I wanted to play Final Fantasy 4 DS, so I went to dig my DS out of my messenger bag. I hadn’t plugged it in for awhile and was probably going to be low on battery power so I reached in to grab the USB charger cable (and apparently the ONLY means of charging it since some dumbass bulldog chewed up my normal charger cable, grr) only for it to snag on something and… uh… said charger cable snapped off at the base. This DS isn’t getting charged, and I can’t get my FF4DS fix. Dammit!

I could have just… ordered a replacement charger cable (or better yet, just loot a 3DS now since there are actually games I want for it– Super Mario 3D Land looks awesome despite its complete and UTTER LACK OF ME YOSHI, but thankfully there is also Mario Kart 7 dropping next month) but I was having a bad night and needed something to drag me back into my happy place. Then I remembered that there was a PSP port of FF4. Sure, it was 2D and lacking in the awesome voice acting but it would do for now, and as a FF4 nerd I was going to have to loot it eventually, so off to the PSN store to loot me some FF4.

It follows the GBA path (as in, bonus dungeons and ability to change your party for the endgame and way easier than the OMG difficulty that the DS version got ramped up to). I was expecting it to be a straight port of the GBA version graphics-wise… oh, how wrong I was. For being yet another 2D iteration of FF4 and with one exception I will address, holy chocobo crap on a stick this takes the prize for “ooh, purdy.” Dude, the Mist Dragon EFFING SPARKLES IN BATTLE. SMOOTHLY. The menu portraits are not crap! Yes!

Just… one teeny problem here, though: the field sprites for the characters look like ASS. It’s, like, yes they are super-detailed and actually make some attempt to be faithful to the original concept art, but at the same time they look like some POS sprite sets out of one of those RPG Makers. This sucks! (I get the feeling that the task of the field sprites got shoveled onto a non-artist, because there is no excuse for them to look this bad.) But, fwegh, if the rest of the game looks so damned awesome, I guess I’ll just have to put up with it.

Other, more trivial but still cool things: Yay for being able to switch between using the original SNES music (Uematsu) or the rearranged DS music (Nakano).

The only other complaint stems from my being a VA nerd. Why, Square, why? Why couldn’t you have either transplanted the voice acting from the DS version and replace the 3D cutscenes with illustrated stills by the dood you recruited to do those kickass menu portraits, and then add onto that with all the extra space you have available? (FF4 PSP only eats up 750-something MB, barely half of the theoretical limit of a PSP UMD) Yeah, I know, tweaks in the scripting and such but… boooo. The voice overs was what cemented (and still does) the DS version as my ultimate favorite, and to have transplanted that into the PSP version would have put it at a very close 2nd place. Very, VERY close 2nd. Maybe even tying for first, even though I love the FFT-like character designs for the DS version. :P

And yes, there is still some spoony bard. If you think Square would EVER ditch the Spoony Bard line…

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This week in Beavis and Butthead… OMG CORNHOLIOOOOO. You would think that, with Cornholio footage being the first to be leaked, we’d have been all “ho hum, we saw the Comic Con video already but there is sooo much more to it than the teaser said. And please tell me I wasn’t the only one who double Picard-brand facepalmed at the end. WTF YOU GUYS. You just walked away from the ultimate cult! You turned down the best ticket to scoring! BOO THESE GUYS! (On the flipside, Stewart finally has something good happen to him.)

We got two new episodes this week, actually. “Drones” was okay, though I’m not sure how the dudes could pull Grand Theft Auto out of something that looks more like a flight sim. :P

Also, I don’t care too much for the “snarking on Jersey Shore” bits, but you have to admit that Butthead’s pseudo-Italian accent is pretty damned funny. It’s not quite Craig Ferguson-brand but it’s still lulzy.

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I have a love-hate thing with Subway. 99% of the time, the store is invisible to my food radar because I don’t care for subs, but once in a blue moon they roll out some variant of a chicken parmesan sammich and it’s instant HOLY CRAP DO WANT. Right now they have a chicken parmesan melt as part of their $5 footlong monthly highlights, and I’m just… “do want, yesterday.”

Why can’t Subway keep chicken parmesan as a permanent menu item? I would give those doods so much of my money if they did that. :(

Hi, I’m Yoshi and I like chicken parmesan, be it in sammich form or with spaghetti.

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I know November is supposed to be “Lazrigees Academy” but I’m just not feeling it. I should have done it in September when it would have been topical but buhuhuh bromides came up and yaaaarrrr and things got all messed up. Also I need to do revised Avatar designs for Blastoise and Dinah, the latter of which I never got around to doing even though she became a MacBook last year!

But I know some doods really want to see Aries and Denlan done up to resemble Bulk and Skull (if those two were to appear in an anime high school AU). So… I make no promises, but time permitting after Blastoise and Dinah’s design upgrades… >_>;

Plenty of fodder to draw upon for Snowschemes, though. Oh my word, so many things to play with there. I kinda want to sneak in an Angry Birds reference, too… :D

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And with that, I shove off to play FF4 PSP. No thanks to LifeForce, I will also have bad images of Cagnazzo dropping Cornholio lines. “I need MP for my Tsunami-hole!”

So, hi. Both because Boss is singing its praises in guild chat and because of voice actor nerdery (and Jessie Monster prodding me over Twitter), I looted the first Mass Effect and slapped it on Blastoise. I was going to hold off until I finished at least the capture part of my .hack//REPLAY youtube project but… you know what they say about curiosity. I’m a few hours into it as of this posting.

Yes, this is another instance of Yoshi being stupidly late to the party. Are we surprised? Hell no!

Anyway… I like it. It’s not something I’d have ordinarily picked up sight-unseen (in fact, I vaguely recall there being a bit of drama about the DRM when it came out, which might have turned me off at first), but this is one of those games where you stick your finger in and something happens and you’re all “I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your magazine.” It makes me think of… a smattering of things, really: a bit of Metal Gear, Star Trek, Metroid and dare I say it, *PlanetSide.* I am particularly amused by how directing the flow of conversation is handled; it’s very… subtle and natural. I dunno.

And, ya know what? Despite all the promo videos and such that pimp out dude!Shepard, everything I’ve seen so far ingame suggests that the story was meant to play out with lady!Shepard. :P While I’m not one of those hardcore feminist gamers, I will admit it’s kind of awesome to play a female protagonist who looks like she could be over-30. (Seriously, look at most games that let you customize your avatar… I am extremely hard-pressed to find one that lets you make anything close to “middle-aged woman,” yet you can still make an old guy.) I think my only complaint about the character editor was the lack of anything resembling long hair, though given that you’re often in full body armor, it wouldn’t have been practical on a graphics level anyway.

Oh yeah, VA nerdery. No shortage of that here. Play as lady!Shepard and… oh hi, Jennifer Hale (as in, Sheena and Samus to name a couple). :D! And, of course, Liara = Ali Hillis (sup, Lightning!*). There are some others in here, but those two are the first to spring to mind. :D

* You want to see something really trippy and meta-y, especially if you like FF4/13 and read voice actor Twitter in character? Watch her tweet at Mr. Liam and Mr. Yuri. One of these days I’m going to crack and draw Lightning flirting with Kain and Cecil over beer and it will be AWESOME. XD

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Semi-related: Blastoise’s rebuild is happening in November, if he can hold together that long. For one thing, his first incarnation was “born” in early November. I built Yggdrasil in November, too (2 years ago)… and last year, I got Dinah the MacBook the week of Thanksgiving. So, may as well do the rebuild then, ya know? :P Of course, I imagine the holiday sales for parts will likely be starting up, too, so that helps in the “keep things under $700 if possible, with $1000 as a hard limit” department.

I finished it. I put off eating most of my dinner (tasty Jack in the Box) until I finished coloring this and… yeah. Ever had some weird brainworm of a VA reference/crossover scene just… embed itself in your head and not let go? That’s what happened here.

And it wasn’t until I was nearly done coloring Luke that I realized there was something that could have been even funnier– Cecil vs. Snow, each dual-wielding puppets (Luke/Alex and Yuri/Ghaleon), which would have REALLY been a three-way clusterfwegh. I’m such a voice actor nerd. :D

For the rest of you, who are all “WTF is going on here?” This is the worst voice actor reference/crossover gag Ramen ever. :D Tales of the Abyss‘ Luke with a puppet of Lunar‘s Alex (and both are voiced by Yuri Lowenthal) up against Tales of Vesperia‘s Yuri with a puppet of Lunar‘s Ghaleon (both voiced by Troy Baker). Why yes, I’m quite aware that all the fans of the original Lunar VAs are now going to demand my head because HOW DARE I acknowledge the recasting for the PSP version, and that only a few people will get this, and I don’t care. ^_^

NEXT~!

As if Microsoft buying Skype isn’t already silly enough, now we have a new video chat service, “AV for AIM.” Despite what the name says, you don’t even need to have an AIM account or anything. Huh. It can go to up to 4 users, where Skype is capped at 2 before it starts charging, so this might be something to consider for upcoming shenanigans. :P As it stands, it kinda looks like something out of Tales’ skit interface. Hah!

I feel I need to drag back out an old video chat wishlist item I’ve been sitting on forever and could very well be feasible now: Someone needs to rig a Metal Gear-like Codec skin for this! I don’t care what flavor (well, all Codec variants would be ideal… I’m partial to the Codec used in MGS2). It’s just a matter of repositioning the video windows, tossing a filter on ‘em and the text chat would go underneath.

Painter 12 appears to indeed be maximum no-suck. I’ll just, uh, wait for deviantArt to spam my PM inbox with promo codes and what-have-you for Painter 12, because we like not having to pay full price. Among the new stuff that’s been added, Kaleidoscope Mode looks like it’ll be stupid amounts of fun– could be useful for making magic glyphs and such! PNG support is also yay (it actually appeared in 11, but, again, 11 sucked so much I ended up going back to 10).

I should transfer to Blastoise to ramen it up, but this big orange troll over here insists I pet him right now or else he will sit on me. :P

As a followup to the other Angry Birds post… it’s now on the new Mac App Store (as in, the one for OS X users, not iOS). Naturally, it’s been looted and plopped on Dinah, so even ninjas can pop the greedy pigs, too. Only the Wii/DS and Xbox have yet to been invaded by killer birds, but I imagine that will happen soon enough.

I’m packing the PC, PSP minis and now the Mac versions in addition to the iPod Touch. Sadly, there is no way to sync your progress between versions, so put such a notion out of your mind right now.

PC version is a wee bit unstable at the moment, though its crashiness can be mitigated greatly if you update your video drivers if you’re behind. Also, yes you can force windowed version by playing with its config.lua file in the program directory.

PSP minis, despite the name, can also be played on the PS3 if you so wish. I’ve yet to do that, opting instead to play on my PSP-3000. It autosaves right before you get your score, which is slightly annoying but tolerable. I don’t know if you see the same autosave screen when run on the PS3.

Mac version handles almost exactly the same as the PC version, as far as the whole “click and drag to shoot” thing goes. That said, if you’re playing on a MacBook with the touchpad, it’s just like playing on the iOS. Maybe it’s me, but the Mac version looks the best of the three… I wonder if its originating from the iOS (which, after all, is a fun size version of OS X) has anything to do with it…?

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Also with the arrival of the Mac App Store? A possible, albeit temporary replacement for Painter. Autodesk’s Sketchbook apps aren’t new– they’ve been on Windows for awhile, and also the iOS, but with the opening of the App Store they’ve rolled out a Mac version, and in two flavors. There’s the free Sketchbook Express, and, for now, the $30 Pro version. While I am loathe to use anything other than Painter for my art posts (ew, Photoshop), it would be nice to have something to tide Dinah over until Painter 12 hits. I’ll play around with the Express version for now and loot the Pro version if I think it’ll be a nice fit.

I’ve had the iPod Touch version, which is awkward because of its size. (Really, drawing apps for the iOS are much better suited for the iPad, you have more space to work with in there.) But to run Sketchbook on something laptop-sized might be a much better experience.