To everyone on the eastern side of the Prime Meridian, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year! Here’s hoping that 2009 brings you lots of joy (at least more than 2008 did, anyway)!

For the first time ever, I managed to punch my way through making a blog update on every day of the month, through either boredom or a few sudden bursts of inspiration. Maybe I should try my hand at National Blog Posting Month. I could feasibly win that…

Anyway, I spent the last few days looking over my website statistics for 2008, and it looks like I’ve had a good year. I don’t know whether or not I should believe that I’ve actually managed to get 1,200 hits per day out of this thing (which is about the same traffic that my old website, Sky Tower Games, had at its peak in 2004), but I’m proud for whatever traffic I get, and happy that I’m able to provide those of you surfing the internet with a little entertainment, even if you only stay for a few seconds. Now, let’s take a slightly more detailed look at what everyone’s been visiting this site for over the last year (warning: may contain spoilers)…

Click to read more…

Category: Blog
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: code geass, contests, end of year, mai-hime, nablopomo, statistics

I think it’s been over a year since I last played Disgaea 2, so I figured I’d borrow the PlayStation 2 from my sister to give it one more go and put it to bed. I previously finished the game and got the Mid-Boss ending (a side battle with no bearing on the game’s canon), but I’d been sitting on the second-to-last chapter for a while, and wanted to see the actual ending (without looking it up on YouTube). It’s a good thing I spent all that time boosting Adell’s power to match that of Zenon’s, with the ability to do about 3,000 damage to him per turn by himself. Being the hero of the game, he was way ahead of everyone else in my party power-wise (his level was in the high 80’s; the two next-strongest characters, Rozalin and Yukimari, were each at 60). Zenon’s no slouch himself, being a level 90 demon overlord with over nine twenty THOUSAND! hit points, but far from the most powerful being in the game. Most, if not all, of the bonus bosses outclass him easily. After knocking him around with combination attack after combination attack and whittling him down to about 2,000 HP, I decided to end the battle suitably with Vulcan Blaze, Adell’s most powerful special attack. They really should give EXP bonuses for that sort of thing.

(The next portion of this post contains ending spoilers.)

Click to read more…

Category: Video Games
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: disgaea 2, finished, good end, playstation 2, spoilers

God, I love that sound byte.

And just when almost all the local sports media (and I) had mostly written off the Eagles’ playoff chances, they end the regular season with an epic 44-6 win against the Dallas Cowboys. On top of that, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Chicago Bears both lost their games, allowing Philly to sneak in the back door and scoop up the last wild-card playoff spot. Talk about having ridiculous amounts of luck when it counts, huh?

On the “epic fail” end of the scale, not even unloading the 800-pound anchor that was Matt Millen could save the Lions from sinking all the way to 0-16 with a loss to the Green Bay Packers. I should feel sorry for Rod Marinelli after he was let go today, since Millen didn’t give him a whole lot to work with, but what sane owner would allow their head coach to stay on after setting a dubious record like that? Now, if they’d only convince W. C. Ford to sell the team to an owner who’s willing to spend money on decent players and coaches, then Detroit might stand a chance of being competitive again…but maybe that’s too much wishful thinking.

Category: Sports
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: bears, buccaneers, cowboys, eagles, lions, nfl, playoffs

Two more entries have been added to the fanfiction archive since last night: Dark Wave (Final Fantasy IV) and Pucker Punch (Street Fighter, Karin/Sakura). It’s weird…I was told by one reader that Dark Wave sounded like a good intro to a longer story. I responded by saying I’d think about doing it, but I didn’t know where to start. It’s also been a while since I’ve added to my Karin/Sakura story, so I wrote Pucker Punch in hopes of getting something jump-started in my brain.

Category: Literature
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: fanfiction, final fantasy, karin kanzuki, rosa farrell, sakura kasugano, street fighter

Last night, I got my first taste of Class World in Disgaea 3. It’s similar in concept to Item World from the previous two games, except you’re, uh…diving directly into characters rather than their weapons. The experience and money payouts for this mode are much, much higher than in the Item Worlds, at the expense of not being able to earn any items. A fair trade-off, I suppose. I was able to boost a newly-acquired Beast Tamer from level 5 to level 17. It’s much easier to go through Class World using a low-level character, since monsters and Geo Blocks are scaled to that particular character’s level, even if the character actually participates in the battle on that level (TIME PARADOX?).

Judicious use of Class World should easily allow me to complete the post-game levels, where I’ll need to be at least level 150 to even get started. I’ve got five chapters left to go in the main game, so it should give me plenty of time to bring my characters to Goku-like power levels.

Category: Video Games
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: disgaea 3, level grinding