Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is one of my favorite games of all time (Brawl or SSBB for short.) If I had to put those in order on a list, it would be difficult, but Brawl definitely ranks up there. As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve got a lot of screenshots (315 if you’re counting) on my Flickr account from the game, and I thought an explanation was in order for those of you out there who are not in the “know” of what Super Smash Bros. Brawl is about.

Items like the hammer from the original Donkey Kong games and Pokeballs also help beginners keep up with the experienced.

Brawl is from the fighting game genre, but in my opinion, it exists on the fringes of the genre. In most fighting games your goal is to knock your opponent out by basically beating them into submission. They rely on uber-violence and gore (I’m looking at you Mortal Kombat) or long strings of memorized button presses to complete special moves (Soul Caliber and Street Fighter, you know who I’m talking about.) Smash Bros. eschews* both. Brawl aims for an experience more aimed towards a general audience. It has easily learned pick-up-and-play controls which allow anyone to quickly join the action, in fact Brenda has fond memories of the previous game in the series, Super Smash Bros. Melee, because it was one she could compete with against my friends and me by “button-mashing” (hitting as many buttons as fast as possible.) Rather than virtually beating your friends to a pulp, your main goal is to knock them off the screen – a slight difference (you still whoop on them first to soften them up) that changes things up from the well-worn knock out your opponent goal. Smash Bros. is also a four player game (unlike the usual 1 on 1 of fighting games) which makes it fun for tournaments and taking turns at a party with a large group of friends.

Sonic the Hedgehog on the Emerald Hill stage

The battlers in Super Smash Bros. Brawl are the mascots from Nintendo’s famous franchises – Mario, Luigi, Bowser, and Princess Peach from Mario Bros., Link, Zelda, and Gannondorf from The Legend of Zelda series, Samus from Metroid, Pikachu, Lucario, Jigglypuff, Ivysaur, Charizard, and Squirtle from Pokemon along with several other well-known characters. There’s plenty of faces recognizable to those who are familiar with games, but they also lovingly added a few characters from the “I don’t quite qualify as a Nintendo mascot since no one has made a game about me in like 20 years” department with the Ice Climbers from the aptly named Ice Climbers, Pitt from Kid Icarus, and Lucas and Ness from the Earthbound series. It may sound a little weird, but controlling Mario in a face-off with Pikachu is oddly satisfying. Most of the stages are modeled after the games these characters have taken part in, and many hearken back to the video games of yore. SSBB also threw the first non-Nintendo characters into the mix – Sonic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series.

Ash from Pallet Town now desires more to be the Pokemon Master - he wants to take out Mario too!

There’s tons more to say about Super Smash Bros. Brawl – there’s a huge amount of content involved (unlockable trophies, a huge list of special ent matches,  online play that never seems to work for me unless I’m playing with a registered friend, etc.) Brawl also includes a story mode which cobbles together a reason to have Princess Zelda and Princess Peach hanging out together (they have a tea party! I’m not kidding!) While the story isn’t anything much to write home about, the cut-scenes that explain the story are amazing to watch and beautifully animated. The real thing that keeps me coming back to SSBB though is the screen capture mode. The game allows you to pause at any time and take a screenshot. You can turn the camera and adjust the angle. I’m serious when I say that taking screenshots of the fights is almost as much fun to me as the game itself (hence the giant pile of screenshots in my Flickr account.) I can’t fully explain it, but it’s a lot of fun.

Luigi at sunset, showing off his dancing moves or something

*Ha. How many other blogs have you read today using the word “eschews”?

Where’s the beef? In my freezer . . .

So, it’s almost that time of the year again. Yup, very soon it will be time to drive the Larsen family cows to the winter pasture and the time when the main benefit of working with cows on a bi-annual basis – quality beef. The meat we get from the cows is lean and delicious – there’s one problem however, we haven’t finished all of last year’s meat yet. In fact, there’s a pile of ground beef in the freezer in the garage. Fringe benefits of working with cows on a bi-annual basis are: 1. The smell, of both the cows and the nearby sewer plant! 2. The ability to get to know your food while it’s still identifiable as an animal (sometimes they let you choose your cow too, however, I usually leave that to the more knowledgeable cow people – I would be classified as “low on the totem-pole ranch hand” at the best, probably more likely classified as “Why did we ask him to come again?”) 3. The ability, nay, the necessity of whacking cows with sticks for hours on end. Don’t get all bleeding heart on me – especially if you’ve never tried to get a cow where you need it to go. They are the stupidest creatures on Earth. I really mean that. I was a little shocked in the beginning the first time I went to help the herd – Bert, (his brother-in-law) Kyle, his parents, EVERYONE was whacking the cows. Quickly though, I learned that cows understand very few things – and whacks with a stick and cattle prods are two of them.

I digress (but when have I ever been known to do that?) We have a lot of beef still in the freezer from last year. Mostly ground beef, but Brenda discovered the other day that we actually still have some roasts from 2006. I need help, I need ideas! What should we do with all this beef?

The return from Bear Lake . . .

Well, the last time I posted (and it has been a while) I described to you our trip to Bear Lake. What I didn’t tell you (although some of you have heard this story in real life since then, I know, but I have a couple more blog updates I want to get up tonight) was what happened upon our return. It was the classical comedy of errors, except no one was around to witness it or laugh at me. Be ye warned all those who read ahead that there be troubling reports of baby poop and puke – anyone who has had a kid should be able to handle it, but don’t come whining to me later about how you thought my story is gross. Of course it’s gross, that’s why it’s funny.

We got home about 8:00 on Saturday night and by the time we got some of the more important things out of the van (Luke’s food, my Nintendo DS, etc.) , we were a little late getting Luke his “pre-bedtime meal which is later than dinner but is his largest helping of mush for the day” meal. Not terribly late, but late. Brenda went off to her aunt’s to pick up our dog Taffy, whom Aunt Sherry had kindly consented to watch while we were “gallivantin’.” In the meantime, I was charged with feeding and bathing Luke and putting him to bed. Nothing too difficult, right? Right . . .

Apparently I had made Luke a little too much of his evening meal. You could blame this on me – that would be uncalled for though. A friend whose baby had never taken a liking to rice cereal had given us some boxes – a different brand than the rice cereal we currently use. The problem enters in here that the rice cereal that we usually use has much smaller flakes, so it’s actually pretty difficult to judge exactly how much of this stuff you have in the bowl. As it turns out though, I probably had too much. Toward the end of Luke’s feeding, he started fussing a little – which usually while feeding him is code for “shovel it in faster.” However, he was strangely avoiding the spoon. What I see now is that Luke had had enough. Eventually he spit up a little and then I finally got the message. It was mostly on his bib though, so no big problem. I unstrapped him, pulled him out, and headed for his room. Luke’s end of day routine is eat mush, bath time, bottle, bed. Just to prove that I am not an incompetent parent, I had already drawn his bath for him while feeding him.

So, we’re headed for his room to get him ready for bed. Just as we were approaching the door, it happened. Spit up. Not minor spit up, puke, enough to cover his front and get all over the floor. Somehow, I managed to maintain my composure long enough to make sure that he puked all over the linoleum rather than on the carpet (kudos to me!) So, I fed Luke too much so he puked, and now he’s covered. I decided that desperate times called for desperate measures – I was going to put him directly in the tub and skip the usual measure pre-bath diaper removal and wipe-down. I dropped his clothes in the sink (trying to keep my now fairly fussy boy from getting more yuck all over him) and congratulated myself on skipping a step until his diaper came off – and I realized that I was going to have to wipe him off, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Yes, dear Luke had pooped. And while I was desperate to get the smell of his former dinner off my hands, I couldn’t bring myself to put him directly in the tub. I walked from the bathroom to his room, succeeded in wiping him off, and even got him grinning. Patting myself on the back, there was a secret danger (or phantom menace if you will) that I hadn’t counted on – baby puke is slippery. That’s right, on my return to the bath, I slipped on the sick. When I say slip, I mean, Three Stooges style, arm flailing wildly (only one because the other was holding on to Luke for dear life) falling like something off a video on YouTube, slip and fall. Luckily, I somehow held on to Luke, who though none worse for the wear, was startled so badly I had to give him a binky in the bathtub. For my efforts, I garned a giant bump on my shin and some big scratches on my arm.

But at least I had got most of the puke off the floor, next time I just don’t want to use myself as the mop.