After having a ridiculous (at least by my standards) year for game acquisitions, I decided to spend 2009 focusing in some of the higher-quality titles on my wish list instead of just nabbing any game that caught my eye. I didn't really think I'd be able to behave. But I have an unwitting partner helping me out...GameStop.

Yes, GameStop. Now, I've complained vociferously about GameStop in this very blog in the past. And yet, I still spend insane amounts of money there. But a few things have, I think, finally irritated me to the point of not going there unless I can't find what I'm looking for anywhere else. For example:

-I purchased Yakuza 2 "new" and watched the clerk, slide my "new" game, media side down, across the counter after removing it from its envelope, put it in a case that had sat on their shelf and been mauled, and "seal" it by slapping a clear sticker about three inches in diameter across the case opening. Said sticker was apparently coated in crazy glue because it took a half an hour and half a bottle of Goo Gone to clean it up.

-I bought my best friend a used PS2 from there for Christmas. I wish I'd tested the thing because, after I degooped a controller that looked like it had been dipped in candlewax, it turned out that it didn't work...and I misplaced the receipt.

And finally:

-I took the same guy in there so he could use my Edge card and the 25% off coupon that I had. He picked out four games, including black-label versions of Burnout 3 and Kingdom Hearts. When he got home, he had Greatest Hits discs in those two cases.

Now, I'm not one of those guys who has to have all black-label versions of my games and avoids Greatest Hits/Platinum Hits/Player's Choice titles like the plague. But I won't accept a GH game in a regular case or vice versa. The last time that happened to me I actually stopped the guy and made him change it. He muttered something about "trying to find the best looking disc." If that's how they do it, then why did Burnout 3 not work? It's laziness and nothing more.

I'm becoming more and more fond of eStarland.com (even though their shipping charges tend to be a bit steep) and, with my backlog, there's nothing that I absolutely have to have immediately. So, happy trails, GameStop! I might just stop in to hang out and listen to your unbelievably stupid sales associates expound ridiculous bits of misinformation, but my wallet shall remain closed to you for the foreseeable future.

*cue sound of my wife heaving a giant sigh of relief*

As 2008 draws to a close, I find myself channelling my inner sheeple and, like everyone else, doing a "year in review" blog. I'll warn you now, this is going to be fairly long, so if you're not interested in my ramblings, please drive through. That said, let's begin, shall we?

-It's been an unprecedented year in terms of the amount of games I've obtained. In 2008 alone, I've acquired 183 games (or slightly more than 22% of my total collection). While I could pass the 1,000 game total in 2009, I doubt I'll maintain that pace.

-My completion rate has been about what I hoped for. I try to finish fifteen games a year. I "wiped the slate clean" back in the middle of 2006. Pro-rating a total of eight games for the rest of that 2006, I should have finished 38 games to this point. I am exactly there, with 19 completions in 2008.

2008 Completed Games
-Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360)
-Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (PS2)
-Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (PS2)
-Bully: Scholarship Edition (Xbox 360)
-Open Season (Xbox 360)
-Uno (Xbox 360)
-Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360)
-NBA 2K6 (Xbox 360)
-Viva Pinata (Xbox 360)
-Madden NFL '06 (Xbox 360)
-Condemned: Criminal Origins (Xbox 360)
-FIFA '06: Road to FIFA World Cup (Xbox 360)
-Medal of Honor (PS)
-Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (Xbox)
-Halo (Xbox)
-The Guy Game (Xbox)
-Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (Xbox 360)
-Fable (Xbox)
-Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)

I suppose I could plow through Metal Gear or something so I could say I'm ahead of my pace, but I probably won't.

-My Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360). While the games I've played for the first time this year include Bioshock, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Assassin's Creed, and Rock Band 2 (all of which I adored), I'm still a GTA mark at heart. While Rockstar didn't do everything I would have liked to see, they made an undeniably epic game that had a more compelling story than it was given credit for.

-My Biggest Disappointment of the Year: The Simpsons Game (Xbox 360). I thought this was going to be the one. The game that made up for all the garbage that has gotten spewed out with the Simpsons name on it (my affinity for Road Rage notwithstanding). Unfortunately, we got a mediocre platformer that was more irritating than fun.

As for 2009, I plan on cutting back on the sheer amount of acquisitions, instead focusing on knocking priority titles off of my wishlist. Paper Mario, Fallout 3, and Soulcalibur IV are early targets. I also would like to bring myself current as far as systems go. I'd like to try Metal Gear Solid 4 one of these days.

On the gaming front, Kingdom Hearts, Saints Row 2, all my music games, and various wrestling games are going to take the bulk of my time in early 2009. At some point, I need to tear through the Metroid saga and spend some more time with the other members of the Holy Trinity of Nintendo. I'd also like to see my gamerscore approach 40,000 by the end of the year.

I think that's all for now. Thanks for sticking with me. Have a safe and happy New Year's Day and I'll see you in 2009.

This is my AvaMii...er...Mii-atar. Um...it's my 360 guy for the New Xbox Experience.

My sister was legitimately freaked out by how close it actually looks to me. My wife thinks it looks like Phil Collins though. At any rate, there's no sugar-coating here...I'm really a chubby, balding dude with glasses and a chinbeard.

I really started to hit my stride as a gamer with the NES. I must take this particular moment to thank my third grade teacher (and the mother of one of my childhood friends) for giving me straight A's during the last quarter of that year so I'd get the NES my dad promised me. I'm fairly certain that she fudged my grades quite a bit (hooray, small towns!), but had she not, I wouldn't be the gamer I am today...come to think of it, maybe I shouldn't thank her...

At any rate, here are my five favorite games for the NES. Remember, this is MY list. You may not agree. The usual criteria apply...I have to have played them. And that's about it... So, without further ado:

5. Tecmo Bowl-Chicago, Run 1. 'Nuff said.

4. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!-A hilarious cast of characters and amazingly tight gameplay more than made up for Nintendo's unapologetic self-promotion ("Join the Nintendo Fun Club today, Mac!").

3. Castlevania-NES games were notoriously tough, and this was no exception. Who knew that Simon Belmont's first scrap with Dracula would launch a franchise that is still relevant twenty years later?

2. Metroid-Tons of items, epic boss fights, going left (?!)...Metroid set a new bar for gaming. You no longer just ran to the right until you hit the end of a level. Add a twist at the end (if you were good enough) and you've got an epic on your hands.

And, my favorite NES game of all time:
1. The Legend of Zelda-Speaking of epic...Zelda is the patron saint of open-world exploration. A slightly more mature version of princess saving (when compared to Mario), Zelda's take on dungeon crawling and inventory management set a path that adventure games and RPGs would follow for years to come.

Honorable Mentions-Super Mario Bros. 3, Rygar, Metal Gear

Apparently the word "fistful" is unacceptable for blog titles...this is the only site I know of that autocensors that strictly...

I finally sat down and watched The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters Monday night. Maybe I built it up too high, but I was disappointed. Here are a few thoughts (if you haven't seen it, you may want to skip this...there could be some SPOILERS in here):

-Billy Mitchell didn't come across as badly as I expected. Maybe I had him pegged for an arrogant pinhead from the get-go, but the only things that hurt my opinion of him was the fact that he wouldn't play Steve Wiebe straight up and that his wife had NEVER seen him play a game. I already wasn't impressed with Sauceboy, so I don't think he got beaten up as badly as he says he did.

-One thing that amazed me was the cult of personality that Mitchell had around him. Between Walter Day, Robert Mruczek, Steve Sanders, and Brian Kuh, Mitchell had an army of dorks who would probably kill if he said so. Come to think of it, Mruczek did kind of look like Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz...

-The funniest part of the whole movie was watching Brian Kuh's face as he started to realize that he would not be the first player to reach the Donkey Kong kill screen at that particular Funspot. At one point, I was sure he was going to cry. He was squeezed so tight that I'm sure you could have stuck a lump of coal between his buttcheeks and he would have turned it into a diamond.

-Twin Galaxies lost ALL credibility. Maybe it was journalistic license, but it would appear that you're eligible for a video game world record as long as you're not messing with one of Billy Mitchell's records. Sure, they gave Wiebe the record later on, but I'm guessing it's only because they knew it was being filmed. I also firmly belive that not only is Walter Day a con man, but he's a lunatic as well. Watch the Walter Day profile in the special features...you'll see what I mean.

-Roy "Mr. Awesome" Schildt is a creepy, creepy man.

-And finally, my opinion of Wiebe fluctuated throughout the film. I started out rooting for the guy. He was down on his luck and I really wanted to see him succeed. He lost me when he literally started crying about not getting the record. While he definitely got screwed, I could think of a million other things to cry about...like not having a job to help pay his family's bills. But later on, as the conspiracy against him becomes much clearer, you start to find yourself in his corner again. And his wife is a saint. There aren't too many women that would put up with that level of obsession...I know of two (his wife and mine).

Kong is definitely worth a watch, even if it wasn't as great as it was cracked up to be.
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I'm (at least for a little bit) going to bring back my "Jolly Roger's Top Five" series. It has only one entry right now, and that's over two years old! I've been temporarily inspired by clownofpoetry's current blog series. Look for my Top Five NES Games soon.

I spent my day off of work yesterday playing through The Endless Setlist 2 on Rock Band 2. I did it on medium level, played the drums, and did it without pausing. It took exactly six hours, 10 minutes. I was able to get 419 out of a possible 420 stars.

That leads me to my one bone of contention...whoever decided that "Visions" by Abnormality a) deserves to be on Rock Band 2 and b) is even a song in the first place needs to be first examined for mental competence and secondly, if found functional, fired. Granted, I prefer my metal to be a bit more melodic. But I've heard, and enjoyed, music from across the metal genre. "Visions" sounds like someone vomiting while a couple of monkeys beat on five-gallon buckets in the background. I was able to get a five-star rating on "Panic Attack" by Dream Theater, "Painkiller" by Judas Priest, and even "Battery" by Metallica (which always gives me trouble)...challenging songs that differ from "Visions" by having a discernable rhythm. I've never heard a more arhythmic song than "Visions"...it's so random that I was never able to lock in and find a beat because it invariably changed to something else.

Either way, I was pretty happy with being able to pull it off and even though my back is killing me from sitting in a drummer's slump for most of the day, it was well worth it. That (with one minor exception) is a pretty solid and varied setlist.

So, I'm currently playing Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie. I'm about 65% of the way through it...enough to have formed more than an at least preliminary opinion of the game. So far, that opinion is not good.

In order to justify myself for thinking this game is a turd, I went around and checked some review scores. To my surprise, King Kong seems to have garnered universally excellent scores. While I've never put much stock in professional reviewers opinions, I've also never been as far off with ALL of them as I am now.

The question is, am I wrong? Have I completely missed the boat and this game is really that good?

Separated at birth?

Russian heavyweight contender Nikolai Valuev.

Soda Popinski from Punch-Out!! (NES).

My gamerscore, as of this very minute, is a palindrome...15,051.

I have another dozen games heading my way. If they all show up by tomorrow, I will have acquired 46 games this month. That's a bit silly, even by my standards. Unfortunately, there are so many good ones out there that I want to pick up. I've heard Soulcalibur IV is awesome, I'm dying to try Burnout: Paradise, and I still haven't picked up Mass Effect. And that's just the ones I'm thinking about most for the 360 right now. The thing is, I'll probably never play many of these games. Unless, of course, I wind up with a LOT of extra time on my hands. At any rate, if you want to see how sick I really am, I track my acquisitions here.

On the gaming front, I'm getting to a point in The Godfather: The Game (X360) where I'm going to see a bunch of achievements pile up in rapid succession. This is actually my second playthrough (I've finished the Xbox version) and I'm enjoying it just as much this time around.

When I finish that, it's on to Sid Meier's Civilization: Revolution (X360). I played through one civilization as the United States (as a resident of Central Illinois, I am contractually obligated to enthusiastically endorse anything and everything bearing Abraham Lincoln's likeness, hence my choice) and won a cultural victory. The game itself is awesome, but since I had already put a significant dent in The Godfather, I decided to put it aside for awhile.

In the meantime, these games are also getting a look:

Kingdom Hearts (PS2)
Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)
Castlevania (NES)

That's about it from here. Here's hoping that my new replacement phone, my new games, and my Wyld Stallyns t-shirt are on my doorstep when I get home. Take it easy, kids!

***EDIT***
My box didn't show up today, so it's 35 in July and an 11-game head start on August. :P

So, my buddy Steve and I decided to buy a bunch of NES games from this seller on ebay. He had a pretty good rating (98.3% positive, I believe), so we didn't worry about buying 15 games from him. Unfortunately, we didn't pay attention to his shipping prices. Fifteen NES games apparently equals $43.75. Now, I just got an entire O2 system, five complete games, and a Virtual Boy stand shipped via UPS for $15. Needless to say, I'm going to pay this dude, take my medicine, and never buy anything from him again. I, my friends, am an idiot.

Now on to bigger and better things. I will soon be welcoming my baby sister to the world of Xbox Live. She's a long time gamer (just like me) and is becoming a collector too...she just doesn't know it yet. At any rate, I'll soon be playing, from Illinois, with my sister who lives in Hawaii. I know playing with people across oceans is old news, but stuff like that never ceases to amaze me (hell, Pong still amazes me).

As far as my recent gaming habits go, I've been playing a lot of The Godfather: The Game on my 360. I've finished it on the Xbox before, but that version didn't have 1,250 achievement points and the ability to give me a two-star sandbox badge on my 360 blog (and my next completed game will give me ten complete retail games). After that though, I'm not sure. I keep batting around the idea of playing through the Kingdom Hearts games, I've got Super Mario Bros. 2 and Castlevania hovering around my NES, and I've got several 360 games I've started, but need to play though. We'll see what happens.

Does anyone know anything about the game L.A. Noire? Early trailers for that had me ready to go out and buy a PS3, but I've heard basically nothing since. Anyone? Bueller...Bueller?