The Blog for the Sports Gamer

- I stopped by Target today and saw 5 more copies of the Madden Collectors edition for the PS3 for $44.98.  If anyone is still looking for a copy let me know and I’ll try and pick one up.  I actually had one in my cart, but figured I would check to see if anyone wanted one.

- The other funny thing that happened while I was at Target… I picked up a copy of Kane and Lynch for the PS3 (It was $10 bucks, so shoot me) and when the cashier rang it up… I got carded.  I’m roughly double the age that is required to buy a ‘Mature’ video game… so I always find it entertaining when things like that happen.

- I don’t know who this CC guy is, but he seems to pitch pretty well.  All kidding aside, I’m curious as to what all of you think about the one hit that was ruled a single in the game today.  Here’s a link to the video.  I’m too biased to say that it could have been anything other than an error.

I do think this would be one of the first times ever that a team could be awarded a no hitter a few days later.

- So, since the topic of my age has come up… am I just too old for all of the stuff that goes on at PAX every year?  I think it’s a great idea for a gamer convention… but I just couldn’t ever picture going to an event like that.

- One last thing… sounds like the NFL Head Coach patch should be out in the next 2 or 3 weeks.  They haven’t sent it to Sony or Microsoft yet, but they should be doing it soon.  I have to give those guys credit, they’re putting a ton of time, post release, into the game.  This is a game from EA that is worth supporting at this point.

- International Track and Field is a terrific game.  It’s very challenging and will really test your patience, but it’s a great deal of fun.  I signed up for the online community aspect of the game today and now find that my personal bests are absolutely horrible.  One thing that I’ve found is that if there are game modes that require you to slide the stylus side to side quickly and then press a button, such as the hurdles, you’re better off holding a finger on the L or R button and using that for the jumps.  I found that improved my times quite a bit.

- Quite an eventful day in the Big Ten, Wells gets hurt for Ohio State, Michigan loses to Utah (at home,) and Wisconsin turned the ball over twice inside of the 5 yard line but still won by 21.

- Last night I was watching the Brewers game and saw the replay system that they have in place for Major League Baseball and it made me angry.  They let the on field umpire crew make the call after watching the videos that are piped into the stadium.  Good god… Just let the people in the center in New York make the call.  Are you honestly telling me that the ump is going to see something different on the TV than the guys in the league office are?  Congratulations… you took a system that would have resolved the issue in less than 30 seconds and turned it into a 3 minute ordeal.  Brilliant.

- I finished the first act of Too Human last night. I couldn’t replicate what I was able to do the other night when I somehow skipped the death animation.  All I know is that the story has almost completely lost me at this point… and I’m not sure if I even want to know what is going on.  I really wanted to give the game a chance based on the demo… but I don’t think I’ll be sticking with it too much longer.

- There is a press conference for NHL2K9 next week, so if any of you have any questions, please send them to Dan or myself.  Thanks.

- I do have to say that this will be one of the most interesting series of debates for the presidency in our lifetime.  Hell, I’ll even tune in for the Biden/Palin debate…

What the hell is Mr. McCain thinking? I don’t understand this VP pick at all. I mean, great if you’re a democrat..but other than that…WTF?

First things first…

- An NHL09 demo is available on the Playstation Store.  How Sony is getting these sports demos a week ahead of Microsoft continues to intrigue me.  I’ll have some thoughts about it tomorrow.

- A new Warhawk addon is available on the Playstation store today as well.  Jetpacks?  Giddyup.  I love how much Sony is adding to that game.  I have fun each time I play it.

- I’m bummed that the Brewers couldn’t pull off the two game sweep from the Cards last night, but such things will happen.  It’s too bad the bullpen couldn’t hold it.  Oh, well.

- The Packers starting offense played 1 play tonight.  Pre-season fever….. CATCH IT!

- I got my copy of International Track and Field tonight.  Holy crap is that game fun.  Seriously… Track and Field fans should run out and buy a copy of that game.  It’ll destroy my DS screen, but it’s wicked fun and totally worth it.

Ok… enough about sports… what a speech…

Good god, Barack Obama gave one of the most impressive speeches that I’ve seen in my life.  Senator Obama just said the things that America really needed to hear.  We don’t need anymore BS politicians trying to pull this country apart… we need people who will try and bring us together.

1. Well I installed the 250GB PS3 drive very easily — the backup & restore function on the PS3 with a USB external drive was a breeze and now I can install MGS 4 and Siren and not have to worry.

2. Have you tried the EA NHL demo yet on the PS3? Impressive.

3. Yay! Warhawk expansion!

The Obama speech tonight was a grand slam. I look forward to that idiot Bill Kristol calling the speech generic on Fox News (credit - The Daily Show).

Nice to see Barack take on McCain’s ads head on. That was awesome.

1. Aww, really too bad about Ponson losing. LOL.

2. Poor Glen and his Wii memory. I know his pain, so I asked some developers I know about the situation. Guess what…the bus that goes from the Wii built in memory to the memory card isn’t even USB 2.0!! The transfer speed is right up there with a 56K modem (okay yes it’s 12Mbps, but still) ! It’s faster to delete games from your Wii memory and download them later than it is to transfer them to a memory card! What a complete joke.

3. Lots of comments today — of all the games to spur comments, I didn’t think it would be Wii LLWS and Tiger Woods 09 Wii. Seriously, the Wii version of TW is exceptional. I don’t need the 360 version — that’s how good it is.

4. Not much time left but today’s Amazon DOTD is GT 5 Prologue for $22…hope you got in on it. I rebought it today….yes, I’m a loser. But hey, I’m a loser with lots of bargain bin games. So there.

- The Brewers can take a huge step towards controlling their own destiny in the month of September by beating St. Louis today.  Last night’s 12-0 win will probably fire up the Cards quite a bit… but the Brewers have just been playing good baseball of late.  Everyone is pitching well and everyone is hitting when they need to.  22 games over .500… They haven’t had a record that good since 1992.  It’s just crazy.

- MLB begins instant replay on Thursday for questionable home run calls.  Can someone tell me why this took so long?  The NHL does something like this for every goal…. and it slows the game down by about 30 seconds.  Considering how long every baseball game takes, this is just something that was really overdue.  I’m just glad that it’s getting done.

- As far as gaming, I’ve probably had about 2 hours over the last week to play anything.. and the two games that I have played have been the Homestar Runner game on the Wii and Too Human on the 360.  I’ll give out the IGN tagline for Homestar Runner, “If you like the flash comic….”  I’ve found myself laughing at the game more than I thought that I would and so far it’s been a passable point and click adventure game.  Considering I’ve been able to nab some Wii points cards for $10 bucks, paying the 1000 points for it hasn’t hurt as much.

The one thing that does need to get resolved on the Wii… and soon… is the damn storage issues.  It took me 20 minutes to copy games off of my system onto my SD card, so that I had enough space to download Homestar Runner and Ys on Monday night.  They need to come up with a better solution for that.  Hopefully soon.

Too Human… too early to say.  I put in about 20 minutes last night but it’s the same segment as we got in the demo a few weeks ago.  I did figure out a way to skip the death sequence though.  I hit the ‘back’ button on the 360 controller, it took me to the settings screen, and then when I pressed B… I was back and alive again.  Maybe I just got lucky, but I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that you can’t skip that sequence.

- Based on Dan’s recommendations I picked up International Track and Field for the DS.  I really can’t wait to play it.  Track and Field (well, specifically Track and Field 2 on the NES) was a ton of fun back in the day.  I’m hoping to get just as much enjoyment out of this version.

- Power Pros for the DS came out yesterday.  I haven’t heard any early word on it, but judging by the screenshots that I saw… I think it’s going to be disappointing.  No season mode, no MLB Life mode, no Success mode.  That is going to make the game a tough sell to the Power Pros fans.

- I was listening to the NFL Network on Sirius on the way to work this morning and heard Peter King come up with this brilliant suggestion.  Instead of having 4 preseason games and 16 regular season games… he thinks the NFL should have 2 preseason games and 2 scrimmages (in small venues - 10,000 seats was his example) and keep the 16 game schedule.  Hmm… think the NFL would give up 1/10th of their season revenue from their stadium ticket, merchandise, and concession sales?  Think the players would want to give up 1/10th of their salary for the year?  Seriously, how does this guy get paid for his work.

- Every year I think it’s funny that there are two ex-Badger QB’s collecting paychecks in the NFL.  I love the Badgers, but when I look at the Vikings roster I keep having flashbacks to Jason Bateman from Arrested Development.  “Brooks Bollinger?  Him?”

Just played one offline and one online game of Tiger Woods on the Wii. Quick Thoughts:

• Whoa, the graphics are very impressive for the Wii
• The online play is very smooth — and the simultaneous play is a godsend
• Not a lot of people are playing Tiger on the Wii (67 online)
• Putting can be a bear
• Driving a ball with the Wii mote can be a blast

I may not open the 360 version at this point…

New York, NY– August 26, 2008 – 2K Sports, the sports publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), today announced that MLB® Superstars, a baseball game that fans of all ages can enjoy, is scheduled to be available for the Wii™ home video game system from Nintendo this fall.  MLB Superstars takes America’s favorite pastime into a totally new realm by bringing fans’ favorite players and teams out of their natural environments and showcasing them in over half a dozen different mini games that speak to the kid in all of us.

Fully utilizing the Wii’s motion sensing capabilities and easy pick-up-and-play functionality, MLB Superstars puts a brand new spin on classic games with Baseball Pachinko, Baseball Bocci, and Baseball Golf.

On their own or with friends, MLB Superstars offers gamers a unique baseball experience with a wide variety of activities. Fans can play Mascot Dance and have their favorite mascot boogie to the rhythm of that funky beat, or have a smashing good time with the Green Monster game by becoming the first to smash down their wall with a baseball bat, swinging frantically to stop the Green Monster from crashing through! Gamers aim for the high score and win numerous trophies to outfit their player in a multitude of ways!

1. Well here’s my videogame story of the day. I had eight Wii games to trade in at GameStop, because 1)I’m lazy and old and no longer interested in wastng my time on eBay and I wanted to take advantage of sales for the Tiger series as well as pick up Super Mario Sluggers.

• I bring in my eight games and see I qualify for a 30% trade in bonus. Seriously, there aren’t many places you can get $10 for Wii MLB Power Pros 2007 or $11.20 for Game Party. We Love Golf only netted me $22.40, a testament to how crappy it is, while Mario & Sonic touch each other at the Olympics netted me $25.20….yet more proof that no matter how bad a game is, if it says Mario it’s worth $$.
• What did I do with my $114.80 in trade in? Bought Tiger for Wii and 360 so I could compare and contrast of course. Did I also mention I have a very, very bad addiction to videogames? I got $5 off the 360 version and an EA Visor, so there’s that.
• Next up, I wanted to buy Super Mario Sluggers which should be in today. GameStop didn’t have it despite my preorder. WTF. I put the leftover money on SMS.
• I went to Target because their ad said SMS would be instore today. It was, so I bought it there, knowing that I can put the $9.80 on some other game…
• While I was at Target, I couldn’t believe it: I found the golden deal: Madden Collector’s Edition PS3 (only) for $44.99. Holy crap. I never get the deals like that. Even though I had the Wii and the 360 version, I still bought it. Did I mention that my addiction is terrible?
• I got home and had a call on my machine from 10:30 from “Mario” about SMS…then he hangs up right in the middle of the message. At 4:30 I have a call from some guy at GameStop apologizing for the delay in getting the game out. They aren’t giving a discount though, which is what they usually do when they f’up preorders…grrrr….

The Orioles came back to win the suspended game, back in the day when they weren’t in last place. This game has really helped me appreciate the work of the Elias Sports Bureau.

Did you know that even though the game was originally played April 28th, this counts as game #130 for the Orioles, so any hits/runs that happened go in the books as happening TODAY, rather than April 28th…BUT..

Game #130 was played on April 28th now, so even though they won it and lost the “real” game 4-3, they now have lost 4 in a row. Go figure….

Oh for some reason you can’t download  your team into the Wii version — it’s 360 or PS3 only. WTF? Glad I bought the 360 and Wii version. LOL

1. First off, if you were thinking about buying Smash Court Tennis 3, there’s a reason why it’s an Atari game rather than a Namco published game: it sucks.

2. All of the teams were claimed in Fantasy. The auto-draft sucked..but that’s the fun of the Auto-draft. Glen gets Tom Brady. I get furburger. Greattttt. I did get LT though, so there’s that. Just a reminder that you can upload your team into Madden NFL 09 and try out the team. That is cool. Also on 9/4 EA will release the live fantasy tracker for Madden, so that’s cool too.

3. Big sports game day tomorrow as Tiger Woods ships for everything but the Atari 2600 and Super Mario Sluggers also ships. Not really a big sports game but I’m still interested.

4. Speaking of baseball games, last night I relived the LLWS by pitting “West” against “Mexico”…you know what I find amazing about the LLWS game for the Wii? It’s a heck of a lot of fun. I’m really enjoying it…my arm is a little sore though but man, it’s a really fun game. Did I mention that it was fun? Just making sure.

5. I did mention that Smash Court Tennis 3 sucks right? This is one of those games that you want to do a one word review for GameShark, but I’m sure Mr. Bill Abner the editor wouldn’t appreciate that :).

Matthew Sbonik, you have 90 minutes to claim your fantasy football team. After that, we’ll have one slot open for fantasy football :).