"Is this real life?"

After consuming roughly 8 beers, two shots and a yard-tall margarita, things do begin to seem a bit fuzzy to say the least. The night before EVO 2010, my good friend Haunts of iPlayWinner decided it was a good time to take in all that Vegas has to offer. Apparently, that meant a whirlwind tour of every single bar within a 2 block radius. In San Francisco, that'd be no problem -- just a few, really. In Vegas, it's a few dozen.

My friend grabs my shoulder and gives me a shake, her eyes wide with genuine anxiety.

"Jared," she says. "Is this real life? Did shit just get real?"

My gaze spins about, unable to focus on the beer in my hand. Behind the counter, there's a man on a cell phone calling us a limo to god-knows-where to see god-knows-who do god-knows-what with no clothes on. I turn back to my friend.

"Yeah. Shit just got real."

ILLiterate: I have a dumb a idea!

Me: And I know how to make that idea even dumber!

When you're editing video all your lonesome until 4AM every night with little to no oversight, you tend to surrender yourself to your creative processes regardless of where they seem to take you. That's about as best as I can explain the utter insanity we at iPlayWinner subjected the audience to with these intros. Overall they went over pretty well and John Choi didn't punch me in the face for all the Sandstorm, so I'll put this one down as a win.

So here they are, all the intro videos as seen at Super NorCal Regionals, minus one: Capcom vs SNK 2, of which I'd like Switcher to upload that one himself.

You'll have to pardon the dust as just about all my spare time has been dedicated to either gaining employment or working on the stream for Super NorCal Regionals. This includes tons of video production (such as the trailer above), staff management and of course, copious amounts of beer and Street Fighter.

If you recall, last November, the iPlayWinner crew and myself essentially set the benchmark for fighting game tournament streams with our work at the previous NorCal Regionals. If that was a revolution, Super NorCal Regionals will be much more of an evolution as we've taken a hard look at everything that went right, and wrong with our previous broadcast and doing everything we can do either maximize or eliminate these issues.

The biggest improvements you'll see as a view will be the visual fidelity as we're now armed with HD capture equipment and the hardware to process it. As for everything else you'll just have to wait until Memorial Day weekend to see.

Just wanted to drop off a quick video that I've been meaning to make since I first laid eyes upon Makoto's Ultra I in Super Street Fighter IV. Production work on the Super NorCal Regionals webcast is full steam ahead so it's the little projects like this that will help keep me sane over the course of May.

This week we say goodbye to our indestructible friend, Street Fighter IV, after two long years of proving the old axiom -- you know, whatever that means. I know that when I look back on this game I'll have a lot of fond memories, mostly coming from the amazing group of players that have banded together here in Northern California. I've made new friends, taken on a lot of new responsibilities and most importantly, I got hype. With the release of Super Street Fighter IV, that hype shows no signs of slowing down.

I made a brief return to not just game reviews this week, but Joystiq as well with my take on Super Street Fighter IV. It was an honor to be called back into duty by good buddy Justin McElroy and I'm always willing to lend a helping hand to my friends at the 'Stiq. There's not much that needs to be said about SSF4: it's a fantastic update to an already incredible game. Here's to another two years and more of awesome fighting action!

You may have seen Onemoreproduction's incredibly cute and well directed short film "PIXELS," as its been all over the place this week, but have you seen it in high-quality and without a random hip-hop song slapped on top? Well, now you have.

Aside from giving me an impression of what District 9 would look like if it featured video game pixel critters as opposed to FOOKIN' PRAWNS, it did touch upon a subject that taps into my nerd rage deposits.

I miss Donkey Kong.

As far as I'm concerned, the giant ape died sometime in late 1994 just after the release of his namesake revival for the Game Boy. From what I can gather, that's the last time we saw Kong in his original, burly form before Rare turned him into a jacked-up platypus on steroids. I'm coming dangerously close to sounding like those Sonic obsessives who shout "GREEN EYES, GREEN EYES" every time they pine for the good ol' days of holding right, but Donkey Kong used to have a lot more charm when he was simply a giant gorilla tossing barrels. Now, all I can see is this mutant duck in drag that is passed off as a special needs case.

Now I'm off to go rotate my arcade monitor, put on my all-Rush mixtape, crack open a bottle of Shasta and get the true classic Donkey Kong experience.