Jolt Country

I have some friends who are 21 or 22, and no doubt thinking, “Hell yes, you are old. Christ.” Most of my other close friends are around 37, because I made these close friends in the dial-up BBS era, and that’s how it all shook out. So, sure, age is relative, but tonight is the first night I’ve ever personally felt old.

I had surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in my right knee a few years ago. I can’t even pinpoint what set it off. I know that before it went completely, I tried to ski, and I had definitely — since the ski boot locks your ankles in place — jostled my knees mightily in the trying. I don’t think there’s been anything I’ve ever been worse at, than skiing. The ligament finally tore when  I was playing flag football in Fort Collins. I went down like someone shot me. I crawled off the field, in agony. I had to drive home, the 40 miles to Longmont, afterwards. It sucks that it was the right one, because it doesn’t give me an opportunity to say how every vehicle I’ve ever owned, save one old S-15, was a stick. I could have been suffering more!

I didn’t get surgery right away. It was diagnosed as a bruised meniscus, and I was told to stay off it for four weeks. I was on a crutch for the first time in my life. I wanted to play in the flag football tournament that season, so I had a goal in mind, a target, a reward for staying off it. 

I played the week before the tournament. Just six or seven plays. It held up. I thought it had healed. 

I lasted exactly one play the next week in the tournament. I went down, again, like someone shot me in the goddamn face with a railgun. There was no more football after the tournament, so I gave it the entire winter to heal. I then tried some roller hockey months later, made it through one game… and it fell apart the second game. I saw a specialist who instantly knew what was wrong with it.

He said that the ACL was torn, and we scheduled the surgery. I read every word about the operation on the Internet. I went for the ligament repair that involved taking a piece from a corpse, because I didn’t want them to grab from me elsewhere. I read that there was something like a 1 in 100,000 or one in a million chance of getting AIDS from the ligament. I took my chances, cos I’m a fawkin daredevil, yo. I also read that I’d definitely develop arthritis in my knee. It was a matter of when, not if. I have thought nothing of that.

Till tonight. As I was leaving work, my manager was out having a cigarette. We talked about the stuff I was working on - it wasn’t even particularly cold tonight, maybe mid-40s. Because of the fucked up and altogether worthless manner that we handle HVAC systems in this miserable country, it was almost as cold in side the office,  all day long. Pffft! But nevertheless, as I was out there, I got this dull pulse in my knee. The right knee. The one operated upon, so many days before.

I drove home and it was still there, lingering. A bit odd. 

… And the pain was not quite hobbling, as I entered my abode. I shut the door and fed the cats, and grimly smiled as one shit its pants, and asked my knee in jest if this (all of this) was indeed me at my best, and my knee answered grimly: just an aching “nevermore.”

Enter dinner, which I started gobbling, with more life that I was badly bobbling, and I started up some Hugo, so that I might go code. I shut the door to shut out the cats (and the air was still sick of shitted pants) and reflected upon my decisions and the ones that I might still change. I created little fiction in a text game-riddled diction, and asked my knee if possibly there were better days ahead. It answered once again, well, you know, “nevermore.”

And I sit here just short of shallow sobbing, as my own knee performs the robbing; the stealing of my hope and soul and dreams of future lore. All alone in purgatory, with a ligament answering exclusively in the negatory, and I can’t stop myself from asking questions, more and more and more. It never answers yes, just a mirror to the mess, the aching still is making, haha, still is STILL is making of mockery of everything I ever did care for.  And no matter what I ask it, each query a bastard in a basket, the knee responds so grimly, an angry nevermo– oooooooooooookay, I think everyone gets it. 

Fallout 3 is the first game I’ve been determined to play through to some sort of ending since BioShock, and unlike BioShock, this game is not a six-hour venture that even I can knock off in a week. Oh no. Bethesda makes video games like Oppenheimer makes bombs: glorious, expansive, and filled with a lifetime of pain for the consumers. Fallout 3 will be taking me straight through Halloween, right through Thanksgiving and into Christmas, and but for the grace of God do I not succumb to the dismal horrors presented every second in the Wasteland. 

I can’t even adequately explain how depressing this game is, so let’s start off as to whether or not it’s fucking awesome. Here’s a quick Fallout 3 FAQ: 

Q: Is Fallout 3, the third Fallout game, completely fucking awe-
A: IMMA ADDICTED TO STIMS

Q: …
A: I have a negATIVE ONE TO INT AND CHAR WHOops

Q: … Can you attach a screenshot that shows some of the – 
A: STIMS 

 
That screenshot doesn’t even do the combat system justice. Bethseda have outdone themselves with the thing they are calling “V.A.T.S.” — essentially, you enter this mode to target some of the freaks in the Wasteland, and then the game adopts a sort of slow motion, pseudocinematronic delight of the camera, to show what should be the absolute horrors of war, but what instead comes off as the greatest combat engine that’s ever existed.  

 I can’t even write straight right now. I’m just filled with all the cool things in this game - how you can detonate a nuclear weapon in one of the cities, how this is the first game where “repairing” a weapon doesn’t make me want to get the game disc in a state where it itself needs to be “repaired,” how one time my player was shooting a Raider in the chest with an assault rifle, and she JUMPED IN THE AIR to get the angle right as she unloaded a burst of weaponry into the poor bastard.

I’ve purchased Wasteland, Fallout 1, Fallout 2, the Brotherhood of Steel games and so on and so forth, but the most fun I’ve ever had was actually with the original (Wasteland). I actually think that it is just as true to Wasteland as it is (or isn’t, according to many of the posters at No Mutants Allowed) to Fallout. the VATS system really does seem to translate the original turn-based combat of Wasteland… and I love it. 

Really, the nice little details in this game have me hooked. The unit of currency is bottle caps. There is a healing object in the game called Nuka Cola. If you drink some cola… a bottle cap is added to your inventory. I just love that someone thought of that, went, “a-ha!” and they were able to put it into the game.

The intro to Fallout 3 is terrible, but once you get past that, it really does pick up. The graphics are drop-dead gorgeous, and it has a perfect balance of ammo, money and enemies. They also resisted the monster closet issue that plagued Doom 3 - when you secure an area in Fallout 3, it seems to stay secure. 

I do apologize for not updating my website the last week… but honestly, this is where I was. 

 

Although I definitely had some stuff I have to do around the yard tomorrow, I did mostly take tomorrow off from work to play Fallout 3. I have talked about using a vacation day for a video game for years, but I am not sure if I had actually done so before? I have to get down to under two weeks by the end of the year, so knowing I have to burn some anyway… well, here we are.

Fallout 3 is installing as I write this. Actually, knowing a little something about how long it takes, I can write several thousand words and the fact that it is still installing shall still be true.

I have found, as I have become older, that I am willing to set a game down for anything. It’s like I am just looking for an excuse to do so. Don’t like the save system? Boom! Outta there. Don’t like the default control scheme? Good day! I said good day! It doesn’t work well with my trackball, because the game needs a scrollwheel? I don’t even have to say it. 

It’s sort of sad, because I stopped pirating games years ago, but my ability to instantly drop a game and never return didn’t change. This is all really starting to cost me a lot of money. I dropped the original Half-Life because it was TOO SCARY. This is really stupid of me. But I end up knowing fairly quickly if I am going to finish a game… BioShock and Freedom Force are probably the last two that I just “knew” I’d play until they were done. 

So I am a little worried about the money I just dropped on Fallout 3. I was under the impression that - at some point in the game - we’d all be able to pick what city we want to set a suitcase nuke off in. I have seen about seventeen seconds of promotional video for this game, and I guess I had created a weird fiction off it. It’s fine, it’s okay - nobody is saying “FUCK YOU BETHESDA” here or anything. I really do know nothing about how it plays, what the story is going to be like, whether it’s really destined to be the horror that the guys at No Mutants Allowed seem to think it’ll be… I know nothing. This is how I wanted it. (I knew literally nothing about BioShock before grabbing that last year, aside from the fact that I’d be shooting libertarians at some point.) 

I’m excited. Right now, as Fallout 3 completes its installation procedure (I have to admit, it was rather quick!) it’s the greatest game that has ever existed. I hope the reality just comes close!

Pinback: Robb? Gravitar, Robb? Fan?

ICJ: Yeah, I am a fan
ICJ: At first I wasn’t? But I am totally a fan now
ICJ: Half of the reason why is because of the technology involved
ICJ: COLOR
ICJ: FUCKING
ICJ: VECTOR

Pinback: Cuz Gravitron 2 is out, and it’s $5, and if you say you’re a Gravitar fan, I’ll fucking buy it, spend the rest of the fucking day playing it, and then fucking write a review of it.

ICJ: Wait - What? Gravitron? Or Gravitar?

Pinback: GRAVITRON 2 is a game released two weeks ago, which is a total retro throwback to Gravitar.
Pinback: But with modern-day sensibilities.
Pinback: It’s either this, or I buy chips at Full Tilt Poker.

ICJ: Here is the thing with Gravatar: that is a 10-minute game
ICJ: You have seen it all in ten minutes
ICJ: If they added stuff to this… Gravitron 2, then OK. 

Pinback: Have you seen it all with GRAVITRON 2??
Pinback: Look, it’s five bucks. Either that, or I lose $100 on Full Tilt which I do not have to spare.

ICJ: Where is the web page for this?
Pinback: http://xout.blackened-interactive.com/Gravitron2.html
ICJ: … I will be getting that tonight.

Pinback: SHIT YEAH
Pinback: Then I am getting it right now.

ICJ: 40 stages! There’s like 3 in real Gravitar?
Pinback: And dude
Pinback: It has a whole “blow the thing up then get 60 seconds to escape” thing, like Major Havoc.
Pinback: AND it’s got a “rescue the little guys” thing, like Choplifter.
Pinback: IT IS EVERY GAME COMBINED INTO ONE.

ICJ: …
ICJ: …  
ICJ: I must possess this game

Pinback: Fucking BOUGHT.
Pinback: Which is to say, I paid money.
Pinback: I don’t technically “have” the “full copy” yes.

ICJ: Yeah, these things take time… Still less of a pain in the ass than going to Gamestop.

 

Editor’s note: I purchased Gravitron 2 later that evening, and yes - it is amazing. It is amazing piece of work. Vector-style graphics done in raster will never, EVER cease to be amazing to me, and the fact that they took a nice retro game and expanded it perfectly means this thing is a steal for five bucks. Five bucks! It’s worth more than five bucks. 

I think the only way this game could be better would be if you were able to rescue and redeem tokens at Full Tilt Poker, which would normally not even be on the table, but seeing how Gravitron 2 merges Choplifter, Thrust, Gravitar and Major Havoc into one delightful package, what’s one more game? 

 

 

Saturday started off with me trying to count the drinks I had the night before - I had an initial count that was low, and would actually remember them as the day went on, like they were lousy quarterbacks that skulked about the history of the New Orleans Saints. (”Oh, yes, someone poured a Miller Light for me! I never drink that! … Billy Joe Tolliver!”) Funnily enough, I think I hissed at the memory of some of the drinks more. There is the spirtual pain of seeing John Fourcade start the season under center, and then the very real pain of several drinks that were stronger than anyone currently on the Saints, except for Jeremy Shockey (I didn’t try any absinthe).

Here’s how bin Laden has ruined America: I assume I can’t bring anything on the plane with me that has to do with personal grooming - in fact, my hair gel was found by Homeland Security and discarded. On the other hand, some of the DHS agents this week look pretty hot, so nobody question my patriotism any time soon. I therefore didn’t try to bring any ibuprofen, because it was going to be in a container that was greater than three ounces. In retrospect, I should have just downed 40 of them before flying and try to cover myself for the whole weekend, but that’s another story. So yeah - I was unable to take some painkillers before going to bed, and had my first hangover since I was in my late 20s. I could have received some from the hotel front desk if it was “that” kind of a hotel, but, well… yeah. You might think that I needed a hangover like I needed a hole in my head, but as discussed yesterday with the strip being shut down directly outside, I could have had both.

(It all actually only went away when I had a vodka/cranberry thing late Saturday night, so trying the hair of the dog that bit me really did work. Amazing. What other wisdom is there in clichéd sayings?? Also, I know that Alt-130 is the messed-up “e” now, so expect that to be a recurring character, so to speak, in future blog entries.) 

 

 

The best idea I could personally come up with to cure a mild hangover is naturally getting onto a roller coaster, and luckily, New York New York provides for just that. Across the street was a mess of arcade games, and after lunch, I was able to play some Centipede with my buddy Fodge, and his wife. The Gameworks is on the card reader setup, so while he was trying to get it to go, he accidentally put nine credits into the Centipede. We also did some virtual bowling. I love that a $15,000 bowling lane with simulated results was developed. This should be the next market taken by the people who did Rock Band: after having delivered the experience of playing in a band at home, plastic bowling would also be great. The side benefit is that everyone’s french fries would be better, as nobody has ever had bad fries at a bowling alley.

By this time, Fodge had to get ready for the wedding. My friend Greg called while I was walking the two (I think?) (I actually just looked it up, it’s 1.9 miles) miles back to the hotel. Greg was a few drinks ahead of me, thanks to being in opposite time zones, but he demanded that I fly out to Atlanta during what would be this weekend. Greg, I will, shortly! I need to see Gerrit anyway and shoot a movie next year! Greg, I am asking you to act in a movie in front of all these people to embarrass you into accepting. 

I got back to the hotel and took another nap - apparently I have the stamina of an 80-year old, but I’m not going to lie here, lying about Vegas comes way afterwards. The wedding was going to be at seven, and I was determined to get a cab. 

I was also determined not to dress nicer than the groom. The wedding was at their hotel room (which was amazingly nice) and I was led to believe that Matt was going to be wearing shorts and a baseball cap - I grabbed my favorite pair of jeans and a button-down, black shirt. I was prepared for anything: being lied to about the expected dress, not being able to find a cab and having to huff it, finally giving into the endless stream of guys who give cards for callgirls, being thrown into a room with an angry pitboss on account for general smugness.

I arrived at the wedding just in the nick of time. It was great. Fodge did a wonderful job as the best man, and there was a lot of food and other pleasantries. Fodge, Luddy, Keith and I sat down to play some euchre afterwards, and it was just like old times, just like being a freshman in college. Euchre really never gets old. When I play cards, or eat, I don’t like to have anything in my pockets, so I put my phone and glasses on the table. 

My phone is a flip phone, and was free with a year’s extension through T-mobile. It is also purple, because I run caltrops.com. This did not go over well! It really got out of hand within a couple minutes, and I was being aggressively mocked for owning a purple phone, all by people I did not really know! But it was very funny (and fun) and I think my argument was essentially that it would be gray to the colorblind. 

I don’t remember anything else that happened that night. 

***

The next day was spent at the sports book, where I put money on the New Orleans Saints. Guess how that went? Reggie Bush blew out his knee and the game was never in doubt after the first few drives. The Saints have disappointed me in every single way, in the last 30 years, but I had never actually lost money on them. They were getting three points, and lost 30-7. I would not have had it any other way, har har har. 

That’s essentially it, except for successfully avoiding the lizard men at Denver International Airport on the way back. I’d say, “I can’t wait to return to Las Vegas,” but it has a way of making me intend to be back, regardless of my intentions. Right on. 

Lovely Vegas

“Vegas is the city of Las Vegas. No one is quite sure how the Soviet missiles managed to miss the city, but most folks figure it was because the “house” was betting against a missile landing — and no one wins against the house.” — the Wasteland manual, 1986, Interplay

Ha ha, yeah. Goddamn, am I psyched for Fallout 3, you know? Fallout, the spiritual successor for Wasteland, was great, I did enjoy Fallout 2 and in between #2 and the upcoming third game, we all were entertained by the batshit-vomiting crazies that make up the Internet’s community of Fallout fans. Every last one of them is convinced that only they should make Fallout 3, none of them have so much as picked up any kind of SDK. I am intentionally trying to not learn anything about FO3, only that I think there’s a nuke in it, but I did read somewhere that it takes place not in the American southwest… but in Maryland or something? Ha, ha, what’s this now? A Fallout game is gonna finally have the graphics engine to do Vegas justice and they set it in near Baltimore, which could be successfully depicted on the original Gameboy? I could make a better game than these idiots at Bethesda! I am now going to delete my install directory for the Hugo programming language.

I was in Lovely Vegas over the weekend for a wedding. You may remember the character of Brian Pang from Necrotic Drift - the actor (Matt) was the dude getting married. Pang was originally a character in Chicks Dig Jerks, and I’d like to say he was “based” on my friend Matt, but even that isn’t being fair. I tried to make him an almost exact, written, duplicate-replica. He is a good guy that is oftentimes out of his goddamn mind.

Almost nobody gets married in the same city they live in - or, I should say, nobody gets married in the same city I live in. I’ve flown for almost every wedding I’ve ever been to. This was my first time traveling completely alone in over five years. I had never actually done the thing where you enter an airport… and there is nobody there to pick you up & you don’t have a rental. I was vaguely aware that there might be a good spot to catch a cab, so I got to do that for the first time. I took it over to the strip, where I was staying. Oh… yeah. That.

I was staying at the Casino Royale, because I guess I make bad decisions. 

Well, yes and no - I didn’t expect to do much in my room except sleep, so in theory, it shouldn’t have made much difference where I stayed, right? Well, yes and no - my friends were staying at the Luxor, Mandelay Bay and the Monte Carlo. Those are all somewhat close to each other, but since I didn’t exactly have a date and I wasn’t getting married, I didn’t see the big deal in trying to impress anyone with an expensive room. I wanted to look for something like the Wikipedia List of Cheap-Ass Hotel Rooms, but somehow, I don’t think Wikipedians get to Vegas much. (I was going to link to my favorite page on the Internet, which was the “List of Wikipedians with Asperger Syndrome,” but in heroic Wiki fashion, they seem to have deleted it.) 

Anyway, I got to the hotel room and unpacked… and none of my friends were in Vegas yet. I think for the first time, it really struck me that I was traveling… “alone.” I don’t know how to best describe it - for some reason, being in a hotel room with paper-thin walls, sort of waiting for my buddies to get into town was almost… crippling. I immediately dialed a few numbers to get some prostitutes over.

Kidding! Long-time readers of my website will have no difficulty in believing me when I instead state that I took a nap until my friend Luddy and his wife called. I can never sleep the night before I fly, so this was all right. Luddy, his wife and I made plans to have dinner at the ESPNZone. 

It had been about a day since I had any food at that point, and I ended up walking from the Casino Royale to ESPNZone - it took about 30 minutes with all the people around. This ended up being a somewhat common theme for me, although I did relent and take a cab home Saturday night, which was (spoiler) for the best. It’s great to walk the strip anyway, isn’t it?

After dinner, the three of us went over to the Pinball Hall of Fame. I was able to catch it for the first time last year, during the Classic Gaming Expo, and the place was packed. (The CGE was running a shuttle back and forth, and there was definitely an effort made to get CGE people over there.) There were only a handful of people at the HoF this time, and I was able to play The Pinball Circus, which was a prototype that I didn’t get a chance to see last year. Like an idiot, I confused “Cirqus Voltaire,” currently rated the #4 best pinball game of all-time at the Internet Pinball Machine Database, with “The Pinball Circus,” which is not. Whatever, fuck the list! TPC was amazing to play, and I was cognizant that I was playing — since it was a prototype — one of two such machines in the world.

And then, since I am not a Wikipedian with Asperger Syndrome, we all met up with the rest of our friends and had drinks for the rest of the night. 

***

I woke up Saturday to a mass of people jumping in and out of the Casino Royale. Well, actually, I woke up to housekeeping SCREAMING THEIR FUCKING HEADS OFF to get into my fucking room. I didn’t set the “do not disturb” mechanism correctly, so it’s my fault, but goddamn - if the door is locked, give up, housekeepers! It’s gonna be fine! Nobody shot themselves! Actually - well, back to the first bit of this paragraph:

People from the strip were entering the Casino Royale, I discerned, because the strip itself was taped off. What I heard, but was not able to confirm through Google News, was that someone got shot overnight. (So yeah, when people asked if the Casino Royale was at all like the movies, I was able to say sure: there was a similar number of gunshots, har har.) Maybe that’s just how rumors spread, I don’t know. 

All right, let’s hit up part two tomorrow. Either that, or maybe my brother will write something horrible about Barack Obama.

I hate doing this, but I was swamped today - the only writing I did today is, man this is going to dork the place up something fierce - my take on why Wrath of Khan is more fondly remembered than Star Trek: Nemesis, even though there was plenty of cheese in Wrath of Khan. 

Enjoy! And let’s not ever discuss this one in person. 

The Multi-Q*bert board is coming back! I just received an e-mail from Mike Doyle, and the thing is coming back into production, with the intent to get it to people by Thanksgiving. 

All right, just what is the Multi Q*bert board? It allows you to play the following games: 

Q*bert

Q*bert Qubes

Faster, Harder, More Challenging Q*bert

Insector

Curveball

Mello Yello Q*bert 

 

And of course, the standard Q*bert board plays one of those games… Q*bert. I have no idea what Insector and Curveball are like - I could load them up in MAME, but it is sort of more fun to not know at this point, y’know? There is also going to be a bonus game in this iteration of the kit: 7-11 Q*bert. That would be 7-11 as in the convenience store 7-11. What does that have to do with Q*bert? I have no idea, but again, I can’t wait to see how it is different.

The instructions for the kit seem pretty straight-forward, just popping some ROM chips and a few RAM chips. If you’d like to get on the list for them, just write Mike Doyle — which is his site directory name, http://www.members.aol.com/kilkeeslps/ at aol dot com. You’ll get the kit and a shirt. 

For me, personally, the real prize is FHMC Q*bert - I run into the wall on regular Q*bert after 30,000 points, and being able to switch over to a new game in the same “style” would be fantastic. 

This is a few years old, but comes from me trying to learn how to make photographs look more comicy.

Concept by Jhoh “Creexul” Cable, words by Mischief Maker, I put the panels together. You can click on it to get the whole thing, uncompressed. 

I am counting down my ten favorite indie games in this thread over at Caltrops.