Video Games

So, I've always enjoyed myself some video games. From as early as playing Super Mario Bros. on my own NES system, traveling to the arcades around town with friends during birthday parties, hanging out playing hours of console and computer games during middle school and high school... getting to college and playing more video games with my new friends there.. World of Warcraft...

Suffice it to say, I've played my share of video games in my life. I don't want to think of the number of months.. if not years of my life I've actually spent playing. And I don't mean figuratively. I mean literally. If you clumped all the hours I've played video games... how many months of 24/7 time have I played? As I said, I don't want to know. It actually depresses me that WoW keeps a log of the amount of time played on a character.

What's that? You want to know my lifetime "/played" in WoW?

A lot.

Anyways, since moving up to Chicago.. I've been introduced to a new form of gaming. Not "new" in the sense of something never before seen.. but more like, the accessibility of a few type of gaming. Cabinets. You know, the things that sit in arcades.. take quarters. Well, my co-worker Geoff has a few cabs.. and has definitely piqued my interest to the genre.

There are cabinets called "Candy Cabs" which are very popular in Japan. Video games are called "PCBs" and a certain format of PCBs can be run in any Candy Cab. There are also other motherboards for other types of games.

So basically, imagine owning a cabinet in which you can play any game you ever played in the arcades.. you know.. all those quarters lost.. and now you can play any of those games as much as you want... virtually for free. Well, you have to buy the boards, or cartridges, or whatever.. but after that.. unlimited play.

The cabinets are imported from Japan.. by a guy in California. Now, shipping one of these is expensive... so I wasn't quite ready to buy one. But I was keeping an eye out for any that popped up in the midwest at a reasonable price. Well, one popped up in Cleveland.... at a good price. So I drove out and got it.

I replaced the buttons, sticks, and cleaned it up. So it looks a little like this now...

The buttons are incredibly snappy.. the joysticks are flawless... so very very nice. And yes, you are meant to sit down at this machine. Which sort of sucks, since they were not designed for a man of my height in mind. Crazy Japanese.

So, now I have a cab.. but whatever do I fill it with. Games of course. I've become hooked on vertical shooters lately... shoot-em-ups.. or shumps for short. So I finally broke down and bought DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou (one of the hardest vertical shooters ever made) a few Metal Slugs.. a game that I've loved since I first played it way back when. Also found a few other gems on the forums I've been cruising... and amazingly enough.. they all arrived this morning at work.

Yeah, I took a long lunch.. what of it?

So the games, laid out in all their glory.


No, I don't have a problem.

Well, maybe 1. That I'm at work rather than at home working on these games.

Later

There Will Be Blood & Pizza

I went and saw "There Will Be Blood" a few weekends ago. It was an amazing movie. I'm still working through all of it in my head... I don't know if other people will enjoy it as much as I did. The movie feels slow at points.. and long.. but I couldn't look away. It was strange.

The music was amazingly done. Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead scored the entire thing. It was eerie and compelling. I don't know if it is something that I could listen to while not watching the movie.. perhaps I'll dig around and see if I can find a copy of it online.

Initially I had gone to the theater to watch an entirely different movie. When we discovered that wasn't playing... the guy I was with suggested this movie. I haven't been following movies much lately, so I had no idea what it was about.. who was in it.. anything. I was hesitant at first since he claimed it was about railroad tycoons or something... but I saw a huge poster for the movie next to the ticket counter and noticed Daniel Day-Lewis's name on it. I figured, "what the hell.. he is an amazing actor, let's give it a shot." Well yeah, he was fucking amazing in it. I don't know how he does it.. but he can embody a character better than any other actor I've ever seen. Perhaps it is the scarcity of roles he chooses as well... but each time I see him it is quite the experience.

Something else I noticed.. I think I found where he derived his image from.

Vs.

Anyone else see it?

Paul Dano is also spectacular in it. He has come a long way from the kid he played in The Girl Nextdoor. He was in other stuff before that, but I think that was the first movie I saw with him in it. He can't rival Daniel Day-Lewis on the screen... but he holds his own. The last scene between the two of them.. you just have to see it.

Alright, sorry for the hiatus. I'll try to post more, and keep the posts up.

Later