Preyed Upon Monday, May 21, 2007 : 12:00 AM By: Chris

I feel sorry for most game store employees. They have to peddle unnecessary game insurance offers to everyone who buys a game and most know it's a bunch of crap. It's a small disc that moves mere feet between a protective case and the console it's played on, it's pretty easy to keep it undamaged. But then there are those employees I don't feel sorry for. In fact, I loathe them. They're the ones that have embraced the "upsell, UPSELL, UPSELL!!!" creed to such extremes that they will say anything to get someone to hand over a few extra bucks in return for essentially nothing. I've heard a lot of flat-out lies spewed from certain employees to customers, usually those that don't appear to be gamers outright. One beauty involved something to the effect of "you need insurance because each time you play the game the system's laser 'shaves off' a little bit of the data, which will eventually make it unplayable." Magnificent.

Here's hoping that tomorrow/today brings the reveal of the complete SSB Brawl cast.

EDIT: I've received a couple of articulate and insightful emails from current and former game store employees. One pointed out at least one valid instance where game insurance is a legitimate service to the consumer if young, unruly children are involved. I agree. I just want to re-emphasize that in no way do I wish to paint a broad stroke that covers ALL game store employees with the scarlet taint of pure evil. Most are not malicious. I am just pointing to those predatory few that couldn't care less about your best interests.

Yesterday I made an allusion to what I hoped the launch of the official Smash Bros. site would yield. Obviously, what we actually received was something of a lesser magnitude. That's not to say that there aren't some gems of information there. Have you checked out that list of composers contributing to the game? If ever there was an all-star lineup of people who create music for interactive media (for some reason I felt I should dress up the term "videogame music"), this is it. What I find funny are rumors that have stemmed from this list. For some reason, a substantial group of people out there have taken these composers' participation as some type of pseudo confirmation that a number of characters from their past projects may make it into SSB:Brawl, almost as if these composers carry characters from other franchises around like polyps, which must bud off into whatever other games they work on. Don't get me wrong, I wish it was so. If all those characters made it into the game it would distill all their respective popularities down into one single kernel of radness. But, alas, we must be realistic.