The Salt Shop

Ok This idea has been bouncing around my head for a while now and I kinda want to see what other people think about it.

I've wanted to open an arcade for years. And I mean years. Like back when I was a kid begging my mom for more quarters in the mall so I can beat my little brother in air hockey, racing games and even the Ahh! Real Monsters plunger test of strength machine thing. And with my facination with fighting games at an all time high (Mostly Virtua Fighter but Im intersted in learning Street Fighter, Marvel and Skullgirls), and offline community is needed to get the most out of the game.

With my hunger to find regular offline gaming, I found this weird void in arcades in DC There's eStarland towards Dulles and Xanadu Games towards Baltimore. For someone like myself without a car, its pretty hard to pull off either of those trips and get back home the same night without spending 200 a night on a taxi. When it becomes more cost effecive for myself to catch a bus to New York and spend maybe 70 dollars for transportation to a weekly, something is kinda messed up.

And that brings me to my reason for writing all this (Thank you if you stayed around this long). I want to open a arcade in or within a stone throw's distance from DC. I know the tradional arcade hasnt exactly survived around here but with maybe a fresh take on it can. Shuttle service, DJs on Saturday nights, and honestly I'm open to any suggestions.

I'm thinking intersting weeklys like a King of the Hill tournament where the last player with a win after time expires faces the player with the longest winning streak in that period of time, and title matches where contenders from the weeklys that month fight it out in a FT5 tournament to face the champ. I'm thinking great presentation with moving projector screens for WWE-esqe entrances, music selected by the people in the arcade at the time, occasional screeings of cool shit whether it be a UFC pay per view or just the latest anime in some weekly format. Even a RV to take select players to majors called the Hyperbolic Major Chamber where they can play each other the entire ride to and from the tournament. But not only fighing games but offline shooters, MOBAs, RTSs and music games will all be avalible to make the Salt Shop just a cool ass place to hang out.

Well at least thats the idea. Im gonna need a ton of capital to get something like this off the ground. I still need to look into figures before throwing out numbers though. I'll hopefully be starting a kickstarter within a year or so if I can get everything together while working in a organized fashion, and most importantly get a computer to start working on graphics, designs and concepts and organizing what is actually needed for this to work. Thanks for reading and hopefully you guys can help a dream of mine come true.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, advice, crap even misguided hate mail, feel free to contact me at ronaldstrong1993@gmail.com or on twitter @darockreaper or on PSN ID: darockreaper and facebook.com/darockreaper (i think).

Why I dont care about the cross you bare

I was looking into items on the ballot for the upcoming election.Being a maryland citizen, I already knew gay marriage and casinos were on the ballot. Personally, I don't like represenative goverment too much. It's corruptable, antiquated, and keeps a lot of its people stupid about issues of their concern. But that's for another post.

Looking through a google search for matters on the upcoming balot, I found a christian voter group, which I assume suggests values of christian faith for action in politics. Groups like these as of recent have become a pet peeve of mind. While I understand that they have all rights to form these groups, no one should be voting based on their own religon except if there rights are being infriged on. The idea of separation of church and the freedom of religion are intended to allow people the freedoms to practice their faith as they wish and and expection of the isolatation of our politicans faith from our nations policies.

Which brings me to 2 issues our nation is addressing this election: gay marriage & abortion.  Gay marriage is a concern of no one other than those who want to be married. As a matter of human rights, this should be a non-issue. Abortion is a much more complicated matter. While I understand the concerns of concervation of life, religous stances should not be used to support the prevention of someone doing as they wish. Personally, my stance on abortion is a lot like my stance on drugs: people will do it even if banned, allow under serious supervison, add taxes too it, and restrict illegal abortion operations and practies that are unsafe.

As is the nature of politics, feel free to discuss in the comments.

E-Sports: Not your Mama's sports

As the London Olympics begin, I began to consider if I would ever see Street Fighter or any other highly competitive video game competed for a gold medal. Then quickly I realized if chess doesn't get in, there is no chance in hell any video game will feel the warmth of the olympic fire.

But with leagues like MLG, events like Evo, and games with the professional following of Starcraft 2, I don't belive there is really any need to compete with actual sports. Because its not. Its a place where your only limited by the your time invested and finger dexterity from being a pro. Where you may know just as much if not more than the player playing of a ceratin Dan vs Blanka matchup because of a annoying kid you played online or at an arcade. Its where you can go on youtube and discover new technology in the form of a high traffic and advantageous CounterStrike map route or learn from the best by seeing exactly what they are seeing in matches on youtube, twitch archives, and MLG VODs.

As of right now I'm preparing for a Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown tournament and some Tekken 6 and Soul Calibur 5 casuals. If I stick with it and play people that can help me learn, before I know it I could be at the Grand Finals of EVO playing Fuudo for a championship next year. Guess we'll find out.

What happened to the love?

Today, my mother and myself spent most of the day together, with the fairly simple agenda of getting groceries and picking up my brother from work afterward. I dreaded every second of it.

After dropping of my brother at work, she enters the house expecting me to be ready by the time of her return (A reasonable request, I'll admit). But being the rather lazy person I am, I never bothered leaving my bed, thusly resulting in her yelling my lack of effort as "wasting her gas" (a rather unreasonable and non-sensical response). But little did I know this would the first of many mom-centric incidents of the day, among which include phone snatching, discussion of my weight/body shape, and a personal favorite of mine, unwarented face touching. But, one event caught my attention for most of the day.

My mom and sister have been fighting on and off for a few years, but things seem to have intensified drastically during my first year of college, for reasons I am not quite clear of. My mom seems to have tried to show an olive branch of sorts by asking visit her during the wait to pick-up my brother from work. Yet as we approached the aparment building, she refused to leave the car, blaming it my mom's explicit hatred of steps due her well documented knee problems. As I entered my sister's apartment, despite my best efforts without my mother, I explained the current situation and my mom's desire to head to our final destination of Ikea now. And after abit of small talk I was rushed out (possibly in fear my mom may leave me with her to take the hour drive back to my home and back, but still rather rude). There is wrong here splattered on all sides of this argument, but sadly, this is over a mother-daughter beef that should have never lasted this long.

But as we were grocery shopping, post-argument about the handeling of this situation, I was enchanted by two encounters with a, while noisy, fairly friendly family. Their near sitcom-esque family dialog seemed to be the polar opposite of the past 3 hours of my life. While my mom seemed kinda annoyed by their antics, I was left to wonder when did out family go wrong and loose that magic. They seemed to be in church clothes. Maybe that's why. They also have both parents. That could be it. But at some point, something went wrong, with my normal family dynamic slowly falling out of the sky.

So I ask one simple question: What happened to the love?

OK Seriously this time

Almost 2 years since I've written for this blog. I think that's just cause for a reintroduction even though odds are you got to this page through me if anyone reads it at all. Name's Ronald Strong. Not so fresh out of my first year of college, but I'll get to that again some other time.

Anyone that's been visiting hoping for something, I'm sorry to dissapoint you for this long but that's about to change very quickly. I am currently planning on writting a game script and design document for this idea that has been floating in my head for a while. In hopes of improving my writting skill, I want to publish a post on a regular basis; possibly weekly but more often for now since my time is free in lack or a job or schooling for the moment (Once again, I come back to that). This will pretty much be my mind dump for anything hopefully interesting for the general public. But for now...

Peace,
Ronald "Serving Hot Dogs like Oscar Mayer" Strong

For the love of the game

I'm a huge video game fanatic, I think I got that from my father. The tales of him beating games the same day they were released and playing games with his feet on a playstation fight pad. But flash forward to my time, I started my gaming life with Super Mario 64 something I to this day consider one of the best games I’ve ever played but that may be some of my gamer loyalty showing. Going over to my neighbors house to play sonic 3D Blast also became one of those staples of my early gaming life time  Even Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing amused me to the night playing my little brother and oldest sister into the night.
This love of gaming has followed me my entire life from that Christmas with my first PS2 under the tree to just a few hours ago working on the only fighter I may actually have a chance at winning a small tournament at, Tekken 6, but still getting destroyed on the rare occasion I go online. From the late night halo sessions to a Skate 3 session on the After Dark DLC, I try to stay varied in my games. I always loved football so Madden was one of my few games of choice but now I expanded to FIFA after the world cup. I've interested my self in the music genre from DDR GH3 and have had my eye on Rock Band 3 since E3, and DJ hero since the E3 before that. But being raised on platformers I was pressed for Galaxy 2 and the new sonic in its 2D awesomeness when ever and if its still coming out.
And my sister and I are trying to become antique game and console collectors. She’s on the the hunt to play Super Mario Bros on the original NES and I want to play all the great games I've missed over the years due to lack of funds and create one of the greatest game collections of all time. Maybe even create a museum or lab for game studies one day or maybe just some arcades because I think if them as great social environments for gamers next to game stores. But for now, I'm stuck trying to organize a game literacy showcase and the gaming club that can host this at my school. I have a few games and gaming associated projects in mind. And once again another post.
Well I know this seems really personal but gaming has played a huge part in my life Even in the toughest of time it provided a refuge where anything was possible by just inserting a new disk. Its also an virtual wasteland where competition and aggression can be released without any consequence other than within the game. Its also a platform for creativity and discovery for designer and player. The virtual world provides so much for the people that it would be a shame just to disregard it as childish fun.  Personally I encourage adults to play games as they age. I would love to play some senior citizen one day that could beat me at Halo or Madden. I just find it a shame that some of the people nowadays that played video games during there childhood. But I'm going to try my best to keep my love of gaming until I'm playing my grandchildren years from now.But until then my fellow and prospective gamers, live to play and play to live.
Deuces,
Ronald Strong

Welcome to The Renaissance…well…kinda

Thank you for coming out tonight.well this morning or any other time you decide to come read this. I created this blog to talk about my view on a lot of stuff: Video games, music, poetry(when I bother to write it), society and any other random idea that wanders in to my head. Comments are welcome and encouraged so if you don’t like me bash me at will. And yeah i should have made this the first post but like it really matters Anything you want me to check out just chuck me an email at ronaldstrong1993@gmail.com .Thank you for your time see you next time

Deuces,
Ronald Strong