I'm cyber the whole darn week.

28 Nov 05

Happy Cyber Monday to everyone. Apparently, today is the start of the online shopping season. Everyone who couldn't bring themselves to face the crowds or couldn't endure them long enough to complete their shopping is (virtually) running to the safe haven of the internet. Hopefully, some of you will take the opportunity to use some of our sponsor links here. I'm going to try to put together a little gift guide using our sponsors to help you out with shopping for gamers. I'll see if I can get that up this week.

I could talk about the Xbox 360 problems. There's shipment confusion. There are reports of lock ups and crashes. There's a new report about how much Microsoft is losing on each unit. There are lots of complaints about the power supply brick.

That last one got me thinking. Sure the Xbox 360 brick is huge and reportedly runs hot (some have even suggested making sure the brick is out in the open to keep it from overheating, crashing the 360), but I remember old school.

Back in the day, every single piece of hardware had it's own power cord with a huge transformer. My old Atari computer system had a ton. The system itself had one. Each of the two single sided, single density drives had one. The printer had one. The monitor had one. I think the old cassette drive was the only thing that didn't.

It's slowly gotten better as engineers made better use of power and peripherals were integrated into the computers. Lower power requirements also meant the use of smaller transformers. Most of the ones under my desk today, are small and barely bigger than the plug itself.

The biggest one still under my desk is a relic itself. It belongs to my original Logitech Wingman Force joystick. Yes, it's the huge two handed monstrosity that's still the best implementation of force feedback ever. Sure, I knew people who turned off or turned down the force feedback for accuracy in their space sims. Where was the fun in that? I love the sensation of fighting the stick under the rocking explosions and the pelting of your enemy's mass driver while you adjusted speed and switched to your plasma launcher to teach him a lesson. That was fun, but the best were those Darth Vader "What?" moments when you're about to finish an opponent and out of nowhere the stick goes wild as his wingman blind sides you. Full Speed, Afterburners, shift power to shields, reacquire target, lock, Fire! Barrel roll as you fly through his wreckage. That's immersion for you. If you didn't have force feedback, you probably would have seen that as a small flashing light on your shields display.

The other vivid memory that crosses my mind, as I dust off the old Wingman, I don't remember the mission details. It might have been Freespace or Freespace 2. I had snuck in to an enemy fleet to destroy something. Whatever I destroyed blew my cover and turned the whole fleet on me. I had to evade and race to the jump node. It was beyond an unwinnable battle. It was suicide to do anything but run and juke. It was nonstop jolting pressure on the stick as fire and missiles rocked my craft, mostly from behind. I was almost dead as I reached the jump point. The constant barrage didn't let up as I tried to jump. I remember whispering, "just hold on baby." Right before death, I jumped.

I've got to say that brick earned it's place. Hopefully, whenever I pick up a 360, its brick will too. Sorry for the rant.

Jason