Zone of Mr. Frosti

Since I am watching these Flash MX video tutorials, I can’t help but feel like Neo in the Matrix when he is running through the training simulations. The first couple of CDs are bullshit, and you can actually start with number four. Arrgh – damn you John for wanting to be the first person in the world to have an “interactive FAQ”! What happened to good old FAQ text files? Tried and true my friend.

Longhorn’s last night had too many people. I couldnt see anyone except the people directly in front of me. It is really hard too jump into a conversation when half of the dialogue is out of earshot, and you cant even see the person you are responding too. We digressed into short conversation about the day, and we all went our seperate ways. I liked it when everyone could see everyone else, like with fewer people or sitting at the booth.

Unreal Tournament 2004 screenshots from Desktop day are up and working. Photoshop automated batches made designing this a piece of cake. Link is on the left.

I had a dream about accidently breaking my mom’s favorite coffee mug, and hearing that the gas station on Honey Creek that I go to was shut down because one of its clerks went on a killing spree. Psycho-analyze that anyone…

So, I was primarily driven to create this site to uses as a basis on which is really better: Consoles or PC. I can’t say why I worked so hard to refute something people might consider trivial, however some things in this society annoy me. I have laid out my argument below, please tell me what you think:

Consoles vs. PC

Let me start by giving consoles a bit of credit. They are a slackass’s portal to gaming heaven. You plug this thing into the TV, and you put in a game, press the power button, and then pick up the controller and proceed to jam multiple buttons in various combinations. Now, if you are ready for a higher breed of entertainment, please keep reading.

The personal computer has been the most stable “platform” for gaming yet. Let me explain: You rush out and by that brand new Super Mario Bros. cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System. You play and play, and you get sick of it and move on. In a few years, you sell your Nintendo Entertainment System and use the acquired funds to purchase a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. You by all of the new games, but Super Mario Bros. Is not there. And you certainly cant stick a NES cartridge into an SNES machine. So you cry and cry until the release date of the Nintendo 64. You pawn off all of the SNES hardware that you have purchased for cash. You buy a 64 with the new Mario 64 game. Bliss ensues for several months. However, poor little 8-bit Mario beckons for you to play him again. Guess what? No dice. Every single generation of Nintendo gaming medium is completely incompatible with its predecessor. A PC now, albeit with special software, can run almost any game ever made for the computer.

Now, I cant knock Sony for this, as their record has been rock sold. Yes sir, Sony is perfect. Absolutely perfect for playing games in craptacular 640 x 480 on a TV screen. For fun, lets throw in a video card that accelerates its polygon output by trailing every frame refresh with artifacts worse than being drunk and spinning around in a chair until you throw up on yourself. Add in an insane time required to load some games, and the time it takes to read and write to the memory card that cost you $20 bucks for 8KB of space. I love waiting in between every scene change for everything to load up in its outdated processor. This gives me time to catch up on some sleep. I digress…

Lets move on to the next obvious fact. Consoles today come with the ability to play DVD’s and music CD’s, connect to online games, plug in keyboards and mice, talk over a microphone to your friends, and swap information on and off of an IDE hard drive. If all of this is in that little box, what do you think that you have? Lets look at pricing from Amazon.com:

Playstation 2 – $179.99 (probably you paid $299 if you got it a while ago!)
Network Adaptor kit – $39.99
Hard Drive – $49 (about)
USB keyboard – $25

Grand total: $295 – $415 without games.

PC mobo – $50 (integrated network, sound)
Video Card – $124 (Radeon 9600 Pro)
Processor – $60 (Athlon XP 2200+)
RAM – $64 (PC2700)
HDD – $40 (40GB 7200 rpm)
DVD Drive – $25
Case – $10 (power supply included)
Keyboard / Mouse comb – $20

I will not count the monitor or speakers, because it is not an equal cost when comparing it to a console, given that the TV is used for both. Every house has a TV yes, but every house also has a computer, and some of the PC parts can be transferred over. So not everything needs to be purchased again.

Grand total: $394 without games.

Now, to be fair, I am bastardizing this argument with incomplete information. That computer will still have to run an OS which is supposed to cost money right? And I am sure that it uses more electricity or whatever. And I know this isn’t the fastest computer in the world, but it trumps the PS2 in processing power, and functionality. Try to check email on a console. Try doing a search on google.

I am on a vendetta for what I like to call “redundancy”. Why not have one machine that can do everything, instead of having multiple, limited devices? Wake up and buy a computer – you will get further with it than you ever will a console.

Eating peanut butter causes cancer

Well, since everyone else in the world seems to have their own site where they can quickly convey their thought to the masses, I figured I would jump on the bandwagon. Hell, I have like 4 websites, so I figure I should do something with them!