KarWai's Blog

Facebook Is Making Us Miserable

2011-12-13T19:47:00.000+11:00

Link to the article: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/facebook_is_making_us_miserabl.html
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I kinda disagree with this post, I would say people who doesn't have self control would become miserable, which unfortunately, span a large portion of the society.

1. Comparison is not a bad thing, people do it all the time, even without facebook. In high school students compare their grade. Workers compare their salary. Relatives compare their marry-age. It is the people themselves are at fault to wanting to compare. Comparison actually can be good as it drives success, it drives students to study harder for better grade, et cetera.

2. Fragmentation of our time? Seriously? Facebook is just an excuse or tool for those who want to procrastinate, be it during working hour or studying period. Blame these to those who lack self-control.

3. Closeness of friends? Lol, you can just ask your friends out for lunch or dinner. I would say facebook makes it more convenient to connect with friends - msn, skype and other IM softwares are doing the same thing. I simply couldn't relate the closeness of a friend with physical interaction, closeness is between hearts not between bodies. Unless you mean closeness in term of that 'sort' of activities.

Finally, either that the writer is anti-facebook because he is paid to do so, or he felt miserable due to his unfortunate traits, or he is just trying to be 'facemous'. Besides, I am not pro-facebook here, I do agree with the part that we should just quit facebook, and join google+ instead.

Chocobo Tower [SquareEnix]

2010-11-01T00:50:00.000+11:00

Recently, SquareEnix (formerly Square Soft, which is the creator of Final Fantasy) comes out with two new games on Facebook, which is a popular social website. One of the game is named Chocobo's Crystal Tower, however, the game is really only facebook game standard, which is disappointing. It is vaguely similar to other pet games, despite the addition of tower exploration and monsters hunting (where players have no control on that part of the game play.

Besides, the computer resources used are considerably high, which suggests an inefficiency of the game programming. Graphics are reasonably well made, albeit there is still a large room for improvement.

As for the game itself, it is simple, you are the owner of a chocobo farm, and you raise them to dispatch the chocobos to towers, in an attempt to prevent monsters from terrorising the human world. Such simple game does not require any deep thinking, and it is probably aimed for kids and/or people who are free and "just bored". Clearly, many players would have attracted to this game because of the title.

Feel free to try the game at the below link.
http://apps.facebook.com/chocobos/

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

2010-10-28T20:13:00.001+11:00

Nice game, feel free to try out.

Shining Soul 2

2010-01-29T20:27:00.096+11:00

I saw this game on Game Ratio website, it was ranked 7 on the list. Besides, a search around on GameFaq.com shows some gamer reviews on the game, most of them are good comments so I decided to give the game a try.

The game is similar to Baldur's Gate or Diablo2 in the aspect of gameplay, you start of by choosing a character out of many to play with, and you will stick to that character for the whole game (I think). There is about seven characters to choose from, one of it, the one looks like a wolfman, was chosen by me.

This is the starting screen, it is pretty similar to the display of an online game.

Seeing the starting, I would think this game is pretty decent. Well, look at those stats, it seems good isn't it? Inside the game, you can move the character around like Zelda, it is quite smooth in the aspect of moving.

(look at the portrait of the guy, doesn't he look the same as the Fuhrer-sama in Full Metal Alchemist?)

Other than the words being a little bit large, the background is quite detailed and nice, however, the characters and NPCs in the game don't match the background at all. This makes the whole game graphic sucks!!

Next I show you the status and item screen, I would say it is similar to those of online games, perhaps the game designer was planning to make an online game after all:

(status and item screens)

Upon level up, you also gain 2 status points and 1 skill point, these can be used to boost your stats and to learn skill (in status screen). It reminds me of a game called Ragnarok Online, which things are similar, while they are much simpler in this game. The only new thing I saw on Shining Soul 2 is those little icon resemblance different types of elements: Fire, Ice, Lightning etc... Those are element resistance, which can be gained by receiving damage of those elements, this feature is pretty new to me.

There are shops in the game, accompanied by a picture of the shop keeper. On the left, I think I have seen the picture of this guy before, perhaps from a movie? The girl on the right dressed like a character in the anime Dragon Ball. This is a little bit disappointing...

I think the design of the game is pretty bad, it is not consistent and messy! Another thing to comment is the text displayed when you are talking with NPC, or with the enemy boss, those speeches are accompanied by some annoying sounds!! Think of the game Harvest Moon, there are some 'do do do' sound when you are talking with NPC, BUT the problem with Shining Soul is, those sounds are annoying, and weird! The game musics aren't too good so I think it is better to play the game without turning on the speaker.

Now to the main point, gameplay. The game revolves around the main character walking around the castle gathering information, preparing yourself and strike to attack various mazes (missions). So you just choose the mission you would like to complete, and you are there, hola check the next pic to understand my statement:

(yea just choose the icon on the map...)

Then, you will be in the game, you can move around, slash enemies like there is no tomorrow or idling. There is no pause button, calling the status and item screens does not pause the game! Well, all you need to do is to defeat those monsters in the area and you can rest your character there. There are several stages in each maze, and moving forward to the next stage will forbid you to go back, it is not a big problem anyway, you will know why if you continue reading this.

(hack and slash is the backbone of the game)

As above, the background and the characters don't match!

Slashing enemies is pretty fun, for a while. Reason being that repetition is boring, no, it's extremely boring!! Why repetition? Because you can always repeat each missions, you will meet bosses that you killed before, you will slash each minion one by one, you will obtain items from treasure chests... Well, I wouldn't repeat those maze IF the monster's drop rate is good enough! See, monsters do not respawn, you can only fight the same monsters by replaying the same maze, and let's say you want to hunt some cards for side quest, it will take ages!! This is the main reason for me to drop the game.

After all, this game is pretty boring, the storyline is bad.

Conclusion:

This is not an online game, so there is no point in making a game looks like an online game!!

What? "So now I have read this post to the end, and where is the link to the rom??"

Well, if you still want to play this game, go to google and hit 'Cool Rom' or 'Rom Hustler'. I think I downloaded the game there, I might post up a link if I feel like it.. See ya.

酱爆 (Jiong Bao!)

2010-01-29T15:38:00.000+11:00

酱爆，在“少林足球”里的虚拟角色。他的不畏精神与勇气，在这段片中完全地展现出来！

赞！！！

English Translation:

Jiong Bao, a frictional character in the movie "Shaolin Soccer", his courage and 'lack of fear' is completely shown in this short video clip!

Excellent!!!

PS: Credits go to Youtube for hosting the video. =)

Movie - Sherlock Holmes

2010-01-26T23:47:00.001+11:00

After I watched Avatar on cinema screen, I moved on to the next movie that was released about the same time.

Sherlock Holmes movie.

Well, it is a movie that I wanted to watch since viewing the trailer, as it is about a detective solving mysteries cases. The movie takes place during the Dark Age in London, where religions are having strong influence in politic. Specifically, the opponent for Holmes in this movie is a guy who utilizes 'magic' in getting political power.

I would say the flow of the story is pretty good, I didn't see any plot of the story which is redundant. Besides, I like how the movie started, especially when the detective analyses his opponent. Some of the plot are quite tense, it feels like watching an action movie in some of the scenes.

Actually there isn't much detective analysis in the movie, however, those analysis are quite impressive. It is not very hard to link those analysis yourself, but while watching the movie, as I was concentrating in the action part of it, I couldn't make such link. Hence, I think that the movie is very unique, and its plot is not expectable, unlike Avatar...

As I didn't read the book, I can't comment much on this movie, in my opinion, the movie is great! I am anticipating the second movie, which I hope will be out soon.

Easy and Effective way to square

2010-01-23T02:42:00.000+11:00

Prerequisite:

You will need to know how to square a number, I doubt anyone who is reading this doesn't know about squaring. To give example, to square a seven, 7² = 7 X 7 = 49.

Basically, everyone should know how to square numbers one to ten.

Method:

Now, if I want to square a number, says 31. I will usually use a calculator to perform the calculation: 31 X 31 = 961, this can be done in a few seconds. Even if you do not have a calculator, you can easily make a search on google to calculate it, an example is here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=31%5E2 .

Please do not stop reading, the easy and effective method to square is not as above (using calculator). However, the method I am going to tell you is not simple as using a calculator. Then why should we learn about other ways to square? The reason can be apparent, think of the case when you need to square a number while you are showering, or in the toilet. A real world example is that you want to determine what set-up is useful for hunting in Mousehunt, for its luck power is determined by its square.

Note: Mousehunt is a facebook game.

Since 31 X 31 can be quite hard to calculate mentally, we can use the square of 30 to find the square of 31, the only thing we need to know is that relationship between the two. First of all, note that squaring a number which is a multiple of ten is easy (Ap.1), square of 30 is 900, square of 70 is 4900. Now, using that 30² is 900, we can determine that 31² is 961 by adding 30 and 31 into 900, to see how it works (Ap.2):

30 X 30 = 900,
30 X 31 = 900 + 30 = 930,
31 X 31 = 930 + 31 = 961;

Please note that 31 can be written as (30+1), so we can temporarily ignore the one, calculate the first number, and then add in the extra 'one' into the equation. You can see such mechanism as I write:

30 X 31 = 30 X (30+1) = 30 X 30 + 30 X 1 = 900+30 = 930
and
31 X 31 = (30+1) X 31 = 30 X 31 + 1 X 31 = 930+31 = 961

Besides, you can also write 31 X 31 as (30+1)(30+1) = 900 + 30 + 30 + 1 = 961. Doing this simplifies the calculation so that you can perform it mentally (Ap.3).

Now let's say you want to get 32², you can find the square of 31 first by above method, and then get 32² = 31² + 31 + 32 = 1024. Alternatively, you can write 32 as (30+2) to simplify the multiplication:

32² = (30+2)(30+2) = 900 + 4(30) + 4 = 1024

which is simpler.

Proof:

You can omit this as this section deals with generalisation of such method, you will need to know about algebra to continue...

First, let us define two variables, y and n.

(Ap.1): Squaring a number which is a multiple of ten is easy.

We can write such numbers as 10y, where y is any integers. Squaring such number yields:
(10y)² = 100(y²) = 100y²

Of course, you can try to substitute in any number into y to see if it works.

(Ap.2):

Now, we suppose y is a number where it's square is known, we can find the square of its next value, y+1, easily.
(y+1)² = (y+1)(y+1) = y(y+1) + 1(y+1) = y² + y + (y+1)
as we had seen above.

(Ap.3):

If we suppose y is a number multiple of ten or five, which its square can be easily determined, we can find the square of any number close to y easily:

Here, we also let n be any integer smaller than ten.

(y+n)² = (y+n)(y+n) = y² + 2ny + n²

such calculations should not be difficult, here I throw in an example, let say I wish to find the square of 79.

Square of 7 is clearly 49, so square of 70 is obviously 4900, we then find the square of 75, as it is closer to 79:

75² = 70² + 10(70) + 25 = 4900+700+25 = 5625
(using the fact that y=70, n=5 as in Ap.3)

Then, we take y as 75 and n as 4 to complete our calculation:

79² = 75² + 8(75) + 16 = 5625+600+16 = 6241

* Sometimes it can be simpler to determine the value of 79 by taking y=70 and n=9.

An alternative method is to take y=80 and n= -1, I will leave this as an exercise. Cheers.

Movie - Avatar

2010-01-19T03:34:00.001+11:00

Hi, I am here blogging again after a silence long month, to comment about a movie that I'd watched some time ago. For some reason, the poster is in Japanese but the movie I've watched is in English. Infact, I watched the movie twice, the 3D and the normal version.

I would say that the idea of 'Avatar' is pretty new, it is about using a human's consciousness to control an artificial being, which is called Avatar. Basically, in the movie, Avatar are human-created body made similar to a particular person and controlled by that person. (As in the photo, two of them look alike)

Besides, contrary to most films, humans are antagonist in the movie, they exploit others' territory for their own gain. In this case, ore which named Unobtainium, perhaps named after the fact that such ores do not exist on Earth. The movie is about a warfare to conqueor and exploit the resources of other planet, named Pandora.
Such activities exist on our Earth too, war errupted due to resources, which is too normal for human.

Another thumb up for this movie is that the world of Pandora is too vivid, real, especially for the three-dimensional movie. It makes you think you are inside the movie. Compared to other movies related to alien and outer space, which I think rather too dark, the world created in this movie is fantastic, it's like a paradise. There is really some effort into the creation of such world, you can see many different kinds of animals in the movie, especially some unique features of theirs, like a different breathing system and 'network' system...

As for the combat scenes in 'Avatar', I would say it's pretty common. Those seem like gaming CG aren't that special, albeit still manage to capture the heart of audiences. I would rate the story line the same as combat, it is kinda predictable.

Anyway, the movie lengths about 165 minutes but it seem to be quite short when I am watching it in cinema, the reason being is most likely because the movie is good, I would say that. It's worth your time to watch it.

Cute little minigames

2009-12-03T18:32:00.001+11:00

I came across a list of cute minigames and I particularly like one of the minigame:

winterbells

It is basically about a small white rabbit trying to jump as high as possible to the sky by stepping on white bells and white birds. Jumping on each bells give you an increasing score starting from 10 and with increment of 10 on each success jump, besides, stepping on bird doubles the score. The game is as simple as that.

Besides, the second reason I love this game is that the music is cute and relaxing. =)

If you like to try the game, go to this link: http://shadowren.webs.com/GameSite/index.html and click at the bell symbol.

Cheers.

Movie - 2012

2009-11-27T22:11:00.000+11:00

The movie I had watched week ago is about the calamity which is going to be faced by humankind (as claimed by the movie and some people). As I didn't do much research about the science behind the story, all I can say is that it is the end of the world, or more precisely, the changing of the earth into a new phase, an evolution... How true is that? Well I have no idea but I don't really want to give a damn since it doesn't matter anyway. It will be a good thing whether or not the world is meeting it's doom, since all things gonna come to an end no matter what.

Back to the movie, I can say that the idea about the end of the world is not really as exciting as it is, many movies use this idea and produce plots that are related to demise of everything. Basically 2012 is just using the same old idea to attract people to watch the movie, I bet it doesn't work that well so they decided to claim that the event will happen soon.. lol

Besides, the same old idea of Noah's Ark is used again, just like many other movies. Just wiki it if you don't know what is Noah's Ark, basically it is a ship that is used to save mankind and animal species... So the human in the movie has resolved to create a big metallic ship to accomodate most of the lifeform in it, which is disappointing as I was expecting something like a spaceship that let them travel to the space.

The plot is basically revolved around a random family who has tried uber hard to survive, to survive the earth quake, the volcano eruption, the catastrophe of collapsing building et cetera. Only one word can describe this, FAKE! Well, it is actually possible for them to survive those events (the movie proves it so), but what is the odd? The odd to survive one of the event is really so small that it is almost impossible, now that all the events have stacked together, the probability of it happening is even lower than for the end of the world to occurs. This can only happen in movie.

Conclusion is that, the movie isn't good at all, it is a waste of time to watch this movie. I would rather watch jurassic park than watching this. The only interesting thing to watch, in my opinion, is the destruction of the world, as how the building collapse et cetera. Besides, I would say that the message the movie is bringing to us is pretty REAL - that if we human don't do anything to protect the Earth, the end of humankind will be near.

So, take that as an educational movie.

Multitask Game update

2009-10-28T15:48:00.001+11:00

Read the previous post if you have not done so:
http://karwaiblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/multitask-game.html

So I continued to play the game for a bit and I managed to pass through 100 seconds!

As soon as I reached 120 seconds, this appeared:

However, I only lasted for 13 extra seconds and lost in the first game... The significant difficulty that I observed is that the length of the stick that used to juggle the ball (first game) has gone shorter.

Maybe I will try breaking my record in the future but I think that's the end for me playing the game.

Cheers

Multitask Game

2009-10-28T02:49:00.004+11:00

So I happened to come across this game, as the name suggests, I thought it will be about playing a few games simultaneously. I am correct, the game is about playing games simultaneously, however I have over estimated the difficulty of the game. It can be quite difficult at times but once you figure out how to play it and practise it a few times, it shouldn't be a big problem.

If you want to try the game before reading further, you can click the link here:
http://shadowren.webs.com/MultitaskGame.htm

or click the picture below to play it on my blog, but with a much smaller resolution:

(Note that both ways load the game from the same source so it doesn't consume extra internet quota by playing it either/both ways)

So far, my best record is 96 and this was my third/fourth time playing the game. I think I will do better if I continue playing this game but I don't think I will do so as I have already seen all 4 different mini-games. Although there are only 4 games to it, it is very "attention-demanding" as you are controlling 4 things at a time.

Besides, the music is a bit too loud compared to others. There is a shortcut key "m" to mute the music though, which is good because the music got repetitive after a while. As for the quality of the game, I would say the games are simple and the graphic is decent.

Conclusion: The game is pretty fun so introduce to your friends =)

Update on blog post: http://karwaiblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/multitask-game-update.html

Arbitrage

2009-10-25T15:00:00.000+11:00

This word can be unfamiliar to many people who has never done any finance courses. Arbitrage simply means riskless profit.

From Dictionary.com, the definition of Arbitrage from Financial Dictionary is:

The simultaneous purchase and selling of an asset in order to profit from a differential in the price. This usually takes place on different exchanges or marketplaces. Also known as a "riskless profit".

Basically, this mean that someone can profit from something by doing a few transaction simultaneously, and gain a profit without sacrificing anything. Note that the profit can be obtained now, or in the future.

Well, to make our life simplier, we need to assume a few things.

First, everyone can borrow and lend at a fixed interest rate (called it r), this removes the advantage of people who can actually borrow with lower interest rate (such as credible companies).

Second, this interest rate r is actually the inflation rate, which means that the ratio of future value of money to the current value of money is related to r. For example, if a dollar now is gonna worth a dollar twenty in a year time (means after a year, the dollar we have actually becomes less valuable), and if we save the money in a bank, we would get a dollar twenty in a year time too. This effectively is saying that there is zero Real Infation rate.

Third, money market is riskless. Here we are saying that we can save or lend money without worrying about risk, no bank and people will go bankcrupt or default on the payment. (contributes to the riskless aspect of Arbitrage)

Last, there is no external cost associated with any transaction. Example of external cost includes: transportation, value of time, personal preference. These costs exist in real life, let say in a rural village, for Ken to deposit some money in a bank in the city, he would need to drive to the city to deposit (Need to waste time and money on travelling), besides, he is afraid of doing bank transaction because he seldom do it (personal preference), this induces an extra cost to him although sometimes the cost can be hard to measured. However, in a technology advance era, we can safely assume away such cost, take internet banking and ATM machines for example.

Now back to the main point, how does arbitrage work? Remember we might need to make a few transactions simultaneously. A simplest example that I can think of is, let's say your friend, Paul want to borrow some money from you for a year and he is willing to pay you an interest i which is greater than the market interest rate r, so do you think you can make a riskless profit out of this?

To do it step by step:

1. By lending the money to Paul, let's say x amount, you would lose x dollars now, but he is required to pay you back x(1+i) after a year time. (This is your first transaction)

2. Since now i is greater than r, you can borrow a riskless amount of money x from a bank, and pay x(1+r) back to the bank in a year time.

Effectively, you are borrowing money from the bank with a lower interest rate and lending it to Paul for a higher interest rate, hence making a profit in return. Since no party will default on payment, the profit is riskless and you don't lose anything! The amount you earn is x(1+i) - x(1+r) = x(i-r) , which you can claim in a year time.

The money you earned, in fact, need not to be claimed in a year time, you can actually realise the money anytime, by doing another transaction:

3. By borrowing the present value of your profit, in this case x(i-r)/(1+r), and returning x(i-r) in the future gives you the power to get a hold of your profit anytime.

Take a note that a positive expected value on something is not an arbitrage, for example, if I gamble $10, I got the chance of getting $110 with a 90% chance or lose my initial $10 with 10% chance. Clearly, the expected value in this case is $80, which is high (so I will definitely do it). However, this is not an arbitrage because the profit is not riskless, I have 10% of losing my ten dollars here.

Back to the previous Paul example, if assumption three (no one default on payment) does not hold, even if you charge Paul higher interest rate to compensate that Paul might default on payment with a 5% chance, it is not an arbitrage. However if the expected value is positive, it might still be worth it to lend the money to him.

Devil May Cry, Anime

2009-10-24T00:10:00.000+11:00

Many would have heard of the game Devil May Cry, it is on Playstation 2 console and the graphic is awesome! Actually I've never played the game but watched it being played by friend. Anyway, I have watched this anime just now and I think that it isn't too bad.

However, one who has played the game shouldn't expect too much from the anime. Well, the game has to be played with style so one would expect the anime to be as stylish as well. In fact, the fighting scenes in the anime are quite stylish as well but it was rather too short.

Besides, there isn't much introduction to the characters in the anime, probably because there exist such expectation that we should have already played the game before watching the anime. Other than that, I think the storyline is quite nice even though the earlier episodes are kinda disjoint. Basically the story revolved around Dante (the main character), he is cool, quiet, handsome and strong too. The story involved things happened after he has opened a shop named "Devil May Cry", Dante is a devil hunter, which accepts job that relates to hunting down demons, the plot is kinda loose in the sense that I don't know much background about the characters and the world they reside in just by watching the anime.

The anime is mainly made up of fighting scenes, the fightings are fast pace (as opposed to Dragon Ball which is draggy!) and quite quite bloody too, as suggested by Dante: R-rated.. Besides, there is a cute little girl in the anime as well named Patty. Watching this anime makes me wonder why are there demons in the world, and whether humans or demons, are actually more scary? Demon would kill people as this is their nature but human still kill each other for money, fame etc...

Anyway, the anime only consisted of 12 episodes of about 25 minutes length each episodes, so the main plot is kinda short and I cant really get any idea how the storyline is from the game. This make me curious about the game's storyline so I will definitely try to experience the game if I have the chance.

Flappy NES

2009-10-21T17:15:00.001+11:00

I think most people will be confused when looking at the title screen wondering how the game will be, well, me too, when I saw the name Flappy. I came across this game while I was bored, I randomly chose a game in my NES collection and here is the result: Flappy. The name might imply a bird flying in a side-scroll arcade kinda game but the game is in fact totally different.

From the title screen, "Push Select Button", how odd it is to ask you to push Select button, instead of the Start button for most games! Well, actually if you press the Start button, the game still proceed and you start the game, enjoy~~ Wait! Pressing the Select button leads you to the screen like this:

On this screen you can actually choose the music you like out of the three given. Okay I actually didn't bother trying changing the music for two reasons, one is that I don't really care about what music it gives, second is that I couldn't bring the cursor to the bottom for me to change the music, or the number of players, maybe I need to press the select button to change... The keyword is actually password, the game originates from Japan but the menu is in English.

So let's start the game:

(FLAPPY)

It is actually a puzzle game! The yellow thingy on the top left corner are flappies! There is an enemy in the map too which is at the right side, and there are many boulders, one of them is blue and the rest are brown.

The aim of the game is to move the blue boulder (apparently a fragment of a planet) onto the blue platform, if you think that is easy, then you are wrong! This game is intellectualy challenging, which means, the game is hard, you really need to think when you are playing this game. (For some other games, those puzzle are quite easy so you wouldn't need to 'think' at all)

(Flappy will be happy when you clear the level)

Other than that, you must not die during the mission (of moving the rock). There is two ways of dying, actually three:

(smashed by rocks)

(killed by monsters)

(Alternatively you can press Select + Start at the same time to commit suicide!)

The green monster in the above pic will only move horizontally, so there isn't much to afraid of but the level gets harder very quick with another mob which will chase you down when you are in its sight. One method to proceed the game is to kill the monster, there is only one way to do so: Smash it!

(This is so fun!)

But it is really quite hard to smash an enemy, as their movement are kinda random, so some of the time you may find them dodging your rock and you will then stuck on the game! Luckily there are these mushroom thingy which can cause the monster to sleep temporarily:

(On the bottom left: Mushrooms! To the right: Crabby monsters)

The puzzle actually does not look quite hard, but when you play it! It is really hard with those annoying monsters around. There is also japanese word as the map:

which I have no idea what it means....

So after 5 levels you come to the bonus stage:

(Let's Challenge huh?)

It is basically a stage where you can run down the enemies like mad! Destroying them and gain points. and then...

Only after 5 levels and a bonus stage you get the 'keyword', which means if you didn't successfully complete 5 levels with only 5 life, you need to start all over again! This is horrible with such a hard game!! So with the password you can access the first 5 levels anytime you want from the 'Keyword and Music' screen! Note that you do not start at level 6, even if you had completed level 5 before this! So you have to go through an extra level...

Well, basically I stopped playing the game as I couldn't (and don't want to waste time on it) solved level 6.

If you are still interested, follow the link below for the rom:

Flappy (J) [p1].zip

Extra Information: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Flappy

Emulators that I use

2009-10-20T23:59:00.001+11:00

These are the emulators that I use to play game on my computer (Window):

SNES (Super Nintendo)
snes9x-1.43-win32.zip (733kb)

NES
virtuanes097e.zip (373kb)

GBA/GBC/GB (Gameboy)
VisualBoyAdvance.zip (575kb)

Nintendo 64
Project 64 Installer.zip (2852kb)

Sony Playstation 1
pSX_1_13.zip (5360kb)

For NDS, you can try using no$gba. (Site: http://nocash.emubase.de/gba.htm)

Bomberman World (PS)

2009-10-18T18:16:00.003+11:00

This is the bomberman game on Sony Playstation 1. From the title screen, it suggests that the bomberman is going to face 4 more villains in the game (the four on the left). Basically the story is about Bagular (the main villain in most bomberman series) had freed 4 Dark Force bombermans from cystal seal and they aim to bring chaos to the world, now, the bomberman has to face these villains to save the world. (Note that you can click on the pictures to view larger)

(Bagular)

There is 4 main worlds for the bomberman to 'conqueor' and defeat the boss of the world. The 1st of which is Planet Forest where the setting is a world like Earth without any civilization. (See pic)

Wait, look at the map. Well, it is an improvement to the graphic now that the game is in 3D, however this introduces much more difficulties in controlling the bomberman to avoid flame etc. It is also a little bit harder to place bombs on a specific tile as the movement of the bomberman is a bit 'slipperly'. Other than that, you just need to be used to the 3D graphic then you will be all fine. The map is not too big or too small on the stages so it is pretty fun to try out the new 3D system.

The aim of the game is to collect the blue crystal on the map and get into the gate which usually located at the top right part of the map, you don't need to destroy all monsters on the field however I will always kill all of them although this doesn't give you anything other than points. There are a few areas to conqueor on each world and Area 4 & 5 are devoted to the boss.

For the forest world the boss is a bomberman who wore a wolf skin, basically you just need to damage the boss a few times and he/she will be defeated. Then the boss will leave you a cute animal to be used in the next boss battle, the yellow cute thing in the above pic grants you the power of jump although I think that the skill is useless against the boss but it still does give you some protection. (The jumping is a little bit awkward though)

(The big boss of the forest world)

World 2 is a world of wind, the setting is on a sky desert where cactus grows. The normal monsters are harder in this world but it still did not stop me from getting to the boss.

The only female boss in the game, she is way harder than the first boss as she can summon tornado which can kill the bomberman instantly, she also has the ability to blow the bombs placed on the map further. After defeating her, she would says something like "this is not the end" and you get the blue machine which lets you throw 2 bombs to the front which can be quite useful against the big boss.

You might be shocked when I mentioned that she speaks. This version of bomberman come with voices, the boss talked (although a bit unclear which I suspect it is because I didn't turn my volume loud enough), the bomberman also talked when he obtains power-up! He will mention like "Bomb", "Fire".. etc which is VERY annoying!! (That's why I lower the volume!) Things get worse when you play battle mode and all 5 bombermans on the map keep saying "Fire", "Bomb", the voice is also retarded, it sound like some idiot talking..

Although annoyed, I still try hard to complete the game so that I can write this review...

Next, the Planet Fire.

As in other bomberman series, the volcano setting of the game comes with the cart that is used to transport ore, so I suspect this is in an ore mine and the volcano errupted. Some of the monsters which existed in other bomberman series also appeared here.

As for the boss, he is a fat dude with holes around his stomach, the holes allow him to shoot fire in a cross-junction-like of pattern. He is able to call upon the rain of fire as well but this leave him vulnerable to bombs attack! He is pretty easy to dealt with. Besides, the creature he was riding will give you the ability to throw 4 bombs at a time, take a look that animal, when it was under the villain bomberman's control, its face showed evil expression; when the white bomberman gets it, it showed innocent face LOL!

The big boss is a 3 round rock thingy which shows 3 expressions! Apparently it is very huge and it moves quite fast, this caused my bomberman to die very fast without defeating it! I couldn't win against it and so I didn't proceed further to complete the game...

Maybe in the future I will attempt the game again and complete my blog post.

1 comment about the game is that it is a little bit laggish when you are using the glove, it is quite hard to be used to when you have played all the previous bombermans (Super Bomberman series for example). Other than that, 3D system isn't really suitable to be used in bomberman game so it is better to stick to 2D platform instead.

For those who wanna challenge the 3D system, go ahead, it is actually not too hard to be played with =)

*Note: To download the game image, try searching the game on http://romhustler.net/ .

Liar Game

2009-10-16T18:42:00.002+11:00

This is a Japanese TV Drama that I have finished watching recently, it is comprised only of 11 episodes which are length about 40 minutes each except the last episode, which is a 3-hours special.

The main actress is Erika Toda (in pic) who also acted in Death Note Movie as Misa. In the drama she is a straight forward and kind person, she is also honest and believes others easily. Her characteristic is deemed as stupid, naived by other people. (Bare close resemblance to Misa Amane in Death Note). However, the main actor (in pic), is smart and good at psychology (bare close resemblance to L in Death Note). The series basically is about both of them got involved in a dangerous game named Liar Game Tournament (LGT), this is a game of deceive and strategy.

I would comment that the story is similar to that of Death Note as it is mainly about the battle of the brains. It is intellectually challenging to the brain when I am watching this and try to think who/what can be the obstacle to the people who joins the game. Besides, people try to lie and cheat in the game as it is encouraged by the host (hence the name liar game).

The story is actually based on the manga (which I haven't read), however, a series of 11 episodes is too short compared to the manga, the ending of the series also suggests a second season. I am looking forward to the second season (and if I have the chance, the manga too).

#5: Bomberman II

2009-10-04T07:21:00.003+11:00

By Hudson~~

This is the second series of bomberman and basically it doesn't differ much from bomberman 1. However a story is added to the game although it is horribly short:

The black bomberman robbed a bank and leave the bag of money to the white bomberman. He then ran away, left the white bomberman confused on the scene. Police arrived shortly and caught the white bomberman. So the game starts by having white bomberman trying to escape the prison... Hmmmm...

A big improvement to the game is that some of the maps are not as large as in the previous bomberman game (see above pic). Besides, more map backgrounds are introduced to the game, which of course make the game less dull:

(Forest)

(Mountain)

(Lake?)

(Cave)

(Escaped from jail?)

There is no boss in the game, which is similar to that of the previous game, monsters are basically the same through out the game so the only difference is the background. After beating this you would see an ending scene that shows the black bomberman kneel and apologise to white bomberman. Yea that's the end, better than no ending right?

and from the credit screen comes this secret password that you can enter for the "sound test", nothing particular though.

There is multiplayer mode too but I don't think it is really that nice as you are only fighting your friends and computer with only 3 items in the map: bomb, flame and skull.

The game is worth for trying for a while just for the fun of it but it gets boring after a while, the ending is nothing special so I think it is not really worth it to try to get to the ending unless you are a game freak like me.

Besides, here attached a link to my previous blog post regarding bomberman 1:

http://karwaiblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/3-bomberman-on-nes.html

Rom Download: Bomberman II (U).zip (67kb)

#4: Double the bet?

2009-09-28T20:40:00.000+10:00

I guess most of the people, if not all, know a method of gambling that GUARANTEED a positive return, that is, you would just need to double your bet after losing. Try to think about it, when you bet a dollar, and if you lose, you bet two dollar, and if you lose, you make it four, eventually you will win for a round and you get back all the money that you loses, plus an extra dollar to your boost! Sounds good?

I am here to analyse the situation for you, let's make a few assumption to make our life simpler:

1. Initial bet is $1. (The amount doesn't matter anyway since we are only doubling after we lose)

2. Probability of winning is 50%. (This is just implying that the game we play is a zero-sum game, usually in casino there will be house advantage, which means a disadvantage for the players. So here let's assume we are playing the game of guessing big-small)

Now let's make a scenario for the method, it is theoretical but is definitely useful. Try with the easiest case, say, I have only 3 dollars and I want to try using the method as described above:

So I start by placing 1 dollar bet on the game, so if I win, I gain 1 dollar, and if I lose, I would place a two dollar bet now and hope that I win, if I win, I gain 1 dollar, and if I lose, there's the end for me. It is easy to illustrate it through a tree diagam, but I would use a table in my case.

Number of Bet | Probability of winning | Gain
#1 | 0.5 | $1
#2 | 0.25 | $1

In this case, the probability of losing is 0.25 which correspond to losing two round consecutively and the amount lost is $3.

So in this case, there is chance that I lose all my money!!

Let's calculate the expected value and variance of this case:
Expected value = 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.25(-3) = 0
Variance = 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.25(9) = 3

So basically I am just playing a zero-sum game, which is not different whether or not I am using the bet-doubling method. The variance here is used to measure the amount of risk (deviation of mean) of the game using this method.

For the following part, it will be a little more mathematic based and simple calculations are skipped:

So let's generalised the analysis, assume that my initial total money is $m dollar, and I still start the bet with $1, the table of analysis will now be:

Number of Bet | Probability of winning | Gain
#1 | 0.5 | $1
#2 | 0.25 | $1
#3 | 0.125 | $1
.
.
#n | (0.5)^n | $1

Probability of losing will now be (0.5)^n, and the amount that I might lose will be m = (2^n - 1). These amount can be calculated using the sum of geometry progressive, it is simple and straightforward so it won't be shown here.

Expected value = 0.5 + 0.25 + .... + (0.5)^n - (2^n - 1)(0.5)^n = 0
Variance = 0.5 + 0.25 + ... + (0.5)^n + (2^n - 1)^2 * (0.5)^n = (2^n - 1) = m

So we are still playing a zero sum game no matter what the n is (n here can be interpreted as the total number of bet you can even if you lose all the rounds). The variance is high here (equal to the money that I hold), this implies that the method is more risky than we just play the game once with a dollar.

So what is the conclusion drawn from the statistic analysis? It suggests that for a normal person, the method shouldn't be used as that would only increase the risk of losing more money. However, for a person who LOVES risk, he or she can go ahead.

Usually, the people who advocates this method would defend that doubling the bet method should only be used when a person has almost infinite money, well, if you carry on the similar analysis with n = infinity, you would find out that the expected value is 1 and the variance is zero, so it is CERTAIN that we can get a positive return of one dollar!! BUT, that is only when you have inifinite amount of money, no matter how rich you are, the money you have is definitely finite, and my analysis has shown that it is a zero-sum game with high risk (that you can finished your whole property). Besides, if a person is rich enough, then there is little point in winning more money as that only changes the figure of the wealth the person has.

So my personal advice is that, do not try playing in casino using this method as it is risky, it is even better if you stop gambling! The truth is, casino usually has advantage which suggests that probability of winning is lower than 50%.

#3: Bomberman on NES

2009-09-27T20:31:00.002+10:00

This is a classic! The first game of the bomberman series on Nintendo Entertainment System. Okay, I didn't complete the game until just a moment so that I can write a review about this game, that means I've just finished all of the 50 levels and get to the ending...

As for the story, it is about bomberman (a robot) who has been working for evil force by making bombs in a underground labybrinth. One day, he heard the legend that when a robot surfaces to the ground, it will become a human being. So bomberman now step out a journey to escape the evil force....

Basically the game is about bomberman destroying a bunch of monsters using bombs, he has to destroy walls to locate the exit (a door) and by collecting power-up his ability strengthened to encounter stronger and nastier enemies.

(The yellow colour thingy is the power-up for the game, in particular, this one allows you to detonate your bombs at your own will. Obvious enough, the door, bomb, and the monsters are there.)

There is no boss in the game, the only monsters that hinder bomberman are the small one that lurks around the game. The game is difficult from the start, since you only have a bomb and a flame. The more flame you have, the longer will be the explosion. So it is VERY hard to kill the monsters unless you get to trap them into a corner where they can't run, and your walking speed is extremely slow from the start so you would need to opt for the speed power-up that improves your speed. As you obtain more power-up such as the bomb detonator and flame protection, you can kill all the monsters much easily.

Besides, you have to be careful not to bomb the door and your power-up as this would create more monsters, AND if you let the time limit to reach zero, the strongest monsters would appear to roam the battleground, they are faster, and they aim for your life, usually this would mean the end of your life unless you have strong power-up to aid you. At this time, you would have to kill all the monsters before heading to the door.

Talking about gameplay, there are 50 levels to the game. All of them are of the same setting (the white colour brick and wall) and the map is the same except for the arrangement of the wall, so things are getting very repetitive after you played the first few levels of the game, which is a pain unless you really like the game (of repetitively killing the almost the same monsters every levels). Well we can't blame the game for that since most of the NES games at that time are repetitive. For me, I played the game using the emulator so I can speed up the game to reduce the time I spend on the game, that explains how I can endure the game for 50 levels.

Besides, there are a few bonus levels in the game which I feel that is redundant unless you aim for the high score in the game, in the bonus level, you wouldn't die from touching the enemy or your own flame so you can kill as many monsters as you can, the monsters keep respawning for you to kill.

As for the control, it is horrible! It is hard for you to place bombs strategically as in most cases you will place bombs consecutively when you try to tap the bomb button. Besides, the control is the worst when you want to detonate the bomb, simply tapping the button quick will only do nothing -> you would need to hold the button a bit longer, which is crap as in the latter bomberman series such problem would not arises. Furthermore, most of the time it doesn't work when you try to detonate bombs when walking, and sometimes it does, I really don't know what causes this.

So I played and played and finally I'd beaten level 50, here is the ending screen if you are curious to see it:

Maybe you can recognize him in another Hudson game, okay, I don't really want to find out, so it is time to say GOOD BYE...

WAIT!! If you can't get more than enough of bomberman, here is it:

You get to play level 59 with this code.

As for me, I can't be bothered to play the game anymore... Enjoy..

Here is some related link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomberman (wikipedia, enough said)

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Bomberman/How_to_play (power-up, monsters etc)

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Bomberman/Walkthrough (contained stage arrangement)

Link to bomberman 2: http://karwaiblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/5-bomberman-ii.html

#2: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX

2009-09-26T05:31:00.004+10:00

This is a game that I completed few weeks ago although I have played the game few years back but I didn't complete it. The storyline is actually quite good even though some of the scenes are kinda expected. It is basically about Link (the main character of the game) got trapped on an Island which turned out to be actually a dream of the Wind Fish. I don't really have an idea what a Wind Fish is, it probably just a sacred giant fish =)

The graphic is actually very good for a gameboy color game, there is actually two version for this game, one of which is the normaly gameboy (non-color) version and another is the one I played, which is a remake for the game. Some extra things had been added to the remake version, such as the photo subquest and an extra color-dungeon.

(Take a look at the camera shop and that gives you all the idea, there is only 12 photos that you can take, beside is one of the photo from the album: Link stole an item from the item shop)

Note that Link's original shirt's color is green, I changed it to red through the color dungeon and this boost his attack power, there is a blue color shirt for him which gives reduce the damage taken by half.

As for the gameplay, I would say it is great! The dungeon isn't too hard to deal with (compared to other Zelda series), there is only 13 items in the game while Link can only hold 12 of them. The extra item is actually a boomerang that can be obtained through a side quest (trading) and you would need to trade an item for the boomerang (you can reverse the process anytime).

(Left pic: the subscreen menu, Right pic: Link is using the flame rod to burn grasses)

The usage of each item is really straight forward, this make the gameplay not hard at all.

Besides, in addition to the overhead view (2D top down view), there is some side-scrolling view part which usually exist in dungeon and some miscellaneous place:

The music is good albeit simple, different places usually accompanied with different music and this make the game less boring. (Well, if you watched AVGN video before you will know how the guy complained about repetitive music.) Other than that, there are some monsters who bear a close resemblance to that of Mario game, for example, look at this:

(There are a few more, one of them look like Kirby)

Other than that, another miscellaneous thing is that when you slashed (or attacked, in any way) the hen for many times, it will called its friends and they will launch a mass chicken attack on you!!

(and there is a mermaid in game too!)

Rating:

Gameplay: 5/5

Sound: 4.5/5

Graphic: 5/5

The only downside for the game is that you can't skip the game message, even though the message speed is not too slow.

*Note: You can download the rom here:

- http://romhustler.net/roms/gbc/l
- 4shared.com (486kb)
- Direct link

#1: Introduction

2009-09-25T14:31:00.000+10:00

One would wonder what have happened to the KarWai's Blog which existed for a few years?

Short Answer: demolished

Long Answer: Due to the fact that the blog has been long abandoned, the decision that the blog should be covered was made and a new blog is built on top of it, and this is the new blog, underneath, there is the old blog.

So for what purpose will the new blog serve? Basically, it will be related to random thought about almost anything, rather than just the daily life of the author, as statistic has shown that little showed their interest on this matter.

Besides, 'emo' posts would most likely to be eliminated, which is a good news for many. =)