Double Agent
Damage control - March 11, 2001 - Chris Jones

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. The Midwest-GIA E3 Road Trip: coming soon to a transcontinental highway near you. Probably. Maybe. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Erin was called away on pressing business, so I get to stop by tonight and take over the reigns for a day or so. But fear not, the divine Ms. Mehlos will be back as soon as possible, and we'll make this as painless as possible in the meantime.

FFT on GBA. Now if they just include new missions and a head-to-head battle mode, I can die a happy man.

Onward.

Death Wish
Back in the good old days of NES, my brothers and I frequently had to keep our youngest sibling away from the system. Most people have heard of the odd object shoved in VCRs and the like from toddlers, but those are usually solid objects. Well... My brothers and I came home one day to find our NES floating in a sea of milk, nearly a gallons worth. We were pissed, but how can you justify Murder in the First to your parents when a 3 year old is the victim? That however, was not the last mangling of an NES system. We ended up buying 2 more, after both a long, 10 inch scredriver was shoved in it, and a cartridge shoved in backwards, and upside down, and then forced shut. Needless to say, we encouraged our youngest brother to play outside from then on.

This isn't all that noteworthy in the great history of game console damage, but it gets points for the milk: I like milk. And it also provides us with a handy baseline of destruction: kids, if you haven't had your most precious piece of electronics mangled by everyday household tools, don't bother writing in.

Amazement after amazement
I was watching a family freind play some romance of the 3 kingdoms 3 on my uncles Sega Genesis one fine evening and as I stood up to leave I wound up tripping over the controller cord. The Genesis promptly slid forward , fell of the table and bounce off the floor.

Oddly enough it only wound up reseting itself instead of getting broken or anything. To this day that Genesis still does what Nintendon't.

Also , years before this event happened I was toiling away at a rather unenthrawling game of Chester Cheetah 2 , getting more frustrated by the minute. Eventually I threw what some might call a tantrum and smashed my poor sega controller on the floor until it started to rattle. It was only then that I became satisfied.

Last but not least, the household Atari2600 finally decided to bite the dust and completly stop working after around 12 years of fine service. I was only 10 at the time it happened but it was indeed a sad day... (It was in my parents house before I was even concieved if your wondering).

For a quick answer to yesterdays topic, I can say that the only honest to god injury if obtained occured while playing yoshis Island on SNES, it gave my thumbs such a work out that they were sore for weeks afterwords. To this day my thumbs seem to suffer from mild arthritus.

Not much to say in response to this letter, except I can't decide which is more amazing: the fact that somebody made a Chester Cheetah game, the fact that somebody made a second Chester Cheetah game, or the fact that somebody would voluntarily play said second Chester Cheetah game.

*sigh*... it's not easy being cheesy.

Dirty Rotten Embroiderers
E.M.,

I love the fact that every gaming news website under Jeebus has a completely conflicting news story on what games will be sprouting out of the holy alliance that is Square and Nintendo. Most say that there will be (an) original title(s) using the GC/GBA link cable, IGN reports that a game will be based on the Final Fantasy Unlimited anime series, others have "confirmed" that FFVII through IX are being ported, and more still are "positive" that FFXI will be seen on the GC. Even the GIA, the most respected website for RPG news in my mind is mixed up in the whole shenanigan. I quote: "Nintendo also mentioned word of Square's development plans for the Game Boy Advance. At least two titles are in the works, one of which may be a port of Final Fantasy Tactics." adding, "the other may be a sim in which you take the job of a videogame net-journalist and use phrases like 'may be' to add your Christmas list into a story. The game may also potentially be possibly sponsored by Chiquita Bananas, in a potentially possible coup to maybe overthrow Super Monkey Ball as the best banana-sponsored game.hypothetically."

-VinceXII- What?

We posts what we gets, and what we gots in this case came from GameSpot Japan, generally a reasonably accurate source when it comes to such stuff.

But the punchline here isn't that a couple of games are under consideration and that only a few of them will be true - portable gaming on the GBA is a huge market, and between a cash-starved Square and a horde of ravenous portable gamers, there's no limit to how much of Square's back catalogue might show up on a Nintendo platform near you.

And the award for most senseless violence goes to...
Goddess that is Erin,

Finally, a topic where I can share how big of an idiot I am with the entire world! Well, just the readers of DA I guess. Grab some popcorn and a drink, because here comes a long story filled with happiness, horrible sadness, depression, and everything else you can think of.

Sometime late last year, probably around late November... wait, actually it was November 22. Thank goodness for LiveJournal entries! Anyway, on that Thursday, I decided to head up to my local arcade to play some DDR. I somehow got this idea that I should bring my TV, import PS2, regular PSX with a converter, various DDR mixes, and my DDR pad up to the arcade for some after hours fun. I had talked to the assistant manager about it before and he said it was fine if I ever wanted to do it. So that day was to be the day me and some friends were going to have a little DDR party there. I was so happy.

I put my PS2 and PSX in my favorite yellow backpack along with DDR 3rd Mix, 4th Mix, 5th Mix, Disney's Rave, Best Hits, and Extra Mix and took them outside to the car. I set them down outside when I realized I still had to bring out my TV and DDR pad. I went inside, got some help with my TV and put it in the back seat. I went back inside and lugged my DDR pad (it's the sucky hard kind with the circle buttons, so I couldn't fold it up) out to the car and shoved it in the trunk. I grabbed the essential pocket items (cell phone, keys, wallet) and hopped in the car. I turned it on and and put it in reverse. As I drove backwards to get out to the driveway (I live out in the middle of nowhere so it takes a little bit to get to the actual driveway), the car met some resistance. I checked the parking brake to make sure I hadn't put it on. Nope, it was off. So I thought "Shane, just step on the gas and go faster in reverse. Whatever it is, you'll drive over it and then you can leave!" So I did. And then it wouldn't let me go any farther. Something had made the car get stuck.

I got out of the car not knowing what the heck it could be. I got down to the ground and looked under the car. That's when my heart dropped all the way down to my feet. There was my favorite yellow backpack wedged underneath the car. And of course, the backpack itself couldn't make the car stop. The contents did. My PS2 and PSX. I started to freak out. I ran back inside looking for help. My uncle came out and looked at it. He told me to drive forward and maybe it would help. I wasn't thinking clearly and just did what he said without considering the consequences. When I drove forward, the WORST crunching sound I had ever heard shot through my ears. I quickly put it in park and jumped out. It was stuck even more now and there were black parts all over the ground. I wanted to cry. Finally, he got out a jack and lifted the car up and was able to retrieve the backpack. I took it out and was horified to see that the PS2's casing was completely messed up on one side and little bits of it were broken off. The PSX looked fine, but I had my doubts. All the games survived but some of the jewel cases were broken. With a heavy heart, I headed into town to play DDR to make myself feel better.

A few days later, I took up the task of trying to fix the systems. The PSX kinda worked still but it wouldn't load any games and made this awful sound when it tried to read a disc. I took the system apart and played around with the insides even though I'm not a techie and had no clue what I was doing. After I was satisfied that I had done enough to it, I put it back together and tried it out. To my disbelief, it worked. I was so happy that one of my systems was back to working order. With that done, all that was left was the PS2.

The PS2's casing, as I said, was messed up on one side. Upon opening it, I saw that there were no runners anymore for the disk tray and lots of important looking black plastic stuff was bent. Somehow, the electronic stuff seemed ok. I knew I couldn't do anything for it though. I gave it to my grandpa in hopes that one day he would be able to fix it and just kinda sulked about and made fun of myself for a few months.

On Feb 18 (thank you DeadJournal entry!), I went up to visit my friend in college. I decided to take my PS2 with me just to see if anyone could help (lots of his friends are techies). He looked at it and couldn't figure out what to do with it. He said none of his friends could help either. It was no big deal to me. That night, me and this random guy were hanging out in the lobby, bored out of our minds. Out of nowhere, I asked him if he knew how to fix stuff. He said he did. So I brought up my PS2. We worked on it til 3 AM cutting off pieces, connecting stuff, etc. Near 3:30 AM, we turned it on. It worked. It freaking worked. Games loaded, CDs played, the whole nine yards. I was ecstatic. That meant I didn't have to sell my PS2 games on eBay or buy a new Japanese PS2. I will forever be in that guy's debt.

-Shane, who still uses his favorite yellow backpack he ran over.

Would you believe that after reading this, I went and gave each of my consoles a big hug, just happy that something that horrible had never happened to them or me?

True story.

Hard drivin'
Sir Erin,

I usually treat my consoles and console accessories like I would my own children. Of course, when playing someone else's system, I tend to not care as much. Before I purchased my own DC I borrowed one from a friend. Unfortunately, one of the games he lent me was Crazy Taxi. During one particularly intense session, the right trigger shattered into three separate pieces, but I was able to repair the controller with some Krazy Glue(no easy task for a caffeine addict, mind you). Anyways, his DC eventually died a few months ago, but the controller still works fine, as far as I can tell. And he still suspects nothing...

Torgo, who is helpless without the bucket on his head.

One question springs to mind: how the hell does someone squeeze a DC trigger that hard? Those things are like iron... I can't count how many times I've had major cramping in my index finger after a long hard night of Crazy Taxi. Ye gods, man, you must crush bowling balls in the palm of your hand for fun.

Anger management issues

I used to bite my controllers so hard they'd snap in half. Secret of Mana and FF3 were probably the worst controller eaters of my days (about three a piece), though the crown doesn't go to physical damage, but rather damage of the more mental variety.

Shortly after playing Resident Evil 2 I developed a very odd habit: opening the lid of the PSX (while the game was still on), picking up the system and speaking very violently to the game disc. Usually it was a string of randomly thrown together words (FUCKDICKWADASSPOTATONUTSCOCKBLOCKER), with occasional creativity rearing it's oddly shaped head (GOAT-RAPING, CLOCK-FUCKING, YELLOW SNOW-EATING, ASS-TWIZZLER). My oddest moment was after a long day of Front Mission 2 I popped the lid on the system, picked it up and held it close to my face and said, "HA! I just beat you you stupid fuck! I'm gonna call your momma and tell her to turn the bed down, cuz I owned your ass tonight!"

After typing this I must apologize to everyone who had to read it For an explanation as to the cause of this, I attribute it to the combination of a cold bottle of Jarritos (mandarin orange) and a hot plate of chili-cheese fries (from a Coney Island).

perth - who thinks the March 12th Far Side Last Impressions clender comic is stupid

Not wanting to be on the receiving end of such violence, I'll limit my comments here to: get help, man.

Games entertain you, you entertain the people who sell you games
Erin,

Okay, this isn't really my story. But I was hella impressed.

I work in a store that sells video games. We also sell the systems, along with an ESA that allows the abusive and the genuinely klutzy to exchange their defective and/or busted systems free of charge within 1 or 2 years, no matter what.

Well, couple months ago, I got a very sheepish looking man in who wanted to exchange his son's PS2. He had the warranty, the cords, the system, everything. In a box. Well, we say. Open it up, we'll take a peek, and we'll switch it out.

Ohhh....wow.

Ever see a PS2 with almost a 2 inch dent in it? How about having the entire back end of it totally shifted off so that the two halves don't match anymore? And let's discuss the controller. Buttons had fallen out of it. It was virtually twisted in half. Half the back end had literally cracked off. We prodded it. In a fit of curiosity, and a love of jigsaw puzzles, I picked it up and put the broken end of the controller in the two inch dip in the system. The creases matched. My coworker and I gazed at it in awe.

"My son had an accident."

Yes?

"He has a temper."

No shit, we're thinking. But he's got an ESA and the manager ain't there. We swapped it. The best part is, the son in question came by about ten minutes later. He's 10. Corpulent. Looks like a total poof. I HAD to ask him about it. "Did you break your Playstation?" "I was playing a game. I got a little mad."

I still don't think the kid understands why I started twitching so much that I had to leave the floor. The system didn't get shipped out for a week. We kept showing it around as some sort of modern art piece.

Regards,
Plotter

Not having seen the psychotic 10-year-old myself, I'll withhold comment on that... I'm just glad that we gamers can give a little something back to the fine men and women that staff game retail stores. These people put up with so much crap from us, day in day out, that it's only fitting that we should perform some stupid act on a regular basis to entertain them.

I mean, where would Acts of Gord be otherwise?

Definitive proof: Online gamers are evil
Greetings, Erin.

Most gamers will tell you that a controller is the easiest target for ''accidents'', but I have to say that gameboys are hard to beat in that department (all your frustrations in a handy bundle). I remember one time I was playing gargoyles quest, I was stuck in that god-awful cave lined with spikes and being chased by some kind of zombie serpent that kept killing me over and over again (hey I was 10) By this time I had already ''punished'' my gameboy various ways, but my latest method cosisted of headbutting the screen, you can guess what this led to. My face went pale as the shattered screen went from gray to black as if it was bleeding, I also could of sworm hearing Firebrand yell NnnNNnNoooOOOooo.... I then told my folks I had tripped on junk my brother left on the floor in order to share the blame (a lost art) I got a new one and later told my brother the truth when the story evolved in an amusing childhood tale rather than a confession. The lesson here is dont use your head, ever.

Of course this is notting compared to what my friend Eric experienced. He met this girl playing Phantasy star online and they eventualy hooked up. She moved in with him, she then stole his dreamcast and his cds amongst other things while he was working and fled to england to her other boyfriend.

OUCH!!!

The lesson here is worth at least 600$.

Nick-V, Lunatic-bastard, demi-canadian

The above isn't a console damage story, really, it's just fascinating.

What can I say, I enjoy other people's misery... which, considering the topic of today's column, means today has been a pretty good day for me!

High voltage
The Agent current topic warrants submission of my experience with hardware mutilation.

I must say that the worst crime against console hardware that I've ever committed was against my close personal friend, the NES. When attempting to diagnose a problem with getting my copy of Micro Machines to work my twisted young mind latched on to the ideat that maybe there was a problem with the connectors on the cartridge reaching the internals of the game system. Being the studious young gentleman I was, I figured that since aluminum foil is shiny that it would be a good conductor.

Turns out I was wrong. Upon jamming the game down into my poor friend and tapping the ominous rectangular power button I was greeted with a WHOOOM-ing sound not unlike that of a lightsaber being ignited. A white fuzzy band of static rolled over an otherwise blank screen. After I recovered from the initial shock of the sound and crawled back up to tap the power button once again the speaker on the TV had begun a pathetic whirring and was begging for mercy. All the pain stopped.

It wasn't until I was able to wrangle out the cart from the mouth of my NES that I noticed that piece of the foil were still lodged in the system. So after unsuccessfully attempting to coax the remaining shards of unhappiness from my jilted compainion. I simply gave up and walked away with sorrow in my heart.

Once my father arrived home and was unable to get Dragon Warrior to work (or any other game for that matter) my father was quite upset and questioned me about what might have happened. I did what any son would do with confronted with his father whom he has, through his own stupidity, deprived of gaming goodness. I lied like a dog.

Nevertheless, our system was rushed the next day to an authorized service center. Eventually the NES came back and was able to resume his role as my faithful gaming center. I have never been able to share this secret sin until now and I thank you for the forum to do so.

On a side not my dad did attempt what seems like a subconscious retalliation. Earlier this month he accidentally spilled a gallon of water on my gamecube. Thankfully the cube keeps on kickin.

Now if I could only get PSO or a decent RPG'ish title for the cube.

-Azerphale

As an electrical engineer and former tech support guy, this interests the hell out of me. You always hear about these horror stories about people with absolutely no understanding of basic electrical safety but to actually encounter one here! In our very own column! What a rare and unexpected treat!

On the other hand, the description of the aftereffects is so intriguing that I'm half-tempted to repeat the experiment myself... at the very least, it'll be something to try next time I'm in my fireproof, asbestos house, wearing my silicon-dioxide insulation gear.

Destroying something rare and beautiful... well, mostly just rare
dearest erin,

I know that quite a bit of people who read this site, and this column, are classic gamers. Maybe even collectors. Let me lay a warning down then, that this story may be too much for the aformentioned collectors [for monetary reasons].

I'd recently purchased a SHINEY new Neo Geo CD system! The cart system was far too expensive at the time; besides I'd landed a keen deal on this one! 300 even for the system [pretty rare! in box! cleeean!] and 25+ games; all mint. If you're a follower of the insane, rabid, 2-d thirsty Neo scene [ www.neo-geo.com ], you'll realize this is quite a find! And if you were me, you'd have one of your childhood dreams REALIZED!

Not two weeks after this glossy purchase, i fired up said-system for a mind bogglingly fun game of Samurai Showdown 4. I was defeated many a time. Repeatedly. I had the sudden urge [want to actually WIN for once...] to throw in another game...So i popped open the lid [PSX Style clam-shell cd lid] and got up. God only knows how...but i slipped. On Carpet. With socks on. It doesn't add up, but it's true I tell you. I flew forward and as I did noticed my skull was shooting towards my Sony Vega. Realizing what was at stake [the TV; not my brain or lack thereof] I KICKED with my foot to throw off my already googly trajectory. In the process, I kicked off the lid of the Neo Geo CD, and in the process, ripped out some of its innards.

Then i cried.

But now i own a Neo Geo Cart system and im a smiley boy again.

PTFO,
Ray

Hmm... Wega TV, Neo Geo system. Tough choice. On the other hand, as the proud owner of homeowner's insurance and a WEGA that was cutting edge when I bought it, and now is not (no 16:9 compression!), I wouldn't have minded having an easily supportable claim to upgrade: "Honest, man, I was just watching TV and all the sudden it cracked! Must be the vacuum inside, or something!"

And now you've got me all nostalgic for the Neo Geo. Ah, Samurai Shodown 2 and 3... we hardly knew ye...

Closing Comments:

Well, that was a profoundly boring column on my part, but I hope the letters were entertaining enough. Tomorrow Ms. Mehlos herself, queen of all she surveys, will be back, and in the meantime I can only suggest a topic: Cliches.

No, not that cliches are everywhere (although they are) but what are your favorite game cliches by now? What weird forms have they taken, and what exciting, innovative ideas in today's games will be the cliches of tomorrow? Will there ever be a time when we no longer have to deal with the hero's village being destroyed at the start of the game, and if so, what will we do about it?

Don't ask me, email Erin. Thanks and goodnight.

-Chris Jones, marathon man

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