I think that Stargate SG-1 Season One is perhaps one of the best seasons of any TV series, period.

It is March 12 today... The 4th day of Super Smash Bros. Brawl's release. (And the 2nd day of Stargate SG-1: Ark of Truth's release.) I bought it the day of release. Went to church at 9:30 to 11:00am, then went to town, ran into Meijer, picked up the game, and got back home at 12:00. Had lunch, and then settled down for an all-day marathon. Best game ever. I don't think I've had a console on for so long. (With the exception of the Halo games, maybe.) Right now, I'm looking at the record screen and it says it's been on for 33 hours and 6 minutes, and that we've actually been playing for 16 hours and 32 minutes. Most of the power on time has been me spectating online matches and betting on the outcomes. (So incredibly awesome... And coins aren't at all hard to come by, so it's not like you're losing hard work or anything.)

But what post of mine could truly be considered a post of mine if I didn't bring up the idiocies of humanity? I don't read Digg anymore, but I have subscribed to the Games section RSS reed in my Google Reader, so I can keep up with the more important stuff. But, actually, since I've subscribed to Kotaku, as well, I get the majority of my gaming news from them, and Digg is always several lagging days behind. Unless, of course, there happens to be an intolerable "problem" with something... And what better article to promote than a "problem" with Nintendo? You'd think that since Digg obsesses with Apple and Linux and other "unappreciated" companies, they'd be cutting Nintendo some slack... But it seems that most of Digg is too busy trying to make their Playstation 3 look like a good purchase now that they've forgotten that Nintendo is and always will be the top dog. Anyway!

It seems people are having trouble getting online to play matches with SSBB. May I take a moment to utter a single word here? "Duh?" That's all. This is Nintendo's biggest title... The Smash Bros. line of games have always been hugely anticipated, and the last release (Super Smash Bros. Melee for Gamecube) has been continuously played since its own release so many years ago. This is the Halo of Nintendo... With free online services. Free. Online. Multplayer. It doesn't cost you anything, either... Oh, and it's completely free. Did I mention you don't have to pay anything for the ability to play online? Yeah. Remember when Xbox Live went offline due to the sheer amount of people trying to get online during Christmas break? That was largely attributed to fact that a lot of people were out of school and trying out their brand new Halo 3 game for real this time. The outcry was astonishing and people demanded refunds for a month (which, I might add, is a whopping 4 bucks)... You know! The typical whining that goes on when people are inconvenienced. Xbox Live, a service that you pay for and caters to millions upon millions of players went down... Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, a service that you do NOT pay for, goes down when a blockbuster game is released... People are shocked? People are surprised? There haven't been any sales numbers released for this thing, yet, but I'm going to guess that it's very, very high.

I'm just saying... Can you name a blockbuster (I know that's a term for movies, but I don't care) game title that sports online play that HASN'T experienced some server strain when it comes out? Face it, clueless gamers. Servers are built to sustain massive loads, yes, but there is absolutely no way to know if they CAN sustain massive loads until you release the game. Chances are high that you'll find some coding error that makes the game lag a tiny bit here, and then another error that causes another bit of inefficiency... Things show up after release that you simply can't plan for because your beta player base was nowhere near as high, and you have problems. World of Warcraft had problems with its initial release. After a couple years, they release the expansion pack and a whole new influx of players flooded the servers and they had problems again. Halo 3 effectively leveled the Xbox Live system, and now SSBB is randomly disconnecting people and experiencing some lag here and there... This is unexpected?

I've had SSBB all week and in all this time, I've been disconnected a grand total of 1 time. Once. It has happened so little (just once) that I attribute it to a wireless hiccup, since I'm inexperienced with setting wireless up to work with a router. It hasn't happened to me more than once, though I have experienced lag at times, but... Uhm. What online services doesn't lag out sometimes? Even Google/YouTube lags out every now and then, for crying out loud, and their entire income is based on those sites being UP. My advice to you whiners is to give Nintendo some time to work some issues out and maybe release patches (if they have to). It'll take time... It ALWAYS takes time to sort this stuff out, and it ALWAYS works out in the end. Kind of like when people were whining about there being no games for the Wii when it came out... Consoles ALWAYS have a small selection of games until publishers see that it's a platform to make money off of. Point is: This always happens. Wait it out, like you always have to, because there are always unforeseen oddities in any online service the day it goes live.

So maybe I analyzed this far too much. I guess that's what comes when you're in the business of analyzing heavy duty politics all the time... When you take the same approach to something as insignificant as gaming, you start getting a major over reaction. Oh, and while I'm thinking of it (because I was going to discuss this earlier in the post, but I couldn't figure a place to fit it in), here's a little screenshot of my Google Reader trends page:

12,717 items over the last 30 days... And, as you can see by the chart, I still have 8 days before I have a true 30-day analysis. I'm always looking for more feeds to subscribe to, also. Political feeds, if you please. If you find one that you think I'd enjoy reading (or one you think I should read) then let me know! Ahh... Politics. The ultimate exercise in managing level-headedness and anger, too. Still not quite Peter Heck-caliber yet, though. (I would have said Rush Limbaugh-caliber, but I really don't like how he responds to callers. I mean, they're definitely funny when someone makes a stupid comment and he makes fun of them, but Peter Heck seems to treat every caller seriously, even if they're ignorant views, and he answers them in a way that they could actually walk away with something learned.) He gets some funky callers sometimes and he knows exactly how to answer them to make them think really hard about what they just said. Me? I need time to think and research before I formulate a response.

Anyway... I need to do History and English Composition now... Maybe after I watch a couple Brawls, though.