CNY Is Around The Corner, and More Games!

With Chinese New Year coming up, I'm officially on leave till next Monday! There are several things to catch up on, especially on this blog. Updates have been coming in slower than I would like, and after the 57 post record last month, this month started off with a disappointment. Anyways, more posts are on the way.


Secondly, games. In several words, Digidrive and Warhammer 40K Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. Yup, I'm slowly getting the hang of Digidrive, with a new top score of 1679 metres! I still think this is one of the best under USD 10 GBA games you can find in the market today.

The new upgrades to my laptop caused a renewed interest in PC games, and I'm currently running Dark Crusade in my laptop's native resolution. Beautiful!


I'm waiting for several games to arrive at the moment, having ordered them from Play-Asia last week, namely the Japanese version of Gunpey DS and one of the Famicom Mini Series for the GBA, The Legend of Zelda.

I can't wait for the new Civilization game for the Nintendo DS coming out this year. It should be a blast. The latest Civ for the PC is a laptop killer, I don't know why but it is the only game that makes my machine overheat and crash, and reboot.. Strange but true. Speaking of strange stuff, did you know that PSPs don't like being connected to Dell machines, especially laptops, via USB cable?

Apparently there's a lack of juice (voltage) in them USB ports, so much so that connecting the PSP to an XPS laptop or my own Inspiron will cause it to be detected for several seconds before disappearing like nothing happened. Hairan bin ajaib (Malay for "strange but true").

One other strange thing is for those regular readers, why have you not subscribed to my feed yet? Just kidding, for those interested in getting Nine Over Ten 9/10 in their favourite RSS readers, you can subscribe to the feed, here!

DO YOU HALO? And by the way, Happy Chinese New Year!

In the course of making the image above dedicated to my current game of the month which is the PC version of Halo, I managed to dig up some interesting stuff on the area of "Combat Typography". To illustrate how does "Combat Typography" plays a role in reading, I give you the example of the warning label attached to every cigarette pack.

Ever wondered why are the letters are in a particular font (Sans Serif), in capitals and are placed rather closely at each other for every cigarette pack regardless of brand? According to this website, Washington Apple Pi (here), this is done by cigarette companies to

"make the warning all but unreadable...thwarting any attempt to read by shape"

According to the site, literate readers tend to read by shape. Serif fonts make letters more distinctive and the proper use of capitalisation helps further in shape recognition. You'll find the method used on cigarette pack warnings is also used on fine print and "terms and conditions". Now, you are not alone in thinking that these stuff are annoyingly difficult to read as this method applies for everyone!

Anyways, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year, Gong Xi, Gong Xi! (If you noticed, this post is abit of a mixed bag, just like most Chinese movies shown during this festive season).

Over Budget

One of my favourite online retailer for video games is having its annual Chinese New Year sale. I ended up going on a mini shopping spree despite being over my monthly budget for video games (and accesories). Having initally spent my allocated cash on two secondhand games, the shopping spree gleaned one new game, one accesory and one postcard book (I love postcards). All of which are now sold out!

There are plenty of discounted items available in Play-Asia.com's CNY sales (click here)and I thought it would be nice to mention this in my blog. After all, no one wants to miss a good bargain. The Nintendo DS section of the sale has been a happy hunting ground for me and despite the shrinking list (it stands at 13 pages of items compared to 18 when the sale started), there are some notable titles such as:

• Winning Eleven DS (JAP) (USD 9.90), click here
• Monster Bomber (USD 14.90), click here
• Star Fox DS (JAP) (USD 14.90), click here
• Cooking Mama (USD 19.90), click here
• Gyakuten Saiban 2 (Best Price) / Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice for All (JAP) (USD 24.90), click here
• Scratch! Viewtiful Joe (JAP)(USD 24.90), click here
• Chocobo to Mahou no Ehon (JAP) (USD 29.90), click here
• Kaitou Wario the Seven / Wario: Master of Disguise (JAP) (USD29.90) , click here

Nintendo DS users who are looking forward to some Nintendo WFC lovin' but not having a wireless router or access point to go online, should get the WiFi Max USB WiFi Adapter which is selling at a discounted price of USD 22.90; click here for details.