Jp Vs US : Jet Set Radio

I bought Jet Set Radio as my first Dreamcast game, and I absolutely fell in love. The game just emits this aura of style and awesome. I've beaten it, COMPLETELY, with all unlockable characters (including Potts the dog) and all graffiti souls.

Just a couple months ago, I decided to buy the Japanese version of the game. It was merely for collectors reasons, but partly bragging rights. I've been noticing the stark differences already. Some of the music in the game is different.

The Japanese only tracks are:

Dunny Boy Williamson Show by Deavid Soul

Many Styles by O.B. One

I love that first track, It plays in Shibuya.

The American levels aren't supposed to be included. I haven't gotten that far, but the largest clue of that being true, is that Combo and Cube are some of the first unlockable characters. What's even weirder? Cube looks different in the Japanese version. Instead of a black top and black pants, she wears a long sleeve flames shirt with a grey shirt on top and rolled up jeans.


This is really neat. I love this game so much more than the sequel.
Owning the Japanese version of a game coming from a time where all consoles were region locked and the games did differ... is really cool.

Testing can be bittersweet

I've been running Kubuntu 8.10, slated for release at the end of the month, for about 5 weeks or so. It has been a much more pleasant experience than 8.04 by lightyears. The Add/Remove Program manager is fast and good looking, all the utilities have been rewritten for KDE4, and it boots rather quickly (between 40 and 20 seconds).

Here's the bittersweet. I've put this on other people's machines since it worked so stably on mine. Well, the ATI drivers have not worked at all until now, the legacy NVIDIA drivers do not work, and wireless networking gets broken and fixed on a daily basis. *Sigh*

What am I upset about? Well, there was an update to KDE with included a patch from the development version of KDE which included the 3D Cube desktop switcher. Oh, It was glorious! It was pretty, and quick, and visually pleasing to switch between multiple desktops. But alas, he who giveth may also taketh away. Apparently there were painting regressions. For the folks at home, graphics are painted onto the screen, bad painting results in black windows or other weird graphical glitches, such as a window drawn with peices of other windows.

Well, I love 8.10, but being able to see the future of the desktop only to have it taken away makes this release a little bittersweet. The desktop cube will the the icing on the cake. It will make Kubuntu Linux complete for me. Looks like I'll have to wait until either January (KDE 4.2's release) or April (Kubuntu 9.04's release)