E-Amusement Pass Obtained!

Oww, talk about accidental collision with someone like that but never mind. It is probably a minor mistake and I already apologized all along for that. But that aside, I managed to get the E-Amusement Pass for $6 from Bugis Virtual Land arcade which is by far the greatest arcade in Singapore. It was really hard to find where the hell was it in the first place until I found out that I was supposed to get to the area with the fountain.

Unfortunately, I made a huge mistake upon myself into concluding that I'm not anything good at Beatmania games that I kept on failing miserably when playing Tricoro like that. A rhythm game like that is seriously hard to start off and the training with the Beatmania IIDX simulators is not enough for me. It is probably due to the lack of the actual controller that mimics the arcade experience but having to use the keys and the turntable at the same time is probably more difficult for me. Maybe I should go back to Jubeat series as I can pass the songs in Advanced difficulty and besides, that series is easy to start off similar to Sega rhythm games today. What a disgrace the way I played Beatmania IIDX. Perhaps I should start off in Normal difficulty to get used to the controls.

Darius Burst obtained!

OK, I still have yet to buy other games for my Xbox 360 console after buying this and holy cow, the graphics on the PSP version are somewhat inferior compared to the arcade and IOS versions. Sure, the PSP is like the portable Playstation 2 in which the graphics will never be that smooth and especially for the gradient shadings everywhere. Talk about loss of gradient shadings everywhere in this game for the PSP but at least, it may be a nice addition to your shmup collection. However, if you're going for the consumer HD version, you can go for the IOS version which has additional features that are exclusive to it and it has certain stuffs taken from the arcade version. Hell, if there's an Iphone 5 and Ipad 3 support for Darius Burst, the graphics will be even sharper than ever but even then, there will still be pixel loss compared to the arcade version.
And before you start this game for the first time on your PSP, you're supposed to enable the Auto-Save and make sure that the Save File is made and stored in your memory card. Somehow, I made a mistake by accidentally pressing the other button that declined the first question about the Auto-Save thing. Sure, there would be two questions the first time you start the game but then, all these texts are in Japanese to be honest. Perhaps, I shouldn't be cocky enough to start the game like that after obtaining it.
It's a shame that the intro video is not used in the PSP and IOS versions but rather the ARCADE VERSION? What the hell? The game on the PSP is like less than 100MB and it can somewhat remind you of the game size of Ikaruga when the whole disc is compressed.
Lastly, I still have to figure out on how to unleash the more powerful burst laser beam which requires the collision with the enemy burst laser beam. It may be risky but it is how the players play. Also, the IOS version has the nice retina display feel to it as if the HD graphics are taken from the arcade version that you can buy it easily instead. For the PSP version, you can buy it from the retail store or the PSN store. I bought it from the PSN store today to be played on my Playstation Vita.

Groove Coaster Arcade

Originally an IOS game where you tap anywhere on the screen to the beat provided that you’re reaching those glowing notes. It may be like Audiosurf where you’re riding through the track but actually, you’re flying through the course of the song and you’re approaching those glowing notes. There are also hidden notes known as the Ad-Lib and you can’t see them unless you use the Ad-Lib item to turn them visible. The Ad-Lib notes are bonus notes and if you’re familiar with Rhythm games a lot, you can try to do the Ad-Lib sort of thing.

Control-wise, it is easy. You tap anywhere on the screen when you’re approaching the notes so think of this as Taiko No Tatsujin game but on the ride. For the arcade version, get the controller in which we have no idea what it is until the game is location tested sometime later this month.

LNY Day 4 Result

Damn, the speaker from ATank I was talking about could not be found in the shopping complexes in Tampines. Maybe, that speaker must be kind of too fragile but it can be a useful thing when playing music. Of course, that wasn’t the first time I saw that speaker anyway because the first time I saw this would be from the IT Show I visited. This speaker from ATank splashes up the water whenever you play the music provided that you have hooked it up to the respective devices. You get the Male to Male Audio cable which is the one I’m not even kidding about and the USB cable which is too simple to explain. With that cable, you can hook it up to two devices as long as you have hooked up correctly to the respective jacks of whichever devices you’re using.

Speaking of that audio cable, if you want the computer to get the sound coming from another device in addition to its own, you’re supposed to connect one end of that cable to the microphone jack of the computer and the other end to the headphone jack of whichever device you want. This cable is what that speaker comes with but too bad it was nowhere to be found in the shopping complexes as this is what I wanted to buy yesterday.

LNY Day 3

Again, this one involves the external visit unlike the second day in which the whole celebration took place inside my home for LNY. I recently finished the remix of December Breeze from Reflec Beat Colette today after starting the work on it yesterday. However, right after finishing the remix of December Breeze, I started on London Evolved which everyone knows it as a DDR song. After the visit to my fourth aunt’s home, I returned back home with the old laptop computer that belonged to my fourth uncle. From what I saw from the system specifications, it seemed that the RAM is only 1GB and the computer’s running Windows Vista Home Premium. This combination made it really unstable but of course, I know the freaking 360 products which are in Chinese entirely. They range from computer maintenance tools, anti-virus to web browsing and so on.

Speaking of London Evolved, it recently made the appearance on Reflec Beat Colette but I’m sure that the Encore Extra Stage song is obviously Tohoku Evolved. It may be harder than London Evolved but the meaning of Tohoku Evolved is about the March 11 disaster aftermath in which the song is arranged for praying for Japan’s national recovery.

Next day may involve looking for the fountain speaker thing by ATake which surprisingly comes with the Male To Male Audio Cable that allows you to get direct audio from two devices at the same time. Last time, I confused the shit out of the staff working at some shop as I was trying to look for that cable until I realized that that speaker from ATake finally had that cable but yesterday, I finally figured out with another online research on Google about getting the computer to directly receive audio from PS Vita console and things worked out correctly after following the instructions. All you have to do is to connect one end of that cable to the Microphone jack of the computer and the other end to the Headphone jack of whatever mobile device you want. You can optionally hook in the earpiece/headphone cable to the Headphone jack of the computer to see if you’re hearing some sound from the mobile device. When I did that yesterday, I finally hooked things up correctly. I could hear the sound coming from my computer and the PS Vita simultaneously. I guess that it can be useful for my video capturing of mobile devices in the future with that cable hooked in like anytime I want. Note that the video capturing is still done with the webcam though.

LNY Day 1

Well, this is about what I did yesterday in personal video gaming work. I started off with the remix of Prana from Jubeat Saucer while at my big aunt’s home. Surprisingly, there was an old desktop computer that was powered by Pentium 4 HT processor and that looked like it was quite old and slow compared to the computers today. However, I don’t know if this is true or not as I have no rights to know the actual system specifications. Sure, you can replace the motherboard with another one for the desktop computer but for the outside case, people may claim that the desktop computer is still old or slow even though the newer motherboard is inside, revealing the better system specifications than the ones that came with that desktop computer. During the visit, the nieces were already there playing a bunch of casual games on the mobile devices. While working on the remix with the computer offline completely, I was distracted by them like they were having me to play those casual games. Games I never played before were Subway Surfers and Temple Run 2. Unbelievably, I scored a million in Temple Run 2 on one of my nieces’ Ipad. Perhaps, the device was big enough to do the swiping but having to tilt it might be challenging.

Next, I visited the home of another aunt of mine at Tampines where I continued my work there and fortunately, there was a power strip with empty slots for charging my laptop. However, it seemed that one of my nieces was completely clueless in using my Playstation Vita and of course, since it was a visit, all the gadgets of mine were offline so some games could be played there. Even worse was that he did something funny by taking photos with my Playstation Vita but nobody else knew that that console has various smartphone like features.

Back home, I managed to finish the work in one day before moving on to another song to arrange. The next song as of today will be December Breeze from Reflec Beat Colette, which is currently being progressed.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Obtained

Now that we had entered the good future, there would be a good opportunity for me to buy this game. Basically, it is the sequel to Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing which I bought on the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even make past the further courses as they may be seriously hard and I don’t know if I can make it through the entire sequel as well.

For the motion control for this game, I was like, ‘Wow, that is unstable like I don’t know how to control this’, that I decided to stick back to the normal controls. Glad to see this feature added in the game because 3DS and PS Vita have the ability to have true motion controls for racing games. And for the graphics, what the hell had happened to the effects in this version? I may expect to see some interesting explosive effects when explosive weapons explode upon contact to whichever racer but I don’t think I have seen something like that on the PS Vita version. Maybe the graphics are not as perfect as the home console version but certain PS Vita games can look quite close to the PS3 cousins.

As you already know from the second paragraph, I bought the PS Vita version instead of the Xbox 360 version because the PS Vita version is less expensive than the home console version and it costs like $40+ compared to the Xbox 360 version which is $10+ more expensive. For the game soundtrack, I had already found one downside of it when playing one of the tracks that had Sonic CD opening played. What the hell is up with this rendition? I could hear the numbers being yelled on but they were like on crack compared to the original version. Sonic CD Enhanced version has the vocals removed for the Opening and Ending due to copyright issues but for this, I’m kind of speechless. Note that the whole game was played without the earpiece hooked on to my console and besides, I don’t even know what the entire soundtrack is like. I still have yet to know what the entire soundtrack is like on YouTube. For the flying part, it takes me time to get used to as you’re tilting your vehicle in every direction while moving forward with the acceleration. The boosts can help you know where to go so that there’s no reason for you to be lost.

Unfortunately, at the time I blogged this, I already discovered that Samurai & Dragons Asian version was already out and started playing that straight away. I don’t know if I may be making major progress in this game in addition to other PS Vita games I haven’t finished. Certain famous characters including the non-Sega one have made famous cameo appearances in Samurai & Dragons but the game and the PV are the available ones I could see in the PS Store. Maybe those characters are not available in the Asian version or something.