Bottom of the ninth in the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, one of the most hyped events in all of baseball. The American League is leading the National League 5 to 2. Two outs and a runner on base.

Alfonso Soriano of the Chicago Cubs hits a home run for the National League to make the score 5 to 4.

The next three batters are walked, loading the bases.

Another walk or hit and the game is tied. A home run or powerful hit and the National League wins in a come-from-behind victory. But an out and the National League loses by one.

Can you feel the tension?

No, you can't feel the tension. You are watching Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference.

Whose idea was it to schedule Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference during the Major League Baseball All-Star Game? Microsoft allows people not at the event to watch its conference live, in part, to create excitement around upcoming and recently released games, peripherals and services for the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows, so surely it wants as many viewers as possible.

Is Microsoft bitter that its XSN Sports line of sports video games failed to take off and is taking it out on sports fans by not allowing them to join in the excitement? Or perhaps no one at Microsoft has paid any attention to what is going on in the world of sports since the company sold most of its sports properties to Take-Two and Ubisoft in 2004 and 2005, respectively?

Regardless, there is crossover between baseball fans and video game players--in fact, there are three baseball video games for the Xbox 360 alone--and because of this I missed much of Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference.

I must be getting older.

I pay hundreds of dollars for a PlayStation 3 and I end up using it for Go! Sudoku more than anything else.

There is nothing wrong with Go! Sudoku, but given what the PlayStation 3 is capable, using the console to play a simple game like sudoku feels like a waste.

I should have finished Oblivion and Dreamfall long ago, but I haven't touched either in months because my desire to play sudoku is greater. I've barely started Oblivion, and I bought that game with my PlayStation 3.

And whenever I crave something action-oriented I go for the instant gratification of Guilty Gear X2's Survival Mode. (Thank you, Pelican, for making a PlayStation/PS2 controller-to-USB adapter that works with my fighting pads.)

Two years ago I decided to cut back on my video game purchases because I was becoming jaded from playing too many games that were good but no better than or different from ones I had already played.

Now I'm not even playing those better and different games.

I am beginning to wonder if I no longer have the patience for games that make me "work" for their rewards.

You might think this means I have an increased desire to get a Wii: the new home for pick-up-'n'-play games, but the opposite is happening. As I become more casual about my game playing habits the idea of owning two game consoles, even two that do a lot to differentiate themselves from one another, sounds increasingly silly. There is a list of soon to be released PlayStation 3 games that I want to play (or at least I think I want to play). A list of Wii games in addition to that list of PlayStation 3 games would mean spending a lot of money on a lot of games and probably not getting a whole lot of use out of a whole lot of them.

The PlayStation 3 games I want to play, overall, appeal to me more than the Wii games I want to play. I keep telling myself that anyway.

Oh, and there's also my DS Lite, computer and, uh, mobile phone. Those things also play games. Adding a fifth gaming platform to the mix sounds ridiculous.

This is new. I had been excited about the Wii from when it was announced until recently--I was waiting for a black Wii. When I sold my GameCube last year, I kept most of its games and accessories so I could use them again when I bought my Wii. Now that it looks like I won't be buying a Wii, I have to figure out what to do with all this stuff.

Maybe this ultra-casual thing will pass when I finish Go! Sudoku. Only 558 puzzles to go.

Last year I wrote an editorial in which I declared fighting games dead because the lack of evolution in the genre since Street Fighter II (1991) and Virtua Fighter (1993) was causing existing fighting fans to lose interest and complicated control schemes prevented new fans from replacing them.

I did not give up all hope in fighting games, ending by suggesting that an original fighting game that plays nothing like existing fighting games could revive the genre.

I have been thinking about this lately, and I no longer believe a unique fighting game can save the fighting genre. If a unique fighting game could revive fighting games, someone would have declared Def Jam: Icon, one of the few fighting games that does not play like Street Fighter II or Virtua Fighter, the fighting genre's savior.

The problem with fighting games is not that they are complicated; the problem with fighting games is that they require players to know everything from the beginning.

There are complicated games in other genres, but they do not (always) overwhelm new players because they (the games) can teach them (the players) how to play the games as they (the players) play the game.

Is there a wall blocking your path? The first time it happens the (non-fighting) game teaches you how to climb a wall. A weapon on the ground? The game tells you how to pick up weapons, and every time you pick up a weapon you are taught or reminded how to perform a different attack.

Fighting games cannot do this. In fighting games you always do the same thing (fighting), and always at the same pace. A fighting game cannot slow down at key events to teach players specific techniques.

At best, a fighting game may include a training mode, not integrated into the main game. A player can spend hours in training mode learning everything there is to know about one of multiple, differentiated playable characters. How many players are willing to spend hours training for a video game, especially when games in other genres make training modes unnecessary? (And those who are willing need strong memories to remember everything they learned in training mode when they enter the main game.)

Sports video games also have complicated control schemes and cannot integrate tutorials into the main games, but unlike fighting games it is not a problem. If you buy a copy of, for example, Major League Baseball 2K7, you are probably already a baseball fan. You know the rules of baseball. All you need to learn is how to go about performing things in the video game that you have seen professional players do in real life. You do not need to be taught what a curveball is and what the benefits of throwing one are.

Can fighting games be revived? Maybe when affordable motion-sensitive controls evolve to the point that they can fully mimic our body movements. Until then fighting games will remain limited to the decreasing number of existing fans who still play sequels in long-running fighting series and those who buy fighting games based on licensed properties because they like the licensed property.

This has nothing to do with The Simpsons Movie.

I insist that all my game controllers for one console be different colors. It makes it easier to tell them apart. You can argue that numbered lights on current-generation game controllers make this no longer necessary, but it is still easier to differentiate multiple, otherwise identical-looking objects by color than by which one (or two) of four little lights is lit up.

As a PlayStation 3 owner, this is a problem. The Sixaxis is currently available only in a slightly translucent midnight gray. Surely it will be available in other colors eventually, but that does not help me now. Either I buy multiple, identical-looking Sixaxises (Sixaxes?), or I limit myself to single-player--offline anyway--games and game modes.

Or so I thought.

Via Uncrate, a Web site that covers cool men's products, I have discovered ColorWare: a car-quality painting service for game consoles, game controllers, iPods, Zunes and select computers.

For $75 I can buy a PlayStation 3 Sixaxis controller in one of 28 colors. That's $25 more than suggested retail price of a Sixaxis, but these things are used for years and years. Spending an extra $25 per controller in 2007 is not going to bother me in 2012.

ColorWare also allows people to send in their already-purchased Sixaxis controllers to be painted for $25 each.

Single-color problem solved, but now I am overwhelmed with color choices.

Playing with the color picker on ColorWare's Web site, I decide that the Sixaxis looks best in Caution (yellow). I am about to order a Caution-painted Sixaxis until I realize that as much as I like yellow, buying a game controller in that color is not a good idea.

Yellow is the current trendy color. Currently I like it more than all other colors, but come August, when yellow is no longer trendy, I (and everyone else in the world) will hate yellow. If I am to use something for years and years, I have to like the way it looks for years and years.

Perhaps Smoke (white) is the best choice for my second Sixaxis. Midnight gray is almost black, and having two game controllers in almost opposite colors would be a nice contrast. That and white will never look completely awful.

Before I order, I decide that a Sixaxis in any color is a waste of money. Vibration, not in the Sixaxis, is likely to be in future PlayStation 3 controllers. I think that vibration is a gimmick, but I would rather have it than not have it.

I'll use my PS2 to PS3 Adapter Controller Dongles with my PlayStation 2 Cordless Action Controllers until then and pray that a must-own multiplayer game with required tilty-ing does not come out before the Sixaxishock.

Can someone explain how color trends work? No one sets them. They just happen.

The PlayStation 3 is backward-compatible with virtually all PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, but peripherals are another story. The PlayStation 3 lacks legacy controller ports, so all (non-USB) PlayStation and PS2 alternative controllers such as guitar controllers, dance pads and fighting sticks and pads cannot be connected directly to a PS3.

You can play alternative controller-supported legacy games like Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution and Street Fighter Collection 2 with a standard PlayStation 3 Sixaxis controller, but they are not fun that way, and in the case of Street Fighter Collection 2 and other fighting games, they can be painful.

PlayStation/PS2 controller-to-USB adapters have been around longer than the PlayStation 3, but the lack of "Analog" buttons--the PlayStation/PS2 "Analog" button is the same as the PS3 "PlayStation Home" button--on many alternative controllers prevents them from enabling themselves and assigning controller numbers on a PS3 (and prior to the System Software 1.70 update, most adapters did not work with PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, only PlayStation 3 games). Additionally, Hori and Sega's PlayStation 3 fighting sticks work only with PlayStation 3 games, not PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games (even after the 1.70 update), making them less than ideal unless all your fighting games are for the PS3.

Enter the PS2 to PS3 Adapter Controller Dongle from Pelican. With a "PlayStation Home" button on the adapter itself, Pelican claims it is "compatible with all PS2 controllers including: DualShock 2 controllers, wireless controllers, guitars, steering wheels, arcade fighting sticks, dance mats and more," and makes specific mention on the front of its packaging that it "works with Guitar Hero 1 & 2." This adapter has the potential to return the fun to alternative controller-supported legacy games on a PlayStation 3.

So, does it return the fun?

The PS2 to PS3 Adapter is better than all other PlayStation/PS2-to-USB adapters, but it is not as compatible as Pelican claims.

Initial tests show that this adapter works with the wired Guitar Hero SG Controller, Street Fighter 15th Anniversary Controller, Ascii Pad FT2 and Cordless Action Controller, all with no apparent input lag--there is a delay between pressing the "Mode" ("Analog") button on a Cordless Action Controller and the menu appearing, but its gameplay buttons perform perfectly. Guitar Hero is fun again and Street Fighter Collection 2 is no longer painful thanks to the PS2 to PS3 Adapter.

The Guitar Hero Wireless Controller and Wireless Anashin 2 do not work with the PS2 to PS3 adapter. So much for "compatible with all PS2 controllers." It is understandable that the Wireless Anashin 2 does not work; it was available only in Japan and discontinued years ago. It is not understandable and not acceptable that the Guitar Hero Wireless Controller does not work. The Guitar Hero games are among the currently most popular for the PlayStation 2, and the official Guitar Hero Wireless Controller is widely available. Pelican has no excuse for not testing it with its adapter. It is difficult to go back to wired controllers after you have used wireless ones.

Also, while the PS2 to PS3 Adapter works perfectly with the original Guitar Hero (provided you use the wired guitar controller), Guitar Hero II support is a hack. The adapter has a switch to toggle between "Normal" and "GH2" modes, but switching this switch is not the only thing you need to do to play Guitar Hero II with this adapter. You have to be in the "menu" sub-mode (press "Start" and the green fret button on the guitar controller) to navigate menus, switch to "Righty" or "Lefty" sub-mode (press "Start" and the red or yellow fret button respectively) to perform songs, switch back to "Menu" when a song is finished to navigate the new menu, switch back to "Lefty" or "Righty" to perform the next song and so on. Hammer-ons and Pull-offs are not supported, and Star Power can be activated only by pressing the "Select" button; tilting the guitar controller upward does nothing. Even if you could live with the limitations and constant switching of sub-modes, it would not be worth it; the PS2 to PS3 Adapter is laggy when used with a wired guitar controller for Guitar Hero II.

Finally, the Pelican PS2 to PS3 Adapter does not support vibration. If you want the rumble back in your PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, look elsewhere.

Still, Pelican's PS2 to PS3 Adapter Controller Dongle works with enough legacy peripherals to make it attractive. Just don't buy it expecting to once again play Guitar Hero II with your official Guitar Hero Wireless controller.

The initial NVIDIA display drivers for Windows Vista did not offer options on how to deal with non-native resolutions. If you or a program on your computer--likely a game--set the resolution to something other than your monitor's native resolution, its picture would be stretched to full-screen. And if that non-native resolution's aspect ratio was not the same as your monitor's aspect ratio, you would get a distorted (read: ugly) picture.

NVIDIA released updated Windows Vista drivers toward the end of February that added options to customize how non-native resolutions were displayed. The problem was, they didn't do anything. No matter which option you chose in the NVIDIA Control Panel, non-native resolutions still stretched to full-screen.

"The next release will fix this, right?," I wrote shortly after installing those updated drivers.

The next release is here, and it fixes this.

Sometimes.

Non-native resolutions 1024x768 and higher display the way they are told to display, but lower resolutions stretch to full-screen or, worse (and new to this version of the NVIDIA display drivers), are neither full-screen nor in their correct aspect ratios.

This feature is useless to me until it starts working properly at those lower resolutions. I used it on my previous (Windows XP) computer so games with fixed resolutions (read: 640x480) would not look terrible on my higher-resolution; wider, taller aspect ratio monitor. Now those games look terrible, so I don't play them.

This is not entirely about long-discontinued games not intended to run on contemporary computers. The Longest Journey (2000) got an official patch to make it Windows Vista-compatible, and Syberia II (2004) and the Sierra ****c adventure compilations (2006) are Windows Vista-compatible out-of-the-box and are intended to be viewed only at 640x480 pixels, so until it is possible to play these games on monitors that are not 640x480 pixels at 640x480 pixels or scaled but preserving their proper aspect ratio, there is no point in playing them.

If NVIDIA does not fix this soon, my next video card will be from ATI.

Fighting games are dead, and the lack of evolution in the genre caused me to lose interest in new fighting games years ago, but I still play some older ones from time to time.

Specifically, I still play Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting (1992), Street Fighter III: Third Strike (1999), Street Fighter Alpha 3: Saikyo Dojo (1999) (the version of Alpha 3 that debuted on the Dreamcast), Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (2000) and Guilty Gear X2 (2002). Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting is legendary, and the others still appeal to me for one reason or another. They all have perfect or better conversions on the PlayStation or PlayStation 2, so I don't have to go about connecting obsolete consoles to my television set or track down arcade boards to play what I consider the best versions of these games.

But I can no longer play these games without pain. I used fighting pads from Ascii (now Sega) and NubyTech to play my fighting games on my PlayStation 2, but with my PlayStation 2 traded in for a discount on my PlayStation 3, and the PlayStation 3 having no PlayStation/PS2 controller ports, I am now forced to use a standard controller for fighting games, which is difficult and painful--I once got blisters on my thumbs playing the original Guilty Gear with a PlayStation Dualshock controller.

PlayStation 3 fighting sticks and PlayStation/PS2 controller USB adaptors are available, but reports from around the Internet say that they work only with PlayStation 3 games, so these things will not allow me to play my legacy-platform fighting games without pain. (If someone can tell me otherwise, tell me otherwise.)

It seems that if I want to play my fighting games without pain I have to buy PlayStation 3-specific versions of them when they become available. (And they will become available--with the exception of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, due to licensing issues. The Street Fighter brand has enough nostalgia value to guarantee publisher Capcom will re-release its games on new platforms for years and years, and Sega is sure to make yet another minor update to Guilty Gear X2 in the future, and by then the PlayStation 2 will no longer be viable.)

But will these unannanounced but surely forthcoming new versions of old games be any good? Capcom's recent record with Street Fighter is uneven. Street Fighter Alpha Anthology (2006) and the Street Fighter III: Third Strike half of Street Fighter Anniversary Collection (2004) are perfect or better conversions, but the Street Fighter II games in Capcom ****cs Collection (2005) and Street Fighter Anniversary Collection along with Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting for Xbox Live Arcade (2006) make me glad that I still have my copy of Street Fighter Collection 2 (1998 ) for the original PlayStation. And Guilty Gear Series developer Arc System Works has yet to release a PlayStation 3 game, so it is unknown what level of quality to expect from a PlayStation 3 Guilty Gear game.

I am willing to pay for these games again--I've purchased most of them multiple times already, so what's one more time--but they need to be just as good or better than the ones I currently own. There is no excuse for game publishers releasing inferior versions of older games on newer, more powerful hardware, and I will not reward them for such (lack of) efforts. It would be a shame to have to give up on games I have played for years and years because I can no longer play good versions of them with appropriately-designed controllers, but if that's what happens, it's just as bad for me as it is for publishers.

Whenever my PlayStation 3's fan gets louder I fear my PS3 is about to break.

It isn't because my first PlayStation 3 broke hours after I purchased it. That doesn't help, but the system comes with a one-year warranty, so if it breaks within the next 359 days, at least I won't have to pay for repairs.

It isn't because the PlayStation 3 costs twice as much as a game console should. That doesn't help either. I don't like it when my things break, especially when they are expensive, but I already paid for my PS3, and surely an out-of-warranty repair costs a whole lot less than a new PlayStation 3.

My paranoia comes out of that Sony is likely to soon not include the Emotion Engine (PlayStation 2 processor) in the North American PlayStation 3, making future PS3's less backward-compatible with PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games than the current model.

If my PlayStation 3 breaks, and Sony decides it is beyond repair and gives me a new PlayStation 3, I say goodbye to a portion of my PlayStation and PS2 library. There is also the possibility that Sony could make changes to my PS3 when it is in its hands, which could also be the end of part of my legacy game library--I cannot confirm this, but I have read stories that Sony would remove the parallel port from original PlayStation models as part of the repair process because with unauthorized peripherals in one, a PlayStation could be used to run import and bootleg discs.

Often my paranoia makes me touch my PlayStation 3 when its fan starts making more noise. The console is warm, but not hot. Apparently in no danger of breaking, at least from overheating.

It seems my paranoia is just paranoia.

It doesn't make me any less nervous whenever the fan gets louder.

One of my fantasies is to play guitar for a thrash metal band.

Alas, I never learned how to play guitar, and even if I were to learn, it would be a long time before I could pull off the things my favorite guitarists can perform.

RedOctane, now a division of Activision, came to my rescue in 2005 with Guitar Hero. With this game in my PlayStation 2 and the included toy guitar controller connected to a controller port I could pretend to play the guitar portions of some of my favorite songs. And when I "performed" a song well I was a legend in my own mind.

Not one of my fantasies involves wearing makeup; perming or doing something else crazy to my hair or wearing uncomfortable, ridiculous-looking clothing. Music should speak for itself. If appearance is part of your appeal you could be compensating for your lack of talent as a musician.

This was almost a problem in Guitar Hero. All but one of the performers as whom you could play (Axel Steel) looked like he or she was more interested in appearance than music. Crazy hair and outfits everywhere. (Hey RedOctane, glam metal and British punk are dead.)

Axel Steel in Guitar Hero I: "I just wanna rock."

Fortunately there was Axel Steel, a guy wearing jeans, a t-shirt, jean jacket and no makeup on his face and no product in his long brown hair, so this almost a problem was not a problem. I would have preferred to play as someone less heavy-set and not wearing a jacket, but Axel Steel was good enough.

But in Guitar Hero II, Axel Steel has gone glam. No longer content just being an incredible guitarist, Steel, by default, calls attention to himself by wearing a jean jacket with spikes on the shoulder pads. (And the other characters, returning and new alike, look more ridiculous than the non-Axel Steel characters in the original game.)

Axel Steel in Guitar Hero II: "Hey, look at me!"

Gameplay-wise, this does not matter. The characters in the Guitar Hero series are avatars. The games play the same regardless of which you choose.

So why am I complaining about the lack of non-glam characters in Guitar Hero II when it doesn't matter? The Guitar Hero series is about fantasies. My fantasies do not involve looking ridiculous, and being forced to play as a character who looks ridiculous distracts me from my guitarist fantasy.

So, Activision, I want, from the beginning, to see some normal-looking characters in Guitar Hero III. (And while I'm at it, I want to be able to "play" "Crush" by Anthrax and "Song without Sin" by Living Colour.)

And Electronic Arts and MTV Networks, this also applies to you. If Rock Band is to have on-screen characters represent players, some of those characters need to look and dress like regular people.

I can confirm that my PlayStation 3's hard disk drive is not fried.

I have turned on my PlayStation 3 several times since my last entry, on the off chance that it might work.

One time, to my surprise, it did work. I saw the Cross Media Bar (XMB) instead of the correct hard disk was not found message.

One time.

And it didn't last long. My PlayStation 3 hanged shortly after inserting my Oblivion disc. (I knew there was a problem when it did not show up in the "Games" section.)

Fortunately I was able to eject my Oblivion disc after switching off the rear power switch and then turning the system on again. And this time turning on my PlayStation 3 resulted in the dreaded correct hard disk was not found message, as have all attempts to use the system since.

So the hard disk drive is corrupted, not fried.

Regardless, my PlayStation 3 is still broken, and will be replaced soon.