I picked up a copy of NCAA Football 2008 for the Xbox 360 on my lunch break. I’ve added my Xbox 360 Gamercard to the sidebar so you can see when I’m online, and shake your head at my lack of achievements. If you have an Xbox 360 and NCAA 2008, look me up. I’m not very good compared to some other people who play on there, so it will probably be a free win for you.
First, college football fans shouldn’t miss Georgia Tech coach Chan Gailey’s interview with James Lipton, Inside the Actors Studio fame. A snippet:
JL: We will now move to our quick questions as given by the students. What is your favorite play?
CCG: Run up the middle and then throw the ball out of bounds on two consecutive plays.
Second, here’s a video parody of the Apple ads for those of you keeping up with the progress of the next generation video games systems from Nintendo and Sony:
The siren’s song of NCAA 2007 for the Xbox 360, which won’t even be released until July, proved to be too tempting for me to resist. When Best Buy sent me an e-mail offering 10 percent off anything ordered online, that was the final straw that bent my will toward the monopolists EA and Microsoft. My Xbox 360 should arrive late this week or early next week. I am weak. I am not sticking to principle here. But, c’mon, this is the first screen grab I saw:
Project Gotham will have to tide me over until I get my NCAA Football fix.
Related, does anyone want to buy a Gamecube with two controllers, two memory cards, and +/- 10 games? I’ll update this post with a full list when I get home tonight, but these are the games I remember off the top of my head:
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Madden 06
Metroid Prime I and II
NCAA Football 2004
Resident Evil Zero (I’m pretty sure it’s Zero, but need to double check)
Starfox Adventures
Also, I lent Mario Sunshine to my brother. Hopefully he hasn’t sold it. And there’s a third-person shooter I can’t remember the name of. Maybe one or two more.
UPDATE: The action game is Dead to Rights. There’s only one memory card, but there’s also a rare promotional copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which was ported from the Nintendo 64 and given free to people who pre-ordered The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker.
Also, my Gamecube is one of the older ones with the hi-def component output that they quit making at some point, and I have the cable for it, which is also hard to find (I had to order mine from Korea). Here’s a photo of all the schwag:
I understand that hate is a strong word that should be reserved for Karl Rove and Barbara Boxer, but my hatred has finally gone beyond the realms of this world, and have now journeyed into the digital universe.
I am a sports video game geek. I can admit this thanks to many 12 step programs, and a few interventions by my wife, the lovely and gracious Phyllis. I owned the very first John Madden Football game that had only a picture of his fat head and upper torso against a red background. Since then I have spent more time playing Madden than I have in thinking about sex. Sadly, I have missed out on the opportunity to sire more children than the one I have already, but two years ago I did rank in the top 100 online players ( Not a resume worthy achievement I know, but this is probably 12 minutes of my 15 minutes of fame).
I bought Madden ‘06 the day it came out, and I was so excited that I opened as soon as I got home six weeks later (I had to finish Tiger Woods Golf 2005, stuffing my fat face, and a trip to New Orleans to see race relations at its finest). I started playing with the new “NFL Superstar” mode where you begin by choosing your parents so that the genetic bouillabaisse can create your player. This, first, is very realistic. I am sure my son looked down from the bucket of heavenly souls and chose an overweight, dickhead father in the mountains of North Carolina and said, “That is my IDEAL choice.” Yet I digress, once the player has been created then you go through an interview with an IQ test (I am not making this shit up) and selecting your Agent. Now your NFL draft position can be determined. Once drafted you have the ability to practice, and play in preseason games all while getting emails and voice mails from various people (Terrell Davis, your NFL mentor and Rich Eisen Mr. NFL Network) before going to the regualr season. Eventually, from what I understand, you have the ability to get “things” for your apartment.
The “things” are what I have a problem with. The only possessions that should matter in football are the ones that determine who has the ball. This is what is causing all of the problems in our society. Football is a controlled ballet of violence and barbaric behaviors set against a coliseum of blood-thirsty tailgaters that have the stench of beer and chili dogs (aka My People). Football is NOT about flat panel televisions (unless you are watching the game on one), looting is. Football is NOT about websites that keep track of how wonderful you are, that is what football cards are for. The fact that we have to have all these “things” is what is wrong with everything.
These “things” show the whore-like nature of my existence since I gladly fork over $49.99 annually for the right to support the EA Games machine, and that walking stroke patient, John Madden. Since I understand that it isn’t cool to talk about a problem without offering a solution so I will try to give my thoughts on how we can eliminate this problem:
Assassinate EA terrer wrists ( Bush pronouncation) then setup a temporary company leadership so we can monitor the corporate structure to make sure there are no more video game evil-doers.
Stay the course (seemed like the right bull shit line after the last item).
Give John Madden 13 four foot long AIDS-ridden tapeworms so we can watch him slowly die and wither away, but as he loses the weight we can donate the extra skin to the shriners so that we can help all of those burn victim children.
That is all for now. I will play this game on regular mode rather than the “Lets see how much shit I can acquire that I will never see in real life,” and enjoy the nonsensical ramblings of the man most in need of multiple angioplasties since President Taft.
From the EA Sports website: I see the exclusive NCAA license, but I don’t see a Gamecube version
In an April post, I wrote about how Electronic Arts secured exclusive licenses to use NFL teams and rosters and NCAA teams, giving them a monopoly on the league-licensed football game market. It appears one of their first acts as a monopolist has been to scrap the Gamecube version of NCAA Football 2006, depriving players who own that console the opportunity to play any NCAA-licensed football game. There was no explanation in the NCAA 2006 press release, and EA’s publicist refused to email me back. You’ll notice the game isn’t on EA’s release schedule. I’ll stress again why this means something to you, the non-gamer, by quoting from my last post on the subject.
The video game industry is a bigger business than movies now, doing $9.9 billion in 2004. Microsoft sold $125 million in Halo 2 copies the first day it was out. Spiderman 2 — which, to date, had the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time — only did $114 million its first weekend.
So, it matters to you because it’s not going to be long before powerhouse publishers like Electronic Arts dip their hands into other forms of entertainment, and push smaller publishers out with their massive bankroll, which will be drastically fattened by what will become their near-monopoly on the football video game market.
EA has demonstrated itself, in a matter of only a few months, to be a poor steward of the NCAA license. More importantly, the company has shown it is willing to abuse its monopolistic position in the marketplace. And that could one day have far-reaching implications on media you view and listen to. Already, EA’s decision will push sports gamers further from the Gamecube platform, and Nintendo is powerless to call upon any company (including itself) to fill the void because of EA’s sole ownership of the license. That’s not right.
this is a great computer game - i think the latest version out is IV, but its great - its like dugeons and dragons except on a computer. its also very similar this other computer game called civilization.
anyway, its great for role-playing and the castles have different themes like hell, druids, wizards, ghosts, et al.
also, i don’t have sims 2 yet, but its supposedly amazing
Editor’s note: This post was part of Blorgy ‘05, where eight of us switched blogs for a week. Mae from Politics 101 was writing here, while I was writing Being Amber Rhea.
Here’s another article that gives me the willies. Electronic Arts had (unbeknownst to me) already acquired exclusive rights from the NFL and Arena football leagues to produce games using league team names and player likenesses for video game consoles and computers. Now, they’ve also gained the same rights from the NCAA for football games — for six years. So, when you buy that shiny new XBox 2 or Playstation 3 or Nintendo whatever-they’re-going-to-call-it, if you want any kind of football game with real teams and players (which I suspect outsell titles with names like Nintendo Playaction Football, considering those games have been produced infrequently in recent years), EA will be the only game in town. No more ESPN NFL 2K5. No more NFL Blitz. No more NFL Gameday. No more NFL Quarterback Club. There will only be John Madden football.
“But I don’t play video games. Why does this matter to me?” you ask…
So, it matters to you because it’s not going to be long before powerhouse publishers like Electronic Arts dip their hands into other forms of entertainment, and push smaller publishers out with their massive bankroll, which will be drastically fattened by what will become their near-monopoly on the football video game market.
You’ve already seen it happen with Sony, who is ahead of the curve in the (hold your noses) synergy game. They produce the films. They publish the films in theaters and on DVDs. They sell the DVD players you watch the films on. They publish the video games based on the films.
If you pay attention to the video game and movie industries, you can see the paradigm of compartmentalized media is dying rapidly. Even though initial efforts to combine the different areas have been clunky (Interactive TV, Microsoft Media PCs, Nokia NGage, and a bevy of others), companies will eventually figure out how to seamlessly merge interactive content with films, photos, movies and other existing mediums. Think CGI characters in films. Once that happens with more consistency, many of the existing players will start to drop like flies, whether by acquisition or by sheer inability to compete with rolling snowballs like Sony.
This model of consolidation also applies to the news media. Daily newspaper circulation has been steadily declining for years now, and no reason exists to think that will change. Even the newspapers that are still treading water are generally under the thumb of mega companies like Knight Ridder and Cox. When the electronics and media companies successfully merge the different forms of media, whatever remains of independent radio and television will be swallowed up by whatever emerges from the rubble.
As this cycle progresses, fewer and fewer companies will own access to greater and greater-sized markets. Diversity of opinion will die, along with the ideas of individual freedom and democracy. So, thank you EA Sports for taking us one step closer to the end of civilization.
I really didn’t mean to write two posts related to video games today, but you have got to check this thing out. Definitely a “why didn’t I think of that?” moment.
It’s a pad where you can arrange the keys any way you like on the board, and it supposedly works really well. Read about it at Tom’s Hardware.
When did the AJC start this section (login)? I’ve read occasional mention of video games under the all-encompassing guise of “technology,” but this [game on] section (my God! lowercase letters! how scandalous, edgy and hip!) appears to be a section dedicated to the narrow purpose of video game news and reviews. Do they appear in the print edition? What content will the paper publish to distinguish its content from the heavily-saturated video game magazine market? The writer of the review I’ve linked to has an ajc.com email address, so I would be led to assume this was a local editorial decision and not something handed down from the behemoth Cox, though that’s only speculation. Do they plan to build a pseudo-wire service within Cox for game reviews? Inquiring minds would like to know the reasoning behind this strategy.
"I dust a bit.... In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."
- Ignatius P. Reilly