Most people here maybe only have the vaguest idea's of what I enjoy, Or what my taste are.

To be fair I also learn these as my life continues on.

When I first messed around with the 3DS I didn't much care for it. It was at worst an oddity, And at best, "Somewhat OK?" I only got to play a demo unit at GameStop and the thing was bolted in place so I couldn't pull it anywhere near my face. I'm nearly 6'7" and a little over weight (at least in the picture. I've lost nearly 100 pounds between then and now) I cracked the guys up by playing on my knee's so I could check out the 3D. Kid Icarus was OK but really didn't drive home anything for me. I wasn't impressed.

I think it was around then I heard about Fire Emblem coming? It may of been the reason why I checked it out? *other than pure boredom while waiting for my mom to finish her doctors visit. I am a die hard fire emblem fan. I have bought every fire emblem that has ever came out in the US. I was a bit apprehensive about the system. My lack of disposable cash plays a small part in that a well.

Flash forward a few months, I got sick again. I spent a good deal of time feeling like crap. My tires were dead, car broke, my furnace broke. It was not a good time. My only saving grace was the bombcast and 8-4 play's podcast. Through listening to 8-4 my fever for fire emblem grew. They also sparked a interest in monster hunter that I hadn't had before. I started playing MH:freedom on the psp for the hell of it... just to see if i liked it. As I had yet to even try one.

Over the holidays things got even rougher, Money got tight, And my mental state wavered like a flame in the wind. I was dead broke, But I frequent K-Mart for my prescriptions and one of those days in late Nov. I think, I seen a friend that happened to have a XL, They had

Mario 3D land

, And

RE: revelations

. I tried both of them for a few minutes each. I had decided that I really liked the XL. The bigger screen looked wonderful, The form factor was better for my fairly large hands... And the updated menu system felt a bit snapper and better.

the games seemed really good. The thoughts of the giant bomb crew reflected as much. So I was half way there just waiting on a sale, And I was fairly sure I would get one. Well a few sales had came, and gone by. My funds were barely stretching the months. I expected that to loosen a bit but it continued through January....

By February , I had a little money to play around with. When Fire Emblem came out I wanted to buy it, But couldn't justify the buying of it and the system. I still wanted to get it on a sale. Well my sister had caught wind that I wanted the game, And realized she missed my birthday so she got it for my birthday not realizing I was unable to play it. I then started looking for any deals on the 3DS I could find. I found none. On march first I caved in... I bought a XL. I was / Am still pretty excited by the system. My mom mocked me when I told her there was a upcoming sale on the 24th at target. She said, "Yep, That sounds like your luck."

So, I had my pink XL. I downloaded every demo they had on the Eshop I liked a few of them more than I thought I was going to. A few I really didn't care for like Castlevania & Rayman Origins I was surprised to see were nearly broken and unplayable. There are a number of games that get to quote most of giant bomb, "super framey" There are some cool demos on there though. I played a small amount of fire emblem. I liked it a great deal, but I enjoy taking those games slow. I will beat it a good 10 times before everything is said and done. There is no rush. I was sort of looking for what my new system to do so I continued down the rabbit hole.

The built in crap had no draw to me at first but, I did remember @brad going on and on about puzzles and street passing. I checked out the Mii Plaza , For the first day I was kind of like, "That's neat." Next day I was jonesing for street pass. I live in Flint, Michigan so I didn't think there would be much to be had? I looked on a few "street pass" forums and stuff looking for any kind of meetup. What I found was one guy begging for people to meet him anywhere locally. I was exactly right, There's not much street passing to be had. I thought, "Screw it!" packed up my 3DS and headed to the 2 nearest game stores that are right next to each other. First is "Disc Replay" a used store that has games, movies, and music. I wanted to check prices and see what they had, but hoped I'd find a random street passer in the mix... I decided after I looked down to not see that little light turn green that I wasn't going to look at it minus to see if I in fact had one. I went to gamestop and was sad after standing around for a while that I didn't have one. So I wondered why the store unit had not triggered the street pass. As i checked it out I discovered they had the wifi switch off and street passing disabled. So I turned it on and got it. I then went to the mall across the street to visit the best buy in there to hopefully do the same if I didn't catch a random one. Unfortunately the gamestop there didn't have a display unti. So I went to used store in there and walked over to sears hoping either would have one. Well neither did but I did pass by a random dude with one apparently which made me happy. I went back out there the next time I was looking for games and included toys R us, Best Buy and Target into my hit lists. Well none of these had any randoms with units on. At toys R us the display unit triggered it right away. At best buy the unit has the home button disabled and the wifi switch off and glued in place. Target didn't have a unit so my adventure yielded only 2 display unit street passes. It was a lot of work to find out what stores had display units which wasn't what I set out to find. I was hoping to find more 3DS's in the wild... But it wasn't meant to be.

This brings us to Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, It turns out after playing MH:F, MH:F2 I really liked it, So some friends, and I started playing Monster Hunter Tri about January or early February ... I got a bit more hooked on it as it is the crack. When I got my 3DS on the 1st or shortly after I put the MH3U demo on it. I really liked it and thought it looked really good. About a week before it I asked if gamestop would be doing a midnight thing for gears and if monster hunter would be included. The guy said he didn't know. I told him if he knew for sure I'd pre-order and come back. (Even though I really hate midnight events at gamestop the last ones I went to were horrid.) He basically told me he didn't know and they wouldn't know till Monday, I should call then to see and it'd be cool to get one even if i didn't preorder. On Monday I contemplated going to gamestop to get it, I called instead. The same dude told me unless I preorded it I couldn't get one which isn't what he told me before. But he also told me not to come.

So Tuesday I had to get meds so I was finding myself back at K-mart. I thought I'd just pick on up there. They didn't have it. So I went to toys R us.... The guy there said he was waiting on a shipment of them, But Nintendo didn't ship them any. He had Luigi already but not monster hunter. I went over to the same gamestop and asked the ok guy if they had any and he said they also had not received a shipment so the other guy lied to me a couple times for no good reason. I head out thinking, Where the hell can I get one? I drive to walmart. Just so happens they have 1 single copy for the 3DS and none for WiiU, The guy said some other guy just bought one right before me. He also said that they got 8 of each and they were now out with no plans to get more. I found out later that best buy nor target got shipments. I am dumbfounded by this.

I have seen a bunch of stories, and have heard Capcom and Nintendo themselves say things to the order of, "this is the monster hunter we really want to get behind and push onto the US market." It's kind of silly that it lunched with neither of the 2 apps *save transfer tool and packet relay tool* were ready for it at launch and Most users that were lucky enough to find themselves with a copy of the retail game... The game refused to register correctly in club Nintendo. The pictures on the left are what club Nintendo spit out on Tuesday and Wednesday when I entered my pin. Then they don't even ship the game to 99% of the stores that carry games in my town. It seems like they almost forgot this was coming or mistakenly thought it was coming out Sunday with the rest of the Nintendo stuff? This experience is baffling at best.

This story could use a lot of pruning and editing, But I don't feel up to the task lately so forgive me. I am not the strongest writer, But sometimes I feel I am the only saying these things. I'll be adding my 3DS friend code to the massive thread on here and will be adding most of the numbers till i get sick of doing so. Hope to see some of you for dumb Luigi fun later in the week. Till then much love,Linus