The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Anyone else pumped? okay maybe not.

I think I will play Halo 2 tonight and call it an evening. I just can’t do the 1am thing anymore, especially when I’m nursing whatever friggin virus is inside my nose at the moment. Blech. And you aren’t supposed to drink and drive so I really can’t go get the game tonight. But I want to. You know how it is. I’m 36 and need a life I guess. LOL.

 In other news, you know in all my waiting, I’ve come to enjoy some cell phone gaming. I have a Blackberry 7100i, and man it loads the games slow but once you get to the games it’s fun. The magmic games like golf are enjoyable. I found Call of Duty to be agonizingly slow but the one I really like is old school: Miner 2049er. I loved that game when I was a kid and love it now.

As I had mentioned earlier, my ‘workhorse’ PC that I use at home, a P IV 2.2 Ghz/1GB ram/GeForce 6800 is very underpowered for World In Conflict, which leaves me with two choices: install it one my work notebook, or get a new PC. Has anyone had luck with ibuypower? They got a good review in PC Gamer but I’ve seen multiple forum posts saying it’s not so good.

Well lots of Halo 3 reviews are out, and they are all positive. Part of me isn’t surprised about this; I’m hoping it’s as good as the reviews say. I guess we’ll see.

 I got my Gamestop phone call about Halo 3 (again) and was told that I should be in line no later than 9pm. Um, yeah, I have better things to do. I expect it to be very busy there tonight but I’m going to pass and pick it up in the morning. I did the midnight thing for Madden and that’s enough for me.

Today’s the start of a new TV season. Looking forward to How I Met Your Mother tonight. I saw Journeyman on demand and wasn’t thrilled. The guy that’s the main character is from Rome and I like him, but the thoguht of ‘another Quantum Leap’ just didn’t get me. I did enjoy Chuck though, but I’m guessing that show will be canned in 2 weeks. Tough to try to watch a show when you know with a name like “Chuck” it’s going to be canned.

I’ve been playing DiRT on the PS3 and it looks better than on the 360, but I am not a fan of the controls. No SIXAXIS support, what’s up with that? I’ll try the wheel.

- The Packers looked pretty good in beating the Chargers today, of course Dan had to chime in and tell me that the Chargers sucked and Favre is too old. And people call me the bitter one.

- I watched Family Guy for the first time in quite a while and really enjoyed their Star Wars episode. They mentioned Robot Chicken’s Star Wars episode at the end of the show, it’s well worth a look. My personal favorite moment was the Admiral Ackbar cereal commercial.

- So, this game called Halo 3 is coming out this week. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it.. but it seems like Microsoft is trying to sneak it out without putting any marketing behind it. A few people might try and pick it up to see if it’s worth their time.

I picked up the two new SingStar games this week. One is SingStar Amped, which has a lot of hard rock songs. One of the songs is Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” and my god Brad Delp could hold a note for a long time — and a high octave. Good luck with that. My vocal chords are fried.

 I didn’t realize the chorus says “i see my maryanne walking away” until now. See you always learn something. Put me on Don’t Forget the Lyrics!
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Ugh. That was a tough football game to watch. 2 hours for the first half… man.

- Nintendo Power confirms Samba De Amigo on the Wii is on the way. That is great news. I only had a chance to play the game once (with Maracas) on the Dreamcast and I loved every minute of it. I can’t wait for the next version of it.

- Nielsen gives out gaming statistics. The story is over at Kotaku. Those are some of the most mindblowing stats that I’ve ever heard. You really must see them.

- Oh, and in baseball, the Brewers pretty much hung it up tonight. Cordero blows a save chance in the 10th, Weeks boots a double play ball that gets the winning run to second in the 11th. Oh, well. It was a good, if not incredibly frustrating run, for the Brewers this year. I still bet that Yost loses his job this year.

Ok, I had to shorten the list… as the game has already started. It’s tough trying to get any writing done and watch two kids. Enough excuses… let’s go.

4. Wisconsin vs. Michigan - 2005 - John Stocco goes into the endzone on a QB draw to put the Badgers up for good, 23-20 with seconds to go. I was at this game, so that made it a bit more special for me.

3. #5 Purdue vs. #12 Wisconsin - 2004 - Purdue is up by 3 with less than 3 minutes to go when Scott Starks forces a Kyle Orton fumble that is returned for a touchdown to give the Badgers the win. This one was brutal for Purdue.

2. #23 Wisconsin vs. #3 Ohio State - 2003 - Ohio State came into the game with a 19 game winning streak and lost when the Wisconsin backup QB, who entered because the starter was choked during the game, hit Lee Evans for a 79 yard TD pass with 5:20 to play.

1. Michigan State vs. Wisconsin (in Tokyo) 1993 - Wisconsin won the game and won the right to go to the Rose Bowl. I wish I could find the pictures of State Street in Madison after they won that game. Estimates had it at 30,000 plus in downtown Madison partying for hours and hours.

My latest TWID post is now available. Click here to check it out.

Those of you who can’t wait for Stranglehold Collector’s Edition (PS3) with the BD Hard Boiled movie are going to have to wait another month. According to GameStop, the game won’t be coming out until 10/29 now. Lovely.

 In other news, I bought my first PC game in a few years — World In Conflict. Haven’t installed it yet, but can’t wait.

My latest board game session report is online in the forums, this time the subject is the superhero combat game, Capes and Cowls.  It’s a pretty cool game with loads of heroes using crazy rule-breaking powers. If you have a kid who loves supers..this game is an absolute no-brainer.

- As was mentioned earlier today in the comments, Sega and Out of the Park Developments have parted ways.  From the press release, it doesn’t appear that anything will change.  Here’s a brief Q and A at the OOTP site.

- Finally some more details about the new version of Tecmo Bowl.   No word on platform, but they’re promising editable jerseys and helmets and player names.  That’s a good start.

- I have a friend who got me started on assigning different songs for ring tones for each of my friends.  Man, this is a lot of work.  It’s especially hard when your trying to find each track without any DRM crap.

- Tomorrow night the Badgers have a night game against Iowa, so I’ll be posting my all time top 5 favorite Wisconsin Football night games.  That ought to excite… maybe 1 of you.

- Well, with the second showing of our house last night (no news yet,) I started to think about what I’ll be doing for a gaming setup at the new place.  I’m seriously thinking about getting a really nice 30-something inch LCD (1080P preferably) and then getting a really nice set of surround headphones to hook up to the receiver (Denon AVR-1805) that I will have in that room.  Any suggestions for TV’s or headphones?

- So, I woke up late yesterday and there was a bit of a scramble to get out of the house to take my girls to day care.  My wife said to my daughter, “Gaby.  We’re late, we have to get you ready.”  My daughter replied, “Momma’s late.”

I quickly replied, “She sure as hell better not be late.  There is no way I’m dealing with 3 girls under the age of 4.”

- A few months ago I mentioned that a tradition was ending.  Wisconsin Public Television for as long as I can recall, has always broadcasted Wisconsin Hockey games on tape delay after the game was over.  Today I see from the Wisconsin Public Television site that they still will be broadcasting these games.  Not a big deal for any of you, but for me it’s a big deal.

- More and more spammers keep trying to get added to the forums.  I personally enjoy seeing the occupations and interests that they list for themselves in their forum.  I’ll probably be adding a new feature to the signups that is supposed to reduce the number of spammers that register next week.  Join us next week for more ‘Fun with spammers.’

- I wonder if Cub fans will wonder if the Braves were giving the Brewers a benefit by pitching a former Brewer (Jeff Bennett) against them yesterday.  The plot thickens…..

I met Bennett a few years ago at a Brewer banquet in Madison.  Really nice guy.  Probably one of the best groomed goatees that I’ve ever seen.  The answer to your question is ‘Yes.’  I did turn in my “man card” a long time ago.

For those who are playing franchise mode, does fatigue seem right to you? My entire team is almost totally exhausted 15 games into the season. I’ve stopped doing any practice/training on off days and my players do not seem to be recovering. Federov looks like he’s about to pass out. Young guys, too. Zherdev, a notoriously fast player, looks like a turtle on the ice right now.  I scratched Zherdev for a game, didn’t make him practice, and after 3 days he’s still 3/4 red with fatigue.

I look around the league and some CPU teams show high fatigue and some no zero fatigue. I just played the Kings, who have no players with ANY fatigue level at all and they skated circles around me. I lost 5-1 and I am certain a big reason for that was due to being 2 steps slow because my guys are all tired.

Anyone else see this?

There’s a new demo for Pro Evolution Soccer out on the 360, unless you live in North America, in which case there’s nothing to see here. Why do us Americans always get shut out of the good stuff?

So, I’m watching the Daily Show last night (Clinton was on), and they are showing “highlights” of the Bush press conference. I also watched ABC’s World News Tonight, and I guess they missed some of the conference! For example, the part where the Moron-In-Chief says that Mandela was killed by Saddam Hussein. Seriously. Oh and, he’s going to veto money for kids insurance while we spend billions on schools in Iraq that just get blown up again. He says he’s not an economist — but he got a B in Economics 101, but he got an A in cutting taxes.

I’m sorry, where is “Cutting Taxes” at school? I mean I took an undergrad course that was all about taxation, but nothing about cutting taxes. I guess he went to one of those special schools.

 Here’s the You Tube about Mandela. I have no idea WTF this guy is talking about. Maybe that’s his way of brainwashing — talk nonsense and then he can do whatever he wants.

 Alright, back to gaming….

Nintendo today announced that they’ve entered into an agreement to have Future Publishing print Nintendo Power magazine. Future is the company that’s brought you such shit as “Official Xbox Magazine” and “PC Gamer.” And I can call it shit because I was a Contributing Editor there (ie “Freelancer”).  Seriously, this is a magazine that tries to make the writers more important than the games and hardware (The Vede, anyone).

It will be extremely interesting to see how they take a magazine that catered to the Nintendo fanbase which is decidedly younger and put their “cock in your face” attitude to it. Well it won’t be that interesting, as I expect their circulation to die, but it will be fun to laugh at.