The Benq Chronicles: the final chapter

In my last Benq Chronicles post you could allready read that this dispute was nearing it’s end and now, finally, after more than 4 months, the replacement model finally arrived and I’ve called it Deimos MK2.

It’s a Benq Joybook A82 and it’s a littlebit better than the Joybook 8100D29 I had previously. It has a slightly faster CPU (1.6Ghz Pentium M instead of a 1.5Ghz Pentium M) and it has a superior graphics chip (ATI Mobility Radeon X600 instead of a ATI Mobility Radeon 9600).

As for the rest of it; it looks the same, it feels the same and it works the same. Now I hope it’ll last a bit longer and I’m still considering to sell it, but won’t do it right away.

But before I actually got this replacement model, I had to call Benq several times again. The first time the manager of the service center agreed to send me a replacement model and it would arrive within 2 weeks. After 2 weeks I called them again and then they told me I should get a repair number first! What?! Couldn’t they have told me that before I started waiting again? Bastards.
Anyway, I called the RMA-hotline again, got my number, a day later they called me again to set the date for the drop-off and it arrived in time.

Finally… End of line.

Going to Pukkelpop

Today around 19:00h I will leave for Hasselt, Belgium to visit the pop festival that will always keep beating the Lowlands festival (hehe, screw Lowlands >=D).

There I will see various bands including:

• Morningwood
• Fear Factory
• Ministry
• Daft Punk
• Turbo Negro
• Mastodon

And some others as well.

Meeeow b*tches!

..End of line.

Uberfighter: the game is done!

It’s now 11:17h, but the game was finished a few minutes ago. Read all about it here.

You can download the game here and it’s called UberFighter.

At this moment I don’t feel like writing any more stuff on here… I’m FUBAR…

…End of line…

Announcement: a game in 24 hours

Thursday, august 10, 2006
11:00h

About a month ago I came up with the idea to create a simple game from scratch within 24 hours. Tell you what, today is the big day. The kickoff was today at 11:00.

The team consist of 3 people:

1. Michiel (NecroDOME) Gijbels
2. Frank (Mad Woody) van Gent
3. Jens (Zhooibaal) Waschk

We have decided on the following:

• 2D side scrolling beat ‘em up
• We will be the characters
• Animation will be stop-motion
• There will be a bonus character
• All graphics will be photos
• A portrait of the characters will be displayed in the top of the screen

I will post regular updates on this page.

…End of line.

Last saturday (5-8-2006) I went to Replay Videogames in Weert (Limburg, NL) together with my buddy Daniel from DDM-YAB and both he and I picked up some games while we were there, I got 3, of which 2 are NDS cartridges:

1. Atari Retro
2. Super Princess Peach (Japanese import)

Atari Retro is a collection of 10 classic Atari games: Pong, Tempest, Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Warlords, Breakout, Sprint, Gravitar and Lunar Lander. All of the games are available in both classic and remix mode, but remix mode is nothing more than a graphical overhaul and mostly kills the original feel of the game, so I prefer to play in classic mode. Some of the games (Pong, Sprint and Warlords) also offer a mutliplayer feature to play against friends.

I am not that greatly interested in Super Princess Peach, but because this involved the Japanese version, I couldn’t resists on buying it and I must say that this game is actually good fun to play, even if you don’t understand a word of it. I can’t read any of the texts, I can’t read the manual and using the various bonus stuff is impossible, simply because I have no idea what to do, because I can’t read any of it… But playing the game isn’t all that difficult, in fact, it’s really easy. The 4 icons in the bottom screen affect Peach’s mood and with that you can activate various special abilities like floating, crying, burning really angry etc. There is no text needed to explain how that works, it simply explains itself with the icons.

But, aren’t that only 2 games? Well yes, but the third one is of a completely different class, because that one isn’t something for some modern handheld. In fact, it’s Ski or Die for the NES, ahhhh, the memories. I used to play this game on my parents’ PC when I was little and all I can remember about it was that it was extremely cool. I haven’t yet tried out the NES version, but I’m pretty sure that it’s awsome.

And one last thing for this blog entry, I also got 3 “new” games for my Sega Saturn, but because Daniel had my AV cable I couldn’t yet try them. I got the cable back from him last saturday, but haven’t had the time yet to try them, so I’ll blog about those later. The 3 games are:

• Harcore 4×4
• Panzer Dragoon
• Panzer Dragoon Zwei

…End of line.