To game or not to game

Ah, well isn't this amazing. I am sitting here at work on a Saturday morning with not more to do then look at a computer screen and ponder why I am not gaming. Well, largely because I don't want to get caught. However, today I think I am going to talk about game emulators for the PC.

In particular NES emulators and the games for it. Most of you know that I recently started setting up a Home Theater PC (HTPC) and of course, I had to include the game emulators so that I can really have an all in one kind of box. It is pretty sweet to be able to play Mario, Zelda, and more again for the NES since I haven't had a system in years. The best thing is that with most of the emulators on the market, you can load the emulator to a flash drive and run it from that location without any lasting footprint on the PC that you are using. This is great for those work computers that no one monitors much or school computers where you can't install software. I can have my games and player in my pocket and pull up and start playing where I have access. At a friends house, well I can play there.

Now, there is a catch to game emulators that I should make clear. If you don't currently own the game that you have the ROM (the file that lets you play the game) then it is technically illegal to have the ROM. With that said, just google NES ROM's or game emulator's sometime and you will have a plethora of results. Nice heh?

The worst thing about emulators though is that everything is by keyboard. I just can't play Mario, or most games, with the keyboard. For this, I went and picked up a cheap USB game controller that looks similar to the PS2 controller and then I had to meticulously set up the buttons on the controller to work for my game emulator. Now though, it is set up pretty sweet and it is great to be able to play alot of the games from my childhood again.

Of course, when the Wii releases from Nintendo I may use thier service to play all of these old games. This is granted they don't charge you arms and legs to obtain all of the old games I used to love and play so much. I am sure that whatever emulator they will have built into the Wii will probably function better then whatever is built for a PC. Still, it is pretty cool to have them available again.

Warhammer live

 
Just based on this beautiful Witch Elf, you have to think that the new Warhammer Online game is getting the attention that it deserves. I have to say from the ingame shots that I have seen of the game, this is game is going to look amazingly like WoW. Coincidence? Considering most of the Warcraft artwork was based on and is from original Games-Workshop offerings this doesn't surprise me at all. Personally, I am looking forward to playing a few warhammer online characters and giving this game a real run for its money. The real question is if they are going to release the game supporting the ability to play characters from all of the armies they have lines for. I guess that is a wait and see. I suggest at least downloading thier trailer. 

Big Day tomorrow

Well, tomorrow is a big day for me. I have my interview for an IT position at one of the biggest and best datacenter's in Madison. I am really excited and hope it goes well. Still, I have been pushing it pretty hard the last few days with everything going on lately and am starting to feel a touch burnt out. That means it will be extra important that I get a good night's sleep tonight.

With that said, I ordered a DVD burner from newegg.com today for my HTPC and I am looking forward to getting it sometime this week. It was a great deal on their weekend deals and will be a great addition. The DVD player that is in my cheap Phillips surround sound system seems to lag sometimes when replaying movies and causes a scene to get digitized. This should really help that. Especially since I am going to replace the receiver in the future with something better (eventually replacing the whole entertainment system).

For an undermountain room, how about this for an idea? A roving duerger trading caravan. Exploit the PCs some with a great wheeling and dealing role play encounter. This sounds like a great idea since the shadowy merchant will quickly be found to be a basic vender by the PCs. Through in a bit of a unique accent as you speak as the dwarfs, maybe a whisper.

On a GenCon kick

Wow, another day, another post. Well, I wanted to show someone what my fiancee looks like the other day, but didn't have a single picture. That just wasn't cool. So now, I went through my photos and about the only really good picture of her was this one by the giant dice at GenCon. Well, if you have to have gaming pictures, then at least they are from the biggest gaming con in the country.



Now, if I could just get there this year...Oh well. Today I get my hair cut, and not looking real forward to that. It is about time though. There have been enough years where I have pretended to be the rebel that I am not. We will see how that goes though. Maybe my dice will be luckier then the ones and twos they seem to always role when I have less hair. If only life (and dice) were so simple.

By the way, I had been working on some Undermountain encounters to add to the campaign I am running. This first one involves using a very similar merchant character to the one in Resident Evil 4 who can offer the PC many valuables for a low rate, and hangs out in the shadows only stepping out when the PCs are overloaded with loot or in dire need of healing potions and such. This way they can avoid the need to return to the surface for longer periods (which seems to disrupt game play in my experience). Just one of many new ideas that I have had....I will post more in the future.

Getting Ready for Spiderman 3

Well, I am psyched for the next Spiderman movie, and as such, thought I would post this picture from Gen Con a couple of years ago.

Another day

Well, we are at work again and not doing a whole lot. There is nothing like doing tech support for dial up customers on a Friday night during the summer.

Anyways, I have been playing the Spockmarket a bunch lately and did ok at it, though I made a bad decision and went from about 500 in the country to 1500 in the country in one episode. Curse you NCC stock!!! Spockmarket is hosted on G4TV and has a virtual spock market, which is like a stock market for Trekkies. Good stuff.

I see that that Blizzard kicked a bunch of folks out of WoW for cheating. Good for Blizzard. Course, I think it is kind o' bullcrap that people can sit and make tons of cash on what is just a game that should Blizzard decide to take down completely would mean entirely lost funds.

I was finally able to download the Vista Beta 2 from Microsoft yesterday and I have it burnt to DVD now so I might install it tonight on my media center PC. Course, I need to rip a DVD rom out of my good desktop...that might require some motivation...grrr...

Well bar food is coming in the next 15 minutes or so. Then I can actually have something to do, eat!

twice in a day

Wow, well, twice in one day. Isn't that something. Well, I do have to say I don't have much in the way of the great advancement of gaming. Course, this isn't really that kind o' blog. I would like to say that sitting here at work is quiet and not really exciting. Class sucked today, and was a complete waste of my time. Worse, was the waste of gasoline as I made the 45 minute drive to class and back.

I hope you are all enjoying the new graphics. I want to thank google for that. Not that any of this is anything really new to the world of bloggers, but it took some time to motivate and get it done the way I want it. I wanted to say for any Warhammer enthusiasts that I did add some content to Dougan's Delve for the new dwarf book and I may go ahead and add some more stuff in the near future. I really want to overhaul the whole look and feel of that site, but I have to learn photoshop and some other images and stuff to obtain so that is a long way off.

My big kick in gaming for the PC has been Battlefield 2 demo and Warhammer 40k, Dawn of War. Both are great games, and I should buy the full version of BF2 so I can play more. Biggest prob with BF2 is that it is best played at LAN parties and the next party I will be at will be in October.

I want to host a LAN party at my place soon, maybe a half dozen folks but I have to get the foundation equipment still (mostly just network cabling now). I will certainly let you know and have a couple of screen shots available for the aftermath.

Sitting in Class

This sucks, the instructor for project management didn't show and now I am stuck here working with my group on this final project and getting nothing done. Yay!!!

Well, maybe I will just have another pic for ye....

This is my main from WoW. I wish I could still afford to play this game. Anyways, meh. Think I am going to go home now.

Long time, no typey

Well, it has been a while since I have posted here but I would like to say that things are going well enough. I have a special treat. I have been busy as crap lately and haven't posted or done much as I have been reorganizing my home network and organizing the files here. Well, while I was doing that, I found some of the old photos from GenCon a couple of years back and found a photo of this beautiful lass and thought I had to share it. I hope all of you folks appreciate it.

As far as the gaming front. My DnD party is supposed to meet I think this weekend at my place, but I think that has been canceled. Oh well. They just started tromping in Undermountain and we will just have to see how long they last.

I started playing my dwarfs again in Warhammer again and I think they did well with the rules. They seem to be a better list. I have yet to see if they trully can hold up in a tourney though. I have one coming up in July though. I caught a 4000 point game yesterday against a pretty average Empire player and managed a minor victory. He probably should have drawn, but he was so frustrated at the way the game had gone and thought he was getting masacred that he just kind of gave up at the end and made stupid decisions. I think he learned a big lesson.