David and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days (in New York) Chapter 1

The past two weeks have been busy. Between working 9 to 5 (plus commuting), errands in the evening, and working on costumes for New York Comic Con at the last minute, free time has been a luxury. Hell, even sleep would have been a welcome addition to my daily schedule. Sadly sacrifices were made and promises were broken. I'm still hoping to get a Battlefield 3 hands-on post up sometime before the game launches on Tuesday. Seeing as how I haven't had many hands on any console for awhile I figure I should dig a little deeper into the beta before reporting back. Here's a sneak preview of what I've played so far: It's goddamned awesome. More to come.

49 seconds of disgusting. Thanks EA/DICE.

Despite my hectic schedule there was fun to be had during the weekends. Sure they were busy weekends, involving two perfectly beautiful Saturdays spent in my most hated of cities:


New York.

Seriously, just awful

I don't want to get into a whole thing here, I just can't stand the place. Fortunately there is one redeeming factor in this cesspool: The Nintendo World Store.

Courtesy http://www.nintendoworldstore.com/

I rarely visit New York without stopping here. It's a small store, only two medium sized floors. Regardless of size it's a destination for any video game fan, old school or new. They usually deck the place out with all sorts of promos for recent or upcoming games, and two weekends ago the store was celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda.

Sorry for the quality of the pic, but the lighting was wicked hard on my camera. For a store half covered in glass you'd think it would receive better natural light. Try as I may I was only able to grab one decent pic of these four Link stencils by the main entrance. Each had a different pose; luckily this was also the best pose they had. Up on the second floor, however more surprises were waiting (with slightly better photos).

Hi, Nintendo Store? You accept first-born children as currency, right?

The monstrous Triforce greeted visitors coming up the center stairwell to the second floor. It was a simple display with some face greenery, but it looked pretty cool for a store window dressing. As for the gold-colored Shigeru Miyamoto signed Gameboy Advance SP? Well, that beauty was part of a mini-museum dedicated to 25 years of Zelda goodies.

I want everything that case. Now.

There was way too much stuff to spend all day taking pictures in the case alone and I had barely glanced around the rest of the store. Sure enough the Nintendo World Store was stocked with exclusive 25th anniversary Zelda shirts and swag, and at unexpectedly unrip-offy prices. Speaking of not expensive things, I did manage to pick up a little piece of exclusivity before I left.

Coinciding with the recent release (or re-release) of Star Fox 64 3D was this set of character dog tags, one for each of the main pilots: Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Peppy. There's not much going on the front, just some basic character art. Totally making up for that is the inclusion of quote for each pilot on the back of the tag.

Every shrill noise that escapes his mouth is like a dagger in my ear.

These aren't terrible fancy for dog tags and Nintendo wasn't asking much in terms of price. The outer packing is a nice sturdy box with the big logo which I like, and the clerk at the register understood the importance of picking the set in the best condition. After leaving the store that day I felt pretty good about my experience...

...That is, until I opened the box again about twenty blocks later and half an hour before I was due at a wedding. Twenty blocks too far and staring at a ridiculous scratch running straight down Falco's tag. Mortified, I had no choice but to finish out the weekend and head back to Massachusetts.

Would I find a replacement dog tag, or would they be sold out by my return the following weekend? Stay tuned, for Chapter 2 of David and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days (in New York) - aka, the obnoxiously long-titled post.