Monthly Archives: September 2009

Sep 12 2009
Uncategorized

Street Fighter IV

The nice part about Street Fighter IV is that if I want a human opponent, I can just go online and find a human opponent.  The not so great part is finding out that my Street Fighter game has degraded since I was putting quarters up on the lip of the screen at the Yellow Brick Road arcade in University Town Center.

I’m a poor player.  My crossups are non existent.  My distance awareness is poor.  Execution is not so great.  Bread and butter combos feel difficult to pull off.  And the timing, well, don’t get me started on my timing.

That said, I’m having a really good time playing online.  Even if, after the consecutive losses people start selecting their second and third (and sometimes fourth) tier characters.  At least I haven’t lost to Dan yet, but I’m feeling like someone’s going to pull that on me at some point.

I’m sticking with Ryu, since at least I can feel like I’m somewhat competent.  At least the move list is familiar.

Through the losses I’m getting a better feel for the styles of play.  By the third match online I was reading the throw setups and escaping them at least some of the time. There were a couple of opponents that were well matched with my skill level, but since I wasn’t playing in ranked matches, I was getting a wide variance of players and styles.  I’ll head in to ranked matches at some point.

It’s kind of embarrassing, I put my quarter up and I’m not even there for three rounds.

But then I put my quarter up at the end of the line anyway, compelled to see if I can just get a little bit better next time.

And this time it doesn’t cost me money.

Well, after purchasing the 360, and the Street Fighter IV, the Tournament stick, and the Xbox Live Gold Membership.

Man.  I’ve got a lot of quarters to catch up with.

Sep 09 2009
Games

Nine, nine, ninety-nine to nine, nine, oh-nine

It’s been ten years since the midnight I liberated a chair from the Pentagon City food court and parked myself in front of the Electronics Boutique.

For the Sega Dreamcast.

A revolutionary console at the time, it had the unfortunate timing of being released within a year of the PlayStation 2’s North American release.  It really heralded the dawn of Online Connectivity.  It shipped with a modem and I eventually upgraded mine to an Ethernet module.  Now it’s hard to imagine a modern console without an online component.

But there I was, lined up in a food court with about a hundred or so other people.  Then midnight came and the line was processed entirely within a couple of hours.  I came away with the Dreamcast itself, a copy of Soul Calibur and the Sonic game, a Visual Memory Unit and a second controller for Soul Calibur.  I have some fond, fond memories of Soul Calibur.

Sonic, not so much.

Waiting in line for midnight launch of a a new piece of hardware was just one of those things I did when I was in my mid twenties.  Now, it’s not something I’d do again, like sleeping on the street for the release of a movie.

With video games, I feel like I’m not that crazy, although there are friends of mine who will disagree.  These are the same friends who, thankfully have not scheduled an intervention.

Sometimes, when I look at the receipts from those days, I wish they had.

Sep 03 2009
Technology, writing

Old Tech

I threw away some old Motorola Talkabouts today.  So old that they did not even have LCD screens to show you the channel ID and the security code.  Instead, you did some strange button combination that required fingers to be in different places on your hand.

That button combination is now lost in the sands of time.

When it was performed successfully, the radio would then speak the numbers aloud, in an unsettling voice that would vary the emphasis between syllables.

“Seven.  Thirteen.”

I remembered carrying them with me in my daily bag.   “Just in case,” although the cases wherein I needed them were always few and far between.

The times that I did use them regardless of whether or not I needed them were far more often.  Like grocery shopping, or running into the drugstore while another person waited in the car.  Over time, they’ve saved me perhaps two  minutes while I told someone to meet me at the storefront instead of having me walk back to the car.

I remember using them, clipped on my belt, to coordinate friend’s moving days.  I remember scheduling lunch at some of the earliest Anime conventions I attended.  Coordinating student events in college was also another use.  I remember using them, for some reason, while shopping in White Flint mall.

Now, text messaging is far more efficient and reliable.

I looked at them before I threw them out.  The rubber had taken on the greyish white tinge of decay.  One of them was missing a volume knob.  The weight of one indicated that I had left batteries inside, and I knew that opening the battery compartment was a bad idea.  The manufacturing date was June, 1998.

They had been in the drawer for probably over a decade, following me from dorm room to a house that I rented to a condo I rented to a house that I now own.  They probably stopped working two or three moves ago, maybe longer than that.

It was time to let them go, but not the memories that accompanied them.

I made a mental note to take the batteries out of the six other radios that I had, and dumped them in the blue bin that my building uses for electronic devices trash.