41 thoughts on “April 14, 2017: Wild Finish”

1. So I accidentally clicked "First Monday" instead of "Friday Music" and now our FMD post has a picture of books associated with it. So we got that going for us.

   1. If you delete the featured image and click the Update button, a new image will be picked from the post's categories.

2. Hope you got your NES Classic when you could. Nintendo is discontinuing it. While it's crazy, I read some rumors that sort of cast it in a better light. First was that they used EOL parts to make it (very) cheaply. I'm assuming they also didn't expect it to be this successful. Once it took off, they didn't have the parts necessary to ramp up production. Second was that it was a dead-end product anyway. You got your 30 games and there is no way to expand it. Third, it was all a Disney-style cash grab. Release a very desirable item, make easy money, and then back into the vault for another decade.

   1. I was one of the unsuccessful ones. im pissed at Nintendo, and probably won't be pursueded to ever purchase one of their products again. If you tire of your mini Nintendo I'll take it off your hands for retail price. 😉

      1. I was just about to bite the bullet at $160. Up to $290 today.

         1. Yowza! No way is nostalgia gaming worth that much.

            1. I wonder how much it would cost to do a Raspberry Pi NES Classic knock-off.

               1. Not much if you don't care about the controller type stuff. NES emulators and RPi instructables have been around for a long time.

               2. The hard* part is the ROMs. There exists a distribution for running emulation on Raspberry Pis called RetroPie.

                  * Hard if you want to be legal about it. Stupidly easy if you don't care about violating copyright.

                  1. yep

                  2. I wonder what a "fair" price for some of that older software would be? I'd guess there were a lot fewer man-hours worked on games from the '80s and '90s than some of the bigger console releases these days.

                     1. for LJN games, the only fair price would be if they paid us to play them.

                        I don't know what's fair, but I think Nintendo could set up some sort of downloading system for their games with price ranges based on popularity. So the crap games released by crap companies could probably go for fifty cents or a dollar, and they could probably go up to $10.00 for some of their more popular titles.

                     2. With some of the game frameworks/engines out there I'm not sure that's necessarily true

                        1. My thinking is that the really big releases still have a ton of artwork and whatnot on top of the framework. If you're doing an EA sports game, you have to figure out a reasonable way to rate the skills for the players in the game, etc. I could be wrong.

                           1. I guess if you are talking about person-hours specifically you are probably still right, though especially for sports artwork I think much of that is rendered via algorithms based on already existing data

                              I know I was quibbling a bit. No real point to be made on my part.

         2. I nearly bit at 160.00 as well, but now I'm so pissed that there really isn't a price low enough for me to buy one.

   2. Brickseek. Got one this morning in Richfield (where they only had one) after driving to NE where there was a line out of the door (they had 5). Thanks Target.

      1. Its the second time I've obtained one, the first was a wedding gift for a friend. There are more coming in for a few more days at least.

         1. If you get a third I'll take it off your hands for retail plus shipping. 😉

   3. I wonder if they will release an SNES Classic?

3. Hanging out at the Nebraska Med Center this morning while Mrs. Rowsdower has thyroid surgery.

   1. yikes. Best wishes.

   2. She is in our prayers.

   3. Best wishes rowsdower for the mrs's quick recovery

   4. We're home now, everything went well, things looked benign. Only real issue is the anesthesiologist chipped one of her teeth, so now we have to get a tooth fixed. Oh, and she's in some pain, but good pain meds.

      1. Good to hear minus the extra trip to the dentist.

         1. Ditto. Hope the anesthesiologist pays for the tooth fix as well.

4. A little medieval word-play from Mental Floss.

5. Miguel Sano leads the majors in OPS and OPS+. He has more RBIs (11) and runs scored (10) than games played (9). He is 10th in the majors in rWAR and is on pace for a 12.6 rWAR season if he plays 162 games.

   1. I guess he's doing ok. Needs to cut down on his errors, though*.

      *Dazzle'd

   2. Quietly, Joe Mauer has 5 RBI in 8 games played. I hope that pace continues.

      1. I couldn't find Joe's OPS+, but I imagine it's surprisingly high when looking at his BA

         1. b-r.com says Mauer's OPS+ is 47. I don't know if that's surprisingly high for a .214 batting average.

            1. That sounds about right, especially given no extra base hits. Some timely singles he's had, though.

            2. sheesh, I'd expect it at least twice that.

               1. Different era, but Mario Mendoza (of the famed Line) hit .215/.245/.262 for his career, which was "good" for a 41 OPS+.

                  1. Didn't realize Joe'd let his OB% drop below .300

6. Red Wings lose to Syracuse 3-2. To the extent there's good news, it's that Joe Nathan pitched the ninth for Syracuse and retired the side in order. It was his second appearance for the Chiefs and his first save.

7. Is anyone else getting a "No feed available." indication from MLB.tv for tonight's game?

   1. It's real early yet.

8. Plouffe playing 3b for the Athletics. Looks good out there.

Comments are closed.