Exposing my socks to the world

For nearly as long as I’ve been a subscriber to Nintendo Power, they’ve entertained letters from devoted fans about nearly anything Nintendo. These letters range from the intriguing to the inane, often leaning towards the latter. I’ve dug out a couple of back issues I have laying around the compound to answer some of these letters. I’m just as qualified as the people who actually get paid to do that to provide answers because I’m on the Internet.

“My friends and I were hanging out at a Burger King when we saw a kid walk by who was playing a Game Boy Advance. My short-attention-spanned friends predictably changed the subject to their opinions about the new Game Boy Advance. They said if I bought a Game Boy Advance and liked it, they would each give me 10 bucks (that’s 80 dollars)! So I bought it with my own money, planning to say that it was great, even if I didn’t like it. I had never been a major gamer, but I loved this thing, I probably played it for over three hours that day. I brought it to school and showed my friends, and I am now 80 bucks richer! Thanks Nintendo!” (Anonymous, Vol. 156 May 2002)

Please introduce me to these friends of yours.

“What happened to the Counselors’ Corner? I liked it as it was very helpful. (Michael Pennella, Via the Internet, Vol. 155 April 2002)”

The game play counselors were phased out and replaced with state-of-the-art gaming robots that have extensive knowlege on a broad range of Nintendo and Nintendo-related products, although nothing specific enough to be of any great use. If you would like to speak with one of the robots directly for game play advice, you may call them at 425-885-7529.
“Great, I just got a 2.217 GPA on my report card. Now, I’m not pointing my fingers at Nintendo or anything, but is there any way the Nintendo Gamecube could do my homework for me or something? (Nintendoholic Dave, Via the Internet, Vol. 155 April 2002)”

Sorry, but the Nintendo GameCube Homework Completion Device has been pushed back until February 2039.

“Is there a vegetarian in your games? (A.J., Burleson, TX, Vol. 150 November 2001)”

No, why? Is there a vegetarian in your games? Hiding out and snatching any wayward carrots that might happen by? If so, tell him to come home.

“PEACH PEACH PEACH PEACH PEACH *gasp* PEACHPEACHPEACHPEACH! (cheez mastah, via the Internet, Vol. 150 November 2001)”

I’m sorry, but I can not believe that someone named ‘cheez mastah’ is such a rabid Peach fan. Perhaps if your name was ‘peech mastah’ or ‘Peach’s Secret Slide mastah’ or ‘Sorry Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle mastah’ I might have thought otherwise. It’s plainly obvious that this *is* Peach writing in to toot her own horn. Very clever, but not clever enough!

“Hey, what’s up? I’m the biggest Nintendo freak there ever was , and guess what we got at Levey Middle School? Nintendo book covers! They have a Game Boy Advance on one side and the Nintendo GameCube on the other. It’s so cool! It’s hard to do my schoolwork and not fantasize about playing the totally awesome games. (Brian Simpson, Southfield, MI, Vol. 151 December 2001)”

“<What_NP_Wanted_To_Say>Hey, guess what? We work at Nintendo*! </What_NP_Wanted_To_Say>”

*I don’t actually know what Nintendo Power wanted to say.

“I think the most frightening characters are Wario, Waluigi, and Vlade Divac from NBA Showtime. (Sean Moynihan, Tucson, AZ, Vol.149, October 2001)”

Sure, I mean, I could see it if you put Vlade in one of those hats with his initial on it and some overalls. Those three could make quite the trio when they… No wait, never mind. That would never work. Even though he could probably jump well enough, I’ve never seen Vlade perform a successful ground pound.

“I must get my hands on Super Smash Bros. Melee. I know it will be on everyone’s wish list when they get a GCN. What does the “melee” mean, though? Is it like a tournament or something? (Kevin Autry, Liberty, NC, Vol. 148 September 2001)”

Since you apparently don’t have a dictionary within a four ZIP code radius, ‘melee’ means ‘really fun.’

So there you go. A sampling of the hundreds of messages that infiltrated my bookshelf over the last dozen years and what my responses might have been in a parallel universe.

Since cooler heads have prevailed since I wrote this article, it has essentially become moot.

So I’m removing all of it except the goofy picture of me.

Yes, that’s the real me.

Fear.

Due to an excessive amount of comment spam on the old version of the site, I have decided to remove it completely. I have already moved all the good articles to this content management system, so it’s no big loss.

Goodbye, old friend!

It’s that time of year again, time for the E3 Expo, the time for all the gaming companies to parade their wares for the upcoming seasons in front of the rabid fans. Every gaming site on the planet is going into ‘obsessive geek’ mode and covering this event, hoping to get some scraps of information dropped from the buffet table of the involved companies.

Trying to get any non-E3 related information this week will be a fairly fruitless endeavor, so I’ll see you next week.

Hot off the heels of my List of 50 important games I discovered that 1up.com has their own article describing their list of 50 ‘essential games.’ Surprisingly there’s little overlap.

Before the Nintendo DS got released, Nintendo confidently and repeatedly assured the gaming masses that their new system was something new that revolutionize handheld gaming. True, the DS does have lots of nifty keen features, but the design of the unit is blatantly ripped off of an already established idea: the Game and Watch.

Let’s take a look at some photographic evidence.

Some of the key similarities we can see by looking at the above pictures include:

• Both units have a d-pad
• Both units contain an internal clock and an alarm
• The battery is located in the same spot on both units
• Both units have 2 screens

Of course the DS has all kinds of additional doodads and geegaws to differentiate itself from its older cousin, but the similarites are too striking to be simply happenstance.

You’ve probably noticed that the front page here hasn’t seen a lot of activity lately, and that’s because most of my creative energy’s been spent in the creation of another site in the Crummysocks family of sites: The Closeout Warrior. I’ll be using the site to go over all the games I pick up that cost me less than $10.

And it’s a lot more than I’m happy to admit.

So are they worth the $20 each? Only if you like playing old arcade games with the controls wedged into the Gamecube controller, and fortunately for me I do.

I know I’ve probably been playing entirely too much World of Warcraft, but I just can’t help myself. With the amount of time that I’ve been investing into the game, I’ve started to notice some of the smaller details that just make the game that much more fun.
For example, in one of the quests, you are charged with retrieving punchcards because they contain some kind of super sensitive data.

Above is an example of one such card. While staring at it, I came to realize that the data encoded on it was 8-bit ASCII. Now I couldn’t very well realize that and not do something about it, so I ran (quickly!) to my favorite encoder/decoder and feverishly started putting on ones and zeros until I had translated all the cards.

Card	Super Sensitive Data (TM)
	The gnome king wears night elf underwear
	Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G
	If you can read this, you’re standing too close
	Help! I’m trapped in a binary punch card factory!
	Message to Castpipe: your laundry’s ready for pickup.

I can put up with the weekly downtime, the bugged quests, the disappearing transports, and the throngs of morons I’ve met throughout the game if I can keep finding things like this to satiate my curiosity and keep the game interesting.

Just for fun, let’s run down a few of the games that I was considering for the big list, but that didn’t quite make the cut. There are any number of reasons why a game didn’t make it, chiefly it’s because I had to trim the list down from over 100 to a svelte 50.

And there you have it. A partial list of the games that weren’t quite good enough to be on the Big List. This almost makes me want to compile a list of games that aren’t good enough to be on any list… but that’s another article.