Have you ever gone to a store where the sales people are either incompetent or completely ignorant about what they are trying to sell? This is especially prevalent when trying to buy a high-tech doohickey, like an MP3 player, CD burner, or video game. I've come to the conclusion that these situations occur more often than you might think. And they certainly occur more often than they should.

Think about poor mom, whose children have been begging her for the new video game CSG's Night Out for Christmas. Despite the lewd content and obscene violence, mom decides to buy it. However, when she arrives at the store, she's greeted by a sales person of a younger age than herself. Mom naturally thinks to herself, "well, they really want CSG's Night Out, but this person IS younger than me, and does WORK here, so I'll just ask 'em what they think." Upon asking the sales person which games are really good, he or she replies, "duhhhhhhhhhh, Gauntlet: Legends is good... duh, buy that..." Stop it right there mom. You're about to do something that no sane person should do...

You might have noticed that stores have been receiving their shipments of the two new consoles, XBox and GameCube. I think I know quite a bit about these consoles... but anyway. Prior to launch, I was watching two guys playing at an XBox display, when a sales person sauntered over. I thought, "here we go..." (my thoughts are in italics)

Sales person: Yah, the Xbox has a lot going for it. It has an 733MHz processor, whereas the GameCube only has a 400MHz processor.

Me: I thought it had closer to a 500MHz processor, and what does processor speed have to do with the fun factor of games? Uh huh.

Sales person: The Xbox has 64MB of RAM, whereas the PS2 only has 32.

Me: What does the amount of... ah forget it. Uh huh.

Sales person: And the XBox's graphics card is 3dfx based.

Me: Really? I heard it was GeForce based.

Sales person: Not according to my specs sheet.

Me: Uh huh.

Sales person: One thing I don't like about the XBox is that it has two PCMA slots, whereas the PS2 has two USB ports. I can plug in my USB keyboard in and use it to surf the Internet, but who would want to...

Me: C is for cookie, that's good enough for me, C is for cookie...

Sales person: ... if you hold up a magnifying glass to a computer monitor, wow, the picture is enlarged. But if you hold it up to a TV, then...

Me: Uh huh. I don't know, I'm not too impressed with any of the XBox launch games. Halo looks great and all but, it just seems like another shooter.

Sales person: Yah, well it all depends on who you're buying it for. If you're 5 years old - GameCube for sure. If you're an adult, get a PS2 or XBox.

Me: What does this have to do with XBox launch titles? And what about Resident Evil and Eternal Darkness for GameCube? Those are pretty adult-oriented titles. Maybe I should mention it to him. Mmmmm... on second thought... See ya.

Don't you see? If I hadn't known better, I could have been easily swayed by this guy's mindless rants. I know poor mom would be. So in conclusion, be careful. Do your research before hitting the stores. And don't buy Gauntlet: Legends!