Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes leaked, near-complete version

If you've never heard of Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, it is a fan sequel to Chrono Trigger; meant to fit in-between the events of Trigger and Cross. It's a hack of the original Chrono Trigger on the SNES. There's brand new areas to explore, new dialogue, new enemies, character portraits, and more. The game was almost finished until Square-Enix sent a cease & desist letter to the team, threatening legal action if they didn't scrap the hack. Shortly after, a 98%-complete beta version of the game was leaked online.

 Recently, some guy on Reddit leaked a newer version that he claims is newer than the 98%-complete beta version. This one is basically the finished game. I have yet to get very far on it, but let me give you the scoop.


-Crono talks (he's a douche)
-Frog no longer has the medieval accent and is more true to the original Japanese Frog before U.S translation
-The new character portraits kind of suck
-There is no main character this time; everyone gets equal focus
-The writing is pretty amateur unfortunately
-Combat is pretty much the same

Generally it's a good game, but unless you're a hardcore Chrono fan you likely won't get much out of Crimson Echoes. The best part is seeing all the new areas and following the story.

So here you'll find the fully-patched rom, which you should probably play in zsnes: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CR6ZTVXG

fully-explorable new future hhhhhnnnggggghhh

This hack is every Chrono fanboy's dream come true, mine included. Seriously. Fuck Square-Enix for being dicks and shutting this down, like they did with Chrono Trigger Resurrection. They're a pretty shitty company these days and have yet to release a decent game PERIOD in several years. Nothing but rehashes and ports. And if they don't plan on doing anything else with the Chrono series, why the fuck should they keep down the fans just trying to keep the series alive? FUCK YOU SQUARE

Lights Out - Rick Astley

This should be a 2010 chart topper.

More Oblivion Screens

Just because.

Oblivion Modding

I've been playing Oblivion again recently and trying out a bunch of different mods, mostly graphical. Here's some screenshots of my game, modded to look extra sexy.

This is running on mostly high settings: large textures, HDR, high shadow filtering, etc. No anti-aliasing though. Oblivion makes you choose between bloom with anti-aliasing, or HDR with no anti-aliasing for some reason. I'm playing this on a 2 year old laptop. So to all the assholes that laugh at the prospect of gaming on a laptop, to you I say I politely disagree with your position good sir. Here's my laptop's specs:

Dell XPS m1530 laptop
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 2.4ghz
Geforce 8600 mGT 256 MB
4 GB RAM

Oblivion is one amazing ass game, and even 3x as good on PC. If you play it on 360, that's fine, but you'll have to deal with the performance stutters and long load times. You're also missing out on the jaw dropping visuals that the PC version offers. The vanilla game is good looking for a 4 year old title, but when you throw in some environmental mods and texture replacements it's simply stunning. Not to mention you there's tons of new quest mods that add on entire new areas to explore and treasures to obtain. If you've never played Oblivion, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Stu Pierces The Heavens At 4 In the Morning

Rap

This is such a good song.

It's been awhile.

Haven't posted on here in awhile. Maybe I'll work on some new stuff this evening. In the meantime, here's some cats.


Enjoy. Be sure to follow my blog to be notified of new posts! I'll follow you back.

The Pirate Bay

Long Live The Pirate Bay!
Yarr!

3 PC Games You Must Play Before You Die

1. Starcraft

Starcraft is a real-time strategy game made by Blizzard. It was made in 1998, so it's a little over a decade old. Starcraft literally defines the genre. There's tons of RTS games but none of them can come close to matching up. Starcraft has perfectly balanced gameplay and, for the time at least, great looking 2D graphics.

Basically you have 3 different races. Terrans (the humans), the Protoss (an advanced alien race), and the Zerg (a race of violent parasitic aliens). They're all trying to beat the crap out of each other. The Zerg want to infest all of the Protoss and assimilate them into their own race to become "perfect". The Protoss don't like that very much. Meanwhile the Terrans are all fighting each other and generally being a pain in the ass to the Protoss. The Zerg, while trying to assimilate the Protoss, have also started munching on the Terrans as well. The Protoss keep blowing up Terran planets and killing millions of people in order to kill Zerg. So the Terrans get kind of pissed off at the Protoss for that.

The single player is great but that's not what makes this game what it is. The multiplayer is insanely fun and addicting. So much that Starcraft is literally a sport in Korea. We all know those damn Koreans are crazy enough as it is, but most of the population knows what Starcraft is and regularly watch professionals play the game on television. It's as big as football is in America.

)Starcraft 2 has been in the making for years. It looks great, but will it be as huge as the original Starcraft?)

Starcraft has been known to kill people, by the way.

So if you've never played Starcraft, I suggest you give it a try. Just make sure you take an hour or so break every 14 hours.

2. Myst

Myst is a first-person adventure game with beautiful pre-rendered graphics and the hardest puzzles you've ever seen in a video game. The visuals and beautiful ambient sound effects make it one of the most immersive games I've ever played. It's the kind of game you need to play in a pitch dark room with the lights off and a pair of high-quality headphones.

Myst was made by a small team of only around a half-dozen people. That's all it took to make a game back then. This game was released in 1993 for the Mac. It was later ported to Windows. To play the original today you'd need an old computer loaded with Windows 95. Thankfully this game has been ported dozens of times to different playforms; the Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo DS to name a few.

Myst is one of my old childhood favorites. It was the first PC game I actually owned. It was one of the most popular games available when it came out. It's spawned many sequels, although many of them weren't actually made by the original Myst team.

3. Unreal Tournament

Unreal Tournament is Epic Games' famous franchise. It's a revolutionary FPS, but still underrated.

At first glance the original UT is a pretty standard shooter. But you notice the differences when comparing it to others. UT is known for its incredibly fast paced gameplay. If you ever played multiplayed Quake or even Doom, you know what I mean. The classic FPS is very fast. Most FPS games today, especially on consoles, are much much slower in comparison. Some even focus on slow stealth gameplay.

If you can get manage to play UT without getting motion sickness and puking all over the keyboard, the game is very fun. There's a standard set of weapons that are all completely balanced. You've got your standard weak pistol and powerful rocket launcher, along with your one-hit-kill close range melee weapon, the Impact Hammer. Inbetween is the Shock Rifle and Sniper Rifle which require lots of accuracy. Then there's the chaingun, biorifle, and Flak gun, all which are fast firing weapons and don't stress as much precise aiming.

The maps and customization options are limitless. You can even make complete campaign adventures to play online with friends. You can customize your character model. You can play as a male or female, a giant demon creature or a robot, or make a mod to play as a naked guy if you want. Every UT sequel has stayed faithful to the original and, for the most part, stuck with the same set of weapons and options. Unreal Tournament 3, the latest game, is almost identical to the original but with updated features and graphics. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

(How a first person shooter is meant to be played. Fast paced and quick.)

BitTorrent

What is BitTorrent?

There's all kinds of ways that major companies and individuals can share their files and media today. Direct HTTP, FTP, IRC, newsgroups, BitTorrent, the Gnutella network, the list goes on... But the one I'm most concerned about is BitTorrent.

BitTorrent is the single most underrated and misunderstood method of filesharing. Usually a typical person has no idea what BitTorrent is, but they know what Limewire is. Well here's something you may not realize. Limewire, eMule, Frostwire, Livewire, they all suck. They're mostly just useful for exchanging single MP3 files, which are always horrible quality, as well as viruses and kiddie porn.

The most popular types of files that people share are music and movies (and porn). If you've ever tried to download a movie on Limewire, it probably took about a day or overnight to finish downloading, depending on the size of the file. Even still, when you go to watch it after the long wait, you may find out it's nothing but a 12-year-old kid standing in front of his 13-inch TV with a handicam on a tripod recording the movie.

Well those days are over my friend. Imagine this. Imagine downloading the entire discography of your favorite band all at once, with a sigle click, ever song in perfect crystal clear quality. Imagine downloading a great movie you've been wanting to see. You can see it in HD quality or download a version that will fit on a CD-R. AND it's finished downloading within 2 hours. Imagine doing this day after day, without ever contracting any kind of virus or malware. That's the magic of BitTorrent.

How does it work?

BitTorrent works like this. One user will create a file, called a .torrent file. The .torrent file is uploaded to a web site and available for download. The .torrent file itself is only around 1 or 2 kb. Another user downloads the .torrent file. His BitTorrent program reads information from the .torrent file and the 2 users PC's connect with each other. One user then begins to upload a video, MP3, or anything he wants to send to the public. More people can download the .torrent and their PCs will connect to everyone else who has downloaded the same .torrent. The file will then be sent to everyone.

Here's a visual representation of how BitTorrent works.

So basically the more people who are downloading a file you want, the faster you will get it. It's common to download a file at speeds up to 1 MB/s (depending on how fast your own Internet connection is).

Why should I use it?

With BitTorrent you have the advantage of downloading hundreds of files at the same time. In Limewire you have to select what you want file by file. But a .torrent file comes packaged with information regarding hundreds of files.

Most importantly, BitTorrent can be a hundred times faster. It's also MUCH more secure. Getting a virus through BitTorrent is extremely rare.

Is it legal?

YES. BitTorrent itself is completely legal. In order to use BitTorrent you must go to a site that offers links to .torrent files. Since .torrent files are only a few kb large, they're completely legal to download because .torrent files are not pirated media themselves. Thus, BitTorrent sites are able to legally operate because they don't offer any illegal content to download.

There's been tons of court cases related to torrenting. It seems to me like the courts can't seem to make up their minds about how they want to handle the legality or torrents. Most lawyers and politicians don't even understand the technology and how it works, so it's hard to determine what the future is going to hold for torrents.

Obviously, though downloading torrents isn't illegal, actually owning pirated media IS illegal under any circumstance; as far as I know, anyway. Some say that it's totally legal because the original uploader is held responsible for pirating. Others say everyone accessing pirated material via torrents is liable.

I won't reccommend that you use BitTorrent for pirating media. What ever you decide to use BittTorrent for is your own business. But anyway...

How do I use BitTorrent?

First, you're going to need a program called a BitTorrent client. By far, the best one available is called uTorrent. Click the link to download the program. It's very lightweight and fast. So if you have a PC made of paper clips and rubber bands you can still use it.

After you've downloaded and installed uTorrent, you need to configure it properly. It can get a bit tricky getting it right. When you open uTorrent for the first time you'll see this screen:

(click image to enlarge)

This is the Speed Guide. You're going to need to select the speed of your connection. Click Run Speed Test and you'll be taken to a site where you can test your download and upload speed. When you find out what it is, select the proper choice from the dropdown menu. uTorrent doesn't care about your download speed; just upload speed.

After you do that you need to forward the port. This is extremely important. If you don't forward your port properly uTorrent will give you very slow speeds. Don't touch that port number. Just click the Test if Port is Forwarded button. If it isn't forwarded, follow the link to find out how. Remember, forwarding the port properly is very important.

Now uTorrent is all set up and ready to go. Now you need to find a BitTorrent site to start downloading files. Here's some:

The Pirate Bay
isoHunt
Mininova

The Pirate Bay is the largest BitTorrent site out there. So start there. When you find something you want, simply download the .torrent file and run it. uTorrent will pop up and take care of the rest for you.

BitTorrent Tips

If you're seeing slow speeds, just wait for a few minutes. It may take some time for uTorrent to connect to other users. The speed should pick up after awhile. If it's still slow make sure your port is forwarded. If all else fails, the torrent may be dead. If no one is connected to the torrent, there's nowhere to download the file. Or if just a few people are connected, you'll see slow speeds. So try to look for the most active torrents.

While viruses don't appear often, don't let your guard down completely. I use avast! antivirus software. It works great and catches any infected files as soon as they show up on my PC. Also make sure to read user comments on torrent sites before you download. If a file is incomplete or infected usually a user will post a comment about it.

After you download a torrent, if there is a readme file, ALWAYS read it. It could have important information you need to know about what you downloaded.

Conclusion

That about covers it. BitTorrent is slowly but surely becoming the most efficent and pracical way of sharing files. Even gaming companies are using it for distributing patches and games. Blizzard, for example, uses BitTorrent to distribute their high res trailers and a few games. Still, a lot of companies refuse to see the benefits of it. BiTorrent gets a bad rep due to piracy.