It started off as a normal Sunday. Got up late, had some breakfast, then took the dog on a walk. It was a nice day, sunny and warm. I walked to the end of the driveway and we started on our way, nothing seemed out of place. But on the return trip from around the block something was missing – our mailbox.

I can’t tell you why I didn’t notice this right away. The mailbox isn’t something I pay much attention to. It’s just always there – or so I thought.

At some point between 2am (when we went to bed) and daylight some punk ass bitches took our mailbox! The whole fucking thing, post included. All that was left was a hole in the earth. Little fuckers.

The only almost redeeming factor was that we were not the only ones that fell victim to this mailbox vandalism. The police officer whom we reported it to said around 10 people in the neighboring blocks had their mailboxes taken, or at least heavily beaten.

Thus, instead of doing what I wanted to do on Sunday – which was nothing at all – changed real quick. After $50 and five hours we had a new mailbox.

But if you happen to see some teenagers riding around on their bikes with a mailbox under their arm, please give me a call right away. Bastards.

Most of the games I stumble across end up as Distraction links, but this game I think deserves a little more credit and a short review why. The game is called NaaC and follows in the classic model of Robotron and Smash TV. It’s simple to play, fun to play, and one that doesn’t require a lot of thought to get on the fun quickly.

NaaC is not going to win any graphics awards or any creativity awards. But they deserve some honorable mention for quick fun. The point of NaaC is to just shoot everything that moves. Simple. Nothing to new here either, shoot the aliens. You get a good selection of guns, all of them familiar to any gamer or anyone that has seen Aliens.

You control the player with the keyboard arrows and control your aiming/shooting with the mouse. This lets you move in one direction while shooting in another. You start with a simple gun, but gun power-ups will appear (in the corners) and all you need to do is grab them to get a reload of ammo or a new gun all together. And you get your standard bonus power-ups like health, shield, speed, and a little bit guy that shoots for you.

To get started you don’t need to think, which is the best part. But after you die you realize the strategy lies in your gun/ammo management. Your motivation, besides just having fun shooting everything, is good old score. Conveniently enough, NaaC has online leadboard…but unless you’re ranging from 12 – 50 million points, you won’t even break the top 50 – so just keep on truckin’ I guess.

The game has two modes, Arena and Survival. I haven’t unlocked Survival yet so I can’t discuss that, but Arena is where you start. Just you, your guns, and aliens in a room.

NaaC follows the simple rules to fun games, which I touched on a bit for the last gem of game I reviewed, Torus Trooper.

1. Simple to play; Just arrow keys and click
2. It looks good; Not award-winning, but gets the point across nicely
3. It sounds good; Sound effects do the job both thematically and as response triggers
4. You die fast; Not that you die fast, but when you do it’s done and over. Not dancing or end movies, just get moving so you can start playing again
5. High score; Along with a point score you get a kill number too, which is always good for comparing yourself to others.

The only real downside to the game is you only have one life to live. It would have been nice to have two or three lives to play with, especially when learning. Or at least give the option of extra lives in mid-play. Getting a few levels in with full guns and then dying really bites it…but in the same vein, it makes you mad enough that you’ll start over again.

So if you’re looking for something new that is familiar, give NaaC a download.

It seems rare the opportunity to relate wrestling and video games together, but thanks to a recent Times article that chance has come. The article talks about a group trying to preserve video game history, so they have declared the “Game canon” – in short, the ten most important video games of all time.

Now, when you step up and declare something like the most important games of all time you’re just asking for a huge debate…and this is no different. But as it goes, here are the then they have chosen:

• Spacewar! (1962)
• Star Raiders (1979)
• Zork (1980)
• Tetris (1985)
• SimCity (1989)
• Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
• Civilization I/II (1991)
• Doom (1993)
• Warcraft series (beginning 1994)
• Sensible World of Soccer (1994)

Now the burning question is what criteria was used to determine if a game was worthy of canonning?

Almost all of the games on the…list represent the beginning of a genre still vital in the video game industry

That criteria alone combined with the selected list is enough to debate on for years. Any good gamer that knows their history can easily come up with a dozen arguments against each of these picks. Where I will pick my bone is the criteria that the game “began” an genre.

That’s all fine and dandy and worthy of praise, but just because a game started a genre/fad does not make that game culturally significant within the context of videogames. Sure, it might have started an avalanche, but that doesn’t mean everyone gives credit where credit is due (just ask Tesla).

While I respect those that invented things, I tend to favor what I’ll call The Hulkamania Significance Theory. Hulk Hogan was not the first professional wrestler, nor was he a particularly good wrestler, but his impact is far reaching. You can walk up to most people and mention his name and they’ll know he is some sort of wrestler, even if they are not a fan. That is impact that makes a difference. Plus, the impact is still referenced to this date and continues to milk us all for regular cash tributes. Much like Nirvana…they didn’t create grunge, but they were the ones chosen to ignite that genre.

And thus I submit that for my arguments for and against the games list above. It’s probably easy to start naming games that should be in there, but I will first start by looking at a few choice picks.

Zork. Zork was a text-based RPG-ish game that could be credited for starting the RPG genre. However, I say The Legend of Zelda should take this honor. Why? Because Zelda reached a far wider audience than Zork and still ranks high amongst the mass populous’ list of all-time best games. Zelda went beyond the nerds. It got early gamers, old gamers, boys, and girls. I won’t argue Zork’s place in history, but Zelda’s impact reaches far beyond Zork.

Doom. Any good gamer was playing Wolfenstein 3D way before Doom was even a possibility. But Doom made the difference because it had everything we wanted in Wolf3D but didn’t get. Modem-play being one of those features. So here, a case when the genre-inventor was not picked — Doom truly fits the theory.

Super Mario Bros. 3. Per the article, SMB3 is important because of its “nonlinear play” and “the ability to move both backward and forward.” I will not argue the game’s place on the list because the fanfare around the game was amazing (remember The Wizard?). But to say it offered nonlinear play is…eh…kinda weak. It had more nonlinear than some games of the time, but it didn’t feel nonlinear when you were playing. Zelda had more nonlinear-ness if you ask me. And the ability to move forward and back was Metroid’s claim to fame, sorry. Case closed.

Sensible Soccer. I was never a big sports game player, so I really can’t say much on the validity of this title on the list. But what I can tell you is that as a non-sports gamer, the games that made a difference to me in that genre were Tecmo Bowl, Blades of Steel, and RBI Baseball.

Otherwise, I don’t have many problems with the other games on the list. Each is very important and made a huge impact. Well, Spacewar! didn’t have a popularity impact, but it was, by all rights, the first video game.

Now let’s move on to what is NOT on the list. I can only imagine the debates between the selection committee for picking the first 10 that belong on the list. I can only assume that more games will be chosen every year, but we’ll see.

Anyway, the games not making the count that really could/should:

• Pong
• Space Invaders
• Pac-man
• The Legend of Zelda
• Street Fighter 2
• Mortal Kombat
• Tomb Raider
• Rad Racer
• Donkey Kong
• Madden Football

I wouldn’t doubt that each of those was in the earlier pool of picks, they are all valuable for different things. I won’t discuss them yet, as I’m more apt to wait until the next list inductees are declared and then see how far off I was…or until someone makes some other stupid list that I can argue…

With all the chances you get in Wii Sports to play games like bowling, tennis, golf, etc, does the Nintendo Wii actually improve you real-world game? It’s hard to say, but I had a chance to put this theory to the test when I recently went bowling at our old CAVEradio haunt, The Palace.

I’ve had the Wii for a little over a month now and have played the crap out of Wii Sports; mostly bowling and tennis. In Wii world I am a bowling pro, which isn’t saying much, other than I have played it way too much. Since the Wii games are played with actual body motion, you can act like you do when you really bowl and the game will (kind of) respond accordingly. So by all rights if my game improves in Wii world then my game should improve in the real world, shouldn’t it?

Well, the most obvious difference vs. the Wii is the lack of 14 pounds hanging from your arm. Going back to a real game of bowling (which I hadn’t done for quite some time), this was the hardest thing to get used to. And there’s nothing on the Wii that can help you hold a bowling ball better, properly, or how to throw it down the lane. It just can’t. So the Wii will not improve your bowling game in that way.

However, the area where I did notice improvement was analyzing the pins and determining where I should throw my ball. Because the physics model on the Wii is pretty accurate, when the pins are sitting there and the ball hits them, they react as they would in the real world. So when I have four pins left after my first throw, my Wii game lets me try different angles at which to knock them all done. This is where the Wii does help your real bowling game.

Needless to say the number of strikes during my real games were not as high on my Wii games. But I was able to pick up more spares in the real game because I had a better of idea of where my ball needed to land. Of course, if I wasn’t able to chuck my ball the right way or at the right speed then it didn’t matter.

For the record, my previous real-world bowling average was about 140. I played four games just this last time I was bowling and my average was 163 (with a high of 177). So my game did improve since I got my Wii. Whether or not the Wii had any effect on that increase I just don’t know…but I’d like to think so.