"One of the sexier pixel vixens, for sure"

And what am I doing writing for this blog?

Well, the short answer is that I was asked. The long answer… is longer. I thought I would spend my inaugural post for Wing Damage exploring my relationship with video games, to explain my perspective to the readers, and to introduce my n00by self to my fellow contributors. A lot of the points that I bring up in this entry will be expanded on later, so I guess you could say that this entry is going to be my Wing Damage thesis statement.

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Pleasantly surprised. That is the best way I can describe my experience with Fable 2.

Back at PAX 2008, I played the two player demo they had on display. Overall, I was not impressed. It was a trail of breadcrumbs leading from one bandit fight to another on a low-end LCD TV that was set up for someone way shorter than myself. The screen being inches from my face made it look blurry and jaggy. I’m pretty sure it was turned up too bright on top of that.

I still wanted to give the game a fair shake, knowing the code at PAX was the same from E3 months earlier. What I had played of the first game on the original Xbox I had enjoyed, but never finished. I decided to go back and finish the first game, just in case it tied in, and to see why I was excited for the sequel in the first place.

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"Take it from me!"

I want to thank you for all the hours of entertainment you have provided. I know that you work very long hours to bring me the best entertainment that you can. I just have a couple of things I would love to see tweaked or changed (and by a couple I mean 7).

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"I just died and went to racing heaven"

This is a little belated as far as news goes, but Monster Games, the team that made Excite Truck, is “nearly complete” on their next Wii game. Apparently it’s been in the works for about 2 years already. Their new project is under quite the “hush hush”, as they are dimming their monitors down when the water guy comes to drop off his latest batch of life juice. The obvious answer would be Excite Truck 2, but would that really require such secrecy? Seeing as how the company only seems to have racing games under its belt, speculation (and another year old rumor) points to Monster possibly working on a new F-Zero game.

As my bio page shows, F-Zero GX is my favorite racing game of all time. Also, I’m a huge fan of the series as a whole. In fact, the only F-Zero game I haven’t played is the add-on for the 64DD. I have even played F-Zero AX (Arcade), F-Zero 2 (Satellaview SNES add-on) and F-Zero Climax (Japan Only GBA). Because I hold the series in such high regard, the development possibly being in Monster’s hands, despite actually really liking Excite Truck, leaves me with some mixed feelings.

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"Together At Last"

If you haven’t seen it yet, we have a podcast where we usually end up talking about video games at length, as well as other geeky topics.

Here is the rundown of our latest episode:

On a very special episode of The Random Pirate Comics Show, I interview JT Shea and Scott Gallatin; the guys behind Nightgig Studios and The Gigcast. After bringing us up to speed on all their current projects and their upcoming MegaCon appearance, we discuss gaming.

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"Waggle at it's finest."

The Nintendo Wii has done an unquestionably awesome job of bringing in new gamers. People that never dreamt of picking up a controller are now waggling away. Games like Wii Fit and Wii Sports have an undeniable appeal, to people of all ages. Nintendo now has a fantastic opportunity to create new, or expand, existing genres. So why is the success of the Wii slowly eroding gaming?

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I've been playing this for 20 years?

When I was a young boy growing up in a small town, it was rare for us to get new games for our NES. When the system was new and shiny, my older brothers would pool their money and pick up some great release, like “The Legend of Zelda”, or sometimes a big stinker, like “Tag Team Wrestling” (this was back when we were all really into the WWF).

Then the years passed, and my older brothers started to lose interest in gaming. I ended up renting games pretty frequently (back when it was only $1 for the whole weekend), but owning them was a rare occurrence.

Along came Tetris. It was hyped in magazines and TV ads for months,even making it’s way onto some day time talk show, where they were going on about it being a game that is actually good for kids to play. It promoted quick thinking, hand-eye coordination, etc. Thanks, Nintendo fluff piece! I now had ammo.

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"I can't see anything with this big gun in the way"

2008 turned out to be a great year for gaming. It seemed like every week there was something both new and notable being released, especially during the holiday season. But there was one shining gem that came out during that flurry of releases that seems to have been skipped over by a lot of people. That game is Valkyria Chronicles for the Playstation 3. In fact, this is what I choose as my 2008 game of the year.

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Hello there, friend.

If you are reading this blog, you are clearly of discerning tastes. You aren’t just looking for yet another place to find re-posts of gaming news articles. No, indeed.

Our goal with this website is to not just bring you reviews (though we will be doing our fair share of that as well), but to bring you articles about why we love gaming. From the music, to the art, the characters, the culture and everything in between.

Beyond that, we want this to be a place for discussion. This is why the blog has been set up so that commenters can set up an account, use avatars (through the Gravitar system), post in the forums and email any of our writers with your questions and comments (wingdamageblog [at] gmail [dot] com).