I remember watching the news report on John Belushi's death. It's not one of my earliest memories, but it's usually one of the first I think about when I think about my earliest memories. It was March 1982. I was in second grade.
My family was visiting my grandparents, as we often did, and the evening news was on, as it often was. I remember one single piece of film, an exterior shot of the hotel where he was found. I'm not sure why I remember it. It's not like John Belushi was part of my world at eight years old. Belushi was part of my parents' world, and my aunts' world... a modern movie megastar they had watched do the craziest shit on Saturday Night Live five years prior. Most likely, when the news came on, the quiet of the room was what soldered my attention.
A celebrity death. That night, it was a shame, a loss, a surprise... to my family and to America. The whole drug thing didn't come out initially, and we didn't have abominable 24-hour news networks trumpeting every single detail or lack thereof to raise the issue. It did, surely and rightly, and only then did the general public hear about his unfettered life, his ups and downs, his quest for - and this would become the single most associated word with the posthumous John Belushi - self-destruction.
George Takei responds to anti-gay hate (YouTube) A parody PSA that roasts the recent homophobic jackassery of some basketball player I've never heard of. Actually contains Sulu.
Topless wife photo ends man's pole protest (Yahoo News) A guy hiding at the top of a TV tower is news enough, but I'm more interested in his wife who is A) 20 years younger, B) a former stripper, and C) has borne five children for him by the age of 25. This guy should be crowned the new King of All Men.
Finished Twilight Princess this weekend. Big spoilers coming. Look away.
OK. Since this "realistic" look stripped most of the series' prior charm away, the rest of the experience is really laid bare. I hope that Nintendo's claims that this will be "the last Zelda as we know it" turn out to be true and not just false marketing hype. Because this franchise needs to amp it up so that it returns to its high status as a gaming standard, rather than just toeing the line set by Ocarina.
Hey Nintendo, you know what I don't want as my reward for reaching a particularly well-hidden treasure chest, or for completing a complicated and lengthy sidequest? Fucking rupees. Money is cheap in Hyrule, so cheap that they had to include a money-eating suit of armor just to make use of it all. It is not an acceptable reward for going out of your way to clean out all the nooks and crannies. How about rewarding players with rare (and inconsequential) trophies for Link's hovel, customizable clothing sets, or weapons over and above the traditional sword-and-shield.
You didn't think they would wrap this up and return to status quo, did you? (Barring the usual quotient of HEROES FOREVER CHANGED, re: S&M Speedball.) That's just not how the modern comics event works.
Look at Infinity Gauntlet. We had six issues and a zillion tie-in books over those six months. It was a big deal. Early on, half of the population of Earth was killed... which was just a clever way of eliminating the less popular heroes so the writer wouldn't have to worry about managing such a large cast. But by the end of #6, the Marvel U is more or less back to normal. Dead people were blinked back to life. The only major swing being that the Infinity Gems are once again back in play, tended by a horrible new spinoff series that nobody read.
Spoiler Week continues, now teetering relentlessly towards Chulip.
Chulip is the hardest game in the world.
It's an adventure game, so you have to figure things out by exploring. It wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't insist on punishing you for exploring...
As Spoiler Week draws to a close, let's go all out and wreck everything. Below are 25 pithy summaries of some of gaming's critical storyline moments or character development touchstones, largely randomly selected from my own memory. I have helpfully blinded the answer in highlightable white text so you can play along. Some of these are genuine spoilers; others are just silly. Many might actually apply to several games.
1. In a blind rage, he killed his own wife and daughter. (God of War)
2. The princess was, finally, in this castle. (Super Mario Bros)
3. One sister kills the other, completing the ritual. (Fatal Frame 2)
4. The family is happy again after the wedding ring is found and an old friend is returned to them. (Chibi Robo)
Your Python Clip o' the Week (YouTube) An interview with one of the world's leading modern composers, Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson.
Tide turning against DreamHost (Red Sweater Blog) Apparently DreamHost had a massive failure last week. I totally missed it. (I've been with them since '02.) So while I'm not as ticked as some customers are, I will totally agree that their pimply oh-so-irreverent attitude is long past played out.
Kotaku is claiming a final end to the discussion over the Wii requiring individual Friend Codes for each game, rather than using the one console code for all games. Several sources have corroborated the continuance of the Friend Code system, per game. So it looks like we'll be back to sending each other long, obnoxious randomized numbers for the forseeable future. I guess our Wii codes were for nothing more than sending e-mail and Miis around.
Looking at the comments for that article, it's clear that opinions are really divided. I've been trying to figure out where I sit. On one hand, I find the whole concept of having to manage a pile of separate codes extremely distasteful and inconvenient. But on the other hand, I'm not really interested in online play anyway.
I'm sure it's different when you have a system that's as full-featured as Xbox Live, because they found ways to elevate the online experience beyond simple match-making. Having your Xbox generate weblog entries, being able to view player stats, and the whole achievements thing... this is all really appealing to me. Getting my ass handed to me in Mario Kart DS was not.
I can't recall for the life of me why I waited two months before buying KH2. Must have still been busy playing Trapt.
Kingdom Hearts 2 upgraded the series by streamlining the gameplay, phoning in the plot, and adding a handful of really oddball movie choices (Pirates of the Caribbean? Tron?) Obviously I was really chuffed by the former, intrigued by the latter, and disappointed by the bit in the middle.
It's great to get better gameplay. The item and ability management was much smoother, and the Gummi Ship portions rocked the freakin' casbah. After the drubbing the Gummi Ship got in the first game, it's clear the KH team took that as a challenge. It's a worthwhile game in its own right.
More disappointing was the story. Initially, it's a cumbersome extension of the first game and the GBA sequel, Chains of Memories... so it feels very deep and RPG-like. Once Sora and his pals really get into it, the story takes a backseat as they just trot from world to world declaring to solve everybody's problems, be they related to the encroaching Heartless or not. It's repetitive and silly. And by the time you pick up the main thread later on, you've forgotten everything you probably didn't understand in the first place, so the revelations in the endgame fall flat.
And, of course, Kingdom Hearts 2 is another one of those games that packs in tons of sidequests and exploration but demands that you fit it all in before triggering the final boss battle. I'll never understand that line of thinking.
As far as the new worlds go, adding Lion King, Mulan, and Steamboat Willie was pure gold. Tron was interesting, definitely visually cool, but all other attempts at reviving the movie have been met with failure, so it reeks of mis-managed corporate synergy. Pirates of the Caribbean may be the most brutally obvious marketing choice... shoehorned into the game based solely on contemporary whims, regardless of how odd it feels compared to the rest of the game. Imagine if Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion movie had been a Hollywood blockbuster; you can bet it would have ended up in Kingdom Hearts. Disney is that shameless.
Memory Score: Don't miss the great secret stuff after the credits.
I finished Chulip last night. The manual is NOT KIDDING when it says that you should collect everybody's name card and show them to everyone in Long Life Town. The final "boss" runs you through a 20 question multiple choice quiz with such WTF gems as:
"All of these four have a disease. Which disease's name is the longest?"
"How many cans of Funny Cola does Policeman drink in a week?"
"Who wrote the screenplay for Summer Story?"
Every wrong answer takes away 20 heart points, and your max heart level is 99. So you can see that there is not much wiggle room. I got down to 19 life on the last question and had to guess on Policeman's age. Crazy.
On to the videos. This is Zombie Mika, whom I could not find for the longest time. She's in the grassy section of the Worldly Desire Temple graveyard, but she only shows up at 2am. The manual says you have to "touch the floating spirit" to see her, but that does NOT mean the floating spirit with the scythe that wanders around the graveyard killing you. Mika is an entirely different floating spirit. I love the sound effect when she cocks her head.
Canadian Customs & Excise (YouTube) I really miss Cartoon Network running "O Canada" late on Sunday nights.
Venture Bros goes for Seasons 3 and 4 (Publick Nuisance) Creator Jackon Publick's weblog has this welcome news plus a ton of awesome Venture images.
Interview with Bob from Sesame Street (Muppet Central) The show's accountants once tried to get the season bumped from 26 shows to 25 shows, and the head writer replied "There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Which letter am I supposed to fire?"
I started up Baten Kaitos this week, of all things. It was a mega-sale at Toys R Us two weeks ago. $5.50, plus a pack-in bonus of an exclusive soundtrack album. At that price, even if I just play it for a weekend, I'll have my money's worth out of it.
This is an '04 game, so I only had the vaguest of notions about it. I remember it being sort of a big deal as a GameCube exclusive, and I remember it being another one of those RPGs with weird Germanic names. I also recall helping some confused mom find it on the shelf at Target back when it came out.
I was never much of an RPG gamer back in the day, because - and I say this in the fondest way possible - RPGs were what the poor kids played. When your budget is limited, you gravitate towards the titles that purport to offer the most gameplay. I tended to send dollar after dollar after new stuff, because I wanted to experience lots of different types of games rather than play Final Fantasy for months. Nowadays, every game wants to tout 30 to 60 hours of gameplay, so that distinction of the early days is gone. Today I get the best of both worlds.
This Captain N one-sheet has been hanging in my office for literally years. But for some reason, as I walked past it today, I thought, "This is exactly the kind of stupid crap that the Internets love." So I scanned it in.
Yeah, I know the phrase "Brave and the Bold" is a DC legacy title, but it's also terrible. This is DC pandering to the 40+ crowd instead of just doing good comics. The new B&B is DC Team-Up, end of story. It's Superman/Batman without always being about Superman and Batman. They could have trotted out "DC Showcase" again if they didn't decide to staple that one to their b&w trade paperback reprint series. I think I would have liked the return of "DC Challenge" as a better title, although that one has weird baggage to it. At least they didn't call it "World's Finest," which is another legacy phrase that DC can't put to press enough times.
Great book. George Perez's art is so unique, he's the comics equivalent of a big screen blockbuster. His stuff may look dense and cluttered, but it's really carefully positioned and visually rewarding. I love when he uses the panels themselves as storytelling tricks. And it wouldn't be Perez without his ol' half-a-face bookend sequence:
Last year, Josh and I ventured out for Free Rita's Italian Ice Day at exactly the wrong time: when school let out. It took hours out of our workday. So this year, we went too early: before the store opened. Josh did a spiffy photo essay on the '07 adventure, of which this panel is my favorite, because I'm doing my Pantomime Italian Ice bit.
Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix Trailer (YouTube) I cannot watch a Kingdom Hearts trailer without breaking into tears at some point. We need verification of KH2 Final Mix (+ Chain of Memories) getting a US release.
By the way, I'm impressed and more than a little in love that Gabe of Penny Arcade would call KH2 his favorite game of all time.
As mentioned before, Baten Kaitos started out really mediocre, storyline-wise. You have the emo kid out for vengeance who partners up with an unlikely band of combatants out to save the world form some giant ancient evil. The best you can say about it is that the Guardian Spirit thing - wherein the game characters routinely face the camera and talk to you - is a small splash of inspiration.
The lands you visit are routine: woodsy forest world, folksy farm world, gruff-but-lovable dockworker world. There is definitely some lush background work here, but, seeing as the environments are all pre-rendered, you would expect that it would all look damn good. There's sidequests out the ass. Every country you visit is populated by generic characters who gush endlessly about their respective King/Queen/Lord/Duke being super-awesome. You churn through battle after battle against skeletons and giant insects and bats, eventually hitting a big boss fight at the end of each world's visit.
About twenty hours in, things begin to change, and the game starts to show the kind of unique vision that it should have displayed ten minutes after bootup.
Near the end of the game's first act, you travel to the country Mira, which is described as a land of illusion. The first city you visit is made entirely of candy, which, although a departure from the game's previously normal worlds, is still more or less in-theme. Then you enter the nearby magical garden maze and you get this:
As I discussed a month ago, I'm working to initiate some under-the-hood upgrades here at fourhman.com. I have a new main page template already cobbled together; it will not be much of a design change (still khaki-and-red!), mostly some key layout moves and some fun interactive bits. Before I go much further, I wanted to upgrade Movable Type.
Although the party line is how easy it is to upgrade, my initial experience was not as successful. First of all, I'm still on version 2.661, which dates from 2003. (And my Movable Type forum account is from 2002, which just shows how old I am in weblog years.) The upgrade path from 2.661 to 3.34 is not as simplistic. Particularly when you factor in that I'm still running a Berkeley database, which I now understand to be terribly gauche and a highly questionable practice. The suggested database solution these days is MySQL, which you might as well mambo dogface in the banana patch for all the sense this makes to me.
I remember watching the news report on John Belushi's death. It's not one of my earliest memories, but it's usually one of the first I think about when I think about my earliest memories. It was March 1982. I was in second grade.
Finished Twilight Princess this weekend. Big spoilers coming. Look away.
What do you know, 
As Spoiler Week draws to a close, let's go all out and wreck everything. Below are 25 pithy summaries of some of gaming's critical storyline moments or character development touchstones, largely randomly selected from my own memory. I have helpfully blinded the answer in highlightable white text so you can play along. Some of these are genuine spoilers; others are just silly. Many might actually apply to several games.
Kotaku is claiming a final end to the discussion over 
released March 2006, purchased May 2006
I started up Baten Kaitos this week, of all things. It was a mega-sale at Toys R Us two weeks ago. $5.50, plus a pack-in bonus of an exclusive soundtrack album. At that price, even if I just play it for a weekend, I'll have my money's worth out of it.
As I 
