Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is here!

In a highly immature move I've purchased a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior cabinet. I brought it home today after buying it on Monday and set it up in the garage. I cleaned it up a bit while my dog sat there trying to figure out what it was. After a good half hour of wiping down the cabinet, cabinet insides, and cleaning up the monitor surface, I was ready to give it a playthrough. I played through a single-player game once with Ryu (long-time favorite of the Street Fighter franchise), and it was a pretty nostalgiac half hour.

I might not be keeping the cabinet here at home, however. I will most likely be taking it to my work where it will stay in the break room. The main advantage for doing that is having competition almost every day.

The place that sold me the cabinet did offer an NFL Blitz cabinet and board for free, but it was missing the monitor. Since the cabinet was a bit smaller, I figure that would make a great project here at home. I really want to build a MAME cabinet with 4-player support, a trackball, and a spinner. I'd like to document the process of acquiring a cabinet, cleaning it up, gutting it, and converting it into a MAME cabinet.

There are tons of people interested in attempting the same thing, so I figure if I offered a nice guide with tons of color pictures that I could inspire those on the fence to go ahead and try it.

Here are a couple of pictures of the Street Fighter II cabinet. You can tell that the monitor and cabinet are in great shape. The picture quality isn't the greatest, but my garage isn't very well-suited for photography. The first picture shows the cabinet with the lights on and with flash. The second, and blurrier picture shows the it with the lights off and no flash. The last picture is to show how nice the screen is, but the movement of the fighters isn't helping the cause.

The Nut Hut gets a bit cooler

Yesterday I managed to luck my way into a near-mint Street Fighter II: The World Warrior arcade cabinet. The monitor and controls are in excellent condition and the cabinet is very clean. Tomorrow I'll be picking up the machine and bringing it home.

As a kid, just about every Saturday (until SF2 came to the SNES) I spent whatever money I had at the local gas station or arcade where I could get a turn on playing Street Fighter II. When I get the cabinet, I'll post some pictures here.

Today I experienced one of the 5 most painful afflictions

Let's see... there are 5 major afflictions that mankind has determined to be the most painful. There's heartbreak, losing to a girl, getting kicked in the shins, getting hit in the beans, and chafing. Today I decided to wake up an hour earlier than normal (also one of the worst afflictions) and to take my dog for a run. I'm trying to do something about the spare tire around my waist, so running seemed like a great idea.

Everything would have gone great, but I made one grave error in my preparation. I decided to put on a pare of undies that had been around since I played football in high school (I graduated in 1999). Sure, it sounds gross to have a 7 year old pair of underoos around, but I only wear them for working out (specific underpants, not underwear in general). So, I figure that even though they were sporting some holes and loss of elasticity, they'd be fine for at least a few more times around the block...I was dead wrong. Almost immediately the friction began. I thought that it would work itself out but a mile down the road the dreaded chafe crept up on me. What was I supposed to do now? I was pretty far from home, so I couldn't do anything but walk back like a saddle-sore cowboy.

Now I'm sitting here at work wondering why I made such a foolish decision; and each time a I shift in my chair or get up to do something that firey burn reminds me of the humbling power of the almighty chafe. Kids, do be careful with your under clothing, it's more important than you may think.

For the interested:

Chafe: ( P ) Pronunciation Key (chf)
v. chafed, chaf·ing, chafes
v. tr.

1. To wear away or irritate by rubbing.
2. To annoy; vex.
3. To warm by rubbing, as with the hands.


v. intr.

1. To rub and cause irritation or friction: The high collar chafed against my neck.
2. To become worn or sore from rubbing.
3. To feel irritated or impatient: chafed at the delay.


n.

1. Warmth, wear, or soreness produced by friction.
2. Annoyance; vexation.

Huge Snowstorm

Right now there is a huge snowstorm hitting here in my hometown. I'm actually sitting out front of my office locked out (the guy with the keys hasn't made it yet). Usually I'm in by 8:00am, but it's almost 8:45 and there is only me and one other employee here. The freeways must be a mess.

And to think that it's Spring Break...

To cheer up the mood, here's some pictures of Cancun!

Sending my 360 back to Microsoft...

Well, after speaking with Xbox 360 Customer Support, and interviewing a manager for an article on 360 Advanced, I was finally told that I would have to send my 360 in for service. The March update officially killed my 360 and the timing couldn't be worse. Today is the second day of Spring Break and I was looking forward to a lazy week of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Burnout Revenge.


So pretty...yet so unplayable.

Luckily Nintendo has shipped Tetris DS for review already and that should provide me with plenty of gaming for the week. The Tetris DS review should appear on DS Advanced soon.

Xbox 360 March Update Screwed my System

This month Microsoft released a MANDATORY update for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live and I downloaded it right after receiving the notice. Well, today, as Spring Break starts, I finally got around to playing my 360 for the first time since I updated it last week. Now my 360 is locking up every 5 minutes, usually before I can even get a race started in Burnout Revenge.

I'm pretty mad about this and I went online to see if I could figure out what was wrong. It looks like others are having the same issue according to this thread on the Gaming-Age forums, and this thread on the Xbox.com forums. In fact, the problem seems to be pretty big.

I know that I'll probably be able to get this fixed for free, but stuff like this shouldn't happen. I shouldn't have to send my 360 to Microsoft during Spring Break (the only time during the semester I'll be able to play) just because they didn't test their update very well for issues.

Exactly 2 months until E3

Wow, it's only two more months before the Electronic Entertainment Expo. We still don't have any solid information on the Nintendo Revolution and Sony has been unusually quiet in regards to the PlayStation 3. Usually a few nice bits of information appear not long before E3 to generate hype for the show. It might still be a bit early for any of those sort of things to appear, but quite a few game releases should be enough to cover the gap of exciting announcements between now and the pre-E3 hype.

Hopefully the DS Lite makes its way here before E3, I really need to get my hands on one before the trip.


The DS Lite is so very pretty...

Spring Break is Coming...

Just as I'm starting to get that total burnout feeling, Spring Break is almost here. My wife and I will be heading to my parent's cabin (yeah, with Bowser) in Star Valley, Wyoming. There should still be plenty of snow up there so snowmobiling should be great even this late in the year.

School has been crazy lately and work has been pretty heavy. I really need the break, and so does Tami. I can't wait until graduation so that we can plan a longer trip to somewhere nice. Hawaii would be great, especially since Tami hasn't been before, but I'd go just about anywhere provided it was relaxing.

Anyway, here's a couple of pictures of Tami and I in Star Valley a couple of years ago.