Just came back to a trip to Korea... 'amazing' doesn't even begin to describe it.
What a great country. I didn't really know what to expect, but I found it very familiar (probably mostly due to the little lady being Korean and having been together for 5 years). I've also felt some similarities with Uruguay (=lived for 3 years) for some reason.

"PC Rooms" (cyber cafes) are EVERYWHERE. People love them as they don't have to keep up with current technology to play games, and would rather spend $1/hour (which is nothing locally; the country's prices and income levels are similar to those in the US).

I tried tyo find a Gamepark but they were nowhere to be seen. I was expecting some big stand at the airport or something, and a chance to see the latest model. But nothing. I guess they must have some specialized store in the capital.

I've also seen very weird software offering in bookstores or general electronics stores. I've grabbed a couple for collection purposes. One is a "7000 games in one" with Sonic and Knuckles on the cover. I was expecting some kind of Megadrive emu, but it turned out to be some weird emulator with 350 games (probably a recompiled Mame with a shitty frontend). The second one I thought would be legit - KOF 2000. But then it's just UOMAME with a rom in it. They've just unzipped all the stuff in a CD and added an autorun... bleh.

But the most weird CD I saw was Super Smash Bros. Melee and Mario Kart (gamecube) for PC... I didn't pick them up as I imagine it must be some type of emulator, but I wonder how well it runs... All this being the dark side of our hobby I guess.

But back to the topic. Amazing place to be. I'll be going back often too, I'm tying the knot by the end of the year :-D




[download a life]

now i can't wait to go... come on february! lol

> But the most weird CD I saw was Super Smash Bros. Melee and Mario Kart
> (gamecube) for PC... I didn't pick them up as I imagine it must be some type of
> emulator, but I wonder how well it runs... All this being the dark side of our
> hobby I guess.

I've just been to Turkey, where there are tonnes of copied GBA games - a few of the more dubious ones had titles like "Super Mario 64 DS", with a scan from the DS game cover. My guess is that in both cases, it's a lower system that's being emulated (in the Turkey case either GBA, GB or NES, and in the Korea case an N64 emu) ... just cheeky packaging