After reading through some of the stuff I wrote a couple of months back, I realised that all my character descriptions required a major rewrite so that's what I did. Since I've been playing the game, my opinion of each character has changed so with the benefit of hindsight, it's a lot easier to write the descriptions now. My game description kind of sucked too..I don't know what kind of English I was using at that time, but it's bad English alright...so I rewrote that as well. Anyways, also check out the Story section. I put in some 'history' of the world of FFVIII, including the talk about the origins of magic etc etc...because I feel that aspect adds to the game's 'mythical' quality I just hope it's not too much of a spoiler...added a basic magic junction explanation as well. A more detailed one will come quite soon. In the G.F list page, I've added G.F pictures too, though they're a little small (loads faster that way). Finally, I've updated a couple of pages in the pictures gallery. If you navigate round my site, you'll notice that quite a number of pages have been spiced up with some new pics. Those new pics are the pics that have been added to the gallery (click on [updated!]) 12 Dec '99
I'm devoting my time playing FFVIII. I'm taking it as a sort of 'rehab' for me, because I've been going out too much and spending too much money :-). So I'm just cooping myself up for a couple of days. It's a totally fantastic game. I'm at the end of Disc Three, and most of my characters are level 100.. Have most of the cards and all the GFs too. I've clocked in 39 hours so far. Spent half a day raising levels at the islands "Island Nearest to Hell" (western part of map) and "Island Nearest to Heaven" (eastern part of map). Really cool place to gain levels for both characters and G.Fs. Lots of items to steal too. Monsters are pretty tough but you can kill them quite easily by having 2 healing characters with high HPs and Squall with a limit break HP and speed-up abilities. Just equip 100 Ultimas to your strength and he'll do slashes up to 9999 each, if you trigger at the right time. Lionheart is way cool...imagine more than 10 slashes of 9999 hp each, all at once.. :-) Sephie's limit break Rapture is cool too, albeit a little anti-climatic. Enough of my rambling. Anyways, wrote a Weapons list today. The weapon descriptions were taken in-game, when you click on the Monthly Weapons magazines. You'll find it in the Story section. Next to come will be a proper Limit Break page, plus probably a section on where are the best places to level up and draw various kinds of magic. I think I'm permanently discarding my walkthrough. There are already so many good ones out there; besides I don't have the patience for that sort of thing, and one thing I know is that most people prefer text walkthroughs to html walkthroughs (because they're so much quicker to refer to and easier to download). I know I do. I'll just have the best online text walkthroughs from GameFaq uploaded on my site to download. I'll write a Boss mini-strategy guide though, when I can find the time. 11 Dec '99
Been busy preparing for my prom on Thursday so haven't been on the computer much. But anyways, major update today. :-) I've finally got a basic (long-overdue) Magic and GF section. You can find this at the Story section. I haven't added any pictures to these pages yet, just got the basic stuff out, but I'll be doing so as soon as I get my hand on those pics. Anyways, I've got yet another 7 B/W Wallpapers for the Misc section, plus a piece of 'art' (hahah..yeah right) that poses of as wallpaper. It's actually a originally b/w Rinoa pic that I coloured using Photoshop. I think it looks pretty nice, at least, more colourful (duh) than the b/w pics. It's currently residing on my desktop now. If you guys like it, I'll colour a couple more of those b/w pics - the nicer ones at least. Tell me what you think. BTW, if you've submitted your links to me using the Site Submissions form, don't worry, I'll have them up soon. There's like a hundred over links for me to filter through, so I'm having a bit of a problem. :-) Also, if you've submitted fan art to me, I'll put it up A.S.A.P. 1 Dec '99
All right! It’s been a long time since I last updated my website. My exams are finally over and done with…I’m free for the next 7 months...can’t believe it!!!! Anyways, have to get back to some unfinished business. I’ve been out of touch with the Playstation world for a really long time. Need time to catch up. :-p Just so you might know, I’ve started work on updating my long-neglected Desktop Theme. Just today, I ripped off 7 pics from FF8 using the Bleem! Emulator. I don’t know if you’ve seen these pics in other websites before, cause I haven’t been checking out on Final Fantasy related stuff. These are the pics that appear in the credits when the overture is playing right at the beginning of each disc. I thought these pics were gorgeous, and since I don’t know any sites that might have these pics, I thought you guys might like these as wallpaper. Anyways, the thumbnails of these wallpapers can be viewed at the Gallery section, under Classic Black & White. The full-sized 1024 X 768 resolution versions can be found in the Miscellaneous section, together with the rest of my desktop theme. They're packed in zip files, so that they can be compressed to 20% of their original size without any loss in picture quality. There's no need to convert any jpegs to bitmaps either. I’ve also started working on a new Winamp skin. It’s still in the early stages of construction, but you can view a pic of its semi-completed state. I used one of the pics that I ripped for wallpaper. It’s a pic of Laguna driving a car. Anyways, the buttons and controls haven’t been made yet, so don’t worry, it’s not going to look as terrible as it looks right now (I hope…). All I have now is the background. But do email me your comments, and give me some constructive criticism. I should get started on my walkthrough, but as it is, I haven’t finished the game yet…*sigh*…I think I might have to start right from the beginning as I’m not sure I can pick up the pieces that I’ve left. Actually, I’m not sure how much a necessity a walkthrough is in my site. There are just so many good ones out there, that it’s really quite pointless in a way. IMO, I was thinking of just concentrating my site on things like screensavers and other sorts of multimedia (more pics!), and just putting links/uploading great walkthroughs to my site (if I’m given the permission to do so). Do email me to tell me how you feel about this. Sorry, if I’ve been rambling a bit. "I've got ramblin' on my mind..." (Robert Johnson, later Eric Clapton) :-p Give me a little more time to get sorted out. I’ll have fuller update next time, which should be pretty soon! 19 Nov '99 Ps. I’ve added in a basic FAQ file to the About section. Hope this answers some of the questions I’ve been receiving in my emails.
I hate to do this again, but I've got to apologise for the lack of updates. :-( I've been studying for my friggin' exams which take place in November, so I have to prioritise my time. They're major exams which determine the courses in University that I'm gonna take so I can't really fool around with this one. Honestly, I've not even completed FF8 yet. We do group studies every weekday so by the time I get home it's like 9PM. My school day starts at 7AM so life kinda sucks for me at the moment. I'm really "appreciative" of the letters that concern my "well-being". =P Yes, I'm very much alive, thank you. I just don't think I can really devote much of my time to this site this October, though once I'm done with my exams, major revamp. FF8 PC should be out by the end of this year, unless I'm wrong...I haven't been keeping up with gaming news for the last 3 weeks or so. Anyways, there'll be tons of screenshots and desktop theme updates coming in once I get hold of the PC version. This time, I'll be more original with the themes as I'm getting a lot better with Adobe Photoshop lately. I've got 3 new pieces of Fan Art. Keep the pics coming in!! I'll try to make a couple of nice ones after my exams. Hopefully, I can get one of my friends to do an Anime piece, she's really good at that. Anyways, thanks to you visitors who've been sending me nice comments concerning the site.. I know the site kinda sucks at the moment coz of the lack of updates, but I hope you'll just bear with me for just a little while... BTW, do continue to send in suggestions on what to add to this site. I don't see the point of adding stuff people won't see and I want to put stuff that people will appreciate. 04 Oct '99
PSX2 Release NEWS!!!! Normally, I don't do news that's non-FFVIII related but this is just TOO COOL..!!!! Go to this page to find out more!!!! My classmate wants me to credit him for this html link...he's utterly shameless don't u think? =p 13 Aug '99
As usual, there's always something that screws up...turns out that my new counter screws up worse than the old one. I finally gave up and switched to a cgi counter from Digits.com. This shouldn't give anymore problems, I hope.... Anyways, my promised mega-update has arrived......!!! I've got a new walkthrough. Originally wanted to write one myself, but I found that this one's really similar to the stuff I was writing. Anyways, it's written by Henry H. Jerng but I edited and updated most of it since it was written for the Japan version. There's some additional hints in there as well. It's got tons of spoilers in it so I would advise you take it easy and not try to read all of it until you've played through parts of the game. Right now, it's not completed because there's still a tons more to update, but I should think that if you've not played the game yet, this should be sufficient for several hours of game play. I'm not in a hurry to complete it myself because I've not yet completed the game. The part where the walkthrough stops, is the part where I've played up till. Please inform me of any mistakes in the walkthrough cos I sometimes slip on certain details of the game. I'm intending to add scene-related pictures to this walkthrough in the near future. Also, I've corrected the errors in the Story section, added some new links (not all submissions have been added...that will be on my next update), and there's my FIRST FAN ART! Please, please, send any fan art you might have...I love those things... Anyways, out of boredom, the other day I was flipping through my friend's FF8 soundtrack..when I noticed a Chinese translation of the Liberi Fatali...I couldn't believe that I had never seen that before, because if I did, that would have solved any problems I had when I translated the Latin text...sheesh.. So anyways, I decided to retype the Chinese text and reproduce it in my site. There are 2 forms, the Traditional Chinese form and the Simplified form. The former, is the same as the Japanese Kanji. Gotta go for a party..I'm late.... 3 Aug '99
It seems that piracy has once again conquered the day...was talking to a friend today, just before my Physics exam. It seems that my friend saw pirated versions of the ENGLISH FFVIII in the local 'underground' stores over the weekend! Apparently, the packaging is very similar to that of the original. And the official release isn't even on sale yet!!!! FFVIII fans (in Asia at least) will be torn between buying the original and the pirated versions (which cost a hell lot of cheaper). I'd go for the original though, even though WE ALL KNOW that software companies are very capable of taking advantage of our consumer surplus. But it's FFVIII after all... The new Squaresoft official FFVIII site is online. It's not exactly complete though. They've got some new character info there, so I decided to update the character info with the new stuff. I like the character descriptions in the official site. Brief but comprehensive. Just for fun: It so happens that Aug 23, which is today, is also Squall's birthday. Happy Birthday Squall!!!. errmm.......... Anyways, I've just added a new function in my website. To all website owners: if you would like me to link to your page, please fill out the form linked below. I figure that I can't really handle the tons of URLS being emailed to me everyday, so I decided to put up a htmlscript (that I took from a htmlscript site and modified) that will help me collect all the info. If you recently (meaning 1 month ago) emailed me your URL but haven't been linked up yet (actually none have been linked up...=/), fill out this form. Just don't piss me off by sending in multiple submissions, which are useless anyway, unless there's some sort of error with the first post. Submit your email addys if possible so I can contact you if needs be. Also, changed the counter to a easily customisable one with greater stability (ie. less chance for collisions to occur) so now I won't pop over the site every now and then to find my no. of visitors dropping to 900. =P BTW, do anyone favour a postcard thingy? =) this is kinda lame yet rather cool. I was thinking of adding that function...if there are no strong objections? *lol*...seriously... Only a 2 more weeks to go... 23 Aug '99 Thanks to J.C (abbreviation; I'm not sure if he wants to be identified) who emailed me a couple of days ago,, I've got some translational errors for the Liberi Fatali fixed. Thanks a mil!! Anyways, I screwed up as usual, the release date for the game will be the 9th of September, not the 7th. It's pretty cool actually - 9/9/99...like some apocalpse date or something... It's a good thing anyways, at least no one can screw the dates up anymore. Read it mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy it's still the same.. Anyways, major update with the music section. Have got 15 more midi files to add to the collection. I think it's all there is available on the net at the moment. If you've got some of these midis on your computer, I recommend you delete them and download the midis again, coz this time, I've got all (or at least most) the files renamed to their original titles as well as added 1 non-playable html playlist to the zip file. BTW, the midis are in the GALLERY section for those of u blindbats out there...lol... I've been getting quite a lot of email lately asking me to put the music files up for download when they are already on my site...sheesh... Just one final thing to clarify, during my last update, when I mentioned that u could take any pic from my website to use, I meant any pic from the picture gallery. NOT the background pics and the inverted graphic, or whatever I used to design my website cos I don't want to see an unauthorised "mirror" site anywhere on the net... 31 July '99
My god...I hadn't realised how long it's been since my last update, which was more than a month ago. I'm sorry I haven't been updating, my exam's in less than a month from now.. yeah, excuses, excuses... I'm been a total slacker...u can kill me now coz I haven't got anything new. This is just one of those "reassurance-that-I'm-still-alive" and "mass-reply-to-emails" (errm) updates. I haven't been going on the net for more than half-an-hour a day. It fact, it's mostly email checks then log-off. I've not been replying to a lot of mails so thousands of apologies.. BUT! don't abandon dropping by ( in a month I guess...:( ) soon coz I'll really have a major update after my exams to tie in with the upcoming English release of the game!!! And to those who want pics from my site, YES!!!! u may have 'em coz they're mostly not mine either! ;-) I'm just a...ahem...humble "collector" of those pics who just wants to put them up altogether to save people the trouble of searching for them. Oh yeah, just a couple of things u site-owners might like to know: if u've been requesting my site to be affiliates with your websites, I'm sorry, but I don't believe in affiliates. I'll put your URL up, if I think your website's good, ie. no broken local links, minimal broken remote links, and a relatively sane design...oh yes, there are those that can just drive u mad.. Also, from some of the emails I've been receiving, in case u people are wondering why I don't have a single award up till this day, well, it's just that no reputable site's offered me any..(*sigh*, I don't deserve any I guess) and I don't believe in signing up for one. I have been receiving emails that say: "please link my site, and I will give u this blah blah...", these mostly come from scrappily done-up websites, amongst which several awards I have rejected. What's the point of choking up my site's loading time just to load some way-too-low resolution graphics that link to sites I know I can 'design' (if that's what u call desiging) in and hour or so? Anyways, I can't believe no one emailed me to tell me about my counter reset...arrgh....The last time I checked (errm..which was a month ago, the counter was 125k++(??), it's now down to a measly 3k+.. I get between 500-900 hits a day so I assume the reset was a couple of days ago? either than, there's something wrong with my counter code. I'm temporarily setting it back to 130,000 until my site stats are emailed to me tomorrow. Enuff' of my rants and rambles I guess. Been studying Economics for the past 8 hours or so and my eyes are swelling, and my English sucks today... BTW, this is a shameless plug, but I drew 2 pics over the weekend, non-FFVIII related...but anyways ;p I just want your opinion. Dont' over-criticise me pls coz I'm no artist..I flunked art in secondary school, and I drew it with a mouse, this is also my first real attempt with adobe photoshop which rocks!...so much for studying huh.... Here they are: click on this blank space ________ (lol) 20 July '99
Yep, just would like to amend the FF8 PSX release date to 7th Sept. It's been pushed back in the usual Squaresoft fashion. Thanks to Compmaster for reminding me to update :-) School's just started for me today, this really sux......*sigh* 20 June '99
Hey, just realised that the 1st anniversay of this website will be in a week's time, time flies fast I guess. I've got a confession...I actually got back from Europe on the 18th, but was errm.. a little slack in bringing updates (Europe was great anways!). To be fair to moi, there isn't really much to update of late. =p Anyways, to keep you happy, I've just made one ascii picture. This was my first attempt making an ascii pic by myself so I think it's not too bad really. Judge for yourself (Sorry that it's a gif file and not in real ascii, 3 reasons: firstly I don't exactly dig the idea of people plagiarising my stuff then later accusing me of stealing from them so this should make it less easy for anyone to copy, secondly, I don't want to risk any problems of alignment etc, finally, I can do some enhancements to the picture that I can't do normally). Btw, if you have any FFVIII ascii pictures you would like to contribute, pls send it to me!!! 23 June '99
Removed the download link to the exocet font coz of legal issues ( was contacted by the font designer!). Never knew that it was a commercial font so I didn't know I was helping to promote piracy which I'm a 'victim' of :-) Anyways, just to let ya know, I'll be going to Finland/London for a choral competition on the 7th with my school choir. I'll only be back by the 18th so I guess I won't be having any updates between that period of time. 04 Jun '99
Oops..I just realised today that my Winamp Skin actually had an error I never noticed before. I actually forgot to edit the volume and balance control buttons. :-\ Anyways, I've got that sorted out now. Download the edited skin if you wish, but it's not really a major error so you don't really have to. BTW, I also learnt from my friend the other day that my Winamp Skin and Desktop theme have been appearing in some pirated FF8 utilities CDs. This kinda sux...I suddenly understand the pain record companies are experiencing towards MP3 piracy. 29 May '99
Okie, put in the E3 booth pic into the Gallery under the E3 Convention link. Haven't the opportunity to put any PC screenshots yet, but it should be soon. 23 May '99
I'm sorry for not being able to give this website as much commitment as I would like to. I've been very busy with school stuff of late. My computing project which is 30% the subject marks is almost due, and I've been having lots of choir rehearsals, there's a concert this week and I'll be flying off to Finland in June. Going a little crazy here so hope you'll bear with me. :-( Anyways, if you hadn't known already, which I doubt so, FF8 PC should be out by the end of this year. It's so kewl, coz first of all, it's so much cheaper than the Playstation version, second is that it comes right after my collage finals so it can't distract me and lastly, the game is supposed to have better graphics than the PSX version. The screenshots so far look really amazing, I hope this one has anti-aliasing so the highly pixilated graphics game graphics will look better. FF7 PC was a disappointment according to many, I donno about that coz I own the PSX version, but this one's gonna be so cool hopefully. I'll have half a year's hols before I go to University so I'll have tons of time to play the game. :-p BTW, I'll have a kewl E3 FF8 booth pic up by the end of the week, plus some FF8 PC pics hopefully. 21 May '99
Okie, just now while surfing, I stumbled onto the lyrics of Liberi Fatali, which is the kewl Latin intro music of the game. It's becoming a tradition of the FF series to have at least one Latin song in each game. I'm quite a fan of Latin (not the same as Latin American) music I must say, and I was curious to know what the song meant, so I decided to translate it. Now, I can't gurrantee accuracy in the translation coz I don't know Latin - I looked up the words with an online translator. If you can correct any errors, please do. Anyways, u can find the lyrics in the Gallery section. It shouldn't be under Multimedia but since the lyrics of the Eyes On Me song is there, I put the Liberi Fatali under the same section. Please note that the lyrics are not to be distributed in any form. 2 May '99
I've finally updated by Characters page
though it took slightly longer than the promised 3 days. :-\ Anyways, go and
I think u people can kill me for the lack of updates. Some kind of website owner I am... :-) I've got tons of picture updates which took me helluva long time to complete. If there are any link errors or missing pics please tell me coz I've no time to check them all. The long-needed character updates should be coming within these 3 days. I've updated the music midi files as well, with 4 new midis. Anyways, I've gotta tell u guys this: I played FFVIII at a friend's house the other day. It's pretty kewl. I didn't use a memory card so I only got to the Dollet stage and died there. :-( I didn't have time to figure out the magic and GF since I don't understand Jap so I muddled through without using Heal and Cure. I managed the GF somewhere in the middle but I didn't realise that I could access the Balamb computers until I came back from Ifrit's lair. :-) My main gripe was the music!!!! I love the intro music which I've heard countless no. of times and it's way kewl, but the battle music was really disappointing.. I hope the music picks up later. The ball music is pretty fine from what I've heard from the mp3s. I guess I can't expect a FF6 score, after all, that kind of music won't fit well with the vastly different FF8 environment, maybe it's just a matter of getting used to. Another problem was the very pixilated character graphics (excluding the FMVs). They're way better than FFVII's but u know.. :-) If FFVIII PC comes out with anti-aliasing minus the stretching problems, it'll be fantastic. I can't wait for PSX2000 though :-) Oh yeah, if you're one of those 'emailers' I haven't had time to reply to, I'll get to it soon. 19 Apr '99
The game has been officially released in Japan and several Asian countries including Singapore. Several FF8 merchandise are now being sold. In Singapore, the limited copies of posters and keychains are being given out together with the import. 15 Mar '99
For some strange reason, the entire "Ball" section of the Gallery went missing. I must have deleted the link accidently at some point. I've already put it back... Anyway, did a complete rewrite on the Story of the game, based on what I know or think I know... Correct me if I made a mistake somewhere. Also, made a few more character descriptions. I've tried to reducing the loading time of the pages by converting some of the decorative pics to thumbnails. I'll see what else I can do to make this site work better. 29 Jan '99
Taken from RPGamer: "Two new characters have been unvieled for Final Fantasy VIII. Fighting along side Laguna Loire, they are Ward Zaback and Kiros Seagul. The three soldiers are said to have complete trust for each other, and anyone of them would gladly give his life for the other two. Ward is 2 meters tall (approximately 6 feet, 6 inches -Terra gasps!!!), 25 years old, and wields a harpoon. Kiros is the youngest of the three, at age 23, and uses a qatar as a weapon. It is not known whether or not these two characters will be
playable, however, they are describe as having a huge impact on the relationship between
Laguna and Squall." 13 Jan '99 |
){kind=link}