Samurai Showdown and Ghetto Hawks

At last tonight I have games to play on my Neo Geo AES system. AES? Yes AES see there was this company in the 90's that decided that they were going to provide the most perfect home arcade experience by making a console that used the EXACT SAME hardware that the arcade machines did. The only problem that they didn't seem to grasp was that not many people would be willing to pay $600 for the hardware and then another $200-$300 per game, being hardcore is one thing having no money is entirely another. Anyway three three weeks ago I received one of these home arcade consoles (Neo Geo AES system) from my friend jmglov who is now working for Amazon Japan in Tokyo. The reason why I wanted to acquire a Neo Geo AES is because playing Samurai Showdown on the Neo Geo CD is kind of like watching snail shit run up hill. I bought the Neo Geo CD system the last time I was in Japan and had heard the load times were terrible, but was thinking "It can't be slow enough to warrant spending over $100 for a AES system and then anywhere from $60-$400 per game".

Hearing that they are terrible however and witnessing that they are terrible is a whole nother bag of jalapenos. Terrible really doesn't describe it, I'm pretty sure I could pop in the CD load up the game select my character and while waiting for the level to load I could run around the block at LEAST twice, take a shower, brush me teeth and then get my ass handed to me by the computer only to start the whole process again. So I am now the proud owner of a Neo Geo AES system but until tonight did not have any games. To remedy that I browsed over to Ebay and purchased Samurai Showdown I and Samurai Showdown II (Samurai Spirits) and today I found them nestled between my storm door and my front door. These are the first AES cartridges I have ever seen and while I heard that they were large nothing could prepare me for how large they actually are. It's great the cartridge is so big it makes me look like a child holding them, it's kind of like SNK (Creater of the Neo Geo) decided that in order to help people justify the expense of the game they would need to make a cartridge that would look quite normal in the fist of Andre the Giant. To give this all a little more perspective I took a picture of the cartridge right next to the latest Wheel of Time book (700+ pages). I have to say so far I am a little underwhelmed but then again I think I built it up way to much especially since I really never played much Samurai Showdown when I was growing up, it HAS taken me many years to perfect my geek you see.

Oh and I nearly collapsed when I first plugged in the system and I couldn't seem to get an image to appear on the TV, it was only after a little fiddling that I realized that the front input of my TV seems to be broken..... grrr.

On another note the ghetto hawks realized that it's been awhile since they last flew over my neighborhood. Ghetto hawks? Yes ghetto hawks, I'm pretty sure meriam-webster defines ghetto hawks as police helicopters that can and will do continuous fly by's over just about any area for no apparent reason. Tonight they circled over and over my house for 10-15 minutes while it attempted to shine it's ghetto hawk eye about a block down on the next street over. Strangely enough I felt a sort comaraderie with my fellow neighbors as just about everyone was looking out their windows or standing in their front lawns trying to figure out why the ghetto hawk felt the need to buzz us at 11:30 pm.