Month: November 2005

About the only way Army will see the Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy is if they steal it.

Go Navy, Beat Army!

At long last, Out of the Park Baseball released the final 6.51 patch. Now it’s on to Out of the Park Baseball Manager 2006!

His exploits in a Phantom jet were very inspiring to me as a kid. Still are. But news like this makes it very hard for me to be optimistic about our society.

A pre-release schedule for Strat-O-Matic Baseball was posted on their site. You’ll be able to pre-order 2005 products on December 20th.

Grognards everywhere should head over to Matrix Games and check out their holiday sale. Six war games’ prices are reduced.

Back in the day I had a major addiction to buying games. I would buy pretty much everything that came out, just because I could – ah, the days before two kids and law school payments. It was a time of innocence; a time of stupidity.

Packing up stuff for my upcoming move (hopefully any week now) I realize just how stupid I was. Yes, I was addicted; I do not use that term loosely. I actually *had* to have every game. I “collected” games. I got a rush from *buying* games. I assume that is what happens to folks that have to take a nic break, or have to have a drink, or whatever goes with the vice. Believe it or not there was a time when I owned every PlayStation title on the market – we are talking about 175+ games (at the time). Wow!

I have since got over my addiction, but I still show some signs of stupidity. The latest version of FootBall Manager. Had to have it. Preordered it. Have yet to play it, much less load it on my laptop. I will chalk that one up to poor timing.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. As I am packing up stuff, I realized that I have many games that I have never played, and I doubt I will ever have time to play. Sure I am keeping some of the stuff (some classics for a rainy day), but for now a lot of games have to go – to help pay off this massive house renovation or something to that effect.

I have the following junk, err games, on eBay right now (43 or so hours left): Porsche Challenge, NFS Porsche Unleashed, Jumping Flash! 2, TOCA Championship Racing, TOCA 2, Nanotek Warrior, RPG Maker, Tomb Raider II, Tomb Raider III, and PaRappa the Rapper all for the original PlayStation. I also decided that I could live with my 2005 version of Madden, so Madden 2006 for the PS2 is for sale. For the collectors out there, everything is pretty much brand new, some with the actual shrinkwrap (that addiction thing).

For what it is worth, I actually got my money’s worth from Porsche Challenge and both TOCA games. Nanotek Warrior, Porsche Unleashed, and PaRappa all received plenty of play time, but hard to say I actually got my money’s worth. Madden 2006 was a waste of money – I never really found the time to get into it the way I should have. As for Jumping Flash! 2, RPG Maker and the Tomb Raider games – never played and all except Tomb Raider II are still in the shrinkwrap. About six months ago I opened Tomb Raider II with the intent of playing it, but alas, I never got around to it. Maybe if it does not sale. Maybe.

For those wonder, Jumping Flash was a great game, so I naturally had to get the follow-up, but I never got around to finding out. I assume I can be plenty happy by just holding on to Jumping Flash.

I used to say that gaming was my vice, but I guess it was also a financial vice in a very big way. This is just a very small round of games that all cost $39-49 a pop. I doubt I will recover 10% of the original value. That should say something to all you would be collectors!

The long awaited patch for EA Sports FIFA Manager 06 was released. There’s quite an extensive list of fixes in the patch notes. There was a little bit of an uproar because a German version of the patch was available before an English version was released. All is well now.

Eidos posted another in their exciting Championship Manager 2006 Pawns Attack series. This time it is the orange pawns that are putting presssure on the goal.

There’s a new blog entry at the Out of the Park Baseball Manager 2006 site. Some pretty exciting news about the extent that OOTPBM can create huge baseball universes. I’m still holding my breath for the online gaming blog entry because a lot will change from OOTP 6.5 as far as I can tell. Since most of the new changes look ver, very good, I can only hope that changes to the online portion of the game are as nice.

Marc Duffy posted a new entry in the Out of the Park Baseball Manager 2006 blog. Not much new infomation. More of an introduction to Mr. Duffy and Sports Interactive.

Eidos posted another article about their upcoming Championship Manager 2006. Transfers, simulate world, player enquiries, club benefactor, and board models are discussed.

I hope everyone has a wonderful (and safe) Thanksgiving. As for me, Tonya and Joshua are sick, throwing up hour after hour since 10PM last night, so I have a bowl of spaghetti for my Thanksgiving dinner. I guess the spin is that I am thankful that I did not have to choke on my mother-in-law’s dry turkey, but I would have still rather had a bad traditional Thanksgiving dinner than none at all.

Enough about that. After several PBRs, some Lay’s BBQ chips, and an easy Falcons victory over the Lions I am salvaging a decent Thanksgiving.

Last night, prior to all the throwing up, I restarted Gran Theft Auto San Andreas. It has been so long since I played, that I figured I would give it a go again from the beginning. After playing the first five missions, and countless crap (making the most of mayhem opportunities), I still think this is a great game. Over the top? Sure. Completely inappropriate for kids? You bet. With that said, man this is fun game. It is certainly not for everyone, but if you take the game for what it is (you can fill in your own blanks), it is damn fun.

I promised to write more about Madden PSP. One day I should get around to it, but for now let me say that it is basically Madden 2005 for the PS2. The kicking meter is too sensitive; I cannot count the number of extra points I have missed, much less the number of out of bounds penalties on kick offs. The punting game sucks; no real return chances, and too many fumbles because of a lack of space. Just like the console version.

I am more than a few games into my franchise without any signs of problems. No shut-downs, no game freezes, no real system problems.

More to come later; hopefully. Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. It is a time when we look back and reflect on what we are thankful for as far as family, friends, and�games are concerned. As I look back over 2005, these are the things that I thank my lucky stars about (in no particular order):

I�m thankful that a company like Sports Interactive exists. I cannot imagine a cold dark world where there is no Football Manager, Eastside Hockey Manager, or Out of the Park Baseball Manager. Thank you SI Games.

I�m thankful that Markus Heihnson and Shaun Sullivan develop games for people like me. They understand what baseball general manager joy is and spread it through the world with their wonderful products. Thank you Markus and Shaun.

I�m thankful that The Escapist exists and fills my inbox with the best writing about games on the planet. It is so good that I would break my long standing vow of never paying for a print game magazine ever again. But the good news is that it is free! The intelligent and topical writing is very entertaining. Thank you The Escapist.

I�m thankful that Blizzard developed World of Warcraft. Even though it has been a year, I still play it almost every day. To use Bill Abner�s term, World of Warcraft is gaming crack and I just can�t get enough. Thank you Blizzard.

I�m thankful for Microsoft and the Xbox 360 game developers. Thank you for concentrating on pretty pictures and graphics instead of game play in your launch titles. Because you did this, I had zero notions of buying an Xbox 360 at launch and saved myself a lot of money. This was the most unanticipated console launch in my gaming history. The Xbox and PS2 had interesting titles and took my hard earned cash from me. But not this year. Thank you Microsoft.

I�m thankful for EA Sports. You continue to develop crappy game after crappy game. It is fun to watch your lemming like fans buy everything you dish out to them regardless of how good the title is. While I did like Madden�s online playing ability, the rest of the game was pretty poorly done. Just as General Motors is finding out, you can continue to make bad products and eventually the consumers will stop buying. Plus folks that wouldn�t think about text games do so now thanks to your terrible sports offerings. Thank you EA Sports.

Finally, I�m thankful for the online sports gaming community. Most of us have been doing this for many years and nothing beats the fun and challenge of being in an online league. So a big thank you to my OOTP online buddies everywhere!

Markus Heinsohn released the last Out of the Park Baseball 6.5b beta version yesterday. Hopefully we will see the 6.5b final version during my lifetime.

There�s a lot to like about Bowl Bound College Football. Everything is pretty intuitive and there is a nice email system that serves as a tutorial. The game guides you through the various stages that include a training camp, red shirting freshmen, setting depth charts, and even determining how much study hall time your less book smart students will have to keep their eligibility.

There�s still much work to be done. Playing for only 30 minutes revealed some huge bugs in the game. I chose to coach Navy (known as the �Sailers� in the game – please fix this before the game is released since I think Grey Dog meant “Sailors”) and set up a flexbone offense. For those of you not familiar with this formation, there isn�t a lot of passing within this style of offense. Imagine my shock when Navy played SMU and Navy�s QB threw for 377 yards with 33 attempts. A flexbone QB might have 377 yards passing in three or four games. There are some wishbone/flexbone AI issues in the demo.

Here�s a doozy of an error/bug. Read the following game log entry very closely:

�Southern Methodist ball, Q4, 2-2-NAVY2 (10:30) 3-14
Offense: Outside Run, Set: Shotgun, Play: SG-RB-straight-LT (outside run)
Defense: Stop Run, Set: Goal Line, Play: GL-run-Man-B7,8,9 (target run)
RB L. Droughns runs left end for 2 yards ****Touchdown!*****

Southern Methodist ball, Q4, 1-0-NAVY0 (10:02) 9-14
Isaiah Frederickson converts the 21 yard field goal.

Southern Methodist ball, Q4, 1-10-SMU35 (09:44) 12-14�

Notice that after the TD, SMU was awarded 3 points for their extra point. This consistently happened throughout the game. I�d suggest fixing this before the full version is released.

Don�t know if this is a bug or not, but there wasn�t much scoring in the game until late during the 4th quarter when SMU scored 22 points and Navy 14 during a five or six minute span during the game.

The demo shows a game with a lot of potential that doesn�t quite work yet. But to Grey Dog’s credit, at least we’re not paying full price to be beta testers. I’d go ahead and post any bugs you find in their bug report forum.