Hung Truong: The Blog!

Wii Sports – Baseball

So I was playing with my new Wii. The sports game that comes with it is really fun. One game that I suck at in real life, but can do okay in with Wii sports is Baseball. Unfortunately, I just lost my first game. I think the game gets harder as your skill level progresses.

The first game, I got like, 11 runs or something. And there’s only 3 innings! I’d say that Wii Baseball is probably the most physically challenging, since you’re either flinging the remote as fast as possible when pitching, or doing an actual bat swing when batting. Eventually I got tired of doing the whole “hey batter batter” thing and just used one hand. I still use two when I’m not sore, though.

During my first loss, I found out that there’s a mercy rule. Yep, when you have 0 runs and the opponent has 5, it’s time to just give up. This is pretty much crap, since on my first game, I won by like, 10 runs or so. I totally would’ve made a sick comeback, too. Stupid Wii baseball…

Hung Truong Is The Sexiest Man Alive: The Song!

Back in High School, my friend Jennae wrote a song entitled “Hung Truong Is The Sexiest Man Alive.” While cleaning up my room, I found the original manuscript, so I decided to put it up on my blog for your reading pleasure. I think it started out as a one verse joke that got a little carried away. The song is pretty long, a veritable five page opus, so here are the main points:

• I, Hung Truong, am the sexiest man alive
• Women want me, and men want to be like me
• The singer wishes she was my girlfriend, but she can’t be because I’m too good for her because I am the sexiest man alive
• It is a fact that I am alive, and not dead
• I can beat up superheroes and look better in their clothing
• I am courageous and I recite poetry eloquently
• A large statue of myself erected in the city center would be desirable to the singer

Maybe I can get Jennae to record it and release the thing as an MP3! If you want the long version, look no further. Since I’m narcissistic and bored, I’ve typed out the whole thing:

I Finally Got A Nintendo Wii! Wii First Impressions.

That’s right! Two months after the Wii was released in America, I finally got it! Yesterday was some kind of national Wii holiday. Apparently 1/21/06 was the day for all retailers to hold the Wii. This is probably why I couldn’t find one in stock for the past two weeks since my last attempt.

I decided to head over to Circuit City around 9am. That’s an hour before they open. I was surprised to see two guys standing there. They told me that the Circuit City guys only had 2 Wiis to sell to the general public, and that the others would go to their pre-order customers. False Advertsising!!! I’m probably going to file a compaint.

Next I got to Best Buy around 9:30. I was under the impression that the store would open at 11am, since that’s what the online store checker thing said. The opening time was actually 10am. So I got there only 30 minutes early. I saw a pretty long line and counted around 38 people in front of me. Still, I figured they might have a ton; they’re Best Buy.

So once 10am rolls along, they start herding us in there like cattle. One person remarked that it was a good sign that they didn’t hand out tickets. There must be enough for everyone in line. We snaked around the store until we got to the video game section. There we waited for each person to pick up a Wii and move along. It was kind of like the Soup Nazi thing from Seinfeld. When I finally get to the Wiis, there are about 3 left after mine. My linemates and I all share some high tens.

In my daze of my accomplishment, I decided to also pick up Legend of Zelda: Twighlight Princess at full price. This is even though I know I can get it cheaper. I’m a tool like that. I didn’t even use a gamer’s gift card…

As far as the Wii goes, it’s pretty darn cool. The remote control is neat because it can give you some vibration feedback when you’re going over buttons. The IR sensor is still kind of inaccurate, but maybe I need to do some more calibration.

Wii Sports is insanely fun. I could probably play the bowling game for hours at a time. That is, if my arm wasn’t so sore right now. My mom even played it, and did really well in bowling. My dad couldn’t quite get the hang of releasing the button before throwing the ball.

Zelda is pretty cool, but the graphics seem kind of lacking. I’m gonna go get a component cable and see if that doesn’t help things. I think the Wii graphics are only slightly better than the Gamecube, which was actually the strongest console of the last generation…

Another cool thing is that the Wii has full backwards compatibility for the Gamecube. You just flip open the top and find some memory card slots and controller ports. I really wish there was an option to save to internal memory, though. It kind of blows that I need to keep using the very small Gamecube memory card.

All in all, I think the Wii is very cool. Hopefully the good games will keep rolling in. I might have to pick up Trauma Center or Wario Ware. Wii Play is coming out soon, too.

Nintendo Power – Now You’re Playing With Power!

I saw this offer on Slickdeals for a 12-month subscription to Nintendo Power for like, $5. It got me to thinking about how cool Nintendo Power used to be. That’s right, used to be…

I remember getting a subscription to Nintendo Power when they had an awesome promotion where you got Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest in Japan) with a year’s subscription. That’s right, you got a video game for subscribing to Nintendo Power! The deal was too sweet to pass up, so I finally convinced my mom to get me the magazine. I ended up getting addicted to RPGs because of Dragon Warrior, too.

I pretty much learned how to read on Nintendo Power. It was so awesome. Nintendo Power would usually have entire maps of games laid out on two pages. I’d sit there and plan out how the game would actually play, even though I never ended up playing the actual games.

I also recall there being some pretty cool comic strips like the Metroid one and Zelda one. There was also a comic about the origins of Wario, which was really weird in retrospect.

I remember always trying to win prizes in the survey contests in each issue. They would be ridiculous prizes, like “win every single SNES game ever!” Too bad I never won…

I guess my love affair with Nintendo Power ended with the whole Playstation generation thing. Like the Playstation got FFVII, and the Nintendo 64 graphics were horrible. I didn’t even get a Nintendo 64 (though my cousin did, and we had a blast with Goldeneye). Plus I realized that Nintendo Power was probably the most biased publication ever. I don’t think I ever saw a score below 7.0. And there were definitely Nintendo games that were seriously bad.

I did end up getting a Gamecube, and I really want to get a Wii. Maybe it’s time I resubscribed to Nintendo Power… Then again, do I really want to pay $5 for a subscription to Nintendo ads?

Giant Steps Reunion! Ska Lives! Maybe…

So last month, this band called Giant Steps had some kind of reunion going on. I was a dummy and didn’t go. But The band played on anyway and Tom Siegel, trumpet player, sent me a link to some videos of the event. I didn’t wanna kill their bandwidth, so I’m putting up the clips on my own site.

Giant Steps was a local (Albuquerque) ska band that was pretty popular during the “third wave” of ska. I’d pin that era somewhere around 1996 to uh, 2000 or so. At least, that’s when the third wave was most popular. As far as I know, Reel Big Fish is still doing their thing.

Anyway, Giant Steps was fairly well known to me, because two of my high school teachers were in it! My high school band teacher, Paul Blakey, played baritone sax, and Mr. Siegel, I mean… Tom played trumpet. How cool is that? I actually didn’t end up going to many of their gigs, but I did hear them live a few times.

One thing that Tom told me is that you can now buy Giant Step’s CDs on iTunes! How cool is that? I’d still rather have the hard copy though, for nostalgia purposes and whatnot.

Ooh. Also, I remember hearing that “Feel the Thunder” was written about Paul Blakey’s snoring. I’m not if this is true, but why would anyone lie about that?

On to the videos:

Boom Ska: