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last modified 2004.17.april

Right now i'm studying at UCLA, so i don't have access to games, comics, or much music!!! But, before i came back here to study, I was playing some games.. Many of these games are in Japanese, so i can't really understand them, but they are still quite fun and interesting. I will introduce them since i don't really see any homepages that have much information about them and other games I am currently playing. ..


---====+[ Phantasy Star Online v.1&2 ]+====--- (action)

Actually, I first played version 1 on the dreamcast.. but I didn't update this file for a long time. .. lazy me.. This is the latest of the "Phantasy Star" series after Phantasy Star 4 on the Megadrive/ Genesis. Don't be fooled that it is actually an RPG! The game doesn't actually have too much in relationship to PS series except for the background of the story. This is an action game where you control a uniquely customized personal character and kill monsters.. (kind of like the comic "BLAME!", don't you think!? @_@)
The story isn't the emphasis of the game. Basically, the colonization ship Pioneer 2 came to the planet Ragol after Pioneer 1 landed there. But what happened to Pioneer 1? No one knows.. . The central government is hiring Hunters to find out what is happening on the planet.. but Ragol is not a friendly planet and many hostile monsters lurk around.. .
Actually, for me, the game is more about collecting rare items~~ hehe. That is the addicting part of this game! Every monster you kill may leave an item. It could be money or a regular item, or a rare item in a red box. No regular item you get are alike. They could have additional % in damage in each monsters' attributes: Native, Altered Beast, Machine, or Dark. Then there are the mysterious ??? item, which has a special attack that depends on bringing it to get it identified at a "Tekker". It may have a special in fire, ice, or lightning, it may absorb enemies HP, TP, or EXP, or confuse enemy. Problem is that there are also different levels in the special attack. For example, for special fire attack, it can be : heat, fire, flame, and burning. Burning is the most strongest fire category and heat is the weakest. There are many different kinds of weapons. Many can only be used by a certain class.
Other little things make each player different from one another. I always dreamed that you could create your own RPG character other than naming him (more than 4 characters that is! :D). This game allows the player to select the character's costume, hair style, hair colour, skin colour, height, width, eyes, and name! The name is most important because that determines your "Section ID". There are about 8 section IDs and each Section ID determines the likelyhood of what items your character may get. For example, my character's Section ID is "Bluefull", and he gets many rods and partisans, but very rarely wands. To make it even more crazy, some items can be only obtained by a certain Section ID! That is what makes you need to create more characters or go online and trade items. You also need to select the "class" of character: hunter, ranger, or force. A "Force" can be described as a sorceror. You can also be human, newman (biologically engineered creature, which have "elf ears"), or android. Forces(Newmans in particular) have the most TP, least attack and defence, and accuracy. Rangers have most accuracy. Hunters are probaby the most well balanced. Androids have no TP, but can set and see traps and can't be paralyzed or poisoned. I like magic, so I never created an android-type character yet! =_=||
For even further individual customization is your little robot friend "mag". Similar to raising a pet, you give regular healing items to it that will increase your attack, defence, TP, and defence if you equip the mag. They will grow and evolve differently depending on your section ID, whether if you are female or male, and what food it eats! yes yes, this is similar to pokemon or "chao" in Sonic Adventure!! It also has a "photon bar" that charges up as you hit the enemy or get hit.. When it fills up, you can use the "photon blast" ability of a mag. The photon blast of the mag also depends on what you feed it. It gets the first photon blast at level 10 (?) and which one you get also depends on which statistics are the highest, your section ID, and your class!
There are 4 levels of hardness: normal, hard, very hard, and ultimate. So, you have to beat the game over and over again to get to the next level of hardness. Everything is rather much the same until you reach Ultimate mode, where most of the monsters and the stages are modified. A motivation to get to the harder modes is that rare items become more common! I find it almost impossible to get a rare item in normal mode.
[My PSO Game] Click this link if you are curious about my own character in PSO and some of the rare enemies and items I found. I only have one main character that I use!

Waku^2 PuyoPuyo Dungeons logo SS Waku^2 Puyo^2 Dungeons cover
-==WAKU WAKU PUYO PUYO DUNGEON==- (Action Dungeon RPG)

I like the character designs in this game! cute and funny! This is sort of a dungeon action RPG, where you explore dungeons (well, actually atractions.. similar to Disneyland :D) after dungeons.. Its quite fun.. However, the dungeons are all randomly generated so some of the dungeons are not very well designed.. In the dungeon, you control a character to attack creatures (turn based). There are three characters you can pick from: Arle Nadja with Carbuncle , a yellow creature (not a pocket monster!!), Schezo Wegey, and Rulue (who has a Monitaur friend that follows her around and helps her). Each character has a different storyline. The character i picked was Schezo. Why? well, i liked his character design... but i found out that he is a very funny guy so i like him even more!! He seems to be very serious.. *too* serious at times :D He is a dark sorceror and fighter and has many spells that other characters doesn't have. Arle (katakana:= aruru!! :D) is a young girl learning magic and even has spells which does not use any MP (magic points). Rulue is a blue haired short tempered and rich girl that is a master of non-weapon combat! She is in love with Satan-sama.
Some faults in the game so far are that there doesn't seem to be enough space to hold all the items.. (OK, OK, i'm sort of greedy!) and that you can't save at locations you want. You can only save when you just passed one floor of the dungeon and are going to the next, and when you are outside of the dungeons and in the attraction selection screen.

Strangely enough, There are such things as stores that only sell Puyo Puyo items such as cakes, dolls, keychains, stationary, etc! I luckily came across one around Hiroshima.. right next to a sea port i think.. i don't really remember.. But i read there are a couple of those stores in Hiroshima.. of all places,. why there?!
Anyway, Puyo Puyo is originally a puzzle game in the same falling down items puzzle game category like Tetris or columns.. But i only played it a couple of times some long time ago...

I finally beat the game with Schezo!! WOw! um.. it took me maybe 3 or 4 years?! How embarrassing!! I can't really remember the ending though.. . That means that I have to replay it! But I want to beat it using the other characters.. .

Would you like to see more pictures from Puyo Puyo? You can go to my little Puyo Puyo image gallerie . Most images were taken from these sites..
Here are some links for more information:

Puyo Puyo Museum This is probably the current best English Puyo Puyo homepage.. although it wasn't updated for a while. It has information about the characters, game reviews, BBS, and more..

Puyo Org. (Japanese) Japanese page on puyo puyo.. I'm not too sure what it contains, but it has many links to other Japanese fan sites on Puyo Puyo or Madou Monogatari..

Kupo no Heya Wandering through many fan sites, I finally find this homepage with data on the characters in Sega Saturn's Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeons and Madou Monogatari. It has all the spells and moves of the characters, what type of attack it is, and what damage it inflicts. Hmm.. it clears up many things for me in Waku Puyo, because I only have the "fan ban" version with no booklet or anything! HOWEVER, its all in Japanese though.. .

American Puyo Federation home page
Lots of info, but it hasn't been updated for some time..
3.26.2000: link is broken! too bad.. .

The Compile game company homepage
The makers of Puyo Puyo. This page is in Japanese. It has lots of pictures of their games. There was a favourite character contest for one of the older puyo puyo games, and the favourite chara were:
1)Schezo Wegey-sama!! ( i didn't knew he was that popular! :D)
2)Arle Nadja 3)Witch 4)Carbuncle and.. etc
UPDATE: Link doesn't work. compile is no more. bankrupt, and bought out by SEGA..


-==Madou Monogatari==- (RPG)

After getting into Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeons, I wanted to try out more games related to Puyo Puyo.. For that reason I asked my brother to buy Madou Monogatari (Saturn version) from NCS a few years ago. I finally got to open the packaging this summer (2002) and start playing. A big problem was the sound. Something seemed wrong with the sound as it has beeps and tweeps instead of music. This was when I played it with the Japanese Saturn with a modified switch to play American and fan ban games. However the sound is perfectly fine when playing the disk with the American Saturn with a modified switch to play Japanese games....... hmmmmm.. I played quite a lot with the sound off (it sounds just terrible!!), and just recently found that I should play it with the American Saturn instead.
Anyway like Waku Puyo Dungeons, this game is quite fun and entertaining.. Of course there is more story to this game and much more humour too! However, you can only play Arle as the main character in this game. Rulue and Schezo are playable as party members along with other characters such as Witch, Draco Centaurus, Sutekeudara, and Minotaurus. The text is not that hard to read, so I can understand, for the most part, what is going on. :D
The story is Arle embarks on a journey to solve the mystery of the strange balls emitting weird smells that are making people act strangely. Along the way she meets Schezo and learns that the main culprit are the "youggs", huge eyeball monsters! Why is Schezo wanting to defeat the "youggs"? He usually doesn't like to do things that are troublesome. Schezo doesn't seem to be his usual self and seems to have many memory gaps! Something is afoot!! (can it be sukiyapodes?! :D)


ssdrcover devicereign

-==DeviceReign==- (Simulation-making choices, strategy)

Now compared to Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeons, this game is much more complex. It has a detailed story line with lots more text and Kanjis to read.. and lots of talking. But lots of that talking can be skipped if you put the skip movie option (and you can change it back) I just started playing this game and since i don't have any instruction booklet for this game, I am not all so familiar with all the options and the fighting portion.

Anyway, the story is about some high school students (as seen in the picture, and believe it or not, those clothes are actually their school uniform!! what a unique design!).. The main character is the blond haired person called Touya (kanji:= ten night). The other characters? oh... .well..sunmahen! desole! i really really forgot! they dropped out of my head and dematerialized!).. now, thinking aobut it, i forgot lots of the story (from what i interpret the pictures and text!!).. It has sometime to do with some weird alien-like creatures that are after Touya's friend. That friend's parents are researchers.
anyway, its a strategy-type game, similar to "Langrisser" or "Shining Force". You control a few characters that have a certain limit of movement and action. There are some alien-like creatures you have to kill.. .
I haven't touched this game at least 4 years...! I'm occupied with other games.. ;D But this game has another version on the PSX.


"The location's name: Southtown Secondus. The wolves have come. They are hungry. How much blood is needed. to sate (save) this evil city?" -SNK Homepage!

-==[GAROU: Mark of Wolves]==-

I just started to play this game in the arcade and I find it very fun! This is the latest sequel of SNK's famous fighting game series "Fatal Fury" or "Legend of the Hungry Wolf". One thing is that the characters and gameplay are all refreshing. In fact, the only character from the Fatal Fury series is an older Terry Bogard, who doesn't wear his trademark cap and jacket anymore. I think that Garou takes place years after the last Fatal Fury game. Some characters are Kim Hap Kwan's sons! :D hehe.. The fighting game that i usually play is SNK's team fighting King of Fighters series, not Fatal Fury. I guess that King of Fighters 95 is still deep in my heart to be the best of that series. The sequels aren't as good, and they aren't that much different from each other except dodging, evading, and now the "striker" system of having a team member especially to come and help you. Garou is very different from KOF, and also very much harder for me! Its not a team play, but regular single play.
The character I use is Rock Howard ( ^_^ .. hehe.). He is the "main" character (IMHO) so maybe he will get the main ending. Besides, his moves are *similar*, yet different from Terry Bogard's moves.. so I'm kind of familiar with them.. for example, he has Terry's [RISING TACKLE] and [BURN KNUCKLE]. He also has a handy long range projectile. Some other characters are FUTABA HOTARU, a kind Nakoruru-type character who has a pet ferret, B. JENNET, a blonde pirate (with a pirate crossbone symbol on her long dress!), Kim Hap Kwan's two sons Kim Jae Hoon and Kim Dong Hwan, MARCO RODRIGUEZ (AKA Krushnood Butt, somehow i find Marco Rodriguez on many homepages I see, but it is Krushnood Butt in the arcade I go to!! strange.. maybe its similar to the Capcom's M. Bison -> Vega thing!! it is a very striking name though!) , who fights in the style of Sakazaki's Kyokugen karate, and wears the traditional outfit too (but i see him wearing a purple top and a green bottom before!! sweat drop rolling down.. Hulk? Joker? not my favourite choice of matching colours! :D :D), HOTARUMARU, a Shiranui ninja kid!, GATO, a Chinese-style dressing guy (who is very hard to beat!), Griffon Mask ("TIZOC" in US!! I look some other homepages that had a picture with the KATAKANA reading of the character's names!), an eagle masked wrestler, FREEMAN, a strange red headed character from London.. somehow he reminds me of Basara of Samurai Spirits and Iori.., and KEVIN RYAN ("RIAN" in US!!), who i do not know much about. I don't know why they changed some names around though... strange.


MY VIEW ON FIGHTING GAMES: When you just watch people playing fighting games, you may think "whats so fun about beating characters individually?" Well, its much different from that! Actually, playing these games require lots of [strategy] (which i don't really have! :D I'm not that good + expert at these kind of games!! :D) and lots of skill to execute and memorize the moves! In fact, it took me a very very long time to master the famous Street Fighter II's Ryu's dragon punch move! (its | - \ (down, forward, down-diagonal) You need to have good reflex and coordination to execute the right move to counter another (such as when a guy jumps at you, do a air offensive move, such as the dragon punch uppercut type of rising attack move). You not only need to attack, but you also need to block and defend yourself too. Playing a fighting game (or some certain ones.. some are just "button smasher" ones, in which you rapidly push the buttons.. most of these type of games are the 3-D ones.. which i don't really play.) is much more complex than it seems. I always like to watch other people play. Its interesting to see their fighting style/strategy and perhaps "borrow" them! If you are good enough, you can do some super complex combos. They are a combination of attacks that the opponent doesn't have the opportunity to block. Unfortunately, i'm not good at these things. I do have one favourite combo that I created for Kyo in KOF95! :D :D I like to play a good fighting game after some exam horror or just for fun! When I play, my mind is put into the character that i'm controlling, so i get very nervous when i am very low on life (my hands get sweaty! -_-..) and i'm busy concentrating on what moves I should execute.

I guess you can say that i'm a fighting game freak. Especially for the King of Fighters series (94-99, but i still think that my first KOF game, KOF95, is the best). That was the game that caught my interest in fighting games. Street Fighter II, i did play.. but not very much. The characters didn't really appeal to me very much. But in SNK's KOF series, the characters have a life of their own! Well, for one thing, they are much more realistic. They not only have last names, but they have rivalries, and profiles on their ages, what they like or hate, and their hobbies!! :D :D I guess reading fan fiction of KOF really gave life to the characters too!! I must admit, what attracted me to KOF95 was its beautiful art. We borrowed the Sega Saturn version of the game (with a cardboard box containing the CD and the ROM cartridge) It has a very unique realistic style. You can check some pictures in my [EYE] section and under Game Art. [Click here!] I thought that the character Kusanagi Kyo looked quite "cool" and he had the power of summoning red flames!! So i tried to play that game, and it was very hard! I had the instruction booklet in front of me while i tried to copy the way to execute the moves! I really wanted to see other characters and see their special desparation moves (which is so hard/complex to do!! but now they seemed to have highly "simplified" all the moves!) Then my brothers saw me playing (no one really played that game before). Confident with my new "skills" , i thought that I could beat him, so i challenged him!! But still I lost anyway! (he has a good background of playing SFII!!) So I kept on challenging him, so that both my brothers and I began to play that game like *CRAZY*!! We even photocopied the move list from the instruction manual so that we won't wear it out! I guess that we all became even more crazy when my older brother's favourite characters to use included Yagami Iori and Heidern!! Heidern has this very bloody move in which that he jumps on and slices the opponent's neck (its kind of hard to describe). And IORI! well, he had the most funniest outfit that i had ever seen!! He has red hair, a very long white shirt that dangles to his knees, a very short black jacket (modified black Japanese student uniform), red pants, and this long red strap that loosely tied both his legs together! We couldn't understand the meaning of that strap and made fun of it! (that is what made us like him! :D) He also seemed to be very well animated than other characters The trade off is that more well animated = more slow! :D So we all made fun of him even more so!

During the summer, my brothers would play that game all day long, even until midnight. Even watching them play was very entertaining..because each game is different all the time!!
Now we don't really play KOF anymore. BUT!! we have this great challenger. He is my oldest brother's friend. I call him "Salty Fish"! He likes to come to our house and challenges all of us to a game of the SNK fighting game Samurai Spirits IIII (Samurai Shodown in US)!! We all take turns trying to beat him! My favourite characters to use are Shizumaru, a boy who fights with an old type of umbrella, and Rimururu, a girl who has the power of ice! Fighting games are quite fun, complex, and challenging! Especially since you can play against other [human]s!!! not only against some artificial intelligence! But even playing against the "computer" isn't that easy either!! :D It gives a person reason to [fight] for a meaning. It also helped me admire the various fighting styles of the world!! (some are "real" fighting styles!)


My favourite characters to use:

KOF: Kusanagi Kyo, Yagami Iori, Nikkado Benimaru-chan!, Asamiya Athena (I really like to perfect the [PSYCHO REFLECTOR], which reflects any projectile!!), King (i like 95 version of clothes the best), Billy Cane (I like his overalls in 95, and his "NO SMOKING" jacket!!), K' ,another cool looking guy that has a visual rock style clothes and has a jacket that says "BEASTS OF PREY" @_@..., etc.. (sorry, my fashion reviews aren't supposed to be here!! :D i should put it as part of my fashion page or something!! @_@... .)

SAMURAI SPIRITS: Shizumaru, Rimururu, ..

GAROU: Mark of the Wolves: Rock Howard (so far, i've only used him! but i would like to at least perfect controlling one guy first, unlike in KOF, where its a team of 3 characters)

My favourite KOF fanfiction is from PSYCHO SHONEN INSTRUCTIONAL . You can go check out the 80+ very well written chapters about various KOF characters! Someone also had the heart to translate the author's fanfiction into Spanish!