September 2005 Archives

OMAC Project #5 So if an OMAC rips off your helmet, but you can still talk and walk around three pages later, that's good enough for it to claim "Threat neutralized"? Because that's what happened to Rocket Red. After the cliffhanger in issue #4, I thoroughly expected Dmitri to be offed. So when another OMAC calls out "Target eliminated" after sending an energy bolt through Fire's back, I don't think I'm going to take it all that seriously.

And Rocket Red dies anyway, but not by an OMAC's hand.

This issue's big moment - apart from another Giffen JLA member biting it - is that Sasha finally goes into her new OMAC form, something that's been adequately telegraphed for the last couple issues. (She spent plenty of panels coughing and questioning herself.) As an OMAC, she is hideous. Silver skin like Argent but with a goofy big clown eye. I can't imagine the Bat-editors expected this to happen when Sasha exited those books.

What's with the complete aping of the Manhunters shtick? Is it 1988 and I'm reading Millennium again? Whaddaya know, sleeper OMAC agents are all over the country. I'd fear that this OMAC Pod People burst is the Infinite Crisis except that it will be too easy for half-OMAC / half-human Sasha to send out some kind of Abort command that will shutdown all one million of them.

Once upon a time, I liked this miniseries, but the OMAC thing grew way out of control. It has ceased to be a character piece and has turned into a silly action title. I'm starting to think it ceased being a character piece the moment Beetle was shot, and that happened before issue #1.

Day of Vengeance #5 Black Alice is the new Dial H for Hero. Except that she steals temp powers from existing characters rather than Mad Libbing up a new one each time.

It is plain that the team here is being set up for a new ongoing series. I'm not sure why we get all the Captain Marvel interludes in this issue, unless he's going to end up joining in the big conclusion.

Rann-Thanagar War #5 Still sucks. We're calling Hawkwoman dead now? Won't be the first time.

Villains United #5 I called it! Cheshire's laydown with Catman was specifically to get her out of her blackmail threat!

This book is just filled with great moments. Tons of fun dialogue and characterization. The difference is that these characters interact in actual modern conversation, as opposed to the stilted Flash Gordon tripe going on in Rann-Thanagar War. I was going to post some good examples, but I feel like I'd be posting the entire book. I'm really pulling for this to be the incident that leads into Infinite Crisis, although, as I said before, I don't think it will be that cut-and-dried. DC will have some kind of twist.

JSA Classified #3 Have I mentioned how much I love this Power Girl story yet? The art is fantastic. Amanda Conner has a very animated style... I don't know what other books she's done, but she has to be a grab from some independent somewhere, because her art is so unlike traditional super-hero work, yet comes off totally at home among it. I mean, she's not doing this book as some kind of crazy Jimmy Corrigan avant garde art piece... she's more like the Hernandez Brothers on Love and Rockets. Still, it feels fresh and fun and she should be put on an ongoing title as soon as possible. I love artists with a wide range of facial expressions, and Conner effortlessly shows off her gift for that in this storyline.

Speaking of the storyline, I have to gush over that as well. I fully acknowledge that this is a fan-service piece. Without some previous exposure to Power Girl's convoluted and confused place in the DCU, you would miss out on the many references to comics history. The gist is that PG is on a search to discover her true origin... and echoes of what might be keep appearing to her in the form of visions that only she can see. What's great is that each one could conceivably be a workable fanboy dream. Power Girl is actually from the Legion of Super Heroes, sent back in time and mind-wiped. Power Girl is actually a member of the Anti-Matter world Crime Syndicate and they want her back. Power Girl is actually the daughter of an adult Superboy and Wonder Girl in the future. And that's on top of the previous PG origins: Power Girl is Superman's Kryptonian cousin (the post-Crisis recasting of pre-Crisis Supergirl) and Power Girl is the granddaughter of an ancient Atlantean mage.

Plus, Psycho-Pirate is in it. Now, I'm not stupid enough to think that if he hadn't been one of the major players in Crisis on Infinite Earths he would still be interesting. He is an unexplainably overpowered villain in a universe full of them. No, he is cool specifically because of his role in Crisis... and because very few books have used him in the 20 years since.

And the last line of this issue, delivered by Psycho-Pirate: "Worlds lived... worlds died. But you survived." I love a good Crisis ref.

I went back and re-read Crisis last week. The difference between the writing of 1985 and 2005 is roughly equivalent to the difference between 1965 and 1985. There is a lot of groan-worthy dialogue and a lot of just-accept-it moments. At times you can almost see the big clipboard ticking off the plot points this thing had to hit. Wally West loses his speed disease: check. Introduce new female Wildcat: check. Devolve Wonder Woman into clay: check. There are certainly plenty of good moments (like the sendoff to the Earth-2 Superman) and I'll be the first to say that Crisis was the most daring feat ever attempted in super-hero comics before or since... but there's a good deal of flatness there to the modern reader. And then there's the problem of that all the stuff that Crisis eliminated that has since been re-introduced, like the return of Supergirl... the story suffers a bit for that. One of the central points of Crisis was to clean up Superman's extended family, and now here we are with far too much of it seeping back in.

Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #1 Speaking of undoing stuff. It wasn't that long ago that the Guardians were all gone (save Ganthet), Kilowog was dead, Hal Jordan was the Spectre, Guy Gardner had the power to be a Marvel character, John Stewart was in a wheelchair, there was no Corps, and Kyle Raynor had the last surviving Guardian-powered ring. Now everyone is okay and back in green. It took DC plenty of nonsense to get here, but we're back to where the GL comics were a decade ago.

This story should be told inside the Green Lantern book itself, but that book is currently dripping with Hal Jordan soap and too busy to handle something like this right now. I hope that the goal is to bring the Corps over into Hal's book, if only so we bring an end to the ego-fetishism going on with Hal's return. The goal is to establish Hal as a solo act first, I assume, before saddling him with the legacy of the GLC.

So in the new Corps, we get two Lanterns per sector... which explains why we can have Hal and John as active Lanterns on Earth. Kyle and Guy, however, are summoned to Oa to work with Kilowog to train all the new recruits. Predictably, Guy is outraged. Also, the yellow impurity is back, but only in the Power Ring of rookies.

Big foul ball coming... Guy, complaining about his new duties, says he is "not a teacher." I seem to recall that Guy's job, pre-Lantern, was as a gym teacher in Baltimore... and that he was good at it. Maybe Crisis retconned that away.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #23 When I opened to the first page, I instantly thought, "Oh crap, that zombie Marvel Universe thing is still going on?" This storyline is that memorable. It is amusing that the chief requirement to be a Marvel zombie (pun intended) is to be missing an eye. I'm not sure what I think of the Ultimate FF these days. I'm sticking around just to see how classic FF storylines are being re-interpreted into the Ultimate universe, but by and large, they're not all that different. For example, Ultimate FF Annual #1 introduces the Inhumans, and the big change is that Medusa actually has snake hair instead of being the big flowing Kirby redhead. The Annual also revisits the Inhumans' practice of arranged marriages mere months after the same topic was explored in the Marvel Knights Fantastic Four books. I don't know how well these books sell, but I don't really see much distinction between the Ultimate FF, the Marvel Knights FF and the regular variety FF. I would not mind seeing that triplet reduced to one book. With Mike Wieringo on art, please.

I had the best time today.

Around 11am, the doorbell rings. This is unusual; we rarely have unannounced visitors so a knock this early probably means a kid selling candy, a teen working on his Spring Break vacation fund by selling magazine subscriptions (yeah, right, like I give a nut about some pre-frat jock's need to party in Aruba) or maybe, if we're lucky, a neighbor dropping off a plate of extra peaches. I check the peephole and see two gentlemen in suits. I have a suspicion what they want. Through the magical happenstance of having Clark, I'm already awake, showered and presentable, so I open the door.

We exchange hellos. They introduce themselves, Wayne and Orlando. I ask what I can do. Wayne says "Would you like to live in a world of hope?"

Oh yes.

He pulls out a Bible and reads something; I forget what. I tell him I don't think this is appropriate. He asks why I feel that way and I tell him it's because I'm an atheist.

Now, you might think he would pull up stakes and the pair would venture off. But ol' Wayne wanted to entertain a serious discussion. Maybe he gets double points for recruiting a declared atheist.

His first tact is to blame my parents for my (lack of) beliefs. He says that often people who feel as I do have been raised without exposure to a religious message, and they simply believe as they have been told. I inform him that, no, they are not atheists but they're not particularly religious either. I further pointed out that I found it interesting that he said that, because Christianity's basic method of propagation is via brainwashing children at an early age. Start with coloring books, move into fear and threats, pow, believers for life. He chuckled. He did that a lot.

He asked what had happened in my life to make me an atheist. Although now that I think about it, I'm not sure he actually used the word "atheist." He probably said something like "your beliefs" or "your viewpoint." I said that the complete lack of proof in crazy supernatural goings-on was what happened. Then he started talking about the proof all around us and I swear to you that I started shaking because I was so thrilled he was going to go that way. It's more fun when they make it easy.

He said that there's a reason that his heart wasn't in his foot, for example, while mine was in my chest. A reason why cats don't give birth to dogs. I told him, yes there was, biology and nature. Millions of years of evolution. He asked if I have any children. I said yes, proudly, hoping he would infer my intent to raise Clark atheist. He started talking about how it must have felt to watch him being born, and how there must be a plan to it all to enable something so wonderful to occur.

I could have launched into an infertility and adoption dialogue here. I considered it. But I thought it would distract from the big point I wanted to make, take us off onto a tangent. And anyway, if I started to demand why "God" had chosen to make us unable to conceive while teen crackwhores across the country get knocked up every nine months, it just might have led to him suggesting that infertility was a punishment for being a non-believer. Or he would have claimed that it was "sent" as a "challenge" that "He" knew we could handle. The former would have exposed him as a typically insensitive, my-way-or-no-way religious hardliner. Falwell-style. However, I suspect he would have gone with the latter, because he's on a sales call... he's selling Feelgood Religion, the brand that most people use. No need for hard questions and tough answers; just show up on Sunday for your weekly reminder of why your clique is correct and everyone else is wrong and screwing things up / don't worry - Heaven is coming / pass the collection plate / see you next week / try not to think too much.

So I sidestepped that and said "Oh, so we're going to bring up Intelligent Design!" He chuckled.

I launched into the logical attack on Intelligent Design: if the world is so complex that it couldn't possibly have come about without being purposefully cerated by a designer, than wouldn't the designer be infinitely more complicated and therefore also demand the intervention of another designer?

He said that you could take that line of reasoning up forever and forever. I said, yes, you can, that's the point. You're selling fantasy. There has never been and never will be any proof of an afterlife, a creator, or any of the junk you're pushing. We went through several more examples along the lines of human birth again, each time him attempting to assert that God was behind everything. Natural laws, mankind walking on the moon, etc. I again suggested that nature was the product of evolution and that the other examples were man's own scientific progress.

At one point he quoted the Bible again, trying to point out the good messages in it. I said that this is the same book that expects us to lock up women and have no contact with them during the week they menstruate. To his credit, he knew what I was talking about. Most people I play that card on have no idea that something so absurd is in the Bible; it's simply not the kind of thing that gets put on a greeting card. He maintained that there was a very good reason for that, because of cleanliness. I pointed out that you can't take that literally, locking up women - what kind of misogyny are you trying to teach? And if you can't take that literally, why should you take any of it literally?

During this part of the discussion, he absolutely refused to say the word "menstruate." I picked up on this rather quickly, so I then said it as many times as I could. When he again referred to menstruation as "the unwell time" or something hopelessly archaic like that, I interrupted him and asked "you mean menstruation?" Haw.

We also entertained a brief interlude about an afterlife, and how it is utter nonsense specifically aimed at attracting the disenfranchised and the poor into organized religion... and basically anyone who is afraid to die. I accused him of giving false promises and taking advantage of people. I stated that mankind no longer needs this crutch... some people with nowhere else to turn may still require it just to keep from blowing their own heads off, but intelligent, thinking human beings do not need this fantasy of lies any longer.

By now, he has yet to win a single point, other than the only talking point that Christians can ever win: that it's all a matter of faith. And of course, that point means nothing in a logical argument when tough questions aren't getting even remotely answered. So the soft sell began: he tells me he can understand why I feel the way I do, with so much evil and confusion in the world.

I guess at that comment I'm supposed to fall to the ground weeping "You're right! You're right! I've been searching for that answer! What can I do to help!" Instead I said, "Yeah, your god isn't doing that great a job." He goes on to discuss how there are two opposing forces in the world, God and Satan. He cited the case of a 12 year old child who threw a 5 year old child into a fire and asked if I thought that could possibly have happened without Satan's influence. Surely I don't believe one human being could do that to another, particularly children. I said, sure I could. Some kids are raised in terrible conditions, some parents shouldn't have kids, some kids are born with mental problems.

This is pure gold. A crystallizing moment. Because this is where devout Christians expose themselves for being completely batshit insane. Because Wayne proceeded to tell me about the demons at work on Earth, sowing evil deeds wherever they roam. This particular style of thought flabbergasts me. Believing in demons is one small step away from believing in unicorns and I told him that. I said "Demons on Earth? Do you hear yourself talk? That is absolutely crazy." He says that Satan's agents want me to believe that, because if I don't believe in demons than Satan can work that much more efficiently. I asked him if he thought I had demons in my house telling me to think this way. He chuckled.

After that, he said something about faith again and the two men excused themselves. The second guy said nothing during the entire discussion. I didn't mention this yet, but Wayne was blind, so Orlando seemed to be there as both backup and guide. I wonder what Wayne would have said if I would have inquired about that, how does he feel about God making him blind. Well, I don't have to wonder, I can easily imagine he would have brushed it off with more crap about faith and challenges and inspiration and tragedy-into-triumph and his mission in life. More meaningless Feelgood Religion.

I would have stood there for hours had Wayne not terminated the visit. Maybe he had run out of empty promises and vague questions to ask. I regret not finding out what particular flavor he was pushing... he never said the word "Jesus" and the only overtly cultist thing was the whole demons-on-Earth bit. I don't even know if he was pimping a local church or was just bussed in to encouragement church attendance in general. I do know that solicitation is banned in our development, but shutting down every one of his weak-kneed please-don't-inquire-further arguments was more fun than threatening a call to the borough or just slamming the door in his face.

"A reason why cats don't give birth to dogs." That was a huge pick-me-up this morning. I could probably enjoy similar doorstep visitations every Saturday morning. Send your best guys; I have a lot more I want to discuss.

Picked up We Love Katamari at EB tonight. I pre-ordered it through them because I knew there was no way my TRU was going to get this game in stock ever, or have any idea what I'm talking about when I ask about it. Since I was already at the mall, looking all otaku in my Domo-Kun t-shirt, I pre-ordered Fatal Frame 3, because I know there is no way my TRU was going to get that game in stock ever, or have any idea what I'm talking about when I ask about it.

I've been looking forward to We Love Katamari for a long time. Like, since 1987 or so. I've already damn near burned the soundtrack into my iPod from repeated playings.

After playing it most of the night, I can confidently claim I am not disappointed. It is, as expected, more of Katamari Damacy. The controls are the same, the graphics are the same. The menu structure is wildly different this time around, and unfortunately it is not a change for the better. This original game had a pleasant simplicity to choosing levels and browsing options. This one annoyingly makes level selection a pain because - unless you have a great memory - there's no way to tell what level you're choosing. In KD, they had this great little icon-and-number system that instantly reminded you what the levels contain... the basic levels were all numbered so you had an idea as to the difficulty, and the special levels used the icon to indicate "Oh, this is the one where I have to collect the largest bear I can find," or "This is the one where you collect fish under the time limit." Choosing replays was easy. Nothing like that in WLK. Levels are all held by human characters - fans of the first game, in a self-aware touch - but they never indicate whether they hold a short level or a long level, a basic level or a special goal level. You have to talk to them each time to figure out which levels you want to replay. Very poor presentation choice.

Also, there's about twice as much talking in this one. Which may be a cute and charming thing or may be a dull and obnoxious thing depending on where you stand on clicking through text conversations in video games.

Being a sequel, the trippy design and far-out Japanese asthetics don't shock and amaze as much as they did in the original, because we've already seen that and, quite frankly, expected nothing less in this one. The opener movie is another stunningly hilarious random color-and-clip art explosion. In place of the astronaut family story, WLK presents the life story of the King of All Cosmos... and there better be an unlockable movie gallery hidden somewhere along the line because from what I've seen so far, it is a riot and deserves to be viewed again.

WLK even lets you load your starfield data from your Katamari Damacy save file, so keep that old memory card handy.

Once you get through that fair amount of fluff, the sticky ball mechanics are just as satisfying as they were last year. The biggest complaint about Katamari Damacy is that it's really only three levels long, polygonally speaking. We Love Katamari has many more environments to roll around in. Tonight I did a snow-filled one and an underwater one that were rather limited in size... but a house / city one just kept getting bigger every time I found a corner to turn.

And I didn't even get to the 2P stuff yet. It's gonna be a fun weekend.

Here's the full story of my current Urban Dead game. (Which, I neglected to mention last time, I first heard about via the A Geek in Korea weblog, one of my usual haunts when I click through my bloggy bookmarks.)

I started playing as a NecroTech Scientist because, when faced with a choice between a Fighter class and a non-Fighter class, I will always choose the non-Fighter, whatever that may be. It's not that I'm interested in role-playing at all, just that I usually prefer to see what the other classes offer up... since I know what a Fighter is going to do. Fight. (The Fighter equivalent in Urban Dead is a military man, by the way, although you can also start as a Police Officer or a Fireman for a similar feel.)

The deal with Scientists is that, in exchange for horrible weapon/hand-to-hand skills, they can operate revivification syringes that amount to a one shot kill against a zombie, with very few exceptions. Also, Scientists can see secret NecroTech lab locations. The newbie Scientist's chief method for gaining experience points is by extracting DNA from zombies, which is also easy and avoids the 15% chance-to-hit junk that combat-oriented characters have to initially muddle through.

So my Scientist, Dred, started out wandering around the city extracting DNA for XP. But then the server crapped out one night while I was playing and my character was stuck outside in the street. It's generally a good idea for human players - particularly weaklings like the NerdTech crew - to get the heck back inside a barricaded building at the end of a session. Zombies have to work to get through a barricade, and they can't see inside to know if it's worth their time anyway.

Since I was caught outside, I was killed. But the nice thing about Urban Dead is that you can bounce back between human and zombie classes as often as you like. So I played as a zombie for a while.

Actually, I found zombie (un)life to be even easier than noobing as a Scientist. If I was lucky, I could munch on a human, but most of my time was spent attacking other zombies for the XP. In a week, I had earned enough XP to buy the skills Vigour Mortis (+10% on all non-weapon attacks), Death Grip (+20% on all hand attacks) and Rend Flesh (hand attacks do +1 damage). I also found that I didn't mind wandering the map indiscriminately, nor did I care if another player killed me. Zombies just stand back up after being "killed."

So I headed north for no particular reason and ended up in Quarlesville, sort of top left of the map. I kinda hung out and fought other zombies for XP, until one day I woke up alive. Some Scientist had popped me with a syringe and revived me!

Back to newbie human levels (puchased zomb skills don't carry over to your human state), I headed for the closest NecroTech lab and found 15 to 20 people inside. A safehouse. They healed me back up and I starting getting back into the DNA extracting game to earn some fresh XP. Usually I would build up enough action points (only 50 a day) to carefully click around a couple nearby blocks, steal some zombie DNA, and sneak back inside the lab before the AP runs out.

Eventually I bought the Lab Experience skill (can use those revivification syringes), Diagnosis (can see other human players' HP, which is helpful for administering First Aid Kits) and Shopping (can search particular stores when inside a mall.) After I bought the Shopping skill, I set out in search of a mall. Luckily the Calvert Mall in Quarlesbank was not far away, so I did some scrounging there. This Mall is another barricaded safehouse, so I hung out there for a while, searching and occasionally sneaking out for a run at reviving any zombies.

So now that's my typical session... run between the Mall and the lab, extracting and reviving as I go. I haven't clicked the combat button since my resurrection. Tonight I found a shotgun at the Mall, so I think my next skill purchase will be to improve my Basic Firearms Training. Shotguns start with a 5% chance to do 10 damage, and that skill pushes the % up to 30%, which is pretty great. Of course, ammo is limited, so you can't become an unstoppable shotgun monster, but I have about 5 shells built up from repeated searchings at the Mall, so I could have some fun with that. I've also foraged a baseball bat, crowbar, wirecutters and a mobile phone (although the phone has no signal, surprise.) And continued searchings back at the lab turn up stupid amounts of extra DNA extractors and GPS units, all of which are useless as you really only need one of each.

I'm at the Mall now, awaiting my action points buildup so I can venture outside again. I need about 100 more XP to get the firearms skill, so that's a good deal more extracting and reviving to do.

The game reminds me of my MUSHing days, although it is far less social. Talking uses up your action points, so most players rarely speak a word unless they're begging for a heal or have a zombie report from the outside.

This is the super-secret new controller for the Nintendo Revolution. The main unit is a remote control-shaped device with a plug on the bottom for interchangable controller add-ons. The analog stick add-on shown has a stick and two "shoulder" buttons. The remote itself has an A button on the front, a B button in a trigger position, and some ancillary buttons out of thumb's reach. The A and B buttons appear to be duplicated at the bottom of the controller so you could tilt the whole thing 90 degrees to create an elongated NES controller for all those NES games you're intended to download. You can see wireless connection lights down there too. The remote itself is motion sensitive so you can actually wave it around as a simulated analog stick.

I'll tell you, I'm not going to fall all over myself imagining new uses for this thing. I tired of having to do that every time Nintendo announces something stupid. When the DS was unveiled out of nowhere with the accompanying tech demos, I could see their intent for the device and could easily imagine many more ways the DS's unique feature set could be used... as opposed to the PSP, which really didn't have anything to break it apart from existing games, aside from "better graphics for a handheld." In fact, I have it on good authority that the PSP was engineered solely for racing games anyway. Despite my initial notion that the DS was completely unasked-for and possessed a total mystery of purpose, I could see the touch screen, the mic, the stylus, the wi-fi, the dual screens and imagine what could be.

When I look at this gimp, I'm reminded of all those interactive DVD "games" that showed up right when DVD players first hit it big. How this thing gets used for a new Smash Bros or Zelda or Mario or Animal Crossing is squarely Nintendo's responsibility to delineate. It's beyond me. With four people waving these around for a Smash Bros match, somebody's going to go home with a black eye. And true to form, they did almost none of that in this round of hype. The only thing we have to go on a grand broad statements like "we'll be able to swing the damn thing like a bat for a baseball game, or point it around the room to scroll our onscreen viewpoint."

Let me tell you something you already know. If you have to wave that stick around in the air, your average gameplay session is going to last about 15 minutes before your arm cramps up. I've played enough light gun games on the PS1 and PS2 and enough Donkey Konga to know that physical labor is anathema to the gaming experience. Sure, five year olds love it. Five year olds can stand in front of an EyeToy and dance for hours. I last about five EyeToy games - taking turns with other adults - and then I'm ready to hit up a card game.

If I have to point around the room with my right hand (let's be charitable and assume it just requires constant wrist movement rather than full arm motion) in order to affect a mouselook in Super Mario Revolution... all the while moving Mario on the analog stick on the other end of the tether... well, I'm not so sure that I'm having fun at that point. My wrist is probably in pain and my brain is probably wondering how this is better than a second analog stick.

I don't think the news is all bad. Two things already underscore the readily swallowed notion that this particular controller is simply a wacko peripheral that most "traditional" games won't use anyway. First, Nintendo already announced that your GameCube junk will work on the Revolution... so the current crop of controllers will be hot-swappable, as well as bongos, dance pads, etc. Second, they tempered this crazy remote release with the promise of a more typically controller-shaped shell that would presumably slip around the thin remote and turn it into something more usable. Will that be ungainly? Perhaps... imagine a WaveBird with a DVD remote running through its center.

My theory is that Nintendo will surprise everyone with a bunch of never-before-imagined games that use this bizarro controller. Just like how many DS games can only be done on the DS. And as for everyone else, we'll get a couple token Revolution-specific games from the developers that Nintendo has with their back to the wall, but most will avoid the whole mess and just stick with the standard GameCube controller.

I just don't see why absurd hardware has to be the driving force of innovation. If, as Nintendo suggests, they're trying to grow the video game market with a more non-gamer-friendly input device, why not just make more games with simplified control schemes? Katamari Damacy is a beautifully simple game to control - push the two analog sticks to roll the ball - and yet you play it on the normal 16-button Dual Shock. They've already spiked the punch with mention of graphically modernized versions of old NES classics on the Revolution... so release a special minimalist retro-controller package and retired gamers can come out of the closet to play Balloon Fight 2K6 without having to navigate a new and over-buttoned controller. Nintendo has always been about the games... to the expense of sexiness and M-ratings and third party support... so these claims about this particular hardware reaching into the zeitgeist of a world and bringing in new business just doesn't seem to match up.

Now, instead of the Revolution showing up with amazing games featuring both new and established IP, downloadable classics, and online wi-fi play, Nintendo has to spend uncalculable energy first explaining just what the hell the Revolution is, and how the hell do you play good games with a remote control containing two buttons and a d-pad.

And if nobody shows up for this party... If all these "non-gamers" that Nintendo is trying to woo don't buy into it... If a bunch of goddamn average shmoes end up being indirectly responsible for driving Nintendo out of the video game business... I am going to be super-pissed.

But I haven't played it. I haven't seen any smidge of gameplay for it. Maybe it is incredibly awesome. Maybe it doesn't feel weird to have your controller split into two halves like a ball and chain. Maybe you can manipulate stuff onscreen without your arm muscles turning to jello after one level. Maybe it's fine to have the d-pad on your right hand - sharing your thumb with the A button - after twenty years of it being on the left.

We had a Magnavox Odyssey 2 when I was a kid. Like most other video game consoles of the day, the controllers had a big phallic joystick and a single action button. When I first saw the NES, I couldn't believe the joystick was gone. It felt like a step backward. How in the heck are you going to move your guy with only a N-E-W-S selection of buttons? And TWO action buttons? How will I keep track of which is which while I'm playing?

So maybe it's like that.

I don't know who thinks they can offer sites like this for free, but it's been my experience that they don't last long, so head over to Video Game Ads while you can.

The site has collected almost 3000 video game commercials from around the world, all freely viewable as long as your browser can deal with it. I had to install Windows Media Player to help Safari along, which, although it caused me great personal pain, was worth it.

You'd expect to see a lot of classic spots (like the first US NES commercial - Will you be the first to play HOGAN'S ALLEY?) and a surprising number of brand new spots, like the Nintendogs ads I just saw on Cartoon Network tonight. And of course the verifiable classics are there... to wit the N64 Smash Bros ads with the costumed mascot fighting.

Some other favorites of mine:
- a Katamari Damacy ad from Japan
- the clueless safari guide spot for Pokemon Snap
- the awesome Animal Crossing series that parodied MTV's Real World
- the incredible "School's Out" GBA ad that was one of Nintendo's early Who Are You? efforts
- Parappa and Ape Escape (and others) in a Japanese Happy Meal ad
- the very hip US WarioWare Twisted spot and the hilarious original Japanese Made in Wario commercials
- the one for Mario Party 6 with Bowser as the prank victim
- and this generic PlayStation one that absolutely gave me chills when I saw it - only once - at a broadcasting convention of all places

Only one spot comes to mind that they don't yet have... the Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire spots that showed real people that physically resembled their animated pokemon.

I realize it's been a while since I last played any of my Pokemon games... but I mysteriously picked them back up a couple days ago.

The thing is, LeafGreen / FireRed is lame, a shoved-out-the-door remake that runs a far distant second to Ruby / Sapphire. Once I realized that, the game lost much of its spark. The Sevii Islands mini-quest that follows the main game wasn't doing much for me, a meandering jaunt chiefly ventured to activate R/S and LG/FR trading... a reward that's more trouble than it's worth if you're not planning on playing LeafGreen much.

So when I picked up a Pokemon game again, it wasn't LeafGreen, it was good ol' Sapphire. I had never evolved one of those awful Feebi into a Milotic, so I planted some berries and nursed that for a while. Turns out, I didn't need the extra berries, since I had already maxed out the Feebas' beauty stat before I stopped playing. That's the thing with Pokemon games. They're so deep that it's tough to remember what you did if you step away for a while.

So, in short order, lv 20 Milotic. Pokedex +1, back in the box. Then I remembered that I had traded my Sealeo over to Ruby so it would evolve up to a Walrein faster, so I pulled him back over. Pokedex +1. Then I sent my Snorunt over to Ruby for a quick run up to a Glalie. Pokedex +1. Then, still in Ruby, I polished off the Abandoned Ship Scanner sidemission for the deepseascale that you use to evolve a Clamperl into a Gorebyss. Pokedex +1.

That left me with a handful of missing monsters, but with the wily Kingdra leading the pack. My frustration with netting a dragon scale has already been well documented... and lest you doubt how much time I wasted hunting Horseas and Bagons, here's a shot from my Pokemon Box storage facility where I dumped all the useless pokemon overflow.

So I googled for "dragon scale leafgreen" in a final act of desparation. A LeafGreen walkthrough popped up. Yes, there is an easily found dragon scale in LeafGreen... and it was mere yards from where I had given up on the Sevii Islands quest! Unbefrickinlievable.

I clicked through a little further into the LeafGreen guide and saw that, once you finish the Sevii Islands mess, you can enter Cerulean Cave and take on a Mewtwo. Now we're talking. Armed with a Master Ball, I confronted the renegade Mewtwo and made him my own... just as I did in Pokemon Yellow five years ago. Then I made Mewtwo hold the damn dragon scale and sent him over to Sapphire.

One trade later and I finally have a Kingdra in my Sapphire Pokedex. What a pain.

Now that I've mined all the required types from Ruby - Groudon, Gorebyss, Armaldo, etc etc - it's time to reboot Ruby so I can generate the final monsters I need for Sapphire: Torchic and Mudkip. Of course, I had severe misgivings about restarting my Ruby cart, because the game is loaded with items and monsters that I would like to keep... so I travelled back into Nintendo's lost land of GBA/GameCube connectivity and stashed everything in my Pokemon Box. This was quite a ordeal. First I made each Ruby pokemon hold something I wanted to keep... some cool TMs, Ultra Balls, rare items... then I put them all in the Box. Then I sent them all into Sapphire and took the items. Since Ruby had more items than pokemon, I had to do this a couple times to get everything I wanted. Took a bit of time, I can tell you.

But now I'm ready to reboot Ruby and start a fresh game with a Mudkip so I can trade it over to Sapphire. Of course, I'm a little exhausted by the whole affair, so it might be a while.

So back to Sapphire stats (the heck with LeafGreen):
Time: 157:45
Badges: 8
Pokedex: 201 (Seen: 202)
Party: Razorbeak (Swellow) lv64, Groudon lv47, Mewtwo lv70, Golduck lv58, Egg (which better be a Torchic), Egg (another old gift from Pokemon Box)

A final note. You can't just empty out a Pokemon cartridge, you have to leave at least one pokemon in your party. So please join me in saying farewell to a lv 16 Machop, the unlucky soul who drew the short straw in the big raffle of who gets to stay on the game before it gets rebooted. Sorry kid.

For the first time in my life, I have a brand new car. A 2005 Neon. Mineral gray. I'm a little intimidated by it since I've never had anything new before. I've always driven beater cars, so I never cared about parking spaces or dings or merging into people who won't move out of the way when they pass an onramp and have an empty passing lane right beside them and no possible right hand exit path for miles.

My previous car was a '91 Sundance and it was continuous trouble. It went through several complete transmission overhauls, had almost the entire underbody rebuilt out of donated parts from other cars, and once burned a line in the road from the street to my driveway when the tran fluid pan was accidentally sliced off. Then there was the time I didn't notice the temperature gauge pegging and kept on driving. I know it had plenty of miles on it, but I couldn't say for sure exactly how many since I drove it for several years without the odometer working. Dad towed it off sidestreets and out of parking lots more times than he'd like to remember.

So in this bright Clark-centric world, it's good to have a new car.

Of course, now I'm right in the Ironic Zone, where something terrible is bound to happen to it just because it's new. Most Ironic Zones happen specifically for newscasters - I was flipping past New Orleans disaster coverage and heard a reporter talk about a family whose house is now gone and they had just moved in last Thursday - but a car's Ironic Zone is a more personal affair. Since I've never had anything this expensive or this nice, I'm liable to fixate on it longer than most. Not so much as a car, because I'll never be a car head, but more as a really big gadget. I mean, I'm the guy who wipes down Wavebirds after a weekend party, who keeps his gaming cards in alphabetical order, and who never ever erases a memory card save. I'm already annoyed that my office doesn't have windows so I can keep an eye on it.