I am not amused.

So I’m sitting here playing Wheelman and waiting for the final hour to tick off over at Hideo Kojima’s Konami site to see what next big announcement with the number 5 the legendary game director is announcing. Set to expire at Thursday, 9PM EST.

Is he going to announce Zone of the Enders…5?  Find out with me after the jump!

Hideo Kojima, as some of you already know, is the former vice president for Konami Japan and head of Kojima Productions.  He is also the mastermind and certified crazy person behind both the Metal Gear Solid series as well as the Zone of the Enders series.  Considered one of the most influential and innovative game directors of our time, he recently was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the 2009 Game Developers Conference.

Despite being called Metal Gear Solid 4, according to the Metal Gear wiki, there are 21 titles with the words “Metal Gear” in them right now, not including the iTouch version and Metal Gear Online expansions coming out for the PS3 this year.  Love or hate MGS 4 for it’s “playable movie” quality as reviewed by most gaming sites, one can only presume that the giant number 5 flashing on Kojima’s website and doomsday countdown timer can only mean that he is announcing the fifth (or 25^nd, if you’re counting) game of the Metal Gear Solid series.

Hmm…40 minutes left.  Maybe I should write a little haiku.

Doomsday timer runs

A flashing number five behind

Who knows what is next?

Ah, that’s nice. 37 minutes.  Guess I’ll eat dinner.  Be right back.

Okay, ate dinner, ran back, jumped in the La-Z-Boy hit refresh as the timer was at 00:00…and the site crashed.

9:01 PM: I’m now staring at a blank screen.  Wonder how many hits that it takes to shut down Konami Japan’s site?  Wonder how many other game sites and avid gamers were sitting there waiting for that site to countdown?  Can you hear the sounds of millions of gamers screaming?  There is a disturbance in the Force.

9:04 PM: Loading, loading….and nothing.

9:07 PM: April Fools was last month.  This is not amusing.

9:10 PM: That’s right folks, this is up-to-the minute journalism.  Hell, I could use this for my Fiction Friday piece at the rate this is going.  A little stream of consciousness softshoe act while I wait for the god damn site to load.

9:16: Kojima’s Big Announcement: Connection Interrupted. The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.  The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please try again.

9:17 PM: Gasp! Will Raiden be the protagonist this time?  Will we finally find out what the numbers mean? And what will Mr. Murder do with Cleopatra’s necklace?

9:21 PM: I know the number five is in the equation here, but how nice would it be if he went with a new and original premise?  I mean, he definitively ended the series with the end of MGS 4…

9:24 PM:  What if the “5″ is a big trick?  What if…bah, still white screen.  Reload.  I mean, I’m sure it’s going to be MGS 5; hell, the 5 looks like it could even be MGS stylized font.

9:25 PM:  This would make for a brutal Fiction Friday piece.  I just keep writing and writing about how I can’t get into the site.   Maybe I could start talking about what I had for lunch.

9:26 PM:GASP BLACK SCREEN!  Loading, loading.  Transferring data from google-analytics.com?  RRRRGHH!.  Still nothing.  Bah, we’re back to page load error.

9:30 PM: OOOOOh! It’s the actual loading screen for Kojima’s site!  44%.  53%.  77%.

9:33 PM:  Well, congratulations, I’m officially stunned into three minutes of white hot rage.  The site reset.  Sort of.  It’s now raining where there were clouds before, and the number 3 has replaced the number 5.  The countdown RESET TO 119 hours.

Suddenly, does the three mean Zone of the Enders 3? One would presume.  So Kojima is having a good laugh right now at the expense of all the hardcore MGS fans out there.  And what does 119 hours mean?

9:36 PM: Wife yells at me to come upstairs and do the dishes from dinner.  I angrily oblige, clicking off the site.

10:02 PM: I go back the site to make sure I’m not insane and Hideo is not laughing at me from Japan.  Okay, sitting and watching through the thunderstorm, the following sequence flashes with the thunderclaps: E….3….S….e  in that exact sequence.  Okay, so he’s announcing something at E3?  That’s the god damn announcement?

That’s right up there with “Drink Your Ovaltine” from “A Christmas Story”.

Check it out here:  http://www.konami.jp/kojima_pro/next/index.html

And just in case you think I’m jerking you around for Fiction Friday:

Douchebag.

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