John Zeitler

It’s hard for me to say what exactly happened with the Turbografx. Don’t get me wrong, it works– flawlessly, in point of fact– but, well, I can’t say it was on the “Reclamation” List because I never actually had a TG-16 back in the day. In truth, the Relcamation List is literally empty now: anything that I had in the past that I could consider worth having back, I have found again, and the things which I don’t have exact copies of I have found in other media (for example, Chrono Trigger DS instead of the SNES cartridge). I’m beyond Reclamation and now into… Hm. I need a new word for the list, preferably one that starts with R. Relic List? Rarities List? Redoubtability List?

So I wasn’t expecting a trip out to Erie this weekend, but I’m glad I did. I got to see my mom and sister, which was nice. But I also managed to find a working Turbografx-16.

As a wise man once said, “It was a good day.”

So apparently some idiot decided it would be a good idea to rob six Gamestops. Let’s set aside the obvious Clerks-esque “in a row?” comments and take a look at one of the key details of the case: when it happened. Captain Dumbass here decided to rob a Gamestop in March. Because March is, as you all know, when Gamestop does its most brisk business in advance of the holiday season. Granted, it’s the Easter holiday season, and that little stretch of time in, oh, I don’t know, late November and early December miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight bring in a little more dough.

Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity. Crime isn’t the best way to get ahead in this world, but there’s just a little bit of awe involved in pulling off a caper with some style, or at the very least brains. Sadly, this story had neither.

Earlier today, I had occasion to take a good, long look at the chocobo doll that sits on my shelves. It’s a pretty cute doll, and honestly it’s one of my favorite pieces in the collection, mostly because of what the doll signifies. A constant in the universe. No matter what happens, there’s always going to be huge yellow flightless birds that are invariably friendly and unimaginably adorable.

And then an hour ago I watched a cut-scene from FF13, wherein a photorealistic chocobo is torn to shreds by savannah cougars. What’s been happening since has been at once unsurprising, and dehydrating.

Do you know any other words that start with F?

(….sorry, it’s been a long day, and there’s not much I can say about it all right now.)

Regarding RoboPope from last night, I did manage to beat him with a minimum amount of grinding and a fair to middling amount of digging through FAQs to figure out the indecipherable and obtuse equipment upgrade system. Of course, now that I understand the system, it makes perfect sense, but it would have helped out tremendously if the system was explained a little better in-game.

But it would have helped out even more if RoboPope hadn’t basically gotten back up after the climactic and awesome boss battle, spouted off some plot stuff, and basically told us “GTFO, you’re not ready to end the game yet, oh and you’re still totally gonna be my pawns for the next ten to twenty hours, too”.

Sunday evening I booted up Final Fantasy XIII and discovered that I hadn’t played the game, at all, for over four months. I wondered why, since it seemed like the story was getting to a really good point.

Tonight, I came to a conclusion that it might have had something to do with the huge RoboPope monster that supposedly ends Disc 2.

So apparently I’ve been invited to join a fantasy football league, and either due to the sleep deprivation or just a general lack of common sense, I’ve decided to participate. This despite the fact that my interest in football is largely passive, in that I can recognize good football when it’s played on TV and not by looking at a bunch of random, indecipherable numbers on a spreadsheet somewhere.

This is gonna get interesting.

At 8:59p, I successfully completed the rescue of the President in Splinter Cell: Conviction for the Xbox 360. This is the seventeenth game cleared in 2010. Thirty-three games remain for the 50/2010 challenge.