thisStrangeEngine.com

As I mentioned before, my router is acting up so every now and again the port forwarding to my webserver ceases to work, so the website becomes unavailable for hours, sometimes days at a time. When I find the time, I’m going to take one my many spare machines lying around and put together my own router/firewall to deal with the problem (my luck with wireless routers so far hasn’t been very good). Until then, expect more foolishness.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Good luck out there if you’re doing any Christmas shopping.

Just before I went to bed, I saw the slot in my Wii glowing in the otherwise completely dark living room. I turned it on to see Nintendo send out no less than three messages about various things. One of them is a notice for an available update in the Wii firmware which includes a new feature that seemed pretty obviously necessary to me since the introduction of the Internet channel: you can now use a USB keyboard with your Wii. Huzzah!

Also, if you haven’t noticed, some new games were added to the Shopping Channel at the beginning of a week. The big news is that they are the first games for a brand new platform of games available for the Wii: NeoGeo. The first released games are all classic arcade style fighters which NeoGeo was famous for. I’m looking forward to many more NeoGeo games coming to the Wii. Also, a few weeks ago we also started to see imports pop in the channel, including the Super Mario Bros. 2 that was released in Japan (known as the Lost Levels in the U.S.) in all of it’s original 8-bit glory, and an arcade style Japanese Shooter called Sin & Punishment for the (I believe) Super Famicom.

Am I the only fool around here using Twitter and not using Facebook?

I was at my local Fry’s the other day and saw that they had a bunch of Game Boy Advanced games on clearance. Obviously it was a bunch of the lesser popular titles, and by the looks of the amount of titles on sale, they were looking to clear considerable shelf space.

Most of the games weren’t worth a second look, of course, but there was one I ended up picking up figuring it might be worth my $10. It was “The Pac-Man Collection”, which contains the original Pac Man as well as a couple slightly more modern variations of the game (“Pac-Mania” and “Pac Man Arrangement”) as well as a Tetris-like puzzle game (“Pac Attack”).

I took it home and broke it out, and was surprised with how much I actually enjoyed playing this old and simple game. When I really concentrated on playing it, it continually kept me on my toes, especially when I went up a few levels. For the first time, I think I finally understood how this game could’ve been such a phenomenon when it first came out in the early 80s. It demands your constant attention, and there’s lots of on the fly strategy involved, because you pretty much had to keep moving and your situation was constantly changing. Do you compromise the main task of completing the maze just to go for the extra-point goodness of the fruit in the middle of the maze? Should you go for the power pellet NOW? Should you save it for when you’re in a bind or have an opportunity to nab as many ghosts as possible?

I always liked the game and appreciated its importance to video game history, but I think for some reason, it has only now just really clicked with me. I finally understood the game’s nuances and why people still enjoy playing it today. I don’t think it’s too far fetched to say that it is similar to classic games like chess or checkers in that way: its strength lies in its few but crucial rules and simple goals, but it is open enough so that it’s often not obvious what the best next course of action is. Quite a few other video games do this, sure, but I don’t think any distills the concept so purely as Pac-Man does.

I’m not entirely sure, but I think just saw a pig fly by.