Rubénerd :)

I wanted to add my voice to the chorus of discontented Mac users over the state of Steam for our platform with my own criticism:

You have none of the games I want.

Hey wait, even the Windows version doesn’t. Never mind.

Here’s another Rubénerd Fun Fact for all you rabid Official Rubénerd Fun Fact fans. I know you’re out there, I can hear you furrowing your brows and sighing.

R18+ games are designated as such for the pirate sound one makes when pronouncing it.

This is my own personal contribution to the debate started by NotGamers.net. Don’t let the name fool you, despite claiming they lied, they’re not gamers. Unless they are.

Thank you.

Sometimes it’s just so simple for people like Michael Atkinson to pass the legislation he wants. Other times though this dang thing called democracy gets in the way and ruins everything. What’s the point of being able to pass laws if the people the law will effect want to debate? Sheesh!

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Reading the always entertaining Slashdot I saw a story claiming the Russian government pulled Modern Warfare 2 (screenshot above… uh, yeah!) from stores, allegedly because they weren’t too happy having their citizens being demonised as terrorists. Eldavojon asks "Is cultural sensitivity becoming an overly played card in the gaming world? Not too long ago, Wolfenstein was recalled in Germany for containing Nazi symbols." and I attempt to answer.

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What’s a better use for a 64bit FreeBSD 7.2 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 desktop with 6.0GiB of Kingston Low Latency RAM? Commander Keen in DOSBox of course!

I dare you to come up with something more productive.

Sending birthday wishes to Tetris which turns 25 today. It’s two years older than I am!

I was born slightly too late to have been a part of this amazing early computer game revolution, but that’s not to say I didn’t partake of many early DOS games on our IBM machines, then our 486SX clone. While I always have a special place in my heart for Commander Keen as the greatest game of all time I used to rush home from school excited to play, we did have a DOS clone of Tetris too.

What strikes me about Tetris (and to a certain extend Commander Keen) was the design and premise were so beautifully elegant they didn’t need flashy 3D graphics to become immersive, addictive and a real pleasure to play. The people who developed games like this were geniuses, plain and simple.

Aside from the Sim City and The Sims franchises, I don’t really play many games any more. In fact my current obsession is still Bejeweled on my iTelephone because it’s simple, addictive and fun. More games need to be made like Tetris!

Screenshot taken with [CMD]+[C] as the game starts

I like to reformat my computers at least once a year to keep them from accumulating too much clutter. Unfortunately after reinstalling a fresh copy of Mac OS X Leopard on my first generation Core Duo MacBook Pro, a copy of The Sims 2 without expansions refuses to load. This despite the fact it was working just fine before the reformat!

When loading The Sims 2 on Mac OS X 10.5.7 with QuickTime 7.6, it displays the Electronic Arts logo, then shows the above screen instead of the Maxis logo. After the the introductory video has played, the game quits and displays a "The application The Sims 2 has quit unexpectedly" error dialog box. Bummer.

Considering I had just reformmated the machine and didn’t have anything else on it yet, I reformatted it again back to 10.5.4 with QuickTime 7.5 and didn’t do any software updates. The exact same error appears.

These were the steps I took to reinstall the game.

1. Repaired permissions with Disk Utility.app
2. Copied "The Sims 2" directory from the installation DVD to "/Applications/"
3. Downloaded and applied the Sims2_1.0_RevF.dmg update without issues
4. Downloaded and copied over the Sims2_1.0_RevF.reissue executable

As I said before what’s frustrating is that this worked before, so I know this machine is capable of it. Twice I’ve tried running it, with the latest software updates installed and with the bare 10.5.4 DVD install. Nothing. Nada. Zippo.

I’ve emailed Aspyr technical support, in the meantime it seems I’ll need to find another means of escaping!