If you have never played Snowboard Kids for the Nintendo 64, consider this a call to action. SK is a totally awesome snowboard based racing game in the mold of Mario Kart, but was infinitely more fun for me growing up.

Where Snowboard Kids really differs from Mario Kart was in the items, which required the player to have coins saved up in order to “purchase” and item from the item-boxes on the maps. These were no ordinary items, however, lord no. Seemingly harmless items like parachutes could completely take a player out of the race with one hit; avoiding hits was of the utmost importance.

No item was more devastating than the pan, which would crush every racer but the user, flattening them. Doesn’t sound so bad? Consider this, even after you reconstitute yourself, it takes time to get back up to full speed, and if you were in a flat area of the course, forget about coming in anything but last place.

Freaking pans, man. Freaking pans.

In other news, my computer is truly back to its old antics, and I’m not really sure what to do. Attempting to make a comic strip while the computer decides to crash every 5 seconds is not an enviable task. I called Apple again, but the guy assigned to my case was not available. Thanks Apple!

Assuming that doesn’t work out, I’m thinking of harvesting all the good parts of my computer to build a PC. Anyone have experience (and suggestions) in that field? It would really be appreciated.