Programmed only for destruction

I recently stumbled upon a messageboard thread where the poster was singing the praises of 16-bit CD gaming. No shit Sherlock, 16-bits + CD audio = full of win. One of that era's shining examples was SEGA/Sims VAY, thankfully brought over to America by official market leaders, Working Designs*. I've always loved this game, with its sci-fi anime style, and traditional RPG gameplay, and rocking techno music, but never had a Sega CD of my own, and never caught on to the notion of buying the games and playing them via an emulator. During my break, I've found a copy of Shining Force CD that I had picked up a few years ago, in anticipation of buying an actual physical Sega CD console. I've been playing through that game using Kega, and it's been performing very well. It's nice to see my 2.93GHz dual core CPU, 4 GB RAM, 64-bit OS machine can properly handle emulation of a 19-year-old console. Back in my day, emulators had no sound, ran at 1/3 the frame rate, and only had keyboard controls, that you couldn't remap, so you kids can just get off my lawn and piss off.

The red card next to it is probably the dumbest thing I've ever paid money for (again). It's one of those pre-paid point cards for Sony's Playstation Network. The first time I ever bought one of those things (for the Xbox 360) I had the actual card shipped over from Japan. Paid over $60 for less than $30 worth of points. That was long before everyone figured out that that was a god damned idiotic idea, and started emailing the codes over. I've bought points from these guys before, so I was quite annoyed to learn that they no longer email codes, but only ship the physical cards. What happened to you japanvideogames.com, you used to be cool? This will eventually become Dark Awake, and Bijin Tokei. You can see why waiting for shipping is a bad idea when the points are meant for insta-dumb purchases.

* I'm not even kidding about that. If you're a fan of companies such as Atlus, Xseed, Mastiff, NISA, or even Ignition, you owe Working Design and Victor Ireland a huge debt of gratitude. Because if he wasn't crazy enough to do it first, none of these upstarts would have had any clue.