I asked my folks for a Wii for Christmas.

Weeeee.

No one cares what the maker of some mildly popular student cartoons thinks, but the internet was built so that anyone could show off their inflamtory opinions to the world. I also need to write in my blog more to justify even having one.

When I was a little kid, my dream was to work at Electronics Boutique. It was heaven. I could be around video games all day long and play whatever I wanted. Games were also really expensive, so the salesmen had to be very wealthy. When I was about 21, that dream came true.

Working at a game store sucks. First of all, every loser who hangs out at the mall wants to work in the game store. Thanks to this endless supply of idiots, the pay is pretty low. We aren’t talking Hot Topic low; they have an even bigger supply of dorks because girls want to work there, too. The food court people took home a few more dollars an hour than me. The only reason I didn’t make minimum wage was because they needed to at least try to hang on to the few employees who didn’t rob the store blind. I never once stole from the store, but luckily my assistant manager stole all sorts of stuff an implicated me, ruining any chance I had at getting a raise or a key to the store when I became the head sales associate. My store discontinued the head sales associate when it was my turn.

I wrote first of all like I had a huge list. There is one, but I’m drifting way off topic…

Working in a game store opened my eyes to a couple of things about gaming. For example: Madden is retarded. For the last several years, the game has been nothing but a graphical upgrade and a roster update. For the diehard fan, I suppose that is reason enough to get a new game. Frankly, I don’t believe it’s worth the full price of a new game, but that’s just me. What killed me is that people would hound the store for days before the game came out, and waited in lines on launch day. Some people attempted to camp out, but the mall was having none of that. All this for some slightly better graphics, a roster update, and stadium mode where can sell hot dogs and beer and change the color of the seats or something. On top of that, a popular game rarely ever sells out for more than a day or two at a time. Some niche market RPG about gender questionable child with white spikey hair who can summon earth guardians by singing into a microphone add-on may sell-out for a week or so, but the next Grand Theft Auto will always be available somewhere. My point is that Madden is always going to be available for purchase after launch, and I don’t get the rush to buy it in the first place.

Now game systems hurt my brain, too. If you live in this country right now, take a little trip down to the toys’r'us, wal-mart, target, or bestbuy. Chances are there is a group of well fed (euphamism!) people camping out infront of the store. I’m assuming you know the PS3 and the Wii come out this weekend… actually I think the PS3 launched last night? Well chances are the Wii lines will be forming now.

Anyway, where was I… oh, yes. These people are idiots… and I used to be one. I spent the night at a Toys’r'us in Baltimore for the Nintendo Gamecube and the Sega Dreamcast. I sure know how to pick a winner.

There is little point to getting a console on launch day. Launch systems have a higher rate of failure than the systems produced in later batches. That Dreamcast I waited up all night for only lasted about 8 months before the drive died on me. There were stories all the time about 360s and their dreaded red lights. Working at a game store, we got a criminal amount of PS2s and Xboxes back after they launched.

Nintendo usually puts out a solid product. This is anecdotal, but my launch Gamecube still works fine. They have another problem: games. The Wii may turn this around, but the gamecube had no games of interest for months after it was released. Sony has a worse problem in that they only have one game of interest for launch, and it’s out-classed by 360’s new Gears of War.

No one asked for my opinion, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway. If you really want a new game system, you’re probably best off getting the Xbox 360 right now. The Nintendo Wii is cheap enough where it is awful tempting, but I’m curious what the attitude about the system will be once the initial hype machine dies down. If it keeps up, I’m getting it sooner, rather than later. The PS3 is a tough sell right now. If you do not own a 360, I would wait and get the PS3 in 6 months to a year. There will be games then, and the probable bugs will have been worked out of the hardware.

There’s also the whole blu-ray vs HD-DVD thing. Frankly, I cannot afford a HDTV and couldn’t give a shit.

My rant sort of tuckered itself out… I was just killing 30 minutes waiting for my laundry anyway.

In closing, get a DS. This thing kicks ass.

I have a Nintendo DS. A lite, but not the pink one. I should have waited a few weeks. This may not come as a surprise, but I enjoy owning the “sort of gay” version of anything I purchase.

This will hopefully be the first in a series of reviews on the games I’ve played for the DS. First up…

Rocket Slime

Rocket slime is an adorable top down adventure game in the Zelda formula with a twist. The twist is that every so often you’ll hop in a giant, adorable tank and rain hell and destruction on some other adorable tank in an attempt to kill their adorable crew of bunnies and cats first.

The plot of the game is troubling to me. You are a slime in the Dragon Warrior RPG world. I’ve never really played a Dragon Warrior game, but I know enough to tell you that slimes are a common low level enemy you grind into oblivion in an effort to level up high enough to stand a chance against the first major boss or two. I think the blue ones are weak against fire and the red ones against water. That could be final fantasy. Whatever, the point is slimes are like the more adorable goombas of Dragon Warrior. They are cannon fodder.

In a period of peace between the RPG Dragon Warrior games and the slime genocide each installment brings, the slimes have settled in a town dubbed Slimia. Within an hour of playing the game, you should come to some pretty chilling conclusions about the sociopolitical structure of Slimia and the economy of this town. First, it appears that a full third of the 101 slimes living within the town are royalty. That’s right. A full third of the population are living off the labor of the other 2/3. Sort of.

There’s also a large religious sect in town. At least half-a-dozen slimes make up the church power structure, with just as many hardcore faithful who remain in the temple praying night and day. After the town’s destruction at the hand’s of outside forces, priority number one is the reestablishment of the church. The church is where you “save” your game. So the church saves? Interesting.

We clearly have a corrupt theocratic puppet government, but are they oppressing their own people? It doesn’t appear so, despite a massive housing shortage. Like I said, there are 101 people living in town. Even with the church folk and royalty accounted for, that leaves at least 15 to 20 families of slimes who need homes. There are only about 5 or 6 houses in Slimia. Many slimes just wander the street day and night, and very few have any kind of job to speak of. Still, they all smile. They all seem healthy. The state seems to be providing at least food and health care to the people. Where is the money coming from?

In your adventures throughout the land you will encounter a number of trains and barges that you can leave items and slimes on to be transported home. You uncover the economic mystery the first time you throw an enemy onto the train and return home. Back in Slimia, your once hated foe is friendly as can be. On top of that, there’s only one of any given type. Throw cat monsters onto trains all day, but there will only be one uncharacteristically friendly cat back at home. Clearly the monsters are being brainwashed and sold into slavery. Those that aren’t can be forced into the dangerous job as a crewman on your tank. The life expectancy as a crewman is short, but this is mostly due to the fact that I will often throw crewmen into the guns as ammunition because it is funny.

The peace of your corrupt theocratic slave state is interrupted one day by an invasion of mildly retarded platypus things. The slimes put up a mild resistance, but are quickly put down by a bombardment by a giant adorable platypus tank. Every last slime in town is taken prisoner except you. You, having eaten a flute, are confused as a baseball bat and thrown in the river. Knowing this game is Japanese in origin, you were probably originally confused with an adult novelty item in the original Japanese translation. In the original Japanese version the Platypus things were dressed as Nazis and the enemy tanks all looked like school girls and you defeat them by firing penises at them followed by some sort of rape mini-game using the DS stylus. Rated E for everyone!

The rest of the game is all about you freeing the 100 captive slimes. There’s no slime POW camp to speak of, though. The slimes all seem to have been thrown in treasure chests and left randomly throughout the land. Why? I could see how a few could be misplaced here and there through bureaucratic mix ups but all of them? Perhaps the platypus things are squeamish about genocide? They aim to starve the entire nation of slimes to death, but don’t want any mass graves left as evidence. If years later someone were to encounter a series of corpses in treasure chests, perhaps they’d think it was all the work of a deranged serial killer? I don’t know. I haven’t actually gotten to the part of the game where they explain the motivation of my enemy. I’m really not sure that part is ever coming.

One more thing of note I didn’t know where to place: there’s a rival. In a Japanese RPG, there is almost always a rival. This is the guy who wants to fight you all the time for no real reason. Right before the boss of the game he will either be brutally murdered by you or give his life saving you from the boss. There isn’t much rhyme or reason to it, but he usually has better hair than you and gross animu girls always write the grossest fan fiction about these characters. The rival in this game is a slime with a tank who attempts to beat the crap out of you once per level. The game dubs him “The anti-hero of Slimia”. My understanding of an anti-hero is that he is a scum bag that fights for good. Both Wolverine and The Punisher are anti-heroes. The Punisher is a mass murderer who only kills criminals and the occasional homeless derelict, and Wolverine is a mass murder and blatant pedophile (see: Jubilee and Kitty Pryde). This slime guy is working directly with your enemies in an attempt to destroy you and Slimia. This means either he is attempting to destroy this evil slave state and anyone who would support it (me without much choice if I want to progress in the game) while working for a genocidal regime, or the makers of the game have no clue what an “anti-hero” is.

In closing, Rocket Slime is an adorable multilayered game where there are no heroes and everyone loses.