Well, today was the day that many of us were waiting for, the day Rockstar finally graced us with GTA4. I picked up my copy today but had to wait till just a little while ago to finally play it.

So, I tear the plastic open, insert the disc, sit through the opening cinema when I hear a horrible grinding noise.

"Did I just hear a grinding noise" I think to myself. My 360 has been making them lately but only when I exit out to the dashboard. I figure that I must have either imagined it or heard something in the game. Less than a minute later, grinding noise again. Now I freak out.

Wanting to test it, I put in another game. No grinding noise. Figuring it to be a fluke, I put GTA 4 back in. Not even 5 seconds in, grinding noises. I tough it out till I save after the first mission and take the disc out. That when I noticed that my fucking 360 has already scratched the disc (I wanted to get a picture but the camera's flash made it impossible to see the scratch) Looks like it's time to call MS and get an extended warranty.

The part that pisses me off about this is that it chose now to do this. Why couldn't it have decided to fuck me over when I bought Jumper?

So, today I hooked up my Dreamcast to play some Zombie Revenge and try out a controller that I bought at the thrift store last week. I plug in the controller, hook the system up and when I go to adjust the date and time I find out I can't move anything. It seems that the controller fried all my controller ports. So now, not only did I was $2 on a shit controller, but now I can't play my Dreamcast. Luckily it seems that controller ports are fairly inexpensive on eBay. Unfortunately I have zero skill in repairing systems. Looks like I'm stuck with a broke Dreamcast for the time being.

I love flea markets. They're like thrift stores, only with more old people without teeth, pornography, cheesy religious shirts that would make Jesus shake his head in disgust and greasy, yet delicious, "steak" sandwiches. For me though, they're all about good gaming deals, both retro and current. I had the day off work so I decided to go to a flea market about an hour away and found some excellent deals today. I picked up:

-9 NES games. I got Rygar, Shadowgate, The Adventures of Bayou Billy, Batman, Life Force, Blaster Master and Renegade for $2 each and Dick Tracy and Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse for $3 each.
-WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 for the PSP for $12
-Jackie Chan's Stuntmaster for the PS1 for $7
-Resident Evil 4 for the Wii for $20
-Atari Anthology for the PS2 for $6
-a movie called "Hamburger: The Motion Picture" (I guess calling it "Hamburger: The Movie didn't sound classy enough) for $1
-and probably the best find of the day, an issue of Warrior #1. A comic book written by The Ultimate Warrior. And it is awesome. As soon as I find my camera, I need to do a c-blog about this.

I did see some other interesting things there. One thing I wanted but didn't have the money for was a Turbo Grafx-16 for $70. Maybe next time...

Crap, how did I almost forget to enter this contest. Sorry for the crappy picture quality but I can't find my camera so I had to settle for my phone's camera.







I bought this PC back in October from some guy on Craigslist after my laptop died on me. He claimed that it's a gaming PC (going so far as to name his Windows name "Game Lover"). Its a dual core (about 2.6 GHZ combined), 1gb of ram, a so-so graphics card (can run, say Sam and Max with no problems, but had trouble with Jaws Unleashed) and an 80gb hard drive, Also, it has no DVD drive (who makes a PC with no DVD drive?) and USB ports that only work when they feel like it.

I think we might have found our next president.


And it seems she's already found a running mate.

Lets see you top that Obama!

About two weeks ago I posted a CB about how I had won a possible bootleg copy of Phantom Hourglass on eBay.. Well, I finally got it in the mail today and it turned out that it was indeed a bootleg. The front looked somewhat authentic enough but then I looked at the back



Despite having an ESRB "E"logo on the front, there was no ESRB content descriptor on the back. Also, the text on the back looked like it came from a preview article on Gamespot.



Well, the cartridge COULD fool me if I had never seen the real one itself. But the worst part is the instruction book. Oh sure, it looks innocent enough, till you look inside.


Really, could I even call it an instruction book? Its nothing but a review (once again, probably from Gamespot). Hell, even the pictures in the revie-er, I mean, "instruction book" are taken from Gamespot (the GS logo is visible in some of the pics)

So, now I'm out $22 on a bootleg DS game that could just up and die on me at any moment.

On a side note, when I went to leave feedback I noticed that he is no longer registered on eBay, coincidently after someone left him negative feedback for selling bootleg games.

On a somewhat lighter note, he was kind enough to include two tacky (and probably bootleg) neon orange rubber wristbands. Whee.