I am practically giving PC fanboys a free ticket to come whoop my ass for being a “so-called” console fanboy. Actually I do prefer consoles over PC but in terms gaming only. Back then (or even nowadays) you can still see flame wars between the two counterparts. PC guys will argue saying that you can do a lot of stuff such as downloading porns, illegal softwares, free anime as compared to a console which does nothing but play games or watch DVD. Those kind of arguments might be valid back in the Playstation 2 era but today, you can do a lot of multimedia activity on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and even the Nintendo Wii. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft suddenly adds Office into Xbox Live Marketplace.

A good reason to tell your boss that you need Xbox 360 in the office

Anyway the real reason I wrote this post is not to bash PC gamers but merely a satisfaction for my own purposes. You see, a lot of good games came out for the PC recently (Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War) but I can’t play any of them. Although my laptop is pretty powerful in terms of application usage, it really sucks when it comes to gaming. The ATI x1600 barely runs most of todays game at 1024 x 768 @ low detail and I’m the kind of gamer who settles nothing less than medium settings (at least). Some of you may say “gameplay over graphics” (likewise the NDS and Wii), but sad to say I can’t do that when it comes to PC games.

Hmm I can see it in your mind now, I know what you are thinking … You are thinking …

“What kind of an idiot gamer would use a laptop to play games?! DUH!”

Was I close?

To end your curiosity, I chose laptop over desktop was mainly because I wanted to get my work done anywhere especially since I need to move around quite frequently. Can’t possibly carry a desktop no?

Anyway ….

The points I am about to present is base on me, myself and I only. Those factors may include my lifestyle, my habits, my attitude etc. What applies to me doesn’t necessary applies to the general public. So sit tight, grab some popcorn and enjoy my rants.

I Save More Money!
Buying consoles is actually cheaper than buying a PC. Let’s use the Xbox 360 as a comparison. A USD$399 price tag vs USD$900+ price tag for a mid range gaming PC. Of course it will dumb to compare price per se as both are made out of different components (generally the PC will have more), but look at it from a different perspective, in terms of lifespan. A console lifespan is average between 4 to 5 years as compared to a PC which last to an average between 6 months to a year (depending on your hardware). You may be playing a game at max settings today but after 6 months, you will probably need to tone down the settings. I quoted this from my cousin “After you have experience gaming at max settings, it’s pretty hard to settle for anything less”. I find that statement to be true.

Would you settle for anything less?

To be honest it’s pretty costly to keep up with the PC technology. The developing speed is going way too fast and we see new hardwares coming out in every few months. Your PC will be outdated even before you can even say “I need a new PC!“. Alright that may seem a bit too dramatic but reality, thats the problem faced by midrange PC gamers (like myself before). Any game that comes out after 6 months from your date of purchase will start giving your PC a hard time. You will start to wonder “Why I can’t I set ‘High’ for this setting” or “Why this game lags??”. Thus thats why I feel spending $399 that last for 4 to 5 years is hell lot better than spending $900 on a PC that only last for 6 months, no?

I don’t feel screwed!
One of the best things about console is that everyone shares the same ups and downs. If a game looks good and performs well, it will be the same for everyone else and vice versa. For PC, graphic quality and performance differs from one another base on their hardware. The difference could be as bad as comparing the graphics between Playstation 3 and Playstation 2 (sometimes Playstation 1).

Just imagine if a ‘new’ Resident Evil came to the PC
Picture A would be my comp, Picture B my cousin’s comp

Taking a trip over to my cousin’s place “killed” me off. With his PC, you can run current games at gorgeous mouth watering graphics with great performance. 6 months ago he was using Intel Dual Core with SLI 7900GT. Now he’s running Quad Core with 8800GTS. Talk about major upgrade within a few months. If it was me, I would probably be using an old Nvidia 6800 I bought ‘last century’.

I don’t know about you but I will lose my mood in playing a game after seeing how well it runs on a friend’s hardware. It sounds lame (yea I know) but that’s just my bad nature. I’m not trying to be ‘kiasu’ (scared to lose) but I just want my games to run at a smooth rate too. Most of the time, they ran like crap.

I can still remember the time I went over to Neko’s place back in the year 2000. He just bought a new PC, equipped with 500mhz Intel Pentium III processor and was testing out Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun. I can assure you that you can see a “W-T-F” expression on my face. A harvester, a unit that is suppose to be one of the slowest in the game, was moving like as if Michael Schumacher needed to pee desperately during a F1 race.

Trust me, getting a console solve that problem instantly. Spare yourself the pain and agony you have to suffer (if you are like me).

I get less problems!
There’s nothing worse than getting home with a new game only to find out that you have gotten an unknown error, which was caused by a corrupted directX file and after you that you find out that you had insufficient spaceandyouneedtoclearsomefilesbutthosefilesareimportantandafteryouclear
yougetsomestupidsounderrorfromyoursoundcardandyouendedupreformatingeve
rythingandthenthepchangandbluescreensappearand…………..

Man look at the problems PC gamers have to face! With consoles, no worries! Just pop in the disc and you are good to go. No sound card error crap, no insufficient space problem, no drivers crashing yada yada. The less stress you feel, the healthier you get! That reduces your blood pressure too!

“Oh f*ck …..” – Shin Asuka (Gundam Seed Destiny)

Alright I think I rant enough crap in this post. The bottom line is, I’m just jealous of people who has high end PC Consoles actually has more advantages than PCs. You spend less and suffer less! What more can you ask for huh?

Once again, this ain’t a REAL flame war between PC and consoles. This is just a post from someone who is bored …

Most gamers usually had their first 3D experience through the Playstation, Sega Saturn or Nintendo64 but for me, it was the 3DO developed by Panasonic, Sanyo and Goldstar. At that time 3DO cost a bombshell USD $699, due to its gaming and media playback capability. My uncle bought it at around 1994 and I was lucky enough have tried it out.

If I recall correctly, I tried two different models of the 3DO. Both of them are from Panasonic, codenamed FZ-1 and FZ-10. I can’t really remember why my uncle bought the later model but perhaps it was due to the faulty cd-tray of the FZ-1 model. As a kid I wasn’t bothered with hardware failures and stuff. As long as I get to play the games, it’s all good.

All my life as a gamer, I have never seen a console system that only has one controller port. In order for a second player to join in, he or she has to connect their controller into Player 1′s controller. From what I see, Player 1 usually has the upper-hand when it comes to versus games. Not happy with Player 2 trashing you? Just plug out the controller! In terms of appearance, the original controller looked very similar to Sega’s, with the exception of L R trigger buttons.

The first game I ever played on the 3DO was Road Rash. Being a fan of that game when it was on the Sega 16 bit, it was totally mind blowing to play it again with a graphical up-lift. You get the same police chase, you get to whack other bikers and you get the similar ‘busted’ feeling when the cops get the better of you. I wonder why EA never came out with new Road Rash franchise. Gameplay too old school for today?

Other than Road Rash, a lot of good games did came out for the 3DO; Super Street Fighter 2 X, Mad Dog McCree, Total Eclipse, Dragon’s Lair, The Need For Speed, Return Fire and Gex to name a few. There are a couple more other games that I have played but I couldn’t remember. My favourite games are definitely SSF2X, Return Fire, Road Rash and Gex. I can just literally play them everyday and wouldn’t get bored of them.

It’s really a shame that the console didn’t last long. Lack of 3rd party support along with crazy pricing was the main reason for it’s demise. I doubt I can still find 3DO along with the old games after a decade but if I do, I’m definitely going to buy and keep it. To me, it’s well worth the collection.

If you want to know more about 3DO, you can visit Wiki or Vidgame.net

Picture Source : Vidgame.net, Defunct Games

This is actually going sidetrack from the original plan that me and my girlfriend had. We were actually saving the current amount of money to purchase a Playstation 3. But suddenly, something else seemed very tempting … and thus we ended up with that today. Please welcome to the family … Nintendo Wii!

After trying it out today, this is definitely a good buy, especially when you have extra company. The bundle I got came with extra wiimote and nunchuk along with Wiisports and Ice Age. That’s the best game out of the 3 I had to choose … the other two was Spider-man 3 and Shrek 3. The webslinger sucks on the Wii and I’m not really a big fan of Shrek, so I took Ice Age. I also bought Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess.

I will write more about it later on. Now … my arm is pretty sore from swinging the wiimote whole day. In fact, I’m already predicting a very sore arm tomorrow. Hope I can type …