Now, a lot of the time I am a pretty insensitive person, an abrasive combination of being stupid and a big mouth. I also like to think I'm a pretty tough guy, who doesn't cry..... at all.

I was surfing through, one of my favorite websites, for a good stress relieving laugh, when I happened upon a site that read "Animal Crossing is Tragic", it had a lot of views so I decided to take a look. Expecting some vulgar or crass joke accompanied by some rock theme, my speakers started to play a soft, quiet piano piece from Final Fantasy X, called "To Zanarkand". Immediately, the mood changed from a juvenile humor to serious.

The website tells the story of a boy, who bought the game Animal Crossing. For those of you who don't know, it's a life simulator along the same vein of the popular "The Sims".

After watching the entire thing, it brought me to the verge of tears. I never thought that something like that could affect me so, probably because I wasn't expecting to be emotionally tugged. Watching this makes me appreciate my parents and all that they do for me.

So after you read, this click on this link, and then go give your parents a hug and tell them how much you appreciate them.

Continued on (kind of) from here

While the subject was on The Raven, I just share a theory I had on it. In most public schools your forced to read The Raven at one point or another. For me it was during Middle School, when I was in a small class of about 10 or so students for English (it was an AG class, where AG is North Carolina's version of a gifted class. I'd take this chance to make fun of North Carolina and there schools here, but the school system I was in was actually good.) The small size was nice for the age level we were at, it let the class have a little more relaxed feel. So we read The Raven, and began talking about it and people were giving their idea's for what they thought it's purpose was. When it the discussion came around to me, I proposed my idea.

The guy is with his lover, Lenore, pretty happy couple, inseparable and in love. Guy somehow gets enraged and murders Lenore, probably with a giant axe to chop off her head. After murdering Lenore, he was pretty unstable (well he had to be to murder her) and was like OH SHI- and had to get rid of the body. Well the head was disposed of in the only head shaped object we know of in the room, the Bust of Athena. The raven comes in, he doesn't talk. The raven lands on the Pallas Athena. What is Athena the goddess of? Wisdom. So now Lenore, who's head is inside Athena's head, is answering the guy's questions, through the raven (of course she's only answering with nevermore, the guy just brutally murdered her, I'd try to make him go crazy too). The guy then goes crazy and pretty much gives up on life, unable to forgiven himself and forever condemned to be with Lenore, nevermore.

Anyway, just another pointless thought, in the same category of being bored enough to rewrite The Raven or thinking about numbers and the personalities they have.

I used to play World of Warcraft. The game has it's flaws, but honestly it was pretty damn fun for a while. It was one of the only mmo's that allowed me to feel like I wasn't grinding away in a joblike fashion while I was playing a game......at least while leveling and the first bit of raiding. Being a 40 man raid healer in MC was no different than 40 man raid healing AQ 40 or NAXX (if you've never played wow and don't know what those acronyms mean, basically picture a screen with an action bar of green looking spells across the bottom, a druid who looks pretty bad ass while wearing bullwinkle style antlers in the middle of the screen, and 40 health bars covering everything else), it pretty much turned into a glorified game of whack-a-mole with those aforementioned 40 health bars (not mana bars, fucking priests learn to conserve mana, I only innervate the main tanks, OH NOES THE MAIN TANK HAS NO MANA! *clicks innervate macro* /w Annalis You have been innervated, you can thank your mana battery later.).

Anyways I've rambled off-topic, I'm sure you all know the expansion wrath of the lich king has been out for a while. It's made me think about WoW, now that I may have free time coming up, but it also reminded me of something that happened. One of the mages in my old guild, had posted a WoW version of the St Crispin's Day Speech, from Henry the V (I don't know if it was original or a copy pasted thing). I thought it was pretty interesting, so I decided to do something similar myself, only with Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. After remembering about it, I wondered if I still had it saved, which I did, so I decided to share it with which ever poor saps come across this blog expecting to read something good:

Once upon a midnight dreary, as I raided, weak and weary,
Killing many a malign and arduous mob upon this floor,
While I tanked, quickly taunting, a mob came a jaunting,
As if it were simply flaunting, flaunting through the hall door.
" 'Tis a npc," I muttered, "jaunting upon this instance floor;
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, clearly I recall it was in the dreaded Kharazhan,
And each seperate dying fiend wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished progression; -vainly I had sought to borrow
From this instance farmed with sorrow - sorrow for the lack of tier 4 -
For the rare and feral gear whom the angles named tier 4 -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the frightful mob's hp falling, the dropping of each purple loot
Thrilled me - filled me with fantasic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
" 'Tis some NPC patrolling this instance floor -
Some non-elite NPC patrolling this instance floor; -
This it is, and nothing more,"

Quickly I cast enrage, waiting for the mana of no mage,
"Demon," said I,"or undead, truly your forgiveness I implore;
For I was engaged in combat, and so quickly you came patrolling,
And so faintly you came strolling, strolling through this instance hall
I was unsure I was in line of sight" - here I stepped into the instance hall
Curator there, and nothing more.

Long at the Curator peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no feral druid ever dared to dream before
Curator stood staring, towering above in the darkness just glaring,
And the only text typed, as it appeared in guild chat, "tier 4!"
This I typed, and the chat logs recorded this word, "tier 4!"
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the room turning, all the mana was returning,
Soon again I saw a flaunting, somewhat clearer than before.
"Surely," said I,"surely that is by the stair case:
Let me check what mob may be alive, after clearing this floor -
Let my healers drink a moment, after clearing this floor; -
'Tis a glitch and nothing more!"

I'll have a link right here, just when my future self gets around to making a post to link to, since this is getting to reach the point of OH GOD MY EYES THEY BURN, WHY IS THIS POST SO LONG WHYYYYYYY

Well not really, but if they had, I would have been able to test out this method to find it.

A student from Missouri State University awoke one morning, to find that his xbox 360 had been stolen while he was sleeping. Luckily, the thief had left behind the controller, and it was still linked wirelessly to the console, which meant that the console was still in the same building. Using knowledge of the controller's range (about 30 yards), the student was able to conclude which floor the 360 was on, and narrow down which rooms it could be in. With the help of the floor RA, the xbox was then found, and proven that it was the stolen xbox (since the controller was still linked, it could turn on and off the stolen xbox, proving that it was stolen).

I take everything I ever said about "THE BUTTON" back. I remember watching E3 05 (when E3 still mattered to developers, thank you media for ruining this year's E3, we love it when you get involved in things!) during the Microsoft conference, and just laughing at the concept of a button on the controller to turn on the console. How lazy do you have to get to not be able to push the on button on your console (That and it was easy to bash microsoft, did you see that killzone 2 demo! Those graphics were fucking amazing! And that duck, just look at that duck!). Even after owning a 360, I still mocked THE BUTTON, and occasionally hit it (to the frustration of those I played with) instead of the start button. But now, THE BUTTON has proven it's worth.

So not only must we congratulate the 360's wireless controller and button (FUCK YA BUTTON!), but we must commend the student from Missouri State University. Not only does he have the endurance to live in the state of Misery.....err Missouri (I'm beginning to think that's why so many people who've lived there too long call it MIZZURAH, because they are afraid to admit how much it sounds like misery), but he also used logic to get his stuff back in a pretty bad ass (read hard boiled) way. The only thing that could have been more bad ass, would be to pop out of nowhere as the thief exists the room, Oblivion style. STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!

One of the great things about computers is that they can really do just about anything you want them to, even play games not for computers (that’s right I’m talking about emulation). Of course, a lot of emulators out there are by no means practical for really playing the games (too slow, only works half the time, etc.) and even a great emulator will only run smoothly on a computer with considerably faster hardware than what is being emulated. But if you want to play some old school console games (or newer ones if you have a really badass rig that can compensate for slow emulation), there are emulators out there for everything (in multiple emulators for many things). So I thought I would do you all a favor and tell you about my personal favorite emulators.

1. Project64 is in the best emulator I have ever found. It emulates the Nintendo 64, and is the only program I recommend you ever do that with. Every other N64 emulator I have tried has been absolutely terrible. The engine runs smoothly for me, and should on any decent set of hardware. In fact, it even does a great job of improving the game rendering (that’s right, they actually look better). I have run it at 1680 x 1020 (and the images were actually rendered to that man pixels, not just stretch), with no problem. Also, it has features for smoothing shapes and filtering the bitmaps. Project64 is great all around, and has worked with every ROM I have tried it on.
   
   
2. Visual Boy Advance is an extremely close second (it mostly lost because it emulates older technology). It does a wonderful job of emulating any Game Boy, up to the Advance. It runs very smoothly (without the throttle it easily jumps to 2000% speed on a cheap desktop). I like that it too has filters to improve the picture quality. There are some ten or so different ones to choose from (though they cannot do as much as the Project 64 one does because the games are only two-dimensional). It is supposed to work with any ROM you can get, and automatically detects what kind of Game Boy it is for. There is a built in GameShark type feature which works great (but is really confusing unless you know nerdy stuff like me). Recently a version with the added ability to “link” with other instances of itself for multiplayer was released, but it is not officially supported and still in need of serious refinement (but I think it’s really cool and will keep an eye on it).
   
   
3. Dolphin is the last of the emulators I have found that is exceptional. It is a GameCube and Wii emulator (because they actually are the same thing in terms of emulation). The GameCube aspect of it works much better than the Wii one though. It is not nearly as refined as the other two I talked about. It runs smoothly most of the time with GameCube games without too much hardware. Playing Wii games takes a bit faster computer than people may have, and is not always that smooth. The main thing is that emulating a Wii for the purpose of playing games is rather pointless right now in my opinion, because you cannot use a Wiimote (which is the whole point of the Wii’s existence basically). People have tried to come up with a Bluetooth hack to couple a Wiimote with a computer (which would make things better, but still not great without the sensor bar), but there has not been any success yet. But if you want a GameCube emulator, Dolphin is the way to go. The only downside with that is you have to use ROMs with it (I couldn’t get it to work with an actual game disc which is annoying cause discs can actually work with computer emulation, obviously).

In case you are wondering, there are emulators for things besides Nintendo products. I just never really use them. Some of them are fast enough for actual gaming like these are, and there are other uses for emulation besides just playing games which don’t require as much speed (but they aren’t of much interest to the average gamer). So yeah, emulation is great and any of you who are interested now should definitely look further into the subject.

I was updating all the junk on my computer in my basement last night because I slipped into my house after a concert in Kentucky (it’s a long irrelevant story that I won’t get into). Anyways, when I got to the drivers I was on the Nvidia site and I found this nifty little widget for people to put on their websites (though it struck me and quite strange that they didn’t actually have it up anywhere on their own site). The widget is for finding the latest releases of the drivers for your system.


As you can see, it has both an automatic detection option and fields to fill in what you have (as usual the automatic option does not work nearly as well, but whatever). I put in the info for my computer in the manual section, and it opened up a window right to the page with the correct drivers (much faster than drudging my way through all the sections of the Nvidia website).

Overall, I think this is a great little widget (it would be even better if it did more than just the Nvidia drivers, but oh well). I wish they would make it into a sidebar gadget or an actual program or something (I know, I am just never pleased). Still it is very useful and at least a good start with the idea. I am one of those people who obsesses over keeping my computer up to date and whatnot (again, I am a serious computer nerd), so this is right up my alley.

If you have a website or something of that sort, be sure to consider adding this great widget to it. In fact, if you’re motivated maybe you could even take a look at it to make some improvement or use it as a basis for your own thing (possibly implementing some of the fantastic changes I proposed in this here post).

I was wandering the internet aimless (one of my not so many hobbies) when I came upon this entertaining little tidbit of Sims 3 machinima. What really makes it interesting is that it is made with a game that is not actually out yet, which you don't see all that often.

Now I have no interest in politics (they just annoy me), but I just barely know enough about what going on to know this video is pretty funny (especially the disclaimer at the end of it. "I can see Russia from my house!"). More importantly (at least as far as this blog is concerned) is that the things in the video look quite good and the movements are very smooth which at least means this game will be an improvement over the previous Sims games in the visuals department (unless those bitches enhanced the video or used custom stuff in some way to make it look better than the raw game, in which case they're well... bitches).

I have yet to hear much about the specifics of how the newest Sims game will be different than the others and what sort of innovations it has. Obviously, it is supposed to make an improvement to the visuals again, and using this video as proof, it appears it has (like I was saying earlier). There is something about the choices they make throughout their life having importance and a lasting effect, which was sort of introduced in the second game. However, I do not know how much they are increasing that aspect of the game, or how it is being done. To be honest, I have not been following this game all the closely anyways. I don't expect it to be that much better or different than the last two (besides these games don't actually get good until the put out the expansions in my opinion. You gotta have pets and traveling and shit), and I end up burning way too much money on them.

Anyways, this game looks pretty good (just like all the others), but I have no idea when it is supposed to be finished. If you are more interested (or one of those people who obsesses over the Sims and goes totally overboard with this crap), I'm sure there is a ton more info out there. So just gts man, you'll find it (by the way peeps, gts means "Google that shit". Spread the word people cause I am tired of people staring at me when I say it).

I wanted to add another horrifying moment to the other list, but it wasn't a video game scary moment, I can't go breaking the laws laid down by the title "Top 5 Scariest Moments In Video Games". But while reminiscing on what I found scary in games, and finding a lot of the things came from my childhood, I also began to think back to Little Nemo (very different from "Finding Nemo"). There was a NES game made based on the movie which I also played, if you can find an emulator and a rom for it I'd recommend playing it (pshh you expect me to go out and find it for you? Lazy bum.).

Anyway onto the point, Little Nemo was a Japanese anime from the late 80's, that was dubbed and brought over to the US in the early 90's, and also happens to be a favorite childhood film of mine. Thinking about the other list made me think of this movie, and how much I enjoyed it, at the same time out much it scared the hell out of me. While it's not a video game, so I did not include it in the "official" list (by official I mean some random loser on the internet's list), but it certainly deserves a mention as nightmare fuel in the same standing as the angry sun and phantos. Actually, it literally is nightmare fuel, seeing how its about a little boys dreams that turn into a nightmare. I don't think I could live with myself if I was going to mention scary things, include nostalgic moments for me, and not include Little Nemo. Actually I wish I still had my NES and a copy of the Little Nemo game right now, or the VHS of Little Nemo to watch, oh well I guess I'll just have to deal with 10 minute segments in youtube (if you want to watch it just follow the youtube video at the top).

I came across the picture of this list's number one spot while I was browsing the cold dark depths of the internet, and began to wonder what my top 5 scariest moments in video games were. So I popped on my nostalgia goggles and looked back at what possibly could be the defining moments of horror in the countless number of video games that I have played, and decided to share the list I came up with.

5. The angry sun-Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

Let's start out with one of the most memorable “OH SHI-” moments in video game history, the desert level in Super Mario Bros. 3. Remembering this just sends me back to a childhood of simpler games, no fancy control schemes, realism =/= brown and bloom, and scary didn't mean something was bleeding to death while it jumped out of dark corridors. I'm just strolling along (drinking a blue mondo to add nostalgia), jumping over quick sand, dodging the fire ball shooting plants, normal mario stuff. Hmm that's a weird looking sun up in the corner, it wasn't in any of the other levels, it's kind of creeping me out up there. I better watch out theres some bricks, I sure hope theres none of those fake ones from the first lev-THE SUN IS TRYING TO KILL ME FUCK!



4. Wall Masters-Legend of Zelda (Pretty much anything nintendo)

The whole part of the original legend of zelda games was that it was pretty much the polar opposite of mario. In mario, you knew what to do. You walk forward, and jump on things, no mystery here. Legend of Zelda (especially the NES one, as the series has advanced the worlds have become more detailed and you have a better idea whats going on, but theres still the element of puzzles and the “wtf am I supposed to be doing” feeling) just throws you out in the open without a weapon and tells you nothing. So you go through the world, solving puzzles and searching dungeons. You get pretty deep into a dungeon, walk into a room and this weird hand thing comes out at you. You've been trained at this point, you get touched by a monster, you get hurt, but you have plenty of hearts, so your a little careless. The wall master grabs you, oh but you aren't hurt it sends you back to the beginning of the dungeon. As you sit there shocked and in despair that you now must go through half the dungeon again, a trained fear begins to build in your mind, like a trained instinct that says, “wall masters/hands = OH SHIT RUN.”



3. Going insane-Eternal Darkness (Gamecube)

A survival horror style game inspired by the Cthulu Mythos and other Lovecraft stories, Eternal Darkness introduced something to the genre, a sanity meter. Everything you might expect will happen when you go insane, you know hearing things, seeing things, bleeding walls, things start happe........OH SHIT THE GAME JUST RESET NO I DIDN'T SAVE.......oh its back. The game likes to break the fourth wall a bit just to mess with you. You'll find th...........WHOS MESSING WITH THE TV'S VOLUME DAMN IT.



2. Uboa-Yume Nikki (Freeware)

The whole game is pretty freaky, so its not surprising to something from the game appear in this list. It's a random event in the game, contained in a certain house, involving flipping a switch. I hate to give everything about a game like this (one in that the ENTIRE game is about little secrets like this), especially since I already talked about it here, so I won't say much more. Honestly I think knowing that it's going to happen is worse than coming across it unexpectedly. The anticipation just builds more and more as you do one simple action, leave the house, then repeat. There's an Einstein quote “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”, that is Uboa. It's not OH NOES SOMETHING BLOODY JUMPED OUT AT ME, it's being driven insane, anticipating something different, sitting on the edge of you seat each time you flip the switch. Soon you may forget what exactly it is you seeking, maybe your not given enough time to forget. The first time, 20 repeats, 80 repeats? Who knows exactly how long it will take.

The video gives away uboa as a warning for those who wish not to know.


1. Phantos-Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)

Phantos is easily the scariest thing in a video game, winning out over the somewhat similar angry sun. Oh look there's the key I need to open the door, up there by those creepy looking masks. OH GOD THE MASKS ARE CHASING ME, GET AWAY ITS MY KEY. Here's the door I'll make it out with the key yay! Ok outside of that room and safe.......OH GOD IT'S STILL FOLLOWING ME NOOO GET YOUR OWN KEY CREEPY MASK THING. Forget Silent Hill, Doom, or Resident Evil, this is the defining scary moment in a video game. Phantos made me afraid to pick up keys, I mean I'm sure whatever is behind the door isn't THAT important, I'll just stay out here and high jump with luigi a bit.......you suck phantos, I want your key ;_;

The Christmas Season is the best part of the year for gamers (Yes I realize it basically is for everyone, but I sort of have a point I'm getting to). It seems like a shit-ton of great new things always come out now, and many of them are things people like me have been anticipating for a long time.

Companies love to hold things off until the next big season for buying things or whatever. Obviously, Christmas is the biggest season like that so the companies hold off for then even more than any other time. Also when games get delayed (Which all the ones I want to hurry up and come out do, dammit), they seem to end up either being finally finished around Christmas or they just hold it off until then since it is already late. So for these reasons (and I believe just to be bastards on some occasions), most publishers put their games out just in time for Christmas (or “The Holidays” for you politically correct folks).

So yeah, I am REALLY excited for all the new video games and other fancy-shmancy stuff (not so much the family crap and the decorating the goddamn tree ordeal though). I don’t really know what else to say about it but… yeah… it’s pretty sweet. Of course, life in general would be much sweeter if I could just go buy the games I want as soon as they are done, and not when those assholes decided it is time for me to buy it.

I am not saying that I buy every game as soon as it comes out, many games I buy after they have been out for a long time. It is just that every so often there will be a game I get massively excited about for one reason or another, and I just have to play it as soon as possible. But anyways, people will buy a game as a Christmas present even if it didn’t just come out. If the game is good, gamers will want it for Christmas (unless they already have it by then, in which case that is still a sale just the same).

As I have made obvious before (like in one of my Dead Space posts), when business decide to use techniques or strategies like these with the intent of saving more or making more sales or whatever, it annoys me to no end. They should all realize something that would help them out immensely (and which I believe is extremely intuitive), if you worry about making a game actually good (or even great) people will WANT to buy it. Once that happens, they will no longer have to waste time or money on tricking people into buying something they don’t really want or strategizing to get more people to buy something that might want a little.

Secondly, they should also realize that when you annoy us loyal gamers it is very very bad and dumb. Even a small reason to not buy a game can outweigh several reason to buy it (especially now that freaking everyone cranks out video games like none-other and there are countless other options). If companies would be nice to us, we might even feel a desire to be loyal to them and do wonderful things like maybe give them the benefit of the doubt on later releases of new products.

But I repeat, it’s Christmas (and Hanukah or however you want to spell it) so it’s a time to be happy and whatnot. Things do bug me, but right now all the great stuff is becoming available so right now I am very happy and excited. I’ll go back to being my annoyed and whiny self at a later date.