What I Did for Zelda

zeldacover

Joystiq has announced that MTV is looking for recollections of vivid gaming moments. I submitted mine, although my most vivid memory isn’t me actually playing a game. Read on to feel my everlasting shame.

This wasn’t related to playing a game, but it’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever done to obtain one.

It was winter and I was still in high school. It was a Friday and heavy snow had cancelled classes that day. I had just gotten enough money to pick up a used Nintendo 64 and a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I still couldn’t drive so I begged my mother to take me out to get my game. The roads were really bad, but she agreed to take me. We went to a pawn shop and got the Nintendo 64 just fine. On the way to the mall, however, we had an accident. Coming around a corner, we hit some black ice and my mother’s car spun out of control. The car hit the curb, jamming the wheel into the wheel well. Not long after that, another car careened into my mother’s.

We were then stuck out in the snow, a half mile away from the mall. We called a tow truck and waited. After some time, I asked my mother if I could just go ahead and walk up to the mall and get the game. She said yes. I walked away, leaving my mother alone in the cold so that I could get my game.

I got it. And it was a thing of beauty. To this day I feel kind of bad about it. I still think it was worth it though. After all, it would have been a wasted trip otherwise, right?

More Smash Bros. Brawl Goodness

Samus is a girl?

Smash Bros. Dojo has been updated yet again. We now have images of Zero Suit Samus and Wario. A few new details have been added as well. For instance, Zero Suit Samus is not a complete character. Rather, under certain circumstances Samus’ armor will fall off and she will become Zero Suit Samus. Will it be a morph like Zelda/Sheik? Maybe whenever she reaches a certain damage percentage? Also, the Wario fart move has tentatively been titled the “Wario Waft”. And the longer you wait, the more his gas will build. Wow, that was weird to type. More images after the break.

Continue reading “More Smash Bros. Brawl Goodness”

I Should Be a Lawyer

Deadly Grandmas

Do those two old ladies to the right look like hardened criminals to you? Well, they are. These women are Olga Rutterschmidt, 73, and Helen Golay, 75, two Californians with no criminal record. They were recently arrested for mail fraud. The scam? Take out life insurance policies on homeless men, kill said homeless men with well planned hit-and-runs, and collect on said life insurance policies. So far, the LA Police can only charge them with mail fraud but are trying to build the murder case. The life insurance policies—taken out on two homeless men—were worth over two million dollars.

Why is this story on 8-bit Ninja, you ask? I’ll tell you. If these two fine ladies were in fact young men, you can bet your ass they’d be using the Grand Theft Auto Defense ™. Hell, they still might, it’s not too late.

Sweet Lord! Welcome Joystiq Readers!

PONG!

Wow. I left my site alone for maybe 45 minutes. I knew they had linked one of my stories—I should know, considering I sent it in—but I had no idea what that would mean. I’ve had some stories linked to them before, but jeez, I’ve had literally hundreds of visitors in the last hour. So, if you’ve stumbled in here via Joystiq and you bothered to check out 8-bit Ninja beyond the Bungie story, welcome. I hope you like it.

Elite Beat Agents Trailer

Romancing Meowzilla? I told you it was wacky. But you didn’t believe me did you? Well, here it is. If you prefer, you can download a higher-res version here: Right click/Save As 

By the way, I’m trying to make it so I can stream Quicktime right off my server—thus avoiding YouTube—but it’s not working just yet. Hopefully soon. At any rate, enjoy the show.

[gv data=”6y5L1SiEayY”][/gv]

Wii Launches on Oct. 24th?

Wii

WiiNintendo.net‘s Hochiminh is reporting that computers at his Game Crazy are listing a launch date of Oct. 24th for the Wii. He makes a few points about the validity of this date. Read for yourself:

Well I opened at my Game Crazy today and for the first time, we have Wii dates on our Master release schedule. A few are November and Q4 2006, but a majority of the titles rest on 10/24, with a ‘last day to prebook’ on 10/14 (we give ten days as a company standard). 10/24 is a Tuesday btw. Note this is pure speculation, but on two separate occasions, our list has given away a systems launch date before it was announced. I’m also curious if any Gamestop/EB other retail chain employees have seen this day?Also, seems like a rather odd placeholder date…and 99% of the time, our placeholder dates list either the month (October 06?) or what quarter it is supposed to come (Q4 2006)

Finally…a placeholder date that doesn’t seem like a placeholder! I will keep my fingers crossed.

Good news or too good to be true? We’ll wait and see.

Bungie Makes Fun of Cheaters

Get those cheaters, STAT!

Cruising Bungie.net, as I am wont to do, I found this. Bungie has published a few emails from banned cheaters. Pleading for shortened sentences or offering to turn in other offenders, these cheaters will say anything to be unbanned. The rest of us can sit back and enjoy the hilarity. I haven’t played Halo 2 for a while. Maybe I should boot it up. My favorite email:

The gamer tag –blam!- is wrongfully accused for cheating. He should not be suspended on a wrong default. To most casualties, this game is taken very seriously. Most just leave feedback over jealously of rank, sense a overwhelming percentage of X-Box Live players cheat for their levels. This person has not done “Modding”, “Standbying”, or “Bridging” of that kind. If Bungie seriously wanted to suspend someone of doing something along the line of cheating, then look over some stats. If none of these accusation are settle, you may be hearing from a lot of complaints. Some may be said by lawyers.

Inconclusive, I hope you consider to un suspend –blam!- Thank you for your time.

Don’t you just love it when people try to sound smart? I sure do.

Thanks for the link Joystiq. And welcome to Joystiq readers.

Where’d I Go?

No posts yesterday. I had stuff to do, you know? Actually, I was spending some time yesterday trying to get my video player up and running. It should be working pretty soon, so you can all bask in video goodness. The first video? Elite Beat Agents, the crazy Japanese dance/action game for the DS! Formerly known as Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! in Japan, the game is both wacky and zany. The video shows a man getting fired. Somewhere, in a secret bunker, agents are sent out to right this wrong…by dancing, I guess. It’s very strange. And soon you can see it for yourself. Sit tight.

Win Bets With GIDb

GIDb

You ever wonder which Bond flick had Christopher Walken as the villain? Just look it up on IMDB, right? What about the first game to feature co-operative play? Why, look it up on GIDb of course! Carnegie Mellon University has just created the Game Innovation Database (GIDb). Professor Jesse Schell, one of GIDb’s founders, explains it thus:

“We have created the Game Innovation Database in order to create a historical record of which innovations appeared when, and why they are important… So many videogame innovations have occurred so fast that there is a danger that many fascinating and important innovations will be forgotten.”

A quick visit to the site confirms that it’s basically a wiki for game info. As such, it may take a while for all of the info to be truly validated. Still, it’s a pretty neat idea. So, which game featured the first power-ups ever (hint: wokka wokka)? Start placing your bets now. A note for the future GIDb administrators: buy gidb.com before someone else does.

—via Game Politics

My Arms Hurt

She's a girl?

I left my little website alone all weekend and it’s still here. What a relief. I seem to have a handful of people who actually visit this site of their own volition now. That’s nice.

 I finished up Zero Mission this weekend. It’s pretty good, though it is indeed short. As I intimated before, I purchased the game to see Zero Suit Samus. I will not say that the Zero Suit was worth the price of admission by itself, but it is an interesting section of the game. Overall, the game serves as a return to form after the break that was Fusion (I liked that one, too, by the way.)

Now I need to wrap up Hunters. Then I will go have some Metroid cereal and sleep under Metroid sheets, just to complete my ascension to true nerdhood. I find myself avoiding Hunters a lot. Primarily I think this is because of the cramp inducing controls. I helped my friends move into a new house this weekend, and the next day I played some tennis. As such, it hurts just to type right now, much less grip my DS with my patented Metroid Prime: Hunters Claw ™.

In other news, I ordered the official VGA cable for my 360 last week. It should be here in another day or so. I purchased it mainly because of the horizontal shift of all my games when using component cables. It’s only a centimeter or so off in 1080i. In 720p it’s closer to an inch. I can fix it—only in 1080i—by changing my TV’s horizontal settings. Thing is, I wants my 720p. Yeah, I’m one of those guys. At any rate, I’ve heard that component cables on the 360 tend to make the picture a little dark, and I can’t argue with that assessment. I’ll be sure and let you know what difference VGA makes.