Classic Bite Commentary: November 13th, 2008

(2018 Update: Replaced an older video with an even older Bite commentary. This one's noteworthy because it was written a short while after I had picked up a Wii. And yes, I did buy a Wii to play Mega Man 9. That's what it says.

Oh, and someone named Barrack was voted into office around that time. Good for him.

Like most of these reposts, bold comments represent present day thoughts and reflections.)


USELESS NOTES: Did you know that the Wii has a bit of a feature that records the play times of each game you play during the day? It's a neat little (useless) feature.

Not much to say, but then there usually isn't.

As you are no doubt aware, Americans have spoken loudly this past Tuesday and voted Barrack Obama into office. That's right; the dream of an African-American man going into the United States' most powerful post is now a reality... or at least, will be a reality in two months when he gets inaugurated. Now I have to take exception; not because there's now a non-white president-elect, but because people have been refering to Obama as the first black president... that's just wrong considering the guy is only half-black... his mother's from Hawaii. So there's your big story; the first half-black president from Hawaii. (Or as the Rock would once prefer; the first president of color.)

Now don't believe for a second that Obama's win will bring about immediate change. Any plan that comes to fruition takes time to have any effect and even so, you still have two more months of Dubya to endure. In any case, I feel bad for John McCain. Don't get me wrong; I don't agree on some of his ideas, I do believe that McCain would continue Bush's wars and even start off some of his own just for kicks, I cringe at the thought of the most clueless woman being one step away from the most powerful seat in the US, and I'm also a bit disappointed that he ditched Letterman (although to be fair, he later showed up on the show), but even so, had he been running against, say, Hilary, he might have had a sporting chance and some of his ideas might actually be different from Bush's. But against a heavy favorite like Obama, he virtually had no chance.

That... and the endorsement from Dubya pretty much killed off his chances.

So, congrats to Obama. Better luck next time to McCain. Go back to Alaska, Sarah Palin. So I guess Tina Fey needs something else to do right about now. Maybe she can come over to Quebec and poke fun at some of the idiots in the provincial government as they attempt to vy for a majority government in another election. Yes, Canada had one in October, America had one this month, and next month, there's the Quebec provincial elections... Americans seem to be lucky that they only have two major parties to put up with; we have several and they all have a tendency to piss us off.

Enough waffle about politics... let's get to the meat of some matter.

I picked up a Wii... yeah, I know. You're all fucking shocked, right?

First game I picked up... nothing. I got one of them WiFi USB connectors and got to fiddle with some settings to get it to work.

Then I downloaded Mega Man 9... and Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels.

Then I got more Wii Points to pick up some MM9 extras and a couple other games, such as Super Metroid.

So I think it's going to be obvious that most of my Wii purchases will be based on digital downloads and I guess that works, considering the hits on the Wii such as Cooking Mama or Wii Music. I'm looking to get Twilight Princess on the Gamecube and I'll wait until I can find a cheap-ass copy of Brawl somewhere.

(Wii games seem to hold their value, as even today, you'd be hard-pressed to find a quality used copy of a top-tier Nintendo title for under 30 bucks unless it's part of their Nintendo Selects line or whatever.)

But enough about that... so let's talk about number 9.

I gotta say - this game nearly brought a tear to my eye. It seemed like there wasn't a game out there that would interest me, much less have me dedicating a good chunk of time to it. Mind you, I haven't been playing as much as I would have liked, but even so, it's still an enthralling experience to be playing what is essentially an NES game made in 2008 - but with addition features you can unlocking by paying for them... LAME.

So about the difficulty... some people have been saying that this game was about as hard as the original, but I gotta say that I breezed through some of them rather easily... although that's not to say that the game isn't a challenge to conquer. The nefarious block puzzle in Plug Man's stage is fairly challenging, but it wasn't so bad... this coming from a guy who would just use Item-2 to blaze through Heat Man's stage.

I'll probably post a review some time in the future, but all I gotta say for now is that if you're into old-school Mega Man and you enjoy the NES titles the best, this is a worthy follow-up.

So like I said, not much to say today, but I'll save some more meat for next month's commentary.

Later,
Dave