Yet another crazy weekend has come and go, though this past one was particularly crazy. Hung out with Dave (Roman) quite a bit, it being Thanksgiving weekend and all. A few members of his extended family, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years, are in town and I got to hang with them as well, plus other stuff went down, all building up towards next weekend, which is when he’ll officially tie the knot with his bride.
But other than socializing (Katie was also in town, so got to hang out with her, which meant a trip to the Central Park Zoo, though the red pandas were total no-shows, the fucking bastards), I did find some room for video games; at one point I found myself watching a friend play Zelda for the Wii, which was the first time I ever saw the game being played in person. And that’s because I’ve actually been trying to avoid it to a certain degree…. I guess I wanted my first chance to play the game to be totally fresh, though obviously that was sort of a foolish notion, given how big the game is. And it looked totally awesome! I found myself totally giddy… then rather depressed. It had finally hit me: the new Zelda game is out and I’m not currently playing it! There’s very few titles I have to get my mits on day one, but Zelda is always at the top of the list. Still not sure when I’m getting my Wii, but at least… don’t laugh… I’m still getting the GameCube version, which for all intents and purposes, is the definitive version. At least everything won’t be filled and the sun will rise in the east (for those who might not remember, Link is left-handed in the series, so to conform to the Wii-mote, they made him right-handed by literally flipping everything over).
Hence why I’ve decided to return to Minish Cap, which I was enjoying but kinda just dropped due to some distraction or another. I guess it’ll fill the gap left my Final Fantasy XII, which I’ve sorta lost interest in. Oh, and MK gave that a spin for the first time and she found the beginning excruciating boring. And yeah… all Final Fantasy games start out way too slow.
Also, Robin took me to a drug store in his neighborhood that sells an odd assortment of old games, including really old PSone titles. I almost got Philosoma, but the disc was all scratched, so I passed, though now I’m thinking of risking it and just buying the game, in hopes of making a workable copy out of it. Though I did the get the totally brand new and totally official Sega Jump Pack for the Dreamcast (you know, their rumble pak) that you absolutely can’t find anywhere these days (hell, they were hard to find when the system was still around).
But yeah, been so busy that I still haven’t had a real chance to catch up on all the gaming news, though I’ve been hearing bits and pieces, such as how people have been playing emulated NES and SNES games other than the ones offered by Nintendo on their Wiis. Oh, and people have been doing the same on their PS3 thanks to folks loading Linux onto their system, which everyone, at least those who actually got their hands on a system to actually play them, has been really digging.
And I may as well finally clear my cache of PS3/Wii launch related nonsense by passing along the piece about the guy who thought he bought a PlayStation 3, but it was actually 3 PlayStations as well this video of a “Wii superfan”. When you realize that the guy probably has Asperger’s Syndrome, then the video ceases to be funny… that is until I change the spelling to “ass-burgers”, and then it totally becomes LOL.
Oh, and here’s some pics of some dude rolling a joint on his Wii box.
Anyway, courtesy of the NeoGAF comes (translated) word that Silent Hill 5 will be more like 2, which is great news since part 4 kinda sucked (even though I really did like what they tried).
And also from France (hey, have I ever mentioned how awesome French gaming sites are… as well as how the French have great taste in video games as well? and I’m not saying that because a huge chunk of site’s visitors comes from France) are some scans from the new Wario DS game. Which I’ve heard at least one person say looks like a shitty SNES game, but I personally love (and miss) that kind of aesthetic.
Also from the GAF comes the kind of thread that I don’t see to often, which is a real shame since I’m a big fan of them… a bunch of folks asking what happened to assorted pieces of vaporware.
Meanwhile from the IC forums, here’s something that was passed along a while ago which I forgot to pass along: a link to SNK vs. Capcom… for the Mega Drive!
As for what’s being talked about today… there isn’t anything. And that’s because the Insert Credit forums, is more or less, dead. And it all went down over the weekend (which I totally missed since I kinda had stuff to do). It’s a long story, one which I have to wonder if anyone besides someone such as myself would find interesting, that being a person who finds internet driven socialization an absolutely fascinating subject. But for those who are interested, it basically went down like this: the site is owned by a person, who had grown to develop a distaste for the forums… he just wasn’t a fan of people who frequented there and the kind of talk that went on. So he decided to shake things up by putting one guy in charge, and make him a moderator (which is someone who oversees any kind of video game message board… think of it as the sheriff, the person who sets the rules, and enforces them when necessary)… the only one actually. and at the same time reliving all the current ones. This one person by the way is one who was universally reviled by the forum, to the point that he got kicked out… a real crazy person who went nutso when banned over a year or two ago, enough to start his own forum and attempt many times to hack the IC forums, even rejoin it in disguise (often those who become so engrossed in message board antics get so in deep that they do or say something insane, which causes them to get kicked out, and since it their only means of socializing, they then become obsessed over their former “home” and it usually becomes super weird).
So yeah, this guy was put in charge (I will admit, this move, as asinine as it might have been, at least ensured some excitement… and he delivered), and immediately the vast majority of the community was up in arms. At first they aired their grievance in a very civil manner (mind you, I didn’t witness any of this, I’m just reporting what I’ve been told) but the new mod/old really hated guy didn’t want to hear any of it and at first banned a couple of people, which pissed folks off even more, which in turn leads to a lot of bans. Soon thereafter, an forum invasion ensues… and this is when a bunch of folks from one message board “invades” another by all registering and clogging the channels with crap. In this case, it was folks from both 4chan and 7chan (which I honestly didn’t even know existed!) and their idea of creating havoc was spreading child pornography, which lead to the site’s creator to go “fuck this shit” and completely pull the plug. And all day today I’ve been sifting through the “aftermath”. I tried accessing the forums earlier this morning, and when I saw it was offline, I figured the server had overloaded due to the holiday weekend or something. It wasn’t till later in the afternoon when I got an IM from James going “Dude….” that I found out all the that had happen. And since then I’ve been talking with a ton of people, trying to get all sides of the story, Some people have been hit hard as crazy as it may sound.
The thing is… I will admit that I’m pretty bummed to see the IC forums dead. It had become my favorite hang-out on the internet. Aside from enjoying all the chatter and wacky shit the place pointed towards or even produced, I actually made some very good friend there (as well as some enemies)… I also know that a few folks who check out this site is from there. So the IC forums will always have a special place in my heart. But at the same time… I’m kinda glad to see it go. If only for the fact that it had in recent times become too much of a time and attention hog for me. Plus things in general were starting to get a bit… tiresome; the personality clashes were getting annoying, as were some of the in-jokes, and the gaming discussions were, near the end damn near intolerable, with folks hating on shit for the sake of hating, if you catch my drift (which is a major problem with any hardcore video game message board, but the fact that everyone at the IC was so over intellectual about it was particularly grating). Hence why, yeah, I was almost happy to see it put to rest. It was lots of fun while it lasted. Granted the circumstances were pretty lame, though on the other hand, what better is there to go other than a blaze of glory? Having the keys given to the most hated man, having him go mad with power, and to then have the carcass be pulled apart by the vultures of the internet? That’s a helluva lot more exciting than for things to get so stodgy that everyone drifts away due to boredom. Though I will miss certain things, of course. Such as the Axe, which was the part that was hidden from the general public, where the real good shit went down (and a great haven from all the banal gaming babbling that plagued the rest of the site). Speaking off…
Okay, so why in the fuck am I mentioning all this? Well… with the loss of the IC forums (though its coming back, but the plan is for it to be re-envisioned, which sounds pretty silly for assorted reasons), and the Axe in particular, there’s a void. One that I’m kinda, maybe interested in filling. Some folks, like Dave (Mauro), Jeremiah, hell, even MK believe that it?s worth maybe pursuing, and even though I seriously don’t have time to even think for myself these days, it is tempting. Though aside from all the work involved (Dave is convinced that I could just set things up and let it run by itself with limited moderation… which was what the Axe was all about…. but knowing myself, it would totally eat up all the time I don’t have since I would want to be super involved 24/7, which would go against why I’m glad the IC forums are gone in the first place), it would just be lame if in the end, only six people joined. It’s also foolish to think that I could ever replace the Axe since, any internet community is entirely made by its members (obviously) and I could never hope to fully recapture that spirt… especially since already folks have decided to go their separate ways. But then again… I do have a pretty varied audience, and it would be really interesting to see what would happened if I offered an avenue for all the gamer dorks, indie comic book dorks, and other assorted “dorks” a chance to interact with each other, even if it was just a month long experiment or something…
Besides, I do have plans for some big changes for the site, so adding a message board might be just a nice additional thing. Or maybe it?s a totally stupid, waste of a time idea. So let me ask everyone… how does the idea of a Fort90 Forum sound?
… btw, one other idea was the addition of regular polls, so that question would be totally perfect for one, but since that’s not in place yet, I’ll just have to cull together comments and the such.
