EA Sports can eat shit.

You heard me. It's now been 2 days of me trying to get EASPORTSWORLD.COM to fucking allow me to upload 2 goddamn pictures so I can be freaked out by my own face in Tiger Woods 08.

The site is apparently in beta still and this is why it is an utter pile of monkey shit.

My patience is wearing thin. I now know how Darth Vader felt when he went to the 2nd Death Star only to find it was filled with a bunch of guys sleeping on the job and jerking off all day long. Except I don't have an Emperor to frighten the shit out of EA Sports to double their efforts to get their asses in gear.

Why do I need 2 different profiles logged in and why can't you link to my fucking Xbox 360 profile? The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.

RE5, SDB and COD4. Uh, what?

Resident Evil 4 is probably one of the best video games I've ever played. Many people, including the makers of Resident Evil probably feel the same way, which is why I shouldn't be surprised that footage of the new, 5th installment looks shockingly similar to its predecessor. I swear, if they don't put strafing in this one, I'm going to be straight up pee-aced.

Oh also, 1up has a cool story about the new Super Dodgeball game for DS. I foresee me buying this and playing the shit out of it.

Finally, our house is the proud new owner of COD4 and Tiger Woods 08. After only briefly playing both, I can say COD4 - visually - is amazing and Tiger Woods was much better 4 years ago. Also, would someone do me a favour and nut-punch whoever created EA's website(s)? A more confusing mess of slow-loading flash menus I have never seen. EASPORTSWORLD IS A FUCKING DISASTER OF A WEBSITE. BETA SHMETA, MAKE IT WORK.

News: DS heavy!

First of all, I lied, I probably won't write a part 2 from the previous post because I want to move on to more pressing issues. Maybe I'll revisit why I'm not, nor ever have been, excited or optimistic about the Wii at a later date.

Anyways, I digress. Some news items:

- According to this IGN article that whimpered it's way onto the internet last Wednesday, there will be (as was probably rumoured) a DS version of Guitar Hero. You plug this weird handle with 4 buttons into the GBA slot and use a special pick-stylus to strum the touch screen. This is all well and good, but watch the crazily lame commercial for it, if you can get past the kid's amazing fake-fun-having skills, does it seem like you have to hold the thing in an incredibly awkward way to anyone else? It's like you're constantly ticking off a check box while about to throw a frisbee.



- Supposedly (according to 1up.com) some Sonic the Hedgehog 360/PS3 screenshots were leaked on the internet via a Sega ftp? Does anyone actually care? Do the 9 people who still like Sonic the Hedgehog as more than a whimsical memory crave Sonic knowledge so much they're combing through hundreds of animated gifs on Sega's ftp looking for Hedgehog news? I guess the answer must be yes? Weird.

- Finally, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for DS is being released this week, with EGM/1up's incredibly nerdy, somewhat annoying, yet very knowledgeable Shane Bettenhausen giving it a glowing review. Despite the fact that it looks pretty great, I still have to get through Phantom Hourglass and then buy Advance Wars: DOR, so I won't be playing this for a while I think.

Now, if anyone needs me, I'll be on live playing against our rival house in Halo 3 and NHL 08.

Getting the Brawl Rolling

For the first post of this, yet-another-video-game-type blog, I'm going to say some nice things and some not so nice things about Super Smash Brothers and Nintendo in general. Consider this a stream of conscienceness post while I'm still trying to find the voice of this blog.

First of all, I've played every iteration of SSB and have on the whole, been fairly impressed. I remember originally thinking SSB would more along the lines of a traditional fighter a la Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. When I was met with the pseudo-platformer, 4 player (ahem) melee I was pleased. However one thing stuck in my mind. I couldn't shake the feeling that out of the probably hundreds of Nintendo games I had played as a kid, this one was only using characters from 9 of them. Really that's all you got?

In the original SSB you had:

• Captain Falcon - F-Zero
• Fox - Starfox
• Donkey Kong - Donkey Kong
• Pikachu - Pokemon
• Jigglypuff - Pokemon
• Mario - Super Mario Bros.
• Luigi - Super Mario Bros.
• Yoshi - Super Mario Bros.
• Samus - Metroid
• Ness - Earthbound
• Kirby - Kirby
  
• Link - Zelda

So let me get this straight Nintendo - after the entire run of both the NES and the SNES, not to mention a good ways into the N64's life span, the best 12 characters (created by you) that you can come up with includes Jigglypuff AND Kirby. Was the one round pink blob not enough?

Now I understand the whole thing is to include only 1st or 2nd party characters, but are you kidding me? 12 characters from 9 games is all they could come up with after utterly dominating video games for 14 years? Does anyone else find that a bit depressing? They all don't have to be the same level of popularity as a Mario or Pikachu, but jeez, can we get a few more names in there? Where the hell is Little Mac?

Don't worry Mac you'll appear as a fucking
item in the 3rd one... Hey did you get that
Goddamned Nintendo Power subscription I
mentioned earlier?

As it turns out, this was my first, sad reminder that Nintendo has 9 good franchises (arguably, as I've never been a Metroid fan), 2 of which still haven't seen full sequels in North America since the SNES, if at all. That's 7 - ok, we'll add the SSB series and make it 8 now. But the fact remains: Since 1985 Nintendo has probably 10 good game franchises under it's belt. That's 23 years of repeating the same 10 games every few months.

Considering 3rd party developers haven't received much support since the N64 era, Nintendo has a long way to go to reclaim their popularity with, let's be honest here, Me - whether or not Nintendo cares about that, I guess I'll just have to wait to find out.

Coming soon: Part 2: Why SSB Brawl is a good sign and why the Wii is a piece of true garbage.