Accidental Childhood Tangent

I must have been 14 or 15 years old when I rented a copy of Wing Commander III: The Heart of the Tiger for the Playstation. I know that's not very "hardcore PC gamer" of me, but at the time, outside of downloading the occasional rom, piracy was something way over my head. (Also, please remember that this was a time when CD burners were 800 bucks, not something I could afford after having spent 1200 bucks on the compaq (yeah, I paid for it) computer sitting in my room.

I actually rented the game because nothing else in the "Playstation" section caught my eye, and this being the year after we received the Psx for Christmas, the bombardment of the "URNote" campaign drove us in to a fervor, as the appeal of the games we were given during Christmas "Battle Arena Toshinden" and "Warhawk" had slowly wore away after completing them more than our share of times (I still have both, in case you were wondering).

We used to make the short walk down to the SuperAmerica (where one could rent games and movies) because it was only about a block away from where we lived. Interestingly enough, it's about two blocks away now. The prices were right (free) and the walk wasn't punishing like the one to the Blockbuster, which wasn't so bad, as long as you were willing to almost get run over in the predeveloped Apple Valley south.

A note about the prices being free: My dad was working for SuperAmerica at the time (not in that store), and we were in good with the manager of that store. The terminals had a cute flaw that allowed you to back out of the fee processing for the title when you scanned it in, leaving it in the checkout list, but removing the price from the transaction. SuperAmerica later put a stop to this, but I was invited by Rich to spend a few minutes looking for another flaw (during my already budding career as a computer whiz). I did in fact find another flaw that if you scanned the one you want to rent as a check in and pull up the account, scanning other titles would add them to the account. All this fun free renting ended when Heath (a friend of my half-brothers when he worked at that store) helped his friend out with free rentals in front of a district manager.

When I was about twelve, I lost 40 some hours of my life to Final Fantasy III (or 6 if you're going to be anal about it, but we're not in Japan, jerk), and lifetime, more than a hundred hours. From then on, I was careful not to rent any RPGs, as they were detrimental to my social life (or what there was of one) and caused largish late fees. This, and a lack of interest in sports titles (with racing as an exception) forced me to look at a game whose cover design was just slightly far enough on the cheese-o-meter that I would have skipped it without a second thought on any other day.

The second appeal was Mark Hamill. Mark God Damned Hamill. You know him as Luke Skywalker. I know him from the endless amount of B-movie tripe that the Sci-Fi channel used to buy up and throw out on Sundays for godless people like me who had no ambitions for an organized religion to fit in with. And I know him as Luke Skywalker. And was that the guy from A Clockwork Orange? And the fat guy from Indian Jones? I would have jumped at it if it weren't from the damned lion on the front cover. See what I mean:


When I got it home and popped the disc in sometime after dinner. My excitement was waning as the introductory movie cropped up. One of the things I appreciate today is that they made no attempt to tell you what the hell was going on. You just had to figure it out for yourself, or the play the old games. Or in some cases both (there were gaps between games, that could be explained by expansion packs and semi sequels that didn't see large releases). The movie they play you before you even hit the goddamned start button is something like 12 minutes long. Oh, and there were real people in it (a hallmark of the generation).

Here it is for your enjoyment:


Wasn't the soundtrack fantastic? All in all, the midi soundtrack does nothing to impress, but the fact is that if they had spent 100 thousand dollars in getting a real orchestra to play this music for them, it would have been quite incredible. But you take what you can get.

The acting... seems off doesn't it?

That's because the entire game was shot with a green screen background. It wasn't the first "interactive movie" game, but Wing Commander III has the pleasure of being one of the few successful interactive movie games.

The actual space combat gameplay was relatively tame. You "fly" from waypoint to waypoint and shoot bad guys. An interesting thing about this game: the controls were heavy. Usually, if you port a title like this, you cut some of the controls out, or automate some of the features to reduce the amount of complex button commands. They didn't do anything of the sort here. If you wanted to play this game, you'd better damned well learn how to use the controller.

Tell me if they make sense to you (from wcnews.com)
Wing Commander 3 Playstation

Thanks to Kristofer Bengtsson for supplying these controls.

Action Button combination
Afterburner L2 + R2
Fire guns Circle
Fire missile Square
Accelerate Triangle
Decelerate X
Full stop X + L1 + L2
Cycle weapons L1 + Square
Cycle guns L1 + Circle
Cycle targets L1 + X
Lock targets L1 + Triangle
Autopilot L1 + L2 + R1 + R2
Comms select Select + Left/Right
Nav Map Select + L2
Eject L1 + L2 + R1 + R2 + Select + Start
Cloak L1 + R2

What? You mean you have to press all 4 top buttons to get autopilot? What if I just fly my ship directly to the way point that's something like 200,000 kilometers away? Well, at the maximum non-afterburner speed of the fastest ship of 520 kps. Due to the fact that the distances were to scale, this would take you approximately 6.5 minutes to complete. Really? Fly 9 and a half minutes? The slowest ship without afterburner traveled at a sluggish 320 kps and Guess what... I did it the first time. And you know what happens when you get to the way point? You can fly right by it. Nothing happens until you hit autopilot. And thank god, because if I hadn't known that, I would have stopped playing if each mission took more that 45 minutes to fly.

Combat itself was a hodgepodge of interesting and uninteresting ideas. Like most space simulators, distance really has no meaning except your relation to the target and the dogfighting itself is more like you turning the whole of the universe around your ship while trying to align your targeting reticle with the enemy ship. The morale of your wingmen and of your enemies had an effect on their ability to combat each other, and the weapons had a nice strategic finesse to their usage. This is not the reason to play the game.

No, the most interesting thing is the acting, and the story. And the characters... including Tom Wilson (you know him as Biff from Back to the Future).

Here he is in an annoying interview about Wing Commander 4.



I couldn't remove myself from my seat, it was nonstop excitement. I wanted to know what happened to the characters. To the Confederation. The cast had some superb actors, and some sometimes superb acting.

This spawned an unhealthy obsession with the books and the other games, including Wing Commander IV and Prophecy (the final official retail game of the series).

The sequel to III ended up with a budget of 8 million dollars (unheard of in 1996), over runs pushed the budgets to 10 million, making it the most expensive computer game of all time until 1999's Shenmue crushed the costs with a 20 million dollar budget.

Today, I look back at the games with a light hearted disposition. I know that if I ever play them again, I will have to play the whole series, but I remember it all fondly, so I can choose not to.

I think, however, that everyone who has ever finished Wing Commander 3 has been mentally conditioned to like the Wing Commander movie, no matter how atrocious you acknowledge it to be. I'll tell you more about it...

When my head stops throbbing.

Fucking Classic

"Things Just Ain't the Same"

Since meeting Gina, anyone you'd talk to would say I was a different person. Don't get me wrong, I'm still an asshole. But habits changed. I did my own laundry, I cooked, I cleaned. I didn't go drinking as much. It wasn't reallly her influence, it was just like something snapped in my head and these things became things that I did.

Since we got married, one thing I've tried to hold on to has steadily declined. I simply don't play games as much as I used to. Before we met, I'd play games online, on the PC a total of 40 hours a week. Like a full time job. After we met, I was stoic in my addiction, carrying on playing games on my laptop, or the PSP (which I eventually traded in for my 360). Before we married, I was still doing 30 hours a week, most of which happened in the days we didn't spend together, and the late night/early morning hours. I would sleep less than 5 hours a night. I didn't need more than that.

I have plenty of opportunity to play. I also now have a huge TV. Gina encourages me to play, especially if she's busy with something (probably to keep me out of the way). But I simply don't play more than 5 hours a week anymore. There are exceptions to that rule. Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 managed to make release last week and has scoured about 10 hours of my time this week. When Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out, I may not see the light of day until I finish the game, some 12 to 20 hours later. But otherwise my interest simply isn't there.

The thing is, I like playing games, but I don't know if that change is related to the fact that I'm married and something is different now, or if that change is related to the fact the games industry hasn't really done much to keep my attention.

Or maybe she's using some osmosis therapy to slowly stop me...

Shhh... here she comes. Act natural.

Operating system of choice

In my life, I use OS X and Windows Vista as my primary operating systems. Not so much Vista by choice, but because that's what I have to use at work. It does alright, except that I have to restart the damned thing 4-5 times a day when ever I leave photoshop or dreamweaver open for too long. And forget about memory usage, IE7 is a hog, but that's OS independent.

Just the same, every time we're coaxed in to switching operating systems, it's an unfriendly experience. I even remember the stability issues that I was having with Windows XP back in the day. Service pack 1 was the end all be all of fixes to save that OS, and I think Microsoft is hoping to regain cred with this new Service pack.

What it comes down to for you? Who cares? The point is as long as PC hardware comes so cheap, and mac hardware doesn't come in a budget market, you're stuck with the Windows Defacto Standard of "we do whatever the hell we want and you pay for it."

Oh no, I've just become that guy...

On an unrelated note, if my high school keyboarding teacher knew I could type this fast without the method God handed down to her on Mount Sinai, she'd be turning in her grave (I do believe she's shed the mortal coil).


65 words

Speed test

Fitness Update

My 1 mile time has come down to 8:30 and I powered thru a mile and a half in 12 and change. It's much better than I thought I'd be, though there isn't much of a visible difference in my body. Oh well. Better than nothing.

In Effect, A Diorama

I have a problem. An addiction, really. I came here to warn you about it.

To protect you. So you won't be like me. Addicted.

To CSI Miami. I started watching this show... almost on accident. Thanks to this youtube video (my personal favorite part is the peter pan moment at 6:00).

The acting is bad, the writing is bad and the science... is flaky. But there is something about the show that I just can't let go of for some reason. Every episode is compelling. Every soap opera-inspired plot twist is a joy.

I started watching this show about a month ago and I'm firmly entrenched in season 4. The good news is that I'm married, and she forces me to bed long before I'm ready to stop watching. The bad news is that if I weren't married, I'd be long done with all 5 and a half seasons of this show.

Sadly, I found out last night that my copy of season 4 is all out of order... I guess I'll have to start the season over.

A little bit of Fire

I own the LG Rumor.  By most accounts, it's very rare to find due to lack of stock at Sprint stores.  I bought it outright, and I didn't have to track it down.

I regret finding it, though.

It's a clever phone, and unlike most Sprint offerings, wasn't on the ass end of expensive.  The keyboard is intuitive, and while the starch nature of the buttons leads to a lot of "misfires", and it's something I'm not to disappointed with.  The menus are slow.  Mostly because the processor appears to be clocked down far enough to compete with a Mac LC.  Again, I can live with it because of the advantage.  The battery life is fantastic.  Ever hear those claims of 7 days on standby from phone stores?  I get 7 days easy.  That's with usage.

This is where the fun stops.  And, as you may expect, my complaining begins.

This phone really has no customization options.  You can't change what menu appears when you slide it open, and that slide open automatically unlocks the keyguard, allowing you make the pocket phone calls you thought the keyguard was protecting you from.

Sprint's Vision network is nasty slow on this phone, and while most of the other phones allow for the newer faster network access crap, this phone is slower than hell.  My previous two phones both worked on that power vision service, but this phone barely gets you online.  It's infuriating just to check the weather.

Bluetooth is another one of those afterthoughts to this phone.  I purchased one of the previous LG releases based completely on their bluetooth support (it was the first sprint phone to offer it).  By this time, you'd think they'd have it down to a science.   Here's a hint, they don't.  Range isn't more than 15 feet without some static, and completely useless at 30.  Also, no matter what distance, there is a slight echo, even on $150 headsets.

One thing I forgot to mention.  The microphone at the bottom is asinine.  It's at the bottom of the phone!  It picks you up just fine (but you sound weird on this thing), but it also picks up everything else.  I mean everything.  Someone next to you just let out a fart?  They'll hear it... and let me tell you, that's the last time I call my mom sitting next to Jeremy.

That's all and good, the same complaints you may hear about all the time.  This phone has one killer quirk: it restarts randomly.  Anytime during the day.  Not even because you were pushing on the battery.  I placed in it on the counter to make lunch, and while I was coating my chicken in flour (and not in a nasty Afterglide innuendo way), the phone restarted.  Silently.  It doesn't give you any indication that this is doing it, unless you catch it in the act.  Though you may catch it when you're in a fuckin' phone call.

Of course, restarting is inaccurate.  It implies that it turns back on.  Sometimes I've found the phone simply off in my pocket.

The Sprint store won't help me, they say they're not responsible for the phone's warranty and can find nothing repairable wrong with it.

Sprint says they can't help me because I didn't buy the protection service at a ridiculous $84/year and won't sell that protection to me now that they know there is something wrong with the phone.

And LG says that it's not reproducible, so they can't service it, but I could send it in for a month for them to look at.  Yeah right.

So here I am with this broke ass phone waiting for my contract to expire, or a better deal to come up.

Maybe I should just get an iPhone.