2001 - LLCC Solar Car (Prominence II) + Hydrogen Fuel Cell

2001 American Solar Challenge LLCC Stop

2001.06.15 - American Solar Challenge stop at Lincoln Land Community College, Springfield, IL

Review - River City Ransom EX (GBA)

River City Ransom is a favorite game among many “old school” gamers. It’s fast paced combination of action and RPG coupled with a first rate two player set up make this a game everyone loves to play. So, like its NES bother Super Dodge Ball, River City Ransom gets a GBA revamp. This game gets not just a complete facelift to 16 bit style graphics, but also many new features. The best new feature, and probably the worst, is the save system. No longer will gamers be plagues by extremely long strings of random symbols and letters. Now you can simply create a data file on the game pack with your character’s abilities.

Review - Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)

1 Player | Sega Sega’s mascot makes the jump to true 3D. Though I believe there was a previous 3D Sonic for Saturn or 3sx or Sega CD or one of those, now he’s 128 bit powered and it shows. This is the Mario 64 of the Dreamcast, the game that was thoroughly crafted to take advantage of the system’s overall capabilities. Certainly a worthy game and surely feels like a Sonic game to me.

Review - Movie - Cool As Ice

So Ice and his group come into this little Nowheresville town. Vanilla ‘Johnny’ Ice and his buddies stop at this motorcycle shop where Ice runs into this girl nammed Kathy (Ice is cool and calls her ‘Kat’) that he thinks is attractive and swipes her planner. Common movie set-up right? Well, Later he goes to meet up with the girl only to find that she has already gone out with her boyfriend to the local hang out. Ice asks for directions from these two men outside of Kat’s, the girl’s house. This sets up a key event later. Since the two men are actually out to get Kat’s father. Ice heads out to meet Kat, only to end up preforming rap in place of the horribly pathetic band there. After Ice dances with Kat, she requests that he give her book back, and he says he will tomorrow. Kat then proceeds to break up with her boyfriend and gets taken home by Ice on his bike. Also while Ice and Kat are out the two men mentioned previously speak to Kat’s father and we find out they are apparently after $500,000 from some sort of extortion scheme from when Kat’s father was in the police force. After dropping off Kat, Ice heads back to the garage where Kat’s old boyfriend is beating on the other band member’s bikes with a bunch of other guys. Vanilla proceeds to beat the shit out of the group in a show of just how tough he is. The next morning Kat wakes up to find Johnny Ice in her bed and they go out and spend a day together, when they return home Kat is forbidden to see Ice anymore since her parents suspect he is in cahoots with the two evil ex-cops threatening them (since he was asking directions from them earlier, he is obviously in league with them). The next day Kat gives Ice the cold shoulder and he decides to leave the town after spending some time with Kat’s video game obsessed brother (we see him playing Tecmo Bowl in one scene and hear him playing Mario 3 in another). Soon after Ice drops off Kat’s brother the kid is kidnapped by the two cops. In a convenient twist, Johnny Ice shows up for one last goodbye to Kat only to find a tape left by the bad guys on the doorstep. When he gives the tape to Kat’s parents they mistake Johnny once again for being in cahoots with the two ex-cops. Before Kat’s father can call the cops on Johnny Ice, Kat runs off with the tape to Ice and they discover the location of the kidnappers through the ever cliche “There is background noise on the extortion tape that we recognize” trick. So of course Ice saves he day and redeems himself with Kat’s family, and Ice’s band spends the whole time listening to music and goofing off with the mechanics in the garage. Little Tommy get freed and turns himself into a little Vanilla Ice wannabe. And of course Johnny Ice and Kat get together happily ever after. Not before one last confrontation with the Ex-boyfriend where Ice and Kat leap off of the boyfriend’s corvette on Ice’s bike. Overall the movie is OK, once it gets past the first 20 minutes where it seems to making a lot of effort to make a joke out of itself… and you can’t get much cooler then Ice Ice Baby!

Review - Disgaea Hour of Darkness (PS2)

PS2 – Atlus – 1 Player Lately I haven’t been the type to buy games until they’ve been marked down at least twice. However for some insane reason I picked this game up very soon after it came out based on one person’s recommendation. Sounds like a mix for disappointment personally but in the end it was a good idea. For the most part I really hate these grid based Tactical RPGs. Final Fantasy Tactics was frustratingly boring/difficult/lame after like 4 battles. This game is ten times the game FFT was. The battles are much quicker for one thing, especially if you’re replaying old matches for experience. Also you can move all your characters on one turn, something I really hated in FFT. Though I must admit after a few days of regular playing it gets a little old. I find eventually become a bit tired of this game and become distracted by other games or other things going on.