The Blog for the Sports Gamer

So, I was at the Wisconsin hockey game tonight and one of the traditions that is observed at all Wisconsin sports, at least all of the major sports, is that the crowd sings a song called ‘Varsity‘ in between the 2nd and 3rd periods of the game. At football and basketball games, it is sung at half time, and the song is always sung after the game… win or lose.

So, my question is, what traditions are observed at your teams games? It doesn’t matter if it’s a college or pro game, I’m just curious as to what other traditions are out there for other teams. Oh, and don’t mention the stupid “Incomplete” B.S. that the Broncos do. I hate that crap.

Not sure if you heard but Forza Motorsport 2, aka “The Reason Why I bought the Wireless Wheel,” now has a release date of May (!) 2007. I’m guessing it will be worth the wait though. It better be, or else!!

In other news, thanks for the comments about Vista. I think I’m going to pass, especially in light of the new announcment from Intel today about a technology breakthrough they hope to have implemented in new chips later this year. No point in buying a license for an old computer…although the Vista upgrade advisor tells me I could get Ultimate on my 2001-era Gateway, which is rather interesting.

I got to play the full version of Crackdown last night, and it was very enjoyable. I couldn’t play Halo 3 because I was playing the Sega Genesis version on GameTap. Fooled you didn’t I.

I checked the coming soon on GameTap and sar Arkanoid. That will rule. I haven’t played Sam & Max yet, but I plan to. Lots of stuff I “want” to do, very little I “have” done. Off to my son’s birthday party today, so gaming won’t be very much. I also have to do my taxes. Always fun….

I’m back from my three day trip to D.C to see Warhammer Online, Dark of of Camelot and the new version of Ultima Online. It was a great trip — super fun time as the guys at Mythic know their stuff and their enthusiasm is contagious. As a Warhammer nut — I was thrilled with what I saw. There’s an online embargo til the 30th, and I went for CGM/MASSIVE so I can’t say anything about it other than it was really cool, and that I MUST get inside the beta later this year. Oh, and several of us got really drunk Thursday night. All in all it was a great time.

I also have another BG review up at GShark, this time of Railroad Tycoon – a must have for any boardgamer.

One of the more interesting aspects of Daisuke Matsuzaka coming over to the U.S. to pitch for the Boston Red Sox is the fact that he, supposedly, throws a pitch that is referred to as the Gyroball. Over at CNNSI.com today they have a very interesting article about the physics of the pitch and the fact that Matsuzaka may not actually use the pitch at all. It’s a very interesting look at the physics of the Gyroball as well as what happens when other pitches are thrown. Well worth a look.

As for me, I’m planning on playing some more WoW this weekend. My 9th level Blood Elf Mage is practically screaming at me to play more. Other than that, I’m going to work through a bit more Wario Ware on the Wii. I do have a few Wisconsin hockey games that I’ll be attending this weekend as well with my wife and daughter, but other than that… it’s a gaming weekend…. thank Jebus that we have gaming consoles and PC’s to distract us in the week before the Superbowl.

What’s on the agenda for the rest of you?

Unlike the PS3, I can’t seem to get enough of the Wii. I even buy the old school stuff, because I’m a loser…I mean I never played the TG16 or SNES.

Anyway, today was the launch of the news channel. Unlike the weather channel (here’s the current temp as of yesterday at noon), this seems to be updated more. When I signed in this morning, the last update was 42 minutes ago. Still no CNN.

The news articles are pretty cool. When you click an article, it looks like it’s off a newspaper and then you see a map of where the news came from, so when you click about the Hold your Wii for a Wii lawsuit, you see where Sacramento, CA is. Great for geographically impaired people.

Ironically the top Technology news article is “PS3 to Make European Debut on March 23″…the dateline for this article is not Europe, but Tokyo, where Sony is located.

So go get the update and enjoy the News Channel!

So, while I mock Dan for purchasing a PS3, I went out and bought Burning Crusade for World Of Warcraft today. Why? Hell, I don’t know. I haven’t played WoW in a year and a half but for some reason I felt the need to spend $40 for the addon and start paying $15 a month for the game again. Yeah, I’m exactly the kind of person that should be mocking someone for spending money….

How bad do PlayStation 3’s suck? They suck so bad that GameStop is selling them bare..as in not in a bundle. I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed in a system. Ever. There are zero games. Zero. I have to get excited when a new PSP game is released over the PlayStation store. Did I mention what a turd this is?

Anyone want to buy a PS3 cheap? Well less than retail…lol

According to multiple posts in gaming world, Microsoft today revised their forecast of consoles sold from 13-15 million to 12 million. Interesting.

Their revenue numbers looked great, but even after all that they still posted a higher loss than last year. They went from revenue of $1,690,000,000 to $2,960,000,000 but still lost $289,000,000. Gee and here I am thinking a $5,000 loss is bad. What’s two hundred and eighty nine million between friends, right?

I wonder how much of that is Zune related and how much is X360 related….

After reading the comments on Glen’s post, that made me ask a question that no one has answered…we have a college football videogame, we have a college basketball videogame, we have a college baseball (kinda) videogame…but where is the college hockey videogame? Wouldn’t that be pretty cool? Just a thought.

After playing hockey tonight with a group of friends we sat around and talked about the Badger basketball win tonight. For those of you that haven’t noticed, the Badgers are 20-1 and are ranked second in the country right now. Tonight they started the game down 9-0 and managed to run away with the game, building a 24 point lead before winning the game 71-58.

I’m sure that your local sports team has had an amazing year or two in their history… but things like this haven’t happened up here. The funny thing is, it seems like most people in the local media… and especially the national media, just don’t care.

When Bo Ryan (probably the best basketball coach that you’ve never heard of) started coaching basketball at the UW in 2001, Wisconsin only had 4-20 win teams in their history… and two of those occured in the 5 years before he got here. This was a basketball program that was celebrated when it attained mediocrity. Fans went berserk when they actually got to host an NIT game in the 80’s.

I know that there is over 2 months left to go in the college hoops season, but I just wanted to make people aware of how impressive this season is for Wisconsin basketball.

Oh, my, those 3 of you like myself that bought the new Blu Ray player/video game machine will be happy to know that an update has been released for it. Apparently it fixes PS2 progressive scan issues. Yay! Almost makes you want to run out and drop $600, doesn’t it?

For those of you wondering on the comments “Why is Dan saying Dan sucks” in the comments that’s a different Dan. My posts always have my full name on them, as I believe in full disclosure and also to alleviate any confusion.

I know you guys think I’m crazy, but I really don’t have multiple personalities talking to myself….

Are you getting Windows Vista next week? Why or why not? Post in comments.

For me I’m going to pass, because quite frankly, I play games on my PC like never, when compared to consoles. The fact that my “main” pc is next to the consoles probably makes that decision. I have a P4 2.2 700XL gateway system that’s now 5 years old and I’ve replaced pretty much everything on it but the processor. I know it’s going to die soon. My “travel/work” PC is a Sony VAIO which is very nice, but not really a gaming PC. The only game I play on my PC these days is GameTap…which doesn’t have steep system requirements.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Games For Windows experiment though….

I love hockey. I’ve loved the sport ever since I saw my first game on TV when I was 7 years old, so it pains me to see how poorly the NHL is doing at this moment despite the fact that the players playing the game are so unbelievably talented right now. If you haven’t had a chance to see some of the younger players like Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, and Evgeni Malkin you really need to take the time to find a Penguins or Capitals game on TV some night to watch these kids play… they are flat out amazing.

If you wanted a good glimpse into why the league is struggling at this moment, all you had tonight was to watch the All Star Skills competition on Versus (formerly OLN) Tuesday night. I typically don’t like to blog live events, but the NHL and Vs. dropped the ball so many times that it kept distracting me from the event and the amazing players on the ice.

I tuned in just as Vs. was beginning their coverage of the Skills competition and it took them no more than 3 minutes to make their first mistake. The introduction to the first competition was done by Rick Nash (of the Columbus Blue Jackets,) but you’d never know that as the Vs. announcer was talking over his video segment as he was announcing it just before they went to their first commercial break.

In the third competition, the fastest skater, the timing system on the ice failed and they had to resort to using a time keeper with a stopwatch on the ice. He, in turn, had to relay his times to the intercom announcer who would announce the time for the skater. So throughout the event the crowd in the arena and at home had no idea how well any of the competitors were doing until the next skater was just about to skate.

In the hardest shot competition, Vs. came back late from commercial break and we missed the first shot from the first player.

In the shooting accuracy competition, during the final shooter’s attempt, the camera switched to the other end of the ice and we got to watch some guy cleaning up the goal at the other end of the ice.

None of these things were horrible, but when every single event had some sort of technical issue it starts to add up and you start to wonder what is going to wrong next.

I think that the NHL has taken a lot of positive steps to make the game more appealing to the fans since the work stoppage in 2005, but tonights event really reminds us that they have a long way to go before people will really start talking about hockey anytime soon.