The ScooterBlog

I thought I would post my current progress in Hot Shots Golf, as I was able to make a good amount of it this past weekend:

* I’m using Tsu as my character now, and he has some great advantages … he’s great out of sand traps and he was when I picked him, the best power and all-around character. However, I’m in the process of unlocking some whom are better, including Logan, who is the best driving character in the game (whom I can likely go over 300 yards standard with!)

* I’ve got 4 courses unlocked, and 4 caddies undone, but a lot of gear left to get, but also a lot of cool clubs left to attain.

Overall, I’m still pleased as all can be with the general difficulty of the game, as well as the amount of stuff there is to do. The special rules and options add a lot to it as well, cause they really train you to try different things in the game. Not to mention part of what makes Hot Shots cool, the ability to “bend” a course through the obstacles. Heck, I’ve just gotten good enough to take one hole and make it to the green in one for a Par 4!

All in all, good stuff, and I’m planning to bring it in on WiFi Wednesday for your gaming pleasure!

So I just realized something. It’s been 8 days since Game Riot, and I never posted my thoughts on it.

Sadly, it sucked! CIncinnati people didn’t have it fair this time around, maybe because last year, they drew about 50 people to Bogart’s, and half of them were Game Junkies! Here’s my rants on the topic:

* You had to pay full park admission to see this … if you wanted to come in and see Game Riot, you’re out of luck. The after 5 PM Price? $30! I was lucky, but kind of wasn’t. I got to go with my friend Tina, a writer for GameDreamz, so I was fortunate enough to be considered a member of the press, but they mixed up her press tickets, so after trying to get it switched, they just gave us tickets … I think they got tired of us complaining (and we were being nice too).

* The actual “show space” was very small, about 2 tents worth. For the sake of comparison, Game Junkie has more store room then this event did, and that’s not good.

* The games shown were unimpressive to me as a hardcore game fan. There were no truly unreleased items there … the only games not out yet were FlatOut, Conker Live & Reloaded and Battlefield 2, and all you got to play was the already released demos of ‘em! They were showing off Soul Calibur 2 for goodness sakes! It’s freaking Player’s Choice! Not that we don’t like the game, we’re having a tournament in it, but it’s not what I want from a video game expo, even one more for the masses.

* You mean they’re making XBox 360? You wouldn’t know it here, no coverage of it.

There was a positive … the DJ running the small main stage was very nice, was doing a good job, and the Halo 2 “world champion” player that was there was very nice too, even got some pictures with Tina, so there were some minor nice things about it.

But all in all, it was small, and just not that impressive. For those of us whom went last year, you missed nothing this year, sorry.

And without further adieu …. The man himself, Matt Matson, as
“pictochatted” by Adam Stewart!

(Curses! The picture got lost in the move!)

I’d like to share some of the fun we had this past Wi-Fi Wednesday, maybe the best one we’ve had yet! I was the last to the party, about 7:30, so I’ll pick it up from there.

(An extra “hard time” must be given to Ryan Freed … I was going to surprise my girlfriend, whom came down to hang out as well, but he didn’t catch that I was being sneaky, screamed out “Scooter!!” and blew the surprise … we love ya Ryan, but you’re not off the hook yet!)

Anyways, when I got there, Matt was already busting out with the game in multiplayer mode, feverishly looking for 8 players with DS systems (we actually had 10 or 11 total). When I got there, I jumped on Ben’s system, and I got to find out what the game was all about.

The game is Nintendo’s latest step into rhythm mania, you take one instrument and are responsible for playing it by hitting and holding the right button. Sometimes, it was just a direction or a button to hit (Donkey Konga like), but sometimes, there were 9 possibilities, including the touch screen! By itself, it’s a lot of fun, addicting, and it’s got great Nintendo classic songs, including Zelda and F-Zero.

But the multiplayer is maybe the best ANY Nintendo DS game has offered yet. One host with a cartridge sends the mini game to 7 other DS players (one cartridge, that’s right!) via DS Download & Play, and then everyone jumps in. Once you’re in game play, you can pick either easy mode (2 buttons) or hard mode (9 buttons), and then which instrument you want to play. Depending on your choice, you’ll see stars indicating its difficulty (2 was the easiest we got, 5 was downright brutal).

Then, you go. You hear the song as it is being composed, with your part a little louder on your system. So in theory, if everyone is perfect, you’re “playing” your favorite songs, but if you mess up, you hear where it’s going wrong! You can even do quick chat during the song with the touch screen, and the balloons track your score compared to everyone else’s.

Once you’re done, you’re rated out of 100 on top, and then our band’s rating, the average of all players, is shown on the bottom.

We had great scores … we sucked a few times … but it was BY FAR the most fun I’ve had on my Nintendo DS yet, and a great example of what DS multiplayer needs to be. Easy to use, as many players as possible, and easy for anyone to get into.

Matt just made a great forum post about it too which I’m going to link to, I agree with him about a gazillion percent! And yes bro … your picture will be posted today!

This news would greatly disappoint me. I mean, I want a Revolution when it comes out, just for the classic game library, for the fact that Nintendo does do good innovative stuff. But come on … no HDTV?! By the time it comes out, more games will HAVE HDTV then won’t, myself included, so they better change their tune. It will hurt them.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/13/news_6127435.html

Most of these are from a couple of sites, but hey, they’re good sites!

* Someone posted an article on PSP Vault complete with a short video on how to possibly fix stuck pixels on a PSP. The link is http://www.psp-vault.com/Article168.psp, and some people have apparently reported success with this. I’ve got a pixel that shows as green, and a couple of other random ones, so I will be trying this! A full report is forthcoming.

* The “Human Tetris” video has been re-hashed on Engadget at http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000893046454. If you ask me, I still think our Running Of The Controllers video was better (although my Pac-Man needs his Tetris-esque costume), call me biased.

* It took about a month but the homebrew peeps figured out the 1.50 firmware and they have homebrew stuff playing on it. Apparently it will be “released” on the 15th, but I already bumped up to 1.51! I’m not worried about it, I’m sure all it means is that I’m out of the cat-and-mouse game for a couple of more weeks. The link is http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000043046430/

* Discussion on whether the DS has really been hacked to let you play whatever you want is running fevrishly on this forum in Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000550046391/. From the looks of reading it, the answer is yes, but it’s a lot of work!

* If you’ve ever wanted to make your own circuit board, or better yet, your own really micro NES pad, check this out: http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/features/51925/Behind_the_DPad_Part_2.html

* From the category of awesome, how about installing your own power-up boxes all over town! Check out http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000993046280/

That’s it. Feast away!

It’s a simple theory really and it shows all the time in the world of digital music players …. the best don’t always sell.

The best device for just regular digital music is the only exception to that in my mind: the iPod does it right, has great software built for it, and comparably is not horribly expensive.

But the two devices that this leads up to, is movie players, and flash devices.

My prediction is simple, and it’s already partially true: the PSP will be the movie player of choice at least for the next couple of years. It’s not the best (no hard drive, Memory Sticks cost a shit-ton, and only MPEG-4 support), but it has “cool” appeal. As nice as the nicer true movie players are like a Creative Zen series, they’re just not quite as hip as a PSP is, and the games on a PSP give it that instant audience (not to mention UMD movies, although they are way overpriced!). It’s gonna end up doing to ultra-portable media what the PS2 did for DVD watching.

And let’s be honest, if you really want good movies on the road now, buy a portable DVD player, they’re extremely affordable, and then encode your own DVD’s. It’s not rocket science anymore.

As far as the iPod Shuffle, this is the ultimate story of how you can be railroaded into something not perfect … it has no screen, and while it also has no battery, it’s small but looks just weird. Nonetheless, cause it does have the backbone of iTunes, I want one (although my better judgment will lead me to the far superior iPod Mini methinks).

I know if it wasn’t for one good (and locked in) piece of software, I’d buy a Sandisk player, or a iRiver and love it, but good for Apple, they’ve managed to make good software sell kinda good hardware … their only hardware i’d say that about.

Typically when one of us Junkies brings up anything involving “strength in numbers”, it’s a take on EB and Gamestop being 600 Lb. Gorillas … But maybe I just haven’t viewed how that strength in numbers helps us, through the loyalty of our customers, and their willingness to pass on the news about us by word of mouth, nothing is stronger. It doesn’t mean that GJ would ever turn into them, it just means we can do even more to make the Game Junkie Experience even better! It breaks down into two things … The everyday stuff, and the special events.

The Everyday Stuff - Ok sure, you could just drive up the street to get that new game, but we always appreciate it when you are willing to maybe drive a few more minutes out of your way to get that game from us. From a business sense, it means that we can get in new and different items and turn over our inventory more and more. That of course means we’re able to make a few bucks and keep the business side of it strong as ever, a strong locally owned business at that too. But it also means that we can better learn what you like and dislike, we can serve you as a customer better, let you try more games, interact more, and become even more a part of Game Junkie.

So while on the surface, it seems like it may not be a big deal that you wanted to get your copy of San Andreas for XBox at Target, for us, it’s huge … We want to serve you as well as possible, and if you’re willing to drive a little farther or wait one day to come get your game, we’re going to give you that service that Target can’t do.

The Special Events - THIS is what makes us Game Junkie! Friday Night Live, our tournaments, our special events, Wi-Fi Wednesday, this is one of the main things that sets us apart from just “Joe Game Store” down the street. We do all we can to make these all fun for both the casual gamer and the hardcore types out there, but it’s not easy to do.

I can totally see how maybe someone who is new to FNL came in and was a bit overwhelmed by that Naruto games everyone is playing, or maybe entered a tournament only to find that the competition was much much better. If you fall in that category, there’s two things I’d love for you to do:

* Let us know!
* Bring a friend!

Ok, the first one makes sense … if there’s something you want to see at FNL, or a tournament you think we could get a group of people to play in, tell us, if we hear people give us ideas, we will react for sure.

The second may seem weird at first, but if everyone brought one friend, maybe with different interests, then that new group of people leaves their mark, and suddenly, maybe we have a Tekken following, or a whole new anime show that people will want to be down with. Conversely, those people will also see how cool DDR is on the big screen, or venture into the Super Smash Bros. games and learn from some of the best players around. Every single person that comes in leaves their mark on our community, the one that we want to include every gamer in town, and be a source for both the everyday stuff, and the events that help define us as gamers.

And for tournaments,we have some cool ideas ahead. New games to compete in, door prizes to give everyone a shot at winning, and of course, Decathlon 2005 will be happening, the best test of gaming skill and fun out there. If you’re not the best, come and see how good you are, and spend a full day at the store … where else could you enjoy gaming with friends for as little as $10 and have a full day of fun? Makes it a pretty good deal, and on top of that, there’s stuff to win!

So that’s my challenge to every gamer here … bring a friend, have them buy one game from us they would’ve bought someone else, and then attend one special event, be it a FNL, a tournament, or even our presence at Ikasucon coming up. And then, have ‘them e-mail me or comment here. Hopefully, your friends will like what they see, and hopefully you will to, cause I speak from experience … the loyal customers here are 10x better then anywhere else I’ve ever been, and the fact that you’re willing to tell friends about it, hey, we appreciate that.

We plan to come through for you and them!

Before I start on this, I’d like to acknowledge that my iBook G3 has reached its limit … streaming music from an AirPort, reading RSS Feeds on Safari, and posting this blog entry, all while checking my mail in the background and instlaling new widgets. Let the record show that G3 is far from defeated! (And right now, it’s looks real good considering it’s the highest native processor an Intel can transcode!)

Anyways, here’s some Engadget goodness for your perusal:

* Our man Ken Kurtagi at Sony is saying that the hard drive? Well, it’ll be an add-on device (bastards!) … why? Cause they can’t determine how big the hard drive should be. Guess our pocket books get to decide this one! Read up at http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000833046205/

* Hope you save your freeware downloads … I don’t, but it may not be too late! A great little program called DVD Decrypter bit the dust because, go figure, some unnamed movie company didn’t like how easy it made decoding DVD’s. There’s a great story posted about it at http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000053046210/ and it talks a lot about how these programs end up in the “Bermuda Triangle” of software. FYI, I’m advising getting your copy of RatDVD and DVD Shrink, these offer good fair use purposes too, but you know they’re on the hit list.

* Ok, no props to these guys, I programmed by calculator a long time ago to include a periodic table, and all the tools I’d need to handle any class in school … and back in 1997, they didn’t care! Check this out at http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000137046163/ and also … can anyone find me a TI-85? I want to reinstall my programs on one, you know, for old time’s sake!

Tomorrow, I talk about why I think the iPod will succeed as the PMP of choice, much like how the iPod Shuffle is the best flash player going now … not cause it’s best, but because it has “cool”!

Here’s the thought of the day, and basically, how YOU can help the Scooter spend his money!

Yahoo! Unlimited is the latest of those “download-as-much-as you-want” rent your music subscripton services. It claims to have one million songs (this is pretty standard now), and maybe most enticing, it has a super low rate: $4.99 per month! This is where the enticement is.

I’ve been disinterested in these services when it was $15 per month, but I would be willing to fork out $60 per year. They have a seven day trial too which I am very tempted to sign up for and give it a go. That’s the advantage for sure.

The disadvantage? I don’t own one of the many devices that can be used to play these outside of just a computer as of yet. and there’s a limited amount of these (which of course, doesn’t include the iPod!). Also, the whole rent-to-own music thing. Songs can still be found through the non-scrupulous methods easily for me, but this would be going more “legal” if you will.

Mark Cuban (you know, that guy who owned broadcast.com and now owns the Mavericks) made a great point about the whole going legal thing … the TRUE cost of going legal now might as well be $5 per month, not the ludacrious $150,000 per song that the RIAA tries to sue for (and by the way, they’ve never gotten this)

So … what do you think?