11/19/01

Well, it's almost Thanksgiving, so allow me to talk a little about the things I'm thankful for this year...

*  I'm thankful that, while almost anyone can get a sitcom, it takes a talented comedian and good writers to keep it.  See you on the Food Network, Emeril!

*  I'm thankful that, in this conflict with Afghanistan, we've got the bigger bombs. ^^;;;

*  On a serious note, I'm thankful that the Afghani people have rights now.  I watched footage of a man in Kabul having his Taliban enforced beard shaved off and I almost cried...  it wouldn't have been more dramatic and uplifting if he had ripped iron shackles from his wrists and ankles.

*  I'm thankful that Ellen is funny again.

*  I'm thankful for my cute Manx cat Squeak, who... hey!  What the heck are you doing?!  Stop shredding the recliner!  OK, well, I'm not as thankful for him right now.

*  I'm thankful for that great Thanksgiving dinner I'll have at my parents' house.  My mom's a fine cook and she always makes everything I like.

*  I'm not just thankful... I'm ecstatic about the games coming soon for the Game Boy Advance.  Guilty Gear X?  King of Fighters Neo-Blood?  Spyro the Dragon?  An enhanced version of Street Fighter Alpha 3?  And the first Sonic game that's worth playing since the original Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast?  It's overwhelming.  The Taco Bell can keep its X-Boxes... with my trusty Game Boy Advance handy, I don't need one.

*  Speaking of the X-Box, I'm thankful that people aren't as excited about this system as the media seems to be.  Game magazines have been pushing this system down their customers' throats... and they're coughing it right back up.  If we're lucky, the X-Box will bomb so miserably that Bill Gates won't even CONSIDER another hostile takeover of the video game industry.  Take your rehashed PC hardware and your oversized controllers and go home.

*  I'm downright surprised that GameNow! turned out pretty well.  As the editors intended, it's light reading, but the reviews seem more real and honest than the stuff in GamePro.  I'm also thankful that Chris Bieniek still sends me Tips & Tricks every now and then.  The new picture puzzle section is pretty clever, too... I get the feeling that it's a sly way to introduce kids to the concept of video game graphics design.

*  I'm thankful that people are using my forums, even when they're doing it to call me a hypocrite.

*  I'm thankful that Dreamcast games are on clearance now... there's a rumor that Wal-Marts are selling most of them for five dollars a piece!  That's cheaper than buying burns from, ahem, less reputable dealers.

*  Finally, I'm thankful that I have a job again now.  Boy, did I need one... my budget was getting uncomfortably tight and I hated to ask my parents to bail me out of every one of my financial crunches.

Remember that parody on the 2600 page about a rerelease of Kaboom! called Kabul?  Well, it's more than just a parody now!  I've finished hacking the game, changing the bomber into Osama bin Laden and the Activision logo at the bottom of the screen into the new title.  I didn't think I was going to be able to do it, since the programs I'd downloaded from Atari Age allow you to easily find game graphics but not colors.  However, I improvised a little... since I knew that the bomber's shirt was striped, I started looking for that pattern in the ROM and changed it a little when I thought I found it.  Lucky for me, the bit of code I'd changed turned out to be exactly what I was looking for, and with about an hour of tweaking I made the Osama character look BETTER than the mock picture on The 26 Hunter.  A cool added bonus was that I was able to take this code and transfer it directly to the 5200 version... even though that game was much larger and for a different system, the graphics and colors were exactly the same.  Here's a picture of both games:

I just need to hunt down the text code in the 5200 version and change that, and presto!  It'll be finished and ready for distribution as well.  In the meantime, you can settle for the 2600 version of Kabul!, which should be on Atari Age along with a dozen other hacks by other designers.  Man, this is great... I love hacking these ancient games.  I'd enjoy DESIGNING them even more, but I'll wait until I've taken a C++ class at the local college and better understand Daniel Bienvenu's ColecoVision programming tools before I try to make them.  I can't wait... the ColecoVision could really use a translation of Bust-A-Move and I'd love to be the person who creates it.

So, who's up for some new articles?  I've finished the ColecoVision Collector's List, responded to some ballots in Fighter's Misery, and added a review of Fighting Street that was originally printed in my old fanzine.  In a few weeks, I'll fix that pesky archives page (I have no clue what's going on with that...), review the Wonderswan version of Rockman and Forte with Mandi Paugh, and maybe even talk about the King of Fighters '99 tournament I hosted a few months ago.  I guess I can look back at it and laugh now. :P