PixlBit

     Just sitting here at Mark's place waiting for Pirate's Booty DLC to download for Borderlands 2. We finished the main story line last Thursday and today we mopped up all but one side mission in the main game. There's one final side mission labeled "Impossible" difficulty that apparently requires four players at level 50 or better to beat. I figure we'll be able to do it with two once we finish all the DLC and are above level 50, or maybe we'll have to find some more players. I am going for a complete achievement run of this game. According to xbox360achievements.com, it's not a hard game to get a perfect score.

     There were a few years where I was too busy to play anything, but about 1995, I reestablished a friendship with one of the old gang, my current gaming pal Mark, from the neighborhood of my high school years. We got right into gaming, of course, starting with the PC. We had several PC’s with P75 processors linked up to play Doom, Doom II, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Heretic, WarCraft: Orcs & Humans, and WarCraft II. It was all about FPS’s and network play mostly.

     At college, I hated the sight of a TV. I wanted none of the life I’d had at home of ritual TV watching on the couch every day. I was out skiing to classes in the Winter and hiking all over the woods surrounding the school. So I didn’t even think about home consoles like the NES, which I didn’t even know existed until I started getting back into consoles with the Playstation years later.

       Not too much this week of interest to me except for a new comic by Antony Johnston. I’m still trying to get that new Behemoth album at BestBuy. Didn’t see it today, but the web site says it’s there so I’ll have to go back and ask someone. I’ll have to blog about that tomorrow.

     In these years I was going to private school and lost touch with my neighborhood friends who still went to the public school and so didn't play much on home consoles anymore. However, my friend Phil (also a private school kid, not going to the same school though) and I hung out and rode our bikes all the way to the the arcade in the Mall. It was five miles and one mega hill away. I was an athlete then and it was just fun to climb that hill on the way back every time.

     The first Star Wars movie (Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope as it's now refered to) came out in May ’77 and the Atari Video Computer System in October ’77. What a year! My Dad probably got the AVCS (or Atari 2600) that Christmas or the next one, and I played Air-Sea Battle, Combat, Basketball, Baseball, Breakout, Bowling, and Night Driver. I think Breakout is still fun today, as is Bowling, which I bought in XBLA’s Game Room recently. I would’ve got Breakout as well but it’s critical to use the paddle controller for it. The same is true of Night Driver which I still think of when I’m in the car at night.

    I was playing Sega Bass Fishing on my Dreamcast the other day when I noticed it was Wednesday, comics day. I told my Dreamcast to bring up the Sega Marketplace and, with the fishing rod controller, made my way through the new releases, the announcer said “Hit!” on every one, which became annoying after a while, and selected the ones I wanted with a tug like you do when hooking a fish in the game. Then I reeled them in to my purchase screen, the announcer saying, “Fight!”. I don’t know why they make you pretend to reel in a fish when you select products to buy, but it is fun. Then an image appeared looking like a basket of fish but filled with comics and the announcer said, “This one’s huge!” A day later, they showed up at my door and here’s the pictorial evidence.