Thursday night notes
- Just sitting here watching the Wisconsin vs. Minnesota game (Gophers student section has already chanted F' Bo Ryan. Still not sure why... I'm pretty sure he's not the reason that your season is going as badly as it is, but if it makes them feel better, so be it.)
The Gophers really outplayed Wisconsin on the offensive end and crashed the boards well. The big men for Minnesota just pushed around the Badgers all night and Wisconsin might have played one of their worst games of the year.
I have no idea how the Gophers have struggled as badly as they have this year.
Also, Wisconsin couldn't hit a clutch shot to save their collective asses. Down by 5, they proceed to shoot a three, get an offensive rebound, shoot another fast three, get another offensive rebound, shoot another fast three and miss. They never got closer than that as Minnesota ran away with it after that. When this team starts shooting poorly, it goes downhill in a hurry.
It was good to see Leuer back out on the court tonight, but it seemed like he was anxious to put up a shot each time and he did not shoot the ball well when he did. This loss, basically, takes the Badgers out of the running for the Big Ten title... so at least that pressure is off of them. Just work on getting the flow of the team back together now that Leuer is back.
Oh, and the Gopher player that tried to dunk on the last play of the game (Westbrook,) total jackass. You're up by 14 and have a 3 second differential on the shot clock so he tries to show off and dunk. Thankfully he got fouled hard for it.
Asshat.
- Listening to the radio this morning, it only took 1 hour into the local radio show before someone came up with the "Will someone please think of the children" line when talking about Tiger Woods. (They were worried about what Tiger's kids would think when they read about this when they grow up.... Yeah... no one will talk to them about what their parents have done... Good lord.)
I'm sick of the whole thing. Don't care who he slept with, don't care about any of it.
Glad to see that the golf writers are boycotting the made-for-tv event though. If you're a reporter and can't ask a question... why even go.
- Game Informer has been running a blog detailing their time with MLB2K10, and I have to say that it looks a lot better than I would have thought based on last years title. They have also posted the first in-game video for the game. I just love the anticipation for the new baseball titles at this time of year.
- Wow, I thought I had heard that the US curling teams were supposed to be better than this. Both the men are 0-4 and the women are 0-3. The men had a win all but handed to them in the 11th set against Denmark today, but the team captain failed to execute on his last stone.
One of my favorite things about the Olympics is that you get to pretend to care about sports that you have no interest in. The only thing that endears me to curling is the fact that it's on the ice.
MLB2K10 conference call coming up next week…
If you have some questions that you would like to add to mine (or possibly replace a few of mine,) send them along either via comments or to my email address.
Wednesday night notes
- Another late night at work, so not too much to add tonight.
- SABR is offering up this year's edition of the Emerald Guide to Baseball, via this link. For baseball geeks, this could be your little slice of heaven. A complete statistical guide to all players in the big leagues and minor leagues for the last year.... all packed into a 17 meg PDF file. Giddy-up.
- So, I look at the Sports Gamer Blog Madden league and see that Steven Jackson is out for 7 weeks... with 3 weeks to go in the season. What a kick in the pants. For some reason, I don't think my signing of J.J. Arrington will turn things around for me. Gotta keep the pedal to the floor though, as I'm holding the #6 seed in the NFC right now.
- Just got done watching Steven Colbert interviewed by Bob Costas on the late Olympics show. I don't want to spoil it for you, but the ending to the interview is awesome. I'll see if I can find a link for it tomorrow.
- Gotta pull for the St. Cloud State women's hockey team over the weekend. This may be the first weekend that I don't cheer for Wisconsin to win a sporting event, but I want the Huskies to take 4 points and lock up 3rd place in the WCHA. It might have something to do with the fact that my brother-in-law is the assistant coach for St. Cloud though. Go Huskies!
- Anyone else find it very convenient that Kevin Smith was kicked off of a flight a few weeks before his newest movie is due to be released? Ugh.
- Missed this article yesterday detailing the 'Catcher mode' of MLB 10. It's nice to finally see catchers getting their due as being a major component of the pitching game. I do want to see how often you can deal with incredibly stubborn pitchers that continually shake you off though. I can't find the exact clip that I'm looking for, but this one gives you the gist of what I'm talking about.
- Talk to you more tomorrow.
Quick Tuesday Notes
- USA Hockey begins today at the Olympics, but for now... we have USA vs. Germany in Men's Curling. It's hypnotic and I can't seem to turn away from it.
- I really hate when certain games get such early reviews, Heavy Rain being the most recent example. It becomes an issue where you have to avoid most of the sites that you look to for gaming news so that you don't catch a spoiler of a game that you are really anticipating. Hopefully all of the positive word about the game will drive decent sales though.
- Jon Leuer is back and practicing for the Badgers. It was amazing to see them go 6-3 all while missing their leading scorer, and considering the fact that 2 of those games were on the road against two teams in the top 11 of the rankings, that's a pretty impressive run.
- More later tonight.
Monday night notes
- I'm still working on the logistics of what I'm working on... so you'll have to bear with me. I don't want to do anything before it is ready, so I appreciate your patience.
- Whew.. I had forgotten that the PSP is region free. PYS 2010 on the PSP will be mine. Don't forget that NCSX is the official import shop of The Blog for the Sports Gamer.
- Just in case you had forgotten about it, the Sam Keller case versus the NCAA will be continuing onward. The NCAA had filed a motion to dismiss, but the judge denied that last week.
This case will mean a lot about how NCAA sports games can be made in the future. Add that to the Ed O'Bannon lawsuit and the NCAA has it's hands full in regards to it's videogame licensing deals.
- So, the new version of Windows Mobile will feature Xbox Live integration. To me, there is nothing better than being notified of friends achievements on my phone... oh, wait... that's useless to me.
How about you make a fast and usable interface for your phone operating system before you start integrating a game platform into it? Ugh.
- For those of you that don't subscribe to the Comments feed, I wanted to link to an article that havoc76 found in regards to adding teams to the Big Ten. It does show how much sense it would make for Texas to be added to the Big Ten, much more than I would have thought in the past. Well worth your time to give it a look.
Riding the Pines – Episode 35
You asked for it, and you got it, Riding the Pines - Episode 35.
In this episode you get to hear Dan and Glen doing a live play-by-play of the opening ceremonies. If you still have it on your DVR... it's amazing broadcasting.
Enjoy the show everyone!
Sunday Thoughts
No football and college basketball is not fun for me, so I’m enjoying watching the Combined Ski Jump & Cross Country competition.
Times like this remind me of all the enjoyment I had playing the olympic sports games (even thought they didn’t have the official license) by Epyx on my Commodore 64.
I loved how you could save your world records to disk..there was always something to try to beat. Although the Winter Games Bobsled felt stupid, the biathlon was always interesting. Figure skating sucked though. And I think the freestyle skiing was pretty lame too.
Speed skating was always cool though.
Speaking of Olympics, I always thought the Calgary ‘88 logo where they made the “8'’s with the Olympic rings was pretty cool.
I have been playing Mario & Sonic a bit and as you’ll hear from the podcast, Glen spoke so highly of Just Dance that I had to pick it up. What a fun game that is. I wish they had downloadable songs for it, but man, it is a much more fun game than DDR because you’re using your hands rather than your feet. I am exhausted playing it.
And yes we did record the podcast. Seriously if you thought live blogging the olympic ceremonies is good, how about live podcasting? My comments about Wayne Gretsky are awesome.
I would concur with what Glen said about the Luge death. I think they had to run it though, it’s still not pretty but when you have an event that happens like that, I think it’s important to show how dangerous the sport can be. I think they may have overdone it however – remember that SNL skit with Buckwheat dying? It felt like that – in case you missed it, here’s the video again – that sort of thing.
Finally, as I continue to play NHL 10, I was noticing that the paid “insert” advertising is for a good cause as EA has put American Red Cross text for Haiti messages. It’s things like that I think are very cool that they can do. When the game companies do advertising like they have in sports, I’m okay with that – ie dasher boards, billboards in baseball etc. Its when they modify everything to add more billboards or put an ad on the screen on every down that I hate.
When Camden Yards first opened, the Maryland Lottery had the coolest ad in right field – the “Hit It Here” sign. I always thought that the stadiums in video games that had that were so cool.
What are your thoughts about Commodore 64 olympic gaming and ads in videogames?
flOw free on PSN until 9 p.m. PST today
Just log onto the Playstation network and grab it.
Enjoy!
Early Saturday morning notes
- So, Dan and I recorded our show last night. You were asking for it... so you'll just have to tune in to see how it turned out.
- The opening ceremonies for the Olympics were a sad affair. I do have to say that I was pretty disappointed in NBC for choosing to air video of the death of the luge athlete. Try to explain something like that to your 2 and 5 year old as they were sitting down for dinner.
I sat down to watch the event with my family hoping that they would have enough respect for the athlete, and the audience, and choose not to run the video. It was something that I did not want, nor need to see, in order to know the tragedy that had taken place. I understand that they wanted to dedicate the evening to him, but by showing his actual death taking place on video, they did not honor him, they disgraced themselves.
I know that's a strong statement, but it really bothered me.
- Nothing more to really add today... time for bed.
Quick Friday notes
- So, the newest MLB10 trailer is out... and it looks to show that the line between real life and what the game can represent is blurring. I'll leave it up to you to see what you think.
- I think I've settled on PYS6 and the God of War collection as my next games to tackle. Plenty of good gaming available there.
- Don't want to jinx it, but Dan and I are shooting to do a podcast tonight. I have to pick up my kids from daycare... so there is no chance of me working late tonight. Thank goodness.
- Anyone played the recent Total War entries? Steam has a deal to buy the last 3 for $20 right now. Empire sounded really intriguing, but I could probably just settle on Rome for $3. Thoughts?
- One last question to you all, Texas to the Big Ten? As a Big Ten guy, I don't think this makes a ton of sense (well, it certainly does financially,) but not in a geographic sense. It doesn't create any natural rivalries and breaks up some pretty huge ones between the Longhorns and Oklahoma and A&M. The money would really drive it, if it were to happen... which.. I don't believe it will.
Thursday night notes
- Yet another fun day at the office...
Seriously, Microsoft. You've been patching this operating system for the better part of the last 8 years. You'd think now they would have a good idea to know what would completely kill a system. One of my customer systems had to have 2 repair installs done before it would start booting again. Grrr.
- One thing that I forgot to mention last week was the fact that 2K Sports is re-adding check swings back into MLB2K10 via a patch. Apparently if we complain loudly enough before a title comes out, things can get fixed.
Also in MLB2K world, there is are a few new videos showing the interaction between pitchers and hitters. If there was one thing that I did like with the interface of last years game, it was the total control pitching. Looks like it has been tweaked a bit for this year, but we'll see if that's a good or bad thing soon enough.
- I loved Crackdown when it was released. It became one of my favorite games of this current generation due to the addictive gameplay, as well as how enjoyable the co-operative experience was. I see screen shots like the ones in this article and it really makes me nervous. I'm not sure why, but seeing massive "freaks" running around the city just doesn't sound right to me. Time will tell.
- Stephen Colbert was dead on yesterday. Peekabologist. I love it.
- I'm still trying to decide what I want to play next. Maybe some PYS5 would do the trick. Now I just need to get home from work before 10 every night.
Wednesday night notes
- After finishing up an incredibly fun Madden league game with Steven, I now have the joy of sitting and watching data transfer on a server. I'm living the dream folks, living the dream.
- Some new footage of MLB 10 has shown up on the Playstation Blog. This time they're showing off the new Real Time Presentation camera. Watching the game show picture-in-picture replays of different camera angles for a given play is certainly different. Your thoughts?
- How many of you wish that you were in New Orleans for at least a bit of the celebrations going on there this week? I'm no where near a Saints fan, but I think it would have been a blast to have been at this extended Mardi Gras.
- I'm this close to getting a Twitter account? Why? More later in the week...
Amazon now offers Release Date Delivery on MLB The Show
This just popped into my email box:
Hello from Amazon.com.
We are writing to you today because you purchased a pre-order copy of MLB 10 The Show.
We are now able to offer Release-Date Delivery for this video game. This special delivery option is available to you for no additional charge and has been automatically applied to your order. Your copy of MLB 10 The Show will arrive on Tuesday, March 2nd.
We realize that many of our customers are huge MLB fans, and we're happy to offer Release-Date Delivery to get this title to you even faster.
Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com.
NCAA Basketball canned
I'd be sad if it wasn't for the fact that the last game just wasn't any good. Well, that's not entirely true... the recruiting was interesting. The gameplay was very poor.
Contact Us
Riding the Pines Podcast
Search Amazon.com
What We’re Playing
Dan:
