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It should come as no surprise that Nintendo and 54 (Yeah, 54! Holy Shit, I say) software makers have teamed up to sue the pants off of R4 and similar groups. It seems to me that the problem would be solved if they just started giving their games away. Forcing me to be a DS and an R4 is highway robbery.
Tiger Direct
If you’re a risk lover, this one may be barking right up your tree (or something like that). Did I mention that this is a refurb and has only a two month warranty? Considering you would still need to shell out $100 for the overpriced hard drive, you would probably be better off just getting one of those out-of-production, price-slashed Premium/Platinum systems.
When the majority of XBLA releases are terrible (arcade rehashes, crossword puzzles…ugh), there is simply no reason to pay attention to each week’s releases. Microsoft has finally done something that might ignite a bit more interest in the service. They are offering some serious prizes and promoting some highly anticipated games.
PS: The prizes are cool, but they could have just worked on quality (vs quantity) over the past year and not had to fight this battle.
PPS: I’m looking forward to Geo Wars 2 and Castle Crashers.
See the MS press release.
See what arstechnica had to say about the upcoming titles.
Found on consumerist.com:
Comcast press release
All you have to do is be a new subscriber to their Triple Play service and sell your soul for two years. Hooray.
Seriously, Comcast isn’t as evil as your credit card company, so why not?
So there was an announcement of a Halo 3 Interactive Board game to come out sometime this year. After first being puzzled by the use of the term “interactive” (seriously, other than MGS4 what game isn’t interactive?) It turns out that the game will also include a DVD that will somehow be used in the game. I then moved on to being dismayed by the publisher. It is being done by B1 Games, famous for such wonderful titles like 24 the DVD board game, The Amazing Race the DVD board game, American Chopper the DVD Board game, Scooby-Doo the DVD board game.
This does not bode well for the game at all which is actually pretty disappointing. The character models for the little figures look like they have some potential and other video game turned board games have turned out decent. For instance the analog version of Doom was actually interesting.
So what do you guys think? Are you interested in video games coming to the analog front? Are you enough of a Halo nut to buy this game even if it looks craptastic?
Releasing on Bungie Day 7/7/08, Cold Storage comes to Halo 3 as a new multiplayer map. The nice news about this is that the map is free. Cold Storage is a remake of the Halo: CE map Chill Out. Cold Storage will be implemented in regular rotation in playlists that require the Legendary Maps. In addition to this free release, the price of the Legendary Map pack has been reduced from 800 MS Points to 600 Points. Anyone still not owning these maps would do well to jump on the price reduction.
If you like to collect themes and gamerpics for use on your 360 dashboard and gamer profile, Bungie has also released a special Bungie Day theme and gamerpic available only on Bungie Day 7/7/08. It is the little things like these releases that makes Bungie such a great game company.
8-Bit Brigade and Gaming4Others are pleased to invite you to play in the
MYA MCINTOSH BENEFIT COD4 Tournament.
Mya is 5 1/2 year old living with cerebral palsy. She is in need of surgery that will enable her to walk. She is anxious to start Kindergarten cast free! There are only 5 doctors qualified to do her surgery and with the sudden lay-off of Mya’s dad, she needs help to get it done.
Please join us July 22-24 to play COD4 and get Mya the surgery she needs!
For more information visit:
http://myaq.chipin.com/myas-cp-surgery-trip
Registration Fee is $10 per person ($60 per team)
COD4 6×6 best of 3
Prizes will be awarded!
Sign-up at G4O under the EVENTS tab
See Tournament forum for more game info and Rules
For those of you who are not familiar with our clanmate MacNTosh, he has two children with special needs and lost his job last week. Rather than attempt to do justice to him with a recap, I am just going to cut and paste a couple of his posts here. Please chip in some money for him.
Hey guy’s most of y’all know I recently lost my job. On top of this wonderful news I have my two children each with special needs of their own. Well my daughter has an opportunity to have a procedure done that will allow her to walk like most “normal” childrens patterns for about five year. This procedure is only done by five doctors in the world and one of them is about 300 miles away. We have it scheduled for late July, but in all honesty we are going to need some help with lodging, gas and food.
This being said, I have created a ChipIn page to help us with these costs if you are interested then please click the following link: ChipIn
Just to share a little back story on Medicaid, Social Security and WIC (The Food Stamp People)
When we found out Aidan was going to have multiple issues and need nursing on his release we were put in touch to start working on getting him Medicaid through Social Security. When I applied I also spoke with them about my daughter as CP is suppose to be an automatic approval. Not so if you are the working class poor in America.
Over the last year I have made about 40K in base salary with commission. This is too much to get benifits for Mya even though I pay 400-600 a month in therapy and such, cover her under our family insurance at $1200 a month and lose many pennies to deductables and our tax system. I was lucky with Aidan however. Since he was living at the hospital, my salary, retirement and cars where not taken into consideration. He was granted SSI benifits, $30 per month and Medicaid, which if we did not have could not afford to take care of him. He has 6-8 different therapy sessions per week, left the Hospital with a 1.8 million dollar bill and we still have some creditors calling for deductables and such that medicaid didn’t cover because we found out to late to apply in order to cover his first couple of months.
So medicaid is still based on salary, but we are willing to give it away to many people that don’t even pay taxes, as I see it every time I have to visit SSA. I do lose his benefits however in months that have three paychecks, as those months I make too much money. That is two months this year.
On top of this is WIC which provides his formula. When you only have 25% of your small intestine you don’t eat like other kids. His formula costs 8.50 per can and he uses four a day. We are lucky enough that we get to drive to the “nice” part of town, sign our vouchers, sit in a room where no one speaks english, and are the one’s stared at. Heck last time they called numbers and such in Spanish first and when no one stood up, that’s when they looked and saw the white girl in the corner and announced it in english.
All this being said, our medical system is really screwed up. SSA told me the best way to insure my daughter would be for me to give custody to my wife and divorce her. This way they could be covered since she is a stay at home mom, who works harder then most with all of their therapys.
I know their is lots of spelling errors and such, and quite a bit of rambling, but hopefully I have shed a little light on my situation.
If you have quesitons, feel free to ask. I’m willing to answer it all from the inside as the “working” poor in America.
This weeks Retro game is none other then the game that brought this clan into existence and together. Halo 2 is the game of choice this week. As hard as it will be to remove the awesomeness that is Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, or your game of choice, toss in that Halo 2 disc that has been collecting dust. Journey again with Master Chief before he finishes the fight. Let’s get some down and dirty matchmaking without all of the fancy grenades, weapons and equipment. Time to get back to basics!
Join us if you wish, I’m sure there will be plenty of people playing. We will most likely run in some matchmaking games, that is if we can find people still playing out there in the internets. Otherwise, we’ll fire up some old fashioned custom games and make a fun night of it. If you miss the first event on Wednesday 6/18, don’t fret. Retro nights always come in pairs and the next one will be Sunday 6/22.
Master Chief will be expecting you. Don’t make him wait!
As gamers, most of us have been bombarded with talk of Nintendo’s Wii console and its popularity with the casual crowd. We’ve heard about nursing homes using Wii Sports to keep their occupants active, and moms who wait in lines and frantically call game stores in order to score a Wii system. Now Nintendo has taken it even further with Wii Fit, a bundle which includes both the Wii Fit software and the Balance Board, a peripheral that looks a bit like a bathroom scale. The board uses several sensors to detect how a user is distributing their weight, and while it sounds simple, it allows for a variety of different game types and applications. Nintendo is marketing Wii Fit as a fun and easy way to get in shape and lose weight - something that the stereotypical “hardcore gamer” has little or no interest in. Having purchased Wii Fit about two weeks ago, I thought it might be fun and informative to give a quick report on my progress and give some impressions of both the Balance Board and the Wii Fit game itself.