Mashing buttons since 1984
… in 25 notes. Or more.
If you want to show off your gaming knowledge, check out the Video Game Music Quiz and find out just how much you know. You have to register for an account, but it gives you access to hundreds of gaming tunes for you to listen to and guess. You can read the full instructions here.
So far I’ve listened to 20+ tracks and I’ve recognized one. I’ve scored a whopping 3 points!
Unfortunately, they haven’t actually made me smart.
This should come as no surprise to people that know me and my wife personally, but she’s, like, way smarter than me. She’s been kicking my butt in Brain Age and she constantly reminds me of it. I need to test my brain age again, because the ridicule and teasing is starting to hurt my feelings.
Proof:
If you’ve been reading buttonmashing.com for longer than a few months, you’ll know that I’m a big sports fan. “Big” is actually an understatement. I love sports. Interspersed between my incoherent rants and ramblings about video games you’ve probably noticed mention of the “Men of the Scarlet and Gray”. Men of the Scarlet and Gray (as praised in the OSU Fight song, the Buckeye Battle Cry) are, of course, members of the many Ohio State University sports teams. My love for all things Buckeyes runs deep. Possibly even deeper than my love of video games. I’ve blogged about their exploits in great detail over the past couple years. It’s been a lot of fun but I never saw sports as a topic people came to buttonmashing.com for.
So with that in mind, I have launched a new sports blog named “Men of the Scarlet and Gray” (MotSaG for short) with some blog buddies (including the Monkey and the Conservative Buckeye). From now on, you’ll find my “Buckeye Blogging” over there, along with other musings on the state of sports in Ohio. While Ohio State football will be the primary focus, we’ll also be discussing things such as the Indians, Browns and Bengals, Cavs and anything else along the I-71 corridor. (I’m “el Kaiser” at MotSaG)
So those of you that ignored my sports posts in the past can rest assured that they’ll only get a passing mention here, and those of you who enjoy talking about sports and video games are more than welcome to add MotSaG to your reading list, whether you’re a fan of the Buckeyes or not. We’re all sports fans, and that makes us equals.
Unless, of course, you root for the Wolverines.
A day early but not a dollar short, The Carnival of Gamers rolled in Grumpy Gamer’s backyard and isn’t leaving. Grab your cotton candy and check it out!
A big thanks to Ron, who’s been rather busy lately, for hosting the Carnival.
Don’t forget that July’s Carnival of Gamers will be held at Ron Gilbert’s blog, Grumpy Gamer. There’s less than a week to go, so get your submissions in soon! Hit up the Carnival HQ for submission information if you’re new to the Carnival.
I am this close to declaring the DS Lite the perfect gaming machine, ever made. The DS as a console was really coming into its own, with a ginormous library of Game Boy Advance games right out of the box and a steady stream of DS games that were simply success after success. Then they gave us the Lite and its sexy, svelte look and bright, beautiful screens and Nintendo had achieved handheld perfection.
I’m trying to find a flaw, I really am, but I just can’t do it. Everything about it is screaming perfection and I am hearing it, loud and clear.
Remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Belloq, dressed up in biblical clothing, begins the ritual to open the ark? Where he does some Hebraic incantations, waves his staff around some, and then opens the ark? Nothing happens at first, but eventually angels and spirits emerge, to which Belloq declares,
“They’re beautiful!”
Then they turn into lion-headed destroying angels and they melt Toht’s face off. Remember that part?
Well, my DS Lite arrived today. When I took it out of the box, it was pretty much the same scene, minus the biblical clothes and the waving of the staff. Its brightness pretty much burned my face off.
“It’s beaut… Ahhhhhhhhh it’s too bright!”
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! arrived from my DS Lite order. It shipped a couple days before my DS Lite, but my DS Lite is currently sitting in the UPS warehouse in Maumee, Ohio. So close yet so far away. My fingers are crossed that it shows up tomorrow. I can almost taste it.
In the meantime, I’m gonna give Brain Age a whirl.
Update: Yikes! The first time through, for the initial Brain Age test I misunderstood the instructions and got the first few “answers” wrong. I ended up with a brain age of 69. Embarassing! I trained my brain a bit with some math calculations and Sudoku and tested my brain age again and it was down to 44. So I’m using 44 as my baseline. That score of 69 was an aberration.
On a side note, I was never caught up in the Sudoku craze. I’m a cryptogram and crosswords guy, myself, but after trying Sudoku, I am a believer. This is a really fun game and is perfect of the DS!
Sure, I don’t have an Xbox360 yet, but I do have a Gamer Card! It’s true! But, alas, no achievements to speak of.
On the other hand, I have earned a few Real Life Achievements. (from Binary Bonsai)
Now someone just needs to make a Real Life Gamer Card.
If you’re a sports fan and you’ve perused the magazine rack at your local bookstore, you’ll notice most of the pre-season rags will have an athlete from your favorite team on the cover. “Cool,” you think, “everyone will see the great Troy Smith on the cover of Althon Sports pre-season magazine.” Well, not everyone. Some will see Troy and Brady Quinn. Others will see Brady and USC’s Dwayne Jarrett. It’s a simple and ultra-effective marketing technique — sell the fans what they want. I know I am immediately drawn to the covers adorned with the scarlet and gray. I might not always buy one, but I’ll at least pick it up and thumb through it.
Fans of EA Sports have been using photoshop for a long time to do the same thing. Every year, while speculating of who will be on the cover of the next NCAA or Madden, fans help out EA and design the cover with who they think deserves to be the next cover. Fanblogs.com has collected a ton of NCAA 2007 covers and posted them on Flickr.
It got me thinking about the marketing that sport magazines use and how EA does it. While it is an honor (and a curse) to be on the cover of an EA sports title, I wonder how many more they would sell if they “customized” the covers for different regions. It would be tricky for a couple reasons: you can’t have a current NCAA player on the cover (nixing my Ted Ginn Jr. dream) and there are only 32 teams in the NFL. Nevertheless, I still think it would work. Sure, this year Reggie Bush was honored with the cover (and rightfully so) but if I was a Texas fan, I’d much rather buy a copy of NCAA 2007 with Vince Young gracing the cover, not the chump your team beat in the Rose Bowl.
Me? I’d personally like to see A.J. Hawk on the cover of my copy.