Profil de tombert256

Powerful without being obnoxious.

I got this server for a steal, and I was petrified that it upon receipt, I would have to deal with a bunch of "gotchas". That simply has not been the case. The 48 core scream through transcoding video, image processing, and just about everything else I throw at it. The power management is decent enough to where leaving it on doesn't break the bank, and everything has had a nice, "just-works" quality to it. Some complaints I have: this only takes laptop-sized hard disks. I should have read that before purchasing, and it's not a big deal, but don't expect to use your old 3.5" disks in this. If you've already made the move to SSDs, you should be fine. Another issue is that the drivers for the built-in ethernet don't appear to be included in FreeBSD (which is what I run on here). My solution was to buy a PCI-e gigabit card for around six bucks. That said, the ethernet drivers *are* included in Fedora Linux (and probably other flavors), and since most people who buy this are probably planning to run Linux on here, I don't see this being an issue. Overall, this has been a tremendously nice server that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone looking for a cheap, powerful computer.

Playing God has Never Been So Fun

Actraiser, developed by Quintet, is arguably the best game on the Super NES, and it's tough to narrow down just one way that this game shines. First and foremost, the soundtrack is among the greatest ever conceived. The music has a wide range, depending on the setting, but it seems that the composer has taken a few lessons from John Williams. Constantly during the fight scenes, I felt like I was in a Star Wars movie. The graphics aren't the best on the Super NES, but they are far from the worst. Mode 7 is used to decent effect, and you can always tell what you are doing. Gameplay is something that this game does extremely well. About half the time, the game is a side scroller very similar to Castlevania. That is all well and good, but the other half of the time is spent in a SimCity environment. Certain items are only available from certain towns, and monsters will attack the town, meaning you must defent it. This gives the game a fair bit of variety and keeps it from getting repetitive. The only real gripe I have with this game is the length. Even with my dying a lot in the side-scroller stages, I was able to beat this game in about 4 hours. In 1991 and a 40 dollar price tag, this would have been horrible, however, in 2009 for a 10 dollar price tag, I am pretty happy with it. A little advice to anyone interested in a purchase: Unless you know how to read Japanese, do NOT buy the Japanese version. For games like Mario or Sonic or Castlevania, knowledge of Japanese isn't really necessary, since the games aren't story driven, and generally the Japanese versions are cheaper (and can be played on an American Super NES with a Game Genie). Such is not the case with ActRaiser. You are constantly forced to read dialog from the citizens and react accordingly. The Japanese version will cost about 3 dollars less, but is entirely pointless if you can't play it. I really like this game, and found it to be a great purchase. After all, how often do you get to play as God?

This is actually a pretty cool game.

I've always been a huge fan of the Rayman Franchise. I have the PS1 Version, as well as the original Atari Jaguar version, and I have to say that for an 8 bit console, this port does a damn good job. The animation is extremely fluid for the gameboy color (though I usually play it on a Game Boy Advance), and the gameplay itself actually is pretty true to the original game. As far as I've noticed, every move in the original Rayman is there. The only thing I think could have been better was the soundtrack. Rayman 1 for the PS1 and Rayman 2 as well had extremely catchy music, while this sounds really bad. I was expecting something like the soundtrack for Super Mario 3, but this is just obnoxious and annoying. However, since this is a portable console, and the game doesn't rely on sounds, I found it better if turn the volume down and turn on some other music. All in all, a pretty damn good rendition of a pretty damn good game.