Tag Archives: Videogames

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Wii Feel Guilty

I have a friend named Carlos (well, two, actually, but that’s neither here nor there) who has been searching for a Wii for a few months now. The purchase has been approved by the Office of Budget and Management (Mrs. Carlos) and the money is in the bank, so all that is left is for them to FIND one of the silly things.

As most folks know, that is “the hard part.” Needless to say, he took umbrage at my stumbling upon a Wii by accident. Not too much, though, since he’s a really good guy. Frankly, if I were in his shoes I would be cursing my name and spitting at the ground that I walked upon.

I would also be over six-feet tall, which would be pretty sweet.

The fact that he is such a nice guy (and also hosts a good Super Bowl party) made me feel bad for his inability to find a Wii. I then made it a habit to keep my eyes peeled for them as I’m out and about. The next day after purchasing mine, I even went back to that same store and they still had one! I then immediately called Carlos, but to no avail, as his phone was turned off. D’oh.

I certainly couldn’t blame myself for that, but nevertheless my “Wii guilt” ate at me until my insides burned like the fire of a hundred suns! Well, maybe not THAT bad, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?

As fate would have it, I happened to be at Costco last night looking for printer ink, and lo and behold, there sat a PALLET of Wii! (hmm, sounds like something out of Dr. Seuss) Once again, I called Carlos, and this time he was there (yay) BUT he doesn’t have a Costco card. We then made a gentleman’s agreement: I would purchase the system, he would pay me the cost and everybody would be happy. He would have the object of his desire, and I would be able to play Zelda:Twilight Princess guilt-free again.

There was a small problem in this otherwise brilliant plan: Like many other retailers Costco bundled the Wii, which bumps up the cost. Their bundle came with 2 games (Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Play) and a second nunchuck for $350. That’s actually not a bad deal; you’re getting the nunchuck for free. I wasn’t sure if I had the scratch to cover it in my checking account, though, and I only had my debit card on me. No biggie, I thought to myself, I’ll run home, grab a credit card with a grace period, pay it when the bill comes in with the money from Carlos, and once again, everybody’s happy.

I dash home in the Reliant feeling pretty good about myself, and hurry back to claim the prize only to find that THE LAZY BASTARDS AT COSTCO CLOSE AT 830. Dammit.

The Wii guilt weighed heavy on my heart as I dialed Carlos’ number…he told me not to sweat it…he’s just too darn nice, I tell you. Yet, I cannot let go of my Wii guilt quite that easily. Nay, I shall continue to search high and low until we are both merrily hurling Koopa shells at each other in Mario Kart. Only then will I can be absolved of my Wii guilt! Verily, I must!

Or I’ll get lucky and they’ll still have some at Costco today. 😉

UPDATE: Yup, I got lucky, woo-hoo!

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Sang Songs Say So Much

I was feeling bummed out this evening; I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately for a variety of reasons, but even more so today. The oddest things can sometimes snap me out of a case of the blues, though.

After the death of a relative some years ago, reading the “The Death and Return of Superman” comics helped me deal with the loss. Red Beans and Rice (with Sausage!) from Souper Salad picked me up a few years ago when I was depressed over the lousy employment situation I was in at the time.

For whatever reason, though, tonight the blues-buster was Karaoke Revolution. I’ve only sang karaoke once in public, but thanks to this game I can croon away in the privacy of my home without humiliation, save for the barbs of Virtual Simon Cowell.

I played for a few hours, managed to top a few high scores, and I felt much better when I was done. I tried to stick to the fun songs, but I will admit to indulging in the occasional weepy love song. A perfect score for “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” remains just beyond my reach, though -sigh-

I guess I’ve learned that when listening to music isn’t enough, performing it has a stronger effect, even if your audience is a virtual one. I wonder if Guitar Hero works just as well. Now I really want to buy Rock Band.

Virtual Simon found my rendition of “Here I Go Again” to be ‘atrocious.’ Jerk.

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The cake is a…BARRRRF!

I picked up Portal yesterday, but wasn’t able to play it until today (more on that in a moment) I had heard the game was short, and so I figured I would blow through it in a few hours, see what all the fuss was about, and get back to my consoles.

While I’m not one one those “PC gaming is dead” fanboys, I will say that if my Portal experience is any indication, the amount of suck associated with PC gaming has increased. It used to be that you bought a game, popped the disc into your PC, typed in one of those long CD-keys, installed it, and you were ready to rock-and-roll.

Now you have to first install extra software on your PC, activate your CD-Key using that software via the Internets, and hope that no significant game-farking bugs exist in the game. Granted, we had the last one back in The Good Old Days, too, but publishers seem to be more willing to let the folks who buy the game on Day 1 be their beta testers these days.

Needless to say, two of those three of those things got borked up. Steam installed with no problem, but when it came time to “activate” the key, I kept getting “Invalid Key” errors despite the fact that I had typed it in correctly. I had to submit a case to Valve’s customer service (after making a scan of my CD-Key and submitting it, grr) and then figured I’d probably have to wait until Monday. Back to Twilight Princess, then.

On a hunch, I tried activating the game again today, and lo, and behold, it worked. It would have been nice if someone had told me the problem had been fixed, but no matter. I was just happy because it was Game Time!

I start playing, and life is good; Portal is an awesome game and deserves all the hype it has received. Unfortunately, a bug poppped up after one of the levels, instead of loading the next level, the game would drop me back to the main menu for no good reason whatsoever. Greaat, now it’s Patch Time!

After poking around for awhile, it turns out the bug has been fixed, I have to restart Steam and the game in order to apply the fix. It was another case of “that would have been nice to know” that I would be more willing to let slide if there wasn’t for this client application (that I was forced to install) sitting on my PC that probably could have told me this ahead of time.

Now it was Fun Time again! I would have finished the game alot sooner if it wasn’t for the fact that I kept closer and closer to blowing chunks the longer I played the game. I can usually tolerate first-person shooters pretty well, but every so often, one comes across that gives me motion sickness. Sadly, Portal is now on the list of “games I can’t play for too long unless I want to see that Whataburger I had for lunch again coming out the wrong end.”

In any event, I finished Portal and enjoyed the game, but the varied problems I came across got me pretty “Steam-ed.” The next time I have to pick between the console and PC versions of a game, I will definitely go with the console. You pop in the disc, and it just works, just like The Good Old Days.

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Wii would like to browse

I decided to drop a few bucks and buy the Wii browser. The thought of not having to use my PC to check email sounds pretty nice. I figured if it wasn’t that great, I’d only be out five bucks. I was already pretty impressed with the News and Weather channels built into the Wii, but the fact that the browser was made by Opera gave me pause.

My last experience with Opera was a few years ago, just before it was ready for prime-time. It couldn’t render tables very well, which was a liability when reading forums. It did, however, have tabbed browsing, so it was a bit ahead of its time in that respect.

I have to say, the Wii browser is pretty nice. I can view almost all of my favorite websites just as they appear on my PC (MSNBC chokes on it for some reason, imagine that). It also has Flash support, which unfortunately means Flash ads. Youtube works pretty good, and fullscreen mode is supported. Now, if I can see Zero Punctuation on my 32″ TV, that will rock.

The icing on the cake? USB keyboards work on the Wii, which is a good thing, or else I’d have developed carpal tunnel trying to type this in.

Apparently, LiveJournal doesn’t like the way the Wii handles linefeeds, good thing there’s always good ol’ HTML!

No Zero Punctuation -sob- Hey Opera, when’s that Flash 7 support coming? 😛

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Suh-wiit!

The Nintendo Wii has been harder to find than Waldo, even two Christmases after its launch. I’ve liked Nintendo’s stuff for ages, even had a copy of Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600, and the first Mario Bros. (before he started hitting the ‘shrooms) was great co-op fun. Yes, kids, we had co-op back in the day, though the only point back then was trying to get the highest score.

By virtue of being at the right place at the right time, I managed to get my hands on the Next Big Thing from Nintendo. I felt silly asking the girl at the store if they had them in stock, when there clearly were three in the display case. She said they had received a shipment the night before, and there had been a line of eager buyers waiting at 1201 when they went on the floor, so these had been sitting in plain view for just under a day.

The bastards were ‘bundling’ them though, so I had to take a copy of Wii Play along with the unit. It was no big deal, though, I was going to get it anyway. After a quick stop at Best Buy for Super Mario Galaxy, a component cable and another Nunchuck, I drove home with my loot, ready to flail away until repetitive stress disorder kicks in.

It actually might happen, too. I once got ‘tennis elbow’ from a combination of a boring-ass graveyard shift job, a Nintendo DS, and Meteos.

The Wii itself is pretty solid, weighs about as much as the Xbox 360’s power supply. -rim shot-

I love the “protective sleeves” (resisting temptation to crack a joke about protecting one’s Wii) they put on the Wiimotes, the part facing the TV has about half an inch of padding, presumably to protect precious plasma-owning players. I own a 32-inch flat screen tube TV. If a Wiimote can crack that thing, Nintendo needs to give their engineers a raise.

I bid Mr. Gamecube farewell, its final destination will probably be a shoebox up in the closet, as the Wii plays Gamecube games as well. We had us some good times, there… -sniff-

Setup was pretty straightforward, just like every other “next-gen” console, I get to do a system update. 😛 The Weather and News channels are pretty cool, being a news junkie (thanks, Dad!) I can see myself using them quite a bit. Its pretty cool, using the remote feels natural, and I suppose I should actually play some games on it now!

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Lights, Liquor, and Licks

Our company Christmas party was this past Saturday, and it was held at Mr. and Mrs. CEO’s house. They live in one of the ritzy parts of town, where they not only have a gate, but a guard station to keep the riff-raff (i.e. people like me) out.

That said, the neighborhood had the worst Christmas lights I’ve ever seen. When I lived with my parents, my brother and I would put up the Christmas lights; I like to think we did a good job of it.

My biggest Christmas light pet peeve is the whole “wrap the lights around the trunk of the tree” bit. It is particularly ugly when you do it to a fucking MESQUITE tree where the branches go every which way but straight up. If you are going to put lights on a tree, COVER THE WHOLE DAMN TREE. Obviously you can’t do this unless the tree is short, but when you do, it looks awesome, and yes, I’ve done it. Otherwise, it looks half-assed, as if you had strings of lights left over and didn’t have anything better to do with them.

Anyway, every few houses had trees with lights wrapped around the trunk from about 3-10 feet off the ground. I’m not sure if that was by design, but whomever had the idea should be hung by them.

I met some of the developers that work just around the freakin’ CORNER from me at the party. I find it a little disturbing that I’ve been there half a year and have not met a lot of these people. Lesson learned: if you want to make your developers even more anti-social than usual, give them offices instead of cubicles.

The food was good. Granted, it was a hell of a lot fancier than I’m accustomed to, though. There was also a “white elephant” gift exchange. I had neglected to buy a gift, so I didn’t participate, but it was fun to watch. No company Christmas party would be complete without speeches as well…blah blah blah. They really need to have it somewhere else next year, though, there was nowhere near enough seating for everybody. My feet were hurting pretty good when I left.

Overall, I’d say the company Chrstmas party I went to last year was better. Those who were there may raise an eyebrow, but I’ll take good company and regular food over a fancy-pants setting and unfamiliar faces. Call me nutty, I guess. Of course, the BEST one I’ve ever been to was the one where the company president was handing out Christmas bonuses. Payday is coming up, though, so perhaps that might still happen. -crosses fingers-

As I was leaving, Mr. and Mrs. CEO were at the door handing out boxes of chocolate and bottles of wine to employees as they leave. I don’t drink alcohol at all, but I also didn’t want to be rude, so I take the wine and go on my merry way. I now have a bottle of Chateau Liversan Haut-Medoc 2003 sitting in the kitchen collecting dust until I find someone to give it to. I can only assume its good stuff, all I really know is that it was made in France, but it may as well be a bottle of air as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps when I distribute Christmas cookies this weekend, I’ll find a taker. Does a red or white go best with Oatmeal Raisin cookies?

On Sunday, I went looking around for gifts for my nieces and nephew, as I’ve already got all the adults on my gift list taken care of. I’m agonizing over what to get for the kids, for whatever reason. As part of my trip, I went to Best Buy, where I noticed the Rock Band demo was available. Having been a drummer myself (marching band), I thought I’d give it a shot, and fired up “Detroit Rock City” by Kiss.

Rock Band was damn good fun, and I was getting into it. The drum pads don’t feel quite right, though. When you strike a drum, your stick should bounce. The Rock Band drum pads are hard plastic, and you don’t get that bounce. I don’t expect this to make sense to those who don’t play drums, but it makes a difference. Between that and the hardware issues I’ve been hearing about, I think I’m going to wait until version 2 before I get it, if indeed, I do. Or perhaps I should get a cheap electronic drum set and rock out that way. In any event, Guitar Hero isn’t going away anytime soon!

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The Lost Days of Arcade-ia

I think we all have moments in our lives when we get smacked in the face with the fact that we are getting older.

I had one some months ago when I was talking to a coworker who was born during the 80’s. We were discussing games, and I bought up Geometry Wars in all of its seizure-inducing glory, and described the control scheme as being similar to Robotron 2084. He then gets a puzzled look on his face and asks: “What console was that game on?”

I then realized that he was born after the glory days of the arcade, when they weren’t old temples kept alive by Dance Dance Revolution. At that moment, I could almost hear my hair getting grayer and feel arthritis creeping into these hands that have been playing videogames for longer than this kid has been alive!

I then explained that once upon a time there was a place called the “arcade” where one had to go to play real videogames and not the watered-down versions you got on the home systems of the time. We dropped our quarters because the games were fun, they were something new, and they let us pretend to really be racing a car or flying a spaceship if only for a few minutes or maybe longer if you got really good. The arcade was a loud place filled with lots of machines, lots of people, and lots of noise coming from both.

When I read reviews where some kid is gushing over the “BRAND NEW” thing they’ve just discovered, I laugh, because its probably been done before, and we probably did it first. Before there was Gran Turismo, there was Pole Position. Before there was World of Warcraft, there was Gauntlet. Take Missile Command, set it to music, and you get Every Extend Extra. The first commercial 3D game to use shaded polygons was made in 1983. It’s called “I, Robot” and it was made by the original Atari.

We also played to be the best. Even if you were only the best at the grocery store or corner gas station, it still felt good to see your initials at the top of the board. Three letters were all you got, and so you had to make the best of it. If you accidently hit Fire and entered an “A” by accident, you followed up with “SS” instead, snickered for a moment, and then moved on to the next machine. Of course, if your name just happened to start with an A, it was no big deal.

Before there was online with its miscreants and trappings, there was playing head to head with your opponent standing next to you or across a cocktail machine. There was also co-op, even though we didn’t call it that. If you wanted next, you put a quarter on the panel and waited your turn, and if you finished and saw a quarter on the machine, you let the next guy have his turn.

Of course, those days are gone now, but the games are still around in one form or another. I still play them, and they’re still fun to me. I laugh at the repeated, often failed attempts to reimagine them for the New Generation. Much like classic movies, the games are products of their time, and the zeitgeist of that era just can’t be reproduced. These kids are also too accustomed to the overly dramatic stories and dinner-theater drama found in too many of todays’ games. You don’t ask why Pac-Man has to eat all those dots or why the ghosts want to eat him, that’s just the way it is.

No matter what aliases, nicknames or avatars I use in these hyper-connected days, I don’t think they will have more meaning than the three letters sitting on top of the list of the Time Pilot machine in the corner store down the road from my house:

EDS

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Un-Achievement

I figure I’d finish up Monday night’s Guitar Hero III session with “Welcome To The Jungle” but I mis-click and select the Slash Boss Battle instead. No biggie, I’ll just press the red fret and back out…

I cancel out of the battle and see the “Achievement” ping appear. At first I’m thinking “All-right, achievement points!” though I’m not sure why. NO points?! WTF??

Apparently canceling out of a boss battle earns the “Tail Between Your Legs” achievement for a whopping zero points. Now that’s rock n’ roll, baby!

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