"Gone, gone, gone, she's been gone so long..."

I decided to put that 80GB HDD from the P3 machine to use as a second drive in my secondary machine (2.4GHz P4B). I switched it over to Windows XP a little while back for use as a hard-wired download/burning machine (my main gaming/audio production box is wirelessly connected to the network), and it serves that purpose well. With this new second hard drive, I was able to install Debian (3.1 rev4, 2.6.8 kernel) as a second operating system without messing with partitions 'n such. I opted for GRUB as my bootloader, but while looking into my options, I came across something that some of you may find useful. By keeping Windows in the primary hard drive and using GRUB, I had to write the bootloader to the MBR of the Windows drive; not an issue for my purposes, and much simpler to set-up that way. For those of you who would like to install Linux on a secondary drive without altering the Windows drive significantly, take a look at this article. It outlines how to 'trick' Windows' NTLDR bootloader into detecting the Linux installation. One of the main advantages of this method is easy uninstallation of the Linux system; returning things to a normal Windows-only boot simply requires editing the boot.ini file.

In other news, I found a copy of Super Smash Bros. for N64. Both this game and its sequel have become insanely popular, notably so among some good friends of mine. I, however, never quite understood their fascination, as it seemed like a terribly simplistic fighting game. Sure, it's cool to duke it out with four of your favourite Nintendo characters in themed arenas, but the damage system made no sense to me and the controls consisted of only two attack buttons. Anyway, I bought it, as it's both rare and supposedly a fun party game... I should have known, of course, that it's much deeper than my initial observations suggested. Yes, the damage system is still weird, and yes, there are only two attack buttons, but the fighting system they control is ingenious! Attacks are divided into strong and weak categories, and vary based both on what your character is doing (running, jumping, crouching) and which direction you hold the stick. The combinations are many, the strategy is deeply involved, and the pace is frenetic. Add power-ups and unique character abilities (Samus' charge attacks, Kirby's ability-adapting ability) to the mix, and you've got a highly-rewarding game that is easily approachable to newcomers. Definitely worth a closer look if you missed this one, and the current N64 and GameCube versions are probably good practice for the upcoming Wii iteration of the franchise.