Charlie Manuel loves him some ‘Punch Out!’

There’s nothing like a conversation about old-school video games to get everyone excited. Mention Tecmo Super Bowl in a group of 20-to-30 year old guys and you’ll get bombarded for an hour with stories of QB Eagles, ridiculously long punts and braggadocio about 106-0 wins and 14 safeties in a game.

Tecmo may be the gold standard of Nintendo sports games, but one that wasn’t far behind was Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! (You must spell this game’s title with the exclamation point.) The plot of the game is this: You’re a 10-year-old (or so) named Little Mac and you fight guys three times your size, culminating in the final fight against Mike Tyson.

And yesterday, as the Phillies were photographed for the upcoming game MLB ‘07 — MLB ‘06 is due out next week — Charlie Manuel shared his fondness for the 1980s classic:

Most, too young for the Atari revolution, first played a version of the ricochet game “Breakout” on a personal computer before graduating to the wonders of Nintendo staples “Super Mario Brothers,” “Donkey Kong” and “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.”

“You got to fight Bald Bull,” recalled manager Charlie Manuel, a “Pacman” fan who, at 62, owns a “Tetris” game.

Yep. You got to fight Bald Bull. (Twice.) Go get ‘em, Fightins!

Phillies have video games on their minds [DN]

Quickies: He’s outta here!

• Little late on this one, but Phillies organist Paul Richardson is retiring after 35 years. It was nice to see him in the CBP concourse the first two years of the park, though. [AP/Yahoo!]

• In Bucks County, things are going so well people are still up in arms over a bad video game nobody’s heard of except for people protesting it. If I ever have a really bad idea that I want to sell, I’m just pepper it with references to killing cops, eating babies and gutting puppies. Hmm, maybe I should do that here. [Bucks County Courier Times]

• Of course, the cops did just catch two eighth graders who made bomb threats. So maybe everything is safe up there. Seriously, though: Bomb threats? How 1999. [Bucks County Courier Times]

• And, hey, the U.S. men’s hockey team managed to advance to the gold medal round of the Olympics without even playing. Now that’s sport! U-S-A! U-S-A! [AP/Philly.com]

Quickies: Short bus

• The reason local boy Johnny Weir finished fifth in the Olympics? They changed the bus schedule. Or maybe he was secretly worried about how he was looking in front of his new pal Vai Sikahema. [ESPN.com]

• Geeze. I can’t believe that Jessica Pressler quoted a girl saying that Jennifer Aniston “was sooo nice.” That’s made me angrier than anything else she’s written in the Times! [New York Times]

• In Bucks County, they’re doing what’s important, i.e. passing resolutions saying a certain video game sucks. Oh, yeah, and they want to ban it from being sold in America. Sigh. [Bucks County Courier Times]

• Don’t bother playing Powerball, because I have it on good authority that I already bought the winning $365M ticket. [AP/Yahoo!]

Action News BS

When media outlets are looking for a way to drum up ratings and scare their readers/viewers/listeners, they usually resort to attempting to educate their older audience about things that only kids know about.

Usually, the answer for this has recently been exposes on “The Choking Game” or Myspace. And that’s fine and all. Kids could get stalked on Myspace and any game where you could possibly kill yourself is a good one to stop, I suppose.

But, last night, Action News decided the newest danger to kids across the Delaware Valley was Nintendo’s hand held DS system. (The photo’s from Nintendogs, the cutest game ever.)

And, so, what 6 ABC did, of course, was broadcast an “important warning” talking about the Nintendo DS’ wireless capabilities and how you can play anyone in the world. This is true. The problem is, after saying this, they talked about a message a young girl received from a “screen name is so offensive, we can’t even show it to you.”

She got the message in PictoChat, a built-in chatting tool for the system. And after Action News talks to ‘experts’ and tries to scare every parent of a kid with a DS is that… well… Pictochat can only go 65 feet at most. (Well, they say the company “claims” that.) So the offensive message she got had to be from someone, essentially, in the room with her. And when you can play with people over the world in, say, Mario Kart, you can’t see who they are.

This, of course, means the Nintendo DS is essentially just as dangerous for a kid as going outside. But maybe Action News was just buttering us all up for their big “THE SKY: COULD IT BE FALLING?” exposé during sweeps.

The Nintendo DS System [6 ABC]

And Peter Forsberg says LOL

Hello, 2006! We’ll begin today with something a little stupid — okay, very stupid — but amusing nonetheless. If you’re not a regular reader here, or you’re just not very perceptive, you might have not noticed that I’m kind of a big nerd. Not like a D&D/Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention nerd — please — but one nonetheless.

And, so, yesterday I was playing my Xbox season of NHL 2006. In recent years, a bunch of the sports video games have added features that let you be the GM of whatever sport you’re playing. Some of the features are normal (setting ticket prices, signing contracts, etc.) and some are pretty silly (like getting emails from players).

And, yesterday, I got an email from a Flyers forward Simon Gagne during my season. And here’s what I got:

Simon Gagne (or at least his video game equivalent) uses emoticons. Sadly, I didn’t get an email from Bobby Clarke saying “OMG Eric Lindros sucks!”

Imagine if this guy got an Xbox 360

And now, your moment of zen:

I can only guess this guy actually said “It’s aaaaawwwwesome.”

U.S. Editions [Metro]