Castle Magus

I went to EBGames earlier today and picked up Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Metroid Zero Mission, and Golden Sun: The Lost Age for GBA. Minish Cap I bought new, but Metroid and GS I bought used, so I only got the carts by themselves, no box, no instructions, nothing. But they were roughly half-price of new GBA games, so there is that.

What kind of sucks though is that I thought I was buying the original Golden Sun, which I haven't played yet either, rather than the sequel. I didn't realize it until I got home and was checking the game and deleting the old save files of the previous owner of the game, and then it asked me if I wanted to "transfer data from Golden Sun" when I was puttering around with it. I popped the cart out and, sure enough, there on the cart in really really tiny text under the Golden Sun label was "The Lost Age". *sigh* So now I have a game that I really don't want to play now because I haven't yet played the first game. Looking online, I haven't been able to find the first game for sale anywhere except Amazon, where people selling it used are wanting outrageous amounts of money for it. I haven't checked ebay yet though, so maybe I could find it there for slightly more reasonable prices... maybe. Either way, I'll wait until I get back to WA before I try to buy it, as I don't want to risk having it sent to NC and then it arriving there after I get back out here. At any rate, I do have a rom of the first GS on my comp, so there is that, although I wouldn't be able to do the whole transfer thing if I played the rom. Another thing is that I bought the games so that I'd have something to do while in NC, where I'll be comp-less, so having the rom for GS doesn't really do me much good in that sense either.

Oh well, I figure Minish Cap and Metroid Zero Mission will be enough, and I also never finished Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, so I could give that one another go as well. Considering Kingdom Hearts 2 is not too far off, that would probably be a good thing to do anyway. Between that, reading the most recent Harry Potter book, and going to see the most recent Harry Potter movie and the Narnia movie, and whatever else comes up while I'm back home, I'll probably have enough to do.

I love The Onion.

I'm not even going to rant about the CS200 assignment anymore. I've already gotten up early and made a special trip to Digipen to turn it in, even though it still wasn't completely working properly as of last night around 3:30. But oh well. It is out of my hands from this point forward, and I'm glad to see it gone. I may still have another CS200 rant in me though, depending on how the final goes tomorrow, but now is not the time for that.

Now is the time for wishing that there actually was a Limit Break in a Final Fantasy game that involved you beating the crap out of your opponent with a golf club.

(Inspired by rabbitucker)

Pirates of the Caribbean. I'd heard about Tron, but hadn't heard anything about this until now, even though it seems the shots are dated from a couple of months ago (not that I've actually been keeping up with it outside of word of mouth until now, really).

Also, I never thought I'd ever refer to Mickey Mouse as "bad ass" and actually mean it, at least using the conventional meaning of the phrase, but... well... see for yourself.

(Also, I hate IGN sometimes. With a loathing unmatched. *clicks the "Continue to Image for Kingdom Hearts II" links 407 times, only to be redirected to still more ads before randomly being redirected to the actual page finally*)

"Jack Thompson Thrown off Alabama Case by Judge"

Oh, and his book apparently sucks, too. Though, granted, a lot of those reviews are probably unfairly written by disgruntled gamers who haven't actually read the book, however. I'm sort of tempted to acquire a copy of his book for myself somehow, though I will, of course, stop short of any method of acquisition that involves money in any way.

Honestly though, there's not much point in talking about Jack Thompson anymore. For future reference, I'll just point the reader to his Wikipedia page. Just about everything that can possibly be said about this man can be summed up there, for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. It's kept fairly up-to-date with each new act of Thompson's tomfoolery, though I gather that it is vandalized rather often and has to be rolled back. The bottom line is that if this man still had any sort of power or credibility at all, he would be a very dangerous man indeed, but, fortunately for us all, he has effectively reduced himself to little more than a laughingstock.

(EDIT, almost two years after the original date of this post)

Said I: Honestly though, there's not much point in talking about Jack Thompson anymore.

Hahaha... yeah, but that sure hasn't stopped me from talking about him though, has it? >_>

(/EDIT)

This is one of the better flash puzzles I've seen in a while. Too bad it's only five levels long, though.

I found out today that Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been delayed until Spring 2006. First Twilight Princess and Dreamfall, and now Oblivion. Why am I not surprised? It sucks, but oh well. Again, I'd rather a game be delayed and be better because of it than be released earlier and not be as good as it could have been.

In my day, I've played a lot of Ecco the Dolphin. I believe that this has trained me to hold my breath a really long time, find things with echo-location, and kill things by ramming into them with my nose. There are a lot of studies, which I won't cite, that support me. But trust me, they really exist.

I've also played a lot of Tetris. I am now fully trained to fall through the air, flip myself around while falling, and fit myself into a spaced formed by others like me who are similarly trained by Tetris. I say it's true, so it must be!

Let's not get into my recent playing of Shadow of the Colossus, and how this has fully prepared me to climb up skyscraper-sized mythical beings and kill them by repeatedly stabbing them in the head with my mystical sword. Oh, I also learned how to project light with that mystical sword by playing this game. All of the Really Smart People agree.

Mario has trained me to kill mushrooms and turtles by jumping on them. I'm not proud of that, but that's just the way it is. I have those skills now and there's nothing I can do about it, unfortunately. And because I have those skills, I must use them. I have no choice in the matter at all. It really sucks. Poor mushrooms. And turtles. Sucks to be a turtle when I'm around, too.

Sonic the Hedgehog has trained me to run faster than the speed of sound and to turn into an even faster, shiny golden version of myself when I find a bunch of floating golden rings. That's actually pretty useful in my day-to-day life. It beats taking the bus everywhere, that's for sure.

Since I seem to be on an anti-Jack Thompson crusade for the time being, here's something else:

Thompson gets owned by a 14 year-old gamer.

Sadly, I'm sure he gets stuff like this all the time, which is probably why he has simply resorted to firing off his one-liner insults rather than actually attempting to defend his tenuous position. After all, gamers are already a lost cause to him, apparently, so why should he waste his time explaining things to us since, in his eyes, we're obviously too stupid to understand? Thing is, the reverse could be said of all the gamers who email him attempting to make him see our side of it. This guy is never going to understand. Emailing him to try to make him Get It isn't going to work. He doesn't want to Get It. He just wants to continue getting publicity for himself and making money off of the true victims of violence that he has conned into believing his lies about video games being the source of all evil. I just hope that the people who are exchanging correspondence such as this with him are then going on to forward copies of it to the senators that Thompson so loves to cite as being on his side, to show them what kind of a person he really is.

It's going to be sad when the rest of the general non-gaming public finally wisens up to the fact that JT was simply a nutball all along, and we then lose his services as the whipping boy of anti-anti-gamers everywhere. Well, no, that will be excellent, actually. Then, maybe, we could get some true, serious debate on the issues at hand, rather than the perpetuation of this whole "us versus them" mentality on which JT thrives and makes his living.

But unfortunately, Thompson is not the only public figure to hold that mentality. He's merely the most vocal for the moment, by far. Here's a bit of background on that last link, for anyone who hasn't heard about it before now. John Davison is editorial director for 1up.com and several gaming magazines including EGM. Brooks Brown is one of the survivors of the Columbine massacre, aka D-FENS on 1up.com, where he has written several interesting blogs. And Donny Deutsch is the host of The Big Idea on CNBC. John Davison and Brooks Brown were guests on The Big Idea back in June. The details of the trainwreck that followed are given in that link, which is Davison's blog/rant on the subject. And here is Brooks Brown's blog touching on the same, which was also his first entry to 1up.com.