1233 Tornado Shelter.

Alex is dangerous in her element. John is hardly a moron, but he’s severely overmatched as far as base intelligence goes. This would be a rare moment of him staring to feel inferior. Unlike, say… Reggie, however, he is aware and accepting of his shortcomings. Which allows him to remain calm in the face of them. As I often say, a man needs to know his limitations. That said, a person shouldn’t feel bound to stay with in them. Reach, but be aware that if you reach too far things might not go as well as you hope. Be prepared for that. Be prepared for people to point it out endlessly. X3

Speaking of failings, I purchased Mario Gold World Tour from the eshop the other day. It’s ten bucks less than a usual Nintendo offering. This is likely because they have removed about that much content from the game so it can be downloaded. If you buy the whole pack it takes the base price right back to what you would expect for a new 3DS game: $35. I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand I appreciate being able to budget in a new game that I can add to over time. On the other hand, all that stuff I just said about content being removed. Of course Nintendo maintains that the content was always meant to be downloadable. I think that’s horse shit.
Putting all that aside, it’s not like the game isn’t a full game minus the DLC. You get access to plenty of characters and your collection of Miis. There are also plenty of courses to keep you busy and items to earn via play. You’ll get your money’s worth if you never buy anything else.
Honestly, Nintendo has been pretty good about DLC so far. The Fire Emblem stuff really enhanced my enjoyment of the game. The Mario Bros 2 stuff was cool, but I didn’t feel like I was missing out when I didn’t get it all. I will probably get all the gold stuff because I really like Mario Golf on a handheld. As I said on my Twitter feed I chose Reggie as my gold avatar because he seemed the type. I then played the worst game of golf I’ve ever played to set my handicap… What’s hilarious though is that the game chooses a selection of Miis to be your avatar’s entourage. All of my Miis are the comic cast except for my personal Mii, so on every hole they all gather around to praise Reggie. Honestly the Reggie Mii acts pretty much like how I imagine he should. He celebrates a bit too long, and gets grief stricken when he fails, but ultimately ignores his mistakes. It’s also cute that the cast is supportive of him in his efforts. They give him hugs when he messes up big and it gives him the strength to try again.

I actually never played a Mario Golf game before Advance Tour. This is because golf is boring as fuck. Why would I ever bother with such a turd of a sport? I only tried it because I had just started working for EB Games when Advance Tour came out and my manager forced me to buy it. He insisted that I would enjoy it and that we weould enjoy playing it together. To his credit he was correct. The RPG elements of the game sold me on it completely. There are some RPG leanings in World Tour, but it appears to come down to equipment selection. This disappoints me honestly, but I understand the change. It’s probably to help even out the online tournaments. In Advance Tour you actually leveled up your golfer into a ball whacking monster, which incidentally is the name of a popular Japanese porn series.
In addition to my manager my friend Zac also played Mario Gold obsessively. (Zac, by the way, was also obsessed with Fire Emblem to the point he would play while driving.) Eventually we all became so skilled at it that we insisted that nearly every hole had to be completed with a trick shot. Backspin was always my favorite. Overshooting the hole to purposefully roll the ball in backwards is pretty satisfying. It’s also how I got my only once ever hole in one.

It’s getting to be that tornado time of year again. We’ve already been under two watches at least. Precipitation of any kind is rare out here. Even more so recently, but we have has a tornado pass within a mile or so of the house. A couple of properties have been destroyed, or at least badly damaged, in recent memory, so we remain vigilant. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, there needs to be some mandatory shelter laws on the books in some places. Especially since wind is pretty much the only disaster you get in large sections of the Midwest. It’s just a damn shame that so many people get killed by a weather condition that can be easily thwarted with a hole in the ground. Of course some people die because they are never alerted to the danger. Unfortunately sometimes a person can just sleep through even the loudest sirens. I’m more concerned with people living in apartments with no place to go when things start to blow. That was one of the worst things about my old apartment in Kansas. It was basically a sheet rock box. Riding out a storm in it was less than ideal. In one particularly bad storm I ended up driving across town to a friend’s house.

Honestly I think the shelter idea is kind of a lost cause. Fatalities happen every year and everybody just kind of shrugs. I don’t know what the death to outrage ratio needs to be, but we haven’t reached it apparently.