Random Video Game Stuffs

When is an off day from work not really an off day? When mommy is sick and daddy has to pretend to take mommy’s place. And I say “pretend” in the nicest sort of way; I am a pretty poor mom, so kudos to Tonya for doing such a good job of the mommy thing.

Falcons vs. Eagles
OK, nothing to do with video games unless I play this one in Madden 2005 this week. Anyway, I expect this week’s game to be much hard than the Rams game last Saturday, in fact, I expect the Eagles defense to be downright scary vs. Vick. My biggest fear is that the Eagles will just watch some Tampa Bay game tapes from the last couple of years and more or less neutralize Vick.

The early line is Eagles -4.5. Enough worrying about that for now; will write more later in the week.

Tempest X3
Much like Xevious 3D/G+ (see post from last night), Tempest X3 is an updated shooter based on a classic game. In this case, Tempest X3 for the PlayStation pays homage to the Atari classic Tempest. Gamers paying attention to their video game history will best remember Tempest X3 as an updated version of the cult classic Tempest 2000, which was pretty much the only decent game released for the Atari Jaguar. Did that system bomb or what?

When Tempest X3 was released way back in 1996, the game was not very well received, despite being a very good upgrade of the classic Tempest. It is one of those things where gamers were expecting more from the PSX other than a graphically version of a classic title. I expect that Tempest X3 would have done much better if it was released as part of one of the Atari compilation games as an “extra” but no one asked me.

Tempest X3 screams for a knob/paddle controller since it does not have analog support. Even so, the game plays well enough with the standard d-pad, but this sort of game was never intended for a traditional d-pad. The graphics are nice, but pretty much what was already done one the Jaguar. The game’s soundtrack is very good, and the gameplay is pretty much classic Tempest. If you have played Tempest, Tempest X3 is really just the same thing with updated graphics, and a nice soundtrack.

With all that said, is Tempest X3 worth keeping, which is the reason I breaking out some of these older games, or should Tempest X3 be sold? It is a tough call. I have not touched the game in years, so it is just collecting the mythical dust bunnies. Looking at my collection of PSX games, I am really kicking myself because I should have sold Tempest X3 and a whole host of others when they had some value. Right now it looks like I can get $7-10 bucks for the game. I may just hang onto it for a while since it is listed as “rare” in some listings. Hopefully 6-12 months from now someone will really *need* a mint condition copy of Tempest X3. Funny how that works; if the game was really all that rare then it would be worth more than $10 duckets.

Speaking of eBay
I was not getting enough time with NBA Live 2005, so I put it up for sale of eBay. This is really not a damning indictment of the game, but rather it just reflects a lack of time for a basketball game right now. I figured that I better sale it now since the MSRP was already down to $29.99. I pulled in $19.52 for it, which was really nice considering that Wal-Mart has it on sale for $24.99 this week.

Winning Eleven 7 was another game that I decided to sale because I wanted to get some value for it before Winning Eleven 8 is released in 2-3 weeks. I hope WE8 is just as good or better than WE7 or this gamer is going to be mightily disappointed. I can see it now: WE7 goes up in price and becomes “rare” because WE8 is broken. I cleared a fantastic $31.50 for WE7, so I am going to get WE8 for $8.50. Fantastic!

Train Jacking
Spoiler alert; this is the last part of this blog entry, and it deals with GTA:SA. I suggest reading no further if you do not like spoilers. The title sub-title probably gives it away, but so it goes.

Last night I was cruising around the city and finally noticed a train running along the tracks. I have driven many a times on the track, but have never seen a train running until last night. Naturally I figured I would do something interesting like jack a car and place it in front of the train. I did not get the intended boom, so I decided to keep running along the side of the train. At a train station it finally slowed down, and I figured what the heck, “Why not jack the train?”

Holy crap, it actually worked. So I drove a train in GTA:SA, which may be old news to many, but I rarely if ever read strategy guides or look for cheats and spoilers – that is a story for another day.

I love finding little things like this on my own, and GTA:SA has a ton of these hidden elements. This is one reason it takes me so long to finish games like GTA titles and Final Fantasy titles – I just like to keep on digging to see if I can find all the dirty little secrets.

Anyway, I am really digging GTA:SA it is extremely deep, allows for a ton of creativity, is well-balanced, and has tons and tons of fun things to uncover.

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