For the first time in my life, I have a brand new car. A 2005 Neon. Mineral gray. I'm a little intimidated by it since I've never had anything new before. I've always driven beater cars, so I never cared about parking spaces or dings or merging into people who won't move out of the way when they pass an onramp and have an empty passing lane right beside them and no possible right hand exit path for miles.

My previous car was a '91 Sundance and it was continuous trouble. It went through several complete transmission overhauls, had almost the entire underbody rebuilt out of donated parts from other cars, and once burned a line in the road from the street to my driveway when the tran fluid pan was accidentally sliced off. Then there was the time I didn't notice the temperature gauge pegging and kept on driving. I know it had plenty of miles on it, but I couldn't say for sure exactly how many since I drove it for several years without the odometer working. Dad towed it off sidestreets and out of parking lots more times than he'd like to remember.

I realize it's been a while since I last played any of my Pokemon games... but I mysteriously picked them back up a couple days ago.

The thing is, LeafGreen / FireRed is lame, a shoved-out-the-door remake that runs a far distant second to Ruby / Sapphire. Once I realized that, the game lost much of its spark. The Sevii Islands mini-quest that follows the main game wasn't doing much for me, a meandering jaunt chiefly ventured to activate R/S and LG/FR trading... a reward that's more trouble than it's worth if you're not planning on playing LeafGreen much.

I don't know who thinks they can offer sites like this for free, but it's been my experience that they don't last long, so head over to Video Game Ads while you can.

The site has collected almost 3000 video game commercials from around the world, all freely viewable as long as your browser can deal with it. I had to install Windows Media Player to help Safari along, which, although it caused me great personal pain, was worth it.

Here's the full story of my current Urban Dead game. (Which, I neglected to mention last time, I first heard about via the A Geek in Korea weblog, one of my usual haunts when I click through my bloggy bookmarks.)

I started playing as a NecroTech Scientist because, when faced with a choice between a Fighter class and a non-Fighter class, I will always choose the non-Fighter, whatever that may be. It's not that I'm interested in role-playing at all, just that I usually prefer to see what the other classes offer up... since I know what a Fighter is going to do. Fight. (The Fighter equivalent in Urban Dead is a military man, by the way, although you can also start as a Police Officer or a Fireman for a similar feel.)

Picked up We Love Katamari at EB tonight. I pre-ordered it through them because I knew there was no way my TRU was going to get this game in stock ever, or have any idea what I'm talking about when I ask about it. Since I was already at the mall, looking all otaku in my Domo-Kun t-shirt, I pre-ordered Fatal Frame 3, because I know there is no way my TRU was going to get that game in stock ever, or have any idea what I'm talking about when I ask about it.

I've been looking forward to We Love Katamari for a long time. Like, since 1987 or so. I've already damn near burned the soundtrack into my iPod from repeated playings.

I had the best time today.

Around 11am, the doorbell rings. This is unusual; we rarely have unannounced visitors so a knock this early probably means a kid selling candy, a teen working on his Spring Break vacation fund by selling magazine subscriptions (yeah, right, like I give a nut about some pre-frat jock's need to party in Aruba) or maybe, if we're lucky, a neighbor dropping off a plate of extra peaches. I check the peephole and see two gentlemen in suits. I have a suspicion what they want. Through the magical happenstance of having Clark, I'm already awake, showered and presentable, so I open the door.

We exchange hellos. They introduce themselves, Wayne and Orlando. I ask what I can do. Wayne says "Would you like to live in a world of hope?"

Oh yes.

As a GameCube launch title, Luigi's Mansion was a shining star... coming out of the muddy darkness of the PS1/N64 era, Luigi was an eye-opener. Detailed environments, nice character models, excellent sound design, and a completely different sort of game from Nintendo: essentially a Mario-comic take on Resident Evil. It was a game of promise, representative of this bold new generation's technology and creativity.

Four years later, I decided to pick it up again - do that second quest - and see how it measures up to the current state of video gaming. This is the GameCube's final calendar year; most of the truly great games have come and gone. There's only a handful of major releases left and then Nintendo will dive off after the Revolution. Although I doubt there are many GameCube owners at this point who haven't already played and forgotten Luigi's Mansion, it holds up surprisingly well (visually, anyway) and remains worth a weekend spin. Perhaps this is a testament to how hard Nintendo pushed this particular launch title, and how often many later games fell away from the standard.

OMAC Project #5 So if an OMAC rips off your helmet, but you can still talk and walk around three pages later, that's good enough for it to claim "Threat neutralized"? Because that's what happened to Rocket Red. After the cliffhanger in issue #4, I thoroughly expected Dmitri to be offed. So when another OMAC calls out "Target eliminated" after sending an energy bolt through Fire's back, I don't think I'm going to take it all that seriously.

And Rocket Red dies anyway, but not by an OMAC's hand.

This issue's big moment - apart from another Giffen JLA member biting it - is that Sasha finally goes into her new OMAC form, something that's been adequately telegraphed for the last couple issues. (She spent plenty of panels coughing and questioning herself.) As an OMAC, she is hideous. Silver skin like Argent but with a goofy big clown eye. I can't imagine the Bat-editors expected this to happen when Sasha exited those books.