New stuff - SNES, Pi and the bunny

Over the last week or so I seem to have acquired stuff quite quickly.

My Raspberry Pi has arrived, about 4 years after I placed the order, but to be honest, all enthusiasm for the little thing has long since perished and if anything it seems a waste for me to hold on to it.

That is my hand and no I'm not a giant, it really is quite small. But the task of gathering equipment, power lead (actually have that) HDMI cable, SD card reader, SD card that works, etc, is seeming as attractive as jumping into some chemical waste and becoming a super-villain. Hmmmm.....

At the moment it's as likely to end up on eBay as actually being used...

But better than that, which seeing as I'm completely unenthusiastic about it isn't overly hard, is the new pet the child has come into the possession of! She has wanted something quite fluffy for a while now and we considered Hamsters (vicious little bastards, fuck that), Guinea Pigs (look a bit like fat rats?) but eventually settled on a rabbit. It's her 4th birthday on Saturday, so last weekend we went and picked one up with me and mother Driscoll fronting 50% of the cost each. Pets at home staff, I have to say were quality, told us what we needed, including a back story on the rabbit and a few hours later et voila:

We have Rosie the rabbit at home, in a nice wooden hutch. Cute aint she?? Shits all the time don't she?? Had her outdoor (now indoor as a result) hutch attacked by a cat first night didn't she?? What stupid animals cats are, just bog off moggy haven't you got some birds to pester?? Stupid animals, feed them all to dogs I reckon! 

And yes that is a USA football top, I like it, it's a nice design!

Finally my favourite new possession is this little beauty:

Oh yes, that is a remarkably good condition PAL Super Nintendo, wanted one for a while and eventually just went and bought it, £40 with 2 games (Super Tennis and Flashback) both of which I used to have and love back in the day. 

The source of this purchase was the lovely Otakuzoku in Cardiff, a cracking little shop on Sailsbury Road in Cardiff, much recommended as they had loads of stuff. (I'll take my fee now...) Only down side was they wanted £23 for Super Metroid, I want Metroid, but not for that cash.

I got a component cable connection for it for £3 on ebay and it looks and plays fabulous. I'm now on the prowl for games on eBay. There is a possibility that these old games may seemingly suck now, but I'm confident my happy 16 bit memories will still hold up, they have on the first 2 games at least. Super Tennis is awesome! I've experienced annoyance with the Mortal Kombat collection on the 360, so some caution will be used though. I also need to invest in a 2nd controller.

In addition a Game Boy pocket has turned up, complete with Tetris game and has seen some use already, although sadly the battery back up in the cart is dead so no scores are saved. Tetris is still a fabulous game though.

Oh and Twin Peaks rocks, everyone watch.

Mortal Kombat

Yesterday for the snip of 800MSP I downloaded the arcade versions of the first three Mortal Kombat games. I used to love these back in ta day (home versions anyway) so I thought I'd relive some classic memories and play some Mortal Kombat.

Firstly, yes I know there's a newer one, yes I've played it and although I didn't hate it, I can't say I particularly liked it. Nowhere near enough to actually part with cash for the thing. If  it turns up in a 2 for £20 with Rise of Nightmares, I'll pick them up, but not for £30/40 thanks.

But the old ones? I thought yeah, lets go!

I started off with Mortal Kombat, looks dated yes, it's old, no doubt me and my grey mop also look a fair bit more... classic then I did in 1992. Nobody's judging me on it (to my face) so I'm not going to pick on that, I started ploughing through the single player mode, as I doubt the wife would fancy a bit of this game. It was still fun, still played mostly ok, felt a little jerky and maybe not the quickest, but good! I remembered (some of) the moves, even Scorpions fatality (10g for that too), struggled through the endurance rounds and then I got to Goro. The bastard.

Suddenly, I was being beaten like Arsenal on a Saturday. Nothing I tried was working and this 4 armed motherlover was beating the living shit out of me (well Scorpion anyway). So I tried again, same result and again, you know where this is going. Eventually I scraped 2 rounds against him and moved on, but I was shocked at suddenly how hard it had got.

Next was Shang Tsung and once again, for an old bloke, he was damn tough. He spent 70% of his time as Rayden and the rest as Goro which really didn't help, but once again repeated beatings started. Then in a lapse of AI judgement he decided Johnny Cage was the way forward so I kicked his behind quite easily (Cage being the worst choice.. ever) and then to my astonishment he went Sonya Blade / Cage the next time and boom he was down and out.

Scarred from the horrible difficulty of it, I thought I'd give 3 a blast (well it's 'Ultimate' MK3 which apparently is quite a minor upgrade) I started, waltzed through the first few in a very similar style, still holding my determination to play as Scorpion, I got beat the odd time on the way up and thengot to Montaro. I could easily write the bit about Goro again here, but this guy had a horses arse too. Bit he was overcome!

Then came the experience of the night, Shao Kahn. Seemingly impossible to beat in open combat. The others were frustrating yes, but this took the piss. I must have played this guy for 30 mins before resorting to such cheap tactics as dodge and uppercut, repeat to eventually beat the fecker. I'm honestly shocked the TV hasn't got a hole in it the perfect shape of a flung XBOX controller and thankfully nobody else was around to hear my language!

This is my point, they started out fun, but became annoying, too annoying. I've still got MK2 to play, but there's no doubt in my mind that'll be very hard and frustrate me too. I never remember the games being this hard, although these are the arcade versions not home and while I don't think I'm great at them, I'm far from rubbish. Apparently the new one is the same at the end as well, I like a challenge but this is bull to be fair!

I will play it, I paid for it after all, but I can't say I'm overly looking forward to it.