Crusin around Minnesota by myself.

Tuesday, I forgot to ask bob to come over, but was to busy completing Xenosaga Episode 2 (fun, but short game) otherwise he and I would’ve been going places like seeing Steven Stellberg’s movie “War of the Worlds” starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. Director Steve even uses the script of the radio show of the same name in the 50s making people think a UFO invasion was occurring with some obvious improvements to relate to the times.

Yesterday, I went to Game Stop to pick up Atelier Iris ~ Eternal Mana ~ on it’s launch day. I was going to get this game one month ago. I’ve scanned the shelves and some pondering about the best deals vs. best scores. I saw Brothers in Arms for $30, but I knew I wasn’t in war themed videogames lately so I hadn’t purchased it otherwise I would’ve. I’ve heard about Katamari Damacy thanks to X-Play’s video review (a G4-Tech-TV show which gave it 5 out of 5) combined with Gameranking.com’s score helped my final decision. After hearing about the cashiers at Toyriffic chatting about R-Type Final being a very cool 2D side scrolling space shooter I’ve finally purchased it for $14. R-Type has been around since Sega’s Master System days (1986 - 1989) when these games were at the height of its popularity. Not even Star Fox is doing well in 2005. Star Fox clearly borrowed heavily from R-Type. Star Fox Assault came out for the Gamecube three months ago, and looks better than your average rail shooter while offering less game play value partially due to close quarter’s combat system awfully designed. Thanks a lot Namco for poor production values! I also asked for used copies of Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Complete (wasn’t in), Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath, and possible RPGs which have been of interest.

On my way home, I was heading north towards Minnesota’s capital St. Paul before I had made a quick turn to get onto the 2nd ramp to go east towards my state. The problem was my truck was 2 lanes left of the right ramp so I did a quick maneuver to go the right direction.

My Uncle invited me to his cabin way up north for Independence Day and I won’t go this year because I’m stubborn, lazy, and will get a free game out of it. No fireworks = free game! THANK YOU! The fireworks shot up there are state-of-the-art and this year only adults will go. Last July 4th we were on the train tracks when the train was speeding towards us. Organizers below told everyone to get off the tracks whom hadn’t listen for whatever reason even after the train passed through. *Remembers it like yesterday.* There were 50 merit badges selectable and the only place you could earn either the swimming or life saving merit badge required for Eagle Scout. Tomahawk had a commercial kitchen with employees making the scouts’ meals three times a day, but my troop cooked ours cause of the metaphor food tasted grouse half the time. Our troop packed in food to avoid the dreaded camp food.

Boy Scouts is an US Congress commissioned organization hence Eagle Scouts are guaranteed to get into the military. It doesn’t matter any more ever since I quit. Some Americans think it as a junior army and religious organization because you’re in uniform, but the organization is multi-lingual. Tomahawk has a Christian Chapel and an East Orthodox Chapel. I’ve been there from 1995 – 2001 starting at 11 yrs old.

Last night the power went out from a severe thunderstorm with possible tornado warning. The woods shield me from the worst of the storm. The outage occurred 15 minutes after I unplugged my LCD TV and PC power strips. Meanwhile, I’ve gotten bored from not being able to watch TV or surfing the Internet so I just crashed. Couldn’t sleep well…..tossed and turned all night. It wasn’t the lightning that bothered me. I tried to listen to the clock tick tock and sleep to that. The electricity went back on about 3 AM so I woke up….drank two glasses of milk, shut off the lights that were on before the storm and I woke up at 10:30 today.

I’ve had found the largest 3rd party developer rankings which is difficult to obtain. Sega would have been in 2nd place under Nintendo during the 16-bit era. EA is bigger than Nintendo.

1.) Electronic Arts
2.) Activision
3.) Capcom
4.) SEGA (since November 2001)
5.) Namco



New games:
1. Katamari Damacy (©2004 Namco)
2. Atelier Iris ~ Eternal Mana ~ (©2005 Gust)
3. R-Type Final (©2004 Iren Software Engineering)