1337 speak

I've been using an increasingly large amount of 1337 (=leet=elite) speak lately in my twitter and blog. Most of it learned playing the World of Warcraft...

Awesomesauce
Weaksauce
lololololol
Epic Fail
Terribad
LOLs
lawl
lul
= Win.
= Fail.
FTW...or FTH (For the Horde)
pwn
nub (n00b)
Pr0n

I enjoy using these terms, it makes me feel young, like I could still talk to a teen, even now. I DO also use old slang as well though...making me old.

Dude
What's up
Cowabunga! - nah, I don't really say that

I wonder...what will happen to my 1337 speak now that I've stopped playing WoW. It's undeniable that most of what I learned was from that game...
I never want to get too old that I forget how to talk like a teenage moron. What do I do? I don't frequent urbandictionary often unless there's a specific term I want.

I guess I should just play WoW and chill in Dalaran and watch the stupidity. If you've ever read/witnessed it, some of it is pretty fracking entertaining....pure genius hidden within pure idiocy. Some very intelligent people drowning their lives and their potential. Kinda like what I did.

Posting 2 old posts = EPIC WIN.
Running out of content = EPIC FAIL.

But that's what this blog's all about anyways. some EPIC FAIL. I CTRL-F 13 "Epic Fail"s on this page atm.

Mario Kart (SNES) was THE game for me.

When I was in high school, my friend has gave me Initial D: First Stage (Anime) to watch. I was skeptical...an anime about cars? I had never been a car person...I took his word for it and gave it a try. Over a decade later, it would still be one of my favorite animes of all time.

Imagine my surprise when I found Initial D: Arcade Stage (Racing arcade game) at UWaterloo Campus Cove. After spending over $1000 in first and second year university playing Initial D, I became pretty damn good. On the online rankings, I would rank top 10 in Canada on over 1/2 of the (8) tracks (4 uphill, 4 downhill). Again, that doesn't count all the people that don't input their track times into the site so it's a bit misleading. Still I would say that I was within the top 25 in Canada for sure. It was very...satisfying to be that good at something. Looking back at it now, I realize that my skill probably came from my years of Mario Kart (SNES).

I'm in a Facebook group called "I learned how to drive by playing Mario Kart". While I didn't learn to drive a real car from Mario Kart, I definitely learned the fundamentals of an ideal line, inertia, action and reaction, and drifting. Of all the games I've ever played in my life be it World of Warcraft, Initial D, any Street Fighter or Puzzle game, Contra, Mario Bros., I don't think I've ever been more skilled at a game than Mario Kart. Mario Kart was my IT game. It was THE game for me.

My skills aren't what they used to be anymore, I can't do the lines or track times that I used to...but my SNES records from my prime speak for themselves. Recently, I tried to search the internet for best course times. People would post their fastest times and I compared them with mine and LUL, my times were still better!

I don't think I ever played anyone who loved the game as much as me. I would have loved to competitively race another highly skilled driver. Maybe that's why I loved Initial D so much. I'm like Takumi challenging other racers. But more likely, I'm one of the arrogant opponents who lose on their home course to Takumi :D I'm good...but I'm no Takumi :(

Narutimate Hero 1 + Friends

Note: Narutimate Hero is a VS type game, like Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat. You pick your char and fight all the other characters to beat the game.

I was talking about Naruto today and it got me thinking about this one weekend where Mark, Vince, Zena and I stayed up all night playing Narutimate Hero 1 (PS2). My parents were out of town and Mark came to Toronto to chill for the weekend. We called up Vince and just hung out at my place. I don't remember when we started playing. There are only 13 or so characters to unlock and you have to beat the game 9+ times or so to get them all. As we unlocked 1 or 2 characters, we kept wanting to play more and get more characters unlocked. So that's what we did....we played all night, the 4 of us, switching turns and playing through all the characters...defeating enemies over and over. Soon it became midnight...then 2...then 5...and 8...and then 10am. All 4 of us stayed up playing the same game for over 10 hours...after which we ended the night (or morning) just before noon with our trademark McDonald's runs, just like how we used to do it in Waterloo. I popped in Narutimate Hero 3 (PS2) and Narutimate Hero Accel 2 (PS2) just now...sadly, the visuals don't carry over to an HDTV very well, everything was very...non anti-alias (jagged).

Anyways, these Narutimate Hero games always make me remember this night and the fun I had. I know the night doesn't sound too special...but those were good times, good friends, good memories.

I will train my kids to play videogames.

I brought this up before but I wanted to clarify that I'm completely serious. I hated Chinese school and piano lessons as a child partly because I was forced into it and partly because it was boring. I eventually traded piano for math school (Kumon), something I had to convince my parents to do. I guess they figured either would be good but I believe that because I CHOSE math school, I enjoyed it much more.

For my kids, I'd probably give them the option of playing video game x, y or z. Let them decide what they want to do, so they don't hate it for being forced.

I figure that on night A, they should get the option to play Tetris, Kirby's Avalanche, Tetris Attack, or Super Puzzle Fighter. All 4 are basically the same premise: get specific arrangements with color/shaped blocks to survive.
I think these types of games help with quick thinking, quick decision making, short term planning, short term memory, and finally reaction time - all of which are good skills to develop.

Night B would be some other games. Super Mario Kart to teach them how to drive. Super Street Fighter to teach them how to fight. Contra III: Alien Wars to teach them how to survive alien wars. Okay, THIS whole paragraph was a joke...(but the rest of the post thus far had been serious).

I would play my kids and destroy them until they eventually surpassed me. Much like Samurai Nanjirou trained Echizen Ryoma (Prince of Tennis) or Fujiwara Bunta trained Takumi (Initial D) or Sai trained Hikaru (Hikaru no Go).

I think we're all thinking 1 of 2 things here:
1. Warren, this is the most ridiculous post ever. I can't believe you're serious. I have lost all respect for you.
or
2. Warren, your kids are going to hate you.

I'm prepared for both.

See below for my game analysis: