Just a heads up: I'm almost done with the entire art project that I'm doing for Daroga... so far roughly a piece or two and I'm done. Here's a small preview of what's being worked on right now:

Remember last time when I told you about DS games getting reprints? Well you can add the Tetris Attack/Pokemon Puzzle League/Panel de Pon styled game Planet Puzzle League to the roster with Clubhouse Games(CHG based CAG Poker Night anyone?) and Hotel Dusk: Room 215. I found a listing on Amazon.com for Planet Puzzle League earlier this afternoon.



Planet Puzzle League is an awesome game, but it doesn't have the personality Tetris Attack had. It plays the same though, has online play, and the ability to use the stylus to move the pieces. You use the stylus by holding the DS in the Brain Age like, book form. I've only played online a few times, and every single time I got my ass kicked by different people from Japan, judging by the Hiragana(Katagana?) screen names.



Planet Puzzle League will be in stock at Amazon on the 19th of August....

I have two -- one that's black, and one that I never opened that's red and black...it was supposed to be a gift for my nephew. Well, at least that's my story!

Explain yourselves...why do you need more than one! By the way, Nintendo is probably very, very happy!

Is there a game or a series of games that everybody loves, reviewers rave about, but that you personally don't like or you just never got into?

For me, its basically two series -- the Zelda series and the GTA series. Both extremely popular, well reviewed and big selling series. But for me, Zelda simply has too many RPG elements for my taste, which makes sense as its a RPG. I've bought a lot of Zelda games, and tried and tried, but the game just progressed too slowly for me. As for GTA, again, I bought all of them and tried and tried, but I lost interest. I could never get a feeling for the controls, and the open environments just led to too much time being spent exploring -- I never had the patience for that! I can even include Metal Gear -- I played it through on the PS, but afterwards...I have MGS4 sitting here waiting to be placed into the dusty PS3. Maybe that makes it three series...what type of gamer am I? Yikes!

Anyway, what games do you dislike --...

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, over the past two weeks (and a little more due to unexpected developments that may be a subject of a future blog) I was on call covering the neurology service at my hospital. Inpatient neurology can be somewhat depressing and one of the more common cases I see are patients in the intensive care unit in comas for whatever reason (cardiac arrest, massive stroke etc.) and asked to give a prognosis on recovery (almost always grim) and to convey this to the patient's family. The cold reality is that every hospital bed is a precious resource and a comatose patient with no prospect of meaningful recovery means there is one less bed available to care for another sick but potentially curable patient. Thus having "The Talk" with the family to have them understand the situation and "make the right decision" is an important, though thankless task that often gets delegated to those in my specialty. I've been a part of many such conversations...

I was really surprised at what I saw. In the Walmart I had been to, the Vizios on the floor looked better than the Sharps or Sonys, but the Samsung was up to par with the Vizio. Even then, the differences between the TVs were very small to me. The one's that looked like shit seemed to just be blurry or too dark. I think calibration could help them out a lot.

I decided that Walmart wasn't exactly the best place to look at TVs, so I went to Best Buy. Every single TV on that floor looked beautiful . HD programming is really foreign to my eyes ( which are shit anyway) , but I could not see a significant enough difference between some TVs to warrant the 500+ dollar price differences. That's really what I was focusing on : the quality of the TVs in relation to the prices. The problem is that Best Buy has most TVs set up in order of price ( probably intentionally). I had finally found a low priced TV next to a high priced TV. It was a 42 inch Insignia plasma for 800 next to this Samsung that was 2000+ ( I'm not sure if itwas LCD or Plasma ) and the difference was glaring. The Samsung was just incredible . The colors just seemed to have more definition, more rich. The Insignia was simply bland in comparison.

Still, the material on that Insignia was beautiful, and as a simple minded consumer and not a videophile, I'd be more inclined to pick up a low to middle end television as opposed to the higher end TVs. The biggest letdown for me was the Sony and Sharp models. What I saw in those stores was not enough to justify the prices of the TVs. In general, I noticed that a TV is only as good as the material that is on the TV. The Nascar footage looked terrible on every single one of those TVs. but the X Games footage had the exact opposite effect for me. As far as I know none of the TVs had SD footage running on them and that'd probably be the deciding factor for me....

Even though CheapyD and Wombat didn't mention it on the Cagcast, a really good and hyped release came out on WiiWare called: Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People -- Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner.

In it, you control Strong Bad, the internet icon from http://www.homestarrunner.com . In the game, you run around in typical adventure game action (Phoenix Wright, King's Quest, Sam & Max, etc) trying to solve problems that Strong Bad faces.

The game is really ing funny and really faithful to the cartoons they show on their website. Oh course you'd expect this, but Penny Arcade proved us wrong (burn!). The whole game also features the characters voices. So much so, that I think half the memory for this game is used for it. Speaking of space, this thing takes up around 250 blocks of data: a good chunk.

There are even neat little mini games like Teen Girl Squad in which you try to comical kill all the girls and Snake Fighter 5:...

People to play with on team fortress 2. Gamertag= yangus27 Hopefully somecags want to play!!!

If you were hoping to beat the crap out of Lan Di in Shenmue III it looks like your dreams may forever be crushed. Yu Suzuki, the creator of Shenmue, is no longer with Sega. Many could look at this as the last thread of hope for the third Shenmue game coming to the U.S. being cut. It's over.



Shenmue was the most expensive game ever created at the time, clocking in at over $70 million. It didn't sell well. It was reported that every Dreamcast owner would have to buy 2 copies of Shenmue for Sega to turn a profit on it. But to give Sega their dues, they did bring Shenmue II to the original Xbox, where it once again under-performed. Sega has never announced Shenmue III for the U.S. and most likely will leave hardcore Sega fans hanging for good.


I loved Shenmue when it came out. It is one of my top 3 Dreamcast games. But even with that...

Finally some progress. I was on vacation 2 weeks ago and then last week I was working like crazy to catch up AND I had the stomach flu so I got nothing done. I was able to sneak out of the house yesterday and mess around in the garage.

The next step for this jig is to drill holes in the circular section so I can secure the router in place. The placement of these holes depends on the location of the screws on the router's base plate. It was actually pretty easy to do.

First, I removed the plate from the base of my router's plunge base. Then I clamped it into place with come spring clamps. I just eyeballed the location here. Next I drilled three holes all the way through the material for the three screws which will hold the router in place.



Next, I drilled out around the holes using a foerstner bit - this provides room for the screw heads...

From a Wall Street Journal article about iphone software sales in general:

Quote: Videogame specialist Sega Corp. says it sold more than 300,000 copies in 20 days of its $9.99 Super Monkeyball game, in which players guide an orb around mazes by tilting their iPhones. "That's a substantial business," says Simon Jeffery, president of Sega's U.S. division. "It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform."

For the past twenty-five years, developers have been trying with varying degrees to success, to duplicate the spectacle and competition of the Olympic Games. Today, Tech-Gaming looks back on a quarter century of Olympic simulation, ranging from humble button-mashing, 2600 joystick destruction, to one obscure Japanese title.

Track and Field (Arcade, 1983)
The grandfather of all Olympic videogames, Konami’s Track and Field challenged players at seven events: 100 meters, long jump, javelin, 110 meter hurdles, hammer throw, and high jump. Gameplay revolved around hitting two ‘run’ buttons in an alternating pattern as fast as possible...

Continued: http://tech-gaming.com/2008/08/11/le...-olympics.aspx

As some of you may know, Clubhouse Games(along with Hotel Dusk) is getting a reprinting set to release in a few weeks. Clubhouse Games features Nintendo WiFi, a.k.a. online multi-player. I believe almost, if not all non-single player only games in CHG can be played online. CHG has everything from Chess to Blackjack, all online. So with many people looking to pick up CHG when the reprints ships, it begs the question...



CAG Poker Night, do you want it?



A night reserved just for Clubhouse Games based Poker, or another game of choice if prefer. Are there enough people interested to try something like this?


UPDATE: Were starting to iron out the details in another post. Here is the link.

Un Genesis de Sega. I never had one, so I'm making up for that now, I guess. Surprisingly, this only cost me $30, even though it was new.

Hey, you wannabe Jap, what games you get for it?

Well, the only game I've gotten so far is Lightening Force, which is the misspelled US title for Thunder Force IV. Why they couldn't spell "lightning", I will never know. The box it came in smelled smokey (I hate smokers), but the game's case seems fine, so we'll see... but you can just dip shit in coffee beans to make it smell normal again, can't you? At least, that's what I've heard.

You ing moron. I bet you voted for Bush.

I also have Castlevania: Bloodlines and Revenge of Shinobi on the way.

?What that's it? You suck! What about [insert game that I think is cool here]?

Yeah, the only games I wanna get...

Due to being quite busy, I really don’t have time to put together a lengthy blog entry today, so this will mostly be a question. There’s no denying one of my biggest problems in life is a lack of socialization. I really only have one good friend in real life right now who is never around (he has a girlfriend and family to take care of), and I never had a girlfriend before. I’m constantly lonely in the real world due to really no one around me (except my parents, who usually anger me). I want to do whichever has the better chance of improving me socially.

The reason having better friends would be important is because they could keep me occupied. They may see movies with me, play video games with me, go out to various places with me, and probably stay loyal for a long time. If we get into an argument, we are more likely to make up. Having friends would be great because there are many activities I’d like to do, but I’m always alone for everything. Having a good friend...

This show kicks ass. I've liked John Henson's snarky humor since his Talk Soup days so it's good to see him again.

I even enjoyed the hell out of the recent "best of" clips episode they built around a fake awards show "The Wipies"

i have been trying to buy Blizzcon tickets all day. A dozen of times, i have gotten to the process screen only to receive that damn murloc fool with a flag saying "An error has occurred. I hate you Blizzard.

Want to do this?

Researchers at UC Berkeley say they may soon be able to develop materials which could "cloak" actual people and objects, making them nearly invisible to the naked eye. The technique centers around redirecting light around the cloaked object, in order to create the illusion of light going through said object, hence, making the object invisible. The research team has already had marked success with the "cloak" on 2-d objects.

Source: Associated Press

There is some Spore marketing thing where they ask Internet celebrities to make their own Spore creature and then have people vote for their favorites. In true CheapyD style, I was placed on their C-list. Here is how to find (and vote) for me:

Go to www.sporevote.com

Click on "More Spore" and "Highest Ranked". I'm the bald whitey in the top row.

Click on on my head and after you get to my profile page, click "I Like it". Of course, if you don't like it, you don't have to vote.

My creature's name is Takogani, which means octopus crab in Japanese. Here is the little creature blurb I wrote:

The Takogani project is headed by Japan's top genetic scientists and sushi chiefs with the goal of delivering maximum crab and octopus meat style at a low price. Please enjoy the delicious flavor and superior happy relax time.