An Aussie geek stuck in Texas

[tag]Nintendo[/tag]Well folks it isn’t supposed to be out until Friday but apparently nobody told Best Buy that and the best girlfriend in the whole world bought it for me on her way home from work. It is so much fun playing a new Mario platformer, yes it isn’t original but who really expected something original out of it? It is just plain good fun and that is what a game is supposed to be all about! Although that isn’t to say it doesn’t have any new original gameplay as things like giant Mario are a hoot!

Anyway please excuse me while I go and play some more!

[tag]Nintendo[/tag]Funniest email subject ever!

It was from an email Nintendo sent out about why buying your mum that Brain Age aegm for Mother’s Day was a good idea, personally I find that a very hard sell even if it may be true in some cases as the last thing you want to do is insult your mum!

The first day of commuting with the Gameboy Micro went quite well, it stayed in my pocket all day without any discomfort and playing it while on the light rail made the trip seem to go a lot faster than when I am listending to my iPod. At one point the bright sunlight made it hard to see the screen but as soon as I increased the brightness setting it was fine, so far I think the Micro is a winner!

Now I just need some games that are more catered towards just picking up and playing for short periods as I mainly have strategy and adventure games at the moment but I think my girlfriend would skin me alive if I went by the video game store again this pay!

After the Astros win I swung by the Barnes & Noble on Holcombe to see if they had the Ruby on Rails book that I wanted in stock but they didn’t so I wandered over to the oh so convenient Game Stop that has an entrance within B&N, picked up a couple of GBA games (Super Ghouls & Ghosts and Metroid Zero), along with Metroid Prime on Gamecube (Used for 5 bucks, I had it back in Australia but not over here) and well just couldn’t resist the urge to get a Gameboy Micro.

So far I am pretty impressed, the screen is really bright and has a nice resolution, it doesn’t feel small at all in my hands and reminds me a lot of the old single screen game & watches but slightly smaller. The only negative so far is that the shoulder buttons are a little hard to press as pressing the corner doesn’t seem to click the button so you have to wrap your index fingers right around to press them.

Once it is charged I’ll put it through it’s paces and also use it throughout the week then let y’all know what I think.

I haven’t had a chance to play it much yet as we had to unprepare everything after Hurricane Rita plus well I have two real live dogs so I can’t very well sit there and play with a virtual one instead can I? I must say though it is an ingenious [tag]video game[/tag], the voice recognition is great but I swear your dog ignores you from time to time just like a real dog!

The niftiest thing so far though has to be the bubble blowing, you get one of those bubble blowing wands you know the type you dip into detergent/water and then blow bubbles, took me a while to work out that the way you blow bubbles was to actually blow on the microphone, what a stroke of genious!

It is sad that the main things getting press for the PSP are Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City, yet another remake of GTA and the homebrew scene and Sony would also like us to believe that UMD movies are the best thing since sliced bread.

WOOHOO another GTA, woopty friggin do!

Homebrew? Sure there will probably be some good homebrew games but will they really ever take advantage of the PSP hardware? Why in the heck would I want a GBA emulator for my PSP?

UMD movies? A lot of them are more expensive than the DVD, WTF?

I’m thinking I might pick up a Gameboy Micro to go with my PSP and DS as both of those don’t get much use as they aren’t pocketable, however the DS will see some use soon with Advance Wars DS and the other cool titles coming out soon for it.

I just upgraded to the US 2.0 version of the firmware with the new built-in web browser for my Sony PSP and I must say so far it has been a far from pleasant experience, it is so damn slow at loadi9ng and rendering pages, even their special designed for PSP site!

Also I tried downloading a video from their site (even though they only have the same old crap trailers) and it is way too difficult plus when I hit download I got a warning about a SSL certificate being expired. Come on Sony this is a brand new site, get your act together!

Now where are my downloadable game demo’s?

Linkage

How does all the violence in Grand Theft Auto only deserve a Mature rating, when a hidden sex scene that sounds like it is not at all realistic and that you can’t actually see any naughty bits leads the game to have it’s rating changed to Adults Only?

The ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) have given retailers an option of either pulling the game from shelves or exchanging their copies for those with the correct rating, I’m guessing they could also just whack a sticker on there to achieve that as well.

Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., said this week the video game industry needs a good dose of government oversight and renewed a call for a law requiring the FTC to determine if the video game industry’s labeling practices are unfair or deceptive.

WTF dude? How about the government take care of issues like health care & education and stay the heck away from parenting? My parents knew full well what kind of games I was playing and thankfully they were fairly liberal so I got to play games like Leisure Suit Larry before when the government believed I was mature enough. I really hate this world where people refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, like why is there even a Parents group surrounding this? It would be different if this was a The Wiggles game that had an embedded sex scene but to complain about a sex scene in GTA is just stupid.

Sen. Clinton seeks ‘Grand Theft’ sex scene probe

“We should all be deeply disturbed that a game which now permits the simulation of lewd sexual acts in an interactive format with highly realistic graphics has fallen into the hands of young people across the country,” Clinton wrote in a letter to the head of the Federal Trade Commission.

What kind of fucked up society do we live in when gratuitious violence is viewed upon in a better light than “simulated sex acts”? It’s a friggin graphically violent game and Hillary is complaining about a hidden mini-game where apparently you can control how fast the guy thrusts in a scene where you can’t see anything interesting.

The only movies of it I could find were in WMV format and VLC didn’t have the codec so I can’t comment too much but can anyone say Leisure Suit Larry? How old is that game and do we hear people complaing about that?

Sorry Hillary I was once a fan but no longer!