Hours And Hours And Hours of Growlanser

At this point, sitting at the computer typing, I can tell which characters are chiming in after a battle, what attacks Grandma uses against her foes, and out of habit I tap along to the fight songs. Grandma has conditioned me into complete Growlanser appreciation.

She's close to finishing the game, according to the chapter list on GameFAQs, but at the moment this is all she does. She has Beyond Good And Evil for the XBox she hasn't really touched yet, not to mention Sly Cooper 3 that has now fallen to completion by two of the kids and mom. "Not until I'm done with this one..." she tells me while switching on XBox Live to play Poker.

She's using the teleportation magic a LOT, and she hasn't lost a battle for days. Occasionally she'll ask my opinion about her Ring / Gem configuration, but I never need to correct anything or give her suggestions, and she interprets this as LIES.

Grandma - "So, because she has the best indirect attack at the moment, I should leave her in the back with a Cycle Up and cure those with swords when I need, right?"
Me - "Yup."
Grandma - "And there is nothing I need to change, all of their rings are good..."
Me - "You have the best set up right now."
Grandma - "..."
Me - "What?"
Grandma - "What aren't you telling me?"
Me - "What? Nothing! What do you mean?"
Grandma - "I'm going to get a Mission Clear or Mission Fail instead of complete and you're going to sit their laughing because I didn't do something. What?"
Me - "Come on, why would I do that?"
Grandma - "See?! I can't tell if you're being sarcastic!"

It's a tough road.

Grandma loves that a character is named "Viktor Hugo," and he has a German / Hungarian / Polish / Standard Foreign Guy accent, but not a hint of French. She also has the tendency to call Monika, very obviously a female character, the "knives dude." Upon correction, she tells me "in anime all the guys look like chicks anyway, it doesn't matter!" She also refers to Slayn as "Sven."

Her last bout went from about 1:00pm to ...well, she's still playing (she went to the store this morning.) Last night it was sometime after 6:00pm to 2:30am, then after a quick nap (her neck hurt a little) she played some more until sunrise, which is ominously happening later and later nowadays. Yesterday we chopped up seven pumpkins and grinded up the meat to make pies, and god dammit we have too much pumpkin. If we can figure out how to ship them, we were thinking of sending MTV, CBS, Ubisoft, Surreal, Microsoft, and Working Designs each a pumpkin pie.

Maybe one to Jack Thompson too, just as a sign of good faith. Knowing Thompson, however, he'd just hire some local kid to taste it first so he knows it isn't poisoned.



In other news, we're STILL getting a lot of e-mail about the Chris Crawford deal, and everyone has a right to an opinion so no problems there. We've just been so busy with stuff (SECRET, HORRIBLE things that will reveal themselves in time) we haven't had a chance to reply to his grand essay on how he has faced his martyrdom at the hands of all of us at Old Grandma Hardcore with any clarity. Luckily, someone else did. That someone, is Thomas.