Christmas Happened Last Year

Shortly after my wife and I started dating, I learned that she, too, had a hyper-nostalgic video gaming love: Donkey Kong 64 on her green Nintendo 64. She never beat it, but she got all the way to the end with those doors where you have to have collected a bunch of crap in the game (bananas, crowns, fairies, coins, whatever) but she didn't have an item she needed and she didn't have the internet back then (poor child) so she just never got it and that was the end of it. 

Moving forward in time, she didn't have the N64 anymore but she would still mention it from time to time. And from "time to time" I mean like once a month she would say something like, "Man, I used to just put on my [um...early 2000's cd...something like Blink 182] CD and just play Dr. Mario on endless for hours." Or, "I can't believe I never beat Donkey Kong for the 64. I loved that game. My whole family played!".

So guess what I decided to get her for Christmas this year. That's right! I got her a jungle green Nintendo 64 off eBay! I of course also got all of the requisite accessories: DK64 game, extra controller, rumble pak, memory expansion pak. Plus a copy of Dr. Mario 64 (because she loved that too) and The New Tetris (because Dr. Mario is horrible and Tetris is way better). I considered picking up Super Smash Bros, but I was already over budget and SSB is like $60 for some reason. It didn't even cost that much when it was new!

Anyway, start polishing up that #1 Awesome Husband award, because I was on the fast track to getting it. I didn't receive my gift epiphany until pretty late this year (about a week before Christmas) because I was in crunch time at work and was working like 60+ a week, day and night, so I was anxiously checking my phone several times a day waiting for packages to be delivered. And they were slowly trickling in. 

Three days before Christmas, it was all here.Green Nintendo with matching controller and expansion pak? Check. Games? Check. Rumbles? Check.

But then it occurred to me. What happened to Aubrey's old Nintendo? I was pretty sure it broke or her little brother sold it or something, but I didn't know for sure.... I decided to ask Aubrey's Mom to make sure it wasn't still just laying around her house or something. She said she hadn't seen it in years and was pretty sure it was gone. Then I decided to just ask Aubrey. 

We were cooking dinner and I said, "Hey, whatever happened to your old Nintendo? It would be pretty awesome to play Donkey Kong at Christmas."  

She replied, "OH MY GOSH that would be awesome! We'll have to dig it out when we're down there!".

"Are you sure it's there? I thought your brother sold it."

"Did he?? He better not have! It wasn't his to sell!"

"Well if it's still at your parents and no one's using it, why wouldn't we have it?"

"That's a good question, we should probably take it. We're the only ones that would use it."

"Are you sure your brother didn't sell it? I really thought he did."

"He sold all of his PlayStation games at some point, but I don't really know why."

None of this made me feel any better, so we decided she would check for it the next time she went to her parents' house.

Suspenseful story short, it totally was still there in a drawer under the tv in her parents' living room. It was all there, just as it had been! Just a little dustier. 

Crap.

On Christmas Eve Eve (get it?), I decided it was only fair that I tell Aubrey what happened. I spent like $150 on a bunch of stuff that she already had. She picked me up from work (at 9pm) and with utter defeat in my voice I told her there was something I needed to tell her. Apparently she thought I was going to say I was fired or that I had to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day because she was still ECSTATIC about the gift!! She's a totally sentimental sucker so she wasn't disappointed at all! 

Now we have two Nintendo 64's and all the fixin's and we've been playing through DK64 together. Still an awesome freaking game. Also, we sometimes break out into a chorus of the Monkey Rap when we're cooking or driving or whatever. It doesn't hold up.

What are you most nostalgic game playing memories? Do you have a game that you just get an itch to play on a certain day? 

  

Positive Experience #5

Sorry I'm late on this one. 20 (or maybe 10) min starting  now.

So it's been a really exciting month. We had two Thanksgivings, one with my sisters and their families up in Cow Town, and another with my wife's mother's parents and some uncles/aunts/cousins. Both had fantastic food. Aubrey's maternal grandparents are totally "do-it-yourself" types to an extreme degree (even though they're both super old and poor and have medical problems), and wouldn't even give us a food assignment for dinner. So we bought them a couple little presents and surprised them. That was really nice. It always feel good to help people who don't generally get much in return.

Also, I totally landed a job! It's for inthinc doing tech support. The pay's good and it's fully benefited  Yay! I feel like such an adult suddenly. From the sound of it, there's room to go up in the company as well, or at least sideways, once I get some experience and get farther along in my degree. I can't say just how lucky I feel about that. It's even in a nice part of town too. I took Aubrey to see the building after church today and there was even a little canal with ducks that I hadn't noticed before. Seriously, my workplace has a duck stream. I'm going to miss the library a lot. There were a bunch of cool people there and the benefits of working at a library are many. I think they'll still let me get away with fines but I don't think I should try to stretch it too much. I told my boss I was looking for other work a couple months ago, so it wasn't a surprise when I was leaving. But it was a little short notice for my last day. I feel a little bad about that.

Things are going well in Starcraftiness too. I'm currently on an 8-game winning streak and hopefully I'll be out of bronze soon. I've been getting a lot better but I psych myself out a little bit. The group I've been casting in Spanish for seems to have taking a liking to me too, so once I submit some casts in English I'll be able to cast for them in English too. Might even be able to make some moneys off of it one day when we get enough viewers. Sweet! Also in Starcraft streaming, I totally met a bunch of guys from Norway that play the Heart of the Swarm beta every morning (my time) that are fun to talk to/play with. Work's going to throw a wrench in that, but I'm sure I'll still see them around.

As a result of the Spanish casting, my Spanish has gotten much much better. I still forgot a lot of easy words. but things are much more fluid. I'm trying to stay sharp with that. I was hired at my new job in part for the Spanish skills (thanks mission and Starcraft!) so I've been reading "The Hobbit" in Spanish again to pick up more words and to get ready for the movie when it comes out. (Already got tickets!) I should probably try to watch some movies or something too to try and get better at understanding dialects. Unfortunately, most Spanish language TV we get here are Mexican news and soap operas...those don't really hold my attention. I guess Disney movies are all translated though, I should get out a new dvd's and watch them in Spanish. That wouldn't be bad at all!

Changing Gears

I'm giving away two copies of DOTA 2! Click this link for details!

Want to know how big of a dork I am? So big that I'm constantly planning out my gaming time and intentions. Today you'll get to be part of that planning.

The main goal here is that I want to play more Starcraft because I really want to get good at it and have a better understanding of the game so I can contribute more to the community. However, there's about a billion other fun games to play. I've gotten way into Dungeon Defenders in the past week and I've hardly played anything else at all. Guild Wars 2 just had it's first major patch with a ton of Halloween content. There's this new game called FireFall that I don't know anything about but is getting hyped out the yang that I might want to try. Plus there was that whole Panda thing that just happened....

And then, of course, there's my real life. Taking my wonderful wife on extravagant dates. Classes. Finding a full time, benefited, job so that we don't have to live just over the poverty line. Keeping new content on the site. Remembering to take the trash to the curb on Mondays. I'm a busy guy.

So here's my gaming plan:

• At the end of next month, I'm going to let my WoW subscription die so I wont have to pay that anymore. I'll go back for major updates, but other than that, I've got too much to play. I've got some triple experience refer a friend bonus stuff doing on until then, so I'll try to get my priest and my monk up to 80 to take full advantage of that. Done. 
• I'm going to stop playing Dungeon Defenders like a freak.
• I'm going to check out Guild Wars when there's a major update and whenever I get that MMO itch.
• I'm going to play more Starcraft. I'm actually going to start putting it into my weekly schedule.
• I will start to actually follow my weekly schedule. I'm an adult. It shouldn't be that hard. Right? ...Right?

And here now is my structured Starcraft plan:

• I am going to be playing exclusively Protoss in 1v1 (and usually streaming it).
• I'm going to be focusing on what I feel like I am "sucking at."
• First, I will be choosing one build order to improve. 
• I will be following the ORCA method. 
• When I'm feeling really good with the one, I'll move on to one for each match up.
• From there, I'll address specific things and change my play to incorporate them more.
• For instance, I never use air as Protoss, so I'll use an air-heavy build.
• I will do this until I reach Master league.
• I will then buy another copy of the game and start the same process for another race. 
• I realize those last two are very ambitious. I might stop at diamond.
• I will start casting one pro game a week to help myself get more familiar with players, builds, and maps.

And that, my friends, is a gaming plan.