BUSINESS, Computers, JUST SAYING, Microsoft, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, TECH SUPPORT, WHATS GOING ON

Closing Windows

technology2 I don’t drink alcohol, but it is going to be hard to resist the urge to raise a glass of something on April 8, 2014. That particular Tuesday is going to be a special day for many of my fellow techies around the world and I have no doubt that many of my I.T. brethren will be celebrating the momentous occasion that takes place on that day. What is it, you ask?

It is the day that Windows XP finally DIES.

Don’t get me wrong, Windows XP has had a hell of a run since August 2001. It was a good OS and was definitely a step up from the awful Windows Me that preceded it. Heck, it was so good Microsoft kept it around when Netbooks came into vogue a few years ago. Those netbooks and the terrible Windows Vista probably helped to keep it alive probably well past its originally intended expiration date, but all good things must come to an end, so here we are…or at least here we will be in just under seven months.

Windows 7 is goodness and I finally decided to eat my Windows 8 peas, so XP is but a fond memory for me except for when I have to deal with customers that still use it at work. I can’t give them too much grief, because I still use WinAmp 2.9 and Microsoft Money 2000! That said, I’ll be happy as a clam when I no longer have to worry about whether users should click on ‘Add/Remove Programs’ or ‘Programs and Features’ in the Control Panel!

Books, BUSINESS, Con Fluff 1, CREATIVE, FlipSide Stories, FURRY, JUST SAYING, One Sheet Stories, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories, Tablets, TECH, The Rules of Tech Support, Uncategorized, WORDS, Writing

The Long and Winding Words

writingbear

My last e-book “Con Fluff 1: 2012 Furry Convention Short Story Collection” was released seven months ago, and as the 2013 edition won’t be ready for a few months at the minimum, I feel the need to get another e-book out into the wild. My (virtual) stack of unpublished short stories has been growing and I’m pretty sure that I have enough of them to assemble another e-book.

Since my stories are very short, I have to round up a few in order to assemble a collection of decent length. One early lesson I learned in my Adventures in Self-Publishing is that five stories was not enough content for 99 cents, as evidenced by the thud that ‘One Sheet Stories’ and ‘FlipSide Stories’ made in their respective marketplaces. Luckily, people are buying the longer collections I’ve produced since so I think I’ve figured out how much stuff is enough.

The stories themselves are another matter, though. The longest anything I’ve ever written was about 12 pages. It also took me a little while to get over my habit of keeping stories about a page long due to printing constraints back in the First Storm Manga days. Even when I have a hard limit to work with, I try not to think about length, but even then I’m pretty sure that the thought of ‘is it long enough’ rattles around somewhere in my subconscious.

I don’t know that I have a Great American Novel in me but I’d like to write one eventually. Time will tell!

BUSINESS, JUST SAYING, Microsoft, TECH, TECH SUPPORT, WHATS GOING ON, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT, WORK

RANDOM REVIEW: Windows 8

EATING MY PEAS

So Purdy…

I first gave Windows 8 a spin when the Developer Preview was released back in 2011. As I have not purchased a new computer since then, I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the final product, but judging from prevailing opinion as well as feedback from customers, it seemed that I wasn’t missing much. As I work in tech support, I figured that I was going to have to support Windows 8 sooner or later, so I decided to eat my peas and installed Windows 8 on my laptop: a 14″ Toshiba P745-S4102 with 6MB of RAM.

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

The install went fairly well, but I made the mistake of not wiping the drive beforehand, so I had lots of icky bits left over from years of Windows 7 use. I would open up my boot drive to find rouge directories sticking out their tongues at me in glee. Obviously the thing to do was to delete them, so I got delete happy and of course, deleted an important directory.

So just like I did during my adventures with OS X, I had to start all over again. I formatted the drive, reinstalled Windows 8, and was back in business. Windows 8 seemed to be a little more happier after the second install, so lesson learned: always format the hard drive before dropping in a new OS.

THROWN FOR A LEARNING CURVE

Up until Windows 8 you could count on a few things like the Start Menu and Control Panel to be there. No mas. The Start Menu has been replaced by the Start Screen and other options are accessed by pulling up a ‘Charms Bar’ that is accessed by moving the mouse to either the upper or lower-right hand corner of the screen. Moving the mouse to the lower-left hand corner reveals a shortcut to the Start Menu, and the upper-left corner pulls up the last program opened and a list of currently open programs if you move the pointer down from there. The interface is not intuitive and poorly explained, you get zero help and are tossed into the Start Screen with nary a tooltip to help you.

A great example of how obtuse things are is the method for shutting down the computer:

Bring up the Charms bar by moving the mouse to one of the right-hand corners…that is, assuming you know its there.
Click ‘Settings’
Click ‘Power’
Click ‘Shut Down’ from the pop up menu.

Is it any wonder that people are upset about having to re-learn how to use their computer again? Expect to stumble around Windows 8 for a while (I certainly did) until you learn its intricacies or say ‘screw it’ and download a Start Menu replacement.

APPY, APPY, APPY

…or not!

One of the big reasons Windows 8 has received so much grief was because of the removal of the apparently-beloved Start Menu. I admittedly gave them static about this too, but having poked at it again, I now get what it is Microsoft had in mind when they removed it.

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have given us the concept of apps, or small programs that only do one thing or access a single service. Like many of you, I’ve gotten accustomed to doing things via apps. When done right, they’re great: you open up the app for whatever it is you want to do and take care of business instead of having to open up a browser, navigate to the website, login and all that.

Microsoft and Windows 8 want you to do everything in apps, and while I like this idea and would like to embrace it, the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, the Windows 8 apps I have used have either fallen short of my expectations or just plain don’t exist.

The official Twitter app is one example. I have multiple Twitter accounts, randomizer9 is my main one and I have one set up for The Rules of Tech Support. The Twitter apps on my phone and iPad both allow me to switch back and forth between identities with a few taps, but the Windows 8 app only lets me login to one account, which reduces its usefulness.

Some apps just don’t exist. The most glaring omissions for me are Facebook and Gmail, though I can set up the Mail client for use with GMail. I’m also surprised that there isn’t a version of Office that uses the Metro interface. Granted, I don’t use very many apps to begin with, so its not that big of a deal to me, but other folks who love apps might be disappointed in the selection, though it should get better with time.

THE DOCKING DESKTOP

Luckily, the desktop is still around and is accessed by clicking the Desktop tile. While the Start Menu is persona non grata, much to the consternation of lots of folks (including myself) programs can be docked to the Taskbar just like in Windows 7. I found myself docking each one after installing them. This works pretty well for me and I haven’t really missed the Start Menu all that much, especially since discovering this handy list of Windows key shortcuts.

Unfortunately, installing legacy programs barfs icons all over the Start Screen just like it did before. It is a little jarring to see the a nice purdy Metro Start Screen morph into icky tile-o-rama with a tap of the Page Down key. The big problem with the Start Screen is that there is currently no good way to organize tiles that were installed by legacy programs. Sure, you can move them around, but one of the nice things about Ye Olde Start Menu was that it kept things you didn’t need out of the way. Hopefully the upcoming Windows 8.1 will resolve some of those issues, otherwise I’m not sure what I’m going to do once my Taskbar fills up with docked programs.

I have experienced no compatibility issues with older programs and hardware as of yet which is pretty darn lucky considering I still use Microsoft Money 2000 and WinAmp 2.9.

WHERE’S MY MEDIA CENTER?

I feel bad for Microsoft at times because even when they do things right they often don’t get credit for it or the Thing Done Right is completely ignored. Windows Media Center is one of those things. Media Center turns a TV-tuner equipped PC into a pretty decent PVR and can even stream TV from a PC to an Xbox 360, which is awesome. It was created during the Windows XP days (remember Media Center PCs? Yeah, me neither) and came included with certain versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It does not come with Windows 8. If you want Media Center you now have to pay an extra $9.99 even if you have the Super Mega Deluxe Happy Version of Windows.. So much for doing it right.

CONCLUSION

Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth you’ve probably heard, Windows 8 is not that bad. Yes, it does have some annoying habits, such as the made-for-touch interface and missing Start Menu, but I have learned to live with those inconveniences. That said, I understand why some people are upset: Windows users (such as myself) have grown accustomed to the Start button/menu being there for nearly twenty years. For Microsoft to just yank that football away like Lucy does to Charlie Brown is just not right. I know workarounds, but lots of folks either don’t or don’t want to go through the trouble/hassle. Microsoft reached just a little too far ahead in that regard.

I understand what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8. I even like the idea of doing everything quickly in apps instead of having to constantly go to the web browser. Unfortunately, the apps either don’t measure up in terms of functionality or they just aren’t there, which means I end up constantly having to go back to the desktop, which defeats the whole point of the new interface.

The much-touted quick startup and shutdown is nice and my laptop appears to be performing as well as it did before, though, as with any new system, one should be leery of potential conflicts with old hardware and software. I haven’t hit any snags yet in that department, but time will tell on that.

To wrap up: Windows 8 isn’t quite The Future just yet. It takes steps in the right direction with its app-centric design but is hamstrung by sub-par apps that will have you going back to the desktop over and over again. If you are one of these folks that just can’t live without the Start Menu, there are third party add-ons, but I can’t vouch for their usefulness or reliability. Once you get over the steep learning curve, 8 isn’t all that bad, but it isn’t as great as it could have been, either. The upcoming Windows 8.1 should make things better so we’ll have to wait and see what happens. While I’ll be sticking with Windows 8 for the short-term, I won’t be tossing away my Windows 7 install disc anytime soon.

3 out of 5 tiles.

JUST SAYING, Microsoft, Nintendo, ORIGINAL-GAMER.COM, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Sony, TECH, Videogames, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS

GAME OVER?

videogames I think I might be done with video games, or at least done with buying new consoles. I have been playing video games since the days of the Atari 2600 but my enthusiasm for new games and consoles has grown smaller and smaller with each sequel/lookalike/dark-haried protagonist/space marine game announcement for the last year or two.

One reason is I just don’t consume as much media as I used to. I see movies very occasionally, watch little to no television and don’t buy very many CDs and Blu-Rays anymore. A bigger reason is a feeling of ‘been there, done that.’ The Big 3’s E3 announcements impacted me with a great big ‘meh’ as I saw the sequel numbers get higher and higher.

So let’s run down the list:

SONY

I like to describe my PlayStation 3 as my “Blu-Ray player that also plays Ratchet and Clank.” I can count the number of PS3 disc games I own on my hands, and most of the downloadable ones I have are games that I reviewed for original-gamer.com It should say something that I still haven’t finished Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault and have yet to even purchase Sly Cooper 4. As I have nearly zero interest in JPRGs or any of the Sony exclusive titles, I don’t see any reason to get a PS4 anytime soon.

MICROSOFT

The Xbox 360 was easily my favorite machine of this generation, though it bears mentioning that about a third of the disc games I own have either ‘Rock Band’ or ‘Guitar Hero’ in the title. I’ve also purchased about a dozen downloaded titles and the Kinect is always fun when friends are over. The Halo and Gears of War series have both been entertaining, but I have little interest in seeing them drug into the ground a la Capcom. The TV functions of the 360 were also nice: I used it to stream and record HDTV from my PC via Windows Media Center to the living room TV. I was actually intrigued by the Xbox 360’s TV functionality but the high price and anti-consumer policies Microsoft may or may not be imposing mean I won’t be getting an Xbox One in the near future.

NINTENDO

“Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,” the old joke goes. Nintendo has finally gone to the well once too often because Mario has become the new Madden as far as I am concerned. I think the breaking point was when they started making sequels. I may yet acquire Super Mario Galaxy 2 but my initial reaction was “Oh boy, they added Yoshi…whee.” When New Super Mario Bros. 2 was announced, I saw the ads about the whole ‘collect a bajillion coins’ thing and thought, “That’s IT?” I am intrigued by the Wii U, but its initial lineup landed with a great big thud and the current game drought makes me feel like I didn’t have it so bad after buying a launch 3DS. The sad thing is that the one franchise I would like for Nintendo to drag into the ground is one they’ve completely forgotten about: StarFox.

I haven’t done any PC gaming for quite a few years now. Seriously, the last PC game I bought was Portal…on disc…at Circuit City. Oddly enough, I may end up playing games solely on my PC from here on out. Since most of the big multi-platform releases end up on PC, I shouldn’t miss very many of the few AAA titles I’m interested in and there are loads of smaller devs doing interesting things these days on the indie scene. Maybe I’ll get an Ouya after its had a little more time in the oven.

So there you have it. I have been a gamer for well over 30 years now, and while it has been loads of fun, it may be time to hang up the controller for good. Will it happen? Who knows, but my current consoles and 3DS are doing just fine for now.

Android, TECH, WHATS GOING ON

Up-and-Down Grade

I bet my size 14 would get great reception

I’ve had smartphones for quite some time, going all the way back to my T-Mobile Dash running Windows Mobile 6.0. From that ‘charming’ system I moved to Android with a Samsung Moment on Sprint, and am currently using a Motorola Photon, also on Sprint. My contract is coming up in a few months, and instead of contemplating which phone I’m going to upgrade to next, I am actually considering downgrading to a not-so-smartphone.

Why? Three reasons:

First, like many other folks, I’m trying to cut back on expenses, and the $80 a month I currently pay for my cellphone plan (and that’s with an employee discount) is a big one that I would love to reduce. I could easily get a month-to-month talk-and-text plan from Virgin Mobile that would cost half what I’m paying now while keeping me on Sprint’s network, which has been pretty good for me overall.

Second, I’m starting to wonder if Android phones have a limited shelf life: my Samsung Moment started crapping out a few months before the end of the two year contract that I purchased it under and the pattern appears to be repeating itself with my Motorola Photon. I think I’m done with Android at this point, and while I could get an iPhone or maybe even a Windows phone, I’m not sure I want to. I’ve never had the latest cell phone so being a step or two behind the times isn’t a big deal to me.

Thirdly, ever since I purchased my iPad mini back in December, I have been using my phone less and less for internet stuff. Thanks to the built-in 4G LTE modem and bigger screen I find myself reaching for it whenever I need to check my social networks or need to Google something. While it costs $20 for 1GB of data per month, that has been more than enough for me given my limited use of video and since WiFi is more pervasive now.

While this isn’t the first time I’ve thought about downgrading to a not-so-smart phone, having the iPad this time around would make living without one much easier. Who knows, maybe I’ll get a flip phone, or a phone with a physical keyboard…or maybe even one with a pull-out antenna! 😀

Apple, Books, Con Fluff 1, CONS, CREATIVE, FURRY, FURRY FIESTA, JUST SAYING, RANDOM STOPS, RANDOMIZER9.COM, Tablets, TECH, WHATS GOING ON, WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT, WORDS, Writing

38 Things I Noticed During Furry Fiesta 2013

I’m all ears!

For the second year in a row, I headed up to Addison for Texas’ one and only furry convention: Furry Fiesta 2013: The Time Traveller’s Ball. I had a wonderful time, and so without further ado:

JUST TAKE THE TOLL ROAD around Austin, especially if you’re going northbound.
Driving up was much more pleasant in my still-pretty-new Honda CR-V
The con was made even more fun by the friends that went with me and the ones I met there!
Artist Alley needs to be a little bigger and supervised.
What? No Rock Band in the game room? Aw, I so wanted to do Power of Love…again and again.
BuckHopper just barely got last year’s Voice Over panel uploaded before this year’s show because he was very very busy with work.
Of course when you realize that his work involves videogames, the amount of sympathy you have for him might drop just a teensy bit.
I think his Voice Recording Basics panel needed to be just a little bit more, well, basic. My head was spinning near the end.
I was a very sad bear just ten minutes before my panel started because nobody was there. *sniff*
People then started to show up, and I became happy, and nervous!
I burned through my prepared material in a half hour…need to rehearse next time
Things went downhill fast during discussion when the subject of DRM and piracy came up…argh
At dinner, the restaurant owner asks how we’re doing and notices the badges. Her: “Are you here for a convention?” Us: “Yeah!” Her: “What kind of convention is it?” AWKWARD SILENCE.
Seriously, I have never seen nine adults (including me) simultaneously freeze like deer in the headlights.
OH YEAH, ITS AN ART CONVENTION! :3
Luckily, I remembered my ‘training’ the next day. Get some furry common sense, y’all!
One guy trying to explain Furry Fiesta to an older person got “What? Fairy Fiesta?” as a reply. That explains a lot, actually.
I’m not sure which made my attempt to record the fursuit parade worse: the lighting, my iPad mini, or the two rubes that stood next to me…seriously, I kept expecting to hear one playing a banjo and the other a jug.
The Furry Psychology panel filled up quick, they should just give Dr. Nuka a video room next time, it’ll be like college but much less boring.
If the International Anthropomorphic Research Project were to change the last word in their name to something starting with “F” it would be I-ARF which would be pawsome!
Got my first dose of con funk in AA when some nasty dude decided to sit next to me. Ended up having to shoo him off later, too…jerk.
Not sure which was better: acquiring a pair of bear ears to wear, or my friend Chris’ reaction to them. “What the hell are those things?!”
There were lots of Marty McFlys but one guy (a fursuiter no less) NAILED IT. How? He had a WALKMAN. Everybody else GO HOME.
There were lots of 4th Doctors, too 🙂
While my panel went well, my attempts to sell berks in Artist Alley did not. *shrug*
I guess I didn’t really need that Sales Tax ID after all, then.
Speaking of AA: If you are going to be in AA read the rules on the wall and don’t whine like a petulant child when they don’t match your expectations.
$3.75 for gas? Makes me glad the Excelsior gets about 30MPG on the freeway even with 3 dudes with 3 days worth of luggage.
Thanks for putting us in the ‘annoying kid’ section of IHOP, waiter. *twitch*
Either the con is short on staff or they were not very noticeable, because I don’t remember seeing very many staff members.
One person in AA had an old school early digital camera that I used to take his picture with a fursuiter: a big chunky HP one that was the size and weight of a brick.
Never mind the burgers (which are good) I want In-N-Out to come to San Antonio because the ‘well done’ fries are the BEST. THING. EVAR.
Boston Market. We also need them in San Antonio, too.
Some friends call TFF ‘CircleCon’ because everything on the second floor is well, in a circle.
Thing I forgot: Electric razor. The ol’ greymuzzle was showing by Sunday
Every time I thought I was going to need/use my laptop, I didn’t because my iPad mini did the job. I may have crossed a threshold.
Of course, just when I start to get familiar with the area around the hotel, they decide to move it next year.
I’ll definitely have to take Thursday off next year…maybe Monday, too 🙂

Books, CONS, CREATIVE, FURRY, FURRY FIESTA, RANDOM STOPS, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

Time for Texas Furry Fiesta!

The 4 3/8th Doctor

Another year, another Furry Fiesta! Texas Furry Fiesta 2013: The Time Traveller’s Ball is happening this weekend, and I’ll be there with ~~bells~~ ears on! Unlike last year where I went for funsies, this year I’m going to be ‘working’ this time as part of my efforts to get word out about my ebooks.

On Friday at 4PM, I’ll be hosting a panel called “How To Publish Your Own E-Books” where I will discuss the technical challenges involved with taking your literary masterpiece digital. With 5 e-books under my belt so far, I’d like to think I’ve learned a few things and am ready to share some knowledge! On Saturday, I should be in the Artist’s Alley selling paper copies of my berks, handing out flyers and chatting up anyone willing to listen, and Sunday will be the drive home…aww.

Android, Apple, BUSINESS, Computers, JUST SAYING, Microsoft, Tablets, TECH, WHATS GOING ON

Apple Does Not Like Files

As my iPad mini is my first iOS device, I have had to learn it and adjust to its idiosyncrasies. Some of the new things I’m discovering are good, like the ability to swipe up with four fingers and bring up a list of currently open apps and volume/brightness controls. Of course, there are bad things to discover as well, such as the ‘locked down’ nature of the device. In particular, I was initially miffed that I could not work with files like I could on desktops or Android devices.

I like files. I know how to work with files. I like to make folders for my files and organize them and e-mail them and sort them and rename them and open them and edit them and do all kinds of fun stuff with them.

Apple does not like files.

Apple likes objects. On an abstract level, apps are objects in iOS,not files. Instead of having files scattered all about, like in Windows or Android, your stuff lives in the app that uses it. If you’re going to work with a picture, you open up Photos, select the picture you want to work with, and get to work. Music lives in iTunes, documents live in Pages, and so on and so forth. The app comes first.

iOS gets irritiating for people like me because unlike Android, where I can get an app like Astro and poke around at the underlying file system, iOS does not let you get ‘under the hood’ at all. I can’t put stuff where I want it because Apple won’t let me, and coming from a world where files rule and I can do whatever I want to with them, that is frustrating.

Case in point: I use Dropbox to store stories that I am working on. Indeed, one of the first apps I downloaded onto my iPad mini was the Dropbox app. I also got the Pages word processor because it had totally knocked my socks off on the iPad demo units. Awesome. I quickly learned that Pages does not talk to Dropbox. My file-centric brain then said: “No biggie, I’ll download a copy of my latest story via Dropbox, open it in Pages, do some editing, save my changes, then upload the newest draft back to the cloud. After all, that’s how it had worked on my Acer Iconia Tab A100.”

In response, Pages threw the finger at me and said, “NO SAVING FOR YOU. You’re going to open the file in Pages and I’ll make a copy there. Its staying there after that, too, because I don’t like Dropbox and I ain’t giving it back.” So I end up with two copies of the story floating around, one in Dropbox and one in Pages. So much for keeping things in sync.

Ultimately, I found a Microsoft Office-compatible app talkd to Dropbox direclty, so that fixed that, but its just one an example of how I have had to work around iOS because it ‘thinks different.’ Its methodology is awesome for end-users because files are icky things and people don’t like dealing with them. I think its because most folks can’t make the mental leap from objects (like documents, pictures, and music) to files. They can’t wrap their heads around the abstract concept like ‘computer people’ do.

If everything lives in the app, then they don’t have to deal with files at all. If they want to do something, they open the appropriate app, and everything is there. Instead of a list of files, they see pictures, songs, and documents, and that’s what they know.

Those of us that are more ‘computery,’ on the other hand, have a few options: muddle around iOS as best we can, jailbreak our devices, or just not bother with it altogether. Unfortunately, I think I’ve taken one step too far into the rabbit-hole, because for all that fuss, I’m still loving my iPad mini…even if it doesn’t want me to have my precious files.

Apple, RANDOM REVIEW, Tablets, TECH, WHATS GOING ON, WORDS, Writing

RANDOM REACTION: iPad mini

The hands in these ads always look fake to me

As I mentioned previously, I was intrigued by the iPad mini because of its lower price and its size. The popularity of Apple’s newest wunderkind meant that I was going to have to hunt for one, but after a few weeks of looking, I finally got my grimy paws on a 16GB white iPad mini last week.

If there is one thing I have learned from owning my Acer Iconia Tab A100, it is that tablets are fairly close to useless without data, so I purchased a model with a cellular modem. I have used my iPad mini for just over a week and I am very impressed with it so far.

I have a friend that used to work at an Apple store. In talking with him about the mini, I found it hard to describe just how different it felt to use the iPad compared to other devices. He wasn’t surprised at that and mentioned that it was fairly common for folks to have difficulty in describing the experience of using one. I took that as a challenge, thought it over and I think I may have found a phrase:

The iPad doesn’t get in the way.

I know that sounds odd, so allow me to elaborate: In using my Android tablet, and indeed, this is the case with many portable devices, the device itself will not work as well as it should. I then have to stop what I am doing to deal with its idiosyncrasies, interrupting my work. For example, while typing, every now and then the keyboard on my Iconia would barf up a bunch of letters instead of what I wanted to type. I would then have to stop and correct the mistake before continuing. In contrast, I can type away on my iPad mini with abandon, fairly confident that the software will catch the overwhelming majority of my mistakes.

Android just feels clunky and half-done to me; a hodgepodge of different bits and pieces glued together to make a Frankenstein of an OS that works…but doesn’t work well.. iOS and its apps, on the other hand, feel more like a unified system. I don’t have to go through a relearning process with each new iOS app I install, and it is very responsive.

While I have no doubt that metaphorical wrinkles and dings will soon appear on my iPad as I get to know it better, I am a very happy owner so far.

JUST SAYING, Nintendo, RANDOMIZER9.COM, TECH, Videogames

Has Nintendo Jumped The Shark?

Detractors of certain games, genres, and even systems often complain that “all they do is make the same game over and over again.” As much as I hate to admit it, I’m starting to feel that way about Nintendo.

I first got this vibe when Super Mario Galaxy 2 was released. I still haven’t picked it up and don’t really have any desire to. The New Thing in that game was the addition of Yoshi. Yay. New Super Mario Bros. 2 was announced and I reacted to the whole “COLLECT A BAJILLION COINS!” thing with a great big “whoop-dee-doo.”

Its not just what some call “sequelitis,” either. Indeed, the Big N is almost expected to drop new Mario or Zelda games every so often, its what they do. To their credit, Nintendo has kept their franchises fresh by evolving and adding to their gameplay over the years, but I now find myself unexcited and uninterested in Mario’s latest adventures. It also doesn’t help that the one franchise I wouldn’t mind seeing them drag into the ground (StarFox) hasn’t seen a new game since 2006.

The Wii U is now here and its not even on my radar; I find myself more interested in hunting down an iPad mini. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s going to take more than just another Mario or Zelda game to get me to drop the cash for a Wii U.

They just aren’t special to me anymore, and there’s something sad about that.

Eduardo Soliz

IT Guy, short story author, podcaster, and furry!

Category Archives: TECH