Jolt Country

I wrote a scene in Fallacy of Dawn where the player is expected to give horrible games to a clerk that is a bit of a gaming elitist. The clerk can’t BELIEVE you came to the counter with a few gems from the bargain bin, and… okay, it isn’t the best puzzle in the world. 

My brother gave me Battlecruiser: 3000 AD for Christmas one year. This is because he is the greatest brother, ever. (He also played Delarion Yar, the main character in Fallacy of Dawn, and doing that even though it greatly annoyed him also makes him the greatest brother, ever.) The idea of a bunch of people going to work and finshing up with something that is truly miserable does sort of fascinate me in a perverse way.

There really is a sort of “classic” list of the worst video games in the world. I’ll try to list them below. They are the ones that always seem to show up on lists like “The 20 Worst Games of All-Time” and such. Annnnnd, because I am an enormous dork, I can’t help but read every “Worst Games Ever” article ever made. It’s a curse.

The list: Pac-Man, E.T. and Custer’s Revenge for the Atari 2600. Superman for the Nintendo 64. Battlecruiser 3000AD, Extreme Paintbrawl, Daikatana* and Outpost for the PC. Rise of the Robots for the Amiga. Finishing up is Sewer Shark and Night Trap for the Sega CD.

I mean, that is a fairly standard list. Season to taste, certainly. You can’t go wrong with those. A list generated by a group of game journalists would probably include those games (although PC Gamer was good enough to give the completely unfinished Outpost a 93%). Sprinkle with something acerbic regarding the Virtual Boy and you have yourself an article. Gamasutra could turn the above list into 33 pages and then remove the “print” option so they can level up their Adsense account. 

… And personally, hey, I never questioned those choices. I certainly did not feel that E.T. and Pac-Man were terrible games when I was growing up, but that’s not been a fight I felt passionate about. They didn’t seem any worse than many other 2600 games, and I did not spend a terrible amount of time in arcades when I was like seven, so the “real” Pac-Man was not burned into my memory. And in all honesty, they are usually included because what they represent, which was the temporary death of the domestic gaming industry.

(I began a thread on my BBS about the worst games ever, and I was trying to limit it to games I actually played and personally detested. Pac-Man, E.T. and so forth weren’t going to be on it. The thread sort of stalled because I promised myself that I’d go back and re-play every single game… and honestly, it’s just been a little difficult finding the time to play in irony the last couple of months.) 

But here is the reason I am writing all of this. Tonight, I was sent a Youtube video that shows the final scene to Night Trap. I am actually angry about this - I am smiling in anger.

At the very end of the video, you imprison some… well, I don’t know what they are specifically, a vampire or shadowbitch or something. (The last girl on the screen before Dana Plato is one such monster.) And then Dana tells you what a great guy you are for solving the game and saving all the girls you could. Right on. 

She turns to leave, walks down the hall and says, “Nah, you wouldn’t.”

At this point in the video, it appears that the same trap was triggered for her, the protagonist, as was triggered for the vampire a moment earlier. And I just assumed that the ending of the game was like that. But my friend said, no, you can actually press the “trap” button there. You have to press it for that to happen.

That’s when everything I thought I knew turned false.

What? What the — what? That is unbelievable! That totally gives the player a chance to - in NIGHT TRAP OF ALL GAMES, it — all right, I am going to try to compose myself here. It’s amazing and unepected.

OK, first off, letting a trap be invoked right there messes with the player/player character relationship. That is supposed to be one of the big “things” you can experiment with in text adventures, and here is a wholly miserable and unloved FMV game pulling it off. And it’s our thing! Not Full Motion Video’s thing! It’s IF’s thing! Secondly, it allows for a meaningful moral choice right at the end of the game. Yes, it is a binary decision, and those can be as lame as they were in BioShock, but in Night Trap, it’s fast, it’s quick - you’re deciding what to do in a split second and the real-time nature of Night Trap actually works in its favor, to its credit. (Believe me, when I woke up today, I didn’t think I’d end it complimenting frigging Night Trap.) 

Lastly,  even in a game with universally terrible acting like Night Trap, Dana Plato is good enough to act distressed for three seconds. Admittedly, the laughable CGI effect that follows ruins the moment, but for a few seconds there is an actual bit of negative feedback as the PC screams and pleads for her own life.

And this is supposed to be one of the worst games of all-time.

I played Night Trap once, briefly, when it was new, and yeah - it sucks. Totally and completely. The writing is terrible, the acting embarrassing, and the gameplay kind of stale. I’m not trying to argue otherwise. But I can safely say that this “twist,” or this last-second player decision saves it from the rep it got over the years. I used to believe that there was no point in continuing to play a horrible game after a couple hours, but for the first time, Night Trap has me thinking, maybe, otherwise. It’s a total revelation. And in my opinion, it should be more famous for that.

*I purchased Daikatana last year, from a vendor on eBay. I had to know if it was as terrible as everyone says. It’s not great, but again, it’s nowhere near one of the “worst games of all-time.” And getting mad at John Romero is like getting mad at Manny Ramirez for something. You know what you’re in for, and Ion Storm the company was probably as bad an idea as Manny being allowed to manage the Washington Nationalsin 2014. But no, Daikatana wasn’t that unpleasant. If I get on Youtube tonight and find that the ending of Daikatana has you making a choice about the fate of Hiro Miyamoto, I am going to hang myself.

Guys: You make women feel terrible about how they dress and act 364 days a year. Especially if you’re on the Internet. Don’t you monsters DARE try to “recognize the irony” in the whole sexy bumblebee, sexy witch, sexy Princess Toadstool, sexy Female Arnold Rimmer phenomenon. You are all fucking retards for doing this. And almost all of you are doing this. I can hear your face screwed up in a wad of irony-recognition from here.

“Ewwwwww!!! Every costume for women is sexy this or sexy that! Ewwww!”

No shit, you dumb bastards. Yes, we live in a post-irony world where nobody tries to be genuinely funny. However, I have had more potential and realized dates come out of Halloween than any other holiday or gathering combined (except Rosh Hashanah, but that’s because technically, on that day, I don’t mind doing all the work). You’re not ruining this for me, you’re ruining it for yourselves. This loathing towards women on Halloween has been going on for a few years now. Your stupid “awareness” is not necessary and it is ultimately self-defeating.

While we’re here, those of you still going as the people from that Beastie Boys video: stop it. Every one of you after the first threesome to do it looks like fucking idiots. The rest of you aren’t remotely clever, and this is coming from someone who’s gone as the Joker four times. I eventually stopped though, because Jesus Christ. You’re not interesting or original, just go as the fucking Mario Brothers or, if you must, the Clockwork Orange guys. That’s still acceptable.

(I am okay with girls going as sexy Alex, sexy Georgie and sexy Dim.)

So, no, I am not okay with angry, aspie men telling women to not dress like strippers on Halloween. I am okay with me telling angry aspies what to do. Halloween goes in three phases, the Chocolate Candy, the Eye Candy, and the You Are All My Candy, and if we are going to make women feel bad about their choices in dress on that magical day, then I will turn you into my bitch, and not stop skullfucking you until all that is left is a small smattering of bone, brain, blood, good and plenty.

Also, enjoy the 2008 Interactive Fiction Competition, everybody. 

Hi! As some of you may know, my life recently went topsy-turvy. If my life were in a comic book, it would have had a banner that read, “EVERYTHING YOU KNEW IS FALSE!” If my life were an NFL team, there would have been articles written by preposterously fat sportswriters that asked “What’s Eating Ice Cream Jonsey?” If my life were a funeral, it would definitely be one that you don’t eat at.

And in the scheme of things, no, it’s not as bad as getting cancer, or having a loved one die, or anything like that. But it was enough to send me spinning like a Venusian compass. And there has been one person that has gone above and beyond the call of duty in helping manage my delicate magnetic mental state - my friend Benjamin “Pinback” Parrish.

I don’t know how many hours he has helped me deal with the issues swirling my brain. You name it, he’s had an answer for it. He is a psychiatrist wrapped up in a psychologist, wrapped up in a Buddhist, wrapped up in Little League coach that helps mold young men, rather than molest them. He’s talked me off the figurative “ledge,” and essentially — and I really don’t mean to make a big issue out of this — kept me sane. Because of his nigh-24 hour friendship, I am sane. I don’t believe I’d be able to say that otherwise.

And in return, as is my monstrous nature, I have done little. I have tried to at least phrase my endless bleating in a semi-entertaining manner? Sometimes? I don’t think he gets anything out of it, and that makes him a motherfucking saint. I am unfeeling worm, but at the same time I think he and his lovely girlfriend are moving out this way before too long, so I plan on totally being kind then! I’m developing not_really_a_monster.exe just for that occasion.

And yet, regardless of my own actions, the Internet itself took notice.

You may recall that, a few weeks ago, Ben wrote an article for this website called Positive Trends in Drunkeness. In typical Ben Parrish style, it is a well-reasoned and well-formed argument towards something positive, namely, Sobieski vodka, made in Poland, from rye. His argument was that vodka – wholesome, delicious vodka — does not need to cost more money than thirty US dollars. It doesn’t need to be locked behind a case, where the store owner sighs before turning round to get it, which is actually fucking AMAZING of the a-hole, seeing how you are buying the pricey stuff. And the back of your neck starts to get all pin-prickly, as the store owner (whom you’d totally throttle at this point) can’t open the stupid case, and all the other people in line start getting all shifty, and at least one of them back there you’re sure is carrying a weapon.

Ben would have none of this.

Purchase the delicious vodka from Sobieski instead, and it will be the wisest decision you’ve ever made. That was his argument.

Now, I am going to be honest: I haven’t yet done this myself. I haven’t purchased any vodka since Ben wrote his article. Oh, but when I do? You bet your ass it’s gonna be Sobieski. After all, the Internet itself knows what a fantastic person Ben is and sent him this:

I have very few rules in life, but if you take care of my buddy Pinner, I’ll take care of you. Sobieski, you now have a customer for LIFE in me, ICJ. Thanks, guys. You rock — good things happen to good people, and there’s none gooder than Ben.

Let’s face it, you do! Sure, if you pile enough cheese and bacon in there, you can come up with something resembling something edible, but when it comes to just making plain old mashed potatoes — perhaps the finest method of enjoying the potato’s natural wonderfulness — you really, really suck at it. Your shit ends up all lumpy and hard, or else it’s just this sloppy, tasteless mess, probably with too much salt. Sure, you try to save it at the end by throwing some black pepper or chives or something on there, but by that time you have ruined it far too much for salvation. Like you always do, because you suck at making mashed potatoes.

It’s embarrassing. For you, sure, but more for us who has to watch you, and, god forbid, taste the pile of garbage you wind up with.

Really pathetic.

But that’s okay, we are going to give you a pass today, just so I can teach you, once and for all, how to make mashed potatoes that do not suck. It’s not that hard, which makes it that much more disappointing how bad you are at it.

You are going to need some EQUIPMENT and some INGREDIENTS for this. –Yes?

Shut up! You only think this because you have never had good mashed potatoes, only the terrible kind that you’ve been making for the last 20 years. Once you have these (”good”) mashed potatoes, you will not go back.

Now, like I was saying, you’re going to need some EQUIPMENT. Not many, but you’ll need it.

EQUIPMENT
————
1 large BOWL
1 vegetable PEELER
1 large POT
1 decent KNIFE
1 potato MASHER
1 STRAINER
1 BURNER on 1 STOVE

You will also need some INGREDIENTS:

INGREDIENTS
————–
2 decent sized Russet POTATOES
4 tablespoons (half a stick) of BUTTER
3 tablespoons SALT
1/2 cup HEAVY CREAM
A supply of running WATER

See? There’s just NOT THAT MUCH TO IT, so there’s really no excuse for screwing it up as badly and for as long as you have.

Now listen, follow these instructions, and do not argue with me. You are not arguing from a position of strength. Have you tasted the crap you’ve been making?

1. I want you to take the BUTTER and CREAM out of the refrigerator and let it sit there on the counter while you do the rest of these steps.

2. I want you to fill the LARGE BOWL about halfway with COLD WATER.

3. I want you to use the PEELER to peel the POTATOES. But I want you to peel them ONE AT A TIME.

4. After completing the peeling of EACH POTATO, I want you to CUBE it into inch-wide cubes, with the KNIFE. I like to do this by cutting the potato in half lengthwise, then half lengthwise yet again, then cutting across in inch-long sections. And since I am good at mashed potatoes and you are not, you should do it the way I say. Then I want you to place the CUBES into the COLD WATER.

5. Now I want you to fill the LARGE POT about halfway with water, place it on the BURNER, and bring it to a BOIL.

6. I want you to then take 2 of the 3 tablespoons of salt and PLACE THEM INTO THE WATER.

7. Once the water is boiling, I want you to DRAIN the potato pieces that are in the cold water.

8. Now you’re going to put the POTATOES into the BOILING WATER, and return the water to a FAIRLY RIGOROUS BOIL. Usually you’ll want the burner on MEDIUM or MEDIUM-HIGH for this.

9. Now you will WAIT there for 20 MINUTES. By the time the 20 MINUTES are up the potatoes should be very tender, bordering on falling apart, but not quite. If you stick a FORK into one of the CUBES and there is ANY RESISTANCE, you leave those potatoes IN THERE!

10. Pour the pot into the STRAINER to STRAIN the potatoes.

11. Will you listen to me, because this part is very important. TURN THE BURNER OFF, but put the empty pot BACK on the SAME BURNER. Do not argue with me.

12. Drain the potatoes VERY WELL. Shake ‘em around quite a bit. We want as much of the water OUT of there as we can!

13. Place the drained potatoes BACK INTO THE POT, which is ON THE BURNER. “But won’t we burn the–” I SAID NOT TO ARGUE WITH ME.

14. In QUICK SUCCESSION, place the following ingredients INTO the POT: The cream! The remaining tablespoon of salt! And the 4 tablespoons of butter, cut into individual 1 tablespoon PATS!

15. Now you are going to take the MASHER, and MASH THE POTATOES. I am looking you directly in the eye when I say this: DO NOT MESS AROUND WITH YOUR MASHING. I want you to mash the BEJESUS out of these potatoes. I don’t care if your mommy made them lumpy and that’s how you like them. You only like them that way because you don’t know anything about it. MASH like you’ve never MASHED before, and if at any point you even have the slightest doubt about whether you have MASHED enough, you have not MASHED enough.

The potatoes are now DONE. Do not add anything more. Do not do anything more, except spoon them out onto people’s PLATES so they can EAT them.

You will not get a chance to EAT them because you will be too busy 1) accepting thanks from people who are so happy that you finally stopped sucking at making mashed potatoes, and 2) continually serving more potatoes to people, leaving none for you.

Congratulations! You now no longer suck at making mashed potatoes!

Nobody was more psyched to get Dead Rising, at least in September 2008, than me. It’s been out for a while now, and I’ve heard amazing things about it. I knew that it would be a long time before I bought an Xbox 360 (the “red ring of death” problem was like coating the console in poison, as far as I was concerned) so I tried to intentionally avoid knowing anything about the game other than:

1. It is a zombie game
2. People generally seem to like it

That being said, I can not believe how multiple-personalitied (schizophrenia isn’t really the right word) this game is. It seems to have been designed by two separate groups of people at Capcom, with absolutely no communication between them. Let’s start with the negatives, although I’ll try not to harp on the problems with the game’s text: it’s waaa-aaay too small and “optimized” for High Definition Television. I do not have HDTV. I am not getting one to play 360 games. I hooked the 360 up in my office, and had Dayna’s 80s-era TV available. I had to switch it out with a more modern flat screen just to play this game. The text is a little clearer. But with how amazing in every respect Resident Evil 4 was (the 16th best game I have ever played)  — also a Capcom game — some of the decisions made with Dead Rising, like this one, are perplexing. I’d expect this crap out of Acclaim.

But that isn’t all. The game defaults to not inverting the y-axis. I like it inverted and I don’t care if it isn’t inverted by default, I am happy to change it. But Dead Rising won’t save my change until I actually save the game… and that opens Pandora’s box, filled in this particular instance with my issues about game saving.

The save system in Dead Rising is broken. Having discussed this with a few people, I sort of see what the designers were going for, but my conclusion is still that it is a problem. Initially, the game gives you a couch to save on and a restroom that you can save in. A bunch of other restrooms are scattered throughout the mall… and you need a key to access them. I mean, come the fuck on! I consider a game that “hides” the ability to save to be unfinished and broken.

The designers attempt to skirt around it by saving your “state” even if you die and restart. While playing, you’ll get experience points. You can then upgrade your skills and — I assume — get better attacks. If you die, you can “Save Status and Exit.” That means that you start the game over, but you keep all your experience points. That’s unique, as far as I have found, in games. You’re going to die because you won’t be able to save once you really get into the mall. And it’s really important for the game designers to give you plenty of stuff to do, if you’re going to be starting over constantly. I have not spent enough time in the game to decide if I like this or not. It’s going to come down to how much content I can experience without feeling forced to do the same thing over and over again. I know it takes about four minutes, after restarting, to skip the cut-scenes and get back to the free-form part. Your character’s walking speed is fairly slow, and if Capcom really wanted to have a game mechanic that demands restarting, they need to let you press a single button to get back to the freeform, sandbox-style fun. They failed at this.

That being said, there are some amazing features in this game. There are seemingly hundreds of weapons, with each one having neat properties. If you get a hockey stick, you can use it to smash zombies, sure. But will also see your character throw down pucks and hit them into zombies, knocking them over. You can get a skateboard, and then frigging 720 Degrees (the arcade game) is essentially included as a mini-game. Nightsticks, knives, mall sit-down benches, cash registered… it’s hilarious. And the last bit I saw before writing these initial thoughts was a scene where a group of hoodlums find a guy with his girlfriend and kill him just for the hell of it, leaving the girl surrounded by zombies and it is now YOUR job to get her out. Video games have such amazing potential to cast their audience into a role brimming with emotion, and potentially it’s always going to be more powerful than movies, books and TV because it’s *you* doing it interactively, but the medium is so horrible juvenile, with games being developed by children, managed by children, tested by children and designed by children. Every once in a while, the thousand monkeys making these things get something right, and I had an absolutely amazing and terrifying experience trying to get the girl to safety. It was the first escort mission I’ve enjoyed since playing the arcade game Crossbow about 20 years ago.

So, with everything Dead Rising gets wrong, I am going to stick with it and see what there is to experience. I can easily see not finishing this game because repetition really irritates me (isn’t this a cheap way to “re-use” content, like with Halo and Hexen?) but in the meantime it seems to be a fairly fun ride.

I would like to alert you all to what I feel is a very positive trend, at least as positive as something can be in the sinful, destructive realm of alcohol and alcoholic beverages.

The topic of today’s report is: VODKA.

Some (your author included) consider vodka the purest and most “noble” of the ignoble playground of the demon alcohol. Going through the simplest distillation process, introducing no flavoring or adjuncts, vodka still today represents distilled spirits at their most elegant. With all of the thousands of offerings at your local liquor store, all the flavors out there, all the wacky concoctions you could ever ask for, to me there is still nothing so sublime as a shot of chilled vodka.

Now, used to be there were two general types of vodka: Cheap-ass shit, and decent shit. Vodka by its very nature doesn’t have a ton of room for quality differential — at its best it’s nearly imperceptible. The good stuff, maybe in the $20 range, would be generally smoother and cleaner than the cheap crap.

Then (I am making up history here, but this is just how it seemed to happen) Grey Goose came along with a pretty bottle, slapped a $40 pricetag on it, and proclaimed with lots of flowery descriptions from “respected critics” that this was “ultra premium”, blowing away even the high end stuff with it’s — what, 8-times filtering through charcoal and baby’s hair.

Much like bottled water, nobody in their right mind thought it would take off. And much like bottled water, Americans with too much money and too fragile an ego just gobbled it up.

Then it was on. The race to come up with the fanciest bottle, the best marketing campaign, and the highest price tag was officially afoot. It worked, it continues to work, and everyone is making a ton of money off it. Off vodka, the least process- and resource-intensive of any liquor.

It appeared there would be no bucking the trend, and it started to look like you’d eventually end up having to choose between a plastic bottle filled with turpentine, or a fifty dollar bottle with a bird and a fancy font on it.

So I am happy to announce that it seems that in the last year or two, there is a new trend taking place within this maelstrom of absurdity. Seems Grey Goose placed so low in enough blind taste tests that some people actually started to wake up to two important facts:

1. The “ultra premium” brands are no better, and often worse, than “lower” brands costing a fraction of the cost.

2. There is no reason good vodka cannot be cheap.

So now we are seeing the very welcome backlash of low-priced, high quality vodka, and all you’re giving up is the fancy bottle and whatever sick sense of “style points” you thought you were getting by ordering overpriced garbage.

My current two favorites in the under-$20 set are Tito’s, made in Texas from corn, costing about $17 for a 750ml bottle, and my current King of the Hill, Sobieski, made in Poland from rye, winning all sorts of blind tests, incredibly clean, and coming in at the seemingly ridiculous price of $11 a bottle, less than Smirnoff. But this is how much it should cost. Everything above this is marketing.

If this post does nothing more, I just hope anyone reading this who ever has occasion to buy vodka or a cocktail with vodka in it, skip the Grey Goose, the Trump, the Hangar One, the Van Gogh — basically anything they put in the “locked case” at your local booze shop. DON’T BELIEVE HIS LIES!

When it comes to computer and console games, there is one sure-fire way to make me despise the game, the developers, its publisher and all the testers (I started off my career as a printer driver tester, so that hate is just a lingering, autobiographical hate): a lack of Save Anywhere!

Let’s define both Save Anywhere and the arguments of those that oppose it. “Save Anywhere” in a video games means … (meant?) … that you can click on the “Escape” button, and save the game. Instantly, the game state is saved to the drive, and you can pick it up from exactly that moment. This is how things should be.

A lot of games use the “checkpoint” system. Let’s say you’re killing Nazis in a video game. You are a little low on health and maybe distracted by a hot, gorgeous, leather-claden female Nazi. At some point in our lives, it’s happened to all of us. Sometimes its in Cosplay, sometimes it was at the camps, and sometimes its in the murder simulator.

Because you’re distracted, the female Nazi shoots you and kills you. You couldn’t save, in this example, because there is no Save Anywhere. Instead, you get to re-start your game from the last “checkpoint.” Or, the last place the designer bothered to LET you save.

This is horrible, this is nonsense, this is for children with wide-open summer vacations. Save Anywhere is critical! Designers don’t always design a game without Save Anywhere because many of them are incompetent and weak and won’t fight for it: as a result, they are constantly putting long, unskippable cut-scenes before the the checkpoint, they are constantly “stacking” missions before the checkpoints, they are, quite simply, ruining their video game.

There are very few people I hate on the Internet, but I really do hope that the people who argue against Save Anywhere die. Just to stop you all from posting, you see: if you could shut the fuck up with your horrible take on this issue, adding to a chorus of SHIT, we’d all be cool. But you people won’t. You say that Save Anywhere is bad. My Save Anywhere. Your words are retarded, and they hurt. You like to say that you can’t stop yourself from saving every two seconds and ruining the tension. Oh, yes, tension - that is a good one. If you want tension in your home, get a pet snake. But it’s alllllll about tension with you people. I hope, when your lives are all snuffed out by the dark hangman of gaming, that he has plenty of slack in the rope, you worthless, miserable fuckers. I hope you all die, but I hope you have that split-second of thinking that the rope will extend to the ground and that maybe you’ll survive after all, but then you don’t.

So on this note, I would like to announce the first couple instances of Save Everywhere that I can recall. They are within the games Space Giraffe and Braid, on the Xbox 360.

When you complete a level in Space Giraffe with three or more lives… the game simply saves. That’s it, you’re done, you’re good, it’s automatic. I don’t have to do anything. Likewise, Braid: you complete a screen, and the goddamn thing quietly saves your progress.

Computer Space was the first game I care about, as it was the first arcade game. According to the Killer List of Video Games, it was released in 1971… which, unfortunately with how inaccurate KLOV is, means that it was released at some point between 1942 and 212 (we reset what year it is in three hundred years, just trying to future-proof this article). From 1971 to 2008! It took forever, but game developers and designers are finally figuring out how to let people seamlessly save their 1) goddamn games 2) time.

I have completed the game (with the exception of some secret, hidden content I’m now learning about from the Intertubes), and so will now present a NON-SPOILER REVIEW. I will start another thread on the BBS for SPOILER-FILLED ANALYSIS.

It says something about the game that it warrants both a review and an analysis thread, a fact which is itself part of the review..

Anyway! BRAID NON-SPOILER REVIEW

All right, I am deep into the swing of things when it comes to Cryptoooooooo-zooooookeeper, so it gets to be like eleven o’clock and I realize that I haven’t updated the website. That’s on me! And I do mean eleven o’clock at night, because it would be pretty damn cheeky to roll into work at ten AM and then start getting bloggy an hour later. (Although I normally go for lunch at eleven-thirty, so I am not going to pretend I am up for any awards.)

We - and I truly mean we, this is not the royal we, Gerrit, Ben and my brother have been incredible throughout all this - have been doing this since about Aprilish, and I don’t think we have missed a day, except for those Fridays that I actually took a vacation day, and, of course, holidays that fall on weekdays. I hope that the site at least gives you, the reader, thirty seconds of entertainment before you go to other websites that more deserve your attention. (I am not being humble, for x given website, it truly does.) At the same time, according to this Google Analytics report I have in front of me, the average time spent on the site is 26 seconds, so I clearly have things to strive for here.

Let’s finish this update by telling you what I LIKE. And then you can either agree with me, or make fun of the BBS posters in the comments section below.

CURRENT FAVORITE WEBSITE: The Killer List of Video Games Forum. I won’t bother attaching a link, because trying to get registered to where you can read it is honestly the most tedious process on the Internet, save for setting a twelve-character password for the Something Awful Forum. I finally got the ten games I wanted most in my arcade, got them all to the point where they work nicely, got all the coin lights going, got them all to the point where they had keys and locks so the cats wouldn’t get in… and then my girl left me.

FAVORITE CURRENT WEBCOMIC: It has to be Dinosaur Comics! It really is the only one worth reading on the Internet that I am aware of, at least since I lost the link I had saved for Red Meat. Do any of you ever do that - do you ever have links on particular PCs, and then when that PC dies (er, actually, in this case it was my second PC at AMD, and I quit that job) you stop going to the site because you don’t have it handy? No? I — okay??

CURRENT FAVORITE SPORTS TEAM: Hey, the Blue Jays just dropped two out of three to the AL East-leading Rays. This means that I can apply the $14.95 I spent on MLB.tv each month to my extended Directv bill, for the NEW ORLEANS SAINTS. For like five months out of the year Directv is $92.93, because I get all the games. Meanwhile, Directv has stealthily raised their base prices from $32.99 (when I first moved to Colorado) to $50.99. I’m sorry, did the satellites get dirty and they had to send someone up there to clean them? They have blanketed the ENTIRE NATION with their seed, how the fuck are their expenses going up each year? How is this anything other than a blatant cash grab that makes me feel like I have throbbing muttonchops when I complain about it? Every post bitching about your TV should start out with, “hmm, yes, I”

CURRENT FAVORITE CAT: I have just three now, and the favorite is actually still Frobozz! The one I actually wanted is the favorite for three years straight running now. He’s going to give the guy that won all those times at Jeopardy! a run pretty shortly, so long as the topics include NOT IRRITATING THE SHIT OUT OF ICJ. Frobozz starts at the $1000 question and goes down the line, to show off, when that topic comes up.

CURRENT SHOW BEING WATCHED ON DVD: Spaced! Maybe it’s just me, but the best parts aren’t actually all the geek references. Hey, I am talking about TV, the muttonchops are closing in, gotta cut this short. HMM, YES.

In this, a new ongoing feature, we introduce the Forgotten Tomb of the Hardcore Casual Gamer. Seeing how last night I installed a high score kit into my Asteroids (hardcore!) and played some Team Fortress 2 on a server selected because of how terrible the other players were (casual!).

ASTEROIDS HIGH SCORE SAVE

I get the feeling that they are made “to order,” as there was about a month’s delay in ordering them from Mike’s Arcade. I touched base with them halfway through and they responded promptly, letting me know that they hadn’t forgotten about me. I was quite pleased, and recommend everyone involved.

Taking the back off an arcade game makes it instantly the most interesting thing in Kitty World, and four of our five cats immediately descended down the stairs when they sensed that the back of Asteroids was coming off. (Frobozz was going to jump inside but got down when I asked him, Spock just meandered from front to back, Reggie poked his head in to see inside and began to chase Spock, and Boggit bolted inside and sat down to take a nap, leaving only when yelled at.)

Installing it was very easy - the PCB for Asteroids is between two rectangular pieces of wood, with a nice and pleasant groove cut for easy removal. Asteroids as a whole seems very easy to work on - lots of room, an easily-followed layout of the wiring, a nicely-separated monitor shelf.

I gently jiggled the 6502 chip loose with one of those small computer screwdrivers, and plugged it into the board of the Braze kit. The kit itself has sturdy gold (brass?) legs and dropped right into where the 6502 used to be.

The board that I bought came with a rapid-fire mod, and the two work together without it being necessary to do anything to the rapid-fire board. (I am interested in any documentation for the rapid-fire mod - I’d like to take off, I guess, but the one text file I found indicated that one needed to bend chip legs to install, and I really don’t trust myself bending things back.)

Anyway, everything came up great, and already my horrible Asteroids scores are being saved for all time. Big props to Braze and Mike’s Arcade.

TEAM FORTRESS 2

Let’s… go… casual! OK, I used to be okay at first person shooters, but now I’m like a golfer in his sixties coming to grips with the fact that he can play nine holes if he’s having a particularly good day.

I immediately turn voice chat off - no offense to anyone else playing TF2, but you are all a bunch of goddamn contemptible nerds, and I can’t bear to listen to your easily-excitable nasal drones for a second. The fact that you are all sitting there with headgear for speakers and a microphone don’t help the mental picture of you animals.

Valve’s big thing in getting people to play has been:

1) The new videos, for the various characters. These are great. What a cockslap to everything id has ever made, too, by the way: Valve got more personality injected into the “characters” of a deathmatch shooter in a few months than id had managed in their entire history. Valve could make a TF2 adventure game at this point if they wished. They’ve done a great job massaging this IP and making it valuable.

2) Adding new shit to the classes nobody wants to play. The medic and the pyro are the first two, and Christ, every tweaking fucker on the Internet is playing a pyro now.

The achievements seem pretty easy to get (the two classes I play the most were the soldier and pyro, although they are not my favorite classes by any means, I just try to fill in what the teams have lacked) but that hasn’t stopped “achievement farm servers” from existing. Fucking amazing to me, we have had one gorgeous day after another out here in Colorado, and some people have time to farm in TF2. (A casual gamer gone too far??)

But playing in a deathmatch game where people have weapons you don’t have access to is retarded. I know Valve doesn’t care, because they are getting more people playing the game, but it’s a clear violation of the integrity of gaming. Which I understand doesn’t make any money, but still.

The kind of server I am looking for is one where there are terrible players, and I guess I define that by how long I manage to last on a given level. Last week I was playing on a team with Worm and I couldn’t fuck around for even a second, or I’d get a shot in the face. That contrasted nicely with a couple days ago, where I wandered into a room with a scout and two pyros, fucked up trying to reverse direction, ended up killing one pyro and the scout, and survived long enough to get healing. I need more servers like that. Because while it’s OK to feel like a casual gamer, feeling like a handicapped one is not.