PixlBit

    So I know I've been whining a lot the last few weeks over my friend not being available to play games, but I have actually played a fair amount on my own.

   I remember this feeling back in the 80's when I was mad for music and collected vinyl albums whenever I had some cash to spend. When CD's started coming out, I was even more enthusiastic and, on weekends, I would jump on my bike with my lawn mowing money and dash to one of the fly-by-night import CD stores that cropped up to get the first CD pressings of my favorite albums. I used to fight with a friend of mine, who was crazy for music too, over who got to buy the one copy the store had of Genesis' Lamb Lies Down on Broadway album - fresh from the U.K.. It was $40 for that double album on CD (probably like $80 today), but I was so excited, I didn't care. Well, now I'm that way about video games. I have a friend who's just as mad for them as I, and I can't help myself when I think a new release might be hard to find down the road. I just have to break my budget and get it. Today was such a day and I picked up Dragon's Crown for Vita and Shin Megami Tensei IV for 3DS after being haunted by them for over a month. Whoopie!

    My buddy is still MIA this week and so I went and got some more games to feed the Cheery Chievo Chipper, ie. my Xbox 360. How many games could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck games. Well, this woodchuck can chuck a lot of games as long as someone OPENS THE GAME ROOM! Ah, well. At least I get to do another blog on the games I got before I go O.D. on Yogo froyo. DEATH BY BRAIN FREEZE!!! OH YEAH!

    After going to four Gamestops within a ten mile radius of where I live, a Chick-Fil-A lunch, and several stops to blog at coffee shops, I've finished my day of picking up used games. I now have all but one (Panzer Tactics [DS]) of the non-Xbox 360 games I wanted that came out '06-'07. I'll have to save now for two weeks, but I'm pretty happy with my purchases. To finish off this rather lonely but fun day, I'm going to see the movie Planes. I don't have much hope for the story, but I'm going to love seeing all the different planes used. 

    Today my usual gaming buddy is MIA and so to ease my depression and loneliness, I thought I'd go on a game hunt. I'm filling out my collection of games I want to play from 2006 and 7. It's a good group to source from because the games are cheap and will probably not be in GameStop stores for much longer. I'm breaking my budget a little bit, but I'll be paying myself back over this coming week, so no worries there; although, I'm trying to remain cautious - I know how spending sprees can get out of hand. 

     I was listening to the Brainy Gamer podcast today and heard about this new indie publisher Press Select. Their mission is to publish books about videogames. So if you're thinking about doing a longer form piece, they may be someone you could submit to. Here's their web page link: http://pressselectpubhttp://pressselectpublishing.com/blogs/news/8672969-welcome-to-press-selectlishing.com/blogs/news/8672969-welcome-to-press-select

     When arcades were all the rage and Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders ruled the day, going to the arcade was the ultimate video game experience and they were everywhere. Second to that were home consoles and you had three choices: The Atari's AVCS (later Atari 2600), Mattel's Intellivision, and Coleco's ColecoVision. They had lots of ports of arcade games and a host of original titles perfectly suited to their respective systems. Lastly, you could also play games on the first affordable home computers. In North America you had: the Commodore 64, the Tandy's TRS-80 (I used to call it the Trash 80, but I was just being a snob), the pricey IBM PC 5150 (something a rich Aunt of mine had), or an Apple IIc (the one my parents got). Arcades, consoles, computers. You had it all.