Super Meat Boy is so good...

That I bought it twice. Anxiously awaiting for it to unlock on Steam. Supposedly within the hour!

Stop the Insanity!

This has to stop. I thought I was done buying games for the PC and then the next day's deals come. Today's purchase: The Orange Box...$7.50. I've never played Half Life 2 either, so the entire experience is new to me. I'm about 1 hour into the game right now.

Tomorrow, I'm not even looking at the deals! (yeah right)

Steam Rolled!

So I've hooked up my "gaming" PC and have put it to work. It's not really a good gaming PC. Definitely needs and upgrade in the mobo/cpu/video card areas. But it's not a total crapper either.

Anyway, Steam has been running some fantastic deals on some awesome games. I took advantage of 2 deals yesterday. I bought the Indie Clever pack which included Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time, Eufloria, Iron Grip: Warlord, VVVVVV, and World of Goo. I also picked up Freedom Force for a steal at $5.

Today, I was probably one of the first in line clicking refresh when the new deals went up. Right away, I saw what I wanted. I picked up Left 4 Dead 2 and the Indie Pulse Pack which included Audiosurf, Beat Hazard, BIT.TRIP BEAT, The Polynomial, and Rhythm Zone.

So PC game overload!!! So far, World of Goo has owned my soul the most. It's a cool casual puzzle type game where you use gobs of goo to build various structures to escape the level. It's very fun with some freakin' HARD achievements! I have unlocked none so far in about 4 hours of play.

Today I spent a fair amount of time with BIT.TRIP Beat. However, my mouse blows balls. It's an old school PS/2 Compaq mouse from like 1994. I'll have to pick up a decent laser type mouse to play this game seriously....or play on a different machine.

Which brings up a question: Am I able to install Steam purchased games on multiple machines as long as I'm logged in? I'm sure a quick Google search will answer that because nobody actually reads this blog (yet!).

I also put in a good solid hour with VVVVVV today too. It's a fantastic platformer type puzzle type, crazy good game. I can see myself finishing this game and going for all the trinkets....SOON!

I tried Audiosurf a little, but I don't have any good music on this machine for it. My classic rock and hippie song collection just isn't the best for that game.

I'm currently waiting on Left 4 Dead 2 to install. It's HUGE. This will be the best test for this machine.

OK, back to some VVVVVV!

It's been a while!

It's been several days since I last posted. Nothing exciting has really happened. I've done a fair amount of gaming on the Xbox during my posting hiatus. Mostly alternating between Super Meat Boy, Home Run Challenge, Avatar Golf, and a couple other random Indie Games.

One thing I'm really missing out on right now is PC gaming. GamesforWindows.com has been offering a couple mad crazy deals in an effort to compete with Steam. My PC for my arcade cab is my fastest machine with a dual core 3 Ghz processor and a 512MB video card. Not the best, but hopefully capable of running a few decent games.

One direction I really want to take this blog is to give a little more exposure to some great Indie games. I'm just really getting into the Indie gaming scene and finding it fascinating. I'm going to do some reviews and such. One gem I came across yesterday was Gerbil Physics 2. I'm going to try to finish the game tomorrow and give a proper review right after.

A Gob of slippery red meat has owned my soul!

So I purchased some MS Points and downloaded a couple games. The main reason I purchased the points was for Super Meat Boy. I played the demo and fell in love. Let me just say this, the demo doesn't do the game justice. I hadn't read much about the game so I really didn't know what to expect other than I was going to die a zillion times.

SMB is a throwback to the old school platform games. Tough as nails, fun as fuck. SMB pays homage to the retro systems and games we grew up loving throughout the 80's and 90's. It also does it with a sort of "fuck you" attitude.

The game is hard...damn hard. However, that doesn't take away from the fun factor of the game. In my opinion it adds to it. There's nothing like dying over and over (and over) again and then finally finishing the level and getting rewarded with an awesome replay of every attempt run at the same time. It's like meat genocide.

SMB might not appeal to younger gamers who don't remember the classic consoles and how games used to be back then. But for everyone else, if you don't love this game, there's something wrong with you! Add in the fact that it's $10! Ten fucking dollars for a game I'd gladly pay $50 for!

I was forced to take a break from the game because my hands were cramping up so bad from extended play. Very few games have done that to me in the past! Every time I close my eyes, I see a little red cube of meet jumping through saw blades and hopping up walls leaving his red snail tracks behind.

Also I downloaded a couple indie games with my points: Avatar Golf & Home Run Challenge. More on those another time.

Have you seen my PSP?

I looked all over my house for my PSP today. No such luck. I did find my original Gameboy in great condition though. I thought I had hit an eBay homerun, but no such luck. Nobody wants to pay anything for them, so I'll keep it as a decorative item.

I've spent most of the day putting my Masters of the Universe collection on eBay. Times are tough. I need some income quick! Super Meat Boy isn't going to pay for itself!

New High Scores! and more!

I've been playing a lot of various games lately. I've also set some high scores the past couple days. Most notably, my Zoo Keeper score jumped from a dismal 69,000+ to 109,000+. I figured out some tricks to push some points and I didn't make too many stupid mistakes.

I've also been participating in the BYOAC High Score Challenge. We are playing the Pac Man Arrangement from the Namco Classics 2 machine. I've never played that version before, but on my 3rd attempt I had my best score of just over 88,000. Nobody has posted a better score yet, but I'm sure it will be beat.

Speaking of Pac-Man, I just can't pass up my Xbox without playing a game of Pac-Man C.E. Oh how I love the game. I did manage to attempt to clear the Challenge Mode 1 today and was successful, but I keep going back to the Championship Mode to up my score. I had almost given up for the day, coming about 4,000 points shy of my high score of 171,000ish. I turned off the Xbox and watched some TV, but I kept wanting to play one more game. I did and bam, 204,000+. Next step, 250K!

Lastly, I downloaded the demo to Super Meat Boy. Here's my review: Fuck Shit, Fuck Shit, Fuck...Dammit, I keep dying! BOOM! FINALLY! I love this game! Well, I have to see the next level...fuck shit, fuck shit, motherfucknaoisdu7089[e8hfw-02!!! and repeat. Fun game. Hard Game. But they made it so that it's a fun kind of hard. This will be my next purchase.

That's about it. The weather sucks here (SNOW :( ). So no work on the MAME cabinet. More snow tomorrow, so I'll probably work on some Pac-Man scores. I also installed FCEUX and have all the NES ROMs. I just need to get it all set up with my front end and I'll have a sexy NES Setup. I really want a NES USB Controller though. Does anyone know if they make a usb cable that has all the different controller dongle thingies on it? I heard there was such a beast, but I can't find them. I'm not even sure what they would be called.

A Trip to the Zoo!

Last night was bowling night. Our entire team pretty much sucked. I bowled a 497 series with a 127 game thrown in there. Not pretty. When I returned from bowling, I was getting pretty sleepy. But I wanted to try out a couple games from my list that I have zero to very little knowledge about. Those 2 games were Bank Panic and Zookeeper. I only played 1 game of Bank Panic to see what it's all about.

Zoo Keeper, on the other hand, I played a few games. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing at first, but now I'm getting the hang of it. I'll probably play several more of these today. I did watch a INP file of a 13millon game. It gets crazy after several levels.

Today is a good day to practice several games. It's cold, raining, and they are expecting that rain to turn to snow. Which way to Florida?

So I've been working on 3 of the 10 games today. I started out with 3 games of Donkey Kong. I haven't played the game in forever and this was the first time I've seriously tried to play it on my new control panel. Let's just say I did horrible. I didn't even write down my first score, but my 2nd score was 16,600 and my 3rd score was 31,100, which was a new high score for me (previously I had 29,000+). Most of my deaths were due to my shittyness, but I'm blaming a few on the joystick. Sometimes I'll accidently hit the diagonal while climbing ladders and it's pretty much a dead zone in this game. I have a 4/8 way Mrs. Pacman edition stick I'm going to be putting in my panel at some point. This will help out tremendously with these games.

Next, I moved on to Pacman C.E. I played 2 rounds of the Championship mode and put in 2 sub-par performances. My goal is to get above 200K. My high score right now is just over 179,000. Todays scores: 117,620 and 132,140. The last game, I lost all my lives before the 5 minutes were up. God I'm a horrible gamer!

Lastly, I decided to get in some Galaga Legions. I wanted to practice some particular areas, so I decided to do the championship mode. I did area 2 in my first game and area 3 in my 2nd. Area 2 is a breeze. Not that I crushed it or anything, but I finished it with at least 1 life left. My first score was 1,028,910. Then I moved on to area 3. Fuck this shit! Area 3 can suck a big fat monkey dick. I got demolished and put up a crowd pleasing 203,300. Area 3, I will make you my bitch soon!

Then I decided to go back to Pacman and do some achievment hunting. I still have to clear the challenge modes and 2 of the extra modes. I just got the game yesterday and have been playing championship mode almost exclusively. I did get the eat the crown achievement playing extra mode 2 I think. Anyway, I couldn't even break 100,000 today on challenge mode 1. I don't know what the hell was wrong with me. I couldn't make that little yellow fuck behave. A few of my deaths were unavoidable, but oh so many were just due to me and the controller not being on the same wavelength. I wasn't making precise directional movements and Pacman was running around the board like he was drunk. It was very frustrating. Again, I'd love to play this game with a 4 way stick. I was thinking about fabricating some sort of restrictor for the 360 analog stick. Not sure if it would work or not.

I'm off to bowling. I'll probably play some Zookeeper and Paperboy tonight. There is a high score competition getting ready to start on BYOAC for Paperboy. I haven't played much of either game in my lifetime.

Game on!

Welcome to my humble gaming blog. My name is Predator314 and I'm a gamer. I'm a crappy gamer too! I go through spells where I play a lot of games, but never really get good at any of them. I'm a big fan of the classic 80's arcade games, so there will be a lot of MAME talk in this blog. I also have an Xbox 360, a PSP, Dreamcast, and soon I will have an iPhone.

A huge project I'm working on right now is my MAME cabinet. I'm approximately 65% finished with this project. Right now I'm working on it a couple hours a week. I have the control panel working and it actually set up in my home right now. I've been playing a lot of classic games on it lately. I will upload some MAME cabinet pictures soon!

Also, on my Xbox, I have been cycling through some XBLA games: Limbo, Pacman CE, Geometry Wars Evolved 2, and Galaga Legions. I'm almost finished with Limbo. I might finish it up this week. I'm just getting started with the others though.

I really want to get my name on the Twin Galaxies leaderboards for some of my games I love. The problem is that I can't decide on a particular game to work on. So I'm going to do a decathalon of games to practice and still cater to my ADD (self diagnosed of course). Here is a list of games I'm going to start practicing:

1.) Pacman CE (XBLA)
2.) Galaga Legions (XBLA)
3.) Donkey Kong (MAME)
4.) Donkey Kong Jr. (MAME)
5.) Zookeeper (MAME)
6.) Gunsmoke (MAME)
7.) Paperboy (MAME)
8.) Bomb Jack (MAME)
9.) Robotron 2084 (MAME)
10.) Bank Panic (MAME)

I think that's a good list to start with. I'm just going to practice these in rotation so as to try to get better, but not get bored with the games. A couple of those games I've never played before, but have been meaning to try.

Keep tuned into the blog. I'll keep everyone updated on my high scores, my MAME cabinet progress, game reviews, and if I ever get good enough, World Record attempts!