i got work all weekend. i'm at work now. i should post a lot, since i have little else to do.

i just beat a gba game- the legend of zelda, minish cap. this game was pretty easy but it had the classic top-down zelda thing going on - it felt a lot like the snes zelda, of course (gba games tend to be a lot like snes games in terms of graphics). the game was enjoyable, despite its easiness, and i'd recommend it to the zero other people i know with gbas. actually, this brings up something - why the hell doesn't anyone i know own gameboy advances? interesting things to note-
1a) the gba is consistently the best selling video game system.
2b) it is not, as i'm sure you are thinking right now, just for little kids. have a round of advance wars 2 and follow that up with, you know, every classic nes game that you miss.
3c) don't you people sit around in doctor's offices and on airplanes and on subways by yourselves and just wonder what the hell to do with yourselves? gba beats the crap out of snake on your cell phone.

then again, it is $100-ish (should pricedrop soon with that new tiny one coming out) and games are $25-$35. regardless, get the gba sp (i think the tiny one might be too tiny, and thus not worth waiting for) and get a couple of used games. like excitebike. and super mario brothers 3. and mario kart. and any of the zelda games. to name a few.

since i haven't played any online sports games with geoff recently, i've revisited burnout 3 and my gamecube. to give a little background, my xbox recently was destroyed by me because i'm an ass, so i had to get a new one. because of this, i have to start over from scratch with burnout 3. it remains a pretty f'n sweet game (i posted about it once, i think). so yeah, its good stuff in short bursts. also, i haven't beaten metroid prime 2 yet (note to self: do that.) but i did get a new gamecube game, which i've already put 3 hours into.

the game is paper mario: the thousand-year door. it's mario meets rpg, and its not the first time its happened (paper mario came out for n64, and there is mario & luigi on gba that i bought and beat before zelda - i tend to get one gba game at a time). anyways, basically you move mario around a lot, you get lost in the gorgeous graphics and the awesome style of the game, and then you engage a bad guy. right now i've been limited to goombas and koopas. oh and i fought one of those octo guys from the underwater levels. you know, the white ones... yeah. anyways, the fighting mechanism is amazing, because you jump on the baddies' heads but there's also a sense of timing - if you press A right before landing, you do extra damage. that kind of thing. this game brings in elements of every mario game ever in terms of bad guys and environments and the dialog is very self-referential and clever, as pretty much everyone you run in to is in awe of the great celebrity, mario.

so this game is pretty f'n great. but this isn't the best part.

i got it two days ago from electronics boutique. here's the deal. the game was $50 in april. they dropped it to $30 in the beginning of may. and now its $20. that's a pretty sweet deal for a game that was rated 9.2 by gamespot and a 9.1 by ign. but it gets sweeter, as the may issue of the eb games in-store magazine has an offer for a $20 eb games voucher upon purchase of paper mario. so you send in your receipt saying you bought a kickass game for $19.99+tax and they send you a $20 gift certificate, which you then go and use on a game you would by anyways (like, say, ncaa 06 football, coming out on july 12th).

and you just sorta got a game for free - you paid tax and for the stamp. nice deal, huh?

and i can't say it enough - the game is f'n cool. i shoulda bought it a long time ago.