posted 2008/03/22 at 20:41
Some of my birthday gifts have still yet to arrive -- including a couple of CDs I bought for myself -- but among the things I got this past Tuesday were Gandhi's autobiography (I don't know how I didn't pick it up sooner), Dr. Strangelove (ditto), an Oh My Goddess! manga (I am way behind on those), and most importantly of all, I am finally in possession of a Guitar Hero game, namely Guitar Hero III for PS2. However, not only have I had next to no time to play Guitar Hero since getting it (between teaching and bsiness relating to Dad's death I'm still swamped here), but the bundled guitar isn't working that well. It's one of the new wireless models that runs on Bluetooth, and the receiver only picks up the guitar if I hold the guitar about six inches from the receiver and keep the guitar facing at just the right angle. It's playable this way, but it's definitely a huge pain.
When I get paid next week, I'm going to head over to Best Buy and pick up a wired guitar. In a way I can understand the huge push towards making all video game controllers wireless, but at the same time these problems I'm having with my Guitar Hero controller just seem to highlight for me the problems with wireless-only options. (This is just one of the many reasons why I'm in no rush to pick up a PS3.) In addition to the problems I have with the receiver (and given how poor my cell phone reception is at the house I'm wondering if we're in some kind of dead spot here), I don't like the thought of having to keep throwing AA batteries into the controller just to keep using it. Honestly, having a cord run from my guitar controller to my console isn't that much of a pain, especially considering how much I'll be likely to save on batteries that way. I don't like that I'm going to be stuck buying an off-brand guitar controller here, though; why can't Activision continue to sell and support their old wired models?
I only made the wireless mistake once, a long, long time ago. Back when attachments came out for the NES for plugging four controllers into the system at once, Nintendo offered two models, a wired adapter (the Four Score) and a wireless one (the Satellite). This was back when Mom was buying me most of my video game stuff, and even though the Satellite cost ten bucks more, I asked for it thinking that the ability to move the adapter around my bedroom would be a major convenience at some point. Ignoring the fact that I think I only ever had more than two people playing my NES at one point in my whole life, the Satellite went through a lot of big, expensive batteries (I think 6 C batteries) in record time. The worst part was that I continued to use the Satellite for a long time, even for single-player games, just because I thought it was convenient, but it was really just a waste of batteries. (It was also a huge pain when the Satellite ran out of power in the middle of a game and I had to frantically plug and unplug the Satellite and my controller just to pause a game down to replace the batteries.) I suppose one of the good things about being such a loner is that I don't have to worry about picking up multiplayer adapters any longer, so I don't have to deal with these problems.
Labels: personal, videogames
posted 2007/11/20 at 23:18
With little more than forty-eight hours to go here before Black Friday and with the holiday shopping season more or less kicked off already, I figure it's time to make my annual plea for you all to either buy me stuff or help me buy stuff for myself, particularly now that my student loan repayments are eating up so much of my money. As I've done every year since I launched the .org, I strongly request that those of you who plan to shop at Amazon.com do so through my Amazon.com affiliate link (also below the Google ads on the .org's pages) so that I get a small percentage of whatever you buy back in store credit. In addition, my Amazon.com wishlist (also in the right-hand bar on the .org's pages) is full of stuff I'd really, really like, so if you're feeling a little generous this season, please shoot something my way. I'm going to be nice and whiny about how I don't have money to buy all this stuff for myself for the next few weeks, believe me.
That being said, I will have a bit of money in my pocket here later this week, and I'm not all that sure just how I will spend it. There is a small chance that I might wind up being one of the lucky people to pick up a Wii for eighty bucks thanks to Amazon.com's "Customers Vote" promotion (check their homepage for details). I have to admit, I've said before that I wasn't that interested in the Wii, but a lot of that had to do with the Wii's price and the fact that it's so difficult to get your hands on one, even all this time after the machine's release. Now that I've started to think about getting one, though, I can kind of see myself paying full price for it at some point (read: once I have more money) somewhere down the line. See, if I'd just kept thinking that the current generation of video game systems wasn't for me, I wouldn't be thinking like this, but the moment I let myself think for even a second about getting a Wii signaled the point of no return. Now I'm probably going to keep thinking about getting a Wii here until I finally get one, whenever that may be.
There is one other possibility that might stop me from just placing another huge book order with Amazon. According to a post I saw on one of the bulletin boards I visit, Circuit City is going to be offering Guitar Hero II bundles on Black Friday for sixty bucks. Given my love of music and music games, I'm kind of surprised that I haven't bought Guitar Hero sooner, although given the additional health benefits of playing DDR and ITG I don't think I can be blamed for focusing on them. Again, the price was probably a bit of a barrier in terms of me starting to get into Guitar Hero sooner (I've played it in store displays and certainly enjoyed it), but for this price, and given that I don't feel a particular need to get Guitar Hero III (since it'll probably take me a while to get really good anyway), but if I can pick up a bundle for sixty bucks, I think it'll be worth it for me. Then again, do I really want to go out for any reason, let alone shopping, on Black Friday? I'll have to think about that these next couple of days.
Labels: shopping, videogames
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon