Pinned and pained
Ouch. Between working on the farm and discovering that the only sunscreen Jan had at the pool yesterday contained something that’s basically poisonous to me, I didn’t just get sunburned this weekend. I fried in my own fat. I was thinking last night before I went to bed that I was just an embarrassing shade of red, but now it really kinda hurts. Add that to all the aches and pains that I picked up over the weekend, between farm work and spending one night sleeping on the floor (don’t ask), and I’m not exactly feeling great today. I’ll probably still be lobster boy by the time CGE rolls around. Ah well.
Interesting article here about Spam Blogs, and it really points up one of the reasons I’m so fond of WordPress…though by the same token, I wish there was a little more due dilligence when it comes to “sponsored” WordPress themes. (I think I’ve griped about that before – ah, here it is.)
I almost forgot to mention, in last week’s travelogue of the 1984 Arcade, that I got my first real bit of Wii time in before Brian and I left his (really really nice) new house. I love that thing. I must have one some day. Brian warned me away from playing the baseball game in Wii Sports, but let me tell you, that was the moment where it really hit me, because I like playing baseball a heck of a lot more than watching it. In fact, I barely can watch baseball – it’s like a televised death march. And this is as close as I’m likely to get to being up at bat since, oh, about fourth grade or so (long story). Bowling was okay – I do about as well with virtual bowling as I do with the real thing (i.e. I royally suck), tennis was a bit better, but baseball was where it really clicked for me. I never got even close to letting fly with the Wiimote, either. 😆 Santa, please take note: I really, really want a Wii this year. I haven’t been so enthusiastic about a modern gaming platform since discovering retro compilations on the original Playstation.
I’ve been skimming the list of available, playable games at Las Vegas’ Pinball Hall Of Fame Museum, a destination to/from which there’ll be free shuttles after hours at CGE this month. Anyone who knows me knows that my very tenuous grasp of physics (for example: walking in a straight line, catching objects which have been gently thrown precisely in my direction, breathing in and out) extends to pinball tables. I never had the interest in pinball as a kid that I did in video games, and certainly not the body mass – as a kid – that one needed to really “work” the table. But so many pinballs in one place? How can I resist? This is truly the kind of once-in-a-lifetime thing one runs into at Classic Gaming Expo that I continually tell people is worth much, much more than buying a CGE-exclusive homebrew and then going home to play it. Anyway, what’s emerged from my research is a few lists of games I need to play/film:
Stuff I Remember From My Childhood: Orbitor 1 (Stern, 1982), Haunted House (Gottlieb, 1980), Black Hole (Gottlieb, 1981), Black Knight (Williams, 1980)
Stuff I’ve Always Wanted To Play, But Never Saw A Machine In My Life: Superman (Atari, 1979), Q*bert’s Quest (Gottlieb, 1983), and the biggie: Doctor Who (Bally, 1992).
Stuff I’ve Never Seen Or Heard Of Before That Intrigues Me Greatly: Space Shuttle (Williams, 1984), Star Trek: The Next Generation (Williams, 1993), Star Wars Episode I (Williams, 1999), Stargate (Gottlieb, 1995), Super Mario Brothers Mushroom World (Gottlieb, 1992), Super Mario Brothers (Gottlieb, 1992)
You can see the details on each machine linked from the Museum’s list. But…no Xenon machine or the original Star Trek pinball? Are you guys serious!? Anyway, I’m not saying that there’s going to wind up being a pinball section on my site anywhere. In fact, I don’t know what the heck I’ll do with any video or photos that I shoot of these machines. But I do know that it’s an exceedingly rare opportunity – the flipside, if you will, of the 1984 Arcade in Springfield. To hit both places in one month? Awesome.… Read more
