Christmas 1990 Nintendo VS Sega
I found this video on gametrailers and thought it was a pretty interesting look back. This was just before the big 16-bit console battle heated up. The next year was the time when Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog and actually became a big competitor against Nintendo and then shortly after the Super Nintendo was released.
News program Good Morning America did a segment on Nintendo and its competitors during the 1990 holiday season. It was a question wether or not Nintendo could uphold their position as top game maker despite their older NES hardware compared to their rival’s 16-bit systems. Nintendo wasn’t gonna have their 16-bit system released in the States until the following year. More powerful systems also meant a higher price tag which was a major concern due to the U.S. economy at the time.
Finals Are Over
Tonight I had my last final. It hasn’t quite hit yet that the semester is over and probably won’t until grades come in. I think I had a good semester and hopefully get the grades I feel that I earned. I’m looking forward to only two classes next semester. I just checked and my degree has finally been changed from the old Multimedia Communication Technology to Digital Media and I am on track with all my credits to graduate in April.
On another note I decided to change to a Christmas theme on the site until the end of December. The theme I was using before had a few issues with WordPress 2.7. I played around with the php, but still couldn’t quite get it right. I’m searching around for a new permanent one to use after the new year. Hopefully after that things will stay the same. I’m looking for one that uses some of the new 2.7 features like threaded comments.
I hope all my readers have a great Christmas and New Year. We will be in St. George over the break, so hopefully we can meet up with some friends down there.
Xbox 360 Dead
Over the weekend it looks like the 360 finally died. We got back from Sarah’s concert Saturday night and wanted to pop in a movie. We turned on the Xbox and everything booted up fine, but no picture. Last night I finally finished all my homework before finals, so I had some time to take it apart and tinker around. After a couple of hours of tweaking and such nothing still came up. I still find it crazy that Microsoft put out such shoddy hardware. I guess I’m lucky it lasted this long. I’ve been looking around and I can get a replacement motherboard and dvd drive for $20-$30 shipped. I might go that route and see if I can revive it that way. If anybody has a dead 360 around it would be great if I could use it to experiment with to see if I can bring it back to life.
Goodbye KB Toys
KB Toys has announced today that they are filing for chapter 11 and plan to liquidate everything:
“The move was the result of a “sudden and sharp decline in consumer sales due to macro-economic concerns,” according to KB Toys vice president and comptroller Raymond Borst in the company’s filing. In particular, he pointed to a nearly 20 percent drop in same-store sales between Oct. 5, 2008, and Dec. 8, 2008. In the previous eight months of its fiscal year, same-store sales had been up 0.36 percent.”
I have many fond memories of going to KB as a kid. I haven’t really bought much there recently since their prices were always a few dollars more. I’ll have to go to the one in St. George one more time when we are there for Christmas. That leaves St. George without a dedicated Toy Store. I always thought Toys R Us would have been a good choice in the old Wal-Mart building before Dillards took it over at the Red Cliffs Mall.
2.7 Final
Well I’m a little behind. Yesterday RC2 was released and I was just checking out the WordPress site and the 2.7 final is out now. Upgrade is going on right now.
