Tag: video games

A relic of ancient times

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m currently at my parents’ house in Virginia, and I was rooting through some old things in the basement.  I stumbled upon this magnificent jewel of the past.  My mom got this for me back in like 1989 on a cold Saturday morning after Korean school.  It was purchased from a Kiddie City Toys.  The original set of four AA batteries lasted all of three days as I, my sister and one of my cousins sought 100 lines in Tetris.

I can’t believe I remember all these little details.  It’s also hard to believe that the handheld division of Nintendo started with this brick, which actually doesn’t feel so much like a brick any more.  Granted, compared to an SP, it’s monstrous, but in my hands again, it didn’t feel like I was holding a hoagie or anything.  What an amazing journey it’s been for Nintendo in this regard; what started out as the puke green brick, ended up being the only thing keeping the entire company afloat when Pokemon games continued to sell in the midst of the CD-based console wars, and now Nintendo is among the triple crown of game companies all over again.  And now it’s called The 3DS.

But there would be no 3DS if not for this Game Boy.  Funny how things work out.

Neko-Con Stories: Is this really DDR anymore?

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Is it really DDR, if you’re 100% reliant on holding the railing throughout the entire durations of every single song you play?  The game is called “Dance Dance Revolution,” not “Hold the Rail and Stomp Hold the Rail and Stomp Revolution (HRSHRSR).”

And these guys were “experts” in the “tournament.”  In every “match,” there was one guy who had a higher score than the other guy, but let’s face it, neither are winners when they’re completely handcuffed to the railing while they have epileptic seizures with their feet, more concerned with the score and not missing any arrows instead of actually, you know, dancing.

Amazingly, despite the fact that every match looked just like the previous match, there was almost always a crowd to watch.  Either they’re really impressed with their scores, or they’re all also contestants waiting for their turn to hold onto the rail and spasm with their legs to the sound of a beat.

The strongest brand in fiction

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Part of what I do for a living involves a lot of brand management. Ensuring the consistency of the brand’s usage, making sure all future projects and endeavors incorporate and also ensure the integrity of the identity, and so forth. Needless to say, I think I know a little something about branding.

So despite the fact that it’s a fictional universe, Capcom has gone through some pretty impressive lengths to ensure that the brand of the Umbrella Corporation is impressively strong. Dare I say it, but I’d venture a statement that Umbrella is the strongest brand in fiction.

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Holy shit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw this, before I filled up my tank (for the first time since Wednesday). $140.00 to fill up someone’s car? Jesus Christ. And the thing is, I think that the vehicle being filled still wasn’t at full capacity, because of the unlikely event that the car was able to hit approximately $140.00 even on the pump. But no matter, $140.00 is ridiculous. I balked at the notion that filling my new car still encroached into the $40.00 territory, solely based on the asinine price of gas in the first place, but to stamp a Benjamin on top of that, I might as well just kill myself if that were my fate, because there’s no way I’d be able to sustain such fuel costs with how much I’m required to drive in the first place.

To put it in perspective, I’m going to assume that the vehicle is obviously in the class of a Ford Excursion, or super-crew Chevy Silverado, or something along those lines, based on the 35+ gallon fuel capacity. On a good day, these guys are averaging anywhere from 15-17 mpgs, so they’re getting anywhere from 540-600 miles on a tank of gas. Based on where I was filling up from, and the notion that most people work out in the city of Atlanta, or at least from where I was, not there, so I’m going to guess that if these people were like me, they’re putting anywhere around 300-400 miles on their vehicle during a five-day work week. Factor in recreational/weekend driving, and we’re looking at possibly the necessity to fill up once a week. At $140.00 a fill up.

In 1993, my parents bought me a Sega Genesis at a Price Club, for roughly $140.00. Think about that for a second – basically, whatever guzzler this person is driving could have literally bought an entire video game console, with a second controller and Ecco the Dolphin, every single week, for what they’re paying for in gasoline. Fuckin’ crazy.

What really happens to children during a zombie apocalypse

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What, you thought they were all safe and comfy at Disneyland while Chris, Jill, Francis, Coach, Ellis and Zoey eradicated the zombies for the sake of humanity?

It’s kind of a no-brainer that kids were never really shown in any danger in zombie games, because of the perceived sensitive nature of such imagery, but take such factors out of play, and it’s assumed that since they’re dumb and frail, they’re simply the first to get wiped out.

Major props to the trailer for Dead Island, which unforgivingly puts together this fine trailer of horror, sadness, and raw defeated emotion, which has more or less sold me on the game, without me really knowing what it’s truly about, the mechanics, or anything else.  And based on what little I have read about it, Dead Island sounds like the perfect one-player game for me to play when not indulging in zbs.

HAPPY KWANZAA.

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My arms feel like Rich Harden, and my legs feel like Chipper Jones.  But all with good reason.  What started with a new television snowballed into an effort to renovate my personal quarters, with me now paying dividends for my work, proving that things are easier when the house is new and unfurnished, and that I am indeed, getting old as fuck.

I haven’t worked all week, and haven’t gotten yet paid for the week of work previously.  Work is coming back as of Tuesday, and some interesting opportunities may arise (hopefully) in coming time.

The year is steadily approaching its finale.  Without much trepidation I say it can’t come soon enough.  But more on a lot of the aforementioned topics at a later date.  It’s Christmas, and I intend to spend today doing jack squat, eating food I like, and playing video games all day.

Merry Christmas, world.

Pimp my netbook: The quest for the appropriate gelaskin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So here’s life in a nutshell – I make tentative plans to go up to Virginia this weekend; see my sister, nephew and brother-in-law, and then go up to NOVA to see my family, and some friends. Elapsed timeframe, would have been three full, maybe four full days, since I wasn’t technically slated to be working anywhere at the time. Apparently, somewhere along the line I forgot that when I make travel plans, work opportunities spring up out of the blue like mummies popping out of sarcophagi, and now my travel plans have been slightly derailed, slightly modified, to mostly omit the whole Richmond part entirely. There will be other opportunities. All this being said, it’s back to WCW for a few more days, and a potential, slightly lengthier opportunity starting next week, if I’m lucky. I’d post the Bret Hart image again, but I didn’t like the overall load time of the animated GIF on my brog.

Since Thanksgiving, I haven’t played Left 4 Dead, or even rogged into my XBOX account. I literally have been playing Final Fantasy Tactics on a regular basis since, and have since gotten my core group of characters to level 99, and am slowly gradually making my way through the storyline, all while completing as many side-quests and missions as possible and growing frustrated with the now-unnecessary random encounters that take no less than 5-15 minutes a piece.

While I’m waiting for my laundry to dry, since if I go downstairs, the Piss1 will inevitably be fired up, and my ass will be planted playing more FFT, I’ve opted to stay up here and actually write; I had some sparks of inspiration over the weekend, stemming from the surprising actual victory of Virginia Tech over Florida State for the ACC championship, but that fizzled out quickly, and I might be a tad burnt out on writing about sports for the interim. So, the topic of the day is that I want to get a gelaskin for my netbook, so that everyone who sees me on it can get an idea of how to prematurely judge me based on my choice of hardware artwork. That being said, it’s been a little more difficult of a selection process than I had imagined; I had almost considered going with one of the pre-made skins, but leave it to me to not be contented by what’s readily available, and desire my own. Although there was a pretty snazzy skin of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night that I’m quite keen on, but that sets me up to be an “artsy” type of person that would likely run into a person who knows way more art history than I ever cared to have paid attention to in school.

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