Mystery Gift 00: Everything in its Right Place...

Mystery Gift is my feature designed to start off the week with a blank. There is a high probability that my thoughts could range all over the medium, so keep your belt blindfolds handy.


Just to start out with, I'd like to remind everyone that Tim Schafer is one of the coolest guys in the industry, and if you haven't yet heard his appearance on the August 25th episode of 1UP FM you owe it to yourself to check it out. The man is a comedic genius, and it comes through in every line he speaks. I'd love to meet him someday and tell him that I've never played Day of the Tentacle, or Full Throttle or Grim Fandango.


Secondly, for those that, like me, missed out on the entirety of the NES generation, it's worthwhile to check out this explanation of one of the most infamous NES peripherals, the Robotic Operating Buddy from PhilBond of POWET.TV. ROB looks like he would be a hassle to operate. A giant hassle, that is. PhilBond also has an interesting look at a series of easter eggs known as Totaka's Song. This feature is in three parts.


I recently preordered Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and Away: Shuffle Dungeon for the DS, but, after I saw this post on Joystiq (Thanks, Ross!), I began to seriously consider canceling both of those preorders and moving the $10 over to Scene It! Box Office Smash. It's not like I'm trying to move away from handheld gaming by any means, because I still love my DS (I'm still working on TWEWY), but the fact is that my family really enjoys their movies, and Scene It is just another way for them to interact with all of their favorite pictures. Later today, I'm going back to the store to move my money around, despite my excitement for the newest Metroidvania and my optimism for Mistwalker's most recent work. I'll pick both of them up on eBay in a few months.


In my (not quite) two months of 360 ownership, I've noticed one major flaw. This would be the sad truth that people who are playing original Xbox games on the system are treated as second-class citizens. Now, I understand that it would be impossible to create achievements for all the backwards compatible games, but all of the Xbox Originals should have had achievements. Gamers playing a Xbox Originals game should also have access to the Xbox Guide. It's true that the Live community is one of the best in console gaming history in terms of giving players access to their friends, even though the majority of random guys I play online are jerks. That's why I muted the lot of them. It's also true that removing the Guide functionality prevents players of original Xbox games from interacting with their friends. This is never going to be fixed, meaning that I can complain about it forever! Thanks for that, Microsoft! You're such an easy target...

Finally, on a completely unrelated note, I'd like to point out the awesomeness that is mazemod.org. If you like chiptune music at all, this is a great place to listen to it. If you're intruiged by any of this, you should read mazemod's "About" page and listen to some tracks while you're there. You'll soon realize why I use mazemod as my home page here on CoG.

As for this week's title, I really like the tone around the CoG network. Here's a place that I am truly proud to be a part of. I can't remember the last time I've been able to say that about an online community. Thanks to everyone posting cool things and double thanks to the management team for CoG.

I won't always explain the title, but feel free to ask if you need to know what I meant.

P.S.: If my internet connection wouldn't have dropped out last night, this feature would have gone live on Monday, just like I'd planned. For your convenience, each week's set of VG Features will be linked in my signature in the most cluttered way possible! The things I do for my readers...

Thanks for reading, and good luck out there!

GG,
VG