I've got a Zune!

Catie gave me my new brown Zune today. I spent most of yesterday loading it with songs, and I've only used up about 3 gigs out of 30.

Now I need a radio transmitter for my car.

Virtual Console - 11/5/07

Today's virtual console offering should come as no surprise with Galaxy shipping next week.

Oh, and two other games came out as well.

Commenting

Before, I had my comment system set up to where only registered users could comment. That's silly. So now everyone can!

Nostalgiafest - N64

If you had any interest in video games in the mid-90s, then you will almost certainly remember the holiday season of 1996. For me, the Nintendo 64 was everything I could have possibly wanted after my five year love affair with the SNES. I missed out on the launch of the system, as $200 was an enormous amount of money for an eleven year old. Needless to say, I was disappointed but I managed to convince myself that Super Mario RPG was all I needed that year.

By the Summer of '97, there was no mascot RPG that could have convinced me to hang on to my SNES. So I decided to earn my own money by mowing grass over the summer. Between June and July, I had sweat enough to earn around $300 and on my families annual trip to Jacksonville to buy school clothes, I walked into Sears and came out with a console and the newly released Star Fox 64.
Between Star Fox, Mario Kart, and Super Mario 64 I had enough entertainment to last throughout the entire fall. And those were just the good games. I would play through any piece of plastic trash I could get my hands on, including trash like Chameleon Twist by myself and WCW vs. NWO with a few friends.

In retrospect, the console never really had any amazing titles. The hardware was hard to to make games for and Nintendo lost a lot of 3rd party developers. As a matter of fact, I would go as far to say that the console only had a handful of classic, timeless games. Only Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and maybe Paper Mario are really worth playing today. However, even if the console was nothing more than an Ocarina of Time player, it would have still been worth the $200. But that's an entirely different topic altogether.

Insane Toys R Us Deal.

Sounds too good to be true. Buy Super Mario Galaxy and get a free $25 gift card.

First Mario Galaxy Reviews

The 1up review is in with a 9.5. No matter how good the review is, the rabid fanboys of the internet will still have Parish's head.

9.5 is not a bad score.

Super Mario 64 DS.

Remember this thing?

I got the urge to play this today as a part of my recent Mario binge. It's been three years since I've last played it, and I get the feeling that maybe I didn't appreciate it for what is was back in 2004.

What it is is the most unique port in my memory. When putting this together, Nintendo put a lot of effort into making this not JUST a port. On top of one of the most satisfying single-player games of all time, Nintendo threw in three more playable characters (each altering how you play the game), some new areas to explore, multiplayer, and 30 new stars. The box should have read: Now with 25% more stars!
What's more, a lot of existing content has even been altered. Mario no longer looks like a jumble of polygons, some frustrating areas have been trimmed up, and some of the bosses are a little different this time around. You'll even find some new power-ups that turn the game into a fresh experience.

In short, the game is exactly what an updated port should be. It was an amazing update to an already perfect game. I like to think of it has Super Mario 64.5, as in it's not meant to replace the original but it adds a bit more content for those of us who still drool when they hear the Dire Dire Docks music.

Why Super Mario 64 DS Sucks

Still, Super Mario 64 DS makes a horrible DS game. As wonderful as the game looks, the DS just isn't meant for a traditional 3D game. The player will spend the entire game struggling with frustrating controls. Precision 3D platforming with a d-pad just isn't possible. The characters have two different walking speeds - haul ass and crawl. On top of the d-pad problems, the game also requires you to press multiple buttons to do fairly simple tasks. Want to do a long jump? Then you'll have to hold down the b-button while hitting both the r-button and the y-button. Oh, and you also have to make sure you're lined up perfectly using the d-pad. The tutorial messages should just say: "Good luck, fucker!"

Hope for the future

So what should have been the ultimate launch title for Nintendo's new portable system was soiled. This beauty of a game just doesn't work on the DS, period. So the reason I've taken the time to post this long, contrived rant is because I've come up with an absolutely genius idea.

Super Mario 64 DS should be available as a piece of Wii Ware software. Think about it. Not only would get all of the new content from the DS version, but you'd have it on a screen you don't have to hunch over to play and you could play it with a controller blessed with an analog stick. I'd gladly pay $20 for that.

Please?

Mario Galaxy unlockable spoilers.

As if the hype for Mario Galaxy wasn't out of control enough, this scan leaked out earlier this week.

Don't click if you're avoiding spoilers!

Mass Effect Screenshots

Lighting up NeoGAF right now is a controversy about a few new Mass Effect screenshots. Here's one that was publicly released a while back.
Gorgeous, right? This next one is from a preview build that is supposedly 99.9% complete.
Garbage, right? Yeah, you can't argue the poor quality of the shot. What CAN be said is that this shot is obviously from a scene where the textures haven't fully loaded. I would be willing to bet that this shot was purposefully taken to look bad, in the same way that the first one was specifically selected to look as good as possible.

Don't worry about how Mass Effect looks.