Hey, giantbombers!  I thought I'd share a silly little video of me doing "stand-up" at a cemetery.  Let me know what you think!  I'm planning on entering this in a local film fest.  Not because I think it will do well, but because I want to subject a crowd of people to this insanity.  Enjoy!

 

I bought Super Street Fighter IV the day after it came out, and I had been looking forward to getting it for months.  I had never even played a Street Fighter game before, much less knew anything beyond "quarter circle + punch."  But despite my excitement and anticipation, I resolved to leave it in the shrink wrap.  I needed motivation to finish my term paper for History 200, to do a much-needed extra-credit assignment for Anthropology, prepare for my all-essay-question final in History of East Asia, and do some hardcore studying for History 101 and Educational Psych (history education major obvobvobv).  I figured having a game that I had been waiting months to play in plain view, mocking me with its intense box art, would encourage me to get everything done and out of the way.
 
Did it work?  Yes!  Kind of!  Well enough.  My portfolio for HIS 200 is done, the Anthropology assignment is done and I've reviewed the class materials for the final.  I haven't reviewed for my other finals yet, but they're later in the week so I don't care.  I needed to crack that game open and play it.  Compromise was needed.  Take care of what needed to be done for Monday, and then play Super Street Fighter IV.
 
I don't know if any of you know this or have heard, but that game?  It's pretty good!  You should pick it up and try it out.
 
I'm not too much of a stranger to fighting games.  I played A LOT of Tekken 3 back in the day, and a fair amount of Soul Calibur 2 on the Game Cube.  Aside from hundreds and hundreds of hours of Super Smash Bros. Melee (which doesn't count, I suppose), that's about it.  So the first thing I did after installing the game to my hard drive was to go into training mode with Ryu to throw some blue fireballs.  Hadoukens, as they are known by many.  Shoryukens were a lot trickier.  After practicing a little with Ryu's moves, I switched to the character that most intrigued me:  Juri.  I did the same thing with her:  went through her move list, trying to hammer out the easy moves consistently.  After awhile, I moved to Arcade Mode with her on easy and fought my first matches of Street Fighter.  A lot of rounds were close calls, but I swept through them all.  With my self-esteem boosted with my initial successes, I entered the last match with confidence.
 
Bison is a jerk.  He kept demolishing me, time and time again.  I think I retried about ten times.  I think my defeats stemmed from both execution issues (both poor memorization of moves and controller input), not really knowing when to use what moves, and what moves flow into each other.
 
But I'm not too worried, since it was literally my first time playing a Street Fighter game in my life.
 
Watch out Bison, I've got your number.

I like to think of myself as an avid gamer.  But I've been hiding some terrible secrets that I've been ashamed of.  But with a quest asking me to post a blog, and a desire to not post something idiotic with no real content just for XP, I figured this would be a nice opportunity to get these things off my chest.
 
-I've never finished a Legend of Zelda game, despite loving the series.  I've started a lot of them, never finished any.
-I started Half Life 2, and then stopped two hours into it.
...Maybe I'll finish these great games someday (and I really do like them), but I doubt it...
-I will always love Sonic, no matter how many awful awful awful games they put out.
-I don't think I'll ever get over my middle school naivete.  I love FF7, and I always will.  I am bad and I feel bad.
-I hardly ever finish games at all, yet I've pumped hundreds and hundreds hours into games like Modern Warfare 2, Advance Wars, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Culdcept Saga, Unreal Tournament GOTY Edition, Dungeon Siege, etc
 
I'll post more atrocities as I think of them.  Flame me at will.