S1500

If your charisma and speech are high enough....go back to her and a choice of what to say will come up that will be a lie. Just choose the lie and say you went to the minefield. That's what I did. The sniper guarding the minefield is Arkansas. I only found that out when he was given to me as a target for the slavers. I actually went to the minefield, but I still had to lie to Moria about something, but passed it regardless. I don't have the perk of being able to detect & avoid mines just yet. I'm betting there's plenty to loot from in the area, but it's not my time yet. I'm surprised mr Burke(the blow up the bomb guy) has a house, and yet I'm not skilled enough to pick said lock. I've found my share of locks that require a blatant 100 lockpick skill to even try to open. Guess I'll go back to it later.

I am proud to report some tales of success from the wasteland: 1. I assembled my first nuka-grenade. Why? I wanted to kill those 3 talon mercs at the mart. One grenade killed 2 instantly, and set the 3rd on fire. He went down easily. 2. I found dogmeat. Wow is he nearly immortal. He was set on fire(no harm done), accdentially got crit from me(no harm done). Plus, he finds stuff for you. 3. No way in hell am I getting a mine back to Moria. One mine blast and my arm was gone. Didn't find the guy guarding the place. Looted his stuff & left. 4. While enemies aren't respawning in the Elementary school, I swear the stimpaks are! Each time I go there, I find more & more stimpaks. Yep, I will be frequently vistiing there. 5. I have the radiation regeneration ability, but it seems useless. I have to get my rads up to heal a limb? That sounds like it's asking for trouble. 6. Got my Agility up one point, let's see if I get some APs now. Might try that in/out door trick described above. Ah that's one great thing about this game. You can spend hours getting supplies & your health up, only to have a couple raiders knock you down in seconds.

So when I first started playing Fallout 3, I was surprised to hear Liam Neeson(sp?)'s voice as the father in Fallout 3. Man, that guy's everywhere. Then I heard Malcom McDowell's voice, all too often on the radio in same game. Mind you, he also was an actor in a Wing Commander game. A quick search of IMDB shows what celebs did whatever. Even though it has been happening for years, it's still funny to see Hollywood actors/actresses doing voiceover work in video games. Sometimes you see some fun oddities: 1. Michael Rappaport was in GTA3 AND a competitor: Saints Row. IIRC Saints Row had a developer or 2 from Rockstar. 2. The guy that does the Engineer voice in Team Fortress 2 was a regular cast member of "Eight is Enough". On a YouTube vid featuring him singing, some commenter left "SPY'S SAPPIN MAH SENTRY" And I bet there's more, but I'm tired.

So it's like the TV boy?

So I take it I just have to do more and more and more small-time leveling up before I start doing brave things like take on Super mutants? And if so, can I stash things at the high school(so far nobody has respawned there) until I get a safer house? Guess I could use the ranch house. Aint nobody alive there.

Argh. I have found new ways to perish. Lesse: Go to the Walmart-like place, get confronted by 3 Merc talons, and die from a car explosion. I almost killed 'em all. Funny thing is, during combat, you talk to a kid who needs help. I mistakenly go into the "raid shack". Go in the house, kill one person, and 2 come out to chase you. I get charred to a crisp. I run into my first Super Mutant Brute. Somehow I kill him and I'm in the clear, right? Nope, another one's behind him. Then when I'm retreating, I get TWO raiders after me. I still can't get past the one raider with the powerful sniper rifle in the Bethesda ruins. Thankfully no respawning. I managed to sneak criticals on all his other friends there. No idea how to get to him. I managed to get several shots on him with the hunting rifle, and he just stands there and takes them. Guess I'm real sneaky. I'm on level 4 right now, but my problem is that ammo is REALLY scarce here. I can't seem to even legitimately buy any ammo for my trusty scoped magnum, nor my Chinese rifle. Ugh. Guess I'll have to do even more scrounging around, defeating raider camps until I get somewhere. Or, start stealing stuff from Megaton city, at a cost of karma.

Weird to see Gain Ground listed on there, but I am glad. Will this be preferrably on a disc at a reasonable price, or are they all XBLA purchases?

I just bought Fallout 3. Much to my surprise, there were quite a few Wiis available(mall of america). I'll play it after my shows.

I was in a difficult position: buy Saints Row 2 or Fallout 3? For/against: Fallout 3 For: I never finished Fallout 1, feel bad about it. For: I don't have any RPGs, let alone ones set in the future For: Need an Xbox 360 game Against: heard it was buggy Saints Row 2 For: I like GTA-style games For: By the time it goes to the $20 bin, all multiplayer fun will be dried up For: Looks like fun Against: Do I need yet another GTA game in my lib? I went to Best Buy and there were no copies of Fallout 3, save for the pricier collectors editions. Oddly enough, there was a Fallout 3 "trooper" statue there. I don't recall any tv advertising for Fallout 3(much less any other PC games), but they are going all out promoting Fallout 3 on TV, etc. Strange. Then again, GTA 1 & 2 never got TV ads either. Well, i bought Saints Row 3 instead. Multiplayer is disappointing. Yeah, I know I would get killed hundreds of times, but the rounds are short & I have to jump through hoops to do another round, unlike GTA4. The jump button is X, not A like I'm used to with other games. I also want to use the triggers for driving, but can't config it that way. Oh well. I felt I should have bought Fallout 3 instead and got into that. Heck, last night I took out SR2 and put Lego Star Wars back in.

I got around to playing Lego Star Wars 2. Frustrating in some parts, but overall a fun, balanced & fair game. I have to now put it on pause for 90 minutes since I'm in the middle of a mission & watching tv

Sometimes I wish I had more resources to make the crazy things I think up. Hear me out. The 3 modern consoles need commercials in a retro flavor. The creepy PS3 ads never worked. Reps from Nintendo zipping around in a Smart car coming to your house? I don't think so. Hannah Montana playing with a DS? Forget it. You guys need a retro themed commercial. Here's the ingredient list. 1. A scrolling starfield. You need it. It evokes ideas of stuff that's space age and futuristic! 2. Inside scrolling starfield, a floating zoom-in of the console itself. It's flying in space! Cominriteatcha! 3. A shot of a kid putting the game in the console. While on the 2600 it makes a satisfying "click" sound and happens in 1 second, it takes a bit longer for the DVD tray to close(360), but a bit quicker on the other consoles. Either way, we need to show consumers how to put a game in the console. Every time. 4. People! Cue a shot of an excited family, showing their game controllers, enthusiastically playing the game 6 inches from the television. Imagine a family of Chads from RetroForceGO playing the game. 5. A stillshot of the game box & console, saying "console sold seperately" in a Don Lafontaine-like voice. 6. Endshot, a glowing 3-d text of the company's logo, in a starfield. Think Juno First's marquee. 7. Rockin' music. I want 3 vocalists selling the company's name in unison! Or The Tubes singing some sort of quick jingle. Oh if I had video editing skills & free time, I would have a YouTube hit on my ads. But just imagine any console/game of today, using advertising methods 25+ years old.

While Twitch Asylum breaks the 1 hour rule, they are much more professional than RetroforceGO(Chad ruined it), and go deep into early 80s games, whether it be computer or console. Good stuff. And no holier than thou attitude like a certain other retro-themed podcast. Easily the best retro-related podcast of the bunch.

The Cassette Vision games look laughably low-res. Looks like something Videlectrix would make. While it's hard to get solid media data on the Super Cassette Vision, it looks like the games are much more fun than the 7800 ever had.

I just saw a commercial for KFC doing some sort of Guitar Hero promotion. Once again fast food & games have come together. So what's the history of fast food & video games promotions? There was Burger King & 2 xbox titles, McDonald's & Atari. The failed Rax & GTA:San Andreas promo(The "Grove street" meal). Am I missing anything else?

I'm broke, even though I just bought an Acer Aspire one.

I'm in your area. Some B&Ns carry them. Also, Microcenter carries them as I was there today. They had both the out run & ants issue.

And now there's mention of a killscreen. Okay, which one of you is on the writing staff of Chuck?

I'm watching Chuck right now. Apparently, one of the geeky characters that works at BuyMore was a Missile Command champ. It was funny to watch the fake footage from '83 with this guy having a mullet. The announcer pronounced it "miss isle command". And apparently the chief engineer for Atari, who is Japanese, has terrorist ties. Never thought I would see an arcade Missile Command in a flash.

I found stages almost too easy. You just keep shooting stuff up Donkey Kong's ass until he gets his head stuck in the beehive. Meh. Still, an interesting variation on the "donkey kong" franchise. I would still have preferred a Spelunker-like game for Mario instead. Just not BADLY MADE like Spelunker.

Small world! I have a video buyers guide from '82 that has that exact same picture of the kids in the 2nd pic(with the whistle, etc). I wonder if it's by the same publisher.

Why couldn't I find this issue at B&N, but found some RG issue with a giant ant on it instead? It's like my local B&N skipped this issue entirely. Went from OutRun to "attack of the giant ants". I really want to read about Gauntlet, dammit!

Okay, there's a video podcast named "retrocore", not to be mistaken for Colin's crappy podcast. Haven' tried it yet. "8 bit and beyond" isn't bad. Weird drop-offs though on the host.

I couldn't get all the way through RetroForceGO's episode either. I never played it so I didn't have a frame of reference. Besides, I think listening to Chad laugh for 2 hours is considered torture by the Geneva Convention. Uh oh, another Retrocore update. This is gonna be good. Let's see how long I can go through this one.

Here's a picture of an Atari 400. At least that's what it looks like to me. There's also an AT&T Unix PC I once had that was just as wedgey.

In the twin cities, there are tons of attack ads being traded between Norm Coleman & Al Franken. I remember the "sega does what Nintendon't!" ads of yesteryear. What's the history of these ads? I'm curious when the first shit-talking of video game marketing occured. We were told the Game Boy's palette was that of creamed spinach. sadly, these ads seem to be gone. The closest we had was the incredibly stupid things said from Sony PR in regards to the PS3 versus the competition.