To my great surprise, PCSX2 is exactly that: an excellent PlayStation 2 emulator. So far, it as worked perfectly with all my games, full screen, full FPS, with an incredible boost of visual quality compared to the original PS2. You can even plug your PS3 gamepad on a USB port, enable 5.1 sound and get a complete experience, right on your computer.

I highly recommend any game enthusiast to give this emulator a try. It was set-up on my system in less than an hour, it’s easy to use and, in my own experience, it simply just works. Here are 2 screenshots taken in Final Fantasy XII, one showing what the game looks like on a real PS2, and one showing the game running with hardware acceleration on my computer in Windows. If you maximize those screenshots on your screen, you’ll see what I’m talking about in regard to quality.

FF-XII - As seen on a PlayStation 2

FF-XII - Emulated with hardware acceleration

Read “Concert de Final Fantasy à Los Angeles, 2004″ (french).

My character is in Bodhum so if you find me, come and say hi! I’ll be cooking and picking up flowers in the forest for the next couple of days. Exciting stuff, I tell you…

As I try not to read about movies before watching them (to avoid spoilers), I was not sure what to expect but I was certainly wondering if old ingredients like music would be part of the mix, especially after reading lots of idiotic comments in the past about that subject. Right from the start, music is there alright, with very jazzy, rhythmic songs from beginning to end. The story is sweet, the characters are great, humour is old fashioned, and everything is put together in a wonderful package. It may not be as funny as Aladdin or as epic as The Lion King but that’s also what makes this movie great: it’s new, it’s unique, and it has its own theme.

Congratulations to Disney for giving us this piece of work. Thanks to you, I felt I was 15 again .

FF-XIII finally has a release date in North America! March 9th 2010, a date to remember. I now know what I’ll be doing on that Tuesday and during the weeks after that .

Here’s an excerpt of what Hideaki Anno had to say about the new movies in 2007. The complete text is available on Funimation’s web site, although not properly credited:

The visual work called Evangelion is composed of a variety of desires.

The desire to put our own honest feelings on film.
The desire to convey to as many people as possible the fundamental
appeal of touching primitive emotions and how versatile the medium
of animation is in its expression and images that it is capable of realizing.
The desire to take the exhausted animation of Japan and carry it into the future.
The desire to shatter the spreading sense of helplessness.
The desire to carry on the strength of spirit that lives on in the real world.

The desire to realize these desires once again.