Thursday, March 31, 2011
-Howdy everyone, just in time before the end of March is my monthly blog, and also my annual Midwest Gaming Recap blog, no promises on whether or not I will continually somehow make it longer than last year, but first I have a couple other things to touch on.
-A few weeks back I had to serve on jury duty for the first time ever! It was a fairly swift trial, and I even had the honor handing in the verdict. Most people there found it a nuisance to serve on the trial, but I was oddly fascinated by the judicial system, probably because it felt like I was making Phoenix Wright proud, especially since when that trial was going on I was on the final stretch of the third Phoenix Wright game, Trials & Tribulations on the DS.
-About two weeks ago I met up with Paul, Jim and Mike for our quarterly night geeking out on Risk. Our first match was a teams game with Mike and I annihilating Jim and Paul within four turns. The second game we never got a chance to finish because we realized it was going to take awhile and we wanted to get some multiplayer Modern Warfare 2 in before the night was over, and thus we played Modern Warfare 2 split screen until we were ready to pass out.
-This week was the last days for two awesome co-workers who have been with me at Target for awhile. Cheap Pop podcast co-host Dave has been working with me for nearly the past six years and in a week or two will head off to join the Air Force. Adam has been working at Target for the past three years and will be leaving soon also to join the military. The two have been a blast to BS with in and out of work the past several years, and work won't be the same without them. We will still find a way to do episodes of The Cheap Pop somehow; we just did an awesome Wrestlemania preview show you can all check out by downloading here. We do plan on doing one more before Dave leaves, which will be our Wrestlemania review episode, which coincidentally will be episode 50 so be on the lookout for that.
-Before I go into the MGC recap, I will try to quickly rundown what I have been playing in March so far...
Let's start with Smackdown vs. RAW 2011. I have beaten Christian & Cena's Road to Wrestlemania modes and am a good chunk into Rey Mysterio's so far. I am trying to plow through these so I can hop into WWE All-Stars which came out this week and not let SDVSRAW 2011 fall way back into my backlog.
On PS3 I have been playing a good amount of Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I have been playing a fair amount of this online against Chris and other VGevo users, and starting to roll through arcade mode a lot in an attempt to see all the endings. Also got back into Enslaved again. I ended beating the campaign and the Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC within a few days. I love the storytelling and the characters, which is par for the course in a Ninja Theory developed game, and the gameplay was refreshingly different than what the demo led me to believe. The DLC also dramatically mixed up the gameplay as it was more stealth based, and to my surprise I actually enjoyed and managed to beat it!
As I alluded earlier I finally beat Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations on the DS, the final case was a blast, as it involved a lot of events that took place previous cases. Find out more in my review. On the 20 some hour road trip to MGC and back I got a decent amount of DS time into Last Window, the sequel to one of my favorite DS games, Hotel Dusk that I had to import because it only got a European release.
Did a lot of other bite-sized gaming in between major disc based games. Pinball FX2 has been dominating a lot of play as usual, but its recent Superscore recent is screwing up a ton of my high scores. I also finally completed RaSkulls after chipping away it here and there over the past few months. Also on the DS I picked up Atari Arcade Classics for only $20, and it features over 50 Atari 2600 & arcade classics, which is a far better value then the $3 a piece they are going for on the Game Room app on 360.
-Now onto the greatness that is my Midwest Gaming Classic 2011 experience. We left early Thursday morning last week. I took an extra day off for the vacation so I could adapt to a normal sleeping schedule for the vacation and not end up getting some odd hours of sleep in the first day of it like I did the past couple years. Also breaking up the drive this year helped tremendously. Joey and I rode with Chris & Lyzz in their Honda SUV, which was a lot roomier and more comfortable than the last time we rode with them in Lyzz's car two years ago. We broke up the drive, which is around 11-12 hours one way from Grand Forks to Milwaukee, by resting at the Twin Cities for a day on the way there.
We spent most of the day at the Mall of America from around noon to 7pm. I did not go too overboard spending there, I only ended up buying the aforementioned Atari Classics DS game, as well as a vintage Atari T-Shirt and a few books at Barnes and Noble. I am jealous of the awesome restaurants that are in the Mall of America, we ended getting some food at Johnny Rockets' for lunch and the illustrious BBQ that is Famous Dave's for dinner.
We left for Milwaukee on Friday morning and got there mid-afternoon. After unwinding for an hour or two, I hooked up with a good chunk of the VGevo crew for the annual pre-show dinner meet up. Roughly 15 of us met up at the Delafield Brehaus, the same venue we ate at two years ago. I consumed an awesome seafood platter, and after that we headed back to the hotel for the annual pre-show karaoke at the hotel bar. Lots of good times were had that night, the VGevo community is tremendous, and I had a blast conversing with fellow podcasters and forum users. I did end up singing two songs that night, the first being Kool & The Gang's "Celebration," and The Beatles' "Let It Be." I was pretty drunk that night so I have no idea how horrible I was, but I think I recall some people enjoying my rendition of "Celebration."
So Saturday arrived and it was the first official day of MGC. I helped set up our table with Chris & Lyzz. I brought my 19" HDTV and had WWF No Mercy running the entire day on it on N64, while Chris & Lyzz brought their own little tv, with a Genesis hooked up to it and a library of games to choose from to play. Like last year, each VGevo Network Podcast had their table set up in the room. It was a similar layout to last year, but the back half instead was used as a mini-arcade due to a cross promotion with Galloping Ghosts Arcade out of Illinois who brought arcade classic cabinets like Galaga, Simpsons, Silent Score, the OG Street Fighter, Street Fighter 3 and MK2. They were all set on free play and I took the first opportunity I had to play Simpsons and play through the whole thing and beat it for the first time ever. Mr. Burns in the end was pretty sinister, and I lost track at how many forms he had.
I guess should stop saying VGevo, because VGevo founders Ken & Terry announced in their opening speech and as you can tell by reading this blog, that VGevo relaunched as Retroids that very same day with a far cleaner look and easier to navigate interface. The Retroids room had a constant theme throughout the first day and that was tournaments. Each podcast was running its own unique tournament. The Amplified Gamers did another DJ Hero tournament, Gamers Only Older had a fastest completion time challenge in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, InDis did another stellar Super Street Fighter IV tournament in addition to a Madden tournament, 360 Nation had a highscore challenge in Echoes mode of Bulletstorm and finally we at On Tap had our annual WWF No Mercy tournament.
I competed in a few of these. I placed a score and came nowhere close to winning the Echoes challenge in Bulletstorm. I also lost in a round nailbiter in the Madden tournament to one Kenneth Wicklein. There was practically no defense in that game, and it was close until the end. In the Super Street Fighter IV tournament I was afraid I was going to get dominated by many of the same loyal InDis community that was in attendance at InDisFest, but alas I emerged victorious in the first round of the 32-person tourney....via forfeit anyways since my adversary was tied up with a presentation. I did however promptly get schooled by Retroids user Krackerjack in the second round. In my annual WWF No Mercy tournament, we held a 12-person bracket-style tournament this year, and it wound up being me against my brother in the finals where I lost to his regular exploits of Steve Austin's cheap arsenal of moves.
I did not have too much time to check out the museum they regularly have at MGC this year, which was unfortunate because of the brief time I was there I can tell they definitely made quite a few changes to beef it up and really added to the presentation. I knew the guy heading up the museum, JD, told me he had the guts from an arcade Wrestlefest machine hooked up to a computer for play with controllers, so I was able to run over and play that for nearly an hour and romped through the entire Saturday Night's Main Event Tag Team championship mode.
So that was Saturday in a nutshell, and like last year, about an hour after MGC was done for Saturday, the Retroids room reopened for a kickass after party with lots of alcohol to go around. All the games were turned back on, and that was when I got a chance to play through Simpson arcade mode the entire way through with Retroids user RPT. I also was able to meet up with world renowned game modder, Ben Heck and he was able to show me his new custom pinball table he is working on based on Lost which was pretty damn cool. Also was able to sing a little bit of karaoke with Torgo of PSNation Podcast as we belted out a duet to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and well, you can see the results for yourself by clicking here. I believe kept partying until 3am, going to a after-after-party in 360 Nation podcast host, Randum's hotel room with several others before finally passing out.
Only grabbing four or five hours of sleep did not prevent me from taking in day two of MGC. Like last year, it was a bit more laid back as many people were nursing their hangovers. Sunday breezed by before I know it, midway through that day we recorded our episode directly from the Retroids room at MGC, and you listen to it by clicking here. When we wrapped up the recording it was 2pm, and people were starting to prep to wrap up the end of MGC so I made hast to the vendor hall to do a little last minute shopping.
I did not spend as much as I did in previous years, which is a good thing, and like last year Chris and Lyzz ended up buying a good bed-load or two of games. Every time I caught up with them there were showing me their latest grabs. I cannot blame them, I was like that myself my first year or two at MGC. This year I finally picked up a GBA SP, now I can enjoy GB and GBC games with a backlit screen for the one or two times a year I want to get nostalgic with old school GB games. Best of all it was only $20! I celebrated that purchase with Kirby's Pinball Land for only $3! Vendor VGK returned to MGC, they are known for homebrew cartridges and I picked up the English translation of Earthbound Zero from them a couple years back, but this year I got Tecmo Super Bowl 2010 from them. Yes it is the classic Tecmo Super Bowl, but now with updated rosters and teams! This year's random annual 3DO game happened to be the original Need for Speed from 1994. I am almost positive it will look and play like crap today, but regardless I cannot wait to throw it in and see what it has in store for me. Finally, I got a few random Japanese Famicom games. The vendor selling them, Mad-Gear, has a good reputation for not letting you buy a bad game, and he had a $3 bin with some in there and I grabbed a few he recommended since my NES-clone also supports Famicom games.
Shortly after my little shopping spree, it was time to shut it down and get the hell out of MGC. I said my goodbyes, and before I knew it, was on the road for the 12 hour drive back home. Only thing that sucked about the trip was I felt bad for Joe since his off and on sinus infection he has has been battling past few weeks kicked into full gear over the weekend, presumably because of all the travel. He ended up spending nearly half the weekend trying to recuperate in the hotel room. Other than that though, it was another hell of an MGC experience and one I will never forget!
And with that I will wrap up another my yearly MGC Blog, sorry if I put you to sleep in the process of reading it!
-A few weeks back I had to serve on jury duty for the first time ever! It was a fairly swift trial, and I even had the honor handing in the verdict. Most people there found it a nuisance to serve on the trial, but I was oddly fascinated by the judicial system, probably because it felt like I was making Phoenix Wright proud, especially since when that trial was going on I was on the final stretch of the third Phoenix Wright game, Trials & Tribulations on the DS.
-About two weeks ago I met up with Paul, Jim and Mike for our quarterly night geeking out on Risk. Our first match was a teams game with Mike and I annihilating Jim and Paul within four turns. The second game we never got a chance to finish because we realized it was going to take awhile and we wanted to get some multiplayer Modern Warfare 2 in before the night was over, and thus we played Modern Warfare 2 split screen until we were ready to pass out.
-This week was the last days for two awesome co-workers who have been with me at Target for awhile. Cheap Pop podcast co-host Dave has been working with me for nearly the past six years and in a week or two will head off to join the Air Force. Adam has been working at Target for the past three years and will be leaving soon also to join the military. The two have been a blast to BS with in and out of work the past several years, and work won't be the same without them. We will still find a way to do episodes of The Cheap Pop somehow; we just did an awesome Wrestlemania preview show you can all check out by downloading here. We do plan on doing one more before Dave leaves, which will be our Wrestlemania review episode, which coincidentally will be episode 50 so be on the lookout for that.
-Before I go into the MGC recap, I will try to quickly rundown what I have been playing in March so far...
Let's start with Smackdown vs. RAW 2011. I have beaten Christian & Cena's Road to Wrestlemania modes and am a good chunk into Rey Mysterio's so far. I am trying to plow through these so I can hop into WWE All-Stars which came out this week and not let SDVSRAW 2011 fall way back into my backlog.
On PS3 I have been playing a good amount of Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I have been playing a fair amount of this online against Chris and other VGevo users, and starting to roll through arcade mode a lot in an attempt to see all the endings. Also got back into Enslaved again. I ended beating the campaign and the Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC within a few days. I love the storytelling and the characters, which is par for the course in a Ninja Theory developed game, and the gameplay was refreshingly different than what the demo led me to believe. The DLC also dramatically mixed up the gameplay as it was more stealth based, and to my surprise I actually enjoyed and managed to beat it!
As I alluded earlier I finally beat Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations on the DS, the final case was a blast, as it involved a lot of events that took place previous cases. Find out more in my review. On the 20 some hour road trip to MGC and back I got a decent amount of DS time into Last Window, the sequel to one of my favorite DS games, Hotel Dusk that I had to import because it only got a European release.
Did a lot of other bite-sized gaming in between major disc based games. Pinball FX2 has been dominating a lot of play as usual, but its recent Superscore recent is screwing up a ton of my high scores. I also finally completed RaSkulls after chipping away it here and there over the past few months. Also on the DS I picked up Atari Arcade Classics for only $20, and it features over 50 Atari 2600 & arcade classics, which is a far better value then the $3 a piece they are going for on the Game Room app on 360.
-Now onto the greatness that is my Midwest Gaming Classic 2011 experience. We left early Thursday morning last week. I took an extra day off for the vacation so I could adapt to a normal sleeping schedule for the vacation and not end up getting some odd hours of sleep in the first day of it like I did the past couple years. Also breaking up the drive this year helped tremendously. Joey and I rode with Chris & Lyzz in their Honda SUV, which was a lot roomier and more comfortable than the last time we rode with them in Lyzz's car two years ago. We broke up the drive, which is around 11-12 hours one way from Grand Forks to Milwaukee, by resting at the Twin Cities for a day on the way there.
We spent most of the day at the Mall of America from around noon to 7pm. I did not go too overboard spending there, I only ended up buying the aforementioned Atari Classics DS game, as well as a vintage Atari T-Shirt and a few books at Barnes and Noble. I am jealous of the awesome restaurants that are in the Mall of America, we ended getting some food at Johnny Rockets' for lunch and the illustrious BBQ that is Famous Dave's for dinner.
We left for Milwaukee on Friday morning and got there mid-afternoon. After unwinding for an hour or two, I hooked up with a good chunk of the VGevo crew for the annual pre-show dinner meet up. Roughly 15 of us met up at the Delafield Brehaus, the same venue we ate at two years ago. I consumed an awesome seafood platter, and after that we headed back to the hotel for the annual pre-show karaoke at the hotel bar. Lots of good times were had that night, the VGevo community is tremendous, and I had a blast conversing with fellow podcasters and forum users. I did end up singing two songs that night, the first being Kool & The Gang's "Celebration," and The Beatles' "Let It Be." I was pretty drunk that night so I have no idea how horrible I was, but I think I recall some people enjoying my rendition of "Celebration."
So Saturday arrived and it was the first official day of MGC. I helped set up our table with Chris & Lyzz. I brought my 19" HDTV and had WWF No Mercy running the entire day on it on N64, while Chris & Lyzz brought their own little tv, with a Genesis hooked up to it and a library of games to choose from to play. Like last year, each VGevo Network Podcast had their table set up in the room. It was a similar layout to last year, but the back half instead was used as a mini-arcade due to a cross promotion with Galloping Ghosts Arcade out of Illinois who brought arcade classic cabinets like Galaga, Simpsons, Silent Score, the OG Street Fighter, Street Fighter 3 and MK2. They were all set on free play and I took the first opportunity I had to play Simpsons and play through the whole thing and beat it for the first time ever. Mr. Burns in the end was pretty sinister, and I lost track at how many forms he had.
I guess should stop saying VGevo, because VGevo founders Ken & Terry announced in their opening speech and as you can tell by reading this blog, that VGevo relaunched as Retroids that very same day with a far cleaner look and easier to navigate interface. The Retroids room had a constant theme throughout the first day and that was tournaments. Each podcast was running its own unique tournament. The Amplified Gamers did another DJ Hero tournament, Gamers Only Older had a fastest completion time challenge in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, InDis did another stellar Super Street Fighter IV tournament in addition to a Madden tournament, 360 Nation had a highscore challenge in Echoes mode of Bulletstorm and finally we at On Tap had our annual WWF No Mercy tournament.
I competed in a few of these. I placed a score and came nowhere close to winning the Echoes challenge in Bulletstorm. I also lost in a round nailbiter in the Madden tournament to one Kenneth Wicklein. There was practically no defense in that game, and it was close until the end. In the Super Street Fighter IV tournament I was afraid I was going to get dominated by many of the same loyal InDis community that was in attendance at InDisFest, but alas I emerged victorious in the first round of the 32-person tourney....via forfeit anyways since my adversary was tied up with a presentation. I did however promptly get schooled by Retroids user Krackerjack in the second round. In my annual WWF No Mercy tournament, we held a 12-person bracket-style tournament this year, and it wound up being me against my brother in the finals where I lost to his regular exploits of Steve Austin's cheap arsenal of moves.
I did not have too much time to check out the museum they regularly have at MGC this year, which was unfortunate because of the brief time I was there I can tell they definitely made quite a few changes to beef it up and really added to the presentation. I knew the guy heading up the museum, JD, told me he had the guts from an arcade Wrestlefest machine hooked up to a computer for play with controllers, so I was able to run over and play that for nearly an hour and romped through the entire Saturday Night's Main Event Tag Team championship mode.
So that was Saturday in a nutshell, and like last year, about an hour after MGC was done for Saturday, the Retroids room reopened for a kickass after party with lots of alcohol to go around. All the games were turned back on, and that was when I got a chance to play through Simpson arcade mode the entire way through with Retroids user RPT. I also was able to meet up with world renowned game modder, Ben Heck and he was able to show me his new custom pinball table he is working on based on Lost which was pretty damn cool. Also was able to sing a little bit of karaoke with Torgo of PSNation Podcast as we belted out a duet to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and well, you can see the results for yourself by clicking here. I believe kept partying until 3am, going to a after-after-party in 360 Nation podcast host, Randum's hotel room with several others before finally passing out.
Only grabbing four or five hours of sleep did not prevent me from taking in day two of MGC. Like last year, it was a bit more laid back as many people were nursing their hangovers. Sunday breezed by before I know it, midway through that day we recorded our episode directly from the Retroids room at MGC, and you listen to it by clicking here. When we wrapped up the recording it was 2pm, and people were starting to prep to wrap up the end of MGC so I made hast to the vendor hall to do a little last minute shopping.
I did not spend as much as I did in previous years, which is a good thing, and like last year Chris and Lyzz ended up buying a good bed-load or two of games. Every time I caught up with them there were showing me their latest grabs. I cannot blame them, I was like that myself my first year or two at MGC. This year I finally picked up a GBA SP, now I can enjoy GB and GBC games with a backlit screen for the one or two times a year I want to get nostalgic with old school GB games. Best of all it was only $20! I celebrated that purchase with Kirby's Pinball Land for only $3! Vendor VGK returned to MGC, they are known for homebrew cartridges and I picked up the English translation of Earthbound Zero from them a couple years back, but this year I got Tecmo Super Bowl 2010 from them. Yes it is the classic Tecmo Super Bowl, but now with updated rosters and teams! This year's random annual 3DO game happened to be the original Need for Speed from 1994. I am almost positive it will look and play like crap today, but regardless I cannot wait to throw it in and see what it has in store for me. Finally, I got a few random Japanese Famicom games. The vendor selling them, Mad-Gear, has a good reputation for not letting you buy a bad game, and he had a $3 bin with some in there and I grabbed a few he recommended since my NES-clone also supports Famicom games.
Shortly after my little shopping spree, it was time to shut it down and get the hell out of MGC. I said my goodbyes, and before I knew it, was on the road for the 12 hour drive back home. Only thing that sucked about the trip was I felt bad for Joe since his off and on sinus infection he has has been battling past few weeks kicked into full gear over the weekend, presumably because of all the travel. He ended up spending nearly half the weekend trying to recuperate in the hotel room. Other than that though, it was another hell of an MGC experience and one I will never forget!
And with that I will wrap up another my yearly MGC Blog, sorry if I put you to sleep in the process of reading it!
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