FYI, I haven't been ignoring or forgetting about writing new entries here. I just haven't had anything I wanted to share until now. :)

First of all, it snowed in Austin late Friday/early Saturday! I mean REAL snow. Not flurries or any of that shit. I've lived in Northern Indiana where it would snow up to your elbows, so I know what I'm talking about here. But anyway, WTF? Snow in Central Texas? Yep. We had snowball fights and a bunch of people built snowmen. Fun times if you don't have to live with that shit for 3-4 months. :) Ours melted over the next 2 days. I saved a snowball in the freezer though! ;)

Tony's gonna hate this, but I won another awesome door prize! I'm not sure why, but I'm fairly lucky when it comes to winning random drawing prizes. I'm not insanely lucky, but luckier than most. So, this past weekend I attended a 3-day LAN/Tournament held here in Austin. AMD was the main sponsor and their biggest prize giveaway was an Athlon 64 FX-51 processor. Guess who won it? Right. Me!

What's weird is that I wasn't even around when I won. I didn't show up on the final day of the LAN because frankly, I was too tired to wake up early enough. Most giveaways at these events are simply of the match-the-number-on-your-ticket variety. Meaning, of course, that you must be present to win. The only drawing of the whole event that didn't require my presence, I won. :) And since I just won a Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor 2 months ago, this new CPU is going on eBay. It should net me around $600 bucks. That sure goes a long way towards... something, I'm sure.

NEWS FLASH: It's 2004, and the Sega CD still sucks! I've started to put together a 'classic gaming' room in one of my extra bedrooms. I got the new TV in place, and I had my CDX just laying there so I thought I'd give it a try. I popped in Silpheed, which I recall as being a pretty decent shooter, but it wouldn't load properly. :( Next I tried Mansion of Hidden Souls. Oh. My. God. That game SUCKS! I had forgotten how BAD games could be. I mean, the graphics were a complete mess. It looked like some kid ate an 8-pack of Crayolas (note the lack of colors) and threw up on my TV. As the vomit slowly oozed the front of my tv screen, and the resulting images, in some highly imaginitive way, resembled rooms of furnitue and a house with endless doors. The voice acting was laughable, and the control was almost non-existant. Please do not ever play this game if you can avoid it.

Moving on, I popped in Sewer Shark. Now this game... a friend and I actually finished it... about 10 years ago. Let me tell you, 10 years can do horrible, horrible things to certain games. Sewer Shark suffered BIG TIME. What I remember as being 1/2 way fun, is now totally moronic. The novelty of live actors and full motion video was pretty cool back then. No longer. The script was horrible, and the acting was terrible. Or I should say, the directing was terrible. Why is everyone so fucking mean? Are they supposed to evoke a sense of urgency? It just pissed me off.

Next we tried some Genesis games. And while I didn't have the absolute best games on hand to test, the ones I did have weren't that impressive or even fun. And let me just get this out of the way: The Sega Genesis has the worst sound ever. I'd rather listen to my Atari 2600. We tried some Street Fighter 2, and while it was mildly entertaing playing Honda and holding down punch with turob enabled, the controllers (6-button ones) weren't very good and the sound was, again, OMG BAD! It sounded like they were using tin can telephones when they talked. If it weren't for Herzog Zwei and a few Working Designs games, I wouldn't even hook up my Sega stuff.

On a collector's note, I picked up Suikoden II for about $40 the other day! Yeah, THAT was a good deal. :) Also picked up Super Mario Bros. RPG complete for $20 (although missing the UPC on the box. doh! ), SNES Breath of Fire complete $10, and a few other SNES games in box. Next up, Valkyrie Profile!

I've been doing the ebay thing a lot lately. Searching for gaming rarities and such. Damn, some of those sellers are fucking stupid. So here's a little list for you.

Things that piss me off about Stupid Ebay Sellers:

• PEOPLE THAT TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS AND OVERUSE EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!! THESE SAME PEOPLE LIKE TO PUT UP FOR AUCTION 112 NES GAMES AND LIST THEM ALL ONE AFTER THE OTHER, WITHOUT REGARD FOR 1. SPELING + GRAMMER,2COMMAS 3. OR READABILITY. ABOUT THE ONLY THING THESE PEOPLE HATE MORE THAN UNLOCKING THEIR CAPS IS USING THE ENTER KEY TO MAKE PARAGRAPHS. LORD FORBID THEY BREAK THIS SHIT UP INTO SOMETHING REMOTELY READABLE. AND GOODLUCK WITH SPACINGBETWEEN WORDS.
  
  
• Items that get listed as "RARE" when they're soooo not rare. In this same category are people that use HTF (Hard to Find) or OOP (Out of Print) on every fucking game they list. They aren't making any more Sonic the Hedgehog 2's? No shit? Just go to ebay and search for "rare" and see all the bullshit that gets listed. Example: "Playstation Final Fantasy VII (RARE!!)" Umm, didn't FFVII sell like a bazillion copies? Some guy really had the balls to state that in his auction. What was worse, according to the photograph in the description, the idiot was actually selling FF VIII. That reminds me...
  
  
• Some sellers are so stupid/lazy/retarded that they can't even copy the name of a game or system correctly. Ever heard of "Mickey Mana" for the SNES? No? That's because it's "Mickey Mania." Typo? Ok, fine. What about a used but working "Sega Genisys"? WTF? What's even SADDER, is that you can actually get some hits of off google with that spelling.
  
  
• Anytime someone uses "LOOK!" or it's more annoying equivalent "LQQK!". "HOT!" and "AWESOME!" are also pretty annoying. Often times, these auctions are put up by the CAPITALS ONLY PEOPLE.
  
  
• Saying something is "Mint", "Complete" or "Like New" when it obviously isn't. "Super Mario RPG Strategy Guide LIKE NEW! Only missing the lower left corner on the first five pages. See picture for details." Ummm. Since when is missing chunks of pages "like new"?
  
  
• OK, this next one doesn't really piss me off. It's actually amusing. Japanese sellers. I mean, guys in Japan listing things in the US version of ebay. I don't know if they're using some sort of babelfish or what, but some of the Engrish these guys come up with are hilarious. Some of my favorites are "Box and manual are contained in this system." [Oh really? Just kinda stuffed them inside the console, eh?], "They are 'PC-FX' and the set of 1 software." [Set of 1? 1?!], "A buyer must do an answer within 3days from the seller's first contact." [I wouldn't even know how to do an answer. Where's the hole?], "If it hopes that you use SAL and Ship and it is sent." [!??!?], and of course, the all time classic "Cash does not except."
  
  

Anyway, you get the idea. People are idiots.

Caught the Super Bowl yesterday. It was pretty good. Surprisingly, the game was better than the commercials. Seems like the Pats are all about winning by a field goal in the closing seconds (for those keeping track at home, that's twice they've won Super Bowls like that in the past 3 years.) In the beginning, I wasn't really rooting for either team, and that's kinda nice because you can appreciate the good plays on both sides and there's no anxiety about your team losing. In the end, however, I found myself rooting for Carolina. For the dumbest reason. Sony has had 1 player from each of the Super Bowl teams play against each other in Sony's NFL GameBreaker game a few days before the Super Bowl every year. And in the 8 years they've been doing it, the team that won the video game, won the Super Bowl. This year, according to the video game, the Panthers were supposed to win. They didn't. I guess it's a good thing though, since Sony's game sucks anyway.

And on a competely different note, the CD of the week has been a compilation of 80's music. Most of the songs I chose for the CD were picked not because I really liked them, but because they were songs that I kinda knew, but not really. For instance, "Mr. Roboto." It's a song I've 'heard' but not really 'heard heard.' A song from years ago, that I'm familiar with, but I was too young to really know wtf the song was about. Well, as it turns out, it's a really stupid song. Way pop-ier than I remember. However, it did envoke some images that were pleasant. It made me think of those 70's paintings of the "future" where they'd be like a robot with human-ish facial features set against a star filled sky and like some radiant star giving off an eerie glow. Kind of like the original Star Wars movie poster where Luke all like, "Yeah! Nothing like thrusting this lightsaber into the air with this hot chick with a gun next to me and like some ominous black faced robot looking guy looking over us." Either that, or the Bride of Pinbot pinball game. And those images, in turn, made me think of playing Tron at the arcade. Which made me think of arcades in the early 80's in general, and that's a good thing. So, Mr. Roboto, I salute you! Or more appropriately, "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto!"