Resolution Ideas

So... new years resolutions? Let's make some just for fun.

1. Don't buy games or movies that you don't intend to watch or play.

This will save me money and space. Space is important because it helps organize things, and makes things look nice.

2. Stop ending sentences with "or whatever", "or something", "oh well", and "or anything like that."

I can modify this rule later, but I hope to overall improve my level of speech, and talk better, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. People say I'm too wishy washy, and I think so too - I'm always undecided between options, and whenever I am to give choices to people, I give them a plethora of choices, so nobody's left out or nobody will say that 'these boots are made for walking.' (inside-reference).

3. Go to more events that involve girls, non-videogames, and/or alcohol.

So far, 2007 is off to a good start, and I'd like to keep it that way. Facebook helps!

Filler post...

A box of letters and a photograph,
are all that's left to keep our memories

Sometimes I swear that I can hear you laugh,
like a ghost of what can never be...

And at night I will look across the sea,
and wonder if you could be looking at me

The ocean arms me like a symphony,
and plays our melodies...

It’sa mee, Mario!

… is what Mario would say… is what Alan would say. But no, Wario would say something different. Hahaha.

Okay, so I got Warioware for the Wii, after much anticipation. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s very short. It promises 200+ microgames, and while I haven’t unlocked them all yet, after about an hour and a half, I’ve probably beaten and unlocked most of them. Logically, if each microgame takes 10 seconds, then to beat the game takes 2000 seconds + cutscenes + death&retry.

Of course, the point of the game is not to beat it, but it’s to have fun doing it, and then have fun as you replay the game more. I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet, but by now everyone knows – there’s no simultaneous multiplayer – all the games use only one wiimote. It’s like how Bomberman for Xbox360 doesn’t support offline multiplayer.

So each player takes alternating turns, and you have to pass the wiimote around, so I can imagine that it’ll be much slower paced, or, it will become a risk to the controller. But, the game is still fun in single player, and when we have multiple people over, we can take turns in multiplayer or single player.

So, what about the game? Well, you can already imagine the craziness. As with a lot of wii games, you’re still bound to be amazed by what the wiimote can do. By holding the wiimote in different stances, you can simulate a lot of different moves, and it’s amazing that the wiimote can detect those moves.

For example, there’s a game where you hold it as a remote, and the instruction is “let go” – and you have to let go of the wiimote. Such an interesting idea! So as long as you are wearing a working wriststrap, that game works for you.

There’s another game where you have the wiimote by your hip, and there’s a race, so you have to run on the spot to the finish line. In another game, you have to hula hoop. Of course, the wiimote can’t sense that you are running with your feet, and hula hooping – you probably just have to shake your hand up and down to run. But it feels more natural to actually run, so that’s awesome.

The graphics of the game are still pretty bad, like they’re supposed to be, but I think I prefer the gamecube graphics. The tutorial cutscenes are awesome though. In the early stages, they teach you about new stances as you unlock them. You start off with the Remote Control stance, and then you learn the umbrella stance, the waiter, the elephant, and a lot more. The cutscenes are spiritual, Japanese philosophical kind of cut scenes, with peaceful music and… well, you just have to see them. They’re very nice.

In the gamecube version, the minigames that come up are pretty random. In this one, they give you the stance that you have to use, which causes your mind to say “okay, one of the 8 games that use this stance will come up”. So I’d say it feels less random, because you know what you’re expecting… but oh well.

Anyway, in conclusion, you guys have to come over and play this. After a few practice rounds, I challenge you to the dancing game. The dancing game is amazingly awesome. And funny. It will make you laugh. I promise.

::edit:: more to write - Because of all the motion-sensor games, the "A" button is rarely used now... although some games still use the A button. Also, most of the games are quite intuitive, but some are somewhat ambiguous, so it's quite likely you fail some minigames when you play them. But sometimes finding out what you're supposed to do is the fun part, and then you become so happy when you finish a microgame the first time you play it! ::/end edit::

The Money Saving Dare

Fact 1: You can trade in 3 old games to EBGames to get a new game for free. The 3 old games of course are restricted - you cannot just trade any game you have. They have a list on their computer, and only certain games apply.

Fact 2: Something Something Pro Paintball is an eligible game at EBGames right now.

Fact 3: Back on Boxing Day and a bit after, you can get this Paintball game, bundled with another game (in my case, Oddworld's Wrath), for $10 at Loblaws. Whether or not this deal is still applicable, I don't know.

Dare: Spend $30 to buy 3 copies of this bundle, take each of the paintball games and trade them into EB to get a brand new game. In other words, you spend $30 to get 3 cheap games and 1 new $60-$70 game.

Why the dare? Because it's 3 copies of the same game, and if I was the EBGames guy, I'd think it was weird if a guy came in with 3 copies of the same game. Ideally it should work, but the EBGames guy would probably give you a weird look, and start thinking "there's a loophole in our system..."

Anyway, today I went and I traded 3 old games for Lost Planet, and then I bought Warioware Wii (full price). If I wasn't in such a rush (stores were closing in a few minutes), maybe I would've thought it over and done my own dare, haha.

33% off isn't that good...

So, on the other blog, we're going to Fred's Not Here for dinner for $25. On the Winterlicious website, for Fred's Not Here, it says you can expect to pay $75-100 for a dinner for two; so basically we're getting $37.50-$50.00 worth of food for $25.. that's not so great. On the menu itself at Fred's Not Here, the "Jungle Prince" curry dish is $19.99, so we're not saving that much. I assume maybe the $37.50-$50.00 includes drink, but not taxes and tip? So $25 + drink isn't so special compared to $37.50 incl. drink. It's like I save $8-$20.

Beerbistro prices are "better", that is, dinner for two would cost $100-150, so we would save more from winterlicious. I'm not sure how big of a difference there is between lunch and dinner, so I thought spending $15 on lunch would be a better saving than spending $25 on dinner.

So I see why Ray likes places like the Rosewater Club - he'll spend $35 on dinner, when an actual dinner for one person would be $75-$100+. So he'll save 55-70%, which is a really nice deal.

Lemme quickly check the others... oh, I don't even need to reference Rosewater Club. Both Pangaea and Acqua are also $35 dinners and have a $75-$100+ for a single person thing.

So... maybe we could go to Fred's Not Here on a regular day, haha. But spending $25 instead of $38 is still "good", although I'd rather have done the double lunch.

For dinner, it feels like we're having a bargain, ya know, spending $25 or $35 instead of $50 or $100, so it feels like we're... yeah, having a bargain, something special for low price.

For lunch, it feels like we're paying a premium - instead of $8 for a plate of pad thai or curry at Spring Rolls, or having an $8 sub at Quiznos', we'll pay just a bit more for a quirky, interesting 3-course meal. So it feels like we're paying just a tiny bit more for lunch, for something special. In reality, we're still saving money, but the thinking is different.

In other words, lunch is Hamburger+2 for the price of Hamburger+1; dinner is Creme Brulee for the price of Creme Brulee-2.

Twilight Princess

I'm not sure when was the last time I've beaten a Zelda game before Duy has, but this might be the first, with him being captivated by Tales, PSU, and pretty soon, The Crusade that is Burning. Anyway, I'm about 11 hours into Twilight Princess now, and it's fun.

Is it like Ocarina of Time? Yes. Yes it is. If they took the Ocarina of Time engine, and remade a story and made new levels and called it Ocarina of Time 2; well... that's what Twilight Princess is. Graphics are a bit better (a lot better than N64, but on par with Gamecube, as are a lot of other Wii titles), sound and music is similar... might even be worse, but whatever. But gameplay, it's pretty much like Ocarina of Time.

The controls? They're fine, for the most part. For the big things, they're fine, but I have complaints about the little things, so excuse this rant for a bit:
When you're hanging on a ledge, you're probably all panicky trying to get back up, so you press the big A button - and you fall down! I think A should be the action button, which brings you back up, and not fall down.
Secondly, I was about to die and then I had to use a milk to get my life back, but I hit + instead of -, because that's the main pause button... and then I died.
Also, I really like my jumping attack, ya know, hold Z to target and press A to jump-attack. Only problem is, most of the time when I start the attack, my sword isn't drawn so my guy will just roll. I hate that. I do like how the wolf does the attack though, instead of rolling.

Umm... so that was my rant. I just finished the first two temples, starting the 3rd Twilight part, found 4 pieces of heart so far... need money for a shield... oh boy. Anyway... that's it. I like the game.

Smells like Witty Jokes

From the other blog, I've chosen a bunch of things I wanted to write about, mostly from my experiences between Christmas and New Years, two of which were "Smells Like Apple Pie" and "Witty Jokes", and so not to take up too much space on that blog, I decided to post them here. These are also smaller topics, and are here only for further reading... and I hope some of you want to read more! So..

Smells Like Apple Pie

We were at our step-uncle's house (Mom's Mother and her Ex-Husband had some babies, this is one of them) and we were having dinner - there were an assortment of foods in front of us, from Spring Rolls, to HarGow, to some vegetable mix, to those crunchy shrimp chips, etc, etc, and some Quail. So I start eating some quail, and... it smells... good. Like, not quail or chicken like at all. So Duy asks me how the Quail is, and he's sitting a bit away from me so I mouth to him,

"IT SMELLS LIKE APPLE PIE!" ... and he's like, "What?? HOW??" And then he tries it and smells it, and he's like, "IT DOES!!!"

So yeah. The Quail smelled like apple pie, which was totally awesome. Later we asked our cousin and he said he sprinkled cinammon on the quail, which explains the smell. But that's so awesome.

Now you see why I didn't post this in the other blog. It's about 3 paragraphs of lots of words, to portray an idea which was funny at the time. I do that a lot... use a lot of words to provide a very detailed, not concise, description of what happened. One day I shall sprinkle cinammon on something, and hopefully it will smell like apple pie, and thus be much better. By the way, Quail is pretty good - a bit bony, but overall it's okay.

Witty Jokes

I wanted to post this shortly after my own party, because this is where it comes from. I wish I were witty... like, quick to think, quick to make up jokes on the spot. Sometimes I can do that, but I often keep them in my head and analyze them before I say them, and by then it's not funny anymore. But since the party, I thought of two other things I wanted to write about witty jokes... heh.

First, I wanted to mention two jokes from the party. At one point, my friends were playing Wii Bowling - Imran, Mike, Andrew Paton, and Ryan. So for Wii sports you choose the Mii characters, so everyone chose someone at random. Everyone chose a male character, except Ryan, who chose a female character (duh).

So after a few frames, Ryan's doing pretty poorly, and he throws a ball into the gutter, and starts complaining, "ohh, what a sexist game". And then Andrew exclaims, "oh, and your character's a girl too!"

And then whole room started laughing. It's such a quick-to-think joke, it's that type of thinking which I'd like to have. In case the joke flew over your head, Ryan was jokingly complaining, because his character is a girl that she is doing worse than all the other characters. Andrew's comment hinted at a coincidence that Ryan's character's a girl, which implies that Ryan is a girl - or better yet, it implies that Ryan's "sexist" comment was aimed at himself, being a girl. Which... ahh, I hope you get it by now... cuz if you don't... *shakes fist*...

So that was awesome, at the time. The next joke wasn't really as awesome, but while we were playing Tales of Symphonia, Mike finished a battle and the enemies dropped items, "Chicken" and "Egg", and then Mike said, "I wonder which came first?" I didn't get it at first, but then I saw it, and it was pretty clever, and I wouldn't've of it. So yeah.

Anyway, in Montreal or on the way back from Montreal, I sorta came up with two circular jokes, which I'd like to share. First, I randomly asked, "Do you know who's weird?" And the rest of the car said, "Who?" And I said "ME!" - and it's a circular joke, because... it is weird that I would ask that kind of question, which would make me weird, so the answer is in the riddle, or.. something like that.

And, on the way back from Montreal, we ate at East Side Mario's for lunch. In 'ssauga, we passed by another East Side Mario's, and Duy commented, "look, it's ESM." And I said "yeah... it's ESM. English Second Manguage." (which is like ESL, but... whatever) - and it's only a bit circular now, but it's like I need to take ESL because I think it's English Second Manguage, not English Second Language. So in a way, I got the anagram wrong because I didn't know the anagram... wait... that's... weird... and... circular...... ?

VGMQ - part 2 of 2 of Basics 2

Okay, now that Alan posted his results, we can go on to the other 5 songs of part 2. I'm not sure what I have in store for after this part - post harder trivia? I don't know... but whatever.

So turns out my predictions were... sorta okay. Let's see how well I do this time!

163 - Alan 0.5, David 0.7

Maybe this time, I put down the reasons why I put down my predictions first. This song is kinda unique, with feeling and vibe and instruments.. David I think has played the game, Alan might not've, but the music is quite associated with the game, I think.

40 - Alan 0.9, David 0.5

High score for Alan, because he'll get it right. It's a bit more iffy for David, so I don't know.

47 - Alan 0.6, David 0.5

Medium scores for both of you! Hopefully you guys can get the style of the game, and then narrow it down by just thinking of it.

55 - Alan 0.9, David 0.7

High scores for both of you! Congratulations. I hope you get it right then, at least to a degree.

271 - Alan 0.5, David 0.3

Low scores for both of you! Congratulations. I'll just say you both failed Classical Bomberman, but this game might be even older than Bomberman! .... maybe not. But maybe it's a familiar theme, so maybe someone will get it.

So Alan's point prediction is 3.4, David's is 2.7, so they're both quite high. I hope I'm correct, heh. Enjoy!