Coming home from a long, long day of working in the salt mines, I found an overseas package in front of my bedroom door. The small package had been sent from Japan and was labeled to contain "juice."

Who would send me something from Japan? And what the fuck is juice?!

My old brain, salt sodded from years of toiling in the mines, eventually clued into the memory that ParaParaKing said that he would send us RFGO! peeps something special from Japan.

The above picture is of the Mega Man E-drink that's available in Japan, and of a flier to what seems like the most awesome arcade (?) around.

Thank you, ParaParaKing. You are super-freaking-awesome!

<3

(No, I will not open it and drink it. It's too awesome to be be ingested by non-humans :)

Yesterday was the big celebration for King Friday's birthday. You may know him as John Kopp, or Cape Guy (you PAX attendees understand :), but if you don't know of him, then all you need to know is that he's the most royal member of Team Awesome.

More pics to follow!

Boring? Not really. But if you're a fan of the show, you may have heard me rag on the GTA series on a few occasions, and this column (written by my friend Darren Gladstone, PC World) satirically sums up why.

Darren's column is based on the premise that the GTA world is completely open to the type of play style you bring to the table, and he brings the most boring one he can think of. Now most people in the video game world play the GTA series to blow up cars and smack up hookers and those other supposed other things that you can't do in real life (I guess?), and you will be quick to say that "he's doing it wrong!", but bear with me for a second.

The bonus to all those illicit virtual adventures, is a world that tries to mimic ours, and thereby trying encapsulate the player into the game. That's pretty cool, but it leads to one of my beefs with the series, because the virtual world that they have is very much like our own, with GTA IV being even more so.

As you know, you can spend hours upon hours watching tv, checking email, or just driving around. You can even try and date some ladies by taking them out to a bar.

This is very much like my actual life.

So, with that being said, the only draw to the game for me would be the criminal aspects that you can emulate. You know, the "blow up cars and smack up hookers" part? Well, sadly, it is not a draw for me. I've never been compelled by the series siren song of becoming the The Man, if you know what I mean.

Hold off, though, I'm not condemning the game, I'm just saying that it isn't my cup of tea (so keep a lid on it fanny boys!). The game is fantastic at what it does, but what it does it not something I want, that's all.

And my friend's column, along with being funny, points out that if you played the game by using your IRL behavior, that it would be boring. He then goes to turn that argument on its ear and say that it can't be a murder sim, at least it can't if you don't want it to be. Regardless, he makes a good point: If you're not playing the criminal role, the game is merely a life simulator, and a boring life at that.

Anyway, go ahead and check out his column here to see his take on it, and see what you think. Feel free to contribute your points of view, maybe you guys can help me "get it" with this series. I feel as I may be missing out on something here.

Hello folks,

If you're reading this, we have all died in a plane crash in Paraguay.

Just kidding! If you're reading this then you are, hopefully, a fan of RetroforceGO! And the reason that you are here at this humble host's Cblog, is the fact that things went a little wonky with this week's episode.

Since you've made it this far, I can only assume that you already know the how and why of it all, so I won't rehash the entire story again. What I will do, is stop rambling and provide you with the link that you'll need to download the Not Really Episode 44.

That link would be RIGHT HERE.

By the way, this week's Highlights! are all of you.


<3's from RFGO!

(My twin posts of the day seem to be very Chad Concelmo-ish, which is not a bad thing.)

So, not only did I find something that I think is pretty awesome, earlier today. I also had something delivered to my house that happened to be along the lines of awesome. See the above pic to see the package that came to my door, courtesy of Luzer7072 (next to the tasty Ramen!).

Now look below to see the box's contents. And yes, I am wearing bear slippers.



Just how fucking awesome is Luzer7072? Incredibly fucking awesome.

Also,

So last night, I decided that I was a little too sick to work, but apparently, I wasn't too sick to go out on the town. No Russian pizza delivery guys were harmed in my evening's festivities, but the how, and the when, of how I got home along with the latter part of the evening, is a complete mystery to my memory.

Upon waking up early this morning (for reasons I can only assume to be that I passed out early last night?), I took it upon myself to have some Ramen, and do some cleaning.

What did i find? Well: I hate cleaning; I have a big ol' bump on my head, from what I don't know; and I found a PlayStation 1 Memory Card that I've had since, well, since the PlayStation 1 came out. When finding it, I put it inot my PS2 to see what game saves I still had on it, and lo and behold, there was a FF7 save on there.

Now we all know how I feel about the Final Fantasy series, and how number seven was my turning point for letting it go (I did try again with nine, but some dipshit friend of mine lost my copy of it and I never got to finish it), so I grabbed my roomies original copy from his room and loaded up my saved game.

According to the game, I'm on disc two and in the town of Mideel. I can't remember how far along in the game's narrative I am (do you?), but as you can see from the above pic, I've been playing for 38 hours.

Why is this a big deal? Well, to you it may not be, but one thing that the picture doesn't show is the last time I played the game. Shit you not, I haven't played FF7 since the game came out.

Yes, this saved game file is 11 years old, and still says Dyson. I rule.