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Archives for 2005

Learn from my mistakes!

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Jones SodaI’m a pretty adventurous guy when it comes to food. I’ll try pretty much anything. I’m not talking “Fear Factor” adventurous, but I’ll try anything reasonable at least once. It was this willingness that lead me to try Pulpo a la Gallega, Escargot, and my most recent finding, Wasabi Funyuns. They’re just like funyuns, only they taste good. The last time I got into trouble eating something new was the time I tried those nasty Harry Potter Jelly Beans (oh that I hadn’t tried the Sardine Jelly Beans!). That was until a co-worker brought in the Jones Soda Holiday Gift Pack. That’s when curiosity almost made the cat throw up.

If you didn’t already know, Jones Soda makes quirky soda flavors and bottles them with even quirkier labels. They also have a tradition of selling “holiday” flavored sodas around the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. We’d been joking about them at work and someone decided to buy the five-pack. On Friday we decided it was time crack them open and give them a try. Big mistake.

We ordered the taste testing how we thought they would taste, from the most tolerable to the most heinous. We started with the Cranberry Sauce. It was not the harbinger of doom that it should have been. It had a mildly tart cranberry taste with a bad aftertaste. Compared to what was to come, it was nectar of the Gods.

Up next was Pumpkin Pie. I had high hopes for this flavor but those hopes were dashed upon opening the bottle. Its smell was unappealing but I soldiered on. A little swig was all it took. This flavor should have been named Burnt Caramel with an overpowering hint of Nutmeg. Bleh! Such potential wasted. So we put that away and gave the Turkey and Gravy a try. One would think a turkey flavored soda would be horrible, but it was surprisingly not disgusting. It wasn’t good by any stretch, but it didn’t kill me, either. It tasted like a rather flat, stale orange soda. It certainly wasn’t as horrible as that pumpkin pie. I still shudder at recalling that flavor.

The next on the list was the Wild Herb Stuffing Soda. This is where things got ugly. This flavor didn’t past the smell test but the taste test was almost the death of me. Heck, it didn’t even pass the “look at the bottle test”. It looked like dirty rain run-off. It wasn’t going to be good. Imagine, if you will, straining chicken broth through a dirty gym sock. Gross, right? Then imagine straining that liquid through a gauze patch that had been covering a festering blister for a week. Still with me? Okay, now take whatever horrible taste you’ve imagined and raise it to the tenth power. It was worse than that. As soon as that drink of death touched my tongue I immediately gagged. Horrible. It took all I had in me not to lose my lunch. I could go no further. Brussel Sprouts would have to sit untouched by my hands. Others were brave enough to try it and paid the price. After a friend tasted it he uttered words that I had never before known to exist, so horrible on my ears. I later wafted the scent of Brussel Sprouts Soda to my nose and was ever-grateful I never tasted it. If the smell of rotten key lime pie doesn’t turn your stomach, you might like it.

So please, learn from my mistakes. Jones is doing this for a good cause, but is it really worth it to torture your taste buds in such a cruel manner?

DS Oddities

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While I am jamming away with some great DS games out right now, I’ve noticed there are some weird DS games, too. I was strolling the game aisles of Media Play, browsing the DS games when I came a across some games I hadn’t seen before. The first game that caught my eye was Elf Bowling 1 and 2. Elf Bowling? I see the obvious implementation with the touch screen, but let’s be honest here. How much elf bowling can one do? I remember when elf bowling was emailed to everyone in the country. I think that was the Christmas of 1999. I played it for like two lunch breaks. It was ha-ha, that’s funny, and then I was done with it. Why would anyone pay twenty dollars for a game that held my interest for fifteen minutes? Are people buying this?

The next odd one I saw was Whac-A-Mole which is another game I can clearly see the utility of the touch screen in implementing the game mechanics but fail to see the replayability of whacking moles. Will my DS start spitting out tickets I can redeem at Chuck E. Cheese? If not, I’m not interested. Now, if they included a stylus in the shape of a mallet, we might have something there.

These ponderings led to another thought. Remember Mark Rein’s comments about the Revolution controller? For those who don’t know, Rein (vice president and co-founder of Epic Games) commented that the Nintendo Revolution controller would lead to the development of a lot of gimmicky (read: crappy) games. (He was misquoted and/or misinterpreted by a lot of people who thought they heard him say the controller was gimmicky. He never said that. He said there would be a lot of crappy games built around it, for which he was pretty much spot on.) There will be a lot of forgettable, crappy games that use the Revolution’s new controller. Luckily, we don’t have to wait for the Revolution. We can see it now, with the DS. The touchscreen has a lot of possibilities and they are just now being developed. In the meantime, we get Elf Bowling. Wheee.

While thinking about the origins of Elf Bowling, I also realized that there also a lot of potential here. Elf Bowling, like so many games, has humble roots as a flash game. Games that put companies like Pop Cap on the map. Games I’d be willing to pay four or five dollars to download to my DS. I hope you see where this is going. With the run-away success of the Xbox Live Arcade, would it be that hard for Nintendo to implement a DS Wi-Fi Connection arcade? I’d love to download a version of Alchemy or Zuma to my DS. Oh, and lookie here! Those games were practically meant to be played with a touch screen. They were made for each other!

So while I’m content with Mario Kart and Animal Crossing, I look forward to what else may be in store for Nintendo’s little handheld.

Carnival Goodies

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While it’s barely the middle of December, it’s never too late to start thinking about the first Carnival of Gamers of 2006, held over at Kill Ten Rats. Ethic will be handling the Carnival duties and it should be another great stop. Hopefully the Holidays won’t interfere too much with your blogging and everyone will be able to submit something.

I also have some cool news for future Carnivals. Zonk, the Games editor at Slashdot has agreed to host the February edition of the Carnival. Zonk linked the original Carnival and has been following it ever since. I’m pretty excited about this. Having the all the Carnival entries listed on Slashdot is a pretty cool thing.

We also have Virgin Worlds signed up to handle the March Carnival. Virgin Worlds is a new-ish MMO blog that looks promising and has graciously volunteered his time for Carnival duties.

It looked like the Carnival was losing steam for a while, but it has really picked up as of late, which is pretty cool. Thanks to everyone who has helped out or participated. It’s been fun so far, here’s to hoping it continues!

Lending another helping hand

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First we helped an intrepid young man convince his mom that video games (violent ones) are okay. Well, now we’ve helped someone else with their homework. I’d would love to know what kind of report that was. Can someone quote a blog in their report? Is there an MLA guideline for sourcing a blog?

“Buttonmashing.com – doing your homework so you can spend more time playing video games!”

Surrounded by giants

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In cyberspace, no one know’s you’re a dog.

In the blogosphere, everyone is a someone. Look at me! I’m a someone! I’m the buttonMasher! Alright, so some of us are less than others. I love that some of the blogs I read are written by some really talented people. Bill from The Blog for the Sportsgamer has a new book coming out, the Gamer’s Almanac. I’ll be picking up a copy of the Almanac, as should you! Of course, I’d never turn down to a copy to review (wink wink). Crecente at Kotaku is now the video games guy for the Rocky Mountain News. Peterb at Tea Leaves has joined the ranks of “professional reviewers.” (let’s not forget the “controversy” Peter’s entry into the inaugural Carnival started. Ahh, good times! I wonder how ol’ Matt is doing). Of course there’s more. These are just a few that have happened recently.

Just like they say in the PGA Tour commercial, “These guys are good.”

Spike TV’s VGA

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Tonight is Spike TV‘s Video Game Awards. I had originally planned on live-blogging the show, like I did last year, so I could make light of how Spike TV single-handedly damages any respectability our hobby has managed to garner, but I can’t. I’m not really sad, though. I know I won’t miss much. With the glaring lights, bad music (remember the Motley Crue Reunion?) and pandering to the lowest common denominator, it would simply be more than my brain can handle.

So I won’t be live-blogging this year’s VGA because I’ve got a Christmas party to attend and my sanity to protect. Besides, they held the event weeks ago and the list of winners has been available on the internet for quite some time. Kyle Orland originally said he was going to live blog it, so you may want to check his blog later to see if he ends up doing so. You could also check Technorati to see if anyone else decided to submit themselves to torture.

I will give the voters their propers, though, for selecting Resident Evil 4 as the Game of the Year. Had that not happened, my faith in humanity would have been shaken to the core.

Update: Rick “32_Footsteps” has not let us down. For the third straight awards ceremony, he gives us a play by play. There’s a lot of choice quotes in Rick’s drubbing, but my personal favorite was

12:00 – Apparently, 50% of the viewers voted the Black Revenge from Burnout Revenge the Best Ride. At this point, I think I truly stopped even understanding how Spike even comes up with these categories. We might as well give Bo Jackson a lifetime achievement award for his incredible moves in Tecmo Bowl.

Kotaku and Joystiq mention their inclusion in “Best Blog” category and Slashdot rounds up the links. There was a tie? That doesn’t sound right to me. Sounds like someone doesn’t like Joystiq.

This made me laugh.

Gaming in the news

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Luckily this bit of gaming in the news does not include references to: Jack Thompson, violence, academic studies, or the shortage of Xbox 360s. No, our story today comes from my local newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch.

It’s a little article about an OSU gamer (you made need to register to view this) who made it to the final four in this year’s EA Sports NCAA Football Challenge at the ESPN Zone in New York.

Mark Stetson, an OSU freshman, made it to the final four of the championship before losing 35-38 to some nobody from Penn State (aren’t they all nobodies? I kid, I kid). Aside from being an OSU student, why am I bringing this up? Because Mark has made OSU proud. How?

Players could choose any college team; among the 16 finalists, only Stetson used his own school.

That’s how.

Child’s Play

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I keep forgetting to mention Child’s Play, Penny Arcade‘s charity that provides video games to children’s hospitals around the country. They’ve been doing this for a few years now and it’s a great way to give to someone a little more needy than yourself. Christmas is a time for giving, so give away!

Gaming and politics

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I will probably need to add a new category for games and violence/politics at some point here on buttonmashing.com. I don’t cover them as thoroughly as Game Politics and others but I still follow it closely. (I’m little bit of a poltical junkie but I try to avoid anything too political on these pages). Anyway, this is old in blog-time, but there’s a good response to Hillary Clinton’s propsed legislation I briefly mentioned here at Tech Central Station.

I like that other people are getting into the discourse. John Luik isn’t a gamer but says something that I just love.

For some, these complaints about video games are nothing more than a reflection of the cultural and generational divide between those below and above age 40. For instance, the Economist recently noted that “The opposition to gaming springs largely from the neophobia that has pitted the old against the entertainments of the young for centuries. Most gamers are under 40, and most critics are non-games-playing over 40s.” That may well be true, though studies suggest that about half of Americans play some sort of video game. As for age and bias, I am both not a game player and rather regrettably well past 40, but the evidence leads me to side with the kids who want to play.

I also find it interesting how many people (bloggers) out there are into gaming in one form or another that aren’t “gaming bloggers”. I read a lot of gaming blogs (too many!) but I also read my fair share of blogs on other topics. I recently read this little gaming blurb on VodkaPundit about Bushnell’s comment about the number of gamers being smaller than 20 years ago. The VodkaPundit, as long as I’ve read him, doesn’t often comment on such things, so it’s cool to see others talking about it. What really amazed me where the number of comments remininscing about gaming. I think that’s a great thing and I hope it continues.

In my hands

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I’ve got a copy of Animal Crossing Wild World. I’ll be giving it a whirl during my shows. Once I get my town set up, I’ll post my friends code. Hopefully we’ll see some of you in town!

Animal Crossing is the game that has probably received the most playing time out of all my Gamecube games. Both the buttonWife and I have played the heck out of it and I’m hoping the DS version has the same appeal. This time I’ll put a little more thought into naming my town. Naming my original AC town “pooptown” is something I’ve deeply regretted.

Update: I finished up the tasks Tom Nook had for me and I am free to roam the world over! Here’s my info:
Name: Tonester
Town: Pamplona
Friend Code: 2749-3859-8704

I’ll add any codes you guys post here. See you in the Wild World!