This has to be one of the worst designed games I've ever played, because the difficulty and level ramping of wild monster battles was absolutely atrocious. It's like someone went through the original SNES version and decided to multiply monster stats on everything by two - take the final boss, for example, which has 65,000HP in the SNES version and 150,000HP in the DS version. Despite its unfairness, I liked the story and characters, and would have probably even enjoyed the game on the whole if I had played a non-DS version.

I was tasked with the important duty of ensuring everyone was well fed at Bryce's farewell dinner last night at Majestic Cuisine. With my fellow Asian accomplice, Juliann, we decided on Chilli Blue Cod, Grilled Prawns, Crispy Skin Chicken, Pork and Taro, Black Pepper Beef, Roast Duck, Tofu and Seasonal Vegetables. I was fretting the whole night about whether we had ordered enough food, but it seemed everyone was satisfied and full, so mission accomplished and thank goodness for that. There's nothing worse than leaving hungry from a restaurant...

Anyway, a whole bunch of photos from the past month or so have been uploaded, including pictures from Guy Fawke's, BBQ at Charles', Sidhe farewells, random meals, random weather phenomena and Sunni's birthday.

Firstly, the fabled remakes of Pokemon Gold and Silver are out in the US today with the Australian and New Zealand release 10 days later. Of course this means it's busy time for me and the Psypoke staff Mike and Stephen. In the past few days, our HeartGold/SoulSilver section has had several guides added to it, including game maps, TM/HM locations, a walkthrough for 16 badges, and touched up a lot of naming changes to various pages around the place. It has been a very productive weekend!



Shatter, Sidhe's revolutionary brick-breaking game, is out on Steam, with my name making a brief cameo under the Special Thanks to the original Shatter team. Go and get it!



And finally, on Thursday, the long awaited Rugby League 3 is out for the Nintendo Wii. Featuring slick menus, awesome player and team customisation, and of course some classic rugby league action using the totally unembarassing Wii Remote controls, why WOULDN'T you want this game? (sorry Americans, this game is not for you)

I recently got Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia and Kirby Super Star Ultra on my DS; and with the ever-addictive nature of Picross, it means more DS and less blogging. Anyway, here goes.

There's been a few events happening in Wellington. You will have heard in the news of the Gaza protests happening in Civic Square. I was passing by and heard the chants (they're quite catchy, I must say). One was "Israel, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!". And this happened for at least two days, we could hear it quite well from our office.

We also had a dinner voucher to the Red Tomato in Kelburn, which had featured on that restaurant revamp show on TV. Yeah, the pizza wasn't too bad, my only complaint was that the Mexican was smothered in coriander, which didn't really suit the overall taste at all. Coriander is a garnish and it shouldn't be the dominant taste on pizza.

We hung out on Oriental Bay one evening, having fish and chips on the beach. It was a really calm day; two of the group even went for a swim in the water. By 8.30pm, the water was warmer than the air, so it must've been incredibly difficult to come out.

Last weekend, it was Wellington Anniversary = Long Weekend, so we planned a trip to scale the heights of Mt Taranaki, somewhat reminiscent of the good ol' 4th Form Camp, when we hiked up Mt Ruapehu. Unfortunately, the weather did not permit, so we decided to make our way to Cape Palliser, the southernmost point on the North Island. Not only was it gloriously sunny, the wind was fantastic and hiliariously fun. We climbed 250 steps to the lighthouse and enjoyed the full blast of the winds on the cape. Three of the group even went swimming in the frigid waters, and we shared a picnic lunch on the rocks by the sea. Cape Palliser is also known for the seal colony, and you can check out the gallery for pictures.

This weekend, it's Parachute 09 up in Mystery Creek, and also Chinese New Year on Monday. It's going to be awesome.

It's been a very busy week in terms of the two websites which I am responsible for.

Firstly, the Ignite Youths website was released to public eyes at the beginning of the week - a result of some awesome collaboration between myself and Reuben.

Secondly, Pokemon Platinum was leaked three days early, much to my surprise, so I moved into emergency mode and started hacking for information as soon as I could. That involved ringing the flat during work hours and getting Andrew to email me some of my programs. ¬.¬

In any case, Psypoke's got some great information for the time we've spent on it. I've been browsing some other websites and they're very far ahead in the game, but I know WPM from PokeBeach spent 28 hours continuously playing the game. I wouldn't be surprised if SPP had some slave doing the same for him.

The period between Christmas and New Years always seems so blah. It's like something's meant to be happening, but nothing does. ¯\(º_o)/¯

Anyway, we had an awesome feed on Christmas day. We had cheese platters (with some pickled onions, yum!), chicken nibbles, roast pork, glazed ham, potato salad, hot salad, green salad...and then for dessert we had these custard things in pastry cup...things. That were really really nice, so it's all good. And we also had a 5-layer rainbow jelly that took 5 days to make.

Since Christmas, I've been trying to get my sleeping habits back to normal after waking up at 4am to go to the airport. I think I'm back on track... kinda. Oh, and Sam arrived safely, so that's good too. \o/

I've been playing a lot of DS. Namely Pokemon...I've been breeding Larvitar and I finally got a good one ¬.¬ Anyway, that's half of my team, I need to get an Abra, Machop and Staryu now. Sigh. I wish the game makers would stop being so freaking stupid over IV Breeding and just make it some kind of max(father, mother, random) function. I also played Mario Kart DS over Wifi with PT, and that was lame, because he got a Blue Shell at the last course and pipped me to win the race. But all in all, we tied because I won the first two and he won the last two, so I'm not too fussed, and I fail at MKDS anyway so it doesn't bother me.

Lastly, I have also been hacking Pokemon ROMs. Yes h4xx0r lolz. I've been looking at the trainers' Pokemon. So far I've figured out level, dex number, item held and moveset. There's another number that I'm not too sure about...Weng Hao hypothesised it to be some kind of AI difficulty, and it makes sense, but I don't know of any way to test it.

We had a good LAN. There were nine computers at the peak time (Thursday night), with a few more people than that. It was more of a gathering, we didn't play that much DotA as one would expect. Rather, we went to Momo's, we went for a run, we cooked our own brunch...yeah it was pretty great. We even played some Mario Party DS (Yes! I know how it works now. Only one person needs Mario Party. All others use Download Play.)

Okay, so yeah, Momo's was great. I had a Papaya Milk Tea with Mango Pudding (One of Debs' favourites). We had stuffed ourselves sick with KFC for dinner, so we decided not to have any sticks.

As for the actual LAN, we had ups and downs. Networking was a breeze this time, so everyone was connected within a few minutes. DotA was great at times, and bad at times. Haha. Thomas thought he could be sneaky and stop screenwatchers by closing the laptop. So, he did. And the laptop hibernated. And he dropped from the game.

We had music practice immediately after the LAN, and by the time we finished it was around 9pm, and we hadn't had dinner so we went to Burgerfuel. I had a Three Degree Burn, and spud fries. I swear I've never demolished a burger that fast before. I was seriously hungry. But it was awesomely delicious, so it was all good.

Tomorrow, we're heading to a beach in Orewa as our end-of-year youth group activity. I hope it's good weather. I haven't checked. Also, shout out to ANDREW LONG: Happy Birthday! Hope you, Steven and Uncle Paul have a good flight to Malaysia. Eat lots and stay healthy. Don't get fat!