My inspiration for this blog post came to me the other day while I was playing Brawl. I know, what c-blog DOESN'T have Brawl in it these days? Hear me out though, I promise this isn't going quite where you think it is.

To be more specific, I was playing Brawl and was about to use a Golden Hammer on the "Clear Boss Battles on Intense" challenge. I had just beaten Boss Battles on Very Hard using Mario and I decided that was hard enough, I didn't feel like dealing with Intense. Now much to my chagrin, I find out that the Hammer won't work on ANY of the Boss Battle challenges after I check out gamefaqs. Here is where my blog topic comes in at. (btw the blog title is to quote a phrase a good friend of mine uses)

So my question is, who's idea was it to decide that the Golden Hammers which were MEANT TO BE USED ON CHALLENGES THAT YOU DIDN'T WANT TO DO OR THOUGHT WERE TOO HARD COULDN'T BE USED ON CERTAIN CHALLENGES? Seriously am I the only one that sees the complete fail in this?



I understand that Sakurai probably wanted to use these challenges to get you to try out modes that otherwise you may not have tried. However, I feel it should be my choice whether I want to do these things or not. Why force me to play through each difficulty? Sure I could just say screw it and not do it at all, but I love collecting stuff in games and I know a lot of other people are the same way. Now I feel a bit sorry for people out there that may want to get all the unlockables, but may not have the skill to complete all these challenges. I finally beat Boss Battles on Intense with Lucas after many, many tries, and even more curse words (probably over 9000).

Beating frustrating challenges in games like this may make you feel good once you finally do complete them, but in the end I'd still rather not be forced into doing near impossible tasks to get unlockables. There are plenty of other games that have super tough challenges too, from Goldeneye and the Facility Invincibility cheat, to Final Fantasy III DS and the optional Iron Giant battle, to collecting every heart piece and item in all the Zelda games. There are plenty of 360 achievements I'm sure that are pretty ridiculous to obtain too.

Having said that, I feel these challenges should be kept to the hardcore that enjoy doing these things just for the sake of doing them and having bragging rights. Developers......in the future, please keep all of the collectibles away from these challenges, thank you.

So I know everyone is sick of all the Brawl blogs, but I can't help myself, sorry. I've never gotten a game before the release date before, let alone a big game like Brawl.

Some of you may remember about a week or so ago that Sears was supposedly selling Brawl early. I didn't think too much of it, but Sears website said they had it ready to ship. So I figured what the heck, I'll just try it and see what happens.

A bunch of days go by and about 2 days ago I tried to cancel my order via e-mail. Sears said they couldn't do it, I was kinda pissed about that. But I check me e-mail today and I get an e-mail from Sears that says it's been shipped. Of course I got standard shipping, so I was like "cool, but it probably won't come till next week sometime." Then I check the tracking info on UPS's website, and it says 3/7/08- OUT FOR DELIVERY. I damn near shit myself when I read that. Few hours after I read the e-mail, and I now am about to pop Brawl into my Wii.

Oh, and for all those "Pics or it didn't happen" people......




And the best part about it was this slip of paper that came in the box with Brawl:




Ah, and finally, thanks to Dtoid member "D" who posted the blog about Sears selling the game early and making this possible for me, and GoNintendo for posting the story that "D" blogged about. Of course I should thank Sears too for not knowing what "street date" means and selling this early.

Ok, so this is my first blog post EVAR. I've been a bit of a lurker since I've been frequenting dtoid from about a year ago, but I've finally decided to post because it seems like something all the cool kids like to do around here. (and God has been bothering me constantly, it's like he's some kind of all seeing/knowing being or something.) Anyways, let me start off by telling you guys a bit about me since I plan on, you know, blogging more often and generally will be around here and there.

Um, so you can find some stuff about me over to the right. Some additional things I'd just like to throw out quickly is that I'm male, (big surprise, right?) I consider myself to have an awesome sense of humor, I'm from Michigan, (missed LarkOhiya's NARP unfortunately.....sad face) I really like hockey, (hence my Xbox Live Gamertag) and I'm apparently a big fan of adding sarcastic/additional comments in parenthesis near the end of sentences.(O RLY?)

Gaming-wise, I can really play anything, but my true love is probably RPG's. Some of my fave RPG's are Final Fantasy VII (actually NOT my first RPG), Grandia II (Was my first RPG), the Pokemon series, the Golden Sun Series, (make a new one Camelot!!!) and the Fire Emblem series, although I haven't played Radiant Dawn (Wii) or the Sacred Stones (GBA) yet, however I do own both. Oh and finally, I promise not to post any blogs about Smash Bros. Brawl (ok, maybe one or two...) even though I am extremely excited for it.

Phew, now that that is out of the way, Let me get to the main event. The title of my topic relates to video games (this is a gaming blog after all...) even though I'm sure some of you were thinking about something else....... so shame on you. So.....do you remember your first video game moment? Was it a happy experience? Did you get hooked after your first time playing, or did it happen later?

For me, my first gaming moment (at least in memory) was from this gem:




Yeah I'm sure it was a lot of peoples first gaming moment, but it was still special to me. I was about 4 or 5 when me and my brother got this thing called a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas. While my older brother played it first, (the jerk pushed me out of the way....I think.) I still sat there in amazement just watching this new experience. When it was finally my turn after my brother got bored, I'm sure there was a big stupid grin on my face when I picked up the controller. World 1-1 started up........and I vividly remember getting owned by the very first goomba.

You'd think I'd throw down the controller and give up. But from that moment, I think somewhere inside me I knew I'd be a gamer for years and years to come. I kept trying and eventually beat the first level. I'd go on to play Mario quite a bit over the following months and even years. However I don't think I ever beat SMB when I was younger, although I do remember getting to the last World.

Well, to the few of you that read through all that, let me turn things over to you. What was your first gaming moment like?