On the Nintendo Switch, and How Much It Costs

I think the new Nintendo Switch console, which comes out in a few days, looks pretty neat.  I've got one on pre-order.

I expect nothing less than great first-party support for this system.  Eventually.  Sure, there's a new Zelda game at launch, and a new Mario game later this year (Holiday 2017 last time I checked).  The rest of the lineup looks... how to put this politely?  Like a pile of gimmicky tech demos with full-game price tags.

And, honestly, I expect nothing more than great first-party support.  I mean, I own a capable gaming PC, a PlayStation 4, and an Xbox One.  There's not much that could convince me that I'm better off getting a multi-platform title for the underpowered Switch.  And third-party exclusives on a Nintendo console tend to be 90% shovelware.  We've got Xenoblade Chronicles 2 coming out at some point, so that's cool, but I'm not holding my breath for a slew of awesome third-party games I couldn't buy for my PS4.  If I'm wrong about this, I'll be delighted.

But this is the kind of stuff you expect when a new Nintendo console comes out.  I'm not sweating it.

You know what else you expect from a new Nintendo console?

You expect it to be cheaper than the competition.

Nintendo's philosophy has long been to use already-available technology in innovative ways to provide unique experiences at a lower price point.  I'm proud of that sentence, in a weird way.  I don't think Reggie could have said it better.

And look, the Switch is $300!  That's... well, that's roughly how much Sony and Microsoft are charging.  Except those guys are giving you a 500 GB hard drive instead of 32 GB of built-in storage.  Ah, whatever, those systems have been out for a while now, and they were more expensive at their respective launch dates.  And so what if, for their $300 price, you're also getting a game!

Wait, really?  The Switch doesn't come with a game?  That's kind of a bummer, you'd think Nintendo would have worked really hard on a collection of minigames that showcase the Switch's unique features, like Wii Sports did for the Wii, and NintendoLand did for the Wii U.

Oh wait, I'm talking about 1-2-Switch.  Well okay, that's more like it.  So you open up your shiny new Switch and what's in the box?

The Switch console.
A set of two Joy-Con controllers.
A Joy-Con Grip.
The Switch dock.
An AC adapter.
An HDMI cable.
A crap-ton of documentation you're never going to read.

Yep, that's it, definitely no pack-in game.  Do you want the aforementioned collection of minigames that showcase the Switch's unique features?  $50, please.  Fifty.

I'm going to assume, for the purposes of calculating the final price, that you do not want 1-2-Switch.  I certainly don't, for 50 bucks.  So let's say you want Zelda: Breath of the Wild instead, which is what I and most other folks will be picking up at launch.  That's $60, but at least it looks like it's worth $60.  We're up to $360, but that's not unreasonable for a new console and a game on launch day.

So, you can play Zelda: BotW in tablet mode with the Joy-Con controllers attached, or with the Joy-Con controllers detached using the Grip or just holding one in each hand.  You can also play it on your TV with the tablet slotted into the dock.  You can also play some games using just one half of the Joy-Con set, so you've got two-player support out of the box.  Cool, hooray for options!  How, uh... how exactly do you charge the controllers?

Why, by slotting them into the side of the tablet, of course!  It's unclear whether the tablet will charge the controllers while playing in undocked mode, but it will definitely charge them when it's docked.  What does that mean?  It means that if your Joy-Con batteries die, you can't play games on your TV anymore--and possibly not at all--until they've recharged.  Which takes about 3.5 hours.  Hooraaaaaaaaaay.

But don't fret!  You can buy a different Grip that lets you charge the Joy-Cons while they're hooked up to it!  Only $30!  And it's not completely clear, but it doesn't look like that Grip contains a battery of its own--it just lets you plug a cord into it to charge the controllers while you're using them.  Why exactly is this an optional feature?  Running tally: $390.

Now, you could also just pick up a second set of Joy-Cons so that you can swap them out as necessary.  You'll always have a charged pair ready to go when you need them.  And, honestly, you're probably going to want a second set anyway.  It enables four-player gaming, after all, or two players using two Joy-Cons each.  And you may as well keep that charging Grip, because you're both probably going to want a Grip to make the things more comfortable to hold, and they don't even give you one of the el-cheapo non-charging Grips for the $80 you'll be paying.  We're at $470 now.

If you're like me, you hated the Wii Remote and the Wii U GamePad, and you hated them because they didn't feel like a video game controller.  One felt like a TV remote and the other felt like a weird, thick-ass tablet.  The Joy-Con controller system doesn't look like it's going to feel like a real controller either--and there's no D-pad on the Joy-Cons--and Nintendo knows a lot of players aren't going to like that.  That's why they've been prominently featuring the Pro Controller, a standard, ergonomically-designed controller with two thumbsticks and the buttons you'd find on any other console's controller.  It's almost like they're finally ready for third-party developers to port their multiplat games to their console.  What would YOU pay for such a thing?  Did you say $60, since that's what everyone else charges for a new controller?  That's cute.  It's $70.

We've hit $540.  Do your friends also want to use a Pro Controller?  Fuck them, they can buy one themselves if they want it bad enough.

So the ultra-portability of this system is a big selling point, but the tablet's battery is probably only going to last you 3 to 4 hours on a charge.  No biggie though, if you're taking it to a friend's house, you can simply set up the dock there.  Hey, now that I think of it, why not pick up an extra dock and just keep it by another TV in your house so that you can play it on either screen, as easy as that?  I mean, it is seriously nothing more than a pass-through unit that connects the tablet to the wall outlet and to your TV via HDMI.  That way you don't have to unhook the dock from the probably fairly complicated system of wiring in your living room; just grab the extra dock from your bedroom, where there's far less going on to get in the way of those wires!

$90.  An extra dock costs $90.  Remember in the last paragraph where I said that it's only a pass-through unit that connects the tablet to other things?  I wasn't joking--it's a hunk of plastic that you plug a wall adapter and HDMI cable into, and it's got metal contacts that the tablet sits on, and it just passes the power and data through to and from the Switch tablet.  All of the storage and processing and network connectivity and everything are done on the tablet.  The dock is nothing but a conduit; a glorified stand that's inexplicably required to hook the tablet up to a TV.  And they want $90 for it.

Sure, having a second dock is a luxury.  Certainly not a requirement.  But if you ask me to pay $90 for a plastic stand that could easily be replaced by a $5 cable if it weren't for proprietary connections, I am going to tell you to go fuck yourself.

So there you go; what started as a $300 venture turned into $540 once you've got yourself set up with a single game and a pretty decent set of control options.  If you don't care about the Pro Controller, it's still $470.  And if you're generous enough to grab a second Pro Controller because you love your friends that much, you're looking at $610.  If convenience is worth enough that you'll allow Nintendo to extort you for the price of a second dock, $700.  Plus tax.

So yeah, I genuinely am excited to see what happens with the Switch.  I'd be excited even if the price for a decent setup were more in line with Nintendo's historical trends.  But considering I'm in it for over half a grand and the thing still hasn't even shipped yet, and when it does ship I'll have precisely ONE game to play on it, I'm not only excited, I'm nervous.

Citizen Kane is overrated as all hell.

Look up pretty much any list of the best films of all time and see what's sitting pretty at the top.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

You didn't even do it, did you?  No, you didn't, because you already knew what was going to be there.  To be fair, the title of this post kinda gives it away, but you still would have assumed that the top spot on any given list of best all-time movies was Citizen Kane.

I'm not going to dismiss Citizen Kane outright.  I would put it at the top of quite a few lists.  "Best Movies Where the Answer to the Pressing Question That Drives the Plot Is a Fucking Sled," maybe.  "Best First Filmmaking Efforts by Orson Welles," definitely.  And without a doubt, it would go in the top five positions of "My Picks for Most Overrated Movies of All Time."

You might be thinking to yourself, "Well, at least it would be the best movie released in 1941, right?"  Do you even know what other movies came out in 1941?  Dumbo came out in 1941.  Mr. & Mrs. Smith came out in 1941.  The Wolfman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, THE MALTESE FUCKING FALCON came out in 1941.

Now, if you've seen any of those other movies, and you've seen Citizen Kane, I want you to answer me honestly: if you were stuck on a deserted island with only one movie to watch for the rest of your life, which would you pick?  If one of the movies on the short list you could choose from was the greatest film of all time, it would be an easy choice, wouldn't it?

I've seen Manos: The Hands of Fate several dozen times.  I've seen Troll 2 at least three or four times.  I've seen Citizen Kane once.  I have no desire to watch it again.

Although I've only seen Kane once, I have seen the first 20-30 minutes of it three times, because the first two times I tried to watch it I literally fell asleep on my couch.  The movie is relentlessly boring.  It may have been a technical marvel at the time, but it's so slow and dull and I simply don't care about any of the characters.  I've seen apologists describe its dreadful performance upon release as a consequence of it being ahead of its time.  I submit that it was a bomb because it wasn't entertaining.

And listen, I know the history behind its production.  I know the technical innovations it brought to the table.  I don't deny its influence.  I simply deny its greatness.  Don't even bother trying to convince me otherwise, because I've heard all of the arguments and I have found them all wanting.

The worst, and possibly most common, argument I've heard in favor of Kane?  "You just didn't get it.  Here's a bunch of information that's a prerequisite for enjoying it.  Now go watch it again."  No.  Fuck you.  Go boil your head in oil, you pompous ass.

What, you don't like tripe?  Tripe is amazing.  It's made from cow's stomach.  People in the UK used to eat it a whole lot, but now they really don't anymore.  Tastes have simply changed as the country became more affluent.  But if you understand why people liked it in its heyday you'll really have an appreciation for it.  Now go eat some tripe.

What's it like to be colorblind?

There are a lot of websites dedicated to helping people with normal color vision understand what it's like to be colorblind.  They tend to do a good job of explaining that there are many different types of colorblindness, and sometimes they even get into what causes the various conditions.  They almost always have some sort of photo comparison section that purports to represent what a given image looks like to a person with one of a number of color anomalies.  They very in accuracy, but none of them are ever spot-on for me.  If they exactly represented the way I see colors, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the images, but I always can.

I am, in the least technical possible terms, partially red/green colorblind.  I can see red, and I can see green.  The line between them is a bit blurred, and sometimes I can't detect them at all when their presence is subtle.

It mostly affects my ability to play puzzle games--in Puzzle Bobble, for example, I occasionally have trouble distinguishing between yellow and orange bubbles or (more rarely) blue and purple ones.  The little creatures inside the bubbles are there partially to help folks like me tell the difference.

I'm very bad at distinguishing subtle changes in skin color.  When a person has a slight rash or is blushing, I won't notice.  I literally can't see it unless it's very dramatic.

One time when I was working at a gas station, I complimented a customer's car, noting that it was a really interesting shade of purple.  It was dark green.

I used to have a pair of slacks that was sort of a pale green color.  I thought they were grey for years.  My mom would berate me for not knowing how to match my clothes because I would wear colors that looked really awful together.  She said she felt really bad when we found out that I just wasn't able to perceive the colors normally.  I don't hold it against her, though.

But here's the real deal.  Here's what it's actually like to be colorblind.

Everything is going normally, I'm hanging around with some friends, and somehow or other it becomes apparent that I'm colorblind.  Rarely, it's because I mention it outright.  More often, it's because somebody else mentions it.  Then something very predictable happens:

Everyone who didn't previously know about my colorblindness wants to know what color their shirt is.

If I play along, I'll be answering color-related questions for at least 15 to 20 minutes.  At the end of that time, everyone will be completely unsatisfied because I'll have correctly identified the color of everything they throw at me.  Usually I will just say, "Your shirt is [insert color here], I can see colors, I just don't see them quite the same way you do."  That's usually enough to give the (correct) impression that I'm not interested in playing a game based on my ability to see color.  Sometimes it's not enough, though, and someone persists in trying to find something--anything--whose color I can't correctly identify.

They want me to tell them what color the sky is.  The sky is fucking blue.  What, did you think that I knew that your jeans were blue, but I think the sky is orange?

Maybe I say, "Blue isn't an issue.  I'm partially red/green colorblind.  I have trouble telling the difference between very similar shades of red and green."  Then they want to know what color grass is.  Grass is green, dude.  It's green.  What do you want me to say?

And so, with this type of person, I almost always have to say something regrettable:

"Please stop pressing me for details on my disability."

I don't consider myself disabled.  I'm fully mobile, I like to think that I'm of above-average intellectual ability, I can see and hear and speak.  But I lack the ability to differentiate between subtly different shades of some colors.  It's an extremely minor disability, but a disability nonetheless.  And the fact that it's so minor almost makes it worse that they won't let it go.  It doesn't affect me in my daily life, and so it sure as hell doesn't affect them.  If I needed special accommodation because, for example, I had spina bifida, it would actually be much more understandable that they would want some idea of the extent of my abilities.  But with mild, partial colorblindness, the only reason to keep pushing me for explanation (which is difficult to provide) is the novelty of it.

It shouldn't bother me, but it does, and it's probably because I've had the same conversation a hundred times.  It's so predictable, and I know how it ends: you still don't understand the way that I see, and I'm not surprised.

The state of politics in the United States

What's the best way to get support from voters?  Address their fears and concerns and offer solutions.

The biggest fear among Americans today is probably money.  A ridiculous percentage live below the poverty line, most have substantial debt, and some have no hope of ever paying back their debt.  The American people are struggling, as a society, to make ends meet.

And it doesn't make sense.  We're working longer hours than we used to but we're not getting paid more.  Many haven't seen a raise in years.  So we're all--at some level--asking ourselves the same question:

Where did all the money go?

Ask a conservative politician in America that question.  You'll get one of a few responses.

"The liberals took it to spend on their Commie social programs," might come up, but come on.  The tax rate hasn't changed all that much for most Americans over the past decade, and most of us still have less and less money.  And need I remind you that the people asking the question loudest are the ones who rely on those social programs the most?

You might also get the noncommittal non-answer, "Gee, yeah, I mean, it's really tough for everyone right now, just gotta pull ourselves up by our bootstraps."  Yep!  Just keep doing what you're doing, it's bound to pan out eventually!

Increasingly commonly, though, we're hearing the scary reply:  "It's the fucking Chinese and the Mexicans!  Go get 'em!  And fuck the Muslims too, while we're on the topic!"  Well, there's the fear, but of course there's no real solution offered because they didn't actually address the cause of the problem.  They may as well just be dangling some shiny object in front of you, hoping you forget what the question was.

Now go ask a more liberal politician.  Many will pass off the non-answer on you too.  But the rest are gonna give you pretty much the same response across the board:

"THOSE guys!  The ones you were just talking to!  They and their backers have, like, ALL the money!  Why do you think they didn't give you a real answer?!"

And that's the only response that makes any sense.  Why do you not make more money?  Because you're working for those guys.  Why haven't you seen a pay raise in years?  Because those guys don't want to give it to you.  Guess who lent you all of the money you owe, and on which you're constantly paying interest?  Yep.  And they get to make the laws that say how they're allowed to treat you.  They make the laws that determine how much of the money they get to hold onto.  That's why they get to hold onto basically all of it.

Think about another issue:  healthcare.  Nearly every first-world nation provides healthcare to its citizens--all of its citizens--as a basic right.  Why don't we?  Because guess who owns the insurance companies, the drug companies, all the other ways in which people make a profit off of other people's desire to not die of easily treatable ailments?

Yep.  Those guys.  They're extremely wealthy, which means they can throw a lot of money around to ensure that they get to keep on raking in the dough.  It all comes back to them in the end.  And hey, I'm not against capitalism.  But even in Monopoly you don't get to buy the ability to make the rules.  You don't land on the "Income Tax" space and say, "How much does this property cost?"

A rumination on local culture lists on social media.

You've seen these posts before.  They're usually titled something like, "You know you're in/from <insert locality here> if..."

I hate them.  Partly because they get posted and reposted so many times that there's rarely anything in the list that you haven't already seen in the past week.  But mostly because the information in them is either far more specific than the title would suggest (for example, in a list of things about Pennsylvanians, claiming that we all call submarine sandwiches "zeppelins"... when almost none of us do) or far more broad (for example, in a list of things about Pennsylvanians, claiming that we all bathe from time to time).  And sometimes the information is just plain inaccurate.

Well, I stumbled upon one that looks fairly original.  I think I might have witnessed the ur-post of one of these lists.  And I'm going to dismantle it point by point right now.


The rules of rural Pennsylvania are as follows:

This should be good.  Let's keep a tally of how many aren't even rules.

1. Let's get this straight: it's called a 'dirt road.' No matter how slow you drive, you're going to get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.

Dirt roads are not that prevalent in rural PA.  They're usually private roads.  If someone from out of town is driving on a dirt road, it's probably because they were originally from the town in which the dirt road is located.  They know that their Lexus is going to get dust on it.  They're driving slow because they don't want to damage their car.  Their car is designed to drive on paved roads, which are the norm in modern civilization.  And since this is most likely somebody's driveway, you're probably saying this to your uncle or cousin on the way to a family reunion.

2. They are cattle. They're live steaks or walking milk bottles. That's why they smell funny to you, get over it. Don't like it? I-80 goes east and west, I-81 goes north and south. Pick one.

You're used to the smell of cattle because you grew up in Buttfuck, PA, and never left.  Maybe if you'd figured out where those interstates went before you saddled yourself with a family at the age of 17, you'd be living somewhere that doesn't always smell like cow shit too.  I'd also like to point out that the fact that we get milk and steak from cattle isn't the reason they smell funny.  They smell funny because they're animals and they poop and fart.

3. Pull your droopy pants up, you look like an idiot.

This is considered sound advice everywhere.  Like, literally everywhere.

4. Turn your cap right, your head isn't crooked. Only losers wear rally caps.

Ditto for this one.  And as far as I know, "rally cap" refers to the superstition of turning your hat inside out in the hopes that it'll help your favorite baseball team win a game.  So what I'm gathering from that second sentence is, "rural PA doesn't have any good baseball teams."  Which is true.

5. So you have a $60,000 car, we're impressed. We have $150,000 corn pickers and hay balers that are driven only 3 weeks a year.

Well.  YOU don't have a $150,000 corn picker or hay baler.  Your farm might, or more likely, your neighbor's farm.  YOU get to LOOK at the $150,000 farming implements.  The people you're making fun of actually get to drive their $60,000 cars every day.

6. Every person in rural Pennsylvania waves. We think of it as being friendly. Try to understand the concept.

Not only is waving not specific to rural PA, it's also not true that everyone does it.  I've waved to someone I thought I knew in rural PA before, and it turned out he wasn't who I thought he was.  He looked at me like I was a weirdo.  People in rural PA can be just as rude and unfriendly as anywhere else.  Example: whomever wrote this list.

7. If that cell phone rings while an 8-point buck and three does are coming in, we will shoot it out of your hand. You better hope you don't have it up to your ear at the time.

Because firing your guns won't scare away the deer.  Also, people who hunt carry cell phones in case of an emergency.  If you don't, you're stupid.  Don't be proud of being stupid.

8. Yeah, we eat scrapple, pot pie, funnel cakes, haluskie, pierogies,shoo-fly pie, apple butter, chow-chow, and schnitz un knepp. Don't like the sound of them or the names freak you out because you never saw a "Bon Appetite" article on them? Great, more for us!

It's spelled "Bon Appetit."  And no, we don't all eat all of those things.  Scrapple is disgusting, and even I had to look up schnitz un knepp and I was raised in a PA Dutch household.  And no, they're not all exclusive to rural PA.  They're Amish and Polish dishes, and there are Amish and Polish people all over the place.  You'll get apple butter literally anywhere they grow apples.

9. The 'opener' refers to the first day of deer season. It's a religious holiday held on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Heh.  That's actually pretty true, except that most hunters in PA would get super pissed if you seriously tried to tell them that deer hunting was their religion.

10. We open doors for women. That is applied to all women, regardless of age.

Yeah, no we don't.  Not as a rule.  No more so than anywhere else.  If someone is following me into a building, I will generally hold the door for them regardless of gender, but I assure you it's not a common thing.

11. No, there's no 'vegetarian special' on the menu. Order steak, or you can order the chef's salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham & turkey.

Wait, wait.  There are no vegetarian options, so literally order a slab of meat?  And anyone who wants a salad without meat can just say, "I'll have the <insert salad name here>, no meat."  Restaurants will totally do that.  Because they want your money, and leaving off the meat shaves like 80% off the cost of a salad.  What happened to your "great, more for us!" attitude from #8?

12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats (includes fish), vegetables, and breads. We use four spices: salt, pepper, hot sauce, and Heinz ketchup. Oh, yeah...we don't care what you folks in Jersey call that stuff you eat. It’s not real chili.

I do consider fish to be a meat, but Catholics don't, and there are a LOT of them in rural PA.  I've never heard of New Jersey style chili being a thing, so that last part was pretty weird for me to read.    And if you only put salt, pepper, hot sauce and ketchup in your chili, THAT'S not real chili!  (Side note: I suspect that specifying Heinz ketchup was meant to be a point of pride for rural PA, but not only is Heinz the number one ketchup brand worldwide, the Heinz company is based out of Pittsburgh.  So, urban PA.)

13. You bring 'coke' into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice.

Pennsylvanians are no more or less concerned about others bringing Schedule I controlled substances into their homes than anyone else.

14. You bring 'Mary Jane' into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, and have long hair.

I know a LOT of people in rural PA who smoke a LOT of weed.  Hell, they grow the stuff.

15. College and high school football are as important here as the Penn State and Eagles and a lot more fun to watch.

Penn State is college football, dipshit.  And high school football is popular all over the country.

16. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don't hit the water hazards---it spooks the fish.

You're not supposed to avoid the water hazards for the sake of the fish.  They're called hazards for a reason.  And if you're fishing in a golf course's water hazard, you're about to be kicked out of a golf course.  It spooks the golfers.

17. Colleges? We have them all over. We have state universities, community colleges, and vo-techs. They come outta there with an education plus a love for God and Country. They still wave at everybody when they come home for the holidays.

Vo-Tech schools are high schools, not colleges.  State universities and community colleges are tax-supported schools, and therefore can't legally teach a love for God.  We also have private universities where they can, but you specifically didn't mention those.  And "home for the holidays?"  Don't you mean Christmas?  ARE YOU WAGING A WAR ON CHRISTMAS?!

18. We have a whole ton of folks who have been in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard - PA has one of the highest percentages of veterans in the entire country. So don't mess with us. If you do, you will get whipped by the best.

PA has one of the highest percentages of veterans in the country because we have the second-highest population of retirees.  After Florida, we are apparently the most popular destination for old people to go to die.  Or maybe our elderly still haven't figured out where I-81 goes and don't know how to get to Florida.

19. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump-thump stuff is not music anyway. We don't want to hear it any more than we want to see your boxers. Refer back to #3

Turn down that blasted pickup truck stereo!  That yee-haw-steel-guitar stuff is no more or less music than the thumpity-thump-thump stuff, and hard as it may be for you to believe it, there are a lot of us who don't want to hear that either.  Folks blasting their music of choice in their cars is not exclusive to rural PA, and you can get a ticket for it in most urban areas.

20. Four inches isn't a blizzard--it's a flurry. Drive like you got some sense, and don't take all our bread, milk, and toilet paper from the grocery stores. You’re not in Alaska . Worst case you may have to live a whole day without your croissants. The pickups with snow plows will have you out the next day.

Having worked in grocery stores for a decade and a half, I can tell you with 100% certainty that the people buying up the bread and milk when the forecast calls for snow are--without exception--the locals.  And they do it when they're calling for even less than four inches.  AND who are you to complain if people from out of state come and buy lots of stuff in our stores?  Do you think PA doesn't need their money?  PA drivers are notoriously bad at driving in the snow--I've been hit by someone who didn't properly weight down their pickup truck twice, and the driver was a rural Pennsylvanian both times.  Furthermore, four inches--a flurry, by your reckoning--is often enough to fuck up our roads for that long precisely because the snow plows are woefully unprepared to do their goddamn jobs.  One final point: fuck you for your implied disrespect of croissants.  Croissants are delicious.

A true Pennsylvanian will send this on to others. Everyone else can leave town.

Only a true, dyed-in-the-cloth, semi-retarded asshole would send this on to others.  I'm a true Pennsylvanian, and I take issue with almost everything in it.  The final tally of "rules" that aren't even rules, being generous, is 7/20.

Your list is bad, and you should feel bad.

Seriously, fuck GameStop.

So, remember how I said I canceled my preorder from GameStop after they sent me an email about the price going up?  That email said that if I wanted to keep my order, I didn't have to do anything.  If I wanted to cancel I could do it on the website or by replying to the email.

Well, I wasn't able to do it on the site, so I replied to the email to cancel it.  Today, almost a week later, I got a response.  "That order has already been canceled, sorry for any confusion."

So what if I had wanted to keep my preorder?  I'd have sat on my thumbs and never got the game I wanted because they canceled the order... even though they specifically told me they wouldn't.

Fuck.  GameStop.

Just a thought...

So I had preordered the physical version of Shovel Knight from GameStop, ahead of its October 2015 release date.  Shovel Knight is one of the best games to come out in recent years, in my opinion, so I wanted to support the developer even though I already purchased the digital edition as a Kickstarter backer.

The original preorder price was $19.99, which I think is fair.  But I just got an email saying, "the price has gone up to $24.99, sorry for the inconvenience, hope you don't cancel but you can if you want."

I cancelled immediately... after all, I was paying for shipping on top of the now $24.99 price of the game, and Amazon still has it available for preorder at $19.99 with free 2-day shipping for Prime members.  And Amazon guarantees the prices it posts for preorder items.

All this is basically to say that GameStop has truly become irrelevant.  If they didn't have retailer exclusives (which I don't even care about) there would literally never be any reason for anyone to go to them for anything ever again.  I only preordered Shovel Knight from them because they were the only ones offering a preorder at the time.

Fuck GameStop.