Vintage Stock Conversations

This past Saturday Brad, Regina & I went up to Vintage Stock. They were looking for games and I was along for the ride. And when we entered the store Brad pointed out a top-loader Nintendo with SMB3 loaded up to play. Well, that made me content so I went to play while they mused over the games.

And after playing for about fifteen minutes I suddenly hear this voice behind me:
"Whoa....whoa.... that is... that is.... that is the ORIGINAL... the ORIGINAL MARIO BROTHERS. On the ORIGINAL SUPER NINTENDO."

I grinned. There was a boy, probably 11-13 behind me watching.

"No," I corrected, "this is on the Nintendo. This is before the Super."

"Wow. Wow."

His friend walked up and the first boy immediately pointed it out.
"Dude, LOOK. That is the ORIGINAL MARIO BROTHERS. On the NINTENDO. That's...that's.... that's so cool!"
(No. I didn't bother to correct the Original Mario Brothers issue. He was too overwhelmed with everything else. :) )
"Wow....that's the original? That's still so cool though!"
"I KNOW. Cause....cause...cause....it's the CLASSIC. This is the CLASSIC."


It was obvious that he had either actually never seen one before or at least never seen a working one before. 

I asked if he wanted to play. Immediately, "No! No." and he just stood there watching.
I asked his friend if he wanted to play. "Sure... I'll try." and as I grabbed the controller he stared at the World 2 Screen. "Where do I go?"
"Oh! Just push down to go to the level."
(After a few minutes of level play.)
"....this is SO different from Galaxy!"

No matter how many italics or caps I use, it will not quite capture his excitement and how enamored he was with the ORIGINAL. It was awesome. I loved every minute of it.

"Some nights, just pretzels and beer, but I'm here..."

Okay, maybe not beer. (Nor pretzels, they make me thirsty.)

This week has sucked.

I mean. They sent me home from work early on Monday. They sent me home from work. (And actually, even then, they only asked me if I wanted to go. YES. PLEASE.)

No, on a serious note, they did send me home. I practically imploded on Monday. I came down with an awful cold and on top of that suddenly Phyllis' death just overwhelmed my system. Tuesday was pretty much the same. I spent most of Wednesday feeling on the mend, but exhausted. Today was pretty miserable.

But you sounded so chipper at the beginning of this post....

GUILD WARS.

Guild Wars 2 has salvaged this week. It is so much fun.

Seriously, pure fun. This is the first game where I haven't felt overwhelmed or like I'm not able to help or like I have to reach such and such level or area, etc. I have just enjoyed it. So I'm running around as a Sylvari Elementalist and I'm shooting electricity and fire at things and finding pretty vista points, and fulfilling quests and having a ball. It seems to be really balanced and very newbie friendly. So I have gotten through my days this week by thinking "In a few hours, I get to play Guild Wars...."

So for everyone that pitched in to buy the game for me, you have my sincere enjoyment of it as well as my thanks for brightening up my awful, no good, very bad week. :)

Also brightening my week was getting to see Holly & Sam at the movies! I would say they put up with me stumbling around and almost falling over, but now that I think about it, that's probably not much different than normal. :)

And while we're speaking of the Dark Knight Rises, this HISHE bonus is hysterical: (Spoilers.)



"I'm startin' to think this guy doesn't have our best interests in mind here!"

So anyway, I'm still here. I still plan on blogging. I'm just working to find my way back into it.

I follow directions well. Maybe too well.

Jeff and I playing Lord of the Rings: War of the North for the first time and trying to figure out the best way to beat a large horde. 

Jeff: "Okay, this is working out great! You keep throwing up that protective orb, watch my back and I'll take out the archers on the rooftops with my arrows."
Me: "Got it!"
(ten minutes later.)
Jeff: "Well, I keep getting knocked off the platform. These guys keep attacking my face because someone is facing the wrong direction to kill them."
(silence)
Me: "You told me to watch your back?"
Jeff: "I meant... I... KILL EVERYTHING IN THE CIRCLE! Kill everything that comes in the circle, Sherri!"

(We won. :)  )

Congrats to the Kings!

The LA Kings won their first Stanley Cup tonight in their 40+ year history! Which is awesome and I'm excited for them.

Their goalie's daughter decided to show up at the press conference and steal the show. She's pretty cute, so check out the video:



Congrats, guys!! You looked so happy and I'm happy for you!

(If you want more on the Cup or the games, I have no doubt Will will be detailing it out further soon.)

(My favorite tweet of the night came from Wil Wheaton: "Local LA sports media is trying to figure out how the Sacramento Kings won the Stanley Bowl Trophy for Basketpuck tonight. Good job, guys.")

Diablo 3: Not-So-Inner Monologuing

I've learned.... I talk to myself out loud a lot if I'm gaming by myself. It's like my inner monologue just can't contain itself. And since there's no one around watching me there's no conscious shut-off valve. I've never really noticed it before because it doesn't happen quite as bad with platform games. But ooooh.... my venture into Diablo 3 has made it so much worse.

While I've played Guild Wars & LOTRO before, I never really got past level 12 in either of them, meaning I never played much at all. So this is really the first time I've tried to take on a boss by myself or major quests, etc. It's really fun (and no guilt monkeys because it's Neal's game! hurrah!). But the first time I ventured out by myself into the world of Diablo I was pretty convinced I was going to die around every corner. So phrases like "DON'T DIE! DON'T DIE! DON'T DIE!" and "DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!" were spilling out at almost every.single.enemy.

I think that's pretty much how playing Mega Man must have sounded too.

And then I realized: Hey! I didn't die! Hey! He died really easy! So you would think that would cut down on the chatter. But it hasn't.

So expelling those previous two mentioned (since they actually are the most common, but I've spoiled them), I give you:

Top 5 (Mostly) Most Used Phrases During Diablo 3:

5) "STOP SHOOTING HIM."
Out of a paranoia that something is about to kill me or is not completely dead yet I have a tendency to shoot anything that moves, including fellow party members. Thankfully, it doesn't actually harm friends, but it does make me irritated at myself when I realize I've been shooting the wrong thing. Especially when something actually is attacking me from behind.

4) "NO!"
While it may come out "NO!" I can assure you a couple times its felt more like this:


It usually means I've just died.

Which leads into.....
3) "PLEASE be a checkpoint."
Before I realized that completing a quest was when a checkpoint (essentially: save point) automatically occurred, I kept waiting for them to occur randomly. And I kept hoping for one about every five minutes. There's another popular variation of this that goes "AH! Where was my last checkpoint?!"

2) "HEAL, stupid, HEAL!"
I'm currently fighting the Butcher and have so far failed (don't judge me!). Unfortunately, I'm still button mashing at times and it'll accept one button over another and I WON'T HEAL. GAH. HEAL. HEEEEAL. I KNOW YOU'RE HURT. STOP TELLING ME.

1) "MOOOOVE!"
This is a real problem. 
My character has a real tendency to stand right next to deadly enemies, which is unfortunate since she's a Wizard and is therefore squishy. Despite the fact that I actually like to battle by standing far away and electrocuting things, I apparently haven't gotten complete understanding of.....something yet. Because somehow I always end up right in the way. Get out of the way. MOVE, Annama, MOVE! Or just....yes, die. Sigh. Checkpoint please.

Honorable Mention:
"PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!"
A variation of "DON'T DIE! DON'T DIE! DON'T DIE!" and therefore not up for top 5, but popular nonetheless.

Diablo Day!

It's finally in mah hands!! :)

Meet Diablo 3.

My cousin was one of the artists who worked on this game and, quite frankly, I'm super proud of him and all his hard work on it. Visually, it's quite beautiful (especially for a demonic world, heh) so far and I really enjoyed spending the evening running around in it with some of my friends. I'm not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination - while I've enjoyed Guild Wars and LOTRO in the past, I've always ended up feeling guilty dedicating so much time to it and usually end up fizzling out.
(Not that you should feel guilty playing games. But for some reason that's where the guilt monkeys attack me. Notice they don't attack me as much for wasting time surfing the internet. Like I'm doing now instead of sleeping. *flicks away a tiny, wimpy guilt monkey*)

Sadly, though, Diablo's launch has been marred by intense server issues. Which means pretty much since its release at midnight last night, there's been very little time its actually been playable. In fact, the reason we finally stopped playing tonight was due to the entire server/battlenet being shut down. As of now (1:00 AM) it is still offline. Eek. 

Nonetheless, it was a lot of fun. Hopefully I'll be able to get through some of it on my own instead of being so dependent on the leading of friends. I made a last minute change to a Wizard class, instead of Demon Hunter. Mostly because I'm a sucker for anything elemental. We'll see how it goes.

Congrats Neal!! May the rage of all the frustrated gamers not deter you from celebrating your artistic success. :)

"This is why we don't attack people with guns."

Tonight I was keeping Brad company when he offered me the chance to play Arkham City for the first time. Yay!

Also: Ahahaha! Oh dear. 

Listen, I'm just terrible at these games. I grew up on all the Nintendo sidescrollers. I never played Final Fantasy or, well, anything else. I did play Link to the Past. That's the only one I can currently think of where you actually go out and explore. Oh, and SMRPG. But Players Guides were my best friends. So the first time someone tried to teach me Kingdom Hearts it was a disaster. I didn't make it OFF THE BEACH. Y'know, that intro section?

"You have to find eggs. Where would eggs be?"
"I have no idea! I'm on a beach!"
"....how about a tree?"
"...."

That's pretty much how it goes most of the time. It's kind of sad.

This is my method for these types of games: Wander around. Eventually something will trigger the new scenario.

And it's not that I don't like those games! You just have to be very patient with me. Which Brad is. And so, even medicated, we sat there and he would calmly say "Sherri, didn't you just come from that direction?" And I would affirm that and he would reply "Then that's probably not the direction you should be going."

Also, I was learning the controls. So when I would go to "silent takedown" someone, I would actually leap up and attack them causing gunfire to come from everywhere. Batman died. A lot. Because I did that exact same button confusion. A lot. AT THE SAME FIGHT. It was awesome.

(I did, for the record, eventually manage to get past it, but it certainly wasn't because I completed any silent takedowns there.)

That being said, it's a really, really incredible game. (Even if you're lost and just grappling from platform to platform for awhile for fun.) The design elements are perfect, the storyline looks like an absolutely fantastic setup, and I feel like once I got used to the controller the controls would be a lot more intuitive. And gliding?! Gliding is the best.

Hm...maybe if I got an X Box....

Won't you take me down to Memphis on a midnight ride?

Flying across the land, trying to get a hand, playing in a travelin' band...

In unrelated news:

Apparently the Tonys are this Sunday. Who knew? I actually thought they were next week. Will I watch? Oh, probably. I don't really know what's up, but I didn't last year either and still got excited at the last minute, so I'm expecting similiar results.
Also, Spiderman: Turn off the Dark will be performing (though not eligible for any awards since it hasn't officially opened yet) so that should be interesting. The show is officially frozen now and back open to critics. It will officially open Tuesday, June 14th. (This looks like a pretty well-handled, fair new review if you're interested. It also appears to note most of the major changes.)

Speaking of next week, Company is playing throughout the week at a local movie theatre. Holly's already mentioned her interest (yay!) so I think we're going. ;)

Tonight I discovered Plants vs. Zombies and I have to admit that's a pretty fun game. Not necessarily too challenging so far, but amusing to despair for suns while zombies attack your garden.

The stories from Jopin still break my heart. I don't even know what to say in light of this new struggle.

In good news, I had dinner with Phyllis tonight which was wonderful as always. Chips and salsa may or may not have been involved. You never know with us (actually, you probably do.)

There are way too many anniversaries in June. I've already missed a few. No one else in my circle can get married in June. The limit has been breached.

Many of you read Epbot, but in case you don't, these silhouettes were just too amazing not to share. They're from Olly Moss' art show Paper Cuts. I have no idea who that is, but you should check out their blog because there are loads more (including Godzilla) and they're all wonderful. These are just some of the ones I was happiest to see:

Will, did we ever watch your full season of this? We should.

You know you're already singing it. I love the use of the map!

I thought this was the sweetest one. Up.

Sigh. I really, really hate to admit that it took me a second to get this one. And then all I could think of was a lion being drawn in crayon with a crown on his head... Maybe I have a block against lions. Or...maybe just against the obvious. *headdesk*

How many theme songs are stuck in your head now? :)

This one is merely for me. One of my favorite animes. Ride on, Cowboy.

And of course....
This made me smile. The days are just packed.

Mario Awesomeness

This was actually done illegally, but woooow this is awesome. Portland, please do not take this down.


Portland Bike Lane Gets Mario Kart Makeover

Always I wanna be with yoooooou....

My cousins left this morning. :(
My aunt and one other cousin will be flying out on Saturday. :(

So I'll probably start posting again.

If you have not played Robot Unicorn Attack, you are missing out. I had a previous high score of 33,130 that I could not get past, but now it's sitting at 42,521. HA! Take that doubtful narrator. I will not fail. One day my wishes will come true.

"I love unicorns, I love unicorns..."

Can't...stop...playing.

Robot Unicorn Attack

(Thanks Neal! Eventually I'll stop stealing your iPhone to play it.)