The Daily Backlog 63

Sometimes all I want to do is tinker... and watch a boatload of Dragon Ball Z!

That’s What I’m Saiyan!

Good afternoon backloggers! Last time we were faced with the daily struggles of a backlogger, but will Patrick be able to finish the games on his now playing list before he goes nutso?! How about all the others gathering dust on his shelf? It has been an exciting adventure so far, but there’s only so much this mighty backlog warrior can take! Even if he is a super backlogger! There’s only one way to find out and that’s to tune in for this exciting collection of action packed scenes, in today’s episode of Backlogball Z!

Unfortunately, I really haven’t made much progress toward completing any of the games I’m currently playing. For one, I’ve been wracking my brain over a fun little project I’m working on (which I’ll get to later) and because the wife and I have been completely consumed with Dragon Ball Z! If you couldn’t tell from the intro!

And I’ll tell ya what, we’ve been having a blast rewatching the entirety of the series lately. Currently, we’re six seasons in, wrapping up the Android Saga and starting to just get into the Cell Saga. It really seems like we’re starting to get to the best parts! And honestly, the parts that I have the least nostalgia for. Mostly because my memories end at around the conclusion of the Frieza saga, no thanks to a certain Canadian broadcast station. Truthfully, that’s probably why I consider him to be my favorite villain in the series. You kinda lose your groove when you’re 6 months worth of episodes in (they aired weekly) and our friends over at “TV studio who shall not be named” resets the series and starts you from the beginning. It was like the roguelike of TV!!

Anyways, we’re three season short of having the complete collection, so we still have a ton more to watch! And I can’t wait to start getting to the stuff I’ve never seen before!

A Musical Adventure

So, how's about the project I’ve been working on?? Well, there’s a bit of a story behind it. Which shouldn’t surprise you because there always seems to be a story! And it all started many moons ago.

Way back when my wife and I were still young (...younger) and still living in the attic of my parent’s house. Back then we pride ourselves in experimenting with new and unique games. Which I guess isn’t any different than what we do today, but I digress. So, one day, my wife came across a little JRPG by the likes of Atlus, named Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. It’s a musically inclined, turn-based tactics games with a healthy dosage of cute if I recall. And my wife, being the cute-aholic that she is, quickly decided she was all about this game and promptly started playing. It wasn’t long though, before curses and other obscenities starting coming from the other side of the room. I was probably tinkering with my computer or something. It turned out that Rhapsody was as obtuse as they came with regards to JRPGs and it was going to be a task in frustration trying to get through it! But she did, and to this day she has a bit of a chip on her shoulder about it!

But then, a few weeks ago (I don’t know why), we started talking about it again. What it would be like to replay it today, now that we’re seasoned veterans and all. Maybe our skills in patience are a little more ironclad. Especially after the birth of our son. And even though her memories weren’t exactly skewed towards positive, there was something special about Rhapsody to her and it felt like a game we should definitely have in our PS1 library. So I bought it for her as a surprise! It was a gift don’t judge me!!

It took some research though, because apparently Rhapsody is going for a premium these days. Which I guess shouldn’t be a surprise, most Atlus games are very collectible. Especially if you try to buy them complete. Even the disc only versions are tough to get your hands on. And then, I got lucky! I was able to get the game for a pretty decent price, disc only mind you, but that’s better than nothing! And to sweeten the pot a little, I also ordered a fancy reproduction case for it! It’s pretty dang nice too!

A Teensy Obsessed

So, now we have this “fun” little collectible. What about that project I mentioned earlier?! I know right? I went on a little bit of a tangent there. Well, if you recall, Rhapsody is a PS1 game and we’ll probably be playing it on our PS2. Which has wired controllers. And that my friends is where the project comes in! We just don’t want to have to deal with those forsaken cords!

Now, I know we could have just played the game on the PS3, which already has wireless controllers. But where’s the fun in that?! No, I wanted to find a solution so that we could play our PlayStation 2 from across the room and have it hooked up through our capture gear and all that jazz. And that’s when I came across this little project by a guy named pelvicthrustman. An interesting username I know. And what this project allows me to do is create my own bluetooth receiver for the PlayStation 2!! All I needed was a Raspberry Pi (which I conveniently already had), a bluetooth usb dongle (which I also conveniently had) and a Teensy Microcontroller (which I didn’t have...inconveniently). Fortunately, Mr. pelvicthrustman made it super easy to put it all together. He made it a simple “drag and drop” process and as long as you have the right equipment you could be up and running in no time flat!

Unfortunately for me though, I may have bought the wrong version of the Teensy. His was version 2.0 and mine is version 3.2. At first I was crestfallen. Now I’m going to have to order a new one and wait a whole 2 more days! But instead of doing that, I decided to dig through his source code to see how different it could be. I mean, my Teensy was a more recent version so it had to work there as well right?? Well, not exactly. Although they’re similar in functionality, the Teensy 3.2 was changed just enough that I couldn’t just plop all of his hard work into it! And for who knows what reason, I decided I would try to take the high road and port it myself! That is, convert all his code so it became compatible with my version of the hardware! Yay!

And that my friends is what I’ve been up to these past few days. I’m by no means an electrical engineer or a technowizard, but I’m kinda having fun figuring this stuff out. It’s certainly stretching my brain since I had no clue what I was doing when I first started that’s for sure! Hopefully after some tinkering I’ll make some more progress and I’ll absolutely let all of you know if I’m successful! If not, I can always fall back on picking up the right hardware (like I should have in the beginning) and then I’ll be wirelessly JRPGin’ it up on my PS2 when we’re ready to play Rhapsody!

63, The Number of Groats in a Guinea

Well my friends, I think that’ll do it for today! Another off topic post today since I’ve been neglecting the backlog, but I had fun sharing some of the other things that have been on my mind. I am starting to get a hankering for playing some video games though so I may just have to dive back in tonight! And I’ll be sure to let you all know how it goes tomorrow!

Until then, have a great rest of your day!

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Currently Playing

Mario + Rabbids (Switch) - The Trio

Devil May Cry 5 (PlayStation 4) - Me

Xenon Valkyrie+ (PlayStation 4) - Me

Graveyard Keeper (Steam) - The Wife

Total Backlogged Games: 734 …Number of hours tinkering with the Teensy!

Total Completed Games: 15 …A number less than 16 and yet greater than 14!

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And you can keep tabs on my backlog by checking out the Backlog Odyssey Backloggery game list!

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