It’s around 4 right now (at least as of the writing of this sentence), and its been a little less than an hour since I’ve gotten up from my 14 hours nap, which was the result of staying up for 24+ hours to cover the Parsons 24 hour mobile game mosh.
So how was it? Well, I had (relatively) no problems spending my entire Saturday evening in a lab filled with people trying to their best to create a cell phone game in only one day’s time (and the place grew a tad bit pungent as the entire proceeding commenced), which also rang with the sounds of both We Love Katamari and Guitar Heroes by folks who needed to take a break from the action, along with about eight cans of Red Bull that was needed to keep myself awake (others injected much, much more). I dare say I enjoyed myself actually.
As for the specifics, that will have to wait till later this week, when my full report is published in Gamasutra. Though I will say that there was some super impressive work produced, and I’m eager to see who will what at the award ceremony later this evening. Also got to meet a few cool folks, including Stephen Totilo, the guy behind the video game coverage for MTV News, and the pair covering the event for EGM.
Anyway, since I don’t have to leave for work till 8-ish….
- Wednesday was movie night, of course, and the main feature was the Steve McQueen classic, Bullit. That film, along with the game Crazy Taxi is precisely why I’ve long wanted to visit San Fransico (that and I hear you can find some killer burritos). We also watched an episode of Monty Python (the Spam episode, which MK had never seen… crazy, eh?) along with some Buster Keaton shorts, which really makes you take notice of where Jackie Chan got all his moves (well, the kung fu superstar has noted numerous times that the silent film legend was his greatest inspiration).
May as well pass along the stupid sight I caught beforehand while killing time at Best Buy. Here’s a question: ever wonder why the hell movie studios still make fullscreen versions of DVDs? There was this woman who was literally flipping out because they were out of the fullscreen version of the new Harry Potter flick. She spent a full five minutes going totally bat-shit insane and was screaming at any sale associate she came across, who near the end were all scurrying away from her (gotta admit, that part was funny). And there were at least three other groups of people who were not with her in any way that were also super pissed that there was only widescreen versions available. I mean, don’t folks know better by now about the loss of information and all that jazz?
I guess I should also bring up the fact that I spent a good deal of my time debating if I should picked up Rumble Roses (that god-awful female wrestling game) which they had for just $10. I know it sucks and all, but its Konami, and its $10! Though in the end, I’m passing because I hear the mud wrestling part is pretty poor. Oh, and for those wondering, I do already have the Dead or Alive volleyball game, and even had the guts to buy it in-front of MK, but the original plan was to sell it on eBay, till I realized that it wasn’t worth the hassle (that was around the time I got into a huge, stupid ordeal with some jackass who sold me a shoddy iPod cable). Plus, and I’m not bullshitting here, but I’m a huge video game volleyball fan, so there ya go. That part of the game sucks, btw.
- Had dinner with Job and Jeremiah (a.k.a. nullsleep) on Thursday night. Got to hear about the upcoming chiptunes world tour he’s organizing along with Joshua (a.k.a. Bit Shifter), as well as the full story behind his confrontation with the angry Magic: The Gathering referee at his New York Comic Con performance. Afterwards we went to Forbidden Planet to look at books and check out the last remnants of the video game section, which has been slowly fading away for a while now. Job managed to grab Sonic Rush for just $20 brand new, and I was somewhat jealous till I realized that I have a copy waiting for me at the Nick Mag office. But then he spotted the Tiger Woods DS game for $6 used and fought with temptation to pick it up, and lost in a span about two minutes, despite Jeremiah and I asking if he really needed it, and this was after Job had been lamenting over the number of games that he has at home which has remained untouched during dinner.
Its something that all three of us suffer from: we all go nuts over certain games, and go out of our way to grab them, despite the fact that most of us barley have any free time, so they usually get tossed in the corner, let along how some of us are dirt poor and living paycheck to paycheck (such as myself, but hey, its all for the purpose of research, and I get the money back during tax time).
I also relayed the story about the greatest regret in my life, which I’ve told to numerous friends, which was how back when I was a teenager in Washington, I witnessed some poor kid who returning a day late copy of Life Force, the reaction of which from both the child and mother from learning how there was a $1.25 penalty was as if they were going to have to obtain from eating from the next week or so (they both looked dirty poor, almost to a cartoony degree, like that impoverished family from Night Court, though that could be just my memory filling in the blanks), and the guilt I’ve felt ever since for not stepping in and paying the, at least to myself, very minor fee. And among all the folks I’ve told this to, Job and Jeremiah are the only ones who at least don’t think I’m nuts for feeling such a way (at least I don’t think). I also mentioned the regret of having to sell both my SNES, along with a shitload of awesome first part games, including Super Metroid, Earthbound and Super Mario RPG, all in immaculate condition for just $80 fucking dollars, as well as Radiant Silvergun for only $200 (this was back in 2002 when I was unemployed most of the year, and the economy, in particular NYC’s, was shit due to 9/11).
Jeremiah in particular was very sympathetic over that last one, simply because he’s a hardcore shmups person, and passed along how pissed he was when he had to pass up on Recca, which isthe holy grail for any diehard shooter enthusiast, as well as Judgement Silversword, the Wonderswan’s best, and hardest to get, game, which also goes for $300 on eBay. Though I was able to refer to him a Japanese site that’s still selling the game for just 7,140 yen, which is $60.50 American. For those of you wondering what the fuss is about, you can check out videos at this site which Jeremiah passed along.
Speaking if vids, and back to Radiant Silvergun, before parting ways, I at least got the chance to play the game to death (again I was unemployed, so all I did at the time was get up at 1 in the afternoon, play video games, watch digital cable, flirt with girls via AIM, and eat fried chicken till 5 in the morning ever single morning), to the point that I got damn good at it, So I recoded myself playing the whole way through, and on just one credit! Mind you, the difficulty was set at normal, and this was only on arcade mode (and not the much longer, and trickier Saturn mode), but still. And both guys want to come over to my place to check it out, as well as play all the ultra obscure PSOne games that I have, including Love Love 2. But on the train ride home, I realized that I had accidentally erased that tape a few months later, when I was recording The Adventures of Pete & Pete off of Noggin/The N for Dave. But I at least have another tape of me playing RS, which was a practice tape that I used to study for me big run-through (which also contains Saturn mode footage).
- And back shmups in general, I also informed Jeremiah of the tragic, far too brief appearance of Senko No Ronde at the Chinatown arcade, which got him just pissed as I was when I first heard about it. Basically, it was recently reported on Insert Credit (which is where I also got the link to the great deal on Judgment Silversword, of course) that the shooter/fighter hybrid from G-Rev was brought to the Chinatown arcade, but no one would bothered to play the thing. Once possible reason might be for the fact that no one could understand how to play it; since it was never picked up by any American distributors, it was all in Japanese, and since it has unique play mechanics, it was hard to pick up. But the main reason is no one gave it a chance, so it was quickly got rid of in favor for another stupid Street Fighter Third Strike machine. Basically, the dumbass arcade rats who frequent the place wouldn’t give something new a chance. Because God forbid they actually play a game they don’t know anything about, and therefore risk the possibility of loosing, which in their eyes is “embarrassing” or some other nonsense. Hence why no one, even folks who enjoy video games, bother with that shit hole. I myself would go more often, since they have Super GT (Scud Race), but I’m tired of asking people who sit in the seats just to wait for their next turn in SNK vs Capcom to please step aside.
- Got Friday off from work, but I didn’t do much aside from do some research for the book, go grocery shopping, and read some comics, including the Crisis on Infinite Earth collection which I had picked up the day prior. Its a bit of a tough read, since I’m not that familiar with the DC Universe, though I did recognize Sgt. Rock during the WWII sequence, since I read a few issues back in the day, when I spent my entire summer afternoons hanging out in the a drug store reading all their comics. But the real reason I’m reading Crisis is that I’ve been long fascinated with the concept of characters who have been around a long while, enough to have developed different iterations over the course of many years, due to times as well as the various people that have written and drawn them, and the idea of having a story that acknowledges all these variations, which then tried to unify, or “clean”, everything up.
- Here’s something different: I’ve got a MySpace story to share. Actually two.
But yeah, I’m on MySpace, which I know is regarded as stupid to many folks, and it is, but its also harmless fun (despite being a vast wasteland of dumb emo kids and their shitty bands, along with horrid HTML). I’m also on Friendster, have been for a while actually, and joined right when it was first getting super popular, so I too got caught up in collecting “friends”, mostly people who I didn’t know, but pretending to be things that reflected stuff that I liked. So my Friendster friends included pizza and Scrooge McDuck, despite the fact that I know that Scrooge really isn’t the richest duck in Duckburg, but probably some 13 year old kid in Portland Oregon that I have never met, nor will I ever, but whatever.
Anyway, when I got on MySpace, the collecting part had grown old, so I decided to just associated with folks that I actually knew in real life. So when people pass along requests, and its someone I don’t know (generally either some sketch comedy group that don’t look remotely funny, or an emo band that of course doesn’t sound good, or some homey-g princess, and I have no fucking clue how she came across me, and I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t want to associated with a person like myself in real life), I pass. I don’t mean to be a dick, but I’m also certain that someone with 14,000 friends wouldn’t even notice.
Except for one guy. One person, whom I won’t name her because I just know he will find out via a Google search or something and it’ll just add fire to his rage, had sent me about 5 invites over the past couple of weeks, I haven’t done anything about it. They just sit there in my request box where I don’t touch them. But on Friday he sent me a personal message…
“What’s the problem? Why don’t want to be friends??”
And to that, I responded with, “But I don’t know you. Sorry, but I choose to only have actual friends on my profile. Thanks anyway.”
Which in just a few minutes netted the response of “Too bad son. You could use friends. I could have even taught you some things.”
Seriously, what-in-the-fuck?! This guy, btw, looks much younger than me.
Another interesting exchange is from a girl a few weeks past. She had apparently been in a few of my classes at SVA and had found me of interest, at least enough to want to get contact me after all these years. And don’t get me wrong, I have a girlfriend and all, but every guy is at least flattered when a girl says hello in such a manner, especially when its legit; she did prove herself the real deal, at least by naming specific things and places and events. But I looked at her pic, I didn’t recognize her, but I did notice “something”, so I went to investigate, and soon came across here homepage, and after poking around, I learned that she was a he. And the funny part was, given are shared common interests of video games, toys, and wrestling, an if not for the fact that I have somebody, and this girl is in fact a dude (the final cut has yet to be made, if you catch my drift) there would be a possibility.
Again, why bother with MySpace? Again, it?s harmless fun. One key feature, like Friendster before it, is the ability to pass along some nice, funny, or flattering words about the other person, and MySpace goes one step by passing along pictures. Here’s what Ed had to “say” about me recently….
And here’s what I had in response…
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Oh, some quick game related news and junk from the web:
- Check out another way to play Pong.
- I know its been reposted by Game Set Watch and Lost Levels, but for those who’ve missed out, here’s info on the long lost Penn & Teller Sega CD game.
- Captain N is coming to DVD? Sweet.
- Here’s something insanely awesome that I found on the GAF late last week: an online repository that has high quality scans of Sendai’s old all Sega magazine, Mega Play. Its sure to warm the hearts of any Genesis fanboy from back in the day.
- And from Insert Credit, here’s info on a huge ass controller for one of the worst games of all time.
- Plus, also via IC, here’s Famitsu dissing the Atari Jaguar.
- I forget if I’ve mentioned this before, but the latest Bomberman game for the Xbox 360 is taking a cue from Shadow the Hedgehog. Take a look at the site, along with the boxart…
I have more to pass along, but now I have to get ready for work.
