European PS3 Backwards Compatibility = 1/12!
Posted by Ray @ 1:08 pmA German shop got their hands on a European PAL PS3, and decided to test its backwards compatibility with 12 PS2 games:
God of War
MGS 2: Sons of Liberty
MGS 3: Snake Eater
Shadow of the Colossus
Guitar Hero 2
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
Okami
GTA: Liberty City Stories
Eragon
Final Fantasy X-2
Ratchet & Clank 3
Lumines Plus
As you can see, the list is made up of some rather prominent titles, including MGS2 and MGS3, Shadow of the Colossus, and the original God of War. Guess how many games worked?
One.
Eragon.
Now, let’s be charitable here and assume that Sony will release firmware updates that will allow for some titles to be backwards compatible. Let’s also be charitable and note that these are just twelve games. Even then, to not have Metal Gear Solid and God of War work out of the box… that’s criminal.
Even importation will not help, backwards-compatibility is region locked. If you want your backwards-compatibility, you have to mod your PS3, which is illegal. How many ways can Sony screw its customers? The PS3 needs its PS2 library to sell, the games that will make the PS3 a mainstay in itself are still a long, long way away.
So tell me, Sony… why should anybody in Europe buy a PS3?
Now a question for Singapore readers: does anyone have a PS3 yet? Can you report on its backwards compatibility? Drop us a line, we want to know!
All I Want for Christmas
Posted by Ray @ 11:48 pm
Identity Crisis
Posted by Ray @ 2:27 am
Welcome to an Irony-Free Zone
Posted by Ray @ 2:34 am
Come on people, your cheese sticks are listed as “sides”, just as the fries and the onion rings are!
And yes, the young fellow at the counter really spaced out for a couple of seconds after I posed my question. Part of me admired him for trying to parse the sentence, even as another part of me watched in horrified fascination as the vacuous glaze descending over his eyes. You could almost hear the cogs creaking to a halt.
Alas! His valiant effort was for nought. In the end, he too, fell before the almighty “Cannot!”
A Specious Species, III
Posted by Ray @ 11:42 pm
Because nine times out of ten, “I wish girls would approach guys more…” is usually just someone saying “I wish the girl I see every morning on the SBS bus with the tight butt and the nice tits and the slim waist and the hot body would approach me…”
(The other one time out of ten, he really means it.)
Happy belated Halloween, everyone. Hope ya’ll had crazy sexy costume parties =).
The Freud Strikes Back
Posted by Ray @ 8:12 pm
Just another example of foot-in-mouth disease (thank you, Russ). Yes, I do say things like this in front of company.
I wonder what will happen should I slip up in Court…
Oh, boo hoo
Posted by Ray @ 11:25 am
Men interacting with this strange sub-genus of human females should always follow the 3Gs: Get in, Get some, and Get out.
Of course, then we’d be perpetuating the circle of life. But hey, all is as mother nature intended. It’s all good, no? ^_^
Oh, and happy national day. We forgot about it down under!
Housekeeping crap follows…
(more…)
Don’t you just hate it when…
Posted by Ray @ 6:51 pm
I profess a certain weakness for panel #4, myself.
Trying this out as an experiment - putting the comic in the main body as well. Perhaps this will give rise to a diverse chunk of intellectual discourse that will broaden the horizons of all who read the comic.
Then again, perhaps not.
Does this solve the prior inability to target a comment at a specific comic? Let us know!
A Questionable Design Choice
Posted by Ray @ 11:28 am
So it seems I was a bit premature in drooling over the XBox 360, because Sony announced their PS3… and its features are impressive. Some highlights include:
Full backwards compatibility with the PS1 and PS2, something which the XBox doesn’t have.
Built-in wireless, just like the XBox 360. And it connects with the PSP!
Up to 7 bluetooth controllers supported, versus the XBox’s 4. Party games, anyone?
Dual HDTV output. Though this is probably overkill.
Just about the only weapon the XBox 360 has is its stellar online component, as yet un-matched by anything Sony has produced.
The PS3, of course, is not without its flaws. It’s controller design is… questionable, to say the least. Sony has the dubious honour of being the sole creators of (possibly) the world’s most expensive bluetooth-controlled vibrator. I mean, look at the thing!
But hey, who am I to argue if it gets more girls playing video games?
The Great Game
Posted by Ray @ 4:58 pm
Once, while I was speaking to this girl about dating, she said: “Isn’t it all a power play?”
It’s all just a game, with winners and losers, and pity the fool who ends up the loser. But while we’re all squandering our youth in the merry thrust and parry of the dating game, secure in the illusion of invulnerability our lack of experience has granted us, thrilled at the minor boost to our self-esteem every put-down brings, remember this:
It’s all fun and games, until somebody gets hurt.
Yeap, a new strip is up. I think Zeng captured panel #3 perfectly. She looks so… focussed. Heh heh heh.
Bastard Tetris
Posted by Ray @ 12:55 am
Someone made a tetris game that uses an algorithm specifically designed to thwart your skills as a puny human.
Unfortunately, it’s for linux.
Fortunately, Mac OS X is based on linux unix.
Even more fortunately, some guy on slashdot has helpfully tipped us on how to compile the thing on a Mac.
So I’ve kindly compiled it for Mac users, that you may suffer the agony of being defeated by a lowly game of tetris. Windows users are out of luck.
Before you click, this program is distributed under the GNU licence, and is presented AS IS, with no warranties whatsoever. It’s been tested on Mac OS 10.3.9, but I suspect it works in earlier versions just fine.
Here it is. Unzip it and double-click on “bastet” to play.
[Link, via /. via pressthebuttons]
Edit:
No sooner had I written this up when Zeng informed me the strip had been updated. Enjoy!
Bloody Psychiatrist
Posted by Ray @ 11:55 pm
I have this guy on my MSN list who’s nickname once read: “A freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother”.
In my case it was “compass”. Yes, it’s a true story. How I confused compass with condom I will never know.
Two Degrees of Separation
Posted by Ray @ 1:15 am
It’s a small world after all.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in social networking environments like Friendster. You go to a friend’s house, check out his Friend list, and bam, all of a sudden people you didn’t know knew each other, do.
At this point if you’re lucky, you get to say things like “Groovy!” and “That’s so cool!” and “I’ve got to tell him about this!”
If you’re unlucky, well, you get to say a whole lot of other stuff.
Okay, so I want to take a moment to present to you Uncle Comics. He’s participating in the Daily Grind - basically a challenge to webcomic artists to put out 1 strip, every day, monday to friday. You pay US$20 to participate, and the last man standing takes the pot (which stands US$1,120). A few artists are putting out shoddy work, but Uncle’s stuff has been consistently amazing. Believe you me, putting out strips just twice a week is work enough.
I especially enjoy his little “death faqs”. Good stuff!
Have a great weekend, folks.
Round and Round
Posted by Ray @ 2:23 am
And so life goes on.
Know that there are those in this world who sit outside the circle. Know that there are those who have had the strength to break the circle. Know that there are those who, once having scrambled out of it, poke their heads back in to make fun of those still inside.
Know that if you’re real lucky, they sometimes fall back in, such that you may look upon them and say: I told you so, ha ha ha.
Ah, such is life. Dying is the easy part, unless you’re Terry Schiavo. Then dying becomes pretty damn hard. Well, she’s gone now. Too bad for the Terry Schiavo Status Firefox plugin.
Now here’s the part where I was supposed to put a link to Terry Schiavo’s blog, attached to some cleverly snide comment I pulled out of my arse. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the link… *rummages*… oh, wait.
Damn, for a vegetable she sure has a lot of comments. I think her superbly succinct writing style really speaks deeply to a lot of people. I wish I could…
No, actually. I don’t.
Moving on - two minor updates.
First, I’m glad to say that the Sumatran students are alright and in one piece. A quick e-mail to the University staff quickly reassured me of that worry.
Second, I’ve noticed a lot of people actually read Squarebrain from the rss2 feed. I’ve therefore taken out the links to the atom and rss0.9x feeds, and put a link to the latest comic in the rss2 feed. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be appearing right… which is strange, because it still validates. Hang in there while I figure this one out. Any help would be much appreciated - you could leave a comment or just drop me an e-mail if you’re shy.