Flashback: Making Friends With Learned Words

So, today I woke up with a dry mouth, and wasn't in a very good mood. So, I do what I always do when the weekend's coming closer: find a classic video game. I have a box filled with my old Game Cube stuff, and a small selection of Gameboy Advanced games. I saw some great titles, which I will come to eventually in this segment, but, one really caught my eye, it was a Gameboy Color game. Now, some of you may not have been around for the Color, but I was, at least for its later years, played a lot of games for it on my GBA. For some of you, this may be a controversial title, but it still remains one of my most played games of all times: Hamtaro: Ham-Ham's Unite!
Now, some of you may say "SANTA! THIS IS A GAME BASED ON AN ANIME! ALL GAMES BASED ON MOVIES, BOOKS, AND ANIMES ARE HORRIBLE! THE MAIN CHARACTER IS A HAMSTER!" And you would be right on the last issue, Hamtaro was an orange and white hamster, but he was adorable, and had to help find his friends who were scattered about this adorable world, and bring them back to your clubhouse. It took me 7 years to complete this game. 7 Years. As a small child, I thought this game would perplex me until the day I died, but, after a while, I figured I could cheat, and looked up how to beat this confounded game. As stated before, you have to retrieve all your friends, but, to do this, you must first find, and convince them to come back. How, you may ask, as you do not speak Hamster. The entire point of the game was to learn words that have special meanings pertaining to their club, and had special abilities, seriously, one word made you quintuple in size; it described 'big.' Hamsters are magic.
After finding this creation beyond its years again, my next challenge was to find a way to play it, as my DS doesn't play Color games (much to my dismay) and my GBA was nowhere to be found. But, never fear, I had the greatest piece of gaming technology ever invented: the Gamecube GBA player. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I got out my old Gamecube (which was covered in a layer of dust about 3/8 of an inch thick) and found the player still plugged in, this cute little thing plugs into the bottom of your Gamecube, then you put in the included disc, and pop your favorite retro game into the slot on the converter, you get to play your old games on the big screen, and use your favorite controller from this seat of your couch. Now, I can't say that I played more hours on the adapter than I did on my GBA (god rest its used soul, wherever it may be) but I can say that it is by far the best 60 dollars I ever spent on anything.
So, to all of you old game fans out there, if you get a chance at one of these amazing devices, I'd take a swing at it, I haven't seen one in a long time, and I can safely say that although it may not change the overall quality of the game, (It will look a bit blocky, depending on your screen) it will give new life to your overall gaming experience. To everyone else who still owns a Gameboy Color, hold onto it, I know that I have countless memories from my days of handheld gaming, and I can only hope that yours are just as magical. Although the handheld industry may be a bit undersold at times, I still have 2 of my top 5 games of all time in the handheld game spot. Who knows, next Friday, I might be back on a Pokémon binge, as anybody who grew up in the 90's can tell you, handhelds may not give you the greatest storyline of all times, but they can kill an entire evening worth of time.

TF2 and You: The Importance of "Protective Headgear"

 As anyone who's ever played TF2 can tell you, its rapidly became Hat Fortress 2. As seen by all the pictures in this post, I'm a bit caught up in the fad myself. These are actual images from my account, and believe me, these weren't natural drops, I traded from them. Now, as some of you may ask: "Santa, why would you put in HOURS of work into just getting items that you can't even see in-game?" Well, I have two answers:

One- My main computer sucks, the only thing I can really do is go onto trade-plaza and shout "STOUT SHAKO FOR 2 REFINED" until someone trades me. Seriously, if I go out and fight, I'll blue screen, it's that bad.

 Secondly, they're legitimately worth money. I have an item named earbuds, that's equipable for all classes, looks like the little earbuds from the ipod commercials 5 years ago, they're worth 20 bucks. Right now I'm trying to pawn them off for Fallout: New Vegas, or some other game I don't already own that I'd like. I've been very prosperous in my days of trading, but one thing always alluded me: Unusual hats.

Some say they're worthless, but that's just because they don't have them. Unusual hats come from the most

worthless item in the game: crates. They drop every few minutes to some un-lucky gamer, and stick in your inventory until the end of time, but, if you want, you can buy a key from the Mann Co. Store, and try your luck. Most of the times you'll get something useless, like a backburner, but, BUT, there is a 1% chance of receiving such items as a Fancy Fedora (as pictured on my Spy) with a cute little heart circling around it, or with brilliant sunbeams radiating from your scalp.

Hats first appeared in the Sniper v. Spy update, bring with it all of the brilliance of hoarding that would come with community updates, and eventually, the Mannconomy update. This allowed trading, and gave everything before the drop "Vintage" quality, which does nothing, except gives the items a very smooth, blue border. More items are added made by Valve, community members, or for other games coming out (Look at the loadout of the Engineer, it's from Fallout: New Vegas.) Any items bought before the items release is given "Genuine" quality. Making it look cool with a not-quite-as-good-as-blue green border. Along with hats, you have miscellaneous items, such as my Vintage Whiskered Gentleman, or Genuine Pip-Boy. It adds another touch of class, without taking up your hat slot, Valve has promised another Miscellaneous slot, to come out eventually. The ideas of hats, although pointless, make the atmosphere of Hat Fortress 2 more enjoyable, and to quote Gabe Newell, the founder of Valve Software, and overall personal hero of mine: "Welcome to Team Fortress 2. After 9 years in development, hopefully its been worth the wait." To me, it was worth the wait, and more, I'll keep trading, although mostly for fun, and see what I can get. And if anybody's interested in my Earbuds, leave a comment. I'm always open to a good trade.

Tech Bytes: Pads to Phones- The Reovlution of Touch

As anyone who’s looked at recent technological releases can tell you, the iPhone really started a new trend. You have every new phone coming out with touch compatibility, making a new line of smart phones, and you have the iPad, which is like 4 iTouch’s  taped together to form a giant board of an object, that requires you to get a carrying case just to use, but to go farther, you’ll seen entire phenomenon start from this! How many "tablets" have you seen come onto the market over these months? How long will it be until we see this odd fad end?

Here's my sense of logic: when the iTouch came out, I thought it was cool, it gave a good bit of power to Apple, and brought them into the gaming market, bringing such innovations as Angry Birds. But what got me was the iPad, which at release had only about 16 gigs, and no Wi-Fi, for over 500 bucks. I'm not made out of gold, and I cant go mining for it either (how I wish the world was more like Minecraft on occasions) but I find that to be steep, especially since you can get a cute little laptop for the same price, it'll have built in Wi-Fi, and you'll even get a large enough hard drive to store something larger than the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on. As my picture shows on the right, I find this to be Apple's logic, make product bigger, make billions in profit, and you know what,m it worked. And other companies have done it too, I can go out and look at Toshiba, Motorola, and more, trying to copy the magic of Apple, at an almost reasonable price tag.

Maybe I am being a little bit jealous, I will admit, I am not a big Apple fan, anybody who won't allow Flash on a $350 iTouch is cruel, but the bigger point is this, why are people flocking to tablets? Touch is the only thing I can think of, since laptops offer what? More power, less price, more options, and if you really want, you can still get your sleek white Apple edition for $1000 too! I think its more of just a way of people thinking it gives them of a leg up, it looks cool, and I will admit, it has some perks, but what can you do on it that a laptop can't do better? I can type on a laptop, I can get Wi-Fi (Built in as standard on almost every model nowadays) and I can even play some really cool games on laptops for the same price of an iPad, so, when it comes down to it, if you like bandwagons, go out and get a tablet. Touch does add a cool flare to an old, traditional method, but think it out, iOS doesn't even have Flash, but Android does. Just somethnig for you, and your wallet, to think about.

Flashback: Building the Future

As a child, there were very few games I played, most of which were on my GameCube. I lead a very protected video game life, not playing any games with guns until 12. But, before any of these events, I was a hardcore Nintendo fan. My favorite game was anything that had a Pokémon in it, and I thought a computer was something that had the internet on it. This changed when I turned seven, and I got an unexpected gift, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2.

Chris Sawyer, one of my all-time greatest  heroes, created the successful series about building your own Amusement park, and as any kid can tell you, they would die to own one. As I had never left the confines of the local ‘Adventureland’ I was amazed to see such rides from the Six Flags Park. I still remembering the shivers of excitement build the Great American Scream Machine in my first park. The entire point to the game was to build the greatest thrill park of all time, in different locations with different challenges. RCT 2 has a tiered system for challenges, starting with the easy parks going up to the EXTREME parks. There are also the options to control pre-made Six Flags parks, or even build your own Six Flags Park, with a very large amount of control: from placement of rides, to building them from scratch, many types of food stalls, and the ability to check with your park guests, seeing how they think of your park. Your park is given a rating, from 0 to 999, based on the happiness, amount, and overall build of your park.

You can get awards for best food, best rollercoasters, or dirtiest park in the country. While you run your park, you hire Employees (paid a monthly salary) to do your bidding, there are Handymen (the ones who clean, mow, and clean up the eventual spew from everyone riding your intense rides too much) Engineers (who fix your rides, and can check up on them to keep them in top condition) Entertainers (who keep your park guests happy by wearing humiliating costumes) and Security Guards (who make sure the snot nosed brats in your park don’t break the benches you just put in.) The next point of the game is all about layout, and debt management. As most rides cost millions of dollars, Sawyer lowered the costs of rides from multi-millions to multi- thousands. For example, you can build a giant, looping rollercoaster, built with thousands of tons of steel and stretches over two miles for around $45,000. You can either charger per ride, or charge a flat fee for entrance. You also get money from your sales of food, souvenirs, and various other objects. You can also choose to take out a loan, set to a pre-determined amount, and use that to build your offering to the amusement gods, but remember, you’ll owe a certain percentage of that back per month.

RCT 2 is the perfect example of how you can get sucked into a game for an entire day, and then wonders why you haven’t blinked in 4 hours. Its playability is similar to the Sims, where you just keep going and going, not knowing where to stop, and what to do next.  And when the tens of thousands of dollars in your pocket, and just can’t think of where to put your next great hit, you can just start anew, coming up with new designs, and coming up with new ways to entertain yourself for hours. In the end, I’ve found myself keeping this disc safe for almost a decade now, installing it onto 4 different computers, and probably logging more hours on it that I have spent all my time combined on the Wii. If your ever in the mood for a retro-feeling bit of building nostalgia, try this one on for size, and download it off most sites for about ten bucks.

A Look Into the Greastest Game Of All Time, Part II

To start where we left off, the defense classes, starting with the Heavy, the lovable Russian. The Heavy has a mini gun named Sasha, is the slowest class, and likes sandwiches. General Heavy strategy is to stick close to a Medic, keep his mini gun ready, and general crowd control, since he has the most health; he also has the most longevity.


The Demoman is Valve's "Black, Scottish cyclops," Tavish DeGroot He is an alcoholic with a taste for explosive ordinance. He comes standard issue with a a grenade launcher, and a sticky bomb launcher, which allows for you to detonate at will, but can be destroyed by shooting. The special thing about the Demoman, however, is his melee capabilities, as he has multiple sword, and shield unlocks.


Last in the Defense category, and my all around favorite class, is the Engineer, also known as Dell Conagher. The Engineer, a soft spoken Texan, has 11 PhD's, all used to destroy anyone who opposes him. He can build items, such as a Sentry gun (Which has 3 levels, one being a simple gun, 2 having duel machine gun, and 3 adding a rocket launcher), Teleporter, and Dispense, which heal teammate. Then Engineer is one of the classes with the lowest class, but makes for it with the Gunslinger, a robotic fist which grants Dell more health, and gives him a fast-building, expendable mini-sentry.


First on Support is the Medic. The Medic is the greatest support character, giving health to teammates in the middle of battle with his medigun, a portable hospital on his back. The medic, after healing for a few moments, build up an Ubercharge, allowing him to turn himself, and his patient to become invulnerable for 7 seconds using an "Invulin." There are other mediguns, with different purposes, but the Invulin comes standard, and is best for general use.


Mr. Mundy, otherwise known as the Sniper, has a rather obvious job. Hailing from the Outback down-under, he got his skills from years of hunting big game. When he isn't killing people from 5 miles away, he's living in his van, or training for his strict "Jarate" regimen.


The last class, and most elusive, is the Spy, the illustrious French lady killer, or to be more accurate, man killer. With the power to become invisible, feign death, and kill with a single stab of a knife, the spy is one of the most dangerous classes. He can disguise himself, giving him unlimited access to your team, can place sappers on Engineer's buildings, and can be a general pest to somebody unlucky enough to walk by.


What ties all of these odd characters is a battle royal between two companies, Reliable Excavation and Demolition (RED), and the Builder's League United (BLU). This gives the reasoning for team colors and the building styles, BLU being more industrial and RED being rough. The TF2 team releases comics to build an intricate web of connections between characters, their pasts, and how the war has been raging for 100 years. TF2 has become the largest lore in the Valve universe, what really sets it apart from most other games for me. You get a feel for the characters you play, and have feelings for them, and the fun continues through an easy to use server system, where there are more game types than I could make in one post. If you ever get the time to, and have the space on your hard drive, hop on Steam, and start the download, TF2 is now a free game, and while you can't trade on the Free to play version, you can still receive items, and get item drops. The one drawback is the download size, which currently rests at just below 10 gigabytes, and with all the mods I’ve downloaded, I have 20 gigabytes worth of Team Fortress goodness, this game isn’t for the faint of heart, it does have gore, blood, and your characters do have the tendency to explode into giblets, but, it is a very good way to spend an hour or two, in my case, over 700.

A Look Into the Greastest Game Of All Time, Part I

Ladies and Gentleman, this is going to be an opinionated post, for those of the faint of heart, you may want to close this now, for I have found the greatest game of all time, and to put it a step above, its free. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, for a whopping $000 and 000 cents, you can now start to play Valve Software's greatest accomplishment: Team Fortress 2.For those of you whom may not have heard of this accomplishment in gaming, you can quickly run over to their blog: http://teamfortress.com/ for their new updates, most of which I will cover on this blog, but onto the main point, the game itself, a synopsis, and its versatility, this will be my first review of a game.


Team Fortress 2 is the child of Valve Software's creative team, headed by Robin Walker, the creator of the original mod for the Half-Life engine. The game is a class-based, cell-shaded, war game based on 1950's era art style. The game play is fluid, the artwork is fluid, and enough jokes and references to shake a stick at. But, best of all, Valve constantly updates the game, adding weapons for their nine characters (whom I will get to very shortly) which have various effects, from flamethrowers to mini-guns rocket launchers to shovels. Team Fortress 2 adds the idea of using everything but the kitchen sink as a weapon, some in the original style, some in a new futuristic style from other games, making TF2 a truly unique system.


To acquire items you can wait, receiving an item from the randomized drop system every hour or so until you hit the weekly cap of items. You can craft items, as newer items have a "blueprint” for crafting it or you can trade. But, trading's true value lies in one of TF2's greatest strength: customization of your character, in the form of hats. Hats range from a humble fedora for the spy to a Max's head (from the Sam & Max series) for all 9 classes. Some hats also have unusual effects, like an orbiting heart, sunbeams, and of course, flames.
For the main event, you have the classes. You have 9 classes, covering all of the forms of combat you could ever want, broken up into 3 categories: Offense, Defense, and Support.


On support, you have the Scout, first and foremost, a fast little guy from Boston. Out of all the classes, he runs the fastest, and has the biggest egos.  His greatest advantages are for “capping” the Intel, a variant of Capture the flag, capping control points, where he counts as two people, and generally annoying all classes, although he can’t take as much of a punch as most of the other classes, he still has the ability to be strong in a fight.


The Soldier, also known as Mr. Jane Doe, is slower than the average class, but a bit stockier in return. He comes with a rocket launcher, and the ability to be a game changer. The soldier’s primary objective is to destroy building, built by engineers, and to break up medics from their healing targets, (both of which are to be covered later.)


The Pyro, a mostly unknown class, has the power set things on fire with a fairly large ranged flame thrower, another item that he can get is the flare gun, giving him the power to shot flares, and cause burn damage, allowing the Pyro the chance at the kill even if the target gets away. His main objective is mostly checking for spies, general offense in war, and to be a watchdog for Engineers. Int part II, I'll finish the explanations of all classes, and get into the multiple game modes and user-made content.

Flashback: Dash To the Finish

I got up a bit late today since it was Sunday and did something I didn't think was possible: I wanted to use my Wii. Unfortunately, my only good game, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, was missing, but I had something even better, GameCube controllers, my brother, and Mario Kart: Double Dash. Before I played FPS games, I played Pokémon games, and before that, GameCube games. The amount of time I put into Double Dash was only rivaled to Super Smash Brothers: Melee, but that was somewhere in the catacombs of my storage room.

Double Dash, (Which I will now refer to as MKDD) is one of the games in the Mario Kart franchise, it features the idea of a two-tiered driving system, one controlling the car, the other one handling power ups, and helping to drift. My brother and I used to come home from school, and race for hours, this is one of the reasons I wanted to be a race car driver when I grew up until I was in 6th grade. MKDD has characters like Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Waluigi, Baby Mario, and more. The game became famous for its antics and its power-ups, from a mushroom that would make you go faster, to a blue shell, which targeted the first place driver and blew them up into the air. With MKDD, you got your fix for racing in a less serious tone. Where else can you be a giant monkey with a baby on the back of a go-kart, racing around a mountain? If you get the chance to play a classic GameCube game, keep this in your top list of choices, this is one I’ll keep with me for awhile.

11-11-11: Soon To Be the Greatest Day Ever

About 3 days ago, I was sitting at my desk, watching EpicMealTime on YouTube, when my friend came over. He asked me if I was following the update feed for the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and I just blankly stared at him.  For whatever reason, I didn't think that Bethesda had put out any information, probably from how they had treated Fallout: New Vegas, leaving me wondering more about the items they DID release rather than did not, but, to my amazement, there was more than just a snippet out. The Elder Scrolls Series is one of the longest running, and well-known, series in Video Game history. From Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III), to Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV), Bethesda has become well known for their series that has a vast, open world, large character creation features, thousands of quests, and of course, the medieval feel. But now, quite possibly the greatest lore of all times is coming to Skyrim: Dragons

Looking into a new 20 minute demo released by Bethesda on the 12^th, they showed off most of the new mechanics, the highlights being the new duel wielding features. I have to admit, the idea of having an Ebony Long sword in one hand and a fireball spell in the other is just about enough to make pass out. The new fluid motions of game play, (making 3^rd person look like a viable way to play the game now) and Bethesda’s great knack for detail has made for putting icing on sweet rolls to clues on the bottom of keys. The inclusion of Dragon words gives you the power to make thunderstorms with the lightning targeting your foes to breathing fire. Bethesda took the game play mechanics of Bioshock 2, the attention to detail of Crysis, and its great charm from Oblivion and put it into a snowy world.

This new and exciting world fill me with questions, most of them revolving around wanting to have a dragon to ride, and whether or not the guards will tell that they’ve fought Mudcrabs fiercer than me. My biggest worry is that we’ll see a lot of what made Oblivion special, like floating paint brushes, will be gone. But in a world as large as Skyrim is set to be, there should be plenty of occasions where odd things happen. I can only hope that November 11^th comes faster than it feels like, I’ve spent more than 500 hours playing Oblivion, I can’t wait to spend another 500 on Skyrim.

First Post- A Look Into Something New

Welcome to my humble blog. After 2 weeks of development, hopefully it's been worth the wait. The premise of my blog is more of just to show what's happening in a few different cultures, today: Videogames, the game in question: Minecraft.

For those under a less tech-savvy rock, Minecraft is the best thing since Legos. Minecraft is a game developed by Mojang, a new Swedish video game company, formed after its founder, "Notch", made the blocky world that took the gaming market by storm. The game mixes everything a gamer could want, building, fighting, crafting (for all of those who have played TF2, you know what I mean,) and multiplayer. Minecraft lets you take the world around you, harvest it, and turn it into whatever you please. And now, its even better. Yesterday, Mojang released Minecraft Beta 1.8, dealing with some of my biggest issues. It splits Single player into two different themes, allowing you to decide on what your true purpose is: Survival, or Creative.

The difference is right in the name, and it puts the difference into what you really want. As I tend to build more than anything else, I tried out creative first. As I found myself flying around this new world, punching blocks with ungodly strength, destroying them with one blow, I almost found it as cheating, but, I found it to be much easier to complete massive monuments to building. I finished my trans-continental finishing the project that had plagued a different world for weeks in just an hour. I found it almost too easy, but in survival mode, I found quite the opposite. Spawning in a world where you can level up, (which doesn't do anything yet,) and have to eat food to survive, (something I thought I wouldn't have to do ever again since Survival mode in Fallout: New Vegas,) Minecraft turned into a game that I hadn't experienced since my first playing of it, a survival game. Once again, I found myself having to build a small dirt house at night, with one torch inside to prevent violent mobs from spawning in on me, but, it had its perks too. I found the same excitement of killing my first Creeper, (A monster that explodes when it gets close to you, much to the dismay of many unfortunate miners,) to re-finding diamonds, and making a diamond pickaxe to last the ages.

Overall, I saw improvements that I didn't think I'd ever use again, the last time I actually used a sword to vanquish a monster was months ago. The addition of noclip lets me finish large house in half the time, and I'm starting to remember the awful hiss of Creepers during the night. I'm glad to say that you can have the best of both worlds, (even if those worlds on a different saved world,) and I even took the time to play the game in the fashion I had forgotten so long ago. Minecraft is by far one of the greatest indie games out there, and hopefully Mojang can keep working its Magic, I look forward to the Xbox version, then I'll never be able to leave my La-Z-Boy downstairs.