I haven’t been able to pass this purchase by the Various and Sundry Finance Committee, but I hope one of you did.  What do you think? How’s the new controller add-on working for you?  And how tempted are you to now go out and buy the Tiger Woods game to use with it?

In Japan, Nintendo is releasing an all-black Wii. They have no plans to do so in North America, however.  That brings us to our quote of the week:

“Once — if — Wii sales ever drop off, we expect a freakin’ deluge of Wii colors that’ll make a gay Pride parade look like a drab, colorless scene out of Killzone 2.”

Today, some apps that I’ve downloaded and find myself using the most:

Erica Sadun’s To Do app is barebones and featureless and a bit ugly, but it does the job I need it to do.  I don’t need anything fancier than this, thanks.  I probably could just use 37 Signals’ TaDaLlist.com, instead, but this is good enough for a few things at a time.  It’s also free.

I love looking up “To Do” in the App Store, because all the icons are identical.  They’re all checks over a box, with various color schemes.

TweetDeck is, no doubt, the most used. It’s the only way I ever want to use Twitter now, thanks.  Someday, I’ll get it linked up to my desktop client, but not just yet.  I don’t need it to be.  I don’t follow so many people that I get lost in the noise.

The USA Today app is good for a quick breeze through the news.  And once it’s done updating itself, the stories load instantly, which is nice.

Flight Control. Addicting little game.  My high score is 19.  Not the game that I’ll kill the most time with, but I like the interface, where you’re drawing landing paths for all the planes flying around, without letting them crash.  Games aren’t terribly long, either.

Tiki Golf 3D.  Fun mini-golf game.  The opening levels are challenging without being impossible.  I’m trying “Let’s Golf” next for a more serious golfing game.

iHandy Level.  I don’t know when I might use it, but I like having a bubble spirit level thing in my pocket.

Amazon.com. I’ve used the feature where you take a picture of something and they email you back with what it is a few times with great success.  Impressive, and very handy.

PhotoGen.  THE photo editing app for the iPhone.  Just adjusting the levels is enough for most pictures, but this also handles cropping, color adjustments, and all the standard stuff you could ask for.

Fieldrunners.  Desktop Tower Defense for the iPhone. The single biggest time sink on the iPhone for me right now.  I’ve played this kind of game before, but it still hooks me.  I screamed when I lost on level 99 the other day.  The game only has 100 levels. Ugh!

Now available in stores near you (maybe) the new Nintendo DSi:

Also, happy birthday to my wife today, who occasionally enjoys my DS and was once addicted to Brain Games. =)

April 20, 2006 on this blog:

It’s official now, but it’s not enough:

Sony lowers price of PlayStation 2 to $129.99 – Joystiq

This week at the PlayStation Blog:

For the first time ever, PlayStation 2 will be offered at a price point under $100 (that’s $99.99 MSRP, to be exact), starting April 1!

It’s almost THREE YEARS too late.  Did I link to the story yet about how the Wii’s Balance Board has sold almost as many units as Sony has sold PS3s?

Early thoughts on “Guitar Hero: World Tour:”

• I started on Medium mode this time around.  GH3 gave me enough experience that I thought starting on Beginner or Easy mode would be too mind-numbing.  I was right.  Medium is relatively simple, but has its challenges: keeping your concentration through 400+ notes is one of the biggest.  The occasional interspersed fourth fret throws you off when you’re not used to using it.  And yet it’s “easy” enough to really get into the rhythm of the music and find your GH groove.  There are some tricky combo moves, though, that keep me on my toes.

• So, you have to play sets of songs (2 to 4) to advance on this system, and not just a song at a time? Weird.  Well, I mean, you can not do the career mode and just practice a song.  So it’s still available to you.  But it is different. Likewise, I haven’t played as a bass yet, but I can’t wait.

• So far, the hardest thing to do has been to come up with a band name.

• The new guitar is a little longer than the previous model. That took some adjusting.  The star power button is a nice addition, but I haven’t wrapped my brain around it yet.  I’ll work it in eventually.  For now, I just do the traditional Raising of the Guitar Neck to invoke it.

• The slide portion on the neck, likewise, is something that excites me but I haven’t worked into my gameplay yet.  I fear taking my right hand off the strumming part, even for a second. I know there’s a tutorial for it in there, so I’ll have to play with it later.

• I’m not a Nirvana fan, yet it was a Nirvana song that landed me my first 100% score of the game.

• GH is fascinating to me, from a music perspective: When you think of a song, you hum the melody.  But the lead guitar line is often NOT the melody.  When you’re playing a GH song, it takes a while to stop pressing the frets to the melody, and start playing to the guitar line.  I find that fascinating.  And the songs that go further off that line are often the most challenging and rewarding.  (I think I mentioned this with the previous iteration of the game, too.  Pardon my repetition.)

• It’s obvious that some songs were chosen for their drum or vocal parts, and not their guitar licks.  Some songs are almost painfully boring to play on the guitar, with long silent portions.  That Beastie Boys song is only there for the person singing.  Perhaps it’s good for the drums, too, I don’t know.  But it’s not a guitar song.  Does this weaken the brand?  Or is it what the video game populace demands, and so Activision must provide?

• There’s still a certain level of cognitive dissonance in watching the CGI band perform a song by a band you know, particularly when using the original master tracks that sound like they come from the 1970s or 1980s.  You KNOW Rick Springfield doesn’t look like that guy, and hearing those old recordings being performed by a character animated with a few thousand polygons seems — off. I’d expect the Intellivision Running Man to be singing the song, instead, you know?

Rock Band 2 for the Wii.

I’m still stubbornly sticking with the Guitar Hero franchise, but I thought a lot of you might like to know about this one.
Back with DVDs a litle later.

So let me get this straight: After a year and a half of negotiations, The Beatles have inked a deal with the maker of Rock Band for a game to come out 13 months from now that’s not Rock Band, and that they won’t guarantee any compatibility with RB instruments just yet?  Ooooookay.

Well, that was certainly worth a press release.

• MTVMusic is an on-line repository for thousands (?) of music videos.  This is all the proof you need that all forgotten art forms will eventually find new life on the web. I’m thoroughly hooked on reliving the 80s right now.

• Whoa: The Christian Science Monitor is dropping its print edition. Ironically, this story is brought to you by “The New York Times,” a dead tree newspaper in deep financial trouble.

• Video from London. Turn of the century London. Most impressive.

• How about a Mac utility to play FLAC files in iTunes?  I like that idea.

• Wii Fit has outsold Grand Theft Auto IV!

• Now it can be told: How a Jeopardy! game board is written. (Current up to about a decade ago. ;-)

• Journey to the Center of the Earth

Brendon Frasier and some kids have a kid friendly sci-fi adventure.  And now you can see it at home in 3-D — cardboard glasses included, of course!  As if that’s not enough, you can also get “The Polar Express” in 3-D these days.  I just learned that in the Best Buy circular.

• Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition: Limited-Edition Tin Box Set

This time around, you’re getting “First Spaceship on Venus (1960), Laserblast (1978), Werewolf (1996), and Future War (1997).”  Sounds good to me!

• Elton John: The Red Piano

This is the 2-DVD/2-CD set of Elton John’s Las Vegas spectacle show. That includes a making of documentary as well as the full concert in both audio and video.

• Guitar Hero: World Tour

Not a DVD, granted, but check that subject header again.  I never mentioned “DVD.” ;-)  I so want to buy this (even if only the game only edition), just so I can download and play “Jessie’s Girl.”

• On the off chance your website’s images are too big, Yahoo has a tool to shrink them for you. Could be worth playing with, though I don’t run any large images here so I’m not too worried.

• One video. 24 hours.  All flight patterns.  Pretty cool.

• Isn’t it kind of weird that a panel of federal judges controls music royalty rates? Don’t they have something better to do?  Like judge murderers or something?

• Memo to self: Download “Cave Story.”  If good, prepare to WiiWare download it.

• Are subtitled movies now more palatable to younger generations weened on text messaging?

• Everything you wanted to know about the iPhone SDK.  You can even grab some source code.  Or buy the book!

• The source code for Donkey Kong is now available.  One of the original coders even comments on it in the thread at the link.  Here’s some sample comments:

;;HISTORY: ;;
;;Nov ‘82 – IDS, initial coding ;;
;;Dec ‘82 – more coding, hair pulling, general cruftiness ;;
;;Jan ‘83 – schedule screaming, rampant insanity, accusations ;;
;;Feb ‘83 – semi-winnage, accompanied by cries of anguish and threats;;
;;Mar ‘83 – Lucifer announces a cooling trend

And here’s a quote from that aforementioned developer:

“I do remember that [Donkey Kong Jr.] was started in FORTH, and was an ego-driven disaster until that nonsense stopped.”

Somehow, that just shattered a bunch of naive childhood memories.

• Here’s another good reason the internet was created: so someone else could apply every Photoshop filter to one photo to see what it gives you.

• Your Flash Game for the Day: Split Words.  Given a playing board filled with word parts, match up two or three parts to form answers in the board’s theme. It’s timed.  It’s nerve-wracking .And it gets very hard very fast.

Anyone buying it today?  I’m jealous of you, if you did.

MTV was running “Rock Band 2″ ads in the bottom right corner of the screen during their afternoon programming yesterday. That’s aggressive.  Of course, “Rock Band 2″ is produced by an MTV company, so maybe they got a good ad rate. They’re also casting for a game show based on the game.

On the bright side for those of us married to “Guitar Hero,” the final track list for “World Tour” has been released.  It’s 86 songs long, with some bright spots on it. “Hotel California” strikes me as a song with some parts that would be very very difficult to play.  R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” is a cool choice.  And Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again?”  I was pretty good at that with “Donkey Konga.”  Bring it on!

At last, it is here!

One of the greatest and least appreciated games from the original NES is now available as a download on the Wii Virtual Console:

Clu Clu Land!!!

And it’s only five lousy bucks.

Here’s some video of the masterpiece in action.

Here’s a FAQ site with a complete walkthrough.

• It’ll never happen, but it’s a wild idea that I really like, as a consumer: Give away your OS.  When you buy your next Mac, you get all the upgrades to the OS for free, for life.  (This assumes, of course, that the next iteration of the OS would operate on your machine’s specs.)  It would save that every-other-year $129 tax fom Apple.  I skipped Leopard.  I’ll probably upgrade on Snow Leopard.

• Nine Amazing Bridges.

• You have 30 days before you go deaf.  What do you do?  The story came to light through Matt Nathanson’s website.  He’s opened for O.A.R. in the past and made a good record or two.

• So the Google Eatery news story earlier in the week was bogus.  (See comments.)  So let’s now turn towards Apple’s cafeteria to see what’s up there.

• Coming to the Wii: Pirates v Ninjas Dodgeball. I can picture the heads exploding across the internet at the thought of this game.  Cute screen shots at the link.