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Aug 4, 2006 - 01:18 PM |
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What I've been up to - a picture entry |
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Well, it's been a while since I last updated. So we went to Tampere last Monday with my parents and my aunt. Ate out, visited a few places, then drove to Turku and stayed the night in a hotel. In the morning, after breakfast, I visited a local game store there and found myself a copy of PAL Bangai-O, something I didn't even know existed. It wasn't too pricey either, so I'm happy with my purchase.
They had a copy of Ikaruga too, I'd never seen one up close like that. Too expensive for such a bad condition second hand copy, but it was still cool seeing it there. A nice collection of Saturn games too, but I had all of the ones worth buying there aside for King of Fighters 94, with 4MB RAM cart. Didn't buy it though.
So then a few hours later it was time to turn in our room keys. We left Turku, visited a few museums and sights on the way and eventually got home in the evening. I spent most of the trip playing Link's Awakening in the backseat and it was completely awesome. I have the Face Key now, so I should be heading to the next temple, as soon as I try to look for that mermaid's necklace some more. Awesome game, either way <3
As for the rest, after I got paid, I went and bought a few movies. Both happened to be french, actually.
Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine and H.G. Clouzot's classic Le Salaire de la Peur (Wages of Fear), which I've always wanted to see. I've only watched La Haine so far, and it was great. Very harsh, but a great movie. Besides the message about violence and the cycle of hatred, the extremely long, single shot sequences and use of music also impressed me greatly.
Also, I got this from my work a few days before it ended.
I had mentioned I always wanted to buy the JogCon pack, but ended up buying just the game, so Timo later walked up to my desk and dropped two packs down and told me to try them out, they'd just been lying around the office for ages. Both controllers worked, but I picked this one as it had an unopened copy of the game 
I'm still not used to using the dial, but it's still a hilarious controller and now I own one.
I was hoping they'd had a G-Con45 somewhere around, but unfortunately none ;_;
As for other games, I bought Stolen from Kishin and I'm enjoying it so far. The AI might be pretty broken and the combat is terrible, but it doesn't bother me so much since you're supposed to stay hidden in the first place. Besides, Anya sure is lovely.
I've also gone to see a few movies after a long hiatus. Went to see Superman Returns and Silent Hill with Boo, plus Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Hoodwinked on my own.
Silent Hill's soundscape and visual artistry was pretty spot on and largely successful, but the story did too many things wrong and the ending was completely awful. Silent Hill had never been about visible gore, and the removal of any sign of the sickness were pretty disappointing. Not to mention it was so bizarre how the movie felt the need to explain the plot in detail to the viewer, yet failed to reason the purpose of pyramid head in any way. What was he doing there? Why was he there?
He made sense in Silent Hill 2's story, since you could see him as some kind of manifestation of James' guilt, but since the movie took only parts of its plot from Silent Hill 1 (wronged, vengeful child, Alessa, Dahlia, school, cult, though they bothed that up as well) and then made up the rest, he had no purpose there other than try to kill the protagonist, considering they tried to explain everything else =/
The whole witchhunt part of the storyline was also hugely disappointing, and was almost as bad as replacing the hellspawn in Doom with genetic experiments. They should have just went with Silent Hill 2's storyline, with Sean Bean as James. The game's story works so well as standalone, there's a journey, there's substance beyond the basic plot and dialogue, and pyramid head actually makes some sense.
Anyway, Superman Returns was fun, Dead Man's Chest was fun, Hoodwinked was funnier than I expected. Granny and the lumberjack were terribly unfunny characters, but the rest were terrific. I especially loved the banjo-playing goat who could only speak in song.
Oh, and when I went to see Hoodwinked, they showed a trailer of Millenium Actress before it =o The trailer was in english, with an overdone, boisterous hollywood trailer guy announcer, but no character dialogue was heard, so I can't tell if they're releasing a dub or a subbed version, but I think it's still kinda cool they're apparently releasing the film here outta nowhere.
Tomorrow is IHANK time again, I'm going to show EDF2
Oh and since I've been meaning to do this for Spatula for ages, here's my anime DVD collection at last. I don't remember what I said earlier, but I think my ratio of bought/downloaded anime is around 15%/85%
Left to right: Captain Tylor TV series box, Lain box, Patlabor movies LE 1 and 2, Patlabor original series box, Patlabor TV series box 1 (turned around cause the discs are on loan right now and the box only holds my Seiken Densetsu 2 guide book for now)
Patlabor TV series box 1 again, TV series box 2, Patlabor TV series first DVD (bought it before CPM released boxes), Manga Video's releases of Patlabor movies, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll (god damn 4:3 censored ripoff >:(), Bastard!!, Moldiver, All-Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku, Laputa - Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso, Totoro (R3 release), Spirited Away (Finnish release), Spirited Away (R4 release), Cowboy Bebop movie, Catnapped!
And the final discs on my shelf, Wonderful Days (Finnish release), Otaku no Video, Tokio Private Police (unfortunately not mine) and yes, that's a chinese release of Shuusaku. I have porn on my shelf. I bought it cause it was cheap and I've kept this release around because the subtitles translate the title in the beginning as "Shit.", which is of course awesome.
As for the ones not on my shelf (lack of space),
FLCL 1-3, Evangelion 1-8, End of Eva movie, Death & Rebirth movie, plus two discs of Ranma, which I got as a gift from a friend of mine in the states. I don't even follow Ranma anime (I have 15 volumes of the manga), but these were quite funny.
Not pictured here would be.. my Steamboy double DVD (<3 <3 <3), which is on loan at my aunt's and the new Appleseed DVD which happens to be downstairs. Oh, and my Finnish release of Howl's Moving Castle (also downstairs). Other than those, I think that's every anime DVD I have. Don't ask to see my VHS collection =x
| Currently Playing: Faithless: Mass Destruction - No Roots |
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