But first, a brief update on my school situation since that rather depressing journal a while ago... If you could care less, honk twice and skip to the bold line.

Anyway, so it's been a lot better, just a bad start. Classes are locked down now, so no big deal. Spanish is boring as ever with Senor Smith... Yeah, So I might as well give up on the girl, whatever chance I had I lost long ago. So I promise my further journals will be about gaming an whatnot, barring a major event. No more whining from me... after today. No really.

So, anyway, I'm into the normal routine now... with a little extra boredom thrown in. Homework, touchds, scouts, various lesser forums, games, and even occasionally friends... This weekend though... Man bad luck. One of my friends is having a birthday party (pretty much a halo party with extra sugar... fun) at the same time as my scout campout... I'll have to negotiate this. Oh well, back to the topics at hand.

----------------------------------

With all of that aforementioned boredom, I'm sure you can understand why I've been waiting so fervently for this new game for the ds, Advance Wars: Dual Strike. I've heard (and said) great things about advance wars, and I know the DS version will measure up. I'm suprised at gamespot's rating, considering they're normally not very sequel-friendly (maybe that's why they're so tough on Mario Kart), so obviously this'll be a hellova game. Of course I called around today, but thanks to the arcane shipping/release date method in use, I have to wait until the day AFTER the release date... This and the new Lunar videos on my flash drive, I'm convinced I can get two more to purchase a DS faster than they would have otherwise. One's an advance wars junkey, and the other is, well... a Lunar freak.

Personally I want to see this "Arcade Style" mode in advance wars. Sounds like a very fun extra. Also, map making with the styluse will be easier than ever, and my AW loving friend is looking forward to it as well, after spending hours dragging terrain. Well, I assume the D-Pad controls will be easy as ever, but I wish more games like this would switch to using B and Y rather than A and B as it feels more natural, especiall for action games, but I can certainly live with it after playing Fire Emblem in it for so long.

I'm also nearing completion of Meteos. 12 endings unlocked, and all but two planets... I even have the horribly expensive Meteo. I still have no idea how to get the last two though... I just hope it's not all endings on highest difficulty, or something like that. Maybe once I hit 48 hours of play... That's not far off.

Also, I hit level 8. No big accomplishment. I personally don't recognize the video game reference here. I liked being a Sectoid a while, but moving on.

School is back today, and it's got me depressed. I've lost all hope of getting together with the girl I've been chasing for two years, and I'm screwed. I've got to get two classes changed and quick, or I'll lose my window and die of absolute boredom. It's one of the wierdest experiences yet going back for my second year of high school. It's completely familiar, but entirely worse, and infinitely wierder. I don't know what I'm going to do for the rest of the year... I hope to got I get another class... with extreme luck it will be with her. This is the first time in two years I've been completely without any class or lunch period in her company. I was fortunate enough to run into her in the halls and said hello, but it was so brief and sudden I found a way to screw it up. Sure, I'm obsessing a bit, but it kind of hit me hard, seeing her again.

Man, after such a wonderfully boring summer, it seems like things went to hell in no time. Well, it's just the first day, so I'll see how it goes. It's just so damn boring. My legs hurt just from staying still for so long. Damn it I've had that heavy metal version of Mr. Sandman from the flash cartoon stuck in my head all day. God, was it this bad last year? At least I've got a relatively familliar bunch for my lunch period. I don't know how I was the least bit excited about this. I don't know...I've just got to say something before I go insane to myself. Well, it's in my genes... Maybe I should succumb to madness before I do somthing idiotic.

Anyway, my computer's coming back tomorrow, so I should be much more preocupied. It's a bit turbulent now, so less dwelling on school the better. I have a new guild member to help through the game on Guild wars, but I'm more than a little worried he's going to leave because he can't get our guild members to help. My main is stuck... because rangers are nobody's best friend and no one wants them in their party as aposed to a monk, warrior, or effective caster. My elementalist is in the mountains at about lv 13-14, and my favorite so far, Canas Arell, a N/Mo, is in about the same space.

I've got limited funds, about $50, and at least three games I'm eying at this moment. FIrst is an older one. Unreal Tournament 2004. I've been playing the excellent demo for a few months now, and I"ve logged over 90 xfire hours on it, so it should be worth the $30. The other two are about the same price, and are coming out in the coming month. Nintendogs is certainly a must, and I've decided on the Chihuahua version. That sheepdog just looks great. The third one is the real kicker. Nintendogs comes out on the 22nd (simultaneously to another game I'm watching carefully, the DS version of Advance Wars), but the third, Rebelstar, comes out on the 30th. It's made by the developers of my favorite game of all time, X-COM, and the backbone of the game is the amazing turn based combat of that classic. It's a GBA game up aganst two great DS games and the best FPS of all time, but it's XCOM! What am I to do? I suppose I could ask my mom to catch me up on my allowance... She probably owes me about 50 dollars...

Well, I just needed to vent...

Well, it's been a while since I wrote, and since an issue that concerns me has just come to my attention, I suppose this would be a good time.

Well, in a heated debate with a person that used moves in ssbm that altered lag, not for the entire field of battle, but for a single move. If that's not an exploit, I don't know what it is. First off, we established early that this was in fact a form of cheating, yet he persisted to give rationalizations. Ok, so once we know it's cheating, there's really no way to rationalize it right? Well, it gets worse. As it is, the entire field of competitive players think that these are fair. They use them in tournament matches, and you can't really be competitive according to most without using them. So, the question is: Do you use cheats just because the judges are too lazy/dumb to realize that these moves are not part of the actual game? Of course you don't.

Now, there's really not much you can do about it as of now, because all of those players are quite content cheating, and they wouldn't have it any other way. That's why I'm hoping beyond hopes that one thing is added now that all consoles will have online capability: patches for console games. PC games, FPS and MMOs in particular have already picked up that hint, and carefully monitor and regulate whatever people are using to get an unfair advantage by way of updates to the game, or patches. This would finally destroy these "Professional Cheaters" once and for all, hopefully. Until such time as console developers catch up, I suppose the only thing I can do is fight the good (and fair) fight, and try to convince people to do the same. Please all reading this, regardless of the game, never resort to cheating, exploits, or anything that would give you an unfair advantage No matter what others are doing.

A link to the debate:
http://www.touchds.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=2000&start=0

On a happier note though, I got a new game, and it is amazing! Meteos, a wonderful game by none other than Q, the developer of the popular PSP title Lumines. I was never a big tetris fan, but this game is extremely fun, and I enjoy playing it every time I turn it on. The gameplay is superficially similar to tetris, but if you look deeper, it quickly becomes apparent that it is much more complex. There are tons of planets to unlock, plenty of sound tracks, and lots of fun.

One of my favorite things about the game is the music. There's so much variety, and all of it is pure gold. All the sound affects are also custom to each track, to blend in and contribute to the music, so it never obtrudes too much but you know it's there. Not to mention you have a sound room, so once you unlock the tracks by fusing with meteos you sent back to space you can listen to them at any time.

At times the game can be incredibly hectic, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Inherently there are two types of puzzle games. The first is one where you have plenty or infinite time to complete whatever task is layed out before you. The other, meteos included, makes you do decisions on the fly, and they normally end in fast and furious action. No game captures this better than meteos in my experience. The system works so that you consistantly end up in close calls, and with some well done moves you can often use the massive piles of accumulated blocks to smother your opponents. My favorite DS game yet.

On a side note, lv7, I'm a Sectoid! That means your brains are mine...

I saw War of the Worlds last night. It rocked! I still don't think tom cruise was a great choice, but I suppose it attracted more people...

Spoilers Ahead!



Well, I'll start by laying out some differences between the book and the movie. For starters, in the movie the war machines were hidden underground, and it was hidden in a lightning storm that the capsules came with no machines, simply the aliens that would controll them. That's fine, but it's quite unrealistic. Think it through. Would an alien civilization visit earth, bury dozens of these massive war machines in preperation to take on a species that was barely beginning civilization? Why not just take control then. Save tons of resources, and they could much more easily control the population they wish to feed on. I suppose the main reason this wouldn't make sense would be that they wanted much more food for their large population, so that is excusable. In the book of course, it was much more believable. They came in 10 capsules, each holding 2-3 martians, and the materials needed to construct one tripod and other construction equipment needed to further their efforts.

The tripods themselves were a wonderful recreation of the book. In the book the tripods were never given a real feel of complexity, with an amazing fluidity of movement like it was nearly an extension of the martian inhabiting it. Of course, these are more machine like in movement, but overall I'm very pleased with the tripods.

On to the next thing: The beam. In the book, you had a "Heat Ray", which immediately burst everthing into flame. Every segment of ground its gaze passed over was forever charred, it made bricks crumble and lead run like water. This new weapon is much different. I expected them to make it something different than the heat ray, but I hoped, this being science fiction not one of spielberg's crappy suspence movies, that it would be explainable by science. The way the beam behaved was this: it was a large purple/blue beam, that when it hit someone, would immediately disentigrate/char/explode them. My first guess was that it was some sort of microwave beam, superheating the water in humans, but powerful enough to charr them at the same time. Hence, humans get both exploded and charred at the same time. Makes sense right? Nope. Spielberg just had to include one thing that would defy reason... When people explode/disentigrate, their clothes remain intact, and go flying off. That makes no sense at all! I guess they went for some hollywood "Disentigration beam". Oh well, so much for science fiction. Also, it should be noted that the black and deadly gas rockets from the book are completely neglected here.

Next up, Characters. In the book they never gave any of the characters names, even the main one, as it was being writtin as if by a survivor of the aliens that wished to remain anonymous. The narrator was a man of science in the book, a writer for one of the many upstart papers of the time. He wrote on many different subjects, and was conveniently and amateur astronomer, with a friend that worked in the also very convenient, nearby observatory. He and his astronomer friend Ogilvy, the only one with any real significance to the story with a name given, were some of the first to observe the giant jets of gas coming from Mars. Eleven of these jets were observed. One was the casting of the great gun, and the following ten, one every 24 hours, were each one of the capsules.

Mr. Cruise did a fine job at the role he was given, but sadly that was not one that reflected the original hero. He was a single parent, taking turns with his ex-wife looking after their two children, a young girl, seen in the trailers plenty (and extremely whiney), and also a typical troubled teenage son. He is such a typical cruise character, I lost a bet that I thought he was an ex fighter pilot that would eventually kill one of the tripods.

I'm off to do something else, so I'll conclude this later.

Well, I'm back from camp, and the strike at touchds is over, so I suppose it's time things got back to normal.

I guess I never really talked about my camp experience, so why not take the time to do so now? Anyway, I spent the last week at the Skymont Scout Reservation, for a short and fun summer camp. Most of our members were there, and we brought plenty of entertainment (books, chess and other board games, a variety of card games, ect), but of course no electronics. I suppose the first thing to get out of the way is that this is not an average scout camp. Sure, we still sleep outside, but other than that it's about as much summer camp as you can get. We have one bathroom with flushing toilets, a good sized dining hall, and a number of improvements made just this year. A rather unpleasant happening this year was the first female to grace our campsite in years... a cubscout mom (SATAN) 

First off, they put up a new pavillion for Polaris, a program for the new boy scouts, which looks quite good. They put a very large pile of gravel out there, and many of the scouts came around to help them put in some sewer pipes around there, including many of us. The next day of course, we had to undo, and then subsequently redo the project, because some idiot put in the wrong pipe. They paved the road going into the camp, so GRAVEL NO MORE! We got sunny ridge, one of the closest camps to the canteen and dining hall, which rocked. They even replaced some of the tent's rat-infested wooden stands with solid slabs of concrete. Of course, as is regular, we all quickly claimed our tents and laid some stuff in it to make sure there were no misunderstandings, but our relatively new scout leader, Mr. Lee, decided that we shouldn't claim tents, and that we should allocate them later, shouted so while he cleared our stuff out of our good tent in favor of his young son. We shall make him pay sooner or later.

The same thing happened to some of our other friends that also claimed cement tents, but this time because the cubscout mom kicked them out for her son that "needed to be closer to the road in case of a diabetic coma". While that sounds like a good answer, but there was another tent much closer to the road, but apparantly it's better to have a diabetic coma on cement. We, of course, ended up in tents with rats under them which kept us awake more than we would like. I personally ended up bunking with a someone that I hate, and he hates me back. Enough of my whining though.

After a rather rocky start, we went to dinner, hoping to raise our spirits a bit. The food wasn't any worse or better than previous years per se, but they cut down on serving sizes drastically. All of us being very rather active guys (at least for that week), this really sucked. Campfire wasn't any better. The same skits we've been hearing from the staff for the last 3+ years, and it's still not funny. Well, the OA guys came out in their loincloths, and that was slightly entertaining. The other guys played some capture the flag, but I refrained from it, having shown my grace while running to the campfire, tripping on a root, rolling several times, and bruising several nonvital but very useful parts.

I did however get a good running start at my book, War of the Worlds. While I 'd read it a couple times before, the last time was when I was 10 or younger, so I didn't really remember much of it, just that it was an awesome book with stuff exploding. I've got to say that other than some technological differences, I prefer the style of writing from 100 years ago to most of the stuff from today. Then again that's why it's a classic. Some of the technological differences were pretty interesting, such as when he learns that the aliens are building a flying machine, lets out great despair, since flight was not available but much sought at the time.

Well, after a really crappy first day, things started looking up. Breakfast was regularly abyssmal (including fake watery eggs and rubbery chicken), and I went down to the range to get through the boring first day of shooting with all the safety lectures. After taht I headed off to lunch... That was heavenly. I was a waiter, so I decided to sit at the adult table and wait that one, since none of the other bums wanted to. The upshot of that was, though, that there were less people, hence more food for me. And it was pizza day. I had 5 peices, and double that in water. I think it would not be an overstatement to say that some of my crap from the last day still consisted of digested pizza. Of course, the rest of the day I got some chess in, killed sheffey. Of course I lost my queen like I always do... but as usual I made a very careful and creative checkmate after eliminating some of his more evasive pieces. Sheffey isn't a big chess player anyway, but he wasn't bad.

I read more of my book, getting up to the part at the ferrey where the kick the ass out of one of the tripods. I also headed down to the shooting range to do a bit more shotgun, since I needed to get used to the new guns... Once I got used to them I was doing quite well though, and I got qualified after a couple days of shooting. Archery was another matter however. There we had to continue with the safety and stuff for another day and a half (hey arun if you're reading this from your camp... the archery chick did in fact remember you)...

Ah, this playlist sucks... that's better.

Anyway, the rest of the time I enjoyed some chess, some boring and one fairly lively match. The less lively ones were with some of the new scouts, which sucked. The more lively one was with Nick, the guy I hate. Well, I didn't lose my queen without reason for once. I traded for his queen. That n00b, the only thing he ever did was check me with his queen. I'm used to losing mine, so I knew how to deal without mine all too well, but he sucked without it. He started playing more defensively, and even though he did better, he was only dragging it out. While his queen was prancing around my king, I had his king pinned down in a corner. Once I got rid of that nuisance, it didn't take too much more to finish him. Just had to get them dang rooks out of the way.

As for the rest of camp, I finished off all my merit badges, and qualified for archery after some amount of shooting... On the last full day I took a nice nostalgic walk out towards the waterfall. It hadn't rained, so the creek that fed it wasn dried up, but that didn't stop the memories from bubbling up. Of course corey was once more temporarily known as slush for blood, and me as Steve, and shortly after Steve the Stinky Fresh. For OA we had three options. I didn't want to do it quite yet this year, so that left three: Ben, Sheffey, and Nathan. Of course ben is an ass, and no one likes him, so he was obviously out. However, the other two have been around a long time, and really earned it.

I finished up my book by the third day, and I'm really looking forward to the movie on wednesday. From the look of the trailers I think it might actually follow the story a bit well even though it's placed a century after. I do have a bit of a problem with the choice of tom cruise... Sure he's a big name actor, but he's certainly not what I would invision as the "hero" of the story. Not to mention he has a daughter... what's that about? He had a wife in the book, but she was a minor role. I'm especially curious as to how they play the ending. If they do it like the book, they better play the downfall of civilization right, or it will come off crappy.

Another thing that I'm worried about is the protrayal of the martians. They would have to beef them up since a lucky cannon shell took out one in the book, but if they make them impervious that would ruin the story. I hope they include the part about the Thunder Child, because that was my favorite part of book one, but how they would do that I don't know. Well, all I can say is that both H.G. Wells and Spielberg are geniuses, but I hold Wells in higher regard, so let's just hope this turns out well.

I got a response from Dave in my email today, and it is quite a good one. I believe what's left of the strike that isn't being made a mockery by the forum members could end quite soon, with mormon's approval, and maybe a bit more discussion. As you probably know, some people think mormon is already at camp, and hence it is just a way to get what he wants without actually doing anything, but that is far from the truth. They just don't get why we striked...


Thanks for letting me know, and I have more understand now on why this whole thing erupted. I want the members to have as much say on the site as the admins and somehow I get the feeling that Chuddy is taking over and feeling too much power in his position. This will be something I’ll be bringing up with him and Allen.

The site definitely needs some work and updates and if I were in a position to do more to it then I would, but Allen, the site owner, is never around and it’s really a shame because I fear the site is going downhill.

I want you to know that I think all the members are great, and I’d hate to see you guys leave because of an argument about signatures. I know I have been asking some people to reduce sig sizes but I don’t think this is needed and we can come to a compromise. Certainly I agree that the majority of members should get the say and not just one or two admins.

I hope that you’ll stick around the site – I myself am looking to launch a new ds/gaming community in the near future. Whether it will be a success I don’t know, but I want to try because I hate watching TouchDS go downhill – I’d like people like you to help me run this new site.

Sorry about this whole situation – I’m talking to Chuddy, Allen and most members so we can sort it out and make sure members have the most say in the community – after all without you guys, the site would be nothing. I’m grateful for everyone for helping make TouchDS a success – especially when I was running the place.

Thanks for letting me know and I hope you will stay on the boards.

Regards,

Dave

Sadly, it appears that the strike may end before it starts. Me and mormon are the only ones left.

It began with a completely idiotic decision under the guise of a positive change for the site, which they have been talking about forever. Well, I suppose I could explain it all, but I will instead just post my email to one of the site admins.


It's quite simple. As you may have noticed, I was not the first one to come up with the strike idea. This is, however, the first time in this site's history this has happened.

I come around after being away, and go through all of that discussion, and find that there was talk of limiting sig size. Not only that, but I find chuddy and touchds basically telling the members to shove it in favor of a single member that has yet to really contribute other than complaining, and also in favor of non-members! Somehow I don't believe that it was in fact a misuderstanding as is now being claimed. If you review the original conversation that becomes quite evident.

I have to doubt that you were even a major part of the decision, even though you are a site admin. I like chuddy, but he seems to be getting far too big a head. He has been closing posts in the lounge for going off topic for quite a while, which is simply a contradiction. Now he is making decisions almost by himself, strongly against the wishes of the people that actually use the site.

Also, on the subject of changing the site, this has been in circulation for a long time. This is in fact the first and only change so far. Now there is talk of changes for the better again, but I fear that the same will happen and it will fall under the rug, or worse, will be taken as a mandate for changes regardless of popularity as it seems to have been now.

In conclusion, it also seems that the only one to understand our leaving the site was Ghaleon, yet another indicator of the problem. I have read your arguments in the Come Back and Strike Response forums, but it seems that it is far too likely an attempt to appease us and attract us back rather than fixing the problem. I love this site, it is one of my favorites, and I visit it more than any other probably, but there needs to be more community involvement in our community.


Sincerely,
Russell Davis
ShadowMarth03

Well, Battle week 8 has begun, and since I'm soon to head off to another brief camp I'm not going to get to play much. For those of you who don't know (and that's probably a whole 1/2 of my audience of two), the battleweek competitions are a Star Wars Battlefront competition between various clans. I am a member of the Gametoast (GT) clan, which is comprised of battlefront modders. We regularly supply pretty much all the mod maps you'll see out there. Anyway, I finally got my first tournament match going, a 3v3 with BURN. Who knows what it's an abbreviation for.

We played four matches, as is the norm. Two maps, and we rotated factions. We played Bespin: Cloud City, and also Mos Isely. We played both in the civil war era, and we won one match... They have one rediculously good sniper, I think his name was IBIS. The guys at gt are great. We just play for fun. EclipticalRealms.com sets up a teamspeak server so that even though battlefront doesn't have voice chat (which is supposed to be fixed in SWBF2) you can do so. The three other guys in the channel were a lot of fun, though I was quickly deemed "Shadow, the quiet one".

Well anyway, obviously i won't be posting for the next week. So I guess I'll see you sooner or later.

P.S. If it wouldn't be too much trouble, please leave a comment if you're reading this. I'd like to guage exactly how many people read this, however few.

Well, I've been listening to a ton of classic rock from various artists all day while playing classic PC games, and I picked up a very classic book for my next camp, War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. I figure if this is the third time I'm reading it and I'm still anxious to do so, I'll probably be revisiting it in a few months, so it was worth buying. Besides, it's a classic.

Anyway, I've been playing quite a bit of X-COM, and I got a good game going. I found a way to organize and remember my squad members a bit better. I used to not even give them names, but lists of main stats for names, but that's very drab, and I'm too lazy to go through all my soldiers like that. Half of them are going to die anyway! So, I came up with a way to remember my higher classed squaddies without overcomplicating it. I have begun giving the highest ranking officers the names of Red Vs Blue characters. Right now my highest ranking character is Tex, and she kicks ass. I have a black guy named Tucker (if you're a fan of rvb you get it, hehe), and a blond girl named doughnut. Simmons has recently been promoted as well. I know doc is dead now, but he's next on the list. I'm waiting for a good psi user to give the pride of being labeled my favorite character, Church.

Anyway, I shot down a large ufo, hoping it was just a simple supply ship trying to set up base, but to my suprise it was my first encounter with Snakemen, Terror class ufos, and the snakemen's elite and terrifying lackeys, Cryssalids. I Hate Cryssalids. They can't hold weapons, but they're still possibly the most lethal threat in the game next to etherials. They have big movement stats, so they can run right up to you before you know they're there, and if your guys don't take him down first, say goodbye to at least one of your allies, as they are turned into freaky zombies that when you shoot, explode to reveal another cryssalid. Luckily Tex had a trusty stun bomb, and that took care of the first one, that suprised the hell out of me. I still didn't know what kind of aliens to expect until that thing popped over a sand dune. I had a few stun bombs left, and it payed off. I only lost three members of my 12 person team on that hellish mission, and gained three live aliens, one of them a snakeman leader.

That gave me a big jump toward the final objective of going to mars to kick some of their weapons and powers back in their faces, but I still havn't made a ufo myself, and I still have a long way to go before this one's over. I wonder if I could beat it without psi... Nah, that would be suicidal.

Exciting day on guild wars. I finally beat that hellishly hard trial of ascention named Elona. I then went on a celebratory killing spree on lv 10 hydras deep in the ascalonian wilderness. After that I decided to head back to face my Mirror Self in the final Rite of Ascention. At first I didn't know what I would do. The first time I died after a medium sized battle. The second I did some work with my skills, removing some necro skills like Blood Well that required a corpse and would be useless in a 1 on 1. Also, I had to keep in mind at all times that anything I took with me he would have but better. Well, that ruled taking a pet out. I tried apply poison, but quickly learned that he could use it a lot better...

After a couple more trial and error runs, I thought I had a dang good lineup of skills... But the best I could do was fight actively for 8 minutes in a stale mate. In that extremely long fight I learned an amazing truth that then made the rest of it incredibly simple. Of course i'm a ranger, so I can attatch a secondary close range weapon like an axe, but of course I can't hardly do any good damage with it. So I got an idea... I ran right up to him and continued to use my bow. He pulled out a very cool looking axe, but since I suck at axes, he does to! I kept up with the fight, but he had both of the healing spells I took, and that just wouldn't do. The next trial I beat it. I took careful thought into taking advantage of his close range weakness. I used only one healing spell and attatched concussive shot, so that when he tried to use that one spell I could use concussive shot to disable it for a while. Of course, I attatched as many bow attack skills as were practical, seeing as at close range they were useless to him. That did it. After a short and fun battle, I royally kicked his ass!

Well, after that I moved on a couple storyline quests, and captured some awesome elite skills from bosses. I eventually arrived in Draknor, the big Dwarf city, which totally rocks, because it has a unique arena. You can do 1 on 1 matches, or team up BEFORE you go in and compete with a like-numbered group. Of course, I'm sure this will be an option in the HoH, but for those of us stuck down here getting blown away by Murskaat (for villians it's way too much like muskrat), it's awesome, and arun I expect to be fighting along side you now.

Well, I joined a cool union, the Turn Based Strategy Union. Half the games on their panel I have on my desktop. I also got into a classic turn based game by the name of Civilization II. Maybe you've heard of it? Well, I was royally getting killed, but my space ship was almost prepared at 66% success rate. I was knocked down to three well defended cities by those damned Zulu, but that didn't stop me. I prepared some nukes and launched the ship. I had about 15 years to survive til the ship reached Alpha Centauri, proclaiming me victor, so I nuked the hell out of those zulu bastards! That's right, the completed A.S.S. Joe Jack (American) (I like to call it the Complete A.S.S.) reached it's destination! Does that mean I have to buy Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri now?

I also tried out this fun indie Mario game named Super Mario Pac, which is like classic 2d mario, except you have FLUDD from sunshine. Pretty fun... Now only if they'd add Yoshi and come out with Super Mario Joust.