2013 Motorsports Recap! Part 2, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Hello boys and girls!  You know what time of the year it is...it's CHRISTMAS time which means more ass-kicking race car clips for you!!  Let's begin.


The All-Star Race is a side attraction to the circus show to the NASCAR, but at least they got one good thing going for it.  Qualifying for the All-Star Race is different than regular season races and is a little game of its own.  Each driver runs three laps and has to make one pit stop.  There's no speed limit on pit road so they ZOOM right on through!  See the Beginner course trick from Daytona USA.  Bitch please, I drive through pits to shave 1.5 seconds off my laps. Though in NASCAR, you have to stop in your pit lane, so yeah, there's that too.

Messing up your pit docks you time penalties so don't screw up.  Top three qualifiers get $50K, $10K, and $5K respectively to share between themselves and their pit crews.


In previous years preceding the All-Star Race was the Pit Crew Challenge.  Basically, pit crews raced against the clock to complete their respective tasks and push their car across the finish line first.  It's a clever little ruse and pit lane choices for the All-Star Race are determined by the results of the Pit Crew Challenge.  But they didn't hold the event in 2013 for some reason so...yeah, disappointing.

These pit crew guys are athletes too, you're a fool to think otherwise.


Anyway, speaking of pit stops...here's Indy Car again.  This was at Sonoma, the 15th race of the season (out of 18).  In the thick of the championship hunt, Scott Dixon (red car) and Will Power (black car) pitted late in the race.  One of Power's crew members was walking with a tire and Dixon clipped him as he drove out.  Fortunately he wasn't hurt but Indycar penalized Dixon a pit drive-thru.

Dixon dropped from first to 15th and Power laughed his ass of as he won the race.  There was debate that the pit member deliberately stuck the tire out in order to hinder his rival.  It could've been an accident because the Indycar pit lanes differ from the lines on the pavement.  Regardless, hitting other pit crews is a black & white issue so there was no room for Dixon to debate.  There was some controversy but regardless, Dixon won the Championship and Power came in 4th overall.  Serves them right.


Back to NASCAR funny antics!  Here's Max Papis and he likes slapping people.  After the Nationwide race at Road America, he pays a little favor to his rival Billy Johnson, while walking away with that shit-eating grin.

And Max Slapis would later get his at a Craftsman Truck Race at Circuit Gilles Villeneue in Montreal.  After getting involved in a late-race wreck, a crazy lady (girlfriend of the driver of the #6 car, Mike Skeen) bitch-slapped him in the face on camera (it's at the end of the video).

Max claimed his jaw was dislocated and his ears rung after that hit.  If so, well, I smell a lawsuit!  No idea what came of it...


More fighting in NASCAR??  NO WAY!!  Rednecks gonna redneck.  BUT FIRST...Le Mans 24 (or "Luh Mah").  Drunken louts mumble and moon the camera.  THIS IS FRANCE, THE CULTURAL CENTER OF THE WORLD, WE DON'T DO SHITE LIKE THIS, RIGHT????

Back to NASCAR, basically Joey Logano is the Grim Reaper.  Well, what do I mean.  Joey gets in a fight with Denny Hamlin after a race at Bristol.  Denny would later get injured at Fontana and sit out for six weeks.

Who's next?  Tony Stewart goes redneck on Joey.  Whoops, Tony gets hurt in a dirt race in Iowa.

And Ryan Newman ALMOST came to blows with Joey but held back.  Good for Ryan!  Cause nobody f**ks with Joey.


Ya wanna see more fighting?  Let's get back to Danica Patrick.  Kyle Petty, "Danica Patrick is not a racecar driver!"  Instant classic, although I wouldn't say Kyle is that much better than Danica.  Only eight Cup Series wins in 30 years of NASCAR.  Ooooo, burned, Kyle!!!  Give Danica a couple more years and a non-shitty race team and she'll whoop your old man ass.  Okay, maybe not, but he makes a good point.  Danica has been in more than her fair share of commercials (plus one Sega racer) and doesn't have much to back it up besides a pair of tits.

But Danica is still not immune!  Here comes Jay Mohr at the NASCAR awards banquet--wait, that ass clown that read jokes off the sheet of paper at Blizzcon??  Yes indeed.  Danica and her new BF Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are not amused.  Seriously, can someone who is NOT an idiot criticize Danica for once?

Oh hey, one more clip.  This is between truck drivers Kevin Harvick (#14) and the "spoiled rich kid" Ty Dillon (#3).  Dillon clips Harvick and they both take a dive.  Harvick pulls up to Dillon's pit stop and gets a sledgehammer tossed at his car.  Last time I checked, getting hit by a tossed sledgehammer can be rather painful.  Whose the wise-ass who threw it?  It's at the end of the clip BTW.

And some more funny/cool shite:

*Brad Keselowski goes for a leisurely jog.
*Tony Stewart REDNECKS at the new cool Kyle Busch.
*Carl Edwards gets paper on his grille and gets in a fight with Greg Biffle when needing to use Greg's bumper as a toothbrush (the story sucks, I apologize).
*Brutal last-lap wreck at Talladega truck race.
*Greg Biffle's pink bumper peels off during the caution and channels his inner Mister Mayhem.

*I become a Kurt Busch fan because he drives the Wonder Bread and City Chevrolet cars in Sprint Cup and Nationwide respectively.  Mad props to him.  Kurt ballin on your chin.

*Donovan McNabb says NASCAR drivers are not athletes.  You know what, Donny boy?  You're a washed up QB like Jake Delhomme and Rex Grossman who bummed your to Superbowl losses against superior teams with superior QB's.  Definition of sport: "An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment."   Driving fast cars for 3+ hours requires a lot of stamina (and is very frustrating).  Otherwise, everybody would be doing it.  Besides, ESPN airs Poker and Spelling Bee championships and can those be called sports??  GET OUTTA HERE...

*Jimmie Johnson wins his sixth title.  Real shocker there.  Matt Kenseth almost had him but had to choke down the final stretch.  The fans on social media were raged at Jimmie's win because he's a "cheater" and he doesn't deserve it.  Unlike other NASCAR legends like Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty, Jimmie didn't build his own team from scratch--he basically inherited Hendrick's birthright.  But regardless, kudos to him since to win that many titles when everyone hates your guts is definitely admirable.

*Also, F1.  You thought Jimmie was ruining his sport.  Well, how about Sebastian Vettel, German driver of the Red Bull team?  He won the last 9 races of the 2013 F1 season.  Yes, NINE WINS IN A ROW.  He also won the last four championships in a row.  Now F1 is talking of adding more double points races in order to level the playing field to give trailing drivers a chance to catch up to runaways like Sebastian.  Just like NASCAR instituting the Chase in response to Jimmie's domination (read my thoughts on the Chase here).  Parity, what's that?  Lol...

I pick my nose after every race.

*RIP Jason Leffler.  RIP Allan Simonsen.  RIP Paul Walker.  Fast cars are still not safe.  It makes me sad but they are to be admired for being true gearheads.  I already said my piece on deceased drivers after the Dan Wheldon crash.  Injuries and death keep happening but some would rather risk it than live a boring safe life so kudos man...kudos... ;_;

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! :D :D :D

Classy.

PART ONE RIGHT HERE.

New Updates To Sonic All-Stars Racing, 90's Arcade Racer, And My Optimism

Okay guys, we're back online and I'm sorry about the huge ass delay.  I'm alive and kicking, just barely though...

This news is OLD'd but I don't care, I thought you'd want to hear my take on it.  So, the new DLC character for Sega All-Stars Racing is the Russian commander from Company of Heroes 2.  This is DLC that came out on July 4th which makes no sense since it's an AMERICAN holiday, not a Red Commie one (BOOOOO) but that's besides the point because the character choice is certainly a strange one.  It's a WWII tank/submarine/fighter combo and that alone deserves praise because the idea of driving a TANK sounds like real neat idea.  Otherwise, my response might as well be summarized by this...

This character, along with the other PC exclusives like the Tactician and the Shogun really show how much Sega has fallen off the map.  Perhaps I'm a bit bitter that I wish more relatable Sega characters like Ryo Hazuki, Segata Sanshiro, Jacky Bryant, Ristar, Vectorman, Bonanza Bros. Toejam & Earl, ChuChu's, or even freakin Bayonetta made it into a game that was meant to promote Sega's Golden Age.  Or also bitter that DarthS0L, Sumo, or Sega basically played us for fools, proposing "Internet petishuns" to help get our favorite characters in the game that were all for naught really.

But the main cause for bitterness is seeing characters from games that I could barely consider Sega in nature (Football Manager, Total War, Company of Heroes) are getting precedence over the other characters for political posturing--people who liked Sega All-Stars Racing are more likely to get into Football Manager, Total War, etc. and vice versa.  It's free promotional material for games that are just painfully non-Sega in nature.  I mean Western-developed games about gritty war heroes and football simulators isn't what Sega should be known for.  It shows that they've completely failed to develop good games in recent time and are willing to stamp their name on any decent games they can get their hands on to seem relevant once again.  I'm not saying games like Football Manager or Total War suck, but whenever I read stories about them on the Sega blogs, my thoughts basically devolve to "meh" since I didn't get involved in Sega years ago just to read about them.  Really, to this day I'm still utterly baffled that Sega would get involved in the Aliens franchise, only to watch garbage Gearbox and Randy Pitchfork piss all over it.

Anyway, cause the Reddit-spooge-inducing Steam Summer Sale is on, I picked up Sonic All-Stars Racing: Transformed up for PC for $8.  Not bad and I hope you did too.  I haven't played it yet but I'll have it for 60 FPS goodness on a rainy day.  One problem I finally realized after all these months is that the game isn't going to work with this fancy GT steering wheel I got a while back.  Why??  Because you can't fly planes with a steering wheel.  Now that's just lame...  Think I said this before but if given the choice for cars only at 60 FPS or cars/boats/planes for 30 FPS, I'd take the cars at 60 FPS.  And the steering wheel compatibility is another reason...

Sonic All-Stars Racing: Transformed is basically in its waning phase and if Sumo were to add anything else to the game at this point, I'd probably shit bricks.  Doubt it'd happen though.

We do have another update from another game and it's from The 90's Arcade Racer crew via Kickstarter email.  This was some time in June.  Basically, they're going all-out with this game now, as they have introduced what appears to be an airport terminal level (Scud Race, duh) as well as the "Omnomnomnom" car which is clearly meant to be the Phantom Full Force car.  In other words, I think feature creep is kicking in as the crew has said f*** it to normal arcade conventions, let's crank the number of cars and tracks in this game up to 11.  Here's two hi-res screenshots.

Now, I might as well tell you what happened recently too and this was after I got fired.  Basically, I sent Pelikan another email about my recent woes and said I can help with the game if necessary (also gave him the link to my personal portfolio site).  He sympathized with me but has since then never replied back with an "offer" (even a free one would do, that's how much I want to help with the game).  And I can understand the lack of offer since I am a programming noob who lives on a completely different continent than he does.

So the game is coming along nicely and let's face it--I've kinda run out of things to do for racing games.  The 90's Arcade Racer is basically out there honing in on the Sega Racing Utopia Project we've all desired while Sega and Sumo Digital are jerking off and every other racing dev is obsessed with making their racing games as photorealistic as possible, gameplay or fun be damned.  I did throw out the idea about a year ago that I should create my own 3D arcade racing game like Daytona or OutRun on my own but let's face it--it'd never work.  I'm not an artist and I no longer have access to the same tools/software that I did during my days at grad school.  It would be like constructing a car out of popsicle sticks but no glue.  The 90's Arcade Racer is doing better than I ever could in a freelance project so I'm basically left in the dust to play the role of an inept cheerleader.  You have no idea how much this depresses me.

As an aside, and I hate getting all emo once again, but my motives have most certainly changed over the last couple of years.  At first it was all "hoorah, we're gonna work for Sega and make Daytona USA 3," then it's "well, Sega seems out of reach but it might happen and I might get to work on some racing games," to "I don't give a shit anymore, I'll work for anyone who pays for me."  My optimism certainly got shot down, curb stomped, and roasted as firewood really quickly.  I'd consider it fortunate if I ever get to "contribute" to a racing game ever again outside of Super Sprint.  Argh, everything just got all fucked up since I was fired and I'll be lucky if I ever get a job working at a video game studio again.  Sorry to be Debbie Downer.  I'll be back with more updates someday so later guys.

A Nightmarish Week Of Losing My Car And Job

GUYS I'M DOING ALRIGHT NOW.  Sorry about the radio silence.  This has been a really shitty week--let me just describe it as best as I know how.

PRE-MEMORIAL DAY 5/24:
Things are going swimmingly.  The project we're working on received a six-month extension and the company is upsizing!  Everyone is let off work a few hours early but I stay to add an alternate control scheme for the vehicles as presented by another one of the programmers (accel, brake, and steer are mapped to the left joystick).  Got that in, impressed the "boss," and got a three-day weekend (Monday was Memorial Day).

WEDNESDAY 5/29:
After an average Tuesday workday, I drive in to work on a damp Wednesday morning.  As I enter the parking lot in my blue 2-door bullet-shaped sedan, I traverse some slippery black pavement with one more left-hand turn to go before I reach my parking space.  Hit the brakes but OOPS, the car won't slow down or turn as I careen into a fenced region with a dumpster inside at about 20 mph.  Airbags go off, windshield cracks, and an undetermined amount of damage is concurred to the front right of the vehicle as two of my coworkers run over to aid me...and end up slipping on the black pavement as well.  Shows you how ridiculously bad this pavement is in the rain...a sign or a speed bump would've helped you sons of bitches.  It was the most BS way to crash, really.

I am not physically hurt but have to hold back man-tears because of fear my vehicular companion of 7 years may have taken its last ride.  After making a round of calls to the cops, insurance, rental car, AAA guys, one placed to my family, my dad's response was basically "HOLD ON SON JUST LEAVE THE CAR THERE!!" as he hopped in my mom's black 4-door Mercedes and drove 9 hours from Louisiana (my original home) to Florida (my workplace) just to help fix the car.  I called off the tow truck and the rental car as he showed up after work to bang the car together a bit.  Turns out all the damage was cosmetic and all it needed was a new windshield, airbags, and front right light and bumper/panels.  My dad was able to drive it back to the garage to get the windshield replaced which was a miracle in and of itself.

That combined with the ticket would probably set me back at least a week's salary which isn't TOO bad and is certainly a relief because I thought I would be reamed with much more than that.  I didn't think things could get much worse than this but guess what--it did! :D

FRIDAY 5/31:
So anyway, after spending some impromptu quality time with my dad on Thursday, he jets back to Louisiana Friday morning in my blue car for repairs while I drive the Benz to work for the second day in a row.  All is good as me and everyone else appear to be loafing around the office before the weekend arrives.

At 6 pm, one of the HR ladies comes to my office saying she needs to speak with me.  I say okay, and we make this rather awkward walk down the hall to the conference room.  I've seen that expression on her face before, the one that's like "you're fucked so I won't say anything to you" as I'm forced to sit in the room alone for a few minutes waiting for people to show up for the eventual sacrificial lamb ceremony.  Two more HR people arrive and, to summarize, say "We're letting you go at the end of your probation period because the engineers say you have had performance issues, goodbye."  (FYI, engineer = programmer)

At this point, I turn pale as my worst nightmare turns true--I had failed to hold down my second job for ridiculous reasons and all I could think of was the metaphorical vacuum cleaner that had sucked me right out of the womb and tossed me into the dumpster--the very one I had run into two days ago.  I beg them to tell me what I had done wrong or how I could have improved but they basically deflected it, saying that they're not engineers so they have no idea.  Hey, this is wonderful.  I'm being let go from my job without a single clue on how to improve myself going into my next job.  It's as if the cowardly engineers who called for my abortion decided not to stare me in the face one last time and try to help me out as a human being in need of improvement just so that they could bolt home from work and get the weekend started a few minutes later.  You've gotta be kidding me.

After getting shit-canned for the second time for no good reason, watching both my car and my job get destroyed in seconds, I panic and start calling friends and family, including my parents, to tell them about how molested I had just felt.  What happens next? Dad calls and says "HOLD ON SON I'LL BE THERE TO BRING YOU HOME!!"  That's right, my dad who had just arrived back in Louisiana after driving 18 hours in the last two days insisted on driving straight back to Florida AGAIN (in a different car besides the blue bullet) with my brother and his GF in tow just to help me pack up my stuff and return home with my family.  Apparently I couldn't have made the 9-hour drive alone by myself (I was too emotionally wrecked) and my mom wanted me home for her birthday (June 2nd, 2 days from now) so yep, there goes my dad again.

SATURDAY 6/1:
At this point in time, all I could think about is why exactly was I fired and how utterly distraught I was.  Was it because I was a terrible employee?  Was it because I wasn't smart or good enough at this job career?  Or was it because I rubbed my boss the wrong way?  These are thing that had me in a cold sweat as my dad showed up at 5 am to pick me up and drive me home that day, making him drive a grand total of 36 hours in the last three days.  Thanks game studio for sucking ass and not firing me on a Thursday.  Would've saved us a lot of stress and gas money.

I get home and spend time with my family at last.  Too bad as soon as I get home, the house basically collapses in on itself as I have to contend with other issues--Brother #1's girlfriend who is always getting in fights and stirring up trouble, Brother #2's loudmouth friends and irrational obsession with whoever uses his toothbrush, Brother #3 and his friend always playing video games and bothering me at every waking moment.  It's like not only did getting fired fuck up my life, it also fucked up my family's cause now I'm another obstacle that's trying to inhibit progress or some bullshit like that.

MONDAY 6/3:
After a weekend's worth of radio silence, I finally get in touch with one of my friends at the company.  He says that I was the only one fired and that there were meetings going on discussing why exactly I was fired.  In other words, every single person, including the engineers who called for my head, was discussing my termination with everyone else EXCEPT FOR THE PERSON WHO ACTUALLY GOT FIRED which is me.  There was nothing I could do but picture my sacrificial lamb corpse being flogged and molested some more as every single lie about me propagated through that building and all my credibility was shot to hell.

I immediately fell sick once again as my mother decided to take actions into her own hands and send a "to whom it may concern" email to the company in a last-ditch attempt to find out what was being said about me.  Was this a good idea?  I DON'T KNOW, I'm in panic mode as it is so it's not like things could get that much worse.  Who replied?  The head of the company, not one of the engineers, who rather than try to find out some legitimate information replied with a jerk-ass email about how he's sorry and how it's a big company and you suck so STFU and never bother us again.  My mother was aghast and so was I.

TUESDAY 6/4:
Another miserable day and, after rocking the boat for so long, I finally get some sort of e-mail response from an anonymous engineer (though I can tell who it is) with a list of wrongdoings and things I could do to improve myself.  The list was mostly bullshit--basically a couple of one-time errors that I had made in the last two weeks that I had since then apologized and corrected.  What's one for instance?  "Including vestigal code that could possibly break the game's logic or the build in the future."  It was one instance of me setting a UDK actor as the parent of another actor and that was over a month ago.  Boss man asked me what I had meant by that code and I walked in, succinctly explained what it had meant by these few lines of code from a long time ago, and they were removed and no harm was done.  But somehow, because of this one incident, I was essentially leaving landmines throughout the entire database.  Okay.

Another thing--"Doesn't know how to follow design documents or take instruction."  This one I love so much.  Basically, the last thing I was working on with the game was UDK vehicles--a tank and two 4-wheel-vehicles to be specific.  And after receiving a bunch of good feedback on how the vehicles have handled, I received an outdated design document for the vehicle as well as feedback from various designers, some of whom spent time in countless meanings or weren't at work at all.  So I was sorta left with a bunch of incomplete, conflicting design ideas for the vehicles, some of which I had to bang together and hand off to whomever was reviewing them at the moment.  I always carried and pen & paper with me to write down any suggested changes which I implemented one-by-one.  Yet somehow, it's all my fault for being a lousy employee.

Yet another thing--"Don't submit huge chunks of code at once and review over it 100 times."  Basically, just be all tippy-toed when editing code which IMO sorta conflicts with my programming methodology.  I just took very small steps trying to edit large systems of the game and whenever I'd try to hurry things up, I'd get a stern lecture.  It was really nonsensical and is another thing that just clashed with my boss.

And lastly, the most fun of all--"Repeatedly late" and "Always playing games in his spare time."  The time frame to arrive in the morning is from 8 to 10 am.  You must stay for 9 hours each day.  Me, I opted to arrive at 10 am and leave at 7.  It was a good deal and my bosses rarely spoke up against it.  But somehow, in that last week, wrecking my car and limping to work late didn't help my cause any.  It's like the flair from Office Space--you want me to show up at 9 am?  Then make it a rule to show up at 9 AM!!!  As for the games--we always have a one-hour lunch break to hang out and play games if we like.  I was playing games during that time but because of how low-pressure the time was that last week of employment, I would occasionally open up my iPhone to click on my Tiny Tower buildings.  Not like I replaced work with games...I just started running out of work that last week because everyone was either in a meeting or simply loafed around as well.

In short, my worst nightmares had come true--my boss only took the worst aspects of my tenure (from his point of view), blew them up really large, and used them to incriminate me as a terrible employee.  To make it worse, my boss had opted not to be transparent with my wrongdoing this whole entire time, essentially feigning friendship with me until the last moment when I was taken out via a firing squad he wasn't even present in.  I still have yet to reply to that e-mail.  Technically, they have my balls in a vice so I can't reply even with the slightest disagreement since they'll think I've learned nothing and won't give me a positive reference in my future employment.  Just the quality of everything has went to shit since I got fired.  Did I learn something from all this?  Sure!  Be more transparent with your boss.  Be more conscientious with your image.  Also try showing up to work a little earlier and put down the iPhone.  But there are ALWAYS things you can do better to improve your image so that's beside the point.

TLDR: The whole thing boils down to this--I had a picky boss whom had duped me into thinking I was doing a good job up until the very last moment when I was fired and accused of being a terrible employee.  He had taken forever to get back to me with a crummy email listing a bunch of wrongdoings I don't necessary agree with.  I am currently unemployed and living with my parents but I'll find another game programming job somewhere (I SURE HOPE SO) and hopefully rebound from this mess.  Thanks for reading.  I want to get back on-topic with some Sega stuff, some Indy 500 or NASCAR talk, it's just that I feel like I've been dunked repeated in a tub of dog piss over the last couple of days so it's gonna take some serious time to recover.  Thanks for your understanding.

Sega Dreams Took A Turn For The Worse...

Well, there's good news and bad news.  The good news is my wrecked car only suffered cosmetic damage. My dad drove it back home 9 hours with no problem (lol).  But that's where the good news ends.

Today, I was let go from my job, just one day before my probation period ended.  I was not given a specific reason why other than "you're not working up to the company's standards."  I was not given anything I did wrong nor was I given any ways to "improve" myself.  I asked for advice from these HR people but got none.  There were no programmers/engineers there to say anything.  They simply ripped the band-aid off and told me "tough shit, we don't need you anymore," which is asinine when I showed up to work every day, did the necessary hours, completed all my tasks in time, added & polished new features in the game that were never there before, had a good attitude and made friends.  I know nothing what I did, nobody warned me about my bad work, I was led to believe I was doing good, and frankly, some of my co-workers were equally shocked that I was shit-canned.

This is fucking awful.  At least my previous job was laughably pathetic because it was an internship for a company that would cease making video games and lay off half the staff in the next month anyway.  But here, this game is on the upswing.  It got a six month extension (expected to release August '14) and they are moving into a larger studio to make room for additional openings.  So basically, I'm terrible and I don't know why.

Just fan-fucking-tastic when you spend $80,000 on both a Bachelor's and Master's degrees and you can't hold down a job for more than three months.  I don't know who's to blame--me or the company.  I will never know.  There could be a few individuals who just don't like me for some arbitrary reason, hence their ability to will the HR people to fire me.  At this rate, I will never accomplish anything that's "good" for the dreadful video game universe at this rate.  Won't be able to work at Sega or Sumo Digital.  Just packing it up.  Fuck it, you want $10 mil budget "realistic" games, fine, take it.  No help for you guys.  Fuck video games, fuck my life, and now I gotta go home with my family once again and find a job at which I won't get fired for some shitty reason.  FML...

Bass Pro Shops, Scary Malls, Dave & Busted's

PLEASE NOTE: I will post pictures I took on my iPhone really soon but since I'm typing this at work, I can't do that just yet.  Later today...

Last Saturday was very strange to me.  And it's not cause it was 4/20 (I don't smoke, SORRY KIDS).  It's because my brother (2 years younger than me) and his girlfriend were driving to Orlando to come visit me for the day.  It was a treat since it gave me the incentive to do something besides sleep in all day to make up for my lack of sleep during the work week.

Whatever, so we're off to go do stuff.  First, we stop at Chipotle to eat tacos.  I throw around a lot of jokes, get a bunch of laughs.  Then after we eat, we want to do something fun.  Since we're near International Drive where all the tourist traps are, we think "Hey, let's go putt-putt."  So Brother searches for "putt putt" on his iPhone and we're off to some place called "Putting Edge."  Strange thing is it takes us to the Festival Bay, a gigantic mall near the end of International Drive (by the Fun Spot and the terrible outlet malls that sell clothes I'm not interested in).  We don't see a sign ANYWHERE for a Putting Edge but we do spot a Bass Pro Shops which served as an anchor to a large mall!  Because Brother and Girlfriend are into outdoors stuff, they inexplicably want to go in.  And I obliged.

In case you're like "dafuq is bass pro shops", it's basically a giant log-cabin department store with a shiatload of ourdoor merchandise--hunting, camping, fishing, boats, ATV's, an aquarium-esque fishing tank, "homemade" candy prepared an log cabin (yo dawg we herd you like...), NASCAR toys, Cabela's silly light-gun games (which reminds me, where the hell is Sega Bass Pro Fishing???), and old-timey red-state stuff.  A far cry from Academy Sports (from my hometown Slidell, LA) which is basically a white box with some sporting goods in it.  Since this place is so big, it was like an amusement park of its own.  Brother pushed Girlfriend around in the shopping cart, checked out the lousy light-gun game, tried on hats, looked at poor taxidermed animals, took pictures next to the Tony Stewart sign, also checked out the stuffed toy animals (I bought a coyote and a brown thrasher, I like little toy animals, I think they're cool so STFU), and sat in comfy recliners.

But after we've had our fun for about an hour, I glance at the other exit to Bass Pro Shops--the one leading to the actual mall.  Now the last time I was at this store, I hadn't gone into the mall.  But here, there was a sign leading to the "Fantasy Arcade" or something.  It was too alluring not to go so I told Brother and Girlfriend, "I'm going to check out that arcade, see ya later."

What happened next was rather surreal like a Twilight Zone or Creepypasta (at least to me anyway).  See, I had walked into....a dead mall.  It was a big, vacant hallway.  All the stores were boarded up except for a few stragglers like a sporting goods, Smoothie King, and the indoor glow-in-the-dark Putting Edge that took us to this very building in the first place.  As I was wandering around looking for the arcade, I felt like I had been here before...  Visually, this building is nearly the same as some of the macabre dreams I had before--ones where everything was dim, the building was on its last legs, and a shoddy arcade.  I did find the arcade and not to my surprise, it was a bunch of poorly aligned arcade cabinets with a bias towards American games (as usual).  No Sega racers but they had Cruis'n World (dumb) and San Francisco Rush (better).

I didn't play any games though.  Didn't feel like it.  Was too weirded out by the place.  I sort of wandered around aimlessly as I nearly crawled up into a ball to cry.  Pains of going to the Northshore Square Mall in Slidell, LA to play Daytona USA 2 wrought me with misery.  I feel like those dreams were just self-fulfilling prophecy of the death of malls (see this informative site), arcades, and Sega in general and that the happy times were never coming back.  And how my journey thus far was really a dramatic one--that malls like this is where my "life force" came from and I'm trying to bring it home for racing game fans everywhere but I been shut out from being able to help for so long.  Drama, I have it...

And like any good Creepypasta story, I didn't simply "run away" when things got weird.  I stuck around and wandered some more and took pictures (Frank West style, speaking of Dead Rising, yeah this mall looks like it).  Eventually, Brother & Girlfriend walked to the mall too but I ran back to Bass Pro Shops.  What would happen is 30 minutes of us trying to message each other in order to meet up again but to little success.  When I finally found them, in a cold I bought a bag of malted milk balls, munched on 'em in the car as I took off uneasy.  I told Brother & Girlfriend that I felt ill but they didn't get it.  I was very talkative up until the moment I went into the mall but afterwards, my energy was drained.

Well, what else is there to do on a Saturday night in Orlando?  Eventually, we agreed to go to Dave & Buster's, the one that I went to twice already (once, twice).  My mood lightened up once we got there.  We paid $25 to play some games and, obviously, I had opted to play Daytona USA (no really?).  Brother & Girlfriend stood on and watched but were mostly interested in getting in petty debates over dating stuff (which is why I'm currently single--no debating with girls and more time to play games).

While I shed a tear and was slightly healed from experiencing the cathartic effects of a Sega racer, the problem was the pedals were defunct.  If you floored it, the car only accelerated 70-90% of the way, varying on the different machines.  Like on Expert, I couldn't even pass a single car on the starting straightaway which is not supposed to happen.  After playing a couple of rounds to much disappointment, I spotted an arcade attendee repairing a House of the Dead 3 machine.  Told him "the pedals on those machines are off," he said okay but was mostly uninterested.  I highly doubt he fixed them.  Judging by how content people are from playing Beginner with the AT car bouncing off the walls with no skill, I highly doubt it was in Dave & Buster's interest to even repair the machines.  That is depressing.

The day did end on an okay thing.  We played this little football game where you score points by throwing tiny footballs through some holes.  I got the worst score of us three and, in three plays, got consecutively worse scores.  I Tebowed in the middle of the place.  Girlfriend got the highest score of all (WTF indeed), plus she also beat me at Daytona USA on beginner (a first for me) but only because my cabinet had busted pedals and hers didn't and she used rubber banding to win.  Was shitty but she didn't rub it in.

We go home to my apartment, I convince Brother & Girlfriend to watch a few Top Gear UK clips on YouTube, they go to sleep on the crappy Target futon, wake up early and drive back home.  It was an interesting Saturday but in many ways depressing.  It makes me think that over the last year or few, I sorta missed out on the pain that Sega & arcade games were going through and that I opted to spend my time on personal projects that had nothing to do with Sega, really.  I couldn't help but cry a little.

Man, the reason I'm going through this "journey" to Sega is to bring back the good times for everyone who was in my boat.  And we're making progress but still, I always feel I could've done better.

Good news though and that is my dad is coming up to visit me today.  I get to see my dad again, it will be fun.  Hopefully we don't get in any stupid situations like I did with Brother & Girlfriend, heh.  I just want to be at peace, that is all...

I love you, Dad.  I love you too, Sega, for your games fathered me like a real father would.  You convinced me to be this way so I'm trying to spend time with you again.  Just don't shut me out, please.  And yes, I do have a habit of spinning media about missing family/friends/loved ones into missing Sega games and now you know that.

Rest In Peace, Rock Band

I know a lot of you probably don't give a crap about Rock Band (the game), but I do.  For a good part of '08-'12 I poured more money into that game than pretty much everything else.  Like you guys would go to the store and buy multiple games--Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, BioShock, etc.  I would just get Rock Band, Rock Band, Rock Band.  Makes sense, no?  That's how much the series apparently meant to me.

Every week for the last FIVE YEARS, Harmonix would release at least one new song for DLC.  The average for each week was about 3 to 6 new songs but sometimes they would release massive albums/song packs of 10 or more songs and those were fun days.  Always checking the websites each Friday to see which songs could be purchased the following Tuesday.  To put things in perspective, I currently own 1,500 songs in my library, plus three RB2 guitars (with third-party strum bar and lots of WD-40 to make the buttons click), two RB2 drumsets (one with cymbals), three RB mics, a RB3 keyboard and a RB3 Pro Guitar..  All of that must cost at least $2,500.  So Rock Band was a pretty big deal to me, don't you think???

Well, apparently, over the last year, the amount of weekly DLC dwindled...it was obvious the game wasn't as popular as it once was and that Rock Band was on borrowed time.  AC-DC/Lego/Beatles/Green Day Rock Band (plus Blitz) were great to tack on additional songs/features but it wouldn't last.  Last Tuesday, they released one last song--Don McLean's American Pie.  It's not one of my all-time faves but it's a great golden oldie to end the 281 week run on.  Dammit, this can't be true...there's so many more songs and bands to get in the game.  Where's Van Halen, Led Zeppelin (I know they are picky), ZZ Top, Bruce Springsteen, The Eagles, etc?  Where's all the keyboard wishlist DLC I wanted?  It's not coming...it's all over...

Rock Band is dead.  I'm utterly depressed but you know what?  It gives me faith in this generation of gaming.  Because Rock Band really was a game that should've faded away much earlier than it has now.  The fact that the series has over 4,200 playable songs is because the people working on the game actually genuinely cared about the damn game they were working on (list of all the DLC)!!  I can tell that they held out for as long as possible even though it was obvious the weekly DLC became less and less profitable.  Honestly, I wish game devs actually stuck to their guns on great convictions like these.

Boy, I'd love to see a racing game get as much DLC as Rock Band did (Forza 4 with its car packs and one DLC track barely comes close).  Thank you Harmonix for the inspiration.  Rock Band 4 is super unlikely IMO cause there's not much else to add to the series (we got pro guitar/drums/keys, what now???  saxophone???) aside from the ability to create charts from any MP3 you own (which is absurd, I admit)?  Now I can't listen to any song anymore without drumming my fingers to the notes, like I'm imagining a bunch of green-red-yellow-blue-orange notes coming down the lane as I press them like piano keys.  So Rest in Peace, Rock Band, you will be missed...

The first DLC song I bought for $2.  It started a Rock Band avalanche for me.

FAREWELL, SWEET PRINCE... ;_;

Announcement About The Future Of This Blog

Hey guys, how are you doing.  It's an okay day for me, kinda tired but this has been on my mind for the last month or so and it must be said.

In the near future, about a month, I'm going to sunset this blog.  Two-and-a-half years and 700+ posts later, it's time to call it quits.  It's become too arduous and trivial to do so here for a multitude of reasons which I will state...:

* I'm a working man now.  I have a legitimate job that's not an internship or other joke of a career.  I'm working 9 hours a day, possibly more in the near future, and after my week, I'm practically burned out after doing that and whatever other things I need to do to take care of my young adult self.  And on top of that, rambling about video games and saying controversial things as someone in the game industry can come back to haunt me, big time.  A few things I've said on this blog could get me fired from my current job.  A while back I caused a mutiny by criticizing a game behind my grad school classmates' back (Plushy Knight) and it caused problems.  I don't want anything like that to happen again.

* There's simply little to nothing going on with Sega anymore.  Well, there is, if you're into cheesy Sonic sequels, more Yakuza, Football Manager, Total War, and the occasional Sega nostalgia piece they toss the fans for a quick buck.  We've worn thin on Daytona 1, 2, Scud Race, OutRun 2, Crazy Taxi, even Sega All-Stars Racing, etc.  Those games aren't going anywhere anymore.  We got the emulators, we got XBL/PSN ports, we got the Hornet in Sega All-Stars Racing, we got a cool new fangame coming up (The 90's Arcade Racer), but other than that, aside from talk about some oldies like Power Drift, Rad Mobile, and Emergency Call Ambulance...we're kinda toast here.

* And as for other things, I can't criticize Need for Speed and Burnout forever.  There's nothing left to say about those franchises that hasn't been said.  It's crap racing all about wrecking expensive cars and terrible cutscenes--it's a done deal and as long as people still piss themselves over it, nothing's going to change about it.  As for things like real-life racing like NASCAR and such, no one really cares, do they?  The sport is awash with phony controversy and regulations, plus when I post about these things, people usually don't read it at all.  So what's the point?

* All great adventures I've embarked on, whether it's Counter-Strike Maps, Super Sprint, posting on various message boards, etc. always have a lifespan.  At first, it's all I ever dream about--wake up, do activity X, think about it in your free time, go to sleep.  But eventually, I just lose interest in it altogether.  And no amount of motivational talk can really get me to work on these things again.  This blog is just a victim of it.  It's getting more painful to write these posts that I reluctantly put them off for too long.  And when I do, the blog just gets more and more disorganized.  Look at sites like UK Resistance and Shenmue Stare--they called it quits eventually so it's not so shocking I do so as well.  Well, better to just call it quits now than force myself to tend to this blog for the two or three serious readers this gets each each day.

* Most of all, I'm starting to realize that this whole infatuation with wanting to work for Sega, meet Yu Suzuki and the AM2 team, and make Daytona USA 3 is a total wash.  It's like a childhood dream you have--you want to assume an extraordinary career like a professional athlete, a musician, or an astronaut.  But when you get older, you realize those things are stupid for numerous reasons--it's incredibly difficult and unlikely you'll ever get that job and once you do, you realize it's not what it's not what you imaged.  After being exposed to the REAL game industry over the last year or so, I now realize how much it actually sucks and how vulnerable I really am.  You have to be some "god among men" like Miyamoto, Suzuki, Kojima, etc. to be heard and even still, who's to say that Daytona USA 3 isn't somehow horribly botched?  It's time to stop pretending I'm on a "mission from God," that's all.

That's...really all there is to say about it.  I still hope great things for Sega, Sumo Digital, racing games, etc. but really, it's time to give it a rest.  I'll get in touch with you guys later but all I have to say is this...  To be this good takes Ages and it's been ages and now I'm good.  Thanks for every subscriber, reader, and good comment that's make this all worthwhile over the years... ;)

Gearbox Gets A Tire Flung At Its Head

This is as brief a post as possible since I'm tired and not in a very witty mood.

So there's Aliens: Colonial Marines.  Everyone knows that was one of Sega's babies.  Everyone knows Sega blew seven years of time & resources on it.  Everyone knows that it sucks.  And now everyone knows that Gearbox basically shifted resources from Aliens to other projects, particularly Borderlands and (get ready for it) Duke Nukem Forever.  This is a great link to read--here's the "anonymous" Sega employee at it again but unlike Zach Morris, this guy actually seems credible.  And even more Sega & Gearbox employees are confirming the same thing.  Apparently all those layoffs and the TimeGate outsourcing confirm that there was foul play here.  Oh, and before you say Sega should sue, apparently they can't because Gearbox basically met the contract and Sega just made a stupid mistake and LET 'EM OFF THE HOOK!!!

It just eats me up on the inside cause you look at it, here's Borderlands (a game I'm indifferent towards) which everyone gushes over "OMG GEARBOX AND 2K, SO AWESOME!!!"  And Sega money basically contributed to it.  But does Sega get anything from Borderlands's success?  No.  What a piece of crap.

And Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford reminds me of Tim Tebow.  Tebow's a pretty cool guy but Randy's a dick.  I even saw a few job opportunities pop up at Gearbox during my tenure at grad school and there was a slight chance I would've gone but no--they suck, I wouldn't deal with Gearbox ever again.  Again, I hope Sega gets their head out of their ass and does a better job at publishing games where the developers don't wander off like idiots.

And then tomorrow is the Daytona 500.  You know I'm not at the race (I'm still at home in Slidell, Louisiana) and and I sure as heck am not going to drive straight there and buy scalped tickets outside the front door or hang on the outside fence Reese Bobby style, like this:

Well if it isn't your mangy, transient grand-daddy...

But just so you know, there was a wreck on Saturday's Nationwide Race on the last lap (can people finish races at Daytona anymore without a wreck???).  And people got hurt.  If you were hanging on the fence like Reese, well...watch out.

No, this isn't Final Destination, this is real.  At least the friggin grandstands don't topple to the ground!

Chris Graythen from Getty Images with the IMPRESSIVE photograph.

"HOLY SHIT!" indeed...pieces of debris as well as a tire from the wrecked #32 car flew through & over the fence on the final lap and injured 28 people (one in critical condition).  Literally, a 50-pounded shredded tire was on the seat right next to the guy (they're super hot, don't touch 'em).  Where I sat and took pics at the last two Daytona races (see here and here) was awfully close to where that tire ended up.  I was closer to the pit row entrance.  Either way, geez, it makes you think...

Now, this isn't even close to the biggest auto racing accident in history (that would be the 1955 Le Mans where 83 people died and 120 were injured, DAMN!!).  But this just cements one thing for me again and that is....I can't take seeing these wrecks lightly anymore.  I like cars and I know that wrecks are part of the sport but when you got people living in fear of fluke wrecks and debris destroying property and huring innocent people, I can't stand it.  Why I don't like these Burnout games and stuff.  And I know some people are saying "well you go to the race so you're taking a chance."  You wanna see a chance, look at those guys at the rally races which are within a few feet from a car slipping around on dirt.  Here, you're sitting back a couple of rows from a giant tire to fly right at their head.  Bits of debris and smoke, yeah, but heavy objects, no.

Had I been at the Daytona 500 tomorrow, I would've brought another Sega sign and waved it, but there's the chance they could lockdown on keeping people away from the fence which sucks.  So maybe I wouldn't have taken the pic anyway.  Just tragic all around this kind of stuff, NASCAR is getting more disappointing to watch. :(

Daytona 500 And Super Sprint BUMMER...

Kinda crummy news going on with my life.  I want to get this now before I start rambling about video games like a madman again...

First of all, I talked weeks, even months ago about going to the Daytona 500.  It's on the 24th--five days away.  I planned on going with my dad.  But it looks like I won't be going at all.  Here's why.

My grandfather (my father's father) is currently in a heart hospital.  A few days ago, he got hit hard by "septic shock" (bacteria poisons your blood) which came about from previous pancreatic cancer surgery which punctured his colon.  For a moment, we thought he was going to die.  Thankfully, he is making a recovery but not a really great one.  We still don't know if he's going to leave the hospital any time soon.  Because of this, my dad doesn't want to take off to Florida for a few days when his dad is in this condition.

My grandfather (aka. "Grump") is 76 and a real hardass.  But a good hardass who hunts, sips his crystal beverages, works out, runs a chain of tobacco stores (which are sadly fading away due to government regulation and dropping perception of smoking by the general public), and has great genes (which thankfully I've inherited).  He doesn't talk much but admires that I've made it so far through school so even if I never talked to him much, it would really hurt to see him go.

Besides, even if you take Grump out of the situation, I still am uncertain about going to Daytona.  The race is Feb. 24th, my birthday is on Feb. 29th (well, 28th), and work begins on March 4th.  If I go to the Daytona race, I have to leave home early and am "stranded" alone in Orlando for about a week.  But if I don't go, I can spend more time (especially my birthday) with my family.  So what's it going to be really?  Looks like stay is my only choice.

Also, the main reason I really wanted to go to Daytona was to get a picture with another cheesy Sega/Daytona USA 3 sign.  Something like "Thanks Sega for putting the Hornet in Sega All-Stars Racing.  Now where's Daytona USA 3?"  But the first pics I took were cool but didn't make as big of a splash as I had hoped.  I could try to photobomb the Daytona 500 but I have a feeling the staff wouldn't take kindly to signs and/or people standing near the fence.  I feel I got lucky that the sign wasn't confiscated in the first place.

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And then there's Super Sprint.

I'm telling you, I always get this post-Christmas lethargy which usually lasts two/three months.  It happened to me last year (during FIEA, sheesus) and now it's this year.  Sleep cycle gets all messed up and I don't take on any really hard tasks.  My best guess is that once the Christmas season ends, my body goes into shock that the vacation is really over, the Christmas lights are taken away, and the weather heats up again.  So I still party in order to crash face-first into depression once life actually begins again.  Either way, post-Christmas always sucks for me, work or leisure.

The lethargy got in the way of Super Sprint.  I was working on the game a few days before Christmas but then I kind of stalled.  I was working on keyboard configs which I managed to get in with a options screen and the ability to save your configs when you close and reopen the game again.  I also began to implement leaderboards into the game which save your fast times & high scores.  I also bought a Logitech controller to program in joystick functionality (I know emulators can use them).  But none of those things are really finished and I have to finish the keyboard config and a few gameplay kinks and get the game out now before everyone thinks I gave up on it.  Just gimme a week or two then I can get a 1.0 version (under a new name besides Super Sprint...to avoid copyright woes).  Then I refocus on more advanced features and stuff.

Programming is like trying to glue a bunch of tangled wires together anyway so if I'm not in the zone, it's tough, you know?  Oh snap, that's right, I have a job in two weeks so if I don't get my s*** together, my ass is going to be out on the street.

EDIT: Sorry guys, should've thrown this in here sooner. I know nobody gives a shit about Super Sprint anymore especially with The 90's Arcade Racer on the horizon. But I have to "finish" it for myself since it's my cross to bear. Also, like I said many, MANY times before, this may be the last time I ever get to work on a racing game again. Sumo may not want to hire me, Firebrand clearly didn't want me, and with the sad sorry state of how racing games are these days AND how what games a programmer likes seems to be worth zero when it comes to the company's decision to hire you, I must proceed with Super Sprint even if it's a catastrophic failure and waste of time. Enough said.

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That's about it.  And the Racing Game Timeline needs to be updated too.  Really, guys, I apologize if the blog has been slow.  I've been doing work but at things that are completely different from racing games.  Yeah, that's REALLY about it for now.  Really, goodbye people and fuzzy animals.

Have I Made A Difference?

One of the things I aim to do in this blog is to keep from turning it into a journal. It's great to talk about how I feel or what I've done lately. But the last thing I want to do is turn this into a LiveJournal where I talk about my reoccuring depression every other post. No one's into that, we're here to talk about the games. But I have to bring this up.

From the announcement post of The 90's Arcade Racer, John Marine leaves a comment:

You (and/or the developer(s) of this project) would reach hero status if this project ever materialized. I certainly applaud your desires for this one. SEGA Super GT/SCUD Race sucked my coin wallet dry. I've played that more than Daytona USA, and MANY more than Indy 500. I like Daytona USA though I've played Super GT more than Daytona USA and Indy 500 combined. Best of luck to you with this deal.

Truthfully, I don't feel I deserve credit for the creation and persistence of The 90's Arcade Racer.  I upped the donation to 90 quid ($143) which gets me a logo on one of the cars.  Yet there are at least two people who donated 750 quid ($1189) which is a hell of a lot more than I did so if we're assigning a person's value by how much they donated to the project, then I'm not terribly important.

So how about working on the game?  Well, I got in touch with the guy, exchanged a few words and I threw out some ideas.  I also offered to help work on the game, even for free.  Yet the guy politely said no.  Money-wise, he's going to get the 10K pounds he needs.  He's currently in touch with a publisher and the game has a great chance of being on PC and Wii U (Unity engine is now Wii U compatible, oh joy).  It's understandable because A. it's his baby and I don't think he wants someone else messing up what he's done so far and B. he lives in Greece, I live in the USA...kind of hard to coordinate game development with people on the other side of the globe.  So The 90's Arcade Racer is out of my hands, even though it never was in my hands...you just hope for the game's best now.

It's just discouraging to me to see all this Sega racer stuff fly by me...  Look, they ported Daytona USA to XBL/PSN.  Look, El Semi and Bart made Model 2/3 emulators.  Look, Sumo Digital makes two Sega All-Stars Racing games (puts the Hornet in the second one).  Look someone made The 90's Arcade Racer.  But all I could do was play cheerleader in a small Blogspot and say "yeah that's awesome, I'm stoked."  But I had no say in any of these things.  The fact I became a fan of this Sega "franchise" so late and how it suddenly flourished in the last few years really is pure coincidence.  At least I think so.

Geez, I wanted to help Sega but most every time I tried to make a move, I miss my chance or I get shut out.  The only things that come to mind were the Daytona USA 2 image compilation on Photobucket and first soundtrack uploads to YouTube.  The Daytona 2 Forza 4 cars were great but were practically busts in terms of actual downloads.  Back then, these things were exclusive, now it's common knowledge amongst Sega fans.  Maybe these things were part of a Butterfly Effect but I'm not sure.

Then I moved on to this blog which I thought would be a great venue to get ideas about Sega racers and game design on paper.  Over the past three years, I don't know how many regulars I really get because my stats are so botched from these Google spambots and image searches.  But there have been a couple of times in past few months that I looked at the blog and thought "Damn, this is really stupid."  Am I posting things that move Sega racers in a POSITIVE direction and not just preaching to the choir?  Doesn't help that the one racing game I worked on so much in the last year was not even a Sega racer...it was Super Sprint and even still, it wasn't THAT well-received and I still hover in and out of wanting to work on it again.

I feel like I was born at the wrong time.  I also feel I wasted so much energy on frivolous things that don't mean anything now or in the near future, like Counter-Strike maps, Rock Band, and Xbox Live achievement points.  There's no telling if I did a good job trying to promote Sega racers.  I hope I did.  I'm not asking for pity messages but that's what I've been thinking the last few days and I'll move on to more fun-tastic racing game posts.  I'm trying guys...until then, now you know how I feel and I'll be back real soon.

Rock Band Blitz: Series On Life Support

Well, I know this ain't a racing game but it's something close to my heart so let's talk about this months-old game.  Rock Band Blitz.

Rock Band Blitz is a $15 game you can buy off of Xbox Live/Playstation Network.  It does not require instruments.  Basically, you pick a song as four/five lanes of notes come at you.  You only need four buttons to play this game.  Down arrow/A to hit left/right notes in your current lane, left/right shoulder buttons to switch lanes. Hit notes in each instrument lane to max out multipliers for the greatest possible scores. You might say "hey that's Frequency/Amplitude" well, yeah it is.

This game is friggin brilliant for a few reasons:

* It is the quintessential "Programmer Game."  Basically I get up here and say "Games have too pretty graphics & cutscenes, not enough gameplay," well guess what.  Look at any generic screenshot of the game.  THIS IS THE WHOLE GAME.  There are no "characters" in the game.  You move through a seemingly endless city (a.k.a. "New Jersey" as Harmonix describes it) as buildings pulsate to the beat of the song.  The only goal of the game really is to play songs over and over again trying to get high scores.  Great game, huh.

* You take a look at every single song in Rock Band's history and there are MANY.  There are over 3,000 SONGS you can download and play in Rock Band 3.  And guess what, you can play all of those in Rock Band Blitz too.  Basically, it gives your library a little more life...you can play songs on Guitar, Bass, Drums, Vocals, Keys, and Rock Band Blitz which is like its own instrument.

* At the end of the day, you will have worn out your A button which is kind of cool yet sad at the same time.

* Play enough notes in a row to enter "Blitz Mode." Camera drops back a little as you start to haul ass through the city. Yet the notes stay in the same place (you still travel the same speed). Can you say SENSE OF SPEED at work here???

* On top of a new Rock Band experience, you get 25 songs to add to your library.  That's 25 songs for $15.  Usually, the average Rock Band song goes for $1 or $2.  What a super deal.

Speaking of deals, I'll tell you some great news.  If you've on the fence about buying some Rock Band DLC, then you're in luck because all pre-RB3 DLC (anything without keys/harmonies/pro guitar/pro bass, about 2000 songs in total) is half-off.  Forever.  You wanted to play some Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Boston, The Cars, Queen, Jane's Addiction, Guns n' Roses, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Tom Petty, The Who, No Doubt, Bob Marley, Weezer, Disturbed, System of a Down, The Offspring, Avenged Sevenfold (aw hell naw), well you're in luck cause they're basically giving away these songs.  Before you would have to pay about $2 per song (song packs would reduce that to about $1.50 a song).  But here, you can get songs for less than a dollar on average.  So to repeat, GO BUY SOME ROCK BAND DLC IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY.  Go buy the DLC that I bought at full price.  Yeah, I'm happy dancin' right now.

But there are some problems with the game and I really don't want to get into how to play the game because you can basically download the demo which comes with the full game but only three songs unlocked (All-American Rejects, Foo Fighters, Barenaked Ladies) so you can play that and come to your own conclusions.  Here's my nitpicks:

* The "perks" are rather unbalanced.  Note, these perks are out of order.
For the first perk, just pick the instrument with the most notes (usually the guitar or bass).  Second perk, Road Rage is good for wiping out tons of notes easily but Jackpot is clearly the best (3x as long as you don't miss) for getting high scores.  Third perk, Blast Notes are the best since it hits notes from all lanes, a very useful, predictable bonus. I can't see any use into turning the purple note into anything else, especially a pinball that bounces around Breakout-style which is distracting enough when trying to fill all the lanes in the first place.  But there's on exception in which Pinball reigns supreme:

Harmonix QA, where were you?

* Playing held notes is kind of stupid.  Assume you hit a held guitar/keyboard note.  Holding a long note "fills" the lane just as much as hitting a lone note in an empty void.  Think about some crap Tier 1/2 keyboard songs where the keys' only purpose is to chime in with some weird BG noise during the chorus.  And you're trying to fill the drums lane.  Okay, now you have to sprint to the orange lane (keys) every 5 second to hit that held note, run back to green lane (drums), hit a bunch of notes, run back between the two again and again.  And because you didn't hit enough of the orange lane's notes (which had about 5 in a minute-long section), you don't raise your instrument multipliers to the max.  Aggravating as s***.

* Switching notes to another lane counts as "missing" notes if you don't play them.  So you are in Blitz Mode or have Jackpot activated.  Good luck trying to "not miss" when switching lanes since if you move to another lane while a note passes, you miss and are penalized.  It's pretty ridiculous especially when the game preaches "It's not about hitting every note, it's about getting a high score."

* A minor complaint but you can't play Rock Band 3 songs in Blitz.  You can play everything else though because it's already on your hard drive.  Yet I have RB3 installed on my hard drive too so the songs are sitting there idle yet Blitz can't play them...yeah, it's stupid programming but the option to play stuff like Caught in a Mosh and Fly Like an Eagle in Blitz would've been nice.

Review-wise, I give this game a typical 8 because it has some replay value if you have a large library.  But after a while it gets repetitive and hurts your thumbs.

This leads me to my final point and it's about Harmonix and HOW THEY ARE TRYING TO EUTHANIZE THE ROCK BAND SERIES.

I always keep track of Rock Band's weekly DLC.  DLCQuickplay is a good site to do so.  Now in case you don't know about how Rock Band DLC works, basically it's a 3-to-6 month process.  Harmonix gathers data on what songs are popular.  Then they get the rights to the song, pass them through a machine that bangs out the song charts (notes), QA them, and plan to release them some time in the future along a time table.  Great.  But the stream of new songs have gotten weaker and weaker.  Used to be that HMX was proud to release a 10-pack of some awesome band like Billy Joel or Bon Jovi every other week and we would be stoked.  Next they toned it down to 5/6-packs and we were happy.  Then they did 3-packs.  Now they do 3-packs with songs that already exist in the Rock Band library.  Sure, it's great that you would release "We are Young" or "Pumped Up Kicks" a month after I imported that garbage from Rock Band Blitz.  It's like they're trying to wean us off of the DLC rather than go cold turkey and kill us all.

Because I am such a lazy bastard and because some other guy detailed our thoughts perfectly on this DLCQuickplay site, I'm just going to copy & paste what user "Riles" said:

Nevermind the facts that Harmonix has never gone out of their way to support Wii before, or that one of the songs this week is a song Wii already has so they only get two songs this week, or that purchasing eight of the 25 songs would cost more money than just buying the pack (which doesn't include when it was on sale for $7.50), or that any songs released now will most assuredly not have retroactive pro support,

this marks the first time that no new downloadable content came out for a week, and that's huge. And it's a complete bummer. And it's asinine the way Harmonix has tried to disguise it as saying this is a result of community feedback that they're doing this, because if that were the case, these Blitz songs would be released as a supplement to regularly scheduled DLC, or as one big release week like the FIRST time they released these songs and claimed it to be DLC for that week, and not the only focus for a DLC week. There have been controversies before about whether or not the DLC streak technically ended with country packs or Green Day, but if it didn't happen before, this is the definitive broken streak. And that sucks, and it gives us every right to complain. Because none of us are complaining about the song choices this week - we're all complaining about there not being any song choices this week

If you need any hint that the Rock Band series is dying, just go to Amazon and search for a Pro Guitar, Pro Keyboard, or Drum Set.  Cheap as it ever has been.  It's a shame too since I poured a ton of money into Rock Band but if the series goes away, then at least it's understandable.  We'll still have loads of Rock Band Network songs (custom songs people submit...most of it novelty/metal trash) but if you're expecting "real" songs like these bunches of requests that I wish I could play on Pro Keys (actual fun Classic Rock songs), well...I've lost all hope.  Rock Band Blitz was basically chemo before the series' eventual death which gave us a little optimism but not much longer.

A toast to my dear Rock Band friend, thanks for keeping me sane during this racing game drought that we've been through for so long.  Who knows how much longer you'll actually be relevant?  A year, two years, three years?  You have no idea how much this sucks for me, but at least Harmonix isn't "Sega-bad" at this point so I cannot complain. They had a really good run with the series--they didn't quit and actually managed to release more DLC than Sega ever will ever.

Adios!  I rocked this song on Pro Keys.

LOL JK GUYS, we'll all wake up tomorrow and HMX will release a 16-song Muse pack and everyone will be happy, DAE believes with me???

Stop Shooting People (No Politics)

Well I really didn't want to talk about this since it's horrific news.  But I heard about the Connecticut elementary school shooting and I just about turned pale when I saw the news.  And I'm sure many of you did too.  Hurts my feelings so bad.  And it's not like this shooting was in a vacuum--we had one in a Oregon mall a few days ago.  Then one at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin.  Then the Batman movie premiere shooting in Colorado.  Then the camp shooting in Norway.  List goes on and on and there's no way I can't talk about these events anymore.

I don't want to blame any one thing--not video games, not TV, not guns, not politicians, etc.  Cause in reality, all this comes down to one thing: morality.  You know, good old fashioned values.  Not just "I promise I won't kill anyone today" (cause most of us won't commit murder in our lifetimes) but things like honesty, integrity, hard work & individual responsibility, be faithful to your spouse, be respectful to parents & authority, not stealing/lying/cheating, treat others like you want to be treated, life has value/meaning, etc.  Cause regardless of what legislation our government passes, if we can't do the stupid simple stuff then we'll foster an immoral society where terrible things will happen (moral relativism, incivility, crime), possibly as bad as what happened that day...  This applies everywhere and every time throughout history.  To quote somebody, "Evil happens when good people stand by and do nothing."

That's my take on it anyway.  I salute all the heroes in these situations.  Pray hard for the victims & their friends and families and be a little nicer to others these days.  Maybe society is getting worse, maybe it isn't (I don't have any "stats" on me) but consider this a wake-up call if anything at all.

Danica's 14th Place Finish (Post-Race Stuff)

Well, Danica finished 14th place in her one and only Sega car debut at Texas.  Here are some low-quality pics on RaceBuddy and the First Row Sports stream I took (click to blow 'em up):

HEY GUYS, here's some more pics from Danica's site.  And here's an article too.

The race, at least as of now, was a let down.  Danice started 8th, dropped to 12th, then made it back up to 5th as she ran laps as fast as the leader.  But then, with 70 laps to go, her right front tire shredded and she had to pit out of sequence.  Also some of the pit crew changes to her car slowed her down a bit, or something.  So she barely squeaked out a 14th place finish as she held off faster cars as much as she could on old tires.  For a second, I thought Danica could actually win but in typical Sega fashion, things didn't work out in the end.  I know it's crazy to expect a win but she couldn't even "make it to Victory Lane" (top 3) or even crack the Top 10 so it was a "meh" performance.  Maybe I am being pessimistic but she was doing great halfway there but couldn't keep it up to the end.

There wasn't much Sonic & Sega All-Stars pimpage on TV.  I really wonder if the NASCAR crowd even cares about Sega or Danica anyway.  What did Sega really gain out of Danica's car?  If there is one good thing to take away, it's that Sega got a little face time and that Danica finished the race without a scratch on the car.  That shredded tire incident was probably a miracle (watching the race live on TV, there's so much going on at once so you never know about those things until much later).  Our Danica fandom unfortunately ends here.  She's fulfilled her Sega quota and she'll go sponsor whatever dumb products they throw at her.  Next, we wait for the actual Sega All-Stars Racing game to be released then deal with the idiotic reviewers next.  Someday, Sega will make it back to the NASCAR oval and we will win again.  Today's not that day.  Until then, be proud that Danica did "okay."

I know some will question why I made a big deal out of this.  Why it was a red letter day to me.  Hey, how often do you see "SEGA" printed on a stock car?  Sega racing fan, put the clues together, now you know why it was so important.  Even if the outcome was probably so significant regardless of what happened.  It makes a feel good story anyway.

Was a beautiful car too...shame she couldn't win in it.  Oh poor Sega...  That's just the way it is...some things will never change.

BTW, Danica reminding you about Daylight Savings tonight.  Finally, I get that extra hour.  Now go drive the Tissot Swiss Watches car and get outta here...

Unless there's some Danica post-race news that's worth posting, I'll probably go on the down low for the next few days because of the Presidential Election.  Once that passes over, I will return and talk about stupid crap no one cares about yet again.  Oh, and I will also blow up my website and fix it in the meantime (maybe).  Laters.

BTW, LSU just blew the game to Alabama in typical Les Miles fashion.  I swear, LSU will always be Bama's bitch.  As someone from LA, it's sad but true.