Videogame List so far (at Jon Mullaly’s request)

Jon Mullaly requested a recap of the games so far.  I haven't posted because I temporarily lost the list because it's on an external hard drive that my younger daughter (probably; Mari doesn't hide too much crap anymore) thought belonged under the bed.  So I'll post soon after this, when Jon has either guessed at the nine remaining games/franchises or else he's had ample time to fail to do so.  Clunky enough sentence, bitches?

50BattleToads NES
49Donkey Kong Country SNES
48Fable XBOX
47Parasite Eve PSOne
46Wii Sports Wii
45TMNT: The Arcade Game NES
44Faxanadu NES
43Super Mario Kart 64 N64
42Ms. Pac-Man Atari
41Shadowgate NES
40The Eye of Judgment PS3
39Section Z NES
38Psychonauts PS2
37Contra NES
36Space Harrier II Sega
35Folklore PS3
34DuckTales NES
33Crash Bandicoot Warped PSOne
32Castlevania: Symphony of the Night PSOne
31God of War PS2
30Gauntlet NES
29The Adventures of Cookie and Cream PS2
28Trojan NES
27Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time PS2
26Tetris NES
25Viewtiful Joe PS2
24Kid Icarus NES
23Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy PS2
22ToeJam and Earl Genesis
21SmackDown vs. Raw: Here Comes the Pain PS2
20Suikoden PSOne
19Super Mario World SNES
18Beyond Good and Evil PS2
17Mega Man Anniversary Collection NES/PSOne/PS2
16MVP 2005 PS2
15The Addams Family Pinball
14We <3 Katamari PS2
13Jak II PS2
12Parappa the Rapper PSOne
11Sly 2: Band of Thieves PS2
10The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past SNES

6:01 PM - 4 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

The Movie I’m In

MySpace page for Forbidden Fruit is right here:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=417165489&MyToken=ebde88bf-cfb9-46df-a079-a8bd02dc69c7

I just signed a release for nudity for the first time in my life.  About time, methinks.  Ha!

3:19 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Top 50 Videogames: 11 and 10

Here we are, faithful.  And really, if you've stuck with this for all five-six months, you're faithful.  After this post, everyone has to guess what games or franchises are represented.  C'mon, it'll be fun!  Guessing games are fun!

11.  Sly 2: Band of Thieves (2004, PlayStation 2)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  6, which was a huge jump over the first.
Played it with:  Went solo on this one.
Did I complete it?  Yes.  Hell, I couldn't tear myself away from it.  I doubt this game even lasted a week, since I marathonned the shit out of it.
Other awesomes in this series:  Both the first and third.  Both are possibly list-worthy, but nowhere near this one.

Hey!  I have a bucket hat of Sly Cooper, and my daughter could recognize and name him before she knew who Strawberry Shortcake was.  I saw these around the store when I strolled the video game department every time I worked, but for whatever reason, assumed they were primarily kiddie games that were way too easy.

But...I have this thing where, through that big retail company, I can take tests about upcoming games, earn points, and get free stuff (there's a lot, but all I've ever gotten is games and, of course, a bucket hat).  I got the first Sly Cooper game, and was stunned at the beauty and simple fun of it.  The voice acting was strong, the characters are more interesting than most human characters in games, and the enemies are easily the most nuanced, shades-of-grey I've ever encountered in video game platformers.

Then Sly 2 became available on the site and blew the first one out of the water.  All three heroes are used about equally for different missions, there are more and more interesting characters, and the difficulty is paced well so there's actually more of a learning curve.  The final boss, too, is fairly tough if I'm remembering correctly (remember, I played a marathon of this.  Hard to retain).  The third Sly game is actually a bit of a letdown in comparison, although still worth playing.

10.  The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992, Super Nintendo)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  8.  Almost 10 if you don't have a strategy guide, because sometimes the "what next?" factor is overwhelming.
Played it with:  My brother Nick and stepbrother Rory, Jon and Ben Mullaly, Jon Ehrich, presumably many others I can't think of right now.
Did I complete it?  I think I was reasonably close and suddenly I had no idea where to go next and stopped.  A year or so ago, I downloaded it to my Wii Virtual Console, and I haven't finished it there, either.  I really need to finish some games.  Oh, and then there are about five I own that I haven't started.  And when LittleBigPlanet comes out on October 21st, I don't think I'll be playing anything else.
Others in the series I've played:  The Legend of Zelda (pretty good and certainly very important, despite Oliver's mental retardation), Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (pretty lame and nothing like the first; plus, a truly hideous title, as the first one and all subsequent ones are adventures starring Link as well), The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (really awesome, but I had no N64 and therefore never played the whole thing), The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (both fun and different with awesome dungeon puzzles; I almost picked this one), The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (also awesome, also considered, also never finished despite having owned it for almost two years).

Zoinkers, this game knocked me on my ass.  The music in the dungeons is haunting and memorable, it's a little darker overall, and the level creation was a thing of beauty.  The dungeons weren't even huge or anything; it was just imperative that the player figure out how to get to the end of it, while revisiting rooms, moving things around, hitting switches and beating enemies until finally something clicked and the player understood what needed to be done.  The bosses in this game are pretty well-conceived too (like in all Zelda games).

It's amazing to me that this series has continued its monumental popularity considering the fact that every single game in the series has the same basic plot outline.  It's not like many years are passing like in Final Fantasy or Suikoden; it's more like Mega Man--or any action kids' show--with its predictable premise with the only change being ancillary characters and how the story is told.  It's more amazing to me, I suppose, that despite this near-total lack of creative thinking, I continue to go back to the series over and over.  But until they start pumping out crap, I'll probably keep doing so.

Alright, guys.  Place your bets on the final nine.  I'll send out imaginary $5000 e-cards as payment to the winners!

4:09 PM - 3 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Top 50 Videogames: 13 and 12

Just as I get rolling on the list again, I have to report that after today I'll be out of state (yes, the state I just moved to five days ago) for five days, as my brother-in-law is getting married in Texas, and my elder daughter is the Flower Girl.  Is that capitalized?  Meh.

13.  Jak II (2003, PlayStation 2)

But Ashelin isn't merely a tough bitty, she's also smokin' hot.  I almost used a shot of just her, but that seemed a bit wrong, as she's not a playable character...

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  9.  Would be 7 or thereabouts except there's this one asinine mission to get from one end of a pier to another across rickety wooden walkways and on the way there are roughly eleventy quintillion Krimzon Guards.  I shat myself with glee when I passed it.  Impossibly, the second time I played through this one, I did it on the first try.
Played it with:  It's one player, but Cathy was around, and her sister Cari gradually played through it every time she visited us from 2003-2004.
Did I complete it?  Yep.  100% is probably nigh-upon-impossible, though.  The sidequests, unlike on many games, are every bit as fun as the main storyline.  They're as stupid as "get this orb that's sitting here from where you are in just eight seconds," but they're all so well-conceived that the whole thing is crazy-addictive.
Others in the series bumped because of this one: Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (that's the clumsy title of the first one), which is crazy awesome, but focuses too little on plot and has a much more lighthearted feel.  Jak III is pretty decent, but a very large percentage of the missions are spent in vehicles compared to II, and vehicle missions get downright boring as hell for me in a hurry, unless I'm playing GTA where it's the focus of the game.  If I'm playing an action platformer, give me action and platforming, bitch!

Here's something I haven't said in quite a while: I shorted this game.  But in this case, I believe I shorted it a lot.  I actually think this should be around 3 or 4, but I'll just see out the list in the way it was originally written.  Normally I'd say "que sera sera" there, but I'm told I overuse that term in print, even though I only use it for quasi-comedic purposes.

Jak II is the absolute perfect difficulty level for someone who's been kicking video ass for two decades.  Nothing is so hard that maybe the developers should've taken a look at it before shipping it out, but there are challenges to be had everywhere.  And when one mission is particularly difficult, it's laid out in such a way that you know you can pass it...you just haven't yet.

This game would be just about perfect even if it didn't have a story, but it has a pretty great one.  Jak, saved by Daxter (formerly his best human friend who was turned into a little rodent called an Ottsel) after two years of imprisonment and experimental testing with volatile chemicals, sets out to find who did this to him and why, in addition to attempting to save the crime and corruption-ridden Haven City.  It's a fine mix of humor and very dark subject matter that's reminiscent of action movies like Die Hard, and the characters both friend and foe are equally engaging (I'd say this has two of the better-developed villains in all of videogamedom) and integral to the sprawling plot.

There are three Jak games, all good to great, but this is the clear class of them.  I'm fairly sure there's a good reason everyone would like this title, besides maybe the true wusses who can't handle things like a little bit of gloom and the sacrifice of a major character or two to move the story forward.

12.  PaRappa the Rapper (1997, PlayStation)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  Like most rhythm games, brutal at first, then very easy once you've played for a while and muscle memory kicks in.  Let's say 6, since even if you're good, the last song is fairly tough.
Played it with:  Everyone on the fourth floor of Crawford in my sophomore year.  I mean everyone, man.  Jeremy Mikolai and Anthony Crep more than anyone else, but absolutely everyone popped in, often the dudes I either didn't like or whose names I didn't even know.
Did I complete it?  Over and over and over.
Other in the series bumped because of this one:  UmJammer Lammy, which is not so much a sequel as a spinoff featuring two middling characters from this one.  It's harder.  But the songs are equally fun and weird.  I never played the actual sequel, which I heard was okayish.  I think I never played it because the first one was such an indelible part of one of my best periods in college and I just didn't want to go back again with all the same people there.  I'm sentimental that way.

Probably most everyone remembers the commercials for this show: people from various walks of life just singing the songs from the game, then a couple seconds of actual game footage of that song.  At the time a great many people didn't know what the game was about or what you could possibly be doing, because despite the enormity of the rhythm genre in Japan, it had never really been brought to the States (it was one of those things where people just knew it wouldn't translate and therefore never tried).  It ended up being a gigantic hit because it's funny, easy to learn but tough to master, and seriously f*&^in' weird.

The game plays out as a half-hour cartoon that would probably be rated 13 and up or so (there are some pretty overt references to drugs in the reggae track I pictured), although an IGN check tells me the game is rated E for Everyone.  Huh.  Anyway, there's a funny, stupid story that takes place between songs, and it primarily deals with PaRappa trying to impress Sunny Funny, his wannabe girlfriend (he's a dog, she's a flower; classic tale) and PaRappa's dreams of playing a large stage.  Along the way it's established that Sunny Funny likes PaRappa best when he's constipated because it makes him grimace angrily and she finds that manly.  It's the perfect party game, and probably the perfect game for drug addicts, which I'd stopped being a year before this one hit shelves.

5:09 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Top 50 Videogames: 15 and 14

15.  The Addams Family (1992, Bally Midway)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  Compared to most other pinball games, about average, I'd say.  There's plenty of play time, but to get the best modes you have to have pinpoint precision.
Played it with:  Leif Bierly, Ben Mullaly, Nate Nicholson, Nick Wells...anyone who hung around the video store at which I worked.
Did I complete it?  It's pinball, stupid.
Other pinball games that I considered putting on this list:  Jurassic Park, Earthshaker, Super Mario Brothers.

This game is awesome.  I had originally meant for this list to involve home console games only, but when this one and Ms. Pac-Man popped into my head, I realized I had to open up the floor.  I'll say this, though, which I can't say for Ms. Pac-Man: if I owned this one, it's entirely likely I'd spend more time on it than any console game.

A quick net search of this one proved what I probably would've guessed--this is the best-selling pinball machine in history, at 20,720 units sold (well, I wouldn't have guessed the number of units sold, but I...okay, you get me).  My benchmark for true success is whether the machine found its way to my hometown of Blue Earth, Minnesota, where there was just a single store that had arcade games after a time--my video store.  And this one lasted a long time there.  It was also in the game room when I went to college, where it remained for a couple years before the pinball games went away for some ridiculous reason (it's entirely possible the management had no idea that pinball has been much more popular than the arcade games for about fifteen years now, with the meteoric rise of consoles).  Anyway, I hope you didn't blink, because that was the only arcade game and the last non-console game on the list.

14.  We <3 Katamari (2005, PlayStation 2)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  8.  Easy to beat, I think, but fairly difficult to really impress the king.  That means nothing to someone who hasn't played it.
Played it with:  Cathy, Leif, Josh Mitchell, my elder daughter.  She calls it Rollin' Ball.
Did I complete it?  Yes.  The ending is awesomely fun.  Such a stupid game shouldn't have such a satisfying ending, but it was better than an least half the endings of RPGs I've spent hundreds of hours with.
Others in the series that could've been on the list:  Katamari Damacy, which was the original.  But there's no reason for multiple titles from this series to be on the list.

Let me say this straight off: I don't know exactly how to explain why this game is so freaking awesome.  Nobody does, I don't think.  In this game, the King of all Cosmos even mocks the game itself, saying "just rolling a ball and making it bigger?  It doesn't seem much fun to us."  It's this kind of meta-humor, along with the endlessly brilliant premise, that makes this game so addictive (and for others, impossible to get into).

So you're this little dopey-looking Prince, and you're the son of the King of all Cosmos, who's basically a godlike figure.  But he's pretty lazy, and when he accidentally gets rid of all the stars in the sky, he asks one of his countless sons to go to Earth, roll things up, and he'll make stars out of the resulting balls.  Now, that whole storyline is a total MacGuffin meant to get us to the point where we're rolling up balls of stuff, but as MacGuffins go, it's pretty damned hilarious.  So in each level, the Prince starts with a small or smallish ball, and can only roll up small things.  As the ball grows bigger, he can absorb bigger things...it's especially funny when humans are introduced to the mix, as they scream and flail their arms as they're rolled up.

In addition, there are special levels like "try to get as close to this size as you can" and "roll up the biggest cow you can find," which is insanely hard because as you're growing your ball to the point where you can get a huge bull, you'll almost certainly accidentally run over a pylon with holstien spots, which apparently counts as a cow.  If this paragraph sounded stupid to you, that's probably good.  But if it sounded funny-stupid to you, you should drop everything and buy both of these games immediately.  I mean it.

3:21 PM - 6 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Top 50 Videogames: 17 and 16

As I get closer and closer to the ending, it gets tougher and tougher to get up the will to do these, since I'm getting fewer and fewer replies.  WTF, guys (I say guys because apparently, based on all the responses I've gotten, no girl anywhere plays video games).

17.  Mega Man Anniversary Collection (2004, PlayStation 2)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  This is about 12 games in one.  I'd say it ranges from 6-9.  Most of the games are pretty damn hard near the end.
Played it with:  Cathy.  And at the time of their original releases, everyone else.  Mainly my brother Nick and Jon Mullaly, I'd say.
Did I complete it?  I've beaten many of the games in the series, but not all.  So...technically no...?

This is a total cheat...the right thing would've been to pick one game in the series (Mega Man 2, if I'm remembering correctly), but since the first 10, 12 or whatever games were put into one PS2 disc, I went for it.  The premise for each and every game is the same: an evil dickish mad scientist (usually Dr. Wily, which most of my brother's friends retardedly referred to as "Dr. Willie," although I think another mad scientist or two was mixed in) has created eight (give or take) evil robots for whatever reason.  World domination, I suspect, though I can't really remember and it totally doesn't matter because the story isn't a big deal in this series.  Mega Man and sometimes a buddy or extra gadgets are sent after the evil robots, and after Mega Man destroys all of them, he's able to go to the lair of Dr. Wily, which usually ends up being shockingly/appallingly long, with several more--usually enormous and beautifully drawn--mechanical bosses.

There.  You now know the storyline to every game on this disc, which is the only real knock I have against this series.  For instance, I remember without hesitation that the above photo is from the Bubble Man level, I remember what Bubble Man looks like and how he fights.  I even remember that, on that game, the only way to beat the final boss is to use Bubble Man's special weapon, which is called the "Bubble Lead."  Despite all this, I can't remember for my life which Mega Man game it's in.  Two, maybe?  I'm thinking anywhere between 2-6 (I'll look after this, because now I'm annoyed.  But it's not like the answer's going to be interesting or inspiring.  "Hmm.  It's that number," I'll say).

Anyway, it's the bosses that really make this series great.  They're interesting, unique, and all provide a challenge for the brain as well as the fingers.  Yep.  Good stuff, that.

16.  MVP Baseball 2005 (2005, PlayStation 2)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  7.  Really quite difficult for a baseball game, which I appreciate.  I'm quite good at the pitching...less so at the hitting.  Interestingly, that's actually me as a kid: good pitcher, great fielder, abso-shitty hitter.
Played it with:  Greg Johnson, Josh Mitchell.  I think.  That may have been a previous baseball game, though.  Well, it certainly was a previous game.  But I think we played this one together too.
Did I complete it?  Actually, no.  I just pick it up periodically and play a couple games and never finish the mammoth season like I plan to.  Plus, there are eight jillion unlocks, of which I've only scratched the surface, and realistically by the time I'm thinking of picking it up again, I'll have a baseball game for the PS3.

Why this one?  Well, of all baseball games ever, it's the one that has the smoothest play.  For anyone who doesn't know (and all of you should), baseball is my favorite thing of all things that are not alive.  I like it more than video games, in fact.  I might even like it more than sex.  My love for video baseball started way back with RBI baseball, still charmingly great after 20 (holy crap) years, continued with Bases Loaded, and eventually translated to this game.

EA Sports was, like with most of its series, making a shitty baseball game that was still the most popular because people are sheep and pay for the EA name no matter what product they put out.  It was called "Triple Play," and honestly, I can't tell you what a joke it was.  On the very hardest level, I would score a minimum of ten runs a game effortlessly.  I won't bore you with how the batting engine worked, but it was embarrassingly easy.  Even worse was the pitching: without trying very hard, I'd throw a perfect game probably once out of every eight or ten games (for those who don't follow baseball, there have been fifteen perfect games in all of baseball history.  I would give my left everything to witness a perfect game, even on television).

But in 2005, MVP Baseball came out.  Every aspect of the game was increased to the point where they went from most shitty and overhyped to blowaway best baseball game in the industry.  There are great mini-games, awesome old fields that can be unlocked (including the old Met!  WHOOOO!) and a fielding engine that actually makes me forget I'm playing a video game, it's so smooth.  Sadly, because EA were dicks and denied all other video game developers the right to create NFL video games when they bought the exclusive rights (they could've allowed the games to be made while still being the only series pimped by the NFL), another company bought the exclusive rights to the major leagues and disallowed only EA from making an MLB game.  I was pretty pissed (and remain so, although another great baseball series has surfaced), but it's their own damned fault.  Fucking EA.

2:20 AM - 4 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Top 50 Videogames: 19 and 18

19.  Super Mario World (1991, Super NES)

Difficulty from 1 to 10: 4.
Played it with:  Everyone.  But Nick, mostly.
Did I complete it?  Yep, plenty of times.
Others in the series I've played:  Mario Bros. (repetitive, but good for the time), Super Mario Bros. (still pretty good), Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (awesome, and pretty hard), Super Mario Bros. 2 (I LOVE this game, despite the total inconsistency with the rest of the series), Super Mario Bros. 3 (I don't like it as much as everyone else, but it's good), Super Mario Sunshine (pretty great, but very weird concept).  I haven't played Super Mario Galaxy yet, which looks pretty badass.

There's probably not much I can say here that people don't know.  I certainly don't have to give backstory or explain what the game is all about.

I chose this one because it was such a giant leap forward...it truly showed off the SNES's power over the NES, and the gameplay was just so smooth and seamless.

I had a tough time choosing between this and Super Mario Bros. 2, which wasn't even a Mario game when it was created in Japan--but the actual Super Mario Bros. 2 was deemed too difficult for American audiences (it wasn't) and a different game was just ported with the only changes being the four main characters.  Plus, I played Super Mario Bros. 2 with Jeremy Mikolai, Anthony Crep, Josh Mitchell and Missy Fuechtmann for countless hours in my dorm room, with the five of us (or whatever 3-5 of us were there) trading off levels, eventually playing so much that we were consistently doing it without dying once.  Yeah, those were pretty awesome times.  Should've picked that one, I suspect.

18.  Beyond Good & Evil (2003, PlayStation 2)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  6.  9, if you like to get everything.
Played it with:  Cathy.
Did I complete it?  I did this super dumbass thing.  I went into one enormous tower where my mission was to take three surveillance photos.  The place was hard as hell to navigate, awesome and fun as it was.  Hours and hours later, I got out of the building...only to find out that I'd forgotten to take one of the three photos.  So...no.  I was close to the end, too.  Instead, I watched Cathy play the end of it.

This is probably the very best game that never got a huge amount of attention.  Well, that's a pretty ballsy suggestion, but it's up there.  Beyond Good and Evil is about Jade, a Guy Fawkes-type freedom fighter who joins an underground group against a cartoonishly corrupt government.  At her side is a bumbling superhero-type geek and a talking pig who walks upright.  Despite this, the subject matter gets fairly serious.

Along the way, besides a pretty decent fighting scheme, the game is primarily about "how the hell do I get there from here?" and focuses far more on platforming and adventure.  Also, you take photos of every animal you see on the way, which is an oddly addictive addition to the game.  I can't necessarily pinpoint which aspect of this game makes it so awesome, but it all works in sync to become so.

Also: Jade gives me a boner.

4:15 PM - 4 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Meatball

I'm finally able to talk about it.

The following is basically a long, mostly photo-based ode to my younger daughter, Miette.  It's extremely important to me that I do this, so bear with me.  Or not, I suppose, but there are some pretty sweet pictures in here.  To wit:

Miette Amelia Wells, my second daughter, was born last October but wasn't supposed to be.

She was supposed to be born somewhere around mid-November.  However, early signs said she might have problems with her lungs.  It went back and forth like that: she's too small, she's gaining.  She's not growing.  She's suddenly healthy.  It was, as you can imagine, terrifying.

Everything was seemingly okay again when Cathy went in for a checkup on October 15th.  She came home and said "we have to go in early tomorrow morning to get the baby out of me."

What happened is that after all the problems Miette had overcome, Cathy had ended up with one.  Her placenta was breaking down, and if Miette was taken to term, she'd be stillborn.  So the medical risks had to be taken, because the other option was near-certain death before birth.

Miette was born early on the 16th and quickly turned blue.  There was water in her lungs, and when she tried to cry, she gargled.  She was quickly losing the ability to breathe.  She was brought to the Intensive Care Unit where five nurses worked tirelessly around her to try to get her breathing.  Cathy had barely seen her and was in recovery; she wouldn't see Miette for another couple of days.  I stood five feet back, watching the nurses work on her, picking up on the fact that Miette was dying.  Nothing they were doing worked.

Frequently, they'd keep looking up at a monitor, and kept mentioning that the "number was still dropping."  I watched the monitor and figured out it was showing the percent of breath she was getting compared to what she should be getting; it was about 22% at this point.  It was dropping maddeningly quickly.

The nurses were able to get this tube down Miette's throat, despite her fighting, and suddenly I heard this sucking sound and saw water dropping into the bag connected to the tube.  Miette's breathing number (I'm sure there's a better term for this) suddenly started jumping at a ridiculous rate.  All five nurses pretty much simultaneously sighed, and four of them walked away.

I approached my baby girl and asked the remaining nurse (or doctor, I guess, I'm not sure) if Miette was going to live.

She sighed, smiled and said, "She is now."

Sadly, an incubator would be her home for almost a month.  We'd get her for about a half hour each a day, but the more she was moved around, the more it slowed her progress.  We were under the impression that Miette was pretty laid back, but a couple weeks in, one of the many nurses we got to know pretty well told us that Miette was actually very upset whenever we weren't there and only calmed down the moment she saw us or heard our voices approaching.  As much as I'm sure that sucked for them, it was pretty flattering.

After first bath, given by her dad:

Even after coming home, Miette needed help.  Her lungs had developed admirably, but she had "better" odds of getting sick because her immune system wasn't as strong as other babies are born with.  She had to get a $1500 shot each month for her first six, which amazingly was completely covered by my insurance.

She took to home very well, but got incredibly nervous whenever either Cathy or I walked away.  Mari helped by being a seriously kickass sister.

Along the way, Miette garnered tons of nicknames: Mims, Mimzy, Meatball, Baby Dufus, Small Sweet Thing (that's what her name means), Crumb (that's how her name directly translates) and Freedom Fighter (because the movie character she's named after is one).  All of these idiotic names were given to her by her no-account Pops.

However, I have no pictures of her and I lined up, so here's one I like anyway.

Miette, over time, became the cutest kid I've pretty much ever seen.  I swear to you I'm not saying this as a dad; I was just lucky enough to get two beautiful children.  Most importantly, you'd never even know now that Miette was sick.

I don't remember who this baby on the right is, but this is hilarious to me:

As I posted earlier, I've been away from Miette, Mari and my wife for over two weeks now.  They've moved to Yakima, Washington, where I'll join them in a few more weeks.  This is hard as it relates to Cathy and harder with Mariana, but it's insanely scary to be away from a ten-month-old; the fear is that she'd forget me.

I talk to my wife and kids every day on a webcam, and today I mentioned my fear of Miette losing her bond with me to Cathy.  I'm able to talk to Cathy and Mari talks to me nonstop, but Miette has never said anything.  She looks around when she hears my voice and has been excited when she sees me on the monitor, but I've been afraid that time would make her slowly forget about me.

I told Cathy all this while I could hear Miette shrieking on the floor.  She was annoyed, probably because Mari was playing too hard with her.  Cathy leaned down and picked her up.  Miette was content, then looked around when she heard my voice.  She saw me, and out of nowhere, went

"Daddy!  Daddy!  Daddy!"

Cathy and I stared at her in disbelief.  My fears were suddenly totally at rest.  Cathy put her down, picked her up and she did the same exact thing.  Later, Cathy told me that she started doing it at pictures of me as the day went on.

Miette's first word, spoken sixteen days after she sped 2,000 miles away from me.  It was the happiest moment of my life.

12:46 AM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Top 50 Videogames: 21 and 20

Note to Jon Ehrich: my "little help, Jon?" request last time was for Jon Mullaly, who's reading on MySpace.  I always forget two Jons are reading this, and not in the same place.

Note to Jon Ehrich 2: Dude, congratulations.  I meant to be at your wedding, but was convinced it was one week later.  For months I've been thinking how weird it was that you and my friend Josh Mitchell got married in back-to-back weeks, but in reality you got married on back-to-back days, which would be so much cooler if I'd actually remembered this and been there.  Seriously...I suck.  I'll be at your next one.  WHOO-HOO!  Comedy Central Roast of Jon Ehrich!

Note to Everyone: Yes, this is two entries in two days.  I'm going to finish this thing before I've played enough games that the list is totally obsolete.  Already there are three new games I'd have on the list, and another--God of War--would be much higher since I've almost gotten through it now.  I have a lot of time for games again now that I'm not around my kids.

Note to Oliver Thrun: Hi, Oliver!

Okay, okay.  I'm starting now.

21.  SmackDown!: Here Comes the Pain (2003, PlayStation 2)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  Depends on what level you set it to.  I got pretty awesome even on the highest 'cause I played it a bajillion hours.
Played it with:  I'll include all the people I've played wrestling vids with, since they tend to run together a bit: Leif Bierly, Nick Wells, Josh Mitchell, Anthony Crep, Steve Kraus, Greg Johnson, Todd Karner, Bobby Gardner, Peter Simonson, Joe Fellman, Jon Mullaly, Ben Mullaly, Ben Enger, Bryan Ankeny...wait, where are you going?  I'm done.
Did I complete it?  Not exactly.  There are a million unlockables, and every time I mastered a difficulty level, I'd go up, and have to start unlocking again.  If the game were made today, they'd allow you to keep your unlocks as you went up.
Other wrestling games I've played:  WWF Attitude (bad, but fun character creation that at the time set the standard), WCW Revenge (unfuckingbelievable; better than almost anything WCW had done on TV for years; in fact, possibly better than this game, but I didn't play it nearly as much 'cause I didn't own it), WCW vs. The World (the previous and slightly lesser WCW game), ECW Extreme (or something like that) (terrible; made by the same crew as WWF Attitude but was a huge step backward), SmackDown: Know Your Role (very good), SmackDown: Just Bring It (very good).  I am the only hardcore wrestling fan in existence who hasn't played WWF: No Mercy, considered the blowaway best wrestling game up to and possibly including the SmackDown! series.

Well, I got most everything out of the way there.  And this is a wrestling game, so I don't have to explain it.  But an anecdote instead:

There's a great character creation system on this game--for whatever reason, even better than the SmackDown! game that came after (I assume the real recent ones kick ass, but I haven't gotten a wrestling game since '04).  I, being the nerdy adult who was formerly a much nerdier kid, have hundreds of cards made for this dice-based wrestling federation I created in 5th grade.  I thought it would be swank to make a few of those guys.  So I did.

But the more I made, the more I realized I was sorta on my way to making an entire federation.  So I did.  I filled a memory card with 60 created wrestlers from my federation's history.  Then, since I still play this dice wrestling game on occasion (don't f*&^ing judge me), I said, HEY!  Why don't I make my current roster, too?!  So I did.  Another 60 guys and maybe a month later, I'd created all of them.  I made their stats relative to what I give them in the dice federation, and I must have done it pretty well, because when I set them to take each other on, the right guys would win.  And I did this for a month: created brackets, set up Royal Rumble matches, everything.  And I never played the game, I just watched my federation with neverending awe.

Then, for no reason I can divine, this old clock, sharp at the top, fell seven feet from the top of my entertainment center.  It impossibly went top down into the floor, and speared my memory card which again, for no reason I can divine, was sitting on the floor in front of the TV.  It's never kept there.

I'm still pissed about it.

20.  Suikoden (1996, PlayStation)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  Let's say 6.  There are a few hard bosses, it's hard to find all of the allies, and each character can only carry a small number of items (which, while unlike most RPGs, makes a hell of a lot more sense).  But in an overarcing sense?  Certainly not the toughest RPG I've played.
Played it with:  Myself.  Though for whatever reason, this is one that sometimes Mari would watch me play.  That doesn't make sense because the graphics are primitive by today's standards, but for whatever reason, she stayed interested.  Maybe because the music is pretty interesting...?
Did I complete it?  100%.  But 100% never would've happened without a strategy guide.
Other awesomes in this series:  I'm told II and III are fantastic and that IV and V are worth playing, but I haven't played them yet.  II is borrowed from Nick at the moment and is one of about 14 (not an exaggeration) games I'm playing right now.

My brother Nick had been needling to play this game for years.  Both of us are madly in love with the Final Fantasy series, and he actually likes this series better.  I've always been a little put off by the premise, though; there are 108 good guy characters to get in this game.  That's not a typo: there are really 108 heroes to recruit.  After having played and adored Chrono Cross, which has around 40-50, I was a little put out.  So many of those characters go unused and are never developed in any meaningful way.

But I played it a few months ago anyway, and after a couple months of playing and getting every one of the heroes (the "108 Stars," as they're called), all I wanted to do was talk to Nick about the game.  As you get more and more characters, you build a larger and larger castle to accommodate all of them.  Eventually, if you recruit the right people, everything you need--item shop, blacksmith, accessory salesman--is right there in your huge castle.  But my favorite thing was that every hero actually has a function.  About 40 of them aren't even available to your fighting party, as they simply run shops in your castle or provide other services.  Many others can be put in your party, but have such laughable stats that they're obviously not meant to be bothered with.  Still others have hidden talents: there's a seemingly useless old woman named Olin who joins, and if you talk to her when you're stuck, she gives you a hint as where to go next.  On top of all of this, about ten to fifteen of the heroes are so well-developed throughout the game that you never feel you've been robbed of a great storyline.  It's a masterfully-created series that could turn out to be my second-favorite RPG franchise if I keep playing.  But first?  Not bloody likely, I don't think.

5:43 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Top 50 Videogames: 23 and 22

23.  Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (2006, PlayStation 2)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  3.  Criminally easy, but it's supposed appeal to a broad age range, and it's meant to be a fun multiplayer game that's not so tough that you want to kill the person playing with you when they screw up.  I gave it a 3 because it's pretty time-consuming and tough to find everything to get 100% on the game.
Played it with:  Cathy.  Oh Lawd, have I played this game a lot with Cathy.
Did I complete it?  Of course.  Hundred percented it, too.
Other awesome games in this series bumped from the list:  Lego Star Wars the first.  It's pretty great, but the second one improved upon it in too many ways to count.

I don't like the Star Wars movies.  There's always this awkward moment when people talk about them where they're talking about a trilogy, and I say, "which one?"  And they go, "you know, the good one."  I know what they mean, but there really wasn't a good one, which I want to say, but...put it this way, I've always gotten more flak for not liking the Star Wars movies than for not being religious.  Is that creepy, or is it progress?  Can't it be both?

I do love Legos, however.  And I do have a grudging acceptance of the fact that the characters in the old trilogy were actually pretty decent, although the story seemed too kiddie-friendly for me even at 8.  These games take all of what's good about the series (character, action, humor) and leave out what blows (most of the acting, practically the entire script) and what's left is more satisfying and coherent than the films.  And truly, this is one of the great multiplayer games ever made.  It's easy to the point where I could beat it in a persistent vegetative state, but playing alongside someone you love is really the best thing ever.  I'm such a sap.

22.  ToeJam and Earl (1991, Sega Genesis)

Difficulty from 1 to 10:  7.  It's easy for a very long while, but the badass enemies at the end catch up to you.
Played it with:  Ben Mullaly, Leif Bierly, Nick Wells.  Jon too, maybe...?  Jon, little help?
Did I complete it?  Yes, with Leif...but not until it was turning New Year 2007.  Thank you, Wii Virtual Console, for allowing me to go back and beat this thing.

As if to undercut my point about LSW being such a great multiplayer game, here's one that dammit, is even better.  It's a truly strange one, too, that employs no bosses, involves few ways to die in the early going but buttloads of ways to fall to a previous level, and even has a hot tub in level 0 that you can chill in if you suck enough to fall that far (I don't, but Ben and I went down there now and then to amuse ourselves).  I remember ToeJam and Earl had hilariously dated rap lingo even at its release, and I was always pretty certain it was intentionally done that way, since the game was largely dependent on humor.

On each enormous level, the two guys can split up and cover the huge amount of ground until they find the doorway to the next-highest level, and once you find the door on level 25, you've won and get a pretty satisfying ending--especially considering how half-assed endings were at the time--where the aliens meet their families on Funkotron.  Meanwhile, there are countless pits which send you to a lower level, and there are tons of idiotic enemies like ice cream trucks, chickens with mortars, boogeymen that continue to be frightening and hilarious even as they're killing you, and women with shopping carts who try to run you over.  It's a rare game that makes you laugh when you fail, and I wish it happened more often.  This is the one.

Side note: I played countless games of TJ&E alongside Ben, Leif and Nick, and I'm almost 100% sure I played as ToeJam every single time.  I don't know why we find those habits, but yep...always ToeJam.

12:42 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment