PixlBit

     Today, or rather yesterday now, I got myself a cheese steak and a German beer and pulled out the original Xbox and dug into my Backloggery Fortune Cookie picks of Atari Anthology and Taito Legends.

     I pulled out the Wii the other day to play some Data East Arcade Classics, having temporarily burned out on 100 plus hours of Borderlands 2 (my buddy is still playing it though). This is a no frills collection of 15 games, some of which are given their Japanese names like: Sly Spy is Secret Agent, Two Crude Dudes is Crude Buster, and Bump ‘N Jump is Burnin’ Rubber. The UI is very basic and also unintuitive as I had to fiddle around to find the menu describing the controls for each game. Majesco did a pretty uninspired and bare bones job on this collection. There is cabinet art and music in the extras, but no interviews or history. You have to unlock these by playing the games, but I played every one and only a few unlocked. What unlocks them? Who knows. Thanks Majesco (dripping with sarcasm).

    This is a rich treasure trove of Okami imagery (which I wish I could center on the page. The library computer I sometimes use doesn't let me do this). There's concept art, character designs, lots of art done for the Okami website, art done for various magazines, E3 2006 banner art, postcard art,  some of the first drawings done as the game was just beginning, and even a short manga that was circulated internally at Clover Studios.

         Borderlands 2 is really pissing me off. Too many choices. Also, I find it weird that when you’re in a fight, the Badass versions of the enemy are so much harder than the rest of them. I mean, I take a shot at the regular crew and they go down with a couple criticals but badasses, no way, the meter bairly moves for those suckers. I nick off a few points while my same-level gunzerker friend takes big chunks out of them. Then a loot midget appears, a robot one that can transform into a jet, and I’m having the same trouble, just doing hardly any damage despite criticals and my friend tackles it, not easily, but does so in fairly short order. I’m so annoyed! I did notice that although we are at the same skill level, he has logged twice as many hours as I have in the game. I just topped 100 hours and he is well over 200. That probably means his equipment is just better than mine. So, oh well, I gotta run around like a lame duck while my friend mops up all the hard enemy types. BAH!

     My buddy Mark and I have been playing video games for a long, long time. What we play together are mainly run-and-gun style FPSes, action movie stuff with over-the-top attitude to the point of the ridiculous. Comedy is a big part of our collective gaming. Our games have to have a big boom, wild crashes, explosions, or any game that has in its description “destructible environments”. I often think of the SCTV skit Farm Film Celebrity Blow-Up in relation to our gaming.