Jolt Country

- Sinistar is a completely different game on the original hardware. I know that 49-way joysticks are available through Happy, but they are very expensive and useful for one game that I know of (Sinistar). So few people include this stick on their MAME cabinets. It's a completely new game with the real hardware and by that I mean to say it's playable.

- Warlords... FUCKING Warlords on the real hardware was awesome as well. The best use of the cocktail setup ever. And the owner was apparently over at the Retro Radio Station booth (I forget the exact name) watching everyone play it.

Which is understandable, because if I had one of those things I would not let it out of my sight. Not just at the CGE, but ever. I'd get a security camera transmitting wirelessly to this chip behind my eyes. I mean, it wouldn't have to be in perfect color or anything, I just want to make sure some prowler didn't break into my home and put his feet up on it. So it would be red lines and a black background and hopefully a complete lack of some asswipe burglar mopping the sweat from his brow with his arm, and then flicking it off on the Warlords cocktail unit.

Warlords is also the main reason why, if my flash cart shows up tomorrow, I wanted to resurrect my Atari 800. But more on that elsewhere.

I can't get over how frigging tight the spinners were on that thing as well. I'm used to flicking it around on Tempest. This was very unlike Tempest. Totally beautiful cab. I took pictures, but they came out all blurry.

I met a guy named Ian Bogost while at the CGE. He is writing a book with Nick Montfort. Ian was also on the Colbert Report like four days after we got back from the trip. Amazing!

Ian did really well on the show. I know that Stephen Colbert can tease his guests a little, but I think that Ian got more time to speak and came off much better than authors and such usually do there. He wrote about his experience at his webpage at www.bogost.com.

OK, the other things I need to post about are:

- The Pinball Hall of Fame
- Juno First
- The raffle for a pinball games
- The Star Trek Bar

And other stuff.