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The things you find when you move...

By Joe on May 30, 2007 9:25 PM | 2 Comments

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.

So I hooked up one of my old zip drives ("one", 'cause I have more than one for some reason) to the 7600 that I never put away from the Night of a Thousand Floppies and started going through my zips. Didn't take long to find it, the version 4.X edition of fourhman.com, back from before it was even called fourhman.com. So I set to work pulling out the crap that wasn't too embarrassing and backdating it into Movable Type. You'll note that my monthly archive column formerly had a glass floor of February 2002... and I smashed straight through that bitch into February of 1998. Did we even have Teh Internet back then?

Now, it's nothing to get too excited about, because I didn't write a whole helluva lotta stuff back then. But I did manage to find some mega-old writings to properly intersperse with the video game reviews from that time period. Although anything before 2002 is more than likely a game review. Truth be told, there's a few others I have yet to release, because they are **so bad.**

Perhaps more exciting is that I found what I believe to be fourhman.com version 1.5 or 2.0, I forget which. v1.0 was the website I had to make for my "World Wide Web" class in college, and this version was the one that I slightly altered and posted to AOL. So this is about as early a fourhman.com as anybody is ever likely to see, and I have resurrected the front page for posterity. I have all the interior stuff too, but I'm not sure it's worth pushing live. That is what the web looked like ten years ago. And it's what MySpace pretty much looks like today, burn.

The best part of fourhman.com original recipe is that you can see the background pattern that I used on all of my Macs (home and office) for a period of about six years, starting in 1993. Although I haven't used it since 1999, I'll still always remember it as Joe's All Time Desktop.

Moving Van, Part 3

By Joe on May 29, 2007 8:09 PM

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.

Here is the first trailer run. That Mappy there may be the second-heaviest thing we own.

The second trailer load has a very shelvy theme. Plus an outdoor train slide. It's all so Animal Crossing, isn't it.

A short but troubling rainstorm delayed the final trailer run... this picture is from past 8pm. What you don't see is me sweating the return of another thundercloud that would ruin our bed, Clark's bed and the papasan.

Now it's another day, and some very minor stuff. If you call Baloo's precious Sea Duck minor, that is!

And now you can see just how packed those minivan trips were... no seats, all stuff!

Here is the last van trip, mainly cleaning supplies and cat stuff. The cats themselves were split up between our two cars (which, by the way, added about another eight loads to this whole grand adventure.)

And now we are moved. Hooray.

Moving Van, Part 2

By Joe on May 26, 2007 11:07 PM

You can't see them, but the rest of the comics (another ten long boxes) are in this trip. Also more Christmas stuff and the dehumidifier.

There was something really funny in this load, but I forget what it was and the blue couch cushions are hiding it. My Spider-Man & Friends figures are in there... and that green thing is the ass end of a Sit-n-Spin.

Those of you who went to college with me should recognize the folding chairs.

We killed Mickey Mouse and stuffed his corpse in there.

Trip #9 is most notable for the amount of Adult Basement/Garage Supplies (topsoil, antifreeze, etc) and a ton of computer junk. There's two 17" old-style giant glass monitors in there, and my old Compaq PC, the machine I bought mainly to play Starcraft, Unreal Tournament, and Dungeon Keeper 2.

By trip #10, things are looking desperate. Nothing fits smoothly anymore. Our 35" TV is in there somewhere, Clark's kitchen playset, the two-seater wagon, and the PS2 and Wii.

In addition to these minivan loads, we've done at least five car runs in my Neon. Mostly weird and/or soft stuff like clothing piles, blankets, and boxes without lids. Tomorrow we switch to the trailer for the really big stuff. It will not be pretty, but the loading pictures should be amusing.

Moving Van, Part 1

By Joe on May 25, 2007 10:53 PM

Here's the first load, mainly boxes of books, video games, and kitchen stuff. My father actually loaded all of these into his minivan before Rhonda and I even got home from picking up Clark at daycare. Talk about a hero!

Second trip. Mostly comprised of stuff that was in our basement, which means more books.

Now it gets fun. See the left hand side of trip #3? Those are all CCG card boxes. What you don't see is that there's another stack just as high right behind them.

The thing in red on the right is our Christmas tree. Bah humbug!

Last trip of the day. The entire lower level (even behind the milk jug) is all comics. And that's only about half of the collection; those effers are heavy and I'm missing most of the lids. We actually unloaded all of these comic boxes at the new house and then brought the lids back for the next wave.

And no, I don't actually own one of those horribly ugly early iBooks; just a box for one. Although if you're lucky, you'll see some of my History of the Macintosh collection on the next update.

The Week in Links

By Joe on May 25, 2007 8:41 AM

They Might Be Giants-They'll Need A Crane(1989) (YouTube)
1989 was the height of the twitchy, spastic Giants era. One of my favorites. (They did it live on Letterman!)

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.

Businessmen want to flip McJob definition (Yahoo News)
What a bunch of jackasses. McDonald's wants to change the Oxford definition of "McJob" to "a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression." BullSHIT it is. You don't get to change a word's definition just because it conflicts with your marketing. How's the term "McCrueltyBurgers" grab you?

Gallery: Pokemon Battle Revolution (Kotaku)
I still say this will be another colossal console disappointment, but you can't beat screenshots like this:

Again with the crappy direct mailer.

By Joe on May 24, 2007 8:06 PM

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.

Let's start at the top. Again and again and again GAMA thinks it makes sense to vomit out a bunch of muddy, boring shots of people sitting at tables. There's always a kid, always a female, always somebody old, and, through no machinations of GAMA's own, always somebody fat. If you're lucky, you get somebody actually looking at the camera and smiling (usually a cosplayer), but most of the time - as it is here - you just get the Gamer's Stare.

If you're already sold into gaming conventions, you could care less. If you have never gone... what on earth about the endless parade of ogres-playing-Settlers would make you want to attend? In GAMA's defense, this particular card probably only makes it to known Origins attendees, but I can tell you that all of their print in the last five years looks like this. The registration book, the print ads inside gaming magazines, everything.

Then comes the ugly-ass font, telling you junk that you already know if you're an Origins veteran. And if you're not, it's confusing and redundant.

And that logo. Look guys, I know it's cool that you got a famous artist to paint up an Origins logo. And it does look nice when it's full-size. When it's full-size. At about 1.5" x .5", you can't read a goddamn bit of it. For chrissake, come up with a logo that you can use at all print sizes, flat and 3D, b&w or color, whether you need to make a 50 foot banner or a business card. You have that distinctive "O"... use it. Wizards certainly did in the last year that they ran the event.

The sponsors. Most of those are set at too small a size as well, but there's probably not much you can do about that unless you make the entire piece nothing but logos. At the least you could avoid having to sit most of them over a white box over the purple strip. That Pokemon one is the only one that looks nice. Paizo should have been switched to a white version instead of the black. Mayfair, Hyatt, Crystal Caste, and the rest should have been either better cropped or entirely alpha channelled to avoid the messy white blocks everywhere. This is either amateur work or somebody who was against a deadline and just didn't care.

Origins is a great, huge, fun event. It deserves better marketing than this garbage that wouldn't look out of place in a free community newsletter. It makes the event look cheap, dull and embarrassing. Origins attracts a lot of creative talent every year; I can't believe that GAMA has no access to any of them to get some decent print work done.

My god, I just went to their website and it's all white and orange text over purple. And no Origins logo to be seen! Unbelievable. If you look bush, you attract bush. These guys are going to anti-market the event right out of existence.

Another five years of that and I may offer them my design services for free.

We're most likely not going to Origins this year, but I can't blame the marketing because we're smart enough to know the event is better than that. We're about to move and we need to tighten up our vacation days. I can't wait to see next year's print pieces.

The crabs cometh.

By Joe on May 23, 2007 8:25 PM | 1 Comment

When WizKids revealed giant crabs as a new ship type for Pirates: At Ocean's Edge, I got all excited and bought a bunch of packs. And, of course, I did not pull a single crab. Turns out there's only three of them. So I ordered them all at a very good price from Strike Zone Online, the only singles joint I ever bother with these days.

I also bought two of the three giant sharks (I already had one of them.) The sharks aren't as visual as the crabs, but they do eat every crew member on a ship should they successfully perform a boarding party.

Since I already have plenty of sea serpents, krakens - and both of the super-sized sea dragons - I now have a full assortment of Pirates monstrosities. Has WizKids strayed from the more-or-less historically accurate sets of Pirates past? You think?

And isn't it kind of lame that the latest Pirates set is called "At Ocean's Edge" and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie is called "At World's End"?

I also bought some forts (who cares; nobody uses forts) and some subs, since I missed out on all the subs back in the dopey Mysterious Islands set.

Happily, all of those wrappers from my crab hunting days came into good use. I mailed them in for the new 10-master gihugic ship, the Zeus. (One of WizKids' ridiculously complicated free offers... but this one is at least attainable because you don't need to collect a set of random "secret message" inserts.) Turns out the Zeus is actually a storyline "repaint" of the previous 10-master, the Baochuan. Turns out Pirates has a story now. Oh boy. Remember when that killed Magic?

Reflecting the Best, Missing the Point

By Joe on May 22, 2007 7:46 PM

Found this full-page advertisement on the back of the latest issue of KidScreen...

Basically WB is openly admitting that their IP library is available for continuous pillage, with varying degrees of success. You got your all-pupil version of Scooby, the weedy totally-not-Superboy Superman, another damn Batman, and fresh from the land of who-gives-a-fuck Tom and Jerry. I can't help but think they missed a few...

*"Taz" available in biker, rapper, and various poses of attitude. Also Tweety.

Katamari on the Phone

By Joe on May 21, 2007 7:34 PM | 2 Comments

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!

I bought two of the three... they're only about 12 seconds each, which sucks, but that's ringtones for you. I bought the two from the first Katamari game, "Katamari on the Rock" and "Lonely Rolling Star" (the third one is "Katamari on the Swing"). Now the hard part is deciding who in my address book is worthy of these awesome tunes.

Just as with Dig-Dug, there's a heavy element of SUPPORT THE CONCEPT here. Namco has released Mappy to a very small list of phones (not the Sidekick) and has done nothing with Katamari other than the ringtones. But they have been aggressive with releasing new content, so there is always hope.

Interestingly, there already seems to be a Katamari game knockoff on the Sidekick, Slimeball Speedway. Check this:

It's 2D, seems to only require one axis of control, and adheres to the eating-things-makes-you-bigger idea. I might pick this up - excuse me, "download fun" - just to see how successful it is at mimicking the legend. Now where's the official Katamari cell phone game?

Save the Magikarp!

By Joe on May 20, 2007 8:13 PM | 1 Comment

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.

The trek to Snowpoint was nowhere near as annoying as that swamp zone in the south of the map. Candice (candICE, get it?) is the Gym Leader of Snowpoint, and fire-type attacks do her in. I packed the party with my Monferno and my GTS Skuntank (who knows Flamethrower), but my Staraptor was just as useful. The Medicham she fields at the end was a surprise, but hardly a challenging one.

Have you noticed that the badges in your case all sound a chime when you tap them? Have you further noticed that they are all in do-re-mi order until you get to badge #7? Guh?

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Clutch (Monferno) lv35, Gengar lv36, Staraptor lv42, Buneary lv31, Bibarel lv21, egg

The Week in Links

By Joe on May 19, 2007 7:30 AM

????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.

Preservation, GameTap, and Curmudgeoning (GameSetWatch)
I agree with the Curmudgeon. Subscription-based services suck.

Adult Swim Zune Going on Ebay (Gizmodo)
Freaking hilarious. So they make a special edition $250 Zune with the Adult Swim logo and pre-load it with shows. There's only 500 of them made, they're not available to the general public, and the demographic crossover between Adult Swim and portable media players seems terribly apparent. One of the 500 shows up on eBay and sells for merely $290. Nobody wants a Zune, folks.

The War Against The True Enemy of Comic Books (Absorbascon)
Scipio makes a great point about how modern comics writing falls flat when they rely on an overly-cinematic storyboard, with expositionless (and often dialogue-less) writing. Being a Silver Age fan, Scip advocates a return to the exposition-heavy days of yesteryear, which both makes any given story more weighty and keeps it accessible for new readers. I wouldn't go that far, but it would be nice to see fewer books with silent pages in them.

First gameplay footage from StarCraft II (Gamebrink via Kotaku)
Looks like the Protoss are still overpowered. I remain a Zerg man.

Still screwing around with MT.

By Joe on May 18, 2007 8:54 AM

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.

The great philosophical debate is, what do you tag? Because in theory, a visitor should be able to simply type in "xbox" and get a more precise result. However, Movable Type's built-in search is kinda slow... clicking an xbox tag is much easier and quicker. But do you pull every noun out of your entry and generate this monster-sized list of tags for every entry? And what exactly is the distinction between a rant and a rebuttal? (You can browse all the tags right here.)

I also have this issue where I hate having a tag associated with only one entry, even if it is legimately something I only ever talked about once. It's the same reason I never put only one card in a Magic deck.

Now do I have to add the Magic tag to this entry?

Something I've been avoiding because it's a pain: since the great weblog archival upgrade, I have a ton of borked links tucked away inside old weblog entries. It's chiefly a result of the archives switching from month-based to individual-based.

But I have been working on getting the game reviews inside the main weblog. Since those reviews were formatted in an entirely different way, I had to do some tweaking to fit inside the current layout. Although - funny story - I'm not sure I even feel like writing any new formal game reviews, since I do so much game reviewing in the weblog anyway. (Which makes me think I should come up with tags to differentiate between BIG game reviews and quick game reviews/first impressions.)

One complication on that, I have game reviews that predate the weblog. So I'm mulling over how I want to handle that. Do I just tack on a bunch of random 1998-2000 months to incorporate a couple dozen old reviews?

As I was considering that, I recalled that I did have a weblog (of sorts) before the Movable Type install in 2001... and a few of those postings might still be around somewhere. Last night I dug out both of our old PowerMacs (a 6400 on OS8.something and a 7600 on OS9.1) and fired them up for the first time since, oh, about 2002. Of course they turned right on (well, the 7600 has two HDs and I had to reboot twice to get the main drive up) and even better, they both networked to my new iMac effortlessly. I wonder if a Windows 95 and a Windows 98 machine could attach to a Vista machine that easily?

I had forgotten how crisp and snappy the elder Mac menus and clicks were. I really miss that, in this mushy OSX land.

Neither of those machines had much in the way of old fourhman.com content, which surprised me. I also couldn't find anything on my collection of old floppies. Somewhere I know I have a single floppy that holds the very first (pre-weblog) website I ever created. And somewhere else I should have that next generation of html files from when I started doing webloggy type things before the word weblog even existed. I just can't believe I would have thrown that away, given all the other stupid shit I keep around.

There is some of that saved by the venerable archive.org, so I'm going to investigate that... and then I'll look into my CD backups from 5+ years ago.

Guh. This is becoming a weblog about a weblog.

Would you lie about that?

By Joe on May 15, 2007 11:30 PM | 6 Comments

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.

The GTS turned up an Afghani Drifloon for me:

Of course, that's just somebody claiming to be from Afghanistan. Although I would find it really cool if I did indeed just trade pokemon with somebody in Afghanistan, it seems suspect since "Afghanistan" is the first country in the list when you tell the game where you're from. What's the import scene like over there? More likely, if true, I just interacted with a US soldier stationed in Afghanistan. But more more likely, it's not true.

The Canalave gym fight was easy. The leader here is the father of the chump back in Oreburgh. ROLL TAPE.

I love the sound effect at the very end of the movie when I'm riding those panels around the room.

After that breeze of a fight (see, Joe, type advantages are worth researching beforehand), then I was led back to the Canalave library by Wedge for a meeting with Professor Rowan and Dawn. He assigned me to go check out Lake Valor, but once we got outside, an random bystander informed us that an earthquake or something just happened at Lake Valor... so Wedge bailed on his assignment (to head north towards the ice world) and went to Valor. Happily, Rowan didn't just send me to the north pole instead. I am still expected to check out things at Valor.

Apparantly there's a "mirage" pokemon there... one of three that holds the SECRETS OF POKEMON EVOLUTION.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure we'll get a third game in the D/P series now.

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Staraptor lv38, Monferno lv33, Gengar lv34, Bibarel lv21, egg, egg

And I thought THAT ONE was lousy.

By Joe on May 14, 2007 8:07 PM | 2 Comments

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.

Things I had forgotten about Spider-Man 2:

2 also has a ridiculous musical montage thing (Peter's New Life Without the Mask sequence). I hated it in 2 and I double-hated it in 3.

In 2, MJ is a successful Broadway star, the rave of the town. In 3, MJ is an unsuccessful Broadway star.

John Jameson. Astronaut. You know, a guy who could have legitimately tied the whole Alien Symbiote thing together for us.

Since we all forgot... yeah, Barnard the Butler was in 2. Hiding his secret love, I think.

The core cast seemed far less ugly in 2, but that's probably due to the small screen vs, the big screen.

The only character improvement from 2 to 3 was, ironically, in Harry. For some crazy reason, in 2 he's this young CEO shooting thumbs-up to Doc Ock and crowing about his Oscorp will scale new heights in technology. And he's what, college age? I'm never clear how old these kids are supposed to be. In 3, he's back to a spoiled, unemployed rich kid.

Sandman had nothing to do with Uncle Ben getting killed. Funny how I forgot that one, since Sandman's involvement is so incredibly obvious.

So, even with a 60% dropoff in sales, they'll make another one. (As we said at work today, 60% of a huge ass is still a huge ass.) Now that's the Osborn family is mercifully out of the picture, what's next for Pete and company?

- Give the Gwen Stacy vs. MJ thing an honest go. She was completely unnecessary to 3 and should probably die dramatically and purposefully in 4. Although they can't kill her like they did in the comics since that was pretty much how the end of Spider-Man 1 wrapped up (although without anybody dying and with a lot of obnoxious New York sentimentality).

- Hero crossover. Dr. Strange has already been mentioned... a perfect choice for villains with a supernatural bent like Morbius the LIVING VAMPIRE or Mysterio the FISHBOWL HEAD.

- Topher Grace as Venom again. I don't care how many exploding rib cages I saw; he survived and he's pissed.

- Make good on the Lizard tease. I did previously mention that the no-name dude that has been playing Curt Conners would be re-cast should Lizard get the nod, but I forgot to consider that they could easily just have him go Lizard and never go back. I lost the link already but I read a comment somewhere that a Lizard appearance could dovetail nicely with the bombastic Kraven the Hunter.

- I think the Spider-Slayers have a decent shot at making a movie. Very obvious candidates for mega CG effects. I also think the Spider-Slayers are boring as hell. Make Scorpion their leader.

- Vulture. The geezer version. Somebody Spidey can't punch. Turns into Death of Aunt May.

- Has enough time passed that we could do Black Cat and not remind anybody of Catwoman? No? How about Silver Sable instead?

- No Rhino. No Shocker. If we include them, who could possibly be considered worse enough to be the first-level bosses in the accompanying video game?

- You want a daring choice? Go with Electro in his classic garb.

- And hey, Sandman is still out there. That means we can definitely dredge up Hydro-Man and go for the special effects powerhouse of our time: the Mud Thing!

The ladies love him.

Party's Over

By Joe on May 13, 2007 12:05 AM

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.

Did some trading with my sister, mainly tradebacks to get the trade-evolutions. WHOO GENGAR! But we did exchange Magikarps so we could accelerate towards Gyarados.

Here's my attack on Hearthome Gym. I just threw whoever I had for the first half, but pulled it together by the end.

Part One

Part Two

And now I can use Surf. First thing I did was head to the south end of the map because the obvious deadend intrigued me. Turns out that's where the Pal Park sits, which is where you can eventually transfer pokemon from the GBA games. At this point, I can't enter, so I had to turn around and head back.

After beating Hearthome, Cynthia stops by with the big clue of Canaleve City. Who the hell is she again? I completely forget why she keeps showing up.

Hey, it just occurred to me that Nintendo doesn't seem to have a Pokemon mall tour planned this year. Betcha there's something in the works for next year. Given the huge sales of Diamond/Pearl, they really don't need any marketing events to sustain interest... but 2008 might be a good opportunity. What's this generation's equivalent of Mew, Celebi or Jirachi?

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Staraptor lv36, Monferno lv32, Gengar lv32, Empoleon lv38, egg, egg

The Week in Links

By Joe on May 11, 2007 8:36 PM

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.

Scottish Girl PWN3D By Animal Crossing (Kotaku)
Wild World calls the player a "fucking cow." Faked and/or hacked, but still funny.

Getting it wrong (News From Me)
Mark Evanier pointed out some errors in a Newsday article about comic strips a week ago. He contacted the author and, eventually, Newsday published a paragraph of corrections. Which, was also wrong. Mark says this:

The guy who wrote that Newsday essay was not a moist-behind-the-ears intern. He is, amazingly, an editor and staff writer at the paper who is on the verge of retirement after forty years there... but he didn't take the ten seconds to Google "Blondie" and find out who currently does the strip. Is the person writing about Iraq for that paper adhering to the same standard?

An excellent point. Journalists are just as lazy and stupid as the rest of us; they just get paid for pretending they're not.

Donkey Gun Beat Echoes

By Joe on May 9, 2007 7:00 PM

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

released March 2005, purchased March 2005

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?

Gun

released November 2005, purchased November 2005
click here for my review written in January 2006!

There's always a Wild West game in development. Yet they never sell.

Gun was definitely ambitious... so ambitious that it was referred to as "GTA in the Old West." Which is more or less true, just it's a GTA without much to do. I guess that's in theme. You definitely get the impression that the American West was vast and empty.

Not a bad effort, but the linear storyline is not well-suited for a sandbox game. You finish a mission, you watch a perilously important cutscene... and then you are dropped back into the game world with no direction. And like Red Dead Revolver before it (which was better), Gun lifts characters and plot points from movie after movie without shame. (Gun even stirred up some minor flack over the game's portrayal of "savage" Native Americans during the first portion of the storyline.)

The controls had some weird bits, like using the same button for "holster" and "scope zoom," WTF.

More unforgivable is the pointless Texas Hold 'Em competitions where you're allowed to enter and win dough without wagering any of your in-game cash.

Someday somebody will do a compelling Western game. I hear there's a new one in dev.

Memory Score: She's dead! Guess I'll go play poker for an hour...

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

released November 2004, purchased December 2005

Metroid Prime 2 went head-to-head with San Andreas and Halo 2... and lost. Then, to make matters worse, even the Nintendo fans didn't buy it.

I liked the original Prime. It was different. It was dramatic. I probably would have been there for MP2 had I not been really busy with San Andreas at the time.

So I waited a year and picked it up on the cheap, and now I see why it floundered.

Back when Mystery Science Theater was this garage band thing that nobody but me liked, they did a zeroxed fan newsletter and one of those had the then-unknown Mike Nelson reviewing Doom 2 (of all things.) He described Doom 2 has being "more of Doom 1." And that's exactly what Metroid Prime 2 is... more of Metroid Prime 1.

Generally speaking, I think we all expected more than that. I have read that the game takes a major switch-up deep into it, but the first part was very tedious, lots of backtracking, with the usual no-help mapping system. So I never finished it. It sat in my "will get to" pile for years. I think it's still there, actually. On the bottom.

Memory Score: Just give me a map with goal points cleanly and clearly marked.

Next time: the GameCube blowout for 2006! Two new releases, two missed classics! The penultimate farewell!

Harried, Rushed and Unprepared.

By Joe on May 7, 2007 11:45 PM

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.

One thing I wanted to mention last time: I am sick to death of Pokemon's box storage system. We need to move past the concept of keeping extra pokemon stuck in some central location that you can only tap by running to a building with a PC inside of it. I don't think we should be able to have instant access to our entire collection inside of a battle, but we really should be feeling completely used as the game makes us run back and forth to hustle guys out of PC storage.

I advocate keeping the six-pokemon party system, and when you enter a battle, you're stuck with those six. But anywhere else, you should have complete access to every dude you've ever caught. It would be better for online trading and team-forming, better for quest NPCs who want you to show them specific types... just better gameplay all around. The game is plenty long enough without having to regularly hike back to a Pokemon Center and suffer through the box's sucky control scheme that was written for a Game Boy's buttons. Wouldn't that have been a nice philosophical upgrade for the DS series debut?

Anyway, after slogging through the marshlands, I stomped directly into the Gym and cleaned out all the subordinate trainers. Then I saved up and tackled Crasher Wake. It's a fair miracle that I got through, because this is my worst Gym battle ever. Several times I considered bailing, but I thought I might as well play it out. As you can see, my missteps and poor choices made the battle longer than YouTube's ten minute limit.

Part One

Part Two

I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't really have to sweat a Gym Leader match until the fifth or sixth Gym, so getting pasted by three and four was kind of a bummer. DidI just have a lousy assortment of types for those two Gyms?

I had no business winning that battle against Wake... but, hey, I'll take it. Now I can get back to screwing around. I see there's a Safari Zone in this town...

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Haunter lv30, Staravia lv29, Monferno lv27, Torterra lv32, Graveler lv26, Luxio lv20

Let's rag on Spider-Man some more!

By Joe on May 7, 2007 9:26 PM | 1 Comment

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.

The question came up: Was it better or worse than X-Men 3? (which was only watchable for the stunt casting of Kelsey Grammar)

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.)

Here's my first draft of the Scenes That Must Go in order to make this a watchable film:
- Peter/MJ in the broadway debut.
- Harry/MJ making an omelette.
- Peter doing Saturday Night Fever down the street.
- Peter/Gwen dancing at the jazz club.
- Anything that involves Sandman killing Uncle Ben.
- Anything with Harry smiling.
- Anything with MJ.
- Anything with Tobey Maguire (NOT Spider-Man; there's a difference.)

Those first four are the really critical errors, I think. Those are the scenes that ruin everything else. Notice how they all involve singing and dancing!

And that list doesn't even cover idiotic stuff like the crane that can carve buildings like butter. I'm willing to let some of that slide in exchange for excising the truly terrible junk.

Everybody I talked to at work today A) saw the movie and B) thought it was crap. So I stand by my assertion that Spider-Man 3 will not make as much money as the previous Spider-Movies (over the long run - I know it made a ton on opening weekend, so hold your emails). Word of mouth will take this one to "I'll catch it on DVD" right away. Or, at any rate, it should. People are stupid.

Nevertheless, I'm willing to call Spider-Man 3 better than X-Men 3. Because, even though it had no interest in making sense and demanded you hate it as much as Sam Raimi did, it kept the characters true to the comics. Visually, at least. Whereas the X-Men movies just wanted to be another Matrix.

I mean, look at Sandman's shirt! You don't think there was a huge temptation to not have him look like the bouncer at a gay bar? Kudos all around.

So, X-Men 3: about as bad as expected, therefore bad.

Similarly, Spider-Man 3: not as good as expected, therefore bad.

Ironically, Fantastic Four: not as bad as expected, therefore good.

And unfortunately, Superman Returns: totally as bad as expected, therefore very bad.

Looking into the future, Fantastic Four 2: will likely not be as good as expected since the first one was not as bad as expected. Therefore, bad.

It's all about expectations.

Spell Something Obscene.

By Joe on May 6, 2007 4:02 PM

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.

Once you capture some Unown, you have to show them to the boy who lives in the house closest to the ruins. (He is actually wandering around the ruins initially, so you first must talk to him so he goes home.) The annoying bit is that he can only see the pokemon in your party's lead position, so you must jockey them around to get him to identify multiple Unowns in your possession. But once he does, he gives you letter seals that correspond to the Unown you have shown him.

The seals are added to your Seal Case (which you also get in Solaceon Town) and that activates the Ball Capsule option. It lets you custom the effect when a pokemon hops out of a poke ball. Since I had captured the "J" Unown, I made a custom capsule that displays "J"s everywhere. I hope there's more seals to be found, other than letters, although I will enjoy collecting enough letters to form entire words.

As far as the daycare goes, I dropped off a male and female Meditite. They started making eggs almost immediately, which is worthless since it just makes more stupid Meditites. You also pick up a cute Poketch upgrade that operates as a daycare webcam. Look at 'em go!

I yanked the lovers out of there and left a Pichu and a Skuntank. What are the chances they'll get along?

I found a fossil in the underground and turned it in at Oreburgh, and after a few days of "research," they gave me a Shieldon. Caught a Chingling in a cave somewhere... is that a pre-evolved Chimecho? And, funniest GTS trade yet, I just got a Mime Jr. from Hokkaido, Japan, who was named Booger.

I lost miserably on my first shot at the Veilstone Gym Leader (the hell! A Lucario!?!), so I did some more exploring. First I avoided pokemon altogether by hanging out at Veilstone's casino, where I turned 100 coins into 2200 coins on the slots. There is some kind of weird Clefairy Bonus thing that goes on, but I don't know you achieve it. All I know is that you get an extra-awesome prize if you do ten bonus rounds, and I could only get nine. Crap. A couple times, the Clefairy that showed up to torment my slots game was actually a Ditto in disguise.

After that, I checked out that dead-pokemon tower that, for some reason, I never entered before. You get HM Strength in there, but you can't use it in the wild until you get a couple more badges under your belt.

Speaking of that, here's my second (successful) fight against Maylene, the Gym Leader of Veilstone City. Watch for some really clumsy mistakes against Lucario.

Now I'll go check out those warehouses in the north of town (at Dawn's request), because that's where the Fly HM is kept... and Fly is really all I want right now.

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Staravia lv27, Monferno lv27, Graveler lv26, Grotle lv30, Prinplup lv23, Gastly lv20

The Week in Links

By Joe on May 5, 2007 9:40 PM

Real Nintendogs + Mario Kart (YouTube)
You've already seen it on Kotaku, but it's great.

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.

Amaterasu Underwhelms In The Flesh (Kotaku)
Once I actually start playing Okami, I'm sure this will be even cooler. Dog cosplay!

52 Pickup: Week 52 (52 Pickup)
Doug wraps up his stellar commentary on DC's ambitious "Missing Year" project. It's been brilliant reading all year long.

The Amazing Spider-Man 3 Live Weblog

By Joe on May 5, 2007 3:10 AM | 3 Comments

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.

New Goblin. Is a snowboarder. Easily tracking to be the least interesting part of the movie. A full switch to Hobgoblin would have been much preferred, although I hear that many comics fans dislike the Hob-concept. I always thought he was much awesomer than Green Goblin, but then again, I grew up during the era when Norman Osborn was as dead as Gwen Stacy. I think I even have the first Hobgoblin story arc, and it wasn't as lame as "Norman's embittered son dons the mask."

Speaking of Gwen Stacy, think they'll have New Goblin drop her off a bridge?

I'll find out in an hour. Movie starts at 10:15pm. Back to Pokemon.

I'm pretty sure we were the last people into the sold out theater. We queued up in the wrong line and would probably not have realized it until our tickets were denied had not Melissa made Tony go ask at around 10:20pm. On yeah: in attendance: Josh and the aforementioned Tony and Melissa. We had to all sit in the very first row (not my usual preferred seating) and we had to split up. Ah well.

If I have to go to the trouble of labelling everything that follows as SPOILER, then you clearly haven't been around here long enough.

10:29pm: Movie has started. Saw a preview of a NEW penguin CG movie! I swear!

10:31pm: The hell? The opening titles look like the intro to Spider-Man: The TV Series. This is really awful.

10:33pm: Yay! Dr. Conners, The Lizard. Have I mentioned before that I fully expect them to pull a Harvey Dent on this poor actor (who was just on FOX's cancelled Drive, by the way) and replace him with a name actor once they get around to doing a Lizard appearance. Which, according to the mathematics of super-hero movie villains, should be by Spider-Man 5 at the latest, which will feature 57 villains.

10:36pm: Harry is such a douche.

10:39pm: When the symbiote asteroid landed, the guy beside me muttered "What happened to his Spidey Sense?" Somebody doesn't know his comics lore, ha ha!

10:42pm: Yay again! Sandman finds his favorite shirt just where he left it, presumably because his wife is too sentimental to move it while he's been in prison. Great shirt. This comics fan approves!

10:47pm: Harry is beating the hell out of Pete. Josh just said "He is way better at this than his dad."

10:51pm: It would be too good to be true if Harry died right now.

10:52pm: Sandman about to become Sandman because he ran into a Let's Make Sandman Test. You know, guys, ya did make a Hulk movie. We kinda know how this is going to work. Welcome to the Marvel Universe, home of the multiverse's most careless scientists. And also the most hard-working; it's like 1am!

10:59pm: Sweet resurrection sequence. That's why I'm here.

11:00pm: Man, are all the apartments in the Marvel U this shitty? Tell Slobodanovich to throw some paint on those walls. The little girl beside Josh just let out this huge sigh at MJ's big psycho "it's not about you; it's about me" speech. My thoughts exactly.

11:02pm: Holy crap, what are they making cranes out of these days? I would suggest they start making the buildings out of the same stuff.

11:03pm: Eddie Brock Junior! Ha! I'm not 100%, but I think the "Junior" thing is not canon and is just a little bone to fans because the real Brock looks like Dolph Lundgren.

11:09pm: Stan Lee! 'Nuff said! Sadly, Stan is not going to be around forever, so it's nice to see him finally gets some lines.

11:10pm: Somebody mail Dafoe another check.

11:14pm: Jesus, ease up on the cinema veritae. Yes, Sandman is tossing cops around, but you don't need to punch the viewers in the face. What did we do?

11:15pm: Cloud of dust rolling through the streets of New York. What's that remind you of.

11:16pm: Happy Amnesiac Harry is the absolute worst thing in the world. His child molester grin makes me want to molest children.

11:17pm: Not a single comics weblogger will fail to notice this, so I'll jump right in... "Shazam"? Wrong U.

11:18pm: Sandman's musical theme is really terrible.

11:19pm: Yeah! Spidey gets an airfoil!

11:20pm: This I like. A bad guy with no interest in Spider-Man.

11:21pm: Bruce Campbell, scene stealer.

11:25pm: Gwen Stacy is creepy but still prettier than Mary Jane.

11:29pm: What?! Sandman killed Unca Ben? This wrecks my whole 11:20pm point! This feels like a scene they added after principal photography was complete, because initial focus groups thought Sandman ought to have some random yet critical connection to Peter.

11:31pm: Tobey Maguire, Face Number Four.

11:33pm: Oh right, Venom is in this movie. Hey, how did the symbiote come up with the proper mask design on it's own?

11:39pm: Kickass fight scene. How sad is it that this movie has great fights every other scene, and Superman Returns had the hero either crying or floating motionless for the whole film?

11:43pm: Aunt May ends her sentence with the word "ugly," and then we cut to MJ. Uh huh.

11:44pm: I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm starting to miss New Goblin.

11:47pm: WTF is this cooking scene.

11:56pm: Remember what I said about Superman III? This evil haircut thing is no better than Christopher Reeve with five o'clock shadow.

12:01pm: "The Empire State Photography and Film Department." Able to verify crappy Photoshops while-u-wait.

12:02pm: Man, that is one aggressive cell! I would have died a fanboy's death had Spidey gone to Mr. Fantastic for this.

12:04pm: Tobey Maguire is now strutting down the street doing little Saturday Night Fever moves. I don't know where I am anymore, because where I am sucks.

12:09pm: And it gets even worse. If anything cool happens for the rest of the movie, it will be forever destroyed by the memory of Tobey Maguire doing emotionless pelvic thrusts.

12:12pm: Excellent drippy symbiote stuff, and it's about time we get actual Venom. Nice subtle reveal that sonics are Venom's one weakness. Does anybody really buy Topher's "intense" hatred though? I don't think we've had enough script to believe that.

12:17pm: Finally it's good. Venom is freaking incredible. Could be a little more muscular, but still cool as hell. I love that he referred to Pete as "the spider." I'm officially predicting an eleventh hour Harry sacrifice.

12:18pm: Hal Fishman actually anchors for KTLA in Los Angeles.

12:21pm: Just who is this butler ex machina guy? From what plot contrivance heaven did he fall out of?

12:26pm OK, now I want the video game. More awesome fight scenes, the only thing this movie does right. And, incidentally, it's the only thing the audience responds to.

12:30pm: Isn't Gwen supposed to be dead by now?

12:31pm: My 12:17pm prediction lurches ever closer to reality. How exactly did they kill Sandman? With invisible missiles or something? He just fell over for no reason.

12:33pm: Good thing Spidey landed in that pile of giant wind chimes.

PREDICTION CORRECT! I'VE DONE IT AGAIN.

Eddie = Not Coming Back For The Lizard Sequel.

12:38pm I forgot to say earlier, but I'm not really behind this whole Sandman-can-fly thing. I am, however, on board with him being unkillable.

12:40pm: Harry is dead and people are leaving. I can't blame them; they've seen all the punching.

12:43pm: Credit roll surprise: Flash Thompson?! Further surprise: no further surprises! Not even a final shot of a black droplet rolling off a girder and into some construction guy's lunchbox.

OK. Wow. Was that really crappy or did I just have higher expectations than the franchise deserved. I mean, there was stuff I hated about the first two, but nothing as awful as this one's many, many dance sequences. I think everybody guessed this going in: too many villains, too much Pete vs. MJ undercurrent.

The film desperately wanted to be taken seriously (re: all the punctured romance sub-soap opera bits) but then does everything it can to not be taken seriously (re: evil hair). By the end of the movie, people nearby were openly mocking Tobey Maguire's infantile blubbering scenes. That's a bad sign. I guess all the CG battle stuff is enough for repeat business, but I don't see this one topping the box office records of the other two. It's just too silly half the time, and too dry for the other half... which, if my math is correct, leaves not enough time for cool action and cohesive storytelling. Very unfocused film.

Too many stupid coincidences too. Pete's lab partner Gwen just happens to be modeling when the diamond-encrusted crane attacks and her dad Capt. Stacy just happens to be on the scene and Eddie Brock just happens to stand beside him and just happens to be dating Gwen who just happens to be saved by Spidey.

And really, that was balls-out stupid for Peter to encourage Gwen to kiss him at the Spidey-festival. He knew MJ was in the audience and he knew that this was his hot lab partner. Hey, did we even really need Gwen to be his lab partner? Couldn't she just have been a model (cough) whom he saves one day? She still could have grenaded his dinner with MJ just based on that connection.

Does anybody care where the Venom asteroid came from? Probably not.

Crazinis from Denis.

By Joe on May 4, 2007 4:18 PM | 2 Comments

Games Industry.biz is in the middle of an interview with Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack, where he makes some bold yet classically wrong assertions. I like his work, but he is so off here.

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."

Denis, I do. If the game is really good. For reference: San Andreas, Pokemon Sapphire, Animal Crossing. I just did 60 hours in Baten Kaitos. And before I dupe my older bitch session on this topic, I'll end it there.

I doubt I have a hundred hours in on Dyack's own Eternal Darkness, but having played through the game three times, I bet I'm in the 50s, which is still no small amount of time invested into one game.

The key qualifier is that the game has to be really good. He throws out "100" rather randomly but it's the game's quality that really matters. Would I have done a hundred in Baten Kaitos? I doubt it. I was feeling a major drag around the 40 hour mark, because the game's overall presentation is lacking. Would I have enjoyed another 40 hours of new worlds (NOT backtracking) in Kingdom Hearts 2? Absolutely. Games with enough built-in variance can carve out a hundred hours with no trouble at all.

What he's doing here is setting up Too Human Episode One as being A) not very long and B) not very good.

And don't you think the average person has dumped over a hundred hours into Pac-Man or Tetris over their lifetime? Not to mention stuff like StarCraft, World of WarCraft or any given popular online shooter. He's trying to attack Final Fantasy-style RPGS with 100 hours of dense, overpopulated story, but he's sideswiping people's play habits in the process.

I'll grant that I don't get excited when I see "over 60 hours of gameplay!" used as a ridiculous bullet point on the back of the box, but I don't see "under 20 hours of gameplay!" selling many units either.

"Each game needs to be self contained. That was flaw in the The Lord of the Rings movies. (sic) Too Human will be self-contained across each game of the trilogy."

Denis, the LOTR trilogy made over one billion dollars, and that's just from the US box office. Not to mention the DVD sales. That's a lot of people who had no problem sitting through a trio of exceptionally long and convoluted films over the course of three years. That's not a "flaw" in the least. If Peter Jackson had made three lengthy film epics that nobody went to see, then you've got a flaw. But clearly the world had no trouble swallowing Lord of the Rings, so what's the point in comparing it to big-scale video game projects?

If the story is unavoidably good, gamers will follow it. If you crap out nonsensical cutscenes with lousy acting and average graphics, and then make them skippable... yeah, duh, people will hate it.

By all means, make each edition of Too Human self-contained. But do it because it makes sense for your game, not because you think gamers can't handle it.

Again, he's carefully positioning Too Human as Not What You've Been Expecting for the last seven years. Wikipedia calls it an action-RPG in the vein of Devil May Cry, which is fine, but does he need to send shots across the bow of gaming in general to get it done?

"I think there are too many games. The market is over-saturated and there's too many consoles. I think we'll eventually migrate to just one console. It's inevitable. I love all three home consoles, but as a person who creates games I wish there there was just one console."

I also wish there was only one TV station, because there are too many TV shows out there.

This is all very futurist of him, but it's not practical in the least. If this was truly the obvious inevitability, why did Microsoft start up their own (failing) game division for the Xbox? Why not just make Microsoft games for the PlayStation? Or, for that matter, for the PC.

No, Microsoft created their own console because they fully intended to create a monster moneymaker from which they control every aspect of content distribution. That was a nice dream, and as long as the mouthpieces can keep convincing the shareholders that they'll turn a profit "next year," then they can keep trying.

When he says "we'll eventually migrate to one console," he means "we" as in "Silicon Knights." And they have. Repeatedly.

Who would want one single console with one company at the helm? That's just not diverse enough to maintain an industry... as Nintendo proved during the NES days. They were the only game in town - which was fine for a couple years - but they got to rook over whomever they wanted, maintained strict controls on products whether it was warranted or not, and ended up caught with their arrogant pants down when competitors did finally arise.

When a market gets "over-saturated" (whatever that means), that means the market has actually just busted out into niches and you're just not standing far enough away to see it.

What's going to happen is you're going to see more and more games offered for sale digitally, but that's certainly not going to end up as this fanciful "One World, One Console" vision.

So, when Microsoft bought this guy, did he become a moron?

Boy, do I hate making poffins.

By Joe on May 2, 2007 9:05 PM | 2 Comments

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 had five categories of contests (tough, cute, smart, something and something else) and you could encourage any given pokemon to excel in any of those areas by feeding it pokeblocks. Pokeblocks were manufactured by harvesting berries and then tossing them into a fun rhythm-based blender mini-game. Certain combinations of berries created specific types of pokeblocks that could increase your pokemon's overall status in "cuteness," say. Feed one pokemon a ton of cute-enhancing pokeblocks, make sure its attack set favored cute-type moves, and you have a virtual shoe-in for winning the various Cute Contests.

Jesus, this game really is the most complicated thing in the world. Can you believe that parents used to get all hung up on it being some kind of bloody fighting game?

Anyway, the Diamond/Pearl version of all this manages to cock it up royally.

The contests themselves have been hugely expanded, which is cool. It's now a three-stage SUPER CONTEST with two entirely new modes. The first third lets you dress up your pokemon, using the accessory stuff you've been slowly collecting since visiting the TV station back in Jubilife. This is nothing more than a virtual Colorforms set (or one of those Dress President Bush! flash games, for you kids under the age of 25) but it is quick and fun. You're given a theme ("colorful", for example) and then you have to use your accessories to dress up your pokemon in the most appropriate way. So it obviously behooves you to buy lots of accessories. Somewhere.

The second part, the dance competition, is a little tricky. It's PaRappa. If you don't hit that beat, you get penalized. Not as neat as playing dress-up, but okay. Takes too long.

The third part is the attack move display that we remember from Ruby/Sapphire, although upgraded with the tweak of having to choose which judge you want to impress. Same as before, using certain moves in sequence or moves appropriate to your pokemon's natural proclivities will work the best.

So what sucks? Poffins.

Instead of blending berries into pokeblocks, you now must cook berries into poffins. Which are, I guess, vaguely cookies. The idea is the same: particular berries result in poffins that enhance certain attributes, and the process creates textures and flavors that may or may not be appreciated by your team. (Your pokemon may prefer "spicy" poffins, for example.)

The mini-game for making poffins, however, is a complete failure. You have to stir the batter with the stylus as it cooks, rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise as you're told. If you spin too fast, you slop over the side (minus points) or if you spin too slowly, the batter burns (minus points.) And since the directional instructions change frequently, you will never sustain the proper pace to avoid screwing up, as a punishing inertia system makes it really tough to stir the batter in the opposite direction. Watch this:

So what am I doing wrong? This totally blows because I really dig the contest thing. I'm fairly positive that it will be impossible to win the higher level competitions (and receive ribbons!!!!) without doping up your team on the correct kind of poffins. Bleah.

In more exciting news, I caught a Gastly in the field immediately east of Hearthome. Guess who just got fast-tracked to be a major player in my team.

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

PARTY: Grotle lv21, Monferno lv23, Prinplup lv21, Staravia lv22, Geodude lv22, egg

I liked World War III.

By Joe on May 2, 2007 2:20 AM | 1 Comment

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.

My only problem with World War III was the use of "World War III," because there was nothing World Warry about it. Black Adam goes apeshit and does regular, garden-variety supervillain damage to various countries. That's what I don't get. What makes this a "World War" when other guys have done this, repeatedly? If you're going to criticize event books, you don't need to look any further than that. It's impossible to raise the stakes, because all-encompassing Grant Morrison universal cataclysms happen every month.

OK, so there's a very small geo-political aspect to Adam's rampage. It's so small that it boils down to China not letting the (primarily) American heroes cross into Chinese airspace. I can't even tell you how many times Superman has not given a shit about rules like that, most recently in a tedious story arc over in JLA Classified. If some nutcase is obliterating the innocent populace of China, Superman is going to get in there. Now, Superman is "in hiding" during WWIII thanks to his powers getting shafted at the end of Infinite Crisis, but my general feeling is that 90% of the hero population would act in the same way. Particularly the JSA, who, as Alan Scott has pointed out, consider Black Adam one of their own.

And for a World War, we sure didn't see a lot of actual heroes die, did we? For a guy that was billed ad nauseum as "ferocious" and "every blow is landed to kill," Black Adam left a lot of breathing bodies just lying there.

It would have been more interesting, yes, to have WWIII go even more deeply political, perhaps provide a better lead-in to Checkmate, and see more of China's Great Ten in action. (I have become a huge fan of the Accomplished Perfect Physician, and he only has, what, ten lines in all of 52?) As it stands, WWIII is not substantially different than a billion other villain-goes-amok stories, most of which could therefore justifiably be termed "World War III." The whole World War concept just carries too much historical weight to be slapped onto something like this, which will be forgotten (by DCU standards) almost immediately.

Calling this World War III is like when the news channels rush to label something a "massacre" or a "tragedy" or a "crisis," just so they can be the first to get a fancy graphic on the air. Probably involving crosshairs and a big blocky font.

I thought the ending (as seen in 52 #50) was clever. It's a nice dangler that hopefully will stand for years before some writer decides to come back to it. Unlike, say, the two days that Jean Loring spent in Arkham after Identity Crisis.

Actually, I wouldn't mind if the entire Captain Marvel subset disappears for a while. Because far too many of these events end with one of them bringing down the lightning ex machina.

I really need to get some friends who read comics.

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