Child’s Play 2008

Child’s Play is a charity started up by Penny Arcade and powered by gamers. It has been raising money and collecting toys for hospitals around the world since 2003. The charity accepts donations year round, but rolls out a toy drive only during the months of November and December.

Since November is here and the Child’s Play site is being updated with information and a new toy drive, I’d like to help by trying to get the word out. Read more

Nintendo Doesn’t Care if You Hack and Cheat

You might have noticed that I was frustrated to find how much hacking and cheating is going on in Nintendo Wii games, particularly, Mario Kart Wii. Well, I decided to send an email to Nintendo to see what kind of response I would get.

I’ll admit that I wrote a somewhat angry email to Nintendo. But, Nintendo responded to my complaint in a timely manner. I suspect that their response was somewhat canned, but that only makes it worse. If this is a canned answer, this is how Nintendo really feels about people hacking their games and ruining other people’s online experience. Read more

Mario Kart Wii - Cheating, Hacks, and Disappointment

I’ve been a huge Nintendo fan for nearly 20 years. I’ve owned every Nintendo console and countless games. So, you shouldn’t be surprised that I (finally) picked up Mario Kart Wii. I even picked up an extra wheel for my wife and the occasional friend to play along.

I played for most of the night of my purchase. The next day, a friend came over and we ended up playing for a solid two hours. It wasn’t until we gave the online play a go that we started to see something funny going on with the game. Read more

Xbox 360 DVD Drive - Unreadable Disc

Last Wednesday, I decided I would play some GTA IV before the wife got home. So turned on the Xbox, popped in the disc, and got to it. About 20 minutes into my session, I began to hear a horrible noise coming from the DVD drive. After a few seconds of growling, a Xbox blade came across the screen saying the disc was unreadable.

Cursing under my breath, I got up from the couch to give the Xbox and game a close look. Of course, the disc was fine. I put in another game just to be sure, and got the “unreadable disc” error once again. I inserted a movie we had watched over the weekend. No dice.
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