My multitap worked great since I got it on my 15th birthday, that was until this game night. I noticed power was still going through since everybody was able to enable the analog light on their controllers, but every button we pressed as we tried to get through the menus was not working. I then concluded the multitap was broken and then we finished the night with Guitar Hero.

Tonight I tried to open up the multitap to see if I was able to find a loose connector or something. I felt confident that if a wire was not soldered down properly I would be able to easily fix it since I was able to build a metal DDR pad all by myself.

When I opened up the multitap every little piece of hardware was bunched together that it’d be impossible to pull anything out individually without unsoldering what was already in place. I did not have the patience to tackle this so I will leave it for another time when there is also more light for me to see.

Now, the main reason for this post; I’m not pleased with Sony’s proprietary products. I did not realize this until now, but of all the current generation gaming consoles, the PS2 is the only one with 2 ports! The XBOX, Gamecube…even the Dreamcast all had 4 built-in ports! Sony is being a bully for building the PS2 in that aspect because it forces you to purchase a multitap if you want to play a game with more than two players. Even then, they made their multitap really dorky. The cord that it connects to the first port is only 1.5″ long! I have a feeling mine broke because I may have stored the multitap in a weird position where the cord could have twisted pretty bad causing a wire to disconnect. I think every gamer looking forward to the PS3 can say “Amen” when Sony allowed for built-in wireless controller support, then again, every other next-gen console supports that.

I’m not done there. When Sony came out with the new slimline PS2s, my friend got one to replace his broken one and had to buy another multitap designed for the new slimline PS2s. Why the f**k didn’t Sony allow us to use our older ones? If I were my friend I’d be really frustrated with Sony at that time.

Besides gaming and Sony’s line of consoles, their digital cameras like to support Sony’s Memory Stick over the other standard digital memory formats like: Compact Flash or Secure Digital. I know this was the case back then but if Sony has changed the digital memory support on their newer digital cameras, feel free to correct me.

Even when I’m working at the IT Support Centre, everybody cringes whenever somebody brings in a Sony Vaio laptop. I feel sorry for the co-worker of mine that has to work on it. Why do we cringe? Sony has developed their Vaio laptops with internal hardware that use a software based service/drivers called “Taxi”. Now where this becomes frustrating is that if you do not have the CD that came with the laptop (which is usually the case when someone brings it in), you have to search the internet for these “Taxi drivers” and it’s worse when the reason you’re looking for these drivers is because the internal wireless module was not installed correctly. Maybe it was a spur of the moment but I found it ridiculous that you had to find these drivers on the internet when they were the reason you did not have internet access. Why couldn’t Sony just use some other standard wireless module that had drivers that came with Windows XP?

Of course, I would like to conclude with the biggie, that being Sony’s new data medium: Blu-ray. I think everybody familiar with the whole Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war shares frustration in both mediums because there isn’t going to be one common format like the DVD. I’m not totally familiar with how two formats branched out but Sony has had the reputation for coming out with its own format (like the mini disc) while everybody has been using the standard. I do get the feeling though that Sony was the one to branch out since almost every other production studio besides Sony has hopped on the HD DVD bandwagon. It seems only films produced by Sony are showing up on Blu-ray based on my observations.

Ending on a good note, I am pleased with one of Sony’s new products: the Mylo. Here’s hoping that they’re heading in that direction for the future.

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So for those of you who have the Japanese version that did not come with the English manual, here it is.

If you want to show your thanks, “thank you” comments are appreciated
Feel free to also post a link to this site in forums if you see that other people are looking for this manual.

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Anyways before I go off-topic, I went and searched for some videos of DJ Max Portable to preview what the game is like. Simply, it’s a lot like Beatmania but with a much better library of songs. Then I felt like searching up some crazy DDR videos and low and behold I find one of some crazy dude playing the new 10-footer “max” song on a DDR called “SuperNOVA”.

I was surprised…why haven’t I seen this new DDR in the arcades? It must have been recently released right?!

Nope, news about this new arcade release was made in January of this year (released in early Spring) and I never new one bit about it. Konami is already even going to release the PS2 version this fall and I haven’t touched the arcade version yet which has a song library of over 300 songs and brand new gameplay modes.

Here’s hoping Eau Claire is going get some updates soon besides House of the Dead 4, that arcade is getting ooollllllld.

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Lately I’ve been playing with my PSP more, but it started to get boring with only two games: that Gretzky hockey game that came with the bundle and X-Men Legends II which my friends got me for Christmas. Since I got a credit card I figured maybe I’d try to find a fun game to buy to change it up a bit. I stumbled on Play-Asia.com and found saw Initial D: Street Stage for the PSP as #2 of the top ten sellers for PSP games.

I enjoyed playing Initial D at the arcades but never really got far into it. However I did go crazy with Maximum Tune as you can see with the status of my card below:

I easily have spent over $40 on that game. I beat it once already and am just one race away from beating it a second time (sad, I know), so I figured, maybe I’ll purchase Initial D for the PSP so I could get my drifting fix.

So I headed over to Play-Asia on the 20th and bought the asian version for $40, not a bad deal for an import.

Then today it arrived and I was a little nervous about opening it. Why? I wasn’t totally sure if it would work on a North American PSP. Still I was excited, so I opened the package and there it was. An original Initial D: Street Stage for the PSP in Japanese packaging:

So I put in the UMD into the PSP and booted it up. I was relieved to see that it recognized it:

Got a little scared when I saw this though:

Turns out it was just some warning screen. Darn my lack of Japanese comprehension

Since this game is hardly covered in any video game related site I’ve come across I’ll try to cover some of it with what I’ve went through so far.

• The game is pretty much a port of the arcade version, the gameplay is fun as the original but steering with the analog control on the PSP takes a little while to get used to
• The manual is in English! It’s really great because without it I wouldn’t be able to understand the menus
• In the arcade version there was a points system which you used towards upgrading your car. The PSP version uses a trading card system (refer to the manual on how to tune your car up, I thought that when you received the cards it automatically tuned it up but never realized my car was just as slow).
• Final note: Imported games work on any PSP

I took some snapshots of the intro which I’ve uploaded to Flickr, take a peek to see how great the graphics are:

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