Life, My Universe and The People I know

Long time, no typing. Ah well, no big deal.

Life has been moving steadily, up and down and in every direction I could probably never guess. I've done a lot of soul searching, and found myself in a very strange state. I feel like I'm 16 years old, in my basement again, after a terrible fight with my family, wondering who I am. I've learned in 6 years that who and what you are is a hard thing to deny. I love to write but I found that writing for myself to be what I was really all about. So I've stopped writing for other people and chose to be selfish. I've heard many times that one can't please every in the crowd and I continually forget that. I try to be more than what I am and fall over. I think that's mostly akin to the fact that I have a hero complex and must help everyone I find with something and never focus on myself until it builds up. It took me a whole month to finally understand that there are just somethings I can never be and will never be and I must respect that. Others will pass me and instead of trying to push myself to beat them, I must accept that instead of pushing myself to the brink like I do, I must let them pass and continue on my own beat.

I learned a great lesson because of these events in the last 6 months. I've learned that not everything is as it is, nothing gold can stay and of course that at the end of the day the only person you are judged by is yourself and that it's your own expectations that you should stick to and no one else.

Oh, and cartoons do teach life lessons if you actually look deeper than the skin.

Terry's Dream He Had Last Night While Sleeping Peacefully Under the Glow of the Internet

I fell asleep on my computer last night. I woke up with a residue in my mouth and coating my teeth that can only be created from a healthy combination of Taco Bell and Mountain Dew. I typically have intense dreams as it is, but now that I'm apart of this blog I can catalog how I feel and think without taking any responsibilities for my actions.

Terry's Dream He Had Last Night While Sleeping Peacefully Under the Glow of the Internet:

I'm working on a computer at a dorm room I have never seen before. Casually comfortable in my Spongebob boxer shorts and D.A.R.E. tank-top I have had since God knows when. Abruptly a strange person walks into my room and draws a gun to my head. I do not really care what is happening nor do i even turn to see what he looks like. The trigger is pulled and the first sound I hear in the vision is the click of the barrel right before it fires.

My vision becomes fuzzy. I grip the edge of the table in front of me as the bullet exits the other side of my head. I feel myself leaning against the wall and tell myself "Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive.", slowly I lose control of my hand and slip off the table. Everything is happening so fast and so slowly at the same time that I forget where I am or what I am doing. All that mattered to me was staying alive.

I hope that when I do get shot in the head that it will look

like that guy from Scanners when his head explodes

I now find myself in the threshold of my dorm, and I do not even recall how I crawled across my room to get there. Some kid looks at me horrified in the hallway and dropped whatever it was they were holding in their left hand. I know what I must look like but at the time I was just trying to pull myself together. Everything was falling apart inside my head and it was too comfortable for it to be good. I feel like sleeping, my hands are numb, and my eyes are trying to force quit on me. Someone grabs ahold of my arm, I'm a little surprised by this because seconds to me are hours in reality. I assume my body is keeping itself alive through pure adrenaline. I feel like fucking Chet Chelios. Everything about me is moving so slow as I find myself laying on a gurney and being hoisted into the back of an ambulance I realize that I'm dying. "Why do they make these gurneys so comfortable?" I thought to myself, "Why the fuck would they make these things this comfortable?" I try to lift my arm and apply pressure to the side of my head and I am met with a restraint that is tied around my chest and arms. A supposed safety measure, something to comfort the patient I guess. I try not to fall asleep. Peaceful images are flashing at me forcing me to fall asleep. I'm so anesthetic ... I'ts probably because of the amphetamines that are being injected into me. Feeling futile in my efforts to stay alive, I'm trying so hard to fight this, I'm trying so hard to keep myself awake.

My eyes close and the images before me darken.

Like a reflex I open my eyes and lunge forward out of my sleep. A pain is surging through my spine, my eyes feel like they are going to explode. My hands tighten and I take the deepest breathe of my life. I hear an EKG machine beeping behind me and a defibrillator dying down infront of me alongside the glamorous chatter of the people above me. Those fuckers, why couldn't they just leave me alone. I think I have finally lost all sense in my body, but not before I lost all hope for humanity and their weakness for compassion. I try to move my hand but all I get are muscle simulations and reflexes. My parents appear above me, I can tell that they are crying but I cannot hear their voices when I see them mouth the letters and syllables that make up my name. My girlfriend is calm at my side. My sister and brother are no where to be found. I guess a year must have passed by since the incident, but to me it feels like it was only minutes ago.

Fully conscious and aware of my surroundings, my disabilities and handicaps are more and more apparent. No longer can I move my thumbs, nor can i make myself talk or control my mouth for that matter, and I cannot control my thumbs. My fingers are perfectly fine, and I feel its the only thing I have control of. I do not notice little things that happen in my life anymore. I do not know when I am being fed, I cannot remember any car rides home even though I can clearly remember the feeling that it had happen, more like a revelation than anything. Everything I try to do on my own is met with the attention of the people around me. If I move everything debates on if I'm hungry or if I need to use the bathroom. I wish I could tell them all to fuck off and leave me alone but nothing escapes my lips. All I carry with me is a blank look on my face and a growing pain inside me that is my own existence.

**I apologize for my atrocious grammar and sentence structure. I should have payed more attention in High School.**

I love yet hate you all,

*782*

EGM and Finals

I swear, finals these days must take steroids. It's not even the tests or such, just the projects and the time consuming, life sucking toll they have attached to them. I'm not surprised nor shocked that I made it through. I'm just shocked at the fact that I managed to do something I set out to do, rather than conform.

Oh and I'm now 22 year's old according to my birth certificate, driver's license and social security. Kind of sucks, I know that there's less of a point in celebrating birthdays but ultimately I can't quite say I'm willing to give up on celebrating them. Granted by 30 I'm sure no one will care but honestly? I can't justify not celebrating my friends birthdays in the same style as mine. Getting something you REALLY want and bang on one day out of the year you actually have something like that com true? Pretty sweet stuff if you ask me.

Granted I do want to take a moment to talk about Electronic Gaming Monthly. The magazine has been relaunched. From a stand point of a gamer, the magazine hits on all relative subjects and managed to actually have the big stories for the month. From a journalistic stand point, this magazine is a Picasso on display in a children's museum. The quality of this magazine is far beyond any expectation I've ever held to something in print. It has quite literally thrown down a gauntlet for magazines that cover videogames in general. It does what it does, but it does it so well that you question what you were reading before you picked it up. Oddly enough, I get a sense of this being much like Playboy Magazine, without the boobs and such.

It's composed much like Playboy. It has interviews with game developers, black and quite photos included of the conversations in progress, much like Playboy. It has the reviews after the cover story and before the interviews. Again like Playboy. The only thing I notice is that this magazine really does show quality. I must have flipped through it and read it cover to cover several times by now and yet I keep going back and referencing the whole thing over and over.

I know, I got an story from when I was younger for just about anything. However, digging through my old stash of Magazines I did uncover a very old, (199-) EGM with Pikachu on the front. I basically flashed back to the exact moment. My Dad was in Florida, gearing up to send me back to my mom. He bought the magazine for me to read on the flight home. I remember digging into it and the first thing that caught me was Hsu and Chan and their plan to make a Radioactive Pokemon called Chernobylchu or something. Back then I was laughing so hard at the concept I didn't bother to look at the subtly of it. Now I read it and I laugh more at the written jokes rather than the visual ones.

EGM seemed to be a gaming staple and their absence I think was noticeable. I had notable respect for Dan "Shoe" Hsu for grilling Microsoft on their retarded backwards compatibility with the Xbox 360. I also loved the fact that EGM was extremely thick and made sure to have as much information on it as possible without becoming a phone book every month. I kick myself in the butt for NOT buying them or subscribing. Course, I look back now and know I wouldn't be helping anything and would probably have several issues of Maxim thanks to the publisher killing it off.

My friend Kyle, he told me the magazine died and I had a mild moment of pause. I realized that something must be wrong with that statement. EGM had been around about as long as I had. Christ, Nintendo Power was founded the year I was born for pity's sake. Starting in 1989, EGM basically just did its thing but like all magazines, I guess Street Fighter impacted it. The more I read into videogame history, the more and more I see connections to popular franchises like Street Fighter, Megaman, Mario, Final Fantasy. Magazines like EGM really hit their stride when they focus on making sure everything for a super popular game is correct. That doesn't happen as much now thanks to the internet and message boards like Shoryuken and Dustloop but it doesn't mean that magazines can't lean to a genre of videogames.

The Highscore itself is mostly a directionless but tightly knit group of people whom focus on their own favorite genre of games and continue to make notes and thoughts as such documented when they post. My Editor for Popzara tells me I need an editor really badly for this blog and I do agree that I'm not the prettiest thing to read or the most verbose or kind, I try at least to be entertaining and fair as possible to most of the stuff I talk about. I think the word I'm looking for is real. I try to be 'real' with everything I talk about because bullshitting and lying isn't going to do me or you any good, especially if someone is trying to actually read this stuff for an honest opinion.

For now though, I'll just continue this blog, updating when I can while trying to bring on friends and talent I think might be cool enough to contribute something to it. I'm not sacrificing anything here really, nor am I really screwing myself over by writing out my thoughts and opinions. So long as I don't readily whore myself out for money without reasons for doing so, I guess.

Fighting Game Journal

I've been thinking on this one a little bit, finally decided to go ahead with it. My general interest in things tends to wane when I either lose focus or nothing interesting comes from it. Rarely do I actually push myself to finish or do something for a long time. When I was in High School, I started writing every Wednesday and Sunday to update an incredibly terrible story. By standards, keeping it up for my entire Junior year of High school, not missing a day unless it was due to something serious, I consider the true triumph. Course that was fucking years ago now and deserves no credit on my wall anymore.

So, from here on until this very date one year from now, I will write a post about the fighting game scene in Kansas City as I both learn and grow with the scene itself as well as the people. I'll post my comments, thoughts and overall view of the scene, every week, on Tuesday. If all goes well, I will not miss anything, but it's not fair to make assumptions when things have only just begun. So let's get to it.

My initial impression of the fighting game scene of Kansas City is rather limited. I see a lot of things happening but nothing truly going in any direction. People are fighting each others, showing up to one another's houses to play fighting games for a sometimes exhaustive amounts. Still, I believe direction is the true thing this scene needs to become a sort of midwest mecca to the fighting game community. Being the center of the continental united states, we have interesting position. With the right marketing and advertising, we very well could become a high end market for fighting game enthusiasts. I think we only lack the financial backing of an investor and the proper marketing to the right people.

From what I see, we have the resources to through our own tournament, but we lack the general cohesion that major tournaments have. Sponsors, media and big names help sell a tournament and make a scene that much more serious. We also lack the population density of other major city's with competitions that're 'major' like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. This doesn't necessarily mean we're completely boned because we lack the true standing amount of people who can come. We have an international airport, we have a major convention center. We can do this type of thing, but unfortunately we just can't get the numbers to come out and do it.

Now, I'm sure there's multiple things that are in the way of a major tournament, aside the prior mentioned funding and such. The city would need to okay a major event like that to warrant use of public buildings but I look at a Comic Convention as a perfect example. With the charging of gate fees, most people can make back all the cost of renting it out quite easily. It's selling such an even that's the true pain of this type of business. Getting a city counsel man to listen to a bunch of guys wanting to through a convention is one thing, but a nationwide tournament might get a confused look. Still, with the proper work, you might get something out of it. With a large scale tournament, Kansas City might have something to be known for outside of Bar-B-Que and bad sports teams.

The people of this scene are kind a mix of the atypical and the truly enigmatic. While, I see and understand the motivations of some, others confuse me outright and others just plain weird me the fuck out. I'll only mention a few people by name but I'm not going to accusatory towards anyone. John (Spottswood A.K.A. JSpot) is a cool guy who made sure I was rather welcome when I went to Kansas City's Maxout Tourney in the end of April. Le (Nguyen A.K.A. Radian) seemed nice but I got the vibe that he was trying to feel me out because I was a journalist covering the thing and spectating to boot.

Note, in the fighting game community, you can spectate as much as you want. However, respect is earned almost solely by your skills and personality. Make no mistake, this community is judgmental much like anything else. I look at my position as being a house guest rather than a part of the crew at the present. I know things they don't but before I dare tell them this, I would rather keep my trap shut and listen. Prior experience to being in an environment where things can go wrong at a moment's notice is invaluable. I try to not make the same mistake twice and like anything, work myself in among them slowly and cautiously rather than be bold and possible put myself at odds with someone and fuck my situation all to hell.

I've noticed that among the 'lower' tier of players, I'm welcomed very openly. I believe this is due solely because of the poor handling of Street Fighter 4. The story goes simply that people who started playing Street Fighter 4 and never played prior were not true fighting game people and thus shunned which shunted the two communities. The old guard realized that the new guard was just like them at one point and they reconciled though my impression is that this type of thing happens with every new game that comes out. I understand this type of environment and I know I have much to gain from both study and practice but first and foremost I need to make sure that when I'm around people know me and are as comfortable as can be when I'm around without giving off this jittery feeling.

In the line of fighting, I have realized I'm hitting a fork in the road. There's two options, both of which carry a price. The monetary price is menial but still there in the distance and the other price is that I sacrifice a better shot at living up to my possible potential in fighting games. I speak of whether to choose the controller or the fighting stick. Like this blog, I must maintain a working relationship with each choice if I want to get better, but I sacrifice my controller for a stick I gain execution and accuracy which is what I need.

Still, I'll end it with a simple note. The Tuesday hook-ups I tend to find myself playing more frequently and learning the game where as in on Friday I find myself having a lot more fun and enjoyment because I tend to get looser with my style and focus less on actually trying to impress. Honestly, I suck at Street Fighter right now, but I'm learning thanks to JSpot and a little pep talk from Chachi. Hopefully, by the end of summer my execution and skill will have improved, god knows I need to learn it as fast as I can because if I want this segment to continue I need to keep going. I will not stop, even in the face of complete failure.

51 Weeks to Go
Drew "Simsar" Misemer
:D

Show Notes for Podcast April 29th, 2010

NEWS:

Activision + Bungie for 10 years.

Sony is happy and excited to see what the team behind Halo can do when given the power of PS3.

Next Call of Duty titled “Black Ops”. Hinted towards being set in Veitnam.

TF2 119th update, commemorated by the launch of 12” statues being sold soon.

Steam on Mac on May 12th.

RELEASES OF INTEREST:

Super Street Fighter IV
Nier
Dead to Rights: Retribution
Just Cause 2 DLC (It turns the parachute into a jetpack)
Pixel Junk Monsters Deluxe (PSP version of the PSN title)

Daft Punk's Discovery

I have finally discovered the website that I have been helping Drew and Eric do podcasts for, even though I'm writing a post about it and still have never ventured off to see what the site looks like.

My name is Terry and that is all I care to say for now ...

Kansas City's Max Out Tourney (LATE)

I'm not going to suger coat it. This should have been done on Wednesday and it should have had pictures and all kinds of shit. I just screwed the pooch on a lot of stuff and I apologize. However, it's not going to kill me I guess. I'm not going to cry about it and I can only hope people are not going to complain. SO, here's the report, 1 week late, that should've been done on Wednesday.

By: Drew “Simsar” Misemer

Make no mistake, arcades are dying in America. There’s little to no space were the bulky single game cabinets of yester year live with people playing on them in constant streams, dropping quarters and dollar bills to try their shot at making it to a new level or finding out how good they are in comparison to the person next to them. No, the arcades might have disappeared but the community at large migrated into something much more formidable. The community rallied to make the arcade as mobile as them and to unite under new times in a better format than the simple ‘Winner stays’ that used to rule the sticky carpet floors of some mall.

In Kansas City, the place to be is the Max Out tournament held in a small but homely Coffee House/Bar called Toad’s Pub and Perk. Sounds ridiculous? Good, cause that’s not all, you will not meet a better group of guys. Special props to the first couple guys I ran into, John “JSpot” Spottswood and his friend Luigi 182 for making me feel accepted. As well as “Radian” Le who made sure I was having a good time despite my spectating. I have little to no true fighting experience so to be welcomed at a fighting game tourney like I was one of the boys is a rarity. The true kick off was at high noon with the teams matches in Street Fighter 4 beginning. A strong player emerged, one of JSpots friends going only by Kevin showed a strong Balrog. Dominating the ever loving hell out of the bracket, Kevin and John managed to win the whole thing as Balrog and El Fuerte.

You could see that it wasn’t the overpowered characters that won but whoever. I've seen teir lists, read hundreds of comments on this character or that combo, but I never saw a bunch of Sagats running the table. There wasn’t any complaining about being cheap or over powered, no tier list in sight it seemed. Just people gathering together to really see who among them really carried a set big enough to call themselves the top dog. During all this the BlazBlue rally which was only four challengers all together still managed to put on a show with an incredible Arakune by B1argh coming in at number one and Hakumen by one going as CactusGuy coming into second. You might think to win a game like BB is all button mashing but the way they play it, you realize this is weeks and weeks of memorization and practice for them and that its an insult to call them a masher.

I do have to admit I needed help with the lingo, like R. Kellyed and Pringles but after I got it, I couldn't stop. One thing for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom I won’t forget, Duck Sauce for Polimar. That’s right, DUCK SAUCE, I got it in the article. You want to know what that means? Go to Max Out, ask the dude who says Duck Sauce and if he’s not busy showing someone up, you can get an answer.

The real fireworks started when Street Fighter 4 singles matches officially got underway. People from Saint Louis drove the whole way here just to battle and hopefully improve the turn out for the battle itself. Kevin was a clear stand out for winner, working the ranks crushing people with Balrog left and right. Another one however was a Dahlsim player named Scamp with the way he could control space and time in his matches. Of course these two met and the Balrog lost out to the paced and patient Dahlsim. Not to be defeated so easily, Kevin managed to storm through the rest of the losers bracket to meet up with Scamp one final time in a finals match to remember. The Saint Louis guy on camera I noticed was too drunk to keep it steady, thus I actually recorded the entire thing, holding the camera as steady as I could for any and everyone to watch. Special thanks to scampjohnson for giving me the links to those videos.

Teams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77C9T5JwU_I

winners semis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfmq__jqPxE&NR=1

winners finals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NH-hYj7bx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_geN8J3kk4

grand finals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zibibY0E0CE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZoxpUwetvU

Scamp’s Dahlsim was just too patient and too good at controlling the battle that no amount of fireballs, spin kicks or jump ins was going to change it. It was still a spectacular final regardless because it was a study in pacing and how well some players manage the game. Dahlsim might be considered low-tier but unless there’s a way to actually get past the ‘gauntlet’ as one Saint Louis player going by Ed said, it’ll be a hard thing to justify when it works this well.

Hype matches were abound of course after the tournament with people taking bets and having a good time. Special thanks to Ed for being cool enough to talk with me and actually give a bit of his philosophy on the subject. I look forward to meeting up with the so called ‘S Team’ of Saint Louis again in the near future as well as attending the KC ‘Hook Ups’ at both JSpots house and Le’s house on Tuesdays and Friday’s respectively. Anyone mildly interested should probably jump on shoryuken.com and go looking for the KC thread for dates, times and people to chat with. I will hopefully be making these ‘hook ups’ and tournaments a regular thing for improving my game and I’ll be glad to see anyone else there sometime.

Trophy Hunter: Assassin's Creed II

[SPOILER WARNING]

Overview:
- Estimated trophy difficulty: 4/10
- Offline: 51
- Online: 0
- Approximate time to Platinum: 20 - 25 hours.
- Minimum playthroughs: 1
- Missable trophies: 0
- Glitched trophies: 0
- Do cheats disable trophies?: N/A
- Does difficulty affect trophies?: N/A
- Trophy breakdown for Platinum: B: 44/S: 15/G: 1/P: 1

Step 1: Complete the story.
This step is simple enough just play through the game all the way to the end. Chances are you will get most of the Miscellaneous trophies by the end but you don't need to get them before you complete the game as you can continue playing after you've beaten it. I suggest you do all of the tombs before you finish the game. Going through all of the tombs not only gets you trophies but you get Altair's armor which is the best armor in the game and will help you get through the game. There is one miscellaneous trophy that you MUST get before the end of the game to prevent you from having to do another playthrough and that is Fly Swatter. By the end of this step you should have all of the story related trophies, all the tomb related trophies and Fly Swatter.

Step 2: Combat trophies
You should have completed the story by now and chances are you have some if not most of the combat related trophies already. If you don't have them now is the perfect time to do so. You don't have any missions to worry about so you can just go around killing guards in the ways necessary to get the trophies. By the end of this step you should have the trophies Street Cleaner, Messer Sandman, Doctor, No-Hitter and Sweeper.

Step 3: Side missions and Money
After the story you should have a lot of money. This is the perfect opportunity for you to get yourself some trophies. You should by enough courtesans, paintings, upgrades to your stronghold, and pretty much anything you need. You should also do all of the side missions in this step as well. This is also a good time to get the view point trophies even though by this point you probably already have them. By the end of this step you should have the following trophies: Kleptomaniac, High Dive, I like the View, Lightning Strike, Red Light Addict, Man of the People, Victory lies in Preparation, Art Connoisseur, Assassin for Hire, Macho Man, Steal Home, Mailman, Handy Man and Podestà of Monteriggioni.

Step 4: Collectibles
These should be some of the last trophies you go for. The longest and, arguably, most frustrating trophies in the game are saved for this step. Don't worry though as it's not that bad when you use a map for the locations of the Feathers and Glyphs. You should also get all the statuettes in your Villa if you haven't already. At the end of this section you step have the trophies: Myth Maker, Vitruvian Man, Tip of the Iceberg, A Piece of the Puzzle, In Memory of Pertruccio and Show your Colors.

I hope this guide sets you in the right path to get a relatively easy platinum. If you want maps of the feather locations and glyph locations I recommend the maps at Games Radar as they are nicely laid out and easy to follow.

Happy Hunting

e_O