*sigh*

Last night I submitted a request to the Dept Of State through the FOIA to secure any documents , laws , or legal statutes for the state of MD that pertain to contests of chance and or gambling through tournaments. One might be wondering why I did such a thing....well here you go

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/h/halo3/championship/rules.htm

[i]"2. Eligibility

You are eligible to enter this Tournament (a "Player"), if you meet the following requirements at time of entry:

* You are a legal resident of the United States, but not a resident of Vermont, Maryland, Puerto Rico, or any other U.S. territory or possession; and
* You are 18 years of age or older; and
* You have access to a Microsoft Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system, the Halo® 3 video game, and you are an Xbox LIVE Gold member in good standing; and
* You are not an employee of Microsoft Corporation (the "Sponsor", "us", "we" or "our"), 38th Floor Productions Inc., MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc., or their respective parents, divisions, subsidiaries and/or affiliated companies, licensees, advertising and promotional agencies, or any of their immediate family members (including, without limitation, spouse, parent(s), child(ren), sibling(s), and their respective spouses) or those living in the same households, whether or not related, of such individuals.

This Tournament is void in MD, VT, Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories and possessions and wherever else prohibited by law."[/i]

It was the same situation for the Bomberman tourney , the Emergence Day events , GRAW 2 Launch event , PGR3 Weekend Racing event...the list goes on.



Now if anyone on this little rock known as Destructoid can shed some light on this I would be forever grateful. I've searched online , spent a while gunning through MD's online legal catalogue and I can't find anything...so my last hope lies in some random member knowing thelaw or reasons or the massive amount of paperwork that is going to arrive(hopefully) soon that I'm going to read through and find out why Marylanders and natives of VT are being shafted. And in all honesty if I can gather enough information and support I am seriously going to look into changing this. It's not fair in the least that our states are cornholed out of participating in these contests.

Your resident Revolutionary

-Rev

I absofuckinglutely love point and click games. They formed my trifecta of gaming that I was weened on while I was but a lad which consisted of

Rail shooters
Jurassic Park on the GB
Point and click

They have always played on my love of detective oriented stories and mysteries and clicking stuff to discover stuff o.O. Anyway onto the point of this post.


Very few people can tell me who Benoit Sokal is , I respect that. He is the man who is responsible for some of the greatest games ever created in the point and click genre and for the PC in general. Some of his credits are

-Siberia(Omg T_T so good)
-Paradise
-Amerzone(I never played this but I've read good things)

So last year he announced what was to be his last game , known as "Sinking Island" which told the tale of an island that was literally sinking under the weight of a massive art deco hotel that took it's residence on the isle. You play detective Jack Norm sent to investigate the murder of a billionaire found dead at the bottom of the tower...the thing is you have three days before the hotel sinks and all of your evidence goes kaput with it. The game was to utilize a time system akin to Mask of Majora where you have a preset amount of time to get shit done and your evidence slowly sinks as time passes. Now normally I wouldn't make such a fuss about a new PC point and click but his company.

http://www.whitebirdsproductions.com/

Have also stated that they are working on a DS version. Not to mention that they are working on a DS port of "Paradise" to be titled "The Last King of Africa"...hopefully with voicing by Forrest Whittaker...sorry bad movie joke.

-Rev

First and foremost I apologize for the lackluster title of the post...It's been a long day. Anyway I ordered a new r4 for my Ds( the r4 is a modified DS cart that lts you use homebrew , roms , mp3 , and other neat shit on a micro sd on your DS) and decided that maybe I should start looking into homebrew. Afterall I hacked the living hell out of my PSP and I've enjoyed most of the homebrew that has been dev'd for it so far , so why not assume I would for the DS?...well I was wrong. Most of the homebrew on the DS kinda blows(with the exeception of Moonshell). None the less I kept perusing through the pages of http://www.ndshb.com/ in the hopes that I may find somthing cool to toss on my DS. What I came across was this


http://home.comcast.net/~olimar/DS/jumbotron/

And while it's not homebrew I must admit that the idea of an oversized DS is kind of cool. If people are willing to carry around the Mac Book Air then I'd def carry around a Uber DS and you can't tell me you wouldn't either! Anyway what hit the link there for the nitty gritty. I just wanted to share it with you guys since we seem to be intrigued with retarded happenings in the gaming-verse.

-Rev

A little known fact about your resident Revolutionary is that I've been reading the Guiness book since I was about twelve. I could never explain why , but I was always been fascinated with reading about the mundane to the extraordinary efforts of humankind. Well last year they were kind enough to announce a new edition to the standard "Book"...a gaming edition. As you can assume my heart skipped a beat and I immediately flew into action. After about an hours worth of digging I found out that they had been in collab with Twin Galaxies(If you don't know who they are....for shame) for about two years , compiling and gathering these records , and readying this amazing little book. Well I've been waiting since last year for this book and I finally got my copy in the mail yesterday and I must admit that for $20...any self respecting gamer owes it to themselves to pick up a copy. They've broken it down into sections for the popular titles , such as

GTA
Castlevania
Metroid
Halo
Mario

You get the idea. Then it moves into an entire sports section broken down by the individual sport. After that they've even added a portable Twin Galaxies scorechart for old school arcade title.

http://gamers.guinnessworldrecords.com/

That is the official site for the book there. You can make an account and submit your own records...but be warned , obviously , Guiness has strict guidelines set around recording a record so check out the do's and dont's before you try and submit your record for "Most Hookers capped in VC". Hopefully enough people will buy the book so it becomes a staple in their lineup....hell the original Guiness is the most popular book in the world other then the bible and I refuse to believe that I am the only gamer that reads it. Anyway I just thought I'd drop that tidbit on ya.

-Rev

For the past few weeks while at work I've been spending alot of my downtime writing out chapter structure and ideas for a book that I'm writing for a few friends of mine that discuss some of our common held beliefs on modern society. Now I've fleshed out and written the first and second chapters along with a prologue. I intend to have ten chapters when finished along with an epilogue. Now all of my writing that I've ever done has been for personal use (with the exception of a collection of poetry that I did for our newspaper) , but when I showed a few of my old teachers and a few colleagues that I had written they told me I should try to publish it. Now I've never made an attempt to publish anything in my life and it seems silly to me that people would actually want to purchase a book of this nature.

Anyway I figured I'd ask for the opinions of my fellow D'tards since our little community tends to be a fair bit more level headed then 98% of the intarweb.

Quick Synop of Chapters 1,2

Chapter 1: The Demon Diaries

-Deals mainly with child rearing in modern society. Broad view compiled with smaller base opinions formed around personal experiences.

Chapter 2: Circuit Bored

-Deals with widespread electronic ignorance(Elderly refusal to attempt to learn basic cpu use , etc). Focused view on segments of society.

PS: If anyone who reads this has ever been published and wouldn't mind posting a few primers on the steps involved I'd be really appreciative.

Well ladies and gents we find ourselves on the precipous(SP?) of a new year. New possibilities , new one night stands , new bad music , new cinema , and new games with which we invest our god given capatalistic wages and time...only to find out that we would have been better off trying to collect a metric ton of monkey spunk in a bathtub. So my question for you is what do you think the hot trends this year will be. What will make it and what will fake it?

Without further adue I present Revolutionary's top ten trends of 2008


10) The Rise of E-Paper.

-In all honesty this is more of a hope then an actual predicition. I've been reading articles everywhere about how Sony and Microsoft have been putting R&D into E-Paper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

To me it has always seemed like the ideal resource to reduce logging issues. Who wouldn't want a tiny one sheet digital instruction guide with MGS4 or GoW2? granted the tech is still in development but I think we will hear more about this in '08.

9) Lowest viewed MLB season in history.

- Ever since the fiasco that the Mitchell Report has stirred up I've seen more and more old school MLB fans turn their back from the sport. It was known as Americas Pasttime , but with more and more negative light being reflected onto the sport it's obvious that the sport needs a serious revision. With declining ratings in the All Star Games and the World Series for almost 8 years and an increase in NFL and NBA popularity 2008 is going to have a rough time pulling people back into the MLB.

8) Internet TV shows will gain ground.

- Most major TV networks have already noted that they are looking into webisode based TV series. I'm not 100% sure how well this will play out but with the widespread usage of the internet , lowered costs for broadband access , and the price of PC's lowering to ridiculous standards I would not be suprised if this trend caught on

7) Celebrity Deaths.

-I never said these would all be happy or tech related >.>. With the amount of coke and sex that modern days teen starlets take part in I would not be suprised if we saw some serious celeb deaths in '08. Hell even putting the blow and cock aside these celebs drive worse then Billy Joel after one too many Tequilla Slammers.

6) Welcome to 4G.

-With the 700MHZ Wireless Spectrum auction fast approaching I'm tossing my opinion into the ring and saying that with the inevitable adoption of HSOPA to most cellphone providers , massively increased air support , and increased service range that the trop providers AT&T , Verizon , Sprint , will begin to experiement with over-the-air boradband speeds approaching 150+MBPS. With wireless net speeds set to double , HDD and flash memory increasing my leaps and bounds , international GSM functionality becoming widespread and supported , and the 700MHZ spectrum being auctioned off I'm damn sure that the era of 3g will be coming to an end sooner then most think.

5) Judd Apatow and company=Funny.

- After having seen Talladega , Knocked up and Superbad I'm damn certain that these guys are the new comic geniuses. With his National lampoon-esque quick riffs and jabs and frequent casting of newcomers who display this comic bravado that I havn't seen since the early days of Mad Tv and SNL Judd Apatow and Co have what it takes to define modern day comedy(at least for me). Keep an eye out for "The Pineapple Express"

4) Indy/Underground= Cool?

- With more and more great titles being released on XBL and the PSN I'm damn certain that '08 will usher in the era of wicked indy/UG development. We saw alot of fantastic titles in 2007 and we can only hope that 2008 keeps the trend up. Now I'd also like to point out that I mean software and app creation also. With people continuing to utilize the PSP , DS , iPhone , and tons of other devices only time will tell what our beloved internet will bring to our mobile devices.

3) Touchscreen across the board.

-We are all videogame fans. We've witnessed the meteoric rise of the DS onto the throne of handheld gaming and I'm damn sure that we are tech fans on some level so we watched the iPhone grab the nuts of the cell phone world and pull. With touchscreen functionality available to the mass market at the cheapest it's ever been we have seen dozens of companies experiment with it and release their respective devices on the market. From the Nintendo DS to Sony's E-Book...it's apparent that we enjoy putting our fingers on things o.O Nowhere has touchscreen been implemented more in 2007 then in the cellphone world with the release of such devices as the iPhone , the HTC Touch , Tytn , LG Prada , and the LG Voyager. My call is that with acoustic pulse recognition and dispersive signal technology being studied by MIT and the DoD I'm sure we will see some great strides made in touchscreen.

2)Ps3 will start to be cool?

- I have to admit...I owned a Ps3 and sold it to make a quick $...do I regret it...not one bit. When I got my Ps3 was at launch and while I thought it looked neat it just did not have enough titles to hook me into keeping a $600+ system...now '08 may change that. With games like MGS4 , La Noire , Killzone , and God Of War 3 in dev or set to come out I can definitely see the Ps3 moving up in the world. Not to mention that all of the titles PLUS lowered system costs are a definite upside to buying one.


And what is my numero uno call for 2008? What will top my list of the big things to happen next year!

.....
....
...
..
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1) Wii will Wii will...not rock you?

-I owned a Wii for three months and in those three months there were no games released for the system that could warrant me not selling it to make a pretty penny. Now I've played Galaxy and I'm sure that Brawl will be great...but I'm sorry to all of you Wii fanboys out there. Your system is a fad and it's a fad that will start to burn out in '08. Hell even Nintendo was surprised at the success of the Wii and I have to admit that I still am. I don't see enough solid title coming out for the Wii in '08 for me to to not make this call and all I see are Nintendo playing their "indecisive card" which is causing the real potential of th system to be lost. I could pound out each and every thing that the Wii needs to maintain it's staying power but for now I'll list a few.

-Lose friend numbers. Jesus christ these annoyed the fuck out of me and they still do. Let people name their system or their Mii and use that as the defacto rep for their system for online play or w.e

-Streamline your damn near non-existant online functionality.I understand that the Wii is primarily a single player experience. But with a huge multiplayer title like Brawl coming out you should be focusing your efforts on maximizing what the Wii ca do online. Hell look at what a good online network did for Microsoft?...aside from spawn racists >.>;

-Wireless sensor bar. The Wii has a bluetooth sensor...can we please just go completely wireless. If you can pound out the lag in the control and nunchauku then I'm damn certain you can make a functioning wireless sensor bar.

-This one aint so big...but can I get more colors? I'd really like to see the red , green , orange , and black Wii be released like you originally planned.

Well guys thats it for my 2008 call. Some may happen and some may not...but hey , who really cares? We are going to get some bitching games and tech devices. So I raise my glass to you fellow D-tards *raise* Happy New Year

-Rev