Video Games

Data East's Sly Spy features the easiest boss in arcade game history. Basically he's an Oddjob kinda fellow who throws his hat. All you do is duck his hat, then stand up and shoot him. Okay yes you do have to perform this action more than once to take him down but really that's all there is to it. The boss never decides to throw his hat low to the ground or in some sort of wonky angle. Maybe this was supposed to be a parody of the movie Goldfinger. You see, if Bond actually had a gun when he was ...

Today's Lesson is that it is difficult to find a bank's RTN when you only have eight of the nine requisite digits, nor the bank's specific name. Managed to put the Form 720 revision under wraps, so that means I should be able to get the other two forms (6627 and 6197) under wraps pretty much within a few days, because I don't think those forms were revised, and they would take much less effort to update if they have been. Next thing I need to do are few State returns and I'll be all caught up. ...

One of the forms I set up a while ago is 1065 Schedule K1, which is used by the partners of a partnership to report income. Upon actually submitting the test return data now, it appears that I don't have to attach the document at all and I could have saved myself the work by not creating the form at all. Oh well! The IRS submitter client is also giving me all sorts of fits and I had to restart the program a few times just to get the tests through.

Continuing on Gold in Extra Mode. ...

Frustrating morning. I have two clients whom I want to file, one is much easier than another, and in both cases I have some information which I will want to confirm and establish before I push things through. Despite several calls, I never get any response. A $20 rebate I'm looking to get from my sound card was declined because the Amazon receipt which I printed was not specifically an Invoice or Tracking Number, so it has been declined. It has the order date, it has the order number, it has the ...

So many Taito games. Is this a theme or something?
No I'm just a huge fan of Taito. Of all the arcade devs out there I think Taito has the most style and creativity. In terms of art-direction, plot, music, and all that other non-essential stuff I mean. Actually non-essential might not be the right word. After all the point of an arcade game is to make money, and there needs to be something there to attract the player's attention.

Warrior Blade is the third and final entry ...

Pizza. Pizza still tastes good. Not that I foresee my opinion of that changing, but it's nice to be able to enjoy some damned pizza every now and then. I say this because we try not to have it very often, because it is an expense which we try to keep in check. Glass bottle Coke also tastes good, and is nicer to purchase rarely, and is easier to justify its extra expense when the purchase is infrequent.

I should be able to wrap up Distorted in EX today.

Code:

			EX% & Rank	EX.p/f

...

Two co workers called off today. I am 0% surprised by this. They chose as good of a day as any to do it, though, since the customer volume was indeed significantly reduced. I need to pick up on Form 720 work soon - I didn't have much of any chance to continue it at all yesterday. I'm surprised that I'm so thrown off in my free time just for spending an evening dinner with family. I didn't even stay that long. In other work news, I need to write this here: I must remember to apply duct tape to the ...

Taito's Crime City is the product of one too many buddy cop movies and a complete disregard for protocol. The main characters of this game are the kind whose badges are frequently threatened to be taken away. Yes they are surrounded by criminals and yes they all have their weapons out but come on, after the fifteen minutes it takes to get through this game half the world's criminal population has gotten blown away. Oh right...this is an arcade game. Forget I said anything.

On the ...

While the holiday is Easter Sunday, it is Easter Saturday which is of more concern to those of us who work at a retail store. It does seem that everyone made a point to shop yesterday and today to ensure that they were able to celebrate the actual holiday tomorrow. At least, that's what I hope. Meanwhile, for my particular station, one co worker called off, another is back on injured reserve (so to speak), a third is officially Not Giving A Shit because the job is too far away from where he currently ...

Just as the title says, I'm scouting around for gamers who post youtube vids of them 1CCing, no-missing, and generally being awesome at arcade games.

MrMaskaman
ArcadeExtreme
TheZeth
VesperArcade
TKDGoiram
Smraedis
IcarusFW
AcidGlow - Okay they're far from awesome at arcade games but they're pretty much the only ones doing co-op vids.
ReplayBurners
gamewd
michaelpf08

If you have any you want to add ...

I'm glad I had a short shift at the store today, because it seemed a bit busier than normal for a Friday. I wonder if there's something special going on for the weekend that more people have today off or are otherwise making an effort to shop today so that they're ready for Sunday. Come to think of it, I wonder how busy Sunday will turn out to be. Even for a small holiday like Mother's Day, the volume was visibly impacted.

Distorted in Extra Mode is no joke.

Code:

			EX%

...

I spent what turned out to be more than an hour to fix up the rest of my record text file to match the current format. I probably could have just waited to change them as I replay the roster eventually but at least now when I do I can give proper accounting of differences, and my list won't look half assed. This matters to me, yes.

Meanwhile, I finally finished up Form 5471, and in the end it weighs in at 10 MB for four pages of data with two extra pages to hold and display all the ...

D.D. Crew? Is it a brawler or a porno company? With a name like that I almost expect them to become a sponsor in the beatemup game community. This is one of those games that you just won't see anymore. First off name another videogame that contains samples of Bobby Brown, Prince, and...seriously just listen to this track from the final stage. How the heck are you gonna beat up some bosses when all you can think about is sex? Another thing. Back then and possibly still today game companies just didn't ...

Working on Form 5471 for Federal corporate returns, and progress with it is excruciating. What is particularly awful with this is because since it's a form about foreign corporation affiliates and agents, there's several address fields on the first page for which the address could be foreign or domestic. The original form layout does nothing to accommodate this circumstance and just has a blank line to allow entry of any address regardless of origin. This means that what I have to do is program ...

Back when I was younger, Ninja Warriors was the sort of game I'd watch and not play. This was mainly because it scared the hell out of me. You're essentially playing as a terminator-ninja and when you fail you explode piece by piece. Sure you're fighting to stop a tyrannical president but you never really forget that you're in control of what is essentially a weapon, an un-feeling android that could very well turn on its masters and wipe out the human race.

Granted it'd probably ...