UPDATE: Quest for all North American Xbox titles

This is an update to my previous "Why wasn't I informed?!?" posts.

• F1 2001 does exist and was released on the Xbox. Xbox.com confirmed the title and I was able to find one on eBay. (Odd, because I've searched for it before on eBay and come up empty.)
• According to two different sources, F1 2002 was not a North American Xbox release. EA had planned to release it but ended up only doing a PS2 version.
• TransWorld Skateboarding is a dead project. It's sister projects, TransWorld Surf and TransWorld Snowboarding did get released. (These I already have.)
• Conan The Barbarian was a PAL-only release.
• Puyo Pop Fever is coming to the Xbox later this year.

Other games that I was missing:

• Bionicle -- I swear I've looked into this one several times and could not verify that it was released. But I found it listed on Xbox.com and was able to find it on eBay.
• Pro Cast Sports Fishing -- I had originally pre-ordered this title from Gamestop.com. They later informed me that they could not fulfill the order. From the way they worded their email, I thought the title had been cancelled. Nope! It just wasn't being carried by Gamestop.

Weird stuff on Xbox.com:

• Shayde: Monsters vs. Humans -- Xbox.com shows this as a released title, but I can't get any information on it. Metro3D, the publisher, does not list the title on their site, and the link from Xbox.com to the "official game web-site" in Metro3D's domain is a bad link.
• Armada 2: Star Command -- Another Metro3D title. Xbox.com claims it was released in February 2004, but again, Metro3D is silent and I can't find this sucker anywhere.
• BC -- Still listed with a "2005" street date. The official word from Lionhead Studios is that everyone on the BC project was reassigned. It's not officially cancelled, just on hold.
• Barbarian -- This one has me puzzled. I know that it was released in the UK, but I've found nothing outside of Xbox.com to support a North American release. Can any of y'all shed some light on this?
• Rent a Hero No. 1 -- I could swear this one was cancelled, but Xbox.com claims it was released in February 2004.
• Slam Tennis -- An Atari title that I can't find anywhere else but on Xbox.com. As far as I can tell, it's vaporware, though it may have been released in Europe.
• Syberia II is listed on Xbox.com, but not Syberia. How weird is that? In fact, Syberia only shows up on one page on Xbox.com: The HDTV Expert Guide. (Syberia supports 720p and 1080i screen resolutions.) But there are no links to the game from that page.

If anyone has some insight beyond mine on any of these titles, please let me know!

The Next Generation Starts in Amsterdam at X05 - Xbox

This just in: The Next Generation Starts in Amsterdam at X05 - Xbox

Why wasn't I informed?!? -- Part 2

Okay, I just ran through EBGames.com's list of pre-owned titles -- and found that there are more that I've missed. This really bites my bum, because I've done this exercise several times before.

Here are the newly found missing children:

• Test Drive Offroad: Wide Open -- This was my mistake. I thought this was the full title for Test Drive.
  
• NBA Starting Five -- Dunno how I missed this. I certainly knew it was out there.
  
• Freestlye Street Soccer -- Huh? Sports title: my eyes must have glazed over. Several times.
  
• Mojo! -- Okay, this one really chaps my hide because I've researched it twice in the past year, and from what I could determine, it had only been released for PAL systems, not NTSC. Yet today, there it was, big as life, available on EBGames.com. It certainly wasn't there the last couple of times I looked.

Now I wonder about other titles that I thought were either vaporware or just not released in North America: was Conan The Barbarian ever released for NTSC? Did TransWorld Skateboarding ever make it onto the Xbox? Did F1 2001 and F1 2002 break the PS2 barrier? Is Puyo Pop Fever really an Xbox title?

EDIT: According to Xbox.com, F1 2001 was a launch title. I have not been able to find a copy anywhere. Looks like I need to make a new eBay bot.

Why wasn't I informed?!?

Well, after spending a frustrating hour on 1up.com (it has the WORST GAME DATABASE INTERFACE EVER) I found out about two Xbox games I don't have -- and they are apparently a couple of real dogs:

• WTA Tour Tennis -- the first tennis game released on the Xbox was a failed tribute to the Women's Tennis Association. This one does not show up on TeamXbox.com or Xbox.com, but it is on 1up.com and IGN.
  
  
• WhiteOut -- A snowmobile game. I keep thinking I've heard of this, but it never made it into my database, or my collection. This shows up on TeamXbox.com as a "TBA" title, and most sites have not reviewed it, so I must have assumed it was vaporware.

I was able to order both from EBGames.com. I now feel like I'm playing Xbox Pok·é·mon: I gotta catch 'em all.

Looks like I need to do another exhaustive side-by-side comparison with all of the games sites again. It's gonna take days...

The really pathetic thing: as I look through the list of pre-played Xbox games on EBGames.com, I know with certainty every title that I have.

No wonder I haven't had a decent date in five years...

I AM an Uncle!

Let it be known to all that Kathryn Elise Abraham was delivered this morning via C-section at approximately 5:30 AM PDT today. She weighed in at just under 8 pounds and appears to be very healthy. Grandma says she's a beauty with fair skin and reddish-brown hair.

My sister was still in recovery, last I heard, but it seems that despite a few complications, all is well.

The Wall O' Games

I had a little task to do for XboxRated.com and ended up taking all of my Xbox games out of their cabinet. For fun, I stacked them so that I could take another picture for y'all.

With the exception of Cold Fear, which is still on sabbatical at The Frozin One's place, every Xbox title released in North America as August 11, 2005 is represented.

That's 637 titles.

I put the second-generation Steel Battalion controller in front to help give you a sense of how huge this collection has become. (Plus, it just looks cool.)

A few things to note:

• On the left side of the picture are 36 titles that are in GameStop sleeves. The were bought used and came with no manual or case. (Actually, one of them is Frogger Beyond, which is in a CD case and came from a vendor on eBay. It seems that title cannot be found at any major retailer.)
  
• If you zoom in, you will notice that the titles are upside-down (except for twenty or so in the left-most stack.) This is because my games are sorted by title and stacking them with the spines upside-down is the only way to get them back in the case alphabetically when they are stacked three deep.
  
• The titles that aren't upside down are in my "now playing" list, or were recently played when Frozin & Family came over for the weekend.
  
• If there is a "Limited Edition" release of a game, then the library includes that version of the release. (With the exception of Halo 2 -- I have both versions for LAN gaming.) Same comment for Morrowind, I only have the Game of the Year edition, not the original release. (Though, oddly, I have a copy of the original release manual -- somebody at EBGames screwed up and put the wrong manual in one of my pre-owned titles.)
  
• There are chairs behind the stacks which help support them.
  
• The right-most stack has 81 games in it. I got less ambitious as the stacks built to the left.
  
• Before the picture was taken, I had one minor fall -- about ten games from one column.
  
• After the picture was taken, I had seven separate stack falls involving over 200 games.
  
• Yes, I intentionally waited for X-Play to come on so that Morgan Webb's face (and only her face) would show just above the WOG. I was in the mood to jerk SlickMoney's chain. :)

EDIT: I just found out that there are six games missing from my database, and therefore, my collection. *sigh* I'll find some other way to photograph the monster (no, Slick, not Morgan Webb) once I have them ALL.

I'll be an uncle soon...

As I write this, my sister is in labor. Woo-hoo!

The Joys of Recess

No matter what you may think of John Bolton, President Bush did the right thing this morning in making a recess appointment.

For almost six years now, the Senate has been playing a childish game of keep-away rather than exercising their Constitutional duty to approve or dis-approve Presidential appointments. Rather than doing their job and going on record with a vote, they have pushed each mildly controversial nominee into a state of filibuster. Note that I said a "state of filibuster" -- these aren't real filibusters like you saw in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. No, these are fake filibusters. No one stays up all night. No one misses dinner. And the other duties of the Senate are carried forward.

And the results? Federal judge seats and ambassador positions remain empty for years at a time. People who have had the honor of being nominated for a position by the President sit in waiting, not knowing whether or not they will be changing jobs. The work of the government does not get done.

Fortunately, the Constitution provides a remedy -- one which this President has been loathe to use: recess appointments. The Constitution gives the right to the President to make judicial and ambassadorial appointments without the approval of the Senate at times when Congress is not in session.

Recess appointments are often pooh-poohed because they can fall into the category of "dirty tricks" -- an appointment can be made with no prior notice, railroading a nominee into position.

But this President has not done that -- he's played fair. Bolton was presented to the Senate five months ago. U.N. Ambassador is a key position -- one that should not be left vacant. But there are factions in the Senate that don't like Bolton. They weren't brave enough to take their concerns to a vote -- so they created a state of filibuster around Bolton, suspending him in political Limbo. The assumption was that, once again, the President would not exercise his Constitutional right to make a recess appointment.

That assumption was wrong, and it's about time. President Bush needs to put an end to this faux filibuster nonsense and start making recess appointments for all of the nominees he has presented to the Senate over the past 5½ years. I'm not saying he should start installing people that have not been discussed before, but certainly it's time to say "enough is enough" to the childish element in the Senate that has put the lives of so many people and the work of the United States judicial system on hold for so long.

Enjoy your recess, Mr. President.