Windbags, Mario Golfin', and Retro GBA'ing

First off, for full disclosure's sake, yes - I am a registered Republican. No, I did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000, and no, I don't know who I'm going to vote for in November yet. But I do know one thing: extremist media sucks shit. On the right are party schills Fox News and on the left, the worst of the worst, that hulking fatass Michael Moore. The way he destorts and selectively edits his documentaries and passes them off as the "whole truth" is appalling. The worst part is the number of uneducated people who see his movies and don't bother to research the things Moore shows them for accuracy. Everybody should read the artile Bowling For Truth, which exposes some of the bullshit espoused in Moore's film Bowling For Columbine. If that article interests you at all, there's more likeminded things at Moore Exposed. Now he does say some good things, and point out some things that need to be reformed, but every now and then he does and say something utterly ignorant and stupid:



Now, I'll see Farenheit 9/11 before I judge it, but from what I've seen so far, it looks like Moore has just taken what he did with Columbine and gotten even nastier. In all due fairness, I doubt I'll pay to see it. Figure that one out.

In less serious news, I went out and got a copy of Mario Golf: Advance Tour for GameBoy Advance yesterday, and I have to say that it's freaking great. Like the extremely fun Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour for the Gamecube, Nintendo and Camelot have managed to pack the little GBA cart full of fun. Camelot, developers of GBA RPGs Golden Sun and Golden Sun II, created a great single player mode that can only be described as "role-playing golf". As you complete side games, match play, and win tournaments, you get experience points which you can use to level up your statistics [driving distance, shot height, control, etc] and you can collect various club sets [super power, control, etc]. It supports the yet-to-be-released in the US version of the GBA Wireless Adapter, which finally shows Nintendo's stepping in the right direction and hopefully abolishing the wired-mess that linking 4 GBAs used to be. With the promise of 802.11 wireless in the new Nintendo DS systems, will wireless, internet gameplay finally be available? I can't tell you how much it would kick ass to be able to sit on my couch, fire up my portable system, and play games against one of my friends three states away. I'd be like a free Xbox Live, but with the extremely kickass Gameboy and GBA library. Tetris Attack, anyone?

Staying on the GameBoy, I'll give Nintendo some credit for their latest ad campaign for the GBA. With the new SP that looks like an old NES controller, they're getting a lot of early-twentiesomethings to buy GBAs. There was a good article in Denver's Rocky Mountain News about how retro gaming is big business, something Nintendo obviously grasps. I love that they're putting out older games, but $19.99 for ONE old game? I loved Zelda and SMB1, but $19.99 each? I would've gladly paid $30 or so for 5 or 6 old NES games on one cart [which is more than technically possible], but $20 for one freaking game is highway robbery, no matter how cool they would look on the new NES styled GBA SP:



Of the games released so far in the "Classic NES" series, only Super Mario Brothers and Zelda are remotely close to being worth $19.99. Hopefully, more older NES games will get ported, but at that price point, I doubt I'd really buy any of them.