Yay, a lot of Windows games work really nicely in Wine these days. I've even got TES4: Oblivion to work. That's got to count for something.

Anyway, here's the absolute cutest thing that has happened in my new-found Wine gaming so far, in Diablo II (with the expansion). I feel compelled to tell about this.

Yep: "Wolf Head of Self-Repair". This is just about the cutest animal-related concept I've seen lately. Wolf heads! That self-repair! Awww! Even though I'm playing this game as a boring amazon, I swear I keep this cute Wolf Head of Self-Repair in my stash until the very bitter end. =)

Awww. I can't stop thinking of that thing. Wolf Head of Self-Repair. Awww.

I really haven't been paying a lot of attention on Wine. I certainly didn't expect to get actually gaming on Wine any day soon, at least without some serious "install this native DLL, hack this file, go to hell" headachery. I was under the impression that all serious work on Wine was done by companies like Transgaming and Codeweavers who had the Only Actually Working Commercial Wine Branch, while the open source project was languishing. And I'm not touching Cedega. Never.

Well, seems like I was so very wrong. Lately, people have been saying that stock Wine is actually much better and good enough for most people. So, um, I installed Debian's Wine 0.9.31 (the latest they have - .35 is out), and tried installing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Followed the instructions online to delete the Music folder.

Okay, it didn't work. Then I noted it tried to create near-empty Morrowind.ini in the current working directory. Scratched head, concluded that I had ran into this problem before. Tried launching the game from the correct working directory.

A bit of messing around, and... okay, a random appropriate Nehahra quote: "I've got one word for you guys. Boom."

The minimap doesn't work, the intro vid and some speech are choppy (something about lacking sound buffer underrun detection or something). The game crashes right as I try to read the papers that were handed by the clerk guy. Shadows get rendered pure white, so I had to turn them off. But the point is: Holy cow, it actually runs and I can play it. Kind of.

And note: This is stock Wine. That is to say, no native Windows DLL hacks whatsoever. No Microsoft magic. Just Wine magic.

And apparently, people have figured out a way to get Oblivion run! Guess what goes to my games-to-try list soon. Oooh! And NWN toolset! Perhaps I could get that running! Oooh, the possibilities are limitless.

But oh boy oh boy, what have we here?

Max Payne 2 runs almost perfectly! Slight sound quality issues, and one slight image bug. Though, I'm not sure if it showed up when I cranked up the quality levels, maybe it disappears when I crank them down again. I experienced what I call the "giant elevator effect": People behind doors appear to get in a giant "elevator", which "comes down" when I get closer to the door or face sideways to it. It probably has something to do with the way the engine renders different rooms. So far, this oddity has not really impeded the gameplay though, and the game works amazingly well.

I have to continue. For some reason, I feel extremely invigorated now that I have an actually working games and stuff. The future is bright!

The Game Politics posted about supposed Hot Coffee stuff in Final Fantasy VIII.

However, I'm not really that convinced - to me, it seems like yet another case of accidental video game porn (by the way, I'm quite glad this site is up - it seemed to disappear a while back and is now on a different host).

While we're at it, last night I played Final Fantasy VII, and now, in the daytime, I can see that I did, in fact, capture a rather... interesting screenie that can be interpreted in many ways.

(Sorry for the low quality - fed through my VCR to computer...)

Now remember how Cloud's head was thrashing back and forth...

Last... weekend or so, I beat Metroid: Zero Mission on Easy in 2 hours 35 minutes or so.

I had previously beaten MZM on Normal and once on Easy. I thought 2:35 was a pretty good time. Then I started playing MZM on Normal again. I thought I'd get one of the cooler images that you get if you beat the thing in less than 4 hours.

Did I ever.

So after a week of playing this thing on and off, I beat it today...

1 hour 53 minutes 54 seconds!!!

This thing seems to be quite interesting. At one point, you just "get" it and then you start playing it really nicely. I think I got some sort of understanding of the game.

Okay, this might not actually have been that great feat. I hope I'll be able to pull off a sub-2h 100% run...

I've been looking for The Mythical Cutest Screenshot of Final Fantasy VII, but obviously, my search has ended.

That's Red XIII's tail, right there on the right hand corner!

Red XIII has such a cute tail, and hard to get good screenshots of.

(I'm currently playing through FF7 yet again, mostly because I'm writing stuff for the Wikibook.)

US version.

European version.

A small, random observation from Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls.

I keep hearing how much this localisation ruled, especially compared to previous translations. One of the most frequently heard praise is that the translators restored the classic mistranslation to the game. When the heroes in Final Fantasy I confront Garland, the first boss, for the first time, he says, just like in the NES version, "I, Garland, will knock you all down!!"

I didn't keep my eyes that peeled when I fought this baddie, and it had been quite a while now since I'm already on the end side of the game. Well, a new game, and... huh... "I, Garland, will cut you down to size!!"

But then I realized that I'm not really mad. In US, I can sort of understand why people wanted the line back. After all, that's how the game was when it was released there. But here, the game was never released with English translation (or in any form, for that matter, until Origins).

Yet, I find it pretty interesting that this single translation bit might build some sort of gap between US and Europe. Here, I think, Garland is a bit different person now.

Oh well, it's an awfully late hour. Just felt like posting some comparative screenshots and rambling.