Why must Wario fail me so, after abstaining from his one true genre for so long? Wario: Master of Disguise has received rather mediocre reviews and although the notion may seem somewhat naive all things considering, it has dissipated my desire for the game. Although the age old philosophy regarding video games states that one must play a game before passing final judgment, I am heavily inclined to just side with the reviews on this one. They usually are correct and it would seem rather ludicrous for all those critics to be off and feature such a difference to what the actual quality of the final product is.

With that said, the next game to garner some interest from this individual is The Godfather: The Blackhand Edition for the Wii. Thanks to a recent discovery of the sheer quality of certain Mafia inspired films, (The Godfather Parts One and Two) I daresay I may have gained a slight interest in such organized crime..... from an artistic perspective of course. As fate would have it, a game focused on such a topic is soon to be released for the Wii. Judging by the renditions of the game for other systems, the game definitely has the potential to be an enjoyable experience. Hopefully it won't end up breaking my heart as a certain other game did. All this has put me in the mood for oranges.

Well Term one has come and gone and I have finally required my marks from that ordeal. They are of course, below my satisfaction, but are an improvement from last year. So without further rambling......

• Science- 83% (Probably should have conducted research for several assignments. More studying would have also helped, although overall I did rather well compared to the rest of the students.)
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• Career Studies- 93% (Although the goal is to have a plan for the future, I still have no idea on what I'm going to do after High school. It doesn't help that I dislike work ether, wishing to find someway making as much money as possible with as little work involved as possible.)
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• Civics- 97% (Basically a very basic introduction to law and politics. Alternated with Career Studies, with each course being a half credit of sorts.)
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• Religion- 91% (Sigh, the downfall of attending a Catholic school. My main criticism is that a Religion course must be taken each year, taking up a slot that could be used for something else. At least next year I can take World Religion instead.)
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• Latin- 88% (Must have done horrible on the exam. Sigh, French has destroyed any interest I could have in another language. Took this mostly for the history portion.)

Overall Average- 89%

Now for this semester;

• History- (It feels so long since I have had a proper History forbidden areas that will be covered are both World Wars, allowing this forbidden bepotentially very interesting, especially with the teacher.)
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• English- (Always an odd experience. The room is really out there, considering its a portable. Who's idea was it to teach English in a portable anyway? First time I've been in one of those things since a portion of Gym over a year ago. Oddly nostalgic......)
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• Business- ( Hmmm, an interesting course to say the least. There are five girls with quadruple the amount of guys, or maybe a bit more. One of the former are rather intriguing to say the least. Errrrr..... I should probably focus on the actual academics more.)
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• Math- (This year I should actually pay attention, at least for the first bit. Teacher seems to have quite a positive outlook, only time will tell if it stays that way... Some carry over people from my business course, including those of particular intrigue.)

To complicate matters, courses for next year are to be chosen soon, I think I'm going to go with these;

• English
• Math
• World Religion
• Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology
• History to the 16th century
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Introduction to Canadian Law

I guess I'm posting this in case anyone has any words of wisdom, on anything really.:P

Oh and I recently downloaded Kirby's Adventure via the Wii's Virtual Console service. The game was originally released for the nes. I'm finding it to be very enjoyable so far.

Yesterday, I downloaded the Nintendo 64 hit, Mario Kart 64 via Nintendo's Virtual Console service. This acquisition marks my second virtual console game (the first being The Legend of Zelda) and the first Nintendo 64 game to be downloaded. As luck would have it, one of my comrades came over yesterday and we indulged in arguably Mario Kart 64's greatest attribute, the multiplayer. All in all, the Virtual Console version seems to be a faithful recreation of this classic entry in the Mario Kart series. Although the sound does seem to be a bit "wonky" at times, (mostly in the choose your game menu) its not really noticeable and I am unsure if this was not present in the original game. Its certainly not as bad as some people would have you believe at least.

Oh and examination is basically over with a new term starting rather soon. (This statement alone constitutes this entry being placed in the general category.)

Over the last few days, I have begun playing Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life a great deal. Don't let the title fool you, it is quite a sinister game, in that the prospect of farming and conversing with NPCs will keep one coming back again, and again, and again, and again................. and again. There are quite a few other games that I must finish and have been neglecting due to said sinister game. I have not even properly started The Legend of Zelda: Collectors Edition, having only played around with one of the Wind Waker demos and watched the short videos that were included on the disk. The Wii version of the Legend of Zelda still remains unfinished, but I have a good idea of where it is leading (how could one not?) and decided to give it a score. GT Pro Series has only been played twice, both times a horrendous experience game wise. Guess having Harvest Moon command free time is not all bad.

Mario Kart 64 is supposedly coming to the Virtual Console next Monday, with the News Channel finally arriving this Saturday. Both will require some attention. Not to metion the whole exam thing going on right now, bloated tests that are worth 20% to 30% of one's final mark. Not too bad when one considers the amount such tests are worth in University, yet they as well require some attention, which is one of the reasons I am not frequenting GameSpot regularly and won't be for at least another week. Once I'm done with this semester I'm planning on playing through the Collector's Edition version of Oot. (Most likely followed up by MM) I am tempted to start into that game early though and it does transcend the need to farm, especially since I did not plan on seeing that game all the way through. (I'm not a fan of the ending) I am disappointed that Nintendo downgraded Oot over time, resorting to changing Ganondorf's blood to green and other such nonsense. When Oot comes out for the Virtual Console, it will hopefully be the original, Islamic chanting and all.

Through an interesting turn of events, I have recently attained The Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition. The prospect of replaying Oot on my Wii using a GameCube controller is perhaps the best reason in my opinion to own this disk yet, MM, Loz, and Aol are present as well making the disk all the more better. Of course now, perhaps I should not have bought Loz over the virtual console, (I still have yet to complete it) though at $5.00, it was not too great a loss. I nearly own all the games in series in some form now that Aol is within my possession. Only La is needed and I will have every game in the series in some form.:twisted:

Well the future is here, although it sure does feel rather familiar with little dramatic changes. Personally, I was hoping for a lot more neon lights to make a presence this year. Of course, its still early in the game so to speak, but the lack of neon lights so far is rather off putting when one is hoping for a large amount of neon lights in 2007. At any rate, this year feels like 2002 with a dash of 2005. Oddly enough, 2 and 5=7, so take that as you will. 2006 seemed to be a lot like 2003, so this is not the first occurrence of a year seeming rather familiar. I have recently rediscovered Cherry Sours however, allowing this whole business of reminiscent years to be taken much easily. They truly are a delicious snack and even factored prominently within my Thursday, which had a large focus on cherries for some reason. Cherry Sours are by no means cherries however, they are a rather sour candy, yet the name cannot be for naught....

Getting to things actually video game related, GameSpot's recent review of WarioWare: Smooth Moves is rather odd. It seems as if GameSpot is trying to win back Wii fans and perhaps make up for the Twilight Princess review. Although this may cause some Wii fans to sway back to GameSpot, the Zelda community has been absolutely ravaged after the review. Really, Only the Legend of Zelda Union and the Twilight Princess Union have truly survived, which can be attributed to their sheer size. Now, the review is not the end all cause, but it did at least factor into the banning of many Zelda fans who were less then pleased with the review, or at least that is what I assume. Others have left the site for greener grass on the other side of the field so to speak. Its quite a shame that people such as Link_Soul have now left GameSpot, willingly or not.

Well, on the bright side, I made another music video, although I'm not sure if too many people will like it. Its the sort of video that I really enjoy along with the music, but I can have rather odd taste at select times, at least when compared to the general population. It was still fun to experiment with a lot of the effects that Window's Movie Maker offers.

Alas, exams for first semester are quickly approaching and I have projects due soon. Sigh.

Well, Christmas has come, bringing with it an assortment of presents and focus on all things jolly. My area has yet to receive snow however, which is quite odd considering Canada is not one to go without snow at this time of the year. This year I also found myself making my Christmas purchases on Christmas eve, that makes three years in a row. I've found one can find some relatively good dvds for less then $10, quite convenient indeed.

So I suppose one may wonder what I received for Christmas. Well, those that are particularly astute will have realized the very recent addition of two new games to my collection and my now playing lists. Those two games are Yoshi's Island DS which I am currently enjoying a great deal and ...GT Pro Series for the Wii.............. yeah.........

Outside of Video games, I received two new music CDs, a Queen CD which considerably bolsters my previously rather pathetic music collection for such a great band and a Greatest Hits CD of Donovan. I'm also supposedly finally going to get an ipod early one in 2007. Thanks to the Wii, my batteries can no longer be pooled to my CD player. There was also a collection games, think Chess and dominoes, a gift card, and a few shirts.

Well, I'm going to spend most of my Christmas break re-playing Twilight Princess. Afterwards, I plan to play Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door again. There is something about the Paper Mario series that keeps me coming back despite having beaten them quite a few times before. Furthermore, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is one of my favorite games of the last generation, second only to Twilight Princess. I really do hope that Nintendo releases Super Mario RPG for the virtual console soon, considering that the Paper Mario games were spiritual sequels to it and I would like to finally get a chance to play it. I'm also looking forward to Super Paper Mario greatly, really liking what I have seen of the game so far. Although I am a bit worried that due to the platforming aspect, the game's story won't be as great as previous Paper Mario stories. Platformers made by Nintendo tend to have, how should I put this..... non existent story. It would be a shame if Nintendo took such a route with Super Paper Mario as it was the story segments that I enjoyed most in previous Paper Mario games.

Oh and if Nintendo thinks Metroid Prime 3 will tide me over early on in 2007, they are sorely mistaken. I don't like the Metriod series to same degree I like many other series. The games are high quality and Samus is an awesome character and all that, (the atmosphere in Metroid Prime was great in the sense that you were all alone) but I did not find myself having too much fun playing the games or at least not the amount some others seem to have. ( Metroid Prime was the highest scoring game on Game Cube here on GameSpot) At any rate, I won't be getting the next Metroid suffice to say and I hope Nintendo does not put too much faith in it and forget about other titles such as Super Paper Mario.

[video=IHc3xWOq5bgFuDLW]

WARNING, MAJOR SPOILERS IN VIDEO.

Hope it conveys at least a bit of the awesomeness of Twilight Princess.

Its quite a shame GameSpot didn't think Twilight Princess was good enough to win best action/adventure game.

Its quite the event, riding around Hyrule field in Tp. I just started a second file on Tp and I am still awe struck by how epic the field is and its large size. Really, this is only the second time that Hyrule has been featured in 3d, (WW does not count, all that water negates any presence Hyrule had) so perhaps it should not come as a surprise that it would have such a effect, yet that does not make it any less impressive. There have been a lot of complaints about the game and many suggestions to "improve" the next Zelda. 90% of the suggestions would most likely backfire, seriously, an MMO? What good would such a game achieve? How about the thought of making Zelda the main controllable character? Did we learn nothing from the CD-I games?

I guess my point in regards to Zelda is that at the end of the day,  its all about the thrill of adventure.

In other news, I've been at GameSpot for about a year now, although that would be shorter if the Legend of Zelda Union had moved. Of course, that did not happen and will not happen, for obvious reasons.:P GameSpot has been attaining a lot of hate for their reviews lately. If you go to any other site, the mention of GameSpot will incite a wrath like no other. This does not bother me, but those that dislike the games that have been on the receiving end of the questionable reviews seem to be accumulating at this site. Worse yet, many members have since disappeared for various reasons.

At any rate, those that are still displeased with the reviews that some games have received should sound off on the reader's choice for 2006.

I purchased the original Legend of Zelda from Nintendo's Virtual Console service via the use of Wii points. (500 to be precise.) I never had the opportunity to fully play the epic title and decided to make it my first of what is sure to be many online purchases from Nintendo. As it stands, it is no surprise that there are Zelda fans complaining about recent Zelda titles being easy. Even Alttp was relatively easy by comparison, or it may just be that I am not use to the movement of Link as well as only being able to thrust the sword forward. Considering this was released early on for the Nes, the quality is surprising and the special aurora that the other Zelda games have is clearly present.

Should be fun.