Anyone else notice that Hero looks a lot like a male version of Pan and in Hyper-mode that one guy looks a lot like Goku or Vegeto?

hahaha yeah he does look like Pan. I was like, "is that dragonball VII..? ..OH." don't know about hyper-mode, i'm not really a dragonquest fan

They look like Dragon Ball characters becuase if i am not mistaken they are done by the same artist.

About mother, nintendo didn't release the mother 1+2 gba pack outside of japan, so they probably will not release mother 3 here.

So you are making us announce publicly what we have done to ourselves while in "the zone" ?

Lets see... well my most common thing is having to go to the bathroom but keep playing. That is never fun.

But anyway, my funniest thing has to be when I was playing Final Fantasy VII (Its my favorite) and I was in "the zone" and I had my speakers blaring and was at one of the fairly good parts of the game, now I should mention that I was hungry and had put some pizza rolls in the oven and let them go, so I am playing and playing and I smell the wonderful smell of burning food but I was at my favorite part and wasn't sure what I should do. So after I sat through the totally awesome FMW scene (Yeah I decided to finish up) I ran upstairs and threw the door open was greeted by smoke which is ALWAYS a good thing. Anyway I turn the oven off and look in the window (Remember kids, NEVER OPEN THE OVEN DOOR IF THERE IS A FIRE, fire likes air) and see that the oil that oozed out of the rolls must have landed on one of the elements and went up. So I waited for it to burn itself out and cool down and I went in and threw out the tin foil with all the little black lumps on it and cleaned up the stove (Thankfully I had the rolls on a stone) opened all the doors and windows and let the kitchen air out for a while.

Nobody ever found out about that little number.

:D

I am sure we have all had our little cooking accidents though.

Well, whenever I am playing, I do a little "potty dance". Whenever I have to pee, and I'm playing video games, I start to stand up and shift around the room. Soon I start hopping from foot to foot, and then I sprint out of the room.

Vivec

My Wal-Mart actually has some Xbox 360's in now. They had 4 core and 4 premium.

For your Final Thought's segement:

I was a new player (read: newb) in counterstrike, and a few rounds into the game, where I was playing as the terrorist force, I somehow ended up with the bomb.

Now, up until that point, I had been doing terrible, I had 6 kill with about 38 deaths (I know, huh?) I was barely lasting a minute per round.

On the round I had the bomb though, I was doing very well, at least, I thought I was. I got 4 of my six kills in that mission. I thought i was finally getting the hang of it.

As it turns out, this was not the case. The other players knew I had the bomb (I did not, it being the first time I had the bomb) so they would follow me, and find the shorter route to where I was heading, and toss grenades in my path to weaken the opponents ahead of me, or flash bombs to blind them, so It would be easier for me to kill them. I was unaware of this and got to the bomb site

Then one said over their mike, "Good, you made it, plant the bomb."
No response. (from me)
"Noob, plant the bomb!"
"Er, hello Mr_Warrior?"
"He doesn't know he has the bomb"
At this point, I realize they are talking about me, and you might think the story ends there, that I equip the bomb and plant it, and we win, end of story.

Wrong.

Remember, this is the first time I have had the bomb EVER. I didn't realize what to do. I started to panic, first thing I did was leave the room of the bomb site and try to write them to shoot me to get the bomb, as I wasn't about to ask for help (this is the same game where if some one asks how to spraypaint, they'll say'ALT+F4' or something equally moronic) Unfortunately, I didn't even know that the chat button was something other that enter.

Not that I needed to chat to tell them to do it (this is counterstrike we're talking about). After a few seconds of poking fun at me, our rifle wielding 'hero' lets loose a headshot and they go on to win the round.

I still play the game occasionally mind you, just under a different name (obviously) i heard they saved some sort of recording of it (part of the delay in shooting me, no doubt).

I still consider this the funniest occurance to ever happen to me in any game. even beating the dismal first time I went with Warcraft 3 online, but I'll save that story for another time. :)

Hey thanks for keeping the retro review FAIRLY recent (within my lifetime.. j/k). I immediately found Baldur's Gate 2 for $8. I played Baldur's Gate 1 back in the day, and liked it, so I figured I'd love this. Thanks for the reminder! More PC game retro reviews!!!

Thank you Steve for answering my Spore Talk Questions. And it's pronounced "Hide-Dro-Man-Cer-X" Think of Necomancer but for water which is Hydro with an X on the end. Also Hydro is fine ;)

Retro review of BG2!!?!? God, that makes me feel old, considering I still clock time into that game. So good though, who could resist the sexyness of it? Mmmmm

I used to play lineage2 hardcore, i was the highest level paladin in the WORLD at the time(lvl 69 kain) on north american servers, i um... sorta had plans to go to san fransico on a paid business trip, but because i was playing the game so much, i forgot to check the email that asked for my address to send the plane ticket, a few days before the event im totally confused what's wrong and i couldnt get in contact with the person that was going to send me the ticket because they were already setting up the event i was going to.

So basicly... lineage 2 messes up the lives of americans too, it didn't kill me but ouch, i still feel like a complete jerk.

BG2 man that game was fun, I almost want to bust that out and reinstall that one. I remember when the first time my party members stated to fight to the death. 2 evil vs 2 good and i think my least favorite of the four was the only one to survive. I think more games today need to have a players party memebr just get in random brawls.

I failed last year's finals because I was playing WoW too much... Guess that's kinda funny. :P Than again, I've failed quite alot of tests and missed some school because of games...

Now I've dropped out of VWO (not a big deal, jsut means I wont go to uni). I'm in college now doing a game design and digital arts cource :) Gaming is allowed during lunch breaks and some classes. It's called "research".

MY funniest inciditend to to with games was when my next-door neighbour rung me up to ask if he could come over.
"Can I come over," he said.
" No," I said.
"Why," he said.
"......ermmm....... I have....er......homework tonight," I said.
As you could tell it was fake, but he is quite gullible so he believed me.

Yes it isn't too funny but it is the only one.

Octopus's have 10 legs? Apparently in Will Wright's world they do.
Another Gaming Steve flub.

The funniest thing that ever happened in "The Zone" didn't actually happen to me, but rather a person I know.
He's the type of guy that makes hardcore gamers like me ashamed of ourselves. Kind of alienated, unbelievably nerdy. For his birthday a few years ago, some friends and I pooled our money and got him Kingdom Hearts. He was finished the game in less than two days. Anyways, he was at my house for a drama project a year or two ago, and although he had several times finished Final Fantasy IX, he loaded up his game save to beat the final boss again. At some point near the end of the game, there are a ton of cutscenes, and as I was downstairs waiting for the rest of the group to arrive, I heard muffled noises coming from above. I slowly crept up the stairs and nearly urinated in my pants when I heard the guy talking to the TV, encouraging the characters. "Awww yeah! Get him! Yeah! Zidaine!" He was being serious. I stood there, halfway up the stairs, for a few minutes, crying. It was the single funniest thing I have ever experienced related to gaming ever. I went back down to get the video camera, and some of my friends had arrived. We went up quietly, and I started recording. The cutscenes ended up at a part where Zidaine falls down a big hole and the camera sort of spins around him in slow motion. We all burst out laughing when we heard the guy yell "Awwwwwwwwww! MATRIX!!!!!!" When he learned we were there, he was entirely unfazed. Friggin’ hilarious.

The funniest thing I ever did when I was really in the zone was back in the days of doom 2. I was playing deathmatch over 38.8 modem with a freind, and I got so into the game that I actually would make my freinds be quiet, and would only speak in whisper as if my opponent could hear me, and discover my location.

The funniest thing that happened to me while gaming?

I used to be part of an Onslaught clan for Unreal Tournament 2004, and we were scrimming another clan one night while my wife was napping in the other room. Well, towards the end of the match, she wakes up and comes out to ask me when I'm going to make dinner. Now she's one of those types that likes to adjust her language for additional cuteness, and I didn't really think too much of talking to her about "making chicky" and things like that.

That is, I didn't think too much of it until I heard my team cracking up and ripping me. We used TeamSpeak for VoIP and I still had a hot mic. They never let me live that down, either.

I was playing Red Alert 2 (I think it was) nonstop for almost two days near the end of it I wanted to get some cola down the hatch and I moved my mouse cursor to the right to grab my coca cola.
not understanding for a couple of seconds why I couldnt grab/reach the cola?!?!! kinda frustrating when youre thirsty;)

Red Alert will do that to you...

I think I am going to go install Red Alert.

:P

My contribution for the Final Thoughts section:
Sadly it's kind of a pathetic sort of sad story and not really funny (though I find it mildly amusing).... but anyway. My freshman year of college I would play Perfect Dark for N64 every single night with my roommate and some of our friends from down the hall. It got to the point where we formed a group called Team D**k and all adopted suggestive names. We would play for hours and hours and at the end of the semester and year my grades were showing it. Almost failed Physics (skipped it many Friday mornings), did fairly badly in Psychology, wasn't the greatest in my core classes for my major, etc. But it was good fun. If you want to have a BLAST playing Perfect Dark (haven't tried testing if this is possible in PDZ, but aim to soon), play with 3 other friends against a full, maximum-sized team of the hardest-level Peace Sims. They run faster than you can turn so they're really hard to shoot, and you won't even know what's going on, one will run up to you and smack you up till you can't see anything and you'll be unarmed and sometimes they smack you up enough to die. It's crazy fun.

It's not quite relating to being "In The Zone" but I play MMO's and chatting and stuff so often that, when I see something funny, I think 'lol' instead of 'hahaha'. Sometimes I almost say lol out loud...

"I was playing Red Alert 2 (I think it was) nonstop for almost two days near the end of it I wanted to get some cola down the hatch and I moved my mouse cursor to the right to grab my coca cola. not understanding for a couple of seconds why I couldnt grab/reach the cola?!?!! kinda frustrating when youre thirsty;)"

Not sure if I'm allowed to make a second entry, but here it is anyway.

I had something simmilar, only the other way arround. I was in art class drawing some stuff and talking to some mates. At some point I drew a wrong line. No problems you might say. Well, for me it was... I actually tried to press CTRL + Z on an imaginary keyboard on my desk to undo the wrong line. It took me about 5 seconds to understand why the line wouldn't go away. 2 of the guys sitting next and acros of me sat there for 30 seconds with this really awkward face of "WTFness". Than the loled for about 5 minutes and I just sat there really uncomfortably.

That same day during lunch break, I somehow asked "What's the next map?", while ofcource I meant to say "What's the next class?"

That was an awkward day, I'm not really sure where my mind was...

Thanks for answering my question about how to transfer saves from an xBox to an xBox360. I kind of figured there wasn't a way that was Microsoft-sanctioned, otherwise the answer would be easier to find. I guess the idea is that you're supposed to be playing the *new* games, right? MS isn't making any money if someone buys a 360 and just plays old games on it, so I guess we should be thankful we can play the old games (mostly) much less access old saves from "extinct" ;-) hardware.

Hummm.... well my funniest game moment I can think of is when my friends and I used to play the old Infocom text adventures in our high school library. Back then you used to have to dump text output to a printer because when it scrolled off screen it was gone. And of course it was the old dot-matrix printers, which were really loud and attention-getting, so we were always trying to figure out ways to trick the librarians into thinking we were printing off actual work rather than printing off reams and reams of "> West. Drop sword. Take lunch. Eat lunch. Kill troll." ;-) Yeah, I know pretty sad. But it was funny at the time. :-)

"At some point I drew a wrong line. No problems you might say. Well, for me it was... I actually tried to press CTRL + Z on an imaginary keyboard on my desk to undo the wrong line."

OMG, I work in PS a lot and I've done that. :D

"and chatting and stuff so often that, when I see something funny, I think 'lol' instead of 'hahaha'. Sometimes I almost say lol out loud..."

I've almost done that too. Eeek.
I'm not alone! ;-)

""and chatting and stuff so often that, when I see something funny, I think 'lol' instead of 'hahaha'. Sometimes I almost say lol out loud..."

I've almost done that too. Eeek. I'm not alone! ;-)"

I do that all the time... When someone tells something that's sort of funny but not funny enough to cause serious laughing I usually jsut say "LOL" :D

"At some point I drew a wrong line. No problems you might say. Well, for me it was... I actually tried to press CTRL + Z on an imaginary keyboard on my desk to undo the wrong line."

haha yeah ive tried that alot:D, I paint on the computer most of the time but my lvl of detail is better when drawing on paper, and it can get hard to get use to the eraser again after many computerdrawings;).

One of the funniest gaming experiences I can remember involved myself and two friends
playing a multiplayer game of M.U.L.E. on the C64. We loved playing this game, but we
always had trouble finding enough operable joysticks to play. It was bad enough that with
three people playing, one player was consigned to using the keyboard for the auction
portion of the round.

We would often discover the limitations of the joysticks during play -- as it happens,
this old, battered joystick was all that was available to use on this occasion, and it was
truly on its last legs. It was near the end of the game, and my friend was trying to mass
convert his MULEs to other commodities. As anyone who has played M.U.L.E. knows, you have
only a limited amount of time to accomplish things during your turn. We were fiercely
competitive, and there was a definite intensity in the air.

As my friend was absorbed in moving his blocky, sprite-animated avatar around the map
using the joystick, the right-hand directional input suddenly decided to quit working --
he pushed it a little harder, and when that produced no result, he tightened his grip and
pushed even more forcibly. Still nothing. Finally, he essentially slapped the stick with
his open hand, and something inside the joystick made a loud, pitiful sound, something
between a short wail and a creak. It could have easily passed for the sound a startled
cat might make were you to step on its tail. It was so funny that we were truly in
stitches for some time. Even funnier was the fact that the right-directional input
suddenly started working again. Years later, we can all still reference this event just
by imitating the motion of the hit and the creak! noise.

M.U.L.E. was truly a classic, and I look forward to trying the network version and forming
some new memories.

Here's my "story" :
I went through 3 Xbox for Halo 2's multiplayer. My first was modded and my dad blew it(and the 50 games on the HDD) up and I had to get another one. I modded that one but used my old hard drive and got banned from XBL so i bought a third xbox just to play Halo 2 multiplayer. I just HAD to play Halo 2. Total expenses : $760 + tax.

Funniest "Zone" moment, eh? Well I don't often get in the zone, really. My mind often gets bored with things after a few hors unless its a game I can like never get bored with (Like most recently, Perfect Dark Zero).

Well there was this one night. I think I started playing PErfect Dark Zero around 6. It was about a week after I had gotten my 360 on launch day so I had enough skills to get through. Since I was signed up with a clan before the launch we were already playing.

So we were having this all-night match thing, right. Pretty much everyone was on so we started up an Eradication game and beat whoever came our way. One of the teams were real hovercraft lovers and they used them ALL THE TIME. It was kind of overwhelming. They used them so much that I got so used to the noise. Well, after about 5 or so hours I decided to take a bathroom break and get some snacks. I'm walking through my hallway, I wstill had my controller in hand cause it was wireless so i didn't feel like putting it down (I do this with remotes to, I get so many lost this way) and all of a sudden I hear this whoosing sound, which sounded exactly like the hovercraft on PDZ, but it was the furnace. When I heard it, I turn around quickly and started to shoot with my controller. I eventually figured out it was the furnace.

Also, when I started to get itno halo for PC, I heard a plane go by and thouhgt it was a banshee, and pretty much did the same thing.

That hasn't happened since, thankfully. It was still darn funny.

Heya Steve. It wouldn't be too hard for China to monitor the age of players. It's not a very private society. The Chinese government has (at least at one point) monitored the menstrual cycles of women of childbearing age.

My zone story.

Many years ago I somehow picked up Harvest Moon for the PlayStation. My initial thoughts were not positive, I mean its a game about farming how fun could it be? About a day later I finaly turned the console off, I glanced at my clock. "only an hour? seemed longer than...HOLY CRAP ITS SUNDAY!"

With the game still on my mind I went to bed...and thats when the halucinations started. I got up off my bed and started "harvesting" various objects from the house and placing them in the bin. I then returned to my bed wondering how much profit I'd made. I kept getting back up and doing it again untill I was awoken by the scream of my brother. Apparently I tried to water him...

"My zone story.

Many years ago I somehow picked up Harvest Moon for the PlayStation. My initial thoughts were not positive, I mean its a game about farming how fun could it be? About a day later I finaly turned the console off, I glanced at my clock. "only an hour? seemed longer than...HOLY CRAP ITS SUNDAY!"

With the game still on my mind I went to bed...and thats when the halucinations started. I got up off my bed and started "harvesting" various objects from the house and placing them in the bin. I then returned to my bed wondering how much profit I'd made. I kept getting back up and doing it again untill I was awoken by the scream of my brother. Apparently I tried to water him..."

Wow... Disturbing... o.0

My funniest gaming experience was when i was dared to play grand theft auto: san andreas for a whole 2 days (i was on holiday) with out saving (i could get people to get me some food) i was in about 1 day and 12 hours my mum was angry and pulled the plug contecting to my ps2 i did not save and i got very very far. Iam still angry at her at this day.

Thanks Gaming Steve for the best podcast around and for doing more games that were around when I was alive (I'm 16).

Back when I was 10, in 2000, My dad and I were heavily into EverQuest...Basically, during the summer holidays, He would play for 12 hours, then go to bed at 5am, where he would wake me up then sleep for 4 hours and go to work, then I'd play until 5pm, when he would get home and take over until 5am....Yeaaah...

I got to Level 60 this way over the course of 90 days =)

Actually, this relates to a previous topic, where you asked about total hours logged...Well, my dad, who is a seriously hardcore MMO player (he plays EQ2 now) has 1 YEAR of Game time. Not since subscription, but 1 year of total play time. This was when he quit EQ1 to go into EQ2, where he has the best everything, is level 60 warrior and level 60 craft-class provisioner. Who knows how many total hours he has logged now...Has to be over 10000 hours.

Worst/Funniest gaming moment: 1993, Baltimore: I was at my brother's college graduation playing Final Fantasy Adventure for the Gameboy. I was halfway through the game when I got poisoned and in a panic I saved the game right at a point when the poison would kill me as soon as I loaded. In anger, I started over and played through until I got right back to that point, all before the end of graduation. Point being: graduations are too long and Final Fantasy Adventure rocks. Thank you.

Hey Steve,

I work for a major UK games retailer and we've had a massive shipment of 360s over the past 2 weeks, about 90% of which have been the premium unit. People have been able to come in and buy them off the shelf most of the time, and for those who just missed out, they can have their name and phone number put down to be contacted as soon as more come back in stock. We also fulfilled all our instore preorders and online preorders before the end of 2005, which is pretty good.

Anyway, just thought you might appreciate some info on what's happening 360 wise on the other side of the pond.

Two things.

I just got Morrowind the day you posted this podcast...So I was like "OMG NAME THAT GAME!"... But it was too late. =(

And, secondly, Gaming Steve has never failed to soothe me to sleep yet.

This is the Best RPG of the year hands down. What a wonderful game. Old School will never die!

Great Podcast again!

The funniest moment, probably isn't my own moment but one my girlfriend and I shared. The only games she used play are racing games in the arcades (she now likes light gun shooters). We had a "party" at an arcade (a lockin), and had been playing Sega Rally for a while till she got ticked at me and said lets play something else. So we started playing Daytona. Did a couple times around the standard oval track and then started on one other (forget which). We were playing and as usual I ended up gunning out in front, but then kept noticing that I would fall back to second spot on a right angle-Left hand corner, and then get back in front a few corners later using a nice powerslide noticing my girlfriend car barrelling around the wall. I kept muttering stuff about her cheating till on the last lap I worked out what was happening. Everytime I came into the right angle corner, I would be passed, not to the left, not to the right but over the top. I saw her car flying over mine and then landing on the track in front of me (yes much cursing ensued), smashing down on the track and taking off (somehow it maintained the speed it had into the corner).

I ended up winning the race, and afterwards I asked her why she never slowed down, using the brake around the corner to which the reply was "There was a brake pedal?" I pointed it out, and she replied "Hmm guess i got into that level, I didn't even notice that".

Gave me a good laugh at the time, we went off and played Time Crisis 3, she definately got into that one, for a while I was worried I might not get my ps2 back that night!

Anyway thats my story, I laugh because of it every time I pass a Daytona booth now.

Hey Steve,

In a true, sad story, I found myself back in to video games, thanks to the Dreamcast, after a bad experience with the Playsation. Video gaming had finally come back to me in a very fun way. I felt the joy and excitement of a new purchase, Cannon Spike, when my girlfriend of the time asked if I'd like to stop over for some "quality time."

To my shock and terror, the first thought that came to my mind was, "But I just got Cannon Spi--" I cut myself off mid-thought and gasped.

I couldn't believe I'd just nearly picked video gaming over spending "time" with my girlfriend.

That's my story.

Final thoughts story:

I don't know if this qualifies, but it's a good story. After about 3 weeks of nagging I was finally convienced to pick up Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast. All I can say was that I was hooked! I started skipping lunch at work so I can leave earlier to play. As soon as I would get home, I would turn on my DC so it can begin logging in while I microwaved a hot pocket for dinner. I would then sit in front of the TV from about 6pm to 1am with only a 15 min bathroom break. After about 3 weeks of this, I noticed my wrists started hurting. But instead of quitting like a reasonable person, I used my weighlifting straps to tape up my wrists and kept going!

That is the reason I don't play MMO's now!

Hmm... The Zone.... Well, I do have a story of sad desperation that's marginally zone-ish, I guess.

When Command & Conquer first came out (the first one!), I was on a 486DX2/66 that could barely run it, and even then it was horribly glitched. There was no sound, it ran really slowly, and it would frequently crash with a ___.MIX error. But I beat it, dammit!

Another time, I was playing Lunar: The Silver Star (on the Sega CD, none of this remake crap), and I was fighting the black dragon skeleton at the end of a marathon gaming session. Some of you might recall that there was a read glitch at this part of the game. I did not know that at the time. So I finally beat the bastich and the game went into an infinite loop, trying to load up some victory music. After staring at the screen for about five minutes, I smacked the side of my Sega CD in frustration. That is the ONLY time I have ever abused hardware! However, the impact caused the CD to skip, it loaded up the track it was looking for, and the game finally progressed.

Score one for percussive maintenance!

This is one of those funny-in-retrospect moments. I was so happy to get my Atari Lynx version of Klax. It looked, played, and sounded like the arcade game--a real first for me! I had to hang out in the Renal clinic for hours because my Mom would get a dialysis treatment while I was there. Three+ hours of Klax, audible to the entire waiting room. Over and over, this is all they heard: Klax wave, diagonal wave, survival wave, ooooh!, yeah!, blip-blip, blop-blop, sploit-sploit, pop-pop! All the colors had a unique sound. How annoying I was! Those poor people, waiting for a kidney exam. Not one told me to turn off the sound.

It's funny now because I thought it was really "cool" to have an arcade game on my "portable" system. Instead, I was about as anti-cool as I could be.

Hey Steve,

Very good Poadcast indeed again.

One thing is not accurate though: All WW shooters are available in Germany (incl. MoH and CoD series) plus they are very successful. The only thing they change is that they remove/replace the Nazi symbols and other evidence that lead to any Nazi involvement. Sometimes, they also replace the history with some fictional story.

I used the episode to find "N." Very interesting. Like a blend of Stick Figure Theater, Loderunner, and Prince of Persia--without the flashy graphics. Thanks to you and the listener who e-mailed it.

Funniest gaming moment.

Picture it, 1993. All night MUD session over dial-up from the on-campus apartments. The problem is, me and my two fellow MUDders/roomates only had one phone line and had no network set up (it was 1993 after all) so we had to take turns playing. The late shift was mine, but my good friend Erik liked to watch what was going on and would patiently sit and watch the rest of us play when it wasn't his turn. As the night wore thin he got tired and laid down on a nearby couch and napped a bit. Erik was well known for being rather disorientated upon awakening. Eventually he woke up, stumbled over to where I was pounding at the keys squinted at the screen and then mumbled, "I have to go to the bathroom." After which he reached into his pocket, handed me his wallet and left the room, completely oblivious of my fits of laughter. It was classic.

Funniest Gaming Moment.

I asked my self that question and I began to think “What would I do to play a game – how far would I go?” Well it was many years ago, back in 1986 – the Commodore 64 (C64) computer was in its heyday. All my friends had one (and/or a NES). It was a great gaming machine and literally had thousands of games made for it. One thing my friends and I would enjoy was connecting to Bulletin Board Services (BBS) with a 300 baud modem and a phone line and to post messages, play games or to do live “typing chats” with others around the world etc. This was all pre-internet stuff. Most of the hundreds of BBS’s were free – but the best ones, cost money to access – lots of money. Our favorite one was Compuserve – it cost $6 bucks per hour at 300 baud speed (wow). But it did have the BEST on-line multiplayer games though, MegaWars I, Island of Kesmai, British Legends, etc. How we stumbled upon this expensive recreation was when my friend got a new Hayes 300 baud modem for his C64 for Christmas. It includes 10 free hours on Compuserve with the purchase of the modem. These free hours were in a sealed envelope in the modem box. It contains a password and a code that you would enter when you connected to Compuserve. Anyway, we quickly went thru our free time and needed either 1.) a credit card (that wasn’t going to happen) or 2.) get (aka=steal) another code and password.

Off to computer store we go. Back then there was no Best Buys or Circuit City, EB’s. With a fool proof plan in mind we calmly ask the sales person for a Hayes 300 baud modem. With modem box in hand I then tell the clerk. “I just want to make sure everything is in the box”. I open the box and pry apart the code envelope. My job in this operation – 1.) Memorize the password and 2.) Distract the sales person. My buddies job, memorize the 10 digit code… in 10 seconds. He had the tough part. I hand the box back to the clerk and say, “Can you hold on to this for me? I’ve got to get some cash from my dad, we will be right back” My friend is already walking out the door, pulling out a pencil and paper while quietly whispering his coded mantra over and over. Soon I join him outside with the final piece to unlock 10 more hours of gaming bliss “RELATED-HITCH” (I still remember that password after all these years). Now that I look back as an adult and I’m not too proud of what we did. It truly was one of the strangest things we did to play video games.

My funniest gaming momment:

The funniest thing that ever happened to me when I was gaming is funny now, but it wasn't very funny when it happened. This was back in the day when I was very entrenched in the X-Wing vs TIE Fighter world, playing for an online fleet called UPA for hours and hours every week. At the time I was usuing a Microsoft Force Feedback joystick, and it was actually the second MSFF joystick that I had gone through already in my XvT career. Most people that have ever had one of those probably remember the bad connection that the earlier versions had with the AC adapter plugging into the joystick.

My connect was always falling out and one day when I went to plug it into the joystick it didn't go in. The pin in the middle of the connector was bent from being forced in so many times. So I decided the best thing to do was bend it back into shape. I decided to use my teeth and ended up electricuting myself in the mouth and tounge because I forgot to unplug the AC adapter before doing this. Its a good thing it was converted into a lower voltage or else I might have been killed! Anyway, it's always a funny moment to think of for me in my gaming life.

Thanks again for the awesome podcasts, you rock!

-Dorian.

I remember that Day of Defeat, as do many of my Allied companions. German guns quiet and a clear run to the center flag on avalanche I make a break for it. The enemy was only playing possum and several on my team go down around me. Knowing it was a choice of either meeting my maker or getting around the corner I start my retreat. Round after round blazed from my gun wounding several and killing some as I make my way to safety. Out of the corner of my eye I see something small flying my direction. Realizing that the grenade was only moments away from exploding directly at my feet I utter my last words: "That sucks".

My friend sitting next to me bursts out laughing.

Funniest game experience... Hmmmm ok...

I remember one time when a friend of mine and me we wanted to play Starcraft in Multiplayer together. We both had no internet connection but we lived close together. So we build us a calbe connection with simple Ethernet cable over 300 meters. The problem is (what we discovered later) that you can use one ethernet cable up to 100 meters. But then you have to reinforce the signal with a router or hub or a repeater. So we bought us a hub which was very expensive in these days (for a school-kid) and finally we managed it. It was soooo great! It was a totally new experience in these days to play with someone together without being in the same room together.

After days people wandered why there was a cable lying right across the street and they started following the cable and often people rang on our door asking my mom and dad about the cable. After a week my mom made me to get rid of the cable. I think I can never forgive her :-)

And then 2 weeks later me and my friend bought us both a 28,8kb Modem :-)

Keep up the good work.

Michael from Germany