5. McDonald’s

This name goes without needing any explanation. McDonald’s is one of the most widely known dining establishments with billions and billions served worldwide. Starting off with a basis of beef, McDonald’s has always been focused on beef for its entire existence. Hamburgers, Cheeseburgers, Big Mac’s and Quarterpounders; the list goes on and on. There isn’t really anything too flashy about McDonald’s – their menu is straightforward and has actually been downsized as of recent months. The last time I actually wandered into McDonald’s I was appalled by the lack of items on the menu. I remember seeing only five value menu options and a couple dollar menu options and that’s it. At some of the new locations I have seen McDonalds is trying to get a little classy, building what they call the McCafe right into the restaurant. Here they offer a variety of breakfast breads including muffins, danishes and even a few scones. Along with the breads, they offer all sorts of coffees and lattes, and some wacky specialty drinks I don’t even remember the names to.

Nothing really else here to talk about except for possibly one of the greatest, and cheapest dollar menu items around. The double cheeseburger, commonly known as the double che. This sandwich is the staple for a quick fix, when you are in a rush and really need something to eat and you see the golden arches up a bit on the street corner. You whip into McDonald’s drive thru, order up a fresh double che (or two) and devour those sandwiches before you are back on the road. This has to be the quintessential sandwich of our time, at the most insane price. There have even been reports of regular old hamburgers, and a boring cheeseburger This is so outrageous, and baffling, that a single patty of beef with pretty much the same fixins, can cost more than the double che. An inexperienced McDonald’s eater (is there such a thing?) would make this mistake and not even know it. If it wasn’t for the Double Che and McDonald’s dominating real estate locations throughout the world, I am not sure I would visit it as sporadically as I do.

4. Burger King

This facility always claims to be The King. Touting their flame broiled beef as being some of the best in the world. Burger King, or BK for short, has been around for what seems forever. They love to create sandwiches that make your mouth drop and have you saying “there is no way I can eat that AND fries”. Some of the sandwiches they devise are so large, it hurts to even think about eating. They offer some quality items on their menu, with a much larger meat selection than McDonalds.

As for their side items, BK was one of the first to offer onion rings as an optional side. This changes the face of the fast food game completely, offering patrons a different option than just ordinary fries. These rings can be ordered as a complete substitute to fries, or you can opt to mix and match a 50/50 ring/fry mix. It isn’t that BK needs help with their fries, because they are the best fries in the entire world. They combine the perfect balance of all features including overall size, girth and crispiness. These fries are a bit thicker than most other fast food fries. The length is about the same as other fries, but often seem to be more consistent, not ever receiving a pile of insanely small shriveled up burnt pieces of potato. The last factor in these amazing freedom fries have to be the crunch factor. BK fries have some of the most amazing crunch that has ever been tasted in a french fry. It may have something to do with the thickness of the fries or even the fashion in which they are created, but it is a flavor and texture that just can’t be beat. This has to be one of the most prevalent factors for personally choosing BK over McDonalds, and it is great because these two establishments are mostly found right across the street from each other.

A final little jewel I would like to touch on is one of the most hidden sandwiches on the BK menu. The Rodeo Burger. This is primo, amazing flavor, and just downright an amazing burger. Often one can scour a BK menu for minutes and not see the Rodeo Burger listed, yet by simply asking the workers “Can you make a Rodeo Burger?” they instantly know what you are talking about and almost get excited about making you one. A simple burger, spiced up with onion rings and some BBQ sauce. It has a taste that is unworldly, and the cost doesn’t break the bank either. There might not be anything better than a frosty drink, Rodeo Burger and some BK fries to brighten up your day.

3. Arby’s

Arby’s, also identified by its frequent visitor name of Arbles has their own style and niche that may interest the non traditional fast food eater. Arby’s main focus is on roast beef sandwiches. This establishment prides itself on leaning heavily on a menu littered with different types of roast beef options. When you finally decide upon one sandwich that peeks your interest, you then have to pick the thickness level of roast beef to be piled on your sandwich. Sometimes this can lead to a massively dense sandwich, if the visitor has an insane appetite. Paired with the ginormous mound of roast beef these sandwiches are always found paired with the familiar cheese sauce. A hot and liquidy, yet firm cheese sauce, it resembles pump cheese that you would dip fresh crunchy nachos into.

The fries at Arbles are in a league of their own, known as curly fries, and they pack a flavorful spicy punch. The rest of the menu is quite diverse as well, featuring many sandwiches that resemble a deli. Artisan bread, fresh crisp ingredients like peppercorn turkey or honey ham, hugging iceberg lettuce and crisp tomato slices, offer meals on the less traditional side. To go even healthier you can choose from one of three Arbles salads. Quite possibly one of the most interesting parts of the Arbles options has to be their sides. If you don’t opt for the spicy curly fries, you can get served up a few potato cakes as a substitute. What is a potato cake you ask? It is basically a triangle shaped hash brown, but not as crispy as a traditional hash brown. If you don’t opt for these potato cakes, you can go for other options such as mozzarella sticks, loaded potato bites, onion petals with tangy sauce, or their newly release side known as mac and cheezers. Pretty much everything here is fried up in some way shape or form. The new mac and cheezers option is a pile of mac and cheese, formed into a triangle and fried. Ables really has something for triangles, and it is uncertain what that kind of fetish this is known as. For toppings and additions to the meals, Arbles offers a sauce station that is bound to satisfy the pickiest of eaters. An Arbles visitor can choose from a spicy three pepper sauce, honey mustard, ketchup and even a custom made horsey sauce, which is known to the rest of the world as horseradish. Squirting the sauces into the individual cups offers the eater plenty of flavor options on their tray for optimal enjoyment.

The environment is fun at your local Arby’s restaurant, the staff likes to have fun and joke with you. On the way out there is a golden bell mounted to the wall on a cherry wood frame. Here dangles a white rope attached to the bell and mounted on the wood frame are instructions etched into a brass plate: “ring bell if satisfied with our service”. All too often you can hear this bell being rung by satisfied exiting guests who fully enjoyed their Arbles experience.

2. Roy Rogers

Roy Rogers is a dying breed. Found far and few between scattered along the eastern seaboard, these amazing restaurants have been slowly disappearing off the maps. You can usually find a surviving Roy Roger’s location that is dependant on tourist bus trips, with heavy travel to and from two regional cities. Busload after busload of tired and withered tourists march off the bus and find themselves staring at a Roy Rogers’ neon sign, welcoming them inside. In they go, walking through the maze-like human corral, gazing at the menu. Chicken, burgers, biscuits and fries amaze these people. Such titles as holster fries, Double R Bar Burger and the Gold Rush Sandwich dance about in the hungry tourists’ minds.

Based on my personal experience, the wait times at a Roy Rogers nine out of ten times is extremely low. So low that upon my last visit they were barking at me to place my order before I even laid eyes upon the trusty menu. Like a beef hungry slaughter house owner, the Roy Rogers employees rip through the tour bus load at record speeds, taking verbal orders, cash and credit cards at dizzying speeds. Before you know it the entire dining area is being rushed by hungry people holding trays – with steaming hot yummy piles of food on them. Someone yells: “Fixin’s bar?! What the hell is this?!” The starving tourists hovering around this mysterious bar, like intrigued mosquitoes buzzing around a bug zapper. Fresh lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions and sauces. A plethora of free fixins awaits every Roy’s visitor, allowing you to customize your sandwich with virtually unlimited topping combinations. This is quite possibly the most amazing value that Roy Rogers has kept true to. Allowing their customers the options to add as much or as little fixins to every meal. It is possible to saunter into a Roy Rogers, go straight to the fixins bar and scoop yourself a mound of pickles on a napkin. This luxury is something that is usually found at higher scale restaurants – but at Roy’s – its standard. Enjoying an entire meal is easy, the wholesome food goes down like no other. You may even have enough time left over to peruse the gift shop for some stupid souvenir before you must pile back on the bus and carry on. Bottom line is Roy Rogers offers a deliciously diverse menu with a wild west theme, insanely fast and efficient staff, and a fixins bar that is so unique it is worth visiting without even ordering a meal.

1. Wendy’s

Wendy’s has always been perhaps the tastiest and most well rounded fast food establishment ever experienced in the universe. Stepping into a Wendy’s and seeing the old school style menu board is both comforting and easy to read. It’s like walking into a Stop and Shop, you always know where the bread, the milk and the cereal is located. The setup is exactly the same in every store, and you feel comfortable walking in and navigating the aisles. This same feeling is achieved when walking in and working your eyes about the Wendy’s menu board.

Often Wendy’s has one or two sandwiches available that are short term items, something experimental with absurd loads of bacon, or some sort of super spicy crispy chicken sandwich. These items are hard to miss, often with a large photo of the sandwich smacked right in the middle of the menu. It is suggested that you try one of these items, as they don’t last long – Wendy’s likes to keep it fresh.

With frequenting this establishment, an alternate name has come about and tends to roll off the tongue a bit easier: Wendals. Wendals is perceived by some as being the male version of Wendy. Nevertheless, what sets Wendal’s apart from all other restaurants is their diversity of items offered to their guests. This was inspired by the famous Dave Thomas, the founder and owner of Wendy’s for much of his life. Do you know of another fast food joint that offers baked potatoes with the option of loading it up with sour cream chives and butter? No. Have you ever heard of another fast food joint offering chili as one of their sides? With the option of adding shredded cheddar cheese on top?? No you haven’t!! These are the types of items that sets Wendals light years ahead from other fast food establishments. The chili is meaty and wholesome and the baked potato is an honest size, these two items can be combined with pouring the chili over the baked potato to create a meal in itself that can’t be found anywhere else in the fast food galaxy.

The other area I need to focus on is their value menu, which of course both the chili and potato can be found on, nestled up against several other options. This is one of the most comprehensive value menus ever found, offering several burgers such as the Junior Bacon Che, and chicken options like the Crispy Chicken Sandwich. A person visiting Wendals can easily create a feast with 5 items off of the value menu. A notation that must be said: all of the items used to be at a flat 99 cents, but inflation and our horrible economy has caused some of the items to go up to the $1.20 and $1.29 range. Even at these prices, it is still a value. One of the most favorite dollar menu feasts includes the following: 1 Jr. Bacon Che; 1 Five Piece Chicken nuggets; 1 Caesar Side Salad; 1 Small Soda; 1 Small Fries. With this you can take 4 of the five piece nuggets, and break them up by hand (caution – they WILL be steamy, fresh and hot!) crumbling them over the Caesar Side Salad. Add in the dressing, croutons and cheese flakes and put the lid back on, shake it around, uncover and you have yourself a $2.20 chicken Caesar salad. You can’t find that anywhere else folks. This is the starter part of the meal, and with that out of the way you can move onto your traditional burger and fries meal, often taking swigs of your soft drink of choice. It is up to you when you want to eat that final lingering nugget, but if I was a betting man it would probably be somewhere around mid burger. The taste of those nuggets get lost in the bacon and beef flavors, but Wendals has got your back – giving you that last lingering nugget for you to enjoy in the last moments of your Wendals Super Value Menu Feast. This is quite possibly the most satisfying feast that can be found on a budget, and created just for you in an honest and speedy fashion, just how Dave always wanted it.

Jim asks, Can I run Windows vista drivers on windows xp?

Attempting to install Windows Vista drivers on a Windows XP computer can, and most likely will cause a complete computer meltdown. When one tries to pull a stunt like this they will often find themselves cursing and hitting random objects and animals. Anything that Vista touches turns to carbon, explodes, and somehow finds its way into your nose causing a serious sneezing fit. This maneuver is not recommended, even by the most experienced engineer at the Microsoft campus.

Bills writes, In the first episode of Lost when Walt is looking at the comic book, there is a Polar Bear. But there is also an ALIEN on the facing page. Why doesn’t an alien ever appear.

The fact that there is an alien on the facing page has no bearing on the fact that it may or may not show up on the island. The island is a very special place where unknown forces are felt and observed but a face can never be put to them. Special forces such as stranded survivors being on a hot island for months on end, yet never getting the slightest bit of sunburn. Think of the forces and experiences as your alien, but with no far fetched green slimy body and distorted figure to it for you to identify with. Or the polar bear got bored and just decided to eat the alien, crushing your every hope and dream with its extremely powerful jaw muscles.

This board game is one of the most straight up, in your face games ever created. During the era of peace love and happiness, Sir Milton Bradley himself must have been on shrooms with the developers of this action packed game. A land of candy, danger, suspense…and candy! Every stoner’s dream. This game is so straight forward you could probably handle it while being on acid yourself. Flip a card, its color coded! But watch out, sometimes you get a special card, instructing you to go to a certain area of the board. With every flip of the card, you get closer to meeting King Kandy, all the while, he gives you a journey unlike any other.

The first character you meet is Plumpy, for whom I can’t even tell if he is the gingerbread man with a tree growning out of his head, or the weirdo grinning green monster sizing up a deliciously ripe plum. I’m gonna guess he is the delicious looking tree, with plums in his hair. After eating some of nature’s candy, the King sends you to see Mr. Mint, the keeper and hedge trimmer of the Peppermint Forest. It appears that he lives in an arctic area, which makes hacking down the overgrown candy canes a breeze. There isn’t anything in the Peppermint Forest that isn’t made of candy canes, including Mr. Mint and his silly hat. Lord Licorice says hi to you, as you dance by him all hopped up on delicious, nutritious candy canes. He has a pointy nose, and weird cape. Around the bend is the overzealous Jolly, who by the looks of it dropped out of ballet classes and decided to study gumdrops covered in icing.

Filling your belly with the oversized gumdrops, you roll up to Grandma Nut’s house for some freshly made peanut brittle. You don’t get any of them though, because grandma is busy prancing through the fields where peanuts grow. She has a cheerful smile, and hands some peanuts to you, which I wouldn’t really consider as candy. It is quite okay with the King, for he wants you to have protein for your journey! Up ahead you see a young girl dancing around with lollipops sticking out of her head and purple curly hair. Who knew a lolly was just what you wanted after eating a handful of grandma’s nuts.

Just past this field of multi-colored lollipops is Queen Frostine, apparently floating on an ice cream sea that looks like a tub filled with bubbles. Her dress so white and clean she pushes a shovelful of icecream bubbles down your throat and pushes you on your way. You soon are spooked by two white eyes and huge pink tongue sticking out of murky yet delicious molasses swamp. Don’t be scared, its only Gloppy! He is your friend and wants you to taste his sweet treats. You feel the presence of the King close, and don’t fall for Gloppy’s tricks. Ah ha! At last! King Kandy greets you with a huge smile flaunting his ice cream crown and peppermint stick kane. You have finally made it, so hopped up on sugar that there is nothing wrong with the ice cream castle in the background. It looks delicious you think to yourself, as the waffle cone structure sucks you in. Prancing, laughing, stomach hurting you follow the candy laden trail right into the gates of the delicious kastle. Within the walls is an unknown mystical yet sticky sugary paradise, with any kandy you could ever want.

Rating:

5. Safari

Originally bundled with Mac operating systems, this web browser was only in use by a small percentage of the computing world. As Mac has grown in popularity over the past few years, so has their web browser, Safari. A unique and fun name accompanied this quick browser yet for most of its life it has been available for only Mac operating systems. The release of Safari for Windows operating systems was long awaited and anticipated. Wrapped in a silver skin, this program offered a fresh look to traditional Windows programs, yet this was overshadowed by the tremendous lack of speed Safari offered. This dramatically affected the release of Safari for Windows, yet the traditional product has been working great with its home base Mac operating systems. Safari offered a nice feature of automatically resizing windows with ease when the user wanted a differently sized window. The zooming and resizing features in Safari were one of the first and have been enjoyed by its users. Development has continued on the Windows version of this product yet this is not their primary market. Conquering the Mac market was a breeze, as it was the default choice for all Mac computers in the world. Overall this product is gaining popularity and is nice enough to offer development for both Mac and Windows. Old-wizard.com enjoys sharing, so we are in agreement that this is one of the better web browsers, finding itself at five.

4. Internet Explorer

Ah yes, another fine product from the monopoly loving company Microsoft. This web browser is often ranked as the most popular web browser on the planet, yet this is largely to do with the fact that most people just settle for what is standard. This web browser is actually built into the operating system known as Windows XP, and is the standard bundled “option” found with all Microsoft operating systems. Until recently Internet Explorer has had huge security flaws, and lacked any sort of imaginative design. The newest product, still in beta testing, is Internet Explorer 7. The streamlined features with this new version made many people feel lost within a product that they use on a daily basis. The menus disappeared and were replaced with icons, and when you click on the icons they just bring up a menu where everything is hidden. This could be considered as an advancement, yet we consider it as just a cover-up and attempt to mock Firefox. Internet Explorer maybe preinstalled into most computers on the planet, yet the lack of cross platform usage makes them rank only fourth on our list. The backing and development of Microsoft Corporation makes this product stable and secure, but in no means number one.

3. Flock

What the Flock? Many may find themselves asking this question, as this word is popping up more and more in daily conversation, and on several websites, invading your computer. Flock is an up and coming web browser that is strongly based upon the feeling of community. A sleek looking product that resembles Firefox with more shapely outlines and curves. It is almost as if they tried to take the best features of Firefox and Internet Explorer, and meld myspace, facebook and youtube into the same window. Flock can pull statuses from your favorite social websites, such as updates from your friends status window in Facebook. It streamlines this data, from multiple sources, and puts it within your web browser for easy access. This is like using an upgraded version of Firefox, yet it lacks in some of its base features such as favorites organization and sharing. We can defiantly see this product getting more attention in a very short amount of time as the social network sites such as Facebook and Myspace are launching into super popular web applications. Flock also caters to the blogger community, offering the same sort of streamlined updates as for the other sites. Due to its young age, this browser does not have the popularity or user base of other browsers, but it is definitely something to keep an eye out for. Go ahead, install it and check it out, perhaps it will replace your copy of Internet Explorer.

2. Opera

Opera finds itself second in this list of competitors because of the massive amount of platforms, or operating systems, that it supports. In its dossier you can find versions supporting Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, BSD and several versions for cell phones and PDA based platforms. Sharing is caring, and Opera has shown us all how to do so. Another great advantage of this browser is that it is self sufficient for its security features, not dependent on the built in security measures of the platform it is being run on. Usability for this browser is very easy for users to get a hang of, and it actually displays pages with fewer errors than Internet Explorer. Opera also finds itself supporting widgets, which are small web applications, with ease. Users can customize their widgets to feed them different streaming information straight to their desktop. Although it is not as popular as the plugins for Firefox, these widgets go along with the same thought process and are enjoyed by many people every day. A clean looking and functional web browser finds itself in the shadows of Firefox and internet explorer, yet actually offer the user a much more engaging web experience than Internet Explorer. Keep up the good development Opera, as we enjoy how you share your fresh application with almost every possible computer platform on planet Earth.”

1. Firefox

The web browser that finds itself at the number one poll position of our list is Firefox. Taking the internet by storm as of late, many users have enjoyed this product because it was a fresh and interesting alternative to the boring and forced upon Internet Explorer. One of the main factors for this product’s popularity was its pure speed at which it could load pages. Zipping through different websites is of course most dependent on the speed of your connection, yet browsing with this superior browser can increase even the tiny sliver percentage of users still using dial up internet. Of course Firefox is secure, if not even more secure than its competitors and is offered for several operating systems. Tabbed browsing was one of the most amazing features introduced by Firefox; allowing users to have multiple web pages open within a single Firefox screen. Increasing productivity and allowing users to have several pages at their fingertips is another huge advantage to this product. Continuing with the list of great features included in Firefox is all of the optional plug-ins that it offers. StumbleUpon, one of the most popular plugins, allows users to select what topics they are interested it and “stumble” through pages that coincide with their likes. If the user enjoys the page, they give it a thumbs up, the program learns and shows more pages like that. If you give it a thumbs down, the opposite happens, and the viewer sees fewer pages with the same content. A community has been created with StumbleUpon users, where links can be shared and sent directly to other users instantly. The popularity of the plugins offered through Firefox, the speed and security of this product, and the cross platform support makes this our favorite web browser on the market. Old-Wizard.com fully supports the use of Firefox, and recommends it for viewing of our content. Enjoy the fox!

It is official; the Norwegian government has excavated the former apartment / love nest of Superman, and is now using it to store seeds.

No, not those kinds of seeds. That’s in Holland. It’s all the same continent though. Anyways, reports from around the world indicate that the Norwegian government financed the construction of the “Doomsday Vault” in order to fill the space with seed collections from around the world. It was done at the bare bones price of about 9.4 million American greenbacks.

The “vault” itself has been built into the side of a mountain that borders the North Pole. The storage space will be serving as the ultimate safety net against any type of human errors, such as war and poverty. It will also work great against world-wide crop changes, effects of globalization, global warming, and any other natural disaster.

So far, over a million seeds have been placed in the 427 foot deep icy chamber, with the hope that they may never be needed in an uncertain future. The United Nations also played a roll in the operation since 2004 by supplying much needed funding to the project, in order to promote crop diversity. The majority of the seeds are from plants that sustain global food supplies. There have also been calls for other types of plant life as well.

This is not the first project of its kind, as there is a similar seed bank in Sussex, England. Not to mention the unknown paranoid billion/multi-millionaires out there who have constructed their own Doomsday survival chambers. For when the day comes that the seas boil and the heavens fall those guys will be ready with a year supply of Dinty Moore stew and Easy-Mac. Plus, the US Government certified duct-tape and plastic wrap.

Rest assured the original Doomsday is still strapped to that meteor and hurtling through space so he won’t be threatening our global food supplies. Thanks again Superman. Or was it The Eradicator?

For more information, type “Norwegian Doomsday Vault” into your favorite search-engine. Read.

Super Off Road was forgotten for several years, and I thought I would never play it again as the Burger King Castle closed up shop (when have you ever seen a Burger King close down anyway?). The magical singing and dancing monkey trio, who wished every child a happy birthday, sang no more. Until the summer of 2005 I had thought I would never see this game again in my life. Hooked up to my 27” color TV was a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. In the corner, dusty and neglected, the SNES sat, until Zeromage showed up one day, with Super Off Road in his hands. We instantly slammed the game cartridge into the console, fired it up, and were blown away by the techno rhymes and sounds of the game’s intro music. Looping and looping the same zany techno music, I was entranced all over again, and we began a multi player game up immediately.

Hours went by as we played, never allowed to choose the coveted silver truck as our own vehicle. Our choices limited to the red, yellow, or blue trucks, Zeromage and I carried on, playing track after track, until our eyes were burning out of their sockets. As days went on, we realized that it was impossible to beat the silver truck on our own, so we had to team up and take shifts. One player trying to win, the other trying to slow down the other cars. Our goal: to reach $999,999,999,999 in winnings money. We needed to find out what would happen when we maxed out the system, and pushed it that one extra dollar over the edge. It became an obsession. Night after night, we diligently raced on the digital dirt tracks and ramps, mastering each level. New shortcuts were discovered, patterns in the game’s so called randomness were recorded. We became masters of Super Off Road. From time to time, we would have help from DestructoMaximo, hording our winnings and watching our as our money count grew and grew.

Player two was always in the race solely to help out player one, who had to win. This was done in a mostly sacrifice manner, often going after the computer controlled racers, smashing them into the walls of the race course, or just blocking their path. At about this point, we really don’t know what happened. Several weeks into this venture, of not ever turning the SNES console off, the silver truck started to become intensely aggressive. It seemed as though the vile silver car had unlimited NITROs, scooting its way around the track as if on a permanent NITRO high. It was relentless. This became a level one threat, and whoever was controlling player two had to really step it up. It became an all out race for survival to the finish line, as if the silver truck knew our mission of maxing out the total amount of winnings money and would do anything to stop us. Every dirty trick in the book was used, so far as to even having player one and player two team up on the silver truck, just so it wouldn’t win. Player two blocking the silver truck, and when he missed, NITROing straight into the rear bumper of player one’s truck, to launch them past the checkered flag finish line. Blocking the silver truck required a skill set all its own, sometimes more so than the player who was actually trying to win the race. At times both players would beat up on the steroid injected silver truck so bad, that it glitched out and started racing the track in reverse. The silver truck actually racked up negative laps, as it raced backwards against us.

Several more weeks went by, game play continued under the summery night sky and we soon realized that the SNES could never be turned off; ever. If we lost power, or turned the unit off, we would lose all of our hard work, as the SNES unit had no way of saving our progress. This was a serious problem. We had to put the game on pause and have a meeting about our dilemma. In the background, the insane looping techno music of Super Off Road taunted us. We ordered Dominos and held a council. After an intense hour long discussion over pizza and mountain dew, we realized that we would have to start the mission over, with a gasoline powered generator running right outside of my bedroom. Combined with a battery backup device, we would be able to keep the SNES running in case of a power outage, and continue the mission. Along with these necessary power devices, we would need a diligent crack team of game operators, running around the clock. After crunching some numbers on the back of an empty pizza box we realized that we would have to go on a straight 24/7 rotation of game play for the rest of the summer in order to achieve our goal. We’re losers, but we’re not that big of losers. We decided to end this technological mission. Playing Super Off Road for months straight, around the clock, without loosing a single race proved to be just too much for us. We gave it our best try, getting to about 1/3 of the maximum winnings money allowed over the duration of one summer. To this day I wonder if the Super Off Road winnings level can ever be maxed out. And from time to time whenever I see a silver car on the road, I always go a little faster, try a little harder, to pass him out.

]]> http://old-wizard.com/super-off-road/feed 1 http://old-wizard.com/mario-pary-4-domination-mini-game http://old-wizard.com/mario-pary-4-domination-mini-game#comments Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:15:22 +0000 bug http://old-wizard.com/?p=226 Mini games. Mini games were the name of the game in Super Mario Party 4 for the Nintendo Gamecube. Wandering through the digital world of psychedelic Japanese programmers, we were sent off onto little detours. Forced to play games that had nothing to do with our main goal: beating the full game. Most of the time these so called mini games were just a pain in the ass, but we came across one that was just completely pointless. It goes by the name of Domination. It was the one where you faced a never ending line of stone figures, shaped and stacked like domino’s. The only point of this mini game was to smash the A button on your controller as fast as you possibly could in a certain time period, and then it would knock down the corresponding amount of stone domino’s. Highest count of downed stone domino’s wins.

Over and over we smashed the A button as fast as possible with our thumbs. We were increasing our smashes, surpassing the required 100 mark. After several attempts, I figured a non-traditional controller grip was necessary to gain more A button mashing. Laying the controller on the rug, holding it down with my left hand, I used my pointer finger to quickly smash the A button faster and faster. This gained only minimal increases in smashes. Thinking about this dilemma, we decided to find other items that would not have the squishiness feeling that fingers do. A harder, tougher item was necessary to put up with the constant smashing vs. the A button.

We gathered up some items: pen, pencil, ruler, AA battery. The pencil worked so-so, but the pink eraser tip slowed down the gliding feeling of the pencil. This gliding effect was necessary to get a high smash count. Taking the item, and sliding it over the A button from side to side created a smooth, and very fast way of smashing that damn A button. The ruler was a bit better than the pencil, but the harsh 90 degree corner of the ruler was too jagged to provide a smooth sliding surface. Grabbing the AA battery was quite comfortable, and provided a smooth rounded edge which we could slide back and forth over and over the A button. Lastly was the pen. A standard bic pen, with the blue cap and rounded plastic corners. This item worked amazingly. The grip was comfortable, the sliding surface was flawless, and it was durable. Test after test we kept eeking out a couple extra button smashes, but not enough. Getting fed up with this, I kept thinking to myself “what can we do to increase A button smashes??”

A far stretched, but possible idea popped into my head. I ran down the stairs into the basement and came back up with a heavy duty electric drill. I took the blue cap off the ivory white bic pen, and inserted it into the drill bit’s mouth. Clenching down on the top of the pen cap, the little one inch plastic piece that allows you to clip a pen to your pocket, stood by itself. Plugging in the drill, I pulled the trigger very gently. Watching the pen cap rotate, I figured this would be glorious! I instantly wanted to put this idea to the test, with both of my friends confused yet intrigued. We fired up the mini game, and placed the Gamecube controller on the ground. I fired up the drill at full speed and watched the pen cap twirl until it turned in a blur. I slowly lowered the pen cap onto the A button, and heard it tap the A button furiously. This worked amazingly! The pen cap was hitting the A button at such a rapid pace we maxed out the game. Blowing away our previous attempts with every other item, the drill plus pen cap was the ultimate A button smashing combination. We tested this, over and over, shattering records and still maxing the mini game. It got so silly that we were beating the game in about half of the allowable time limit. We found that this mini game was maxed out at 160 permissible smashes. We reached the 160 mark several times in a row to confirm this. Laughing at this, we decided it was time to slow down on the drilling of the A button. Without even noticing it, we wore the button down to a smooth gully, making the sharp “A” disappear all together. A rather small price to pay for destroying the built in limit of this mindless mini game.

Here is a great video of the Mario Party 4 Domination Mini-Game:

It begins with choosing your game play. After a few introductory (and fairly interesting) AVI clips, you will have a medley of options to choose from. You can choose to begin the generic campaigns preprogrammed, create your own game, online play, or Regicide (My personal favorite, which I’ll get back to). The predetermined campaigns aren’t much to rave about. They mimic actual historic happenings, but change them into an AOE friendly format. (AOE = Age of Empires for those who haven’t caught on yet). For example, one of the first campaigns is that of Joan of Arc, where she must be navigated through hostile terrain to a safe area in order to muster an army. Again, nothing too thrilling with these campaigns.

Where the real meat of game play lies is in the “creating your own” game option and the Regicide option. With these options you literally do just that, create your own game. You can choose from any number of different terrains, to different civilizations. These range from the Chinese to the Vikings, and everything in between. With these different classifications of people come different types of options with the game. Meaning that some colonies will have the ability to create armored elephants of war, where as others may be able to research different technologies to create any number of different characters.

But these features are not what make the games so intense. So dreadfully, yet glued to the screen and mouse intense. Your game will start after you set all your specs, and its off to the races. You will be given a set number of villagers to start with; as well as a scout horse, some food, and other food resources close by. Other resources include wood, stone, and gold. And of course, all of these resources are up for grab. Once you master the point, click, click again technique of game play you will be ready to build your empire and compete in the game.

The point of the game is domination…of course. It is critical to understand what you need to survive, and what type of “personality” your opponents will take on. Meaning that some civilizations are more war-like, and others may keep to themselves and rely more on commerce and trade to survive.

The details of the game are endless. It really does just take some time to go through all of the options you as feudal master possess. For instance, you will want to try and build every building you can in order to find the different options you can access to improve your civilization. It is imperative to think capitalist in this game. Food, stone, wood, and gold are your currencies, and you need to get to work.

After immersing myself in the game for almost two days straight, I found several key points to keep in mind while creating and defending your empire:

1. Be very aware of what resources are around you. The game will try and place certain resources throughout the game map. Locate the ones near you, and the ones not near you. It may be the case that you have a lot of stone near you, and not as much gold. Both are equally important to procure.

2. Try and be as equally offensive and defensive as possible. While this may sound rather obvious, it is rather easy to find yourself in a bind at some point during game play. You will need military to secure resources, but you will need a suitable force to defend the colony. Keep it in mind.

3. FISH!! Try and build as large a fishing fleet as you can. The fish are almost unending, and fishing boats rarely ever get attacked by enemy vessels. But that isn’t a promise. It’s an easy way to stay ahead in gaining food.

4. Always take on angry animals with two villagers when exploring. Wolves are mean. They kill villagers by themselves.

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