And I join the other million Chirstmas blogs today :P Wish I had something special to say....but hope you guys all enjoyed your Christmas! I won't be getting any gifts since I don't celebrate Christmas, but I consider that little haul of things (read my previous blog) my gifts for this year already. Even if I did buy them myself :P

Merry Christmas~

I'm back from my four day trip in KL. Pretty exhausting, and I don't feel like writing a long essay of what is mostly the same things as what I said in my last trip to KL. Basically it's more shopping than ever. Instead of typing everything out, I'll just put pictures of what I bought this time. Note that this time, not all of them are game-related.



White mages are awesome because their outfits look best on cute Chocobos.



I'll never know why I picked the blue one over the yellow. It would have looked so much like Stafy. Which it isn't. Oh well, I'll pretend this is a blue Luma. Which it isn't.



A set of pins from Asiasoft. Four of them are from MapleStory, which says a lot about how popular their characters are.



I know what you're thinking, but no. I'm looking at the fancy strap, not the fancy camera-equipped dual-screened device on the left. That one's a month old(more on that later on the Meadow board~!)



Told you I'd get Spirit Tracks before the end of the year.



Third plush out of a bajillion ones I bought. Okay, so I only bought three.

There was a Pokemon jigsaw puzzle, but I forgot to take a picture of that. Later then~

Actually, the main reason for the trip this time wasn't for just mindless shopping, but to go back to The One Academy to redeem my prize for the Creative Media Awards thing. It was a one-day course for learning Adobe Flash. Yes, fear me, for I now know how to make basic Flash animations. Now to actually buy the damn software.

I'll be gone from today till the 23rd of December because I'm going on a trip. I won a free one day lesson for Adobe Flash at an art college that's about 200 miles away from where I live (god damn it :P), so I'll have to go there. Enjoying myself while I'm at it too.

See you guys on Christmas.

I hope it's not too soon for me to be doing this again, but I want your support in making my Nintendo forum a success! Just follow the link below and register:

http://tinyurl.com/ninten5

The more members join, the better! Spread the word too, and invite your friends to the Nintendo 5-Star forum. It's not just Nintendo we talk about, we have topic discussions for everything, including a sub-board for other consoles, a gallery to display your creative works, and as usual, a Random board. Every good forum needs one of those.

I will personally award a custom title/mod position to the person who has registered, is active, and can manage to invite the most members to N5S! Please, I need as much help and support as I can get from you. I want N5S to explode with activity and fun, and I need you to help me make that happen!

Thanks!

After one long month, I've finally finished off the last government exam in my school life, the STPM (Malaysian Higher School Certificate). It was quite tough, even with just four subjects, there was a crapload to cover before each paper began. That exam was definitely no monkey business.

And with that, it marks the end of my high school education. I've graduated! Now I'm free to do pretty much whatever I want until I enter university. But too much freedom and you don't know what to do with your time anymore :P. Back to gaming, advertising my forum and posting blogs. At least I won't be bored for the next 2 months or so.

Unorthodox. One word that sums up this game(which will probably never be released in the US). It may feature one of the world's most hated character in gaming, but look past the little green man in tights and there's quite a solid game underneath it.

Okay, so what is it? This Tingle game is a point-and-click puzzle game(point-and-touch, actually, since all the action is on the bottom screen, the top screen displays your map). In it, Tingle has bought a magical storybook by mail order and gets sucked into it. The story is a twisted, wackier version of The Wizard of Oz, with a yellow brick road to follow, and the partners that join forces with you are all pulled straight out of the original story, a cute little child scarecrow, a robot whose spaceship crash landed, and a cowardly lion. Each can do different things to help you advance.

Of course, you play your part too. The game involves you advancing through various locales following the yellow road(or railway) with the ultimate aim of dancing with a princess in the capital city. To do so, you collect various items and interact with objects and people. That's when you find out most people won't want to have anything to do with you. Specifically, people of the female race. Nearly every single girl in this game will hate Tingle(for obvious reasons, just look at him). Herein lies the main gimmick: a Love Push game. Capture womens' hearts by giving them presents which you buy from some old Cupid wannabe. Each present has its own attributes: for example, one girl may like cute items, others may not. It plays out like a game of Mastermind.

It sounds shallow on paper and looks shallow based on what the trailer shows you, but there's more to this game than that. For each 'page' you advance in the book the puzzles get a bit harder(and the language barrier adds some degree of challenge too). If you don't feel like continuing through Story Mode there's a bunch of secrets for you to discover, and getting all of the secret stamps is no mean feat. Of course, I can't tell you how to unlock any of them 8). Or, you can earn some quick Rupees by going to a dungeon minigame on a certain page. Or, you can go fishing, or continue to Love Push a few girls and rack up how close their relationships are with you. The last bit sounds creepy, but the feature is introduced to you so subtly in the game you hardly ever notice, you're just going to find it fun. And the story isn't as run-of-the-mill as you think. On the way there are many laugh out loud moments akin to Wario's games, and there are actually a few heart-warming parts to it.

Aside from mister perverted protagonist himself, the graphics are cheery and colorful, and some of the characters, like the scarecrow that joins you, are pretty guldarn adorable(you can't tell by looking at him, you have to read what he says to get a feeling for his personality. He's childish and naive). The BGM's fine. Any BGM would be fine after the Rupeeland train wreck, which didn't have any music at all.

Any flaws in this game? Well, Tingle himself is a flaw, but let's ignore that, shall we? The puzzles are fine and well, but let's say the only thing that will make me get stuck is my inability to read the language. I can do some Japanese, but this game is text-heavy and frequently I got stuck because I couldn't tell what some person was saying. If this game ever gets a translation to English, it's definitely going to turn out a whole lot easier. Too easy.

It's hard to believe Tingle is still part of the Zelda series with the two games Tingle has all to himself on the DS(the other one is this game's prequel, Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, which isn't half as good as this one due to a few crushing flaws, namely too much guesswork involving money, terrible combat system and complete lack of overworld BGM). The only references to Zelda in this game are the sound effects, the existence of Rupees, and a few other things. Link has a sword and many other weapons for combat, while Tingle only has a slingshot. You'll be surprised at how fighting bosses in this game actually have some variety, although they are few and far between.

But I'll say this. The core gameplay of Zelda has not changed one bit. Tingle has deviated from the Zelda series(or exiled, more like), and has diversified in ways the rest of the Zelda series can only dream of. This quirky girl-hooking game is one example.

P.S. I have no idea why I keep buying and reviewing obscure Japanese games that half the people I know wouldn't have even heard of. :P

I downloaded a freeware video editing software and saved it to the My Documents folder. After messing around with it, I found that it didn't have the features I was looking for, so I tried to uninstall it. However, I forgot to put the said program in a separate folder. The uninstall program and everything related to the software is still in My Documents. The moment I hit Uninstall......

....everything in My Documents was cleaned out. All my pictures, music, videos, applications, gone.

In just a few seconds, everything I had established in my cyber-life was gone. I can salvage some of them, but I'm going to have to do a lot of redownloading, and somethings couldn't be saved, like my Photoshop projects....

I'm ruined. I don't know how long it'll take to fully restore everything, and I don't know how long I'll be inactive because of this, so, this is goodbye for now.

*sigh*

YESYESYESYESYESYESSSSS!!!!! My most wanted game of this year has arrived! And it's not New Super Mario Bros Wii, it's not Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, but this!

You don't know how much my hands were shaking when I took this picture. Excitement ensues as I open the box.

Holy ****, yes. Now I'm going to play it.

A gameplay video I recorded just for kicks. It's not a perfect combo(the last bit of the song got me bad)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeuKOu1aMMI

About this game, it's the 2nd Wii game of Taiko no Tatsujin, a cult rhythm game series by Namco. I don't have much to say about the graphics and the features, it's pretty much unchanged from each iteration of the series, like most rhythm games. The songlist is always the most important part of any rhythm game, and this one, with a huge list of 70 songs, doesn't disappoint.

One thing you have to note about Taiko no Tatsujin is: don't go into it expecting to see many of your favorite songs. There are some J-Pop and anime songs, and some game music, but the core appeal of the game are the tracks made exclusively for this series. Out of the 70 songs, 29 are original compositions. They are also the hardest songs in the game. If you're new to the series, expect to get frustrated a lot by them. But be patient. Once you conquer them(especially on Oni difficulty, the highest setting), something will just click and you'll start to like them more. They're also great to listen to.

On the box, you see a cute drum. The game is colorful and festive in mood. It's advertised the same way Wii Sports was- as a family game, with a drum accessory you can use to play along. But is it really just something to attract casual gamers, like most every mimigame collection and shovelware games on the Wii? No. Underneath the family-friendly nature of Taiko no Tatsujin lies a rock-solid hardcore rhythm game that's as addictive and difficult to master as any. This series has nine years of experience under its belt and 'casual' will probably be the last thing you'll think about when you start playing. And it's no Guitar Hero/Rock Band ripoff ether. It does its own thing entirely, and it was first released way before those two games existed anyway.

If you import games, GET THIS NOW.

Remember I blogged about that Spiky-Ear Pichu glitch in Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver? I have pictures to prove it now. Here they are.

This is my Pichu. Note the Technique medal on the bottom.

This picture shows the 2nd room in the Pokethlon museum 'Shinrai'

Browsing through the medals my Pokemon earned...This is the bottom screen.

And this is the top.

See ol' Spiky-Ear in the last shot? This is the glitch.

I turn 19 this year. And all this happens in the middle of my exams. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry :P.

Nothing groundbreaking, so I don't have much to blog about, except I get to preorder Taiko no Tatsujin Wii 2 as a birthday present~ THIS is the game I've been waiting for. I'm going into fits just waiting for it to arrive :D. I'll blog about this amazing game later.