When someone asks you if you’re a god, you say yes!
Man, there was a lot of food in my house today. Thankfully, I didn’t eat it all. I ate plenty, but there’s still enough turkey and dinner rolls left over for mini-turkey sandwiches all weekend.
I did take my belt off, though.
Now for some serious face time with the Wii…
Thirteen hours later, (shut up) my friend and I walked out of Wal-mart, Wiis in hand. It was an sometimes interesting, mostly excrutiatingly boring wait. By sometimes interesting, I mean that of the 20 people who were standing in line, almost half of them had Nintendo DSes, including me. So we had a couple of giant wireless MarioKart DS tournaments. I also got my ass handed to me several times at Metroid Prime Hunters.
There was a little bit of conflict over who was No. 20 in our line, but it all got straightened out. A few sketchy characters showed up at 11 o’clock, hoping to displace someone in line. A kid got his DS and all games snatched during our transition from the garden center (yes, they made us wait in the garden center) to layaway, and we all felt bad for him. What a bittersweet day for him.
But when we got home and plugged it all in and gave it a shot, it became clear that it might have been worth it. Not to say I would ever, ever, ever want to do that again, but to use the words of my friend, “I think Nintendo is onto something here.”
That’s right. Tonight at Midnight + 1 minute, the Wii drops into the gaming world. I’ll be there, at Wal-mart, getting mine.
I know some people call it a kids machine, and it’s true that the graphics can’t stand up next to the XBox 360 or the PS3. But I think it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun to play.
More news later. Comment if you have any launch title purchase suggestions, besides the obvious Twilight Princess.
It’s t-minus 7 days until the launch of the Nintendo Wii, and while I don’t usually consider myself a fanboy, I am going to try my damndest to pick one up on launch day. But I’ve been waiting for that for a while, and I needed something to fill the gaming time between, so I picked up a Nintendo DS. (Actually, it was practically given to me by a friend who had upgraded to a DS Lite.)
Anyway, until getting the DS, I had pretty much given up on portable gaming as a platform. I just didn’t feel like the really small screen provided a very good gaming experience, and when I had my Gameboy Advance, it seemed like all the games that I really enjoyed were just ports of much older games for much older systems. So I was skeptical. But after having the DS for a few weeks and trying a few games, I must say I’ve been won back over.
The graphical power of the system is probably along the lines of a PS1, maybe slightly better. But the real breakout feature of the DS is of course it’s use of dual screens, one of which is a tough screen. At first, I thought this was a gimicky feature that had few useful applications. I have so far been pleasantly surprised by how many games have used it, though.
But anyway, this isn’t meant to be a review of the system or a commercial. I just wanted to say that the DS has made be believe that portable gaming systems are still a viable platform. (And I can’t wait for Phantom Hourglass. That’s going to be frickin’ awesome.)
I realize that I said my last book was going to be “Tropic of Cancer,” and I’m still reading that, but I also picked up an audiobook of Stephen King’s “Cell” to listen to while I worked. And I just finished that. So, I’m not sure how this fits into the timeline of my reading, but here goes.
I am an unabashed Stephen King fan. I’ve never read anything he’s written that I haven’t liked, even if I knew it wasn’t always award-winning literature. And this book probably won’t be winning any awards anytime soon. This was King’s homage to the zombie horror genre of books and movies, and he does a fine job. He uses a somewhat silly-sounding premise (a “pulse” sent out over all cell phones turns the user into a mindless zombie) to build a survivor road trip story around. There are a lot of similarities between “Cell” and King’s own “The Stand,” except that in “Cell” there are mindless zombies chasing the survivors around.
As for listening to it as an audiobook, I must say I had my doubts at first. But now it feels like I just read it, even though it was in the voice of some B-list actor. I may have to check out other audiobooks.
[This article is part of the 26 Books project that I'm doing this year.]
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