jwalkernet

Work on putting my site back together continues. It's slow going, but it's getting there.

I'll tell you something: finding emulated NES and SNES games in as enormous pain in the ass. Searches lead you to pages which only lead you to other pages, and then you're bombarded with a whole lot of pop-ups and no ROMs at all. (ROMs are what the emulated games are called, in case you didn't know.)

But it's worth it sometimes. Like a few days ago. I found a ROM for Final Fantasy IV, one of my very favorite games ever. Now, in the US, it was called Final Fantasy II (since the second and third FF games weren't released here). In addition to that, the game was seriously edited -- items and special attacks were removed, character details were either glossed over or deleted entirely, and the language was severely softened for the US audience. I know it may seem odd, in this day of Grand Theft Auto, to hear about bad words being removed from video games, but back in the early 1990s, that's the way it was.

So joy was mine when I found a ROM for not Final Fantasy II, but Final Fantasy IV -- translated from Japanese, and everything taken out put back in. I had found this ROM several years ago, but it went the way of the dodo when my laptop keeled over. And now I've found it again. Yeah.

Now, I just need to find Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, and my life will be complete. Well, as far as ROMs go, anyway.

And oh yeah: 25th Hour is a friggin' awesome movie. It's out on DVD, so if you haven't seen it, go get it now. No, seriously, right now.

Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends.