IGNCube (a reliable source if there ever was one), recently copy-pasted the track list from Donkey Konga (2): Hit Parade onto their website. The only song of note is one “Gantanamella,” which is classified as being a piece of “Latin” music. A quick visit to Google quickly proves that no such song has never existed, and confirms my suspicion that this mystery piece of Latin music may in fact be Guantanamera, a prospect that makes me more than a little giddy. Unfortunately, the only other source with this information, the lovely 1up.com, seems to have completely excluded the song from their supposed track list, misspelled or not. Sigh.

Tomorrow: More reasons not to visit this site.

To celebrate birthdays, the roomies in our little household give the gift of bad movies. To make known his displeasure at my having inflicted “From Justin to Kelly” upon him last week, wedge55 forced “House of the Dead” upon me today. And, of course, we promptly took it out of its theft-resistant packaging and watched it. Twice.

Now, as a general rule, I derive pleasure from watching bad films. They’re fun! They make me laugh and grimace! Guilty fun, like throwing cats. “House of the Dead,” however, scraped the very bottom of the enjoyability threshold. It began with sporadic flashes of breast, and then quickly turned into zombie shooting. But, it was like… stupid zombie shooting. It made me angry.

Then there was Liberty, the Asian Super Rave Girl with the special power of “kung fu” (I kid you not — that’s her special power in the dvd menu). She kung fu-ed for a little bit after she ran out of ammo, but then she was bitten to death. She got a game-over screen to commemorate her end. There was the other guy who shot a lot, but he got bitten to death. He didn’t get a game-over screen.

In conclusion, director Uwe Boll is now my enemy.

(vector_black bakes a cake!)

Since I started working at OfficeMax, I’ve made it my personal mission to shape the buying trends of PC games here at what once was Davis’ only video game outlet. I frequently stack copies of Seaworld Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, and Rollercoaster Tycoon on top of one another on the shelf, or hide copies of Nancy Drew: Double Dare behind Microsoft Picture It! while spreading out boxes of Halo, Siberia II, and Civilization 3 to fill out two or three locations. Though most game buyers worth a damn buy their PC games from GameStop or EB Games (both of which first opened up only nine months ago) or head to nearby towns for Targets, Wal-Marts, or CompUSAs, its nice to know I’m doing my part, regardless of how insignificantly futile it may be. If I can curb but a single god game enthusiast from purchasing a Tycoon game and going for Civilization 3 instead or encourage a kid to persuade his parents to buy him Halo rather than Illegal Street Racing, I’ll consider my efforts a success.

In related news, vector_black, two of our roomies, and I ventured for many hours to the nearest real McDonald’s this evening, where I purchased one of those new Go Active Happy Meals, complete with wicked cool stepometer! And a Big Mac. Vector_black bought a collection of horrible things which made him die. Or something. I forget exactly. In any case, I proceeded to tear my Big Mac to pieces and work it into my California Cobb Salad, effectively creating the greatest food ever known.

Then we watched From Justin to Kelly, which vector_black gave to me as a birthday gift last week (OMG PAYPAL ME MONEYZ $$$).

It takes nine hours of holding down the tilda (`) key to fill three lines less than 188 Microsoft Word pages (single spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font).

My cat is cuter than any other cat before or since.

I stopped by our friendly neighborhood GameStop the other day, as I found myself in desperate need of a PS2 memory card, for reasons which should quickly become obvious to even the densest of readers. I walked through the door and past two of the tiny leased suite’s (RHYMEZ) employees, one busy with the XBox kiosk, another playing the GameCube demo unit. The third employee was leaning against the counter, thumbing through a game magazine.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “can I get a Playstation 2 memory card? One of the Sony ones.”

“Used cards are behind you.”

“I’ll take a new one if you have one, actually.”

He sighed, turned around, and pulled a single black PS2 memory card, mounted on garish yellow cardboard, from behind the glass case. “What game you playing?” he asked as he rang me up.

“Ico,” I said.

“Ico? Man, why you playing Ico? That game sucked.”

I quickly generated a large number of possible responses in my head, ranging from yeah, I’ve heard most stupid people didn’t like the game to don’t worry, I picked up a copy of GTA 3 in case I get bored but eventually settled on “oh.”

“You an RPG fan?”

I didn’t have the time to give him my thoughts on the modern RPG genre, and so simply responded with, “not really.”

He then told me the price, $25 or thereabouts, I handed him a $20 gift card I had recently acquired through completely legal procedures, and he mentioned something, though the specifics have been lost to my rage-tainted memory, about Xenosaga.

“Actually,” I told him, “I don’t even own a Playstation 2. I’m playing Ico on my roommate’s.”

“He won’t let you use one of his?” he asked.

“Yeah, he would. But I plan on owning a Playstation 2 someday, so I might as well buy a card now.”

“You know, PS2s are now only $149-”

“Actually, I’m waiting until they’re $99.”

“They’re not going to be $99 ’till the PS3 come out.”

“Well, it’s only a matter of years,” I told him.

“And there’s been a lot of talk about the new consoles. When they come out, they’re gonna be scarce. We’ll probably start taking pre-orders for the PS3 and XBox 2 pretty soon.”

Nevermind the very real possibility of the N5 and/or Nintendo Revolution beating both competitors, or almost certainly the Playstation 3, to launch. Or the PSP. Or the impending release of the DS. In four months.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, as he handed me my receipt.

If you glance over there to your right, you’ll notice a shiny new link for your clicking pleasure, one Consolvania. I’ve been meaning to add them to that most ignored of sidebars for over a month now, but my No Posting In May mantra did a good job at stopping me and when it became clear that no other site (that I read) was going to link them, I just sort of gave up. But here I am, now sending them one, maybe even two, extra hits each and every week. You can’t buy exposure like this. Because nobody would pay for it.

Consolvania’s one of those video game TV shows all the kids seem to be watching these days. However, unlike every other video game TV show ever produced, ranging from GamePro TV and the Anti-Gravity Room to more recent additions to the genre such as X-Play and the entire lineup of G4 (TechTV), it doesn’t suck. The reviews are intelligent, insightful, and more than 250 words. The comedy bits, for the most part, are actually funny. I even laughed. Out loud. There are still a few rough edges to be ironed out, and some of the comedy pieces, such as the reoccurring “Hitler’s Bunker” comes off as more annoying than entertaining, but for a show produced out of Glasgow by a small group of friends, the fact that it’s infinitely better than every other attempt at video game television is more than enough for me.

Oh, and one more thing: the show doesn’t actually air on TV, proving once and for all that the greatest obstacle in video game television’s path is the television itself. Instead, you download the episodes directly from their website via BitTorrent. With the third episode scheduled for a June release, I suggest you start getting your download on right now so as not to be left behind. If you have some sort of sick moral objection to BitTorrent, or your firewall simply hates you, let me know via e-mail or AOL Instant Messenger and I’ll be more than happy to AIM and/or ICQ you the files. In case you’re wondering what my AOL screen name is, here’s a hint:

Everyone generally agrees that April Fool’s Day and the Internet don’t mix, esspecially when it comes to gaming sites. Every video game “journalist,” professional or otherwise, seems to agree the writing a fake news story declaring SEGA PURCHASED BY NINTENDO OMG! or STARCRAFT 2 STARING THE CAREBEARS is the ultimate incarnation of hilarity. We disagree.

That’s why we’re not just covering E3 this year, we’re un-covering it. It’s like April Fool’s Day, all week long. Because it takes a week of stupid, similar jokes before they start getting funny.

Sometimes I play video games while not wearing any pants. Sometimes other people are around to document it.

Hi kidz! It’s time for the annual DORKclub spam and eggs cookoff! Cooking spam and eggs (spam and eggs) cooking spam and eggs cooking spam and eggs cooking spam and eggs cooking spam and eggs (fun for you and me) cooking spam and eggs cooking spam and eggs cooking spam and eggs cooking spam and eggs cooking spam and eggs. And! The “Electric Boogaloo”.

Love,
vector_black

Link goes here

I just got back from visiting 7-11 while not wearing any underwear.

Vishnu had 10 avatars, none of whom were me.

Chicken, rice, and mushroom baked in a delightful pastry crust. Oh, the rage of mushroom! It took 8 billion years to work through one day and night of Brahma, during which civilization (i.e. us) existed in cycles of 400,000 years. That was a great deal of mushroom, back in those days. The rage of mushroom, in case I was unclear (about?). On the plus side, however, I saw the Berryz perform on TV today, none of whom were older than 12. They wore Charlie Brown stripes on adorable yellow performance costumes. Thank God (…or Brahma?!) for imported Japanese television programming.

Brahma approves of your dinner, and I approve of your dinner. But not Vishnu, nor any of his avatars. None of whom were me.

(vector_black considered it an honor)