To all employees of EB Games and GameSpot,

Dear pimply purveyors of electronic joy,

If you see this person anywhere on the premises of your stores, you are allowed to shoot him on sight. Or, if you don’t happen to have a firearm handy, just don’t fucking sell him any more games. I was made aware that someone at one of your fine establishments recently sold him two additional games: Mario Kart: Double Dash and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. While these are marvelous games, do you realize that he still has a copy of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door in its original wrapping, which he received as a gift for Christmas 2004? The same can be said for his copy of Advance Wars 2, and countless others hidden in the dark recesses of his game drawer. If you don’t stop him, then I’m not sure who will. Soon, there will be no more games for the kids to play at all, as those games sit instead in his apartment collecting dust. And it’s not like he owns bad games; many have been voted worldwide by pundits and gamers alike as “Game of the Year”, yet they remain unplayed. Countless others remain unbeaten: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, another progeny of the game-filled Christmas 2004, has over 60 hours logged into it, yet there is no victory in Ivalice. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes has been started twice, with no resulting destruction of the big boss Metroid or next incarnation of Mother Brain. The list goes on and on, yet this serial gamer is still allowed to purchase games. Anything could be next: Viewtiful Joe, any of the Fire Emblem games? Please, don’t let any more jewels of design and gameplay be purchased and forgotten. Give this young man the time (it could be years) to complete what he has now. With some luck he’ll be a student soon, so will have a little more free time to play, but you must be patient. In the meantime, refuse his credit card, and certainly don’t take his wads and wads of cash. Think of the games. Think of the title characters: little Link, he needs to finish his boating adventure in Windwaker. With your help he will.

Begging for help,
Friends of the Lost Games

A call for friends

And not just any friends. I’ve decided that I need more gaming friends. Though you may consider it childish, I want to have more (I have none know, so I guess even one would be nice) hardcore gaming friends. As it stands now, I have gaming relationships with two people: my wife and my brother. However, my brother is horribly unreliable (he likes to pretend to be a busy premed student at BU, when in fact he’s just a dick who ignores me) and my wife will only play one game, Super Smash Bros. Melee, which is fucking awesome but can get a little dull, especially since I’m so much better than her at it.

I am getting more and more into gaming, and need some more friends who feel the same. I know I’d have a much more impressive gaming resume if I had some friends to play with, specifically ones with other systems. My wife won’t let me blow all my money on games, which is why I only have my computer, my Gamecube (Bill), and a DS for systems. I need a PS2 and an Xbox friend. And they must not mind dropping whatever they’re doing when I show up to game.

Some of you might say that I should just make gaming friends online, as most games are online now and it is there where I will find the largest repository of potential gaming friends. In response, I say that I am more than a little wary of online friends of any sort, even if video games is the only interaction we have. I’m savvy enough to not be taken advantage of online (I’m not going to give all my money to a Nigerian prince, for example; fool me once shame on you…), but that doesn’t mean that I’ll meet up with people of a similar mind to me on something like Xbox Live. What I mean is, while I can be an intense, competitive gamer, I’m not a fucking moron, which I hypothesize is the case with most online gamers. What evidence do I have to support this outrageous claim? Nothing but my gut instinct and my knowledge that most online gamers are 15 years old. I was an ignorant dick at 15, and I can’t believe that the next generation is any less dicky. If I knew someone beforehand, had personal face-to-face experience with them, and then played online with them, I’d be okay. I mean, I’m even cautious on Clan Lord, which is full of the nicest people ever (I mention this in an earlier glog post).

Furthermore, I enjoy playing games with people in a home setting versus online. The insults flung around when gaming are always more sincere when said to someone’s face. I’d much prefer to get insulted to my face than to my online persona. People are always much bigger pricks when they know there’s no way I can physically retaliate to their comments.