Twev1701.net

I got a little bored while ripping a CD for a friend so I played with the site’s code a bit. You’ll notice I moved some things around on the right and added a thing or two.

Yeah….now time to go to bed!

I did something today that I can’t honestly remember when I did it last. I had to go to the mall after work to look for shoeslaces (short, but meaningless story). Anyway, while there I was walking around looking at all the new stores that seem to pop up in between my now very casual visits. So, as I am walking around, getting ready to leave actually, I just got a funny feeling. You know that feeling that you know you should go somewhere, but can’t explain what is drwain you there? So, I found myself wandering towards the food court and to the old arcade where I would spend a great many an hour years ago. Since the advent of my love, the Dreamcast, I have never really gone back into an arcade. After seeing the graphics on the DC, compared to the graphics in the arcade, not to mention rising prices, it seemed foolish for me to dump my usual $20 every Friday night at the arcade and instead pick up a DC game and stay home. Sure, you lose a bit of the “feel” of an arcade, but then again, I don’t have some fat fuck standing on my toes as he waits to play.

Needless to say I was saddened to see my once beloved arcade. There was flourcent light filling the entire place, a far cray from the dark place it once was. Back then, the only light coming out of the plce was from the soft CRTs glowing around groups of frenzied gamers. Also, and don’t think me weird for saiying this, but it smelled “clean”. A good arade sould wreak with the stnech of sweaty gamers in the heat of battle. Not “honeydew”. A bit beleagered, I put 50? into Silent Scope II and played a short game. I enjoyed it, but the graphics were dated when compared to Raven Shield, and the “magic” seemed to be gone. Although, I do have to admit that my heart did skip a beat when I saw that they still had a working Marvel vs. Capcom 2 machine there.

Although I so think my fondest arcade memories will be of playing X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Not only did we play that every weekend, we ended up breaking our two local machines and were forced to dive 20 minutes to get to the nearest machine after that. And even after all of that…we never missed a Friday night at the arcade.

It’s weird. I was over a friend’s hose last night, and we were talking about the possibility for some nice weather this weekend. (riveting conversation, I know!) She then mentioned that they were calling for some snow today, which she didn;t like because Wednesday is her day off and she said that if it snowed sh wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. To which point she uttered, “It sucks when it snows before your day off!”

This is where I had to be a prick and make a counter-point. I explained to her that it NEVER snows before my day off, but always ON my days off, so I HAVE to go out and shovel the shit and not lay around a be a bum.

What’s the point to all of this??

Today’s my day off, and I woke up to it fucking snowing out. That’s my point.

It’s really a great feeling when you re-discover a great game after not playing it in what seems like…well…forever.

Last night, after trying to get a UT2K game going with JP over my shitty dial-up connection (sucked ass, by the way), I decided that I craved more games. So, I looked at the rolling cart of games I keep next to my desk to see what kind of mood I was in. I spied Oni and installed it. I bought it when it came out a few years ago, and got about 50% through it. That was about the poit that my shitty computer at the time decided it didn’t want to render the graphics anymore. So, I never got a chance to finish it. After installing the game, I loaded it up and played through the mandatory tutorial. Not too bad, but not as fast as I remember. Feeling upbeat, I started the first mission. Honestly, I think I played about 10 minutes before I started getting bored. I’m not sure if it’s the game that bored me, or if it just wan’t what I was in the mood for at the time.

So, I lquit the game game and talk to JP some more. While I was dream shopping for a new primary monitor (21″ black flat screen CRT), I suddenly got the urge to play Diablo II. This was a game we used to obsess about when I used to work at EB. Once again, I had made it quite far only to be hampered by my CPU at the time. In this case, it was Act III. So, I grabbed my Diablo II : Lord Of Destruction CD, and set off. I created a new character, a Necromancer of course, and threw myself into the game. This was about 11:30pm.

After killing Blood Raven and gaining 6 levels, I could feel myself getting tired. I decided that this was enough to satisfy my craving and decided to quit for the evening. Once I arrived back at my desktop, I was rather shocked to find it to be 1:20am. I had no idea that I had been playing for almost 2 hours! Now that’s a good gaming experience as far as I am concerned. A game should hold you attention and take you away so that you don’t notice the passage of time at all. Averything around you should fade away and all that should exist as far as you’re concerned is the game environment.

It’s funny. With the plethora of new games out there, I still ind myself returning to my old games. It’s as if today’s games are more focused on the “flash” of bump mapping graphics and 3-D postition audio, and have totally forgotten about what makes a game good–fun.

I suppose sometimes you forget about the things that used to mean a lot to you when life happens.

What the hell is he talking about?

What I’m talking about is gaming. I used to be an avid gamer. It was nothing for me and the Bertman to play games until dawn a few days a week. Hell, we even skipped school when MK3 came out for the SNES. All night gaming sessions we the norm and we enjoyed every minute of it.

But the past fews years have seen thos gaming sessions vanish. Sure, I still play EverQuest till dawn occasionally, but not my game of choice — First Person Shooters. That is, until last night. I ended up stopping by JP’s pad after work last night to collect some of my gear, and we talked for a bit and played around with trying to breathe new life into his sever. Then, about 3am, we decided to fire up UT2K4. Let me just tell you, I had my game on. We played until well after 5am and I loved every minute of it. We had so much fun we’re talking about actually hosting a LAN party/tournament. To be honest and frank, that was the first time I have played an FPS in well over a year and a half that I have not only enjoyed it, but had my game on as well.

This may be the start of a rensiance in my life.

I’m over here at JP’s pad right now, partaking in a nice 2 day gaming fest. Right now we have 8 systems running, doing all sorts of evil bidding. We have computers that are merely downloading new hacked games for us, a laptop that’s just downloading some nice g33k videos for us, 3 full gaming machines, and 3 servers. And when Mike comes over in about 3 hours, we should have another 2 computer to add to the chaos. Yes…we may need professional help!

I’m very proud and very ashamed at the same time. I finally got JP to play EverQuest tonight…and he likes it.

I’m really not sure if this makes me a good friend or not….

Oh yeah. This is for JP……

STOP STEALING MY SITE DESIGN!!!