Pork came by on Monday to hang out, and being utterly without a DS he's never experienced the high points the system has on offer for wireless gamers. A number of these games only require a single cartridge to play, typically two or four player, but there are games that reach up to eight and, yea, even unto ten. Meteos has fallen out of favor with most people I know, because even though it's a great game you can be tremendously effective just scribbling on the screen. Like the "snaking" scourge of Mario Kart DS, it's the sort of thing that is best resolved by refusing to play with assholes.

Pork is color-blind, which was something I knew intellectually, but I had not considered the effects it might have on Meteos perfomance. Knowing this makes my demonstrative victory celebrations appear crass in retrospect, as they were not triumphs over a well-matched foe, but rather acts of domination perpetrated against a man with a disability. Let me detail them for you, so that I may be absolved by this full accounting.

Suggesting that he "return to his country of origin," which I believe is California.

Opening and closing the DS over his jeans, declaring that my portable console had "torn" his "dick off."

Smashing the Nintendo DS will all force into his left ear.

Inventing a new sexual preference ("cuomosexual") and then suggesting that he adhered dutifully to its tenets (presumably, having sex with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo).

My spirit feels lighter, somehow. Oh - I also penetrated him with a Sharpie.

I'm glad that people found something to enjoy in the "podcast." I have employed quotation marks to imply that there is very little "podcast" going on there. Downloads need to be a turnkey affair, and updates must be available via RSS. This the casting part you may have heard about.

Beyond audio innovations like "two microphones" and "show notes with links," understand that we're simply leaving a microphone on in a room while we talk. I know Gabe covered this already, but I want to stress the point. We don't have any desire to be funny microphone guys queuing up the fart sound. Imagine that they are something which just occurs naturally, like the formation of stalactites.

(CW)TB out.

those that murdered me shall stand before god

I just wanted to remind everyone that the early bird pricing for PAX ends on March 31st. If you want to get in on the deal you’ll need to register before the end of the month. The PAX website has also been updated with a bunch of new sponsors.

If you missed my earlier post about PAX you can see it here.

I mentioned it in the “podcast” but I wanted to say here in the post that the new Shadow Hearts game is great. I recognize that the series odd humor isn’t for everyone. For example you make most of your purchases from a store called “Just us guys” run by two homosexual bikers. Like I said, it’s not for everyone. Personally my favorite thing about the game is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s actually really refreshing to play a game that sort of recognizes how convoluted the RPG stories are and decides to make fun of the fact. The additions to the combat system make the game fresh to play but it’s all still based around the judgment ring which is hot. So if you’re a fan of Shadow Hearts you should grab it for sure. If you’re new to the series you can jump in with this game since it introduces all new characters and you really don’t need to be familiar with the previous games.

That’s all I’ve got.

-Gabe out

We will be at Sakuracon this weekend. If you are in the area and you wish you were Japanese, this is the con for you!

We will have a booth there with some merchandise. We’ll have a pretty good selection of shirts available as well as the Penny Arcade book, the PAX DVD set and some posters. I'll also be doing sketches and we may crack out some Tetris DS.

I say it every year and it’s still true. It’s nice of them to invite us to this show but we feel very out of place. One year I think I said “I have never watched any manga.” and the audience for the panel laughed for like ten minutes. Please come see us.

Please.

-Gabe out

Just got a mail from Lik-Sang (import guys) saying my DS Lite was on the way, which is great - you might have been following the tribulations of people having a hard time getting them in Japan.

We know a guy who runs an import shop here in Seattle, and ran the situation by him just to get an idea what retailers were dealing with. You might remember that they increased the price on the one that I had preordered to 192 dollars - an amount I was happy with, given supernatural levels of demand. Our man with the import shop says that his wholesaler - his wholesaler, now - was offering them for three hundred dollars. So I don't feel so bad, now.

(CW)TB

We were able to secure twelve or so copies of Drakengard 2 to give away at the booth, seemed like a good tchotchke for an Anime convention. I don't know how long they'll be available, but our booth is typically a ghost town.

(CW)TB