Soda Fizz is an idea that Pickle and I had a few months back. Regular visitors to the site know that I am easily annoyed and generally an irritable person. Something in the brain chemistry of dumb and annoying people in this world causes them to gravitate to a person such as myself. With that said you can imagine what a usual day in my life is like. So I’m starting this column as a way to vent some of my frustrations I encounter on a day-to-day basis. I’ll do my best to keep everything game related, but occasionally something will piss me off so much that I’ll have to share. Those of you who are visiting the site for the first time, I am usually not this disgruntled, but this is my forum to blow off steam. I hope everyone enjoys.

Late night trips to Wal-Mart are a Snackbar ritual. Cone and myself are two people infamous for never getting enough sleep and being up all night wasting time. Being awake and bored at 4 am usually calls for a trip to good ole Wal-Mart. I mean hell, where else can you buy a new video game, a DVD and underwear in the middle of the night? Unfortunately every other freak in the world has the same idea. The only thing more bizarre than the patrons of Wal-Mart at 4 am is the cashiers and stock-boys. Without fail some idiot always decides to try and strike up a conversation with the SB crew every time we go in there. Idiots! It’s 4 in the fucking morning and I’m looking at PC games, do I look like a person you would want to try and kick off a friendship with? Leave me the hell alone and go back to looking up Barbie’s skirt or whatever the hell it was you were doing in the girl’s toy aisle.

One night after several hours of getting our asses kicked while playing WarCraft III on Battle.net Cone and I decided that we were never going to be any good at this game and it was time to head the Wal-Mart for a new one. To the Cone-mobile we go. Little did we know what awaited us at the store this particular evening.

When we first got there nothing seemed amiss. The cashiers all looked cracked out and pissed off. Several people in line were buying very strange items for this hour of the night, such as Windex. There was that family that thinks it’s a good idea to take their 5 year old and their 3 year old to the store at 4 am. Cone and I immediately passed all this and headed straight for electronics. Same overweight, shabbily dressed, toothless, white trash cashier was working in electronics. Nope, defiantly nothing out of the ordinary, typical late night Wal-Mart crowd.

We then proceeded to browse around some of the game display cases. We were having a pretty typical conversation that two friends would have when video game shopping; talking about games we’ve played, what we liked and didn’t like about them. We ended up stopped in front of the PS2 display case. I can’t even remember what game it was that Cone mentioned, but my immediate response was A

Yes folks the rumors are true, EA Games has released a slue of titles for the Medal of Honor series for all platforms. EA released the title of two games for the PC, MOH Allied Assault Expansion Pack 2, and MOH Pacific Assault both games have not been given a release date as of yet. Earlier this past Monday, EA announced the release of MOH Rising Sun due this coming fall for the Xbox, PS2, and GC. This game will take place in the pacific theater of World War II and will continue to its sequel in 2004.

EA reps expressed the desire to move on into the war to give players a wide range of diversity in game play. EA felt that it was time to move from the European Theater and move towards the Pacific for a different adventure. Rising Sun will have an enhanced multiplayer mode compared to its MOH Frontline multiplayer. Rising sun will have team play, deathmatch, and also cooperative play during the missions. EA is beginning Rising Sun with a pivotal point of the war. Instead of Omaha Beach like in Frontline, you will go through the invasion of Pearl Harbor. Marine Corporal Joe Griffin experiences the invasion of Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Singapore, Burma, and the Philippine Islands. You also begin the missions with your brother who you fight with side by side until battle separates the both of you. The search of your brother will take you to the sequel of Rising Sun. With new weapons, missions, cinematics, and game play, I am excited about what EA is going to do with the MOH series. Here are some of the rough screenshots and artwork developers displayed at the EA conference:

Our very own Snowcone humbly notified me about the EA Game Life Mall Tour that was kicking off this passed weekend which started in my current hometown Houston, Texas. I was kind of excited because I have never actually been to a gaming event before. As Saturday rolled around I got myself out of bed and made it to the mall. I expected the place to be filled with people just crowding around and killing each other to play the demos, fortunately it was not that bad. The demos were set up with 2 islands of TV?s. One island had 6 TV?s on each side and the other had 3 clusters of 4 TV?s. All TV?s were 27″ and every one had a console hooked up and a different game to be played. In the front of the main island were two massive Alienware computers set up for the demo of Rainbow Six Raven Shield. The bad part about that was that the systems kept crashing.

The demos being presented were as followed: The most anticipated Def Jam Vendetta, Rocky, Smugglers Run: WARZONE, Zone of The Enders, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Tiger Woods Golf PGA Tour 2003, Ghost Recon, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, The Sims, Rayman 3 Hoodlum Havoc, Splinter Cell…and many more. I had the opportunity to play most of these games for about 20 to 30 minutes a piece or until I finished the demo. As you can see, some of these games have already been out for other consoles. This tour enabled viewers to experience the game on consoles it had not previously been released on. I spent most of my time playing Rocky and Def Jam Vendetta, which let me tell you, were the best games at the tour. If it wasn?t for the damn computers crashing then Rainbow Six Raven Shield would’ve won the award. The tour reps were so busy playing, they really did not answer anyone?s questions or comments which I thought sucked. The tour reps also did not have much to give away either. Delta Force: Black Hawk Down and Nightfire on PC were among the only demos being given away including some stickers and posters as well. If you are in any of the cities that the tour will be held at I suggest stopping by and checking it out. The EA Game Life Mall Tour Takes will continue on through the month of March and will hit ten cities in seven states. For info on the tour stops check out the EA website.

Scheduled Tour Dates:

March 1: Houston, TX – Willowbrook Mall
March 2: New Orleans, LA – The Esplanade
March 8: Miami, FL – Aventura Mall
March 9: Jacksonville, FL – Regency Square Mall
March 11: Panama City, FL – Sun Spree Resort – Spring Break
March 15: Baltimore, MD – White Marsh Mall
March 16: Washington DC – Tysons Corner
March 21: Philadelphia, PA – The Gallery at Market East
March 22: New York, NY – Roosevelt Field
March 23: Boston, MA – Natick Mall
March 29: Los Angeles, CA – Glendale Galleria
March 30: San Francisco, CA – The Hillsdale Shopping Center

Ok let me just start by letting all of you faithful readers know that I am big fan of superhero films, and the such. I did own comic books when I was small, but not of Daredevil, so let me try and give all of you who are big fans of A