There is a backwards compatibility update now available over Xbox Live. This free update brings the complete list of original Xbox games that you can play on your Xbox 360 to almost 300.

Xbox Live's Major Nelson : August '06 Back Compat Update

This is the usual mishmash of crazy "Who Cares" games that we've come to expect from the backwards compatibility of Xbox 360, but I mention it because it includes Burnout 3:Takedown and Sid Meier's Pirates. Plus Aquaman and Outlaw Tennis (rolls eyes). Still no Psychonauts or Jet Set Radio though.

technorati tags:Xbox_360, Pirates, Xbox

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I've taken a minor break from the "catch up on Babylon 5" project, in order to institute the "catch up on Lost" project. Geez, you'd think I was an art director lost in the Land of the Rising Sun, wouldn't you? But this was necessary because B5 doesn't have new episodes this fall, and Lost does, so there you go. I finished season 4 of B5 and from what I understand it's all downhill from there anyway. I'll go back and catch season 5 and the movies later.

So you can imagine my slight confusion to catch the actress who played D'lenn in Lost. Plus a hobbit is in the mix as well. But I digress.

B5 was worth watching, but I didn't find it as great as usually advertised. I suspect that has to do with chronology. When it originally aired the only real contemporary SF would be Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I can see how in comparision it would seem very fresh and exciting. But I can compare it to Battlestar Galactica, and it doesn't come off well in that comparision. Of course I can also see the historical side and realize that BSG might well owe its existence to B5 proving that interesting SF with long story-arcs has a home on television.

Lost seems pretty cool so far, but I'm less than halfway through the first season, so I will discourage discussion of it until I'm caught up. :-) At my current rate of consumption (limited by Netflix queues and shipping times) I'll finish season one right around the time season two is released on DVD - thus saving me from any shaky BitTorrid affairs with that darn internet. I doubt I'll finish season 2 before season 3 starts, but I'll finish it before stacking up five episodes on the TiVo - which is when you start requiring drastic measures.

One thing that I will mention about Lost is that the commentaries are fantastic. They use seamless branching to great effect. During the pilot they discuss some of the FX shots early on, when the plane wreckage is still on fire and stuff is collapsing. Then they actually say in the commentary, "In fact, stop the film right here", the screen fades to black and then they show some of the daily footage - without the FX added. Later they show some footage where a take goes wrong and generally discuss the shot. When they are done they say "OK, roll the film again" and the show picks up where they stopped it. Very cool.

Is anybody else watching Eureka? The two hour pilot was pretty s . . l . . o . . w, I wouldn't blame somebody for giving up after that. But if you did, give it another chance. The pacing picks up, and it has a certain quirky charm. It also is a bit less predictable than the pilot implies. While there still is a MacGuffin of the week, they are doing some development from episode to episode and things carrying from one ep to the next. It's not epic TV, but it's fun and there is a little more depth to it than I expected at first glance. If you've been looking for some sci-fi filler on your TiVo (what to do in the three days it takes to get a new disc from Netflix?) check it out.

technorati tags:TV, Lost, Eureka, Babylon_5

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(This is a follow-up to my first Kingdom Hearts II post.)

I finished KHII this morning so I thought I'd retouch the discussion. Did I finish Jiminy's Journal? No I did not. There was a bunch of annoying mini-games that I needed to go back and redo. I probably would have done that, but along the way I ran into Sephiroth. Here's the thing - Sephiroth hit me once and I dropped to one hit point. I tried it a few times and finally went and went to see what GameFAQS had to say. There's a whole FAQ for Sephiroth, and it talks about how you should probably be level 99 and compares how difficult he is at level 75 to level 99.

My save at the final save point I'm level 52. So in order to beat Sephiroth I need to just fight random encounters for somewhere between 30 - 50 levels. Screw it. So I'll give you the sane person's method for finishing KHII.

1. Play the game through to the last save.
2. Fight the final boss and see the ending, minus the "secret ending"
3. Close your eyes and imagine that you spend 40 hours or so grinding out miserable random fights in service to the crazy Square bastards.
4. Go to YouTube and search for "Kingdom Hearts II ending". Watch the secret ending - which doesn't even really make sense anyway.
5. Play two or three decent games in the 40 hours of button-mashing I just saved you.

Don't get me wrong, I like the game overall. But Square has this odd desire to force you to battle endlessly in their games. At least in KHII it's optional - as opposed to say Final Fantasy VII.

Anyway, back to Gamefly it goes. Hopefully I'll get Dead Rising as a replacment.

technorati tags:Kingdom_Hearts_II, gaming, PS2, Square-Enix

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(Kudos to Tony for finding this)

If you're somebody who wanted to play Sid Meier's Pirates but were unwilling to shell out the $50 to buy a new copy . . . well for the most part you're a goddamn cheapskate and you'd better not work in the industry or I'll mock the shit out of you. If you can't be bothered to buy the good stuff then I don't want to hear the complaints when you're stuck working on Movie-Tie-In 3 or Sequel-To-Random-Sucess-In-The-Past 17, or Derivative-Just-Like-Last-Year's-Surprise-Hit-But-Rushed-Crapfest. But in my case I had bought the PC version, so buying the Xbox version a few months later seemed a bit steep.

Amazon now has the Xbox SKU for $12. I don't know why, don't know how long the price will last, etc. etc. But if you want a copy of Pirates for crazy-cheap click the link. If you're into the PC thang, it's $20 - but that's still a great buy. Check it here.

I've only played a bit of the Xbox version, but it seems to be almost identical. Load times are more noticeable, but that's to be expected. The only substantial difference I've seen so far is that they seem to have cut out the "explore on land" game. When you hit land it just tells you "you searched for days" and either gives you the treasure (if you were close enough I guess) or tells you that you found nothing.

technorati tags:games, Xbox, Pirates, sale

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So in between discs of Babylon 5 I've been watching random episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And I really want to like it. But I can't. It's just bad people. Not because I'm a Star Wars fan - I fully expect the upcoming Star Wars TV show will suck way worse. But that doesn't make ST:TNG good. My relationship with ST:TNG is . . . complex to say the least. Here's the scoop (going from memory, so I could have it wrong) - the first two seasons of TNG I was in Germany, attending colleage at the U of M, Munich campus. Somehow (I have no idea how I was working this) I was getting bootleg tapes of TNG. I'm pretty sure that I saw all of season 1 this way and some part of season 2. (My confused memories even claim some of these tapes were Betamax, and yes I did have a Betamax VCR while I was in college - long story.) I think I watched season 3 after returning to the States, during the Dark Year(tm) I lived in New Jersey. I was really upset by some cliffhanger or another - Data getting his emotion chip or some such. Anyway, I think once I went away to finish college at College Park I could no longer see TNG and so I gave up on it. I have this jumbled impression of A) Wesley Crusher - supa-genius!(tm) plus the B) belief that almost any problem could be solved by Geordie running some sort of experimental particle through the deflector dish. So fine. Now I'm older, my genre tastes are more mature, yadda yadda. So I've watched a half-dozen or so episodes from Spike TV or G4 repeats. And y'know - it's just BAD. They are bad, bad, bad sci-fi. I just watched an episode where Wesley's science project was studying medical nanites, but he fell asleep and they "escaped" and took over the Enterprise's computer. Because, y'see, Wesley being a supa-genius(tm) came up with the radical step of having two nanites . . . cooperate (gasp). This led to a complete defeat of the military computer running Starfleet's state-of-the-art flagship vessel - because nobody could anticipate rogue nanites who actually communicate in the future. Yes, the terrorists nanites took hundreds of people hostage, but it's all good because they are a new life-form and Prime Directive, blah, blah, blah (yawn), blah. It's bad sci-fi. It gives the genre a bad name. When people say "I don't like sci-fi" they really mean "I don't like shows where Geordie/Data/Wesley makes technobabble shit up in the last ten minutes of an episode and saves everyone". ST:TNG was popular because it aired in a drought period of no competing SF - not because it was good. Sanders' rules of picking out the ST:TNG bad episodes are as follows: 1) If it involves the holodeck, it sucks. The holodeck was always a literary cheat, a goofy deus ex machina that got way-the-fuck overused to justify whatever crazy plot point they wanted to tell. Plus - the only thing goofier than Kirk fighting Abraham Lincoln is to make a fake Abraham Lincoln and then have the computre go berserk and refuse to let people out. I wish that wasn't the description of a half-dozen or so ST:TNG eps, but sadly it is. 2) If anybody routes anything through the deflector dish, it sucks. 3) If anybody spouts anything that sounds scientific, but makes anybody who has read a science book in the last fifteen years grind their teeth in annoyance, it sucks. This will include tachyons, deuterium, nanites, or anything involving strange energies. 4) If it introduces new characters that we don't care about, then explains their dilmemna, then resolves their issues within one episode and we never see those characters again, it sucks. This is admittedly a literary complaint, not a sci-fi one but I feel it's still valid. These four rules cover every ST:TNG episode I've watched in the last month, and most of episodes are hit by two or more rules. It's bad science and it's bad fiction. There are moments of good acting (Patrick Stewart especially), and there are several characters that look hot in the silly uniforms. Everything else is just terrible. Are there any fans who read my blog who can actually refute any of these points?