Greetings, Shadow Warriors!

There’s an old saying where I come from, and it goes something like this:

“If you can’t come up with a Spwug article for the week, just make something up.”

How anyone in my home town even knew there would ever be a web site called Spwug some day in the future is a riddle that we may never solve (radiation spill).  Be that as it may, today it just happens to be good advice.  I’m having a frazzleweek (not to be confused with a Fraggle Rock) this week, and it’s making it tough to come up with anything substantial to offer.  So instead, I once again break out the odds and ends that I have come across over the past couple of days, plop them all into a stew pot, add some seasonings, stir, and serve it to you with some blue milk, courtesy of the charred corpse of Aunt Beru.

What?  It’s not like the Lars family was going to be drinking it anymore.  It was just sitting there on the table.

Megaman 10 is out.  Rockman continues to cry at the injustice.

For those of us still clinging to the nostalgia of our 80s roots (and who really isn’t these days?) and were feeling a little like we got repeatedly crotch-punched by the last fanboy-pleasing offering, Capcom once again gives us the retro-NES-looking goodness of Megaman 10.  While the last installment offered Proto as DLC, this time he comes ready-to-play, with Bass being the DLC character this time around.  All of the graphic and gameplay charm of 9 returns, but this time you can save yourself a cranial bruising from beating your head against the wall – Megaman 10 includes an “easy mode”.  Meanwhile, the Japanese continue to laugh at us while they exist in their superior universe.

Final Fantasy XIII also came out this week.  World buckles at the contradiction.

I stopped playing this series a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away…), sometime after X or XI or XVIC or whatever that one was with the different characters (stupid Roman numerals).  I’ve read that there have been a few changes, one of which is that the battle system is set up similar to Advent Children.  I’ve heard mixed feedback.  A few of my friends seem to enjoy it, while a few others do not.  And still a few other others are still wondering how there are thirteen of them when it’s the “Final Fantasy” (and even more when you count the spin-offs).  I still maintain that three six is the best one Square has ever done, and they will never be able to top just how well that game is.

The new Tron Legacy trailer is online.

Some of you may be a wee bit too young to remember the movie that put CG animation on the map and laid the groundwork for what Spielberg, Cameron, and Pixar are doing today in film.  Tron didn’t pull in a very large box office when it opened back in 1982, but it has since gained a cult following – enough of one that Disney finally greenlit a sequel last year.  Jumping on the viral marketing bandwagon, Disney has kept the details scarce on this new movie, but has made discovering the details rather fun and exciting.  Most recently, people around the world had the opportunity to go on hide-and-seek missions to find an individual wearing a “Flynn Lives” t-shirt in several major cities around the globe.  The reward?  Exclusive swag, and the ability to unlock an online page that featured dates and locations for a “secret” showing of the new trailer for Tron Legacy.  For those who could stand to wait a few extra days, the trailer went online for everyone this week.  And it is badass.

Speaking of movie trailers…

I’ve got two words for you: “briefcase armor”:

One of these things is not like the other…

Word has it that John Krasinski has landed the role of Captain America for the new Marvel film.  You may know him from the American version of “The Office”.  The rest of you may know him as the guy completely wrong for the part.

And that concludes this broadcast day!  I know I said before that I would be making stuff up, but I decided not to… or, at least not entirely.  One of the things I mentioned above is not at all true (or is close to the truth but not true).  Can you figure out which one?  Ooohh!  Puzzles!  I’m guessing that this one won’t be enough of a challenge to keep you busy until next Thursday, will it?

Probably not.

There’s nothing special about The Don.  He’s just an ordinary program.

Greetings, Madballs!

Holy crap.

I’m sure those of you who own one of the “fat” PS3 systems (like me) became quite acquainted with the issue that occurred last Sunday on the right and straight on ‘til Monday.

In short, the non-slim PS3s all took a huge dump.

In a major snafu that most-assuredly gave Xbox 360 owners plenty of ammo in the “Which system is better?” war, a simple glitch with the internal clock ended up wreaking havoc for about twenty-four hours.  For some weird reason, the older PS3 models tried (unsuccessfully, I might add) to turn over from February 28^th to February 29^th, 2010 on Sunday night.  Of course, the system that only does everything (including ride the short bus) did not get the memo that 2010 is not, in fact, a leap year.  The side effect of that?  February still remains short-stacked against her fuller siblings (I’ve always thought of February as a woman – she sure flirts like one).

So, when that internal clock rolled over to the obviously illegal date, those “fat” PS3s immediately wet the bed, making online connection impossible.  Also affected?  Trophy data was either corrupted or non-existent and almost all PS3 games were completely non-playable.

Sony’s response was amusing, yet horrifying at the same time – “Stay off your PS3!”  Sounding like an septuagenarian who just confiscated your Frisbee (do people even play with Frisbees anymore?), the company that uses the same font for Playstation and the Spider-Man movies admitted that they were at a loss, but that the problem was bad enough to warrant treating your system like a red-headed step child (what a sad moniker – I happen to like gingers).

So, like the stalwart troopers that they are, Sony set their tech experts (who obviously have no concept of the Gregorian calendar or this wouldn’t have happened in the first place) to task to find and fix the problem.  Meanwhile, Xbox folks were laughing at our misfortunes right up to the moment when their 360s got their fifth or sixth “Red Ring of Death”, at which point they swore profusely and immediately throw themselves onto some jagged rocks.

At the same time, I was going through a steady decline as withdrawals started to kick in.  It wasn’t noticeable Sunday night, as the problem didn’t occur until after I had already signed off for the evening.  But by the time I got home from work Monday afternoon?  Well, let’s just say that I never realized just how much I use my PS3 until I found out the hard way that about two-thirds of my couch time in the living room requires the use of the third generation Playstation.  I couldn’t play any video games.  I couldn’t watch any movies.  Every time my instincts automatically queued up my arms to reach for the power button on my system I had to stop myself.  In the end, I was forced to “channel surf” – a past time that I’m pretty sure became obsolete right around the same time that Frisbees stopped being something cool that you did in parks and backyards.

Fortunately for me, the Winter Olympics were just over enough to return one of my 8 PM viewing staples to its proper time slot.  After watching the show I bought a Subway sandwich to keep on the air, “Chuck” returned the favor and kept me distracted long enough for Sony to figure out how time is actually kept track of in modern society.  By 9 PM I hesitantly fired up ol’ Bessie based on some positive rumblings I had read in one of the forums I frequent.  Sure enough, my sleek-black beauty was fine and dandy.  She was a little disoriented, still thinking that it was Sunday, February 28^th, but after a gentle correction I was able to play Fallout 3 with only my usual operational glitches and irritations.  All was now right in the world once again.

At least, until all game systems everywhere instantly self destruct while trying to reconcile December 21^st, 2012.

The Don survived the PS3 Blackout of February 29^th, 2010.  He didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt.

Well, guys, it’s been a busy week, and we’re only three days into it! I could ramble on and on about the state of the Geek Nation (we’re not quite as snazzily-dressed as the Colbert Nation), but Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has dropped today, the next installment in EA’s comedy-action-FPS series. The last time I ever see my housemate will be when he walks in the door with game in hand, as he will be glued to the PS3 for the foreseeable future. So pardon me if I’m keen to rush out of here and say my final farewells. In the spirit of rushin’ (but not Russians–that’ll be left up to Bad Company 2), have a few little news clippy-dippies of what’s been on my mind the past week:

Item the first – The new Borderlands downloadable content, “The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.” So far, this is shaping up to be the best DLC yet! Fantastic new enemies, weapons, and vehicles, and the new maps are appropriately huge. It also takes the punny, crude humour of the game and boots it up a few notches, particularly in the form of grafitti. I’d share screenshots, but most of the jokes thus far are not suitable for Spwuggy content. The “politest” one I’ve seen is a poster depicting one of the game’s despised Crimson Lance bullies soldiers. Over the soldier is the word “VACANCY” with arrows pointing at the soldier’s head and, uh, crotch. Only a handful of the add-on’s quests have been completed so far in this household, but I’ve already lost track of the laugh-out-loud moments–there’s just too much with the funny! By the way, in this DLC, you will learn a bit more about redneck Scooter and the sexy Mad Moxxi than you probably wanted to know. And it’s not what you’re thinking. Check out the launch trailer for the add-on; although it’s not humourous like I’d expect a Borderlands to be, take a good look at the wanted posters of the four main characters about twenty seconds in. Particularly, look at the female character’s picture for a good chuckle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFWMnKeoDdg

Item the second – The new Nintendo DSi XL will be out very soon! I’ve been looking forward to this new system, with its larger screen and a few other keen features you can read about all over the Web. It’s also looking like the homebrew community will be very happy with this DS, since hack videos are already popping up on YouTube. I’m disappointed that the only launch colours are wine and bronze (I suppose appealing to the target older demographic), but that’s what skins are for. I’ll have my teal Hylian DS yet, even if I have to skin it myself!

Item the third: There is no item the third. I just wanted to see if you all were paying attention.

And that’ll do it for me for another week. It’s time for me to boot up the PS3 and get my kill on!

It’s that time again, and I bring good news! I’ll get back to the appointed task of webcomic reviews soon. No, I still don’t have the notes for future articles which are sitting on my deceased computer. But I have been assembling NEW notes during the past month and reading new(-to-me) webcomics. I’m happy to say I’m tearing through Aaron Williams’ stellar but recently-halted Backward Compatible (it’s hosted on the sinking ship CrispyGamer.com, so its future is uncertain). I’m also a year and a half’s worth of archives away from having caught up on Ryan Sohmer’s and Lar DeSouza’s Least I Could Do.

So, yeah. Webcomic reviews later. Video game downloadable content reviews now!

Rants about imperfect video games are nothing new to me. Nowadays, in this era of patches, you’re not buying a complete game anymore when you shell out your $65 or so at the cash register. You’re buying the IDEA of a complete game, the POTENTIAL that all the glitches, bugs, and other oversights will someday be fixed by the development team and render the game as playable as it should have been the moment you bought the disc or download.

Sadly, this is all too often not the case. There are far too many instances where developers seem to think, “Well, we’ve made enough money on that title now; we don’t have to fix it anymore. Let’s start on the sequel!”….Which definitely pushes my rage buttons that gamers are doling out big bucks for flawed products. Let’s take a look at a specific title, the incredibly fun, but irritatingly flawed Borderlands.

The game overall is a work of genius. Fun weapons and shields, and there are ways to modify them and make them even more fun. Unique enemies (ever want to shoot psychopathic axe-wielding midgets? Well, now you can!) Humourous dialogue and so many geek references (everything from Bruce Campbell to Joss Whedon’s Firefly) that you know the makers don’t see a lot of sunlight, and you’re extremely grateful for this. Games that are heavy on the FPS aspects don’t usually catch my attention, but I’ve spent far too many hours seeing this game in action that I should have spent working!

Vanilla Borderlands actually runs as it should–most of the time. The downloadable content, however, is another story, and one that continues to light up fan forums.

“The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned”

Nice mustache! I didn’t know you could grow them OUTSIDE the surgical mask like that. Unlike his twin brother(?) Dr. Zed, Dr. Ned is definitely a man of mystery….

I love zombies. Do you love zombies? I also love shooting them in funny settings, where you’re given quests with names like “Brains” and its follow-up quests “Braaains”, “Braaaaains”, “Braaaaaaaaaaaains”, and “Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains” (can you guess what you’re collecting?) I also love parody quests like “Here We Go Again” in which you discover the planet Pandora’s versions of Scooby-Doo’s Shaggy and Scooby…Harry and Skaggy–Skags being the vicious alien dogs of Pandora with rather suggestively-shaped maws. Zoiks!

What I DON’T love are glitches, particularly glitches that never get fixed. If I buy your DLC, developers, I expect it to WORK, and if it doesn’t, you’re supposed to make good on it!

In this Zombie Island DLC, you find and repair a vending machine belonging to the weapons manufacturer Jakobs, where presumably you stand a good chance of buying hard-to-get weapons. Fans cheered this move–a unique vending machine that could help you score some of those rare and powerful weapons we’ve all heard so much about! This was much-needed because most items and their stats are randomly generated. You’re never guaranteed to find a butt-kickin’ gun in normal gameplay, so having a high-end weapons vendor that you can visit any time was a big relief.

….Except that the Jakobs machine stops working if you “turn in” the repair mission for your reward or leave the area for any reason. Once you turn in the quest or return to the machine from another area, it’s once again defunct, and you’re left with those crappy weak guns the enemies always seem to want to drop when they die. The Zombie Island DLC has been out since fall 2009. It’s now winter 2010. WHERE’S OUR BUGFIX, GEARBOX SOFTWARE?! We paid for a fully-functional add-on, not one that’s hobbled in one of its major selling points!

“Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot”

So many people bottle up their emotions, it’s nice to see someone who wears her heart on her…uhhhh…never mind.

This one seems like more of an extremely stupid oversight than an outright glitch. In the Mad Moxxi DLC, you fight arena matches against enemies and bosses from the game. There are different levels of challenges, and the greater challenges are twenty rounds long. This doesn’t seem so bad, until you realize that there five “waves” per round in which you battle multiple enemies during each wave, and a different boss every fifth wave.

How long does it take to complete twenty rounds, totaling one hundred waves? If you weren’t lucky enough to find very powerful weapons and shields during normal gameplay, you can realistically spend your entire day in the arena. My housemate took six and a half hours to get from round one to round ten, only halfway done. And this wouldn’t be that bad–a nice long challenge would be FUN, if you could put it down and pick it back up whenever you wanted.

….Except, the developers didn’t include any way to save your game during or between rounds. If your system crashes and needs a restart, or you decide to quit and come back, you have to start all over again. At round one of twenty. Apparently, Gearbox didn’t realize that most people have to work for a living and don’t have unlimited amounts of time to spend trying to complete arena challenges. And let me tell you, those challenges get really, really old after a few hours, knowing you can’t quit without losing all your progress. And here I thought games were supposed to be FUN! Silly me.

So, how about it, game developers? Here’s a little tip from the gamers of the world: we don’t want to pay for faulty, rushed products. We’d rather wait for a thoroughly playtested and bugfixed product that works from the get-go. If you’re going to take our money, at least make sure we get what we paid for.

Thank you, and good night.

Ah, fandom. It’s always fun to write on a touchy subject. No matter what I say about a topic as popular as Zelda, someone’s gonna get their jerkin in a twist. So I’ll just be upfront with my opinions (which are not at all the same thing as facts) and say this:

I think the only studio that could produce a good Zelda movie is The Jim Henson Company.

Peter Jackson who? Spielberg jiggawha?

OOOOOOoooooOOOOooohh, snap. Did I open a can of worms there? Let me present my essay which argues my point. I call it “Why Zelda Is Awesome and Why Jim Henson Is Awesome and Why They Should Work Together Like My Teacher Says We’re Supposed To.” I got an A+ and a gold star for it!

When I first wrote it. Just now. Look, I’ve gotta use all these star stickers for SOMETHING….

By sheer coincidence, the works of the late-and-great Jim Henson have been popping up almost daily in my life the past few weeks. It started with the release of Labyrinth on Blu-Ray, followed by the BluR release of The Dark Crystal, further followed by finding an uncut version of A Muppet Family Christmas online, and finally followed by discovering the original seasons of The Muppet Show on Netflix. I’ve been put back in touch with my childhood in ways I haven’t experienced in years, and I’m lovin’ (the heck out of) it! (Suck it, McD’s.)

However, it was The Dark Crystal–a beautiful, somber, mature, yet amusing movie–that really set my mental wheels in motion. Until this year, I’d never seen it all at once, or even all the way through. And, as I watched the elflike Gelflings, the divided sacred object that needed to be reunited, and the fantastic monsters that managed to be both intimidating and caricaturish at the same time, certain thoughts kept bouncing through my head: “I’m watching a Zelda movie. I’m watching THE Zelda movie. Miyamoto surely viewed this right before he pitched The Legend of Zelda to Nintendo.”

Now, I know I’m hardly the only one to point out similarities between these two beautiful works. And if you really wanna get technical, everything that happens in 1982’s The Dark Crystal and 1986’s The Legend of Zelda has already been done in many fantastic stories over the years. But these two entities, taken as two wholes and placed side by side, make two quite complementary packages. I just can’t imagine a Zelda movie being done better by anyone other than The Jim Henson Company.

Oh, sure, for years I’ve heard statements from giggling fangirls like, “Orlando Bloom needs to play Link in a Zelda movie because he was Legolas!” And…NO. Just, seriously, NO. Not only does Bloom look far too old to play a teenage Hylian (and I’d say he doesn’t look like Link at all, regardless of age), wearing elf ears and a blonde wig doesn’t make you the iconic Legendary Hero of Hyrule any more than a crown and scepter make you the Queen of England. We’re talking about a much-loved video game series that’s been around for over twenty years, and a hero that still makes us cheer and/or swoon in his various (re)incarnations. Link was my first idol when I was twelve in 1992, and at the tender age of thirty, I’m still no less enamoured of the Legendary Hero’s epic quests. And I’m just ONE diehard fan.

Yeah, to cast for live-action roles of characters like Link, Zelda, and even Ganon is a thankless task, almost certainly doomed to failure. Have you ever seen a fan-produced, live-action Zelda video? If yes, then you probably know the sense of disappointment that the cast didn’t fit your personal image of what the Zelda characters should look and sound like, and you probably felt that rush of relief that it was only a fan production and not an official film. I know I felt all that most recently in 2009, when that awful fan-movie The Hero of Time came out, featuring lousy acting and costumes that I’ve seen topped by first-year cosplayers. And yes, I had a huge sigh of relief when Nintendo put the smack down on the movie’s makers.

(I’d like to deviate here, and say I had no interest in ever watching it after seeing the bad, bad, BAD trailer. However, I wouldn’t have had a problem with the fan-film, and I would have even supported fans showing their love in such a way….Except, the makers stated it was “not for profit” and then proceeded to sell tickets to screening events, while planning to sell DVD’s and other merchandise. They said it was “to recoup expenses.” But the thing about “not for profit” is that you DON’T try to recoup expenses. You make a product with the resources you have, and then you make that product available without ever seeing a dime go to you, for ANY reason. And you’d better make doubly sure you’re doing that if you’re not even using your own intellectual property to start with. Yeah, with little legal breaches like that, I’m not surprised Nintendo shut them down.)

Thing is, I don’t see a live-action Zelda movie ever really working on a wide scale, largely for the above reason that people generally aren’t going to be satisfied with whoever is cast. At least with animation or puppetry/Muppetry, the characters still retain an abstract quality–you SEE them on the screen, yes, but the fine physical details of how they should look are still left to your imagination. It’s harder to let your imagination speak when Orlando Bloom’s or whoever’s every wrinkle and freckle is staring you in the face. Animated characters and puppets have the double advantage of being viewable, but not forcing one set visage into your mind–only the most detailed CG characters currently seem to run that risk. All in all, when live-action actors aren’t involved, you’re likely to be more lenient on the character designs (while mainly harping on about the voice actors, I’d imagine).

Another problem I have with a live-action film in relation to Zelda is that such a movie is highly likely to take itself too seriously. A LOT of fans have said that a Zelda movie should be done by Peter Jackson, using the same settings, special effects, and style of writing as was found in the Lord of the Rings movies. I agree that a Peter Jackson Zelda movie done like that would be very pretty, but it wouldn’t really feel like a Zelda movie. Think about it. The characters, enemies, and even locations and items in the Zelda games tend to have a cartoonish look that extends across every game from the original to Twilight Princess and beyond. When you play a Zelda game, you get the feeling that it’s never really taking itself entirely seriously (after all, Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t want his games to ever stop feeling fun). The Lord of the Rings movies, on the other hand, give the impression that they’re taking themselves VERY seriously, even when something funny happens. I totally understand why; it’s freakin’ Tolkien. If you don’t honour his works with the proper degree of respect and solemnity, the fans will have your head in chunks.

But making Zelda a “Hobbit Lite” movie just wouldn’t work. You need character designs and actions that don’t take anything too seriously. You need everything in the movie to be a kind of caricature of itself. You need to give the impression that, no matter how dark things become when Ganon conquers Hyrule or X-character meets a tragic end, the audience as a whole still feels a childlike wonder that takes us back to our first Zelda game. We need to feel we’re IN Hyrule, and the way to do that is by staying true to the vibrant visual nature of the fantasy land we’ve all come to know so well for the past two decades.

That’s where The Jim Henson Company steps in, with their imaginative designs, bright colours, boisterous acting, and puppets that move in ways which are truer to human nature than most humans are usually comfortable displaying. For example, you’ve seen dancing in Zelda games? Ever think how ridiculous some of those moves would look in live-action? But if performed by Muppets, those same moves would look natural and entertaining. Monsters roaring, animals skittering, Hylian heroes dodging fireballs–all those movements in the games, even the motion-captured ones, are done with a subtle exaggeration (oxymoron, much?) that would look strange or over-acted in live-action, but would seem perfectly normal with Muppets.

Time to put up or shut up, right? Well, okay, then, I’ll do both (mostly). I’ll let the following pictures speak their thousand words apiece. Look at some of the official art from the original The Legend of Zelda.

Now go look at some screenshots from The Dark Crystal over at Blu-Ray.com (then come back here for an interesting little video). If you didn’t know what you were seeing, and someone told you they were screengrabs from a Zelda movie, would you (Gelfling faces aside) really find it all that difficult to believe?

And if you want to see where Miyamoto seems to have gotten the idea for Peahats (pure speculation on my part, but Miyamoto loves to include things from his fandoms in his games), watch this segment from The Dark Crystal. Skip ahead to 1:37 to see what I mean.

Thus concludes my A+ gold-star essay. Now I have to go, so I’ll just see ya next time….Miss Trunchbull sez I got after-school detention. Again. Who knew it was against the rules to put cherry bombs in the toilets? No one ever tells me anything. :/

(Zelda, “Reading Rainbow”, AND Matilda? Yeah, no further need to prove I was an 80s kid, is there….)

Greetings, Noghri!!

I hope everyone had a great holiday and is having a wonderful New Year so far.  Let’s not forget that 2010 marks “The Year We Make Contact”.  Not sure what we’ll be contacting, but let’s hope it doesn’t involve turning Jupiter into a sun.

Now that the holidays are over it’s back to the old grind, which means I have returned to deliver my first “Office” of the new year!  Oddly enough, it’s a run-down of some of the cooler, geekier things I got for Christmas.

So as to avoid the funny stares, let’s just get started, shall we?

I actually made out pretty darn well this Christmas, but here are the highlights of my spoils that fit in more with the spirit of Spwug (make with the clicky to make biggy):

About a week before Christmas even arrived, I managed to order the latest re-offering from mattycollector.com – Skeletor.  Made from new molds and fully articulated, Mattel has been offering He-Man action figures based on the classic designs for over a year.  I wasn’t able to get these two when they were first offered in 2008, but I managed to snag them both over the past two months when they were re-offered.  The sculpts are incredible and each figure is based on a combination of the original cartoon design and the original figure design.  They’re a little pricey (about twenty bucks), so they’re only for the serious collector.  They usually offer one or two figures a month, but they sell out quickly.  This month they are offering a figure of a character that never saw plastic – Princess Adora.  You can bet I’ll be snatching up that one.

Another awesome offering from Mattel, these guys are based on the movie versions – not the cartoon counterparts.  I’ve been ordering them for the past couple of months.  The latest figure – Winston – came the same day as my Skeletor.  I almost have the entire team; only Venkman remains.  Bill Murray was the last of the original cast to sign off on his likeness, which is why his is the last of the four to be produced.  He should be available in February.  I can’t wait.  Now I just need to find my Real Ghostbusters figures and have a crazy crossover…

This game is so much fun to play, and I haven’t even started a new game on it yet.  Let me explain: when you first load up the game, it puts you in a practice area where you can just mess around.  For those not in the know, mess around means you can create almost any object by writing the word on the stylus screen based on a word database consisting of tens of thousands of words.  The object of the game is to create objects to solve puzzles.  I haven’t gotten to that part of the game yet, as I am too busy in the practice area creating God and then pitting Him against other people and creatures to see who would win.  So far, God wins every time… except against vampires.   They always manage to turn him.  Weird.  Still, I’m having so much fun with this game that I’m hoping to actually play it soon.

This.  For those of you that have read my Christmas articles, there is one particular memory that makes it Christmas for me over anything else – Mario.  Ever since I got that NES all those years ago, it seemed like every Christmas brought another adventure for the plumber boys to embark on.  No matter what console it was for, it just seemed like Super Mario Bros. and Christmas went hand in hand.  But for the past several years, things have been different.  Nintendo has been sparse with their Mario titles (sparse with any good titles, for that matter).  So, the past few holidays were surprisingly quiet on the coin block front.  Then this wonderful game revealed itself when I ripped off the wrapping.  Holy crap, it’s like I’m a kid again.  This game manages to hold up pretty darn well against what has come before.  With a mixture of SMB 3, World, and the most recent release for the DS, this game is extremely fun and challenging.  Add to it the ability to play up to four players simultaneously, and you have a game that will frustrate you as much as make you squee.

This came as a surprise to me.  I didn’t even know this book existed, and I’m a huge zombie fan.  Christmas carols with the lyrics altered to be about zombies.  It’s so campy, but at the same time it is beyond awesome.  Christmas 2010 – be ready, as I’ll be singing these all over the place.

Along with the Matty Collector figures above, this has to be the coolest geek collectible of 2009 – a Back to the Future Delorean that lights up and makes ten different sound effects from the movie.  I had ordered this through my comic shop, but my wife was nice enough to buy it out from under my nose so as to make it a prezzie for me.  This thing is sweet.  Almost everything that you can think of that should light up on the car in the movie lights up here – headlights, tail lights, dashboard, time circuits, flux capacitor, and – of course – the flux bands on the outside of the car.  This thing is incredible.  Sadly, there aren’t any action figures to go with it (at least not yet).  So, in order to make sure the car had a driver, I had to improvise:

That there would be Matt Tracker from M.A.S.K.  Not the original figure, mind you, but the limited edition figure that was made as part of the most recent (non-movie) G.I. Joe line.  I figured that since his last car had gull-wing doors he was worthy enough to take a spin through time.

Hopefully the rest of you out there had a holiday that visited just as much geekdom at you as I did.  Here’s to a new year and a fresh supply of Spwug for 2010.

I leave you with some disturbing developments that occurred in our LEGO Advent Calendar just after Christmas.  Let’s just say the negotiations apparently turned hostile:

Manny Bothans died to bring The Don this information.  Poor guy.

Greetings, Ka-Nights!

I’m sure most of you out there had your own, personal Jesus Red Ryder BB Gun – that one item or items that you had to have for Christmas.  Maybe it was a racing set, or a certain action figure.  Maybe it was a Cabbage Patch Kid, or a Tamagotchi.  Or, maybe you just got dirt, and you were happy to receive that dirt.  Whatever your personal windmill was each Christmas, nothing ever matched the feelings that swept over you when you finally got to that one present that looked like it might be the right size and shape of what you had been yearning for all year.  You look it over carefully, curiously… wondering if pinning all your seasonal hopes and dreams on this wrapped box of secrets would be worth the risk of possible disappointment.

You slowly undo the first tab of tape, cautiously tearing at the paper…

… and catch your first glimpse of the box underneath…

Your eyes open wide in feverish glee as you suddenly tear faster faster faster…

You got it!  You got…

…socks.

Then your dad laughs and hands you the package that really has the item you’ve been wanting since you saw that commercial cartoon back in January.  It doesn’t matter that your dad is a malicious deceiver of men.  You got what you asked Santa for.  It’s yours!

Five minutes later, you see something on TV that you just have to get next Christmas, your current acquisition just a fuzzy memory…

I know I had quite a few must-haves on my list growing up.  In fact, even at the age of thayunasflakhfy-fqtlkdur, I still end up every year with that one item that I just need for Christmas.  So, as a tribute to the endless quest that many of us embark on annually, I present you with my top five Holy Grails from my childhood:

5. “M.A.S.K” Toys

I remember the first time I saw the “M.A.S.K.” cartoon when I was a kid.  It came on around 6:30 AM (in 1985 time) on one of our local stations and I would watch it every morning before school.  For someone who was already into vehicles that transformed into something else, this show was cool!  The premise was that a special task force called M.A.S.K. (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) led by Matt Tracker was created to defend the world against an evil terrorist organization called V.E.N.O.M. (Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem), which was led by Miles Mayhem.  Both good guys and bad had vehicles that transformed into other vehicles, and all the operatives wore masks that had special abilities.  Of course, like all cartoons of this nature that we grew up with, the cartoon was really just a half hour long commercial that sold us toys.

And man, these toys were awesome.  The first vehicle I ever got was Condor – a green motorcycle that turned into a helicopter.  Included was the driver, Brad Turner, whose mask could project lifelike holograms (only for pretendsies).  My friends and I all collected them, and we spent many hours creating our own adventures.

By the second season of the show, the direction of the plot had changed and the characters were suddenly ripping off “Speed Racer”, as the good guys entered race after race against the bad guys for some item that would be deadly in the wrong hands.  The vehicles were still cool, but the line would die off quickly after the show started to suck.  This Holy Grail has the distinction of being one that I’ve reignited my efforts in finding recently.  I have managed to procure two vehicles so far, and am looking to rebuild my collection.

4. CD Boom Box

Sometime in the late 80s/early 90s, CD’s started to make their way into mainstream use for music lovers everywhere.  It was sometime around 1992 that I wanted to get in on this new medium.  I mean, cassette tapes were fine and all, but CDs allowed you to skip to the next song without having to fast forward through the current one!  No more wasting time cueing through tape just to get to a favorite song or to get past a bad one.  With the touch of a button, you could go right to the track you wanted.  Heck, you didn’t even have to listen to songs in the order that they were put on the album anymore!  The Compact Disc revolution gave us the freedom to choose!

It also re-introduced a feature that our parents were familiar with and that we would constantly gripe about – skipping.  Oh yeah, one bump and you just “time-traveled” a second or two into the future of the song you were listening to.  Or, you could revisit the same two second you just heard.  Top notch!

Despite the minor annoyances with the technology, I was extremely excited when I unwrapped that bad boy on Christmas Day, along with a couple of carefully chosen CD selections that would be my introduction to digitally-recorded music.  You know what I did then?

I made mix tapes for my Walkman from those CDs.

3. Star Wars Toys

Anyone who knows me knows I am a HUGE Star Wars fan, despite the prequels.  From the time my parents took me to see the first film (that’s Episode IV: A New Hope to you yung’uns) in theaters at the age of three, I lived and breathed everything Star Wars.  Bed sheets, actions figures, pajamas, cups – you name it, I probably had it.  Every Christmas from 1978 to 1984 saw some assortment of Star Wars merchandise under our tree.  I still have the very first action figure I ever got – a Stormtrooper.  His legs are a wee bit wobbly and he looks like he was dragged behind a bantha for several miles, but I still have him in a box somewhere.

Sadly, by summer of 1985 the toy line would be discontinued.  It had been two years since Jedi premiered in theaters, and a year since it was brought back into theaters for an encore showing.  With the final movie come and gone, interest in the franchise waned considerably.  And so, my ten year old self was left with a gaping hole of no toy series to love (that would quickly be filled not too long after by Transformers, M.A.S.K., Thundercats, Silverhawks, and The Real Ghostbusters toys, to name a few).

I still have the very last figure that was bought for me also – Lando Calrissian in his general uniform, complete with cloth cape.  No Lando… Han won’t have that shield down in time this time…

2. Nintendo Entertainment System

Some of you might remember that I wrote about this as part of my Christmas series last year.  For those that haven’t, you should really go back and read all three of them.  They’re quite good.

I won’t rehash too much since this is ground already covered, so instead I will give you the short version (in rhyme):

Atari 7800 is what I had,

Then I saw my friend’s system and it made me sad.

Nintendo made a console that blew mine away,

Five minutes with Mario and I wanted to stay.

I pleaded with my folks to get us a NES,

But we were too poor; man our life was a mess.

It would be many months before I could play,

So I was over at my friend’s house every day.

We’d play Mario and Popeye and Donkey Kong,

When’s Christmas get here? It’s taking too long!

Christmas finally came and within the first hour,

I was playing Nintendo; I was playing with Power!

1. Debbie

Okay, now we’re to the part where I get sentimental and mushy.  Too bad.  I have to say, without a doubt, the greatest Holy Grail I ever chased after and won was a girl.  And yes, it was around Christmas.

Debbie and I started out as friends in high school.  Her older sister was dating my best friend Chad.  Chad, his girlfriend and I were seniors, while Debbie was two years behind (Yes, that makes her two years younger than me.  Try and keep up.).  In an odd twist of fate (and some manipulation by Chad and Debbie’s sister), Debbie and I started dating.  I can go on record and say that she was, honestly, my first love.  I fell hard.  We were practically inseparable after that (to this day she is the reason I love when it rains).

Unfortunately, like in a Rankin and Bass holiday special, a nefarious scheme was hatched by some evil force to break us up.  And it worked.  I was devastated.  By this time I had graduated and was getting ready to go off to college.  I tried everything I could to get her back, but it just pushed her away more.  It got quite ugly.  So, despite being extremely broken hearted, I did the only thing left that I could do.

I let her go.

The fall semester flew by.  Before I knew it my first semester as a freshman was over and Christmas break was upon us.  I eagerly came home to enjoy my time off…

…only to find a letter waiting for me from Debbie asking me to meet her at the church we both attended regularly for that night’s service.  Reluctantly, I went.  When, what to my wondering eyes should appear… but an angel of a girl who had won my heart earlier that year.

She apologized sincerely, profusely, and several other important words that end in “-ly”.  Skeptical and still sore from the heart-wrenching, I wasn’t sure.  But, over the course of the next couple of weeks, she convinced me, and by Christmas we were together again.

Obviously, we didn’t end up together.  Things happen, as they often do.  We’ve both moved on to bigger and better things.  But, the reason she places at number one on my list of Holy Grails is this – for one, shining moment, Debbie made for me a Christmas that you normally only see in movies and read about in books.  That year my Christmas was one of merriment, magic and wonder – the kind that the hopeless romantic I was had always hoped for.

For once in my young life, I had chosen wisely.

The Don swears that he just has something in his eye.

Greetings, Banana Splits!

There comes a time in every child’s life when they must put away childish things and become an adult…

…or they can say “To Hell with that” and continue to have fun by going to conventions like Nekocon.

Guess which one I did this past weekend?

To be fair, I was there in an official capacity, as my partner-in-crime Danny Valentini and I were invited to the convention again this year to be guests.  Supposedly, we do this web comic together called “The Draconia Chronicles” that grows in popularity every year.  Now, I would just chalk this up to rumor for now, because everyone knows that there are no such things as web comics.  That’s just a story parents tell their children at night to scare them so that they won’t grow up to get online degrees.

You should know the drill by now – I do a quick recap of my weekend at a convention, you skim over it feeling unfulfilled, then we both reluctantly agree that we need to see other people as we give back all the items we borrowed or gave to each other.

I’m still waiting to get back my copy of the “The White Album.”

As con Fridays go, this year’s Neko offered pretty much the standard fare – I show up at the convention center about two hours before the Opening Ceremonies.  Heading up to the “Con-Ops” room, I procure my Guest badge.  After some spirited conversation about topics I have no recollection of discussing, I make a dotted bee-line for our table in the Artists Alley.  I say dotted because one can never just go to where they are going at a convention.  Invariably, there will be many stops and restarts as you run into old friends for a quick chat, pose for pictures, stop to take pictures, notice something shiny, pause to ponder the secrets of the universe, stop because you’re chewing gum, or hesitate because the all-powerful con gods sent a messenger to you with a gift consisting of this confection called “Pocky”.  And no, I don’t mean the owner of Spwug.

As I survey the landscape of the cavernous region known as the Artists Alley, I catch up with more fellow AA (not Alcoholics Anonymous) commoners as I wait for my cohort to arrive.  I also wait for time to slowly transport me into the future, for that is where the Opening Ceremonies await me.

When the Hour of Trying to Fool People Into Thinking You Are Someone Important in Front of a Medium-Sized Crowd is finally at hand, my recently arrived partner-in-crime and I make our way into the even more cavernous region where the Ceremonies are to take place.  After a series of horrible attempts at humor that are the reason my parents gave me up for adoption, Danny and I – fully convinced that no one knew who the heck we were – remove ourselves and head back over to “Con-Ops”, where we trade our silly old Guest badges for shinier and cooler “Neko Bazaar” badges.  With renewed vigor, we return to the first cavernous area of which I had already mentioned previously.  From there, we set up our table, and begin the attempt to peddle our wares for the rest of the evening.  And that, little Christopher, is how babies are born.

Saturday finds us arriving early, long before noon’s rising sun can greet us.  We have a panel to host and candy tied to strings so that we can lure entice the con masses to our little panel room.  We are able to capture accrue a respectable number of individuals despite our outlandish buffoonery on display.  In fact, I do believe that a couple of them even stop screaming long enough to ask us questions about our web comic.  I call that a success.  Then again, I call not getting maced in the face when I ask a woman the time a success.

From there, we return to our temporary abode in the Artists Alley for more shilling, more debauchery, more talky-talky…blah blah blah…  You’re already asleep, so we’ll skip ahead…

Two in the afternoon!  We have another panel!  But our princess is in another castle!  Dejected from finding yet another one of those stupid Toadstool weirdoes (where do they all come from?  Do they multiply like rabbits?), we make our way back to the same room our last panel was in.  In a strange case of déjà vu, the room looks exactly the same as the last time we were in it.  In fact, maybe this really is the first time we are in it, and the first time really wasn’t the first time, but instead a strange message from the future telling us what lie in store for our fates.

Nope, same room, different panel.

This time we are joined by real artists and writers as we try our best to sound like we know as much as they do about making web comics.  I think we have them fooled right up to the point where I mention something about the right amount of tension needed on a loom when interweaving the threads of a web comic.  I’m not sure where the audience got the pitch forks and torches, but it makes for an exciting conclusion to what I think was a successful panel.

As my counterpart and I make our escape back to the Caverns of AA, we easily slip back into our respective roles – he’s the DJ and I’m the rapper.  Sales seem to be going well on our new “Men of the Quadratic Equation” calendar, as well as a few other items we have somehow managed to fool the commonfolk into believing have magical powers – mainly some Shamwow!s, as well as a few pounds of Mighty Putty.  Throughout the afternoon and evening we get several con-goers who stop by claiming to be fans of our web comic.  But, I know the truth.  After being visited by them as often as I am, you tend to recognize evil spirits when they show up to haunt you and ask you for favors.

It is at this point that I also have a vision that my wife is in an 80s glam-pop band.  I shiver from the delusion, then down a couple burgers that are really cookies.  My life is strange.

The greatest highlight of Saturday has to be in the evening when we go to dinner.  It isn’t often when an evil spirit actually tries to get you drunk so that they can take advantage of you.  Joke’s on him, though.  I would have said yes sober.

Sunday seems to be a blur.  No, I mean every Sunday seems to be a blur.  I think my brain just hates living in my cranial cavity so much that it just decides to shut down every seventh day as a middle finger to me and my ancestors.  I can’t fathom why.  I mean, it isn’t my fault that the Waltons aren’t real.

Now that I think about it, I do seem to recall some events took place on Neko’s Day of Sun.  We have a final panel wherein we are usurped by dark forces who yank the proverbial rug out from under us by yanking the actual rug out from under us.  I think we still manage to do a fairly adequate job of teaching the wailing masses how not to create or develop characters.  At least, I pray to Bill Cosby that we did.

A few more hours of trying to prove to the con folk that we are not wax statues and the con is officially over.  As my main squeeze who is not my wife but is really the artist who draws the web comic I scribble words for and I break down and cry our set-up at the table in the AA Caverns, we say our goodbyes to a few of the fellow artists who were crazy enough to talk to us.  We make our way to the bar in the hotel that is across the way from the convention center.  I remark as we head over that a way looks an awful lot like grass and asphalt.  Once inside the bar, a friend buys me an apple pie – except that this pie is really liquid and I have to drink it instead of eat it.  But hey, in today’s economy everyone has to make sacrifices – even our American icons.  I heard that baseball is currently just gardening in order to save money.

With the evening now upon us, we make our way to Olive Garden.  There, a free meal awaits all of us who were sneaky enough to convince the staff that we were Guests Neko Bazaar attendees.  But first we stand outside the restaurant to play a game called “Parking Lot-to”.  The object of the game is to stand out in the parking lot until the number of people in your party matches the number called.  Our group makes it to the bonus round, where we win some fabulous prizes – including our meals, as well as a copy of the home game.  I can’t speak for those who are still in the parking lot after we are seated, though I’m told that “manicotti formaggio” is Italian for “convention stragglers”.

I’m glad I ordered the chicken alfredo.

The Don would like to give his heartfelt thanks to everyone at Nekocon for their gracious generosity and hopes to be invited back next year!

Andrew Dobson, skilled artist and Nintendo fan of old, gives his take on Project Natal and the Sony Wand in “Danny and Spot” (I’m showing you two comics that were uploaded together, but it’s the second comic that’s relevant here.) Check out his amazing work at the link above!

Fall has, uh, fallen upon us here at the Casa de Marlink, according to the bright red tree outside our door. Halloween rushed in and blew out with the speed and force of six three-year-olds on a sugar high, leaving us with just the leftovers of candy for trick-or-treaters, decorations to be taken down*, and some form of minor plague that some generous soul donated to the big Halloween party.

*Decorations were left up into November to ensure we did not incur the wrath of Sam by taking them down too early.

While I soothe my aching head and raw throat with honeyed ginseng tea, let’s get down to brass tacks. Or thumbtacks. Who even uses brass tacks anymore?

You might notice this isn’t the monthly webcomic review I’ve normally been doing the first Tuesday of the month, although a comic on the Web still makes a feature here. I’m switching up the way things are done, but since how a writer works is only of interest to the writer, I’ll spare you the details and get to the topic at hand. Well, topics. I’m gonna get random and complain about a few things here. This post was inspired by the Dobson comics you see here and the gripes they reminded me of.

This isn’t NEW-news; we’ve all heard that the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 are keen on adding motion controls to their systems. The response from the gaming community so far has largely been a big yawning “Meh.” My, the enthusiasm of disapproval sure has fallen since Nintendo announced the Wii Remote a few years back! (Read the “2006″ panel of the above comic to see the reaction I got a few years ago, when I expressed delight at the proposed Nintendo motion controls that have since come to rule the world.)

But, even though I posted a comic here that’s mocking the Wiimote-mockers, I’m not going to tread…too much…into that old territory of how it’s “cool” to hate the big N because they always seem to come out on top (funny, I would think that would be a reason to LIKE them. We’re supposed to like winners who provide quality products for the consumer, right? Or maybe I’m the only one who still values substance over style. Wait. Said I wasn’t gonna go there. I also said I’d call you after last night. Get used to disappointment, kids.) No, my problem with the gamer-dubbed “copycat” motion technology announced by Sony and Microsoft isn’t relevant to the “copycat” part.

We don’t have a 360 in this house, due to there being nothing we wanted to play on it. We do have a PS3, which I pretty much only use as a DVD/Blu-Ray player. I spend basically all of my gaming time on the PC, the Wii, or my older Nintendo systems (and much of my PC gaming is playing Nintendo ROM’s when I’m not playing Oblivion). It’s not that I’m just obsessed with everything Nintendo does to the point that I won’t touch the competition. It’s that I’m obsessed with Nintendo BECAUSE they produce the games I actually like to play and replay, an area in which both Sony and Microsoft have been severely lacking for me. Let’s have another set of Dobson comics to illustrate:

Before anyone says anything, A Boy and His Blob falls under the “third-party” category, not the “new intellectual property” one.

Yeah, I’m not a big first-person shooter fan, nor am I diggin’ the dull “realistic” brown graphics that make backgrounds and items largely indistinguishable and have become the gaming norm. Don’t think I’m ignoring that Nintendo has been known to fall into this trap too (Twilight Princess, why you gotta hurt me so bad with your muted colours? Can’t we go back to the vibrant pallets of your NES and SNES glory days when I could tell one object from another? Even your N64 forays were more vivid!) And many of the PS3 FPS offerings are pretty much all the same thing, graphics-/gameplay-wise. Even the rare stand-out FPS games like Call of Duty: World at War and Battlefield: Bad Company tend to look alike…and play alike in a bad way, which I’ll get into and ties into the motion-control thing….

I can’t comment on the 360’s proposed motion controls beyond quoting a few gamer responses of “Way to do what Nintendo already did!” since I’ve never played a 360, but I’ve got a big problem with Sony’s take. Which is, how can PS3 developers be looking at new types of controls when the ones they’ve been working with for years are still so loose and unresponsive?

There aren’t that many PS3 games I’ve been excited for and actually played. There was Metal Gear Solid 4 (more brown futuristic FPS with a scruffy hero!), Eden, LittleBigPlanet, and the minigame LocoRoco Cocoreccho!, and that’s pretty much it. And I probably would have liked those games a whole lot more, had the controls actually freakin’ worked.

The battle against Vamp in MGS4, for example, took about five times as long as it should have because the CQC maneuver to put someone in a lock-hold only works when it wants to. And let’s not forget the other times during the game that Snake wouldn’t grab what he was supposed to or go where he was told. (Cranky old man.)

In Eden, the controls work like you’re playing underwater with slow response time, which leaves your little character missing easy grab-jumps and constantly falling to the beginning of the level while the timer ticks down. I can generally only play one level at a time, before getting so frustrated at the controls that I quit playing it for the next two months.

LittleBigPlanet…do I even need to get into the controls and hit detection that are so sloppy, even the game’s designers admit there’s something amiss–and then completely reneged on their promise to repair the broken controls by Christmas 2008? I have tried so hard to love this game with all my heart because it’s extremely unique and obviously a labour of love (see also: Stephen Fry narrating), but it’s another one that leads to migraines. I still recommend to friends that they play this game–but as a rental. I can’t justify buying it until you’ve seen if you can love it despite the crappy controls.

LocoRoco…another game that would be so creative and so much fun, if only the damn LocoRocos actually did what they were told, instead of bouncing in place and ogling the pretty butterfly that is clearly telling them to jump on each other and form a stack. Many friends have seen this game on the PS3 and wanted to try it, only to give up after ten minutes of yelling at the screen and shaking the controller.

Ever since the PS3 entered my home, I’ve had this theory that game developers aren’t making games harder–they’re making games harder to play. (Or perhaps making the games themselves “stupider” so that they don’t recognize what you, the player, are trying to do with that weird little alien “controller” thing your PS3 has heard so much about.) And there’s a big difference between the two. People like a challenge. People don’t like watching themselves fail even though they hit the right button at the right time. If developers can’t get regular old button-dominated controls to work as they should, how can they expect to re-revolutionize gaming with a new(ish, *ahem* Nintendo) type of control? Do me a favour, Sony. Get the old right before you move on to the new. Make me love you, as Nintendo made me love them over two decades ago, and continues to make me love them, by getting it right the first time. And Microsoft? At least try to catch my interest next time, okay?

I now end this largely nonsensical ventilation to pop pills for the headache and more tea for the throatache. Catch you on the flip–or catch you at Nekocon this weekend for those who are going, provided I’m not dying of the zombie plague by then!

Welcome to this week’s post of my Geek Journal!

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Ah, Hallowe’en Eve, otherwise known as Devil’s Night in the metro Detroit area where I grew up. Not that I did anything bad, but I did always look forward to the local cable company’s attempt to limit the chaos by making all of the pay-TV channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) free to view for that one evening. I wonder if they still do that…

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted about components I’d like to upgrade my computer to when the time comes, one of which was the monitor. I forgot to mention a couple of additional aspects I’d like to see in the next monitor I get: LED backlit (like I mentioned for the next TV I’d like) and multi-touch support (got to make the most of Windows 7 whenever I get it ^^). You hear that Dell? Make me proud!

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It appears that the wave that Nintendo has been riding since the release of the Wii may have finally crashed upon the shore: It was recently posted that their profits weren’t as high as expected. A local news anchor commented that it may be due to the Wii’s popularity: Everyone already has one.

Nintendo also announced the DSi XL, which is exactly what its name implies: It’s an enlarged version of the DSi. Besides having larger screens (still having the same resolution as the DS and DSi, meaning the pixels will be VERY BIG), it comes with a larger stylus. This may be mainly to make it more accessible to older people who have a hard time seeing the smaller screens and holding the standard (and quite thin) stylus.

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There are indications that Sony is at work on the PSP 4000, which will continue to support UMDs. I guess many people didn’t like the PSPgo’s lack of it. Sony may make the 4000 more go-like, to include built-in storage.

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Netflix also announced the near-future availability of their Watch Instantly service on the PS3. At the start, a special Blu-ray disc will be used to access it (free via the link), but it appears that Sony will add built-in support in a future (sometime in 2010) firmware update. I (and others) wonder if this will force Microsoft to remove the X-box Live Gold requirement on the 360’s version. There are also indications that the service may become available on the Wii as well.

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The next Final Fantasy XI update is close, with a release date of Monday, November 9th. This is also when the third mini-expansion, “A Shantotto Ascension”, goes live (it became available for pre-order earlier this week). SquareEnix did a pre-update update yesterday, downloading around 1700 files totaling 30MB in size.

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That’s it for this week!