Here's some exciting news for classic gaming fans... there's a BASIC compiler available that will allow you to design your own games for the Atari 5200.  So far, it's kind of limited... I can't imagine being able to write more than simple text adventures and Snake games with it.  However, when the creator improves it and adds more graphics and sound commands, I'll start work on a simplified 5200 version of the game show Press Your Luck.  It seemed like a perfect match to me... everyone who's familiar with the system hates the 5200 joysticks, but the beauty of a video game adaptation of Press Your Luck is that you won't need to use them.  You simply press a button to stop the marker as it flits around the screen, preferably on a space without a Whammy in it.  I'm planning two modes for the game, with one and two player options for both.  The first, Classic, is most closely based on the game show... the two contestants each get five turns, and can choose to pass play to their opponent if they think their luck has run out.  The second, Showdown, allows players to compete simultaneously by giving them both control of the marker.  This mode is timed for two minutes, forcing both players to take risks if they want to take the lead.

You'll find updates about Project "Jess Your Luck" here on The Gameroom Blitz, so keep comin' back!

OK, so the last banner was a little embarrassing.  Here's one that oughta pump some testosterone back into this site's veins.  Those pictures, by the way, were from Game Hits' second annual Orgy of Destruction, where a bunch of frustrated gamers smash broken systems, games, and controllers into bite-sized chunks with the aid of hammers, baseball bats (aluminum, please!), cars, and even our bare hands if necessary.  The games get in their licks, too... occasionally, tiny shards of crappy CDs and monochrome Game Boys will lodge themselves into the hands of their assailants.  I was nicked by a piece of plastic the first year and Game Hits owner Shawn Sodman took some shrapnel the next.  Neither of us were seriously or even noticably injured, though, so it's more than likely that we'll be back for another Orgy of Destruction sometime in 2002.  Hopefully, I'll give the next one full coverage in The Gameroom Blitz.

One of these days I'm gonna post an update on the same day I write it.  Oh well...

First, a correction.  Remember the story I printed about that local arcade being closed down by pressure from the town's council?  Well, everything about it was true, except for the part where I said the arcade owners were going to sue Lakeview for loss of revenue.  Brian Deuel recently told me that he decided to drop the lawsuit because he didn't want to deal with the paperwork and the lawyers and the court fees and all that fun stuff associated with taking legal action.  Personally, I wish he would have went through with it, just to make the lives of the former town council members even more miserable, but I can understand why he's not pushing the issue.

So hey, I guess my work was mentioned in an issue of Entertainment Weekly.  Unfortunately, the reference to Kabul! in their review of Atari Age was very brief, but maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to pull in a few dozen more readers from it.  By the way, the writer of the column gave Atari Age a well deserved A, so I suppose the editors of Entertainment Weekly do know a good thing when they see it... that is, when they bother to open their eyes.

Well, before I go, I should let you know that due to college and outside projects, I'm not going to update The Gameroom Blitz very much.  What outside projects?  Well, I'm planning on writing character descriptions for the English translation of Card Fighters' Clash 2.  The game won't officially be released in the United States, but thanks to the hard work of dedicated Neo-Geo Pocket fans, you can find the English version of the game on the Internet and even play it on an actual system with a backup device.  I've always wanted to be part of a project like this, and thanks to the CFC2 translation team (consisting of Judge, Comic-Kaze, Flavor, and others), I'm gonna get that chance.

I'd also like to spend more time drawing and contributing to Zoo Logic.  I've ignored the comic long enough, and considering some of the great articles he's contributed to my fanzines and this web site, I owe it to Josh to update it more than once every few months.  Plus, to be perfectly honest, I need the practice.  The less time I spend with a pencil and paper, the more my artwork's going to suffer.  I was thinking of adding an art section to this site a couple of years ago, and it could still happen if I become confident enough about my artistic talent.

1/7/02
(written but not posted on this date)

Me thinks it's time for another update.  I really don't have any excuse not to write one... the holidays are over, my birthday's over, and I've got a few days left before classes begin again.  It's the perfect time to start writing again... and I have a lot to write about!

Let's get some of the off-topic stuff out of the way first.  I went with a friend to see Lord of the Rings... I'm not really a big fan of movies but I thought my friend would enjoy it, having done little else but play Final Fantasy X for the past week.  Maybe it's because both films were by the same company or because they were set in a fantasy version of the United Kingdom, but Rings reminded me a lot of Harry Potter.  They both went overboard with the special effects, and each film was a little on the long side... but they had great casts playing some very likable characters straight out of the books that inspired them.  I always thought Liv Tyler was just a hack actress riding on her father's coattails (as well as her own shapely figure), but her performance in Lord of the Rings was great.  It was also nice to see Elijah Wood get a starring role in a film like this... he deserves it after proving to the world just how lousy an actor Macauley Calkin really was in The Bad Seed.

We also caught a couple of trailers in the theatre.  Spiderman looks good enough, I suppose... if the film is anything like the sneak peek I saw, it's going to leave roughly half the audience stumbling out of the theatres with sensory overload.  I don't know about the casting, though... wasn't Toby McGuire the same guy who played the beagle in Warner Bros.' Cats and Dogs?  Oh well, I guess he needs the work, and so does Sam Raimi now that Hercules and Xena have both been cancelled.  As for Austin Powers 3, the preview didn't really tell you much about the film, but I'm sure it'll be even more over the top than the second one.  Plus, it'll give midgets everywhere one last chance to cash in on their height before the technology in Lord of the Rings renders them obsolete and legitimate actors get all the small fry roles.  I've got three words for Verne Troyer... Swiss bank account.

All right, it's time for a little video game action.  I spent most of the holiday season playing Suikoden, a smartly designed role-playing game that lets you establish a headquarters, then fill it with recruits.  The ones you take with you act as full-fledged party members, and the rest stay behind as non-player characters, adding options and features to the game.  It's one of the most rewarding RPGs I've ever played, since there are over a hundred characters to find, and each one contributes to the game in their own way.  The best part is that I've been assured by friends that the sequel is much better... and I've read on GameFAQs that yet another sequel to Suikoden is being developed for the Playstation 2.  I'll take 'em all.  Heck, I'd even try Suikoden Card Stories for the Game Boy Advance if there was a version available in English!

Hey, speaking of card games, I thought you guys might want to know about this... there's a translation of Cardfighter's Clash 2 (the Neo-Geo Pocket game starring hundreds of Capcom and SNK characters) available on the Internet now.  It's not finished, but what's there makes it playable, and I'm surprised at how faithful the translation is to the English text in the first game... even the font is the same.  As for the game itself, Cardfighter's Clash 2 doesn't seem quite as good as the first one because you can't actually walk around in each of the locations.  Also, the artwork on most of the cards has changed, and while it's still well done, the angrier characters aren't as endearing as the ones in the first Clash.  You do get a lot more cards, though... nearly everyone who wasn't represented in the original game is in Clash 2.  You'll find Rock Howard, Bao, Tizoc, the stars of Project: Justice, and even characters from Dino Crisis and Onimusha!  Hmm... now that I have these new graphics, it might just be time to retire the Bomberman picture I've been using to represent all of my contributors.

While I'm here, I might as well add another pair of reviews from John Roche and more links to my favorite sites.  As long as I'm changing the links page, I should remove the plug for IGN.com, because I don't really recommend the site anymore.  It's a little strange that the advertisements have only gotten worse since they started that moronic subscription service... the only thing that really impresses about the site these days is that they've found places for ads I would never have considered.  They're about three steps away from beaming commercials directly into the minds of readers.  The only thing stopping them is that the technology is, at least according to Futurama, a thousand years away, and there's no way Imagine Games will be around long enough to take advantage of it.  Judging from the desperate pleas for subscriptions on IGN.com, they'll be lucky to make it to the next episode of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.