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How did Jake Paul beat Nate Robinson

In the undercard of the Mike Tyson/Roy Jones Jr. Fight., we had the Jake Paul Vs. Nate Robinson. Fight. For those few who don’t know whose these two are, Nate Robinson is a professional basketball player who is a 3-time slum dunk contest champion and Jake Paul is one of the world’s most popular YouTubers, and one of the most controversial of them as well.

To sum up what happened: Jake Paul destroyed Nate Robinson. Sent him to the Shadow Realm. Jake Put up his hand and said hakai. Yeah…lopsided.

Some of you are wondering: How did a full-time YouTuber manage to defeat a professional athlete in a boxing? What you have to understand is this. Jake Paul arguably has more free time to train while Nate Robinson was until recently on a professional basketball player’s schedule, giving him not that much time to properly train. Also, Jake Paul had a fight before this one so that also gave him advantage. This was practically setting up the former Knickerbocker for failure.

The moral of the story: Train like you are going against a killer, dedicate whatever time you have to the fight, and get some experience under your belt!

Why GameStop Sucks

In early October I saw video from CNBC about GameStop and how it was doing well in the beginning but started declining in recent years. The video got some flaws that GameStop suffered from but there were a few things GameStop did that didn’t exude good customer service. I will give you my take about GameStop and my experiences with GameStop and there were a few that were less than spectacular.

GameStop wasn’t always GameStop. It was a first called Babbages. I haven’t been to a Babbages; they weren’t in my area at in most of the 90’s I was more used buying my games from Toys “R” Us, Kay Bee, FuncoLand, Software Etc., and EB Games. Well Toys “R” Us and Kay Bee are no more and Funco Land, Software Etc., and EB Games became GameStop. So that was how I got familiar with GameStop: The bought up the places where I bought my games.

GameStop was okay at first. The stores do what video game stores supposed to do but there things they did that didn’t make customers happy.

First is probably their signature issue: used games. While GameStop sells new games, their biggest profit comes from used game sales. They would offer anyone who sells their used games not so much and then sell those games to other people for a steep price. There selling and buying used games common in video game stores but the way how GameStop approaches used game sales along with other issues people have with GameStop is what souring the customer-retailer relationship.

Another issue is the selling of opened “new” games. When you buy a new game you would get the game sealed in its case. But with GameStop that may not always be the case. GameStop was known for taking games out the cases, sometimes being used for the demo station or employees taking it home so they can know the game (?) and then put it back into the case so can be sold as new. That happened to me a few times. But people are also saying that there were games that would come to GameStop used but be put in a case and be consider new, which would be one of the lowest things a game store can do.

Next is the Game Informer situation. For those that don’t know, GameStop owns Game Informer Magazine. When you subscribe to Game Informer, you become pro rewards member at GameStop. When you sign up for the pro rewards, you become a Game Rewards subscriber. The problem with that is that when a game store owns a major game magazine, the magazine game reviews can influence the games sales of the store. So if GameStop is heavily invested in copies of a certain title it would be in their best interest for Game Informer to give that game a good review so their sales don’t suffer. Gamers are smart and they pick up on stuff like that.

Next is the suspicious treatment of employees. Anyone who has searched for GameSpot on YouTube has probably heard the horror stories shared by former (and sometimes current!) GameStop employee. The stores seem to be pressured into doing things that are either questionable or straight up unethical. First the stores pressures the sales clerks to sell used games which makes them more money as well as pre-orders. The clerks don’t get commission for the games they sell but the sales do have to be high for them to not be fired. This policy makes employees like to customers and say that there are no new copies of a certain game in order to sell a used copy, or try to pressure you into a pre-order you don’t want. I once left a GameStop realizing the was a store warranty I did not ask for on my receipt. (Most store warranties are not worth the extra cash).

With all of these issues it is not that much of a surprise that GameSpot is not doing well in sales. Their sub par business practices and how they treat their customers and employees is certainly costing them in the long run. Is it possible for GameStop to improve and give back power to the players? Maybe, but I doubt it.

My Take on the Jiu Jitsu Trailer

I saw the trailer for the upcoming trailer for upcoming movie Jiu Jitsu and instead of being amazed at the trailer I was terribly confused. What was confusing was how the trailer hardly represents Jiu Jitsu at all. Maybe one or two moves my be Jiu Jitsu but that’s it. Very little submission grappling at all. Just a bunch of strikes.

I know what you are saying. Maybe it’s not Brazillian Jiu-Jitst, it’s probably Japanese Jiu-Jitsu or a different style of Jiu Jitsu! Yes there are variants of Jiu-Jitsu, and some of them do involve strikes but strike are not the main part Jiu Jitsu. Yes you may see a Jiu Jitsu practitioner throw a strike but strikes would be secondary at best. It’s still Jiu Jitsu without the strikes but it’s not Jiu Jitsu without the grappling and submission.

Jiu Jitsu’s roots date hack as far back as far as 2000 BC when Buddhist monks in India… Well that’s what some of the historians say but there was some form of grappling all around the world but with the Buddhist monks in India were merely using it to neutralize the opposition, not to inflict bodily harm.

If you want to know specifically know about Japanese Jiu Jitsu or Jujutsu’s origins. The start for that was Feudal Japan. When Samurai had to fight unarmed they would prefer their enemy to the ground and putting then in hold because punching someone covered from head to toe in metal armor tends was bad for you hands. Who would have thought?

In the 1880’s martial artist Jigoro Kano adapted the Samurai Jiu-Jitsu system that something that could be practiced by people who weren’t soldiers in metal suits. This is what would be Kano Jiu Jitsu and then later Judo, a style still practiced today.

Then in 1914 Judo champion and student to Kano, Mitsuo Maeda aka Count Koma traveled to Brazil where here would teach a teenage Carlos Gracie who would go on to pass the knowledge down to his brother and those brothers would open up Brazil’s first Jiu Jitsu school, thus Gracie Jiu-Jitsu or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is born.

The were multiple times Jiu-Jitsu was evolved to give us the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu we have now but the key part of Jiu-Jitsu has always been submission grappling. Always.

When it comes to the main actors in Jiu Jitsu, Alan Moussi, Fran Grillo, Juju Chan and Nicolas Cage had training in either Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or Judo, which is again the successor to JJJ and the predecessor to BJJ. I couldn’t find anything that said Tony Jaa train in any type of Jiu-Jitsu of any type at all. That makes it even more weird, if most of the main class knows Jiu-Jitsu, how come the trailer didn’t have too many Jiu Jitsu moves? That would be like Kickboxer not having any kickboxing.

With that said, is it possible that the trailer may be holding out on some other fighting style this upcoming movie is titled after.

Gaming and Dining During NYC Lockdown

With the life-changing pandemic that is COVID-19, it makes most activities outside of the house more difficult, assuming those activities had not been flat out canceled. After months of be legally forced to Some businesses have opened up and recently some restaurants in the NewYork City have opened up to indoor dining, including one of my favorite local restaurants Barcade. Well there are three of those but you get the point. For my first times dining inside since start of lock I went to Barcade St. Marks and Barcade Brooklyn, where both venues follow strict rules and laws.

First was Barcade St. Marks, one of the two Barcades in Manhattan (the other being in the Chelsea area). I went with J-pop singer Reni Reni. She vlogged her experience for her own YouTube channel. When we got to the place the person at the door looked at our ID’s (it IS a bar with drinks) took our temperatures. They jotted down names for COVID tracing.

We finally got to go in and sit down at our table. There weren’t many people with us inside but that was by design. There were no physical menus; we had to look at the food and drink choices on our phones. There was a good variety of drinks but the only thing they had food-wise was hot dogs and chips and queso. Whenever we got up to play any of the game we had to keep our mask on. I wish I was able to order different food but I guess it was because the chosen was quick to make and

Then it turns out a second meetup would be at Barcade Brooklyn. They Brooklyn Barcade followed the same protocols as the St. Marks Barcade did and had the same food: hot dogs and chips and queso. The drinks in Brooklyn were different than St. Marks. And of course staff reminded patrons to stay away from each other. After the drinks and games there my group and I stopped by and went to a local spot for tacos.

It’s good to see the 3 Barcades in New York City and all the local restaurants allowing dining in to some extent although it’s not to those establishments’ full level. Ultimately, it will be up to the consumers if making the trip under these conditions are worth going through.

My Cosplay Video

Coinciding with the first video from my date night with Reni Reni, I am in another video of Reni’s, this one explaining what cosplay in general means to me.

Think Twice Before Pre-Ordering a New Console or Game

Pre-orders are so much a huge aspect of video games sales, you can consider pre-orders an industry within the gaming industry. While they arguably had served a convenience by acting as reservation to a hot new game, their value to the player has gone down in recent years despite retail stores relying on them. And now with the disaster from the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation pre-orders, the holes in the pre-order system were even more visible and that pre-orders today are not as strong as they may have been in the past.

Back in the past video game pre-orders existed although wasn’t as prominent but it was a good way to put you game on reserve and come back on launch day to pick it up your game. There wasn’t online shopping so it was purely in store. When you pre-ordered at Toys “R” Us they give you a big yellow slip which was nice to hold, much different from the small white receipt you get from GameStop or Best Buy.

But as the years go by, pre-orders changed and become not so appealing. With the in-store pre-orders there is clause where if you don’t pick up the game withing a certain length of time the store can stop holding the game. And These days there is still copies of the game for the people who didn’t

And of course you can log into an online store and pre-order a game and they just charge you on release day… if its a console they sometimes charge you a bit then then charge you the rest on launch. But sometimes if a store is in a bad mood or thinks you may be scalping they can straight up cancel your pre-order. And all this is assuming you manage to get pre-order before the store “runs out”.

You can technically pre-order digital game and it’s probably the safest best because digital games don’t run out and it doesn’t make much less sense to cancel a digital pre-order when you can just buy it on launch anyways.

Despite it being a bad deal for buyers, stores keep pushing pre-orders for games and systems hard and collect the deposit money. If a store had 100 pre-orders and each of them had a five-dollar deposit, that store collected 500 dollars just sitting there without producing any product.

It has been common for player to camp in front of stores overnight for console that was about to be released. But now we have people waiting overnight for pre-order for a new console! My cousin saw that for himself! Who camps for a pre-order.

Pre-orders for titles are not too appealing by themselves but when paired with a bonus such as exclusive beta play, or some fancy action figure, or maybe even a new level. The new consoles don’t really get that many bonuses because the hype for the systems tend to be enough to move pre-orders by themselves.

The funny thing is that console pre-orders simply running out for some reason. How could pre-orders run out? On launch the seems to have enough systems for those who pre-order more sytems for those who didn’t pre-order.

Long story short: Pre-Orders are not as great now as they were then. If you REALLY want the new game or console then they may be okay. Otherwise you can just wait.

My Date At Barcade with J-Pop Singer

My date with Reni

I went to Barcade in lower Manhattan with Reni Mimura. She vlogged the whole thing which you can watch above. And yes that’s me in costume.

My Google Stadia Channel: Mr. Stadia

This month I have made a new channel which is dedicated to Google Stadia, which I fittingly named it Mr. Stadia.

Below is my first video for my new channel: A Stadia Controller opening.

 

This one is Destiny 2 Gameplay on the Stadia.

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