…as determined by somoene on YouTube. Maybe he’s not the authority on the matter, but some of these are great. My personal favorite is the Mega Man 8 actor who probably should have had years of speech therapy as a kid but somehow managed to land a job as a voice actor.
I’m probably going to take some more more heat for this, but I think it’s worth it. Before I continue with this piece, let me explain my methodology for choosing those pictures found in this post. Every once in a while you’ll see a message board thread inviting the community to share their gaming and/or home theater setups. Eager forum users time and time again step up and post their pictures while proudly stating, “this is my setup!” Well, if you’re going to put yourself out there, I’m going to be the jerk that saves your picture, shares it with an audience, and ridicules each and every one of your missteps. To be fair, however, I don’t make fun of people for having poor setups due to financial constraint; everybody is judged according to how well they did within their financial means. It’s all about execution, people! Also, you can click on the images to enlarge them (and believe me, but the final image you’ll want to).
Note: I’ll be adding to this as the need arrives. If you find worthy submissions, email them to me at jar155 [at] gmail dot com.
I’m guessing that there must be a good reason why everything in this person’s room is jammed into this single little shelf unit. I figure that the house was built upon an active volcano and that the floors are indeed made of hot magma. Why else wouldn’t you let your power bricks sit behind everything on the floor? Or maybe they just look great elbowing for space with dusty figurines, smashed game boxes, and whatever else might be on there. One solid bump, and that’s all coming down.
I had a conversation with this guy, and I said, “Hey buddy, why don’t you move some of that stuff into boxes or somewhere else where they won’t be so tightly crammed in?” He said, “Well, now, I can’t do that, can I? I already have the game shelf. It’s the game shelf. I put my game stuff on the game shelf.” In order to avoid a possible British comedy style conversation, I just nodded and left him be.
I’m not certified, and I’m certainly not qualified, but I have to write this guy up for a safety violation. We all can see what’s going to happen here. This guy will asleep in bed and his little brother will be using the bathroom in the next room. Little bro will let the lid drop too hard on the toilet seat and the resulting vibrations will send everything crashing down. Should he survive the initial avalanche, digging out won’t be easy. And how in the world is he getting games out of there to play? Some of those are stacked two deep and several levels high. I want to make friends with him just to ask if I can borrow one of those hard to reach games.
And finally, you don’t need to store your Rock Band drum sticks in the impale position, there’s a holder for them that lets you store them horizontally, also known as the “don’t die” placement.
Keep reading past the jump for more. You know you want to. You know you will.
Tetris has always been a great time waster, but this version of it clearly outdoes anything you have ever seen before. By using your whole screen and shrinking the pieces down, it would take you all day to make any significant progress. If you get up to 10-20 lines, you’re a far more patient and dedicated man than I am. If anybody sends me a screen shot of them getting a Tetris, well, I might just have to give you an high five.
Note: Pressing space bar makes the block drop faster. You can also click on the “key” button on the top right to make it so space bar rotates the block and the down arrow makes it fall faster.
The 80s were full of ridiculous trends and fashions, but one thing I kinda miss is the cheesy style of advertising for things like toys, games, and food. Back then advertisers were kind of fun, rather than just irritating (see: Taco Bell). Below are a few YouTube finds of some ads that I pulled at random to remember the good old days.
The item description for Chrono Trigger DS at Gamestop.com is rather odd. Rather than giving a description on the game, it makes a direct Napolean Dynamite reference, and then it ends there. I’m thinking that either someone is tired of their job and wants to go out with a bang, or this was a placeholder description that was accidentally put live. I doubt that they’re trying to sell the game with the current description. Below is a pic grabbed from the site in case they change it.
At TGS many new screens, trailers, and announcements have come forth. Without a doubt, the most disappointing screenshot to emerge was Activision’s Quantum of Solace on the Wii. Now, we all know that teh Wii is no graphical powerhouse, but is there any reason why it should look worse than Dreamcast level of graphics? Seriously, Activision, this is grade-A bull crap. Up until now, the biggest joke of a screenshot this generation came from Perfect Dark Zero’s unveiling when Wallguy (full name Wallace Guyford) became an instant meme, but now I think Mr. Bond has outdone our good pal. Maybe the impact is less, but the crappiness is more (now that’s an awesome sentence…stay in school kids).
For comparison sakes…
James Bond: Quantum of Solace on the Wii
Just look at that water on the right side of the pic…LOOK AT IT! The muddied textures, the low poly counts, the haze, and the idiot guy on the left looking down the wrong side of the hall all add up for one poor looking screenshot.
Wallguy’s famous intro to the world with Perfect Dark Zero
Yes, his legs are different sizes, and yes, it looks like he’s part of the wall, but I’m sorry Wallguy, you’ve been outdone.
The video below is Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb just having a blast with Mega Man 9. The game is brutally tough, and Jeff is making sure that you can understand his frustrations in this video. Note: The video contains a bit of strong language, so send the kiddies out of the room.
And I don’t know why a white rectangle is showing up above the video. Just ignore it and don’t complain, ok?
Denis has been a very outspoken defender of Too Human on mainstream news sites, enthusiast press sites, message boards, blogs, and anywhere else anybody will offer up a soapbox for him to stand on. Well, a while back Denis made a bet with the NeoGAF community over how Too Human would be received. Earlier this week reviews started rolling in, and it quickly became obvious that Denis was on the losing side of the wager. Today, in a post started by site admin EvilLore, Denis’ plate of crow was offered up. The thread can be found here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=331932.
Now, Denis got himself into this, but really I think we as a gaming community are being just a bit harsh on him. Yes, it’s providing some nice comedy for anybody willing to watch things unfold, but I think amid all the mudslinging that people should at least be giving Denis some props for being so candid and accessible to the general gamer. Denis, you blew it, but I really hope this doesn’t prevent you from interacting and communicating with the gaming audience. It looks like your game didn’t turn out as well as we (and you) would have liked, but I guarantee if you come back strong with a new project after Too Human that a lot of this can be swept under the rug.
Now, this is bad. I mean, this is real bad. Either this is some serious moneyhatting or, well, can it really be anything else? Jane Wells, whom we all respect as a leading gaming journalist, has written a story for CNBC entitled, “The Ultimate Proof Sony is Winning”. This article is full of fun, so I’m going to post it and we’ll carve out a few select bits. Here we go:
Forget the analysts. Forget the NPD sales figures. Forget the CEO’s. I live with the ultimate expert on the video game industry—my 16-year-old son.
He not only plays video games, he watches every show about them on G4, he participates in chat rooms about them on the internet, he competes in a variety of games on a variety of platforms. He always tells me the latest trend three months before I read about it in the media.
But he’s never been a PlayStation fan. Sure, he had a PS1, but as soon as the Xbox came out, it was game over. He loved the Xbox graphics, and once he was old enough to play “Halo,” he loved the games. He graduated to the Xbox 360, Xbox Live, “Gears of War,” etc. He even hung in there during the overheating Xbox “red ring of death” phase. Other than a two-year detour/obsession playing “World of Warcraft” on his computer, he has always been an Xbox fanboy. Sony just didn’t have great games.
Last week he recorded all of G4’s E3 coverage so he could watch it after work (he’s got a summer job to save money to buy gas and videogames, in that order). He was very excited after Microsoft had its news conference. “You can stream Netflix movies onto the Xbox 360!” he exclaimed.
Then he watched the Sony press conference, and the world as we know it changed. After hearing about “Metal Gear Solid 4”, as well as other PlayStation exclusives in the pipeline and the awesomeness of Blu-ray, he promptly packed up his Xbox 360 and all his games and went down to Game Stop to trade them in. He bought a PS3 and “Metal Gear Solid 4.” I had to be there to approve the purchase of the M-rated game since he’s not yet 17, and I was surprised at how rapturous the Game Stop employees were about Sony. They then sold him a USED copy of “Metal Gear Solid 4.” “How can the game already be used?” my son asked. “Because some people get frustrated if they don’t have ‘cheats’,” he was told. But the cashier assured him that the game “was just as good as new.” My son asked, “How can that be?” “Because PlayStation players are ninjas!” was the response.
I’m happy to say my son didn’t accept this answer. Perhaps that’s because he’s now spending his own hard-earned money to purchase these games. He said, “Seriously, how does that work?” And the Game Stop fanboys explained that Sony now has a special coating on Blu-ray game discs which makes them virtually scratch-proof. We shall see.
One thing we do know. We may not be able to stream Netflix movies onto the console (yet) but now we can start ordering them on Blu-ray.
As we left the store, I said to him, “I never thought I’d see you with a PlayStation.” “Neither did I,” he replied.
Ok, so in the first line she claims that she lives with the “ultimate expert on the video game industry”, who happens to be her 16-yr. old son. That’s nice, but how does this so called expert not even know about Metal Gear Solid 4 before E3? After all, she says that he spends his time on message boards, watches “every show about them on G4″, and informs his mom of the latest trends months before the media picks up on them. So she states this, but we’re supposed to believe that E3 2008 was the first time he’d heard of the game? Strike 1!
She claims that he’s always been an Xbox fanboy and that “Sony just didn’t have great games” is the reason why her son picked the 360 over the PS3. Ok…so what did each company show at E3? Sequels! If Sony never had great games (and they most definitely have), why is he all of a sudden excited about their sequels, but not about the sequels on the 360? Fishy. Strike 2!
The conversation in Game Stop…I don’t I really need to point out the improbabilities there. Strike 3!
Seriously, what a load of garbage. I don’t care if this article had been about Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, the PC, or the Phantom; there’s absolutely no way this is anything but fiction. We might be geeks and nerds, but we’re not naive idiots.
Entries (RSS)