Metal Gear Solid | I Spit Hot Fire

Moving to Saigon (And other News)

Friday, August 15th, 2008

I’ve hit a lull in blogging, but things have been happening.

Dark Knight comes here (finally) in 2 weeks. I’m moving to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), essentially, right now. It’s ….a bit sad for me, I actually wanted to stay in Hanoi, well, I didn’t want to leave, since I just really, really love Hanoi, especially my apartment. It’s a good move for my work, and may make me happier with work, which is an extremely important part of my life.

Other:

Went to Hue a few weeks ago for 5 days, checking out Thuan An (a beach that’s only 15km away from Hue and Lang Co, a more isolated beach town 75 km away from Hue). Very fun trip, plan to make a post on the trip with pictures…just need to get to it.
My eldest uncle on my Dad’s side died a few days ago. I hope my Dad is doing ok. I’d met my uncle a few times, but don’t really have a connection to my relatives on both sides since I didn’t grow up nothing them. But essentially all my relatives live in Saigon, and now I’m moving to Saigon….so that’s a bit awkward and stress for me. I know for anyone reading this, you probably think I’m a bastard who doesn’t care about anyone, which I suppose is true, but most people are used to relatives and a sense of extended family. I, however, am my sister, and my parents, cousins from Indiana (1 family), and that’s it.
My Metal Gear Solid and Hoang Thuy Linh posts, are by far, the most popular posts on this web site. I almost feel like I should upload the sex video on here to amp up this site’s page views, but that really wouldn’t be right. Incidentally, Hoang Thuy Linh is an active user of Cyworld Vietnam.(She marks her stuff private)
It was #1 for a good amount of votes, but it was inevitable that it would fall: I’d be lying despite my grand claim that I thought it would be that good. I think it can stay top 10 over time.
Not playing basketball at all
Don’t have a place to live in Saigon yet, which worries me, especially since I loved my Hanoi place so much, but once I’m in Saigon and accept it, I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Top Gear is such a ridiculously good TV show. Took me forever to start watching it, but oh, is oh so very good. Just damn funny.
Starting a English club on Cyworld, club.cyworld.vn/VNEnglish. Me and my friend Henry are joining up to help people learn English, but it’s not just on us helping people. We’re creating a club where Vietnamese students join, teach, and help each other, collaborative discussion and learning. I think it be a big success as long as there are a few dedicated people (like me and Henry) to start it off.
Interested in the Olympics, but have not been watching
Vietnam played the Brazil Olympic team in Hanoi right before the Olympics started. I didn’t know Ronaldinho was going to play, and that really drove up ticket prices here. I wanted to go, but didn’t. I turned up sick that day anyway. Almost a lock that it will be the only time Ronaldinho comes to Vietnam in his life.

Tags: batman, cyworld, dark knight, hoang thuy linh, hue, lang co, metal gear solid, Random, ronaldinho, saigon, thuan an, TV

15.08.2008 Random, TV No Comments

Metal Gear Solid (PC) with EPSXE 1.7

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

(EPSXE is a Playstation 1 emulator for the PC, 1.7 was released recently. Before this, it hadn’t had a new version in I think, over 5 years. You can find out more about it here: http://forums.ngemu.com/epsxe-discussion/)

In continuing my run of themes, or perhaps better stated as “enjoying old things again”, I’ve also been playing Metal Gear Solid, with the intention of finally playing 2 and 3 as well.

I bought the recently released MGS Collection (Play-Asia is freaking fantastic for buying legit games in VN, btw), mainly for MGS1 since I I’ve owned MGS2 for the XBox for nearly 5 years after a crazy sale at EBGames listed it at $19.99. Never played it once.

I have a modded PS2 which is why I bought the collection- I could get a copy of MGS 3 easily, but I didn’t think I could run a copied MGS1 on my PS2.

Turns out, I can’t run legit copies of PS1 games on my PS2 either. I actually own the PC version of MGS and have it with me in VN, but I wanted dual shock vibration. Turns out, the solution was to go with EPSXE and XBCD* drivers to go with an iso image of my MGS1 CDs. You can also play straight from the cd, but its significantly slower, with loads of loading delays.

(I even have Mike’s hint book guide to MGS2, also given to me probably 5 years ago, and again, never played it once.)

The overall gameplay experience was quite good.

20-30 fps, with some occasional dips into the 10’s, but not during gameplay. (I think PSX games were originally 30 FPS anyway, at least MGS was, so for the most part things run well, although I kind of felt that control was slightly sluggish)

Keep in mind I was pushing higher-end settings on my T61P laptop, not running it how it looked on the Playstation when it first came out. See the screenshot at the bottom of the post.

Analog control was good, and vibration accurate. The game’s sound, always one of the most memorable things about MGS, still holds up after all these years, though I think David Hayter’s acting is a little overrated. He’s good, but he’s not fantastic. I kind of feel the way about the rest of the cast too, but I think a lot of that is the script. When I was 18/19/20 it sounded great, now that I’m 27, it comes off a little cheesy.

*XBCD Drivers are 3rd party drivers for the XBox 360 controller. Much better than the Microsoft ones, they’ll let you get rumble in emulators like EPSXE. The link to where you can normally find them is gone, so I’ve uploaded them for download.

XBCD Installer 0.2.6.exe

(edit: June 23: wanted to add some things. 1.7 version of EPSXE has an issue when you get to disc 2- you won’t be able to load it. You’ll have to get an older version of EPSXE (1.5, 1.6), use your save, get past the bug point, and resave for the import back into 1.7. This is easy, just look in the right directory in your program directory. Also had trouble with the ISO image at the end of the game- the Playstation (not the pure emu software) reported it could not read the disc. When I used to original game disc however, things were ok)

Here are my settings with EPSXE: