I moved to my new appartment over a week ago (November 14, 2004). It wasn’t bad at all. Thanks to my good friends who helped me out, it took less then three hours for everything. New place is nice. It’s an old appartment building, and it isn’t in great shape, but everything is relatively clean, and the tenants seem to be nice. I think at least two thirds of tenants are romanians. It’s fun. May be I’ll make some new friends and improve my Romanian.
I moved my Bell phone ground line to the new place. I requested DSL move from my provider. I’m planning to go to my bank branch today to update my contact information.
Last week I bought old-style NES console (‘85 design) with Final Fantasy game for about 15 CA$. It was very dirty and didn’t work properly. After some research on the Internet, I opened it up, bent cartridge connector springs back to their original position, cleaned the case and put it all back together. Now everything works great and I can play original Final Fantasy from 1990 with no problems. And soon Square-Enix will release a GBA remake of FF1. Awesome!
I also got the new-style top-loader NES (‘93 design) with two crappy games, a copy of Super Mario Brothers 3, wireless 4-port multitap and four controllers (3 old-style and one “dog bone”). Everything is scratched and dirty, but works fine. I had to glue a small piece of broken plastic and clean it. I also plan to add composite video http://www.gamesx.com/rgbadd/nes2avmod.htm and may be also a stereo audio output http://www.chrismcovell.com/nesstereo.html. RF is just too bad.
I also picked up a copy of the old pack-in NES cartridge: Super Mario Bros + Duck Hunt. My Zapper gun works great! I think that SEGA’s Safari Hunt and Phaser work a bit better than Duck Hunt and Zapper.
Now I need to find Metroid for NES. I hope it won’t make me bleed cash as it was with top-loader.
Last week I bought Half-Life 2: Collector Edition, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Nintendo DS with “Feel The Magic: XY-XX” game. I can’t play HL2 because I still don’t have Internet access at home. I didn’t play Metroid Prime 2 yet as well, still need to finish first Metroid Prime. Nintendo DS is leaving mixed impressions: the unit itself it kind of bulcky and too heavy to play for a long time. But the games I played (XY-XX and Metroid Prime: Hunters demo) are really good. Screens are kind of tiny for real 3D in Metroid Prime: Hunters, but I guess I can get used to it. As usual with big N, hardware on it’s own is not very impressive, but games do make a big difference.
According to one of my coworkers, I completed about three quarters of Halo 2. It’s a good game, but I’m getting a bit bored. Somehow I think the first Halo had more fun single player campaign.