Good things have continued on into the rest of my week. Veronica's website is shaping up nicely. It puts mine to shame. Hrm ... may have to do something about that. I must admit that my Photoshop skills were culled in a version of the program that didn't utilize layers, and i'm having a rough time retraining myself to do things in terms of multiple layers. But i'm managing.

As we're beginning to emerge from our cocoon of debt, Veronica decided to swing by the mall and pick me up a new video game. I had expressed a primary interest in SSX 3, and offered Viewtiful Joe for the GameCube as a backup. That evening i found a shiny new copy of VJ waiting for me on the coffee table. I gave it a try, but several factors dulled my enjoyment. The first was that the voice track kept dropping out for some reason. During the opening scene, you'd hear the GameCube access the disc furiously for a second or two, then no more speech. After employing the old NES solution (blow on everything and try again), the problem seemed to go away. However, i wasn't digging the side-scrolling beat-em-up so much and quickly dropped it in favor of old faithful Winning Eleven 6 International. Still jonesing for some snowboarding action, i talked Veronica into attempting the return the game as faulty software and exchange it for SSX.

However, most stores have rather strict policies on what you can do with a game once you've opened it. Target let Veronica swap VJ for another copy, but no exchanges. We then tried exchanging the new, unopened copy at Electronics Boutique and Toys R' Us, claiming it was a gift, we already had one, and we didn't have a receipt. No dice ... those suspicious retailers won't do anything with video games without a receipt. Finally i decided to throw caution to the wind and just buy SSX 3, and keep VJ as well.

SSX 3 is badass. No surprise there. EA Sports Big has taken the joy that was SSX Tricky and made it bigger, more complex, and more challenging. Little things like having to hit a button repeatedly to regain your balance after bailing really add to the gameplay. Also, whereas in Tricky you could pretty easily max out your trick meter and start busting "Uber trick" after Uber trick, in SSX 3 you have to really work to achieve that level, and then work some more to stay there. No pushing your opponents around anymore, don't know how i feel about that losing that guilty pleasure.

After jetting down the mountain a few times, i decided to give VJ another shot. I again yawned through the first 10 minutes as you beat up a few robots as ordinary Joe, then meet your hero Captain Blue who bestows the power to become Viewtiful. With this power comes special skills, the first of which is the ability to slow down time. This is where things pick up. You begin to notice that the martial arts combos are looking pretty sweet, especially when you slow things down and watch a punch really clock your opponent. Within another ten minutes i was thanking my lucky stars i wasn't successful in returning this bad boy. At first glance it's easy to dismiss as a run-of-the-mill, Mega Man-esque action game, but with a little time you can't help but get addicted.

Also, now that my 3D geometry problem has been solved, my image display and analysis program is evolving rapidly. There remains a host of issues to be addressed, but having put the headache of 3D ROIs intersecting the view plane to rest, i'm cheerfully optimistic.