posts by tyson
tyson

Tales From Behind the Counter – Santa Claus Cometh

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Last night, I walked into a video game store that was swamped with trade-ins. I could barely make out my manager and another co-worker behind the counter for the stacks of NES games that were piled before them; it was like Christmas…of 1989. Classics like Ice Breakers, Ducktales, RC Pro-Am, and countless others littered the counter top as my geeky colleagues waded through processing all of the games in order to give our Santa Claus his grand total of trade-in credit that the store was bestowing upon him for his generous endowment.

In Germanic folklore, Santa was this skinny guy that dressed in green clothing and gave out gifts to good children while beating the bad ones. Kind of like a strung out father who would smack his kids around while waiting in line at the methadone clinic. →  READ3R

Tales From Behind The Counter – Mutant Powers of Femdom

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One thing that sets my store apart from other video games retailers is our game testing stations. Each of the two stores I flutter between during the week is equipped with just about every major gaming console made in the last twenty years and we encourage people to try out the games before they take them home. This also means that when it is slow, I pretty much play any game I want. Life is good. The other night the battle of the sexes erupted at my Xbox 360 test station.

These two high school kids were playing one of the Soul Caliber games and the girl was absolutely rocking this poor guy’s newly pubescent world. You see, this naive young man confidently entered into a contest of furious button mashing with a girl that had no clue how to play the game. →  Read or die.

Tales From Behind The Counter – I Am A Snobby Bastard

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It is inevitable that this topic is going to come up so I will tackle it now. Today’s secret word is a fun one: elitist. When I hear that word, my initial response is a simple, “Yes. I. Am.”

Every genre of media has its upper echelon of assholes who insist that their opinion on the topic is really, truly the only one that matters. I consider myself to be above that upper echelon. I have titled myself a “post-gamer”. I have basically played so many video games for so long that I really don’t like them anymore. In fact, talking about video games usually bores the living daylights out of me and watching people play video games is akin to making small cuts with a dull knife on the fleshy, inner part of my thigh. →  It was the best of games, it was the worst of games

Tales From Behind The Counter – The Long Joystick of the Law

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Last night I achieved a sales goal that I don’t think will ever be topped by another mortal.

It was a quiet evening and my boss, Jason, and I were being good little worker bees. Alphabetizing and sorting titles, rearranging aisles, trying to restructure the layout of my store so that it may actually generate a couple of bucks profit. One of our big tasks of the night had been to weed the crappy and older games from the shelves and make a bargain bin of marked down titles that was placed prominently in front of the door so would-be customers had to walk right past it. Both of us were sitting on the floor of our empty and serene establishment when the front door burst open and two police officers rushed into the building, hands on guns and tasers. →  Ratchet & Read

Tales From Behind The Counter – Come One, Come all! Hear my tales of Mystery and Excitement!

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Welcome to the inaugural release of my new and (hopefully) weekly column. Since returning to America, I have found myself short on cash and pretty much willing to do anything for a buck or two. Yes, I have even tried to sell my body but for some reason or another, most prospective customers frown upon my “by the pound, by the hour” pricing scheme. This lack of cash and abundance of free time meant that I spent a lot of time hanging out with my friend who works at a small video game shop close to my house. Well lets be real honest, it isn’t my house, it’s my parents’ house and I live in the basement.

One night my friend and I were talking while there was a lull in customers tooling around the shop and it came up that if I was going to hang out with her at the video game shop, I may as well be getting paid for it. →  Please sir, can I have some more?

Teabagging and Halo 3 — An Anthropological Study

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The Muffin Buffalo stalks through the corridors and crevasses of The Narrows map on Halo 3. Quietly he roams, picking his targets and releasing them from their mortal coils. He has done this many times before and is good at his job. Out of nowhere, a fellow warrior named SheepandVelcro69 jabs Muffin Buffalo from behind with the butt of his shotgun. Muffin Buffalo lurches forward and then lifelessly drops to the ground. This has also happened to him many times, business as usual, the cycle of death repeats.

But wait, SheepandVelcro69 is not leaving his corpse; does he feel remorse for the act he has just committed? Is he taking a moment of silent reflection to realize that body could just as easily be him lying on the ground? No, our shotgun equipped friend creeps up to Muffin Buffalo’s head, centers himself above the corpse’s cranium and proceeds to drop his crotch up and down on the motionless clump of pixels . →  18 Wheeler American Pro Reader

Better Late Than Never — Tyson Reviews the Xbox 360

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I showed up a couple of years late to the party that has been the Xbox 360. Thanks to my cheapness and the joys of region encoding, I held off getting Microsoft’s newest system while I was in Japan, vowing to grab one mere minutes upon my return to the United States. Over the past two years I have had bouts of jealousy, smug satisfaction, and concern as I watched the trials and tribulations of the Xbox 360 owner. From red rings of death to the release of Halo 3, I have quietly observed from the sidelines and bided my time. Well, that time has come. Holding true to my promise, I picked up a 360 Elite two days after landing in the US and since then I have been sampling the many facets of the console. →  The happiest post on Earth.

My little piece of gaming sentiment for the past two years

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October of 2005 was a severely messed up time for me. I was newly divorced, living with one of my best friends, and had just found out that in several months time I would be moving to Japan. My life has always been kind of weird but the Fall of 05 was the pinnacle. Back then, gaming was an escape. My real life kind of sucked and games were an escape for me. I had an Xbox I had modded, a PS2, and a Gamecube. What I lacked in a love life, I more than made up for in pixilated goodness.

When I wasn’t playing video games, I was sleeping or at work. I hated my job and I didn’t sleep often so it can be said that I played a LOT of video games. →  U R Not lamE.

A Christmas Story

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Gather around children and let me tell you a story of a Christmas long since passed. The year was 1991 and I was eleven years old. It was that magical white time of year when all a kid my age could think of was snowball fights, playing video games, and Christmas morning. You see children, 1991 was not just any other goofy year. Oh no, 1991 was the year the Super Nintendo came out and I was sure that come December 25th, my chubby butt would be glued to a television playing that sleek, grey piece of gaming heaven.

crying.jpgI’m sorry kid, Nintendo is hoarding all of the Wii’s this year. How about a Playstation 3 instead?

 

As the countdown to Christmas began, the yearly rituals were gone though. →  Ratchet & Read

DS games on the go!

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So you have a DS but you don’t have the time to sink into long playing sessions. Or in my case, you have the attention span of a seven year old on crack. The whole concept of the aging process bringing patience is a lie and I’m living proof. When I was ten I could sit for hours and rock Final Fantasy 2 on the SNES, now I can barely sit through a thirty minute session of Phantom Hourglass. I think I am turning into more of a casual gamer and I know for sure that my mind is usually elsewhere when I flip the switch on my black-as-my-soul DS.

This does not mean that I don’t enjoy games anymore; I just don’t get overly involved in most of the games I play. →  Screw Jesus, this article’s the real deal