Various and sundry

IGN has a pretty amusing Top list this week: they chose to determine the 25 Worst instances of game box art.  There are several apparent categories: too much flesh (male - e.g. Rambo), too much flesh (male+female - mostly consisting of heroes'n'heroines dressed in their Brassieres Of Protecting), plain old Bad Art (e.g. Wonder Boy, Mega Man, several others), inclusion of odd elements that have - presumably - minimal amounts to do with the actual gameplay (like the Appalachianesque banjo player on the cover of the space war game Phalanx, the bizarro baby face on the cover of Super Bust-A-Move)...

.. and finally, the "What were they thinking when they came up with the game concept?" cover: Ninja Golf.  A clear winner. 

As a side note, I'd never seen the box art for the home console release of the original Pac-Man (heck, I'd never seen the art for, much less heard of, most of the games listed, and I'm sure that's for all the right reasons), but I thought it had a certain charm to it.

I've now logged over 5 hours (yeah, woo!) of gameplay on Zelda: Twilight Princess and so I feel like I can make some early comments on the game. 

( Spoiler indicator: I've just acquired a shield. )

 
In non-gaming stuff:

- The boxes that arrived at work had everything!  And there was even a packing slip enclosed!

- The little lilac bush in our back yard, which has never had more than one spray of flowers on it (and more often had none at all) has FOUR SPRAYS of buds!!!  *happy joy dance*

- I bought myself new ice skates!  I'd been using my mom's old skates for a while.  Said skates were probably 20+ years old, and had no support in the boot above about the height of a pair of dress shoes.  Not useful when you're trying to do 3-turns and mohawks and stuff.  I'll probably spend the rest of the current session of skating classes just getting used to them, but it'll be a good thing overall.

- We had a lovely time hanging out with friends this past weekend, and listened to several chapters of At The Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald driving to the meeting point and back.  Delightful story.  But do move along, sir.  There's no religious symbolism to be seen here.  ;)