I'm so happy to see The WB and UPN merge into one network, because now I'll have one less thing to hate in my life. And now we'll no longer have to hear the fabricated word "netlets" bandied about in the trades.

The best news is that the working title for the new gestalt is "The CW," which is so hilariously awful that it's difficult to foresee any success at all. Even aside from no one understanding what CW stands for (CBS and Warner, and even that makes the common man raise an eyebrow, wondering what CBS has to do with anything), it's the continuation of WB's "The" that truly makes it stink. If they had gone with CWTV or CWC or CWN, they might have a show at respectability. Maintaining the "The" - which clearly did wonders for The WB's success - just makes them look lame.

Disney's features division has been in a lose/lose situation for years. Their original movies have failed miserably, gobsmacked by just about every other family movie outlet around. Treasure Planet. Brother Bear. Home on the Range. So it's become apparant that nobody wants them to produce original content... and yet when they crap out features based on their beloved classic properties, the purists say those suck too. Bambi 2. Lady and the Tramp 2. Cinderella 2. So what are they supposed to do?

Here's a great Pixar/Disney deal editorial that pretty much says it all. Summary: Steve Jobs is highly aware of the odds that Pixar's winning streak is about to end, plus he knows that only Disney has the power to continue to wring money out of the Pixar stable. Disney is desparate to remain a force in the animated marketplace, it's just good karma to stay on good relations with the progenitors of their most successful licenses of the past decade, and they know they need a creative shot in the arm... an injection now personified in Jobs and Lasseter.

I finished off the fossils section of the Museum tonight. 52 fossils in just under two months. If everybody's town generates 1-3 fossils a day, and if everybody is as diligent as I am in digging them up, then I would expect that a lot of Day One Wild Worlders have a full or nearly full Museum right about now.

The last fossil I needed was a Trilobite.

I finished Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented in just over 16 hours. I'm well aware that's not any kind of record - my completion ranking was E, as expected - but I tend to play games like this slowly and with a lot of exploration. Took 19 in-game nights, and my highest scoring photo was over 7000 points. Unlocked Ending #1 and other fun stuff.

Here's some of the in-game photos I saved. I usually don't pay much attention to a photo's point total; I keep pics based on how awesome or rare or scary they are. So most of these are embarrassingly low scores simply because the ghost is a split second away from kicking my ass. Still, the photos look great!

I'm riding the MGS fanwagon, sure.

This is mostly a documentary DVD, some short films about the making of Metal Gear Solid 2. Being a big fan of the game, I definitely found the stuff interesting - like the hilarious footage of Kojima and Co. being instructed on how real soldiers clear a room. But, this being a pretty rare concept, I thought it was important to buy it so as to show support for future video game documentaries and explorations. (They're doing a similar DVD as a pre-order bonus for the re-release of Metal Gear Solid 3.)

There's some actual gameplay here, just some sample levels of the VR Mission ilk, but nothing I really glommed onto. Nope, this was a passive purchase. I'm anticipating this will be even more interesting to watch years from now, as video games develop: Imagine watching a "behind the scenes" special about the making of Super Mario Brothers today.

Memory Score: The countermonkey felt he had to warn me that this wasn't a game. Dude.

After finishing Fatal Frame 3, I did some info searching at Beyond the Camera's Lens and GameFAQs, just to see if I missed anything.

I knew I missed a couple of items. Having Folklore Notes 1 and Folklore Notes 3 but missing Folklore Notes 2 was pretty obvious. And of course, all the Vanishing Ghosts that fade out just as I realized they were there...

But I somehow managed to completely avoid one of the legends of Fatal Frame 3, the Stroller Grandma. Not sure how I skipped that bit, but I never saw a single Stroller Grandma. Didn't see one until the Mission Mode that you unlock after beating the game. Huh.

There's spoiler material here, so watch out. Although, as you'll see, it ain't much.

I received my Wild World Player's Guide this week, my free gift for another year of Nintendo Power. It has lots of great pictures, a hip HGTV kind of layout... but the more I paged through it, the more pissed off it made me. Because it doesn't explain much of anything about how the game actually works. As I said previously, Nintendo remains dead-set against anybody knowing anything about Animal Crossing. Even the strategy guide has to stay spoiler-free.

Now, I'm not asking for a complete watchmaker's detail. I don't expect to see every single dialogue tree or an explanation of how the game generates town visitors. But when I pick up a strategy guide, I expect certain layers of game strata to be exposed. I want some secrets revealed, some thorough discussions. And I expect it all to be correct, because that's the chief advantage to buying something official like this as opposed to dredging the internet for info. (Plus the in-theme layout and imagery.)

Just a quick note to make sure everybody out there reads 2005's Most Loathsome People in America. The acidic list comes from the Beast, a website I've never heard of but seems to be some kind of political commentary/humor site. My favorite quotes follow:

This was a hotly anticipated purchase, and for a while, I really didn't think it measured up to the hype. It took me a few months of on-again, off-again play before I seriously got into it. My initial reaction was that it just wasn't new enough, that it was just more of the same GTA3 stuff.

Once I warmed up to it, I think this became my favorite GTA game thus far. The faux 1980s setting casts the game in a high-spirited light. It's more broadly drawn, more cartoonish, than the other two in the series... and I think that helps counterpoint the gangland violence and Scarface-inspired plotline. Vice City also gave the radio stations a massive upgrade: more real music and much longer loops.

Vice City proved that GTA3 was no fluke. And although today GTA is the 800lb gorilla of video game franchises, back then it was nice to see a great game get a great sequel.

Memory Score: But there's no way I'm listening to K-ROCK.

This is hilariously sad. This story from the award-winning ABC 6 Action News Team - WPVI in Philadelphia - is so full of bullshit and unresearched assumptions that it just reeks of a pandering, bottom-feeding Panic The Parents sweeps stunt story. There simply must not be any gamers on the WPVI staff, and if there are, they should be wholly ashamed of the lies their station just foisted upon the wide-eyed eager viewers of the Philly region. (I heard about this via a Slashdot link to a GameSetWatch story, so it's been around the block already.)

It's about the DS. It's about how the DS can be used to lure innocent children into online chatrooms and, assumedly, get them kidnapped or molested or worse. It's another solid fear story, pitched as "an important warning to parents" but done with absolutely no evidence or credibility. It is sadly indicative of the state of local newsrooms all over the country, where any press release issued from any wacky fringe group can land on the broadcast like the Word of Cronkite himself.

Actual story text follows in italics. My inserted comments are not.

An astonishing new development in the saga of the guy who attempted to park his SUV in his living room.

And now, the spirited conclusion to my FF3 photo album.

Every year, around the anniversary of Dale Earnhardt's death, this dramatic billboard shows up around town.

He died in February 2001. Lots of things have happened since then.

I had enjoyed the Devil May Cry demo that came packaged along with Resident Evil: Code Veronica... but I didn't pick up the game when it came out. The reasons were threefold: GTA3, followed by MGS2, followed by Fatal Frame. I was busy.

But when DMC2 came out, and everybody said the first one was better anyway, that's when I bought Devil May Cry... as a Greatest Hits selection, no less.

It's definitely a fun game, crazy fast... with some hilarious cutscenes ("Hello, Devil May Cry?") However, I found that my skills couldn't keep pace with the game's punishing curve, so I never finished it. But it was easily worth the $20.

I've always had the feeling that DMC is the franchise that Capcom desperately needs to explode to RE status, but it just keeps missing the bar.

Memory Score: I forget exactly where I stopped, but I think there was a pirate ship involved.

Last week was a nonstop parade of visitors. Adamsvil welcomed - and I hope I don't forget anyone - Stephen, Rachel, bik, Matti, Biff, Eli, Marci, Taylor and Cameron. I'm sure I forgot somebody.

Tonight, I shut it down around 9pm because my battery was dying. The picture is from tonight, when I briefly enjoyed an All-Girl Open Gate Night: Lilly, Cameron and Marci.

I'm still fielding friend requests... so the unfortunate truth is that I have to cycle out names to meet new people. As Cutter informed me, if I drop your name from my Friend List but you still have me on yours... then you can SEE my open town but you can't enter it. That's actually a bit rude, Nintendo.

So anyway, if you can't get in, that might be the reason. I'm keeping track of every code, so it might just take another email in a few weeks to get you back in. Just trying to get everybody a shot at it.

I should just stop doing my own updates and start linking directly to Kotaku. Because they've posted another mindless, unbalanced, anti-video game scare-the-parents story. This one, coming to us from Chicago's Very Own WGN, might actually be even worse than the one from Philly Action News 6. At least the 6 story attempted to present a legit concern, but just had every single fact wrong. This one doesn't even try to use facts.

The premise behind this Medical Watch segment is that video games are drugs, teens become addicted to their own adrenaline, and that once you limit access to them teens all of a sudden become nicer. And all without talking to a single doctor! The only "expert" is a social worker who claims that the video game generation currently in college dorms can't even share rooms together because they've never had to relate to fellow humans before.

There's plenty of talk about all the "speed, sex and violence" in video games - while we see footage of two teens playing Tony Hawk on what looks to be a kickass home theater setup. It's the same crap once fielded against rock and roll, against comic books, against television. Yet another Nation of Wasted Youth is upon us, folks. Just "unplug the drug" and your surly, inattentive kids will pink-cheeked and bright-eyed again!

My comics organizational system is as follows: New books land in a stack by the computer. Eventually, they make their way down to the basement for the bagging and boxing ceremony. With any luck, this will happen at least once a year. I have a nice stack going at the moment, so to feel like I'm catching up on my government-assigned comics weblogging, here's the rundown.

Teen Titans #30-31
I jumped in just for the sidebar Captain Carrot bit, but I didn't mind the main Titans storyline (part two, anyway.) Especially when Kid Eternity showed up. (What's up with Beast Boy mackin' on Raven?!) Ironically, the Captain Carrot story gets far worse in part two... and even though they put Scott Shaw!'s name on the cover of #31, he did not do the art for the interior Zoo Crew pages. Which is a complete shame, because these characters absolutely belong in his pen. I know a lot of Zoo Crew purists hated this story - what with Little Cheese dead and the stunning reveal of Alley-Kat-Abra as a villain - but I would love to see more. I just don't buy that Felina would betray her team like that - my guess is that she's being controlled or replaced or cloned or something - but I would love to see that story develop in a new, genuine, Scott Shaw! Zoo Crew comic. These few pages, which have NOTHING to do with the Titans story, simply have to be a tryout for interest in new Zoo Crew stuff. DC: I am intensely interested. I also request an animated series (hey, you cancelled Titans and Justice League, so you've got the time) and plenty of toys.

I never penned a full-on review of the first Animal Crossing, because I figured my ongoing diary feature more or less covered it. Plus, you almost need to play it for months before you can truly review it, since the game's slow pace unfurls new content long after you've stopped expecting it. Ultimately, the game's success depends on what you put into it... which is a pretty crazy thing to ask of your average gamer. I've read many reviews from people who never "got" Animal Crossing. They sunk an hour into it, maybe a weekend, and declared it boring. Or depressing. Or another Nintendo kiddie game with no point and terrible graphics.

It can be a tough game to grasp. It's not for everyone. I've come up with a short questionnaire of the personality traits you need to be able to enjoy Animal Crossing.