Fellow GameSpotters, a couple of days ago I posted about my Xbox 360 breaking down in the middle of my second run through Ninja Gaiden II. Three red lights of doom claimed my fourth 360. This unfortunate event inspired me, and I decided to have a bit of fun with Microsoft's finest. Browse through the following pics and story, and if you have a sense of humor I am sure you will appreciate.

Here we go:

After a hard day of work, it's time to let some steam off. What better game to do that with than Ninja Gaiden II. Obliteriation moves, here I come. I can't wait to cut ninja nasties in two and sever demon spawn limbs with my oversized scythe.

The 360 refuses to digest the Ninja Gaiden II ration I'm feeding it. It's giving me three red fingers instead. What gives? Say it ain't so!

Maybe my 360 is feeling particularly unenergetic today, so as a good owner I'm trying to be supportive by giving it GREEN powered energy drinks. Alas, to no avail.

You know, maybe it simply is a digestion problem. Ninja Gaiden II is a heavy duty game, so I can understand if the 360 has some difficulties dealing with it. After all, it needs three cores where other consoles can achieve the same result with just one. I'm giving it various stomach aids, but they don't make the three red lights go away.

Master Chief jumps by to check if he can help out, but as usual he is unable to finish the fight. Hardly legendary. That spartan never fails to unimpress me.

I hear a whisper coming from the right, and there is my PlayStation 3. No nasty blinking red lights that make you skip heartbeats to see there. It's a subtle hint.

A mysterious force draws me to my pile of Ninja Gaiden games. *Duke Nukem voice* Where is it?

Ninja Gaiden Sigma! You rock!

The angy video game nerd would say to pop something in. I'm not quoting him to full effect because it would just get censored anyway. Besides, you can't talk of Team Ninja games like that. They're simply too awesome. Except for the Xtreme ones. Don't get me started about the Xtreme ones.

It's working! Victory, decapitations and therefore therapy are mine!

Before I can fully receive the sweet joy of graphical violence on my retina, one task remains to be done. It's time to take out the trash. Believe me, it's the smart thing to do.

EPILOGUE

The next day, early in the morning. Upon inspecting the garbage bin, I notice my 360 has passed away for good. I am not a horrible person, so I'm sending the 360 off to the zen gardens, where it will receive eternal affection of the DOA girls. Sayonara, 360. Once you were like a flying swallow, but unfortunately you have been hit by Microsoft's dead soul bind. The corporate bs version of it, which happens to be the deadliest.

I'm giving Ninja Gaiden II another run, looking for the last couple of skulls that I missed on my first playthrough. Yesterday, I got a hold of all 30 of them. Pleased with the progress, I turn off my 360. Today it refuses to boot up, giving me the three red fingers.

I thought Elite models were supposed to be more reliable. That may be, but it doesn't take away the fact that my fourth 360 just died on me. A bit of a bummer, as I had just caught on to Itagaki's swan song. A bit disoriented, I turned to Ninja Gaiden Black on my old Xbox that is not filled with cheap components and therefore is as reliable as ever. *sigh* Black is a fine game, but coming hot off Ninja Gaiden II, it feels slow.

FACT: Ninja Gaiden II is too hot for the 360 to handle.

Bursting through doors with axes, hammers or even your own lifelihood seems to be the hype these days. I still prefer to gain entry the old-fashioned way.

Anyway, this is just me signing in to say that I'm back for duty. Still not with enough time at hand, but now that Team Ninja seems to be back on track, so am I. Ninja Gaiden II with Ayane added into the mix makes it all Sigma. For our screenshots fix, we have to head outside of Gamespot.

Oh, if you sent me a message over the course of 2008, chances are high I never read it and probably never will. Sorry, I did post I was gone for about a year, didn't I? ;)

Time to bask in the sunlight now, just like Kokoro.

All wiccan references set aside, I have decided to take time off from GameSpot for an indefinite time. This involves me abandoning union officer positions, and also my position as a leader from The Team Ninja Clan union. I have transferred leadership for that union to HRDKyoSaNim. I ought to have hotlinked that, but it doesn't matter anymore now lol.

People sometimes ask me: "flan, how can you suddenly leave certain things behind that you have worked so hard for, at the snap of a finger?". That's just one of those mysterious of life, isn't it? In reality it isn't. It's a decision building process that builds up, like drops slowly filling a bucket. For me, the decision making process is tied to the balance between effort and relaxation. Even the sharpest of blades will become dull if no time is taken off to keep it top notch. It's the exact same thing in a human life, where certain activities have to make room for others in other to improve the overall quality of life.

When will I be back? I don't know. I have left other places for similar reasons in the past. Sometimes I do come back to them, but with a new identity, which can be quite rejunvenating. Time will tell. To all of my GameSpot friends that I have built a good relationship with: carpe diem.

This is interesting. According to this poll from Associated Press-AOL Games, 43% of the parents don't play video games with their kids. I was gobsmacked. I can relate to the fact that, as a parent, you're not interested in video games, but that should be no excuse to ignore your kid while he/she is playing them, especially with the added realism in video games nowadays.

My parents never were pro video games. To them it was just a waste of time, and they only gave me access to them when I was 15. What I got was a NES with Mario, hardly the kind of game that can be perceived as threatening for moral values if you compare it with Manhunt for example. They probably still should have spent time with me as I was playing video games, especially after I got a hold of Doom, but at least they have the excuse of being part of the baby boom generation, where video games didn't exist yet in the childhood years.

I wonder what would be the excuse now for parents to ignore their kids. Maybe they don't have the time, which is a valid excuse in these days of just-in-time management. If you don't have the time though, why even consider leaving your kid behind with some ultra-violent games, with the only message being that it's just a waste of time? That's hardly just-in-time.

Of course, when something goes wrong later on, it's easy to blame the video game. After all, why blame yourself when you can blame digital media?

Hey Jack, Hillary and company, how about aiming your arrows on this? Ah wait, I guess it's better for your own conservative popularity to blame a video game than it is to blame the parents, who are supposed to be the audience that you're serving.

It's that time of the year again: my Ninja Gaiden Black savegames on my Xbox 360 have become corrupted again. This time it's worse because I had completed the game earlier this year, and all of that effort has gone to waste. I was planning on recording some of the movies in the theatre that you unlock after completing the game, but that's impossible now.

I don't know what the cause is, but I assume it has something to do with either the BC file being updated, or you needing the original Xbox 360 that you saved the data with. I think it's the latter because my Dead or Alive Ultimate profile has become corrupted as well. I know Team Ninja is quite obsessed with gamers having to work their way through games fair and square, and this may be one of their protection measures kicking in. Encrypt data in such a way that it is tied to the original console it was saved with, and there you go. Of course, if that's true, it makes me a victim of circumstances.

Possible solutions? I could have tried recording the videos in Ninja Gaiden Sigma on the PS3, but:
1) I don't have the cable set for that;
2) Sigma doesn't even unlock a movie theatre after completion.

Conclusion? I guess the Ninja Gaiden Black videos will have to wait. Next time, I'll just play through the game on my old Xbox and record the videos from that system. My first and only Xbox has survived four 360 systems at this point. That's one sturdy black box. As for Team Ninja, if my assumption is true, maybe they shouldn't just think about people who try to cheat, but also about those who don't?

Here is a nice little pic I took of my new Shakugan no Shana statue. I made sure to have the camera flash kill off anything inappropriate. Shana being the dfc she is made my task even easier than I thought.

Something else: I filled up the big gap in my gaming culture by playing through Half-Life 2, Episode 1 and Episode 2. This particular achievement in Episode 2 is quite original, wouldn't you say? I even tried it myself but soon discovered that it's better to finish Episode 2 normally before taking on this quest. It helps when you know where to leave your little buddy behind.

My girlfriend took the plane to Brazil in order to spend the next two weeks with her family there. Normally I am the kind of guy that likes things quiet around him, but at the moment it feels weird at home. It's too quiet. I am already missing all of the chatter lol.

In order to take my mind off things, I started playing The Orange Box some more. I wouldn't exactly call Half-Life 2 a perfect game, but it does a good job at sucking you into the game universe, so at least time passes fast. Fast enough for me to play through the game, so now I can start looking into the two extra episodes and solve some puzzles in Portal, although I'm not really the patient type.

One more week to go for Gears of War on the pc. I am curious about this game, not just because of the extra chapters, but also to see how Epic's slightly updated engine will make the game look and feel. Gears easily is one of the best looking Xbox 360 games, but will it also be able to grab that title on the pc. More importantly, will pc gamers take a liking to the third person perspective?

It's about time for another blog update. I have been spending a lot of time improving the quality of The Team Ninja Clan union lately, and I feel like it's finally taking off now thanks to combined efforts. More than 1,500 hits in one day, that's something that even the bigger GameSpot unions out there would be pleased of having. Apart from having the latest updates about anything that concerns Team Ninja, we also happen to be a laid back union with a friendly atmosphere, so it's all good now.

What's new when it comes to games? Well, what's funny is that I have both the legendary, limited and standard edition of Halo 3 at home, and I didn't have to pay anything for them. One freebie, and two editions bought by my gf. Now that's called luxury.

Halo 3 didn't grab my attention for long, and I quickly moved on to Project Gotham Racing 4. There is a lot more content here than in PGR3 now that there also is a career mode, and the bikes add plenty of diversity. Another game that I'm messing around with is The Orange Box, but for some reason playing Half-Life 2 for too long is making me seasick. I sure was glad to make it to Ravenholm and have firm ground under my feet again. Or rooftops, whatever, as long as I don't have to spend too much time on the water.

New anime I'm currently tracking would be Ghost Hound, Genshiken 2, Da Capo II. I am also very pleased with the new season of Shakugan no Shana. Talking about Shakugan no Shana, I also ordered a new statue of her. I can't post picks of it here because I think it's nsfw as parts of her clothes sustained some battle damage. Normally I'm not into that kind of gratuitous fanservice, but it's not really overdone here like in Ikkitousen, and the quality of the statue was so high I just couldn't miss it.

When I was a teen, the A Nightmare On Elm Street movies easily were my favorite horror movies. There was nothing like Freddy Krueger for a good scare and laugh at the same time. Today I finally got an opportunity to meet up with Robert Englund, the man behind the mutilated horror icon. He was present at F.A.C.T.S. 2007, an anime/fantasy convention that I attended. I'm going to treasure this picture, and especially the memory. For the record: I'm on the left.

Any news from mr. Englund himself? Well, chances of a Freddy vs Jason vs Ash are looking slim because apparently director Sam Raimi doesn't seem to be too interested to take on this project, and New Line couldn't really live with the idea of Ash beating Freddy, which was one of the points raised. Raimi is looking into a remake of Evil Dead instead now, which is a great idea as well.

With Raimi more or less out of the count, rumors surface that New Line is approaching John Carpenter for a Freddy vs Jason sequel. Hmm, very, very interesting rumor. Carpenter is the brain behind Halloween, so does that bring Michael Meyers into the picture?

There absolutely was a stack to see during F.A.C.T.S 2007. There also was loads to buy, and I got home with a couple of anime statues. I uploaded the most relevant pics, just click here to visit the album.