General Update.

The month long hassle with the Xbox 360 is nearing a close. It's been shipped from the repair center in Texas and should be here Monday. Which will be one month and three days to the day of the red ring of death appearance. You don't know how much you'll miss something until it's gone.  And goddamn, did I ever miss it. I want my X360 back so I can play some Phantasy Star Universe and Texas Hold 'em along with this season's upcoming titles. And Golden Axe. The freaking arcade version of Golden Axe hit Xbox Live Arcade in the middle of this ordeal and I haven't been able to download and play it. One of my all-time favorite games. And of course Riddel has been chiming in with how much fun it is and all of that every third day or so. That's just torture. She's mean like that. I have been keeping myself relatively busy going through some Virtual Console games in the ten days or so since finishing off Taito Legends 2. Blasted my way through Bonk's Revenge. I've been plugging away at the awesome Punch-Out!!: Featuring Mr. Dream. Which reminds me ... in checking out the message boards on Punch-Out!! to see how people are taking to games like this more than a few have never played it's interesting to note how many topics there are screaming about how Mr. Dream sucks and how they want the Mike Tyson version of the game. First of all, Mr. Dream plays identically to Tyson. He's just a different character model. Secondly, and more importantly, Mike Tyson is a convicted rapist. Hello? Rapist. Let's have a little perspective here people. Nintendo would never want anything to ever do with him again. They'd like to remove any notion they ever even worked with him. This doesn't even bring into account the legal issues regarding royalties and the rest of it.  It amazes me that people can be so entirely clueless. And lastly I went through Ninja Spirit on the Virtual Console. I still have a bunch of Xbox Live Arcade and Virtual Console titles left to go through. Stuff like Kid Icarus and The Legend of the Mystical Ninja and Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention. I'm hooked on both services. I've yet to download anything from the PlayStation Network as of yet. Hopefully something catches my fancy. So far I've been able to resist the temptation to download something lesser than just to go through the process and see how it all works with the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. It's also a little over three weeks until Bioshock ships. This title marks the start of the ever earlier busy season for this year. Hell, the week of Bioshock alone sees the release of Metroid Prime 3 and Blue Dragon. With major releases every week or two thereafter into December. This season appears to be monumental. We have Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4 and Super Mario Galaxy. The Nintendo DS sees Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. The PSP sees the next Silent Hill and a long awaited Castlevania, one of the Holy Grail missing games up to this point. It's going to be insane. And I still have a sizable backlog. And the trend of major winter releases continues. So there won't be the post holiday season dry spell of yore. Games like Splinter Cell: Conviction, Mario Kart Wii, Alan Wake, Left 4 Dead, and Metal Gear Solid 4 are all filling up the new year. I guess I better get cracking...