Curse you friendship!

So, I wasted a great deal of time typing up something extensive about Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria only to realize that no matter what I had to say about it, the expansion as a whole could be summed up as having an aging problem to contend with. Even with Cataclysm, I managed to find entertainment for a few months. Here, part of the problem with blogging about MoP had to do with a complete lack of desire for spending more than an hour or so in front of my computer going through the familiar elements,such as "kill x creatures" and collecting 50 of something for a recipe, that I had grown sick of with the previous games. Granted, this entry is still lengthy, but not as much as it was originally going to be. I must have cut this thing in half, if not more… your welcome.

MoP is a testament to how far Blizzard has come to creating a slick and interesting world, but it’s old now. I’ll put it another way. Even if Star Wars was re-released with hundreds of thousands of CGI banthas stomping across the dirt world of Tatooine, swimming along the waters of Kamino’s Tipoca City, and floating all over the screen during the space battles, possibly crashing into a few of the starfighters, you would still be watching the same movies with the same ongoing plot. If a person has barely or never played WoW before, then I strongly encourage them to, at least, have one character reach the level cap before quitting. The old content has been redone to fix several of the issues players griped about prior to Cataclysm, and the new content shows how the game has evolved to make questing, raiding, and PvP more entertaining, varied, and user friendly. For the rest of us who have been fans of the franchise for years now, there just isn't enough new content to compensate for the grinding, fetching, escorting, and repetition that still plagues many parts of MoP. I don’t have the drive to work my reputation with several factions, run the same ten dungeons a hundred times, and get my ass kicked repeatedly in the battlegrounds all for the sake of wearing gear that will need to be replaced with another new set of junk every few months. Do it once for the experience, and maybe do it all a second time to take in the vast amount of lore, but that should be it. The only thing keeping me in the game is the social aspect. If I could convince all my WoW friends to play a new PC game together, I’d be thrilled. It could even be a shooter. I suck at those, and if you ever spot me in one, I’ll probably be the guy who either can’t get his weapon to stop pointing at the floor or the one who blows himself up holding an explosive too long, but I wouldn't care, because it would be something new to enjoy.

As for the specifics of Pandaria:

~ The mist around Pandaria disappears and players travel south to explore an entire continent that is a spoof of the very country that plagues WoW with account hackers and gold farmers.

~ Pandas are a welcomed addition to the choice of races, as many of us have been waiting for them to arrive since the days of vanilla WoW.

~ The monk class, regardless of how you wish to level one, is a somewhat unique and enjoyable experience. A few similarities with some of the other classes, but it still feels fresh (and so clean, clean).

~ Dragons have become an unavoidable and sickening sight to behold. No matter where you look, there is a dragon mount, a dragon companion, or some type of dragon-shaped decoration on your screen. In the world of nerds, dorks, and geeks, this was already a problem. Much like swords and attractive, world-saving teenagers, a dragon is one of those things that the people behind the creations of video games, anime, novels, etc. all feel a need to constantly incorporate into their work. An in-game example is seen with MoP’s Pet Battle mini-game, which is obviously a knock-off of the Robopon series, which also makes it a knock-off of Robotrek; but, fortunately, it is not a knock-off of Dragon Warrior Monsters, because I very much doubt most WoW players want to spend 50+ hours just dealing with an intricate breeding/raising system when they could be wasting the same amount of time hovering around rows of virtual crops looking for mounds of virtual soil containing virtual presents to give to a bunch of virtual farmers and a drunk, virtual fish man. ...As you level a trio of your favorite companions, you’ll probably notice how often dragons are included in the teams of your opponents. Magic companions seem to be the least popular, probably due to their weakness against dragonkin attacks. Go figure.

~ There are now six “Way of the...” branches of cooking to level and reputation gains for individual NPCs, but both changes seem to only prolong the suffering of trying to max them out.

~ Lastly, there are now scenarios (nothing at all) and challenges (fire) which turn normal and heroic dungeon runs into the equivalents of Taco Bell’s mild and hot packets. I love some of the mechanics of the fights, but after that initial newness wears off, only the challenge mode makes the player feel like he has accomplished something. I've nearly fallen asleep multiple times trying to complete a dungeon or scenario. If I make a mistake, it’s because I was distracted by the pain in my jaw from constantly yawning.

That's it. This is the newer, condensed version of my work. Originally, I started typing a week after the launch, and I was going to talk about things like the new zones, the mobs, the questlines, and the changes to the classes. I was also going to provide screenshots of Juppiter’s (my main's) progress through all of it. It was a long, detailed blog completely erased and redone with something I pieced together in three hours. Hope you had an easier time staying awake to read about the game from me than I did with trying to grind through it, because I’m probably gonna go back to playing my older systems until the day Garrosh becomes the final raid boss on the expansion. I never liked him. The named NPCs who were always by Thrall’s side have deserted him. Obviously, the Alliance couldn't care less for the guy. It’ll be a joy to gear up one last time to kick his sorry ass. Granted, I doubt Thrall will return as the Warchief, but it seems like just about any other NPC would make for a better leader at this point.

*Update*

Not even my desire to see Vol'jin take over as the Warchief has spurred me into paying for another 30 days of gear-grinding heroics and LFRs. If anyone from the guild wishes for my return, I'll promptly return to aid them. Outside of that, I'll just stick to completing my list of older titles and occasionally blogging about them for the sole purpose of amusing myself... and Paul, since he's the only other person I've ever met who has taken an unusual interest in all the garbage I post.

Ahoy, bitches!

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, everyone! This is the holiday’s 10^th anniversary, and people all over the globe are celebrating. Why are they celebrating? Sigh, really? Fine, I guess I could spend a few minutes educating you, before I go back to my fun.

For those of you unaware of its origins, TLAP Day, as with Halloween and Festivus, was originally a pegan holiday that Adele intertwined with the release of her debut album 19 in order to help sales. It is because of this, and due to the fact that the recording of the album began in the September of 2006, that the holiday itself is celebrated on September 19. A few of you might be wondering why the focus shifted from Adele’s music career to pirates. The answer is rather obvious. Everything is better with pirates, no matter how terrible it is.

Hmmm. It’s better, but not by much. I might have to add Guile’s theme to this.

When Adele was interviewed in 2011 about the release of her next album 21, she was presented with the opportunity to give her thoughts on the evolution of September 19 into what it is today. Disregarding the comment, Adele held up a copy of 21 and shouted, “I promise it won’t suck like one of Rihanna’s albums!” Two days later, during a radio interview, Rihanna told the public, “Adele’s just jealous that she has never found love in a hopeless place! Actually, that sounds kinda catchy.” Months later, Rihanna was found comatose in a back alley, covered with dirt and urine. A nearby homeless man told a reporter that she was drunk when she showed up and creeped everyone out by demanding one of them to be her lover. He said that she then lost her footing and fell into the trash can fire that they were all huddled around. While she rolled back and forth on the road, the rest of them did what they could to put out her clothes. The incident left the singer traumatized as she eventually woke up in a hospital bed repeating the phrase, “We found love in a hopeless place.” Not to be deterred from making a quick buck, Calvin Harris added some background music to her rambling and released the album Talk That Talk, which features a headshot of the now-mindless artist on its cover.

And you thought I was making this shit up!

Today, we raise our Jolly Roger in honor of those who fought for what they believed in (having fun through stealing). During an era when people didn’t have the time to learn how to read and write, it just wasn’t practical to rob people using misleading contracts padded with several lines of fine print. You might be thinking of more conventional pirates, armed with shoulder cannons or powered with devil fruits. Such things didn’t exist back in the 14^th century BC when piracy began. Originally, pirates had to spend several minutes chanting spells like Aeroga and Blizzara, which left them quite vulnerable to a counterattack from their enemies, unless the captain knew how to properly support his men with Haste and Curaga. Their attire included bandanas for the scrubs while captains wore an assortment of luxurious hats which were usually obtained through the item drop system, crafting system, supply crates, or bought from the Mann Co. Store. Another common piece of headgear included the eye patch that typically indicated a pirate was concealing some sort of unique power that would consume the individual if they didn’t restrain it. One major exception to this was the infamous Captain Kenpachi who actually wore an eye patch to weaken himself, rather than to survive. Other forms of clothing included frock coats, puffy shirts, and an assortment of accessories, such as the shard of purity, which protected the wearer from status ailments, or the stealth ring, which provided a captain with an effective means of escape if the fight was not in his favor.

At the time, pirates were not the only people to fear while out on the waters. For a while, merfolk were a common sight, and a bit of a nuisance. Fortunately, most of them could only tap target creatures or cause you to discard your hand. Vikings, however, were every bit as vicious and dangerous as the pirates. Many referred to them as “coastal pirates” as they generally stayed within a few miles of land, while a few actually sailed on rivers and attacked nearby trading posts. In fact, some historians like to lump pirates together with Vikings, as they lived similar lifestyles, but Vikings relied heavily upon auto-attack options, rather than magic, and, not only that, the two groups represented completely different sports.  As much as I would love to see a receiver taken down with a ball bat, it’s just not going to happen.

I think that's enough for one day. I gotta get back to harassing General Chat in Booty Bay. Those pirate jokes won’t tell themselves, you know. Now that you know a thing or two about today and the people it represents you oughta join in the festivities. Obviously, you don’t have to do what I do. There are other ways to have fun, like dressing up, singing shanties with your fellow buccaneers, and drinking grog until your liver looks like the aftermath of a drive-by Medusaing. Of course, I wouldn’t mind a pirate joke or two in the comments section. I did, after all, take the time to enlighten you on the matter.

YARRR! I be a dork pirate!

Necromancing my Library 2: Rygar

For some reason, I was drawn towards Tecmo’s NES version of Rygar, a game released in 1987 that is still praised to this day for its use of a permanent form of strengthening the warrior. He wasn’t given an actual name in the Japanese game, but it’s best to just assume he’s called Rygar, because that’s what the English version did.

Rygar started out as a more colorful and detailed arcade title (degree of fun experienced varies with player), but, as with nearly all coin-operating entertainment machines, it was a sadistic, money-gobbling monstrosity that threw everything, except kitchen sink-shaped demons, at your one-hit-KO’d hero. When it was released on the NES, however, Tecmo had made a few changes.

Obviously, he’s talking about one of those 2 A.M. sunsets.

The arcade’s “Go right!” killing spree was turned into an open-ended half-n-half with some areas being a side-scroller, while other spots were viewed through a top-down perspective. Sounds neat, right? Metroidvania gameplay, for me, has always been a non-cake related lie about providing the freedom to explore. Yeah, I could go to any poorly-named zone of Argool (Primeval Mountain, Rosla, or even Ragua Sando) and kill stuff with either my glorified yo-yo (Diskarmor) or a flashing screen created from using the yo-yo ten times after buffing myself with Attack & Assail, but to accomplish what exactly? To reach a point where a hermit, who looks exactly like any one of the five Indora gods (because creating one more sprite to differentiate them would have taken Tecmo for-fucking-ever and billions of yen to accomplish), tells you, “Sorry, pal, but you need (item) to continue.” Essentially, I am given the freedom to run back and forth across the land each time I pick up an item in order to figure out which area I’ve now gained full access through. I’m still being forced to accomplish things in a particular order with only a few deviations along the way. I’d rather have kept to the side-scrolling throughout the whole game and avoided the headache of running into dead ends. My toleration of all that backtracking was thanks to the permanent power-up feature that rewarded me for the excessive fighting.

The story doesn’t really change in the transition; it just gets a bit longer. Ligar’s floating palace and his army of wimpy monsters darkened the land of Argool, captured the five Indora gods, and established the kingdom of EVIL. (Yes, the entire word is capitalized.) The “Door to Peace”, which symbolized the, you guessed it, peace of Argool was taken away by Ligar, leaving the people with no other option than to begin praying for salvation. Apparently, their prayers were so loud and obnoxious that it literally woke the dead as Rygar popped up out of the ground to fight. I guess this means Rygar is a zombie, but there is nothing zombie-ish about him outside of being able to pick himself up again each time he is killed. Endless continues! Yay!

The last change made for the NES version involved the monsters. Blue monkeys, flying squirrels, cave bats, drones and other creatures with simple names are replaced with kuzeelars, hyokings, garzels, epolcons, kinobles, and whocomesupwiththisstuffs. There’s also boss fights besides Ligar, but one can tell how lazy Tecmo became with these sprites, as they did with recycling the one shared by hermits and the Indora gods.

Belzar and Deathpigor look almost identical while Ligar’s unique appearance is offset by his attacking serpent heads that make him out to be another Deathpigor. What’s worse is that these three bosses have no mobility, and I’m supposed to believe Ligar is the most powerful foe in the game? How can I take Ligar seriously if he’s stuck to the floor? If Tecmo had allowed it, I would run around this guy, recover the door (wait, does that sound right?), and leave the lion man to die of boredom alone in his palace. I mean, what could he do about it? Yell loudly in protest? 

Other things to nitpick about include the game’s soundtrack. This is especially true of the looping roar sound the player listens to in each boss area. The sound effect repeats every other second and continues to do so even when the boss is dead. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the sound of the monster’s corpse emitting the last bits of life from its backside. As for the other areas, the only piece with any real quality to it would be Sagila’s Cavern, which has been remixed more than any other (from what I could find) on Youtube, though Suero Mountain’s theme will likely be the most memorable for players, since it’s the first thing we all hear when we start a new game. Also, feel free to hit the mute button once you reach the Palace of Dorago. If you’ve ever heard a record player skip for over a minute, then you already know what this stage sounds like. Using Rygar’s age isn’t a plausible excuse, either. Koji Kondo has been composing beautiful vg music since 1984.

Finally, the items you collect on this journey are not all that impressive (just like this blog entry). There’s no real indication as to when you need to use the grappling hook. You just sort of throw it up in the air when you think there might be a platform off screen. The wind pulley requires a little practice to use, because if you don’t position yourself properly, then it won’t latch, and your hero ends up falling off of a cliff. The crossbow’s only use is to create lines for your wind pulley. Not that I need another weapon, but it wouldn’t hurt to have it shoot bolts or arrows at enemies from a distance greater than that of the Diskarmor. The coat of arms is legitimately useful. Take it to a specialized hermit (or maybe it’s an Indora god cosplayer) and receive a potion than restores your health whenever you wish to drink it. Then there’s the Indoras’ armor. By the time you receive this item, your tone (offense) and last (defense) are probably high enough to overcome enemies without the added protection. I sure didn’t need it to beat the final boss!

IGN places Rygar at #59 for its top 100 NES games, and they refer to it as a “cult classic.” Then again, they consider Mega Man 6 to be #58, so I don’t think being on that list is much of a compliment, and the retro sanctuary places it as #52. I couldn’t find the game elsewhere on the lists of other sites, but all that really matters is whether or not you should play it. If you have the system (or an emulator) and you have access to the game, then why not play it? I own the cartridge because I bought it as part of a fifty-game lot on eBay. I certainly didn’t aim to own this particular title, but I guess I’m happy to still have it. Well, actually, I didn’t think the game was all that fun, but it was simple. Also, once you have an idea of where to go, the whole journey can be done in under an hour. Someone who enjoys speed runs might buy this… maybe. As for myself, being able to finish an NES game always gives me a feeling of satisfaction… even if the ending was kinda crummy.

Necromancing my Library: Kickle Cubicle

Once in a while, I pull my Nintendo Entertainment System out of storage and dig through a big box of "blow me" cartridges in hopes of quashing 8-bit nostalgia that loves to creep back into my conscious whenever I listen to chiptunes on iTunes. The most likely targets are Karnov, Paperboy, Galaga, Ghost'n Goblins, and Super Dodge Ball, but I had a desire to go back to something a bit more eye-catching this time around. The game holds a small place in my clogged heart, as some may have noticed through my use of the name for MMO characters and online accounts.

Today, Irem still develops video games, but their production is a far cry from what it was between 1978 and 1994. If their name doesn't ring a bell, then perhaps you've heard of a few of their creations: the R-Type series, Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, Moon Patrol, and 10-Yard Fight. I doubt anyone reading this would know of Rocky Rodent. Actually, it's better that you don't. 

Enjoy seeing that face again in one of your nightmares.

While I'm a fan of Kid Niki... 

This is the last time I'll ever mess with this screenshot again for my blog. I promise.

the game I'm typing about today is Irem's colorful, little puzzler Kickle Cubicle. As the story goes, Fantasy Kingdom used to be a place of wonderment and happiness. Thanks to King Tois, the streets were paved with gold, wars didn't exist, junk food was good for you, and the Pokemon anime only had one season. It was a peaceful era that many believed would last forever, until the day when the Wizard King arrived. Sentenced to death for attempting to suffocate a young freckled child, Bad Mr. Frosty watched in horror as one of his siblings was slowly melted away by a hot bowl of Campbell's soup. As a result, Frosty sent his half-witted, younger brother Wizard King to get revenge on the people who allowed such an atrocity to occur. Along with three of his special friends, Wizard King drove his small bus right into the entrance of Toy Land's castle and covered the land in ice. He then proceeded to stuff everyone into dream bags and scattered them in groups of three all across the lands of Garden, Fruit, Cake, and Toy. No one knows (or really cares) why he did this, but there was one little fellow he forgot to capture.

That's our hero! Even when it's game over, he's still having fun.

Kickle looks like some runt from the Flab Boys family, but, instead of exploding records, this adorable albino (box art be damned!) fights back by breathing on his enemies and turning them into blocks of ice. These cubes are then used either to create paths across the water, or pushed into other enemies in the hope of crushing them to death. This is similar to using the Bomb Kick ability from the Bomberman series, which Hudson Soft licensed to Irem back when the company manufactured arcade games.


He also forms pillars to act as barriers and uses balloons to fly from one spot to the next. Kickle's a simple character to figure out, but the puzzles you must solve gradually become more challenging shortly after you reach Cake Land, and are downright evil once you begin the thirty special game rounds. I wish I could say the same for the Wizard King and his idiot buddies. 

Koke, Kapan, Piro, and Wizard King

The four battles are similar, especially the first three. Koke throws ice cubes at you that break into smaller ice cubes when they land. Simply push three of them into him when he's facing you and the fight's done. Piro tosses balls that break into small balls, which is no different from Koke's ice cubes, but he will occasionally flip jump, rather than charge, at you, and if you move up, rather than left or right, to dodge it, he'll charge into you while he heads back to the top. Kapan chucks, you guessed it, shells that, you guessed it again, break into small shells for you to shove into him. Sounds easy enough, until he curls up into his own shell and begins bouncing off the walls like Armored Armadillo. Rather than wait for him to stop moving around, I find it easier to hit him from the sides of the room. Lastly, Wizard King himself is a complete waste of time. 

"Hee, hee, how dare you come up here. How can you defeat me?"

Gee, I don't know! You got a staff that shoots balls of water around the room. What effect could my ice breath possibly have against that? Oh, and let's not forget about that helmet of yours. Seriously, a guy would have to be brain dead to use a bucket for protection.

I rest my case.

After using his staff, King likes to jump high up into the air in an attempt to land on top of Kickle. His defeat is simple. Turn the glob of water into a large block of ice, avoid being crushed by the snowman's fat, cold ass, and shove the ice into his gut once he slams into the floor. Once he is defeated, Kickle is abruptly thrown out of the room and wakes up in a bedroom to the sight of Princess Mira, the youngest daughter of King Tois. After a few words of gratitude from her father, Mira rewards Kickle with a kiss and her hand in marriage. It's a far better ending than only receiving a baked cake from Princess Peach.  The whole thing is a visual treat for the player (except Paul, because he can't see colors), and the citizens are adorable, especially the girl with the head of a wrapped piece of candy. I also appreciate the inclusion of the quick-kill option for each level. If the player knows he cannot complete the puzzle, pressing the select button will end it immediately so that he may try again sooner, rather than after the timer runs out. If there is a reason to bitch, it would have to be the crummy dialogue:  


Tomato girl: "A monster is in the palace, scaring the princess. Please destroy him!"
Apple boy: "Thank you, Kickle, now the sunken palace is reappearing! Is the princess still safe and sound? Please, Kickle, beat the hateful monster!" (I know they are the bad guys, but it just sounds wrong coming from these two food citizens, and how would I know if the princess is safe? If she isn't, I can think of at least one piece of fruit to blame for that.) 
Piro: "Good job to come up here! But you have to give up now." (Didn't I just go down into a sunken palace to meet this goof?) 
Kapan: "Hee, hee, you are Kickle. I will punish you!" (It's hard to take him seriously when this sounds like something Skeeter Valentine would say to me if I was battling him to save a race of sentient food beings from having their bike stolen.)
Old red stocking man: "Our palace is said to have been hidden in a faraway world. If only I were young I could fight together with you, Kickle, my boy! Be careful! Good luck!" (What a shame. A young sock could have come in handy while battling evil.)
Kickle: "Thank you for playing with me! See you again!" (No. Just... no.)


I'm also not a fan of the baddie Noggles. I mean, why do we need another blue slime representing the weakest creature in a game? Didn't I just bitch about this a few entries ago when I was typing about Golden Sun?


Still, Kickle Cubicle's focus is on solving the puzzles, and there are 97 of them to figure out. A few seem like giveaways midway into the game, like they were meant to be moments of rest after failing repeatedly with a couple of the more difficult stages prior to them, and many are designed in various shapes, like... um..
 
Again. Just... no.

Many gamers view Cubicle as a "forgotten classic", but I noticed recently that Kickle has a cult following. The KickleCubicle website is dedicated to creating a level editor based upon the game, while others in the NoobToob community have participated in what is called Kickefest. I especially enjoy the images by Douglas Bushong, a 3D artist who seems to be in the process of creating a video to advertise the convention. According to an old post on his blog, the plan is to have the video done by 2014. This is a lot more attention than most NES games will ever receive, and, if this keeps up, perhaps we'll be seeing a brand new Kickle in the near future.
 
Hopefully not like this.

Don't Read; Not Interesting (for you, that is)

I figured it was Vampire Hunter D when TNT's 100% Weird aired the movie one boring weekend a long time ago. Other possible candidates might have been Monkey Magic, Ninja Scroll, Voltron, or a stray episode of the original Dragonball series.

I discovered the truth while watching PONIES the Anthology II on Youtube. In addition to clips imitating the opening for The Walking Dead, the video of Leeroy Jenkins, and overdubbing bits of the show with music or one-liners from other media, the one in particular that caught my interest was an ABC bumper from 1988 playing to the scene of an exhausted Applejack crashing into the dirt. That got me searching for the other bumpers ABC used with their Saturday morning cartoons. This led me to videos of the bumpers Nickelodeon used in the late 80s and early 90s which primarily featured Doo-Wop. Not surprisingly, because I had no life back then either, I was able to recognize all but two of them. I type "two" but it was just the same one with "1986" replacing "1985" at the start of it. Of course, why would I remember them? They would have only aired when I was three and four years old. Even if I was plopped in front of the tube at that age, I wouldn't have realized what was going on. I guess I could lie about that like those little fucks who are featured on TV periodically for being talented at an early age: "I've been horseback riding since I was two years old." No, you were shown a Polaroid of when your parents held you on the saddle while they posed for the camera. By your logic, if I had a snapshot of some brat chewing on a pencil, then he's probably going to grow up to become a writer. Heck, let's say the kid really did become a writer. I doubt he'd claim the foundation of his career started with the taste of graphite. More likely, he'd talk about the first piece he wrote that he felt proud of or of one that merited some sort of recognition from others. I started playing on the Nintendo when I was five. I was given a controller and left to figure out how to use it for Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and Track & Field. Maybe when my parents had an Atari, they placed the joystick in front of me and added another photo in my baby book, but I am not about to count that as the start of my interest in video games.

Anyway, where wasn't I? Oh, well, those bumpers brought on more curiosity, which led me to research (research = Wikipedia nowadays) the programming Nickelodeon had running when I was a child. I was fortunate enough to enjoy Nick's golden years, before Viacom took over and turned the image of the familiar orange slime logo into one of splattered shit.

Looking over the names on the list, I vaguely remembered the time I wasted watching Double Dare, Pinwheel, You Can't Do That on Television, Today's Special, and The Elephant Show. Two other shows I noticed were actually a pair of anime called Noozles and Adventures of the Little Koala, which aired from '87 to '94 ('88 to '93 for Noozles). These were products of some Koala craze going on in Japan in the mid-to-late 80s (similar to America's obsession with Australia at the time) that Nickelodeon picked up for its Nick Jr. hours. They're also the first anime shows I have ever watched and was old enough to retain memories of to this day. I hadn't realized they were from Japan, however, so I found it to be an interesting bit of information from my pitiful childhood. As for those of you who couldn't have cared less about me, I've provided an apology in the form of a poorly rendered fart image of Noozles I made on MS Paint:

Just one more piece of evidence to indicate why I'm not "koala"fied to be writing a comedy blog.

Newest Member of the 484 Club!

No mentioning of a new hop and bop 3D platformer for Mario just leaves a sour feeling inside. Yeah, there's another Super Mario Bros. side-scroller coming out, but that doesn't interest me much. I was spoiled by Mario 64. Even now, I'm trying to play New Super Mario Bros. on the DS and struggling to finish even a few levels at a time. Outside of having Mario occasionally Godzilla through half a stage, what reasons do I have to continue reliving my childhood days of Super Mario on the NES and SNES? "This one has better graphics, an item holder, and you can wall kick!" It still feels like one of those old games I burned myself out on long ago, but now it's retardedly simple. 1-ups galore makes trying to survive feel trivial. If any of them, I wouldn't mind playing Yoshi's Island again. I never did get around to finishing it and, back then, I thought the game provided a decent challenge. Still, without any information about a new, unique experience to be expected on the Wii U, my only first-party hopes for owning the system any time soon would be on Pikmin 3 and the next Smash Bros title. I don't know about that, either. Who is Namco going to add to the roster of fighters? Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man? Dig-Dug and Mr. Driller? I really have no desire to see legitimate fighting characters in the game, like the cast of Tekken. Regardless of those chosen by Namco (and all of this will sound a bit silly for me to read again in years to come), I can't seem to care as much as I did with the previous games. Bascially, my bitching is just more proof of how much I enjoyed Mario Galaxies 1 and 2. Once I've beaten Bowser and collected all the stars, I began to crave more from the series. I actually make the effort to look up news about it. It seems like that desire for information is commonplace for a lot of other gamers, but I usually just concern myself with what's available at the moment. Play it, beat it, and find something else for $20 at Gamestop to pass the time: This is how it usually goes for me. I don't like selling the games I've purchased, so I have a halfway decent library of them, but few manage to find a place in my heart that leave me wanting to play them again. Maybe I'll force my children (if I ever have the misfortune of raising some) to live through my pitiful youth by exposing them to the wonders/blunders of the 80s and 90s. Maybe I'll add salt to the wound with music from those days, as well:

"Straight up, now tell me is it gonna be coins, shrooms, and flowers?

Oh oh oh! Or are you collecting rings?"

Moving towards the main topic (until my mind derails again), Mario Galaxy, as was Sunshine and 64, is just phenomenal. It's almost an excuse for having fewer games than the other systems, considering how much time and effort must have went into creating something this fantastic. Shiggy himself was said to have clocked in more time with this project than he had with Mario 64, and the original idea for it was conceived seven years before it's release. If every game on the Wii, or any system, was give this much attention, then I'd have no problem dealing with a smaller library to choose from. Quality over quantity, and such.

I'm no expert on graphics, but the bright colors and cheery enviroment always managed to stave away my ADD. Essentially, it was the usual Mario-esque atmosphere that would make for one more glorious attraction at a SMB theme park, which would be part of a Nintendo-themed resort, that executives of Nintendo will probably never support unless they are under the effects of huffing a large dose of paint fumes and chlorine tablets.

Translated to English: "I'm serious about it! If we do this right, it'll be a huge success! Best of all, there isn't any real competition out there to cut into the profit!"

The game continues the trend of avoiding any sort of actual story involving Peach's rescue, which is fine: Bowser kidnaps her, gets cornered, fights, fails, and Mario/Luigi is thanked with a cake while the rest of us endure an unavoidable and lengthy credits sequence. What Galaxy does provide, however, is a backstory for Rosalina, a new character who helps Mario reach Bowser with her observatory and provides additional support through the aid of her children, the Lumas. The player learns more about her as she reads from a book that talks about her life. What I found odd was that her book omitted the parts about when she found time to learn how to drive a kart and motorbike. Another odd detail is that she is a deceptively big person. Rosa has a similar look to Peach, but she's got more inches on her than Waluigi. I like tall women, but it's still funny to realize that she shares a weight class with Donkey Kong, Wario, and Bowser on Mario Kart. Bowser Jr. returns, but not the other Koopalings, and he periodically battles Mario in some sort of oversized contraption that he probably pieced together himself, though I couldn't imagine why he wouldn't utilize Iggy's genius in the mechanical creations. Dr. Gero and Dr. Myuu worked together to create the android Super 17 and look how long he... lasted... nevermind. Still, if one is trying to create his own galaxy and seize control over the entire Mushroom Universe, Bowser should have incorporated all the help he could muster. Hell, he recruited the Whomp King and that boss is literally meant to be stepped on!

The problem many players had with Super Mario Sunshine was that it lacked a strong variety of places to run, bounce, and climb around, because everywhere Mario went had to be related to what one might see and visit on a tropical island. I found the change to be refreshing. If nothing else, it made sense. As a kid, I thought it was a little weird to go through SMB3 and SMW moving from one stage to the next and the adjacent environment would be completely different. The setup for Galaxy is as perfect for stage diversity as the painting gallery portals are in Mario 64. As you fly from one galaxy to the next, you are guided first by Rosa, then later by Lubba. Obviously, I preferred being welcomed back by Rosalina aboard her observatory than I did being greeted by an obese Luma slapping his stomach in front of me while riding on top of a ship shaped like my character's face.

"Cheeee.... seburger!"

Cloud, Bee, Spring, Boo, Ice, Rock, and Drill Mario are all interesting transformations for the plumber, but, when he has to actually ride something, things get a bit irritating. I had more trouble with steering the star ball than I did with surviving Galaxy 2's The Perfect Run (though only slightly). Floating around in a bubble, surfing on the manta ray, and even controlling Yoshi all required a bit more patience than I would have expected. I adore Yoshi, but I groaned each time I arrived at a new galaxy and saw that dash pepper sitting in front of me. It brought back formerly-repressed memories of Turbo Tunnel, the third stage of Battletoads.

Still easier than Ghost'n Goblins.

I bump into one thing with Dash Yoshi, and that's it! Even if I don't fall to my death, I still have the pleasure of trying to hover him back onto the platform and starting all over.

Yeah, both Galaxy games can have their moments of frustration, but it never reaches the point of ragequitting. If anything, I found myself taking short breaks, convincing myself that I just needed to relax a little before continuing. Even Lubba makes this suggestion once in a while. I commend Nintendo for this, because I've played many other titles where I would sooner believe the developers screwed up before admitting I was at fault. Proof of this can be found in the NES library where many games included "fake difficulty" to help extend their replay value at the cost of the player's enjoyment (see "Not quite Ghosts'n Goblins" for examples).

Lastly, I love the music. Mahito Yokota and Koji Kondo are geniuses! If they weren't, I would have muted these games a long time ago in favor of the playlist of trash I actually listen to on my iPod. My favorite tracks are Grass Beach ~Undersea~, Yoshi Star (Yoshi), Wind Garden, and especially Puzzle Plany Galaxy, but I could just as easily enjoy hearing any track from the Mario Galaxy Orchestra.
I know it's only a matter of time before I read/hear news of a new game for the Wii U that doesn't involve 2.5D platform gameplay, but even if I were to do so right now, that would still involve, at least, a few years of agonizing wait for it to be finished and released in the states. As for a wrap-up score of both Galaxy games, I'd say it deserves a number out of another number, possibly of equivalent value, because the only real flaw I can account for are the (very) few moments when the camera didn't keep up, like while riding the star ball. If you've got a Wii, play the games, collect all the stars, and join the 484 Club with me!

Now, more insight with Huffing Iwata:

Golden Sun, I am disappoint.

I was a little disappointed with Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. Seven years after The Lost Age was released, and all GS3 brings to the table is better graphics. Camelot is the video game developer who gave me Shining Force 1 and 2, and they certainly didn't disappoint with the first two Golden Sun titles. Perhaps too many golf and tennis projects have turned their brains to mush. As the third half (ignoring logic) of the story goes, everything takes place thirty years later. Things seem to occur most frequently in numbers divisible by ten, ensuring that the next group of adventurers would be old enough for fappable fan art, but not too old to be adults, because adults saving the world would just be stupid. I'm not a fan of the time jump in sequels. It usually becomes an excuse to explain everything over again in the form of teaching the new characters about all the basic stuff they need to know for their upcoming journey. I was treated to all the yawn-inducing lectures of Issac and Garet as they accompanied me through the terrifying woods filled with leaf bats and the iconic blue slimes that like to inhabit the weakest spots in all JRPGs.

"Um... Mr. Slime, is it? We need you to not smile during the battle. Oh, no no no! It's a great smile, but, you know, we don't want Enix to sue us."

I especially enjoyed the parts where Garet began overreacting to how I moved a block that was in front of me and applied fire to a plant. 

This whole bit in Goma Plateau and Tanglewood is a long-winded tutorial for those who never played the other two games in the series. It's also punishment for those of us who did. See, it's all unavoidable. Garet even tells you how to use the aptly-named psynergy Move after you've already figured out how with the first block that you shoved into the hole that was perfectly shaped to fit it, while terrific father figure Isaac watches his kid jump across these pits, ignoring the "what if..." situation of Matthew missing a step and falling to his death. There's also the tutorial about the djinn, an encyclopedia, Sun Saga issues to collect, and even a training course that summarizes the other two games in the form of an obstacle course, because everything else I mentioned, along with the introduction that began right after you ignored changing Matthew's name (which loops at the title screen), just wasn't enough hand holding.

I would like to point out that the script, much like my blog, is rather verbose. I wouldn't mind if all the chatter was actually worth reading (kinda like a subtitled episode of Kitanagatari), but it's just your usual "blah blah" storyline with little more than that to maintain the player's interest. Occasionally, you get to choose one of four emotional responses to answer someone, but it doesn't always provide a reply you were expecting, and none of them will alter how the conversation will continue.

It was so dull at the start of my journey that I barely made it to the 30-minute marker before saving and turning off the DS to find something else to occupy my time. Eventually, I'd pick up where I left off, and, within another 30 minutes, grow tired of it again. Midway into the game, however, I began putting in some legitimate effort. When I found myself sailing around to various islands for a bit of side-questing I grew world-weary. At that point, I actually put the game down and played those Yu-Gi-Oh! titles I bitched blogged about earlier.

I put so little effort into combat. All mobs were beaten with simple attacks. Once in a while, I'd stop and heal. Repeat when necessary. Bosses were essentially an onslaught of summon spells at the start, then use Djinn until I could cast summons again. Chaos Chimera and Dullahan were the only exceptions to all of this. It was after I lost twice to the chimera that I began to realize that I hadn't bothered to do anything with the crafting material, nor had I bought any other basic equipment to replace the low-level bits I had found in chests throughout the game. Once my junk was up to snuff, that thing didn't even merit a Water of Life. Dullahan, however, is an evil bitch. Abilities such as Charon and Condemn tend to succeed at the worst moments, dropping my party members right when I get things together. After a bit of research, it seems he follows a simple attack pattern and can be defeated by a low-level group so long as one pours all his strength into Matthew and knows when to use defensive Djinn, like Ivy, Shell, and Doldrum. What I found to be more interesting was reading about how he is considered to be more powerful in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I didn't have any problems against him in the second game. When I thought about why, I could only speculate that it was because I was actually interested in the previous sequel. Here, I just wanted it done so I could collect my summon tablet of Iris the Goddess of (Puking) Rainbows.

"Taste the painbow, mortals!"

I bought this game out of respect for the series, and a desire to see how the next part of the story would play out, but Dark Dawn just isn't all that impressive. The characters lack any sort of charisma, the story is just a long, boring read, and the new psynergy abilities Slap, Thermal, Track, and Third Eye added little to nothing to the (non-existent) complexity of the puzzles. 

So cryptic! How will I ever figure out... already done. 

It's a mediocre addition to something that was an amazing throwback to the glory days of RPGs on the SNES. It felt like Camelot stripped Dark Dawn of this and just made it pretty. I appreciate the visuals, especially the animation of the summons, but not at the cost of everything else. Even the box art is kinda blah. The cover of its instruction manual is much better, and I can't believe it wasn't used instead. You're online right now. Look up the box art for the first two games and compare it to that of Dark Dawn. I know, don't judge a book by it's cover, but this is the sequel to something that hadn't been around for seven years. Trying to grab the attention of those who may not have played the previous Golden Sun games starts with that cover. Even I stop to look at titles that catch my eye, and, in a few cases, have purchased them. Still, there is something about seeing Matthew on that box that reminds me of greatness...

"I'm not just a boring main character... I'm A SUPER BORING MAIN CHARACTER!"

If I was to score this game, it would be a number out of a bigger number, and I'm being generous about that. 

On a positive note, I adore Sveta. She reminds me of my first video game crush:

Katt's the muscle in the party, speaks her mind without qualm, and she wears no pants. What's not to love?

Dark Dawn's ending doesn't go into any sort of detail about the psynergy vortexes, so I'm going to assume the adventure will continue with them in the fourth game. Perhaps there will be a similar connection between it and Dark Dawn as there was with Golden Sun and The Lost Age. I want to hope I won't have to imput another super fucking long password, but, since I have no friends, I doubt there will be an alternative for me to transfer the information. When it does arrive, the game better be more difficult. The hardest thing I had to deal with in Dark Dawn was trying to stay awake through the conversations. 

It's still a better sequel than Bomberman: Act Zero, for what little that's worth, which tried to bring a new "look" to the Bomberman series.

Even the characters wanted nothing to do with it. 

To be fair, the game isn't really as bad as I seem to make it out to be. It's just not all that good, either. It certainly doesn't do anything befitting the franchise. I want to compare GS3's situation to how Chrono Cross could never live up to Chrono Trigger's success, but I saw the effort put into making Cross. In its own right, Cross is still a great game. Dark Dawn, on the other hand, is a garden-variety RPG that is easy on the eyes.

Whine to go with the Cheese I Slice

Enjoying a few blog entries from other people about their bad experiences with the staff at various places, so if they can be childish online, why not I?

I won't speak for other grocery stores. Even within the same supermarket chain, your experiences with the staff will vary based upon the set-up of the department, the expectations placed upon it by management, and, of course, the mind-set of each worker (a.k.a. "grunt"), which will shillyshally during the times one is alone and when one is coadjuting with other grunts. There are other factors to consider as well, such as the time of the day, the time of the year, and the stability of the person's emotions. If you are expecting impeccable service on a Saturday afternoon during a holiday weekend from someone who has been having a rough day, then you're still enjoying the ignorance of having never worked a minimum wage job. Problems arise all the time, but even when things are running smoothly, it doesn't take much for a single consumer to toss a spanner into the works, creating a domino effect of setbacks. In the best interests of everyone, I try to encourage people to come into our store with reasonable expectations and a flexible attitude to help us provide you with a positive shopping experience. For the rest of this entry, I will be addressing the common peeves that seem to deteriorate the disposition of many of my colleagues. This isn't to say one won't receive proper attention from one of us, but there are certainly benefits that our preferred customers will occasionally (not always!) receive.

The two major issues are the business model of most of our departments and how the employees handle it. In hopes of maximizing profit, the workload is meant to have each employee in a constant state of busyness. When everything is done the way we are trained and expected to do it, there is no time to help a customer. This might sound odd, because it's certainly not true for the front-end. The first job to come to mind when one thinks of a grocery store is typically the cashier or bagger, and the bulk of the work for those two positions is to handle your purchases. They also deal with the carts out in the parking lot, cleaning the bathrooms, returning items left by people who decided against paying for them, and a few other odd jobs, like shucking corn, but when called back to the registers, they stop what their doing to comply. That's them. For the rest of us in the other departments, we are provided with enough to do to keep everyone busy so as to not waste any of the company's time with standing around or goofing off. As one particularly odious individual who ran my department used to say, "If you've got time to lean, then you've got time to clean." If anyone needs assistance, it's up to each person to be able to handle the manner swiftly so as to not fall behind on other duties. Obviously, if the workload is meant to occupy the entirety of a shift, then trying to handle customers is going to become difficult once in a while. "IF everything is done the way we are trained and expected to do it" ...for minimum wage, this is not the sort of thing to expect out of a grunt. With many of us (not me, of course) cutting corners, we'll have more time to service our clients. On the other hand, don't expect the greatest of... anything. If Lennie Small the deli clerk is half-assing his duties behind the counter, then it's a sure bet that he's half-assing his ability to service you, as well. The job is accessible to anyone over the age of eighteen, so it doesn't matter if your education ended in middle school, but I've been working at my store for five years now, and I've seen plenty of book smart people who couldn't figure out the three sink method for washing dishes, let alone understand how to rotate our product. Then again, my department has also enjoyed the company of morons who had to learn firsthand, with their hand, that the big spinning blade on the slicer is sharp while others had to be reminded that if the cookie label says "12-ct..." on it, then it's probably safe to assume that a dozen of them should be in that container. Basically, this is not meant for everyone. Just because anyone can get the job, it doesn't mean they possess the competence to keep it. Think Reversi. Anyone can learn to play, but being good at it is a different matter. Trying to find a balance between preparation and interaction is tricky, especially during holidays, weekends, and those times when your area is short-staffed and you're forced to pick up the slack.

Another issue is with the amensalistic nature behind seniority and the lack of responsibility associated with it. I've seen it more than a few times. An individual has worked for a decade or two and they feel entitled. It's not that they will try to intentionally make your job harder, but there are things they no longer deem worthy of their attention. This only becomes an issue for the shopper as the younger employees grow increasingly bitter about their situation. Cheerful, somewhat eager to learn idiots start to grumble, slack, and many of them eventually quit without warning. Again, I've seen this happen, and it's kinda sad to watch that work ethic turn to shit because of those moments when the support they were expecting from the rest of our department isn't there. As a side note, for those of you wondering about our training, it's kept at a minimum for two reasons.

The first is explained above. Those with experience have no desire to share it. My entire training in the bakery was to play a game of Memory by matching breads to figure out the numbers for their labels. The next day, the person who "trained" me with this sentence-long bit of instructions complained that I didn't get much done. I believe her exact words were, "Did he even do anything yesterday?" On a related note, don't call a bitch "a bitch" to her face or you'll have to go upstairs and hear a lecture about how one shouldn't be disrespectful to bitches. Another possibility places the blame on the rookies. "I don't do..." is a common response I hear while trying to teach some newbie. I just laugh at them and reiterate what they are going to do, but for the older ones in our department, there's a lack of patience to deal with someone who either won't learn willingly or is a little slow and requires more time to understand.

The second is due to the high turnover. Why spend precious company time and money educating someone who is probably going to leave within the first year of employment? I've had plenty of customers pick at me about it. My very first day included an old woman wearing one of those forced smiles while being roundabout with the way she was trying to tell me I should stop what I was doing and learn how to work another department for the sake of serving her. This is a rather common thing, too. They find the nearest person in a uniform and start asking questions either unrelated to the department or about something unusual, like how much it would cost and how long it would take to prepare a fruit tray using only "tropical" fruits, or they demand help with something that an employee may have no idea how to do. Ideally, everyone working in a grocery store knows everything about the grocery store, but if you actually take a moment to consider such a notion, it's rather absurd logic to accept. Using myself as an example, the entirety of my shift is spent in the same work station, either frying and baking cluckers in a variety of shapes, or I'm darting between three slicers and the cooler behind them. At what point would one expect me to memorize the layout of all the aisles, know the difference in taste of farm raised and wild caught fish, and be able to prepare an appropriate bouquet of flowers for a 73-year-old woman who just got out of knee surgery? It would be like a mother going into a hospital and asking the oncologist to explain why her child farts so much while he sleeps. Unless it's a result of irregular and uncontrollable cell growth, that gassy brat will probably be sent to a different specialist to have his pooter peeped at. All I can say (or type rather) is that a customer needs to have patience. If one of us doesn't have an answer, we can usually direct you to someone who does. As for more training, it can take years for someone in our store to learn something new. Some do know a little about everything, but, as I see it, it's because they don't quite "fit" anywhere in the store. A person who performs poorly in one area is moved around until he finds a job he can do without being too much of a burden to the others in that particular spot. Taking this into consideration, it might be better to wait for a person who is only trained for one or two roles.

Moving on to other issues:
Selection. Even within the same chain, what is sold varies from store to store. What sells here might not sell there. Sounds kinda obvious, right? Had a woman ask for Black Diamond Cheddar Cheese the other day. Our deli carries it in a wedge, but not in the spreadable form found in cups that she was wanting. Some, usually the newer and larger stores, in our chain do have it on the sales floor. Wedges of the brand do reasonably well at ours, but the cups, for whatever reason, do not. It's fine to ask for what you want, but don't get fussy if the specific type of product you desire isn't available, and, please, don't have an attitude about it. We hear enough tantrums from the children who don't want to be in there. "This is a huge mistake! You people need to fix this, because..." Businesses are trying to make money. If what you want isn't selling to anyone but you, then carrying it is bad business. In fact, if the product was found at another store, what we can do is request an order of it. It might take a few days, maybe even a week, to receive it, but it is possible. If the box we order continues to be a loss, we won't order it again until more request it. Believe me or not, that's your only option, and it's no guarantee, even if we can order it. This is especially true during times when a particular item is on sale. Part of an order can be scratched leaving us with nothing until the next truck arrives. "Why promote something in the paper if you don't have any of it to sell?" Because what we had sold out and what we ordered didn't come in. It happens.

Service. "The customer is always right" is a phrase I still hear, and I still don't understand why so many people actually believe that means they can treat the employees like garbage. When I was a teenager, I was already aware of the fact that this didn't literally mean I could do no wrong as a shopper. How come other adults haven't figured this out? Because a common grocery store caters to the general public, it's going to provide basic stuff in a wide variety based primarily upon what the average person buys. There are a few niche items, but nothing too extravagant. At least once a week, someone calls my department and tests the bounds of what we can and cannot do. There's about thirty different kinds of sandwiches we offer. The problem is someone has to walk over to our deli counter and demand a creation that utilizes an assortment of flavors that a Subway or a Jimmy John's could most likely provide, but, for a reasonable price, we cannot. Pulling bottles of specific condiments off the sales floor, along with a loaf of a particular type of bread, slicing the desired meats and cheeses, and doing so at that very moment is expensive and time-consuming. It wouldn't be if enough people requested sandwiches to use up all of what we opened. The remainder of what was use for that order is almost always thrown away as an overall loss in profit, as well as being a giant waste of food. Sometimes, we can't even do that much, either because we don't have what they want, or because we know we have run out of it. I spoke with a lady (and I use the term loosely) over the phone wanting aquamarine-colored icing. I told her we have blue. She wanted the message on the cake to be perfectly written in the middle, the decorations in certain spots, and was making sure to grumble while telling me all of this. No matter. I took the order and repeated it until she agreed that all the information was correct, but not without adding one last grumble about how it should be aquamarine. When she picked it up, she took it up front, told customer service it wasn't the color she wanted and got it for free. I'm glad I wasn't notified of this until after she had left, or I would have gone up front to plead my case. I may be in the right, but we're suppose to play guilty at all times. Don't actually apologize, but don't disagree with them, either.

At other times, we're trained not to do something. There's no number in the system to ring it up, and charging it as something else can complicate inventories and arouse suspicion from management about potentially helping friends or family by giving them unjustified discounts. When someone new comes into our department, one of the things I make sure to teach them is to be wary of the requests some will make. Old people are particularly manipulative. While marking down items out on the sales floor, I've had more than a few of them talk to me about their fixed incomes and the costs of medication or medical attention, and then it seems like I can help alleviate them of these problems by knocking off an additional twenty cents or reducing a pastry or loaf of bread that is suppose to be sold at full price for another day or two. Others will purposely share unfavorable opinions and comments in order to goad the worker into saying something to get himself in trouble while customer service gives them free food as an apology. It doesn't matter who is right or wrong. "Give the baby his/her bottle and go back to work" is how we usually handle things. A manager might even insult us in front of the customer, then, as the person leaves with their spoils, the manager will turn around, talk nice to us again, and remind us that it's only business. This has happened to me twice, and, in both events, it left me with a sour attitude the remainder of the shift. Keep that in mind. If you try anything dubious, you'll likely get what you want, but it'll leave a bad impression upon yourself, because we will remember people who give us a hard time in front of management. This is also true for those who intentionally try to be difficult with an order. There are restrictions on what a typical grocery store can do, and the customer is only right within these limits. We cater a little bit to everyone, offering basic needs and wants. For those of you who seem to take pride in being persnickety, please find a specialty store.

Minor things to address.
~ Don't stop us for assistance when we're shopping. Even when I'm not in uniform, someone will usually recognize me and start asking questions. If someone is "off the clock" it means they can be fired for doing their job while not being paid for it. I have a tendency to stop and help others, but not in that location. Anywhere but there.

~ If food says "(Hot)" it means it isn't cold. It has nothing to do with being spicy. We prepare some things to be ready to eat right away, and they last only a few hours before being replaced. We also prepare food to be chilled then sold refrigerated for two days. I prefer to buy cold product so I can place it in the oven at home later and have a relatively fresh-tasting meal, rather than get something that was nearing its two-hour limit and is desiccated. Cold food not only lasts longer, allowing us to provide something at all times while preparing more for the hot table, but it's also the only option available to those who rely upon food stamps.

~ Look at the signs and tags before stopping an associate. In every single major grocery store I've ever been in, there has always been a sign of some sort telling me what to find in each aisle. It's one thing to ask where coconut milk might be located, but it's another thing to ask where cereal is found. Right there, above you, is a big-ass sign that includes "cereal" on it! And everyone has met that one guy before. That special customer who wants to know where something is, and all you do is tell them to turn around. "Oh! I was looking everywhere for this and it's right here behind me. Thank you, sir." Some never even bother to look. They walk in and torpedo into someone stocking the shelves, wanting that person to find everything for them.

~ We don't make the prices. Quit blaming us and demanding answers for why they are what they are.

~ It's a minimum wage job. Threatening us by going to another store will have no effect. I even encourage it. Different stores have different deals. Make the most of your money and go where it's cheapest.

~ Do some research. There is no one at our store who has memorized all the ingredients of every individual item, and many of us have put little thought into what is appropriate for certain diets. If you are allergic to nuts, gluten, fruits, or have issues with salt, sugar, dyes, etc., then look that shit up on the internet! Even better, consult a dietitian and/or nutritionist. Once again, we work a minimum wage job. Do you really want advice from one of us about something that important?

~ Learn to be quick and courteous to us and the other shoppers. Don't block the aisles to chat. Don't cut in front of someone in line to demand help. Don't stand there for ten minutes staring at what we have while others behind you are stuck waiting to be served. Don't ask us if that's all we have on the hot bar or in the deli case. It's not like we are trying to hide hot food in the back. Don't order something then walk off. We need to make sure we know what you want and how you want it. Plus, other customers don't like the idea of standing quietly at the front of the line, and still not be acknowledged because we are preparing something for someone who isn't even there. Don't use a funeral as an excuse to not order ahead. Even calling right before driving to the store is time we can use to make a tray or fry chicken. Besides, I've had deaths in the family and I've been to funerals for those people. Never once did any of them turn into a mad dash to piece together a farewell party for the deceased. We always had at least a day to get things in order.

~ Sliced meats and cheeses come in "loaves" that are not always perfect. The ones that will look like they are would be the processed ones. Until you are buying the cheap stuff,  the loaf itself may be misshapen, causing itself to wobble on the slicer. This might result in odd-looking slices. Don't like it? Demand perfection at a specialty store.

~ Thinner doesn't make the food taste better. If that was true, I would cut my pizza into sixteen slices to double the flavor and eat ice cream with a smaller spoon. What thinner slices will do is cause the meat/cheese to spoil sooner. This goes for "shaved" or "chipped" meat as well. Think of how much faster crushed ice melts in your drink compared to cubes.

~There seems to be an odd rumor of how fresh our hot food is. It's made on the day it is served. Not the day before. Not even half a day before. That food gets two to four hours, depending upon what it is. That's it! Those numbers in the "Fresh from the oven at..." sticker are... *dramatic pause* the time of when it came out of the oven. The price for an entire chicken isn't "2:30".

Lastly, we get complaints all the time for an assortment of things. Sometimes, it feels like we can't do anything to please anyone. If a person does his job adequately, then let customer service know about it. "It takes a lot to make me highly satisfied!" Why? For eight bucks an hour, what do you expect from one of us? To kiss your ass and wash your feet with our hair? Yeah, there are many who don't even have a job, but that doesn't give someone the right to talk down to me or one of my associates as if we're sub-human. Treat us with respect, and most of us will return the favor (sometimes with added enthusiasm).

"You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? It's like, 'Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law.'" 
-- Chris Rock