980 Days To Go - 27/01/2013

Complete Pokémon Games

So this week I started Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, got about 10 hours in and the memory card corrupts so I didn't make any progress there. However, I did start Japanese Pokémon Ruby in order to get to the point where I would be able to transfer a Celebi from the Japanese Colosseum bonus disc. I managed to go from the start until the end of the Elite 4 so now all I have to do is complete the Japanese version of Pokémon Colosseum.

Complete New Super Mario Bros. U

I decided to continue with this game this week. I've already 100% complete the story (All coins etc) and have moved on to Challenge mode. I'm currently on the 4 star regular challenges after managing to complete the final 2 3 star challenges this week (With Gold Medals).

Watch all of Inuyasha

31 episodes in now and it's still good, that's 8 more than last week I believe. It's still pretty good, though I have a feeling it'll get much better...at least I hope it does being 167 episodes long.

Take a photo of myself for 365 days and make one of those 365 day face videos

I started and failed this this week. I took a single photo and then didn't continue so I need to start this again.

Have £1 less to spend each week for 52 weeks and never overspend (Basically save this amount of money)

Similarly to the last, I failed to save the extra money this week so I need to also start this again.

Catch up with the All Gen Gamers Podcast and then stay within 5 episodes

I'm now on Episode 37 which is 6 more than last time. That's 4 more than last week so I've actually done quite well here.

Stay less then 5 episodes behind in the Gamerscore Popcast

I listened to those 3 episodes that I was behind, but not yet this weeks. That means I'm an episode behind which seems reasonable.

Make a sequel to my Mario Fan game containing at least 10 levels

I started on the first level of this, feels similar to when I had the prequel in development :D.

Catch up with Slowflake videos and don't get more than 5 behind

I've now finished the Sonic 3 and Knuckles LP and moved onto the Wind Waker one of which I'm 1 part into. That makes 10 videos this week I believe.

101 Things Progress 2/101

Complete Pokémon Games

So this week I managed to finish the Unova Dex, all 301 Pokémon on Black 2 and kept on with the time sensitive Medals. I think this is where I stop Black 2 for a while in favour of the Generation III games. I caught a few more Pokémon in Emerald so I'm making progress here.

Complete Dunamis 15 - 3/10

I completed Dunamis 15 this week, it's a really quick Japanese text adventure game. I had left it on 900 Gamerscore so I finally finished it. About 3-4 hours for 1,000 points.

Watch all of Inuyasha

I've now watched 23 episodes of Inuyasha which is 10 episodes further than last week. It's really starting to get good now. I can't wait to get back to watching it :D.

Save £1 More a Week for a Year

So the idea of this is to save money. I save £1, then £2, then £3 etc each week up to £52. If successful, this will save £1,378 in total which will be good for a nice holiday break somewhere or maybe for something else.

Catch up with the All Gen Gamers Podcast and then stay within 5 episodes

I'm currently on Episode 31 of this great Podcast. That's 2 more than last time.

Stay less then 5 episodes behind in the Gamerscore Popcast

I was behind 3 episodes in this Podcast that I listen to, I listened to the 3 episodes I was behind. I just have to make sure that I don't get behind by 5 episodes.

Finish this list

Last week there were 74 things on the list, there are now 82 so this is also making progress.

Catch up with Slowflake videos and don't get more than 5 behind

I finished the Final Fantasy VI Spotlight and I made my way 6 parts into the Sonic 3 & Knuckles Let's Play. That's somewhere between 6-11 videos depending.

Complete Otomedius G - 6.5/10

Another game I've been meaning to finish which took a lot of my time this week. A great Shmup that anyone with a Japanese Xbox 360 should play. Around 15 hours for the 1,000 points.

Completed Games

Not completely related, but I also finished the following games:
Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout NES - 4/10
Clu Clu Land NES - 6/10
Excitebike NES - 5/10

The 101 things in 1,001 Days Challenge

So after I watched Grax's video about his 101 things in 1,001 days I decided that I would begin one myself. It's a self explanatory challenge that can be found on www.dayzeroproject.com which involves completing 101 things in 1,001 days. The list I created so far can be found here, with one of the tasks being to simply have 101 things on the list and another to blog my progress.

Complete Pokémon Black 2

This is the first task from my list that is currently in progress, but with 649 Pokémon and 255 Medals (Achievements) to obtain this isn't going to be an easy task. I'm currently almost done with the Unova dex, but the problem isn't going to be with the Pokédex, it'll be with the Medals. There's one for playing a Funfest mission (A minigame) with 30 people in real life and another for getting 1,000 points in a single mission. 1,000 points requiring about 27-40 people.

So what am I doing about this medal? Well I don't have TrueAchievements to create my own boosting session because it's a DS game. Nope, I created an event at the London Expo for it which seems to be going quite well at the moment and I hope it continues to do so. It'll be a fun event, but you know you're addicted to Achievement style things when this is what you go through in order to get them. We're on 23 people going (Plus another 19 maybe going) according to the Facebook Event, so lets keep making that number higher and get as many people that medal whilst having a good time as possible :D.

Watch all of Inuyasha

So I have an Anime schedule and as long as I keep to it, then I'll do this. So far I've watch 13 episodes of this great Anime.

Keep up to date with Naruto (No more than 5 episodes behind)

The filler just ended so let's hope this Anime decides to get good again. Naruto has far too much filler.

Keep up to date with One Piece (No more than 5 episodes behind)

The Naruto Anime could do with some lessons from the One Piece Anime, this is how you do it and keep people interested. One Piece feels like it hardly ever has filler and when it does, it doesn't always suck.

Keep up to date with my Dragon Ball schedule (No more than 5 episodes behind)

I've been watching Dragon Ball Z at 2 episodes a week since mid 2010, mainly because the Dragon Box's weren't all out so I had to watch it at this rate. I haven't stopped since and I'm currently near the end of the Fusion Arc so it's almost over. But then I'm on to the Movies, Specials, GT and finally Kai. So let's keep this going :D.

Catch up with the All Gen Gamers Podcast and then stay within 5 episodes

I listen to this everyday on the way to work. So far I'm on episode 29 and it's one of my favourite podcasts. They talk about pretty much games from all generations, hence the name. It has the same feel as RetroForceGo! did at one time. That podcast was awesome :D.

Make a system for work that is better than the current one

I love my job, I'm a Software Engineer. I'm not sure what I can say about this one but I'm progressing nicely, so let's keep it up :D.

Finish this list (Have 101 tasks)

I'm on 74 so far, so I still need 27.

Catch up with Slowflake videos and don't get more than 5 behind

This guy is my favourite Let's Player and the only one I watch all of the videos for. But I've managed to get around 10 months behind in his videos and for a long time I've wanted to catch up. At the moment I'm in the middle of his Final Fantasy VI Character spotlight, I've got a long way to go.

And that's my progress for this week, now I can mark the one for blogging my way through this as "In Progress", see ya :D.

Weekly Stats

I'm not going to write as much as last week since I don't have a game to grind while I write this. I think I'll just go over the games I've completed this week.

• Virtua Fighter 5 FS
• Ghostscape
• Katamaridamacy
• Mush
• Portal 2
• NBA Live 06

So that's 6 games and it has been a busy week with me going up over 3,000.

I'll also make it known that I have some rivals that I'm keeping track of which they don't know about yet. I'm also going to be sneaky and not tell them about this blog :P. I've also been tracking Dead Herb but I don't have a weekly total for him yet.

Weekly - 

1st KaibaChaos: 3,065G

2nd Bartonator89: 1,500G

3rd Da Mitch Man 90: 895G

4th Demon Liar: 440G

As with the weekly I'm yet to track Bartonator89 or Dead Herb for a month yet so they are not included in these stats.

Monthly - (Last 30 days)

1st KaibaChaos: 11,293G

2nd Da Mitch Man 90: 3,380G

3rd Demon Liar: 830G

Return to Gamerscore...

Well, hasn't it been a long time since I've posted on this blog? Sometime before my final year of university started, I decided to stop gaming for Achievements. It was obviously important that I had my studies as my top priority and that all ended around the middle of May.

So with all that over I'm a little more free and got that craving to start scoring again. It happened when I was at my friend Da Mitch Man 90's house after looking at his score which was when I remembered what I was missing. The urge to unlock achievements again and get higher in the leaderboards was so very tempting and I felt great happiness at the idea so it was hard to ignore.

I can't really explain fully why I like achievements so much, it's probably a combination of the challenge, community, leaderboards, my love for games among other things. I also figure that if this makes me so happy then why shouldn't I do it? I realise that there are people out there that will say it's a waste of time, boring or that it does nothing for you and that they are pointless rewards. Well guess what? I don't really care what you think because I enjoy what I am doing and I'm not harming anyone by doing it. Haters will hate, people can find things hard to understand or just be ignorant that some people enjoy what others don't. Some people like collecting stamps, so if you want to hate then go moan at those people too.

Anyway, I guess I'll now get into why I decided to also return to this blog. There have been times where I have been earning achievements and just haven't written anything into this blog. I don't really have any particular reason for that, though right now I feel like writing a blog and so that's what I'm doing. Of course I'm not wasting any time, I'm writing this between the loading screens on Sonic & SEGA Allstars Racing.

I also wasn't about to just start writing blogs again just because I felt like it, I wanted to make sure that my want to gain achievements again was real. I guess I knew it was coming, since I've had the urge to do it for a while and the only thing stopping me was University. As of writing, I've earned over 10,000 Gamerscore within the last month. I should think that this is enough to justify my return to blogging...despite the few times I've returned to this blog and then stopped just a few weeks later.

Now onto Gamerscore goals. Let's start with Windows Phone 7 and a list of my incomplete games:

• Katamaridamacy
• Angry Birds
• Final Fantasy
• Ghostscape
• Beards & Beaks

At the moment I'm mostly playing Final Fantasy when I get the chance to since it's the easiest to just pick up and play, then put down again. Yes, I realise that the logical choice in such a situation should be Angry Birds, but at the moment I'm going for 3 stars in that so it requires me to concentrate and usually use video guides. Katamari is also blocking me from playing Angry Birds because of the "Exquisite Collection" Achievement which requires every item in the game to be picked up and rolled over. I brought Katamari first and I want to get it finished with so that I can concentrate more on the 3 stars in Angry Birds levels.

Then there's Ghostscape which I find to be a shame because it seems to be an alright game. It just has glitchy achievements. I have a warning to people starting this game, *when* an achievement glitches to the point where you need to restart the game, uninstall it first. After that, wait at least a few hours before downloading it again. The game seems to have problems with you continuing without doing this and will probably glitch even more. However, it is a quick game if you have a guide, it just comes with plenty of problems. Don't buy it unless you want Gamerscore and even if you do, you should be wary of glitches.

Now we come to the final incomplete Windows Phone 7 game which is Beards & Beaks. The game in itself is not a bad game, but it does something which really annoys me. To use the powerups in the game you must spend Microsoft Points and  these powerups are REQUIRED for at least one achievement. The game itself is £2.29 which is about right if you were buying the full thing. It's easy points so far but once again I can't recommend this one. Imagine if every time in Angry Birds to use a Bomb Bird you needed to spend Microsoft Points. I paid for the game without the knowledge of this so consider yourself warned. All would be forgiven if the game was free, it might even seem a little logical to pay for powerups then...but this is the first time I've encountered this on a phone game. It's not a bad thing, but I paid for the game already so I kind of feel cheated out of my money.

Next is retail games which is a much longer list so I think I'll leave that for now. I have a lot to talk about there and I'm pretty sure that I've rambled enough now anyway.

Why don't you just "hack" your 360?

So I just got my NTSC-U Xbox 360 and I've been asked multiple times before I got it why I don't just hack my PAL one to play any game. It's legal as long as I'm not using it for piracy other such things, so why don't I just do that? According to them, I can't be banned if I play offline and only come online to update my score. Well that's just it, my score, that is the reason that I don't want to do something like that. It's against Microsoft's terms and conditions to connect to Xbox Live to hack my Xbox 360 and that's the reason I won't do it. I care about playing online on the console and I care about my Gamerscore. I want to be able to get a consistent update of my position on the now not MGC but TA leaderboards. I also want to know how I'm doing in the 360Voice challenges and time stamps on my Achievements. I can't get any of this by hacking my console, so I won't do it.

I want to be able to also project the integrity of Gamerscore in every way I can. Whilst I have no objections to people hacking their console assuming it's for a legitimate reason, I can't condone it in the world of Gamerscore. I know that there are game saving sites out there which to my knowledge you don't need a hacked 360 to use them, but I'm convinced that some of it could potentially come from hacked consoles. I think of the recent PS3 hacking and yeah, it's a lot more serious but I believe that you can unlock Trophies using a hack. The same could be true for the Xbox 360 and I don't want to have any potential reason to be banned. I love the Xbox 360's and I'll get a Japanese one when I have the money, I want to increase my Gamerscore with games from all around the world, legitimately.

Thanks for reading, bye :)

RIP MyGamerCard.net

Why is it that I keep making these "goodbye" blogs? This is the third one of them and as much as I'd like to continue on with other topics, these keep happening. So as you may have heard http://www.mygamercard.net/ is no more. It served the Xbox community for 5 and a bit years and had by far the biggest worldwide Achievement leaderboard. I used to use the stats from that website in my battle against DizzyChaos way back in those days. It's a real shame to see them go, but I'd rather not be sad about this one and hope that there is something coming along for all Achievement Whores out there. Not to say that the demise of the site means that something better can now come, but Morgan was one person managing a massive website. Maybe one day there will be an official GamerScore leaderboard? Maybe TrueAchievements might implement genre leaderboards which I loved to look at on MGC.

I must thank MGC for the greatness over the years. After I started GamerScore in 2007, you were the site that I visited most. From watching myself and my friends go up the leaderboards to watching the game savers be deleted. The impact this website had is incredible and with it gone it has messed up a spreadsheet I had 7 months in the making. I guess I'll have to start again with TA stats.

Of course, there was that website project I haven't talked about at all yet. Whilst my GamerScore project efficiency thread died on X360A, I still have the spreadsheet and still update it. So perhaps it's time I learnt how to make my own leaderboards and website properly. I have a lot of ideas, but getting them done and getting into the community developer program is another thing. That doesn't mean I'm not going to give it my best try, but these things are going to take time. That and I don't really know much about advertising a website aside from adding links into my forum signature.

Thanks for reading, bye.