neurological dryer lint

no front tonight - but i've been playing mario galaxy for much of the night, so that's a fair tradeoff.

to hear 1up's shane bettenhausen bubble about it being game of the year on 1up yours had me intrigued. i loves me some mario, obviously, but honestly mario 64 (hailed as brilliant and the father of 3D platformers - a genre i avoid) never really won me over and sunshine seemed a little too fluffy. it was the controls, really - i never quite felt like i was able to get the onscreen guy to do what i wanted. contrast that to, say, ocarina of time - still with 3d platforming elements, but i always felt in control.

so galaxy controls almost exactly the same - but add in vertigo from running around spherical worlds. still feels a bit imprecise, and when it starts to cost you lives it gets aggrivating. but it is creative (albeit a little too adorable at times), addictive, and a lot of fun. the critics say mario 1 is to mario 3 as mario 64 is to galaxy. an hour in, i'm not sure, but it's absolutely worth getting if you liked 64 or sunshine.

trying to find a copy was an experience. i ended up at toys r us, which was offering a $25 gift card with purchase... so i rolled in on the way home from work to find a crowd of six or seven people floating nebulously around the counter and a couple of listless employees ambling around. after about 20 minutes the number had grown to about 50 and a line formed. we waited around for a while, and in process i spoke to the three people in line ahead of me:

- a dad in his late forties with three kids. he talked for a while about how gaming had improved his kids' relationships with each other - they cooperate better, ask each other for help more, share a lot more, etc...

- a mom in her late thirties whose husband enjoys gaming as much as their kids. she raved about their wii - playing wii sports, making mii's, etc. she also dug the rock band demo.

- a grandmother in her sixties who was name-dropping her favorite Gamecube titles like... she was me. plays a lot with her grandkids, as well as a lot of PSP on her own. it was quite inspiring.

i spend enough time among hardcore gamers - i found this crowd refreshing. strangers that don't know tons about games, talking about genres they like, stuff their kids like, their opinions of the different platforms and their strengths and weaknesses (a lot of comments, for example, about how the game consoles match up appearance-wise in their entertainment centers).

speaking of rock band... brian, tony, ryan and i fired up the four-player action today over lunch. wanted dead or alive - b was on bass, i manned the drums, tony on guitar, and hamrick was jon bon jovi - and tore it up, garnering an audience of customers and even a few best buy employees that certainly did not want to throw us out of the store and ban us for life.