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PSX emulation with it's million plugins and endless configuration always gets me pissed off eventually. But I eventually got FF7 to work properly on my PC and it's a beautiful thing. Everything really pops out at you... I'm noticing lots of little details on monsters that I never could make out before. Even in towns, the lego characters look a little less ugly. I don't know if it's because the PS3 sucks at PS1 games but when I was playing on there, there was this minor flickering in certain spots that was giving me a headache. That doesn't happen on the PC.

The only downside is that I have to start from the beginning again but the experience is so much better that I don't mind at all.

In FF7, I just joined up with Aeris. I've done something terrible. It's all Crisis Core's fault. Hearing Aerith so much in that game got me used to it, so I... renamed her. What have I become?

No matter how many times I hear this text error, it never, ever gets old.
"This is a church in the slums. It suddenly fell on top of me. Gave me quite a scare."
Maybe she has good reason to be afraid of the sky if churches are dropping on her now.

Edit: I just finished the crossdressing part and the sewers.

Just left Midgar. The only problem of note with playing on PC is that Tifa's slot machine limit breaks are harder to time. So when leaving Midgar, I decided to make a party of Cloud, Barret, and Red 13. I saw a new bit of dialogue because I guess the game figures you're more likely to pick either Aeris or Tifa. But really, Aeris is useless in combat except for spells and will be dead before long in the storyline. Tifa's okay but her limit breaks aren't good to start with and when I can't even get them half the time because of the timing issue, it's no good. I may bring her back later, but I'm thinking of a party I've never used before like Cloud, Cid, and Yuffie (once I get those characters).

Anyway, the dialogue was:

Tifa: Unexpected...
Aeris: Combination.
Tifa: Have fun with just the guys.

Perhaps I should mention that I didn't download FF7 or anything, I got the data from the discs I bought from Codie. I never would have gone through the trouble of trying to run it on PC otherwise.

I'm through Cloud's flashback in Kalm and ready to catch a Chocobo. I'm almost caught up already to where I was when playing on the PS3. I'm glad I started over, there were a lot of scenes in the first several hours of the game that I enjoyed more or paid more attention to after having played Crisis Core.

Gamefly sent me Assassin's Creed today. As I recall, hype was very high for this one, but reviews were mixed. Seemed like a decent choice for a rental. Not sure if I'll play it alongside FF7 or just save it for when I get around to it.

I like those things. I usually only watch them when somebody links to one but maybe I'll check out some more.

I got Yuffie to join before Junon. That's never happened before. I also leveled up and earned a fair amount of gold figuring out what the correct responses were to make her join. Party is now Cloud, Berret, Yuffie. Something about Red 13 is obnoxious.

I found it, and man that worked so much better.

Yeah, that's a nifty emulator. I found that I was able to use the game's normal save system or the emulator's save state and both worked just fine. I could also run from the disc or from the drive equally well.

If you play Sam & Max, I'd recommend playing it casually over a long period of time rather than focusing on beating it, so that it doesn't drive you mad. Unless you've got more patience with those kinds of games than I do.

Now departing Costa Del Sol. This is the farthest I've played into FF7 in a long time. There's very little in the way of traditional gameplay once you reach Junon. You get there and you fight a boss, okay, that's gameplay. But then you give the girl CPR, do the thing with the Dolphin to get to the upper city. March in the parade. Then try to impress Rufus. Then walk around on the ship and talk to everybody. Then finally fight another boss, then watch some scenes and explore Costa Del Sol.

So for Junon, the welcoming parade, the ship, and Costa Del Sol, you've got two bosses and nothing else. I don't mind when the game does storytelling for extended lengths of time. I think the flashback in Kalm is one of my favorite parts of the game, actually. But this last hour or two, I feel like not only have I not gotten to play very much, but the story wasn't very interesting, either. I'm still enjoying the experience and I know it gets better, but that's something I wanted to mention.

The fight with Jenova on the ship may have been the most challenging in the game to this point. I remember Game Overing there in the past, but I don't think I was in any real danger of losing this time. After using two limit breaks, and both my Summons, I think it's HP were down close to half. I was in the most danger when the thing attacked Barret a million times in a row and killed him. I was afraid I might have trouble using a Phoenix Down and then healing but the boss kept trying to use stop and missed every time, so that gave me plenty of time.

I've never paid too much attention to materia growth before. I think it pretty much takes care of itself for the casual player. I only started thinking about it when buying some new armor. The one that cost 1800 gold had a much worse defense rating than the one that cost 800. But it offered double materia growth rate. It's got me wondering if I should be paying more attention to such things, but I ended up going with the cheaper, higher defense items instead.

One thing I'm sure I've mentioned in the past but I'll say again... I love FF7's overworld. It just makes me feel like exploring.

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Unrelated, but I haven't given up on archiving the progress topics, I've just been going about it at a painfully slow pace.

This is kind of random but I've been following the new Mario Kart a little bit, and so I decided to play some Mario Kart 64 tonight. I had bought it when it first came out on Virtual Console. I couldn't remember exactly what I was doing with it the last time I played, so I started the Mushroom Cup on 150cc for the first time. And I beat it rather easily, to my surprise.

My first experience with a Rainbow Road sort of track was actually in F-Zero X, I think.

FF7... Completed the events of Cosmo Canyon. The explanation of how the lifestream and planet function all seems a lot sillier than it did when I last played the game. I laughed how in the simulator, they showed the planet just kind of crumbling and turning to dust if all the spirit energy were removed. Does that mean even the planets in the solar system without any life have spirit energy holding them together?

The dungeon was okay. The encounters were a little tougher than usual and extremely frequent, but they gave tons of experience points. Except for those stupid spiders. I fought almost every battle I encountered and gained several levels and made enough gold to buy all the best new equipment.

I guess the easy way to kill the boss was to use an x-potion on it, but I didn't realize that until after the fight was over and I read about it online. I probably still wouldn't have wasted it unless I was desperate. I was a little confused by how to actually beat the guy because he has two flames fighting with him, and they can semi-possess one of your characters. They don't take control, just cause you more damage. But I didn't know if I should focus on them or the main boss, so it dragged on for a while. I eventually killed all three parts.

The part with Red's father was sad. Still no guidance on where to go next, either. I guess what was supposed to happen is that I would have gone past Cosmo Canyon and the buggy would have broken down or something, and I'd get the clue to go there. Then when I did all those events, it would be fixed.