"Don't Forget About Nintendo This Holiday Season"

You know what Nintendo, the hell with you. The big boys have real new hardware coming out in the next couple months; PS4 and XBox One. Interested or not, it takes a lot of work from industry and retail professionals to ensure that the respective hardware launches are seamless as possible. So what does Nintendo do? Muddy the launch windows with obsolete hardware!

WiiU basic set, you know the discontinued one, bundled with Skylanders Swap Force to make a new bundle that no one will want. Of course it has a huge box. It'll look great collecting dust along side the Deluxe model, WindWaker HD bundle, and the new standard bundle with the two Mario games. That's not enough for the big N however, as here comes the stupid Wii Mini (I shall call him mini Wii). Cheap, yeah, that's great - but no internet connectivity and no SD card slot means no cheap Netflix gaming box and no cheap cracked emulation console. And of course we're buried under the damn things. Then of course we have the rehash of Super Mario 3D Land ported over to the WiiU on XBox One launch day. Seriously Nintendo, way to make it even more confusing for your potential customers and as difficult as possible for your retail partners.  What do you think is going to take priority that morning in retail stores?  That weekend?  The top of next week?

Nintendo, you only have so much retail shelf space for your huge console boxes. There will actually be more Wii / WiiU system options than there are colors of DS / 3DS systems on the shelf currently. It makes it real easy to divert people away to look at new and old offerings from Sony and Microsoft.

Yeah, there's an awful lot of hardware in that WiiU case, too bad there's not really all that much interesting to play on it.

Stopwatch

Today wasn't particularly fun.  It started out fine but just before really beginning with my day, my computer developed a pretty nasty infection.  I pulled the network connection and got to work on fixing the issue, all spawned from a java based advertisement on an otherwise reputable site that was infected.  After about three hours I had the issue fixed but my Windows activation key file had been corrupted and I couldn't get it re-certified even thought I had a valid key.  So I used a different build of Windows that had a different key and about 15 hours after the issue began, things seem "normal" again.  I didn't loose any data since that's all archived but I did loose about half a year of bookmarks.  I've been going through the bookmarks from the last backup, adding in new things I can remember and removing ones that I had gotten rid of since the last archive.  It makes me realize how bloated my bookmarks had become over the past half year.  I think I have everything back in order and I've really slimmed them down.

I've come to the realization that old sites that have information that I want for reference, the ones that haven't been touched in years; those are ones I need to get what I want and remove the bookmark.  The reason for this is there are tons of sites that ARE getting constant updates that end up being brushed to the wayside and lost in the shuffle.  While it makes me smile to browse a site I've visited for years, if it's not really useful and not really maintained, then it's taking away time I can be browsing current sites more relevant to my interests.

Anime and Sailor Moon for instance.  There's so much happening and a few truly spectacular sites out there now.  It really makes me want to get going with my CCG indexing and scans project as it will be something I can offer that isn't already offered.  There is ONE really solid scan archive site for the CCG that has individual scans but the navigation is kinda strange.  The scans also aren't as nice as I would like to provide.  I would also like to develop at least one additional expansion set.  Big words, I know, but I still want to do it.

There are some things online that I really need to quit living in the past concerning, and this is one of them.  If I want to see Sailor Moon and anime sites of the past, well, that's why I maintain my Sailor Moon site.

Game Center CX in USA

After finally watching the "Game Center CX in USA" special episode, and thoroughly enjoying it as usual, I have two things to say (although it's probably old hat at this time)...

Why the hell take Arino and crew to that dump of an indie game store 4Jays?  Wow, the games and display monitors don't work - big surprise.  Staff that doesn't know crap about games, an owner who always seems like he's pissed off someone is in his store, and outrageously overpriced inventory.  Seriously, they didn't seem too proud that their "fine establishment" was being featured on international television, at least they weren't faking for the camera.  Also while I know that the segment was for quick plays of some usually not found in Japan NES games, why was StarTropics not mentioned?  There has to be a copy in there - a game developed by Nintendo, by Japanese game developers working in America, specifically for the American audience.  Never mind that it's my favorite NES / Famicom game, it truly is a unique specimen of NES / Famicom history.

Second, the segment in the laundromat with Ms. Pac-Man.  Really, no one could do research that the reason that Ms. Pac-Man was moving so fast is because the game had a "speed up" chip installed?  It makes me wonder how much research is really done for the games on the show that are featured.  It also goes to show how much we need something like the Video Game History Museum to act as an information repository, open to everyone.

An Open Comment to De Anza College, Community College Network CCN1

This morning Space Shuttle Discovery returned to Earth from its final mission, completing a lifetime flight record of over 365 days in space.  The broadcast can always be watched on NASA TV over at nasa.gov but NASA also offers free HD broadcast for any television network that chooses to carry it.  Occasionally the local Community College Network channel (CCN1 De Anza) will show the NASA TV stream when they don't have anything else going on - sometimes.  You'd think it would be a perfect program to take up dead air when no distance learning classes are being broadcast but many times there's absolutely nothing being aired.

Amazingly a few nights ago they broadcast the entire launch of the Taurus rocket for the Glory satellite project, which ended in failure due to a failed launch separation.  However the entire time I was watching it I was full on expecting the broadcast to cut away.  That didn't happen, no, they decided to wait for something more momentous for that.

I got up for work early so that I could watch the NASA broadcast from the time that Discovery began its deorbit burn until eventual landing and wheel stop.  Basically I wanted to watch the final operational moments of my favorite of NASA's orbiters.  Deorbit burn was scheduled for 7:52am PST but I was up about an hour before that and began to watch on CCN1.  I was kind of shocked that they were actually showing it but I figured that since it was such an important moment in American spaceflight, De Anza realized they had a duty to provide the free service of the broadcast to the general public.

Then the clock struck 7:45 and the broadcast ended.  Instead of continuing to show the final operational moments of STS-133, De Anza elected to run their usual crap broadcast that can be aired at any time.  Of course I simply went over to my computer and pulled up NASA TV online and proceeded to watch the rest of the landing activities until I had to leave for work a few minutes after touchdown.  However I'm sure someone that may have been simply flipping channels in the morning and came across the Shuttle return, only to have it disappear in its final moments, wouldn't think anything of it.

This is one of the fundamental problems with spaceflight and the general public.  NASA providing a free HD stream for any station to broadcast is a tremendous asset to increase public awareness and involvement but only if the networks that elect to carry it actually pay attention to what is being shown.  I think the final recovery of the most traveled orbital vehicle in human history can trump whatever general broadcasting that was planned for that morning.  I'm sure no one would care, and if anything applaud the act, if the normal scheduled programming was delayed for the less than hour's time that remained until Discovery touched down.  I'm pretty disappointed to say the least in how CCN1 handles their broadcast of NASA TV.

The bigger issue is that more channels should carry NASA TV during their downtime and pay some attention to what is being shown.  It's just not programming that should be used for toss away filler, it's some of the most important things that we are doing as humans.  And it's your tax dollars at work to benefit the quality and convenience of life for all of humanity.

Damn Mountain Dew

Okay, just a bit of a rant this time. Most who know me know I have a Klax arcade cabinet in my kitchen, across from the refrigerator. Beautiful shape (could use a new control panel overlay, cigarette burns from its past), works great, tons of fun, was one of the machines I had been wanting for a long time. Anyway, when I take a soda from the refrigerator I usually open it in the kitchen before exiting or doing whatever else needs to be done. The last, maybe, five cans of Mountain Dew I've opened have been so overfilled they've shot everywhere. They're not shaken up or frozen or anything, just under too much pressure in the can from being overfilled. I would go ahead and say the whole case has been like that but the first ones out didn't have the same problem. Of course the couple streaks of soda usually end up on the Klax cabinet. I just clean it up and no damage occurs or anything like that but still - technically I've been spilling soda all over the cabinet this week. ...And that pisses me off.

Stupid perhaps, still annoying just the same. In other news - big announcement coming up soon about a new addition to classicplastic.net!