The current PS Vita backwards compatibility list* is live

Looks like I’ll be forking over ¥1,000 to play Growlanser and Disgaea on the PS Vita.

Siliconera notes that this is roughly 3/7 of the total PSP games currently on the PSN for download. (Well, they give the numbers themselves; I provided the fraction, because fractions are awesome. Who can’t immediately visualize 3/7?)

Square Enix, Capcom, and Namco Bandai haven’t joined in yet, but this list isn’t comprehensive; Sony’s original news regarding the UMD Passport program listed Falcom (and Square Enix, for that matter). I figure it will be updated as they work out the licensing arrangements with the various developers.

That said, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and get a PS Vita at the US launch (using a combination of various credits, coupons, game trade-ins, and the like to lower my price at amazon by a great deal). I’ll probably just pick up Uncharted: Golden Abyss from the US launch lineup; I’ll also have Tales of Innocence R (which releases in Japan ~1 month before the US system launch), and with Growlanser and Disgaea, that should keep me busy for some time.**

*For Japan, at least.

**When I’m not losing my mind at law school, anyway. I think a portable system will be convenient for between classes; I’m more likely to have time to game there than at home, and I can’t study all the time.

Bombing Mission

Everyone loved Final Fantasy VII*.

The games opens with Cloud, Barret, Tifa, and the rest of AVALANCHE heading to one of Midgar’s mako reactors (isn’t magitek grand?) to blow it the hell up.**

The party infiltrates a reactor, and the various characters give the player tips on how the game actually works (on the battle system and using items or magic and that kind of thing).

The music, though, is very tense. In spite of the ridiculous character models and hit-or-miss dialogue translations.

The Black Mages‘ rendition of the mission’s theme is excellent.

*By everyone, I mean more than 10 million people worldwide. I rounded up. To everyone.

**The game mostly glosses over this, but the player characters are essentially ecoterrorists. Damn elves.***

***On the other hand, they do have a point; the magitek of the FF7 world was bleeding the planet dry, and if nothing had been done, the world would have been a burned out cinder before much longer.****

****On the gripping hand, they are rebelling against a monopolistic corporatist government/business conglomerate; the Shinra Company runs everything, owns almost everything, and is practically despotic. People have revolted against far less evil governments. AVALANCHE is focused more on taking out the magitek power source Shinra uses than on overthrowing the government, though, so they’re still a bunch of elves.*****

*****No, I didn’t mean for the footnote section to be as long as the main post. Sorry.

And now, for Black (gun) Friday…

I just placed an order at Comp-Tac using their BLACK-2011 coupon code for 20% off (good only today, so you better hurry!).

One paddle holster and a single mag pouch on the way (eventually; they’ve got a seven day wait time).

I didn’t do any in person shopping, though. Walmart was packed, and I don’t particularly want to get trampled in the mad dash for bargains.

Instead, I watched the football game (sadface), worked some on my memo, and then saw The Muppets.

Definitely not a waste of money. Unless you hate the muppets, in which case, you’re probably a godless commie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all have a good holiday; eat too much, spend time with your family, watch football, laugh at Black Friday shoppers, or whatever else you do for Thanksgiving.

This year I’m mostly thankful that I’ve got 5 more days to work on my memo, and another 9 days after that to study for finals.

If I seem a little obsessed, it’s because the stress is getting to me.

Three more weeks and the first semester is over, though. I must press on!

Rick Reilly is hoarding the melange*

Back in August, he wrote for ESPN:

Grub’s, the best college bar in America, will nearly come unhinged when Arkansas wins the BCS national championship over Oklahoma. It’s the first national title for Arkansas since 1964, when it went undefeated under Frank Broyles. (Yet Alabama, which lost its bowl game to Texas that year, still claims it as theirs. Whoa, Tide!) Anyway, chili cheese fries for everybody! [emphasis in original]

The spice must flow, Rick!

I don’t know how likely winning the whole shebang is; Arkansas is 10-1, with undefeated #1 LSU coming up this Friday. Depending on how we do against them, and how ‘Bama does against Auburn, and how the SEC championship goes, we might not even get to a BCS bowl game.

On the other hand, if the stars align…

H/T Ryan.

*Yes, I did shoehorn a Dune reference into my post on SEC football. You’re welcome.

The imminent cephalopod uprising is at hand!

First we had to deal with the footsoldiers, the dread zombie squids.

Now, octopuses have ventured from their watery home to strike fear into the heart of man.

Can the Deep Ones and Cthulhu be far behind?

H/T Thinkgeek.

Battle vs. Lord Blazer

In the grand tradition of Japanese gaming soundtracks, the Wild Arms folk released a couple of arranged discs of tracks from the series.

The first disc, Wild Arms Music the Best – feeling wind- (yes, really) is a piano arrangement. The second disc, Wild Arms Music the Best -rocking heart-, is more up my alley; the tracks are all rock arranged.

This track is the rock arrangement of the final boss theme from Wild Arms 2nd Ignition.

I think you’ll like it.

Quote of the Indeterminate Time Interval – Frederic Bastiat

While reading about the Bipartisan War on Liberty (and thereby getting further depressed), I saw this Bastiat quote in the comments:

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

What could I possibly add to that?

The wailing and gnashing of teeth of gun banners is music to my ears

I’m looking at you, Josh Horowitz (of CSGC infamy).

He starts off his screed by defining “mass murder” as killing three or more. In typical Humpty Dumpty fashion, that’s not what mass murder is. According to the FBI, it’s four or more.

Horowitz goes on to whine about the evil NRA and how we’ll soon enter an era of forced reciprocity!

Just like we’ve had for driver’s licenses for decades, I guess.

In 2004, there were ~40,000 automobile deaths in the US. In that same year, there were ~10,000 homicides committed with firearms (not that you’re any more dead if you’re shot than if you’re stabbed, bludgeoned, suffocated, poisoned, exsanguinated, hanged, or electrocuted). So in 2004, 1/4 as many people were shot to death as were killed in a car accident; considering that there are roughly twice as many privately owned guns as there are cars, that doesn’t exactly paint the dangerous picture the gun banners want you to see.*

He then goes on to outright lie, saying, “. . . demented individuals like Jared Loughner and Nidal Malik Hasan continue to legally buy guns and carry them in our communities.”

First off, Loughner did not legally buy his gun. He committed a felony when he lied on his Form 4473. Similarly, Hasan did not legally carry his gun into Fort Hood; military bases are gun-free zones, and privately owned guns on base are required to be unloaded and locked for transport to/from the armory (when not actually locked in the armory) (as I understand it).

Tam is right (and so is Joe); we’ve come a long way since the the ’94 AWB.

It’s much easier to make your case when you don’t have to worry about telling the truth.

*Stats cribbed from google searches and wikipedia; caveat lector.

Occupy? Or Destruct?

The more I think about it, the more the Occupy Wall Street crowd and their clarion call for the people to “Occupy!” reminds me of a book in one of my favorite SF series: The Childe Cycle* by Gordon R. Dickson (sadly unfinished; cancer is a bitch).

In the first (in the series timeline, not published first) book, Necromancer, the cry of the Chantry Guild, a group attempting to overthrow the stagnating earth government, was “Destruct!”

Only through destruction could man destroy the computer-oriented society on earth, and only by using the Guild’s Alternate Laws.

It’s a mashup of ESP and SF, and gets a bit weird at times (not that weird, though; it was written in 1962).

But the various Occupy movements, the rioting, the calls for less automation because of the jobs stolen, reminds me more of the Chantry’s Guild’s motto than anything else.

Destruct!

*Dorsai!, the first book in the series, was Dickson’s take on military SF and published the year after Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. They’re very different takes on the subject, and I recommend both. That said, my favorite book in the cycle is Tactics of Mistake.