First off, Pimpin' Sytems 2 is on hiatus... again. Partly because I spent every cent of that computer's budget for my Gibson, and partly because I upgraded my current computer a few days ago. Granted, it's still not worthy of running Lost Planet or Crysis, but any computer that can play Bioshock on medium smoothly is good enough for me. Don't expect anthing major on it until 2008 comes to a close. It's NOT dead, just (sadly) delayed.

Everyone's saying how 2007 was a great year in gaming. It was, although I'm a lot more excited about a few 2008 games than anything from last year:

Radical Entertainment's new third person inhuman mayhem simulator, Prototype. It's been somewhat low-key, but the early trailers show that this game means buisiness. This is the game I'm anticipating the most, out of all the games I can think of for 2008. I'm not going to rant about Prototype, but if you get a chance watch that trailer. There's something for everyone to love. Except for squeamish people.

Burnout Paradise. To me, Dominator was a big letdown. They took Burnout 3 and ripped out everything that made it so unique and fun in the first place. Paradise is the holy grail of Burnouts so far, an open world area where you can literally body-check a car into the railing, smashing it into shreds and smashing those shreds into flaming particles of metal is too good to pass up. The only concern is how it's going to play out in the final release. Criterion has been great with presentation so far, BLACK and Burnout Revenge were marvels in keeping their theme up and alive. But games that have tried similar ideas *cough TDU cough* came out as fun games but not as amazing as everyone anticipated. I'm keeping my hopes up, but even if it's half as good as the first few Burnouts I'm still going to play it.

Spore. Sims, but way bigger. I want to play this game. Just tell Will Wright that if you release a near-finished copy of the game at E3, don't delay it for a year and a half.

Far Cry 2. Far Cry rocked. The developer switch might takes out a tiny bit of the uniqueness Crytek created for Far Cry, as well as a little of the hype, but my guess is they're going to stick with what worked in round 1 and add a few minor details. If they don't screw up the formula Far Cry 2 will be a great game.

Apart from updating my aging Dreamcast-era avatar with a new Portaly one, that's about it... I'm not a person who can write about every game I'm looking forward to this year, I could write another day's worth of text about MGS4 but instead I'll settle with this.

Buy the Orange Box. 50 bucks, for literal days on end of pure Team Fortress bliss. Portal and the HL2 set just add to the mix of raw awesomeness that this game contains. I'm putting off my computer rebuild for a bit just to sink in some more. It's that wicked.

You'll find me in TF2 under the handle "Ciao Time", BTW.

(Foreword: This is a work-in-progress build, and probably not be finished until early 2008. This page will be updated periodically to reflect changes in the design.)

(UPDATE: Jan. 2008: Due to me laundering all my money on a new guitar and upgrades for my current rig, PSE2 is delayed... for a bit longer than 2 months. Expect a summer update with a few parts, and the thing might be ready to go for winter of this year.)

Alright, welcome to the second edition of Pimpin' Systems! Today's project is a little unorthodox: I'm going to take a very low-end computer (a Hewlett-Packard a1116x, to be exact) and turn it into a real gaming machine... while keeping a reasonable budget.

The first thing I noticed about the HP was that its' internal components were very outdated. Don't let it's snazzy external appearance and big, shiny OS (it came with Vista Home Premium) fool you, 'cause this thing is weak. Let's go take a look at some quick stats for the a1116x:

• RAM: 504 MB (they just couldn't add another 8 MB to make it work, couldn't they?)
• CPU: Intel Pentium 4@ 3.06 gHz (not that bad, actually)
• Graphics Card: NONE! THE HORROR!!!
• Motherboard: PCI compatible (not PCI Express, just 1993 PCI)
• Windows Vista Performance Index: 1.0. (ouch)
• HD: 200 GB (good enough for now)

Now, here's a quick look at the projected final stats of the system. Due to the cost factor, I will not be upgrading small necessities such as the sound card and the hard drive, and due to the fact that I want the computer to retain it's original form I won't be upgrading the case. This is going to change periodically as new technologies come out, so stay tuned! (Text in green symoblizes parts that are already bought/installed.)

• RocketFish 700W Power Supply

• Linksys Broadband/LAN Ethernet Modem

• Intel Core 2 Duo (possibly the "Wolfdale" spec CPU, when it's released)

• 2-4 GB of RAM

• PCI-Express 2.0 compatible motherboard (Intel X38???)

• Nvidia PCI-Express 2.0 compatible graphics card (there's a possibility that I might upgrade from a single v.card to an SLi setup in fall 2008, so stay tuned!)

• Upgraded cooling fan, if necessary

• 1 TB hard drive (I doubt I'm going to get this one until waaaay down the road)

That's it for now, folks! Come back in late '08 , when I attempt to start the fun part of the build. See you then!

EB Games' used section is basically giving away games right now. If you're looking for games, check it out. I just bought Gran Turismo 3 for 5 bucks yesterday!

Alright, how many of you still have a Game Boy Color? (*sound of crickets in background*)

...Well, it was a cool system at the time, but it was lacking a few features. That's where I come in.

Today's recipe for disaster: to take my good old 1999 Electric Purple Game Boy Color and slap on some stuff. That stuff includes a GameShark Pro, a combination screen magnifier/lighting system/stereo speaker set, and a rumble kit, all courtesy of Interact.

The assembly is really easy, you just have to mount each part in the right order. The speakers go on first, followed by the rumble kit. Since the rumble kit plugs into the Game Boy's headphone jack, the speakers had to be wired through it. Next was the GameShark, which simply slapped onto the cartridge slot. I added 2 AA and 4 AAA batteries to run the thing, and the masterpiece was ready.

Here's the finished system, next to a regular lime green Game Boy for a size comparison. The final product has three stereo speakers, a backlight, a 'magnifier', a rockin' rumble set, and the always-handy GameShark.

As you can see, it's anything but sleek.

But here it is, in it's crazy super-rockin' mayhem. Sure, it may not look the coolest, but it performs like a real champ.

The first installment comes to a close. A perfectly decent system has become a hardcore looks-don't-matter system for the masses. So, until next time*, keep on going.

*(Don't expect too many episodes.)

Well, the PS3 and the Wii are out of the gates. Everybody's asking the same old question: Who's gonna come out on top? Although it's really close to call at this point, but it's between the Xbox 360 and the Wii. Why these two? Just looking at the stats so far: Sony had a blockbuster with the PS1 and a good run with the PS2, Microsoft has just been (literally) buying a slot in the console market, and Nintendo, the veteran, just hanging back and watching the big dogs eat each other.

Here's the way I see it now:  Bill Gates' Xbox 360 appeals to the semi-hardcore group of people. They're just going to churn out games, and occasionally hit a big one. They did this with Halo and Gears of War, and they're probably going to stick with that. Sony's going to go head on with all the weapons blazing, the PS3 loaded with all the crazy multimedia stuff, strong launch titles like Resistance, and a price tag aimed at... people like Bill Gates. And Nintendo's going for everybody. This morning I clocked the sales of the Wii at 400 consoles per minute. 400 per minute. And they said they'd be making about 100,000 consoles a week. Nintendo is usually honest when they say they're going to do something extremely risky. The DS was almost like a big social experiment: will people buy something innovative or something hardcore like the PSP? They're using the strategy that already dominated the handheld market: make something that's affordable, readily available, appeals to people of all ages, and fun. And you know what? That simple strategy is going to win this war.