Today was supposed to be t he day that I got my 360 online. Nintendo WiFi was easy enough. This should be a piece of cake, right? A router and the appropriate cables make their way to my home and then the fun begins. Well, fun if you like talking to customer service for 3 hours, having your network connections somehow erased, and installing new programs in your computer only to be told to return the router and get a new one. I wouldn't feel so bad about this if I didn't suspect that the exact same thing is going to happen tomorrow when I try my new router.
With that experiment failed I decided to try things the simple way and connect the 360 to my modem and see what happens. Should be simple enough. What can go wrong? No luck there either. How unexpected! Instead the machine just spits out some nonsense about IP Addresses and router settings. How fun!
The best part about this is that now Nintendo WiFi won't run either. Technology once again makes life easier.

Water levels suck. Please stop adding them to your games. If Ocarina of Time, Kingdom Hearts, and God of War couldn't make water fun, then you can't either. It is a well known fact that the water level is guaranteed to be the most frustrating and hard to control part of any game. On behalf of all gamers I ask you to end the madness.

 Some of my recent eBay purchases have arrived and I'm basking in the glory of some old school bargains. It's funny how the 3DO feels like the ghost of PS3 past. Technologically superior? Check. Overpriced? Check! Lack of quality launch games? Check!!!  The 3DO even allowed users to listen to music, view their photos, and watch videos on it. How could such an all in one central hub of entertainment fail? Here's to hoping that the PS3 has the muscle to thrive where 3DO didn't. I love gaming too much to want Sony to die, but would love to see them humbled.

 That brings me to my newest portable acquisitions. Meet Game Gear and Lynx the PSP's of their time. On the go battery hogs that owned the Game Boy in every technological way. You could even watch color tv on them! While enjoyable machines in their own right they couldn't stand up to Nintendo's demure juggernaut. The Big N's focus on game play and longer battery life to increase portability was too much the bloated non gaming aspects of Sega and Atari to handle. Simple fun that doesn't tax your wallet? That sounds like a familiar strategy...

 It looks like all that was old is now new again. It's 12 years later and Sony doesn't seem to have learned from the mistakes that 3DO, Sega, and Atari made.  Will the past repeat itself? Only time will tell how this most interesting of console and portable wars will end. Who else is happy to go along for the ride? I am!

I go to EB to pick up my pre order of Elebits and much to my chagrin they don't have the free plush toy that I was supposed to get. This is the same store that didn't have my Castlevania Portrait of Ruin pre order. This causes me to ask for my money back for both games. The manager immediately gets on the phone and magically finds both bonus items at another EB and has them hold them for me. I then pay for my games there and head to the other store to get my goodies.
When I arrive at the store they get my items along with another copy of Elebits...

pika: I already bought the game at the first store.

EB: Yeah, we know.

pika: [Thinks to himself] They can't be this stupid...

EB: Thank you for your business.

pika: [Scampers out of the store] Giggity! Gigggity! Giggity! Giggity! Giggity! Giggity! Goo!

In your face, EB. This was karma coming back to reward a pure at heart gamer who was being screwed out of what was rightfully his.

So yesterday I went out to pick up my pre ordered Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin collector's box set. Unfortunately life had other plans for me. According to the clerks Konami didn't send out enough to cover their pre orders and they had already sold every one that they had. Somehow I get the feeling that they would have had enough if their employees hadn't taken any for themselves. I won't be buying anything from that store for a long while and I won't be adding PoR to my collecton if I have to settle for a regular copy of the game instead of the box set that I paid for.

Yeah. So I'm still stuck on the fishing at the beginning of Twilight Princess and don't see that changing any time soon.

It's been over a week since my Wii arrived home so I thought that I'd reflect on how that went. Connecting it online was a breeze, the nunchuck is surprisingly comfortable, and my Mii would bare an eerie resemblance to me if Nintendo would allow them to be fatter. Watching the Wii come to life with pulsating blue light while getting a Wii Connect 24 message when the Wii is turned off  is pretty cool too.  I'm very satisfied with what my little, white cigar box can do without even putting a game inside of it.

 On the software side of things I've mostly been playing Wii sports. The boxing is my favorite followed by bowling, fitness, and baseball. Despite having played the game for about 90 minutes a day I haven't had time to get to tennis or golf. The boxing is just too addicting to allow that to happen.
 
 My only other launch day purchase was Twilight Princess and I've had problems with it. Maybe it was the fact that I had my wisdom teeth pulled the night before and thus haven't been in the mood for any sort of frustration or maybe I'm just a big dummy, but I can't get past the fishing. Yeah. The fishing. The part in the beginning of the game with the cat. I caught one on accident and since then haven't had a bite or at least haven't been able to hook anything.  After a few days and several hours of trying I called it quits. It's just not fun to get that stuck in a game when your head hurts, your mouth is sore, and you can't eat solid food. It was time to stop before I permanently associated my unpleasant feelings with the game itself and risked never playing it again. Zelda's day will come, but likely not any time soon. For now Wii sports and my newest purchase Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz will have to keep me occupied.

 All in all the future seems bright for the Wii as long as the 3rd parties don't abandon ship again. Even if they do it's still fairly bright since Nintendo can always be counted on to publish great games. The future is also bright for my mouth which is now capable of chewing solid foods again.

Gabby Jay: Yay...

I have migrated over from the GameFAQs boards where I normally kill time while at work. My presence can be mostly felt on Random Insanity where my Pikadeth's Playhouse topics have been running for over 4 years now. Don't expect much in the way of great writing from me I'm just a lowly security dispatcher looking for ways to make his night go by more quickly. Most of my time at GameSpot as been on the On The Spot live chat rooms being annoying and finding creative ways to get moderated for offensive behavior whilst not actually doing anything blatantly offensive. I'd write more of these if I could figure out how...