Internet! Be aware that on this day contributor wumpwoast has completed his epic journey into the very soul of Mega Man’s black-and-white (or green-and-grey, if you prefer) adventures with this profile of the woefully underappreciated Mega Man V. Read! And enjoy! Unless you hate tough love for good games. In which case, you must be new. Welcome to GameSpite. You’re probably not gonna want to hang around here for long.
And now, a question.
Can something be said to be a tradition if it happens regularly despite your best efforts to prevent it? I ask because I’ve discovered that I have a “tradition,” of sorts, involving new cell phones. Namely, whenever I acquire a new cell phone, I inevitably drop it on the pavement during my first few days of ownership, severely banging it up. And this only happens once per phone — I drop it when I first get it, and never again. And only my own phones! Never rental phones. It’s happened four times now. I think that makes it a tradition.
Also, I’ve noticed that the nicer the phone, the more quickly (and visibly) the damage happens. Back when the Razr seemed new and unique, the scratch was moderate and happened within a week or so; my Blackjack earned a major nick within two days. And yesterday I finally bit the bullet and bought an iPhone, which as of this morning has severe dents on three of its four corners. That’s less than 24 hours. Awesome. I assume the next phone I buy will fly out of my hands as I open the package, streak across the office and deflect off the walls into the bathroom and down the commode.
Fortunately, that will be a few years yet, I think; I finally have a phone that will last me a good long while. (Assuming I don’t destroy it.) I’d been waiting on committing to an iPhone until the price came down (check) and I could determine how long it would be until a 3G/MMS-compatible version would arrive. Since the same slow-connection phone is slated for European release later this year, it seemed safe to assume the answer was “not for a while yet.” And after using a Japanese rental phone for a week — a rental phone that put my slugtacular, unreliable BlackJack to shame! — I decided to give in, despite the phone’s flaws.
Said flaws are actually much less aggravating in person than the Internet’s complaints would have you to believe. Which makes sense, really; once you adjust for the Internet’s collective, over-developed sense of entitlement, nothing is ever as bad as people make it sound online. And what it does well, it does so well. Don’t worry, I won’t go on about it; I’m way past my techno-fetish phase and can simply appreciate it as a nicely-designed piece of hardware with lots of options, an excellent interface and refreshingly painless synchronization with my computer.
And dents. Lots of dents.
I believe the word you’re looking for is Curse.
“nothing is ever as bad as people make it sound online.”
Shooting yourself in the foot here.
I have been a follower of your same traditions for about a decade now. I’d like to stop doing it, but this is what’s always been done, so I must continue without questioning.
Traditions like that were the reason I stopped babysitting. If you’re a valet and you scratch a car, the worst thing that will happen to is getting fired. Try retuning a kid with a couple of dents. You’ll be filling out paperwork all night.
You know, having read all of wumpwoast’s Mega Man reviews, I’m now more upset than ever that the GBA Mega Man Anniversary Collection never came out. I vaguely recall several of these games from my time with a massive, brick-like Gameboy, and I enjoyed them. I’d previously thought it may have been the sickly sweetness of nostalgia fooling me (see: Kid Icarus), but apparently not. Damn you, Capcom! It’s not as if you haven’t milked the franchise enough! One more compilation!
Shooting myself in the foot? Not really. Self-deprecation is my self-defense; I don’t take myself too seriously, and neither should you.
I completely empathize with your cellular woes. As I won’t be getting a paycheck from the government in four months (I never get tired of saying that I’m on my way out of the Air Force), I cannot justify a new phone purchase. But, before I owned this three-year-old Samsung, every phone I owned was treated like a rubber ball. It didn’t matter how careful I was with them, they always managed to fly from my grip as if my fingers were covered with petroleum jelly and the phone was a warm stick of butter. I don’t get it. Doesn’t Apple have a pretty good replacement plan for problems such as yours?
What a terrible iPhone for a curse.
I think what you need is one of those rubber no slip grips that go on the phone. I know it takes all the sexy out of it, but so does broken glass in your face.
It’s denty because you’re holding it too delicately! You’ve gotta grip it hard! Like a man who eats beef! Lots and lots of beef…
“I know it takes all the sexy out of it, but so does broken glass in your face.”
*Dislodged* glass, maybe. The iPhone’s screen is shatterproof glass, as is just about every piece of commercially available silicon oxide.
Yeah, the iPhone’s face is its most resilient element. Naturally, I dropped it on its back, which did no favors for all that plastic masquerading as brushed aluminum. I would much rather have a back made of grippy rubber — the one thing I really liked about the Samsung was its texture. Of course, I still managed to drop that, too.
Well he doesn’t like Toasty Frog, or Mr. Parish or anything for that matter. I think we should call him Butter Fingers from now on. At least this name is true.
Sorry to hear you hurt your phone Mr…..uh I mean Butter Fingers.
Whee Mega Man V. It also has the distinction of being the only original Mega Man series game where Wily isn’t the final boss. Granted, the real final boss kind of comes out of nowhere, but it’s still a fun fight.
My defense against this curse used to be to forgoing having a cellular phone entirely. Now I just use second-hand, pre-scratched, pre-dented cell phones.
Yeah, I finally got my existential disappointment of this game “on paper” — it took a while to figure out why this game didn’t hit me quite like Mega Man IV did.
As for the remaining NES games, I’m going to tear each one a new asshole.
My cell phone resembles a zombie because it lives in my shirt pocket and gets dropped at least once a day. It’s received so much physical abuse that the paint has chipped off and the rest of the body is covered in scruffs and scratches. Still works great though.
Oh Jeremy, props on the slick front-page banner too.