Book Review 72: Ready Player One

Going outside is highly overrated.
-Anorak’s Almanac, Chapter 17, Verse 32

One day last fall, I glanced over at my Twitter feed and saw that Wil Wheaton (@WilW) was in Seattle that evening for a reading at the Elliott Bay Book Company. He would join author Ernie Cline (@erniecline)  to talk about Cline’s first novel -- Ready Player One. I  had to go.

It was fun evening. The author Q&A was awesome.Wil did the reading and was also awesome. I bought my copy of the book and got in line for the signing at the end of the event. I chatted with Wil and Ernie about my Atari shirt and their dealings with ThinkGeek. If you get the chance to see them, I highly recommend it. And by “them” I mean Wil and Ernie. Or ThinkGeek.  Either way.

Eventually, I worked through my reading queue and cracked open Ready Player One while having dinner at the Nine Fine Irishmen in Las Vegas during CES 2012. The book was quite good, but not quite as good as I hoped.  There are lots of things to love about it, but the book does have some flaws. That’s even more disappointing because, given the subject matter and the author’s presence at the reading, I wanted this to be the most awesome-est book I’d seen in years. It’s not. It’s still good, just not as awesome as I had hoped.

Still, if you’re a fan of 80s Geek Culture, you’ll likely enjoy the book.

The story takes place in a dystopian future where the Earth has suffered major environmental collapse.  The divide between the rich and poor is wider than ever. The most popular form of entertainment is the virtual world of the OASIS.  That basic setup is nothing new; we’ve seen it from William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Melissa Scott, Richard Morgan, and more. While the basic scene may be familiar, Cline takes it in a different way.

The OASIS is the heart of the story. It is a virtual land, not unlike Second Life or World of Warcraft on a much larger scale.  You have an avatar that you design, buy clothes for, equip with weapons and special gear, and then you interact with other characters on different planets and virtual locations in the OASIS. Where you are in the real world is irrelevant.  You put on your goggles, headphones, gloves, and sometimes your special suit, login, and you’re walking and flying around the OASIS.

The story kicks of with the death of James Halliday, a game programmer, entrepreneur, inventory of the OASIS world, and child of the 80s.  

At first, I couldn’t understand why the media was making such a big deal of the billionaire’s death. After all, the people of Planet Earth had other concerns. The ongoing energy crisis. Catastrophic climate change. Widespread famine, poverty, and disease. Half a dozen wars. You know: “dogs and cats living together . . . mass hysteria!” Normally, the newsfeeds didn’t interrupt everyone’s interactive sitcoms and soap operas unless something really major had happened. Like the outbreak of some new killer virus, or another major city vanishing in a mushroom cloud. Big stuff like that. As famous as he was, Halliday’s death should have warranted only a brief segment on the evening news, so the unwashed masses could shake their heads in envy when the newscasters announced the obscenely large amount of money that would be doled out to the rich man’s heirs.

Page 1

Halliday’s death is momentous because of his will. He leaves his company shares and all his wealth to a gamer who finds the Easter Egg. Basically, he hid puzzles throughout the virtual world. The player who solves the puzzles and wins the game gets everything.

This draws individuals, teams, and organizations who all want to win the prize and control the OASIS for their own purposes.  One of those egg hunters, or “Gunters” is Wade Watts (AKA Parzival) our narrator -- a poor, orphaned teenager who’d long been an OASIS denizen and is obsessed with the 80s.  Halliday is his hero. He lives through the crushing depression that many teenagers face.  But he takes on the quest.

He’s got the background for it because he identifies so much with Halliday.  When a reporter ask Halliday’s former friend and business partner for tips, he offers this advice.

“As the person who knew James Halliday the best, do you have any advice for the millions of people who are now searching for his Easter egg? Where do you think people should start looking for it?”

“I think Jim made that pretty obvious,” Morrow replied, tapping a finger against his temple, just as Halliday had in the Anorak’s Invitation video. “Jim always wanted everyone to share his obsessions, to love the same things he loved. I think this contest is his way of giving the entire world an incentive to do just that.”

Page 122

As is often the case, completing the quest isn’t what the character needs. The quest itself matters. That was certainly the case for our narrator.

Then the Hunt for Halliday’s Easter egg began. That was what saved me, I think. Suddenly I’d found something worth doing. A dream worth chasing. For the last five years, the Hunt had given me a goal and purpose. A quest to fulfill. A reason to get up in the morning. Something to look forward to.

The moment I began searching for the egg, the future no longer seemed so bleak.

Page 19

Our narrator pursue the challenge like many geeky teenage boys shyly falls for a girl and rival.

This is an interesting story bit. Cline writes about these feelings in way that feels really familiar from back in those days.

I didn’t, of course. My whole relationship with Art3mis was in defiance of all common sense. But I couldn’t help falling for her. Somehow, without my realizing it, my obsession with finding Halliday’s Easter egg was gradually being supplanted by my obsession with Art3mis.

Page 178

I’d heard all the cliched warnings about the perils of falling for someone you only knew online, but I ignored them. I decided that whoever Art3mis really was, I was in love with her. I could feel it, deep in the soft. chewy caramel center of my being.

And then one night, like a complete idiot, I told her how I felt.

Page 179

I especially like that last line.  It feels right in that context.  The other interesting thing here is the way Cline tells the story. The whole book is told in flashback.  Parzival tells us he’s going to tell Art3mis how he feels and that it will go badly several pages before we actually see that encounter.  Going into many sections of the book, we already have a sense of what is going to happen, but Cline still builds a feeling of suspense around it.

Why does he finally tell her?  Well, Cyndi Lauper has a little something to do with it.

Her avatar lost its human form and dissolved into a pulsing amorphous blob that changed its size and color in synch with the music. I selected the mirror partner option on my dance software and began to do the same. My avatar’s limbs and torso began to flow and spin like taffy, encircling Art3mis, while strange color patterns flowed and shifted across my skin. I looked like Plastic Man, if he were tripping out of his mind on LSD. Then everyone else on the dance floor also began to shape-shift, melting into prismatic blobs of light. Soon, the center of the club looked like some otherworldly lava lamp.

When the song ended, Og took a bow, then queued up a slow song. “Time after Time” by Cyndi Lauper. All around us, avatars began to pair up.

Page 185

This section of the book is revealing in a number of ways. I’ve ready criticism of the book that says Cline is an immature writer and that when he writes about emotions and feelings, it all comes across as juvenile and immature. I do get that sense throughout most of the book, but I’m not sure if that a limitation of Clines skill or an example of it. The book should sound like a teenager wrote it because it’s told from a teenager’s first person point-of-view. 

This section is also interesting because it plays with the OASIS world a bit.  In the passage, Cline shows us just some of the things that are possible in the digital world.  You can defy gravity. You’re form can convert into blobs of light. Avatars can interact in ways that would be completely impossible in the physical world.  And if your avatar doesn’t know how to dance, just  add some software.

The huge open space in the center of the sphere served as the club’s zero-gravity “dance floor.” You reached it simply by jumping off the ground, like Superman taking flight, and then swimming through the air, into the spherical zero-g “groove zone.”

Page 183

SInce the OASIS is only 1s and 0s on servers, it can be infinitely big. Adding more space is as simple as writing some code.

Early in the Facebook days, you may remember friends giving on another virtual sheep and other goods.  Users could pay for fancier ones. Games like Farmville and Pet Society let you pay real cash to get fancier farm equipment and furniture.  And what do you actually get for your money? Nothing but an automated entry in a database.  “Items” are simply conjured out of code, and if the game goes away so does all that merchandise.  

The virtual world of the OASIS works in much the same way, and Haliday’s GSS made a fortune on it.

In addition to the billions of dollars that GSS raked in selling land that didn’t actually exist, they made a killing selling virtual objects and hides. The OASIS became such an integral part of people’s day-to-day social lives that users were more than willing to shell out real money to buy accessories for their avatars: clothing, furniture, houses, flying cars. magic swords and machine guns. These items were nothing but ones and zeros stored on the OASIS servers, but they were also status symbols. Most items only cost a few credits, but since they cost nothing for GSS to manufacture, it was all profit. Even in the throes of an ongoing economic recession, the OASIS allowed Americans to continue engaging in their favorite pastime: shopping.

Page 59

There are thousands of worlds in the OASIS. The world where Parzival confesses his feeling to Art3mis is called Neo Noir.

There were hundreds of cyberpunk-themed worlds spread throughout the OASIS, but Neo Noir was one of the largest and oldest. Seen from orbit, the planet was a shiny onyx marble covered in overlapping spider- webs of pulsating light. It was always night on Neo Noir, the world over, and its surface was an uninterrupted grid of interconnected cities packed with impossibly large skyscrapers. Its skies were filled with a continuous stream of flying vehicles whirring through the vertical cityscapes, and the streets below teemed with leather-clad NPCs and mirror-shaded avatars, all sporting high-tech weaponry and subcutaneous implants as they spouted city-speak straight out of Neuromancer.

Page 181-182

Because of the ability to equip avatars and the scope of the universe, there are still differences between the Haves and Have Nots, even in the OASIS. And early challenge for Parzival is simply to figure out how to get to different parts of the OASIS without any money.

The kids who didn’t own ships would either hitch a ride with a friend or stampede to the nearest transport terminal, headed for some offworld dance club, gaming arena, or rock concert. But not me. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was stranded on Ludus, the most boring planet in the entire OASIS.

The Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation was a big place.

Page 48

So I remained stuck at school. I felt like a kid standing in the world’s greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.

Page 51

As Parzival figures out ways around the limitations, he devotes himself full time to hunting the egg.  He spends more and more time in the OASIS.  Aside from basic biological needs, why leave?  Everything he needs can be delivered to his home. All his friends are on the OASIS, and he can even earn money there.

My apartment was on the forty-second floor, number 4211. The security lock mounted outside required another retinal scan. Then the door slid open and the interior lights switched on. There was no furniture in the cube-shaped room, and only one window. I stepped inside, closed the door, and locked it behind me. Then I made a silent vow not to go outside again until I had completed my quest. I would abandon the real world altogether until I found the egg.

Page 166

Capitalism would inch forward, without my actually having to interact face-to-face with another human being. Which was exactly how I preferred it, thank you.

Page 191

Cline opens one of the chapters with Groucho Marx prescient thoughts on the matter:

I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.

Groucho Marx

Page 167

One of the most popular features of the book is all the 80s and pop-culture references.  Parzival has a series of videos running on his “channel” within the OASIS for others to watch.

I pulled up my programming grid and made a few changes to my evening lineup. I cleared away the episodes of Riptide and Misfits of Science I’d programmed and dropped in a few back-to-back flicks starring Gamera, my favorite giant flying turtle. I thought they should be real crowd pleasers. Then, to finish off the broadcast day, I added a few episodes of Silver spoons.

Page 202

That stuff really resonates with me. Misfits of Science is where I developed my crush on Courtney Cox. I was never an A-Team fan, but I loved Riptide with its pink helicopters. I like the show even more when they added June Chadwick to the caste in the last season (I developed my crush on her during V: The Series).  Gamera was always my favorite Godzilla monster. I mean, come on, he flies by pulling his legs into his shell and turning his leg holes into jet engines. That’s awesome. I was a regular Silver Spoons viewer, too, but there were no crushes involved in that.

There are other references that amused me.

I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing ‘80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn’t part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.

Page 63

The only cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles that I’m familiar with are of course Molly Lewis and Kate Micucci, but I haven’t delved deeply enough into their back catalogs to know if they’re the ones Cline is referring to.

The whole book is built on 80s references and deep descriptions of the movies, video games, music, games of the era. It’s clear that Cline loves this stuff, and who can blame him? They 80s were an awesome time.

Sometime the references got to be a little too much for me, though. It wasn’t their volume that got to me. It was the way Cline explained all of them in a little too much detail. I’m undecided if I consider this a flaw of the book. It may have gotten to me because it feels like he was explaining stuff that was completely obvious.  The reason it’s obvious, though, is because I grew up with all this stuff.  Perhaps that level of explanation is important for those who were not children of the 80s. The deep dive did take me out and make me roll my eyes a few times.

While the book may not have been as awesome as The Empire Strikes Back, is at least as awesome as Return of the Jedi. It’s a great book to read, with a few flaws, and I look forward to Cline’s next book. I also look forward to the “Ready Player One” movie, should it come out.  If you’re a fan of light CyberPunk, or of 80s references, don’t miss this book.

New Character Class in Next Version of WoW: The Hermit

It has now leaked out that the next character class in WoW will be the long awaited Hermit.

A spokesperson said, "The Hermit really lets us take social gaming into a new realm: the anti-social."

When a player chooses a Hermit, they can play the massively multi player online role playing game on their own. When they log on to their favorite server, their first task is to find a cave in the forest or dessert for their hermit to live in. Then they go there and stay in hiding.

Characters advance in levels by not interacting with others, and when they do, it's through shouted exhortations to go away. Sometimes they throw cats.  The primary defense the hermit possesses is strong body odor which annoys other players who attempt to visit.  Players can also advance by mumbling to themselves incoherently, coming up with conspiracy theories they shout at their walls, pacing uncomfortably, and growing facial hair.

As a character advances they get access to special items, like scratchier clothing, scrawled "Do Not Disturb" signs, and stronger body odor.

Despite these awesome advances, a higher level character will gradually lose their affinity for spoken language while their conspiracy theories become more grandiose.

A Hermit can choose to be a member of the Alliance or the Horde, not that it makes any difference.

The spokesperson continued,"We think this will be the biggest hit in the next expansion pack.  Many users want to play our multi player game but they want to do it completely by themselves. The Hermit let's them do that.  They finally have a place for mumbling and avoiding social contact which is something WoW players never been able to do before.  Plus, it should stave off those ADA lawsuits by those suffering from Social Anxiety disorder."

The expansion pack featuring the Hermit should be in stores and online by Thanksgiving.




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Angry Birds Peace Treaty: an end to Avian on Porcine violence, or a new Aporkalypse?

If you are a fan of Angry Birds, one of the hottest games out there for Android or iOS, and you are not among the 2 million+ people who have already seen this, you owe it to your self to take a look. It's pretty awesome.

(Note: some language may be NSFW).

Angry Birds Peace Treaty

I guess it's bedtime

The other night I made significant progress in Super Mario Galaxy 2.  But I guess I was playing kind of late.  You know it's time to put down the controller and go to bed when the game is telling to put down the controller and go to bed.

Okay, it was 4:AM, but still...

Star Wars in Georgetown

On Friday, The GF, her former roommate, and I had dinner at The Georgetown Liquor Club Company.  It's a pub in a mainly industrial area of Seattle, just north of Boeing Field and right next to a set of active train tracks.  You know they best thing about this place was?  This:

It's the vector graphics Star Wars arcade game introduced in 1983.  It's probably been 15-20 years since I've played it, and it's still awesome.

In it you pilot Red 5's X-Wing fighter through a dog fight with Tie Fighters, across the surface of the Death Star against a series of gun turrets, and finally through the Death Star trench blowing up more turrets and dodging inconveniently placed beams until you finally drop your payload into that exhaust port that surely got some architect fired.

My favorite way to play this game was in the sit-down cabinet version they had at Electric Avenue in the Green Acres Mall.  But for now they stand-up version will be fine.

The food?  That was surprisingly good, too.  It's a vegetarian pub.  I'm not anti-vegetarian, but I am suspicious of that cult.  The food here was quite tasty though.

And raise your Geek flag higher, because it's all geek themed, with dishes named for Star Trek characters, Land of the Lost inhabitants, Penny Arcade denizens, and Battlestar Galactica profanity.  Check out the menu here.  And to top it off, they have Guinness on tap.

Good music, video games, tasty food, nice beer selection, and geek-friendly?  Throw in some bacon and beef and you may as well forward my mail.

"Still Alive" sung by a children's chior in Racine, WI

I found saw this in @MikeDrucker 's Twitter feed. It's just awesome. I only wish the video quality was better.

This is Jonathan Coulton's "Still Alive" which wrapped up the video game Portal.  You can see Coulton perform it here.

No longer misleading the DMV

I just hit a goal that I didn't even know I had until about a week ago.
I just got my new driver's license in the mail, which was actually part of a wonderfully simple process.  The state sent me a note saying it was time to renew and that I could do it online.  I took the note on a trip to Phoenix, and from my hotel, found the site, checked that my info was correct, gave them my credit card number, and a week later, they sent me my new Driver's License.  It was so much better than trekking down the the Jamaica DMV in Queens in the late 80s.

But when I checked my license, I saw my weight was listed at 240.  "Huh," I thought.  "That's not too far off."

And as of tonight, I reach a new goal.  I now weigh what it says on my license.  My actual weight and my state reported weight haven't matched in, well, ever.

I know some people are horrified at the idea of posting their weight publicly.  It doesn't bother me too much because it's not like people I know in real life are under the illusion I'm skinny.  It's no "secret shame." It's pretty obvious that I'm a big guy.

I'm down about 15 pounds since 2009-10-31.  At my biggest I was up around 265 3-4 years ago.

For an number of reasons I decided to make some small changes this past fall.  For example, while I always fit entirely in my own coach seat, even on a regional jet, it wasn't always pleasant.  And if the person next to me spilled past their own seat, well, there was no room for error.

I've been losing at about 3 pounds a month, which isn't quick, but it is likely sustainable.  I'm doing it without major lifestyle changes, too.

When I'm at home, I spend about 60-90 minutes on the Wii Fit Plus. (See 5 Things I like about the Wii Fit Plus and 5 Thing I don't like about the Wii Fit Plus.)  That's actually how I started -- just using the Wii Fit Plus.  And it helped.  I attribute that fact that I'm accomplishing any of this completely to the Fit.

I started taking the stairs in my building whenever I'm not carrying too much stuff. I live on the 5th floor and can make it all the way up without being too winded. 

I've reduced my regular soda drinking.  Now I mainly drink diet soda, water, juice, wine, beer, or other items.  I still have the regular stuff from time to time, and am not jumping on the corn-syrup-is-evil bandwagon.  As with most things, moderation is key.

I really enjoy eating good food, and I'm not willing to give up the wonders of bacon and butter and meat.  It's just not going to happen.  What I can do is make sure that if I'm going to eat stuff that's bad for me, that I eat it because I am actually hungry or because I really want it.  Eating just because it's time to eat, or because something happens to be in front of me, is a bad idea.  The key here is to eat deliberately and intentionally.

A few years ago I switched to 2% Lattes.  I tried the Soy ones, but they were nasty (which is funny because I do enjoy things like Miso, Edemame, and even Tofu).  More recently, I switched primarily to Americanos and often drink my coffee black.  I'll explain the reasons for that switch in the coming weeks.

I try to walk more.  I live in a fantastic neighborhood and plan to explore it more this summer.

So it's been a lot of little things.  I'm not swearing off any food that's "bad" for me.  This biggest change is the hour+ on the Wii Fit and that's mainly come at the expense of some time wasting on the net.

Where do I go from here?

Well, in a couple months, the summer will be here and once again, I'll be hauling 7, 50 pound water jugs up the stairs and out to the roof most days, so I may pick up the pace there. 

I was hoping to make 235 by the end of the month, but that might be pushing it. Here are my target weights for the next 12 months.

• 2010-05-15: 230
• 2010-06-30: 225
• 2010-09-30: 215
• 2010-11-25: 210 (Thanksgiving)
• 2010-12-31: 220 (Holiday food it too awesome to worry about it)
• 2011-03-30: 199

Does anyone else have a weight at or below what it says on their license?

Super Mario Bros. Wii thoughts

A few weeks back I wrote about the awesome Super Mario Galaxy game for Nintendo Wii.  That was a great game.

So I was looking forward to Super Mario Bros. Wii.  It's a good game, but not quite as much fun.  It's also more frustrating.  It's still a valuable use for my time, though.

I never played Mario Bros on the original Nintendo systems.  I was an Atari 2600 / Commodore 64 guy.  I'm just a couple years too old to have lost my childhood to that particular console, so the game doesn't quite have the same nostalgic grip on me that it does on others.

The game is a tribute to that earlier era.  It's a side-scrolling game that takes advantage of the Wii's better sound and graphics, but is by no means a graphics power house.  Game play is mostly like the traditional game, but there are new features and power-ups. 

It's also challenging.  I'm in World 2 now, and it's taking a while to advance. And that brings my to my main criticism of the game -- the dearth of save points.

In the old day of video game consoles, saving your game wasn't really an option.  The old consoles lacked memory cards; the games were typically on ROM cartridges.  If you died, you often had to start over from scratch.  Early games with save options might give you a certain code when you accomplished something, and you could enter that code the next time you played.  But mainly hardware limited you Save opportunities, and we accepted it becase we didn't know another way (and wore onions on our belts, as was the fashion at the time).

But this is not that era. And the design decision to limit save points is a mistake.

In Super Mario Bros. Wii, you can only save your game once you defeat a boss.  You typically have to complete 3 levels before you get to a boss.  If you spend several hours completing those levels, and then fail to defeat the boss, or have to stop playing because it's time to go to work, or have dinner, or whatever, all those hours you spent on the preliminary levels get you nothing.

It's not a game you can advance in if you have a half hour here, and an hour there.  You need to dedicate a significant block of time, and then be successful in that block of time or you have to start over again.

Were I in junior high, on summer vacation, with days to wile away,  this wouldn't bother me as much.  But it's not longer 1984. And there's no technical reason to limit Saving your game so much. Storage is cheap.  I probably have as more memory in my phone today than was in all the Atari 2600s sold in NY.  Ever.

I'm okay with hard levels, but once I beat it, don't make me beat it again. And again. And again. And again, just so I can get to the next, slightly harder level

More specifically, let me create a penalty-free save point each time I complete a level.  C'mon Nintendo. You can issue it through the online updates on the Wii.

I'll be waiting.

Super Mario Galaxy and 244 Stars

Finally.

Two years ago, I started playing this game on the Wii and mentioned it here.  Tonight I finally beat it.  I got all 244 stars, playing as both characters, and it only cost me 3,464 lives (2,270 Marios and 1,194 Luigis).

Now, I didn't play straight through like I would have as a kid.  Things like work interferred with my video game time, and there were the daliances with Mario Kart, Guitar Hero, Wall*E (only once  -- great movie, stupid game), and Wii Fit.

The neat things is that I don't alwasy finish video games.  They get too hard, or I lose interest, or something else distracts me.  This was a game that I kept coming back to, and it marks the second console game I've actually finished (the first being Paper Mario for the Wii).

And now I can relax and work on other projects.

At least until Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out.

Five things I don't like about the Wii Fit Plus

Wii Fit Plus is a great game/exercise program.  I've stuck with it for a month, and look forward to using it.  But it's not perfect.  Yesterday, I talked about Five things I like about the Wii Fit Plus.  Now it's time for the things I don't like.

1) Routine limits

It's great that the Plus let's you build your own routine from various strength training and yoga exercises, but that's all it let's you choose.  You can't add aerobic activities or balance games to your custom routines.  The system has some predefined routines with those features, so it doesn't make sense that you can't add your own.  I'd like to build my own one hour routine that starts with some balance games, adds yoga poses, moves on to strength training, goes into aerobics and then let's me close out with more balance games.

2) No routine scoring

When you run a routine that you build it moves from completion of one exercise to the start of the next.  The great thing is that it skips all the menu choosing.  That bad thing is that it also skips the scoring step.  It doesn't tell you how well you did or give you points at the end of the activity.  Seems silly, I know, but I want that feedback. 

3) No new slalom game. 

The slalom is my favorite balance game, but it's getting old.  I would have like it if the Plus included a new, longer version of that game.

4) The Balance Board is a little too small.

While it still works fine, it appears to be designed for those that do not wear a size 12 shoe (not that I'm wearing shoes on the board).  My feet extend beyond the preferred placement rectangles and sometimes my toes or heals are hanging off the edge.  It's needs to be about and inch or two bigger.

5) The dodge in the boxing game is too vague.

I can't seem to get this move right.  The graphic describing how to move the Wiimote and Nunchuck is confusing, and after a month of trial and error, I can't quite get this move right.  And I don't really know what I'm doing wrong.

So there are definitely some areas for improvement.  Despite that, I can easily recommend it.  It's a lot of fun, and it gets me moving.  And those are two very good things.

Five things I like about the Wii Fit Plus

Wii Fit Plus is Nintendo's latest exercise based computer program.  It works with the Wii Fit Balance Board so not only do you watch stuff on the screen, the system gives you feedback and, most importantly, a score.

Wii Fit Plus is sold as a sequel to Wii Fit.  It's actually more of a Service Pack.  Both of them sell for about $100.  The Plus however, is also available for $20 without the Balance Board, for users who already own one.

Here are five of the things I like about the Wii Fit Plus

1) It gives me a score.

I occasionally consider doing a push up or two in a hotel.  But the idea never lasts more than one day, or even 10 minutes.  The Wii Fit Plus, though, will score my performance on all the various Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobic, and Balance Game exercises.  Now, it's not about doing the exercises, it's about getting a higher score.  It's not about refining technique to improve workout efficiency, it's about doing all that to get a higher score.  Why does this matter to me?  I don't know.  But I need that metric.  And I need that competition against myself to do things a little better each day.  Losing weight isn't an incentive to do this.  Scoring better is.

2) It imports Wii Fit data flawlessly.

When I started it up the new version the first time, it easily imported my old data with absolutely no problems.


3) The end of day can be 3:00 AM.

Most games seem to define the end of day at midnight, just because that's when a day technically ends.  But I prefer to use it late at night.  The old version ended the day at midnight, so if I started playing with it at 11:30 PM and wrapped up at 12:30 it would think that was two separate days (because technically, it is) which was frustrating.  The new version let's me redefine the end of day to 3:00 AM.  It's much more accommodating of night owls like me.

4) Custom Routines

The Wii Fit Plus let's me pick from a bunch of different activities and the bundle them all together.  The nice thing about this is that when I do this, I don't have to go back to the menu after each exercise and choose the next one.  The game will just move from one to the next.


5) All the old games are in the new version

The Wii Fit Plus includes all the original exercises, games, and more from the original Wii Fit. The nice things about this is that I never have to choose which disc to put in. Everything is part of the new package. I can play the older games just as easily as the new one.

And with all these advantages, and using it 1-1.5 hours a day when I'm in Seattle, I should hit record scores in no time.  And maybe -- just maybe -- lose a pound or two.

 

A little white thing you stand on

I stumbled across this video last night while looking for tips to improve my scores / performance on the Wii Fit.  The video may be a bit old, but I found it hilarious. Plus I spend too much time at Ikea, anyway.





There are also a number of sites dedicated to cheating on the Wii Fit. Seriously? Leaving a box of books on the balance board to score higher? What's the point? If you really feel the need to cheat on the Wii Fit, maybe you should just put it on Ebay.

Have you played Atari today?

This is really why YouTube was invented -- so we can relive awesome commercials from our youth.




I vaguely remember the ad. What really sticks in my head from the early 80s is the jingle -- "Have you played Atari today?"

I was an avid reader of the Atari Age magazine back in the day, on those sporadic occasions when they actually published it. One month they wrote ad article about how the company was originally going to be call Syzygy, but fortunately they opted for Atari instead. The pointed out that "Have you played Syzygy today?" didn't have quite the same ring to it.

It's probably also fortunate because of the planetary alignment -- syzygy -- in 1982. I seem to recall the crack pots of the day predicting the destruction of the world due to out of control tidal movements resulting from the crazy gravity.

Ah, well. I'm off to find my Buckner and Garcia tape.

Pandemic II

Deadly world wide diseases are rarely fun. Then again, they are rarely Flash games.

I know this game has been bouncing around the internet for a while, but somehow I've missed it (probably too busy looking at LOL cats).

In Pandemic II, you are a disease creator. You start by choosing whether you want to create a virus, bacterium, or parasite. The game chooses the part of the world your disease starts.

As the game progresses, the disease moves from one region to another if you play right. People can get infected at borders, airports, or seaports. As the disease grows, governments begin shutting down points of entry and using other techniques to minimize the spread of the disease.

You gain evolution points through the game that you can spend to improve your disease's infectiousness, lethality, resistance, and visibility.

You want the disease to spread faster than governments can react, infect as many people as possible, and ultimately bring them to death.

The goal of the game is to wipe out the human race.

As you approach the end game, it starts to get a bit disturbing. The game updates pop up with things like, "No signs of life in Peru" or "No one left alive in Canada" and things like that. Sure, it's just a silly Flash game, and worth playing, but it's sobering nonetheless.

The Legend of Neal

This series on Atom Films is surprising funny.

A guy gets drunk and nods off in front of his TV. When he wakes up, his is in the well known Nintendo video game, The Legend of Zelda.

It's a live action comedy. Each segment runs about five minutes.

The first segment is below; you can find the others here.

Content and language may make it NSFW.

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

Now, I have to finish Super Mario Galaxy

Because this is coming out soon. It looks awesome.

Super Mario Galaxy ...

... has been getting universally, gushingly, positive reviews.

And, yeah. It's that good.

Now I'm just waiting for them to release the soundtrack.

Suicide Bombers in Video Games

Clive Thompson wrote an interesting piece for Wired.

He discusses how he gained some understanding of real world suicide bombers by resorting to similar tactics in video games.

Obviously the stakes are quite different, but his point is that when options are limited, people will make desperate choices.

The person who is most dangerous is often the person who had nothing to lose.

So after a few weeks of this ritual humiliation, I got sick of it. And I devised a simple technique for revenge.

Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I'm only making it easier for them to shoot me -- and thus I'm marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.

But at the last second, before I die, I'll whip out a sticky plasma grenade -- and throw it at them. Because I've run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I'll die -- but he'll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone "from beyond the grave.")

It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber -- or a kamikaze pilot.

It's not just that I'm willing to sacrifice my life to kill someone else. It's that I'm exploiting the psychology of asymmetrical warfare.

...More

I made a mistake.

I started playing SimCity 4 again. So there goes every spare hour I had.

But, it's okay. Because I have to get ready for the next one -- SimCity Societies.

Based on what I've read so far, I'm not terribly impressed, but I'll give it a shot.

You can read an early review here.

Bad Translation

If you're going to spend the time and effort to build and market a product for the most popular game console of the year, spend couple bucks on some college intern pursuing an English degree.
(Click for a larger version)




This is my favorite line:

Please keep that no drying process by external heat equipment such as microwave oven etc.