This is the blog for the After-School Zone. We created this to give people a forum to talk about games, and to stay in contact with people even if you're not at the Library playing games.
Phillip works part-time at the Library and goes to college full-time.
Allison works at the Library full-time.
Phillip's favorite games are: the Tekken series, the NES Ninja Gaiden trilogy, the Metroid series, the Metal Gear series and anything Atari Jaguar-related. He generally likes RPGs, shooters, action-platform, and fighting games. Phillip wouldn't waste his money on an average game if he could buy an outstanding one.
Allison's favorite games are RPGs, rhythm games, or sims. So she likes the Sims, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and a bunch of RPGs. She doesn't mind average - or even lame - games as much as Phillip does.
Now that school's out, what's everyone doing? Played any good games recently? Done something fun (like attending the summer games program on Thursdays) ? Or maybe you've done nothing at all. Just talk about anything here.
Ive been playing a lot of Punchout for Wii lately. The new version is really good. It keeps all the things that made the original NES version good, plus it adds better graphics. The game is also very challenging, particularly when you have to defend your title. I'll be bringing this to the game program on Wednesday.
As many of you know, I play a lot of fighting games. Lately, I've been playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix and Street Fighter 4. Playing HD Remix especially takes up most of my game-playing time due to tournaments and practice. I'll be bringing this on Wednesday too. -Phillip
Last Thursday, turnout was ok. It wasn't as good as the week before though. So, everyone show up! If you want to see more interesting and new games, then there has to be good turnoput to warrant setting them up.
Everyone liked Punch-Out, so I'll be bringing that again this Thursday. I'll also be bringing Killzone 2 and Resistance 2. We'll probably play these online. The idea here is to have other shooters so we can free up the Xbox 360 for games other than Halo like N+ and Castle Crashers.
Yea isn't resistance two the game where it's able to have sixty people online in one gigantic map or am I thinking about something else cause I know there's one with like two hundred people online and one with sixty.
Yeah, that's it. But there's really around a dozen maps I think. Resistance 2 has to be one of the fastest-paced FPSs around. The running speed is very fast, and most of the weapons are really good due to their secondary fire modes. For example, the Marksman, Resistance's version of the Halo Battle Rifle, has a secondary fire that's a lighting ball. The ball shoots bolts that auto-aim to the opponent. This lightning bolt hits multiple times and never misses. I think Resistance 2 has the coolest weapons of any FPS right now.
Btw, The Conduit for Wii comes out today. I'm sure many of you have heard me talking about this game as the Wii's best FPS. I'll let you know what I think and I may bring it next week.
That's cool. O yeah hey phil do not and I mean do not forget to bring killzone and resistance for the PS2 I would bring my killzone 2 but my dad and brother don't trust me too bring it back safely since I have to go and volunteer with the little ones first.
So Thursday was a day of precendents for the Study Zone program. First, we hooked up a router, to communicate with all the videogame systems in the network. Secondly, via the router, we had four systems connected to the internet at once. Lastly, 2 of those 4 were Wiis, connected together by exchanging friend codes for the same game. So, did turnout and interest warrant all this trouble? Not exactly.
Turnout was average for summer games, and interest in the setup overall was insignificant. People did like The Conduit though. Killzone 2 and Resistance 2 didn't do so great. It was a nice experiment though, and the sucessful operation of the setup bodes well for future events.
Translation? Don't expect this again anytime soon, but it was kinda cool.
Not sure what I want to do next week that might be interesting. Some people have been talking about Wii Motion Plus and the new Tiger Woods game, so I might bring that. Wii Sports 2 came out in Japan recently, so that may be another option. It's much better than the original imo. Lastly for Wii, we've had Boom Blox 2 for a while now, but really haven't gotten an oppurtunity to set it up. Any other requests within reason?
Ya I think there just trying to get to sell more copies because most people think that it's just an expansion to the first one. Most of my freinds say that they don't wanna go and spend another $50 for something that isn't gonna be much of an improvement over the other one. I mean they just released number one last year and haven't had much time to edit or even create a new game. But don't get me wrong I still think it's gonna be a good game.
Yeah, one's thing for sure is that Valve always makes good games.
On a different note, games on Thursday was pretty good. I thought it ws funny that some people there were asking if we're going to get the Conduit. Obviously, they weren't there the last few weeks when we had the game set up. This leads me to what I believe to be a main issue of the game program. Should we decide to do something special or different, there's really no way to let people know ahead of time what's happening other than the blog. So, placing the success of certain events done on how many people show up is not fair. I think a lot more people would come if they knew what we were doing during the summer.
Lately, I've been thinking about doing a collaboration with the K2 program. For those that don't know, K2 is an afterschool program run by the City of Benicia's Parks department. There has always been some overlap of their program and ours. Many K2 kids end up coming to the library's afterschool program and some library kids end up joining K2 or Kid's K (for younger kids).
In fact, according to the numbers, about 10% or 60+ kids that are signed up for videogames at the library were in K2 at one point. This doesn't include the many kids who left the K2 program only to sign up for the library's games (which I found out later on). When Study Zone stopped being about studying, and more about videogames, the numbers in this area came down by a bit. When K2 got their own videogames, their numbers at the library's program went down even further.
However, I think the possibility is there for us to play games together. We play many of the same games like Brawl and Halo, so K2 could join tournaments when we have them. They have an Xbox 360 and a Wii, so technically speaking the possibility is there to do system link in games like Halo. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making any promises as this is basically me thinking out loud; but this could be really interesting and make it a little more exciting.
Eh K2 has a pretty beat up Xbox less hey got a new one. We could always post fliers or share emails and spelread the news that way. But I don't thinkaby people are gonna ce because it's In a libary and noons I know likes the libary other thant grandma but whatever I think well get a few more people.
Assasims Creed II Video : www.YouTube.com/watch?v=TcuEqTzRXI4
Glad I could help the kid who's Xbox RROD'ed. I only hope that he takes advantage of my advice and gets his Xbox repaired. I'd hate to know that his Xbox returns to the back of his closet, unfixed and wasted, when Microsoft can fix it for FREE. Especially considering that he can give it to the library as a donation should he not want to bother :P
As many learned Thursday (and almost every week), the library's PS2 has not gotten more graceful with age; it's become a stubborn and belligerent old grump, not to mention needy. I've been meaning to fix this problem for a long time with the voltage mod trick (Google is your friend), but have been avoiding it. The plan is to take care of this before this coming Thursday. You'll know I've succeded if the PS2 is there, and that I blew it up if it's not. Cross your fingers.
One thing that's interesting to note is the lopsided ratio of kids in attendance to the Summer games. There's way more little kids than big kids. I'd assume they're all equally on vacation, so what gives? I have a few ideas already. There's no homework attracting big kids to the library for one, while the summer reading program attracts the smaller kids. What do you think?
Btw, there was a big fighting game tournament over the weekend called Evolution. I didn't go this year, but they had live feed at www.evo2k.com. I meant to mention this on the blog this weekend, but I forgot. My bad. It was a great tournament.
Hehe you always make long ones I actually read the whole thing this time. -_- O and ya you should fix the PS2. O and bigger kids don't come because they would rather go and hang out with their freinds on first street or at least that's what I do everyday except for thursday.
And lately I've been playing Guild Wars on my computer it's knda like WoW but it's free and more mature. So ya I don't know what else to say...
How was games last week? Pretty good I think. I usually like to try something new each week, and since the PS2 was fixed the week before, it was only fitting that we try something with that. So we had Rock Band 1. Being pretty anxious about the PS2's performance, I was unsure if it would be able to handle playing Rock Band for the whole day. It ended up working fine. The only problem was that no one wanted to sing. So of course, I had to take matters into my own hands and show people how easy singing was. About that, if you're going to make fun of my singing, then you could at least show me that your singing is better :) Anyway, it was fun and maybe we'll do it again.
For this week, I think we're going to try Wii Sports Resort on the projector. Normally the Wii (and every other system sans the 360 for that matter) looks like crap because it can only use composite video, which of course produces extremely blurry images. I thought this was unfixable because the projector only supports VGA or composite video inputs (unless of course we buy a video transcoder, but that's for another topic). Recently I discovered that the projector can support component video through the use of a VGA breakout cable designed for component video. I haven't tested this yet, but this setup should work great with the Wii. Anyway, Wii Sports 2 is a very fun game so this should be a nice change of pace. Xbox 360 will be moved back to the monitor, so I won't have to pull out 100 lbs. for no reason, unlike last week.
Hey Phil sorry I wasn't there last Thursday my mom planned a suprise vacation down to santa cruz....... Iran it was fun but can she at least tell me if were gonna leave town for a couple of days >.>
Ive been playing a lot of Punchout for Wii lately. The new version is really good. It keeps all the things that made the original NES version good, plus it adds better graphics. The game is also very challenging, particularly when you have to defend your title. I'll be bringing this to the game program on Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteAs many of you know, I play a lot of fighting games. Lately, I've been playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix and Street Fighter 4. Playing HD Remix especially takes up most of my game-playing time due to tournaments and practice. I'll be bringing this on Wednesday too.
-Phillip
Last Thursday, turnout was ok. It wasn't as good as the week before though. So, everyone show up! If you want to see more interesting and new games, then there has to be good turnoput to warrant setting them up.
ReplyDeleteEveryone liked Punch-Out, so I'll be bringing that again this Thursday. I'll also be bringing Killzone 2 and Resistance 2. We'll probably play these online. The idea here is to have other shooters so we can free up the Xbox 360 for games other than Halo like N+ and Castle Crashers.
Yea isn't resistance two the game where it's able to have sixty people online in one gigantic map or am I thinking about something else cause I know there's one with like two hundred people online and one with sixty.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's it. But there's really around a dozen maps I think. Resistance 2 has to be one of the fastest-paced FPSs around. The running speed is very fast, and most of the weapons are really good due to their secondary fire modes. For example, the Marksman, Resistance's version of the Halo Battle Rifle, has a secondary fire that's a lighting ball. The ball shoots bolts that auto-aim to the opponent. This lightning bolt hits multiple times and never misses. I think Resistance 2 has the coolest weapons of any FPS right now.
ReplyDeleteBtw, The Conduit for Wii comes out today. I'm sure many of you have heard me talking about this game as the Wii's best FPS. I'll let you know what I think and I may bring it next week.
That's cool. O yeah hey phil do not and I mean do not forget to bring killzone and resistance for the PS2 I would bring my killzone 2 but my dad and brother don't trust me too bring it back safely since I have to go and volunteer with the little ones first.
ReplyDeleteI won't forget. :) See you Thursday.
ReplyDeleteSo Thursday was a day of precendents for the Study Zone program. First, we hooked up a router, to communicate with all the videogame systems in the network. Secondly, via the router, we had four systems connected to the internet at once. Lastly, 2 of those 4 were Wiis, connected together by exchanging friend codes for the same game. So, did turnout and interest warrant all this trouble? Not exactly.
ReplyDeleteTurnout was average for summer games, and interest in the setup overall was insignificant. People did like The Conduit though. Killzone 2 and Resistance 2 didn't do so great. It was a nice experiment though, and the sucessful operation of the setup bodes well for future events.
Translation? Don't expect this again anytime soon, but it was kinda cool.
Not sure what I want to do next week that might be interesting. Some people have been talking about Wii Motion Plus and the new Tiger Woods game, so I might bring that. Wii Sports 2 came out in Japan recently, so that may be another option. It's much better than the original imo. Lastly for Wii, we've had Boom Blox 2 for a while now, but really haven't gotten an oppurtunity to set it up. Any other requests within reason?
http://kotaku.com/5308751/left-4-dead-2-might-work-with-left-4-dead-1
ReplyDeleteI thought this was interesting news. It's great that Valve is making an effort to appease owners of the original Left 4 Dead.
Ya I think there just trying to get to sell more copies because most people think that it's just an expansion to the first one. Most of my freinds say that they don't wanna go and spend another $50 for something that isn't gonna be much of an improvement over the other one. I mean they just released number one last year and haven't had much time to edit or even create a new game. But don't get me wrong I still think it's gonna be a good game.
ReplyDeleteYeah, one's thing for sure is that Valve always makes good games.
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, games on Thursday was pretty good. I thought it ws funny that some people there were asking if we're going to get the Conduit. Obviously, they weren't there the last few weeks when we had the game set up. This leads me to what I believe to be a main issue of the game program. Should we decide to do something special or different, there's really no way to let people know ahead of time what's happening other than the blog. So, placing the success of certain events done on how many people show up is not fair. I think a lot more people would come if they knew what we were doing during the summer.
Lately, I've been thinking about doing a collaboration with the K2 program. For those that don't know, K2 is an afterschool program run by the City of Benicia's Parks department. There has always been some overlap of their program and ours. Many K2 kids end up coming to the library's afterschool program and some library kids end up joining K2 or Kid's K (for younger kids).
ReplyDeleteIn fact, according to the numbers, about 10% or 60+ kids that are signed up for videogames at the library were in K2 at one point. This doesn't include the many kids who left the K2 program only to sign up for the library's games (which I found out later on). When Study Zone stopped being about studying, and more about videogames, the numbers in this area came down by a bit. When K2 got their own videogames, their numbers at the library's program went down even further.
However, I think the possibility is there for us to play games together. We play many of the same games like Brawl and Halo, so K2 could join tournaments when we have them. They have an Xbox 360 and a Wii, so technically speaking the possibility is there to do system link in games like Halo. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making any promises as this is basically me thinking out loud; but this could be really interesting and make it a little more exciting.
Eh K2 has a pretty beat up Xbox less hey got a new one. We could always post fliers or share emails and spelread the news that way. But I don't thinkaby people are gonna ce because it's In a libary and noons I know likes the libary other thant grandma but whatever I think well get a few more people.
ReplyDeleteAssasims Creed II Video : www.YouTube.com/watch?v=TcuEqTzRXI4
Summer games went well as usual.
ReplyDeleteGlad I could help the kid who's Xbox RROD'ed. I only hope that he takes advantage of my advice and gets his Xbox repaired. I'd hate to know that his Xbox returns to the back of his closet, unfixed and wasted, when Microsoft can fix it for FREE. Especially considering that he can give it to the library as a donation should he not want to bother :P
As many learned Thursday (and almost every week), the library's PS2 has not gotten more graceful with age; it's become a stubborn and belligerent old grump, not to mention needy. I've been meaning to fix this problem for a long time with the voltage mod trick (Google is your friend), but have been avoiding it. The plan is to take care of this before this coming Thursday. You'll know I've succeded if the PS2 is there, and that I blew it up if it's not. Cross your fingers.
One thing that's interesting to note is the lopsided ratio of kids in attendance to the Summer games. There's way more little kids than big kids. I'd assume they're all equally on vacation, so what gives? I have a few ideas already. There's no homework attracting big kids to the library for one, while the summer reading program attracts the smaller kids. What do you think?
Btw, there was a big fighting game tournament over the weekend called Evolution. I didn't go this year, but they had live feed at www.evo2k.com. I meant to mention this on the blog this weekend, but I forgot. My bad. It was a great tournament.
I made a long post again. Whoops.
Hehe you always make long ones I actually read the whole thing this time. -_- O and ya you should fix the PS2.
ReplyDeleteO and bigger kids don't come because they would rather go and hang out with their freinds on first street or at least that's what I do everyday except for thursday.
And lately I've been playing Guild Wars on my computer it's knda like WoW but it's free and more mature. So ya I don't know what else to say...
Almost forgot to make a post! PS2's been fixed. It's played every game that I've thrown at it so far. More later. See you at summer games tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteHow was games last week? Pretty good I think. I usually like to try something new each week, and since the PS2 was fixed the week before, it was only fitting that we try something with that. So we had Rock Band 1. Being pretty anxious about the PS2's performance, I was unsure if it would be able to handle playing Rock Band for the whole day. It ended up working fine. The only problem was that no one wanted to sing. So of course, I had to take matters into my own hands and show people how easy singing was. About that, if you're going to make fun of my singing, then you could at least show me that your singing is better :) Anyway, it was fun and maybe we'll do it again.
ReplyDeleteFor this week, I think we're going to try Wii Sports Resort on the projector. Normally the Wii (and every other system sans the 360 for that matter) looks like crap because it can only use composite video, which of course produces extremely blurry images. I thought this was unfixable because the projector only supports VGA or composite video inputs (unless of course we buy a video transcoder, but that's for another topic). Recently I discovered that the projector can support component video through the use of a VGA breakout cable designed for component video. I haven't tested this yet, but this setup should work great with the Wii. Anyway, Wii Sports 2 is a very fun game so this should be a nice change of pace. Xbox 360 will be moved back to the monitor, so I won't have to pull out 100 lbs. for no reason, unlike last week.
Hey Phil sorry I wasn't there last Thursday my mom planned a suprise vacation down to santa cruz....... Iran it was fun but can she at least tell me if were gonna leave town for a couple of days >.>
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm back. As some of you may have heard, I had a death in my family, so I took off a week to attend the funeral and be with my family.
ReplyDeleteHopefully the rest of everyone's summer was good, and I'll see you in After School Zone!
More to come later..