James Galvin

Inspired by Adam’s repository of silly domain names (verbo.se, foot.ie, explic.it, …) and others like pix.ie, I am now the proud owner of galv.in. Unfortunately jam.es was not available.

It must be the laziest day of the year. I hooked up the Nintendo Wii and downloaded a few old NES games:

• Excite Bike

  Browsing through the titles, I was hit by nostalgia for the excite bike theme tune. Turns out the game is not very exciting. Don’t think I played it much to begin with. Waste of credits.

  

• Megaman

  I couldn’t believe it - I beat Megaman from start to finish in under 2 hours. How could I have spent weeks (months?) struggling with this game as a nine year old. Today I beat Iceman without losing a life! I always assumed that kids were as good if not better than adults at console games, but I must have spent every waking hour playing the NES in 1988-1991 and still I would die time after time trying to get past the first part of Gutsman’s level. I confess, I did cheat twice in the final stages just like in the old days (keep pausing and unpausing really quickly to do extra damage), just to save a bit of time.

  

• Punchout

  What a classic - I was disappointed that they didn’t have Super Punchout in the Wii store, since that is even better than the original. Can’t believe I lost to Piston Honda…

  

• Ice Hockey

  I think back to all the fun I had playing this at my friends house. Choosing your team - a mixture of fat guys for strength and skinny guys for speed. Not quite as good as I remembered.

  

• Zelda II

  Still one of the greatest games of all time. Can’t wait to get back into this one. Didn’t have time to play it today, because Zelda always requires commitment. Maybe, like Megaman, the game will be much easier this time around. It feels a bit weird playing Zelda II on the Wii when I never even made it out of the village in the current Wii version.

  

Via Fence I found this preview for the new Batman movie: “The Dark Knight“. Looks really promising - very much a follow-up to Batman Begins as opposed to “a new Batman movie”. I was saying just yesterday how much I love the atmosphere in the films directed by Christopher Nolan, and how great Christian Bale was in The Prestige and Batman Begins, so I’m delighted to see that this configuration has remained in tact. IMDB lists Cillian Murphy in the credits, so I assume the Scarecrow will be making a return (good stuff).

Here is an idea for a variation on one of those premium phone number scams:

• Register a premium phone number, one of those super expensive ones where you set the price - €99 per minute or however high the phone company allows you to go
• Print the number onto a “How am I driving?” sticker and stick it on the back of your white van/SUV/small truck.
• Drive like a lunatic for a few days - undertaking people in the hard shoulder, driving 30mph in the fast lane, randomly slamming on the breaks, etc.
• Record all phone calls and make a compilation CD in time for Christmas