Captain Buttbeard's Blog

Couple new acquisitions: I had this shitty bootleg chink HDD Transfer Kit I bought more than 10 years ago, I used it to transfer title updates to my Xbox 360. Now that shit died, so I bought another one on eBay: that one wasn't working either, what a suprise (their shitty tracker didn't show it was delivered so I just said it never arrived and I got my money back lmao, fuck that country and their cheap shitty products). After doing some research it turns out you can copy any game data from USB flash drives if they are formatted by the console first. I don't remember if this was a thing a decade ago, I remember there was an update that allowed games to be installed on them, that's probably when it happened. Anyway I bought a 16GB SanDisk flash drive, it was really cheap and I found a coupon that made shipping free. I had a smaller one (2GB) I could easily use for title updates, but I need it to play installed XGD3 games (for some reason if you start playing a music from your flash drive then you can start those games without any errors, I have no idea who discovered this but bless him lol) and I actually found out some Xbox Live Arcade games and DLCs were DRM free, and after some deep googling I found them on various different sites. So I'm gonna play some of the DLCs too for games like Dragon Age: Origins, Borderlands, BioShock Infinite etc. Speaking of BioShock Infinite, I finally found a copy really cheap and I bought it, so I got my second and last original Xbox 360 game lmao. It had a shitty sticker on it from the store that sold it, I managed to peel it off, I hate when they do that shit. And so the biggest news: I bought a PlayStation 2. I was looking at some games recently I would love to try out, and I was doing some research to see which models are the best and how to softmod them. At first I wanted to buy a fat model because you can add a HDD (and I just think the originals are always the best looking), but it needs a network adapter and there is no way I could find one used in this country with it. Slims have ethernet ports but I didn't want to buy discs for it, because I know how unreliable the lasers in these consoles were. It turns out you can connect the console to your PC and run games from there. And there is a new method called FreeDVDBoot where you just need to burn a DVD and you can softmod the console with that. So I was looking through some local sites every once in a while but they cost more than what I wanted to pay. But I checked it again last week, and I found the exact model I was looking for, with original memory card and controller (most of the time I see them with shitty bootleg ones), without a modchip on a local eBay like auction website, starting from zero, whoever has the biggest bid wins when it expires. It felt like a sign, I knew I was gonna go for it. I had a price in my mind I was willing to give for it - basically half of what I usually see on these sites, and I thought if I'm lucky it might be just enough, because in this shithole people are so dumb they still think this is the 2000s and you need a modchip to play pirated games, they ain't gonna waste money on original games. So I was getting ready for a bidding war, checking the auction every day. There was a lot of bidding for a while then it slowed down a lot, there was only one bid on the last day, I thought it's gonna be an intense last minute battle. But minutes before it ended it was still the same price. So I put my bid on it, refreshing it like crazy every second to see who is gonna battle with me. No one did. I won. For almost half of what I wanted to pay maximum, for the third of other consoles with modchips (there was actually another auction like this but that console had a modchip, of course the price was higher on that and there were still a couple days left). Lmao. So I had the DVD and FreeMcBoot and OPL on my flash drive ready. When the console arrived, I couldn't believe how tiny it is. It looks so cheaply made, no wonder they made so much, the way you put the disc in it is just ridiculous. It didn't want to read the DVD, but it came with an original game (XIII, which I'm not gonna play there, I have it on Xbox) and it had no problems reading that, so I thought great, I can go and buy another DVD. I looked at the disc and saw these circular scratches, and I saw them on the game too. Apparently it's a common problem with Slims, caused by the shitty ribbon cable. But I just kept trying over and over again until it just read the disc, and I could install the softmod and the program needed to run games from the PC. I set up everything today, downloaded a game to see if it works and it played the game! I think I'm gonna clean it first and try to tape down the ribbon cable. And tape down the sensors too, because apparently that's what needed to play PlayStation games with softmod (there is a way to do that with an emulator, but it's not compatible with the game I want to play the most, and the model I bought is the only slim that can play them without issues). I need a memory card and an original game to play burned games, so that's not gonna happen for a while. I never really cared for Sony consoles, I think I only played on a PlayStation 2 once at some kid's house, I couldn't believe how bad Star Wars: Battlefront looked compared to my Xbox version, and that's a common thing for multiplat games, so I'm still gonna play most games there. But there are a couple exclusives I really want to play, like the Ace Combat games, Ico or Shadow of the Colossus for example. The controller is fucking awful though, the analog stick placement is retarded, and those R and L buttons feel so bad compared to triggers. Also it's so small, it's weird to hold it with my big hands, I hope I can get used to it. I think I'm gonna make a list of games I want to play first, I probably gonna start playing on it after that (I already know the first game is gonna be Ico). I also need to find a Sony Trinitron TV, because on this cheap shit I have the picture has a shitty black bar on the right and it isn't really centered. I have this issue with some Xbox games too, I hope I can get lucky with a TV too.
So I bought another pack of Verbatims right after the last post, but more than half of them were coasters and that made me really mad because I can't waste my money like that. I checked on Amazon how return works, no way I would have sent it back but after writing my complaint they gave my money back in a gift card and I didn't even have to send it back! What I did was I bought another pack with it lol and seems like they all work so I got one and a half pack for one's price, pretty good deal. I also bought another one from a local website recently because they had a discount and I didn't even have to pay for shipping and that's just a deal I couldn't miss. And because I found more games I'm interested in than discs I had it was perfect timing. Now I really can't think of more games to play so this was probably the last one I bought. I didn't really play much in the summer because the heat was just unbearable and my room was really hot too, so there were times I didn't turn on my Xbox 360 for a weeks, and never more than just 30 minutes. I hate summers so much, my body just breaks down if it's more than 20 degrees, I can't breath or sleep, I'm sweating all the time, the fan is constantly on and it doesn't even help that much, and I'm just in my underwear for months. And no, I'm not fat and I've never been fat, I was skinny most of my life but now my BMI is perfect. It got really cold recently and I can finally play more which is awesome.
Lot of things happened on the Xbox 360 front: I wanted to fix the USB flap on the faceplate then I realized I should clean out the console too. It was so hard to open it, I was so scared I'm gonna break something. Also it's ridiculous but that small plastic thingy that broke off was still in there lol, so I glued it back on and when I was trying it out a couple times it broke off and now I can't find it! Anyway the console was really dusty, this was the first time it was opened since 2012 I believe. Suprisingly the heatsinks barely had any dust on them, but the fans looked terrible. Here is a PHOTO of how it looked (it's missing the spiderwebs and dead spider that were on the back of the DVD drive lol). I'm way too scared to replace the thermal paste, hopefully that won't be a problem. And it shouldn't be: I always knew it's a Jasper, but I never knew it's the Kronos revision, which are the most reliable ones (yes, more reliable than the Slim and E models!). It was really suprising because it was made in early August, which makes it one of the earliest Kronos consoles out there, pretty cool. Anyway I cleaned it up and put it back together. It was still loud when I played from the disc, but I don't have to do that anymore because I finally finished Alien: Isolation. Also I was checking the Verbatim price on Amazon to see if it goes down a bit and I noticed there were only 10 something left, so I had no choice but to buy another pack. The problem is I'm not sure what games to burn. I burned 9 so far, one disc was a coaster but that turned out to be a good thing actually (unless I'm gonna need another disc in the future lol), I will tell why when I finish playing that game, it's such a ridiculous story! There are some games that can't be burned with a normal drive and there are two of them that I'm interested in. One is Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, which became the first retail game I've ever bought lmao. I have like 60+ games and this is the first one, crazy (I don't care what people think about piracy, I've always been poor and I'm not gonna miss out on things because I was born in a shithole with no opportunities). It was cheap and used, and it looks so awesome so I had to do it. The other game is BioShock Infinite, but I'm not sure about this and I don't have more money to waste. I will finish the first game on PC which I stopped playing years ago too and decide, but I don't remember liking it that much. Also I organized the way I think I'm gonna be playing games: I'm trying to pick games based on release date (the earlier ones first), and play not more than 3 games on Xbox at the same time. One would be a shooter, then some kind of adventure game without guns, and maybe some other short and easy game inbetween the two. On the Xbox 360 it would be 2 games max, an easy game that I can just play randomly (I feel like that's gonna be EDF for a while) and then something else, either a game I haven't finished or an earlier title. The reason why I left so many games unfinished is because new titles were coming out around 2010-11 when I was still playing something else, then I stopped for a new game and circle continued. I'm watching longplays on YouTube to catch up with them, and of games that I played on PC and didn't like but I have the sequel which should be a lot better. Well, I hope I can put together a list of games that I want to burn soon.
Man it's crazy how many games I've left unfinished. Games I just stopped playing 5-10 years ago and it feels like just a few years. I think I'm not gonna play anything new on Xbox 360 until I finish at least some of them. I played a little bit of Alien: Isolation, I was so excited for that game because it feels and looks like the first Alien movie. I love those sci-fi movies with futuristic analog technology so fucking much. Alien, Star Wars, Blade Runner. God I just love that so much and this game is full of it. I don't even know why I stopped playing, I remember it was ridiculously stressful though. I'm gonna rewatch the missions I've played just to remind myself what's going on, I remember the alien got blown out of the airlock and there was something about androids but not much else. At least I remember something, I will have to start a new game with Red Dead Redemption because I forgot everything. This might have been the only game I've played on a 720p TV with HDMI cable, and the last Xbox 360 game I've played (with the exception of Earth Defense Force 2025, which I've only started playing recently). Every other one I played on my shitty CRT with composite cable, I didn't even know there is a graphical difference. I played Ace Combat 6's tutorial just to try it out and it looks so gorgeous. Also I discovered so many cool games I would like to play, mostly RPGs. I've never really been into that genre, I mean fantasy RPGs, but I'm playing Fable: The Lost Chapters and I'm enjoying it. It's gonna take a while to get there, these games take a long time to finish so I hope I will have more DVDs by then.
Finally my Verbatim discs arrived. This is the first time I ordered something from Amazon and it took them a week just to ship it because of that stupid virus. Who the hell buys food from Amazon anyway? I guess I should talk about this virus as the great happening of our time: it has no effect on my life whatsoever lmao. Well except for going out less to buy food. I understand that we can't overwhelm hospitals (especially in this shithole) but the panic is ridiculous. You know what else is ridiculous? People going crazy because they have to stay home. They have access to all the movies, music, books, games, whatever in the world through the internet but that's boring, they gotta go out and socialize lmao. "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." What a great quote. Anyway I bought 10 discs, I thought about buying the 25 pack but I went with the cheaper option because it should be enough for the games I really want to play. Here is a few of them: Perfect Dark Zero: I remember when it came out and I thought it looks good, but I've never played the original and I'm gonna do that first on my N64 emulator. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter: I remember seeing it in stores and in a magazine I bought and I was obsessed with it. This is probably the Crimson Skies of my Xbox 360 lol. Syndicate: I don't know much about it but I thought it looked awesome when it came out so I gotta try it out. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition: I actually thought about getting this ages ago but it didn't look interesting enough, but after reading more about it I want to play it. Ace Combat 6: looks like a really good flight sim and I can't wait to try it out.
Last night before falling asleep I was thinking about making a website where I post about the games I've finished playing. I've flirted with this idea for a while after lurking on /retro/, and I used to have one almost 2 decades ago but I forgot everything and I'm too much of a brainlet to do real coding so I'm using SeaMonkey. Recently I rearranged some stuff in my room and put my old Xbox and my Xbox 360 to more accessible places. I got really into the idea of playing older games again (new games just suck, everything is either DLC ridden cancer or half assed early access indie garbage, and I'm kinda stuck in the past and still think the graphics on 10-15 years old games look great) so upgraded my old Xbox with a newer softmod and bought a bigger HDD, as for my Xbox 360 I ordered some Verbatim discs. As for why consoles, I just don't like PC gaming that much and I have an ancient toaster that would make it harder anyway (although I want to play a few games there too). I've downloaded so many games (including an N64 emulator with 212 games for my Xbox) it's gonna take years to go through all of them (I have a bad case of simulation sickness, I may talk about it later but I can't really play more than 30 minutes or an hour or I will get a pretty bad headache). But whenever I will finish a game I will write my thoughts about it, but no ratings because that's lame. I don't like attention so I don't want to write those on imageboards but I like the idea of leaving my thoughts behind as a time capsule, maybe some day someone will find it and read through it, I like doing that with old websites although it always makes me sad (some other time I will tell why). I may post about personal stuff too but I'm really paranoid about that, my family never left me any personal space and always wanted to get into my private life and ruin shit and that kinda fucked me up.