RECORDS
continued from page 9
are for sale, this isn't a place for peo
ple just out to find expensive first
editions. The people here honestly
seem to care about music.
"My first record was Telstar' by the
Tornadoes and I haven't been the
same since," dealer and KVVVA DI
Marc Time said. "As a kid I would take
money for my clarinet lessons and use
it to buy singles, like 'All Along the
Watchtower' by Jimi Hendrix."
I guess that part of the reason I'm
sympathetic toward these people is be
cause I'm almost one of them. After
blowing nearly $40 and filling a back
pack with everything from Aretha
Franklin to old 1960s garage rock
compilations, I shouldn't be one to
judge the obsessive behavior of others.
And this is obsessive behavior,
without a doubt. What other way is
there to explain the kinds of things
people search for at conventions
such as this?
"My personal genre that I'm
searching for is Christian ventrilo
quistrecords,"Timesaid. "Anything
where people have a puppet and are
singing evangelical songs, that's
what I'm looking for."
Of course, there is no place like a
record convention to find obscure
music. The mere volume of items is
rather astounding, even if most of it
is stuff hardly anyone would want
to buy. How much demand is there
for old Styx and Journey albums
anyway? But in general the main
stream is set aside and people aim
to find that one thing that they have
never been able to get on CD. Old
Chet Atkins albums, the early works
of Dick Dale or a vinyl copy of The
Who's "Tommy," which no amount
of digital remastering could im
prove upon.
Who knows what else? What peo
ple obsess over and why they obsess
over it is always a murky area for dis
course. Why do people get so worked
up over the collection of wax discs?
Why do they take such a defensive at
titude should anyone question the va
lidity of their obsession? These are not
easy questions.
At least with music, the obsession
is more than just the materialistic
collection of stuff, unlike lunchbox
or baseball card collecting. It is true
that a good vinyl record sounds bet
ter than a CD, it is true that there is a
lot of music you can only find on
record and it is definitely true that
records are cheaper. But it is still just
an obsession, and, as I realized at
this convention, has no deeper
meaning other than itself.
Contact the senior Pulse reporter
at ryannyburg@dailyemerald.com.
FROG
continued from page 9
double that when using the series'
trademark Booster.
But, given a little playtime, players
will adjustto the unusual game me
chanics and can start to win races.
Winning grand prix earns players tick
ets, the in-the-spirit-of-arcade-gaming
currency of the F-Zero universe, and
also opens race car parts for purchase,
letting players design their own cus
tom cars. Players can spend tickets to
buy those parts or unlock more cars
(only four of the game's 41 cars — the
Blue Falcon, the Fire Stingray, the
Golden Fox and the Wild Goose, all
of the original F-Zero's fame — are
playable at the get-go). Tickets can
also be traded for new missions,
among other things, in the game's
Story Mode.
The Story Mode itself follows a
mostly non sequitur plot surround
ing the F-Zero defending champi
on, bounty hunter and generic
poster boy Captain Falcon. Players
race on specially designed courses,
sometimes having to meet special
conditions to advance to the next
chapter. In one course, Black Shad
ow (a mildly goofy but generic
"cold-blooded king of evil feared by
all") places a bomb on the Blue Fal
con, and the Captain has to com
plete a serpentine highway course
while never slowing below 700
kilometers per hour, Speed-style,
lest the bomb detonate. Demand
ing exacting skill, the Hard and Very
Hard difficulty versions of the Story
Mode challenges will thwart even
the efforts of players who have best
ed the game's Expert and unlock
able Master difficulties. (At those
difficulties, CPU cars are smart
enough to knock human players off
the track, if they get a chance, but
gamers can fight back with their
own Side and Spin attacks.)
The game's comic book cast har
bors no shortage of larger-than-life
sci-fi and pop culture archetypes: the
Mighty Gazelle is a pilot who sur
vived an earlier F-Zero accident and
was "recreated as a cyborg with en
hanced reflexes," Bio Rex is a sen
tient dinosaur cloned from a fos
silized egg who, incidentally, is
racing so that he can satisfy his un
wavering appetite for mammoth
ribs; and Zoda, a dopamine
pumped "phantom," plots to con
quer Earth but is inexplicably still al
lowed to race. Such logical speed
bumps don't draw much notice,
though, as the game certainly does
n't take itself overly seriously.
Vehicles themselves vary widely in
driving style, too. Driving a the cus
tom 880-kilogram Queen Sapphire
handles radically differendy from the
2340-kilogram Black Bull, and the
possibilities for customizability —
after unlocking all parts available on
the American version of the game,
players can create 8000 different cus
tom cars — should satisfy even the
most Type A players.
The game's courses are masterful
ly designed, each testing a different
mix of skills. At the higher difficulty
levels, success depends partly on ju
dicious use of each car's Boost func
tion: Boosting saps a fraction of a
player's energy bar (which can be
depleted, too, through collisions
with other cars or guard rails), but
a car will explode if the bar empties
before the race ends. The visually
stunning and expertly designed
tracks vary from the highly technical
and very satisfying Aeropolis: Multi
plex to the challenging Fire Field:
Cylinder Knot, wherein racers dash
along the outside of a long, weav
ing cylinder, to the lush, looping
and imminently fun Green Plant:
Spiral. Winning the initially avail
able Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald
cups on at least normal Standard
difficulty unlocks the deviously
tricky Diamond Cup. (Players who
manage to conquer all four of these
cups on Master difficulty can un
lock the so-called AX Cup, which
includes the six fresh tracks from F
Zero AX, the arcade version of
the game.)
The highly recommended F-Zero
GX was released in August 2003 for
the Nintendo GameCube.
Contact the editorial editor
at traviswillse@dailyemerald.com.
POEM
continued from page 5
A boy holds his mother's cracked palms
And asks how much it costs to be free.
How much does it COST to be FREE?
We wear this paradox under orders of patriarchy
But father has broken his promise.
And so we are calling out into the dark of it all
For our mother to come nurture us back to wholeness,
Angels with dirty halos
Gone mad, mnning from Moloch only to consume
ourselves
Under telephone wires and TV screens,
Masturbating to phallic filled monuments
In Washington's wet dreams,
And they tell us to Buy, Buy, Buy, Buy!
As though enough fancy fabric may cover the truth.
The truth is we are wearing our pants over our eyes
And flexing our bear breasts like beasts.
Hanukkah feasts in the Holy land, and
The government is passing settlement laws
Across the dinner table to their children,
Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha-olam,
And the candles are burning
As a reminder of our faith, love, and strength
And sister is asking for a slice of Khallah
And it breaks in half as the bombs drop.
Another Palestinian child commits suicide,
Strangled by star spangled ropes,
Noosed by her own hopes, and lies,
Ihe lies, the lies, who lies? She lies,
Down beneath an Israeli bulldozer
And dies in the name of justice.
She was young with lungs full of revolution
But no real means for a solution.
Here I stand
Naked
In front of a cracked mirror,
Quest-ioning my origins,
Slave stories embedded beneath my skin,
Asking when will the war end,
And when did the war begin?
Israel is bordering genocide,
And the wall has been erected,
But I know naught what side of the fence
To stand on
— Anonymous
This poem was voluntarily submitted to the Emerald
for publication. Artistic submissions of any medium
can be sent to pulse@dailyemerald.com.
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