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In writing this, I feel a little bit like I am encroaching on Charon’s territory here by complaining about Arby’s. However, I will forgo complaining about their food - this is easy for me since I never eat there. Yet, despite this avoidance of shoe-leather on a bun, Arby’s still manages to reach out with its horsey sauce covered claw and grab me.

Several years ago I and a car-pooling co-worker were heading home. It was my day to drive. I turned out of the office driveway and onto the main road - from there it is a mere 200 yards to the expressway.

I didn’t make it.

Instead, I turned and after successfully navigating the first 100 yards was broadsided by a guy turning left into Arby’s. He couldn’t even wait for traffic to clear he wanted it so badly. He hit my car hard! Airbags were deployed even (slight digression - airbags are not at all like they are depicted in the movies and TV - they are not soft pillows that inflate and slowly deflate - rather they inflate quickly, hard as a rock, then deflate so fast you don’t even have time to register that they went off - they are also painful - and I am glad they were there).

My car was totaled. So was his. Everyone was ok except for some bruising. While waiting for the police and tow trucks, the fellow that hit me - who never even spoke to me, let alone apologized for his action - went into the Arby’s and got his lunch.

I am not kidding. That dude really wanted his Arby’s.

Don't confuse this with the Justice League

Now, let’s jump forward to the here and now. My wife, kid and another mom and kid went to Arby’s for dinner, post-swimming lesson for the kids. I was able to avoid this by being at work. However, when my 4-year-old got home she was very exited because of the toy she got with her Arby’s kid meal. She said the toy was a “Super-Friends” toy. It was really a Justice League toy, but I decided that at 4 she was allowed the error. At 5, though, we will have a long discussion over the differences, which are many.

This toy was a Martian Manhunter Bobble-head. Made from paper. Full assembly required.

“C’mon!” you might be thinking, “How hard can it possibly be? It is just paper right?”

You need new thoughts.

Yes, indeed it was just paper. In fact, it was just “slot A into slot B”. Problem is, it was super-cheaply made. This means that nothing fit together quite right. Additionally I am trying to put this together with a 4-year old saying “Why couldn’t this just come together so I could play with it? They should have had this together so I could play with it. Why didn’t they just make it together? I really want to play with this daddy, why didn’t they do that?”

This went on for the full 15 minutes it took me to assemble this stupid toy.

So how did it turn out?

I hate you Arby's

Check out the picture. The head does not bobble because the weird spike that I put the head on goes through the top. So it just sits there. The moment my daughter touched it the arm fell off. I mean, yeah, it could be how I put it together, but I am going to blame the cheap toy itself. I mean, sheesh, what is a kid supposed to do with this exactly? Stare at it? Anything else and it falls apart. Which is did in about 10 minutes.

Listen, Arby’s, giving away Justice League stuff is awesome - but please make it something not made of paper. Also, I am with my daughter on this one - let’s make it fully assembled, ok?

Thanks.

Matthew Random Thoughts Arby's, cheap toy, martian manhunter

It has been 10 years to the day since Sega launched what ended up being their final console, the Dreamcast.

The Sega Master System

I and my brothers grew up on Sega, as opposed to Nintendo like so many others. My first console was the Sega Master System. This incredible 8-bit system came with a light gun and what are still the coolest 3D glasses ever. Those glasses actually had screens built inside of them, so rather than just using cheap red/blue 3D glasses that change the color of the game and only work moderately well, these would give a true 3D effect. I used them to play many, many hours of Missle Command on the SMS. Unlike the original Missle Command, in this game the rockets flew out “at” the player, who had to use the light gun to take them down.

The SMS also had Phantasy Star. I firmly believe this was the best 8-bit game ever created. The music was excellent for its time and the graphics far ahead of its peers. When exploring dungeons in the game, it even moved to a first-person point of view, the first such game I had ever played.

Then came the Sega Genesis. I saved up to buy this wonderful machine so I could play NBA

Try and match this Nintendo!

Jams. My brothers and I played a LOT of this game and many others. The Genesis also took Sonic to a whole other plane. Sonic was cool on the SMS, but on the Genesis he showed why he, and not Mario, was the best video game icon. Mario was slow, plodding and just like to jump sometimes. Sonic was all about moving at high speeds and rocketing from place to place. Heck, as time went on Sonic games even used rock and metal as its musical backdrop, as opposed to the dinky Mario music that, while iconic, does not exactly scream “excitement”. To me, the console-war winner was clear, even if the Nintendo people didn’t get it. This Penny Arcade comic does a great job summing this up. Later, the Genesis grew in complexity and added a CD reader and a 32-bit add-on. As you can see from this picture, it could get a little … crazy.

The Sega Saturn came next. I never owned one of these. When it came out it certainly had amazing capabilities, but programing for it was proving too complex for game makers. This console just never had the games to compete with the Sony Playstation. I worried that this would be the end of Sega.

Then, one fateful day in the summer of 1999 I was walking through a local mall when I passed by a Babbages. There, on display, was the Dreamcast. It was love at first sight. The graphical capabilities of this system far surpassed anything I had ever seen before. Unlike the Saturn, the Dreamcast was also going to have games and a lot of them at that. I knew I had to make it mine.

So, once again I saved up and bought a Sega console. Like all of my previous Sega consoles, it was a sleek black (I stayed away from the beige model and bought the Sports Edition, which was black). It even had innovative controllers. The memory cards that held game data went right into the controllers. Those memory cards even had tiny screens on them that gave the player information as they played. Even crazier the memory cards had little controls on them, so that mini-games could be played on them.

That awesome memory card for the Dreamcast

I, of course, got the new Sonic game for it, which just about caused my head to explode. It used rock and metal to pump the player up and moved at speeds I didn’t even think were possible. This, I thought, would make believers out of the Mario-people and get them to understand why Sonic was so much better.

Then came what remains to this day the best overall videogame I have ever played: Shenmue. It played like an old Kung-Fu movie. The story had an amazing complexity to it, and was intended to be a 3-game story-arc. Sadly, only one game was ever released in the US. The second did get released overseas, but the third and final game never came out. I have the second game along with an adapter, but sadly we will never learn how the story comes out. Despite this, I certainly don’t regret playing the game - it had an open world in which Ryo was free to explore and go wherever he wanted. I loved this.

In 2001 Sega stopped producing the Dreamcast and has yet to return to the world of manufactoring consoles. It is very unlikely they ever will enter that market again. They do, of course, make plenty of video games for the remaining consoles. Sonic is certainly still alive and kicking. Still, it hasn’t been the same without Sega making its own consoles.

I think tonight, to celebrate this occasion, I will pull down Shenmue and explore Ryo’s world again. You know, just for old time’s sake.

Matthew Random Thoughts dreamcast, genesis, master system, sega

When the Spartans took to the court last night, they easily had 90% of the crowd behind them. North Carolina had solid representation, but it is hard to have a crowd advantage when the opponent’s school is just 90 miles away.

Unless, of course, the home crowd does something like have a “White Out”, which effectively takes away home court advantage.

The reasons to hate the “White Out” movement are many. First, it is called “White Out”. The name fits, because just like the erasing fluid, a “White Out” erases the fans. White is a stupid color for sports fans, if you can even call it a color. If you were going to list the most intimidating colors, white wouldn’t even make the list.

Nothing white is even scary. Pillsbury Doughboy? Frosty the Snowman? I mean, the last scary white thing was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and that was over 25 years ago.

See? Even in a sailor suit he is scary!

Furthermore, the only people that wear that much white are very old, very retired people from South Beach, Florida. There is a reason for this. It is because white is very, very boring. It isn’t just to reflect away the heat, they also wear it because it is boring.

North Carolina was the home team, technically, in this game. This means that they wore white. Not to mention their other color is, and I got this from their official Web site so I wouldn’t get it wrong, “Really Wussy Powder Baby Blue”. It is such a light blue that it is almost white. It wouldn’t take much for a UNC player to imagine that the crowd was, in fact, behind them. Though it would have been confusing as to why the crowd got so quiet after the first minute of play.

I hate “White Outs” in almost all cases. Whenever I see a fan base doing this, I find it exceptionally lame. The only time I ever found it even remotely cool was the first time I had ever seen it done. It was several years back when the old NHL Winnipeg Jets did a white out during the playoffs. It was quite the sight to see. The whole crowd was white (and not just their clothes). The stadium was white. The ice was, of course, white. If I had been a player on the opposing team, upon seeing this crowd, I would have thought, “WOW! How did they get all these old people to come up here from South Beach, Florida? This is spooky!” I wouldn’t have been intimidated so much as disconcerted.

The only time I can think of when a “White Out” is ok is if the team involved had colors of white on white. It would be a horrible color scheme to be sure, but at least then all of the fans wearing white would make sense.

Now I know MSU has two school colors – Green and White. But the white exists to give the green just that much more POP. It wouldn’t work all by itself. It needs the green.

As a side-note, when I am at an MSU game of any kind, I am always vaguely disappointed if I am on the side of the area/stadium that has to say “Go White” as opposed to “Go Green”. Green is just that much cooler.

Now, imagine Ford Field if it had been 90% green. It would have been a sea of green. UNC would have no doubts as to who the fans in the crowd were supporting. The green is dark enough that the whole atmosphere of Ford Field would have changed. It would have seemed that much darker, that much more sinister for the visiting team. Instead of the lights being reflected back, the green would have absorbed the light. It would have been an impressive and actually intimidating sight. If the Spartan fans in attendance had done this, if they had worn the Green than I firmly believe that the game would have gone differently.

The Spartans might have lasted 2 minutes into the game instead of 1.

Wow North Carolina is good.

Matthew Random Thoughts