An Online Journal - by Clake and Klake

AN ONLINE JOURNAL_
by Clake and Klake

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MORE: Randy the Cat , Links (del.icio.us), Clake's Recent Books (del.icio.us)

Friday, January 19, 2007

Hey Man Like It's Friday
posted by clake at 8:12 AM

The weeks just go by and very little internet work is getting done. Not that internet "work" makes a single dime for me, so I don't even know if I can call it work. I guess if I specify that it is non-profit work, that is more accurate. I am CEO of Making the World a Better Place Through Cat Comics and Unsolicited Yakkity-Yakkin'. We just made a huge gift of $0 to the Celebrity Reporter Trust for New Initiatives. With a new baby on the way in May, you can probably assume that the patchy updating of my various web farms will continue as such. But maybe I'll be proven wrong. Maybe random internet content is one of those hobbies that you are able to keep up with a baby around, since it is something small that you do from your house. Maybe when the kid gets older we will make some sort of odd puppet video blog together. "Get your stuffed animals together, we're gonna make a puppet show. What should Danny Bear's next adventure be? Danny Bear finds a dinosaur? That sounds good, son. Remember what I told you about three-point lighting technique."

Just this past weekend, Klake and I were browsing for baby clothes and other gear at one of those consignment superstores (like a pawn shop, but the size of a Goodwill store and without the cramped spaces and rows of guns). I, of course, took some time to wander toward the cabinet of old video game crap and look at N64 cartridges. I was thinking it would be fantastic to find one of the Mario Party series of games and buy a couple of extra controllers, but that did not pan out. But then I spotted something awesome. A Gameboy in excellent condition, with a Tetris cartridge inside, all for about $11. You KNOW I was all about this.

(An aside: In college I bought a Gameboy Color and a Tetris cartridge and it was pretty much awesome. Within the first year after graduating college, though, I sold it on eBay so I could buy a used Palm III. This was during "the lean years" when any purchase of an unnecessary electronic item had to be offset by selling something else. Now, we live in better times when I simply have to have Christmas money or cash earned by participating in research studies.)

The cool thing about this Gameboy is that it is of the original design for the system. This is the Nintendo Gameboy as it was unleashed upon the world in 1989, not the later miniturizations of the technology that made it more portable. This is a solid brick of electronics and plastic. The screen is one of those green, LCD dealies with simple greyscale graphics. What is remarkable is the great condition it is in. Not only does it work, but the plastic casing is unmarked. It isn't even stained or discolored in that way that old plastic gets. I'm still using it on the batteries that were in it when I bought it: Energizers from the era when they came with built-in meters that tell you if they still have any juice left when you touch two green dots. I'm kind of hoping to wear these out and replace them relatively soon - probably with rechargables - just because it creeps my out how old they are.

I have a few additional games on the way, acquired from a half.com seller at super-cheap prices. These are Super Mario Land 2, Kirby's Dreamland, and (for the unbeatable price of $1.50) F-1 Racing.

One of the great innovations that this brings to my personal entertainment is that now a husband can actually sit on the couch next to his wife while she watches American Idol:

"Wow, this guy sucks." (DOOT DOOT DOOT) "Oh man, that is mean. That is hard to watch, right there." (DOOT BLEEP DOOT DOOT) "Tetris!" (BLING!)

(It's a good idea to wear headphones for this to work best.)

This isn't the last you've heard about me and my dork-brick. I'll be posting a picture soon. And I'll probably be reviewing some games in the near future. I don't think I will review Tetris, though. At this point, that game is critic-proof. "I wonder if I should go out and buy Tetris. I wish someone would write a review so I knew something about whether Tetris is the sort of thing I would enjoy." You already know whether or not you would enjoy playing Tetris. Either you've already played it, or you were born after the 1980's, in which case the answer is written into your genes.*

When Tetris starts up, one of the copyright notices on the opening screen is (c)1989 by Elorg. Elorg is not a company, but rather an office of the communist government in the Soviet Union, which employed brilliant Russians to do computery stuff, and where computer scientist Alexey Pajitnov coded a puzzle game with falling shapes for the enjoyment of himself and his coworkers.

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*Not how genetics actually works

Comments:

I remember those! I had to sell my nintendo to get one. I used to play WWF and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all the time. Oh, and Metroid. That was probably the best game evar for the boy of gamesnitude.

Remember the game link? You could play tetris against someone else with what was essentially a precursor to the USB cable.

Ahh, nostalgia...
# posted by Unknown : 11:32 AM

I still have my original bought in 1989! I think we had 4 of them at one point with my siblings. We also had 100+ games; but my brothers sold most of them when they were young and wanted to upgrade. One of my favorite games was F1 Racing where we'd have all four of us racing each other with the game link.
# posted by juBlie : 12:15 PM