Castlevania was one of those Nintendo games that while popular at least in my social circle, I never owned myself. My first encounter came with going to my cousins house and she popped in a game, saying it was about Dracula. My mind crept to Christopher Lee, who was the popular Dracula at the time, and old school horror movies of the Universal and Hammer Vintage.
And then she hit start, and I beheld a man with a whip, and one of the most awesome video game musical scores I EVER HEARD.
The three Castlevania games on the Super Nintendo were not a massive revolution. Their scope only seemed more epic then Mario Brothers or many of the one word Nintendo titles like Karate or Golf because of the sheer variety of levels. Castlevania succeeded because it created an atmosphere. You as a lone man going through a castle and taking on every mythical creature and classic monster you could possible think of, and even Death himself all to destroy Count Dracula. This game was literally every kid’s fantasy if they were fascinated by horror and monster movies.
The plot of the series is centered right on stokers Dracula mythos, taking place primarily between the 11th and 18th centuries. Mathaias Cronqvist, who assumes the name of Dracula, is a vampire and count of Wallachia. Because of his vampiric nature he is a natural enemy of the Belmont clan of vampire hunters. In the first game (in terms of production) Simon Belmont, follows in his grandfather’s foot steps to ONCE AGAIN suppress a resurgent Dracula.
Resurgence and suppression is the main theme. It is acknowledged that Vamparisim, particularly Dracula’s Curse, can not ever be truly destroyed, merely battled. Throughout the series many characters that may be allies in one game are manipulated into foes in the next, creating on ongoing cycle of valor, betrayal, and redemption. Most of this is explored in latter games with more sophisticated platforms and the ability to better explore narrative.
As awesome as the setting was and a wonderful challenge to conquer, Castlevania was one of those games that defined “Nintendo Hard.” Aside from managing the maze of bullets and bad guys you had the three fatal flaws in the game to contend with.
The first flaw was that if your character got hit, at all, by anything, he would be propelled back a good four tiles. This can sometimes lead to you being able to clear a gap you would have trouble jumping, but most of the time it shoved you into a bottomless pit, or more bad guys.
Fatal flaw number 2 is that when your character had to climb stairs, he is fundamentally defenseless. Later games allowed you to attack on stars, which helped a bit, but when you are climbing a staircase between twin columns of fire breathing dragon skulls, expletives will leave your mouth.
The final flaw is the inability to control your jumps. When you are stark still, you jump strait up, and when you are moving forward, you jump forward a set distance. You can not short change your jumps, or perform any course corrections in mid air. And while games receive high praise for realism these days, on the NES THAT level of realism is a handicap.
Over the years Castlevania has produced over 30 games on over a dozen platforms, making it perhaps the most wide spread of the Nintendo 8. These days most Castlevania games have abandoned the linear progression in favor of a more exploratory format. 8 bit chip tunes have passed in favor of orchestral scores. But the core of the series remains the same. The twilight always comes, Dracula’s Curse lives on, and children of the night will dance once more in the woods of Romania.
Hope you all have a wonderful new year, it will be 2011 when we come back to take a look at memories of one of the most loved, yet hated, Nintendo turned gaming franchises, Ninja Gaiden!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Sorry to keep you waiting!
In an age where franchises in all popular media are being turned through the meat grinder for any last ounce of profit they can generate, one kid had been left behind. Kid Icarus was a gem of a game that was largely left behind in the great Nintendo boom of the 1980s and early 90s. It was known largely for its unforgiving difficulty, unique story and setting and quality music.
The story takes its roots in a hybrid of Greek mythology and Christian demonology. You play as an angel named Pit; whose “Land of Good” was invaded by an army of monsters from the “Land of Evil.” I shit you not, the plot is that much of a trope. So you as a surviving angel are given a bow by the gods and told “go forth and conquer.”
Graphically the game was built on the same “guts” as fellow cult classic Metroid. You can tell with the jump physics, and even the patterns that some on screen enemies move. Musically it had a style all its own though. Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka provided four six tracks (massive for the NES) that gave an ambiance any Dungeons and Dragons player would love for their own games. Not nearly as up beat as Mario’s over world theme, nor as depressing as Zelda’s Dungeon music, Kid Icarus Soundtrack managed to capture a sense of epic adventure and wonder.
In terms of game play, Kid Icarus was a platformer that managed to work out two sub genres in one game. The first sub genre was typical platforming, with the twist of stages being largely vertical since the goal is to “retake heaven.” The second type of plat forming genre is the dungeon crawl, where three levels are set up in a castle like area.
The game was mind blowingly difficult though. You started bare bones in the game, with next to no health, and a weapon with no power and range. The vertical nature of the game meant falls off the screen were lethal and enemies could hurt you in was you did not expect.
Most famous of these said enemies was the so called “egg plant wizard” a purple one eyed magician who instead of damaging you transformed you into a walking eggplant, preventing you from attacking or using any of the items you collected along with way until you were uncursed.
Kid Icarus was praised critically for the past 25 years, despite only having one sequel on the Game Boy console. Released in 1991 “Of Myths and Monsters” was largely a port of the classic game, with a minimally enhanced story and few additions.
The classic Nintendo game reach something of a cult item, retaining a certain popularity. Four Nintendo consoles passed up the opportunity for a full blown new game however, with only the Wii paying homage to the character in the crossover orgasm Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
It was not until the 2010 E3 this past year when Reggie Fils-Amie was pimping Nintendo’s latest handheld and showed us a very special trailer.
Sorry to keep us waiting indeed. Whatever took you so long Pit, We are just glad to have you back.
Next time we will return to the original schedule and I will talk Castlevania.
The story takes its roots in a hybrid of Greek mythology and Christian demonology. You play as an angel named Pit; whose “Land of Good” was invaded by an army of monsters from the “Land of Evil.” I shit you not, the plot is that much of a trope. So you as a surviving angel are given a bow by the gods and told “go forth and conquer.”
Graphically the game was built on the same “guts” as fellow cult classic Metroid. You can tell with the jump physics, and even the patterns that some on screen enemies move. Musically it had a style all its own though. Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka provided four six tracks (massive for the NES) that gave an ambiance any Dungeons and Dragons player would love for their own games. Not nearly as up beat as Mario’s over world theme, nor as depressing as Zelda’s Dungeon music, Kid Icarus Soundtrack managed to capture a sense of epic adventure and wonder.
In terms of game play, Kid Icarus was a platformer that managed to work out two sub genres in one game. The first sub genre was typical platforming, with the twist of stages being largely vertical since the goal is to “retake heaven.” The second type of plat forming genre is the dungeon crawl, where three levels are set up in a castle like area.
The game was mind blowingly difficult though. You started bare bones in the game, with next to no health, and a weapon with no power and range. The vertical nature of the game meant falls off the screen were lethal and enemies could hurt you in was you did not expect.
Most famous of these said enemies was the so called “egg plant wizard” a purple one eyed magician who instead of damaging you transformed you into a walking eggplant, preventing you from attacking or using any of the items you collected along with way until you were uncursed.
Kid Icarus was praised critically for the past 25 years, despite only having one sequel on the Game Boy console. Released in 1991 “Of Myths and Monsters” was largely a port of the classic game, with a minimally enhanced story and few additions.
The classic Nintendo game reach something of a cult item, retaining a certain popularity. Four Nintendo consoles passed up the opportunity for a full blown new game however, with only the Wii paying homage to the character in the crossover orgasm Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
It was not until the 2010 E3 this past year when Reggie Fils-Amie was pimping Nintendo’s latest handheld and showed us a very special trailer.
Sorry to keep us waiting indeed. Whatever took you so long Pit, We are just glad to have you back.
Next time we will return to the original schedule and I will talk Castlevania.
Friday, December 10, 2010
TwouptwodownleftrightleftrightBA
Contra was not exactly a compelling game. The plot, like most in the NES series was a single four sentence paragraph that really served as a meager justification as to WHY you pumped quarters into the arcade machine. Your in game avatar was a silly knock off of the shirtless John Rambo, complete with a little bandanna, and you ran to the left and shot up billions of dollars of military hardware in the jungle. The game stayed that way until the very last level, which then made it look like the game should have been an “Aliens” arcade game.
Contra was a game for the Nintendo that characterized several things that are important for gaming as a whole. It clearly demonstrated that tight mechanics are important to narrative, and that a shallow game experience can be made up for by extreme difficulty.
Contra also reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of early video game producers. The limited lives and continues of early NES titles were brought to simulate the effect of being in a real arcade operating an actual cabinet. Lath meant limiting lives, something many video games continue to do this day, but also limiting the number of “continues” fabrication to represent limited pocket change. This created a whole slew of Nintendo game that demanded exceptional skill on part of the players to even finish.
Konami got around this with one simple keystroke combination though that spread like wildfire. The button pattern Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right B,A, entered before you started the game gave you 30 lives in the game, including after continues.
This key combination spread like wildfire in the 1980s, quite remarkable considering that the internet as we knew it was in it’s infancy. Word of mouth was powerful though, and it inspired game producers to include other so called “cheat codes” into games, or sometimes even allow players to enter a “debug” mode allowing you to fully customize your game experience.
Wow, I really did not have much to say about this game after all. Enjoy this music video then.
next time I will talk about the most under appreciated NES game, Kid Icarus
Contra was a game for the Nintendo that characterized several things that are important for gaming as a whole. It clearly demonstrated that tight mechanics are important to narrative, and that a shallow game experience can be made up for by extreme difficulty.
Contra also reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of early video game producers. The limited lives and continues of early NES titles were brought to simulate the effect of being in a real arcade operating an actual cabinet. Lath meant limiting lives, something many video games continue to do this day, but also limiting the number of “continues” fabrication to represent limited pocket change. This created a whole slew of Nintendo game that demanded exceptional skill on part of the players to even finish.
Konami got around this with one simple keystroke combination though that spread like wildfire. The button pattern Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right B,A, entered before you started the game gave you 30 lives in the game, including after continues.
This key combination spread like wildfire in the 1980s, quite remarkable considering that the internet as we knew it was in it’s infancy. Word of mouth was powerful though, and it inspired game producers to include other so called “cheat codes” into games, or sometimes even allow players to enter a “debug” mode allowing you to fully customize your game experience.
Wow, I really did not have much to say about this game after all. Enjoy this music video then.
next time I will talk about the most under appreciated NES game, Kid Icarus
Friday, December 3, 2010
I'm Blue... and Cyan...
In my NES retrospective I am compelled to move beyond the realm of Nintendo owned characters, and into the world of licensed properties. Mega Man (Rock Man in Japan) has spent the better part of his 25 years of existence dominating my gaming life. Living in an implied near future (constantly referencing 20XX) the world the game takes place in seems to be a mysterious blend of Issac Assimov and Harry Houdini’s wettest of dreams.
6 NES games, 1 SNES, 1 Playstation, and two throwback style games for download on your console of choice, and the entire plot is the same. Dr. Albert Wiley, a mentally unstable computer scientist specializing in Artificial Intelligence, in an effort to get revenge for his perceived ostracizing by college Dr. Thomas Light builds (or in a few cases steals) robots to engage in terrorist actions around the world.
The Core Mechanics of Mega Man are nothing special. Solid Platforming around obstacles and bad guys is a must. The ability to blow the hell out of what’s in your way is important as well. But Megaman offered two unique mechanics that let it stand out.
The first is that you hyad the ability to choose the order of the levels you went through. A relatively simple mechanic that blows away the concept of levels simply getting “harder” as time went on, instead level design had to pose unique challenges.
The other mechanic was that every time you beat a level, you got to use the master of that levels weaponry. weather it was an explosive, Flame thrower, or even bladed boomerangs, whatever weapons you picked up also served as tools to assist you in getting through other levels as time went on, until you reach Wiley himself, and had to use all the tools at your disposal to even GET to him.
In my adulthood I realize the game was far from perfect. Plot-wise, as I said before it can be summed up in the same old
“Dr. Wiley is on the loose again.”
While certainly not the first, nor the last to have a plot point repeat to the point of silly I really wish Capcom has stuck to their guns. In the 4th game of the series a whole new character was introduced in Dr. Cassock, and then in the middle of the game they backed out and revealed it was Dr. Wiley blackmailing Cassock. In the 6th Game a Mr. X (creative right?) who stole robots from a competition was also reviled to be Dr. Wiley in disguise.
What would be so wrong with having a NEW villain… Seriously? Each time it Might have breathed some fresh life into a stagnant plot, and it DID till you screwed it up! but it does not end there.
Finally in the often derided second game, our protagonist finally had enough and was ready to vaporize this clichéd villan. Here a Robot with a sense of justice finally had himself pushed to far, where he overrides his own programming for the sake of a perceived greater whole. When it is pointed out that he as a robot is programmed never to cause a human harm he replies
“I HAVE BECOME MORE THEN A ROBOT!” the only thing that keeps him from firing though is not pity, but self preservation, as the building they are in is about to collapse.
COME ON! we were about to explore self actualization of an AI CAPCOM! And you BLEW IT!
Mega Man still has a huge following after all this time. To the point of Bands like the Megas dedicated to making music based off the games, plenty of artwork and ROM-Hacks out there as well.
What is most fascinating is that Eddie LeBron, an independent film maker, actually created a film, about an hour and a half long, based on the Mega Man Franchise. I got to be honest, it’s not Oscar quality, but it certainly has Lifetime Movie Quality script, even if the effects and costumes are…. UPN quality.
Then again this is big budget action on no budget.
The series is worthy of a checkout if your not familiar. You can find a compilation of the first 8 games on the Playstation 2, as well as the Mega Man X Series (which I consider separate)
You can also get the classic Nintendo games at vintage stores, but the price tag tends to hover around 20 dollars, if you pick ONE up, make sure it is Mega Man 2 or 3 often held as the gold standards of the series.
6 NES games, 1 SNES, 1 Playstation, and two throwback style games for download on your console of choice, and the entire plot is the same. Dr. Albert Wiley, a mentally unstable computer scientist specializing in Artificial Intelligence, in an effort to get revenge for his perceived ostracizing by college Dr. Thomas Light builds (or in a few cases steals) robots to engage in terrorist actions around the world.
The Core Mechanics of Mega Man are nothing special. Solid Platforming around obstacles and bad guys is a must. The ability to blow the hell out of what’s in your way is important as well. But Megaman offered two unique mechanics that let it stand out.
The first is that you hyad the ability to choose the order of the levels you went through. A relatively simple mechanic that blows away the concept of levels simply getting “harder” as time went on, instead level design had to pose unique challenges.
The other mechanic was that every time you beat a level, you got to use the master of that levels weaponry. weather it was an explosive, Flame thrower, or even bladed boomerangs, whatever weapons you picked up also served as tools to assist you in getting through other levels as time went on, until you reach Wiley himself, and had to use all the tools at your disposal to even GET to him.
In my adulthood I realize the game was far from perfect. Plot-wise, as I said before it can be summed up in the same old
“Dr. Wiley is on the loose again.”
While certainly not the first, nor the last to have a plot point repeat to the point of silly I really wish Capcom has stuck to their guns. In the 4th game of the series a whole new character was introduced in Dr. Cassock, and then in the middle of the game they backed out and revealed it was Dr. Wiley blackmailing Cassock. In the 6th Game a Mr. X (creative right?) who stole robots from a competition was also reviled to be Dr. Wiley in disguise.
What would be so wrong with having a NEW villain… Seriously? Each time it Might have breathed some fresh life into a stagnant plot, and it DID till you screwed it up! but it does not end there.
Finally in the often derided second game, our protagonist finally had enough and was ready to vaporize this clichéd villan. Here a Robot with a sense of justice finally had himself pushed to far, where he overrides his own programming for the sake of a perceived greater whole. When it is pointed out that he as a robot is programmed never to cause a human harm he replies
“I HAVE BECOME MORE THEN A ROBOT!” the only thing that keeps him from firing though is not pity, but self preservation, as the building they are in is about to collapse.
COME ON! we were about to explore self actualization of an AI CAPCOM! And you BLEW IT!
Mega Man still has a huge following after all this time. To the point of Bands like the Megas dedicated to making music based off the games, plenty of artwork and ROM-Hacks out there as well.
What is most fascinating is that Eddie LeBron, an independent film maker, actually created a film, about an hour and a half long, based on the Mega Man Franchise. I got to be honest, it’s not Oscar quality, but it certainly has Lifetime Movie Quality script, even if the effects and costumes are…. UPN quality.
Then again this is big budget action on no budget.
The series is worthy of a checkout if your not familiar. You can find a compilation of the first 8 games on the Playstation 2, as well as the Mega Man X Series (which I consider separate)
You can also get the classic Nintendo games at vintage stores, but the price tag tends to hover around 20 dollars, if you pick ONE up, make sure it is Mega Man 2 or 3 often held as the gold standards of the series.
Monday, November 22, 2010
It's Dangerous to Go Alone... Take This.
If Mario is the King of Nintendo, Zelda is most assuredly the queen. Everything about the original Legend of Zelda game made it stand out from the rest of the Nintendo Library. From its metallic gold cart to its overall play style to the little lithium ion battery that allowed you to save a game directly on the cart, as opposed to a password system, Without the Legend of Zelda, video games as we know it would not exist.
In 1986 Shigeru Miyamoto fresh off the success of Mario Brothers, created another world. Named after the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Legend of Zelda tells the tale of a Boy named Link, off to save a Princess named Zelda, from a Wizard named Gannon, who has taken the form of a Pig King. Creative right? Eventually there would be whole mythologies devoted to a Triple goddess, and sages and blah blah, but for now, the Triforce you had to find and build was nothing more then a huge MacGuffin.
Rather then giving us single levels like most games, where we were moved in one direction towards a goal, we were dumped in the middle of a mystical land. We That very first screen had three roads and a small cave in front of us. In that cave, if you did not miss it at first. was an old man and a rusty sword.
“It’s Dangerous to go alone… Take this”
It was like tossing a toddler in a poll and telling it to swim. Nothing had ever existed like it. You had to explore the world to find your goal. Each dungeon you went into had a new device to help you explore further, to the point where once your realized you could bomb walls and burn bushes, you would do that on every single tile of the game possible to find everything.
And you were doing it to some bitching music! Again Koji Kondo brought us a fantastic chip tune. On the over world you were treated to a track that sang to the epic nature of your quest, in the dungeons a dark brooding tune reminded you constantly of the danger you faced.
Yet you were not some sword swinging Conan the Barbarian. Often times you had to think through the game, figuring out that you could only kill the Dinosaurs by “feeding” them bombs, or that the hungry but passive monster blocking your path could be fed meat to go away. Puzzles would be as simple as step on that switch, to playing with beams of light to reveal a ghost.
Music was also an important tool, able to transport you instantly across the entire game world as early as the first game. Others had musical instruments as plot points, or as tools to allow you to change time, the weather, or even act as a key to unlock certain doors.
But there is a lot of controversy about this tale of a boy, a girl, and a man… who is sometimes also a pig. You see the Legend of Zelda spans almost 20 games. But to an audience to crave continuity, this franchise has been hard to pin down. Nintendo has taken the aspect of “Legend” to it’s furthest conclusion, and despite a handful of direct (Zelda II, Majora’s Mask), and sometimes indirect sequels (Spirit Tracks) there seems to be little continuity between the games.
Timeline arguments always focus on the 1998 released Ocarina of Time, argued to be the earliest point in the timeline, and its direct use of Time Travel. So dedicated are some fans to the story of the Boy, the Girl, and the Man… who is sometimes also a pig, that wide ranging debates always result in a stalemate. As for me, I tend to focus on the “Legend” aspect of the series title. Tolkein got it wrong as far as I am concerned. The best stories are not the ones that never end, they are told over and over again, eventually gaining new aspects and loosing old ones.
Anyway, that’s it for that retrospective, next time we will discuss my personal favorite of the 8 bit pantheon… Mega Man.
In 1986 Shigeru Miyamoto fresh off the success of Mario Brothers, created another world. Named after the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Legend of Zelda tells the tale of a Boy named Link, off to save a Princess named Zelda, from a Wizard named Gannon, who has taken the form of a Pig King. Creative right? Eventually there would be whole mythologies devoted to a Triple goddess, and sages and blah blah, but for now, the Triforce you had to find and build was nothing more then a huge MacGuffin.
Rather then giving us single levels like most games, where we were moved in one direction towards a goal, we were dumped in the middle of a mystical land. We That very first screen had three roads and a small cave in front of us. In that cave, if you did not miss it at first. was an old man and a rusty sword.
“It’s Dangerous to go alone… Take this”
It was like tossing a toddler in a poll and telling it to swim. Nothing had ever existed like it. You had to explore the world to find your goal. Each dungeon you went into had a new device to help you explore further, to the point where once your realized you could bomb walls and burn bushes, you would do that on every single tile of the game possible to find everything.
And you were doing it to some bitching music! Again Koji Kondo brought us a fantastic chip tune. On the over world you were treated to a track that sang to the epic nature of your quest, in the dungeons a dark brooding tune reminded you constantly of the danger you faced.
Yet you were not some sword swinging Conan the Barbarian. Often times you had to think through the game, figuring out that you could only kill the Dinosaurs by “feeding” them bombs, or that the hungry but passive monster blocking your path could be fed meat to go away. Puzzles would be as simple as step on that switch, to playing with beams of light to reveal a ghost.
Music was also an important tool, able to transport you instantly across the entire game world as early as the first game. Others had musical instruments as plot points, or as tools to allow you to change time, the weather, or even act as a key to unlock certain doors.
But there is a lot of controversy about this tale of a boy, a girl, and a man… who is sometimes also a pig. You see the Legend of Zelda spans almost 20 games. But to an audience to crave continuity, this franchise has been hard to pin down. Nintendo has taken the aspect of “Legend” to it’s furthest conclusion, and despite a handful of direct (Zelda II, Majora’s Mask), and sometimes indirect sequels (Spirit Tracks) there seems to be little continuity between the games.
Timeline arguments always focus on the 1998 released Ocarina of Time, argued to be the earliest point in the timeline, and its direct use of Time Travel. So dedicated are some fans to the story of the Boy, the Girl, and the Man… who is sometimes also a pig, that wide ranging debates always result in a stalemate. As for me, I tend to focus on the “Legend” aspect of the series title. Tolkein got it wrong as far as I am concerned. The best stories are not the ones that never end, they are told over and over again, eventually gaining new aspects and loosing old ones.
Anyway, that’s it for that retrospective, next time we will discuss my personal favorite of the 8 bit pantheon… Mega Man.
Friday, November 12, 2010
MARIO! BUSTED UP THE PIPE! YOUR SAVIOR HAS ARRIVED!
What can be said about Super Mario Brothers, that has not already been said. Shigeru Miyamoto could largely be considered a genius when he made this game, because his focus was for the player to complete a story, rather then just get a high score.
One of the more amazing facts about Mario is the design of the character. By now we all know about the blue overalls, white gloves, cap and mustache. What few know was that Mario’s Getup was deliberately designed to avoid having to draw poorly rendered 8 bit characters. The hat hid hair, the ‘stache hid the face, and the contrasting overalls and shirt were to give the character a less monotone body.
Mario at the same time developed what became the most basic instructions for all video games to come, at least until plot driven narrative and X Box Live took over. This was namely the two cardinal rules of Nintendo.
1) MOVE CORRECTLY!
2) DO NOT DIE!
Two rules that can be found in EVERY video game, sure you can fight back by jumping or shooting, or you can hide, but fundamentally every video game from Mario to Modern Warfare 2 has this base assertion behind its controller.
Mario was also one of the pioneers in the video game music genre. Coming in a 3 minutes and 45 seconds, the ever infamous “ground theme” can usually be identified in the first second or so of play. Koji Kondo was a genius for making such a melody, particularly given the technical limitations of chip tunes in the day. These days composers working on video games have whole orchestra’s to work with, and high tech mixing tools. And while Halo and Metal Gear can claim some kick ass soundtracks, there would not have been those greats without Kondo’s work.
In my adult life it strikes me how much people try to interpret from the Mario franchise. Druggies want to see Poppies, shrooms and cannabis in Marios Power-ups. Freudians see the relationship of Mario, Peach and Bowser as the Id, Ego and Super Ego, figure that one out for yourself. And there is also a strange relationship with cake in there.
All that said, Mario is arguably the best selling video game franchise ever, with hundreds of games across 200 platforms. He was the gateway to many adventures for children, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for opening a world from us?
Next time we will look at The Legend of Zelda
One of the more amazing facts about Mario is the design of the character. By now we all know about the blue overalls, white gloves, cap and mustache. What few know was that Mario’s Getup was deliberately designed to avoid having to draw poorly rendered 8 bit characters. The hat hid hair, the ‘stache hid the face, and the contrasting overalls and shirt were to give the character a less monotone body.
Mario at the same time developed what became the most basic instructions for all video games to come, at least until plot driven narrative and X Box Live took over. This was namely the two cardinal rules of Nintendo.
1) MOVE CORRECTLY!
2) DO NOT DIE!
Two rules that can be found in EVERY video game, sure you can fight back by jumping or shooting, or you can hide, but fundamentally every video game from Mario to Modern Warfare 2 has this base assertion behind its controller.
Mario was also one of the pioneers in the video game music genre. Coming in a 3 minutes and 45 seconds, the ever infamous “ground theme” can usually be identified in the first second or so of play. Koji Kondo was a genius for making such a melody, particularly given the technical limitations of chip tunes in the day. These days composers working on video games have whole orchestra’s to work with, and high tech mixing tools. And while Halo and Metal Gear can claim some kick ass soundtracks, there would not have been those greats without Kondo’s work.
In my adult life it strikes me how much people try to interpret from the Mario franchise. Druggies want to see Poppies, shrooms and cannabis in Marios Power-ups. Freudians see the relationship of Mario, Peach and Bowser as the Id, Ego and Super Ego, figure that one out for yourself. And there is also a strange relationship with cake in there.
All that said, Mario is arguably the best selling video game franchise ever, with hundreds of games across 200 platforms. He was the gateway to many adventures for children, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for opening a world from us?
Next time we will look at The Legend of Zelda
Trippy goo!
Why is it when you get an actual cook book you never use it, but when you get cooking software, suddenly the kitchen is your empire?
*WARNING GENERALIZATION AHEAD*
Why is it that when a woman finds her mans porn collection, she is shocked, appalled, and offended... yet when a man find his woman "I love me" drawer or chest he calls her and asks for a demonstration?
*Generalization ended*
So a Black guy, a woman from San Fransico, and a Mormon are in charge of a country. God Bless America.
Friends help you move, true friends help you move bodies
Beer is in fact beer, and beer is good.
what if the Illuminati and the military industrial complex is nothing more then a n apathetic 90 year old former communist named Bob who is snickering at the crazy ideas "free minded" people have about him.
Aslain is Jesus
I can create a well reasoned legal argument to get out of any crime by saying that I did not have any involvement in the movie "Batman and Robin"
Keep watching the 17 year old in the black trench coat, it will distract you from the big scary guy with the machete
*WARNING GENERALIZATION AHEAD*
Why is it that when a woman finds her mans porn collection, she is shocked, appalled, and offended... yet when a man find his woman "I love me" drawer or chest he calls her and asks for a demonstration?
*Generalization ended*
So a Black guy, a woman from San Fransico, and a Mormon are in charge of a country. God Bless America.
Friends help you move, true friends help you move bodies
Beer is in fact beer, and beer is good.
what if the Illuminati and the military industrial complex is nothing more then a n apathetic 90 year old former communist named Bob who is snickering at the crazy ideas "free minded" people have about him.
Aslain is Jesus
I can create a well reasoned legal argument to get out of any crime by saying that I did not have any involvement in the movie "Batman and Robin"
Keep watching the 17 year old in the black trench coat, it will distract you from the big scary guy with the machete
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Nintendo's SIlver year
Nintendo turned 25 this, year. Weird huh, especially considering I am 27. I still have vivid memories of playing Mario in Kindergarten, with classmates and realizing just how unskilled I was at certain games, and a god among men at others.
Being retrospective about the old NES brought be to purchase a Nintendclone later in life, and I am working on getting all the Staples for it. It is often debated as to what are considered the “essential properties” that made the Nintendo Entertainment System a huge American phenomenon. Should they be only Nintendo produced titles, or do we allow third party developers? How do franchises come into play? Should they have appeared ONLY on the NES, and not other platforms, including arcades?
For me, I have a very liberal interpretation, and it is based on what was popular with the kids when I was growing up. For me, if I had to boil down my experiences with the NES into a selection of classic games they would be
1) Super Mario Brothers
2) The Legend of Zelda
3) Mega Man
4) Contra
5) Castlevania
6) Ninja Gaiden
7) Metroid
8) Kid Icarus
These where the games that, if one kid had all of them they were the coolest on the block. And off and on for a while I plan on sharing a little retrospective on each of them, so look back every so often between now and Christmas.
Being retrospective about the old NES brought be to purchase a Nintendclone later in life, and I am working on getting all the Staples for it. It is often debated as to what are considered the “essential properties” that made the Nintendo Entertainment System a huge American phenomenon. Should they be only Nintendo produced titles, or do we allow third party developers? How do franchises come into play? Should they have appeared ONLY on the NES, and not other platforms, including arcades?
For me, I have a very liberal interpretation, and it is based on what was popular with the kids when I was growing up. For me, if I had to boil down my experiences with the NES into a selection of classic games they would be
1) Super Mario Brothers
2) The Legend of Zelda
3) Mega Man
4) Contra
5) Castlevania
6) Ninja Gaiden
7) Metroid
8) Kid Icarus
These where the games that, if one kid had all of them they were the coolest on the block. And off and on for a while I plan on sharing a little retrospective on each of them, so look back every so often between now and Christmas.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
The Clarion Call
Let me make something perfectly clear. With a few recent exceptions, including sadly my upcoming pre-ordered purchase of Fallout New Vegas, I do not purchase games from GameStop. It just does not happen; I tended to favor Best Buy or Target until I found the joy of a more regional place called Vintage Stock. I chose not to buy from Gamestop because of a very specific incident that happened when I was trying to find a copy of Ace Combat 6.
I walked up to the counter and said “Hi, I noticed this game was not on the shelves, but it came out last week, do you have it?”
“Did you pre-order it?”
“No.”
“Well we don’t have it unless you pre-ordered it”
“Okay, I will check Target across the street.
“They don’t have it either.”
Ten minutes later I walked out of Target with my copy of Ace Combat 6 that they supposedly did not have. A year later I had a similar incident with Assassin’s Creed, in which I was told a best buy down the street did not have any copies of the game, and low and behold in the middle of an aisle was a CRATE full of Assassin’s Creed games. I still have the picture on my cell phone, and I showed it to the kid behind the counter who told me best buy did not have it.
So I made the conscious decision to get my game fix elsewhere, to exercise my power of the purse to reject GameStop business model, which fundamentally resembles a Pawn Shop more then a retailer.
This morning however I saw a video on one of my favorite gaming websites www.ScrewAttack.com my personal favorite feature there, The Game Overthinker posted a new video where he called upon gamers to do what I as a Gamer have chosen to do for years now and purchase games elsewhere. There really is no point in summing it up when I can just have you watch it here.
I want to take this call to action a step further though. I want to point out a few stories where I was suckered into a Gamestop Pre-Order that I really should not have been.
In the Case of Transformers War for Cybertron, I preordered From Gamestop, as opposed to Wal-Mart or Target for a specific Downloadable content character called Shockwave. Transformers Fans know what I speak of there. And I was happy and hunky dory, even though I felt dirty for giving GameStop money. Then what happens? DLC was made available to all that included the Shockwave character, as well as all the other Pre-Order Characters from other stores. I felt like the biggest jackass of all.
Another time I pre-ordered Halo Wars, and I got the phone call saying it was available Tuesday at midnight. I got the phone call Tuesday at 6 PM, so I thought “hmmm that was strange.” When I went to get my game I was told it would not be available for another six hours. When I brought up that was Wednesday at midnight and the message said Tuesday at midnight, all I got was “you must be the only one in the world that thinks that way.”
Obviously not, since that is how time works you jackass.
The Hardest truth of all is that I am not the only one. If I was one voice crying out into the night, that one whiney little bitch who had no real complaint, I could accept that and brood. But the internet is littered with GameStop Haters, many of them former employees. That there are so many Gamers out there that do despise this conglomerate for what it has done to gaming as a hobby speaks volumes to the company’s character.
So I answer the Game Overthinkers Clarion Call, and I ask you to as well. Take that mightiest of weapons you have, your wallet, and when it comes time to purchase a new game, go somewhere else first.
I walked up to the counter and said “Hi, I noticed this game was not on the shelves, but it came out last week, do you have it?”
“Did you pre-order it?”
“No.”
“Well we don’t have it unless you pre-ordered it”
“Okay, I will check Target across the street.
“They don’t have it either.”
Ten minutes later I walked out of Target with my copy of Ace Combat 6 that they supposedly did not have. A year later I had a similar incident with Assassin’s Creed, in which I was told a best buy down the street did not have any copies of the game, and low and behold in the middle of an aisle was a CRATE full of Assassin’s Creed games. I still have the picture on my cell phone, and I showed it to the kid behind the counter who told me best buy did not have it.
So I made the conscious decision to get my game fix elsewhere, to exercise my power of the purse to reject GameStop business model, which fundamentally resembles a Pawn Shop more then a retailer.
This morning however I saw a video on one of my favorite gaming websites www.ScrewAttack.com my personal favorite feature there, The Game Overthinker posted a new video where he called upon gamers to do what I as a Gamer have chosen to do for years now and purchase games elsewhere. There really is no point in summing it up when I can just have you watch it here.
I want to take this call to action a step further though. I want to point out a few stories where I was suckered into a Gamestop Pre-Order that I really should not have been.
In the Case of Transformers War for Cybertron, I preordered From Gamestop, as opposed to Wal-Mart or Target for a specific Downloadable content character called Shockwave. Transformers Fans know what I speak of there. And I was happy and hunky dory, even though I felt dirty for giving GameStop money. Then what happens? DLC was made available to all that included the Shockwave character, as well as all the other Pre-Order Characters from other stores. I felt like the biggest jackass of all.
Another time I pre-ordered Halo Wars, and I got the phone call saying it was available Tuesday at midnight. I got the phone call Tuesday at 6 PM, so I thought “hmmm that was strange.” When I went to get my game I was told it would not be available for another six hours. When I brought up that was Wednesday at midnight and the message said Tuesday at midnight, all I got was “you must be the only one in the world that thinks that way.”
Obviously not, since that is how time works you jackass.
The Hardest truth of all is that I am not the only one. If I was one voice crying out into the night, that one whiney little bitch who had no real complaint, I could accept that and brood. But the internet is littered with GameStop Haters, many of them former employees. That there are so many Gamers out there that do despise this conglomerate for what it has done to gaming as a hobby speaks volumes to the company’s character.
So I answer the Game Overthinkers Clarion Call, and I ask you to as well. Take that mightiest of weapons you have, your wallet, and when it comes time to purchase a new game, go somewhere else first.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Banned Book Week
Happy Banned Book Week!
Yes for decades, nay nearly a century, there have been some books that have offended people so, that said people have gone out of their way not just to exercise their own power of the free market, but have forced their will upon the public by rallying for several works of fiction and non fiction to be banned at publicly owned libraries.
From Authors as celebrated as Mark Twain, to Recent Geniuses like J.K. Rowling, a minority in the United States, Nay, the entire world have sought to destroy or ban the exercise of intellectual freedom by subverting human expression in one of its most basic forms.
I choose however not to rally a call to prevent such censorship. Not because I believe that some books ought to be banned. Quite the contrary, I find all books to be as sacred as some find the Bible, or the Quran to be. It matters not if it is as whimsical as “The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby.” That Mein Kampf came from such an evil soul is irrelevant. It does not even matter if it is as bad as Twilight. The fact is that the written word is the gateway to a person’s soul, and we are allowed through books to view into the souls of others. Nothing can be more divine then that.
So rather then wording my own call, I choose instead to invoke John Milton, from his speech to Parliament Areopagitica
“Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
Damn, dude that is heavy stuff.
To celebrate banned book week, go out and find these books, and read a couple of them.
Yes for decades, nay nearly a century, there have been some books that have offended people so, that said people have gone out of their way not just to exercise their own power of the free market, but have forced their will upon the public by rallying for several works of fiction and non fiction to be banned at publicly owned libraries.
From Authors as celebrated as Mark Twain, to Recent Geniuses like J.K. Rowling, a minority in the United States, Nay, the entire world have sought to destroy or ban the exercise of intellectual freedom by subverting human expression in one of its most basic forms.
I choose however not to rally a call to prevent such censorship. Not because I believe that some books ought to be banned. Quite the contrary, I find all books to be as sacred as some find the Bible, or the Quran to be. It matters not if it is as whimsical as “The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby.” That Mein Kampf came from such an evil soul is irrelevant. It does not even matter if it is as bad as Twilight. The fact is that the written word is the gateway to a person’s soul, and we are allowed through books to view into the souls of others. Nothing can be more divine then that.
So rather then wording my own call, I choose instead to invoke John Milton, from his speech to Parliament Areopagitica
“Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
Damn, dude that is heavy stuff.
To celebrate banned book week, go out and find these books, and read a couple of them.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Not Republican Enough
In 2002 I signed up for the Young Republicans in order to get a free T Shirt. I was never bothered by them again. Well a few days ago I got a call on my cell phone being invited to a small event in Columbia so I could speak to a small Young Republicans Panel as a “Approaching 30” guy who apparently was a “long standing member” of the organization. Despite being confused, I graciously accepted.
When I asked about what Items I wanted to speak about I said that I wanted to talk about a return to fiscal conservatism. I also spoke about a serious opposition to gun control, something I am not passionate about, but do tend to fall on the Republican side of.
This got the caller really excited.
Then I said I also wanted to talk about things that Republicans need to change, social issues that are either unimportant, inevitably going to move a certain direction, or are not the venue of legislation to solve.
This got the caller nervous.
I spoke of the need to step back from LGBT marital rights for example, as time and history are on the side of that issue. I spoke about how Television, Film, and Electronic entertainment need to be continuously advocated for to ensure first amendment protection.
This agitated the caller
I then talked about how if Republicans want any credibility on Abortion rights; they need to surrender other sexual rights issues. Those issues, like access to birth control and sexual education need to be handled in a more comprehensive and scientific way then smacking kids upside the head and saying “don’t have sex.
The caller summarily dis invited me, stating that I have swayed to far away from Republican Party issues to be of any use to them.
They can fuck off.
When I asked about what Items I wanted to speak about I said that I wanted to talk about a return to fiscal conservatism. I also spoke about a serious opposition to gun control, something I am not passionate about, but do tend to fall on the Republican side of.
This got the caller really excited.
Then I said I also wanted to talk about things that Republicans need to change, social issues that are either unimportant, inevitably going to move a certain direction, or are not the venue of legislation to solve.
This got the caller nervous.
I spoke of the need to step back from LGBT marital rights for example, as time and history are on the side of that issue. I spoke about how Television, Film, and Electronic entertainment need to be continuously advocated for to ensure first amendment protection.
This agitated the caller
I then talked about how if Republicans want any credibility on Abortion rights; they need to surrender other sexual rights issues. Those issues, like access to birth control and sexual education need to be handled in a more comprehensive and scientific way then smacking kids upside the head and saying “don’t have sex.
The caller summarily dis invited me, stating that I have swayed to far away from Republican Party issues to be of any use to them.
They can fuck off.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Park 51 Part 1
You know there is a reason I do not talk about political issues on this blog too often. It is not that I fear pissing off people, hell I make a career out of that. No the reason why is that I am a firm believer that every political opinion that every different person on the planet possesses is wrong, my own included. I fully expect 10,000 years from now humanity will look back at the differences in opinion between George Bush and Barack Obama and condemn them both to the trash heap of stupid bullshit along with their forty-one predecessors.
But once in a while a gem comes alone, a diamond of opportunity where I get to step forth and do what I do best, and that is arbitrate the differences in opinion between two or three groups of people who are making complete jackasses of themselves over what will eventually become insignificant bullshit.
There is trouble brewing in New York City, I would say quietly brewing but that would be a fucking lie. This trouble surrounds a building at 45-51 Park Place in lower Manhattan. For those unfamiliar with the New York area, two of the largest commercial buildings in the United States of America stood not two blocks from that region, until they were brought down when 19 Saudis decided to take flying lesions in the middle of their transoceanic flights.
That’s right kids, it is time to talk about the so called “Ground Zero Mosque.” Now I don’t know what is more frightening, that in a recent poll 11% of Americans thought that the building of this mosque violated the 1st Amendment of the Constitution; or that Imam Abdul Rauf seems to be so callous towards the will of the public, the safety of the contractors that will build this center. And the people who will use it that he continues to press the entire thing forward.
So where does the Arbiter stand on this you wonder? Simply put EVERYONE IS WRONG! Opponents of the mosque are wrong, proponents are wrong, the media is wrong, and the politicians who speak out for or against it is wrong. This ENTIRE travesty is about as wrong as a man covered in paper cuts being in the middle of a circle jerk at an AIDS clinic. And sadly it is up to me to break this down for the rest of you folks so you can calm the fuck down!
For the people who oppose the building of this “Ground Zero Mosque,” I have nothing but sympathy for your base argument, I really do. This is hard for many because 19 nut-jobs killed 3000 people in the name of a faith that this new building caters too. It FEELS wrong. I emphasize FEELS wrong because while that feeling maybe there, and it maybe strong, there is not one thing illegal about it. I am thankful that the level headed folks are clinging solely to the fact that their emotional malfeasance towards the building of this Mosque is centered on that.
What makes me ashamed are the fuckwits who go around clinging to silly one liners from the Qur’an trying to prove that it is all part of a greater “muslim conspiracy” to plant some kind of victory flag over the world trade center and wave a big ass middle finger to the United States of America and its citizens. This whole incident has raised a massive wave of xenophobia where people are openly declaring Muslims born and raised in places like New York, Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vega, Kansas City, and Orlando as not American Citizens. I wish I could say that this was unique in our history but it isn’t. one only need to look back seventy years ago to the long term imprisonment of American Citizens of Japanese descent after World War Two to show that when we suffer a major blow to morale, the American people will go after anyone who remotely LOOKS like the kind of people who did us harm, despite them having nothing to do with it. It kind of makes it hard to hold a moral authority over the holocaust when we did something pretty similar back home, and yet for some reason we still pull it off!
And then there are the people with thin ass legal challenges. First they were trying to make the original building a historic site, then there were zoning restrictions, and the list goes on. Concerned citizens trying to catch a group on technicalities of building stuff that any responsible and intelligent build would have cleared with the City of New York BEFORE even grabbing a drafting pen.
Here are the facts you nitwits, Islam as a religion is just about as united as Christianity is. If you think that is pretty tight knit, I should remind you that there are over 100 different denominations worldwide that claim to call themselves “Christian”, including Mormons, Rastafarians, and people who practice Voodoo. By trying to lump the American citizens who want to build this Mosque where it is going to be built up with the Al-Queada Terrorists is akin to me lumping Baptists with Catholics and saying “all ministers/priests/preachers are child molestors.”
So stop it, sit down and shut the hell up.
No as for Abdual Rauf and his ilk, and yes I address this to you specifically rather then the greater American Muslim community. I think that is reasonable since it is YOUR Islamic Cultural Center. I have one question for you. Are you Gods damned out of your minds? You have received enough negative press about this that were you running for political office your career would be over, and yet the project still persists, as is, no changes, not mediation, no attempts to reach out to the public that by and large, for whatever reason opposes this project.
This is a continuation of forced ignorance on behalf of Muslim community leadership in the United States. It is not just in new york either, but nation wide, where a lot of people seem to believe that the United States of American and it’s citizens has either forgotten about the September 11th attacks, or has forgiven Islam as a whole for its role as a motivating factor therein. While I am not saying it is just, by and large Americans have not, and that includes some Muslims. I have a Muslin coworker who is pissed of at you guys and used the term Fitna to describe what is happening. I had to look it up, and it means “organized mischief making.”
Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, while noting that blaming all Muslims for 9/11 was "ridiculous", said:
"I don't think the Muslim leadership has fully appreciated the impact of 9/11 on America. They assume Americans have forgotten 9/11 and even, in a profound way, forgiven 9/11, and that has not happened. The wounds remain largely open [...] and when wounds are raw, an episode like constructing a house of worship—even one protected by the Constitution, protected by law—becomes like salt in the wounds". He goes on to say that, in his opinion, if the center is constructed as well as a mosque it should contain a memorial and an ecumenical house of worship.
I do not disregard the legal right for this Islamic Cultural Center to be constructed, I really don’t. You guys have the money, the legal paperwork, the constitutional protection. But that does not change the fact that this is as wise as opening a Planned Parenthood office across the street, and out of the jurisdiction of a Catholic church.
Have you considered in light of the negative flak you have received, working in partnership with Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the United Jewish Federation of New York to create a TRUE interfaith cultural center. In the Park 51 website it is described that the center will contain "a mosque, intended to be run separately from Park 51 but open to and accessible to all members, visitors and our New York community." If a house of worship is a secondary concern to providing a place to workout, provide childcare, etc, then perhaps an interfaith partnership would be the best way to go on this.
The continued progress towards the building of this Islamic Cultural Center is going to be inflammatory, and the persistent hiding behind the law and disengagement from the greater New York community, and fellow Muslim dissenters does nothing to help your cause. The power to perform an action does not mean you SHOULD do that same action.
So that is my take on the people directly involved, next time I am gonna look at those who are not involved, but are not helping the issue. Until then party on.
Christ I would love to know what Marisa thinks of my opinion.
But once in a while a gem comes alone, a diamond of opportunity where I get to step forth and do what I do best, and that is arbitrate the differences in opinion between two or three groups of people who are making complete jackasses of themselves over what will eventually become insignificant bullshit.
There is trouble brewing in New York City, I would say quietly brewing but that would be a fucking lie. This trouble surrounds a building at 45-51 Park Place in lower Manhattan. For those unfamiliar with the New York area, two of the largest commercial buildings in the United States of America stood not two blocks from that region, until they were brought down when 19 Saudis decided to take flying lesions in the middle of their transoceanic flights.
That’s right kids, it is time to talk about the so called “Ground Zero Mosque.” Now I don’t know what is more frightening, that in a recent poll 11% of Americans thought that the building of this mosque violated the 1st Amendment of the Constitution; or that Imam Abdul Rauf seems to be so callous towards the will of the public, the safety of the contractors that will build this center. And the people who will use it that he continues to press the entire thing forward.
So where does the Arbiter stand on this you wonder? Simply put EVERYONE IS WRONG! Opponents of the mosque are wrong, proponents are wrong, the media is wrong, and the politicians who speak out for or against it is wrong. This ENTIRE travesty is about as wrong as a man covered in paper cuts being in the middle of a circle jerk at an AIDS clinic. And sadly it is up to me to break this down for the rest of you folks so you can calm the fuck down!
For the people who oppose the building of this “Ground Zero Mosque,” I have nothing but sympathy for your base argument, I really do. This is hard for many because 19 nut-jobs killed 3000 people in the name of a faith that this new building caters too. It FEELS wrong. I emphasize FEELS wrong because while that feeling maybe there, and it maybe strong, there is not one thing illegal about it. I am thankful that the level headed folks are clinging solely to the fact that their emotional malfeasance towards the building of this Mosque is centered on that.
What makes me ashamed are the fuckwits who go around clinging to silly one liners from the Qur’an trying to prove that it is all part of a greater “muslim conspiracy” to plant some kind of victory flag over the world trade center and wave a big ass middle finger to the United States of America and its citizens. This whole incident has raised a massive wave of xenophobia where people are openly declaring Muslims born and raised in places like New York, Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vega, Kansas City, and Orlando as not American Citizens. I wish I could say that this was unique in our history but it isn’t. one only need to look back seventy years ago to the long term imprisonment of American Citizens of Japanese descent after World War Two to show that when we suffer a major blow to morale, the American people will go after anyone who remotely LOOKS like the kind of people who did us harm, despite them having nothing to do with it. It kind of makes it hard to hold a moral authority over the holocaust when we did something pretty similar back home, and yet for some reason we still pull it off!
And then there are the people with thin ass legal challenges. First they were trying to make the original building a historic site, then there were zoning restrictions, and the list goes on. Concerned citizens trying to catch a group on technicalities of building stuff that any responsible and intelligent build would have cleared with the City of New York BEFORE even grabbing a drafting pen.
Here are the facts you nitwits, Islam as a religion is just about as united as Christianity is. If you think that is pretty tight knit, I should remind you that there are over 100 different denominations worldwide that claim to call themselves “Christian”, including Mormons, Rastafarians, and people who practice Voodoo. By trying to lump the American citizens who want to build this Mosque where it is going to be built up with the Al-Queada Terrorists is akin to me lumping Baptists with Catholics and saying “all ministers/priests/preachers are child molestors.”
So stop it, sit down and shut the hell up.
No as for Abdual Rauf and his ilk, and yes I address this to you specifically rather then the greater American Muslim community. I think that is reasonable since it is YOUR Islamic Cultural Center. I have one question for you. Are you Gods damned out of your minds? You have received enough negative press about this that were you running for political office your career would be over, and yet the project still persists, as is, no changes, not mediation, no attempts to reach out to the public that by and large, for whatever reason opposes this project.
This is a continuation of forced ignorance on behalf of Muslim community leadership in the United States. It is not just in new york either, but nation wide, where a lot of people seem to believe that the United States of American and it’s citizens has either forgotten about the September 11th attacks, or has forgiven Islam as a whole for its role as a motivating factor therein. While I am not saying it is just, by and large Americans have not, and that includes some Muslims. I have a Muslin coworker who is pissed of at you guys and used the term Fitna to describe what is happening. I had to look it up, and it means “organized mischief making.”
Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, while noting that blaming all Muslims for 9/11 was "ridiculous", said:
"I don't think the Muslim leadership has fully appreciated the impact of 9/11 on America. They assume Americans have forgotten 9/11 and even, in a profound way, forgiven 9/11, and that has not happened. The wounds remain largely open [...] and when wounds are raw, an episode like constructing a house of worship—even one protected by the Constitution, protected by law—becomes like salt in the wounds". He goes on to say that, in his opinion, if the center is constructed as well as a mosque it should contain a memorial and an ecumenical house of worship.
I do not disregard the legal right for this Islamic Cultural Center to be constructed, I really don’t. You guys have the money, the legal paperwork, the constitutional protection. But that does not change the fact that this is as wise as opening a Planned Parenthood office across the street, and out of the jurisdiction of a Catholic church.
Have you considered in light of the negative flak you have received, working in partnership with Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the United Jewish Federation of New York to create a TRUE interfaith cultural center. In the Park 51 website it is described that the center will contain "a mosque, intended to be run separately from Park 51 but open to and accessible to all members, visitors and our New York community." If a house of worship is a secondary concern to providing a place to workout, provide childcare, etc, then perhaps an interfaith partnership would be the best way to go on this.
The continued progress towards the building of this Islamic Cultural Center is going to be inflammatory, and the persistent hiding behind the law and disengagement from the greater New York community, and fellow Muslim dissenters does nothing to help your cause. The power to perform an action does not mean you SHOULD do that same action.
So that is my take on the people directly involved, next time I am gonna look at those who are not involved, but are not helping the issue. Until then party on.
Christ I would love to know what Marisa thinks of my opinion.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Online Exlusive RPG Content and YOU
Print is dead. This axiom has been stated going as far back as when the Radio was first introduced to the English by Guglielmo Marconi in the late 19th century. Yet for over a century, despite the advent of Radio, Television, Computers, and Computer networking Print media in its various forms has persisted as a preferred means of delivering information.
That said it is also undeniable that Print may finally be starting to decline. Newspaper and magazine circulation is at an all-time low, with such vaunted publications as national geographic and Readers digest culling their print runs from their bi weekly high, to bi monthly or quarterly. Major publishing houses are staring down the barrel of the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, and having to choose the embrace the technology or become extinct by it. The question is further exasperated with “print on demand” services largely cutting major publishers and editors out of the fiction publishing circle, and largely returning to an era reminiscent of the early days of the printing press where any schmoe could get anything printed so long as they had the money to do it.
Table Top gaming, my preferred passion, and why I come to you today, is stuck somewhere in the middle of this technological evolution. There will always be, at least for the foreseeable future, people who play with miniatures on tabletops. That will take the invention Holo-Deck to make extinct. But most tabletop games that are not “self contained” i.e. anything you need is all in the box with no expansions or customizations, fall under a peculiar conundrum. That is what to do about the vast majority of printed source-books, scenario books, plot line books, and just plain master rule books that are needed for play.
Catalyst Game Labs (my nerd crack dealer of choice) has been experimenting with publication of their rulebooks and other materials in digital form for the better part of five years, through their own website and a company called Drive Thru Rpg. In addition to new publications they have also experimented with products, smaller in nature, that will ONLY be published electronically.
Sales figures do not lie, according to Catalyst officials on their forums, the online exclusive products have been a roaring success. Being a smaller company in the middle of publicized financial issues, that statement is believable. After all, a company like catalyst can not afford to put money into products people are not buying.
That said, on Catalysts forums there is calls from the fan-base to publish these online exclusives in so called Dead Tree Format (.dtf). This brings me to ask two questions of the game play community. The first is why is it important to you to have these products in a hardcopy format published by Catalyst? The Second is if Catalyst does decide to print their electronic exclusive content, either individually or in compellation form, what advantage will those who have purchased the products electronically have? I admit I have my own bias on the entire issue, but that will be addressed as I attempt to answer these two questions.
As to the first question, “Why is it so vital for you to have these products in hardcopy format?” I think first we need to ask a corollary question. “Are you completely opposed to purchasing these products in electronic form at all?” If the answer is yes, that you are opposed to purchasing digital content for X, Y, or Z Reasons, I can not do anything for you. Trying to convince you otherwise would be pissing in the proverbial wind. And I do not need the reason either. If it is because you think online content should be free, have a pathological fear of losing digital content, or just flat don’t own a computer (in which case how are you posting on an internet forum?), I can not help you.
There is content for you game out there you do not have access to, and you feel left out. You fear that these special “whatever” is the equivalent of the “cool kids club”, and you are the one playing with the frog on the curb next to their clubhouse. I get that. Table top gamers are already a far too discriminated against sub culture of humanity. Whether the ignorance of others is do to disinterest, feeling of priority, or religious fear, we just don’t get along by and large with the outside world, so we want to stick together. I think that those who do not wish to or are incapable of downloading these items for pay, may fear being left out of the loop by their gamer friends.
In my humble experience though we as a sub culture are better then that. I have numerous life experiences where some kid I hung out with triumphantly held up a book of awesome he just got, and SHARED it with others. All this is doing is holding up an iPad and printing off pages rather then holding up a book and making photo copies.
Then there is the question of those of us who are not opposed to online content on any sort of principle. The best thing I have to offer is the nostalgia factor of flipping through a book. Again I get that, after all it is easy to not see a digital file as “Real” in any way. This is particularly troublesome for those of us who do not religiously back up our files on a regular basis. (remember kids, First Wednesday of every month is official Back Up Day!)
But these applications are real. Real effort goes into them, and the money you pay provides real support the company you love, be it Wizards, Catalyst, or other game producing companies that experiment in this form of distribution. This is not Vaporware in the Duke Nukem Forever mold. This is real stuff, and by not purchasing it until it meets a production standard you will be satisfied by YOU are missing out. And by purchasing them, you are in fact contributing to your gaming companies revenues, which allows them to produce more product both digitally and in hardcopy form.
Then there is what last thing that upsets me the most about the .dtf mafia that is out there. Hypothetically there are some who are OVERTLY saying they will wait for these products to be released in print form. I already addressed this prior. But I want to talk economic models with you.
If a gaming company takes a series of related digital products, like Battletechs Experimental Technical Readout Series, and prints a hardcopy for release, two things will happen. Other then cost to print, the development on the series of micro products has already been paid for. Thus any paper release of a digital product would be considerably cheaper then its cumulative digital cost. What happens when that sells like hot cakes?
The answer is that the early adopters will feel ripped off, and will hold off from the next big release of digital exclusives. Some might be loyal and buy the print version anyway, but many will not, partly because of product redundancy, but also out of feeling burned.
Because Digital exclusive revenues drop off sharply, what could have been a great constant trickle of game resources comes to a gradual stop, with nothing satiating the fans until the next big book release.
How do you counter this? the first thing is that if digital exclusive content no longer becomes exclusive, then there needs to be an incentive package for those who do buy them online. I am not speaking of something like a free print copy that would be far to expensive for the developers. Certainly a percentage off to print products price would be nice, or some sort of freebie like a years Battlecorps subscription.
Of course the whole issue is going be decided by the people that make this content, and it is a choice they will make based on what they feel the success of printing digital exclusive content will be. I just feel the need to contribute my voice to the greater whole, and hopefully I provided some context for people on both sides of the issue.
That said it is also undeniable that Print may finally be starting to decline. Newspaper and magazine circulation is at an all-time low, with such vaunted publications as national geographic and Readers digest culling their print runs from their bi weekly high, to bi monthly or quarterly. Major publishing houses are staring down the barrel of the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, and having to choose the embrace the technology or become extinct by it. The question is further exasperated with “print on demand” services largely cutting major publishers and editors out of the fiction publishing circle, and largely returning to an era reminiscent of the early days of the printing press where any schmoe could get anything printed so long as they had the money to do it.
Table Top gaming, my preferred passion, and why I come to you today, is stuck somewhere in the middle of this technological evolution. There will always be, at least for the foreseeable future, people who play with miniatures on tabletops. That will take the invention Holo-Deck to make extinct. But most tabletop games that are not “self contained” i.e. anything you need is all in the box with no expansions or customizations, fall under a peculiar conundrum. That is what to do about the vast majority of printed source-books, scenario books, plot line books, and just plain master rule books that are needed for play.
Catalyst Game Labs (my nerd crack dealer of choice) has been experimenting with publication of their rulebooks and other materials in digital form for the better part of five years, through their own website and a company called Drive Thru Rpg. In addition to new publications they have also experimented with products, smaller in nature, that will ONLY be published electronically.
Sales figures do not lie, according to Catalyst officials on their forums, the online exclusive products have been a roaring success. Being a smaller company in the middle of publicized financial issues, that statement is believable. After all, a company like catalyst can not afford to put money into products people are not buying.
That said, on Catalysts forums there is calls from the fan-base to publish these online exclusives in so called Dead Tree Format (.dtf). This brings me to ask two questions of the game play community. The first is why is it important to you to have these products in a hardcopy format published by Catalyst? The Second is if Catalyst does decide to print their electronic exclusive content, either individually or in compellation form, what advantage will those who have purchased the products electronically have? I admit I have my own bias on the entire issue, but that will be addressed as I attempt to answer these two questions.
As to the first question, “Why is it so vital for you to have these products in hardcopy format?” I think first we need to ask a corollary question. “Are you completely opposed to purchasing these products in electronic form at all?” If the answer is yes, that you are opposed to purchasing digital content for X, Y, or Z Reasons, I can not do anything for you. Trying to convince you otherwise would be pissing in the proverbial wind. And I do not need the reason either. If it is because you think online content should be free, have a pathological fear of losing digital content, or just flat don’t own a computer (in which case how are you posting on an internet forum?), I can not help you.
There is content for you game out there you do not have access to, and you feel left out. You fear that these special “whatever” is the equivalent of the “cool kids club”, and you are the one playing with the frog on the curb next to their clubhouse. I get that. Table top gamers are already a far too discriminated against sub culture of humanity. Whether the ignorance of others is do to disinterest, feeling of priority, or religious fear, we just don’t get along by and large with the outside world, so we want to stick together. I think that those who do not wish to or are incapable of downloading these items for pay, may fear being left out of the loop by their gamer friends.
In my humble experience though we as a sub culture are better then that. I have numerous life experiences where some kid I hung out with triumphantly held up a book of awesome he just got, and SHARED it with others. All this is doing is holding up an iPad and printing off pages rather then holding up a book and making photo copies.
Then there is the question of those of us who are not opposed to online content on any sort of principle. The best thing I have to offer is the nostalgia factor of flipping through a book. Again I get that, after all it is easy to not see a digital file as “Real” in any way. This is particularly troublesome for those of us who do not religiously back up our files on a regular basis. (remember kids, First Wednesday of every month is official Back Up Day!)
But these applications are real. Real effort goes into them, and the money you pay provides real support the company you love, be it Wizards, Catalyst, or other game producing companies that experiment in this form of distribution. This is not Vaporware in the Duke Nukem Forever mold. This is real stuff, and by not purchasing it until it meets a production standard you will be satisfied by YOU are missing out. And by purchasing them, you are in fact contributing to your gaming companies revenues, which allows them to produce more product both digitally and in hardcopy form.
Then there is what last thing that upsets me the most about the .dtf mafia that is out there. Hypothetically there are some who are OVERTLY saying they will wait for these products to be released in print form. I already addressed this prior. But I want to talk economic models with you.
If a gaming company takes a series of related digital products, like Battletechs Experimental Technical Readout Series, and prints a hardcopy for release, two things will happen. Other then cost to print, the development on the series of micro products has already been paid for. Thus any paper release of a digital product would be considerably cheaper then its cumulative digital cost. What happens when that sells like hot cakes?
The answer is that the early adopters will feel ripped off, and will hold off from the next big release of digital exclusives. Some might be loyal and buy the print version anyway, but many will not, partly because of product redundancy, but also out of feeling burned.
Because Digital exclusive revenues drop off sharply, what could have been a great constant trickle of game resources comes to a gradual stop, with nothing satiating the fans until the next big book release.
How do you counter this? the first thing is that if digital exclusive content no longer becomes exclusive, then there needs to be an incentive package for those who do buy them online. I am not speaking of something like a free print copy that would be far to expensive for the developers. Certainly a percentage off to print products price would be nice, or some sort of freebie like a years Battlecorps subscription.
Of course the whole issue is going be decided by the people that make this content, and it is a choice they will make based on what they feel the success of printing digital exclusive content will be. I just feel the need to contribute my voice to the greater whole, and hopefully I provided some context for people on both sides of the issue.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Regional arrogance
I want to talk to you about something that has been bothering me for close to two decades now. And it has reached a turning point with me thanks to something my friend said. Sociologists will tell us that there are two major types of areas human beings live in, broadly defined as Rural and Urban.
Rural communities are defined by large land holds with spares populations, usually dominated by farmland and their adjoined homesteads. Urban communities likewise are surrounded by commercial real estate, and very dense populations, where large homes sit on a single acre. This is all well and good. We have rural sections, and Urban sections of the united states.
What bothers me is this prevailing attitude where entire regions are defined as Rural, or as American English states “country” despite the fact that these regions have well developed urban areas in them. Now don’t get me wrong, Montgomery Alabama is nowhere near as large as New York City, But the city is certainly larger then say… Madera California. Yet by virtue of Montgomery being in Alabama, and Madera being in California, in the United States, one is country, and the other is not and it is not based on population.
I would like to thus call bullshit on the United States of America.
It seems to me that this attitude has it’s origins in the American Civil War, with the us vs. them mentality that the American south has with the rest of the world. The amusing part is that from Kansas on west, who almost had no part in that unfortunate conflict, the group seems to be stuck in the idea of being part of “the north” and thus not “country.” At the very least, regions like Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas, arguably the least populous states in the union when compared to Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee, barely get recognition from “country folk” elsewhere.
I wish I could say that this behavior was limited to folks in the south, but there are urbanites who have a bit of regional snobbery to them as well. Famed Comedian Andrew Dice Clay once said “if you live between New York and L.A. you’re a fucking farmer!” I went to college with a girl from San Francisco, who was amazed when I took her to Kansas City that there were buildings “taller then five stories!” and multi BILLION dollar business located there. My entire college life I have surprised folks from towns smaller then my home who expect me; because I lived my entire life in the geographical center of the lower 48; to wear cowboy hats, talk with a southern drawl, and listen to nothing but Keith Urban and Garth Brooks.
The people of the United States need to wake up and ditch the damned regional stereo types. I am sorry but if you moved from Kansas City to Montgomery, that does not make you a country gal, and if you want some fresh air, taking a vacation to Kansas City from Las Vegas will only net you moderately less pollution.
Urban Areas are Urban Areas no matter the region, same with Rural, and I think it is high time we address ourselves and our regions as such.
Rural communities are defined by large land holds with spares populations, usually dominated by farmland and their adjoined homesteads. Urban communities likewise are surrounded by commercial real estate, and very dense populations, where large homes sit on a single acre. This is all well and good. We have rural sections, and Urban sections of the united states.
What bothers me is this prevailing attitude where entire regions are defined as Rural, or as American English states “country” despite the fact that these regions have well developed urban areas in them. Now don’t get me wrong, Montgomery Alabama is nowhere near as large as New York City, But the city is certainly larger then say… Madera California. Yet by virtue of Montgomery being in Alabama, and Madera being in California, in the United States, one is country, and the other is not and it is not based on population.
I would like to thus call bullshit on the United States of America.
It seems to me that this attitude has it’s origins in the American Civil War, with the us vs. them mentality that the American south has with the rest of the world. The amusing part is that from Kansas on west, who almost had no part in that unfortunate conflict, the group seems to be stuck in the idea of being part of “the north” and thus not “country.” At the very least, regions like Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas, arguably the least populous states in the union when compared to Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee, barely get recognition from “country folk” elsewhere.
I wish I could say that this behavior was limited to folks in the south, but there are urbanites who have a bit of regional snobbery to them as well. Famed Comedian Andrew Dice Clay once said “if you live between New York and L.A. you’re a fucking farmer!” I went to college with a girl from San Francisco, who was amazed when I took her to Kansas City that there were buildings “taller then five stories!” and multi BILLION dollar business located there. My entire college life I have surprised folks from towns smaller then my home who expect me; because I lived my entire life in the geographical center of the lower 48; to wear cowboy hats, talk with a southern drawl, and listen to nothing but Keith Urban and Garth Brooks.
The people of the United States need to wake up and ditch the damned regional stereo types. I am sorry but if you moved from Kansas City to Montgomery, that does not make you a country gal, and if you want some fresh air, taking a vacation to Kansas City from Las Vegas will only net you moderately less pollution.
Urban Areas are Urban Areas no matter the region, same with Rural, and I think it is high time we address ourselves and our regions as such.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Call of Schmooty
Call of Duty can kiss me ass. That’s right I said it. I have a thorough dislike of Call of Duty for very logical, and I hope understandable reasons.
Call of Duty is a series of first person shooters that came out in 2003 as a means for a small time company called Infinity ward to cash in on Steven Spielberg’s highly successful “Medal of Honor” series of First person shooters. Both games take place during the Second World War, and while Medal of honor tried to create its own story within the era, Call of Duty tended to simulate pivotal battles, fulfilling historians wishes to be “Private Jimmy in the foxhole.”
All of that is well and good, and Call of Duty 1 and two were fantastic games in their own right, with lots to offer the shooter fan. It was right around the third entry in the franchise that something began to happen to the series that was a microcosm of Shooter gaming in general. What happened?
Xbox Live happened.
Call of Duty 3 was a tipping point in my ability to enjoy the franchise. When it comes to shooters I am more of a single player kind of guy. M I find the realm of on line first person games to be way to competitive for my tastes. Further I can not put on a headset on online gaming without be blasted by kids halfway through puberty calling me racist, sexist, homophobic, or politically charged names. yes I have been called a liberal on Xbox Live.
Does this bother me at all? A little. What do I do about it? I log off and stick to single player. Which brings me back to Call of Duty 3. COD 3 was not a bad single player game per say. Much how I was excited in the previous installment to play as a Russian at Stalingrad, or the Brits in North Africa, in COD 3 I was actually thrilled that you got to be smack dab in the middle of Canada’s vital but often underplayed role in the European Theater of World War II. The same goes for the Polish Army post Blitzkrieg. But the single player campaign, while suitably long, just was not doing it for me. It seemed that despite the 4 playable difficulties it still played like a racer at an arcade. Play on easy or hard.
So I gladly uninstalled COD 3 on my computer and sold it on ebay, got most of my money back and never game the franchise a second thought. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare passed me by without much fanfare, and while I thought the idea was interesting, I felt that all of the assets a modern solider had would make any first person shooter far to easy to play. I am sorry but what is the point of having dark levels AND giving me night vision goggles? Eventually I did pick up modern warfare at a reduced price and gave it a go, and this is where my chief complaint comes in.
I finished the single player campaign of that game in a weekend. I am not talking about a hardcore 12 hours at a time with only 3 hours of sleep a night weekend. I mean I popped it in the Playstation, sat back with an orange juice and some crêpes, and was about 2/3rds of the way done by lunch time. I was teased with what I saw as all sorts of story telling potential and awesome plot points. I mean for fucks sake YOU WITNESS A NUCLEAR DETONATION! But then said nuclear detonation is glossed over and barley talked about again, and you never even see that particular region (playfully dubbed notiraqistan) in the rest of the game. Fuck that noise.
See this brings me to my big point. Online Multiplayer has degraded the ability of Shooters to act as a narrative medium, when they have the potential to be one of the most power storytelling methods in gaming. Instead we have developers focusing on photorealistic graphics, and reflex oriented gameplay mechanics. Guys, those have been taken care of. The gore level is just about perfect in both realistic shooters and in Horror oriented shooters (F.E.A.R. THAT’S A FUN GAME!). We need a little work on the science fiction end though. As great of a story as Halo is, with its music and well tuned mechanics, lets face facts, staining the soil in purple ink is not good for alien gore.
It does seem that the “real war” inspired shooters is reaching a plateau. Because almost everything the allies have ever accomplished in WWII has been done, and no one thinks you can responsibly make a game where you play as the Axis powers, WWII is going by the wayside. Call of Duty is making a shift to the cold war and 21st century eras, The Halo Era is pretty much over, and Medal of Honor is set to become more of a Tom Clancy Oriented special operations genre. Meanwhile a lot of nerds are going to be waiting for the next big thing in science fiction shooting.
Which brings me to Transformers War for Cybertron…. Next time
Call of Duty is a series of first person shooters that came out in 2003 as a means for a small time company called Infinity ward to cash in on Steven Spielberg’s highly successful “Medal of Honor” series of First person shooters. Both games take place during the Second World War, and while Medal of honor tried to create its own story within the era, Call of Duty tended to simulate pivotal battles, fulfilling historians wishes to be “Private Jimmy in the foxhole.”
All of that is well and good, and Call of Duty 1 and two were fantastic games in their own right, with lots to offer the shooter fan. It was right around the third entry in the franchise that something began to happen to the series that was a microcosm of Shooter gaming in general. What happened?
Xbox Live happened.
Call of Duty 3 was a tipping point in my ability to enjoy the franchise. When it comes to shooters I am more of a single player kind of guy. M I find the realm of on line first person games to be way to competitive for my tastes. Further I can not put on a headset on online gaming without be blasted by kids halfway through puberty calling me racist, sexist, homophobic, or politically charged names. yes I have been called a liberal on Xbox Live.
Does this bother me at all? A little. What do I do about it? I log off and stick to single player. Which brings me back to Call of Duty 3. COD 3 was not a bad single player game per say. Much how I was excited in the previous installment to play as a Russian at Stalingrad, or the Brits in North Africa, in COD 3 I was actually thrilled that you got to be smack dab in the middle of Canada’s vital but often underplayed role in the European Theater of World War II. The same goes for the Polish Army post Blitzkrieg. But the single player campaign, while suitably long, just was not doing it for me. It seemed that despite the 4 playable difficulties it still played like a racer at an arcade. Play on easy or hard.
So I gladly uninstalled COD 3 on my computer and sold it on ebay, got most of my money back and never game the franchise a second thought. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare passed me by without much fanfare, and while I thought the idea was interesting, I felt that all of the assets a modern solider had would make any first person shooter far to easy to play. I am sorry but what is the point of having dark levels AND giving me night vision goggles? Eventually I did pick up modern warfare at a reduced price and gave it a go, and this is where my chief complaint comes in.
I finished the single player campaign of that game in a weekend. I am not talking about a hardcore 12 hours at a time with only 3 hours of sleep a night weekend. I mean I popped it in the Playstation, sat back with an orange juice and some crêpes, and was about 2/3rds of the way done by lunch time. I was teased with what I saw as all sorts of story telling potential and awesome plot points. I mean for fucks sake YOU WITNESS A NUCLEAR DETONATION! But then said nuclear detonation is glossed over and barley talked about again, and you never even see that particular region (playfully dubbed notiraqistan) in the rest of the game. Fuck that noise.
See this brings me to my big point. Online Multiplayer has degraded the ability of Shooters to act as a narrative medium, when they have the potential to be one of the most power storytelling methods in gaming. Instead we have developers focusing on photorealistic graphics, and reflex oriented gameplay mechanics. Guys, those have been taken care of. The gore level is just about perfect in both realistic shooters and in Horror oriented shooters (F.E.A.R. THAT’S A FUN GAME!). We need a little work on the science fiction end though. As great of a story as Halo is, with its music and well tuned mechanics, lets face facts, staining the soil in purple ink is not good for alien gore.
It does seem that the “real war” inspired shooters is reaching a plateau. Because almost everything the allies have ever accomplished in WWII has been done, and no one thinks you can responsibly make a game where you play as the Axis powers, WWII is going by the wayside. Call of Duty is making a shift to the cold war and 21st century eras, The Halo Era is pretty much over, and Medal of Honor is set to become more of a Tom Clancy Oriented special operations genre. Meanwhile a lot of nerds are going to be waiting for the next big thing in science fiction shooting.
Which brings me to Transformers War for Cybertron…. Next time
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Getting my groove back
Nothing to serious right now. I just noticed this. the woman that lead the majority in the South Carolina Republican Primary has been accused of two seperate extra martial affairs. Maybe it is just my natural sexual attraction to mildy older (10 years) women, but I say rock on.
the previous also republican governor of South Carolina admitted to one affair with an Argentinean woman and was shamed out of office.
that means that so far the number of affairs a person can have before being publicly shamed is 3 to 1 in favor of women.
both my wife and I need to never run for political office.
the previous also republican governor of South Carolina admitted to one affair with an Argentinean woman and was shamed out of office.
that means that so far the number of affairs a person can have before being publicly shamed is 3 to 1 in favor of women.
both my wife and I need to never run for political office.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Airline security
So I travel pretty extensively. In my 27 years of life I have set foot outside of an airport in 38 of the 50 states in my beloved USA, as well as traveled to Canada, Mexico, the Virgin Islands, and been on boats in three oceans. I have family in Alaksa, Arizona, Wyoming, Geogria, Massechussets, California, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho.
I would argue despite my lack of international credentials that I am more well traveled then the average American. And to get around, I usually fly. In my youth I enjoyed the ritual of flying. Sometimes it was a hassle to get up at 5:30 to make a 7 am flight, but it was always a positive experience. At least until 19 crazy Saudis decided to take piloting lesions in the middle of their international flights.
For the past decade now, the experience of air travel has degenerated to an experience that for many people around the world has shifted to a very negative experience. This can be divided firmly into two categories, the first being that Airlines, in their cost cutting measures, are taking away from the service and comfort of their customers. The second is governments, particularly the American government, is intentionally suspending the liberties of Passengers for the sake of the illusion of security, as they respond to the LAST threat that has hit air travel, rather then attempt to be proactive.
There have been two news items that recently have made air travel such a tremendous pain in the ass that I am on the verge of refusing to fly until such restrictions are lifted. The first and most humorous was that actor/director Kevin Smith (known for his View Askew films like Clerks) was kicked off a plane because he was too fat. His girth was unable to fit in a seat according to a flight attendant (which is a misnomer these days, because they really do not do anything). Never mind that Smith, who is a self proclaimed “fat ass” bought two southwest seats cause it was cheaper then flying first class elsewhere. Never mind that he was forced to give up one of those seats so a person on stand bye could make the flight. Because Smith could not fit his waist inside a seat 17.5 inches in width, he was booted and given 100 bucks for his trouble. (Never mind the cost of the two tickets was probably close to a thousand dollars.)
The second story is that the Transportation security agency, in an effort to deter and prevent incidents like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted bombing of a Christmas day flight over Detroit, is going to begin swabbing the hands of random passengers to detect explosive residue, thus adding another 15 minutes of security screenings that mean nothing, and that the flying public is expected to accept and “deal with” for the illusion of safety.
The first story I have little to fear from, since I am a man of average girth. I do have to say though those tiny seats that are on airplanes are uncomfortable as hell though. About the only full blown seat that I have seen on a passenger ferrying vehicle that is smaller then a typical airline seat is a device in Kia SUV’s that advertise that they seat seven people (the seats in those case are ten inches wide in the back, and the front has bench seats for three people). It is a greater symptom that Airlines are forgetting that their passengers are paying customers. With the advent of “strategic partnerships” between airlines and the mergers of others though, there is no competition that can take place between them, and the competition that does take place is in Cost cutting being extended to the passenger, thus removing frills all the way down to beverage service. No airline is willing to try and be upscale. No one is willing to advertise themselves like Makers Mark advertises the Bourbon. “It tastes expensive ... and is.”
I want to see a mainstream Airline that is unapologetic about their prices, because they let you check bags without an extra fee, give you a blanket and pillow without you asking and offers seats the size normally found in Caddilacs. If someone knows of such an airline that serves the whole nation, please let me know.
I would argue despite my lack of international credentials that I am more well traveled then the average American. And to get around, I usually fly. In my youth I enjoyed the ritual of flying. Sometimes it was a hassle to get up at 5:30 to make a 7 am flight, but it was always a positive experience. At least until 19 crazy Saudis decided to take piloting lesions in the middle of their international flights.
For the past decade now, the experience of air travel has degenerated to an experience that for many people around the world has shifted to a very negative experience. This can be divided firmly into two categories, the first being that Airlines, in their cost cutting measures, are taking away from the service and comfort of their customers. The second is governments, particularly the American government, is intentionally suspending the liberties of Passengers for the sake of the illusion of security, as they respond to the LAST threat that has hit air travel, rather then attempt to be proactive.
There have been two news items that recently have made air travel such a tremendous pain in the ass that I am on the verge of refusing to fly until such restrictions are lifted. The first and most humorous was that actor/director Kevin Smith (known for his View Askew films like Clerks) was kicked off a plane because he was too fat. His girth was unable to fit in a seat according to a flight attendant (which is a misnomer these days, because they really do not do anything). Never mind that Smith, who is a self proclaimed “fat ass” bought two southwest seats cause it was cheaper then flying first class elsewhere. Never mind that he was forced to give up one of those seats so a person on stand bye could make the flight. Because Smith could not fit his waist inside a seat 17.5 inches in width, he was booted and given 100 bucks for his trouble. (Never mind the cost of the two tickets was probably close to a thousand dollars.)
The second story is that the Transportation security agency, in an effort to deter and prevent incidents like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted bombing of a Christmas day flight over Detroit, is going to begin swabbing the hands of random passengers to detect explosive residue, thus adding another 15 minutes of security screenings that mean nothing, and that the flying public is expected to accept and “deal with” for the illusion of safety.
The first story I have little to fear from, since I am a man of average girth. I do have to say though those tiny seats that are on airplanes are uncomfortable as hell though. About the only full blown seat that I have seen on a passenger ferrying vehicle that is smaller then a typical airline seat is a device in Kia SUV’s that advertise that they seat seven people (the seats in those case are ten inches wide in the back, and the front has bench seats for three people). It is a greater symptom that Airlines are forgetting that their passengers are paying customers. With the advent of “strategic partnerships” between airlines and the mergers of others though, there is no competition that can take place between them, and the competition that does take place is in Cost cutting being extended to the passenger, thus removing frills all the way down to beverage service. No airline is willing to try and be upscale. No one is willing to advertise themselves like Makers Mark advertises the Bourbon. “It tastes expensive ... and is.”
I want to see a mainstream Airline that is unapologetic about their prices, because they let you check bags without an extra fee, give you a blanket and pillow without you asking and offers seats the size normally found in Caddilacs. If someone knows of such an airline that serves the whole nation, please let me know.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
It is not often that my education has an ability to intermix with my favorite hobby, Battletech. But some news popped up recently that has allowed it to happen. Strait from the horses mouth.
Long and short, the small business that runs and develops the Battletech line has exploded in growth beyond their wildest imaginations. But demand exceeding supply was not the only issue, there was also a hiccup in finance and it was one of the business owners fault.
This has lead to a lot of doom and gloom from the tabletop gamer community in general, but what surprises me is how the fans of catalyst propeties specifically have behaved. Shadowrun fans have been flapping around like chickens with their heads cut off.
My Fellow Battletech fans however seem to be taking a much more chill approach to this whole thing. Given that the revival of the two games were a mere 3 years apart, I can only hypothesize why one fan group is being Chicken Little while the other is Dali Lhamma.
Businesses large and small run into cash flow issues all the time. They can sometimes destroy perfectly solvent companies who rely far too much on receivables to carry the day. Other times they can be mere hiccups in a companies history, and be that tumble that leads to a brighter future. Given the success alluded to in the very beginning of the press release I am prompted to believe that Catalyst will be able to go forward despite this, to a brighter future ahead.
Sure many fans will cry fiat, or fanboyisim. But I look at it this way. Unless someone breaks into my house and burns my Battletech books and melts down my miniatures, no one is going to stop me playing the game. So I can afford to have faith. If Catalyst fails, I will continue to play, and with no new product to tell me what is going on in the universe, I will make it up, or use existing products to create and weave my stories. And that will be enough for me.
Long and short, the small business that runs and develops the Battletech line has exploded in growth beyond their wildest imaginations. But demand exceeding supply was not the only issue, there was also a hiccup in finance and it was one of the business owners fault.
This has lead to a lot of doom and gloom from the tabletop gamer community in general, but what surprises me is how the fans of catalyst propeties specifically have behaved. Shadowrun fans have been flapping around like chickens with their heads cut off.
My Fellow Battletech fans however seem to be taking a much more chill approach to this whole thing. Given that the revival of the two games were a mere 3 years apart, I can only hypothesize why one fan group is being Chicken Little while the other is Dali Lhamma.
Businesses large and small run into cash flow issues all the time. They can sometimes destroy perfectly solvent companies who rely far too much on receivables to carry the day. Other times they can be mere hiccups in a companies history, and be that tumble that leads to a brighter future. Given the success alluded to in the very beginning of the press release I am prompted to believe that Catalyst will be able to go forward despite this, to a brighter future ahead.
Sure many fans will cry fiat, or fanboyisim. But I look at it this way. Unless someone breaks into my house and burns my Battletech books and melts down my miniatures, no one is going to stop me playing the game. So I can afford to have faith. If Catalyst fails, I will continue to play, and with no new product to tell me what is going on in the universe, I will make it up, or use existing products to create and weave my stories. And that will be enough for me.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Birthday reflections
Well just in time for March, your Arbiter has reached his twenty-seventh birthday. I spent my actually birthday in the throws of the Flu. To say I felt like I got hit by a truck would imply the impact was brief, but very painful. I felt like I got hit by a Truck, drug underneath the wheel well and pulled across a stretch of 30 some odd miles of Arizona highway…
The following Saturday I felt better enough (I was still coughing up a storm) to have a bunch of friends over to watch “Dark Side of the Rainbow.” For those that do not know, this is the bizarre phenomena that if one plays the movie “The Wizard of Oz” muted with Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album on a CD player, the two Sync up in such a way that you end up with a rather convincing music video.
For the most part it is bullshit. The Wizard of Oz is three times as long as the Dark Side of the Moon, and being something of a media buff, I can see glaring holes in the theory. That said, there is a lot of times in the experience, particularly in pure instrumental moments where it does become quite beautiful, and OCCASIONALLY the lips sync to the lyrics. It was great fun, even for an over-analyzed coincidence.
Turning 27 has led me to examine my life, I figure get it out there in advance of the big 3-0. no serious internal reflection, don’t worry. I prefer to marvel at what I have beheld in the world. From 1983 to 2010 we went from the Apple LISA to the iPad, the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Wii, the Pinto to the Prius… wait that was a bad example.
The point was I was born in an era where I did not just witness quantum leaps forward in such a short time, I LIVED them. I was born to an era where Computers always existed in my house, humanity in space was semi common, and rock and roll was mainstream. The idea of these things being novel to my parents is just as bizarre to me as the concept of the Internet, Cellular Phones, and hybrid cars being “typical” things for my son.
Eventually some one is going to be saying “I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities....” That is the path that human beings have set themselves on, and it blows my fucking mind.
My best guess is that I got another 43 years left on this rock, and I am NOT marking down the days. I plan on making good each one I have left. So as a toast to everyone, Here’s to another ROCKING year!
The following Saturday I felt better enough (I was still coughing up a storm) to have a bunch of friends over to watch “Dark Side of the Rainbow.” For those that do not know, this is the bizarre phenomena that if one plays the movie “The Wizard of Oz” muted with Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album on a CD player, the two Sync up in such a way that you end up with a rather convincing music video.
For the most part it is bullshit. The Wizard of Oz is three times as long as the Dark Side of the Moon, and being something of a media buff, I can see glaring holes in the theory. That said, there is a lot of times in the experience, particularly in pure instrumental moments where it does become quite beautiful, and OCCASIONALLY the lips sync to the lyrics. It was great fun, even for an over-analyzed coincidence.
Turning 27 has led me to examine my life, I figure get it out there in advance of the big 3-0. no serious internal reflection, don’t worry. I prefer to marvel at what I have beheld in the world. From 1983 to 2010 we went from the Apple LISA to the iPad, the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Wii, the Pinto to the Prius… wait that was a bad example.
The point was I was born in an era where I did not just witness quantum leaps forward in such a short time, I LIVED them. I was born to an era where Computers always existed in my house, humanity in space was semi common, and rock and roll was mainstream. The idea of these things being novel to my parents is just as bizarre to me as the concept of the Internet, Cellular Phones, and hybrid cars being “typical” things for my son.
Eventually some one is going to be saying “I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities....” That is the path that human beings have set themselves on, and it blows my fucking mind.
My best guess is that I got another 43 years left on this rock, and I am NOT marking down the days. I plan on making good each one I have left. So as a toast to everyone, Here’s to another ROCKING year!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
People Who Ruin it for everyone
So there is a Rule hear on Arbitration. I wait one month after a major disaster before I talk about how I like to jerk off to the body count. okay I do not actually do that, but in a very Carlin-esque way I love watching disasters. I work in an industry (life insurance) where death is a fact of life, and can even be seen as the cost of doing business. so when I watch a city disappear because most of the homes were not built to any sort of safety regulation, and in regions explicitly flagged off from development because they were not safe to build on, I admit I laugh.
Seeing one of the poorest countries on the planet almost literally collapse to non existence in terms of governance, and exist as a pseudo anarchy has been fascinating. The fact that it HAS turned into a survival of the fittest scenario and WORKED indicates that sometimes we just need to leave other peoples problems alone.
lets face it the relief effort in Haiti, has been another colossal failure. Medicine is not getting to proper people, language barriers (Creole is not French UN Peacekeepers!) are causing hostility, and a society who used to revere the dead to the point of graves being more elaborate then homes, are no kicking as many people into deep holes as possible and trying to move on.
there is no greater example of people failing to help however, then the story of ten Baptist-Christian Missionaries from Idaho. In this case, ten people have tried to take about 30 children they declared orphans across Haiti's border to the Dominican Republic for eventual adoption by American families. they now sit in a half demolished prison cell awaiting child trafficking charges
the problem of course was, some of these kids were not orphans. Yes there were some parents who gave away their children in hopes for a better life, some other children where, on a fundamental level, kidnapped from parents.
as a result of this case, many of the life saving medivacs that have taken children from hati to nearby Miami, Florida or aboard hospital ships like the USS Comfort have ground to a stand still.there is a mountain of paperwork that is supposed to be done when a child is to be removed from Haitian soil. in the immediate aftermath of the Earthquake, a lot of that paperwork (by necessity) was waived in favor of saving lives. in light of this however, what is left of Haitian law enforcement is spent on making sure NO CHILDREN leave Haitian soil.
when one listens to the stories of these ten missionaries, you get the sense that they had no idea what the hell they were doing. It almost sounds like ten idiots with no sense of protocol or sense were closing their eyes and letting their God point them where they should go and what they should do. I am all for making it up as I go along, but that usually applies for things like dinner menus.
the end result however is that yet again we have a group of religious nut jobs, who by their actions have made life hard on the rest of the world. like any Islamic Terrorist their choices are costing lives every day, and making a government paranoid and over protective of its people.
for 100,000 years human beings have used the Gods and Demons we worship for whatever reason as a good excuse for doing anything. and it has erupted into wars, changes in a nations governance, persecution of minorities, and abuse of our fellow man.
I am not saying that human beings must reject religion, far from it. What I do think we as a species need to do though is stop accepting religion as an acceptable argument to justify ANYTHING. We need to have a higher standard, a higher and more universal rulebook that applies not to the spiritual world, but the physical one. with something like 5 major religions and over 50 sects combined therein, too of "God's Laws" intersect each other.
"God told me to take this children and provide a better life for them!"
Thats great, the world wide rule book says that you need to make sure, along with one of our state department reps, that these kids are actually orphans, here is a ton of paper work to fill out, in the mean time this hospital needs triage nurses, so the other nine of you follow me."
Seeing one of the poorest countries on the planet almost literally collapse to non existence in terms of governance, and exist as a pseudo anarchy has been fascinating. The fact that it HAS turned into a survival of the fittest scenario and WORKED indicates that sometimes we just need to leave other peoples problems alone.
lets face it the relief effort in Haiti, has been another colossal failure. Medicine is not getting to proper people, language barriers (Creole is not French UN Peacekeepers!) are causing hostility, and a society who used to revere the dead to the point of graves being more elaborate then homes, are no kicking as many people into deep holes as possible and trying to move on.
there is no greater example of people failing to help however, then the story of ten Baptist-Christian Missionaries from Idaho. In this case, ten people have tried to take about 30 children they declared orphans across Haiti's border to the Dominican Republic for eventual adoption by American families. they now sit in a half demolished prison cell awaiting child trafficking charges
the problem of course was, some of these kids were not orphans. Yes there were some parents who gave away their children in hopes for a better life, some other children where, on a fundamental level, kidnapped from parents.
as a result of this case, many of the life saving medivacs that have taken children from hati to nearby Miami, Florida or aboard hospital ships like the USS Comfort have ground to a stand still.there is a mountain of paperwork that is supposed to be done when a child is to be removed from Haitian soil. in the immediate aftermath of the Earthquake, a lot of that paperwork (by necessity) was waived in favor of saving lives. in light of this however, what is left of Haitian law enforcement is spent on making sure NO CHILDREN leave Haitian soil.
when one listens to the stories of these ten missionaries, you get the sense that they had no idea what the hell they were doing. It almost sounds like ten idiots with no sense of protocol or sense were closing their eyes and letting their God point them where they should go and what they should do. I am all for making it up as I go along, but that usually applies for things like dinner menus.
the end result however is that yet again we have a group of religious nut jobs, who by their actions have made life hard on the rest of the world. like any Islamic Terrorist their choices are costing lives every day, and making a government paranoid and over protective of its people.
for 100,000 years human beings have used the Gods and Demons we worship for whatever reason as a good excuse for doing anything. and it has erupted into wars, changes in a nations governance, persecution of minorities, and abuse of our fellow man.
I am not saying that human beings must reject religion, far from it. What I do think we as a species need to do though is stop accepting religion as an acceptable argument to justify ANYTHING. We need to have a higher standard, a higher and more universal rulebook that applies not to the spiritual world, but the physical one. with something like 5 major religions and over 50 sects combined therein, too of "God's Laws" intersect each other.
"God told me to take this children and provide a better life for them!"
Thats great, the world wide rule book says that you need to make sure, along with one of our state department reps, that these kids are actually orphans, here is a ton of paper work to fill out, in the mean time this hospital needs triage nurses, so the other nine of you follow me."
Monday, January 4, 2010
Happy New Year
Happy New Year folks, hope it has been fun and fruitful for you all. 2009 has been one of those years that has been, for me at least, one of the best ever, and yet one of the most frustrating. as I stare down the barrel of finishing my 27th lap around our local star, I figured I would just give you a list of the best and worst things that I experienced this past year.
The Best
Best Video Game- Batman Arkham Asylum. Seriously, lets take the 1994 cartoon voice cast, and appkly it to a Christopher Nolan movie! WINNER
Best Movie- G.I.J.O.E. The Rise of Cobra. My childhood was not raped.
Best Television series- Throwdown with Bobby Flay, or as I like to call it, Bobby Flay can not win
Best Book- The Spectre Series by a woman named Pheadra Weldon.
Best Nostalgic Moment- watching Die Hard and Die Hard 2 Back to back the week of Christmas with my wife.
Best Moment to completely change my mind about how things are- the birth of my son, and how children are demons
Best “New Person”- Brent Evans, the Catalyst Game Labs Art Director. Thanks for the Interview!
Best Old Friend- Chris Wrenn, whom I fancied as an apprentice, but has become my equal
Best dumb thing I ever heard- “Yeah I needed the thicken the broth up so I added water.”
Best smart thing I ever heard- “live like a dog, if it can not be eaten or humped, piss on it and walk away”
Best guest on a TV Show- Jessi Combs on Mythbusters. Sexy like Karri, but with a blow torch and a touch of immature enthusiasm
Best Vulgarity “Fuck-tard” Fourth year running
Best Meal cooked by Me- Thanksgiving Prime Rib
Best Meal cooked by someone else- an “Australian Meat Pie” for my birthday.
The Worst
Worst Video game- that I played? Sacred 2, had all the promise of Baulders gate, but lacked the side by side multiplayer.
Worst Movie- Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (why did we need this movie again?)
Worst book- Twilight religion and morality subtly wrapped in a romance novel unintentionally portraying a bevy of abusive relationships
Worst Television Show- Stargate Universe. It took ten episodes to even get me to WANT to watch more of it.
Worst Nostalgic moment- December 31st 2009- buying a device that could play old NES games, and fighting like a son-of-a-bitch to get mega man 3 to work… (it’s the only one with problems though)
Worst Moment that completely confirmed the way things are- Dude trying to blow up a plane of Christmas day. Air Port Security is pointless bullshit!
Worst New Person- Kate Only known you a year but you seen to always want to hang out but find lame excuses not too.
Worst old friend- Pamela. Sorry babe, but you seem to be ready to drop people you say are important to you at the slightest shift in wind.
Worst Dumb thing I ever heard- “Barac Obama is not a Citizen of the United States”
Worst Smart thing I ever heard (as in I did not like it, but I had to agree with it)- Some people want us to grow a pair between our legs and shout at the top of our lungs that global warming is fake, and this is where we have a confession. We don’t know. We know the earth is in fact getting warmer, but despite a crack research team we can not confidently say that mankind is directly responsible for it, or whether or not it is reversible. (Penn Jillete, from Bullshit Season 6)
Worst Guest on a TV Show- Joquinn Phoenix on David Letterman
Worst Vulgarity- Socialist, or Nazi (seriously that the best you got)
Worst Meal cooked by me- a seriously lame attempt at stir fry in april
Worst Meal I had cooked by someone else- Jenny’s home made French dip au jus…
The Best
Best Video Game- Batman Arkham Asylum. Seriously, lets take the 1994 cartoon voice cast, and appkly it to a Christopher Nolan movie! WINNER
Best Movie- G.I.J.O.E. The Rise of Cobra. My childhood was not raped.
Best Television series- Throwdown with Bobby Flay, or as I like to call it, Bobby Flay can not win
Best Book- The Spectre Series by a woman named Pheadra Weldon.
Best Nostalgic Moment- watching Die Hard and Die Hard 2 Back to back the week of Christmas with my wife.
Best Moment to completely change my mind about how things are- the birth of my son, and how children are demons
Best “New Person”- Brent Evans, the Catalyst Game Labs Art Director. Thanks for the Interview!
Best Old Friend- Chris Wrenn, whom I fancied as an apprentice, but has become my equal
Best dumb thing I ever heard- “Yeah I needed the thicken the broth up so I added water.”
Best smart thing I ever heard- “live like a dog, if it can not be eaten or humped, piss on it and walk away”
Best guest on a TV Show- Jessi Combs on Mythbusters. Sexy like Karri, but with a blow torch and a touch of immature enthusiasm
Best Vulgarity “Fuck-tard” Fourth year running
Best Meal cooked by Me- Thanksgiving Prime Rib
Best Meal cooked by someone else- an “Australian Meat Pie” for my birthday.
The Worst
Worst Video game- that I played? Sacred 2, had all the promise of Baulders gate, but lacked the side by side multiplayer.
Worst Movie- Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (why did we need this movie again?)
Worst book- Twilight religion and morality subtly wrapped in a romance novel unintentionally portraying a bevy of abusive relationships
Worst Television Show- Stargate Universe. It took ten episodes to even get me to WANT to watch more of it.
Worst Nostalgic moment- December 31st 2009- buying a device that could play old NES games, and fighting like a son-of-a-bitch to get mega man 3 to work… (it’s the only one with problems though)
Worst Moment that completely confirmed the way things are- Dude trying to blow up a plane of Christmas day. Air Port Security is pointless bullshit!
Worst New Person- Kate Only known you a year but you seen to always want to hang out but find lame excuses not too.
Worst old friend- Pamela. Sorry babe, but you seem to be ready to drop people you say are important to you at the slightest shift in wind.
Worst Dumb thing I ever heard- “Barac Obama is not a Citizen of the United States”
Worst Smart thing I ever heard (as in I did not like it, but I had to agree with it)- Some people want us to grow a pair between our legs and shout at the top of our lungs that global warming is fake, and this is where we have a confession. We don’t know. We know the earth is in fact getting warmer, but despite a crack research team we can not confidently say that mankind is directly responsible for it, or whether or not it is reversible. (Penn Jillete, from Bullshit Season 6)
Worst Guest on a TV Show- Joquinn Phoenix on David Letterman
Worst Vulgarity- Socialist, or Nazi (seriously that the best you got)
Worst Meal cooked by me- a seriously lame attempt at stir fry in april
Worst Meal I had cooked by someone else- Jenny’s home made French dip au jus…
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