Live Blogs Let Fate Guide Us: Barrylocke plays unexpected Game Boy Advance games

Barrylocke2011-09-28 00:14:41

Barrylocke here. You may have seen my Fire Emblem Draft Liveblog floating around here. While I was working on that liveblog, I thought of an interesting idea that I know has been dabbled in before on other parts of the internet.

I've played a decent amount of roms over the years, and while I make a rule to not play roms of the more recent systems, older systems that are no longer active are fair game for me. If any of you are familiar with roms, you may know that often times the rom's file name will have have a number attached to it. This number is the release id, and (correct me if I'm wrong) I believe it is used to show the order that games were released for a system.

Why does this all matter? Well this number makes for a clean way to randomly pic roms and try them out. The idea of this is for me to use a Random Number Generator to pick one of those Release Ids, and play the game that corresponds with it. I plan to play these games for as long as I can stand (which may, but probably won't) involve beating them. I originally wanted to do NES and SNES roms, but it seems that my romsites that I use don't have the release ids (or at least they dont have them listed that way) so until I figure something out, I'll be doing it with GBA roms.

Rules:

1. My site has 2810 different GBA Roms, so I will be going to random.org and having it find 1 number between 1-2810

2. I'll look at the number and find the corresponding rom. If the rom is in another language, I'll see if there is a corresponding english rom. If there isn't, I'll have to stick with it.

3. I play for as long as I can stand, and record my adventures here.

I may find myself posting pictures, and possibly links to video, depending on how I feel about this whole premise. Until then though, I just hope to have fun with it. If/When I manage to get it going for the snes and nes, I may possibly have those listed in other liveblogs of there own. We'll see.

That's about it for now! I hope to start very soon, and you may see more of this after the Fire Emblem Draft is complete.

Comments

Hunter1 Since: Dec, 1969

Oct 29th 2011 at 11:53:45 PM

Well, it is your choice, as you're the one writing the liveblog, but if I was in your position, I would choose either A, or B (or B2, or B3: Play the Wiiware/iOS version) and just skip case 5 (since I seem to recall that that case was added in the DS version).

FreezairForALimitedTime Since: Dec, 1969

Oct 30th 2011 at 12:47:23 AM

If you'd never played the DS remake, I'd say go for it, since you fumbling through the Japanese text in a heavily text-based game would be hilarious. But since you know it already, and I think the novelty would be part of the fun, I'd say pass it by. Reroll, my friend.

MadWritter Since: Dec, 1969

Oct 30th 2011 at 4:28:53 AM

I said, "Roll again!"

JonnasN Since: Dec, 1969

Oct 30th 2011 at 1:05:29 PM

I say that, if it lands on a game you already played (and don't wish to play again) you should simply do a quick one-phrase review of the game and re-roll.

After all, you're doing this to play random games you never played before, right?

BearyScary Since: Dec, 1969

Nov 2nd 2011 at 2:25:00 AM

A or D!

Nyarly Since: Dec, 1969

Nov 2nd 2011 at 5:12:55 AM

Personally, I'd say reroll. If you decide to play it, you should play the English version. Sure, it's not GBA, but playing it in a language you don't understand (I assume that you can't read Japanese) would be rather unfun and confusing.

kanbabrif Since: Dec, 1969

Nov 2nd 2011 at 6:09:38 PM

Do something different: play the original Japanese GBA game, but only through the first chapter. You'll spend a LOT of time if you play some of the games all the way through, I mean, what if you pick Final Fantasy IV next?