Archive for the 'Blog' Category
mario March 3rd, 2007
Is anyone else as psyched as I am about the rapidly impending release of Pokémon Diamond/Pearl for the Nintendo DS? Less than two months to go until I’m battling and trading online with friends and foes alike!
I’ve been following the Pokémon series from the beginning (back when I was trading Bellsprout to my brother to receive the coveted Oddish), and I can honestly say that I haven’t anticipated an entry in the series this much since the excellent Gold/Silver edition. Ruby/Sapphire was fun and all, but the omission of day/night functionality and weekly scheduled events saddened me to no end; needless to say, Diamond/Pearl adding FIVE times of day has got me sufficiently pumped.
But of course, the biggest feature of all (it certainly ain’t having two screens or touch control) is the ability to connect to other players via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection! This is something I’ve dreamed about from the very beginning, before people were even talking about console games hooking up over the Internet. It was always a pain carrying around the rat’s nest of link cables just so you could track down an extra Articuno to make up for the one you accidentally knocked out (good experience though). From what I’ve read across the Interslice, the game employs a clever trade request system: post on the equivalent of a bulletin board with the Pokémon you’re looking for and what you’re willing to give up for it. If someone accepts the request, the trade will go through – even if you’re not currently connected! And of course, battling on a worldwide network is going to rock all kinds of worlds, especially with the inclusion of voicechat. I’m sure we’ll all get our asses handed to us at first if we’re allowed to link up to the Japanese games, since they’re had a several month headstart.
See you all April 22nd!
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mario February 23rd, 2007
I’m sure everyone’s read by now that The Legend of Zelda’s arguably most-loved title in the series, Ocarina of Time, has finally made its way to the Virtual Console (in the UK; the US will get it on Monday).
Can I be the first to say: Who really cares?
Yes, Ocarina of Time, or “OoT” to its friends, was a great N64 title. It was one of the reasons I was so psyched to get the system back in the day (I can’t believe I’m already referring to the N64’s time as “the day”, but it really was two gaming generations ago). But between the original (shiny gold) cartridge and the Master Quest and Zelda Collector’s Edition GameCube disks, I’ve pretty much had my fill of the game (and can even play those last two on the Wii directly with no fuss). I can’t be the only one in this position of owning the same game too many times already, and not wanting to drop another thousand Wii Points just so I can flaunt my ability to beat the puzzle to reach Gohma (SPOILER ALERT FOR YOU ZELDA 64 NEWCOMERS: “Twenty-three is number one!”).
Unfortunately (fortunately?), it’s pretty much the same story for me with much of the rest of the Shop Channel, at least as far as the Nintendo fare is concerned. No matter how much I love to blast through Super Mario Bros., I’m not going to pick it up when I already own the NES cartridge as well as the Super Mario Bros. DX remake on Game Boy Color. Donkey Kong Country? I’ll just fire up the ol’ SNES, thank you very much. I won’t even think about picking up Zelda II: The Adventure of Link whenever it becomes available (you don’t wanna know how many of those I’ve got). The Legend of Kage? I-
…
Well, there might be a few Nintendo games I need to pick up.
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mario February 20th, 2007
I got a kick out of this. Granted, I get a kick out of anything that reminds me of Trauma Center: Second Opinion, but…
A recent study performed at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York has determined that the doctors who played video games were better at performing certain kinds of surgeries. From the Reuters report:
Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.
“It was surprising that past commercial video game play was such a strong predictor of advanced surgical skills,” said Iowa State University psychology professor Douglas Gentile, one of the study’s authors.
It supports previous research that video games can improve “fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, visual attention, depth perception and computer competency,” the study said.
You can totally ignore the second page of the article, which talks about silly nonsense like gaming being linked to aggressiveness and poor grades. Plant your kids in front of the tube, throw a Wii Remote in their hands, and you’ve got an instant formula for a medical degree!
…As long as they’re playing Trauma Center, obviously.
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mario February 19th, 2007
A clever Wii enthusiast had an equally clever idea: he had custom sculptures made of his and his girlfriend’s Miis as a Valentine’s Day present. They came out beautifully:
On top of that, the sculptor is offering his services to anyone else with the desire to have a sculpture of their Mii (like me) and $50 (unlike me). Act fast, he’s only making 100 Mii sculptures in this fashion. Go now!
(courtesy of 4 color rebellion)
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mario February 18th, 2007
Until a few hours ago, I never owned a PS2.
Okay, you can stop laughing now.
For a long time now, I’ve been amassing PS2 games without owning a console on which to play them. Katamari Damacy (and the “less than three” sequel), Kingdom Hearts, X-Files: Resist Or Serve and ICO have been gracing my shelf for far too long without being spun at high speeds and shot at with a red laser.
I was excited about the announcement of the PlayStation 3 for what some might consider to be all the wrong reasons: I knew that once the $600 console hit the shelves, the PS2 prices would plummet shortly afterward. So patiently I waited, watched the PS3 hit the shelves in their crazy limited supplies and capture the imagination of millionaires everywhere, all the while checking with local game shops for the imminent price reductions. And this Sunday, while walking through my hometown’s Game Crazy, I saw that they had a refurbished slim PS2 for $99! Armed with $45 in gift certificates, I swooped in for the (proverbial) kill!
And forgot to buy a memory card. Oh well, I’ll never get tired of rolling around a giant ball covered in crabs.
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mario February 16th, 2007
Apparently I’m in the minority on this one, but I’ve been exerting quite a lot of effort this past week in an attempt to obtain a Wii Points Card. For those not In The Knowâ„¢, this card is used to purchase items through the Shop Channel on the Nintendo Wii such as Virtual Console games and the Browser Channel If You’re Not Quick Enough On The Draw When It’s Released.
When I set out on a mission to purchase one of these cards last week, I didn’t think there would be much to it. It’s a gift card, I surmised. You can pick up such cards for the iTunes Store with relative ease just about anywhere, so a Wii Points Card should be no problem.
Oh what a fool I was.
As it turns out, the Wii Points Card is harder to find than the Wii itself was in the weeks following its release. By this I mean that, though the Wii was pretty much impossible to find anywhere, at least the people you called knew what it was. Here’s the gist of one call I made to the Wal-Mart in Dixon:
Me: Hi, do you have the Wii Points Card in stock?
Wal-Mart Electronics Department: …the what?
Me: The Wii Points Card? It’s like a gift certificate for buying games through the Wii Shop Channel.
Wal-Mart: Shop… Channel?
Me: Yes. On the Wii.
Wal-Mart: …Whee?
Me: …
This wouldn’t have been as bad if the item in question wasn’t listed on their website, indicating that they do indeed sell it. Though the other stores I checked with weren’t as ignorant of their own stock, I couldn’t procure one through Target, Best Buy, or numerous GameStops and GameCrazies in the region. They had all either run out and had no idea when they were getting them in stock again, or had never seen one with their eyes. In desperation, I went back to Wal-Mart’s page and ordered one through their Site To Store option (where the item is shipped to the store when it’s available, and I can go pick it up there. No way I was gonna spend $6 on shipping for a piece of plastic!).
It’s a sad situation when something as simple as a gift card is out of stock. Unlike the Wii Remotes and Nunchucks and the like, Nintendo is basically printing money on cardstock with the Points Card. They should be shipping these things out by the truckloads across the nation and to our (proverbial) doorsteps. Instead, they’re exercising the same level of caution as they are with their entire product line, thinking the world gaming community still isn’t ready for their radical new gameplay.
Hey Nintendo: we’re ready. Quit holdin’ out on us. We can’t use your Wild Wacky Wii Sticks if you won’t sell us any.
Oh yeah, and don’t charge tax on gift cards. I’m pretty sure crap like that isn’t kosher, and trying to market your gift card as something that isn’t a gift card isn’t gonna fool anyone. That we can buy Wii Points through the Shop Channel and not pay tax should be a safe indicator that you already know better.
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mario February 16th, 2007
Howdy Inter-folk! I’m a bit new to the whole “serious blogging” thing, but I feel that I’ve got a lot to contribute to the whole video game discussion “scene”. So I made a video game discussion blog! If you think this means a blog updated semi-regularly talking about the state of the industry, reviewing a game or two, and lamenting the inability to find a Wii Remote: you’re right! You must be very smart.
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mario December 1st, 2005
Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday! Now for some SCIENCE!
Let’s see here… if the circumference of the Earth’s orbit is about 2Ï€r, and the radius is 1 Astronomical Unit, and 1 AU = 149,597,870.691 kilometers (it’s a little screwy to assume that the Earth’s orbit is a perfect circle, but since the difference between perehelion and aphelion is only about 3%, I think it will work for my purposes), multiplied by 23 revolutions, then by tomorrow I’ll have traveled approximately 21,618,876,291.554 km around the Sun.
I also heard that I share a birthday with Britney Spears. Happy 24th Britney (I’m not too sore that she’s got 939,951,143.111 km on me)! If I cared about celebrities, I would probably make some comment about relationships or pregnancies or scandals or something, but I honestly hardly know anything about Britney Spears. Is that Mouseketeer bit still working out okay for her?
mario November 25th, 2005
Hope you all had a wonderful turkey feast! The song displayed in my “currently playing” dealie is the best Thanksgiving song I know of, so listen to it a million times, even though it’s a day after the fact. ENJOY A WEEK STRAIGHT OF TURKEY SANDWICHES! I know I will.
mario November 20th, 2005
Whether you’re a fan of cylinders, or just casually acquainted with the notion, check out the UCSB‘s Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. They’ve got over 5,000 recordings ranging from the 1890’s to 1920’s transferred from Edison cylinders, all available for download in MP3 (cleaned up) and WAV (uncompressed, but also not touched up, so they’re pretty staticy) format. Pretty hot stuff, considering it’s all free to download (from what I understand, Edison cylinder recordings are all in the public domain). Get going!
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