Opening Day is nearly here and my beloved White Sox are getting ready to embark upon what I figure is going to be a third-place season where they hover around .500 all year long (of course, the last time I entered a season thinking so pessimistically was in 2005...when they won the World Series, so who knows?).

With baseball season almost upon us, I fully expect my gaming to drop a bit. Good thing I got back on pace with three completed games in March:

4. DiRT (X360)
5. Dash of Destruction (XBLA)
6. Rygar (NES)

DiRT was a bit of a cheapie. I'd already completed the single-player aspect of the game. I only needed the last two multiplayer achievements to finish it. So I tossed it in on a whim to see if I could squeeze them out. When I tried before, I kept running into players that were on "Such and Such Racing Team" or whatever...in other words, guys who do this fairly competitively. I got destroyed. This time around the competition wasn't so fierce and I was able to win a couple of races fairly quickly. At any rate, if you like rally racing (or any racing at all) you should definitely give DiRT a try. I heartily recommend it.

Dash of Destruction was free. And that's about the best part of it. Granted, it's a Doritos themed game (and it was free), so I wasn't expecting much. But it took me about a half an hour to run through the whole thing and pop all 200 achievement points out of it. At least it was free...

Rygar was one of those games that I loved as a kid, but had absolutely no clue what I was doing. This time, I sat down and actually paid attention to where I was going and figured out what "tone" and "last" were (that was key!) and was able to finish it for the first time ever. Rygar is one of those lost clas sics on the NES. While there are some graphical hiccups here and there (doesn't every NES game have those?), it has surprisingly good music and very tight controls. Track a copy of this down if you still mess around with the NES at all.

The highlight of the monthwas undoubtedly the Midwest Gaming Clas sic. This was the first gaming convention of any type I had ever attended and I will definitely be back next year. My wife, my often-mentioned best friend Steve and I spent two days running around a hotel conference/ball room area filled with some of the coolest gaming and pinball stuff ever created. The museum was unbelievable. There were things there I never thought I'd lay eyes on (like one of the Hello Kitty Xboxes) and things I never thought I'd see again (like the Atari phone attachment). My wife found every possible way to play Pac-Man they had and we lost her in the pinball machines a few times. Steve got hammered in a Tetris tournament and came home with a boatload of stuff. I also met up with GameSpot's ownCodingGenius, proving that there are actually people behind these avatars! If you ever have a chance to go to this event (or any other one like it), take the opportunity.

I also acquired a ton of new games this month, mostly because of the MGC. The vendor section there was huge, so I was able to whittle my wish list down significantly. All MGC acquisitions will have a * next to them:

March Acquisitions
-Frogger (XBLA)
-Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting (XBLA)
-Street Figher IV Collector's Edition (X360)
-StarTropics (NES)
-Spider Figher (2600)*
-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (2600)*
-1942 (NES)*
-3-D World Runner (NES)*
-Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (NES)*
-Battle Chess (NES)*
-Bee 52 (NES)*
-Double Dare (NES)*
-Firehawk (NES)*
-Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (NES)*
-Short Order/Eggsplode (NES)*
-Zelda II: The Adventure of Link gold cart (NES)*
-Crue Ball (Gen)*
-The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (GBC)*
-Mario Golf (N64)*
-Feet of Fury: Mobile Tactical Dancing Action (DC homebrew)*
-Adventure Island (NES)*
-Dash of Destruction (XBLA)
-Fear Effect (PS)
-Jet Grind Radio (DC)
-Tetris Splash (XBLA)

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Backwas the last 2600 game that I can remember having as a kid that I hadn't yet reacquired. Feet of Fury is a homebrew produced by the guys who put on the convention. They were given away in welcome bags to attendees. I'm not sure if everyone got a copy or if it was a limited thing.

I have yet to decide what I'm going to play this month. I've got Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Xbox) about half-finished, there are five or six 360 games I've been eyeballing, and Dead Space seems to be calling me from the shelves at the store. I've also batted around the idea of playing through the Resident Evil games on my GameCube. Who knows? By this time next month I'll probably have gone in an entirely different direction.

That's all for now. Next update is approximately thirty days away.