Paying Up to the Horror Geek

As big a sports fan as I am, you might think that I'm the type of guy who does a lot of betting come Super Bowl time. Well, you would be wrong. I made my first ever real sports bet this year back in September in Las Vegas ($60 on the Seahawks to cover, and I won) but I've actually made it through Super Bowl weekend in Las Vegas once without placing a single bet. The thing is, sports are just too unpredictable to me. I don't mind sidling up to the craps table with a few hundred to play with, but betting on sports? Ha! My name's Walsh, not Gretzky!

So I stick with box pools and friendly small-stakes wagers. Which brings me to this year's game.

I've been a regular poster on the Gamecritics message boards for the better part of the past 4 or 5 years now and one of the guys I enjoy communicating with is none other than Mike Bracken, also known as The Horror Geek from the defunct Comedy Central show "Beat the Geeks". He's the type of guy who really knows his stuff (read his regular column at IGN right here) and is easy to like, if it weren't for the fact that he's from Pittsburgh.

We had a lot of fun talking smack to one another during the two weeks leading up to Super Bowl XL and finally, I propsed a bet. Each of us have our videogame collections posted on IGN and each of us have several hundred games, so I proposed that the winner gets to browse the other's collection and select one game to take. The loser would have the opportunity to make 3 games off-limits, but beyond that it's up to the winner's discretion.

But that's not all. The loser would also have to use the winning team's logo as their avatar for the rest of February. So yes, my avatar has been the colored stars of the Steelers logo for the past couple weeks.

Well, just when I was wondering if Mike was ever going to claim his prize, he PM'd me to request "Breath of Fire 3" for the PSone. He was awfully courteous about it too. Saying that I can veto it if I was still playing it or hadn't gotten around to it yet or basically if I just wanted to keep it.

I didn't even know I had it, but sure enough I have a mint copy of it sitting on my shelf. It's going in tomorrow's mail.

I just hope whatever Mike bribed the officials with wasn't much, because I'm pretty sure he could have gotten that game pretty cheap on Ebay.