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Yahoo News is reporting that Sony’s Universal Media Disc (UMD) movies are hurting, bad!  While I don’t own a PSP, and have no immediate plans to buy one but you never know, I have always found the device to be “techno savy” with its sharp display and variety of games.  However I could never see how people would actually buy movies for the PSP.  I’ve been to some stores where the price for a UMD movie was only 5 bucks less than the price of a DVD.  On the flip side I’ve seen some UMD movies 5-10 bucks more than the DVD!  Seroiously, who pays for roughly full price for a mini DVD with less video/audio quality and no special features just to watch it on a 4″ screen?!   It’s rediculous.  So long UMD, nobody will miss you.

I woke up today thinking to myself, “Today is going to be a good day.”  I hit no traffic despite the weather on the way to work.  Had a good day at work.  Even missed all the rush hour traffic on the way home.  Let my dogs out of the garage (weather again)  and grab some grub.  “Kingdom Hearts II here I come” is what I said to myself next.  What do you mean it doesn’t get released until tomorrow?  The release date is today?!  Every single store that I went to gave me the same reply.  “That’s what the internet says, but the official release date is tomorrow.”  Let me get this straight.  The official release date on the KHII website is March 28.  Every source I ‘ve seen online says that the game is released on the 28th.  But for some reason I, and the everyone else, have to wait until the 29th….  WTF!  Someone please explain that to me.

The PS3 will be an HD Blue-Ray home media center giant complete with a hard drive and wireless capabilities and be ready for Christmas of 2005
The PS3 will not have a hard drive when released.
The PS3 will not have wireless capabilities when released and it will cost around $800 and will not be coming out in Christmas of 2005.
The PS3 will include wireless capabilities.
The PS3 will not have wireless capabilities excpet through an add on and the console will cost around $500 and won’t come out until spring 2006.
The PS3…. you get the point.

The Reuters, along with a lot of other sources, is reporting that once again Sony  might be delaying the release of the PS3 and  who knows what they’ll be cutting out and how much it will cost this time.

I’m a Mega Man holic.  It’s true.  I’ve been playing Mega Man since the game first came out and I love the series.  When Mega Man X came out on the Super Nintendo I fell in love.  It seems that Capcom has found yet another way to intise me, Mega Man X Collection.  That’s right, Mega Man X thru Mega Man X6 and Mega Man Battle and Chase (a racing game never released in the USA).  I haven’t gotten to play the game(s) yet but you can make a “sure fire” bet that I’ll be playing it tonight :)

Tonight I bought FEAR, a new FPS game that I’ve been checking out. The game is graphic intensive and then it’s got great graphics.  Lets just say that it’s rated M for a reason.  I installed the game, all 5 CDs, and started it up only to see the Visual Studios .NET 2005 Just-In-Time Debugger come up and say that FEAR caused an error.  Perplexed I checked my running services, made sure that I didn’t do anything in error and tried it again.  Wham!  Debugger again!  So then I tried uninstalling VS2005 from my box.  I figured I have a gig of RAM; I’ll put VS2005 on a VPC and call it a day.  After a successful uninstall I start FEAR again just to see that the Debugger was still there!

Visual Studio Just-In-Time Debugger
An unhandled win32 exception occurred in FEAR.exe [####].  Just-In-Time debugging this exception failed with the following erro: No installed debugger has Just-In-Time debugging enabled. In Visual Studio, Just-In-Time debugging can be enabled form Tools/Options/Debugging/Just-In-Time.

Check the documentation index for ‘Just-in-time debugging,

Here’s my first question.  If I’ve uninstalled Visual Studios, why is the debugger still on?  Would it not make sense for the uninstaller to check to see if I have another debugger with Just-In-Time debugging and if I don’t disable the feature?  Silly me, too much common sense I guess.  So after Googling the problem some people suggested modifying the registry and setting this value to that value and this that and the other thing.  Start FEAR back up and same thing.  After a grueling 20 minutes trying to fix the problem I finally did the only thing that makes sense.  Check for updates.  Sure enough there were two patches for FEAR.  I installed both of them and at the same time completely removed all instances of the .NET Framework from my machine.  Started FEAR and finally, it worked!  Since I did two steps in the last attempt, patches and removing the .NET Framework, I can’t exactly say what was problem.  Obviously there was something wrong with the “out of the box” FEAR but at the same time there was something wrong with the JIT Debugger.

So far the game has been awesome.  Great visuals, game play, and thus far the story is catching.  The feature that stands out the most is “slow-mo”.  Your character has super human reflexes and by pressing the right key you can slow the game down for a few seconds.  This gives you a cool Matrix’ish feel with ripple effects coming from the bullets, shells slowly flying out from your gun, so on and so on.  Aside from slow-mo, I love the voices in the game when you attack the enemies.  “Oh shit!  Incoming.  Incoming!”  It’s the small things like that that make the game seem more realistic and fun.  Supposedly the AI is top notch in this game truly simulating a squad environment however I haven’t gotten that far yet having only played for a little while.  I will say that the enemy AI is impressive.  So far I’ve been tag teamed three times.  I’d go after one guy and as soon as the shooting starts two more guys come at me in cover formation while another one or two come in and try to flank me.  Go to the FEAR website for more info on the game.

I read an interesting article on Slashdot that I thought I’d share. It seems that the Xbox 360 is already plagued with problems not even 24 hours after its release! You’ll always have some problems after you release a new system but this takes the cake.  Good luck Microsoft ;)

If you haven’t been keeping up in the gaming news you probably don’t know much about Jack Thompson. Jack Thompson is a big-shot lawyer who is suing Rockstar Games, creators of the Grand Theft Auto series, for making a “Cop killing video simulation.” While I personally don’t play any of the Grand Theft Auto games, I do know something about them.  They’re rated M for MATURE!!!!  So, if a kid younger than 17 gets the game, goes and shoots 2 cops, what gives him the right to blame the video game makers?  He should never have had the game in the first place!  Jack Thompson decided that this would make a great case so he’s suing the game makers.  It turns out that due to his actions, he got tossed out of court.  Serves you right Jack!  If you’re looking to make a name for yourself and keep what’s left of your public image, sue the mother/father/who ever bought the kid the game!

I just finished reading this article on Slashdot and it amazes me how childish some people can be. Jack Thompson is the lawyer who is sueing Rock Star Games (GTA everyone) for making a “cop killing training simulator responsible for the murder of a pair of cops.”  While the GTA series is indeed very graphic and questionable, I question Jack’s logic in this case.  Yes, I know that he’s a lawyer trying to make his name known and make millions of dollars, but come on.  Sue the game maker for making a violent game with a rated M for mature ERSB label on it?!  Nevermind the fact that the kid who killed the cops was even old enough to by the game.  Why isn’t someone sueing the person who gave him the game?!  Read the article, decide for yourself.

As you may or may not know FFVIIAC was leaked on the web last weekend. I managed to download it and it is awesome. The movie is in Japanese and the only subtitles are also Japanese but I still loved it. If you liked FFVII and are a fan of action movies this is a must buy. I won’t go into any details because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but believe me, you’ll love it.

I have just successfully fixed my old PS2! You might recall from my earlier blogs that I had a PS2 that crapped out on me. I kept getting the infamous Disc Read Error that plagued the first wave of PS2s. I went out and bought a new one and have been using it since. I actually got a good deal for the new one. $150 for the console, network adapter, and a free game that I haven’t played yet. Anyhow, I never trashed the old one so for a while I was contemplating on what to do with it. Well I fixed it and now have a second PS2 and no clue what to do with it. Oh well!