Josh Highland’s Blog

In 1997 I was really getting into computers. I had started to program, and I was graduating high school. Video Games were a huge part of my life. I didn’t play many PC based games, with the exception of DOOM, Duke Nukem, Warcraft, and Warcraft II.

In 1997, Blizzard released StarCraft. My life was forever changed. StarCraft is a real time strategy game with 3 alien races, terians, protos and zerg. I myself was a protos specialist. In 1997, it was the peak of PC gaming winning th game of the year.

It is now 2008, 11 full years after the release of StarCraft. We are in an age where my cell phone has enough power to run games like DOOM. Video games have reached limits that are astounding. I don’t play many games now. I miss playing games sometimes though.

The other day I was hanging out with my good friend Jason Keller and he says “Lets play some StarCraft”, so we did. After nearly 6 hours and many successful campaigns, our wifes came home from shopping, so we had to stop playing, or I imagine we would have been there for another 6 hours. It was so awesome that I want to set up a StarCraft LAN party at my house. If you want to join in, let me know!

I think this goes to show that good design can carry something well past its prime and still be very relevant, making it a classic. I cant wait for StarCraft II though! HOT DAMN!

Last Saturday, Massive mat and I stood inline with a bunch of other geeks to get Nintendo Wiis. I will write a blog post about that, and about how fun the Wii is to play, but for now, im going to bitch about it for a minute…

One of the big reasons that I wanted to get a Wii was the fact that you are able to play EVERY nintendo game format on it. NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and now Wii games! To play the old games you have to join their version of XBox Live, and buy them.

The Wii is so futuristic, that it doesnt have an ethernet port on it, no no, wifi is the way nintendo wii rolls!

I wanted to buy some of these old games and play them, but you have to connect to a wifi connection first. Not a problem, I have a Linksys WRT54GL router upstairs serving out some 802.11g love.

The Wii would see the access point, I would enter the WPA password, then the Wii would think about connecting then spit back and error, "ERROR 52230 contact support.nintendo.com". SUCK!

Ok, so I go to the nintendo site, search forever and then find a place to enter my error code. It returns something stupid about trying changing the channel that the router broadcasts on. Weird, but I try it… no LUCK.

I searched up and down the web seeing people with similar problems to mine. I couldnt figure it out for the life of me. All my other wifi gear worked fine.

I did a little research on what was actually inside the Wii as far as a wireless card. Thats when I found this site,
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=677908&seqNum=2&rl=1 where they actually took a Wii apart.
I found my answer there in the form of a simple statement "The 802.11 card only operates in the 2412-2462GHz range. In 802.11b mode"

802.11b MODE! WTF!

I dont own any 802.11b equipment, only 802.11g. 802.11b is shitty and slow compared to G. NO WHERE IN THE NINTENDO MANUALS OR ON THE NINTENTDO SITE DOES IT SAY THAT IT ONLY OPERATES AT 802.11b.

Why would nintendo do such a stupid thing? B is 5 times slower then G! Who the hell rund 802.11b equipment? My Damn cell phone has 802.11G support in it! Im more pissed that they didnt print it anywhere in the manual. They talk about WEP and WPA, but not the fucking protocol they use for the connection!

So I logged into my router and put it on Mixed (B/G) Mode, and what do you know, the Wii was able to connect to the nintendo server and get the updates that I needed to connect to their store.

So if you are having problems connecting your Wii to some WiFi. make sure that the router is set to mixed mode.

Nintendo, thank you for a great machine. Screw you for putting in a slow wifi card and not telling people more details about it.

I hope someone else can finally get their Wii online after reading this post.

When I was younger I would spend days on end playing video games. When I was 7 got my first Nintendo, it was 1987. I played the hell out of it, I fell in love with Zelda. Years later Super Nintendo came out. I was older and had more patience; again I fell in love with the SNES Zelda game. I like the character development and the epic story. In 1994,
Final Fantasy III was release in the United States. I ate the game up instantly. The game play was turn based fighting, meaning that I tell my characters what to do, attack, use magic, use an item, or defend. The enemy would do the same. We would trade attacks until the fight was over. Characters gained experience from the conflicts and grew over time. The story was epic, something out of a legend. The company that produced the game, Square, knew how to build a great RPG (role playing game).

Fast forward 12 years. I havent seriously played video games in about 7 years. Sure I have dabbled, but what geek doesnt play a game here and there. I know that I am behind the times, but I only have an XBOX (not-360). I decided that I wanted to play a good role playing game, turned based preferably like the final fantasy games. The FF series is only available on play station though. I looked and looked and couldnt find a good game to play, every one i tired just sucked. Frustrated and out of luck, I turned to my good friend the Super Nintendo.

With the magic of computers its possible to turn you computer into a Nintendo, or a Super Nintendo by using an "emulator" and a "ROM", which is a back up of the game. Most SNES games are smaller then a single mp3, and most NES games are smaller then an average Microsoft word document! Sure emulators and ROMS are technically illegal, but there is no other way to play most of these games anymore.

I have a windows media center computer in my living room, so I downloaded my favorite SNES emulator, ZNES, and loaded up a game that I remember loving, but I never beat, Super Mario RPG.

Super Mario RPG was released in 1996, and was an effort from Square (makers of final fantasy) and Nintendo (makers of the Super Mario). The result was a game that felt like Final Fantasy, but had the charm and good feeling of Super Mario World.

The game is 10 years old, but is so fun that it doesnt matter that the graphics are pixilated and the music is MIDI based. Super Mario RPG is proof that you dont need a cd quality sound track, full motion video, forced feed back controls, and 16 button controllers to produce a great game that holds up through time. I think that game developers and companyss have gotten to mixed up in the power of the platforms they are working on, they forget about the roping in the players imagination and selling them on the story while making them want to play to find out what happens next, instead of just throwing eye candy at them at every turn.

I have great hopes for Nintendos next platform the "wii", I hope that they bring back the love and magic that make video games like Final Fantasy and Super Mario RPG feel good to play even if they are relics from a simpler time of gaming.

If you want more information on emulators and roms, leave a comment and I'll get in touch with you.

What older games did you think still hold their own today? Please leave a comment, I'd love to hear what you think.

zombies.............. CHECK
shot guns............ CHECK
blood................ CHECK
fire................. CHECK
Death Metal music.... CHECK

play zombie grinder 6000

post your high scores, mine wasnt that high, i only made it ro the 3rd round

It has been years since I was excited about a video game. Im trying to remember the last time that I couldnt wait to go home and play a game. I think it was back in 1999, with Final Fantasy VIII for Play Station 1. I put 80+ hours into that game building up my character, only to have my memory card crash before I went into the final stage of the game. After investing that much time into something with little more then a sob story, it was hard for me to sit down and play any video game at length, despite the fact that I got into computers and programming because of my love of video games since I was 7, and Nintendo came out. Its been a rare event for me to even pick up a PS2 or XBOX controller.

About 2 weeks ago I realized that one of my favorite movies was being made into a video game, The Warriors. A WARRIORS VIDEO GAME! I watched the trailers on the website, and checked out all of the screen shots. It looked like an amazing game, I couldnt wait to play it… despite the fact that I dont own an xbox or a PS2.

I was going to buy an XBOX, but yesterday my brother stepped in and gave me his! I guess he likes his PS2 better and hasnt played his XBOX in a while. SCORE FOR ME!

Last night I bought a copy of the Warrors at walmart (only because it was open at 10:30 on a Sunday night). Keller came over and played it. I was blown away by it. The game in made by rockstar (makers of grand theft auto series), and follows their winning formula of ultra violent action and language. The game loosely follows the plot of 1979 movie of the same name, and there are various tasks to accomplish in game, but it all boils down to beating the piss out of everyone, stealing things, doing drugs, and tagging. Amazing!

Keller and I both agreed that the fighting in the game is the most realistic that we have seen in a game. You can smash people with just about any thing that you can find. I picked up a bottle, smashed some guy in the face with it… he goes down, the bottle breaks. His friend runs at me, I stab him in the stomach with the broken bottle, just before i stomp in the chest of the first guy. While this is going on, Keller is busy tagging the Warriors log on the wall behind us.

The language in the game is possibly the most violent that I have ever heard also. Things like "Come on bitch, bring it! Im gunna fuck you up". Its pretty rare for a character not to be cussing if he is fighting, and its pretty rare for there is to be no fighting going on.

I love this game, I think its great and super fun to play. I do think that this isnt a kids game at all though. I think that its the first time that I agree with a mature label on a game, but I really dont agree with people who say that games like this will make kids tend to be violent.

All I know is that I wont want to "Come out to playyyya" because Im going to be inside playing The Warriors on my new, used XBOX.

After I finish this game, Im going to hack the crap out of the XBOX. Its going to be fun.