The Recycle Bin

I switched back and forth between the Texas Colorado and Army Navy games yesterday. I think the Texas A&M game was a wake up call for the Longhorns, and poor Colorado had to suffer through a serious beat down because of it.

Navy beat Army for the fourth year in a row. Life is good.

I downloaded Grey Dog Software’s Total Pro Basketball 2005 and will take a look next week. The game looks much improved over last year’s version. I’m looking for an NBA sim, and this is pretty much the only game in town for GM fans.

A few “experts” seriously picked UCLA over USC.

I had the good fortune of being around San Diego State when Marshall Faulk was there (my wife is a proud Aztec). He is the greatest running back I’ve ever seen in college. Reggie Bush is a close second. The difference is that Marshall Faulk was by far the only option at San Diego State. You knew who was going to get the majority of the touches. Yet when he touched the ball and got to the secondary, there was always a chance that he would score a TD. Reggie Bush is one of many options at USC, so that’s why I will always think Faulk was the better college running back. Teams would line up 10 players in the box and Faulk would still rush for 200 yards.

The Army Navy game is today at 2:30 PM ET. I tell my students at Texas A&M that they have a nice little quaint rivalry with University of Texas compared to the proud tradition that is the Army Navy game. Graduates of both institutions take the game very seriously. I remember when I was deployed in Japan many years ago breaking into the Officer’s Club at 3:00 AM to watch the game with some of my fellow Academy graduates. Losses are devestating and victory is expected. Records really don’t matter because history shows us many examples of a scrapy Army or Navy team defeating the opponent with a better record.

It is a good natured rivalry. One of my students at the University of Florida was a helicopter pilot in the Army, a West Point graduate, and we had fun giving each other a hard time during this time of year. I ran track and raced bicycles when I was a Midshipman, and it gave me great pleasure that I never lost to an Army doggy while I was at the Academy.

Games like these make college sports so much fun.

A couple of new posts at the Out of the Park Baseballl Manager site. In the first, Markus Heinsohn discusses the stats engine and how it works. The second post asks for volunteers to help write the OOTPBM manual. It’s not clear how they are going to choose the help that they’re asking for from the OOTP community, but it is nice to see that a manual is in the works.

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!