Captain’s log, supplemental.

Our assignment was simple, scan Gorn facilities in this remote asteroid belt to make sure that they weren’t stockpiling weapons of mass destruction of any sort.

The Gorn, of course, were having none of it, and we found ourselves on the receiving end of a volley of disruptor bursts after attempting to scan the first outpost.  Calling on my background as an engineer I rotated the shield frequencies before the impact.

The Lockheed’s shields held gracefully. Rotating the frequencies had the desired effect and managed to mitigate most of the damage to the shields.

But there were still three ships.  I ordered engineering officer Ensign Kort to reroute EPS systems to boost the shield systems while I sounded the red alert.

Shields were holding, but I could see that there was another incoming volley of disruptor fire, plus photon torpedoes.  I reinforced the fore shields and told tactical to open fire on the lead Gorn cruiser.

The Lockheed’s heavy disruptor cannons locked onto the Gorn ship and opened fire.  Their shields dropped quickly, and without shielding the disruptors quickly ate through the rest of their hull.  The Lockheed was too close, and the shockwaves from exploding cruiser shuddered through the ship.  Thankfully there were no major casualties.

We moved to three quarter impulse and engaged evasive maneuvers.  Full power to starboard shields soaked a torpedo volley as we brought the Lockheed around in an arc to end up behind the second cruiser.

My science officer Ensign Sadi jammed the targeting sensors of the third Gorn cruiser, preventing them from targeting us for some of the fight although she warned that it was but “a fleeting dream that wouldn’t last forever.”  She could have just told me nine seconds.  I forget that her previous host was a poet.  Note: I need to speak with her regarding combat expediency.

My tactical officer, Ensign Noros prepared a high yield torpedo burst to impact just as their facing shields were dropped.  Commendations for Ensign Noros for her impeccable timing.

To this day, many Starfleet officers protest the academy’s admission policies from some of the more controversial systems, such as Ferenginar, but every day, new recruits like Ensign Noros continue to prove them wrong.

One on one the last cruiser was no match for the crew of the Lockheed.  We scanned the installation and moved on, although it was not the last of the Gorn we would see that day.

The retelling of them, not so much.  A detail here and there is added or removed.  Not out of deliberate editing, but for the simple reason that each retelling is different.

And so, there are a lot of “maybes.”  This is a story then, about a girl who broke my heart.  Maybe.

One day, when I was younger, a beautiful girl broke my heart.  One of my friends, taking pity on my situation, and no doubt sick of my moping, asked me to help him DJ at a party near his house.  This was when DJs actually needed people to carry discs.  It was a paying gig, so I said yes.

On the way there, I rolled down the passenger side window on a lonely stretch of road alongside a valley.  I took a deep breath and shouted about how she was the only one for me and that I still loved her.

I remembered the cool breeze across my face, his laughter at my defiant act, the brush whipping past us and the the smell of the desert air.

At the party, while bringing in the third milk crate of vinyl, I met a different beautiful girl that night.  She wrote down her number on a post it note and gave it to me.

Later, after the party was over, along that same lonely stretch of road alongside that same valley, my friend stopped the car and looked at me expectantly.

I rolled down the window, took a deep breath, and shouted that perhaps, well, maybe, possibly. . . she wasn’t the only one for me.

Perchance.

It’s a colder spring day in 1996 and I’m shivering in my long wool coat.  Despite living in the District for three winters, I still haven’t learned to layer.

I look over to my girlfriend, and she’s occupied with driving.  She shifts matter of factly in the stop and go traffic on Rockville Pike.  It’s a slightly misty rainy sort of day and the intermittent wipe of the blades punctuates our conversation.  It’s about everything and nothing at all, the kind of conversation that two lovers have when they’re not entangled in each other.

We should be in class but we’re not.  We do this more often than we should.  Even though our grades don’t suffer, I know that every time we skip class, a part of us rips away.  A little bit more, every time, we step further and further away from being the perfect son or daughter that our parents want us to be.  But we don’t care.

It’s a long trip in the rush hour traffic, longer still because we ache to get to our destination.  We know what awaits us there.  We long to hold it in our hands, to be complete.

We arrive and we get out of the car.  I wait, in the rain, feeling small droplets through my too short hair.  She locks up the car, takes my hand and we walk through the doors together.

We walk slowly, window shopping at first, stopping at every counter to look at the tiny, expensive objects under glass.  Every now and again, I ask a salesperson to bring an item up from behind the counter.  She nods her approval or disapproval and we move on, taking great care to thank the salesperson each time.

Finally we stop at what feels like the last counter.  The final one for us.  The reason we came all the way out here, in the rain and through the traffic, together.

I’m buying a Pilot 5000 from US Robotics.

She looks at me and I smile.

Because she understands.

It’s a love letter to the Atari 2600 box art.  It’s got the hideous background color, the fonts, and the action packed style that resembled a dynamic movie poster, but in no way resembled the blocks, bits and bleeps of the actual gameplay.

They even have faux aging on the box.  I have it in hand now and it’s just incredible looking.  Great job.

Just a good dungeon crawl would do the trick.

The whole top down view, press a single button a lot, manage your inventory, and drink potions genre has kind of been ignored lately, and with good reason.  I just summarized it for you in that last sentence.  Still, there’s no reason why someone can’t make a well crafted version of the same type of game and have it stand out.  It’s not like the market is really taking chances with new franchises, developers and publishers might as well go back to some old standby titles.

I hear that Sacred 2 may fit the bill.

Although to be honest, I may start playing it and then just lose interest.  It’s entirely possible that this phase may pass.

Both M rated titles, and both on Nintendo platforms.

I played a good bit of Madworld, lumbering my way through a couple of the earlier levels before I really started to “get it.”  It’s really more like a puzzle game combined with a fighter, and a tiny bit of pixel hunt.  You’ve got to combine prop kills with environmental kills to really get things going, but sometimes, finding the props is difficult because everything is in black and white.

The exception of course, is blood.  Which is everywhere.

Madworld is the other answer to that knock knock joke.  “What’s black and white and red all over?”

Chinatown wars is well, it’s top down cel-shaded GTA on the DS.  It’s like a deeper version of the 1997 client.  This time, there’s a bit of Dope Wars (remember that on the Palm?) as well.  Money seems quicker and easier to come by if you’re running merchandise to different parts of the city.

It’s not bad although I’ll probably get sick of it around the impossible missions.

Madworld is just too over the top not to play through.

But, back to the I get a follow (on twitter) from someone I don’t recognize, but don’t really think anything of it until I check out who it is.  Turns out it’s the Environmental Art Lead for Dead Space.  So he shows me a couple of things I missed and then I notice a name I think I recognize.  It’s the guy that lived in our group house for a couple of weeks, a friend of one of my roommates.

I do some additional research and well, he is the same artist that painted the triptych sitting in my bedroom, awaiting framing.  He painted them 13 years ago as a thank you for letting him stay.

And he did UI design for Dead Space.

Small world, indeed.

It’s a light gun game with an actual physical gimmick of the elevator doors closing in front of the arcade screen.  I’ve played gimmicky light gun games before, but this one pretty much takes the gimmick crown.

I know.

But, back to the game.  There is a feeling of coming back home, while also finding out that while you were gone, some incredible remodeling took place.  The new Street Fighter IV is a 3d fighter with a true 2d feel.  It just feels like street fighter, but with this fantastic aesthetic with some great special effects.  The collision detection for the fighting is great, and I never feel like an attack should have hit when it didn’t.  Soul Calibur and its sequels had that issue sometimes.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great 3d fighter.

There’s just something about coming back to a two dimensional fight plane. 

It may be nostalgia, it may just be simplifying the game mechanic, but whatever it is, it just feels solid.  And it’s fun.  So far, it’s great fun.  The characters are expressive caricatures (sterotypes?) from different countries and they fight each other.  An interesting addition is 2d animated sequences before the start of each character’s arc in the arcade mode.   This attempt at story is really only interesting the first time through for each character.  After that, it just becomes another reason to hold down the start button to skip through and get to the fighting.

My experience my be somewhat biased, I think it’s a great game.  This may have something to do with the fact that Street Fighter II, and fighting games in particular, were no small part of my high school experience, and to a certain extent, my college experience.  I spent many hours in front of arcade machines, and on couches with a controller in my hand playing a lot of fighting games.  It’s something I still like to do on occasion, but since I no longer live in a group house, the opportunities to engage in video fisticuffs are not as frequent.

Street Fighter IV taps into the nostalgia center of my brain, sure, but it’s not simply a rehash.  There are EX Modifiers for special attacks, Focus Attacks, Ultras, and Revenge attacks.  The revenge attacks are somewhat similar to the Desperation moves from the King of Fighters series, only command inputs are straightforward.

My experience is also biased by the fact that I’m using the MadCatz tournament edition stick.  It’s awesomeness also my be affecting my perceptions of the game.  I find I even use the Japanese layout and it works for me.  I may convert the “ball” style of the stick to “bat.”  What’s great is that it’s made so that you can do that.  It was the intention that you could change parts afterwards.  The stick is well made, solid to the point where I could classify it as heavy when sitting in my lap.

I’ll have to try out the online mode that replicates the arcade experience by allowing outside opponents to interrupt your single player arcade game.  That sounds awesome, but I can’t seem to get decent latency so my games never connect.  Until I figure that out, I’m looking forward to reliving the arcade experience at home.  Not only with the graphics and controller to match that of the arcade cabinet, but possibly some of the community as well.

Update:  The MadCatz tournament edition stick is $150.  a 360 is $300.  Street Fighter IV costs $60.   A Street Fighter IV cabinet costs 2,394,000 yen.  Which, when converted from space dollars, is $23,000.  I feel like I’m coming out ahead here.

This was a mistake.

The mistake was ordering from Gamestop in the first place.  Now, I don’t know what happened.   I’m sure there’s another side to the story, but long story short, I did not walk away from Gamestop with Dawn of War II.

I called earlier today, to check to see if they had it in.  I am informed that they are sold out.  I state that I had preordered said title and was promptly referred to a manager.  I asked why I was not called.  He stated that the automated system did not call anyone.

Note:  Gamestop has a policy where if you do not pick up a preordered game within 48 hours, they will charge a $5 restock fee.

The manager was apologetic, but then stated that he would call another store and make sure they had one on hold for me, today.  He took down my name and assured me that there would be a copy waiting for me at the Montgomery Mall location.  I asked about the restock fee and canceling my preorder and he stated that I would have to come in person to cancel the preorder to avoid the restock fee.

I canceled my pre order at White Flint, and then promptly decided that I didn’t need to purchase Dawn of War 2 from Gamestop, but another person might want that other copy.  I call the other store to free up the copy that was on hold for me.

I’m told that it is the last copy, and they don’t hold games.  I ask if the manager called ahead and either the message never got through, or there was no call.

I wasn’t really surprised.  Either way, Gamestop lost pretty much all of their future sales from me. They won’t miss my money, considering that they posted $8.8 Billion dollars in sales last year.  I saw the business model in action tonight.  Someone traded in a copy of Forza for one dollar and thirty cents.  They sell it for $14.99.  I should have bought that copy for five dollars and given it to someone.

Dawn of War II did get released a bit earlier than expected, and I’m guessing that the automated call system can’t handle variables outside of its schedule.  I guess that’s a plus for the “filthy human” column.