I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Visited my family and my new in-laws for Turkey Day and had an extremely relaxing time. I got my brother a Go board for his birthday (along with the excellent Mario & Luigi ). Todd and I played once, but my Dad and I played four or five games, all very close. Go is such an amazing game. Bessie and Todd played a few hours of Mario Kart: Double Dash! . I wasn't impressed with the game when I saw it in May at E3, and I'm still not impressed with the single player, the cooperative play makes it feel really fresh. (The two players ride on the same kart; one drives and the other uses the items and helps out with powerslides.) It's no Halo coop, but it requires enough communication and synchronization to make it really feel like you're racing together. It was a great way to spend time with my side of the family. Visiting my in-laws was quite a treat as well. Mrs. Yang always tries to stuff me with the sheer volume of food she prepares, and I always oblige beca

Master and Commander is fantastic. Directed by the Truman Show's Peter Wier , it's a period fiction piece about a British ship and it's brave crew engaging a larger, faster Napolean galleon that hunts them like a phantom. Think Das Boot with sunlight, humor, and movie-star charisma. I actually enjoy the movie more than the German classic. M&C is a thinking guy's action movie. The film is beautifully shot, visual poetry of 19th century sea vessels and the men that sailed them. The cast is fantastic, especially the two leads, Russel Crowe and Paul Bettany as the ship's captain and doctor, respectively. The sea battles are logical and visceral. Unlike most war movies, the scenes between the battles are no less captivating. Master and Commander is of my favorite movies released this year, along with Lost in Translation .

Amazon ran a sale about a week ago on Neo Geo Pocket Colors - a handheld system by SNK that was launched around the time Pokemon became a household word. The system went unnoticed while Nintendo's pocket monsters took the world by storm, but SNK singlehandedly released a large number of quality games for their system - the majority well made miniaturized versions of their established arcade frachises. While the selection had an overly generous portion of fighting games, the console's library has only a few stinkers in the lot; a sharp contrast to the quality needle in the haystack of licensed mediocrity that is the Game Boy library. Had Pokemon never hit it big, Neo Geo is one of the few handhelds that had a chance to survive against Nintendo's Game Boy systems. The System The NGPC is a nice piece of hardware. The screen is one of the best reflective screens I've seen, easily better than the original GBA screen. In terms of hardware horsepower, it is abo

I'm a big fan of Nintendo's Intelligent Systems ; who wouldn't be after Paper Mario , Mario Kart Super Circuit , Advance Wars 1 and 2 ? Their latest game is Fire Emblem , a long running series in Japan making its first English debut. Comparisons to Advance Wars are inevitable - turn-based strategy game, grid map, and little groups of units battling it out. At the first play, it may feel too similar to some gamers, but differences emerge making Fire Emblem a completely separate interpretation of how to make a tactical strategy game. The RPG elements included in Fire Emblem provide depth and character without sacrificing simplicity. Characters only use one type of weapon and no armor. When characters reach a certain skill level, they can advance to a new class (i.e. knights to paladins) which allows the character to use another type of weapons, further extending their usefulness. The weapon types follow a rock-paper-scissors approach, or in this case, swords-lances-ax

Jellis sent me the link to KidRobot a few days ago and I've been checking it out. I'm not a big action figure guy (they're just geek-dolls, really), but this special ape dude (*cough cough* DEATHMONKEY *cough*) caught my eye and hasn't left my mind since. I want him for my office. I think he's awesome.

After reading such positive reviews , it was my geeky duty to go see Matrix Revolutions bearing as low of expectations as one could take. In that regard, it was better than I anticipated - it was no Waterworld, but not much better. As dozens of other reviews attest, the proceedings lack any human emotion, the viewer is completely detached from any of the characters, and the Wachowski brothers ( siblings ?) expect us to subsist off of heavy handed, half-baked religious symbolism, that through all the crosses, the buddas, and pronouncements of belief when what is stated is neither unique nor interesting. And don't go in expecting closure either, or to leave with any fewer questions than you walked into the theater with. One thing is resolved - that I'll watch the fourth movie in the Matrix series when it runs on TBS. I will say that the battle for Zion was far more impressive and enjoyable than I anticipated - usually battles that involve a bazillion enemies leave me cold a

I played my first game of Go tonight against Bessie. I work for a game company and have spent (or wasted) a great portion of my life playing all sorts of games, but I was uniquely awed by the subtlety and beauty of this Chinese masterpiece. Simple rules. Timeless asthetics. Fathomless depth. When I spend my money and time filling my life with typical video and board games, I sometimes question how selfish and empty gaming is. Games can be a more viceral fantasy reality than any type of fiction because they're first person experiences. Games can be about making someone feel smarter, more talented, stronger, and/or more powerful for some fleeting moment before they return to their less exceptional reality. Besides a small (mostly synthetic) ego boost, games don't really add people's lives; they rarely enlighten the player about themselves or the confusing real world. For some reason, Go was different. Maybe the sharp contrast of quality makes me think Go is more

I hate the Yankees and I'm glad they lost. I'm not sure who the winning team was, it may have been the Tampa Bay Lightning or the Cincinnati Bengals - I don't really care. It's good to stick it to `roid-raging Roger Clemens , their goon-like coaching staff, and of course, the man .

Capcom has tendency to make one amazingly great game every decade, sometimes even define an entire genre, then spend the next 10 years demolishing their accomplishment by flooding the market with cheap, quick follow-ups. Mega Man was Capcom's claim to fame in the eighties. Street Fighter 2 reinvented arcades in the 90s. Both games spawned dozens of sequels, and their brilliance dimmed with each ever-diminishing, apathy-inspiring release. And from about two hours of play time, I predict there will no fewer than three thousand Viewtiful Joe games by the year 2010. At the end of the decade will the gaming public be bored with Joe's immaculate art direction and fluid kung-fu battles against robot dudes? Who knows, but it's really fun to play right now. It is surprising to me how mature Joe is as a play experience. The game's controls are introduced in sandbox tutorials that allow the player to test out their abilities on a endless set of enemies without fear of dyi

In case ya missed it, here's the full story .

Had some friends over on Saturday night, cooked them dinner, and played a game of Bohnanza . While I've played the popular bean trading game dozens of times, often enough to be completely tired of it, I always have a great time playing it. Just rubbing shoulders with people, yammering about how you'll give TWO blue beans for one of their stink beans is worth playing the game for. Who cares if there's no real strategy in the game. . .

My wife's youngest sister has a blog as well as almost everyone under the age of 22. I am way behind the times. Here's our im conversation: Tracy says: how did u find my [blog]? DeathMonkey says: searched for "weird pirate asian freak" DeathMonkey says: it was the first link Tracy says: did not Tracy says: ! Tracy says: let me see Tracy wants to be a pirate, as all middle school-aged asian girls do. For my wedding, she presented my wife (her sister) with a trophy of a pirate's head with the inscription "Arrr. ..I'm a teenage mutant ninja pirate chipmunk!" I need to get a photograph of this trophy; it has to be seen to be believed. Where do you find a pirate head in a trophy shop anyway?

My wife's LITTLE SISTER has a blog too, and has had one for a year. She's an undergrad at UGA, so she's not THAT young. I never claimed to be hip or cool, but goodness, I feel old. Oh, this week she won tickets to an REM concert playing the ultimate schoolyard game: Four Square. If this sounds bizarre, that's because it is. I'm so jealous.

This blog stuff is amazing. Technology: it IS the future.

In its first hour of existence, my blog has already spawned an imitator . Er, well, more of a detractor. I told my brother about my blog and he immediately created one of his own, mocking my self-aggrandizement. We'll see if he ever makes a third post.

Yeah, this is my blog. This is the most vain thing I've done by my recollection. Like everyone on the internet, I have an opinion. In my case, I usually pontificate on games, movies, books, sometimes music and sports and other things. Following a google search, I found only a few billion web pages covering these topics, and only a few million of those are blogs covering games. It is good to be a pioneer. I'm currently listening to an episode of This American Life covering ordinary people MacGyvering solutions to various problems.