I don’t understand college sports fandom at all. It goes far beyond being “true to your school,” or any of that rubbish; it makes even less sense when you have unwavering support for teams after you’ve graduated and moved on.

Look at it this way: when you go to college football/basketball/whatever games, you have to pay to get in (depending on the size of your student discount, if any). A good chunk of these ticket sales go towards the scholarships that student athletes earn. To quickly go off on a tangent about that, I find athletic scholarships to be downright insulting. A kid who plays basketball marginally well can get a free ride to college, whereas someone who busts their ass academically (which is what college is supposed to be all about!) is lucky if they can get a few grand. It’s a disgusting side to our culture that throwing a ball around is more important than education. And don’t even get me started on the slaps on the wrist that student athletes get when it comes to discipline; if a school’s star quarterback and top math student both get busted for DUI, who do think will actually get thrown out? It ain’t the guy tossin’ the ol’ pigskin.

But I digress. Like I said, ticket sales considerably help in paying for the athletes’ college scholarships. Which means you are helping to pay for their scholarships. So instead of kissing their asses…shouldn’t they be kissing yours? Furthermore, people who mindlessly support teams in which the athletes have gotten into trouble multiple times (like my alma mater’s lacrosse and baseball teams) are nothing more than an accessory to their bad behavior. Sure, not in the legal sense, but certainly in the ethical one. I sure as hell wouldn’t want my hard-earned cash supporting some college jock’s lecherous party lifestyle.

And then there’s continued support for teams after you’ve earned your degree. Most students are saddled with a large amount of loans after they graduate; so you’re going to support a team and school to whom you owe tens of thousands of dollars? You already owe them a considerable amount of money; why waste any extra on sporting teams that you now have no connection to whatsoever?

It just makes no sense to me. People go on and on about supporting these teams, when the athletes do nothing for their fanbase other than taking their money and, by extension, contributing to the ridiculous notion that athletic prowess is somehow more important than a good education.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Famicom, better known in the US as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I still maintain that the NES is the finest video game system ever created, and its library stands the test of time as the highest quality gaming to be found anywhere.

As such, I miss those halcyon days terribly. I never owned an NES growing up, as my parents refused to let video games cross the threshold of the door. But all of my friends had them, so it wasn’t too much of a hassle to get my gaming fix. During those times, I was exposed to games of all kinds, and many of them were the foundations of what would become my favorite franchises, even to this day: Super Mario Bros., Mega Man, Metroid, Castlevania, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear (even though the NES version is a non-canon port), and many more.

What bugs me is that many younger gamers decry the NES out of hand. It’s old, therefore, it’s not cool. (It’s also used as yet another excuse to attack the Wii, since that console features many downloadable NES games.) Sure, the NES’ graphics don’t match up against the 3D powerhouse consoles we’ve got today, but that’s not the point: the fact remains, NES games are still a joy to play over twenty years later. When Mega Man 9 was announced as an NES-style exercise in retrogaming, even though it’s being released for current consoles, I was overjoyed; I’m a hardcore Mega Man fan and a hardcore NES fan. Double whammy! But you wouldn’t believe the amount of bitching that appeared on gaming forums, complaining that it was a “huge step back in the wrong direction” for gaming and other such bullshit. Seriously, kiss my ass; Mega Man 9 harkens back to a time when games were both amazing in their simplicity, and brutally fucking hard. Make no mistake: games nowadays are a breeze, and even the “hard” ones are a walk in the park compared to a lot of the NES patience-testers. When you beat a tough-as-nails NES game after busting your ass on the same boss for weeks, you felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment. People beat a game now, and just move on to the next one. (Even I’m guilty of that.)

On the subject of specific games to play, I’ve had the urge to play through Mega Man 6 again. Sure, I’ve got it as part of the PS2 Mega Man Anniversary Collection, as well as the PS1 Rockman Complete Works edition, but there’s something special about playing the game on the original hardware, without any extras or the benefit of rapid-fire. If I may go off on a bit of a tangent, it pisses me off that the later NES Mega Man games get shit on so much. Yes, Capcom started to scrape the barrel with some of the boss names and whatnot, but that didn’t make the games any less fun! Mega Man 6 was released towards the very end of the NES’ lifecycle, and while nearly every boss was a rehash of one that had come before, they still had some clever attack patterns. The level designs, loads of secrets, and unique weapon usages really made the game a gem. (I’m not the only one who feels this way.) I don’t care what anyone says; Mega Man 6 is totally undeserving of all of the rolled eyes and grunts of disgust often lobbed its way.

Back to the task at hand. I’ve actually been working on bolstering my NES collection as of late. While some games can fetch a high price on eBay and the like, most titles can be had for a few dollars or less. I’ve already acquired many of my favorites from years past, and I’ll just keep hunting for more. I generally prefer titles that have password save system, rather than a battery; after twenty or more years, those batteries tend to die out, and they’re a pain in the ass to replace! Besides, we all filled notebooks with game passwords and secrets back in the day; why not do it again? These damn kids these days with their strategy guides and cheat codes and GameFAQs just don’t know what they’re missing.

To wrap this whole thing up, I’ve got a brief anecdote for you that proves not all hope is lost. A buddy of mine has a baby daughter; she isn’t even a year old yet, but he’s already planning on raising her on the NES. (He’s also got a second child on the way, and plans to start their education in the 8-bit ways as well.) He enjoys the modern stuff, sure, but like myself, he has a deep appreciation for the classics, and knows that they just can’t be beat.

(Just in case you’d like to help me out with my reborn obsession, I keep a running list of NES games I’m hunting for right here. Though I will take just about anything; the more the merrier!)

No more registration! Now you can just comment away, with no more pesky logging in. Hopefully that’ll solve the headaches my commenters were having. (In case you were thinking of spamming me, though, forget it; I’ve got a rather robust anti-spam system installed, and all comments must be approved by me before they appear on entries anyway.)

Enjoy!

Some readers have expressed concern about the slow loading times experienced on this site. I contacted my web hosting provider about it, and here was their response:

“The reason is because the subdomain is a blog and using MySQL server.
We are not doing any server migrations for the time being. We are aware of the growing problem recently and are making changes to better service for everyone. Please be patient as we are making changes and doing everything possible to insure quality service for everyone both now and in the future. Thank you for your patience.”

I knew from the get-go that I’d experience a slight performance hit due to my use of the MySQL database, because that’s actually not stored in the same folders as my site. But the slowdown I’ve received lately is near-unacceptable. (My last blog used MySQL, and was never this bad.) To be honest, the tech support response above almost seems like a blowoff. In other words, they know of problems that everyone is experiencing, and they’re working on fixing it…but with no clear details of exactly what is being done, or when we can expect a proper fix. I don’t like that one bit.

I should also point out that I use a third-party blogging client, ecto, to write my posts, and that client often takes a few tries just to connect to my server. I spoke with the program’s author, and we discovered that the root of the problem was indeed my slow-ass server, not ecto. I thoroughly appreciate the author’s help, and I’m even more angry that my server’s not acting as it should.

In other news, I’ve received feedback that the commenting system isn’t working too well. To comment, a reader has to log in (using the link in the right-hand column), and then apparently the blog software’s taking them to the dashboard page, not the main page or the post they were originally reading. From the dashboard, a reader can easily get to the main page by clicking the “Visit Site” button at the top of the page, but all of the other stats and stuff on the page can be very confusing. (It’s stuff that I need to know, not you.)

I’m currently working on finding solutions that’ll make everybody happy. (Especially me, because these constant technical mishaps really piss me off.) I’m talking with WordPress tech support, and consulting a few other WordPress gurus to help me. Wish me luck, and please accept my apologies for any problems. If I can’t find proper solutions…this blog may not last too much longer. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!