Dare to Play the Game

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I am your host that likes dark meat and brisket for thanksgiving…but probably will get neither. Yeah this is the first thanksgiving without my wife since we split a few months ago. So no texas thanksgiving for me. I will be forced to endure thanksgiving with the folks and my aunt and her…family. Yeah…traditional thanksgiving, somebody shoot me. I’ve had a rough week in the emotional department. I saw my soon to be ex-wife on tuesday and imagine if you will that your wife left you and you don’t see until 3 months later to meet for lunch. You are never prepared for that feeling. I am not going to elaborate on it, but its an apology of sorts for the column this week. Next week, we’ll do something different. Just give me a little time to get my facilities straight. By the way, I did do something crazy on friday of this week, I got an XBOX 360. Scroll ahead to where you normally find Retro / Genesis goodness for a full story.

Well since I don’t have that much content this week due to turkey day a cometh, I have decided you get two poses of Morgan this week. Enjoy. I mean imagine what you could do with two morgans, why you could play three player video games. You could have one cook and the other clean. One could wear morning clothes and one could wear evening clothes. One could be a redhead, one could be a brunette. One could be bad cop, one could be good cop. And truly both would never give you a reason to ever leave the house. Video games, two morgans, please tell me what else you could possibly need in life.

Taco Bell is trying to do a good deed. The first person who agrees to give up their PlayStation 3 to Taco Bell will get the equivalent of tacos for life. Your console (should you choose to donate it) won’t go to a Taco Bell manager. Instead, the Bell is giving the PS3 to the Boys & Girls Club.

“The PlayStation 3 is on every teen’s holiday wish list,” said Bob Fulmer, Executive Director, Taco Bell Foundation. “That’s why we’re offering one lucky individual tacos for life in exchange for giving Boys & Girls Club teens a gift that will keep them in the game.”

If interested, send your name, email address and phone number to tacobellnews@tacobell.com. The offer expires December 1, 2006. It’s first come, first served, so if you want to make the ultimate holiday sacrifice (and get some free tacos in the process), email sooner rather than later.

Alright folks…who here is willing to give up their prized PS3 who they sat in line for 36, 48, some even 100+ hours for some bloated calorie filled cholesterol ridden tacos for the rest of your life. Does that come with free medical? Seriously. I’m sure some schmoe will do this for the publicity but I dunno about you but if I wasted my time for a console such as this and then traded it away for some 79 cent tacos (maybe it includes the mexican pizza too)..I might need a catscan with that trade barter. I will admit it is for a good cause, it would just be really hard to do. Only thing I can honestly fathom is somebody went and got a ps3 and their wife got pissed (and didn’t realize they were gone 72 hours) and that’s a fantastic way to get out of it. Look honey, I donated this sucker to charity and we get free tacos. Oh good, the kids won’t go hungry now.

WiiConnect 24 Update Breaking Systems?

We have received word from numerous sources that running the initial WiiConnect 24 update on the Wii has had a tendency to cause a recurring error code. Several error codes have been reported so far, but the most prevalent of them are 110213 and 32002. We contacted Nintendo about this issue, and they filled us in on what you should do if you find yourself in this predicament.

Currently, Nintendo has two options in place to resolve the problem. If you do not have any data saved to your system that is important to keep, then you can contact Nintendo customer service and they will ship a new console to you in 3-4 business days. However, if you do have important data saved to your system, then things get a little trickier. Data like game saves and Miis are not disastrous to lose, but Virtual Console data is. While Virtual Console games are re-downloadable should you delete them, the data saved on your console regarding which games you have downloaded is tied to your system. In this situation, option #2 is the way to go.

Option #2 requires that Nintendo send you a shipping label which should take 4-10 business days. Once you receive the shipping label, you can use it to send the console to Nintendo for repairs, after which they will send it back to you. Sadly, this process takes 8-12 business days, meaning that if you choose option #2, you will be Wii-less for a good long while.Nintendo could not comment on how widespread this problem is, but did say that they are currently looking into fixes that can be done without Nintendo replacing or repairing the console itself. If you find yourself receiving either of these error codes, or any others, please visit Nintendo’s customer service website.

I pray that Nintendo has already fixed this issue. I mean talk about reading this article and be scared to death to go anywhere near your Wii that you just spent $250 on (not including accessories). System software should not corrupt your console, that’s for beta users and the like. Worse yet Virtual Console stuff may become trashed and lead you to even bigger problems in addition to having no Wii for a while. But there is an old adage here, live by the launch, die by the launch. Things happen at launch time that happen no other time in a console’s existence. Look at the X-Box last year I mean it all sorts of shorting problems, drives killing disks and I think it had system software issues too for that matter. Finally it looks like all of the real problems are done with. Which is good, and why I finally got one.

There I was, two women both in hard hats and me in nothing but the suit I came into the world in…oh wait…wrong story. That one is saved for the adult column later on boys n girls. So its friday, me and friend Brandon had been looking at cars for a good part of the day (Brandon wanted something new, and I figured I would help him out and all…he ended up getting a Mazda 6 a few days later)…anyhow we decide to go to the Microcenter. Microcenter through December 3rd is running a special where if you buy the core or the premium system you get a $100 rebate in 8-12 weeks. Which is probably when they are planning a price drop, but hey I get the system early so its pretty darn cool. So we are there, and I am literally pacing…looking at games, looking at dozens of accessories (I never knew so much weird stuff existed), and just trying to figure out a)if to even get the thing and b)what to get with it. To be honest, I’m not the type to ask questions either unless it is to Brandon who is with me. However, he is more interested in watching King Kong in Hi-Def. Understandable. So I am forced to be in my own little painful prison. I finally decide to initially get the XBOX 360, a 12 month live with additional headset, camera (which I had since traded away for 1600 points), robotron, uno and 200 points, and a cooler which is actually one of the cool ones (haha) where it gets your machine to sit vertical (good for my setup) and does not plug into the xbox power supply (it has its own). This is good because from my friends this can cause your xbox to fry like a turkey at a texan’s thanksgiving. So I buy the stuff, comes to over $500…and as I partially faint…I realize my day really isn’t done in the x-box arena.

The next place I decide to go is EB Games & Circuit City to do a little game looking. I decide that I am completely confused as to which 360 title to get first (still am), and look at the old xbox titles. For the two stories, I come out with the following 4 XBOX titles (that I made sure were compatible) : Doom 3 Collectors Edition (a steal at $15), Thief Deadly Shadows, Fable Lost Chapters, and Tecmo Arcade Classics. All for less than $40. Sure I could have gotten one of the cheaper 360 titles but when I know I’ll enjoy the above 4…I think it was a safe bet. So I take it home, decide to start fresh in the morning and set it up. I then went out for a little karaoke and being in the company of strangers. Another story, another time :)….next morning

.I wake up the next morning about 8:30, 9 o clock. I start the day by moving furniture in my game room so that I can reach the router in the other room easily with a just little bit longer network cord. (better option than spending $100 for a network wireless accessory) I reorganize all of the stuff and then start taking out the 360 system and all of the accessories. A lot of stuff, the system is kinda bulky but to be honest not that bad. The most heavy thing? The darn 360 brick or power supply. I mean seriously this thing is heavy. I thought I had walked back into the nintendo and genesis era of power supplies and I think this thing was actually bigger. So I get it setup like I want and put it in. Let’s start off with Live. And that’s where i would be for the next 4-5 hours. I played Uno, Robotron and Hexic for a long time, all online..getting used to the controller and the live experience. It’s so nice to sit there and play without having to insert a game. Something I’ve professed for years! You can download demos, listen to music, watch trailers, and never having to do anything. One fantastic perk, you can stream your mp3s, jpgs and wmv files from your own pc directly to the xbox. No slowdown to boot. I was in awe, but they do need to add avi and mpeg support. Then its pretty close to perfect for media center capabilities. I am still interested in making it part of my media center when I do an overhaul come next year probably sometime.

Of the 3 360 demos that I played, Burnout Revenge, WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007, and Rumble Roses, I was blown away by the graphics to say the least. I haven’t felt this overwhelmed in a long time, I’m not even sure my ps2 I was this impressed. Its crisp, the games play well and gaming is genuine fun. I did pop in Doom 3 briefly and its a heck of a great game, it looks better than almost all PS2 games I have seen with the exception of DMC3. I hope to get back to it as well as the regular xbox titles I procured. I also went back and got a 1600 point card at my local target to buy Doom and Contra from live marketplace. I kick some major butt at Contra, that’s all I’m saying :). I still have 600 points left (400 from the first 1600 card and the 200 card which I haven’t used yet), and then I have another 1600 point card coming as a result of my trade for the camera. So most of the weekend I was playing live and just having a fantastic time of it. I think the best experience of my weekend was the streaming of the mp3s from my computer to my xbox (and realizing the media center potential of this machine), and the worst probably had to be coming into Uno at 1am on a saturday and seeing another guy with a camera holding up his bag of weed (and smoking a blunt) and then talking business with another Uno player. Some people should not be allowed cameras. I think this led to me trading away my camera, that and I am a little bit of a voyeur :). However, all in all I made a great decision; I’m not sure where I’m going next or what 360 game to buy, but rest assured I will have fun doing it. Also on tuesday night I decided to go get those Burger King XBOX games…I was able to get all three with only one value meal. I will review those probably by the weekend. Yeah its cheap fun, but its cheap gaming fun for my new x-box. Nuff said.

PS2

Drive to Survive
Hard Rock Casino
Victorious Boxers 2: Fighting Spirit
Capcom Classics 2
Delta Force Blackhawk Down: Team Sabre
Harley Davidson
Pimp my Ride

PSP

Hard Rock Casino
Hammy Goes Nuts
Tony Hawk’s Project 8
Justice League Heroes

XBox 360

College Hoops 2k7
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Superman Returns: The Videogame
Cabela’s African Safari
World Championship Poker: All in

XBox

Bass Pro Shops Trophy Hunter 2007
College Hoops 2k7
Bass Pro Trophy Fishing
Capcom Classics 2

Wii

Rapala Trophies

Gamecube

Shrek Smash and Crash

DS

March of the Penguins
Totally Spies 2: Undercover
Dogz

GBA

March of the Penguins
Yggdra Union

Well since the PS3 and the Wii came out last week with an impressive list of releases titles, there isn’t hardly anything worth mentioning for you guys to get. You’re looking at Rainbow Six and Superman Returns for the 360 and that’s it. Capcom Classics did get thrown back a week but I’ve heard some people got it already. So, I guess after most of us blew our collective gaming wad last week, nothing is going to reach out and bite us this one. Thank goodness, I spent a ton last week on the 360. I probably won’t be buying anything until at least….Black Friday, owwww, owwwww I hurt very much. The pain is quite bad. 🙂

As usual I do end this with a little gaming note. Problem is I got an X-Box 360 and already carried on about in a whole little section. So…something else perhaps. Black Friday is almost upon us. That time of year when we go crazy to run down aisles in hope of getting some crazy deal for a gift for ourselves or for our loved ones. I will probably participate this year but I plan to be quite the little planner. I will most likely only go a couple of places and then I’ll be done dang nab it. With that be said, please be safe this Black Friday, little old ladies are your friend (unless they swing a mean purse, then its on), and some things just aren’t worth it. And if you are thinking this year about who to buy for, remember a little guy who writes your favorite column on upcomingdiscs.com. I love anything ps2, 360, and heck if I got a xmas card from a couple of you folks that would make this holiday season go a whole lot smoother. Have fun folks and eats lots of turkey (but go easy on the dark meat, that’s for me :)).

As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)