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2010-02-20T14:46:00.000-08:00

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Review: Scribblenauts (DS)

2009-09-23T04:28:00.000-07:00

The cold winter air swept through Maxwell's rooster hat.

It is a fine day for Scribbling, he whispered to himself. He whispered this before every mission.

Earlier in the day, Maxwell received this mission via a phone call. "Please help my husband," a woman cried, "because he is on a boat that is headed straight for an iceberg!"

Maxwell hesitated briefly, and asked: "Why doesn't he just turn around?"

The wife was silent. And then later, she was not silent. "Please, just help him."

That was then, and this was now. Maxwell stood on solid ground, and watched as the oblivious man headed straight for his doom. It was obvious to everyone else, but why not this idiot? Was he some kind of idiot?

Maxwell knew what he had to do. He had to make the man see fear—and what better way to make someone see fear than by summoning something terrible with your magic notepad? Sure, his methods might be a little extreme, but Maxwell was known for getting the job done—in a very extreme way.

Turning to face the man in the boat, Maxwell whipped out his magic notepad, and wrote the word that he was so well-known for writing.

KRAKEN.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Scribblenauts is a DS game where you, the main character, can summon just about anything. Let me restate that: YOU CAN SUMMON JUST ABOUT ANYTHING, AS LONG AS IT IS NOT VULGAR OR TRADEMARKED OR ALCOHOL FOR SOME REASON.

The alcohol part confuses me, because there are a wide variety of firearms that you can summon. Like, all of them. Think of a firearm! Did you think of TREBUCHET? That's not really a "firearm", but it's in there!! YOU CAN SUMMON A TREBUCHET.

Summoning is done by means of a magic notepad, that you can access by tapping the "magic summoning notepad" button. You can actually write in names one letter at a time, which takes forever, or you can type them in with a virtual keyboard. This is the good way to play the game. The other way is the lame way.

Possibly one of the greatest parts of summoning items is that these items interact with each other. Cats chase dogs, God kills dinosaurs, and you can fire trebuchets at chocolatiers. These are all things that can actually happen in the game. And that all can take place at the title screen.

Yes, before you dive into the 220 levels of the game, you are dumped into a menu screen where you can access your magic notepad, and summon anything that is in the game's library. Squid? You got it. Stadium? Big, but sure. Kraken? Of course you can summon a Kraken.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

For The Peaks, this was considered good weather. Of course, it was only because there were volcanoes going off in the background for some reason. This balanced out the normally wintery atmosphere of The Peaks.

"My sheep", said the shepherd. "He is separated from all my other sheep."

"I don't see the problem," said Maxwell, lying. He already saw the problem, and he knew the answer. But he needed the shepherd to give him a reason.

"There is the small matter," said the shepherd (nervously), "of a wolf."

Maxwell nodded. He knew before he came that he would have to send a creature to a creaturegrave. This sheep needed saving, and he knew what he had to do.

Motioning for the shepherd to take a step back, Maxwell Scribbled something down in his magic notepad. Instantly, a large red seamonster fell from the sky, and landed atop the wolf. The two engaged in combat briefly, with the seamonster having the definite edge. As soon as the wolf was felled, Maxwell made another Scribble into his pad. Instantly again, the seamonster disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The shepherd watched in awe as Maxwell retrieved the small sheep by using a fishing rod that he appeared to have summoned in the same manner. Maxwell made his way over, and began to unhook the sheep.

"What was that?" asked the shepherd, bewildered.

"It's a fishing rod," said Maxwell.

"No," said the shepherd, bewildered and frustrated. "The other thing."

Maxwell smirked. "Do you mean…the Kraken?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The game features 10 different worlds, with 22 levels each. These levels are split into two different categories—"puzzle" and "action". Both gametypes involve you collecting a Starite, or Generic Video Game Collectible, to end the level. "Puzzle" levels focus more on accomplishing tasks, while "action" levels focus more on getting to the part of the level that happens to contain the Generic Video Game Collectible.

The game's biggest fault is its controls, although I don't seem to mind them as much as some reviews have indicated. In case you weren't aware, Maxwell's motion is all controlled by the touch screen. While you might think you know exactly how this works, you probably don't. If you tap somewhere that doesn't require you to climb or whatever, Maxwell will run to that location. You will probably send Maxwell off the edge of platforms several times, since you will be trying to control him the wrong way.

At least, I did.

However, that isn't really a big deal to me, since I can have Maxwell wear a JETPACK whenever I want to. YEAH THAT CAN HAPPEN. Let's spawn twenty jetpacks!

Oh, wait. Each level has an item "par", which is like golf, except not really. You can go over par, but you don't get as many points for that level, and you get less Ollars, which are like dollars, except not really. Ollars are used to unlock more levels and, I don't know, stuff from the unlockables menu.

Also, just to keep you from spawning twenty jetpacks, there's a limit on the amount of overall items you can spawn at once. Fortunately, you can delete items you've spawned whenever you want. This means you can dispose of that Kraken before he eats all of the sheep.

Did I mention that this game has a level editor?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"How did your cat get on the roof?" Maxwell didn't need to know the answer. The answer was not important.

"I don't know, he just does it sometimes." The woman was worried. The woman wanted to pet her cat, to ease her tension, but the cat being on the roof was the source of her tension, which caused her to experience more tension.

This was serious. Maxwell could sense some sort of tension. He pulled out his notepad, and began to Scribble.

"Do you want the cat dead... or alive?" he asked, knowing the answer.

"Alive," the woman responded.

Maxwell paused. Alive?

He scratched out the K-R-A he had begun to write, and thought about it for a moment.

"Are you sure?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The game's level editor allows you to build a new level using the terrain from any level you've cleared. Then, it's really all up to you. Write in some objects, set their logic, and place a Starite wherever you want it. Then you can name it, set a clue, and send it to your friends.

Yeah, that's right, your friends. Scribblenauts doesn't have a level database or anything, so you have to exchange friend codes with people to get their levels. It's a little irritating, and is probably the other major flaw in Scribblenauts.

However, did you know that you can make a bear fight a pirate? And that the pirate WINS? It is clear to all of you that this is awesome.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The room was too small. Maxwell didn't like it.

Too small for a Kraken.

In the corner, a child wept. Closer to Maxwell, a clown wept. Less close, but hotter, the child's mother wept hotly.

A lone piñata hung from a rope that was way too thick.

"He does not have a bat," the mother explained seductively. At least, Maxwell thought it was pretty seductive.

"Would you like me to give him a bat?" asked Maxwell, miffed. He was a Scribblenaut, not a Delivernaut. Delivernauts don't even exist.

The mother shook her head. "He will use it irresponsibly," she said, and Maxwell was sure that she winked at him. Or she blinked, and he couldn't see her other eye.

"Why is the clown crying?"

"He has a computer science degree, but he is merely a party clown."

Maxwell nodded with understanding. He flirtatiously removed his notepad from his pocket. "Do you want your son dead... or alive?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In closing, buy Scribblenauts.

The Domain Name Is Renewed

2009-05-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

What can we look forward to in 2009-2010?

- More things
- Additional articles
- New logo? (More like, new log-NO)
- Comedy?
- Cheap video game reviews ("So, hey, this Guitar Hero: Aerosmith game...")
- Freakazoid references.

I haven't updated in forever (naturally) but I plan to do so eventually (naturally).

And if I don't, well, AWWWW NUTBUNNIES (Freakazoid reference! See?!)

RUMOR MILL: NINTENDO WII BANANA CONTROLLER?????

2009-04-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

NINTENDO MAY RELEASE A BANANA CONTROLLER FOR NINTENDO WII.

CRITICS SAY THE BANANAS HAVE NO GRAPHICS.

NINTENDO'S OFFICIAL RESPONSE IS

"YES, WII HAVE NO BANANAS"

APRIL FOOLS.

Animal Crossing Exchange Rate

2009-01-21T10:42:00.000-08:00

I've been playing the stalk market a lot recently.

Turnip stalks, that is, in Animal Crossing: City Folk.

If you're unfamiliar with the stalk market in Animal Crossing, here's how it works: every Sunday morning, you have the option of buying turnips from a character named Joan. The prices of these turnips varies week by week, and you can only purchase them in blocks of 10.

Throughout the rest of the week, you can sell your turnips back to the local shop owner, Tom Nook. But here's the catch: every day, the price he'll pay you for turnips also varies. It's a dangerous game to play, because you could end up selling your turnips for less than you purchased them for.

After the week is up, your turnips rot or something and you can't use them again. There's also some other thing that has to do with red turnips, but I've never done that, because you have to plant them, and all my plants die.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I noticed that Nook was lowballing me on these turnip prices. I became angry, and, living in the US, decided I would sue. But I needed to know: How much money am I going to sue for? Animal Crossing doesn't use US dollars, it uses Bells--and what am I going to do with thousands of bags of real life bells? Therefore, I devised a type of Animal Crossing Exchange Rate, and here's how I did it:

Step 1. Since you can't buy real money with bells (yet), the task was to figure out what else you end up spending to earn bells. The answer? Time. So, I found the only source of regular renewable income, selling seashells, and figured that it took about five minutes to harvest all of them from the beach.

Step 2. Next, the average amount of money that I earn by selling all the seashells on the beach hovers around 1,500 bells. This is EXACT SCIENCE, in that I didn't really do any research other than this.

Step 3. So, 1500 bells = 5 minutes, right? So you agree, then, that an hour of seashells translates to 18000 bells, right? Good.

Step 4. The current Federal wage rate in the United States is $6.55. Therefore, 18000 bells = $6.55.

Step 5. Which means that 18000/$6.55 = 2748.09160305344, or, rounding down, 2748.09.

There you have it, 2748.09 bells to the dollar.

TEN DOLLARS PLEASE, NINTENDO.

The Spore Diaries, Day 4: Space is Big

2008-09-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

The stars look very different today.

Just one day ago, we were building creepy mutated Sporemen. Two days ago, we were conquering the world. Three days ago, we were just a spore.

Throughout these days, Spore has challenged me to make decisions about life, the universe, and flagella. The game forces you to answer such questions as "Is it wrong to eat a baby?", to which the response is, "Not unless you're an herbivore." Which I don't usually agree with, but if it'll save me from being trampled by 50-foot tall sporecreatures, well then, sorry, babies. You'll understand when you get older--oh wait no hahaha!

Now, however, I have entered the final stage of Spore--the Space stage. This is the stage I've heard the most positive things about, and I was eager to get here. And let me tell you...it delivers. Space (space space) is the place. First of all, you're now directly controlling a spaceship, instead of merely assigning units to do your bidding. However, flying a regular UFO is boring, so you get to design (!!!) your own ship. I wanted to make the Axiom Starliner, from WALL•E:

...and I ended up designing the Haxiom Starliner.

You control your ship with the mouse or keyboard, and are finally able to leave orbit. Doing so reveals that you're in a solar system, and zooming out even further reveals other solar systems. Your ship can only move so many parsecs at once, so in order to get around, you need to hop from system to system (or upgrade your engine as the game progresses). Zooming out totally shows you the swirly spiral galaxy from the game's main menu screen, which is also in the Spore logo. See? Now you're part of the galaxy. You started out playing flOw, and now you're flying around like an idiot in a fake Axiom Starliner. Isn't life grand?

This is where the game reaches total awesomeality (is that a word i think it is). You are now able to communicate with empires stationed on entirely different planets, establish trade routes with them, form alliances, conquer them, hire them to attack other empires, and so much more. It's like Civilization mode, with less stress on immediately taking over everything. As in, other empires don't randomly attack you as often as other nations did in Civilization mode, although they do get mad at you for entering their airspace. Okay, there's no air in space, so...spacespace. However, you can curry their favor by accomplishing tasks for them, which are pretty neat. You can abduct animals, shoot them, erase their minds, terraform their land, paint their skies, or just steal their treasures. Space also leads you to my favorite thing to do in Spore, which is backstab your allies.

Example: I teamed up with the Yellow Empire (these empires actually do have names, but are all assigned colors again--and since I can't remember made up names of 200000000000000000 empires, we're sticking with the colors) and have established three trade routes with them. Now, when I try to gain the approval of the hostile Pink Empire (those jerks!!) by flying to one of the many planets in the Yellow Empire and shooting 6 infected animals, the yellow guys get a little ticked off--but since I'm supporting their economy a lot and they like me (they really like me) they stay allied with me--and I still have the use of one of their spacecraft to help me do my dirty work. It's all very backstabby and political and amazing, and once you get the hang of it, you can really work it to your advantage.

You also can sell spice directly to other empires, by delivering it to them. Different colored spice is worth more in different empires, so you've got to manage how much you're selling to which planets in order to maximize your profits. You can also buy spice from other planets and resell it, so it's up to you if you want to invest your Sporebucks in Green Spice. I'm still getting used to that mechanic, but it's great fun.

Combat is a little difficult, at least I think it is, because I only have one ally ship at the moment and we're taking on entire fleets of fighters at a time. However, I can manage smaller combat missions, which are exciting. Many missions come with a time limit, so if you're quick enough, you can pop back over to your home world, recharge your ship, and fly back into battle. I don't think that's what you're supposed to do, but if you can manage it, give it a shot.

All of this seems to be quite the overwhelming experience. So much, in fact, that even after spending a day in Space, I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I'm nowhere near halfway through, and then, who knows what'll happen? Maybe the universe will explode. Maybe the Greenus McWhatThe Empire will invent their own version of the Large Hadron Collider and create a black hole that sucks everything into it.

At least there isn't Autosave.

The Spore Diaries, Day 3: Sporeman Edifice

2008-09-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

The world is changed. I feel it in the spore-water. I feel it in the spore-earth. I smell it in the spore-air.

No longer am I micromanaging individual citizens of the planet (which happens to be called LOLSville, in case you were wondering) and caring for their eating habits. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, they're not eating at all--and if they are, they're eating spice from one of the four spice derricks that our nation has forcefully taken. I don't know how an entire civilization is supposed to survive on spice, but they are.

Since we destroyed all other tribes in Tribal mode, the planet is filled with different sovereign nations of Greenus McWhatThes. Each nation is assigned a color, that has nothing to do with anything. In this mode, you also get to design buildings. I've mentioned the Lantern Memorial Tower before, but this is the first time you get to see the creation I'm most proud of: the Sporeman Edifice.

PNG version, to drop onto your copy of Spore:

Behold, a Sporeman! This is what I imagine sporecreatures think humans look like: horrifying. This also doubles as an entertainment building, and apparently it doesn't matter that the door to get in is actually the Sporeman's mouth and that it's like 200 feet in the air with no stairways or anything. However, it keeps them happy, and it probably gives them something to do between spice overdoses.

Things were not so happy when the Crimson Nation (note: not the Red Nation) started to get on my case about "being too big" and "attacking them". So, I did what any good warrior nation would do: I cut off their spice lines. My army, now high on purloined spice, managed to wipe out the Crimson Army and establish an Economic City on their home turf. Thanks for helping me produce more spice, jerks! Those guys were totally jerks.

The game allows you to backstab, too. Not literally, because I don't really think all of the sporecreatures have backs. No, what I was able to do was ally myself with the Yellow Nation, assign them to attack the Blue Nation, and vice versa. After Yellow defeated Blue, I tasked them with attacking the Red Nation, and then, at their happiest, we struck.

By this point, I had about 20 of these on my side:

The battle was almost over, until I realized that I had two cities left to conquer. What to do, what to do...oh, right. I launched the ICBM, a weapon which I only was able to use after I had around 25,000 sporebucks, and flattened them. WE WILL BURN SPOREUTICA TO THE GROUND.

And with that, I moved on to space, the final frontier. (and stage!)

What awaits Greenus McWhatThe in Space?!

I dunno.

The Spore Diaries, Day 2: This is Sporeta!

2008-09-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

I was never really good at strategy games.

I think my first encounter with strategy games was on this CD-ROM I got with this package of Hansen's juice once (or something, it was sponsored by them and I don't really remember where the CD came from). It had some pretty good demos, some creepy ones (at least, Bad Mojo was creepy when I was like 10), and a demo for some Heroes of Might and Magic game. I liked it because you could move knights around on horses and stuff. I hated it because I didn't have any idea what was supposed to be going on.

Of course, it's 12 years later now, and since then I've attempted to play strategy games every couple of months. I've got enough problems with the Advance Wars series, and I've tried Command and Conquer demos and the like and I've never really caught the bug, I guess. The closest I've gotten is CivRev on DS, and even then, I'm only playing on one-level-above-tutorial-mode. There's something about commanding units that's not as exciting as actually doing stuff.

Imagine, then, my surprise, when my poor little clan of Greenus McWhatThe changed into a warrior tribe of Greenus McWhatThe, and was plopped into the middle of a simplified RTS. You see, every decision you make in the game actually effects (affects? EFX?) the next stage of the game, and while I started this stage with the Adaptable (read: middle-ground) trait, I was soon entrenched in battle.

First, of course, you need to arm your spore army (Sporemy?) like so:

Also, a few revisions since last time: different mouth, and the poison spitter is now mounted on their hands (so it's like they shoot webs of poison, like Poisonspiderman or something) and oh yeah a ton of armor.

Soon, though, our enemies moved into the territory. The game informed me that I could give them a gift, or defeat them in battle. I was still getting used to the controls, and I didn't actually know how to give them a gift yet, and--let's face it, my creatures have poison spitters on their flippin' hands. So, obviously, we went into battle and emerged victorious. This strategy didn't always work, as four more tribes appeared out of nowhere--some stronger than others. No longer were Singing and Dancing and Charming and Posing viable options. Instead, we used axes and fire and medics and spears and strategy and war and like three losses to the pink tribe. THE PINK TRIBE. Who do those guys think they are? Better than me at war? Probably.

After many many losses and births of babies, the Greenus McWhatThe tribe wiped out the rest of the planet, as any good warrior tribe should. Coming up on day 3: the Civilization stage. What kind of crazy antics can go down in a civilization whose main city hall resembles a large lantern?

Stay tuned.

The Spore Diaries, Day 1: Greenus McWhatThe

2008-09-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

I started as a spore.

That's how everyone starts when playing Spore: as a spore. I don't know if you know it or not, but that's kind of a large part of the game.

In case you're unaware of Spore, it's a fancy shiny new fancygame from the maker of SimCity, The Sims, probably SimAnt, SimLife, and Simsville (canceled). In Spore, you make a spore and raise a spore to become a bigger spore and then a bigger spore and soon you have a sporeman and you run a sporeworld and you develop a sporeculture. For 49.99!

If you're more Spore-savvy (Spavvy?) then you've probably already forked over the $10 for the Spore Creature Creator, a demo of a part of the game in which you create sporecreatrues. I know, I know, who would pay for such a thing? Oh right, me. Thanks a lot jerks! We'll see if I ever invite you to any of my parties again.

I probably won't, though, because Spore is so immersive. At least, that's what the back of the box indicates, and if the back of the box is lying to me, I think I've got a pretty good case against them in court. That is, unless they create a society of sporelawyers (splawyers?) to bite, charge, strike, or spit at me.

Anyway, I started as a Spore, and got to play a fancier version of flOw wherein I ate meat particles (what?) and smaller spores to nourish myself. Every once in a while, I ran across an extra "part" (raise eyebrows here) and was able to mate (!!!) with other spores (!!!!!!) to add parts to myself (????????????). That's when I realized that all the parts in the editor modes actually had purposes.

Let me explain. In the Creature Creator, people were finding all kinds of "creative" ways to make their creatures look "good". By "creative" I mean "entire creatures made out of arm flesh," which is about as creepy as it sounds. However, in the real (fake) world, it turns out that these sporetopotties actually need, like, mouths. And things to fight other spores with. And things to move around with. And body parts...to sing with.

You see, once my creature was on land and mobile, he needed to be able to make new friends with which to go killing/singing to other friends with. He also needed to be able to dance and "charm" (whatever those mean) and glide and jump and did I mention, kill other spores.

Also, apparently whatever I did at the beginning of the game means I can't buy the right kind of mouth to make him an omnivore, so he's stuck with these weird omnimouths that I gave him when he was just a little spore (as opposed to a MEGASPORE).

So, instead of turning out pretty awesome, I ended up with my newest creation, a mishmash of crazy body parts and no design sense whatsoever:

Greenus McWhatThe.

Cellspin Test

2008-07-25T16:55:00.001-07:00

I downloaded a new app, called Cellspin, that can post to Blogger.

Review: Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)

2008-02-15T23:12:00.000-08:00

A mysterious letter. A strange town. A large, structurally impractical tower.

This is the world of Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke. Intrigue, suspense, investigating.

All this talk reminds me of a puzzle.

PUZZLE 001

Bill, a man who is known for cheating everybody out of their money, because he claims they deserve it, because they don't really put that much thought into what he says before handing over their money, because he claims that everything he tells people is ridiculously simple to figure out, claims that he can predict the score of any football game even before the game begins.

How is this possible?

(answers at the bottom of the review)

Oh, forgive me for asking you to solve a puzzle that had almost nothing to do with my narrative. Hey! That reminds me of something: the entire gameplay of Professor Layton.

Don't get me wrong. The puzzles are absolutely brilliant in Professor Layton. Even if you've heard some of these brain teasers before, I can guarantee that you haven't played them on the DS before. Unless you're Japanese, and you played this game in Japanese. In which case, why don't you finish writing this review for me, jerk? Jerk-san?

That also reminds me of a puzzle!

PUZZLE 002

Mary and JoAnn are bootleggers. Each of them have several bathtubs full of bathtub whiskey.

Mary drunkenly remarks, "Yyyyyyyyyyyyknow, JoAnn, iffffffyou gifffffffvme oneoffyour bathtubssss, I'll hafff twice as--hic--twice as--hic--...double what you haffff."

JoAnn has a hollow leg. "Mary, you old drunk! If you give me one of YOUR bathtubs full of bathtub whiskey, we'll have EXACTLY THE SAME number of goats. And by goats, i mean bathtubs full of whiskey."

Although both Mary and JoAnn have consumed large amounts of bathtub whiskey, they're both right. How many bathtubs full of bathtub whiskey do Mary and JoAnn have?

Puzzles in the game are rated by Picarats, which show you how difficult each puzzle is. The easiest puzzle is a 10-picarat puzzle, and the hardest weighs in at 99 picarats. Some of the easier puzzles require you to recognize shapes of things. By that, I mean, the first puzzle requires you to recognize the shape of something. I won't tell you what. The harder puzzles actually require you to do some math. The game realizes this, and usually lets you write on the touch screen as if it were a piece of scratch paper. (I still needed to whip out the ol' calculator every once in a while.)

The game also provides you with a hint system. There are three hints for any of the 135 puzzles, which can be unlocked with Hint Coins. There are a limited number of Hint Coins in the game, which are hidden around the village like the hidden puzzles.

The game's story is actually pretty charming, despite the fact that the puzzles might seem out of place. However, after LEARNING THE GAME'S SECRETS...I get it. It all makes sense. I really don't want to ruin it, but it makes sense.

There are 120 puzzles in the main game. When you're not solving puzzles, you're exploring the village, talking to people and searching for hidden stuff. Most of the puzzles come from villagers, but a number of them are hidden in almost completely random places. (Here's a hint: one of them is by some random window in some room. CLICK EVERYTHING.)

The game features--hold on, I just remembered a puzzle!

PUZZLE 003

Steve was making apricot dynamite. He cut up all the apricots into the Bombamatic™ and pressed "Bombify!" However, he forgot to add in the nitroglycerin--35 grams per apricot. How will he know how to add the proper amount of nitroglycerin?

The game features a large amount of video and voice acting--for a DS game, anyway. It probably adds up to like 10 minutes of video. I'm not really sure, it could be more! The animation in the video is well done. I'd probably watch a Professor Layton movie. It was that awesome.

During the course of the game, you can unlock the remaining 15 bonus puzzles by accomplishing certain tasks. These challenges are HARD. At least, they were hard for me. If you're a super genius man or woman with a brain so big that you have to wear external brain packs taped around your waist like a belt, then you can probably solve them without buying any hints.

If 135 puzzles isn't enough for you, Mr/Ms Brainpack, the game allows you to download weekly new puzzles via Nintendo Wi-Fi. As I understand it, this game has been out over a year in Japan, and they are still receiving new puzzles every week.

The game also has a TOP SECRET PASSWORD that you can only get by playing the sequel to the game. You heard me...MORE PROFESSOR LAYTON.

I AGREE, NINTENDO. BRING IT ON.

That reminds me of a puzzle.

PUZZLE 004

You are flying the Millennium Falcon. The Falcon can make the Kessel Run in just under 12 parsecs. Chewbacca eats 12 bananas every parsec. R2-D2 beeps 32 times for every banana Chewbacca eats. Luke Skywalker whines constantly throughout the trip. Princess Leia redoes her hairdo every 3 parsecs, while C-3P0 says 62 words per beep. Who is in the pilot's seat?

Professor Layton is an absolute must buy. If you don't buy this game eventually, then you don't like video games. Are you gonna let some random person on the internet accuse you of not liking video games? I didn't think so.

HIGHLIGHT FOR ANSWERS:

001: Bill says that the score of every game is 0 to 0 at the beginning of each game. Bill is a horrible person, and his children hate him.

002: Mary has 7, and JoAnn has 5. THAT'S A LOT OF BOOTLEGGING!

003: By counting the pits, silly! Steve later accidentally exploded in his lab.

004: No, the answer isn't "you," it's Han Solo. No exceptions.

Adventures in Tech Support: EA, Part I

2008-01-05T01:34:00.000-08:00

I like Rock Band.

Wait, let me clarify that a bit.

I LOVE ROCK BAND.

It's the best multiplayer experience possibly ever. It inspires feelings that the Wii did, by which I mean it's just SUPER AWESOME to play.

I like it so much that I regularly purchase downloadable content for it, because they actually release new (good) content regularly! I KNOW, RIGHT?!

I rock at Rock Band. I straight up rock.

Sadly, I apparently rocked so hard that I broke my Rock Band guitar. I'm sorry, I mean my official Electronic Arts™ and MTV Games™ Present Harmonix™'s Rock™ Band™Guitar™™ Per™i™pher™al™.

I wasn't the only one having problems, apparently, so EA set up a seriously easy to use support website.

Wait, what? Something made by EA actually works and is good?

Kind of.

Within several mouse clicks, you're able to get a replacement guitar sent to your house via free 2-day air mail. All you need is an EA account (which I had!) and a credit card that won't explode when EA puts a temporary $125 "hold" on your card, to make sure that you're not just scamming them out of a guitar (which I also had!)

Anyway, I ordered it on the 21st of December, which I knew meant that I would not get it 2 days later (weekends, those crazy holiday things that screw up everything, etc). I got a UPS tracking number and everything! Score, I said. Score. I put the tracking number into the Delivery Status widget, set it, and forget it! Just like Ron Popeil would have had me do!

On the 26th, my package was on a truck, set to arrive at any moment. I made special plans to sit as close to the door as I could, without looking creepy. I even wore pants.

Apparently, the UPS guy is that girl on Heroes that can manipulate how things look around her, because I never saw or heard him come, until, hours later, I checked the tracking info again, which informed me that the box was already delivered.

Upon retrieving the box, I thought it felt a little light. Maybe it was just the guitar, because everyone complains that the Rock Band guitar is too light. I open the box, and...

NO GUITAR.

I look all through the narrow box, up and down, with a flashlight...nope. Empty. I checked to make sure I hadn't misunderstood the arrangement; I believed that the EA website said that they would send the guitar first, then place a hold on my credit card, and then I would send my broken guitar back, and they would remove the hold on my credit card. This was actually what was supposed to happen, because the packing slip claimed that there was a guitar inside the box, and that the box weighed 5 pounds.

My father is better than I am at dealing with CSRs, so I had him make my call to EA's tech support line. He's forceful. Not in a mean way, though. He just knows how to get things done when he's dealing with customer service people. I needed that, because I basically had zero proof that I did not receive a guitar. For all they knew, I stole the guitar from the box before we called. For all I know, the UPS guy took it. It was looking grim.

After explaining my problem to the CSR, he looked up my info and confirmed that EA had not actually sent out the part, but that they were supposed to send it first. I felt vindicated, and I stopped thinking terrible things about the UPS guy. (Except for the fact that he didn't even ring the doorbell, or actually make sure nobody stole my $125 worth of plastic guitar.) He said that he would somehow magically send out another guitar to my house, and to just pack up the broken guitar in the provided box and mail that back. Deal, I thought. This will work out great!

I waited until I received a tracking number for the new package before I packed up the broken guitar. I did, and I did. The package was sent, and a new round of tracking began.

On December 31st, I received a package. Again, I didn't hear the bell--it was probably the same guy, and he was probably worried that he was helping smuggle in lightweight firearms or something. I plugged it in, it worked, I 5-starred Buddy Holly again, all was good. It was a good day, and Dick Clark said "Happy Dew Year," which was funny, but not in a "good" way.

January 3rd, I receive an e-mail from EA Support, asking me to fill out some support survey. I did, because I like filling out surveys sometimes, and I was actually somewhat pleased with their service. Hey, it took me a month to get my Xbox back, more than once. A working Rock Band guitar within 10 days is good in my book.

Towards the end of the survey was a question like, "Why has your problem not yet been resolved?" That wasn't the question exactly, but that was essentially what it said, and I can't access the actual survey anymore, so you're going to have to deal with it. I checked my EA account, and found out that I had three support tickets open: my original RMA, an RMA that I had accidentally started, and the new RMA--an "Agent Request," which means the one that the CSR sent to me. By the way, RMA stands for Return Merchandise Authorization, which you will probably not need to remember.

Anyway, I explained to the survey that the reason my problem was unresolved was because the CSR sent me a guitar, and opened up a separate support ticket. I left well enough alone.

And then, today, I received this e-mail.

Dear Michael,

We trust you have received your new Xbox 360 Guitar by now and are enjoying the Rock Band experience! However, it has been 14 days and we have not yet received the faulty Xbox 360 Guitar you’re returning to us.

To avoid a charge to your debit or credit account, please return your faulty Xbox 360 Guitar immediately upon receipt of your replacement. A charge will be posted 28 days after your request for a replacement if we do not receive your faulty Xbox 360 Guitar.

Rock on, Michael!

There are a number of problems with this, which should be obvious.

1. Why are they counting 14 days from when I actually made the RMA? (they probably can't do anything about this, but they should)
2. I only received my guitar 5 days ago!

And my favorite,

3. I sent them the guitar ten days ago.

And thus begins another rousing adventure, in my Adventures in Tech Support series. More updates as the insanity continues!

Excuse me while I go to weep. I mean, sleep.

Hahaha.

2007-11-09T20:33:00.000-08:00

One of My Favorite Moments in Gaming.

2007-10-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

Cheap Wiimotes at Wal-Mart? Not Exactly

2007-10-27T14:54:00.000-07:00

The Daily Grind: Day 4

2007-09-01T15:55:00.001-07:00

I would like this to be a short update today. Really.

Picross DS

Some improvement, another weird memory score, and some lame times. 51.74 seconds for Nonstop Time Attack, 46.15 seconds for No X Marks, 39.48 seconds for Error Search, and a shocking 1.69 seconds for Memory Search. I'm like The Flash, if he used his powers for video games.

Bringeth forth thine chartest of charts!

Big Brain Academy

The only minigames that the game covered that I haven't reviewed yet are the Memorize category's "Sound Bites" and Compute's "Written Math." "Sound Bites" is pretty much like Simon, where you have to tap things in the order that they make noises, while "Written Math" forces you to solve math problems that they spell out with words. REAL ACTUAL WORDS.

My brain lost some weight, measuring in at 1070g. I still have my C+, although I now have the brain of a fashion stylist

I think this chart is pretty fashionable and stylish.

Planet Puzzle League

Two new records today! 3171 points in Score Attack, 2728 points in Lift Attack, and 145 points in Garbage Attack!

Prepare for the CHART ATTACK!

Brain Age

Brain Age 1 comes first, of course. The Stroop test was a little unforgiving today, because I messed up a couple times. I also did Number Cruncher, which required that I count things, and the good ol' Connect Maze.

Long story short, I received a brain age of 31, which I'm going to blame on the Stroop test.

Remember yesterday, when I set all those records? I did it again! It is as if by magic. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Symbol Match, and High Number. THEY ALL GOT SERVED.

For my efforts, I was assigned a brain age of 25, bringing the Aver-Age up to 28!

Here is visual confirmation of that fact.

Pac-Man

I have redeemed myself! I've learned how to not die during the first screen, and I've started using the warp thing on the left and right to my advantage. I'm going to say that the brain training is working, so that it's not a complete waste of time. I've achieved a new lifetime high score of 15250 points in Pac-Man! BILLY MITCHELL, WATCH OUT.

In fact, Billy Mitchell, why don't you writhe in fear at the sight of this chart?

I know you're writhing, Billy. I can feel it in the water.

The Daily Grind: Day 3

2007-08-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

Better or worse? YOU DECIDE! (The correct answer is "slightly worse," but I don't want to spoil it.)

Picross DS

I'm going to try something a little different today. It's not that big of a deal, I'm just going to try hosting these charts through Blogger instead of through Imageshack. What does this mean for you? Nothing.

Picross saw some interesting developments today. I made too many mistakes during Nonstop, finishing up in 66.69 seconds. If you turn it upside-down, it's 69.66 seconds, so I could have done worse. You know. If I was playing upside-down.

However, there was a marked improvement in the other games! 30.52 seconds in No X Marks (the lowest it's been in the past 3 days!), 48.01 seconds in Error Search, and 26.35 seconds in Memory--which, if you disregard the anomaly from the first day, is PRETTY GOOD.

This chart is PRETTY GOOD too.

Big Brain Academy

Oh, Big Brain Academy, is there anything you can't measure? What with your five categories of testing and all?

The Think category was well-represented by "Pathfinder," a game that requires you to draw a line. Yes, that's right. You know those old games you used to play in all those books of kids games, the ones for kids, where there was a thing at the top of a thing, and you had to draw another thing to get the thing at the top of the thing to the thing at the bottom of the thing? It's like that.

I liked the game in the Identify category, "Get in Shape," which shows you a silhouette, and then charges you with selecting the correct shapes to form it. It's PRETTY GOOD as well.

Compute and Memorize had games that I've explained before ("Coin-parison" and that one where you memorize stuff). Analyze had "CubeGame" (GET IT, LOL) which is pretty much a game where you count cubes.

All of this Academy-ing raised my brain's weight to a whopping 1143g, which is slightly higher than yesterday's! I again got a C+ grade, but I now have the brain of a museum curator!

More like museum CHARTator, am I right?

Planet Puzzle League

Disappointing today. 2979 points in Score Attack mode, and 2209 points in Lift Attack mode.

At least I got 124 points in Garbage Attack mode this time! That's 124 more than I got yesterday!

The following chart may be too extreme for younger viewers.

Brain Age

I know how you people think. You don't care about those other games! The Brain Age tests are the only reason you keep coming back. DON'T LIE TO ME.

Brain Age 1, Stroop test. I find it easier to get it to recognize "Blue" if you say everything in this low gravelly voice. Well, not like, super gravelly, but a low voice. IT'S ACTUALLY SORT OF SENSITIVE.

I also did Calc x20 and Connect Maze, but you already know what those are!

Brain age of 29. Woo! Getting back to normal!

Brain Age 2 was PRETTY G--um, PRETTY AWESOME today. I set three all-time Brain Age 2 records, which would be pretty impressive if I had been playing more than a week. The games were Rock, Paper, Scissors, Symbol Match, and Serial Subtraction.

Serial Subtraction shows you a number (like, for example, 63) and tells you to subtract another number (like, 7) over and over again (like, 63>56>49>42>35>28>21>14>7, except it usually doesn't pick numbers that can be divided so easy).

I ended up with a rockin' brain age of 28, which brings the Aver-Age up to 28.5! It's looking PRETTY ACCURATE now, right?!

Well, why don't you read the chart?!

Pac-Man

You're going to be sorely disappointed in me today. I made some terrible choices during Pac-Man, resulting in a Pac-Score of Pac-8990 Pac-Points. They kept cornering me! :(

A document of my shame:

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to work harder at brain training, Pac-Wise. I only play it once per day, so every time I play, it's like, Tron, or something, where I'll explode if the disc hits me.

Something like that.

The Daily Grind: Day 2

2007-08-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

Some interesting data today, including ANOTHER GAME. I KNOW, GUYS.

Picross DS

It occurred to me that I should be applying the negative number rule to Picross, since it uses times to measure your score. The chart has thusly been updated, and will look even weirder than I predicted it would yesterday.

Either I'm very tired today, or I was super alert yesterday. I did a good job with the Time Attack, coming in at 34.73 seconds but I ruined everything else. No X Marks took me 74.45 seconds, while the Error Search took 55.12 seconds. The Memory time is probably a more accurate representation today (35.95 seconds), since yesterday's was REALLY EASY. Here's a REALLY EASY CHART.

Big Brain Academy

The Identify category presented me with a game called "Matchmaker," wherein I had to find matches between sets of items. It's sort of easy, until they start using numbers instead of easily definable shapes.

For my Analyze score, I played a game of "Animal Lines." The game displays a grid of animals, and a pattern of them on the top screen. The object is to draw a line through the grid of animals that accurately passes through the animals on the top screen in their correct order.

The Think-related game was called "Bone Yard." A little cartoon dog thing appears in a grid, and the top screen displays arrows noting the path that the dog is going to take upon the grid. The point is to place a bone in the place where he will end up, based on the arrows. There are also large green blocks that can move, so you have to take those into consideration as well. DARN YOU GREEN BLOCKS.

Memorize and Compute were the same. HAH!

My brain weight is now 1139g! Woo! Improvement! I also now have a C+ rating, and the mind of Michelangelo!

Unfortunately, "Michelangelo" is not a number, and is therefore not featured in the following chart:

Planet Puzzle League

It's sort of hard to write a lot about the Planet Puzzle League scores. It's so boring to say, sorry. All I did was get 3170 points in Score Attack, 2419 points in Lift Attack, and 0 points in Garbage Attack.

Wait--WHAT?!

Yes, 0 points. I let the stack get too high. SORRY EVERYONE.

At least the chart should look cool now.

Brain Age

First test...Stroop Test. I finally ended up running into the "Blue" problem. That'll teach me to open my big mouth! My big typey internet mouth!!

Word Memory, which was forged from hate and lava and evil dinosaurs, let me remember only 18 of its 30 random words. Thanks, Word Memory.

My third test was Calculations x20, which I genuinely like to do.

Sadly, I ended up with a brain age of 43.

In Brain Age 2, I got my second-highest time in Rock, Paper, Scissors! TAKE THAT, STROOP TEST.

The second test was called Symbol Match. The game assigns random symbols to numbers, then shows you a number, and then you have to draw the symbol. I don't often draw ampersands, so, naturally, they throw in 9000 ampersands. Thanks guys.

I also did Math Recall again. It's like Total Recall, except less about Mars and more about Math.

My brain got older today, with a brain age of 35. BRAIN, WE HARDLY KNEW YE.

I'm introducing a new thing to the Brain Age chart, the "Average Age" (or "Aver-Age" as I am so wittily calling it) of my brain. Logically, since both games are a true measurement of the age of my brain, because of SCIENCE, I can get an even more, super-accurate estimate of my brain's decline into senility via this new item.

(FYI: Yesterday, the Aver-Age was 29.5, while today it is 39.)

THE NEW FANCY CHART PLEASE!

So, you may ask, "how does this stuff actually affect you in real life?" To which I will respond, "I don't know, but I can do an inane test to pretend to find out!" And, thus, another game is added to the fray, a game that I am impossibly terrible at...

Pac-Man

Yes, that's right. I'm bad at Pac-Man.

But, super Brain Training should have a positive effect on my Pac-Man scores, right? Isn't this how science works?!

I don't know.

But I have gotten better since yesterday! My score yesterday was 12520 points, and today it is 13280 points. ASTOUNDING!

Wild CHART appeared!

Some hits and misses today. My brain is getting older and heavier, and I'm getting worse at drawing stuff in boxes. At least I know how to run around and eat pills.

Like Pac-Man.

It was a Pac-Man joke.

The Daily Grind: Day 1

2007-08-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

I was looking through my DS collection the other day, when I realized exactly how many games wanted you to play them every day. I mean, yes, of course developers want you to love their games and play them all the time, but these games actually promote daily play as a feature. And we all know who to blame for that! (I'm looking at YOU, Brain Age!)

Anyway, I figured this would be a good enough experiment for the site. It's not really an "experiment" because I'm not really trying to figure out anything. I guess you could call it a "research project." Or a "case study." Or a "waste of time."

For the next 1 or 2 weeks, I'll be providing daily updates (I hope) chronicling my progress through 5 DS games: Planet Puzzle League, Picross DS, Big Brain Academy, Brain Age 2, and our old buddy Brain Age 1.

Much in the spirit of the Brain Age Chronicles, this new project will have fancy charts (this time, courtesy of Apple's Numbers trial).

So, what are we waiting for? Let's begin!

Picross DS

Picross measures its progress in times, so I'll be using seconds in the charts. I've only got four of the five modes unlocked right now (although I'm sure that will change.)

If you're unfamiliar with Picross, Google it, because it's hard to explain.

The first mode is Nonstop Time Attack, which presents you with 5 different 7x7 Picross grids that you have to solve in as little time as possible. Today it took me 52.89 seconds, which is actually my second highest time! GO ME.

The next mode is No X Marks, which is exactly the same as Nonstop Time Attack, except you can't place X marks anywhere on the grid. X Marks in the game help you determine where NOT to place blocks, so it's a little more challenging. I made a few mistakes, which adds additional time, so I ended up with a time of 64.02 seconds. Ugh.

Error Search is an interesting mode. It displays 5 nearly-completed puzzle, with some blocks in the wrong places, or missing altogether. IT'S UP TO ME TO PUT THOSE BLOCKS IN THEIR PLACE! (sorry.) I completely rocked this today, coming in at 38.26 seconds! Zoinks! Jinkies! RARI'M ROVER RHERE! (Scooby Doo references.)

Memory displays a single 7x7 grid for 30 seconds, and requires that you memorize the numbers outside the box to properly fill in the correct squares. (I bet you wish you'd clicked that Google link now!) Today's was frighteningly easy, and it only took 2.92 seconds to complete. THE CHART IS GOING TO LOOK WEIRD FROM NOW ON.

Please wait while we process the Picross DS chart. I'm just kidding. Here it is.

I know, it's not exciting. Also, the size of the charts will vary, because of (REASONS GO HERE.) Onward!

Big Brain Academy

Like everyone else that bought Big Brain Academy for the DS, I have not played it in months. I'm sure everyone else moved on to Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree, but I didn't! No sir, not me!

Anyway, Big Brain Academy uses the "brain weight" scale to determine how...uh...large and pulsating your brain is. Gross. They also give you letter grades, but those are pretty much determined by the weight of your brain, so I'm not going to bother putting them on the chart.

Big Brain Academy tests your brain in five categories: Think, Memorize, Analyze, Compute, and Identify. After using some special super magic mathematical algorithms, it tells you how much your brain weighs. I'M NOT SURE HOW ACCURATE IT IS. BUT NINTENDO MADE IT SO I'M PRETTY SURE IT'S A FAIRLY GOOD ASSESSMENT OF HOW MUCH YOUR BRAIN ACTUALLY WEIGHS BECAUSE IF YOU KNOW MORE STUFF THEN IT WILL MAKE YOUR BRAIN HEAVIER, BECAUSE IT'S SCIENCE AND THAT'S HOW SCIENCE WORKS. Not really.

First up is Identify. In this particular minigame, I have to touch images that match the shadows provided.

Think follows, with a minigame called "Heavyweight," that shows me a bunch of scales with stuff on them and asks me to figure out which item is the heaviest.

The Compute category challenges me with "Coin-parison," which is a little game that shows me two sets of coins, and asks which one adds up to more money. DARN YOU, MATH.

The Analyze game, "Missing Link," shows me a completed "connect-the-dots" puzzle on the top screen, and the same puzzle on the touch screen, which is missing several connected dots. The game highlights (on the top screen) a specific line it wants you to fill in, but the game also flips around the image on the top screen so that it is hard to find. DARN YOU, LINES.

Finally, we come to Memorize. The "Memo-random" game wants me to memorize images and touch the answer. This isn't like the Brain Age memory games, because this is fast-paced. TRUST ME, GUYS.

I ended up with a Brain Weight of 946g. The little man in the game says it's "pretty impressive." I also have the brain of a conductor, and a grade of...C. Somebody programmed this game to humiliate me.

HERE'S YOUR CHART.

Planet Puzzle League

Planet Puzzle League doesn't bother itself with fancy brain measurements. Rather, the game is ALL ABOUT YOUR SCORES. In fact, the game practically ATTACKS you with game modes. As in, the game modes are called "Score Attack," "Line Attack," and "Garbage Attack." They're pretty easy to explain: Score Attack measures your score, Lift Attack measures how many lines you are able to make the puzzle rise (or LIFT, hotshot), and Garbage Attack measures how many Garbage Blocks you're able to clear. Oh, you're also given 2 minutes each.

I'm going to do these all on HARD MODE just for the sake of science. Also, since they all use numbers as their scores, they all go on the same chart. HAH!

I got 3301 points in Score Mode, 2709 points in Lift Attack, and 137 points in Garbage Attack (BECAUSE IT COUNTS POINTS DIFFERENTLY.) WITHOUT FURTHER ADO HERE IS THE CHART. I told you, Planet Puzzle League doesn't like to mess around!

Brain Age

I'm combining the two Brain Age games into one category, because, let's face it, they are the same game, with different tests. I'm going to do things proper, and do them IN ORDER. I'm going to try to do the voice-recognition games whenever I can, because those are a true test of BRAIN POWER!

Brain Age 1, first test, STROOP TEST. LET'S YELL OUT SOME COLORS. I only messed up twice! How come everyone else has problems saying "Blue"?

Next up is my least favorite thing ever, Word Memory. 21 out of 30 words! Tied my best score!

Connect Maze is a welcome relief from those games, which are arguably the two hardest things to do in Brain Age. My #2 score in this. Woo?

Anyway, I ended up with a Brain Age 1 brain age of 28. Oh well.

Ah, Brain Age 2. The new kid on the block. The new boy in the backstreet. The new sync that is just N.

First up is the warped version of Rock, Paper, Scissors that forces you to shout out "ROCK," "PAPER," or "SCISSORS." The game shows you a hand forming one of the three, and an instruction to "please win" or "please lose." THIS GAME IS HARDER THAN YOU THINK, BUDDY.

Math Recall asks you to perform basic math questions, while also remembering the number that it draws over. Yes, that's right, you actually have to remember stuff. WHY?! This game is easier if you say every single problem out loud like a maniac.

My third and final test is High Number, which requires that I choose the highest number out of a series of randomly scattered numbers. It's pretty fun.

Anyway, Brain Age 2 gave me a brain age of 31. LET'S PUT IT UP ON THE CHART!

Since, in the world of Brain Age, a lower score is a higher score, I'm using negative numbers. JUST SO YA KNOW.

That wraps up today's edition of The Daily Grind. Don't expect all of them to be this long, because this took FOREVER to write.

YES, IT HAPPENED AGAIN.

2007-08-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

They've had it for a week, now. Can't I just play Marathon Durandal in peace?!

Meta: Simpsons Movie

2007-07-26T23:21:00.001-07:00

I am in the theater RIGHT NOW, GUYS.

Sent from my iPhone

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Test

2007-07-22T11:12:00.001-07:00

Word.

Sent from my iPhone

____________________________________________________________________________________
Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting

Japandemonium: Hiite Utaeru DS Guitar M-06

2007-07-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Get it? It's like the word "pandemonium" and "Japan" mixed together. ISN'T THAT SO CLEVER?!

One of my favorite video games ever is Guitar Hero (which I've reviewed). I know it's no substitute for a real guitar--all of the songs are pre-recorded. Most of them are cover songs. Some of the singers of the covers are terrible. However, it more than makes up for this in the gameplay, which is completely awesome and addictive.

Anyway, when it comes to a game such as Hiite Utaeru DS Guitar M-06, a quote springs to mind. I don't know what it's from, but this is the Internet, so I'll post it anyway:

THIS IS NO GAME.

That might not even be a quote.

The point I'm trying to make is that Hiite Utaeru DS Guitar M-06, or "M-06" as I've decided to refer to it, is not really that great of a game at all. "Wait a minute," you ask, "isn't this supposed to be a video game review site? What's up with all the guitar stuff and the iPhone pictures?" Let me explain. This guitar thing is awesome, and I really want an iPhone. More on that later.

M-06 is essentially a guitar simulator. It is, more accurately, a guitar chord simulator, that lets you play guitar chords. "That sounds lame," you say. It DOES, but it sounds pretty good. You may not be fooled, sitting there, strumming your DS with your stylus, but it is pretty decent, considering. The sound on the DS is, unfortunately, fuzzier than Fuzzy Wuzzy if he had hair, because Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't very fuzzy, was he? No, he wasn't. But the point I'm trying to make is that, if Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear who also happened to have hair, then he might be as fuzzy as the sound output of the DS.

But I digress.

M-06 is set up thusly: the touch screen displays something that is apparently supposed to represent a single guitar string. It's a big line that runs horizontally through the screen, and it sort of jiggles when you strum. The top screen displays chord names in a square shape. 8 of them indicate 8 directions on the D-Pad. These directions are customizable--so you can set "Up" to be G, "Left" to be E minor, "Down" to be C, and "Right" to be D, and you can play In the Aeroplane Over the Sea while you are actually IN an AIRPLANE over the OCEAN. See what I did there?

Pressing either of the shoulder buttons presents you with an entirely different set of chords, meaning that you can easily access 16 chords at any given time. You must hold down a direction and strum at the same time--sort of like playing a real guitar, or, for the nerdier of us, sort of like playing Guitar Hero. There are no points, and some may even say that there is no point.

There is some semblance of a video game here, though. Preloaded on the cartridge is a selection of--apparently--Japanese songs with Japanese lyrics. You can play along with these songs, and sing the lyrics if you know how to read Japanese. However, there's not really a way to lose this mode, since it doesn't follow a rhythm or a timer of any kind. As long as you eventually play the chords it tells you to, you will pass the level. Your reward is just as exciting as the game--different colors for the string on the touch screen. Great. There's another game, which is more challenging, that tests if you can recognize the sounds of chords without seeing the name. This is actually pretty fun, and is more like some kind of Brain Age test than anything.

The game has some different modes. One mode lets you adjust the sensitivity of three different areas on the string. This is hard (for me) to explain accurately, but I'm going to try anyway, using funny terms. See, when you strum down, it goes BWAAA! and when you strum up it goes bwaaa! So it's quieter, like when you really strum up on a guitar. So when you do this divide-y thingy, it seperates the string into three sections. One of the sections makes it harder for a down-strum to sound like BWAAA, which means you can make it go bwaaa if you really want that sound. This is all complicated, and it's all written in Japanese, so I don't use any of these.

You can change the tuning of the guitar, and you can change which direction you are going to use for up and down strumming. A mode called "LiveMode" moves the menu button off of the touch screen, so that--I guess--while you are plying this DS game in concert, you will not accidentally exit out to the menu. There's an option that apparently sets it to "headphones mode" and I guess makes it louder or something. You can also add reverb, which is pretty fun.

Why would you play this? Well, it's FUN. It's NOVEL, right? Right. Plus, it helps you practice playing songs--if you're into that. You can also try to get the proper cables and record yourself some acoustic music. This is more fun than it should be. Girls also like guys that can play guitar. I can't say if the same is true for guitar video games, but it's something to think about.

This game is being translated and improved, and is coming overseas to this country--the country that I am in, which is the United States, which is the country that I am posting this from. The new name for the game is Jam Sessions, and it's going to come with a built-in recorder and more effects pedals. I know, it sounds great, right?! Right.

If you're interested, wait until Jam Sessions comes out. Unless you happen to be in Japan. Or you have money coming out of your nostrils that you can waste on importing DS titles.

That's disgusting.

ElroyHead.Com Is Apparently iPhone Compatible

2007-07-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Isn't that ~~adorable~~ completely awesome?!

JAPAN UPDATE

2007-07-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

1. I'm in Hawaii now, but I WAS in Japan.
2. You can buy a lot of video games there.
3. DS games aren't region locked.
4. I brought a list.
5. Reviews coming soon.

Meta: Testing DS Browser

2007-06-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

Hey look! I'MMA TESTIN MAH BROWSER!

Review: (I'm Not Entirely Sure How I Feel About) Spectrobes

2007-04-03T11:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if this counts as a review or not, because I haven't gotten very far in the game yet.

Spectrobes is some new kind of RPG for the DS. The story takes place in space, like 50% of RPGs. The story involves fossils, of which there are like three different kinds in the first couple areas. It's basically like Pokemon, except it's lamer and harder to catch stuff and there's way less strategy involved. Also, it's made by Disney, which doesn't really matter because it has absolutely nothing to do with any lame Disney properties (I'm looking at you, Country Bear Jamboree!)

I don't think the actual storyline matters, but it goes a little something like this:

While you are out space-adventuring one day, you get a call about a Mysterious Object on some random planet. You are forced to investigate, because you're in the Space Police or something. When you investigate, you find some kind of magic wristwatch, and a frozen guy in a pod, who I will now refer to as "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer." You also engage in a battle with an evil purple cloud of monsters, which you battle with these other monsters that live inside the wristwatch.

I told you it didn't matter.

There are about 4000000000 things you have to do in this game, and I'm not entirely sure how fun any of them are. Let me give you a rundown of the flow of the game, for reference.

After you take Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer back to the ship and talk to him and get the traditional "save the world" spiel, you get a "follower" Spectrobe that follows you around. The follower guy helps you seek out Spectrobe fossils, which is what you will spend more time doing than actual battle.

To search for fossils, you have to touch the Spectrobe with the stylus. He emits a little circle of searchy-energy-stuff around him, and any hidden fossils/items show up as sparkly things. You tap one of those, and then a digging minigame starts, which I'll get to in a minute.

Let it be known that you have to actually stop walking to scan the immediate area around you for fossils. I'm pretty sure that item placement is mostly random, too, which means you'll be spending a lot of time walking and stopping. One hand on the D-Pad and one hand with the stylus hovering directly over the Spectrobe. It's like, I don't know, if you had to stop running every five seconds during the marathon. Or something equally irritating.

At least battles aren't random. Instead, purple tornadoes of monsters fly around the map, and if you hit one, you're sucked into a battle. Remember Dizzy Devil from Tiny Toon Adventures? It's kind of like that.

Before I get into the battle, let me talk about this digging minigame. Since it's about digging, it naturally takes place on the touch screen. You have to tap the screen a few times to break past a couple layers of rock, and then you see part of the fossil/item sticking out of the ground. At this point you press a shoulder button to "scan" for the basic shape of the fossil, then drill around it. This minigame is actually sort of fun, because there is all kinds of strategies for carefully removing the fossil from the ground (if you drill the fossil accidentally, you damage it, which is NO GOOD because you can lower the stats of the Spectrobe or destroy it).

Battle is a whole different story. You only take two Spectrobes into battle, because each one is assigned to a shoulder button. Your character, RandomAnimeGuy, also joins in on the action, but his attacks are mostly lame at the beginning of the game. It's a real-time battle, which is right up my alley, and you can walk anywhere within the little battle arena area. This is sort of weird, because you are moving three characters at the same time--they're not "following" you, they actually move at the same time RandomAnimeGuy moves. It's different, to say the least.

Attacks are carried out via the shoulder buttons. The Spectrobes you get at the beginning of the game pretty much just attack when you hit the buttons. However, I obtained some high-level Spectrobes through the really interesting code entry system, and they get entire attack menus upon command. I don't know if this is level-specific or Spectrobe-specific, but it's a lot easier to press R, then choose Attack, then choose which enemy to attack than it is to press R and hope you were aiming your Spectrobe at an enemy.

I mentioned the really interesting code entry system because I really like this feature. Somewhere near the beginning of the game, you get an item that unlocks the code entry machine. When you buy this DS game at your local retailer, it comes with some "bonus cards" in the case. The cards are a little see-through, and they have 7 numbered holes poking through them. When you start up the code entry system, you have to place the card on your touch screen and tap through each hole in order. I don't know why this is so amazing, but it is. The best part is that you can just LOOK at a card--or better yet, a scan of the card that you find on the Internet--and tap in the approximate areas. It helps if you get the high-level Spectrobe cards, so that you can cheat, like me.

After you dig up a fossil, you have to "awaken" it back at your spaceship. This involves a weird minigame that I don't like as much as the digging game. Awakening your fossils involves yelling into the microphone at a species-specific volume for three seconds straight. It's more fun if you don't want to yell at the game, like me, and if you try and find substitutions for yelling at it. Blowing into the microphone works, and running your finger over the microphone seems to work on the DS lite.

Overall, it's not a bad way to waste time, right now--although I hope that I end up finding more than just the same four kinds of fossils. Battle takes a while to get used to, but when it works, it's not bad. I didn't get to test out the online features, but from what I gather, there isn't any online battle, so I probably won't get into it anyway.

In short, it's fun, but it's no Pokemon.

Website Does Fake April Fool's News

2007-04-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

A popular website on the Internet has done the unthinkable: posting a fake news story on April Fool's Day.

Many readers either believed it or they didn't, and many either complained or didn't complain about it. Some thought it was funny; others, in a stark contrast, didn't think it was that funny. Most readers could agree, however: it was certainly not true, and it was certainly on the Internet.

Sources say that the post was meant to be "a joke," but sources say a lot of things.

April 22nd, Here I Come

2007-03-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

It's the best Earth Day ever!

Meta: ElroyHead.Com Soars Into Twitter-arity

2007-03-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

Hey look at the sidebar. It's a Twitter badge!

Now you can keep up with the random musings of a crazy person--me!

Twitter is pretty awesome because I can update 40000000000000000 ways, and it takes like ten seconds to do. So yeah. Twitter.

Microsoft: "LOL, FOOLED YOU!"

2007-03-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

The second announcement, made on Wednesday, was really pretty lame--and had nothing to do with the Xbox 360 (even though I'm tagging it as such) and I don't really know why they hyped it up like that.

http://on10.net/Blogs/larry/exclusive-video-new-mobile-web-browser--deepfish/

Basically--a new web browser for Windows Mobile. Great! Let me get my Windows Mobile Phone!

Oh wait I don't have one! Oh well. At least I can still play Java-based Sudoku on my SLVR, right? Right.

This isn't the Halo beta at all! This isn't even remotely cool! :(

Worlds Collide! Mario and Sonic Together At Last <3

2007-03-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

So yeah, check this out, folks:

http://marioandsonic.sega-europe.com/en/index.html

Mario and Sonic?! AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES?!?!?! We haven't had a game about the Olympics on this magnitude since that Izzy game came out.

I actually liked the Izzy game, because you could turn into a rocketship. I hope the Mario/Sonic game lets you turn into a rocketship, because I think it's actually one of the Olympic events.

Microsoft: "LOL, U KNEW THIS ALREADY"

2007-03-27T21:21:00.001-07:00

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360elitesystem/default.htm

Hey look, all those rumor-thingies were right.

Microsoft: "LOL, ANNOUNCEMENTS"

2007-03-27T18:58:00.000-07:00

Source: http://on10.net/Blogs/larry/breaking-two-exclusives-in-two-days/

If you are too tired to read, I will sum it up for you: Microsoft is going to announce something tonight at 9pm PST and tomorrow at 9pm PST.

Of course you probably read that on a better video game blog. LOL INDEED.

Meta: Tags!

2007-03-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note: all the posts are tagged now. On the right, you'll see a list of "Features" and "Platforms" which should take you to all the necessary places. For example, this post is tagged "Meta" which means that if you click the "Meta" link on the right you'll see only the posts tagged "Meta" which includes this post which is tagged "Meta". Get it?

Also, apparently, the RSS feed link changed. Also, apparently, I screwed up the RSS feed with all this post tagging. So, uh, I reviewed Guitar Hero a long time ago, not just today.

That is all.

In Other News...

2007-03-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Review: Joust

2007-03-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your interest in Xbox Rewards. Due to technical issues, you may have experienced difficulties while trying to register for Xbox Rewards. Please accept our sincere apologies. To help make up for any inconvenience this may have caused you, we are providing you with two Xbox LIVE® Arcade games*.

Yes. Yesssssssssss. Thanks, Microsoft. I don't really remember having difficulties, but what are you gonna do? You're going to accept the flippin' free games and keep your mouth shut, is what you're gonna do. I wonder what they are!

Joust (ESRB Rating: E)
Robotron (ESRB Rating: E)

...heyyyyy, that isn't fair! Those both cost 400 MS points! And I already HAVE Robotron!

Well, I guess Joust could be fun. It's a classic, right? And it's not like I have high Xbox Live Arcade standards, anyway--I bought that fish game, after all.

For those of you not familiar with Joust, let me begin with a story. Long long ago, in the Nineteen-Eighties, there was a thing called The Arcade. Wait, never mind, this intro is horrible.

A while back, video games used to be original. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, right? But back then, we didn't have games like Madden 07 or Call of Duty 3 or John Madden Presents: Call of Duty: World War II Shooter 07. We had games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Yes, Moonwalker technically came out in 1990, but it belongs in the 80s. And it can take Robo-Jackson and Evil Joe Pesci with it!

While ideas were being thrown around, apparently somebody got the insane idea to make a game about riding ostriches into battle. Maybe I'm just unaware of the big ostrich craze that took place in the 80s. (Did you know that Mario was originally an ostrich? And that Luigi was a taller ostrich?) Aside from the ostrich obssession, they also decided to throw in some pterodactyls. You know, those kinds of pterodactyls? The ones that fly around in the sky, and also happen to be dinosaurs? Yeah. Those.

Eighties(Ostrich + Battle + Pterodactyls) = Joust. That's algebra.

Joust is one of the earlier entries to the Xbox Live Arcade. The presentation is pretty much exactly like that of Robotron, which is to say, not very exciting. I mean, it's a game about battling people while riding an ostrich, right? Shouldn't that be accompanied by a wicked awesome intro screen? It should.

By the way, Wikipedia claims that the ostriches are really "rocs" which are supposedly mythical creatures. Of course, it is Wikipedia. Go on and edit it and say that they are really elephants. Elephants who are tripling their population. Go on, do it. Joust reality has become a commodity!

So, graphics. I won't really say much about graphics. Joust is now presented in High Definition. This is truly a great achievement in the game industry.

Let's make this absolutely clear: either Joust is extremely difficult, or I am just naturally horrible at it. Let me clarify this further: either the controls for Joust were horrible this entire time, or the controls for Joust on Xbox 360 are in themselves horrible. Fortunately, I don't have a Joust arcade cabinet in my house, because it would just be a massive waste of space since I really hate Joust.

So let me explain the controls to Joust. Thumbstick: moves you around. A button: flap your sad little ostrich wings. The controls are simple, but that's not the problem. The problem is the fact that you have very little control while you are in the air. Imagine, if you will, ostriches flying around in the air (can't happen) and then running into each other head on (uh okay) and then bouncing off each other (can't happen) and then trying to turn around in mid-air (can't happen) and it happens to take half an hour because the acceleration is messed up. The point I'm trying to make is that the acceleration is MESSED UP.

Your ostrich basically only has two speeds: "Sitting Duck" speed (slow) and "CLEVER SPACEBALLS REFERENCE" speed (fast). I don't have a name for the speed you're going for the 80% of the game you spend accidentally flying backwards, but I'm sure you'll come up with your own! (May I suggest "I want my 400 points back"?)

The game's sound is accompanied by the standard 80's bloops and bleeps. The thing is, they went through such trouble to try to reproduce an authentic "wing flapping" sound, and it has the comical "woah hit the brakes!" skidding sound, but it beeps when you hit a rock. I know that always happens to me! Also, remember the familiar old Joust theme song? Hint: there wasn't one!

As far as Achievements go, the game has such creative entries as "Get to Wave 5" and "Get to wave 10" and "Get to wave 30" and "Get to Wave 100". Anybody who plays Joust up until Wave 100 deserves way more than 40 Gamerscore for their efforts. They deserve a better game.

There are some other achievements, that have to do with earnestly playing the game, and the like. These ranked Versus ones seem to be the hardest to get, since I defy you to actually find anybody playing this game on Xbox Live. LOL!

To sum this all up, if you don't remember ABSOLUTELY LOVING the arcade version of Joust...don't bother. There are better things to spend your points on, like Geometry Wars, or THE BEST GAME EVER MADE, Galaga.

However, if you happen to receive the same e-mail that I did, with the free download code, go for it.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Console Wars: Nintendo Wii

2006-11-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

-BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!-

Hello? Is-bzzt-this work-bzzt-ing?

-BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!-

I think-bzzt-that one had-bzzt-an extra Z. -bzzt-

-BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!-

There it goes. No more bzzting.

-bzzt-

Lame.

Allow me to explain what's going on here. You see, I have travelled from the FUTURE, through an INTERNET TIME MACHINE. The future is a post-Wiipocalypse, where the entire family structure as you now know it has been turned around and kicked out the proverbial rock club door because it didn't have the proverbial wristband to get to the proverbial backstage area to talk to the proverbial band and maybe move some proverbial sound equipment out to the proverbial tour bus. What I mean to say is that things have changed, and it's all the Wii's fault.

As we all know by now, Nintendo is reaching out to the uninitiated gamer with this latest console. As in, any idiot should be able to pick up Wii Sports and hit the tennis ball. Unless that idiot doesn't know what tennis is in the first place, but you'd have to be a pretty uncultured idiot to not know what tennis is.

In the weeks approaching the Wii's launch, there was a sudden surge of Wii advertisements. Wii-vertisements? No, that's a stupid name. Wii was everywhere--in a two-episode South Park story arc, advertising during Dancing With the Stars, and various other things that I'm not going to link to. In short: Nintendo wants to take over the world one person at a time, and if those people happen to be middle-aged women watching Mario Lopez do the waltz, then so be it.

What the folks over at Nintendo never anticipated was just exactly how successful this combination of intuitive gameplay and the sensual swinging of AC Slater's hips would prove to be. People bought consoles, people plugged in consoles, people played Wii Sports, people all agreed that Wii Boxing was the coolest, and people all went to sleep that night. Yes, the average Wii-owning American family all experienced the exact same thing at roughly the exact same times, give or take a couple hours because of time zones and those freaky states that don't observe the organized lie of Daylight Saving Time. However, what transpired over the next few days would rock the foundation of the average Wii-owning American family--in more ways than one.

On Day 2, there wasn't much of a notable difference.

FATHER: Are you kids still playing that Wii? (This was be pronounced as "Why.")
KIDS: It's pronounced "Wii." (Pronounced in the usual manner.)
FATHER: [Disapproving glare.] Well whatever it is, pause it. Dinner's ready. You don't want it to get cold.
KIDS: [Disapproving glare, regarding the use of the cliche.]

Note the casual mispronunciation of "Wii," a common tactic among many parents. (See: Pokémon) It seemed...normal. This time would pass as all other console launches passed, mispronunciations and disapproving glares in abundant supply. Also, a lot of dinners would actually get cold.

However, nobody knew what to expect, when, on Day 3, everybody heard this exact sentence.

FATHER: Hey, let me try that tennis game you got there.

The kids guided their father through the simple process of creating a Mii. The father found this mildly amusing, but he was only doing this to appease his children. The kids then loaded up the Wii Sports disc, went through the menu system, and set their father loose on tennis. They showed him what to do, which character was his, and what "those funny square things" under his Mii represented. He began playing.

Three hours later, the kids finally won the arduous struggle, and reclaimed the Wii remote from their father. Somebody then carried the father to the kitchen. The father stood frozen in the kitchen, eyes wide, arms trembling, moving only to wipe the sweat out from his eyes.

FATHER: That...was...amazing.

The very fabric of life in the average Wii-owning American household was about to get its seams ripped out and replaced with dental floss, and while that metaphor doesn't make any sense, it would still be pretty shocking. Children everywhere would suddenly find that they had less and less time to spend with their new console. Saturday morning cartoons were replaced with hour-long dungeon-crawling Zelda sessions--and the kids weren't being invited.

FATHER: Hey, son--do you know what "turbo graphics" are? Because I just bought 40 of them through the "Why Shop Channel."
SON: It's a classic game console. And it's pronounced "Wii Shop Channel."
[pause]
SON: ...where's my digital camera?
FATHER: I needed the memory "chip" for these "turbo graphics." Did you know that this "Why" uses the same memory "chip" as your camera?
SON: But what happened to the actual camera?
FATHER: How do you think I paid for the "turbo graphics"?

Eventually, the Opera browser was released, and the Weather and News channels became fully active. Suddenly, the parents could access all the things they needed--all through their children's console.

The children were not pleased.

KIDS: Mom, dad--we need to talk.
FATHER: No.
MOTHER: No.
KIDS: We never get to play anymore.
FATHER: You also don't work forty hours a week to support your family.
MOTHER: You also don't need to check the weather for the big FAMILY VACATION that we're planning.
FATHER: Yeah, we're taking a big vacation.
MOTHER: A big one.
KIDS: Where?
FATHER: New York.
MOTHER: Nintendo World.
FATHER: To get some Wii merchandise.
MOTHER: You're not invited.
FATHER: Also, I need some component cables.
MOTHER: Yeah, 480p news and weather.
FATHER: But you're still not invited.
KIDS: . . . (This indicates stunned silence.)

The Wii was only a gateway to the world of the DS lite, and soon both Mother and Father were Training their Brains, Nintening their Dogs, and Clubhousing their Games. DS/Wii connectivity allowed them to fully take over every cool Nintendo system in the house. Also they wouldn't buy their kids an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, which wasn't fair. Seriously.

Cut to a few years down the line: Mom and Dad are full-on gamers, and they're both unemployed. Children have taken to more adult hobbies, such as stamp collecting and thimble collecting and doing taxes and working ten hours a week and supporting the family and taking out the trash and paying bills and talking to the neighbors when they're going to build a new fence and watering the grass and mowing the lawn and caring for the flowers in the garden and planting tomatoes and getting the paper and reading the paper and throwing away the comics except for the crossword puzzle page and doing the sudoku puzzle and tearing out the crossword puzzle and reading Family Circus and writing letters to the doctor in the newspaper because you were angry about how he responded to that poor old woman in Wyoming because she has to be at least 83 and in poor health and she just wanted to know what he thought about the medicine she was prescribed by her doctor and it didn't seem right that he was so mean to her just because she was taking an active part in being concerned about the health care that she was being given by her doctor and saying 'how dare he respond with such candor!' and asking if this is what they call bedside manner nowadays and saying that you can understand why he just writes a column now instead of being a real doctor and also yelling at the judge shows on TV.

Also, kids won't get to play Zelda. Who wants to live in a world where kids don't get to play Zelda?

In closing, it is clear just how a prevalent a threat the intuitive controls and engaging gameplay of Nintendo's Wii console present. You must do your part to prevent this tragedy from taking place. I'm not telling you not to buy the Wii; I'm telling you never to tell anybody about it, and if that means opening Wii-related speakeasies (speak-wii-sies?) underground, then so be it.

Over and out. -bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt-

Time passes.

-BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!-

Okay, scratch the speakeasy idea. That just spawned some kind of horrible lobster/bear species, and I don't even want to know how that happened. So, uh, just take turns.

And that goes for you too, Mr. Father.

And you, Mrs. Mother.

And you, Mr. Pinchy-Bitey, the lobster/bear.

-bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt-

Current Status

2006-11-07T00:39:00.000-08:00

For a detailed analysis of what will happen, please click here, here, here, here, and here.

Meta: ElroyHead.Com Soars Into Popularity

2006-11-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

Guess which rarely-updated video game news blog got featured on a Weblogs, Inc weblog? This rarely-updated video game news blog got featured on a Weblogs, Inc weblog!!

http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2006/10/22/console-wars-lcd-edition/

Yes, the news post is about one line long, and yes, he incorrectly assumes I'm from Australia (G'DAY MATE KANGAROO KNIFEY-SPOONY FOSTER'S), and yes, it would appear as though I've only generated a grand total of 4 hits from it, but...that's popularity. This is fame.

No pictures, please.

The Console Wars: Microsoft Xbox 360

2006-10-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

Previously on The Console Wars, we took a look at Sony's new offering, the ~~Plaga Statim~~ PlayStation 3. This time, we're taking a look at the first console out of the gate--Microsoft's Xbox 360.

The 360 launched last November, to insane shortages. Everyone who bought one at launch was either crazy, insane, mental, or had some extra money lying around to pay for super expedited shipping (read: crazyinsanemental). Or, they preordered it way in advance. That's silly, though. Who would preorder something that far in advance??

The console itself did not go without criticism, either. Many were quick to note the lack of attention paid to graphics in certain launch titles--thanks a lot, ports--and some noticed that the system may have been prone to crashes. That'll probably be the last link.

Of the criticisms about the 360's graphics, one phrase has stood out above the pack: Xbox 1.5. Let's ignore the fact that it goes against the Xbox numbering scheme, and get on to brass tacks. Tax? I don't know. Forget I said anything.

For this special edition of The Console Wars, we're going to look at two brand new Xbox games. Since these are brand new, surely we will be able to exhibit the Xbox 360's power, right? Second-generation graphics, right? We'll see about that.

The Contenders

Above: Robo Blast, Mystic Castle

These two Xbox games demonstrate the pure processing power of the 360's tri-core processor. That's three of them! Each of them features the 360's revolutionary "d-pad and one button" scheme, which is perfect for moving around and doing exactly one thing.

Let's get on to the reviews!

Robo Blast

Note the green wrist strap.

Robo Blast shows Microsoft's new approach to kid-friendly gaming by including a wrist strap that only fits malnourished three year old children. If your child manages to affix the console to their wrist, they'll be treated to a one-half-inch tall hunk of plastic that serves no purpose other than to allow you to play Robo Blast. This is not recommended, as it is easier to blast robos with both hands at the helm.

The premise is simple: there are robos everywhere, running amok, without supervision, and it is your job to blast them into submission. This is accomplished by moving a targeting reticule around the grid, aiming for the aforementioned robos, and pressing the green "blast" button. Yes, all of the buttons are green, and yes, I've forgotten to tell you to flick the "on" switch on the side, but in this day and age, I assume you all know your way around complex electronics.

Given the fact that the Xbox 360 is fully capable of providing surround sound, I was surprised to hear the familiar bleeps and bloops of an old arcade game from the 80's. Is this supposed to appeal to my retro-gamer needs? Because it totally does.

The presentation in this game is a little lackluster. Where's the introductory cutscene? Where's the soundtrack? Where's the voice acting? Where's any kind of menu system at all? The answer to all of the above is "nowhere near this game". How long have you been making video games?

The lack of online multiplayer hurts this game. In a game so rife with possible multiplayer modes (co-op robo blasting, robo vs. robo, capture the robo) it is almost unimaginable that the devs would skip this. Perhaps a patch from the Xbox Live Marketplace? I don't know. Maybe.

The controls could use some tweaking, as well. The d-pad is even less responsive than the regular 360 controller's d-pad. Oh no I didn't! Oh yes I did.

Bottom line--skip Robo Blast, or wait until the Platinum Hits version drops.

Mystic Castle

Get me my +2 Sword of Sexy Justice

Mystic Castle is a gem in a sea of less-than-fulfilling gems, a veritable "good game" amongst a wave of "lame games".

Mystic Castle is a dungeon crawler--in the truest sense. Fighting your way through hallways, other hallways, and even MORE hallways, looking for items and pressing your green fire button to fire your weapon at enemies. The gameplay here is reminiscent of Elder Scrolls IV, in that it takes place entirely from a first-person perspective. Visually-stunning LCD graphics take the Xbox 360 headfirst into the true era of high-definition entertainment.

The storyline follows thusly: your main character--a Robot (not to be confused with a Robo, from the dreaded Robo Blast franchise) seeks items. What items they are, I do not remember, because I lost the manual. The fact of the matter, however, is that these items have been lost inside a mystical castle--the Mystic Castle, if you will--and are guarded by enemies. Dangerous blip-shaped enemies.

The core gameplay should be familiar to us all--walk down the hallway until it looks like you've come up to a wall, press "right", continue walking, go into a door, and, depending on the size of the blip you run into--walk into it or fire at it. It is rare nowadays to come upon a game that blends these elements--walking and firing and recognizing the size of things--so flawlessly, so beautifully.

Some famous people once said, "Trust, but verify." Others have said "I am not an animal." This makes up what seems to be the general consensus about this game. This game also lacks multiplayer, but its single-player campaign is SO deep and involving that I've literally lost seconds of my life to it. Minutes, even. If I'm not too careful, I could miss a commercial on TV or something.

The controls here are a tad unresponsive as well, but that only adds to the stark realism of the game. If I was walking down a hallway, how long would it really take me to fire at an enemy? To enter a doorway? To pick up an item? It would probably take me as long as it would to press the corresponding buttons on my controller. That's what I'm getting at.

The soundtrack is full of gleeful and mystic bleeps and bloops.

Mystic Castle is the perfect video game, the epitome of "totally rad", an X-Play 5 out of 5, et cetera. Pick up this game and immerse yourself; LCD graphics like this only come but once a year.

So wlll the Xbox 360 survive the console wars? Only time will tell. But if they keep making more Mystic Castles and less Robo Blasts, the future is looking up.

Signing off!

BLEEEEEEEEEEEP BOOOOOOOOOOOP BOOOOOOOOOOOOP BLEEEEEEEEEEEP

(That's the end theme to Mystic Castle.)

The Wii-order Adventure

2006-10-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

Today's top story: wild alligators on the loose.

Today was the day for Wii preorders, according to EBGamestopGeneralElectricKmart. I am ALL for preorders. I know what it's like to run around like an idiot.

I had the perfect plan. It was the perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, a perfect, the perfect plaaaaaaaan. I would show up early. Nobody would show up early, right? Not in this small town! No way! Not at all!

Of course people will show up early. It's Nintendo. I figured an hour early should be enough, right?

At around 8am this morning, I set up my little. camping kit.

(Pictured: DS Lite, a memory card case filled with DS games, and a Victory Smartie. Not Pictured: Camera, and the elroyPod.)

I was amped. I was charged. I was stoked. I was ready.

I arrived at EBGames at 9:07am, 53 minutes before opening. There were about 12-14 people in line. I stood at the back of the line, queue'd up some Decemberists on the ol' elroyPod, and got to waiting.

After about 20 minutes, a guy steps out of the store with a clipboard. I squealed a little on the inside. A clipboard means justice. He began taking names from the people at the front of the line, when I hear this:

SOME GUY: I'd better get on the ^#$%# list, I've been here since 4 in the morning!

4 IN THE MORNING?!?!?! How am I supposed to compete with that?!

After a couple names are written down, he turns to the rest of us, and I know what's coming. He's got that look that the ride operators have on their face when the rides break down.

EBGUY: I have some bad news. We only have 10.

Great for everyone else, not so great for mister 15th-in-line. He kindly re-directs us all to another store, which I totally decide to not visit because i have four people ahead of me.

Is this the end of our tale? Will my Victory Smartie go UNOPENED?!

No, it won't! I take this as a hint to drive to an EBGames in a totally OPPOSITE direction. I'm excited, so of course I make 15000000 wrong turns along the way. I get there, and am greeted with a crowd of about 20 people, at another store with only 10 preorders. That Smartie is burning a hole in my pocket, so I drive to another store.

When I arrive at the third EBGames, this is what I see:

"HAHAHA!" I exclaim to myself. "THE LINE IS REALLY SHORT!"

If you'll notice, the guy on the far right brought a TV. What you DON'T know is that he also had Guitar Hero plugged into it. Clearly this was a sign! Clearly this was meant to be!

ME: IS THIS THE WHOLE CROWD?
GUITAR HERO GUY: What?
ME: FOR THE PREORDERS
GUITAR HERO GUY: Oh, those are already gone.
ME: . . .

At this moment, I see about five people walk out of the store, grinning and clutching their preorder receipts in their grubby claws. Okay, that's not entirely fair. But they were huge jerks, probably.

Right around then I started to feel a little discouraged. I was about to give up, when I remembered that there was a GameStop in the mall adjacent to this little minimall.

I'm up for an exercise in futility every once in a while, so I decide to go. I forgot where the store was in the mall, so I ended up parking on the completely wrong side. This caught my eye:

After trudging to GameStop, I noticed it was about 10:15. "No way," I said. "No chance."

I arrive to a line of about 15 people. Nobody's saying anything, I don't see any lists, nothing. I decide to stand in the line, because what else am I going to do? People at the front of the line keep leaving happily with receipts, like this guy's back:

LOL I PREORDERED A WII

I'm busying myself with taking humorous photographs:

LOL I'M 12 AND I'M A MANAGER

As I stand there, I wonder: will my dreams of preordering be...flushed away?

By the way, in the midst of all this, in the middle of a phone call, my cell phone decides to stop working. The only thing that works now is the little joystick, and it just dials the number 6. I can't even answer calls.

It's been about a half hour now, I'm thirsty, I'm angry at my cell phone, I'm mad that I've been carrying around my DS all day and I haven't used it at all, I'm mad that this is my fourth store, and I'm mad that all of a sudden I realize that they have a list of names from earlier in the day.

When I get up closer:

ME: Do...I have to be on the list?
GAMESTOP GUY: [checks] No, you should be fine.
ME: What spot am I?
GAMESTOP GUY: 21.
ME: How many are you getting?
GAMESTOP GUY: 30.

YES! FINALLY! A RAZZ-A-MA-TAZZ-A-LA-WAM-BAM-DIGGITY! (lame)

I preordered a lot of things there. A Wii, an extra controller, some product replacement thing--I might have preordered Reggie Fils-Aime. I was so excited. Still mad about the phone, but excited. I was now the proud owner of a receipt. It was now 11:15.

And the Smartie of Victory was delicious.

UPD8: Media List, NHL 07 Season, Wii Price and Info

2006-09-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

If you'll notice, I changed the "now playing" section to a myMediaList. This makes it easier for me to update that section of the site, as well as provides a way for me to steal bandwidth from EBGames.com. (sorry)

You should also take note of that NHL 07 part of the list, because I will be tracking my progress through NHL 07's Dynasty Mode. I'm sticking close to my roots by choosing the Los Angeles Kings to lead to victory. To ensure (insure?) accuracy (accuracy?), I will not be restarting any games (lame), and I will not be switching control over to the other team so that I can pull their goalie and then switch back to my team so that I can score unlimited empty-net goals (double lame). Expect a full review eventually, along with reviews of Mario Hoops 3-on-3 and Test Drive Unlimited. You MAY even get to see the rest of the Console Wars series! Maybe.

Also, the Wii will cost $250 and will come with Wii Sports and it will come out on November 19th. IN THE US. Japan gets it for 25,000 yen, sans Wii Sports, on December 2nd. LOL, JAPAN! LOL.

Sorry about the LOLing.

Review: Star Fox Command

2006-08-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, gas prices go up. Every once in a while, a good TV show gets cancelled. Every once in a while, someone loses a sock and they blame the dryer.

Every once in a while, a Star Fox game comes out.

Star Fox Command has some interesting predecessors. Star Fox for the SNES featured the Super F/X chip, which graced the SNES with the power to render triangles like no other console could. Star Fox 64 introduced N64 fanatics to the Rumble Pak, and it introduced us all to floating brains that had big eyes flying around at the end of electrical trails. Dinosaur Planet--I mean, Star Fox Adventures--was a game that featured Fox McCloud hitting things with a staff. Star Fox Assault was a game that tried to bring the series back on track, which meant adding a third-person shooter aspect that I didn't like.

When you think about the DS as being a portable N64, and you think about Star Fox Command being a DS release, you may think that this game will be akin to the N64 game. And, well, it's not.

First, I'll get to the characters. Peppy is a General now!

Okay, enough about those guys. Let's talk about the differences between Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Command!

1. No more rails! Instead, you get this new strategy-game-like element which makes up the core of Star Fox Command. At the start of each mission, you are presented with a map, with icons representing the Great Fox, enemy groups, and your entire fleet. That sentence had a lot of commas. From the map, you must draw paths that lead you to the enemy ships, and then engage in dogfights. Occasionally these lead to boss battles (and let's not forget Star Wolf!). Of course, the removal of the rail-shooter element means that it's not as cinematic as Star Fox 64. Remember those falling buildings and columns?! Those were awesome.

2. The controls. Let me make this clear: if you have recently lost your stylus and don't plan on buying another one, forget this game. Let me clarify further: A, B, X, Y, L, R--and the Control Pad--all do the exact same thing: shoot and lock-on. If you thought Metroid was crazy, you'll think this is even crazier. The stylus is used to steer, drop bombs, barrel roll, boost, brake, U-turn, and loop. The bomb-dropping is pretty sweet, because you can drop it anywhere on the radar (which is also featured on the lower screen!).

3. Peppy is a General.

4. The voices. I was tooling around in the options menu, when I ran across an option to replace the "voice" of the characters in-game with my own "voice." I'm a pretty vain person, and I like to feature myself as much as I possibly can within video games. What followed were a series of questions that I was expected to answer via microphone, such as "Who do you like?" (Nintendo!) "What do you like to do?" (...play Nintendo!) "Who do you not like?" (SONY!). After that was complete, I was treated to a sound test screen, which allowed me to play back my voice. All of your answers will be totally unrecognizable beneath the layers of editing and filters. Admittedly, it would be weird for Slippy to say "Hamburgers!" every time he got hit.

5. MULTIPLAYER. Yeah, Star Fox 64 had multiplayer, but here's what bugged me: You always had to have it split the screen four ways. I can't remember if that's true, but if it is, I told you so. Star Fox Command lets you access the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and compete with players around the world. The Friend Code system is back, and so is the Rival system from Metroid Prime Hunters. Online dogfights shine, and are extremely exciting. Here's how they sound when I play them: BEEP BEEP BEEP! AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa the beeping means I'm being locked on! AAAAAAAAAAAH I GOT SHOT! AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA I GOT THE SUPPLY RING I WONDER WHAT IT DOES! AHAHAHA I GOT A STAR AHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BEEP BEEP BEEP! No, I don't make the beeps by myself.

If you're looking for Star Fox 64 on DS, this isn't it. If you're looking for a Star Fox game with some strategy elements and beeping multiplayer, this is the game for you.

Plus, Peppy is a General.

The Console Wars: Sony Playstation 3

2006-07-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

NAME: Sony Playstation 3
SIZE: 15 square miles
TARGET MARKET: Anybody that doesn't know what "E3" means

The Sony Playstation 3 was originally conceived as an entirely new continent. However, the disappointing surface area of the first several prototype models discouraged the executives, and it was then decided that the Sony Playstation 3 would simply become a supercopmuter, capable of reading lips and causing mass mayhem.

Several bloggers at the recent Electronics Entertainment Expo took note of the size of the Playstation 3, stating that the controls for the eighteen-wheeled power-supply-wielding vehicle were, at times, unresponsive, and, at other times, life-endangering.

The "Playstation" moniker was derived from the latin phrase "plaga statim," which refers to a disease from ancient Rome that was instantly contracted, and, at times, life-endangering (note: 'at times,' in this case, means 'always'). When afflicted, a person was required to etch "PS" in front of a crowded marketplace onto a nearby rock, followed by the number of strains of the disease he was currently carriying. In this case, "PS3" was a fairly good sign, because it meant that only those that came within ten feet of the afflicted individual would themselves be struck with disease.

The PS3 makes use of a Cell processor, which has less to do with cell phones than the average person might believe. The Cell processor was crafted by James E. Motion, creator of the ever-famous "emotion engine" that was featured within the Playstation 2. Many Sony critics note that, despite the presence of an "engine" within the Playstation 2, it was unable to drive anywhere. To quote one Sony fan: "The Emotion Engine owns anything your purple Nintendo Gamesquare can do. I drove it to work this morning." All Sony fans are liars.

Sony is including "Drummy, the DRM-powered Robot" with every console purchase. Hearkening back to the days of the Nintendo ROB, "Drummy" connects wirelessly to your PS3, and is used to enhance select game experiences. As an added bonus, "Drummy" will destroy any burned CDs and MP3 files you may have lying around your home. As "Drummy" puts his foot through your generic-brand television set, he will howl in pain and scream "you should've bought a Sony television" and "please stop emotionally terrorizing Drummy" and "please direct Drummy to any other non-Sony appliances." He will also leak oil onto your PS3 games, which cannot be replaced by warranty.

To top off the delicious sundae that is the PS3, Sony is throwing in a first-generation Blu-ray player, because, as the old saying goes, "always buy version 1 of everything!" Blu-ray is a wonderful new technology that will require you to purchase a new, high-definition television set (and why not a "Drummy"-approved SONY set?), because, as it is stated in the PS3's instruction manual: "Playing Blu-ray Discs on a standard-definition television is stupid." Blu-ray technology drives the price up an additional 200 dollars, which brings the final cost of the PS3 to "your firstborn child and 200 dollars."

There's also something about a motion-sensing controller, but they just told me about that right now.

Review: Point Blank DS

2006-06-27T17:58:00.000-07:00

When you walk into an arcade, what do you see? Yes, those are all good answers.

Wait, what's that? One of you hasn't ever been to an arcade? Whatever, Mister Segue. Even though I don't really believe you, I'll tell you what I see when I walk into an arcade.

Upon opening the door, a flood of lights and sounds floods you like a flooding flood. Yes, lights and sounds, like that song! You know. "Lights and Sounds." Don't know it? It's like a Yellowcard song, without the cool and unique violin music.

Muscling your way past the kids with tickets stuffed in their hands with which they wish to redeem prizes, you can find a setup of fighting games with really nice screens, and three thousand kids playing them at the same time. I don't know how they all fit, but they do. And the number is always three thousand.

On either the front or back wall is usually Dance Dance Revolution. Everyone has played Dance Dance Revolution at least once, according to scientific studies. Either you really like it (I CAN ACE MANIAC-LEVEL SONGS, SERIOUSLY) or you were pressured into playing it (WHAT, WHEN DO I STEP, I DON'T UNDERSTAND).

Then there's usually some old games, like the Simpsons arcade game! This is worth paying money to play again for the 100000000th time. If you bring a friend, you can do combo attacks. YEAH HOMER, THROW BART AT THAT CLOWN! Those stupid clowns.

There's also the wall of racing games. These are all exactly the same.

After mucking through all that nonsense, you end up at the wall with all the LIGHT-GUN GAMES. Take aim and fire away at a screen with a plastic gun? Yes please! These test vital skills you will need later in life, such as warding off an alien invasion and blowing up a truck while people are shooting rockets at you and solving crime in the future and shooting random targets haphazardly with no real motivation other than the fact that it's mildly fun. And yes, that one about the random targets is most likely Point Blank.

For those of you who scrolled down until you saw bold letters and just skipped all my hilarious chatter, Point Blank is a light-gun game that was first introduced in the 90's. It's enjoyed a Playstation port that I never had because I only jumped on the Playstation train for the PS2, but I'll assume it was pretty fun for the sake of argument. Point Blank is pretty much a target-shooting game, turned upside-down and fed to a happy animal machine. Yeah, I just made that up.

Point Blank DS is another animal entirely. Yes, it's essentially a port of Point Blank for Arcadestation 1, but saying that they're the same thing is like trying to play Burnout 3 with the Guitar Hero controller. (Ten points if you spot the reference.)

Light-gun games pretty much only utilize one game mechanic. Sometimes you can dodge stuff, and sometimes you can reload, but not in Point Blank. It's pretty much point-and-shoot, and in Point Blank DS, that shooting is tapping. What Point Blank DS basically becomes is a different take on the tapping-related WarioWare games. The formula is basically "shoot these kinds of targets, and not these other kinds of targets, k thx!" This is done with varying degrees of difficulty and different themes, which make you momentarily forgive that you're not holding a plastic gun-shaped device and pulling a trigger.

The modes include Arcade, Freeplay, VS, Games Museum, and Brain Massage. Arcade involves a round of 8 levels (4 in Practice Mode) in 4 difficulty settings, with the ultimate goal of gaining a high score. Freeplay lets you practice any level as many times as you want.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Games Museum. Games Museum gives you four games to play that are "replicas of classic arcade machines." Intrigued, I chose the aforementioned game mode, only to notice that I actually RECOGNIZED two of them. One of them is that alligator game, where you hit the alligators with the foam mallet. Another one has these little alien guys that try to take your boxes that you have to shoot in the eye. I don't know the names of either of these, but they were awesome.

Brain Massage tries to be Big Brain Academy, but with target shooting instead of math and stuff. This is kinda fun, if you want to play Arcade mode but have the game call you a glitzy dancer or say "respect Helen Keller" for no real reason. Has the required amount of time passed to where we can reference Helen Keller when a person gets a low "sight" score on a fake brain test? I don't know, probably. It was a long time ago.

The question you are probably asking yourself is "is this game worth buying," to which my answer will most likely be "yes, if you consider yourself to be a skilled marksman," to which you will respond "I don't understand, isn't it all tapping," to which I will quip back "yes, but it's fast and it's kinda hard sometimes and it will make you feel like a fool if you try to get a decent brain massage."

Overall, it's a pretty fun game. If you haven't bought, say, New Super Mario Bros. yet, however, I'd say get that first.

You can always hit some alligators with a fake mallet later.

Testing Dashboard

2006-06-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this from the Mac Mini (which I've shown you before), and I'm doing it through Google's Blogger Dashboard Widget.

So basically it's this fancy little box thing in the bottom-right corner of my screen whenever I press F12.

One-button access to ElroyHead.Com posting? Mac OS X = 1, Windows = 0.

DS LITE.

2006-06-11T15:47:00.000-07:00

they were made for each other.

Lack of Updates? "SRY, PLZ!!!"

2006-06-01T23:26:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Just wanted to apologize for the lack of updates.

Um, I can't explain it. Yes I can. I got lazy. And school got schooly. And I got a cold. Two days ago.

Expect reviews of New Super Mario Bros, Sigma Star Saga, Sonic Rush, and Super Princess Peach soon. Yeah, I bought the princess game.

Hey look I added new stuff to the sidebar over there.

The E3 Report: Wii Won't Let That Defeat Us, and The Best Thing at E3

2006-05-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

"Okay, the name ... we want to thank everyone that had good things to say about it ... both of you."

Thanks, Reggie.

The Wii had some pretty awesome things this E3, including playable demos that I didn't get to play because I didn't actually get to go to E3.

It has tennis. TENNIS. Not Mario Tennis, though, for which I am deeply saddened.

It has a port of Twilight Princess.

It has Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which has THE GUY FROM METAL GEAR SOLID. YEAH THAT GUY.

It has a speaker on the remote.

It has a virtual console.

It has a way better implementation of motion detection than the PS3 does. Sony, if you're listening, this is unacceptable. Combined with my previous complaints about Sony at E3, this is worthy of some drastic action. Sony, I'm putting you ON NOTICE. You and your "Dual Shake" controller.

I can't really complain about the Wii right now, though, and I've even gotten used to the name by now. Wii. Wiiiiiiiii.

The best thing about E3, besides the Wii, is this:

STAR FOX DS.

Yeah man. Star Fox DS, man. Star Fox DS ONLINE, MAN.

So Nintendo pretty much wins E3. Sony can go fall in a ditch on the side of the road. And um, get really dirty.

Because the hole is full of dirt.

The E3 Report: XBLM Stuff, PS3 Kneejerk Reactions

2006-05-08T22:31:00.000-07:00

First off, yes, that's Mario's head on Stephen Colbert's body.

My plans for E3 fell through. As in, a certain unnamed party's promises of a glorious trip to E3 fell through. More like his lies.

You know who you are.

Anyway.

Having the Internet is like being at E3, because from what I understand, all the cool video game newsblogs post stuff live from E3. So it's pretty much the same experience, minus the free stuff and the game demos and the cute girls at the booths, although those are supposed to be in short supply this year. It was controversial.

On the game demo front, however, Microsoft is doing something unprecedently nice this time around, by giving 360 owners some keen E3-related content via the much-heralded Xbox Live Marketplace. Content such as trailers, weird promotional gamerpic packs, and--yoooou guessed it--demos! Well, like, two demos so far--Test Drive Unlimited and a game I previously reviewed, Top Spin 2. More stuff is supposed to come, I guess...COOL new stuff. That's all I know.

So today brought us the PS3 announcement. What? Sony actually said something about the PS3? Is it...something amazing?

I don't know. Let's find out.

According to Joystiq, the PS3 demos were running at 1080i, not 1080p. Of course, that page is riddled with typos from the live blogging, so I don't know. 1080i is cool and all, but amazing? Not really. We already have a console that does 1080i.

The controller wasn't received too well when it was first shown o' those many moons ago. Today, Sony revealed their new design, which looks--surprise--exactly like the old controller. Thanks, Sony, for remaking the second- or third-worst controller I've ever used. It's the third-worst if you count handheld pads as controllers, because the PSP had horrid controls. For everything.

The new controller has some features which we once dubbed "revolutionary"--as in, they're ideas that Nintendo came up with already for the previously-codenamed Revolution. XYZ, pitch, roll, yaw, and lateral motion detection. Great, Sony, thanks for taking really cool features and blah blah blah blah the second-worst controller I've ever used.

(Don't get me wrong about the controller stuff, because I still like the PS2. But the controller is the least comfortable thing ever. Thanks, Sony.)

The way I see it, it can't possibly be as fun as the Wii controls, because 1) the Wii has a seperate controller for each hand and 2) because playing tennis with a Sony Dual Shock controller would be like playing tennis with a steering wheel.

Speaking of "Dual Shock," the PS3 controller lacks rumble output. Thanks, Sony!!

Finally, the price: $500 for the "basic" package, and $600 for the "good" package. I don't know what they're really called, and, no, those aren't Canadian prices, either! 500-600 REAL DOLLARS! At least the Wii will (hopefully) be around a third of that price. Think about it, because I know you're not thinking about it yet.

In closing, I'm kinda ticked that Sony isn't doing anything really amazing with the PS3. Not anything that we haven't seen before. And they actually removed a feature that became standard! What's your game, Sony? What's your game?!?!!?!?

Also, if any of you saw The Apprentice, there's no way Michael should have gotten fired. And Lee is on his way out. And none of you watched The Apprentice.

Brain Age Chronicles: Week 2

2006-05-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the nuclear bomb that Nintendo dropped on the gaming world (read: the Wii), I managed to squeeze my way through the rubble to bring you the new weekly Brain Age Chronicles update.

This past week was interesting. I'm doing Brain Age Checks at night, now, so I'm not sure how that affects my performance.

I've been getting the worst Word Memory scores EVER, and I've noticed it's when I've got a TV on in the background. This is evident on the Chart of Wonders (tentative title), where a two-day Spike of Dumbness (tentative title) appears.

I also got my best Word Memory score ever, because I made the words into a song. Yeah, I did. 21 words. Try it.

This week unlocked a new Brain Age test, Speed Counting. Apparently you're supposed to count from 1 to 120, out loud, and then touch the button on the screen. This seems like the easiest game to cheat at, and yet my overwhelming dedication to the honesty of this test led me not to take advantage of that. Plus it's not as fun.

I also unlocked a new Training game, Triangle Math. Triangle Math is pretty much like CalcX20, but with three things you gotta add together. There are three numbers at the top, and you need to add them together in a weird way. If the numbers were A, B, and C, the equation of Triangle Math is (A+B) + (B+C) = Your Answer Here, 'cause that's how Triangle Math rolls.

As of last night:

Current Brain Age: 25

Here's a big fat nightcrawler of CHART:

Totally.

News: Nintendo Revolution = Nintendo "Wii"

2006-04-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

I thought this was important enough to steal for my own website.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/27/nintendo-revolution-now-called-wii/

"Wii sounds like 'we,' which emphasizes this console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii."

Adventures in Tech Support V: The Console

2006-04-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

Cut back to Friday, when I posted chapter IV. Note the desperation. Note the neediness.

Friday night, I receive an e-mail from Microsoft, containing a tracking number. I am ecstatic. I don't regret not posting it because I liked my last post and I didn't want to ruin it. Okay?! Okay.

The UPS site said it was arriving today, so today I literally stalked my front door. I hear it's filing charges later.

About a half hour before I had to leave for class, a friendly man in a friendly brown suit handed me a friendly electronic clipboard and asked me in a friendly manner to sign it. For my efforts, I was rewarded this:

"A box? A BOX?!" my inner nerd screamed. My inner nerd really likes boxes and manuals. Sorry.

Upon opening the box, I was greeted with yet another sheet of instructions.

See, when you get an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for the first time, you "connect" it to the console. This is for all the people who seem to think that they're getting their original 360 back in the mail, even though you're totally not getting the original one back.

Since I didn't have time to take a picture of the console itself, here's a mockup.

(By the way, I got an Intel Mac Mini somewhere in the past couple weeks. More on that later.)

When I was plugging in the console, I had a brief flashback to the day I discovered the original one was dead. Something about all those cables.

When I went to turn it on, it wouldn't.

"NO NO NO NO NO NO NO, WHAT GIVES?!?!?!?!?"

It turns out I forgot to plug the power cord back in. Hah! Terrifying.

It works now, though. So, I can safely say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And I wouldn't make such a bold statement without a graphic to back it up!

Previous Chapters:
Chapter I: The Shocking Revelation
Chapter II: The Phone Call
Chapter III: The "Box"
Chapter IV: The Wait

Brain Age Chronicles: End of Week 1 (Day 7)

2006-04-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

Okay okay okay:

Test one was the county game again. New record!

Test two was the connecty-the-dots game again. New record!

Test three was the wordy memorizey test again. Worst score yet!

GRAND TOTAL PLZ:

Current Brain Age: 26

Get me a bucket, 'cause I'm about to CHART:

And thus brings Week 1 of the Brain Age Chronicles to a close. I've learned a lot; mainly, I've learned that I hate memorizing words. I still haven't unlocked all the minigames from the training levels, and I only just now got to design a stamp.

What will future updates bring? I don't know. The only thing I know is that you won't be reading them as often as you have been in the past seven days. Weekly updates will keep you posted on my current brain status, and that can only lead to more charts and graphs and other things I'll learn how to do in Microsoft Access with all the fancy data I'm going to start collecting.

In closing, here is a word from Dr. Kawashima!

I'm so sorry for that.

Brain Age Chronicles: Day 6

2006-04-23T21:50:00.000-07:00

For fun, I did the voice-controlled test today.

1. STROOP TEST WAS THE FIRST TEST. I did better this time! Woo!

2. My least favorite thing, the memory test. I got 16 this time.

3. CALCULATIONS X20, THANKS. 21 seconds!

An improvement over yesterday? Maybe:

Current Brain Age: 28

CHART-BERG, STRAIGHT AHEAD:

Slight improvement today.

These updates are going to start being weekly updates, soon. Sorry, everyone.

:(

Tomorrow is the last daily update.

Yeah. You heard me.

[edit] Blogger wasn't working, so this is posted a day late. Sorry!

Brain Age Chronicles: Day 5

2006-04-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

Quick update today:

1. Connect the dots. New record!

2. Calculations X20. New record!

3. Word memorization. New r--wait, I got the lowest score this time. 11 words out of 30! ELEVEN! I deserved it, I guess, for not paying attention for the first thirty seconds.

I thought I'd done pretty well, setting two new records. That has to count for something, right? RIGHT?!

Current Brain Age: 31

I bet you'd like to see that in chart form:

31?! My brain got ten years older overnight! Does that happen to a lot of people?! I don't know! I need some sort of Brain Time Machine or something. I'm sure glad I got my bragging done yesterday.

...I didn't even really get to brag yesterday. Lame.

Adventures in Tech Support IV: The Wait

2006-04-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

When I was at the UPS office, I received a tracking number with which to track the progress of my poor dead Xbox-shaped baby. According to UPS, my Xbox 360 touched down in good ol' Microsofty Texas on April 19th, and arrived at the probably-outsourced Repair Center in McAllen, Texas yesterday afternoon. Woo, right?

I suppose. However, there's one little hitch: how do I know when she's coming back?

I mean, I know I won't be getting the same one back. That's not how it works, at all. I've said my goodbyes, taken out the hard drive, and given it a well-deserved goodbye hug. Not really.

The point I'm trying to make is that I don't have a tracking number for the replacement console, so I have no idea when it'll be arriving. If they're efficient (and they might be, since they're not actually Microsoft) then I project it'll be here somewhere around next Tuesday or Wednesday. But that's an awfully long wait, isn't it? Isn't it?!

Until then I've been regaling myself with games of console generations past, by which I mean the Gamecube and PS2. Guitar Hero is still awesome fun, despite the fact that I'm stuck on the last three songs of Expert Mode and I mostly play it to hear the cover of Ziggy Stardust. That is a really awesome song.

Previous Chapters:
Chapter I: The Shocking Revelation
Chapter II: The Phone Call
Chapter III: The "Box"

Brain Age Chronicles: Day 4

2006-04-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

No voice option today, as it got pretty loud. By "it" I mean "the repeat of last night's Colbert Report."

This time, Dr. Kawashima decided it would be a good idea to hit me with the painful word-memorizing test that I'd previously faced FIRST. It got a little tense, especially when I was interrupted during the first portion, so I ended up only remembering 17. That's 1 less than last time. Not a good start.

The second test was Calculations X20, which I'm getting pretty good at. I didn't miss any this time, and I achieved a new high score! Go team! GO TEAM!

The third test is a sort of twist on the familiar old game of connect-the-dots. On-screen are two sets of dots; one set is marked with the letters A through M, and another set is numbered 1 to 13. The catch is to connect the dots from each set in alternating order. A-1-B-2-C-3-D-4 and so on. This game is a little challenging, because you're not allowed to touch the wrong dots (obviously) and your hand blocks the bottom-half of the screen slightly. I managed to pull through in like 1 minute and 8 seconds, not knowing whether or not that was a good enough score.

What was my ultimate result?! WELL?! WHAT WAS IT?!

Oh, here it was:

Current Brain Age: 21

Th' chart, ye scurvy dogs:

21! Avast! Twenty-flippin'-one!! That's almost twenty, the ideal Brain Age!! Granted, I'm not sure it counts, since I didn't do the voice-controlled tests today. I seem to do worse with those. But whatever!! TWENTY ONE! BRAGGING RIGHTS FOR EVERYONE!

And by everyone, I mean only me.

Brain Age Chronicles: Day 3

2006-04-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

I made sure the voice option was turned on, and I got our good old friend, the STROOP TEST! That's the, uh, words with colors test that I did on Day 1. I did slightly better this time, but only by a few seconds.

The second test was the good old number counting game, where I accidentally mistook the "#" sign for a "2" a couple times. I was just trying to go fast. Apparently that didn't bode well for my score. :(

Calculations X20 would prove to be my final battle between good and evil. Smart and dumb. Whatever you may call it, I think I lost. I maintained the status quo. You know, like in National Treasure? No, of course you don't know, because I think I'm the only person that saw National Treasure.

A long and arduous battle, leaving us with the grand total:

Current Brain Age: 34

Obligatory confusingly upside-down chart:

Apparently I got dumber since yesterday. That doesn't make any sense! I got more sleep today! What gives?!

Brain Age Chronicles: Day 2

2006-04-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today I did a Brain Age Check without using the microphone. Apparently from now on it involves three tests at random, so that's a little more fair.

The first test was Calculations X20. Twenty rapid-fire equations, with handwriting recognition on the touch screen. I only missed one, because I messed up a number.

The next one was some kind of counting game, which involved me writing down a number based on various different types of instructions. Those instructions were things like "how many RED numbers?" and "how many blue numbers?" and "how many pulsating numbers?" I'm not even kidding. I missed like two of those.

The third test was pretty much evil. Thirty words are displayed across both screens, and the game gives you two minutes to memorize as many as you can. You then have three minutes to write down all the words you can remember. I'm pretty sure I got 18/30, but I, um, can't remember.

After all was said and done, the little polygon doctor man was delighted to tell me my score.

Current Brain Age: 28

And a GIF of the chart I'm making in Access:

Keep in mind that the ideal Brain Age is 20, so while it might look like I'm getting dumber, I'm actually, er, not. So there.

Brain Age Chronicles: Day 1

2006-04-18T17:35:00.000-07:00

I picked up Brain Age today, and I decided it would make for a great ElroyHead.Com series. Unfortunately, that means I had to wait until I finished the above awesome fancy logo before i could start playing it.

I'm going to track my results as often as I can, so here we go.

So this guy is apparently a doctor of neuroscience. He's just a floating head. How can he be a doctor? I don't know. Perhaps it's like Futurama, with the heads in the jars. In fact, I think it is exactly like that.

I'm setting the date and time right now. I think this is a brain exercise, like "hey if you can't tell what time it is you should return this game immediately." Games are jerks.

I guess I forgot to set my clock one hour ahead on the DS. I never realized it would count as a "clock".

It's showing me some brain scans. I like brain scans!!

Okay, it's asking me to make sure the room is quiet. I'm about to start training!

I'm being asked to say the colors of words that show. The words are the names of colors. So it looks like Yellow Red and so on. Let's see how it goes...

I had to do 50, and I kept going "R--Yellow." That test is tricky.

It made me sign my name and enter my age. Are they building some kind of profile? Like, a blackmail profile?! I don't know. The writing recognition is pretty cool, though.

Drumroll, please...

Current Brain Age: 56

I think they timed the test. Oh well.

With great training comes great results, as they say. Nobody actually says that, but I just made it up, so it's gotta hold some weight. Check back frequently to keep tabs on my brain age!

Adventures in Tech Support III: The "Box"

2006-04-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

This chapter involves pictures! PICTURES.

I've heard this box referred to as a 'coffin,' which is pretty much what it does. On the left is Ol' Trusty, the Xbox 360. It's an ironic nickname.

I made sure to take Top Spin 2 out when it died the first time. Poor old Top Spin 2. :(

This is the first step on the page of instructions that you find when you open the box. Think about that for a second.

There it is, all wrapped up like it's in some kind of wrapping plastic. Or something. The point is that it's wrapped up.

Dropped it off at UPS today.

Thus begins "the wait." :(

Previous Chapters:
Chapter I: The Shocking Revelation
Chapter II: The Phone Call

Adventures in Tech Support II: The Phone Call

2006-04-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning, 8:30AM. I check the poor little white box to see if it works.

No false-alarms today; it's the three blood-red evil lights of doom. Sigh.

Phone-in-hand, I start to dial nervously. I hate these kinds of calls.

Play-by-play:

Xbox 360 support. I press 1.
Console help. 1 again.
The friendly voice tells me to have my serial number ready. I do this.
I think I hear some faint mumbling. The radio?

A voice! I forget his name. He hears my plea and looks up my info. I explain I've had it since launch, which doesn't phase him. I'm told to wait while he "looks up what we need to do here."
He comes back and transfers me to somebbody who handles orders to the US. Apparently he only does orders to the UK. hahaha :(

Melanie. I can't hear her typing. She's funny, but it's like she's delaying.
While I'm making the call, the 360 rests next to me. It looks sad. :(
She gives me a reference number, and we're done.

What? We're done?

I hang up, slightly confused. I know they got my address from the serial number. COuld they have used that to link to my credit card number to charge me the $110 I'm going to end up paying because I didn't buy the warranty within 10 days of when I purchased it, which was launch day? I don't know. I'm trusting them with so much, which kinda creeps me out.

Let's see where this takes us.

Previous Chapters:
Chapter I: The Shocking Revelation

Adventures in Tech Support I: The Shocking Revelation

2006-04-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

Tuesday morning. April 11th. Eleven o'clock.

I ease into place in front of the television, turn it on, and switch over to Component 1. The Xbox 360.

I'd left it downloading some content from the XBLM. That's the Xbox Live Marketplace, naturally.

I attempt to access the content eagerly.

"Wh...what?"

Black screen. No sound. Can't access the Xbox Guide.

"Okay okay, don't panic. I SAID DON'T PANIC."

I turn it off and turn it back on. It freezes during the logo at the beginning.

"...DON'T PANIC"

I do this repeatedly, each time with the freezing starting at some other random time.

"Maybe it's overheating."

I give it a couple hours in front of a fan, careful not to blow dust into it. I try it again.

"TOP SPIN 2 IS L--darn." It freezes again. I try various combinations of cable setups and other things, I try it with the HDD off, I try it with everything. I try everything and it gives me nothing.

Until it gives me those three red lights.

"...okay, now I can panic."

I try it again and again. Three red lights. It goes through once, only to freeze and THEN give me three red lights.

"It's over," my inner nerd screams. "She's dead, Jim!"

I agree, and my name isn't even Jim.

I decide to place my call to tech support the next day.

A Moment of Silence.

2006-04-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

More later, but you can read the review I wrote last night below.

It worked perfectly last night.

:(

Review: Top Spin 2 (X360)

2006-04-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

This review is brought to you by Bob and Steve, two fictional characters that are more commonly known as...

BOB: What's that you've got in your hand there, Steve?

STEVE: Oh, just Top Spin 2 for the Xbox 360, Bob.

BOB: I thought you already bought Mario Tennis.

STEVE: Ages ago. This game, however, promises tennis in High-Definition.

BOB: I see.

STEVE: Yes, it's quite impressive.

BOB: I am overwhelmed. Please pop it in.

STEVE: Excellent. This game will be great.

(fifteen minutes later.)

STEVE: This game is stupid.

BOB: Your custom character plays like an eight-year old girl that doesn't know how to play tennis.

STEVE: Look at him, his arms are flailing about wildly like he's practicing semaphore.

BOB: That's like Morse code, right?

STEVE: No, it's flag signals. I think he's calling for some kind of aid.

BOB: This training level you've entered is pretty interesting. I never knew the Williams sisters learned how to play tennis by knocking an oversized bowling ball into a set of oversized pins.

STEVE: I think I heard an interview with Andre Agassi where he talked about that training level with the tower of bricks he needed to knock down.

BOB: Agassi? How old are you?

STEVE: Old enough. What's this menu over here? Are these e-mails?

BOB: They're fake e-mails. With voice messages. From fake coaches. Fake coaches that want you to enter a Tournament.

STEVE: I would normally say it's time to try our hand at a Tournament, but apparently our rank isn't high enough.

BOB: I like how you've been throwing around the word "our" as though I've had a turn to play.

STEVE: I got us into a Minor tournament. Let's see how "Steve Topspin" ranks against these guys. You can take the helm when I'm done.

(TOURNAMENT.)

BOB: Congratulations, you got "deuce" again.

STEVE: I hate deuce. Deuce turns the playful and sophisticated nature of your average tennis match and turns it into a kind of sudden-death marathon tournament, where you keep playing until one of you falls over.

BOB: I don't think that's how it works, but I'm glad you lost that set. I'm so glad you get to play another set. I'm so glad I get to wait another twenty minutes.

STEVE: I get what you're trying to do, but I don't really care. I am literally angry at this character I'm playing against. His taunts have driven me to the edge.

BOB: Not to get off-topic, but can you re-design your character? He looks kind of horribly ugly. I find it hilarious that there's a "face spots" part of the character design screen, in case anybody would be interested in that kind of thing.

STEVE: "This tennis game is fun, but optional Face Spots would make it more fun."

BOB: That must have been a weird focus group to be in. "Yeah, this model's pretty, but she'd be prettier with some more Face Spots."

STEVE: We lost the tournament, you know. I think we'll have to try out Exhibition mode. On Easy. Doubles.

BOB: Hard court.

STEVE: Yes.

(EXHIBITION.)

BOB: I think the battery's dying in my controller.

STEVE: No, it's just not super-easy like Mario Tennis.

BOB: Everything was better in Mario Tennis.

STEVE: Maybe, but I don't recall there being Training levels. Or the promise of Online play.

BOB: Why would I want to play this game online if I can't even beat the computer on EASY?

STEVE: Career mode wasn't on Easy. Career mode was on "learn and it'll get easier."

BOB: I don't even think those training stats did anything.

STEVE: Did that momentum meter do anything in Career mode? Because it's giving us trick shots here in Exhibition mode.

BOB: It didn't, and we only get extra trick shots if we win a point. Which we haven't.

STEVE: Man will one day invent the necessary words to convey the frustration I'm feeling with this game.

BOB: But it's oddly compelling. Like, I know I'm horrible at it, but I still want to play it to get better at it.

STEVE: Some would call that depth.

BOB: Yeah, some would. I think it's pretty enjoyable, once you accept the fact that the game hates you.

STEVE: And the AI is totally unforgiving.

BOB: Yes. And it's not Mario Tennis at all, so I'd keep little kids away from it.

STEVE: Unless they're really big braggarts or something. "Hey, I beat Mario Tennis in one hour, YAWN."

BOB: "Here Billy, try out Top Spin 2."

STEVE: "I see the error of my ways. Here is a twenty-dollar bill."

BOB: At that point I'd wonder where my kid got ahold of twenty dollars that he didn't try to force out of my wallet. Probably through Mario Tennis hustling.

STEVE: I'd wonder how you managed to have a child.

BOB: Indeed.

Happy Taisho Day!

2006-02-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

Download your official Taisho Day poster here!

International Weezer (T-Shirt) Day

2006-02-14T10:49:00.000-08:00

On February 14th, 1992, Weezer formed. 14 years ago today.

So, in celebration...

=w=

Rock out, everyone!

-m

Gaming: Some Other Essay I Had to Write for College

2006-02-12T11:45:00.000-08:00

Hey, college made me write another essay. I made it about ~~the console war~~ video game genres. More specifically, ~~the handheld console war~~ I can't really be any more specific.

I pretty much ~~made up a lot of the stuff after the second paragraph, but the professor said that didn't matter~~ got a 99 on this essay.

~~Expect some real content soon in the form of a Guitar Hero review!~~ The professor thought I was missing a semicolon somewhere.

Video games have been slowly increasing in popularity since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Games slowly became a part of popular culture. As the popularity of video games rose, demand for new styles of gameplay increased. Nowadays, there are many of these styles, or genres, of video games. Three examples of these video game genres are platform, racing, and rhythm.

A prime example of the platform genre can be seen in Nintendo’s flagship title, Super Mario Brothers. In a platform (or “run ‘n’ jump”) game, players control a character that forges its way towards the goal by jumping onto platforms and collecting items. In a platform game, precision is often an important factor in making decisions about which pathways to take. Platform games are usually distinguished by their cartoon-like visuals and fantasy storylines. In current platform games, more attention is paid to item collection than in earlier days.

In a racing game, a player competes with others to reach the goal, or “finish line.” This is usually done by controlling an on-screen vehicle. Some racing games feature vehicles that closely resemble name-brand cars, while others veer towards abstract or futuristic vehicles. The basic concept of every racing game remains the same, though some games focus on simulating the actual experience of driving a car. In many games, certain “pick-ups” are available on the courses, which can be used to gain an advantage.

Rhythm games are within a relatively new genre of video games. In a rhythm-based game, players perform an action based upon the beat provided by the game’s soundtrack. The action varies between different games, since many games use specialized game controllers. The most popular rhythm-based game, Dance Dance Revolution, uses a special “dance pad” controller that the player operates with their feet. A recently released home-console game, Guitar Hero, uses a replica of a Gibson SG guitar as its means of input. The difficulty of each new level is dependent on the speed with which the player must perform the required action.

As video games continue to evolve, more new genres will be created. Platform, racing, and rhythm games represent only a mere fraction of the entire video game populace. Many games also tend to cross genres, resulting in new hybrid genres. The goals and concepts of each genre, however, are usually varied. However, the main concept of video games, “having fun,” is the main focus of each genre.

Gaming: GUITAR HERO.

2006-01-27T00:39:00.000-08:00

Simply typing the title of the game sends a chill of wonder and mystery coursing through my veins. That cold feeling that's not unlike that cold feeling of having ice water injected into your veins. You know...cold. And coursing. After that thrill escapes me, I suddenly realize that I can't really write that well.

Guitar Hero is brilliance embodied in a hard plastic lightweight guitar controller that's something of a replica of a black Gibson SG. It's lightweight because Awesome is somewhere in the neighborhood of the weight of helium. I'll bet you didn't know that.

Guitar Hero is, in case you didn't know, one of those fancy new rhythm-based video games. They all contain the same basic game mechanic: watch the icons hit the line, and press the corresponding button along with the beat. It's the variations of WHEN to hit the buttons and HOW you hit the buttons that make each individual game a unique experience. In Guitar Hero's case, this is done by the aforementioned guitar controller. It's like playing a real guitar, except totally not.

A word of warning: if you're going to try to run the game from the PS2's browser, you're going to need to plug in a regular controller to access it. The SG has its left D-Pad control set to always be "on", which means it'll endlessly scroll through all the different options. I think the game uses this to determine whether or not you have a guitar controller plugged in. Or it's just funny. Try playing Burnout! Watch the hilarity! By hilarity I mean incorrectly calibrated controls. Ha ha ha ha ha! It's funny because that's what the controller does!!

Once the game begins, you can watch some tutorials, start a career, or jump right on in with the Quick Play option. Having previous experience with Guitar Freaks, I decided to skip Easy mode. I chose the Quick Play thing, set it to "Hard," chose "Smoke on the Water," and ended up humiliating myself in front of the cartoony 3D-rendered guy with the mohawk. Maybe I'd better start slow, I thought. Maybe I'd better start Medium.

I started a career, named the band "School of Rock" (lame) and chose--sorry--"Smoke on the Water." There was a little bit of an introduction thingy, and then this fretboard started moving towards me. It was kind of like watching the road when you're in a car except with colored circles moving towards you that replace that enveloping feeling of total doom. Am I the only one that feels that way? Maybe it's all the dangerous left turns I'm forced to make every day. Maybe it's my reckless driving.

This isn't about driving, this is about Guitar Hero. Which is a lot more fun. And, at the rate gas prices are going, probably cheaper! Ha ha ha ha ha! It's funny because gas is really expensive!!

Songs on the Medium difficulty range anywhere from laughably easy (I don't care how many people like the Ramones. "I Wanna Be Sedated" is one of the simplest songs of all time.) to the pinky-achingly difficult (I'll bark at YOUR moon, "Bark at the Moon"), and that's not even covering the Bonus Songs. That's right, there's Bonus Songs. And some of them are pretty good.

The songs in the game are mostly cover songs. That makes sense; you play guitar in a cover band, after all. The covers pretty much all rock, despite the poor imitations of some of the vocals. WhatEVER. Who said vocals were important to music?! Oh, right, everybody. Well everybody can shut up, because this isn't "Vocal Hero". That doesn't even sound right. As it shouldn't, because everyone knows the true rock stars of rock stardom are the guitarists.

As you go on, you'll eventually want to try out Hard mode. Hard mode is like Medium mode, except harder. It also makes use of the fifth, slightly more orange fret button on the neck of the guitar that's been hanging there uselessly all throughout Medium mode. "Oh, please, won't you touch me?" "No, fret button, because if I do then I'll break my 4x multiplier which I've been saving up to use with my Star Power technique." "You are a big jerkface! We're through! I never want to see you again! Stop calling me! I want all my CDs back! I want half of the gifts we received at our wedding!"

I'm sorry, I got a little carried away.

Star Power is an awesome experience that basically doubles your multiplier for a small duration based on "Star Energy" you extract by playing notes that are shaped like stars. Pretty boring, right? NO IT'S NOT BORING YOU GUITAR HEATHEN. When you accumulate enough star power, you get to ROCK OUT.

AND BY ROCK OUT I MEAN YOU GET TO HOLD THE GUITAR STRAIGHT UP. When that happens, the crowd goes WILD and the reverb goes ALSO WILD. Sometimes I reserve Star Power for the climactic parts of the song, just because it sounds so much better that way. Sometimes I'm a huge dork.

Overall, Guitar Hero is a must-own for the PS2. Also, they have a red controller available on their website. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Ha ha ha ha ha! It's funny because it's an 80's movie reference!!

Gaming: Some Essay I Had To Write for College

2006-01-20T00:17:00.000-08:00

Hey, college made me write an essay. I made it about the console war. More specifically, the handheld console war.

I pretty much made up a lot of the stuff after the second paragraph, but the professor said that didn't matter.

Expect some real content soon in the form of a Guitar Hero review!

The Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP are two competing handheld game consoles. One of the main differences between the two systems is the total cost. Additionally, there is a noticeable distinction between the abilities of each system. Due to differing control schemes, the experiences of each system’s provided games are very diverse. Overall, the Nintendo DS seems to be the better value.

The Playstation Portable from Sony costs $249.99, and no additional games are included. The Nintendo DS costs $129.99, with optional “bundle packs” available for the price of $149.99. The average PSP game usually costs within the range of $40-$50. Nintendo DS cartridges cost between $30 and $40. There are certain “budget” titles available for the Nintendo DS which cost as little as $20.

The Sony Playstation Portable has many features that make it an ideal media device. A PSP owner can listen to music, view pictures, and watch videos. The PSP also boasts a powerful graphics processor. The Nintendo DS has less than the PSP in terms of graphical prowess. However, the Nintendo DS features an innovative touch-screen feature, which allows game developers to show more creativity.

The touch-screen controls featured on the Nintendo DS bring new elements of interactivity to video games. The screen enables players to effectively “touch” the game, manipulating events on the screen with a small plastic stylus. On the other hand, the control scheme of the Playstation Portable is almost virtually identical to that of Sony’s Playstation 2 controllers. The analog “nub,” a replacement for an analog control stick, is slightly uncomfortable to use. The buttons on the PSP also feel less responsive than the buttons found on the Nintendo DS.

Sony’s Playstation Portable and Nintendo’s DS are the two leaders of the handheld market. However, the Nintendo DS is more reasonably priced than the Sony PSP. Although the PSP features media capabilities, the DS has an innovative touch screen. In addition, the controls for the Nintendo DS provide a more immersive experience than the PSP. It appears that the Nintendo DS is the clear winner of the handheld war, despite a great effort from Sony.

Gaming: Robotron 2084 Released on Xbox Live Arcade; Takes Up Valuable King Kong Replay Time

2005-12-22T15:20:00.000-08:00

Some people call it "the greatest game ever." Some people call it "the game that inspired Geometry Wars." Some others call it "the game that inspired that weird N64 port."

I call it Robotron 2084. For one, that's the title. It's also easier to type than those other monikers. Although, to be fair, I don't think long descriptions count as monikers in the first place. "Whatever," right?

It turns out whatever is NOT right. Robotron 2084 isn't ABOUT whatever; it's about precision, skill, determination, and shooting up robots. Mostly the part about shooting up robots.

Created in the pre-"Matrix" 1980s, the world of Robotron is set in a futuristic dystopia. Charged with saving the last human family, a robot with a funny-shaped head (who I will refer to as "Robotron") is given a robot-destroying laser (which doesn't even destroy every kind of robot) and set upon the massive world of...actually I think it's Earth. It's kind of like an Asimov novel in some aspects, by which I mean absolutely no aspects.

I'm admittedly not that good at Robotron 2084. I've yet to see wave 10, and I doubt it really exists.

When you first begin the game, you'll focus on saving the last human family. It's easy the first two times, right? Just clear out some robots around them and charge in their direction, right?

It turns out that they'll end up being just about the last thing on your mind in the coming waves. "Save the last human family" turns into "save your own hide from being eaten by giant indestructible robots." Yes, the robots eat you. That's what that explodey noise indicates.

One of the main things you need to consider are the little red flashing orbs that spit little tread-wheeled robots at you. In the later waves, they spit like fifty of them at you. And there'll be five flashy dots. I know.

It helps if you take into consideration that the "last human family" wouldn't need saving if they didn't decide that it'd be a good idea to dance around with evil giant robots all day. Forget them, okay? Forget them and watch the flashing little skull/crossbones with glee. Jerks.

Except of course in wave 5, when they decide that they've had enough of your lack of care for them and they go all rogue and flashy on you. That's right, the evil brain-robots (HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE, BY THE WAY) decide that it's a good idea to turn the last human family (which, in this level, is made up of like thirty women) into flashing running laser bombs.

First off, why are there thirty women in this level?! Are we taking the phrase "family" too lightly, or do these people just have way too much time on their hands? I prefer to think it's the latter, just to suit my "these people don't need saving, you're on your own" needs. Alas.

Wave 7 is pretty much where I give up hope for all living things.

Wave 7 is controlled by these bouncing light orbs which, if you don't destroy them promptly, turn into giant rubber toy robots that hurl bouncing globs of evil evil laser gunk your way. But it moves really fast, because the people over at Midway have no morals. I made it to wave 8 twice.

Wave 8 is pretty much a slap in the face. That is, if you were getting slapped in the face with little tread-wheeled robots.

Aside from all the horrible horrible experiences Midway has decided to torture me with, Robotron 2084 has become my most-played Xbox 360 game. That's right, more played than King Kong. And King Kong is totally awesome. However, I've not played through it a second time to unlock the "good" ending where Kong lives and is sent back to his home island where he's greeted by cute girls and dancing candy robots that spit candy every time they do a flip, which is a lot of candy because the only dance candy robots know how to do is that one dance that involves a lot of flipping.

I made up the part about the girls and robots.

Gaming: I Forgot the Slogan Is Really "Jump In"

2005-11-23T00:28:00.000-08:00

enjoy.

Gaming: UPDATE TOMORROW.

2005-11-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

"jump on in."

Poll #1 Results and Lost: The Two Most Anticipated Events of the Year

2005-09-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

so according to the poll results, i should either buy the xbox 360 after its release and after some reviews come out, or i should just avoid it like the blue-screen-of-death plague.

thanks. a. lot.

in about four and a half hours, the season premiere of Lost airs on the west coast. which happens to be the coast that i'm going to be watching it on.

what makes Lost so awesome that i feel the need to actually use a capital letter to begin its name? what makes Lost post-worthy? what makes Lost so special?!

it's because it might be about time travel. or robots. or robot dinosaurs. or aliens. or some possible combination of those.

it's not really that. but, at the same time, it could be that. what makes Lost so special is that it's vague, yet it has a direction and a meaning. twists come out of practically nowhere, yet they make perfect sense in the context of the entire story. mysterious hatch? easy. invisible monster that might be a cloud of dust that tries to eat people by sucking them down into the island itself? sure. a mysterious group of people who already lived on the island before the plane crash that are trying to take the young boy who somehow conjured up a polar bear out of a comic book in spanish that belonged to the big guy that won the lottery with a strange sequence of numbers that happens to be everywhere including on the side of the aforementioned mysterious hatch? totally.

so Lost begins tonight, and we learn what is inside the hatch. is it important? no idea.

but my guess is that it's a robot.

Talk Like A Pirate Day - September 19

2005-09-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

happy talk like a pirate day, ye scurvy dogs!

PSP Wallpaper!!

2005-09-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

if you're viewing this site on a psp, i feel bad for you. this is like one of the least psp-compatible sites ever made ever.

statistically, though, you most likely are not viewing this site from a psp.

i don't know where i was going with that, but, anyway, i made some elroyhead.com themed wallpapers. specifically, one.

(it's a link.)

Moral Dilemma: The Xbox 360

2005-09-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

check out that omega bundle.

for the duration of the xbox's lifespan i've avoided it like the plague. LIKE THE PLAGUE.

sure, they tried to lure me in over the years with their promises of "blinx the time-travelling cat that ended up being a disappointing game but still looked cool at the time" and "shenmue II, which i actually still want to play" and "free gummy bears in every box! X-box, that is!!" i may be making some of those up.

but the new xbox, the xbox 360, is coming out, and i somehow find myself falling victim to the hype machine. it's like, that part in Lost where the guy almost gets eaten by the island. or the monster. whatever!

i am not saying i would spend two thousand dollars to get the omega bundle. that's silly. i don't need every single launch title.

but, i also don't need an xbox 360. why do i want one? it's pretty, that's why.

yes, the xbox 360 is pretty. it's shiny. it's "cash in on the ipod" white. it's four hundred dollars.

four hundred dollars buys a lot of gummy bears.

this is all pretty much a moot point right now because it's set to release in about two months, and i haven't preordered it, and if the rush is anything like gamestop and ebgames and everywhere seems to indicate, they'll be sold out for weeks.

i remember running through best buy to grab the last ps2 and beating out this little kid's family. (we passed him as we left the store and he was crying.) i remember phone calls placed (not really) everywhere within a 30-mile radius when the DS launched. i remember the same about the psp, except that was only about two months ago.

needless to say i've been caught up in the "forgot to preorder" rush before. it's not good. it's like...something not good. i don't know. rabid dogs. there you go.

i've still got some deliberating to do on this subject. preordering wouldn't be so bad if it didn't fall into the price range of a new game (sly cooper 3 takes precedence over a shiny new system any day) and i still don't know if $400 will even be in my posession in two months.

so i'd like to hear your input. or, rather, i'd like to read a chart of your input.

since i can only have one poll running at a time, i'll let this go for about a week and then edit in the results. since the table code for the poll is being a jerkface, i hid it in the little "expand post" link down there. if that doesn't work, the poll is also here.

Video Game Review: Namco Museum Battle Collection (PSP)

2005-08-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

i figure i'm just doing video game reviews now.

---

namco museum battle collection is a throwback to the good old days of coin operated video games. which pretty much means "the eighties".

the box boasts "over 20 of your favorite titles in the palm of your hand!" the box is a filthy liar.

what namco museum battle collection contains is three types of galaga, three types of pacman, three types of dig-dug, and three types of rally-x. i bet you didn't even think people liked rally-x. they still don't.

four of these games are "arrangement" games, which pretty much means that they took elements of good gaming and ruined them. galaga arrangement has powerups. galaga arrangement is a stain on the otherwise perfect record of galaga. it shames me and many others.

out of the nine remaining games (which brings us to a total of 21; 'over 20', accurate as it may be, is quite misleading) i only recognized two of them: mappy and xevious.

mappy is about a mouse. a police mouse.

xevious has less to do with mice than you might think.

with this new iteration of namco's old "throw a bunch of old games together" formula comes some interesting features, and by interesting i mean "pretty useless".

first is the game-sharing option. do you know what game-sharing implies? being able to share your game. which, i assumed, meant wireless multiplayer from one UMD. but apparently namco hates my culture, my family, and my thoughts on game-sharing. also my pets.

game-sharing, to them, involves one-level demos of arcade games being sent to your friend's psp. one level of galaga is possibly 30 seconds long. dumb. really dumb. well, it'd be a really awesome 30 seconds, anyway.

the other interesting feature is eight screen modes, five of which you will not ever need in your entire life. among these is the 'innovation' of rotating the screen 90 degrees so that you can 'take full advantage of the psp screen'.

in japan, the game "star soldier" has already implemented this feature.

i am having trouble figuring out why.

it works okay for the games that don't require any buttons. which basically means the pacmans and the rally-xs. everything else is, well, wonky. hold your TV remote in its normal position and pretend to play galaga on the middle of it, with the buttons at the top being the fire button. you can't. your brain will go into cranial failure. that's not even a real thing. but it would happen.

of course, you're probably asking yourself "OH THE GAMES, WHAT ABOUT THE GAMES?!" so i will review the ones that namco battle collection introduced me to. we'll start with one of the least interesting video game titles i've ever seen.

King and Balloon

see? the game involves a king shooting at balloons, and every once in a while a balloon swoops down and steals a villager. or something like that. i can't explain it well enough, it is something to be experienced. or, rather, something never to be experienced.

as you play the game, a painful thought shoots through your brain and electrocutes you because you know it is the truth.

this game is between "galaxian" and "galaga" in the games list for a reason.

it's a comforting thought, though, that the developers realized the errors of switching from an awesome space theme to a really confusing medieval theme with hot air balloons before they released galaga. or, as it would be called, king and baloonaga.

~~Bostonian~~ Bosconian

although it's not billed as the return to galaga supremacy, the graphic design of bosconian is very...well...almost exactly the same. the ship looks like the ship from galaga turned into a rogue ship and ate another ship from galaga. plus it has the multicolored starfield.

it has some advantages, though. upon firing, bullets will launch out your back- and front-sides. plus you get to blow up hexagons! nobody likes hexagons!

THE TOWER OF DRUAGA

the title of this game is so EPIC sounding, isn't it?! so grand, for such a mediocre 80's coin-op hack'n'slash maze game.

the first thing you will notice about the game, besides the title, is that the enemies in the first level are probably made of snot.

then i stopped playing.

DragonBuster

what do you think of when you see a elflike boy in a green tunic, wielding a sword and fighting off skeletons?

of course the obvious answer is DragonBuster. this side-scrolling platform gem pits you against the aforementioned skeletons, as WELL as snakes and dinosaurs! YEAH I'M PRETTY SURE THEY WERE DINOSAURS!

this is what happens when my zelda preorder gets pushed back to 'sometime after the next twelve apocalypses'. they can't even interpret prophecy correctly. thanks a lot gamestop. or nintendo.

Grobda

"grobda" may look like a typo, but it is in reality a tank battle game.

with lasers. did i mention there were lasers?

basically you ride a tank around and shoot lasers. sometimes you put up a shield to block the lasers. it's kind of entertaining until they put you in a level with like twenty other tanks and they all have shields.

Motos

if you've ever played that mario party game where everybody is balancing on balls, trying to knock each other off a platform, and if you thought it was the best thing ever, then you will LOVE motos. i LOVE motos. this is the basis of the game, except replace your character with a Roomba and the other characters with marbles. go roomba go!

Rolling Thunder

guess what this game is about by its title.

nope, you're wrong, it's a side-scrolling platform shooter about a guy who hates people who can't color-coordinate. or at least that's what it looks like.

he apparently is also a guy that didn't figure out the cardinal rule of playstation video games:

X SHOULD ALWAYS BE JUMP IN THE CASE WHERE THE ONLY TWO ACTIONS ARE JUMP AND SHOOT. barring that, you should be able to customize the controls. you can't. and so, as awesome as rolling thunder may be, it's too confusing for me. it's like saying "this is the best movie ever, except you have to stand on your head the entire time". no thank you, mister headache. mister rolling thunder.

all in all, i would probably recommend this game. at forty dollars? probably not. but it probably won't drop in price. so, pick it up if you must, and get ready for the shocking realization that rally-x and rally-x arrangement are the exact same game.

my white ninja fanart

2005-07-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

i don't know if you were aware that i made a fan comic for white ninja comics.

...

2005-06-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

graduation is so awesome, i think i'll do it every year!

x&y

2005-06-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

i like the new coldplay album

so much so that i made this:

oh yeah. soak in the awesome.

go on. soak.

testing

2005-06-03T16:16:00.000-07:00

Short post here

Extended post here

picture picture

2005-06-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

i was going through some old pictures off the digital camera and i ran across this one.

On location: Ties

2005-05-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

So many different ties. Who gets paid to design ties? Do they get a lot? What purpose do they serve?

Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

On American Idol

2005-05-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

carrie underwood sings mostly modern country-pop, and bo bice sings mostly "raaar! i'm from the south! graaarl" country rock.

whoever wins, we lose.

Help.

2005-05-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

Dentist's office. I really don't like it. At all. Seriously.

Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

On Star Wars

2005-05-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

okay, so, you might notice some changes around here. the main one being that now we have a little rotaty quote at the top. it's still in development. i can't think of a lot of quotes for it right now. but if you want to see, like, all four or five of them, keep refreshing.

another change is that i set up the blogger mobile thingy so that i can send text messages to the site. you might not see a lot of those. text messages cost money.

also we're set up with audblog. crazy.

so, moving on to Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

it was actually awesome. george lucas used up all the extra cool points he could have used for episode 1 and 2 and made a great film. it was really dark, yes, and it had some SHOCKING REVELATIONS (YES) and they did the thing that i suggested where they cleared the air about certain parts of the original trilogy. i won't spoil anything. padme dies.

overall, a really good awesome star wars movie. if you've never seen a star wars movie you probably won't understand what's going on. and it's not recommended to watch them in numerical order, because a lot of the fun shocking revelations from the original trilogy will be ruined.

and jar jar doesn't die. i know, i'm sad too. but he doesn't talk either.

i'm glad whoever did his voice didn't get paid.

Test

2005-05-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

Testing! Star Wars was awesome.

Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

Midnight Showings

2005-05-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

so this week is pretty much the nerd mecca. and while a week can't represent a place, it's still pretty close.

first off, it's E3, as noted below. fans everywhere are up in arms about their nintendo revolutions, playstation 3s, xbox 360s, and atari 26,000,000s. yes i made that up.

it's also, and this is the big one, STAR WARS WEEK. YEAH. STAR WARS. a time for costumes and lightsabers. a time for rabid merchandizing (merchandising?). a time for real nerds and poser nerds who liked episode 2 to forget their differences for two and a half hours. that's counting previews.

so why am i posting today and not tomorrow? because i'm going to a midnight showing. yeah, i know! total nerddom, right! is nerddom even a word?! who cares! star wars! FOCUS, PEOPLE, I'M TALKING ABOUT STAR WARS.

the end of an era, as it were. or, more specifically, the beginning of a new era of spinoffs. i don't even think jar jar dies in the movie anymore. i think he's just not in it. go team! woo! GO TEAM.

so, uh, in closing, expect another post with my impressions of the movie and stuff. yeah. i'll probably do that.

Planet GameCube News Article: Nintendo Reveals Revolution Features

2005-05-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

Planet GameCube News Article: Nintendo Reveals Revolution Features

...The console also will have downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo® 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System® (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System® (NES)...

...A number of Wi-Fi-enabled launch titles are in development that will employ Nintendo’s newly announced wireless gaming service...

...Smash Bros. Online for Revolution's launch is confirmed...

i think i'm going to faint.

Weezer - Make Believe

2005-05-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

i also forgot to mention that Make Believe is out.

go buy it. come on. do it. :(

The Guide - Graduation

2005-05-09T22:40:00.000-07:00

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a wholly remarkable book, has this to say on the subject of Graduation.

Graduation, it explains, is a custom which is practiced in only a small number of planets, particularly due to the usually-excessive nature of the presents which are amassed by friends and family.

For example, the Drabain people from the fifth planet of the Vraxis star system had, at one time, instituted a ritual which was not entirely unlike that of Graduation. At the end of a Drabainian's childhood, it had been said, each family member was required (by law) to donate an entire herd of the third-most vicious creature in all existence: the Vraxite Housefly. Many eons and lost lives later, the Drabain people eventually gave up Graduations altogether as a sign of moving on, instead replacing them with Vraxite Housefly Hunting Sessions.

Unfortunately, it is currently unknown where the concept of Graduation actually originated, yet most cynics tend to point the finger at greeting card companies.

To survive Graduation, the Guide offers a few words of advice.

1. Dress comfortably.

2. Take several deep breaths.

3. Be sure to wear Vraxite Housefly Repellant.

4. Try not to fall down.

5. Don't panic.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Coachella

2005-05-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

coachella was, as expected, pretty awesome.

i know i throw that adjective around a lot, but it truly was. the doves were missed, but the sheer...er...awesomeness of everything else more than made up for it.

The story of this past weekend, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertwined with this remarkable music and arts festival begins very simply.

It begins with a car.

about forty minutes into our trip out to indio, my aunt's car exploded. not literally, of course--we'd both be dead--but it did get fed up with running for so long.

"I've had it," said the car, "you're on your own."

we did eventually get the car to an auto center and got ahold of a brand spanking new rental.

a minivan. how indie scenester is THAT! (very!)

we ended up missing Gratitude, but we did catch the end of Radio 4's set. they were pretty rockin'. or should i say, dance-rockin'! no, i shouldn't.

at this point i want to mention that i was carrying a towel around a lot of the time. not just because of the handy guide reference, but because i needed a thing to sit on, a thing to wipe off my face...i suddenly realized the true genius of douglas adams. towels really ARE that useful.

"I told you so," remarked Douglas, who was still not alive.

after some milling around and looking at some of the art exhibits (there was something about a giant baby and robots, which was either an artistic statement, or some kind of warped version of BattleBots. we missed the robot show. i doubt it would have cleared things up) we went and checked out Eisley. despite some problems with the monitors and stuff, they rocked out. how's that for an adjective!

i tried to take some pictures but only one came out well enough.

(click thumbnail to view)

throughout the duration of the day, we tried to track down any of the members of Eisley for a photo. we missed our chance once, scurrying after her only to find out that she'd disappeared into the crowd of 50,000.

It is a little-known fact that the members of Eisley are holograms.

while we were in-between sets we stumbled upon a giant metal piece of art that was actually an interactive drum.

(click thumbnail to view)

i know, all drums are interactive. but you get the point. a bunch of people with metal drumsticks playing at the same time, and anyone could join in! how awesome of an idea is that! i'm going to buy fifty of them.

the real reason we went to coachella and incurred all these car and hotel fees and all this heat and all these water bottles and all the horrible port-a-johns, however, was to see weezer.

they played for fifty wondrous minutes, touching on songs from three of their five albums.

The audience stood in wonder. "Did he just say THREE out of FIVE?"

yes, yes i did. no pinkerton (insert sad face) and no maladroit (insert somewhat concerned but not really face). also, FIVE from make believe. FIVE.

SERIOUSLY FIVE.

I TOOK'SES SOME PICTURES.

(click thumbnails to view)

i loved it. i sang. i danced. i took pictures.
i bought a t-shirt.
it has a robot on it.
it combines two of my favorite things.

i wonder how many of you out there know what a tesla coil is. it's apparently something that looks dreadfully evil and dangerous, yet at the same time is completely awesome and mesmerizing. put more simply, it's a twelve-foot-tall metal dealy that makes lightning bolts out of static electricity. or at least the one i saw was.

(click thumbnail to view)

slow shutter speeds rock, you guys. seriously.

i didn't take a lot of pictures on sunday, sadly. the visages of the arcade fire and sloan will not grace this page. however, you MAY recognize this fellow...

(click thumbnail to view)

...although i don't blame you if you don't recognize him, it's a very bad photo, and i'm a very bad photographer. it's danny masterson! you know...hyde! from THAT 70'S SHOW!

"Oh," they replied, and went back to not caring.

well whatever. apparently he's a big sloan fan. or, the band that played before them. i can't remember.

i also spotted some pseudo-celebrities while i was watching the arcade fire. which ones, you may ask?

er, i mean

"Which ones?" they asked, and pretended to listen.

why, the girl that plays Ann on Arrested Development! also, the girl that plays Maeby Funke! ON ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT! TOGETHER!

it was quite the sight to see. it totally threw me off. i didn't get a picture.

in closing, the weekend rocked the house. the proverbial house. the HOUSE OF ROCK.

and that is coachella in a nutshell.

Countdown to Coachella - 1 Day Remains!!

2005-04-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.

the name alone is enough to strike a chord with the nerds of the world.

if you have read the book, and are expecting an exact translation of the book to film, this is not the movie for you.

i thought it was pretty awesome.

what, you were expecting more in the way of a review?

okay, my only complaints are:

1. the bulldozer scene. way too short :(
2. "What's so bad about being drunk?" "You ask a glass of water." is nowhere to be found.

all-in-all, though, it was an enjoyable experience, leaving the way open for a sequel. [shakes fist] SEEEEEEEQUELLLLL

...er. it wasn't as confusing as i've heard in some reviews (they possibly might not have liked the guide entries being a main plot device. well, those are awesome. forget those guys.) and all the changes worked well. plus zaphod was actually pretty funny.

so, in closing, you'd better check out this movie.

seriously.

just do it for me.

Countdown to Coachella - Now Really 2 Days Remain

2005-04-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

i seriously don't know why i was so off.

Countdown to Coachella - 2 Days Remain

2005-04-27T18:05:00.000-07:00

in other news, the Doves just cancelled their coachella date.

let us all mourn.

or just feel bad for me because i wanted to see them.

:(

Countdown to Coachella - 3 Days Remain

2005-04-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

i'm sorry if I made it seem like these updates would happen daily. i'm simply not creative enough for that.

if you are running the latest version of Internet Explorer (6 Service Pack 2) then you might notice that you can only scroll as far as a small area underneath the weezer banner ~~(that says "testing!!")~~ (I added helpful instructions instead). it's a problem in IE and there's not much I can do to fix it, but, to scroll down more, "restore" your window and then maximize it again. i know it's a lot to go through to read about ewoks, but it's all i've got.

yesterday I was at wal-mart, and I noticed a shopping cart full of video games. they had SSX 3, which is a snowboarding game from like two years ago, for five dollars.

i wouldn't have bought it if it weren't five dollars.

this is a lesson for game developers: make more things five dollars, and less things fifty dollars.

that's your thought for the day.

Countdown to Coachella - 5 Days Remain

2005-04-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

so this is the first post in my "countdown to coachella" series. score.

so i've recently gotten to hear the new weezer album, and i must say it is one of my favorite albums of 2005. it's definitely been worth the wait. "pardon me" is a standout track.

look forward to the coming days, because they bring a personal perspective on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as other random rantings and maybe even pictures.

i just recently re-watched Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and, I must say, I like how everything turned out to be Jar Jar's fault. ha ha-HA ha-HA.