Yes, unfortunately it's true. It's that time of the month for me and the pain is almost too much to bear. That is, it's time to pay the rent and the loan.

It's funny I can go a whole month and spend less than 30 dollars, but at the beginning of every month I have to drop like 13 times that much. I guess that's why I live off of pre-packaged side dishes like Seasame Rice and Butter Herb Noodles (at least it isn't Ramen...).

Anyways, I guess I'll be letting go of my microkorg, or I'll be jumping off a building.

And because this series blogs  GAMES I guess I'll mention what GAMES I've been playing.

The goods folks over at Edge pointed me towards the Experimental Gameplay Website and you all know  how much I like experimental media, so I creamed when I saw this (or maybe it was the ecchi?). Anyways I'm fond of the recent game Fungus. It blends my love for ALife sim.s and pleaseant aesthetic. When I finish my MLife art project I'm looking to contact the author and start doing something with this prog.

In unrelated news, I've aquired the Arial fontsets for this blog. ("Times New Roman? More like Times Old Roman" - Mark Delabor)

I'm playing my GBA games still, Metroid 4 and Yoshi's Island. I give up on MMZ i hate in MM games where you have to re-fight all the bosses, SUXXXX

okay, shove off

well i played a game today i'm sure alot of you have tried, and if you haven't, i'm sure you've at least not tried.

the game is paintball, and the rules are (should be) simple. but there's so much crap because it's dangerous!! well, i mean, that's what mom's think. but here are my rules to make everything simple

Rule #1: wear a mask so your eyeballs don't get hit  and a paintball won't explode your temple

Rule #2: if you get hit, gameover, go back to the deadzone

Now I played paintball pretty seriously back in highschool. I played often and had "nice gear" (which, if you want any respect at all on the field you'll need that, people never seem to notice when you're actually kicking ass, but a shiny red autococker or some sort of smart-parts gun does the trick)

but paint was expensive and i quit. now that my dad likes to play (he's a VP for Vector Security , ya 'know, the blue octagons on like every store front?) i have to entertain him and show up at the fields.

I hate paintball

it seems like a dumping ground for the socially inept, sortof like the fans of slipknot and evanescense, just these dweeby kids who don't fit in (oh and rednecks). I uhh, don't mind getting hit, but to me, paintball is just boring. So I remembered the words of Mia Fey "You're thinking too normal, you need to think crazier!"

Thus I've developed very deplorable tactics when it comes to paintball, what I like to call "Gonzo Paintball"

On previous gamedays i've pulled lawnchairs out into speedball fields and sat in the open w/ no cover relaxing and lazily shooting the occasional advancer. I DO NOT CHEAT so typically i don't last long anymore, but I do get noticed haha.

But from saturday, my favorite tactic was "The Hornet". My dad came up with this one, and it works for a castle field. It can also be called "Green Hornet", and "Hornet's Nest". It works best when you go "Hornet Center" as my dad suggested.

Basically you run towards the greatest concentration of enemies screaming as HARD as you can, shooting on full-auto if you've got it (I had my dad's A5 with a APE modified e-grip). HILARIOUS but in no way could it be considered effective. A cool way to play your last game, also try this one I haven't named yet

play the whole game walking backwards and make sure to walk past refs but don't say anything even if they ask you, just keep advancing with your back towards the enemy, it is funny

someone introduced me to a new game today, and i do NOT like it.

it's called "try to eat all the ice cream"

I'm not sure if it counts as a video game, in fact I'm sure that it dosen't. The premise is you go to the ice cream store and order their largest size, and then get one of the chocolate waffle cones and tell them to put LOTS of candy in it.

then you have to eat the whole thing. this was fine for a while, and everyone was having a good time. at this point i would have given the game a 7, because the graham cracker's in the cone were kindof stale.

anyways as time progressed my eyesight started to lose focus on the NP i was reading. i also started getting a big headache. then i remembered "oh hey i'm a diabetic".

things are going bad now

well i took a shot and while i'm not dead, i'm in no way feeling any better. walking back to my apt. was like this horrible horrible nightmare. i would see people stare at me and the sidewalk started to morph. I had to stop at a drinking fountain and i was there so long there was a line behind me and everyone was mad.

so, for the rest of the day i'm taking it easy and playing nothing but baby games, or games with babies in them

CLUBHOUSE GAMES (or 42 all-time-favorites)

Yah man, I totally feel like a genuine Nathaniel S. Turner (or n8 teh gr8 ). I'm actually learning the rules to all these "real" games; it feels pretty good. Except right now I'm getting my a** handed to me at 01. I tell you what I will be carrying this game around with me everywhere. And the fact that almost all of them have wi-fi does not help my addiction. Honestly this is one of the greatest carts you can pick up this week.

I won't go into too much detail because I'm sure GS has something to say on the matter, instead I'll just tell you how it makes you feel.

Do you know the feeling where a group of friends is whining about how they're bored and they keep suggesting things like card games and darts, but you don't want to because you don't know how? But they talk you into it and after you learn the rules you find out how fun it really is and that you're actually pretty good? That's how Clubhouse Games feels all the time. Oh and if you're a seasoned pro at any of the 42 games (impossible I say!) I'm sure you'll get a real kick out of just how good the recreations are. There are some non-traditional games thrown in like "Shake the Soda Bottle", which is actually just a game of hot potato, with the twist that how much you shake will eventually affect the other players (or you).

Actually, hmmmm, yes i believe so....... Yes I'm recieving confirmation, "Shake the Soda Bottle" is most similar to the party favorite: Chug-The-Jug!

I've been looking at getting a new ps1 and sticking in a modchip, i'd like to go back and revisit alot of the ps1 games i never got to play because my parents thought i was fine with a super nintendo, for 8 years. Some I'd like to play are the mmx games and like the ff games, even though i really don't have the patience for those.

I've been using the BulletGBA bullet trainer and some of the patterns are INTENSE. When I get good I'm loading up VBA and making some AVI's. Oh yeah.

Well I'd say that Yoshi's Island is good... but not as much a platformer as i'd like. Half of the time I find myself only playing because I want to get to the bosses, which, are extremely easy, but highly entertaining. The game provides you with plenty of lives which does give that "one more go" bonus that makes the game fun, but sometimes you find yourself in that rut where you waste 10 lives because you keep making the same mistake.

Anyways I'm sorta updating my other blog which is good news because I like writing, especially comedy, if you like I'll link you, it's GKG EXP LIT BLOG

Right now I'm playing "Media Ethics Notes 5 & 6". I'm really hoping to get a 100% completion on the final boss: "Media Ethics exam #1". The cool thing about this game is it's timed and I have to finish today by 3PM or else I lose. The game is for the Dell Inspiron | 6000 Console and it's powered by the Microsoft Word Engine. I give it a 5 out of 10 because the story is pretty boring, but the overall difficulty adds a certain level of difficulty that makes the game sortof fun.

***SPOILER WARNING!!!***

I couldn't believe that about halfway through number 5 that the Roman Caveat Emptor (from the Ancient Roman Phase of Ethical Theory development) appeared as an NPC!!!

here is some hilarious footage from a toho game on "lunatic" mode (non-boss portions are sped up)

[video=cHQ2kDDw5bkLsjU]

ps i should finish rocket slime today and have a review done soon, next up is mario advance 3

okay real quick before i start hammering my skull with sociology i want to put up my first impressions of square/enix's latest handheld offering

A baby game

is what i thought at first. you start out by learning how to stretch out your slime and clear away some leaves so that you get to play a tune on the warrior flute for your friends. easy. then they shove the flute down your throat to hide it from "big daddy" and you turn into a baseball bat and hop around making a stupid sighing noise.

after everyone gets crammed into treasure chests and hauled away (you're spared because the stupid plod's think you are a worm) you go to the forest to find unimaginable wealth in the form of countless buried treasure. not, i wish, these chests are filled with slimes, and for some reason lots of random creatures that cohabitate with the slimes. Now I've played my fair share of Dragon Quest I, and i don't remember 90% of these things, if only there were seven other dragon quest games to play...

well this type of children's action game item grabbing starts to become blaringly obvious really soon, this is why it's fortunate that you also get introduced to the other gameplay mechanic very early. that mechanic is...loading guns. you'll be doing alot of gun loading because that's all the tank battles are. fortuneatly the addition of vertical and horizontal firing guns as well as different types of ammo helps introduce ALOT of strategy. there are also many other enemy tanks to take out, and a neat way of infiltrating the enemy tank once it's HP has reached zero. I've been doing alot of tank battling since it was introduced but the game is doing a good job so far of not presenting too much of either game element

In all honesty it was pretty hard to put down to get started on my studying which makes me think I'll have alot of fun this weekend working on it. The wireless sounds fun, I can't wait to try it out with my little brother.

okay so that's my first impression, it controls well (though the method of getting things does seem akward at first) and the story looks like it will shape up nicely, i'll post more about it further along

Okay so I finished Iridion II this morning and noticed that the final boss is practically the same as that from Nanostray (except for his flamethrower) which leads me to believe that perhaps nanostray is about the Iridion forces as well even though the game has absolutely no story given whatsoever.

So the game is short and fairly easy, the environments are all pretty much exactly the same and the gameplay is horribly tame. I've tried the challenge mode and didn't make it the whole way but I'm assuming with a little bit of practice I could put it away no problem. Playing it on the TV  (via gameboy player) could be a factor though. There really isn't too much story but the sound is very good (i'd expect nothing less from shinen) with each level having it's own mod-tune song ranging from J-pop stylings to trancey themes. It's an old GBA game so noone is looking to play it, but on the greatest handheld console it is the best vertical shooter.

Going to finish megaman zero here pretty soon. Not too much to say, we all know what megaman is like.

I'm picking up the new Dragon Quest spin-off before class starts and seeing what that's like. If it's good and I have some time where I can take a break off from studying for my soc. test tommorow I'll put up some impressions. It looks like a decent action-RPG and I think the whole tank idea is cool. Plus I have the poster hanging up in my room right now so I'd kindof feel like a jerk if I didn't at least play the game