Fail dart

A couple of co-workers and I decided to play a friendly game of darts over our lunch hour today. In the process, we experienced our very own “fail“.

We were playing a certain type of dart game that I was unfamiliar with. Basically, you begin with 300 points and you continue to throw the darts, each point you gain being removed from the starting 300. The first player to get to zero exactly wins.

One of my co-workers had only 14 points remaining. So, what did he do?

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He somehow managed to hit the number “14”. Spectacular FAIL.

A photo of my shame

Some may doubt my wife’s gaming prowess. May I submit to you proof that my wife is indeed, “1337”. In the photo below, my wife’s Mii is the one in the orange hat with shades.

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She has left me with, what, five top scores? Out of nearly thirty? A paltry sum, I declare, but I am up to the challenge. Since snapping this evidence of my wife’s awesomeness, I have reclaimed a handful of top scores (like, three). However, take a gander at her score on level 3, stage 1. 82,000?! I am concerned, my friends. I believe my beloved may be consorting with the devil. And not in a good way.

This isn’t over.

Of tropics and crossbows…and gamer wives

I’m lucky in that I’ve latched onto an amazing woman for my wife. Besides her phenomenal cooking skills, her excellent brain, and her beautiful body, she also happens to be a lifelong gamer.

She honed her skill on the Sega Genesis, playing Sonic the Hedgehog games. More recently, she’s been addicted to various MSN “casual” games, including the Diner Dash series, and all the sundry restaurant manger-type games available online. With the introduction of the Wii, she has gracefully moved on to games such as Super Mario Galaxy (playing as my ever-present and faithful “number 2”) and Super Monkey Ball.

This past weekend, however, I got to experience a whole new side of my wife’s mysterious gaming history. I was browsing the Wii Shop Channel because I had completely forgotten that I still had an extra batch of 500 Wii Points just sitting there, doing nothing at all. They required spending. I browsed the 500-point NES games and came across Startropics. I recalled briefly that my wife had played that game; or, more appropriately, her mother had played that game once upon a time (see! good genes). In any case, I mentioned it to my wife, as I had skipped that game in my brief NES past (but managed to score most of the rest in some fashion). My wife responded thusly: “Startropics is on there?! Download it!” as she leapt off our bed. We downloaded the game, and then somewhere about an hour into it, she became disinterested because the gameplay style wasn’t to her liking. But the fact of the matter is that she showed a definite interest, one that still remains even years after she has sold and/or packed away her old gaming gear.

As of this moment, I have no doubt that she is busily firing away with the Wii Zapper at little wooden targets, cursing each and every miss as she attempts in vain to beat my scores in Link’s Crossbow Training. I love that woman.

I don’t know why after all this time I still get tickled so when I think about the fact that my wife enjoys video games. Maybe it’s because I continue to read thread after thread on Evil Avatar where aging gamers are finding it hard to get in valuable game time because their nagging wives are brow-beating their “childish habits”. Or maybe it’s because even with what little game time as I get each night, gaming itself is such a huge part of who I am, and was so integral to shaping my creative instincts growing up, that I’m honored to be in a marriage with someone who shares a love of this basic, simple, “childish”, wonderful, engaging, provocative activity.

Or maybe, I just love watching her face when I beat her high score. And, consequently, hearing the pride in her voice as she mercilessly returns the favor. Whatever the reason, it makes me look forward to all the future game nights with the boys as they grow up in a family that games together.

No More Heroes has acquired my interest

Violent Wii-exclusive action title No More Heroes by Suda 51 has been garnering some rather excellent reviews since its release this week. They are compiling some of the more impressive scores over at Evil Avatar. A 9 (out of 10) from GameSpot. A 4 1/2 (out of 5) from Gamepro. Perfect 5 from X-Play. I think this will be a must buy for me. Especially if my FF7 ebay auction turns out as well as it appears it will (ending in 4 hours and it’s already up to $40!).

Propeller kind of sucks

I started using Propeller about a week ago as a Digg alternative. My goal was to find a place that gave me the same functionality as Digg, but maybe offered more topical variety, gave a platform to undiscovered stories, and maybe even included a better interface for activity. What I found at Propeller was the exact opposite.

The landing page offers you really nothing much more than politics and top news stories of the day. There is very little content beyond that. Even worse, oftentimes the top content on Propeller will remain top content for several days. And with such little activity, I can see just why this is the case.

But nothing else tops the unapologetically abhorrent interface. It took me several minutes of hunting and pecking through the various stories, clicking on various headlines, buttons, and text links, before I finally discovered where the link to the actual article was located. Then, once I clicked the link, I wasn’t allowed to actually leave Propeller. I was presented with a slow-loading sidebar next to the story which offered me (equally slow-loading) options for removing it and performing various other Propeller-based activities. While I like the touch of having access to Propeller from another site, it isn’t implemented well in this case, and turned me off from clicking any further links.

So, I’m back to Digg. Even though it is inundated with a lot of stories that I don’t necessarily care to read, I like the ability to customize my landing page and available content. I just have to make sure I never actually accidentally read any of the hideous comments left behind by the Digg masses. Those have the power to kill.

Is there a Digg-clone out there that is fun and easy to use, has a lot of content variety, and doesn’t have an interface that will make me want to maim the designers? If there is, I’d love to hear about it.

Finally finished Metroid Prime 3!

I beat the game last night, with 100% completion, meaning I obtained all of the cherished suit upgrades, missile expansions, and energy tanks. I spent a sum total of 21 hours, 34 minutes in the MP3:C universe, and enjoyed every minute.

The last boss – Dark Samus and the stolen Aurora unit – were incredibly disappointing. Both battles were amazingly easy to win – I never once felt any pressure or fear. That said, there were parts of the game up until that point that were frustratingly difficult. I sum the two together and come out with a nice balance. The game itself was challenging enough – I suppose a simpler finale was required in order to assuage fears that the game might be just as difficult overall as the first Metroid Prime game, which was, essentially, impossible. Don’t try to tell me you beat the game; it simply didn’t occur.

ship.jpgInteresting thing to note (which is also a spoiler): at the end of the game, if you get the 100% ending, you are treated to a brief glimpse of a ship (shown here to the right) following Samus as she careens away from Elysia. It’s a quick shot that allows you (one would presume) a bit of insight into the subject of the next entry in the Metroid franchise.

The Metroid wiki seems to suggest that the ship is the Delano 7, which apparently belongs to Sylux, one of the bounty hunters featured in the DS Metroid Prime Hunters. The funny thing is, now that Retro is stepping away from the Metroid universe (for now), we have no idea who will be developing the next game in the series, what system that game will be on, and there’s absolutely no guarantee that the next entry will even follow MP3:C chronologically.

So, what was that? A bit of a bait and switch? Retro throws something in – something that may or may not ever see a follow-up – just to appease the completionists. It’s probable. Or is the next Metroid game truly already in development? Maybe another DS entry? Who knows at this point? All I know is that I think the ending to MP3:C is nothing more than a red herring sent to whet our appetite, but not truly foreshadow the future of the franchise. Hopefully, we’ll discover more about where Samus is headed next after Nintendo gets their big titles of 2008 out the door.