Paradise Found

Beauty has a name and her name is...Cyberball - Long ago 80's rock band Survivor once sang, the search is over, and it is, sort of. I have found my Excalibur, my Fountain of Youth and my Holy Grail, sort of. I have found "Cyberball", sort of. After receiving an email and a message on Xbox Live Arcade from two different gamers reminding me to fight the good fight and keep bugging game developers for the release of the greatest robots-playing-football video game of all time, my determination was renewed. I emailed my contact at Atari, the publisher of "Cyberball", demanding a response. I then went to the new release board to find out when the expected release date was and found to no surprise those dreaded letters, TBA. Then I noticed something I hadn't before. Instead of seeing Atari as the publisher, I saw the company creating the XLA version of "Cyberball" was Midway. I have no idea why this was but I didn't care, my faith was restored! I was going to be meeting with Midway reps at E3. I figured I'd just hold one of them hostage until they released "Cyberball" on Arcade and the world would rejoice!
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Then, on a whim, I took a peek at the Midway website, figuring I might be able to find some info on the 360 Arcade release. I saw nothing. I did see the Classic Game Web Arcade at the bottom and decided to look around. There was "Joust" and "Root Beer Tapper" (already on XLA) and a few other games but no "Cyberball". Then I scrolled down and saw that Midway had released three volumes of classic arcade titles available on the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox. What would it hurt to take a look? I checked out Volume 1 and found "Defender", "Rampage", "Joust" and a few others. I looked at Volume 3 and found "Super Off Road" (another arcade classic and must own) and "Hydro Thunder". Finally, I opened up Volume 2 and after scanning through "Mortal Kombat II and 3" and "Primal Rage" found what my eyes had longed to see - "CYBERBALL 2072"!!! Shazam!!! At long last it would be mine! Oh, yes...it would be mine. This game was released in October of 2004?!? How did I miss this!?!?
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I immediately called my buddy Fritz at GameCrazy and they were out. I called GameStop and they had 2! I had them hold it and for $12 I made my best gaming purchase of the year. Sure its not on Xbox Live Arcade and I won't be getting any Achievement Points (well, not until it comes out on XLA) or playing against other gamers online but at least now I have a reason to turn on my PS3. And, as my buddy Dieter used to say, I'm as happy as a little girl. These are the days when gaming almost brings a tear to my eye, sort of.
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Other stuff - Coming up Wednesday, a review of "Shadowrun" for the Xbox 360 and PC gamers with Windows Vista...coming up Friday, a look at gametap.com, the Xbox Live Arcade for PC gamers...the latest coloradojoe podcast is available on iTunes and on this website. If you'd like to contribute to a podcast mailbag, send your questions or comments to coloradojoemail@yahoo.com.
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terry.terrones@gazette.com