My Imaginary Conversation with the Winner of Ebay Item #250189173724

I don't know about you, but when I spend over 300 dollars on something, I want to, if not enjoy it, at least get some use out of it. That's why I wanted to interview eBay user generalhellfire, who paid $330 for The Music Machine. I wanted to know what motivates someone to spend that kind of money on something that's only valuable because nobody wanted it in the first place. However, generalhellfire never responded to my request, so I'm left to imagine how the interview would have gone.

Me: You must already own every video game worth owning if you're willing to spend $330 for The Music Machine.

Him: Yup, got 'em all. Air Raid. Stadium Events. Power Lords.

Me: Those games are terrible.

Him: Terribly rare, you mean. Admit it, you're jealous.

Me: I admit I'm jealous of the amount of disposeable income you seem to have. Have you ever considered using that money for something a little more worthwhile?

Him: I've slept with a hooker.

Me: Good for you. But what about buying something you might get some lasting enjoyment out of?

Him: Like a mail-order bride?

Me: No. Why not use that money on an Xbox 360?

Him: But lots of people have 360s. I want to be cool.

Me: So you bought The Music Machine because you thought owning a rare game would make you look cool to all the other guys on the Digital Press forum?

Him: Well, yeah? Why else are video games for?

25 Years Too Late

AtariAge forum member BigO has created an Atari 5200 controller that isn't a total piece of garbage. Learn more about this possibly miraclulous device here.

Super Fun Matching Game #1

Match the arcade game on the left with its Atari 2600 counterpart on the right. Answers below.


1-D Blueprint. 2-C Buck Rogers - Planet of Zoom. 3-A Tutankham. 4-B Zaxxon.

Video Games - The Board Game

Growing up an only child in a neighborhood with few other kids, I spent a lot of time playing video games when there wasn't anyone else around (or when I got tired of hitting that 2 out, bottom of the ninth home run in game 7 of the World Series in the back yard with my trusty Steve Garvey bat and a Wiffle Ball). Someone at Milton Bradley must have been concerned about the anti-social behavior fostered by video games because that company started churning out board game versions of every even remotely popular video game of the era. Not only were these games nowhere near as much fun as the original versions, but each of them required at least two people to play.

Running out of games to ruin, but still looking to cash in on the video game craze, MB upped the ante with Electronic Arcade Mania. Instead of a single game, Arcade Mania was based on the competitive gaming concept popularized by Twin Galaxies. It also required four people to play.


The centerpiece of Arcade Mania is The Machine, a 9-inch tall plastic arcade cabinet with 9 buttons and 9 LEDs. Using plastic overlays, The Machine can be transformed into 4 different games: Alien Raiders (kinda like Space Invaders), Rattler (kinda like Centipede), Sneak Attack (kinda like Missile Command) and Run Amuk (kinda like Berzerk). Each player selects an overlay and a corresponding pawn and that become their game. Whenever another player lands on a square with your game on it, the two of you play and whoever gets the highest score wins some chips. The other 2 players can bet their chips on who they think will be the winner. The goal is to have the most chips when the game ends.

Considering that many parents in the early 1980's considered video game playing delinquent behavior on par with doing drugs and worshiping Satan, combining gaming with the unsavory practice of gambling wasn't a great marketing decision on Milton Bradley's part. That would explain the game's obscurity, even next to Zaxxon the board game.

The four games manage to be unique and playable (though not necessarily fun), despite being nothing more than the same 9 lights blinking in different patterns. But there's no reason to limit yourself to the games programmed into The Machine. Not in the 2000's. With roughly 96% of the titles released for the Wii being collections of mini-games, it would be easy to have players select games from one of those. Or, if you want to keep the retro vibe intact, there are several classic video game collections available for current systems to choose from.

Arcade Mania will add a nostalgic twist to your next game night. Or it will make three of your friends hate you. Fortunately, you'll have your video games to keep you company should that happen.

Friends Don't Let Friends Make Sprite Comics

My tolerance for sprite comics ranks somewhere near George Wallace's tolerance for black people, so imagine my horror when I discovered a sprite comic devoted to teaching others how to make sprite comics. A Thing or Two About Sprite Comics is a series of random tutorials done by different authors, all of which could benefit greatly from a tutorial on making comics. So today, for your benefit and theirs, I present Uncle Ojo's Tips on Making a Webcomic that Isn't a Complete Waste of His Time.

First, if you and your friends are going to do a collaborative comic, actually collaborate with each other. This way you'll avoid posting a comic instructing people not to splice sprites 3 days after your buddy posted in-depth instructions on splicing sprites. It will also lessen the chances of all seven of you posting roughly the same lesson on shading in seven different comics.

Second, one of you should create some kind of template so that there will be a more uniform look and feel to the series. Also, it will help those friends who have never actually seen a comic before and aren't entirely sure what one should look like.

Third, don't let spammers join your little group. This will prevent them from posting a seven part ad for the software they developed disguised as a tutorial.

Fourth, don't use MS Paint. Ever. The only tutorial I want to see that even mentions MS Paint is one called "How to Remove MS Paint from Your Computer Forever."

Fifth, don't use l33t. This applies to all of you out there, not just the ones making sprite comics. Listen to your English teacher. Learn to spell. Don't make an ass of yourself.

Sixth, when making a tutorial comic, keep in mind that tutorials are most effective when they cover things that aren't general knowledge. For example, most people know how to use a spell check, therefore, you do not need to make a tutorial on the use of spell check. However, if you still want to make a spell check tutorial, my advice to you is to actually run a spell check on it.

Follow these simple rules and not only will your sprite comic tutorial be a hit, but it will greatly reduce the chances that I will make fun of it.

Oh, one last thing before I forget. Jokes are only jokes if they're funny to someone besides yourself.

Elevator Inaction

Somewhere out there, sitting in a poorly lit room, listening to Rush, there's a man working on the next great Atari 2600 game. The year isn't 1981. No, no, my friend. It's 2007. And while that game isn't ready yet, many are. Homebrew games. Created by dedicated fans of long dead gaming systems.

Released this past summer, Elevators Amiss is a hombrew game that, in my humble opinion anyway, misses the mark. First, don't put the word "amiss" in your title. It gives way too much ammunition to smart-ass game reviewers. Second, don't make the enemy a box.


The premise of this game makes absolutely no sense. The player controls a maid in a hotel where the elevators have "taken on a life of their own!" Gotcha. I'll use the stairs. Only in order to get to the stairs, I have to avoid the out-of-control elevators. I'm no architect, but elevators normally live in elevator shafts, not hotel hallways. As long as I don't try to get on one of them, they can't possibly be an obstacle to me.

The controls make absolutely no sense either. On the normal and expert settings, the maid can't stop moving once she starts across a floor, she can only change direction to avoid the elevators that shouldn't be a threat to her anyway. Is she supposed to wait until the moment she can shoot all the way across the floor to the staircase, or do the back-and-forth Pac-Man dance until the way is clear?

There isn't a terrible amount of variation from level to level. The colors change and the speeds of the elevators becomes more varied. There's no variation whatsoever in the annoying music, which plays nonstop throughout the game. The only other sound effect is that of the maid going up the stairs. Visually, the game is very clean-looking. The maid sprite looks very nice and the animation of her running is cute.

If only she were running through a more inspired game.

Veteran of the Penguin Wars

In Penguin Wars, you control Arctos, leader of the Penguin Rebel Forces, in his battle against the oppressive General Tusk and his Walrus Army. On your way to the Final Confrontation you'll have to rescue imprisoned penguins, fight your way out of the belly of a killer whale and navigate treacherous ice floes.

Just kidding. Penguin Wars is part dodge ball, part air hockey and part Hello Kitty. You pick one of five cute animals to play as and throw balls across a ping pong table at other cute animals.


Each cute animal begins the game with five balls on its side of the table. To win, either get all ten balls to the other side of the table at the same time or have the fewest balls on your side when time runs out. Scoring a direct hit on the other cute animal temporarily paralyzes them, giving you a chance you get all your balls to the other side. If you're not into playing fair, it's possible to hit cute animals while they're down, giving you more points and more time to get your balls across. Winning a set in two straight games lets you play a bonus round for extra points.


Each cute animal has its own strengths and weaknesses. The rat moves the fastest, but throws balls the slowest. The cow moves slow but doesn't stay knocked out as long when hit. The penguin takes on the role of Mario, getting not only the title nod but also the most average stats.

Penguin Wars is cute, fun and well animated. The main knock is that it's so short. There are only four other cute animals to beat and once you beat them all, that's it. If you've got two Game Boys, a link cable, another copy of the game and a friend, you can play a 2-player match. That's a lot of work to add to the play value of one game. Especially since meeting people offline is so hard.

Golf + Ninjas = Bodacious

The 1980's were the Decade of the Ninja. Ninja Turtles. Ninja Gaiden. Ninja High School. American Ninja. You couldn't walk ten feet without tripping over something that had been ninjafied. The ninja craze didn't escape the notice of the folks at Atari, but instead of churning out yet another hack 'n' slash ninja game, they came up with... Ninja Golf.


Unlike other golf video games, Ninja Golf isn't about picking the right club to get to the green from 75 yards out in a 10 mph cross wind. You don't pick clubs at all. In fact, the actual golf part of this game only takes up about 30 seconds of a nine hole game. But hey, you're a gamer. The only reason you even know there's a difference between a sand wedge and a pitching wedge is that you spent a week straight playing Tiger Woods '07 when it was released for the Wii.

No, Ninja Golf is all about kicking the crap out of ninjas and giant frogs. Once you've teed off, you've got to run to the spot your ball landed to take your next shot. Along the way you'll encounter other ninjas, fight off cobras as you traverse the sand traps, cross shark infested water hazards and dodge dirt clods thrown by giant gophers. The fighting element is a basic side-scrolling karate game, i.e. Kung Fu. Your character can jump, kick and throw ninja stars, which are plentiful on the course along with other power-ups such as temporary invincibility and health.


Once you've reached the green, you don't putt, which is fine with me because putting is usually the most frustrating part of a golf video game. Instead, you fight a fire-breathing dragon by throwing your ninja stars at it in a blatant Shinobi rip-off. Rather than die in some glorious fashion, the dragon simply flies off after you hit it enough, licks its wounds and tries again next hole.

The dragon fight is the best looking part of the game. Everything else is very blocky, even for a game this old. The sound effects are serviceable, but unspectacular. The whole audio-visual experience is very underwhelming, even with cute additions like playing the Jaws theme when you're underwater.

Judged as just a golf game or just a fighting game, Ninja Golf is below average at best. The combination makes for something just off-beat enough to be fun despite its flaws. If, for some reason, you don't have an Atari 7800 (the only system this game was released for, eat that Nintendo) or an emulator, there's a cumbersome flash version, but stick with the original if you can.

There's a Little Pervert in All of Us

Approximately seventeen times a day, someone discovers Custer's Revenge, thinks it's hilarious that there are adult Atari 2600 games and writes what they think is a clever, insightful, maybe even humorous blog on the subject. These would-be comedians, most of them born long after the demise of the 2600, typically focus on how stupid 80's people must have been to be titillated by heavily pixelated sex.

As a public service to these newcomers, I provide the following information about a couple of games they might find disappointing.


Hole Hunter is not about hunting that hole. Instead, you control a guy with a hammer trying to bash in the brains of large rat-like animals. There's no indication of what these animals might have done to deserve having their brains bashed in. It's possible the guy with the hammer is simply a colossal dick.

Gameplay is fairly simple. You move the guy around the screen and hit rat-things with the hammer. Ideally, you hit them before they leave their holes, as they are difficult to catch once they come out. Getting touched by a rat-thing won't kill you, but it will cause you to lose points. Occasionally, some unidentifiable creature will move across the screen from right to left in a straight line. This thing can kill you. Below your score is a timer counting you down from 20 minutes. I have no idea what happens when it reaches zero. I always get bored and quit long before then.


Ram It, despite the name and the fact that you control something called a "ramroid" is also not even the least bit dirty. Rather, you use your ramroid to shoot back the advancing color bars before they trap you or you run out of time.

The ramroid moves up and down along the gray line in the center of the screen and can shoot to the left and right. By shooting the color bars, you gradually push them off the screen. Clear the screen to move on to the next. Run out of time and you have to start over. It's a pretty simple game that's fun for a little while, but you'll probably want to keep your copy of Lula.

That's all for today, but be sure to come back for the disappointing truth about Acid Drop.

What the Fucking Shit Fuck Ass Fuck Is this Doing on the Web?

Webcomics are the bane of my existence. Especially now that sites like Comics Genesis and Drunk Dunk make it possible for any idiot with a copy of How to Draw Manga to post their comic without even learning how to build a website. (In my dreams, Chris Crosby's fate after dying of a massive coronary at 37 is to spend eternity in Hell reading every single comic posted on his site.) You can even skip learning to draw entirely and make a sprite comic. If you don't know what a sprite comic is, I envy you.

Sprite comics use sprites from video games rather than the creator's own art, making it easy for thousands uncreative people to make comics starring their favorite video game characters. Like Mario, who has to figure out what to do with himself after Bowser stops kidnapping the princess in What the Fucking Shit Fuck Ass Fuck Is Mario Gonna Do Now?

The title suggested I was in for an Angry Video Game Nerd-esque experience, with random swearing substituted for humor. I didn't even get that. There are more curse words in the title than the entire run of the comic. Instead, after a painfully long explanation of why Bowser has stopped kidnapping the princess, I just get Mario bouncing from job to job and kicking Luigi off a diving board several times in what appears to be an attempt at a running gag (which may or may not be an homage to Jim Davis' famous "Garfield kicking Odie off the table" attempt at a running gag). Here's a tip for any aspiring webtoonists reading this: for a comic to be good it should either have an interesting storyline or jokes. WTFSFAFIMGDN has neither.

Now, if I was a real jerk, I could make fun of the writer's spelling and grammar, but he's obviously not a native English speaker. I will, however, suggest that he have someone with a better command of the language look over his comics before he posts them. This will save him from embarrassment and save his readers (Judging from the comments left, most of his readers appear to be his non-English speaking friends. Webspeak is not English! Do not try to learn English from the internet!) from trying to figure out what he really means.

I hope the next time you and your friends are hanging out, cracking jokes while playing Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu and you realize how easy it would be to take a couple of screen grabs, put your jokes in some speech bubbles and post the result on the internet, you don't. Instead, turn the game off and do something that will benefit society far more than another webcomic ever could. Maybe sell meth to school children.

Thomas Holzer Likes Girls

Just by looking at pictures of his game room, I can tell that Thomas Holzer is a raging heterosexual.


Does Thomas Holzer hide his dirty games in a box with a blanket over it with a plant on top of it? No. He puts them on the shelf right next to his other games.


In case you can't see all of them, Mr. Holzer was kind enough to provide these pictures.


If your German's a little rusty, let me help you out. "Rotlicht" translates to "red light." As in "red light district." You know who doesn't play Whorehouse Tycoon? Gay guys. Here are some more games gay guys don't play.


No self-respecting homosexual would come anywhere near a game called "The Sorcerer's Appliance." OK, that one might be a little bit of a gray area, but "Sorcerers Get All the Girls" is straight all the way.

It is my fervent hope that Thomas Holzer one day meets a real girl. (Not a real doll. I assume he already has one of those.) In the meantime, the pool for when Tom leaves his wife to live with a man he met while on a business trip to Miami starts at age 35. The winner gets all the games pictured here and a big metal footlocker to store them in.

Rock Bland

Having grown bored with Guitar Hero III in just a few days, I'm hesitant to spend 200 dollars on Rock Band. Fortunately, my good friend Meager has no such reservation. And when he extended the invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at his place, I eagerly drove across town, Spear's pumpkin pie in hand, for a chance to rock out.

What makes Rock band different was obvious the moment I set foot inside his house. The plastic drum kit in the living room. And drumming is fun. On easy. Harder than that and you'll want to save it for actual drummers or to teach a lesson to annoying know-it-alls who think any idiot can play the drums. The same goes for singing. You'll probably be able to make it through any song on easy even if you've never so much as sung along with the radio in the car before. Start upping the difficulty and prepare to have your bandmates "save" you.

That's another new feature. If one member of your band fails a song, it isn't over. Someone else can bring them back using their Star Power (called "Overdrive" here). Make sure your guitarist and bassist save it to help the drummer and singer out. Also new, at least if you've never played a video game before in your life, is the character creation feature. Why this hasn't been standard since Guitar Hero 1, I haven't the slightest idea.

That pretty much does it for the new, which leaves us with the old: guitar and bass. The new Fender Stratocaster controller is way prettier than anything ever made for any of the Guitar Hero games, but the flat buttons and stiff strum bar might make for a difficult period of adjustment. Grab your trusty Guitar Hero X-Plorer controller and someone can join in on bass, just like they've been able to do since GHII.

What made Guitar Hero so great is that it took 6 (or 4) string and 22 frets and simplified them down to 5 buttons so that anyone could pretend they were a rock star. Drumming and singing in Rock Band, particularily at the higher levels, isn't a video game. It's drumming and singing. If you've got four people together who are that musically inclined, why not just start a real rock band?

Maybe I'm just burned out after 3 Guitar Hero games (II, Rocks the 80's and III) in the span of a year, but I see no reason to own my own copy of Rock Band. I will, however, gladly accept any invitations to sit in on bass for an evening.

...You Got Sonic in My Mario

Mario visited Mobius in Somari, so it seems only fair that Sonic repay the favor by visiting the Mushroom Kingdom in Sonic Jam 6. (Pirates love continuing the numbering sequence of legit games. Super Mario Bros. 17 is Mario hacked into Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers.)

Knuckles?

Sonic Jam 6 is just Sonic dropped into the 16-bit Super Mario Bros. from Mario All-Stars ported to the Genesis, complete with all the, oh let's call them quirks, you expect from a pirate game. Quirk number 1: instead of starting as a smaller version of himself, Sonic starts the game red and turns blue after eating a mushroom. OK, that's a little weird, but harmless.

The game also lacks any of the secondary animation. Sonic doesn't transform when he gets a power-up or lower into a pipe. He's just instantly a new color or in a new place. The only animation of him running is the full-speed, cartoon legs-in-a-circle, no matter how slow he's going, so it always looks like he's having trouble getting traction. And the Sonic sprite itself looks bad. The edges are jagged and black. Again, these are fairly minor things that don't affect gameplay.

Watchayoo doin' in-a my game?

Now we get to the fun stuff. Sonic can only jump 1 of 2 preprogrammed distances: too far or not far enough. Try a mid-air course correction and he goes careening into the nearest bottomless pit of death. All of the controls feel loose and sloppy, a feeling heightened by the "out-of-traction" look of the animation. And the collision detection is overly sensitive. If anything comes anywhere near you, you will die or power down.

So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna play Mario if I wanna play Mario and I'm gonna play Sonic if I wanna play Sonic. Good. That's settled then. Actually though, I kinda feel like playing Alex Kidd...

You Got Mario in My Sonic...

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games is getting hype as the first meeting of those video game icons. Don't buy it. Mario visited Sonic's world more than ten years ago in a pirate game from Hong Kong called Somari. The two don't meet on-screen, but Mario is wearing Sonic's shoes, which suggests an off-screen meeting. I imagine Mario jumping out from behind a bush, turtle shell in hand, beaning Sonic from behind and making off with the shoes.

The programmers took quite a few liberties with the level maps, but this is more or less an 8-bit version of the first Sonic the Hedgehog game with Mario as the hero. The programmers also forgot to include the Scrap Brain Zone and the extra life for collecting 100 rings. And those checkpoints that let you start a level in the middle after dying? They forgot those too. You realize just how helpful those are when you have to start a level over from the beginning after misjudging a jump against a boss.

Oops. Back to the start.

On the plus side, you'll never notice the extra life reward is missing. Because you probably won't go long enough without getting bumped into by something or shot by something or bumped into by something while something else is shooting you to ever get anywhere near 100 rings. There are more enemies in this game than I've ever seen in any Mario or Sonic game. I challenge you to go ten steps without getting hit by something.

This being a pirate game, there are plenty more problems. The graphics are glitchy. In the Marble Zone, moving platforms appear that aren't really there. Some of the rings can't be picked up, or can only be picked up if Mario touches them while jumping. The first boss battle is extremely flickery. The physics are off. It's almost impossible to get Mario to stop from running speed. Oh, and the music is terrible. In fact, I recommend against ever getting the invincibility power up solely because, as bad as the music is, it's even worse sped up.

Somebody needs to clean the pool.

For all it's problems, Somari is an interesting novelty and infinitely better than Sonic's adventure in the Mushroom Kingdom...

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night

This image accompanied an online article about the possible next generation Xbox. While I know this isn't even remotely official, I am intrigued by the possibility of using the same device to play video games and charge my power ring.

Game Snob Buyer's Guide #1

Ebay item #250189173724 - The Music Machine for the Atari 2600. Buy it now for $329.99. But before you get your credit card, here are a few other things for you to consider.

The Music Machine or Gibson Melody Maker electric guitar

Priced at $329.99, the Music Machine lets you score points by collecting Fruit of the Spirit symbols.

Priced at $349.99, the Gibson Melody Maker features a mahogany body, rosewood fingerboard, 2 single-coil pickups and is available in a black, white or sunburst finish.

The Music Machine or Pro-Ject Debut III Audiophile turntable

Priced at $329.99, the Music Machine lets you play alone or challenge a friend.

Priced at $329.00, the Pro-Ject Debut III features a felt-covered steel platter, an aluminum tone arm, a silicone damped arm lift and is available in your choice of colors.

The Music Machine or Nikon Coolpix S50c digital camera

Priced at $329.99, the Music Machine lets you help Stevie and Nancy avoid the mischievous pudgeons.

Priced at $349.99, the Nikon Coolpix S50c features 7.1 megapixel resolution, 3x optical zoom and a built-in wi-fi antenna.

The Music Machine or a hooker

If you can afford to spend over three hundred dollars on a video game that isn't even fun to play, then you probably fall into one of two categories. Either you have so much money you can get any woman you want, in which case you don't need a hooker or financial advice from me, or you're a 35-year-old virgin living in your mom's basement. If that is the case, I would recommend the hooker because while any 2600 emulator can mimic the experience of playing Music Machine, I know of no software that can imitate what a hooker will do to you for 330 dollars.

Super Clifford Bros.

I have a request. I would like for all of you to please stop putting your video game hacks on the web. If you want to spent your spare time pretending to be a programmer, that's fine. Everyone should have a hobby. I just don't see why the rest of us should have to be subjected to your creativity.

Example number 1 is Knuckio. Based on the name, I think this is Knuckles in Super Mario Bros. Based on the visuals, I'm not so sure. Knuckles kinda looks like a dog to me. Yup, that's Clifford. Clifford the Big Red Dog is in the Mushroom Kingdom. And here's a tip for all you would-be hackers out there: change the text too. Look at the score. Mario has 6,150 points. How'd he get those points? I haven't even seen him anywhere in this game. And how many points does Clifford have?

Open your eyes, Toad. That's not Mario. It's Clifford. I know they're both red, but they look nothing alike. Mario is a plumber. Clifford is a Big Red Dog. Not as big as you right now. But just wait. Next level he'll find a power-up. While he's doing that, maybe you can do something useful for once and figure out which castle the princess is actually in.

Speaking of power-ups, what the hell is this thing? Flaming toaster? Box of Kleenex? It replaces the flower. I never understood how eating a flower would give you the ability to shoot fireballs anyway, so I guess a flaming toaster is actually an improvement. That's one point for you, lazy hacker! Now do us all a favor and quit.

Angry Video Game Nerd vs. Halloween

Sixteen minutes ago I made a very bad decision and watched the Angry Video Game Nerd's painfully humorless Halloween video. It follows the same premise as almost every other Angry Nerd video. The Nerd plays a bad game and lets us know how bad it is. To his credit, he doesn't say the game sucks shit or that he'd rather suck an elephant's balls than play it again. He can't really muster any emotion at all about this game, which makes for a pretty boring review.

Since this is the Halloween video, some trick-or-treaters show up. But look at this:

That's not a front porch. These kids are inside. Is it an apartment building maybe? No. When the Nerd leaves later, you can see coats hanging on the wall.

Is it a closet? Is it the hall outside his bedroom at his mom's house? What? You couldn't move the camera to the front door for this shot? Do a little actual editing? Maybe they're the Nerd's little half-brothers doing a little warm-up before hitting the streets for the real deal. Wouldn't want to pull a hammy.

So now the Nerd has reviewed 3 games and taken a dump in a kid's trick-or-treat bag. Why is this video only half over? Because now we have to watch him take on Michael Myers in the basement with a pair of Atari wireless controllers. I thought this guy was a game critic. Now I have to sit through his cheesy fanfic remake of Halloween?

And this thing got an average viewer rating of 9.3. Out of 10. Am I missing something? Is the Nerd's new subtle humor lost on me? Maybe he was never funny and I just didn't know any better. I mean, I thought Garfield was funny when I was a kid. I had all the books and everything. Then, years later I went back and read them again and was left wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

Okay, that's enough of this. I've got a hard drive full of ROM files I should have been playing.