| « The Ventures are coming! | Scrabble » |
Help! Otakus please respond.
09/02/04 | by Jamie
| Categories: Deep Thoughts
I've been trying to get to the bottom of this whole Playstation BB pay to play online service David mentioned in the comments section before. Since I can't read Japanese, finding out more information from official sources is pretty hard. Using Altavista's Babelfish translation service only gives me 'Engrish' text that is even harder to understand than what my students normally create. After much searching I came upon this blog entry that answered many of my questions. I'm still a little confused though. Is it only new games that are pay to play? For instance, if I had Tony Hawk Underground would I be able to play that online for free? I bought a crapy old 500 yen driving game called Auto Modellista which is supposed to work online. When I try to play a network game however it doesn't work. Since all the menus are in Japanese I haven't been able to decipher any clues as to why. If anyone reading knows anything about what games are pay to play and what games are free (if any) on the Japanese PS2, then I'd love to know!
10 comments
Comment from: Jacob [Visitor]
Hey Jamie, that's what you get for not buying an Xbox. I know the Japanese don't like it...but that is just their stuck-up way about games. Actually the online stuff for Xbox is pretty tough too in Japanese, and since there isn't a US equivalent to the BB, you might be up a particular creek without a paddle. Good luck and be sure to post the solution if you ever get one.....even though I love Xbox, I'm a bit tired of the 10 game selection compared to the 2000 for PS2.
09/02/04 @ 02:25
Comment from: Hugh [Visitor]
Sounds like you spent a lot of money on a nice piece of junk! That's why you should never 'impulse buy'! Is it even possible to surf the net on it? I mean, maybe the internet connection isn't working with it? Well you could always sell it for 20% of what you paid at the recycle shop, or get a cool x-box!
09/02/04 @ 02:33
Comment from: Jamie [Visitor]
Xbox fans. You gotta love 'em. I actually didn't pay much more for the BB version then the regular PS2... maybe 2000 yen extra, or one drink at a hostess bar. The whole thing was under 2 man. Of course a used Xbox is only about 1 man now! I wonder why? Anyway, I've already got it hooked up to the Internet and downloading crappy free games. I just don't know yet if I can play anything cool without paying. You can get a browser for it seperately apparently and surf the web a-la webTV... but why would you want to? I'm sure there are plenty of illegal uses for the hard drive I have yet to discover too. It will probably just wind up being a 40 gig memory card like the one on your Xbox. Unlike the Xbox however, you don't need a Mod Chip to play "backup" (i.e. stolen) games... just a swap disk, which I've already burned and will try tonight. Plus the PS2 has a huge library of perverted Hentai RPG games that you will never see on the Xbox!
09/02/04 @ 03:09
Comment from: Jamie [Visitor]
I did a little more research and learned that I can't burn my own swap disk but have to buy one that has been made with some special press in China. Too bad Aomori doesn't have a Chinatown anywhere. Maybe there is store somewhere in Tokyo that sells grey market software.
09/02/04 @ 05:49
Comment from: Jacob [Visitor]
Touché Jamie. Xbox doesn't have a wide library of porn, but for the price of one hostess drink at a snack bar, you could have slipped down to the manga shop and gotten all the dirty porn your heart desired, instead of dropping 2 man on a PS2. Just because something (like Xbox) isn't popular in Japan, doesn't make it bad, take women's rights for example. ;) good luck getting all your illegal stuff work.
09/02/04 @ 19:35
Comment from: Jamie [Visitor]
What chu talkin' about? You some sort of sissy feminist girlyman? Male domination is the best part of Japan! That's why playas like me and that Ghettocities dude love it here so much!
09/02/04 @ 19:58
Comment from: Jacob [Visitor]
maybe so Jamie. I'd have to say that you're more of a playa than the Ghettocities boy. Everything from his website name to his language are cheap rip-offs of true playas.
09/02/04 @ 20:51
Comment from: David [Visitor]
Going on no actual first-hand experience, I'm assuming that you can play on American networks for free...if you have a US copy of the game. I know on Xbox Live most games share the same servers worldwide but I'm not sure if this holds true for PS2. I know for pretty much all Japanese games you have to pay through some service. Capcom uses KDDI, not sure what Sony uses and I've heard it's about 500yen per game, per month.
I can't help you on the menu stuff, but I remember that even in the US getting the BB unit to work took a lot of stumbling around. Maybe if you could post a picture of what the screen is telling you?
09/03/04 @ 00:55
Comment from: David [Visitor]
And good choice on the PS2. I mean Xbox gets Halo 2 for xmas, and GC gets the better version of Viewtiful Joe 2 & RE4, but otherwise this fall/winter is full of amazing PS2 games. Also for the most part I'd say don't bother with downloading and swapping and stuff. The used game shops are so cheap here for older games it's easy to grow a huge collection fast.
09/03/04 @ 01:00
Comment from: Jamie [Visitor]
Thanks for all the gaming advice! I used to follow this stuff closely back in the Genesis/TurboGraphics16 days but lately I'm kind of out of it.
09/03/04 @ 19:30
Comment feed for this post