Terrible Analogies

For the past few days I’ve been glued to my arcade machine, unable and unwilling to tear myself away for any great length of time.  I’ve found myself addicted to a game I had somehow managed to miss during my arcade-hopping years in the late 80′s to early 90′s.  Lost in a shuffle of neon lights, Vegas-style low-shag high-traffic carpeting, change machines, and questionable chain smoking characters lurking behind glass counters, eyeing the kids with malicious intent was this game that I had only, in these recent days, come to discover and absolutely embrace.

This game goes by the name Nitroball, and it currently owns my soul.

Nitroball can best be described as a cross between Smash TV and NFL Football, set inside a gigantic pinball machine.  I know how funky that sounds (heck, the logistics and costs of constructing such a massive pinball machine located at the edge of space in and of itself boggles the mind), and that’s part of the appeal of this game.  In Nitroball, you play the part of a “soldier” in a futuristic game show, and your goal is simple; kill the baddies and grab the prizes.  Thin on plot, but interesting gameplay and unusual visuals keeps you pumping in quarter after quarter.

Not much thought went into the design of the tease screen...

Apparently this game takes place inside a huge pinball machine floating at the edge of space

You play Gary, an ex-Navy "sregeant" (whatever that is). At over 6' and weighing in at a gangly 177lbs, I don't think our hero stands much of a chance against the upcoming onslaught.

Look at the kind of crap Gary has to contend with: spelling competitions, crazed overall-wearing ducks, villains in purple leisure suits, and autonomous robots showering the field with high explosives.

Mini-boss time!

Laying waste to "Ghost Town"

Ghosts, and zombies, and truckers...oh my!

It's nice to see that, in the distant future, dual cassette tape decks are considered "big prizes"

You can keep your XBoxes, your PS3s, and your newfangled Atari 5200s.  I’m keeping it real, rocking the original games that made going to the arcades so much fun back in the day…

…What kind of toys are kids playing with nowadays?

In the span of a single afternoon I happened to stumble upon:

Disgusting Anatomy Heart:  Have you ever found yourself standing in your darkened kitchen late at night, with the only light coming from the single dim frosted bulb inside your open refrigerator?  There you are, slouching into the open box, your arm draped heavily over the door as you slowly scan its chilled contents.  Unsure what you want to eat you’re suddenly overcome with an overwhelming, insatiable desire to hold a slick, pulsing, quivering human heart in your bare hands.  

No?  Strange…I can’t believe I’m the only one ever to have that feeling.  

+1 for the bonus eyeball kit.

Gabby Girl: High creep factor with this toy.  I’m not sure where the manufacturer was going with this doll, but the posable mouth, flickering tongue, beady, vacant eyes, and 80′s inspired clothes propels this toy into the high stratosphere of the uncomfortably abnormal.  

Recently I’ve been having this reoccurring nightmare of waking up in a cold sweat and seeing that sometime, in the dead of night, this life-sized doll had silently pulled up a chair next to my bed and has been patiently sitting there, in the dark, inches from my face, watching me sleep.  The only sound I hear is a sticky, rubbery *smack* *smack* as it gums it’s lips together, her dead eyes staring straight into my shivering, cowering soul.

This doll eerily resembles a cousin of mine who lives in San Francisco, but with fewer facial piercings, no chronic cough, and absence of strict vegan diet for “religious reasons”.

Gummy Tapeworm: Knowing that by eating this it’ll soon be working its way through my colon is enough to make me want to wash my hands after handling the package.  I wonder, if I ever had an opportunity to eat a real honest-to-gosh tapeworm, would it taste like apple?  Who knows what a tapeworm tastes like?

Okay…that’s enough disturbing thoughts for one night…

I’m not sure when this practice started, but it has got to stop.  Right.  Now.

What I’m all up in arms about is the fact that cereal companies are getting into the habit of placing their prizes inside of the cereal boxes, but packaged and placed along side the interior cereal bag.  This, IMHO, completely strips away the thrill of digging into the cereal itself and hunting for the elusive toy.

We all had our own special ways of extracting the prize from inside a freshly opened box of cereal.  As a child I preferred the “hold the box at a 45° angle, push in against the box to create a hand space, then dig in from the bottom” method.  Others opted for the less refined “bum rush the box by slamming your arm up to the elbow and muscle the toy out” approach.  If you weren’t hip to either technique you could find a large bowl and dump the entire contents and simply pick out the prize.  This last approach was deemed the cowards way of obtaining the prize, and was considered bad form around our household

But I guess this is all becoming moot, with Kellogg’s now pre-separating the prize from the cereal itself, these and other self-taught prize extracting techniques might go the way of Pound Puppies, Speak & Spells, and “flesh” colored crayons.  We’re denying future generations of children by not allowing them the pleasure of digging deep into a box Froot Loops, bits and pieces of cereal oozing out of the box as they stare at the ceiling in total concentration, hoping to feel their way to the prize that looked so cool printed on the outside of the box.

*Sigh*  It’s an example of another small of piece of my childhood dying by carefully measured increments.

My cube was looking more than a little bit ratty, so I ordered a set of replacement stickers from the Rubik’s Cube store.  Apparently Rubik’s is based in Canada, so I wasn’t expecting to see these replacement stickers any time soon.  I was quite pleased when they arrived in my mailbox just four days after placing my order.  Great service!

There’s a Rubik’s Cube competition happening this Saturday at Balboa Park.  Who knows, perhaps while we’re wandering around the show Karin will buy me a new 4×4 cube? (*hint hint*)

My sad looking cube

Sweet set of new stickers

Sticker prep

Aligning the new stickers couldn't be easier

Dead sexy looking cube ready for abuse

I love games.  Board games, video games, puzzles, crosswords, cryptograms…I love them all.  As it happens, my favorite magazine is Games magazine.  I’ve been reading this publication since high school, and Karin ensures that my subscription is kept up to date.  During the weekends one of the things I most look forward to is lounging in the backyard, feet up on the patio table, a tall glass of soda slow dripping with condensation by my side, and a Games magazine opened to the current month’s The World’s Most Ornery Crossword puzzle.  Hard clues, thankyouverymuch.

My current puzzle obsession, something that’s taking up far too much of my time as of late, is a Nintendo DS game called Picross.  Now, this puzzle shows up in Games under the moniker Paint By Numbers, but I’ve never really paid it much mind.  I always dismissed it as a simple time waster, but this DS incarnation has shown me how addicting this puzzle really is.  

The objective of Picross is to determine which blank squares within a matrix are to be filled in, with the ultimate goal of revealing an image.  Squares to be filled in are identified using numbers that have been placed along the outside of the grid.  These numbers tell you, in order, how many squares are to be filled in, how they are sequentially laid out, and how many spaces there are between sets of shaded squares.  With each incorrect move the game penalizes you a set amount of time which eats into the 60 minute time limit you have to complete each puzzle.

The obsessive compulsive part of me is fascinated with this game.  It makes for a nice break between Rubik’s Cube sessions and memorizing movie monologues.