Gaming

I like to make lists. They’re fun. I decided I’d make a fun little list of “Things I own that Get Hot but don’t Stop Working.” Here are a few I came up with:

• My water heater. This is an easy one. It’s never stopped working for me. One time the pilot light went out, but the water stayed warm for a while and it was easy to fix. I am ready for when it need replacing, I’ve read the best tankless water heater reviews and know exactly what I want. For now though, that puppy is still working it gets nice and toasty and keeps on chugging!
• My Easy-Bake Oven. It’s a simple cardboard box with a big ol’ light bulb inside. It’s gets pretty darn hot in there, but it makes me delicious snack-sized brownies with nary a break down. It’s like it was built to handle the heat or something.
• My Jeep Cherokee Sport. It has an internal combustion engine, meaning it’s powered by high temperature explosions of gasoline mixed with oxygen. The engine is cooled with water and uses oil to reduce friction because it gets so damn hot in there. I know it gets hot in there because I have a little temperature gauge on my dashboard that tells me when it’s getting too hot. You know what else gets hot in my Jeep?
• Me. Because the air conditioning doesn’t work. So on a nice hot August day, after the Jeep has been cooking in the sun all day, I get to ride in a hot box of stagnant air. I often get real hot. But guess what? I don’t stop working! I’m fricken amazing.

I also thought I’d make another list: “Things I own that Get Hot and Suddenly Stop Working.” It’s a pretty short list:

• My Xbox 360

Of course, this isn’t the first time my little white heat-sissy died. But it’s dying at the most inopportune time possible. 360 Euphoria is almost upon us. Everyone is already lavishing praise on the Bioshocks demo and hearing the guys on the 1UP Yours podcast give it a lot of love is killing me. I want to play Bioshock! I also have family visiting next month and we were planning on a bunch of NCAA 08. I don’t even have to mention that little game coming out at the end of September. I’ll probably get my 360 back a week before it drops, giving me precious little time with Bioshock. This sucks!

So my 360 box is on its way. Then I’ll be 360-less for a while. The wait will be painful.

DO NOT WANT.

Music has Motown, Basketball has James A. Namesmith, and videogames have the coin-op arcade cabinets. It is important to every man, woman, and child to know where they come from, what it is that makes them who they are. Videogames are no different.

When Micro$oft rolled out the Xbox Live Arcade to go along with the 360 and the Wii followed suit with it’s Virtual Console hundreds of previously forgotten about classics had new life breathed into them, and justifyably so.

Legendary titles like Golden Axe (my personal all-time favorite) and Super Mario Bros. should never be cast aside for the sake of polygons and Blu-Ray HD-DVD Players.

Seriously, what is more kick ass than a 7 foot dude with an axe named Death Adder?

Without these titles, which laid the foundation for the mega-success the videogaming industry is today, who knows what would’ve come of our little 1’s and 0’s. After Atari single-handedly crashed the market in 1983 with colossal stink-a-roo’s like E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark things looked pretty bleak until Nintendo came on the scene in 1985 with their NES and upstart Sega, previously a division of Tonka Industries, released the Sega Master System.

Thankfully the developers of Raiders of the Lost Ark held true to the movie right down to Indy’s pink warmup suit and the scene where he transverse the blue void to get the ancient Hockey Stick of Rah.

Ok, enough with the history lessons. The point is not only were these classic titles needed in the mid-80’s but they are need now as well. We need to remind the newer generations of gamers that not everything was about how maxxed out your Pokemon was, how many hours you logged into Final Fantasy VII or your worldwide rank in Rainbow Six: Las Vegas’ multiplayer. It was about getting that high score, maximizing every last second from that quarter, and fun.

For anyone with these consoles that offer a trip back to the Golden Age of Gaming sans a tricked out Dolorean you owe it to yourself to check out where gaming came from.

Surprisingly, the first time I heard that CBS was going to air video games as “sports” was last night when I read Zonk’s post on games.slashdot. I figured it would be a shame for me to miss them, seeing how this would make some excellent blog material. Something to really rag on! Spike TV’s Video Game Awards all over again! I couldn’t wait to begin the snark.

The snark never came! I must say, I was actually impressed with how CBS presented the show and handled the overall production. Everything that Spike did wrong (garish music and sets, celebs that mailed in their appearances, backhanded jabs at gamers)? CBS did it right — it was about the games and the gamers. They took the high road. It wasn’t about making fun of the hobby we love or mocking the “geek lifestyle.” It seemed like they recognized it for what it was — video games are something people get a lot of joy out of. Even the people hosting the shows weren’t completely clueless.

Of course, everything wasn’t perfect. When they did the Fight Night 3 competition, they interviewed one of the participants in between rounds, which came off as really lame. Every once and a while a backhanded comment would slip, but for the most part they seemed to be taking things seriously.

One of the biggest complaints people use when they hear about televising video games is, “I like to play video games, I don’t want to watch them on TV.” I may be in the minority here, but I’ve always enjoyed watching others play games. This goes way back to the days I’d go over my friends house to “play” the old D&D SSI games like Pool of Radiance. I put “play” in quotes, because it mostly consisted of him playing and me watching. I really enjoyed that and still do, even now. That may explain why I enjoyed more than others might.

While I don’t think televising video games will ever reach the level of any type of sports broadcast (even “Xtreme Sports”), it’s a step in the right direction. It was fun to see people compete in games that weren’t First Person Shooters. The World of Warcraft 3v3 match was interesting, especially since I haven’t played WoW myself. Overall I give it a thumbs up.

Did you happen to watch it? I’d love hear what others thought of it.

After awakening “The Immortal” in Prince of Persia I reached a minor milestone — I hit 5000 Gamerscore points.

(Pay no attention to the fact that my co-blogger Dark Reyule has 20k.)