Endangered Gamer

I've passed the 10,000 mark in my Gamerscore . This might not mean much to some people, but it's significant to me because up until about 2 months ago, i didn't really care what it was, but my score was hovering at about 9000 for far too long. the Wii was the reason for that, but now that the Nintendo drought is in full effect, I'm back on the Xbox saddle, and I've been playing Crackdown and Rainbow Six: Vegas for the last few nights. RS:V has a ridiculous achievement worth 30 Gamerpoints if you use the Xbox Live Vision camera to create a online avatar. It's not the best use of the Gamerscore system, but hey, i don't make games, just play them. For a real Gamerscore Whore, check this out.... [Update] I've just finished Crackdown. This is probably the fastest i've finished a game in a LOOOONG time, i just powerleveled through it and got 'er done. It's a great game, but the main complaints about it being not focused enough an...

sketch combat, FTW!!!!!

DJ Shadow is one of many music artists that i feel have lost their way recently, (along with ...And You Will Know Them By The Trail Of Dead..) but this video off his new album is mining the newest fad in music videos, the 8-bit treatment. The second video is from Cadence Weapon, and the song "Sharks" is a badass homage to early 80's video game retro. Donkey Kong, Frogger and what looks like Pit Fighter all make appearances.

Finally!!!! After getting screwed out of the Best Director Oscar 3 times ( Raging Bull, Casino, and Goodfellas) Martin Scorsese has FINALLY won!!!!! My personal choice for best movie of the year won the statue for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Editing. fucking awesome!!!!

If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, or a little brother ( or sister ) driving you crazy, Best Buy is having the mother of all fire sales, starting tomorrow. Games for all the systems (ps3 and wii not included) are going for as little as 1.99 to 9.99 there are a few Xbox 360 games there too, for easy gamerpoints. there's actually a few pretty good games in the list, like Metroid Prime 2, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Dogz, etc. check out the full list at Destructoid.com

Continuing the parade of non-gaming related stuff....

I'VE NEVER MADE A POST ENTIRELY IN CAPS, BUT THIS DESERVES IT, I SWEAR!!!!! IF YOU WATCH ONE YOUTUBE VIDEO THIS YEAR, THIS IS IT!!!!!! from the person who posted it.... I found the song at http://www.gamercastnetwork.com/ I want to offer a thanks and an apology for using the song to whoever made it. But its a really funny song and I just had to. ******UPDATE******** Official name of the song is "How to Kill a Brand" By Doc Adams (more)

no crackdown last night.

Not being a fan of tim hardaway, I was still surprised at the frank way he expressed himself a few days ago. i guess he stirred up a hornet's nest by saying in a radio interview ' i hate gay people. i'm a homophobe, i just hate them.' George Takei, FTW!!!!

I'm maxed out in 2 attributes, Agility and Explosives. haven't slept very much, since i still have to work (stupid work). cleaned out Los Muertos, and i've started working on my driving skills and gun skills. need moar sleep.

I spent about 5 hours playing Crackdown this afternoon (stupid work) and had a fucking BLAST. from playing the demo, i knew the first thing on the agenda was maxing out my agility by finding all the agility orbs scattered around the game. Then i realised there were 500 of them. and the game is HUGE. I feel like a crackhead now, looking everywhere for the green orbs, and hearing the crystal hummmmm ......The leveling up is way slower than in the demo, but that's to be expected. what i didn't expect was the difference in architecture in the different sections of the city. Slums, gleaming spires in the sky, shipping docks, suburbs, yuppie urban starbucks zones, you name it, it's there. good shit. by the way, I'm not accepting any co-op game invites or intrusions, at least till i get maxed out in all the skillz . By the way, the four chaps you see above are the new skins released today for Crackdown. download them from the marketplace, they're free, you foo...

Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis When I was dead broke, man I couldn't picture this in honor of Biggie's song "juicy", SoulCommandoe's put out a Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis shirt. hawtness.

wiiminder.com is a site that optimizes the web for the Wii. Wiiminder allows users to create and manage bookmarks, select bookmarks to be opened in new tabs, listen to music while you surf, and much more. its' actually pretty cool, makes tabbed browsing alot easier. if you're into that sort of thing. wii web browsing, that is. *yawn*

Spent all day today at the Art Institute. I really went there in the hopes of finding something interesting i haven't seen before, but most of the stuff i saw was.....stale, i guess. My appreciation of art does not extend to stuff like this or this Both of these paintings were on exhibit there today, and call me crazy, but I'd like to see stuff hanging in a museum that I can't make. I'm not trying to be a meathead about it, but to paint a canvas 3 shades of black and call it art is bullshit. anyway, the impending release of Crackdown has got me buzzing with anticipation. In two days, we'll see just how much staying power it has. I just hope i don't get bored of it before the Halo 3 beta begins. If you ever wanted to create some Papercraft of Zelda characters, here's your chance to get some really detailed instructions, complete with PDF files to print out with the fold lines inc...

Bungie released a movie theater-style poster for halo 3 a few days ago, to much fanfare and aplomb. i guess they think all the Halo fanboys out there will post, repost, and spread the image across the internets, thereby doing the promotion job for them. What kind of gullible fool would fall for THAT???

I fucking LOVE this game.

It's been awhile, but the podcast is alive and kicking!! I get right into it with a review of Wii Play, some thoughts on the Crackdown demo, and various other things that catch my attention. Don't expect anything special, since it's been a long time since the last podcast, and i'm rusty as hell. Music this week is from Playhouses from Brooklyn's Tv on the Radio, off the new Return to Cookie Mountain album and Pink Steam from Sonic Youth, from the Rather Ripped album. Endangered Gamer #13 Mp3 Direct Download

I always smile when i see a well made linerider video, and this one takes the cake. i'm not sure if there were any mods involved, but frankly, i don't care because it's sooo good. when is that DS version coming out again????

Yesterday i finally got around to checking my mail, and guess what was there?? Nintendo sent me Wii Play, with the free controller package and everything!! Now, I've been waiting for this game since the Wii launched ( i've had a sneaky suspicion that some of the games in Wii Play SHOULD have been on Wii Sports). It's really an extension of Wii Sports, and a great way to justify the purchase of an extra Wii Remote. the games themselves are really simple, and only one uses the nunchuck (tanks). the reviews have painted this game as overly simple and shallow, but i like to think of getting Wii Play for free with the purchase of a Wii remote. the nine games included are Billards , Laser Hockey, Charge!!( ride a cow and knock over scarecrows), Tanks! (think atari 2600 combat, using the nunchuck to move and the wii remote to point and shoot), Fishing,Pose Mii ( a game were you rotate your mii with the wiimote and strike cheesy poses), shooting gallery ( a...

After getting some sleep, I'm back to posting with my normal irregularity. I was hung over all day yesterday, after returning from my trip to Austin, all i wanted to do was stick my head in a ice bucket and sleep. I went with my wife to celebrate my brother-in-law's leaving the Army and joining civilian life. after 2 tours of duty in Iraq, it's a well deserved celebration, and the party Saturday was awesome!! It had a Pajama theme, so all the guests were rocking their sleep duds and lounging around drinking wine and Shiner Bach. the reason I'm telling you all this, dear reader, is to justify the following image: This guy shows up to the party, and during the "best pajama Soul-Train" walk through , pulled his shirt up and almost caused everyone to spray beer everywhere. Apparently he's a Army Lieutenant and was my brother-in-law's good buddy.

bad puns aside, this guy really outdoes himself by running through Super Mario Bros using only his feet on a advantage controller. i don't know what posessed him to even try something like this, but here is the video.

somehow, i was given credit on Joystiq this morning of completing the Wii Sports Bowling power throw game with a perfect score of 890. On Friday i answered a post about this topic , and i guess whoever wrote the post mistook me for the person who actually accomplished the awesome deed. I already contacted Joystiq and informed them that i wasn't the person who did it, i only pointed them in the right direction. anyways, here's the video of the guy who did it.

I'm off to Austin, Tex to vist family and get drunky-drunk. i'll be back on sunday, so don't expect any posts. w00t!!!!!

Check this out. She takes a photo of the screen while they keep playing.

I spent some time with the Def Jam: Icon demo that was recently released on XBLM. my taste in hip hop is in the Digable Planets/DeLaSoul/DJ Spooky vein, so i'm not too familiar with the guys in the demo. I'm familiar enough with crappy fighting games, and in this regard, DJ:I hits the nail on the head. Sloppy, slow and broken are adjectives that come to mind when thinking of this game. The combat system is just broken, it's like they tried to take Fight Night Rd. 3's control scheme and somehow wrap it around this game. grapples are performed with the d-pad (WTF??), and the face buttons are used for high(x,y) and low (b,a) attacks. the right stick is used for stronger attacks, and the bumper buttons are used to delay the "beat", a key component of the gameplay. what's supposed to happen is that the game's hits and attacks are coordinated with the beats in the music, and the background pulses and throbs with beat. it sound WAY cooler than it looks. I...

Guitar Hero for the Wii? Maybe . Either way, they plan to have dozens of 'products' for Nintendo. Maybe some DS action too!

except the mohawk part

so just for shits and giggles i strolled over to my Libsyn stat page to see how many people have been downloading my non- existent podcast. yeah, the podcast that has not seen a new episode in almost 4 months, and one episode in the last six. endangered gamer, indeed. Imagine my surprise when i see this graphic.... apparently, there are still people listening and downloading the podcast files. well, i guess i should get around to recording another one.

fuck that, i'm preordering this game NOW!!!!!

I get my fair amount of spam, and since starting this blog, it's been slowly increasing. most of the time, Yahoo filters out the poo, but sometimes a stray stock tip or investment offer from Uganda makes it through. it's pretty easy to spot them, and they're always the same. except for this one. I know there are text generators that mask the true intentions of the sender, like a few lines of gobbledygook at the beginning and at the end mask the main body, but this email was ALL crazy-ass i-don't-know-what. what is so facinates me about this is how it makes me think I'M the one who's high as a kite, and the email is just a normal email. it's meaning is floating around somewhere, lost in the ether. I LOVE IT!!!!! Dakota Fanning Film Continues To Hit Headlines The Motion Picture Group Symbol: MPRG Price: $0.19 Target: $0.40 Dakota Fanning Film "Hound Dog", most popular at the Sundance Film Festival, is now featured at Santa Barbara International F...

Some games have boss battles that might give you a headache for a few minutes, till you either learn the pattern or figure out astrategy to victory. and some games just throw a throw the biggest boss at you and force you to weather a brutal storm of abuse till your eyes bleed. none of those games can compare tor Mushihimesama Futari's boss battle. even rainman-like reflexes will wilt in the face of this assault.

Kotaku and Destructoid both picked up on a promotion that Microsoft and Old Spice (yuck!!!!) are running rewarding you for padding your gamescore. here's the press release..... Since launching in November 2005, Achievements and gamerscore have taken the gaming world by surprise. The "Achievement Unlocked" alert makes not firing once in the first 60-seconds of "Geometry Wars Retro Evolved" appear perfectly normal. Looking for hours on end for the 50th survivor in "Dead Rising" - just another day's work. In fact, since the Xbox 360 launched, more than 200 Million Achievements have been unlocked. Achievements and gamerscore allow gamers to compare success, attempt unique in-game challenges and find value in playing games over and over. The reward for Achievements is an exciting and challenging way to play games, and only Xbox 360 offers it. Since Xbox 360 gamers love to be rewarded, we are happy to announce the Old Spice Experience Challenge. ...

I've been married now for about 5 months now, and the hammer I've been fearing hasn't fallen yet. I really thought my days of being a semi-hardcore gamer were going to end, but i underestimated the effect of being the Nintendo Wii ambassador has had on my wife. getting a Wii and a DS lite for free was a HUGE bonus, and not having to justify the purchase price has helped my wife embrace gaming. maybe embrace is too strong a word. tolerate is more like it. She's played her share of Wii Sports, but that's about it. more importantly, the delicate balance of gaming vs. life has been in place since we were married, with me getting about 8-10 hours a week of gaming time. some weeks it's less, and I'm sure that once the weather breaks I'll be getting less time because of something called "the outdoors". but since i was expecting NO gaming time before i was married, i appreciate her tolerance of my hobby. Destructoid had a great article yeste...

So my cousin from Texas has been bugging me about checking out my blog. he's been told plenty of times what the URL is, but he keeps forgetting. hopefully he don't forget and checks it out in school today. para chuy, aqui esta mi hermano Cesar el chapulin!!! here's my myspace page here's my youtube page here's my flickr page

It came and went without much fanfare, but my blog is over a year old. it's so weird, it seems like i've been doing this forever. if anyone is interested, here's my very first post.

someone has done what i've been wanting to do for a while. they've ripped all the Wii menu music and converted them to mp3's , for your listening pleasure. get them now, before the site gets on digg and goes down.

some joker in japan turned his Wii remote into a lightgun, literally!!!!

So the Bears not only lost, but lost UGLY. After the first few minutes of the game, I really thought they had a good chance of doing something special. Unfortunately , we have Rex Grossman as our QB. i feel like crap, but I'm sure the team feels worse. *sigh* we still have the White Sox , and 2005.

Go Bears!!!!

for the most part, i agree with all the CHOICES, but the order is all fucked up.

Sony's ailing PSP had finally gotten a much-needed powerup today. Konami held it's Gamer's Day envent today, and announced that they will be releasing one of the best Castlevania games EVAR, Dracula X: Rondo of Blood. Formally a Japan PC Engine game that was never released in the U.S., Rondo of Blood was the game that laid the foundation for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Branching paths, multiple characters, and a badass story make it the bestest Castlevania game to never be released here. And as a SUPER DOOPER bonus, Konami is doing it's hardcore fans a service and adding a port of the PSone Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to the package!! This is the best news i've heard for PSP owners in a loooooong time, and if it wasn't for the fact that SotN is coming to XBLA, i might have considered buying a PSP. MIGHT.... Here are some vids of the original game.

So earlier this week, police and bomb squads were called out in Boston to gather up some so called "bombs" which turned out to be Light- brite promotions for a Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. This in itself is pretty funny, but what really caught my attention was the reaction from the media and the politicians in Boston. They acted like there was a legit threat from these kid toys, never questioned what they were, just pushed the panic button and spazzed out in front of the whole world. It's one thing to be cautious and vigilant, but to react the way they did without making sure it was a real threat was just stupid. Read more here .....

here's a video showing some of crackdown's achievements. I love the fact that the developers show some creativity with the distribution of the points, stuff like keeping a car in the air for at least 7 seconds or throwing a body more than 200 feet. I might spend a few sleepless nights when this game comes out to get ALL those wacky achievements. Video: Crackdown Achievements