Last night I finally managed to get our new place fully online…that was due to two problems: one, we didn’t pack our own stuff, we used a relocation company. That’s great, but that meant we didn’t necessarily know what was in any of the boxes, since we didn’t pack them ourselves. Which lead to the second problem, which is that I use a Mac mini as my home server. It’s great and compact and I love it, but it’s so small that it was extremely hard to find among all those boxes. I don’t think the movers even knew it was a computer, as it was packed deep into a box of books.

Anyway, once I got the whole apartment/house (it’s an attached townhouse…I guess I should call it a house?) online, the first thing I wanted to do was check out all the stuff I missed on Xbox Live. And by “all the stuff” I mean, of course, Space Giraffe.


Achievement Unlocked


Space Giraffe is everything I hoped it would be. It’s completely insane. It lacks the purity of the Tempest gameplay, but it’s so over the top, and so outrageously wacky, that’s it just plain brilliant. Jeff Minter remains one of the most important game designers in the industry, even if most people have never heard of him. It’s kind of like the way I think about John Waters and movies. I may not like his movies (I don’t think I’m supposed to), but I’m glad he’s there making them. Even if you think Jeff Minter is an insane, farm animal obsessed weirdo (that’s probably an accurate description, by the way) you have to at least be glad someone out there is doing stuff like this.

I didn’t have my media streaming set up last night, but at some point I really need to try playing Space Giraffe with the Tempest 2000 soundtrack. I think the game might implode, or worlds might collide or something, but it should be a fun experiment.

The other thing I downloaded was Streets of Rage 2. I grabbed the demo and started playing it, and next thing I knew I had unlocked the full game and was getting my first couple of achievements. I have the first one on Wii Virtual Console, but the second one is a much better game, and more importantly, the version on XBLA is cheaper (400 points!) and offers a lot more for your virtual money.

Thanks to PartnerNet (the developer-only version of XBL) I know there are some pretty cool games in the pipeline…I’m looking forward to checking those out when they eventually get released.