May 2003 Archives

I've now been to the Towson MD Apple Store three times in one week. On Saturday, we breezed through the Towson mall on our way to see Our Pals Pete and Margaret Hansen (whom we haven't seen in far too long.) I really wanted to pick up a new iPod glove, but everything they had was either Luxurious Leather or Hideously Repelling. Rhonda got a very nice iBook carrier, however.

But while we were at the Hansens', I had a call from Dad... his DV iMac modem was not responding. Somehow the entire internal modem had gone missing. I did everything I know how to do: zapped the pram, re-installed the OS, installed a clean OS, ran the hardware test cd... but when System Profiler says No Modem Found, I think you're pretty much shafted.

I called in Matt for tech support, as I often do, and he said "Get back down to your Apple Store." I'm going to lay this story out for you because I personally had no idea that the Apple Stores did service. Maybe I turned a blind eye to them, but I thought they were retail only. When you bring in a sick Mac, you throw it on to the Genius Bar, a literal bar with stools and everything (albeit decorated in Apple White instead of Killian's Irish Red.) The genius behind the counter hooks up your baby, checks it out, and gives you a quote if further repairs are needed. You swipe your credit card, amigo, and you're all done.

It's nice that it's all done right in front of you; it makes the Apple people seem accountable and honest... unlike most computer repair shops where you drop off your machine and it goes behind the curtain for two weeks. My father - who is not the arty yuppie type you usually associate with Macs - was impressed. He uses his iMac on a daily basis - it's essentially become his income source since Consolidated Freightways went bankrupt. So it was great to see it diagnosed and handled in a straight-forward, upfront way.

The recommendation was to replace the internal modem. Unfortunately, on the iMac designs, that's not something the home user would generally want to attempt. The price quoted was just over $200; the modem part itself making up over half of that.

So here's the options. 1) Go for the service repair, pay $200. 2) Go find an external USB dialup modem somewhere and just use that one. 3) Make the leap to a cable modem. 4) Buy a brand new Mac.

I'm quietly pushing for #4, simply because I'd like a new toy in the family. My sister's grape iMac is getting flaky lately, so I'm entertaining visions of two brand new iMacs. But Dad, quite realistically, doesn't really need a new machine. The DV iMac works perfectly for his needs (internet, email, importing digital photos, bookkeeping)... if anything, he needs the speed of a broadband connection more. But #3 means several weeks of delay from the cable people, plus the headache of untangling all the splitters and coax running through their not-cable-friendly home. I have a feeling that #3 is coming someday, just at a pre-planned time. #2 is probably the cheapest solution, although then we have the inelegant non-Apple external modem taking up desk space... if we can even find one, since just about every computer sold since 2000 has a dialup modem built-in.

So, yeah, choice #1.

We picked up the repaired iMac Thursday night (the holiday slowed down the works a bit) and the experience was much the same. Back at the Genius Bar, out comes the machine, yes the modem exists properly now. And the bill? Bumped down to $135. That's how you take care of your customers. Dad is back online, back on his personal iMac.

I hope the Apple Stores become the center of the company's operations. Mac users have grown accustomed to the idea that we're all alone out there. Stores won't stock our software. We have to trawl crappy websites and mail-order catalogs if we want to buy anything. Electronics store aisle monkeys have no idea what we're talking about. Local ISP phone techs say "Do you mean XP?" when we say we're on OSX. Having a nearby full-fledged sales-and-service store is the much-needed connection point to the machines we choose to use and the business we choose to support.

I jumped into the Battle Tower this weekend. You can only register a three-poke team, so I brought in Darkling, Knifejaw and Gringo. Although they make a big deal about "surviving seven matches in a row," your team is completely healed between bouts so it's not such a problem. I beat the lv50 mode. The Sableye did most of the work against the randomized, robotic opponents. ("I'M READY FOR BATTLE ARE YOU")

But here's what gets me. You get no experience for Battle Tower matches. So what's the point? And how are you ever supposed to become competitive enough to attempt the lv100 mode? You also don't get any money out of it. My big reward for beating lv50 mode was the Iron item. Maybe after lv100 you get Carbos. Hot damn.

Fighting battles without receiving experience points is just nuts. It kinda flies in the face of the game's predominent logic: that your trained creatures improve in skill and ability as they continue to battle. I mean, creating larger and better pokemon is why we play the game.

The eCard battles go the same way. For all the mess of having to connect two GBAs, the eReader and a link cable, scanning a battle card gets you a strange three-on-three match with no experience and no reward. You don't even see any new pokemon (at least not with the two battle cards released to date.) It might be worth it if you at least could +1 your pokedex records with a visual spotting of a Gastly or a Scizor or any of the 100-some pokemon types missing from the normal Ruby/Sapphire quest. But you don't.

This irritates me because I now have no motivation for walking into Battle Tower again. (Unless one of ya'll can tell me about amazing future rewards!) And since Sapphire has no "second quest" like Gold/Silver/Crystal, that leaves me with just some sidebar pickups... like hunting the Regi's and Latias (or Latios?)

Magic Box posted a single line rumor that Nintendo is working on a Pokemon RPG for GameCube. I think that's important enough that I need say no more about it.

Time: 61:48
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 76 (seen: 155)
Party: Darkling (Sableye) lv50, Knifejaw (Sceptile) lv49, Gringo (Mightyena) lv48, Razorbeak (Swellow) lv53, Golduck lv46, Kyogre lv46

In a directionless game like Animal Crossing, it's easy to fall into the trap of "I've done everything I want to do; this game is over." By this point (eight months after the original release), I've seen many message board postings saying "How can anybody still be playing this game?" Here's how.

#1) I don't cheat. That's the biggest point of all. Many gamers have bought the Action Replay cheater add-on, entered in the code for Complete Catalog, played level 1.1 of hidden item Super Mario Bros, and traded in AC for credit towards a new Xbox. But with no catalog cheats or sneaky time travelling I still have secret items and future events to look forward to.

#2) I change up my design. My first complete furniture series was the Exotic set... I slowly found all the needed items, displayed them, complemented them with the Nintendo set, and kept it that way for months. Then it occured to me that it might be fun to go after a new series... so I sold all the Exotic furniture and went after the Ranch series. Now, months later, I'm trading in all the Ranch stuff in the Cabin series. Even the Nintendo items are gone, so I have room to display a different range of collectibles.

#3) I buy the eCards. Almost every time I buy some Animal Crossing eCards at Electronics Boutique, the clerk on duty asks me what exactly they do. First of all, read the trades, Johnny. But anyway, the eCards have provided a street-legal way for me to expand my catalog. I would estimate that 10% of my catalog has come from the cards. Meaning that the cards brought me items that I still have never encountered in the game. Crap, if anything, the cards are the one thing killing my replay value. Even though they have sped up my collection rate a bit, they have added an additional layer of fun... the GBA games are mostly cool, the pattern cards are great, and they do provide some stuff you'd have a miserable time getting them in the game itself... like the 15 different Station Models.

#4) I don't play more than 20 minutes a day, unless something extraordinary is going on. If you play too long in a single day, you're inevitably going to burn yourself out, because the game just doesn't offer enough variance inside a single 24 hour period. (Except when you first get the game and you go crazy talking to people, fishing, buying everything, planting flowers, and such.) It's best to jump in lightly, poke around, and get out. There's always tomorrow to plan a trip to the Island, design a new pattern, or send out an eCard password.

But this is what is astonishing to me. After eight months of daily playing, after scanning hundreds of eCards, after the occasional trading with Rhonda... I still know of several items I have never found in the game yet. Still! And I don't mean secret items like the rare NES games or the Nintendo Power Mario furniture... I mean regular, everyday random-ass items. Topping the list is the damn Well from the Western series, but I'm also missing lots of Gyroids, a couple Island items, and some Crazy Redd-exclusive furniture. Oh, plus here-and-there blank spots from the other village vendors... Gracie, K.K., Gulliver, Wendell and Saharah.

And last night, I saw Wisp for the very first time. I've played after midnight plenty of times, but this was the first time I heard Wisp calling for me to trigger his minigame of spirit-hunting. After eight months, the game still pulled out a surprise for me. That is absolutely incredible.

Honestly, I've seen the most of what this game can do. This summer holds the final pieces: the new season of bugs and fish, the summer camping games, and some other holiday stuff. I'm sure there will be a smattering of new conversations to experience; getting some new dialogue with a villager is a rare treat, but it does happen. I'm unsure if I will continue to play daily once a hit a solid year... I have a vain hope that the game will reward me in some fashion for perfect attendance. No one has yet reported any such bonus, but then again no has yet to play 365 days in a row.

And even though I haven't missed a day, I have missed various annual events... Officers' Day, New Year's fortune telling, Spring Cleaning Day, etc. So even if I stop playing daily, I might try to login on the holidays I missed from 2002-2003.

If anything, it will just fill the time until the sequel.

Look at that Spider-Man... can you resist his simplified design? His super-deformed feet and arms? I think that thing is hilarious. I love the entire line.

He's from the Spider-Man and Friends set, which is a new preschool action figure line. The style is aping the popular Rescue Heroes series, with the exaggerated limbs and broad, happy smiles. As with all of these things, there's about a hundred different Spider-Man figures, all with increasingly strange outfits and props... Hang Glider Spider-Man, Fire Fighter Spider-Man, Snowboarding Spider-Man. I'm not collecting all of those, hopefully just one of each character... whichever one is closest to the comic book original.

Actually, the adorable Spider-Girl was the figure that sold me. She comes with pull-and-go roller blades. The very next day I went back to Target to get a Spider-Man and a Captain America.

Although the set is clearly aimed at toddlers, somebody behind the scenes is giving a crap about adults as well. The basic Captain America figure has blonde eyebrows. There's two Wolverines, an unmasked X2 style figure and a masked one in the yellow-and-blue outfit. The Captain America that comes with the motorcycle accessory looks suspiciously like Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider." They even found a way to justify a classic topless Hulk figure in purple pants: Beach Patrol Hulk.

They're the happiest crime fighters around! Adding villains into the line seems unlikely (I don't think Rescue Heroes does baddies either), but a super-deformed Venom or Doctor Doom would make me quite a happy little collector.

I'm halfway through Splinter Cell and I keep thinking "THIS was the Xbox's big game last year?" You remember the hype; this was the Metal Gear Solid 2 killer. Everything you loved about MGS2 without everything you hated about MGS2. Having played it, I feel sorry for Xbox owners circa Fall/Winter 2002. PS2 got Vice City, GameCube got Metroid Prime... and Xbox got Splinter Cell.

It's not a bad game, not at all. It just falls short of MGS2 in just about every area. I was expecting a much deeper and engrossing title. Color me fooled by marketing. The game's tagline is "Stealth Action Redefined," which is an obvious jab at Metal Gear... since it is extremely fashionable to bust on MGS2. But it's more like "Stealth Action Reduced to Linear Paths Where You Must Do Exactly What the Game Expects to Proceed."

The first hole in Sam Fisher's arsenal is hand-to-hand. The dude's only brawlin' skill is to attempt to clock an enemy with his elbow or rifle butt. That rarely works when your enemy is dumping bullets into you point blank. Sam dies quickly... which is realism that I like (and don't mind much since there is an abundance of save points.) But it just seems ridiculous that Sam can't do anything when a terrorist gets the drop on him, except lie down and restart.

The plot and characterization don't measure up to MGS2 either. In Splinter Cell, we have some kind of basic Evil Dictator Intends Global Domination storyline... nowhere near Metal Gear's multilayered, symbolic story. Those of you who are still making fun of whiny, transgender Raiden and the Jack/Rose love story subplot are welcome to send me mail, but really guys, that's awfully old by now.

A great example of Splinter Cell's shallow story is errand-boy Wilkes's death. We never get to know Wilkes as a person. He's just the weak-chinned red-haired goof who drives Sam in and out of missions. His death scene, which desparately wants to be emotional, just falls flat because we have no interest in the character. Compare that to Otacon from MGS2. We get to know Otacon from codec conversations and cutscenes. When Otacon and Snake split up late in the game, you get the feeling of two buddies against the world. When he has his gut-wrenching moments with Emma, you damn well feel it.

Once you drop the absurd notion that Splinter Cell is a top tier title, it becomes quite serviceable and fun. It's upper tier, but not top tier. There are lots of nice touches, like having to hold your breath while sniping to steady your aim, using the analog stick as a virtual lockpick, piping a lipstick camera under doors to peek into the next room... there are more tools and toys, but I haven't found much use for some of them. The stealth aspect of the game relies heavily on keeping Sam in shadows; an onscreen meter shows your level of invisibility as you tiptoe down the hall. It's fun and great for methodical planners such as myself, but it is dopey to think that secret government installations would have long hallways with roving sentries but scattered ambient light sconces.

Between levels, a cutscene shows a clip montage from an all-news cable channel. I thought that was a nice touch, and some of the shots there are remarkably real looking.

The GC/GBA connection is very cool. Your entire level map appears on the GBA - rather than having to jump to a pause/map screen on the tv - and you can scan the GBA for nearby sentries! Since the GBA constantly gets "live" info, you can use it to watch enemy walking patterns and remotely trigger sticky bombs. Very, very nice.

So that's where I am in Splinter Cell. It's not measuring up to what the hype suggested, but good times nevertheless.

Unrelated aside: From DMG Ice, this scientific article about a newly discovered sea animal, of which marine biologists know almost nothing. You, however, will know what it is as soon as you see it. Samus, get the plasma beam and ice missiles on standby.

I finally got a chance to watch Tech TV's X-Play this weekend. It's a half-hour covering video games, hosted by Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb. The show has been around for a while in one form or another; Sessler has been on it for years. We first watched it when it was called "GameSpot TV" and the set consisted of Sessler standing amongst several old coin-op games, even though he was talking about PC and console stuff.

The thing about X-Play is that it's obviously the result of a terrible marketing experiment and a desperate bid for ratings. My guess is that "the video game show" has been failing on Tech TV for a while now... but they keep it around because it fits the network's theme and it's cheap to produce. This particular reinvention of the show reeks of overdone EXTREME ATTITUDE, hoping to lure in the 14 year old gamer crowd. Which is silly since the average gamer's age is like 25.

I've always liked Adam Sessler. He still needs somebody to teach him how to talk and gesture on tv, because he always hunches his shoulders and makes us look up his nose. Straighten up and head down, Mr. Sessler. But I liked him because he was smart about gaming, and his host bits and commentary displayed that... this was back in the GameSpot days, before it relaunched as "Extended Play."

Now on X-Play, they've forced Sessler to act as Average Dumb Gamer. Now he has to make snide comments about how his co-host plays, drool over the most boring average titles, and generally act like a hyperactive pre-teen. My gut feeling is that he's being coerced to act this way so the show appeals to Young Adults 14-25... but I just know it's not the true, smart Adam of shows gone by. They ran a clip on one of the shows I watched called "How We Choose The Games We Review," showing Adam behind-the-scenes getting excited about the upcoming flood of Guaranteed Unjustified Hit games like Doom 3 and Halo 2. The Adam Sessler who preferred Ico must have died inside.

Another sad aspect of the New Adam is the interplay between him and Morgan Webb. Now, ever since the "Extended Play" days with co-host Kate Botello, we've known that Adam has to show off and "be funny" with his women. Its grown especially annoying on X-Play. Every segment intro shows Sessler mugging for the camera and speaking in tongues while Webb slowly steps away. Then they trade a few snarky, obnoxious gibes with each other. She is the straight man to his crazy man. And she's around to look good, which was probably another bullet point on that revamp memo.

I do appreciate enthusiasm. I like the new slick graphic look. I like the bits where they actually play the game live and discuss it. And I like when they take a crap game to task and honestly warn viewers against it. But the "comedy" skits and snide barbing between the hosts make it tough to stomach. If you trimmed that crap out, you'd have more time for actual gaming stuff.

Adam, be smart again. And keep the nose down.

No, I'm not at E3. But I have been trolling the gaming websites for news from the show. Here's some of the standout stuff I've seen so far...

One of the early stories was news of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. After watching a few seconds of Snake in the jungle eating a snake, I figured this one was a fake, but it's not. True, true, completely true. And on top of that, creator Hideo Kojima is up to his old tricks of obtuse dialogue:

Kojima: "It is the third Metal Gear, and in that sense, it is very important. Not that there will be a lot of threes in the game. You see, Metal Gear Solid is the third game in the series. There is has been Metal Gear games on the MSX and a solid is something that is three-dimensional, and it's solid. This is the third Metal Gear Solid. So, in a sense, this is like Metal Gear nine, with the three threes. (Laughter)"

This is the year that Nintendo will really push the GameCube / Game Boy Advance connectivity, and there has been a ton of games that show off bizarre and wonderful uses for the two. Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles will allow four players into the same action-RPG game, but will use the GBA screens to give the players different info... so it's up to you if you want to share your secrets with your friends. Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (yes, a GameCube version of the GBA game) puts four Links on the TV, but when your Link enters a house, the house interior is only shown on your GBA screen.

But the showstopper on this front is Nintendo's implementation of Namco's video game icon Pac-Man. One player plays 1980 Pac-Man on the GBA, while three other connected players are the ghosts! the ghost players play on the Cube with a limited viewpoint, forcing cooperation to track and eat Pac-Man. Just about everyone has been wowed by this idea, but we're all curious how this can make it into a regular-priced game. Perhaps it will be some sort of cheap disk ($15?) or simply a bonus feature inside a bigger game. Maybe even a compilation of new-look, high-concept versions of classic games?

Sony finally pulled the pin on the anti-Nintendo grenade they've been holding: announcing their own handheld device, the PlayStation Portable. It's still really far away (winter 2004), so it's too early to tell what effect, if any, if will have on the GBA. It will have a bigger screen - 4.5 inches compared to GBA's 2.5 - but it will need its own media format... meaning you won't be playing your PS1 games on it. Like I said, Nintendo isn't scared at this point... and it's always been widely assumed that the reason GameCube disks are so small is so a future Game Boy can play them...

Resident Evil Outbreak, the online multiplayer RE, is finally starting to show some legs. We've known for a while now that the game will rely heavily on teamwork and survival... and that you won't know for sure who among your partners is computer-controlled and who is a real player... and that eventually you could turn into a zombie yourself and impede the remaining humans... and now we're assured of zombies that chase you more convincingly...

In the past, the meandering buffoons would stop in their tracks if you closed a door on them or left your current area. That's not the case anymore. Regardless of where you go and how you get there, the undead keep coming after you -- busting down doors, breaking windows and crawling through, or finding scary new ways to enter the room so they can claw your eyes out is all part of the fun.

Last year's Spider-Man: The Movie was a fine game, but the sequel appears to have looked to Grand Theft Auto for inspiration...

The game's structure will be wide open where you're free to go anywhere at anytime, but there will be specific goals you'll need to meet in order to advance the story. The streets of Manhattan are alive and teeming with all kinds of petty crime. You'll get to really experience the "friendly neighborhood" elements of Spider-Man this time around as you help women get their bags back from purse snatchers and retrieve lost helium balloons for crying little boys. Often times, Spidey will simply see an exclamation point over a citizen on the street as he's passing by and you'll have the option to go investigate and opt to accept the minitask or whatever it is.

That's EXACTLY what I've been hoping for in a super-hero title. Non-linear gameplay. Although the idea that Spider-Man is just "passing by" people on the street is a little weird. This style is probably best suited to a character like Superman; somebody who does more public appearances.

The Pokemon front is somewhat sad. Nintendo has opted to essentially release "upgrades" of older games instead of genuinely creating a new pokexperience. And even more annoyingly, the older games don't even include the one I would like to see, Pokemon Snap. Pokemon Colosseum is the new version of Pokemon Stadium. Yes, it looks great and will likely have some great additions (you can already see they've added trainers to the battle arena, one of my Perfect Pokemon requests) but it's still shaping up as the same old non-combative combat. Blaziken does a kicking attack, and the kick just animates without ever touching the victim. Guh. The demo movie I saw did not have much sound, so there's still hope for actual pokemon voice effects and not that obnoxious crystal radio screeching.

Pokemon Channel is the N64's Hey You Pikachu without the flaky microphone controller. That's probably a good idea to eliminate the mic (although that game did cause my young cousin Colin to yell into it "Come here Pikachu or I will punish you!" which we found hilarious) but is the gameplay going to go beyond HYP's utterly simple point-and-clickiness? Pokemon Box is a Cube/GBA linkup title that allows you to play Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire on the tv and store up to 1500 of your GBA catches on a Cube memory card. Let me tell you, I'm about as big a Pokefan as you can get, and there is no way I'm catching 1500 goddamn pokemon. And come to think of it, the N64 Stadium games let you play your GB Pokemon games on tv as well, so either that feature won't be included in Colloseum or Pokemon Box is a complete waste. The final Pokemon title is a Ruby/Sapphire version of Pokemon Pinball, which was a great Game Boy Color game. It will likely be a fine GBA game now too... but it better have more than two stupid boards, which is all the early screenshots seem to reveal.

Same old, same old. It's a frustrating time for Pokemon trainers.

Aside from that bit o' bad news, there are plenty of other great franchise titles coming. Mario Kart: Double Dash. Fatal Frame: Crimson Butterfly. Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes (the GameCube-exclusive remake of the first MGS.) Mario & Luigi, a sort of GBA Paper Mario. Mario Party 5, which is probably going to have to go a long way to keep people interested. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. Metroid Prime 2. Starfox.

Overall, I see more interesting stuff on the GameCube side than the PS2 side, but that's probably because Nintendo is throwing everything out there since their biggest premiere titles are already out. Nintendo still has no online plans, which is hurting them more in perception than in reality. There's a good deal of swagger in Sony's PSP announcement and in their online situation; EA has announced their intention to release online sports titles only on PS2. And Sony likes to remind everyone that the PS2 is still the exclusive home for the next GTA game and the Kingdom Hearts sequel, both of which just might show up for E3 2004.

It's rather intriguing to think that a game can be Not Hard and still be Fun. Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is definitely Not Hard. I just beat the game last Friday night, besting Ganondorf (and his Puppet sub-boss) on the first attempt. Sure, I had three Fairies-Suffocating-In-Bottles and a life meter about 16 hearts long... but still, I stumbled into two major boss sequences, sussed out the weak spots and general strategy, and layeth the smackdown without much trouble.

I suspect that Wind Waker purposely geared down the difficulty for two reasons. #1) Accessibility. Nothing is more frustrating than having a game you love but end up being simply unable to win. From Nintendo's standpoint, the game has so much extra stuff to do that it's quite all right if the main quest errs on the side of easy. #2) Presentation. Normally, when you die during a boss fight, you have to rewind time and enter the boss fight again... breaking the illusion of living a video game character's real-time challenge. But if the boss fights aren't too terribly hard, and you win on the first time through, you maintain the pace of the game's storyline. No duplicated scenes, you see.

And the Ganon fight certainly has a great deal of storyline attached to it. It does cheapen the whole experience if you have to keep restarting and skipping cutscenes. The game's other bosses - Kalle Demos, Jalhalla, etc - aren't as big a deal, storyline-wise... so they can afford to offer a tougher gameplay fight.

Great ending, by the way.

But about the Fun. In Wind Waker, the real meat of the game is exploration and sidequests. You can spend hours and hours sailing the seas, taking Picto Box pictures, unscrambling slide puzzles, tracking down secret treasure chests, and uncovering hidden dungeons. In that respect, the game is very similar to Grand Theft Auto, in that the game creates an ongoing, changeable world in which you are free to roam at your leisure. And even if combat isn't especially difficult in most situations, it's always a blast to play and to watch.

What we're seeing is the new face of quality in adventure video games: multiple simultaneous goals, interactive and evolving environments, and a built-in ability to scale according to the user's level of commitment. GTA, Wind Waker, Pokemon Sapphire, MGS2 - and any given low-level RPG, really - all work this way to one level or another.

I suppose it's really just the modern iteration of adding replay value. Pack in a bunch of junk that you can do during or after the "main game." Pizza delivery missions, collecting photographs, pokemon beauty contests, toying with sentries. I think it's great, because I hate getting locked into one linear path... especially when it starts to suck and you'd like to take a break (Wolverine's Revenge, I'm looking at you right now.)

The only feature I'd like to see in the next Zelda game would be a friggin' quest checklist. Wind Waker almost figured this out by letting you find specialized maps that reveal locations of Fairies, Octos, Heart Containers, etc. But the maps won't tell you which ones you've found/completed and which ones you have left to find... which just pisses me off, frankly. My memory just isn't good enough to keep track of every little sidequest, so give me a little help here, Nintendo. TRIPLE the quests for the next Zelda game, but include a way to organize them all! Link needs a PDA.

I did train up a little bit, but not as much as I had intended. I didn't want to wander around Victory Road for the experience, because I hate stupid Golbat Confuse Ray attacks. So I stocked up on Hyper Potions and Revives and made for the Pokemon League. My party needed a sixth player, so I threw in the Kyogre simply because it was my highest level pokemon stashed in the box. It is not one of my favorites; looks a little too Digimon for my tastes. The following is a play-by-play of my final battles against the Elite Four and the League Champion.

Sidney fields quite a mixed bag. He has a very diverse team, but they are all from level 46 to 49, so he was not much of a challenge. First up is his Mightyena, which I countered with ol' Knifejaw. I kept Knifejaw in against his Absol, which isn't the best move when the Absol uses an Aerial Ace attack, but whatever. When Sid brought in the Cacturne, I switched to Razorbeak, back to Knifejaw to handle the Sharpedo, and back again to Razorbeak to polish off the Shiftry. All in all, very little damage and no wasted items.

Phoebe is a fan of ghost-type pokemon, but her team is very repetitive. First up, she tosses out a Dusclops; I started off with my Golduck and Waterfalled the 'clops out of the arena. Next was a Banette, which received lessons from Darkling's Faint Attack. Phoebe then sent out her own Sableye, which I matched against Kyogre and his Hydro Pump move. Another Banette, back to Darkling. Another Dusclops, this time I used Gringo and his Crunch attack. Phoebe was a little tougher than Sidney, but only in terms of using Hyper Potions at the end to bring everybody back up to full HP. And her pokemon will start in with Confuse attacks, so pack the Persim berries.

Glacia, a master of ice, was my first real difficult (and annoying) match. By now, I'm used to the constant cheap use of Full Restores just when the enemy is almost knocked out, but Glacia adds in freezing moves like Ice Beam and Blizzard. Now is when I had to dip into the berry bag for some quick thawing. Glacia's first three pokemon, a Glalie and two Sealeos, were handled by Knifejaw. The Glalie being the toughest of the three thanks to Knifejaw's inherant type advantage over the Sealeos. Then she throws out another Glalie, but Knifejaw was in a bad way, so I sent out Darkling to Faint Attack and Shadow Ball the floating ice-rock back to its poke ball. Her final pokemon was a Walrein, which I started off my Kyogre... and he did well at first, but Walrein's Full Restore unevened the odds, so when the Kyogre passed out I switched in the Golduck, figuring a water type would minimize the enemy attack damage. Not so much, but I did get the Walrein down to a controllable HP level, whereupon I brought in my superfast Razorbeak to finish the job.

Drake, the dragon-type specialist, is the last of the Elite Four. His first offering, a Shelgon, was Crunched by Gringo. His Flygon and Altaria were brought down by Razorbeak. (And again, the Altaria insisted on increasing stats with Dragon Dance before actually attacking when facing Razorbeak.) I pitted Gringo against a second Flygon, but Gringo came out hurting, so Drake's last pokemon - a Salamance - required a switch. I brought in the Kyogre and wielded a super-effective Ice Beam attack.

By this time, I have used a lot of Revives and Hyper Potions, so I felt a little stretched as I headed up the staircase to the Champion's room. But what the heck.

With everybody revived and nearly full on HP, I faced Steven. First is a Skarmory (the only non-Ruby/Sapphire creature in this entire sequence!), who I flattened with Kyogre. His Aggron fell to Knifejaw, and Kyogre took down a Cradily. Back to Knifejaw to knock out a Claydol... Steven used two Full Restores on that one, but I kept Knifejaw just as healthy and I eventually came out ahead. Next up was an Armaldo, which I knew to be weak to water attacks... but Kyogre was low after his two fights, so I brought out the Golduck. Waterfall. Steven's final pokemon is a mighty Metagross, a pokemon I had never seen before. Using an amazing Meteor Mash move, the Metagross decimated most of my team while I tried some hesitant attacks (doing very minor damage) and poured some potions into Knifejaw, Razorbeak and Kyogre. Razorbeak soon joined Darkling, Golduck and Gringo on the sidelines, so I switched in Kyogre. The Hydro Pump attack did the trick... and I am now the new Pokemon League Champion.

Here is my winning team. We made some questionable choices and relied heavily on assistance from items, but we did it.

"Knifejaw" Sceptile level 49	"Gringo" Mightyena level 48	"Razorbeak" Swellow level 53	"Darkling" Sableye level 49	Golduck level 46	Kyogre level 46

Time: 58:51
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 75 (seen: 154)

We bought an iBook last weekend. The 12" current middle model. It's primarily Rhonda's machine, a distinction unclaimed since I gave her PowerMac 6400 to her folks and swapped in a 600 MHz Compaq PC. Oops.

But naturally, I've been all over it installing stuff and integrating it into fourhman.home. For one, it works wonderfully with our in-home wireless network. It sensed my Linksys setup right out of the box. I've already been online from as far away as our outside deck, and I intend to see just how far into our backyard I can roam. For another, I was able to enjoy iTunes 4's amazing music sharing feature. The upstairs iMac holds our entire CD collection (for the iPod), but activating sharing allowed the downstairs iBook to see and play the entire song library. Instantly. With no pause during playback or anything. Apple's one great strength is that they make stuff that just fucking works. (Although I am pretty pissed that the new iPod software is being denied to previous generation iPod owners.)

We'll be dragging the iBook out to Origins this June. Now Rhon will be able to watch a movie or something during the boring, extended straight line drive from York to Columbus. Hurm, there's going to be an astonishing amount of gear headed to Origins. iBook, iPod, Hiptop, GBA SP, GameCube.

Last year, we were lucky enough to have a TV in the hotel room with rca inputs for the GameCube... but I don't like to take chances. (In fact, I called the hotel last year and asked if the room TVs allowed video game hookup and was told no. Liars.) So I wanted to find a way to use the iBook as an emergency monitor for the GameCube. Such is Animal Crossing's grip on me.

Matt found it for me: the MyTV2GO peripheral. He's like a rabid dog when I give him a Mac tech project. It's a plastic converter box that sends s-video, cable, or composite video into usb so the iBook can display it. Truthfully, MyTV2GO's big benefit is that it is cheap. You could pay $200+ for a consumer-use video capture box; MyTV2GO is only $70. So you can probably already guess that this isn't the greatest video-in gadget around. It's so bare bones that it's probably cartilege.

If you buy the newest model, it's going to crow about "Version 2.0 for OSX!" Well, very little about Version 2.0 actually works. I only saw actual video once out of three startups, and the crappy software interface conforms to almost no OSX standards. Plus, it doesn't record movies or screenshots at all, despite promises all over the box and support materials. The biggest problem is that the enclosed documentation isn't even for Version 2.0. The manual illustrations look nothing like what you just installed. 2.0 is all new-look brushed metal, while the printed screenshots are from the pre-Jaguar Aqua X days. But design aside, the manual shows features and controls that just aren't in 2.0 but should be.

I did a little investigation on the company website and found the previous version of the software, the one that matches the documentation. So at least I've achieved visual parity here. This version - 1.1 - works much better, and looks much better. It now captures movies fine, and it looks to be much more reliable. Although, it still has no screenshotting feature and I could not get it to play audio from my source. The irony here is that video/audio inputs used to be standard on Macs. My old 7600 was used to grab many a screenshot from tv shows and movies.

I got what I paid for. But it will be fine for my intended purpose, that being pumping Animal Crossing onto the iBook in case of emergency. But if I was intending to actually record video and audio for editing, I'd be sending that bitch back to MacMall pretty damn fast.

P.S. It's Free Comic Book Day. You know where to go.

You may have heard that we had a school shooting here last week. It wasn't a grand scale massacre (a single shooter killed the principal and then himself), so it only floated through national news for a day or two... but as you can imagine, it has put the local community on edge.

It took about three days for somebody locally to blame video games. Because - get this - the kid played them. An article in one of the local newspapers quoted Jack Thompson, the grandstanding pop activist most famous for attacking 2 Live Crew, pointing fingers at violent video games, specifically Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. He even volunteered to come to Red Lion, PA to help investigators. (That same article also pointed out physical similarities between the Red Lion shooter and another recent child killer, as if you can tell a kid planning a murder just by looking at him!) A recent editorial referred to Lt. Col. David Grossman, who visited the area on a speaking/book tour in the wake of the Columbine shooting. He claims that video games - "killing games," rather, he's not attacking Tetris - are teaching children to ignore the natural inhibitors against taking a human life.

It's really easy to believe that, isn't it? We watch kids killing soldiers and aliens and cops in video games and we wonder if they're taking that situation into reality.

But obviously, they're not. Why do millions and millions of children play violent video games, listen to aggressive music, watch horror movies and come out fine? And regardless, kids have been imagining killing for centuries. It's part of any child's play pattern no matter how well insulated he/she might be. It's how they learn to deal with the very concepts of death and killing. It's how you did, too. Bang, bang, you're dead. I'm not so sure there is a "natural inhibition" against taking another life. There certainly isn't in the animal kingdom. Only by virtue of our advanced society do we find murder repulsive.

It's ridiculous to draw such a straight line between any media influence and a child murderer. Especially when the overwhelming majority of children come out fine. And in almost every school shooting case, the killers have some sort of weapons introduction outside of video games... most often through an interest in handguns, weapon/military magazines, hunting animals, or actually owning guns. I'd venture that teaching a kid to own, load and shoot a weapon is much more dangerous than allowing one to press the X button multiple times to simulate killing. And another thing... why is this always happen to rural, predominantly white schools?

Our local papers have also been making a big deal about threats he made in the weeks prior, and about lists he wrote of his likes ("sluts") and dislikes ("fat people.") If you were to lock up every teen who keeps lists and threatens others, you'd be jailing 90% of the entire school. That too is part of growing up. Our Red Lion killer was a young kid, mired in the hormonal difficulty of adolescence, and he made a series of bad choices. Plus, his stepdad had an easily accessible handgun collection.

There is no simple cause - not even gun culture - and we'll never know what was inside his head. All parents can do is stay involved with their kids, model good behavior, and teach them responsibly. And even then, you're going to have kids that put on a good face but still harbor darkness.