I dunno about you, but one of my favorite things to do when I'm hungover is play a game that I've beaten before. Lately, I've been playing Ocarina of Time, but other examples are the Metal Gear Solid series, Mario 64, Twilight Princess, A Link to the Past, Okami, Castle Crashers, and others. I dunno why it is, but for some reason it's really one of my favorite things to do after a long night of getting hammered. Actually, me and my friends love drinking and playing games so much that we've even come to describe the activity of being really drunk as "Super Smashed Bros." and "Warhammered Online".

Gaming while hungover beats watching TV cause it keeps me active mentally. And my friends who get wasted and pass out on the couch enjoy watching me play the games. You don't have to talk to people so that's nice. Also, gaming lends itself to sitting in a dark room, and we all know that the sun is the arch nemesis of some one who is hungover.

I thought I'd more articulate with this blog, but I'm actually hungover at the moment.

What are your favorite games to play when hungover? Bonus points: What are your favorite games to get drunk to? (mine are Mariokart, Rock Band, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Warioware Smooth Moves)

So I have reached a roadblock. I am trying to play the old school DOS versions of King's Quest V and VI (two great games from my childhood) and I keep having trouble emulating it. I have gotten a few files off of abandonware websites and I Googled a few different programs that should have run them. I tried using DOSBox and WINUAE.

Does anyone know a simple way to set this all up? I have removed all the files I downloaded due to frustration. Does anyone know of a free flash version of these games? I tried Googling those as well with poor results.

Tech Specs of my PC:
Laptop running Windows XP SP2
1.73 GHz processor
1 GB RAM
14.8 GB HDD

Any ideas? Also, post your thoughts about the King's Quest series.

Here's my top 10 list, based on how much I enjoyed them, how long I spent playing and replaying them, how much fun I had with them in group settings, and how just plain badass they are:

1. Metal Gear Solid 4

The best series of video games ever comes to an end with this game. I'm playing it through for a 3rd time at the moment and it just keeps getting better and better. If you've played any of the Metal Gear Solid games or if you've just heard me rant about the storyline, you need to play this game. Seriously, the PS3's price tag and this game are worth the cost. Metal Gear?

2. Super Smash Bros. Brawl

This game got me interested in Metal Gear Solid, so I've gotta give it props. Also, this is one of my default games to sit around and drink while playing it with friends. I wasn't too hype about it before its release, but once I got it, I just couldn't stop playing it. The single player story mode is actually pretty good and of course the multiplayer brawling brings the ruckus. This game is definitely a staple of the Wii and it has refined a series that has spanned the last 3 Nintendo consoles. I'll definitely be playing it quite often until the next edition comes out.

3. Little Big Planet

The creativity involved in the level design of this game is just astounding. Just playing through the story mode is enough for me, but on top of that, they give you the developer tools to make your own levels and share them with the world. Not nearly as good as Metal Gear Solid 4, this game is still definitely a worthy purchase for your PS3.

4. Castle Crashers

The time spent at my house playing this game is staggering. We played this game from start up to completion many many times, mostly because of how much fun it is to beat the living shit out of some bad guys with your swords and magic. Additionally, the fact that you can level up your characters and give them all kinds of badass powers through repeated plays makes this game extremely addicting. People keep saying that Left 4 Dead got the cooperative multiplayer campaign idea down perfectly; I say Castle Crashers did it first and better.

5. Megaman 9

Easily the most ridiculous game of the year considering the technology available to developers, this game is also one of this year's best. It plays upon the fact that I love old school Megaman without giving me any of the bullshit from later iterations of Megaman. I mean, if you give me a game with exactly the same game play mechanics as an old Megaman, I'll love it no matter what. 8-bit 4 life!

6. Legend of Zelda - Phantom Hourglass

Ok, true, this game came out in late 2007, but I didn't play it til this year so to me, it's a 2008 release. It's a direct sequel to the Wind Waker, but with much better controls. Actually, the touch screen controls of this game make it, in my opinion, the best handling Zelda game ever. The developers also did a lot of really creative stuff with the dual screens of the DS. Also, probably one of the best parts of this game is the fact that one part of it borrows the Soloton Radar from Metal Gear Solid, so of course I'm going to love it.

7. Braid

Definitely the most creative game play mechanic of this or any other century is the time controlling of Braid. The sparse story and familiar game play style make it reminiscent of older platformers like Mario and Megaman, but the fact that you can control the flow of time makes this game unique to itself. Plus, it's just beautiful to look at and listen to, and I loved solving the puzzles.

8. Lost Winds

Definitely an under appreciated game of this year, Lost Winds was another platformer with an interesting twist. Controlling wind and using it as a 2nd jump, as well as using it to push fire and water where you needed it to go make this game stick out in my mind as a great game for 2008.

9. Grand Theft Auto 4

Definitely not worth any of the hype it got, but it was still a fun play through. The story was boring, the missions kinda got repetitive, and the graphics made the people look like shiny monkeys in a time where graphics should make the people look like people. But it was still kinda fun. The multiplayer is surprisingly good considering this is the first time they've had true multiplayer in a GTA game.

10. Guitar Hero 2

Though I don't own this game, my room mate does and we got quite a lot of miles out of his broken-ass guitars. I like playing bass or singing, and this is another great "sit around and get wasted while you play it" kind of game.

Best Game Rediscovered in 2008:

Mariokart 64

I'll definitely be rediscovering the badass-ness of this game every year til I die, but this year, it holds a special place in my heart because of how badly I destroyed Tom, Glen, and Glen's brother the other day. December 19th, 2008 will be a day that will live on in infamy because of how badly I kicked their asses. With nearly double the 1st place finishes of anyone else playing, I am single handedly the best Mariokart 64 player in the universe. Suck my dick.

I write rap songs about super heroes. I haven't done it in a while though, but every time I listen to this song, I think "I should really post that song on Destructoid." For some reason, I never did, until today.

With the release of Megaman 9, I have come to realize why I love this series of games so much. I love that you can know everything there is to know about the mechanics of the game and still get your ass kicked by new level and enemy design. This, coupled with the fact that I listened to my Megaman song about 50 times today made me realize that I should finally get around to posting it here.

I produced the music and wrote and recorded the lyrics back in December of 2006. I've written a whole series of songs about super heroes (though none of the others are video game heroes) and I had plans to shoot music videos for each one, but they have fallen through due to the fact that I'm really busy with working and drinking all the time. Other heroes I've given the D-Sane treatment to include Spider-Man, Batman, Thundercats, Spawn, etc. If you want to hear any of those songs, let me know and I'll link you up. In the mean time, enjoy this song about Megaman.

So I dunno about you, but I'm impressed with the video download service that Sony is now offering. Launched tonight, it's kinda badass. I haven't downloaded anything yet, but I'm really more impressed with the quantity of titles and the relative ease of purchasing/renting movies without having to go to Blockbuster or whatever. And since I won't have to become a member of something like Netflix and pay a mandatory $10/month, I'll have more freedom of when I want to watch a movie (instead of feeling pressure to watch a movie as soon as it comes in the mail and then return it to get the full benefit of the service, as many of my friends with Netflix must do).

The reason I haven't downloaded anything yet is cause I imagine I'll be renting more than purchasing (and I don't have time to watch a movie at the moment). The cost is much lower to rent and I usually only watch a movie once or twice anyway, so this is a great idea for me. I can imagine myself renting some movies from this service that I'd never have an interest in seeing, just cause of the price. Also, I have downloaded game trailers, game add-ons, full game titles, etc. from the PSN store and I've always been very impressed with the speed of downloading, so I'll probably use the video store to grab stuff that's available rather than using a torrent (torrents can be such a hassle sometimes).

What do you think of the new video download service from Playstation?

I arrived at my obsession with the Metal Gear Solid franchise in a roundabout fashion. Unlike most people who play this game series, I never owned an original Playstation so I didn't get started with this game series at the same time as most people. One of my friends had the a PS1 and I wasn't too impressed with the games. He'd always rant and rave about Metal Gear Solid and I just assumed he was crazy. I was a Nintendo kid, so I was too busy playing Mario 64 and the like. I mean, at the time, they didn't even really have stealth combat games. It was just shooters and action games, so I didn't really know what to think of this Metal Gear Solid business.

However, when the PS2 came out, I temporarily jumped ship from Nintendo in favor of playing Grand Theft Auto 3. I had heard so many great things that I sold all my video games and consoles (I had a Sega Genesis smuggled in there somewhere) to buy a PS2 and GTA3. But even with the backwards compatability of the system, I never got around to playing Metal Gear Solid. I never even heard people talking about MGS2 or MGS3. Eventually I got sick of the PS2 and sold it in favor of going back to the N64, specifically so I could play Mario 64 (well before the days of the Wii Virtual Console).

More recently, right before the PS3 came out, I spent a year working at a local used CD/DVD/video game store where one of my co-workers was also obsessed with Metal Gear Solid. I didn't see the reason, really. At the time, the original game, used, was worth more than the PS1 system. Then one day at work, that co-worker hooked up a PS1 and played the game through to the end. It was pretty interesting, but it didn't latch its teeth into my psyche quite yet. I suppose I would have liked it more had I played it rather than watched the co-worker.



When Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out on the Wii, everyone made such a huge deal about Snake being a playable character. I didn't really care too much though. Mario and Link and link were my boys -- Nintendo kid to the end, or so I thought. Through the course of the game, I unlocked Snake as a playable character and he instantly became my favorite, surpassing even Link. This was based entirely on what I had seen in the Brawl game, not on any pre-concieved attraction to playing as the character (similarly, one of my friends has never played Fire Emblem, but he loves playing as Marth).



Last month, a month before Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out, I stopped back into that store that I used to work at. The same co-worker was still there and I mentioned how I loved playing as Snake on Brawl. He told me that if I loved Snake so much, he'd cut me a deal on a used copy of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for Game Cube. I figured, what the hell, I might as well. I took the game home, popped it in, and spent the next 6 hours playing it. I knew then that I was hooked. I knew that the cutscenes and the storyline were all specifically designed to keep the player playing, but this knowledge didn't phase me. I had Metal Gear Solid Mania.

In the last 4 weeks, I have spent every waking hour that I wasn't working playing some form of Metal Gear Solid game. I even went so far as to re-buy a PS2 specifically to play MGS2 and MGS3. I have it so bad that yesterday when I got home from work, I played MGS3 for 12 hours straight, sacrificing the needs to sleep, eat, and use the restroom just so I could beat it. I stayed up til 6 am and I missed a day of work today just so that I could finish MGS3. I figure what better way to spend the day after that than writing up a blog about how much you love the franchise. If that's not obsession, I don't know what is.

I am going to buy a PS3 for the sole purpose of playing MGS4 when it comes out next Thursday (well, I'll also play some GTA4 too since I can't play that on the Wii). I might even buy a PSP for the sole purpose of playing Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops so that I can continue the Naked Snake/Big Boss storyline. Sony and Konami have conspired with the devil to make me spend the most amount of money possible and strangely, I don't even mind it.

It's amazing to me how my Nintendo brand loyaltee was instantly shattered by these games. I mean, I still love Nintendo and all, but my love is more rational now. I won't hold Nintendo on a pedistal any more. I realize that Super Mario Galaxy can't even shake a stick at Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, which is kind of sad considering the 3 and a half year gap between their release dates (And even more sad because Twin Snakes is based on a game that came out around the same time as Mario 64). The weirdest thing to me about this whole process that I went through is that it took two Nintendo games to make me switch my brand loyaltee to Playstation.

I love Metal Gear Solid.