There are good and bad sides to everything. As an example, let's take my exam situation. I'm currently taking my end-of-year exams, having spent the last year at the University of Essex studying English Language & Literature - the first year of a three-year course. On the positive side, I have one exam left. It's a Literature exam and I'm reasonably comfortable with the texts I've been studying, so I'm feeling pretty confident about it. I've already sat three of these three-hour exams in the last two weeks, and I found them alright too, so that thought is helping to keep me calm as well. As soon as this one's out of the way, I'm free (well, at least until October when I start my study for the second year). On the negative side, however, that last exam is tomorrow. On a Saturday. As in, the weekend. And not first thing in the morning, either. My final exam starts at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon, and doesn't finish until 5pm. Talk about eating into a guy's game time!

But anyway, that's not the main reason I came here to blog. Yesterday, I received a disc storage wallet from Amazon in the post after ordering a couple for next year. The flat that my girlfriend and I have decided to rent is pretty small and isn't exactly loaded with shelf space for my games and her DVDs. Thus, I decided that it might be a good idea to invest in a couple of these storage wallets to keep all our discs in without sacrificing too much of what little shelf space we have. Like I said, the first one arrived yesterday and I spent a good hour or so moving all my game discs out of their cases and into the wallet. As I was doing so, I couldn't help but notice that some of these discs (particularly the older ones) have some really awesome designs on. These days, discs are often just printed with a cropped version of the box art, so I'd almost forgotten how nice-looking and truly original some of these discs are. Naturally, these thoughts soon gave way to the urge to write, so I thought I'd share some of my personal favourite disc art with you guys here at Giant Bomb. After a worried couple of hours debating whether or not it was wise to put my discs into my scanner, and a number of test runs with lesser-liked games (here's looking at you, Unlimited SaGa), these are the results:





I think my personal favourites are the Final Fantasy IX discs, featuring some beautiful concept art of the game's characters drawn by series stalwart Yoshitaka Amano. Although you probably can't quite make it out from the pictures on display, the level of detail in those drawings is incredible and really makes those discs something to admire. I also like the disc art for Shadow of the Colossus and ICO, as it complements the minimalist themes present in both games. I like the Vagrant Story disc art because it's simple, but effective. Unfortunately, I picked that up second-hand back when GAME used to mark their preowned stock with permanent markers, so there's a bit of black writing on the disc surface. It's a shame we don't often see this level of thought being put into most modern disc art. I included Lost Odyssey as a more recent example of interesting disc art, but for the most part I couldn't really choose anything from my Xbox 360 collection because all the art on the discs was identical to that on the game's box. I have a few other gems back at home, notably the Metal Gear Solid discs, but I don't currently have access to those so I can't scan them for your viewing pleasure.

Before I wrap things up, I guess I'd better let you all know what I've been playing since my last blog. First up is Final Fantasy V. I decided to play through this on the advice of Disgaeamad, as a means of dragging myself up out of the JRPG blues. While it was a little slow to start, the game has gradually become something very special in my eyes. The plot, which didn't really amount to much at first, has slowly turned itself around and improved to the point where it rivals some of my favourite Final Fantasy games. The characters are charming and really help to spur the player on at points when the story falters. I'm also a really big fan of the Job system; having loved it in Final Fantasy X-2 and the Final Fantasy Tactics games, it's nice to see where it really started becoming the infinitely flexible system it's known as. I've also played through Shadow of the Colossus for a second time, and started a third play-through of ICO. This is entirely down to a request from my increasingly game-intrigued girlfriend, who'd heard about Shadow of the Colossus and wanted to see it played. After playing through it, I let her know that ICO was developed by the same team and we started on that. Both games are incredible feats of design with some truly unique gameplay on offer. Playing both of Team ICO's previous games has also got me super-hyped for Project TRICO, even though I don't currently own a PS3.

Anyway, I think that about does it. Thanks for reading guys, see you around.


DanK

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Currently playing - Final Fantasy V (PS1)