So Much Seafood

So I have a PSP now. It's white, shiny, sexy, and is sitting next to the Suikoden I & II compilation and Lumines, and I have no time to play it, really. You would think that with it being spring break, I would have plenty of time. But I signed up with Goddess Miyaku Team around Christmas, and have a chapter to edit.

I have played a little bit (really, you can only work on photoshop edits for six hours straight or so before you need a break). Lumines is trippy as always. Almost everything in the menus is in English, which kind of surprised me. I forget, though: in the NA version, when you get a high score, do the bars on the side say "High Score?" or "Rank In"? If they don't say "Rank In," that is unfortunate, because the Japanese version does.

As for the Suikoden compilation, I am lazy, and just going to copy and paste the information I put up on the AllRPG forums:

I am not Ryan, but I bought a PSP and the Suikoden compilation (and Lumines, but that is off-topic) a few days ago. Haven't played with it as much as I would like due to other things needing doing, but here's what I have for you:

The main menu allows you to choose between S1, S2, and a gallery. I haven't really unlocked anything in the gallery, but the options are Sound Mode, Movies, Event Viewer, Endings, and Staff Roll. The first is listening to music, the last is credits. Those seem completely unlocked from the get-go.

Suikoden I's start screen movie has been revamped to be a lot more like that of Suikoden II instead of a run-through of parts of the game. The game itself seems to be exactly like the original. They adapted for the larger screen pretty well; if the map you are on is one that filled the screen (like the McDohl house), then they added tiles to the side to fill up space. In other places, you sometimes find your main character a little to the side of center screen in places where he was centered before, but it isn't bad in any way. Portraits are now to the side of the text instead of above it.

Suikoden II I haven't played (I assume you can load data :D), but the intro is exactly the same as before.

All in all, it's shiny, loveable, nostalgic, portable, and cheaper than buying either of the games for PSX on eBay.

EDIT: It is also still playable left-handed, for the most part, though with select too far away now, you need your right hand to go into the menu. I assume you will need your right hand to run, too, due to the fact that there is only one shoulder button on each side, but since I don't have a running rune yet, I can't say for sure. You can also use the joystick to move, but since you can't talk to people or activate anything from a diagonal direction, I find that more of a pain than it is worth.

After one guy posted something, I replied with this:

Have a couple of pictures, by the way. First one is my glorious, just-arrived-in-the-mail, unopened copy of the game, and the second is a picture of the UMD itself. I really like the UMD design.




It may be a ho-hum port, but I don't object to them doing that. If they port it to another system, I am guaranteed a chance to buy it if I either don't have it or in case my existing copy/copies get lost or broken or what have you. In this case, I don't mind the whole I-can-take-it-with-me part of the equation.

I also did a bit of shopping today. I am wondering if the bookstore is ever gonna have volumes 2-5 of Elfin Lied in stock so I can get them for Nacilik. While I was there, I looked at cookbooks. I found a beginning Japanese-style cookbook, which looked like a really good one. They also have a crazy selection of books aimed at being snacky-type food for drinking parties.

I have been trying to find stuff for Shannon & Bob in regards to rice, but it looks like the Japanese mainly just have plain old rice on the side with everything. That and have it in sushi. While browsing the cookbooks, though, I found some recipes that were made for rice cookers in a book on cooking for one person. Some of them involved adding stuff with the rice at the beginning, so that the taste of whatever soaks into all the rice. Some of these recipes had stuff like vegetables, others had ketchup. (o_O I have heard of ketchup rice before, but the idea never fails to weird me out a bit. I was thinking to get a rice cooker anyway, but now I really want one. Morbid curiosity says, "Try the ketchup rice!")

There were also recipes involving taking meat or fish and seasoning it (usually with a sauce), then wrapping the fish/meat in wax paper (with the ends twisted) or putting it in a ziploc bag on top of the rice to cook while the rice was cooking. It looks like you can do this with any kind of meat you want. I think the recipes were for making rice and fish and whatnot that go together.

Taste-O-Meter!

Tonkatsu Curry: 5
Breaded pork cutlet over rice with delectable Japanese curry sauce? Yes, please. More, please. More. More. MORE! MORE THAN THAT!!! ;_; Oh god! I'm ADDICTED!

Realizations of the Period

1) Do not judge a movie by its opening credits. I got Good Will Hunting to watch, then went o_O when I saw that it was written by Matt Damon and Ben Afflek. It was a really good movie. If you haven't seen it, do so.
2) No Japanese people my age seem to know how to make rice without a rice cooker. When I told Mika I don't have one, her face became so filled with "You DON'T?!" that it bordered on true horror. While eliciting that reaction was fun, it made me realize that there are rice cookers everywhere here.
3) It is cool to see the Japanese actors from Last Samurai on random stuff on TV here.