Exposing my socks to the world

There we go. I managed to take all the best articles from the Old Site and migrate them here. If I missed your favorite one, the Old Site will be available here for a while at least.

Time for a break!

1. Collectors. These gamers like to amass stuff. If it’s game-related, they probably have it, or are working on getting it. If you meet one of these people, they are likely going to have some of the most bizarre game-related things that you will ever see. They are good at identifying odd pieces of hardware should you bring them somthing. They keep their stuff in great shape and occasionally play a game or two. Some of them have definate themes to their collections from ‘Everything ever made’ to ‘Nintendo Nintendo Nintendo’ to whatever. They sometimes will go to odd lengths to add to their collection. They frequent yard sales, flea markets and eBay.

2. Enthusiasts. Enthusiasts want to learn, and consequently do learn, quite a bit about games. They read, they play, they probably have several old systems right alongside their new systems. They are knowledgeable and enjoy gaming for the sake of gaming. They may not have the biggest collection you’ll ever see, but they do have some nice games.

3. Players. Players usually aren’t too interested in collecting, per se, but they do have a nice library of games for whatever systems they do have. They might have a system or two from ‘one generation ago’ for one reason or another, but as a rule, they don’t go out seeking anything that isn’t manufactured any more. If they can’t go buy it at Wal-Mart, then it really wasn’t worth getting anyway.

4. Pseudo-players. Pseudo-players want to be enthusiasts, or even collectors, but don’t know how to do it (think of a poseur). This person probably has an enormous archive of ROMs and emulators on their computer for the ‘older’ systems, but none of the actual hardware. He really wants you to know that he’s an ‘old-school’ gamer because he has access to all of these games, but he’s probably only played a tenth of what he has stored away on his computer somewhere. He won’t go and hunt for the old stuff because it ‘takes too much time’ or he ‘doesn’t have any money.’ They might be great people. Who knows?

5. Latest-Gamers. LGs are the ones that always have to have the newest stuff. When the PS2 came out, he sold his PS1 and all his games to finance his purchase. He always has the latest and greatest at the expense of the earlier and not-as-greatest (sorry, I couldn’t think of anything clever to put there). This guy is likely to have Madden 200X and none of the other ones. He likes the trendy, mainstream games. Pretty boring.

6. Casual-Gamers. CGs are the ones that may not even own a system at all. They like to play some games once in a while when they are around their friends, but that’s it. They might have accidentally bought something game related at some point in their life, and maybe even have kept it. They’re usually up for a quick game of whatever’s easy to pick up and play (usually Tetris), but don’t expect a challenge.

7. Anti-Gamers. I don’t like these guys. They hate games and anyone that plays them more than an hour a year. They are usually associated with body builders and sports figures, but those barriers are breaking down, an AG could be anybody.

I think that about covers it. I think I am somewhere between 1 and 2 on that list.

It’d make more sense if you toured my house.

Over the last few years, I’ve done what I can to get my hands on just about every kind of game music soundtrack that I could get my hands on (well, only getting the ‘good’ ones), and I have a smallish collection going (about 15 titles spanning multiple systems). Some of them came free with some promotion or other, some were imports, and some were special orders that I almost had to have inside contacts to get. I’ve even gone through the trouble of making my own CDs by recording and editing the output of my consoles.

Why is it this hard? I have game upon game that have wonderful soundtracks that I would absolutely love to hear outside of the normal game environment. Some of the newer games even have orchestrated soundtracks. It should be relatively easy to throw those on a CD and sell them for however much they think that they’re worth.

Maybe no one buys them. As much as I hate to admit it, I might be in the minority. I’ll go out and get the Final Fantasy IV Soundtrack and play it loudly and proudly in my car all over town, but I don’t know anyone else who does. Of all the stores that I’ve been to, I only know of one store (outside of the Internet) that sells game music soundtracks and that’s Electronics Boutique (well, local to me, anyway). Trying to find them anywhere else without paying a fortune for import fees is next to impossible. Although, importing is certainly a good way to get the music from elsewhere, I hate spending $25 or so on one disc, regardless of how good it is.

Time for me to head out. I need my Final Fantasy VII music fix.

Picture this: You decide you want to fire up your game of choice… let’s say F-Zero GX. Put in your official Nintendo.net boot disc in the drive, let it go through it’s thing, select what game you want to play, throw it in, and start looking for an opponent. This can be done in one of two ways:

1. Automatic. The server searches for other people looking for a game that are on about the same skill level as you (more on that later) and you get down to business.

2. Directed. Of course you will have a Friends list that you can put your buddies, favorite opponents, famous people in, etc, and see your win/loss record with them, and maybe even some personal notes about them. You can both set up a time when you agree to meet online to throw down the virtual gauntlets.

Whenever you win a game in this mental exercise of ours, you will win a certain amount of points. The amount of points you win will be based on a percentage of your opponent’s points (rounded up). That way it works in your favor. If you somehow challenge and beat a level 58 opponent while you’re still on level 2, you’ll get a lot more points because, one would hope, the level 58 guy is supposed to be pretty darn good, while at level 2, you either aren’t really good yet or have just started to play online. Of course, you can also lose points. If you lose a game, you lose some points. Perhaps not as many as the other person gained, and certainly not enough to go into the negative points, but this will be to ensure that there won’t be many people that would rocket up to the maximum level within the first week the service was up and stay there (although I’m sure they would be there anyway).

When you go to play an Automatic game, the system will look for someone with at least the same level as you, then it will search +5 and -5 levels, giving preference to the higher level player. If no one is found, the search will broaden to +10 and -10 levels. If no one is found by the time that the search gets to +maximum level to -minimum level then that game may be on the verge of being removed from the network, you might want to look into playing something new.

Of course there would also have to be newsletters, contests, tournaments, chat areas, perhaps message boards, exclusive game demos (hmm, it’s almost starting to sound a little like the Satellaview), there could even be some sort of ‘secret area’ for subscribers of Nintendo Power. Kind of an online supplement to the magazine. For that matter, there could be some kind of bonus service to the subscribers such as: interviews with game developers, subscriber-exclusive news, demos a week earlier than everyone else, etc. I don’t even want to think of what they could do if they managed to get this working with the GameBoy Player. The Pok

Steam sounds like a good idea. You fire up your Valve game of choice, Steam checks for mods, updates, and etc., and you get to play with the latest version of everything. Great!

But there’s a downside. There’s always a downside.

Once you connect to Steam for the first time (whether you check for updates or play multiplayer online) you must then log on to Steam each and every time you want to play the game. If you want to play a Steam powered game at a LAN party, every computer must have a connection to the internet. Through my own LAN party experience, I’ve learned two things: Counter Strike is still one of the most popular LAN games, and not every LAN party has a connection to the internet (even some of the big ones like LanWar). So a lot of Counter Strike will not be going on at LANs. (Yeah, I know they get a lot of grief, but people play CS more than any other game at most of the LANs I’ve been to.) Why will people go to a LAN if they can’t play the game they want?

I don’t want to have to connect to the internet every time I want to play a single player version of a particular game. It just seems unnecessary, and I really don’t want to have to authenticate with the internet to play a multiplayer game if there’s no internet connection available. I just hope one of two things happen: 1. People like me abstain from purchasing Half-Life 2 in the hopes that Valve mends their software or, 2. Someone hacks together an authentication ‘workaround’ so that computers on an internet deprived LAN can actually play the games they want to play.

I’m not holding my breath for either, unfortunately.

I know that most people do their reflections on their respective sites on anniversary dates. Bah, that’s too far away. I don’t want to wait until January if I have no real reason to.

I alluded, in an earlier article (on a whole other website, to envisioning this site as some sort of gaming news site where I would have stories about comings and goings, new games, reviews, and the occasional whatever. Since you’re reading this now, it’s safe to assume that that didn’t happen exactly how I envisioned it, mostly because other sites do the same thing that I wanted to do, and much better.

Having spare time is definately a problem. I have a few alternatives when it comes to running a site. I can quit my ‘real’ job and try to make money at being a webmaster, which I don’t see happening in the near future, or I can just keep on having fun with it, providing content for free, which seems more likely.

It’s fairly obvious that now the site has turned into more of a blog style. It’s the wave of the present. Everyone, their cat, and their cat’s mother has a blog. Most of them, though, are just painfully boring to read. I do not want this site to turn into some kind of “I went to the mall today and got a Coke, but the guy behind the counter totally screwed up and gave me a Diet Coke instead. I smiled, walked around the corner and threw the almost full thing away. That’ll show ‘im” kind of blog. I just don’t find that reading about other people’s personal lives and experiences terribly interesting. Maybe that’s a character flaw. I don’t particularly like reality-based TV either.

So what does that mean that this site is going to be? Well, that’s something that I’m not entirely sure about. It’ll be different than what’s been here.

Probably.

Someone email me a Boot to the Head if I start talking about how my shoes were knotted up this morning or how the server put mayonnaise on my sandwich instead of mustard that day or the Mountain Dew I drank tasted like Mountain Wizz or etc. etc.

PHP-Nuke, while it has its uses, really wasn’t what I was looking for in a site, and I think Movable Type will be a little closer.

PHP-Nuke, and Postnuke for that matter, aren’t the most secure software packages out there. I had my homepage defaced once, and I fixed that hole, but there are just too many security holes to deal with.

I couldn’t get PHP-Nuke to look *just so* without extensive knowledge of PHP, sure I learned some (and could have probably learned more).

PHP-Nuke is OK, but after a year of using it, I think it’s time to move on to something (hopefully) better. Don’t worry, for now, the PHP-Nuke version of the site will live here.

Anonymous wrote: Everybody loves genuinely free software like abandonware. And the best unknown peice of abandonware is XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It’s an adictive little peice of game that combines turn based strategy, “SimMilitaryBase”, aliens and uh, staring at a badly rendered globe. For how simple the game is it is surpriseingly adictive. Check it out. here

1- Sorry, but there is no respawn.

2- Even though you are going in as a medic, when someone is hurt PLEASE DON’T stab them and then try to revive them.

3- Your melee weapon will not always be there, you can drop it.

4- Jumping all the time will not prevent someone from shooting you (and please don’t grunt every time you do jump).

5- It usually takes only one shot to reduce your entire “health meter.”

6- Funnily enough there usually isn’t a bunch of the correct ammo laying around on the ground.

7- Try and say what you want not shout F commands (F5, F5)

8- Medipacks themselves don’t cure everything.

9- You are not invulnerable when you are blinking, something is seriously wrong with you.

10- and finally, unlike most games a bazooka will take up more space than say…a key.

Most importantly, be careful John.

Current Crummysocks.com Super Smash Bros. Melee champion and all-around something brc64 has written an interesting article over at Driver Heaven that’s worth a read.



From the article:“(GLEXCESS) was, perhaps, the most interesting benchmark I ran. Scenes 1, 9, and 12 … resulted in some very similar scores, and somehow, the Pentium 3 managed to score slightly better overall.”