Most DC weblogs that I read hated the miniseries, but I was fine with it. Eh. It wasn't the greatest thing since Dark Knight Returns, but it wasn't the unholy cancer that some would call it. There's an obnoxious tendency out there to just instantly hate any and every Big Comics Event, as soon as it is announced. That's not to say that some level of skepticism isn't deserved, but the factionalizing of comics fandom means that nothing ever pleases anybody anymore. I have bought books that I regretted and spent money that I wish I hadn't. WWIII did not leave me feeling like that.
I liked getting a scattershot sampling of One Year Later answers that I otherwise would never have encountered... like Aquaman's big change and Martian Manhunter's new X-Men Movie suit. Would it have been nice for the zeta-ray-mishap heroes to have been explained better? Absolutely. But most of that was so stupid that I think even the writers hated that they did that. Hawkgirl unexplainedly six stories tall? Cyborg fused with Firestorm? Random, dumb, and now all neatly wiped away.
So I've made it to Hearthome City, where a traveller from Hoenn dragged me to the Contest Hall building. I really enjoyed the Contests from Ruby/Sapphire, so I'm happy to see them return WITH A VENGEANCE.
I never saw much online chatter about the contests, but they were a surprisingly detailed addition to the series. The whole concept seems intended to soften the battle-heavy image of the franchise, even though the whole thing is eminently skippable.
The original idea was that every attack move also doubled as a beauty pageant move, which meant that Gamefreak had to come up with alternate data for every single attack in the game, whether you actually entered the Contest Hall or not. So not only do you have to obsess about the four attack moves you grant to each pokemon, but you also need to consider their usefulness in pageants. Wow.
You'll remember Silicon Knights from two incredible yet underplayed M-rated games, Eternal Darkness and the Metal Gear Solid remake, Twin Snakes. (Hey all you Wii owners out there looking for something to do that isn't Super Paper Mario... pick up one of those!) Silicon Knights is also rather infamously known for the game Too Human, which was originally announced as a PlayStation game in 1999... then shuttled over to the GameCube when Nintendo bought them... and is now tracked as a 360 release now that Microsoft owns them. And it's now announced as a game trilogy, with part one due this fall.
Dyack, company president, says this:
"I don't care how good the game is, I don't want to play something that's one hundred hours long."
I'm an hour away from seeing Spider-Man 3, which I understand to have crappy reviews. Eh. Although it looks like it will suffer from villain overload, I'm ready for it.
Sandman looks spot-on. I mean, there's a guy who has been a lousy villain and an even worse hero over the years, and he doesn't even have a costume. I'm excited that the movie is upholding that tradition. (I still can't get over the loss of the classic Osborn family hairdo.) I can't imagine him being anything more than a special effect.
Speaking of special effects: the big question is will Venom talk? And when he does, will he say "I want to eat your brain?" I'm pretty sure the movie will reward fans by ending with Venom in his purest form: beefy, gigantic, and with a mouth full of illogical teeth... but there's certain to be an abundance of skinny-Venom soul-searching before they get there. I do hope that the "Evil Spidey" scenes are a notch above the "Evil Superman" scenes from Superman III.
Ultimate T-Shirt finds. (A Geek in Korea) Torgo weblogs some ridiculous english-language t-shirts he's found in Korea. "Someone Make Foppery!" I'm sure it's just as silly as all the stuff on sale at Target with kanji on them.
Steve Wozniak On His Gaming Past (Gamasutra) The Woz reveals how the Apple // started out as his quest to design a game machine. Super freakin' cool.
Ten hours just not seem like a lot of time when you're playing Pokemon. Unless you're entering Super Contests and losing, which is a gigantic waste of time. I did some multiplayer poffin-twirling and found it equally as annoying, but at least you get more poffins out of it. You made two level 8 Bitter Poffins! Hoo-freakin-yay!
With the Hearthome Gym Leader ignoring all callers, I went east and followed the path to Veilstone City as urged by Wedge. The route takes you through Solaceon Town (and Sinnoh gets it's own unpronounceable city name, just like Pacifidlog in Hoenn!)
Solaceon Town is noted for two key locations, the daycare center and the ruins. The ruins are rather shabby, but they do serve to hold Pearl's collection of Unown. I have already captured about a third of them, and, although the out-of-the-way locale of the ruins makes me think that the Unown will have absolutely nothing to with the game's plot, they do provide an explanation of the Ball Capsule menu item that has gone unmentioned since the first time you turn on a Pokemon Center PC.
We spent most of the workday busting on Spider-Man 3. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. There was all kinds of awful stuff that I didn't even cover on the live weblog. Like Harry and Pete goofing around with a basketball, Pete mooning over MJ at the broadway show ("That's my girl up there!"), and Spidey and Eddie both choosing the same church at the same time.
It's a tough call, because both movies are a complete mess. X3 feels like more of a mess simply due to the overabundance of characters, but the huge cast of bush leaguers at least kept the action up... which was a huge problem in Spider-Man 3, where it sucked whenever somebody wasn't getting punched. (And even one of those scenes was obnoxious, and not simply because it was MJ who got smacked.)
During all of this nonsense at Veilstone, I noticed that my larger pokemon were becoming unruly. So I figured I better book it to the next Gym - in Pastoria CIty - before the whole team levelled up beyond my control.
The southern path to Pastoria is terribly long. Initially, it's just the regular forest - rather hilariously patrolled by policemen whom you can battle - but it turns into a messy swamp as you approach Pastoria. Somewhere in the middle is the Pokemon Mansion, where some rich guy supposedly has a statue garden in the back. I saw nothing. But I did catch a Pikachu.
Speaking of statues, what is up with that generic monster statue that you see everywhere? It's been around since Pokemon Red/Blue and I've never understood what it is intended to represent. It seems to most resemble a Kangaskhan, but that is hardly a world-renowned pokemon worthy to venerate every single Gym and other assorted important structures. You would think that by now, the Gyms would have statues of the various pokemon most associated with their city and trainers... like an Onix in Oreburgh. Not some never-before-seen nondescript "monster" statue.
I'm all for unusual games and uniquely appropriate control schemes, but it would be nice if said games didn't try to kill you.
Although I enjoyed the first half of Jungle Beat (read: the easy half), I never mustered the internal fortitude to finish the game. Eventually, the complicated bongo-banging necessary to maneuver DK through the trickier bits just outpaced me. And it doesn't take too many failed attempts before you completely lose interest in abusing your arms any further.
I think Nintendo learned some lessons on the nature of the human body with Jungle Beat, lessons that were applied directly to Wii development. IE, repeated violent movements are superbad. If you can play Jungle Beat for more than an hour, you're either a superhuman or a subhuman, I don't know which.
Maybe there's the big problem... Nintendo combined intense physical activity with long, unforgiving level design. Jungle Beat was really nothing more than a Thank You to all the fans who bought the bongos and were (rightfully) tired of Donkey Konga. Plus, geez, if they hadn't released this, what would they have done in 2005?
Beautiful game, though. And most of the boss fights make really clever use of the bongo controls. I'm just not sure that full-length platforming challenges were the right venue for the bongo control scheme.
Memory Score: And why the duplicate DK closeup in the bottom corner?
Bungee Buddies (YouTube) Steve and Josh prove that the Wii is the new Double Dare, complete with the Leave-Me-Hanging high five! More True Tales of Game Night here, courtesy Tony.
The perils of coincidence (John August via Daring Fireball) Great discussion about everything that was shitty about Spider-Man 3. Including lots of stuff that even I didn't have time to mention.
Seems like the Japanese pokemon black market has dried up. I've tried several weaksauce deposits with no finished trades. I guess it didn't take long for every kid in Japan to assemble an English language set. To make matters worse, nobody has realistic requests available to browse... they'll give you a Glameow or a Murkrow, but they expect a Deoxys or a Palkia in return. It's crazy.
The only reasonable trade is for the starters, so I'm getting into the Chimchar breeding business. Chimchar itself might pale in comparison to cutesy Piplup, but the monkey evolutions are far superior to those ugly uber-penguins. Have you seen Empoleon? Holy crap, it's worse-looking than any given ten Digimon.
Where's the nickname changer? I've finally got some reasons to name my guys, plus I traded for a Gible with a silly name and I want to change it back. To Gible. Which isn't silly at all.
Since I've been rampaging through the entirety of fourhman.com since the weekend (adding tags to all FIVE YEARS worth of entries, thankyouverymuch), I've run into plenty of old topics. One of which was Spider-Man 2. I thought it was crappy.
Only now do I see how wrong I was.
In a strange confluence of events, we (the family) watched Spider-Man 2 this past weekend. Clark, too. The whole thing, even. Just whenever Spider-Man was not on screen, he repeatedly and insistently demanded his appearance. And Peter Parker rarely counted.
Anyway, so now I've recently seen Spider-Man 2 and recently reviewed my initial impressions of the film. So now it is terribly clear how they screwed up Spider-Man 3.
One of the hidden secrets of Pokemon is finding the special types that can learn multiple HMs. In Sapphire, I used Tropius and Golduck. A recent thread on Kotaku pointed out that Bibarel (the evolved form of Bidoof) is one of the HM mules in Pearl/Diamond.
So I rustled one out of storage and promptly taught him Surf, Cut, Rock Smash and Strength. Now I don't have to worry about keeping Empoleon (for Surf) or Torterra (for Cut) or Golem (Rock Smash) around whenever I want to go for an extended exploring trek. My beloved Staraptor is still running my Fly and Defog. (Will that be my nickname for my Staraptor: "Beloved"?)
I think I have about four Chimchar eggs in various stages of Egg Watch. I paired my female Monferno up with my male Empoleon and boy did they "find eggs." Within minutes, another egg would show up. I wish there was another way to hatch eggs aside from having to cart them around. I'm considering filling my party with eggs and then just do laps around Hearthome until they all hatch.
Another post-modern fourhman.com upgrade has been completed. Nearly so. I have added tags to every single weblog entry.
This wasn't even an option in the ancient Movable Type, but my new install is built for it. And every other weblog in the universe uses them, so I figured why hold out. Although I can't say I personally use a tag search often on the weblogs I visit, I can see the use. If you wander in to a website cold, and you see an entry tag for Animal Crossing, you could click to see everything ever posted about Animal Crossing. HOORAY.
Of course, this relies on me being smart about adding tags, because they are entirely manual. In fact, I want to go through my entire database again, because I starting adding new tag categories about halfway through. There's also the potential for "funny" tags, which sites like Kotaku do almost to the exclusion of everything else. Which is annoying and non-useful.
????U.F.O. BIG CM (YouTube) A Nissin noodle commercial that is a great Ouendan parody.
Virtual Toad (via Mice Age) Somebody fund this guy. He's creating a CG version of everyone's favorite Lost Disney attraction, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Check out all the thumbnails on the pix/movie page, because you can't tell which ones are movies until you click them. And the movies are worth watching for the crush of sweet nostalgia. One thing that struck me was the RL-accurate scrapes on the floors in the outside renders. I remember looking at those and marvelling at how many times those poor cars had to bump along the track during an average day.
The GTS has paid off again for me... this time with a Finnion and a Murkrow. Both from Japan. I think I have seven different Japanese cities marked on my GTS globe, stretching all the way across the nation.
My new catches this week: a Sneasel, a Cleffa and a Clefairy. I just recently realized that the second countergirl in the Pokemarts (the one on the left) sells the special function Poke Balls, so I have been checking out her wares in the various cities. Those Clefs that I caught were both snagged with Dusk Balls, the one that offers an improved chance at a capture when used at night or inside a cave.
I'm working on evolving a Buneary, because I saw that its evolved form is some hot bunny chick thing. Even if it's male, as mine is?
I have investigated two of the three lakes... I found it hilarious to see all the about-to-die Magikarp flopping around in the drained bed of Lake Valor. You should be able to pick them up and chuck them around, Link-and-Cucco style.
Several months ago, Namco content started showing up in my Sidekick's Pay-To-Download area, which, on my aging Sidekick2, is still depressingly labelled "Download Fun." Namco has their own cell phone download site, but the Sidekick is kind of weird and non-easy about that kind of stuff. So I'm stuck with "Download Fun."
Anyway, back then I was super-excited to pay $2 for a Mappy ringtone. I also bought Dig-Dug (the actual game) just to show support for future Namco releases on the Sidekick.
Because I don't need a hell of a lot of games on my phone, and because 90% of all phone games suck anyway, I rarely check "Download Fun" to see what's new. Today I did, and found a small pile pf Katamari ringtones!
This is like the millionth year in a row that the people running Origins (GAMA) have proven that they don't know the first thing about layout and/or design.
52 Fixes (Absorbascon) Scipio lists 42 lighting rod problems with the DCU, in hopes that Mr. Mind ate them out of existence. I'm proud to say I understood every damn one.
Averaging Gradius (The New Gamer) Fifteen Gradius (NES) runs layered into one movie, illustrating how different people play the same level. Beautiful and fascinating.
Sorry for that radio silence, but it took until today to get internet service. NO LONGER WITH COMCAST. On one hand, I'm glad to be out of the great snarling beast of Comcast cable, but now we have a small little regional cable/internet provider that will probably get bought out by Comcast anyway once the current owner decides to retire.
Remember when I was wondering what happened to my pre-Movable Type website? Well, I found it, and the location should have been obvious... what was the removable storage media of choice circa 1998?
ZIP DISKS
In my search for the missing website, the proto-fourhman.com, I had been through two old computers and hundreds of floppies (most of which I threw away... the floppies, not the computers.) But as I started pre-packing for the Big Move, I found a box stuffed with old CDs, even more fucking floppies, and a small pile of zip disks. I even found a SyQuest drive, and if you remember what those were, you're older than dirt.
Most DC weblogs that I read hated the miniseries, but I was fine with it. Eh. It wasn't the greatest thing since Dark Knight Returns, but it wasn't the unholy cancer that some would call it. There's an obnoxious tendency out there to just instantly hate any and every Big Comics Event, as soon as it is announced. That's not to say that some level of skepticism isn't deserved, but the factionalizing of comics fandom means that nothing ever pleases anybody anymore. I have bought books that I regretted and spent money that I wish I hadn't. WWIII did not leave me feeling like that.
So I've made it to Hearthome City, where a traveller from Hoenn dragged me to the Contest Hall building. I really enjoyed the Contests from Ruby/Sapphire, so I'm happy to see them return WITH A VENGEANCE.
I'm an hour away from seeing Spider-Man 3, which I understand to have crappy reviews. Eh. Although it looks like it will suffer from villain overload, I'm ready for it.
Ten hours just not seem like a lot of time when you're playing Pokemon. Unless you're entering Super Contests and losing, which is a gigantic waste of time. I did some multiplayer poffin-twirling and found it equally as annoying, but at least you get more poffins out of it. You made two level 8 Bitter Poffins! Hoo-freakin-yay!
We spent most of the workday busting on Spider-Man 3. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. There was all kinds of awful stuff that I didn't even cover on the 
During all of this nonsense at Veilstone, I noticed that my larger pokemon were becoming unruly. So I figured I better book it to the next Gym - in Pastoria CIty - before the whole team levelled up beyond my control.
released March 2005, purchased March 2005
Seems like the Japanese pokemon black market has dried up. I've tried several weaksauce deposits with no finished trades. I guess it didn't take long for every kid in Japan to assemble an English language set. To make matters worse, nobody has realistic requests available to browse... they'll give you a Glameow or a Murkrow, but they expect a Deoxys or a Palkia in return. It's crazy.
Since I've been rampaging through the entirety of fourhman.com since the weekend (adding tags to all FIVE YEARS worth of entries, thankyouverymuch), I've run into plenty of old topics. One of which was 
One of the hidden secrets of Pokemon is finding the special types that can learn multiple HMs. In Sapphire, I used Tropius and Golduck. A recent thread on Kotaku pointed out that Bibarel (the evolved form of Bidoof) is one of the HM mules in Pearl/Diamond.
Another post-modern fourhman.com upgrade has been completed. Nearly so. I have added tags to every single weblog entry.
The GTS has paid off again for me... this time with a Finnion and a Murkrow. Both from Japan. I think I have seven different Japanese cities marked on my GTS globe, stretching all the way across the nation.
Several months ago, Namco content started showing up in my Sidekick's Pay-To-Download area, which, on my aging Sidekick2, is still depressingly labelled "Download Fun." Namco has their own 
Remember when I was wondering 
