Gaia and I have been spending a lot of time in the Mushroom Kingdom lately. And let me tell you this: New Super Mario Brothers Wii is both a blessing and a curse. It's great fun that Gaia can play along with me, carefully ensconced her her protective bubble until we get to a flag, at which point she will scream that she wants me to let her out of the bubble. Once I do, she will hop on to the flag before me and exclaim: "I Beat You, Daddy!"

The curse? It's a goddamn hard game. Especially when you have a little bubble floating around during boss fights that gets you killed every so often. And, it's unforgiving. It's a Mario game. Mario is stupid and falls in lava and dies a lot. That's what Mario does. He's lame that way. If Mario had half a brain, he'd leave the Mushroom Kingdom forever and head back to Brooklyn where he could rake it in as member of UA Local No. 1. But no. He'd rather get his ass kicked again and again by some cheaply placed Bullet Bill. Whatever Mario.

Anyway, my mismash of love/hate feelings for Mario have not yet sullied Gaia's feelings toward him, as evidenced by this pair of drawings found in the back seat of my car this morning. Enjoy Gaia's drawings of Mario and Luigi.

In the midst of a weekend of many amazing events, far and away, the best find of the weekend was the vintage Bubble Bobble machine Gaia and I got to play together in Mercer.  The machine alone is worth a five-star Yelp rating for the Pines Miniature Golf and Arcade on Highway 51.

Ebay is listing this machine at $500. You might find a worse place to throw half a G.

It was, also, home to the finest deep fried cheese I’ve ever had. Ever.

I grew up in a time where home-based emulation of a Arcade Machine was a pipe dream. There was a man whose job it was to drive from Arcade to arcade configuring the videogame machines according to the dip-switches on the motherboards inside the cabinet.

The simplest games were complex labyrinths of transistors, switches, chips and tubes, and they were treated like major entertainment investments by the public venues that could afford them.

The games played at home were quadrichromatic facsimiles of the mighty arcade machines, but you’d only know this if you were one of the lucky few to own a video computer system.

And along came Lord Nintendo. And for a brief time there was parity between the arcade machines in the form of Saint Mario. And although that time of parity was short, it was mighty. It was Lord Nintendo who crafted the sword that first nicked the Arcade’s vitals. And from that wound, although their struggles would be mighty—and parity would be lost and gained 100 times over, the Arcades would founder.

I grew up in a time  where home-based emulation of an Arcade Machine was a pipe dream. We are now witnessing a time where those mighty machines of old are sold as throw-away electronics. Simple arcade sticks that plug and play into any television. There are now arcade machines emulated within the supercomputers that sit under our gigantic televisions. It is a golden time. These are halcyon days. Revel in them. Be amazed by them; they are yours to enjoy.

You dicks. 

We shall read from the Book of Wikipedia, Article 254453666, Revision 50.

Crop milk, also known as pigeon's milk, is a secretion from the lining of the crop of pigeons and doves with which the parents feed their young by regurgitation.
...
Crop milk bears little resemblance to mammalian milk, being a semi-solid substance somewhat like pale yellow cottage cheese.

The article points out that various commercial substitutes for pigeon milk are sold on the market.

At 6 p.m. Sunday Evening, Media Molecule pulled the plug on the Little Big Planet beta. Pulled the plug is a little harsh. It's probably more accurate to say that the beta expired. It still came as a bit of a surprise. I'd kind have hoped I could play until midnight.

I'm still not sure if I'm allowed to talk about it, given the non-negotiated Terms of Service that came with the beta code I was using, but I'm gonna spill anyway.

While the gaming press (as well as SCEA) seem to be hell bent on declaring Little Big Planet as the long-lost Killer App for the PS3, I'm not sold yet. I think another week of beta would have swayed me, but since I only had about a week of solid playing for only an hour or so every night, I've got a few impressions, but haven't yet decided if the game is, as the kids say, "all that."

Discussion about gamestuff, after the break.

Dear Mr. K. Nutpunch Ed,
Thanks so much for making my Wii crash so badly that I had to walk over it and unplug it to make it reset. I can see how you would be upset that I would back out of the music selection screen becuase I didn't want to play "Through the Fire and Flames" against a guy in the Slash Avatar for the THIRD time today.

That's great. You're the best. And while we're at it. Thanks for the quality control Actavision! You're the best too.

In case you didn't realize it, this posting is sarcastic!

I bought a game off the PlayStation Network today. I don't like their DRM any better than Nintendos, but I'm actually ok with buying software electronically, especially if it's cheap. $10 is exactly the right price for a great little game.
It's called "The Last Guy."
You play the titular guy and it's your job to run through satalight maps of cities and coax survivors of a zombie apoacolypse out of their homes and to the rescue locations. So far I've played on Fisherman's Warf, San Jose, and at Washington CD. And on Writelarge.com. And on a picture of Pete.

See! You can play the last guy on any webpage. Try it out. It's a great little game and well worth the $10. It's not horribly deep, but it's fun to play though the levels a few times and see how horrifically you stack up on the online-rankings. Last I checked, I was the 9,494th best player at level 1 in the world. I was only 2 more points shy of the 9,493rd best player. It was neck and neck all the way.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King [homepage] the first piece of WiiWare to suck $15 out of my pocket and turn it into largely useless bits of data on my Nintendo console is a worthy investment, really.

I mean, I only bought it yesterday, and with the ability to give my imaginary town a name that tickles and delights my inner 12-year-old, the $15 was well spent. Lets talk about the whole concept, though? Ok?

First and foremost, My Life as A King is an RPG that dismisses PG part of the conceit. You play a roll in this game, and the game part that you're used to -- you know the adventuring and plodding through random battles to raise your stats -- is played by the game. That sentence is confusing but accurate.

As the monarch, the loan player character commissions "party members" to adventure on his behalf. Those characters run off stage and have statistically determined adventures based entirely on their numeric condition. Then they come back to the town and you read about them in the newspaper in the morning. Reading through the battle logs, which play out nearly exactly like every other RPG you've ever played, is as close to turn-based combat you get in My Life as a King.

And that's fine. But it makes you wonder if you've ever really played an RPG at all. Think about that the next time you're three sheets into Final Fantasy XII. Are you playing the game, or is the game playing you?

Once you've wrapped your head around that one, understand this: if you don't want to be the king, you're playing the wrong game. This is a game about land-use management, resource tracking, and clicking the damn talking penguin when you're trying to catch a runaway adventurer. If you don't find the City of Celebration, Fla., deeply fascinating, this is probably not the game for you.

It has that damn "one more time" quality however, that makes it a prime time-sucker. Since yesterday's results are only given at the start on the day, players are easily sucked into another quick day's worth of game-time. And So on.