Josie and the Pussycats - Musical Evolution (YouTube)
Great Cartoon Network interstitial from a couple years ago that I completely forgot about until I saw it on Boomerang Friday morning.

Wizard World Philadelphia Guest List
Some personal favorites in there, like artists Amanda Conner, Rags Morales and Humberto Ramos. Although I feel kinda bad for the guys whose credits only show one single issue. Not one book. One issue. Are they, like, rooming with one of the other guests?

The big question: will I stand in line to meet Kairi?

And another brand new Nintendo IP slips out to absolutely no acclaim while jackholes everywhere bitch and whine about Nintendo never doing any new IP! ANOTHER MARIO GAME DURRRRRR.

This is a fantastic little game, a sandbox world set entirely within one family's household chiefly seen from the perspective of toys. Cheebo himself is only about six inches tall, so if you need to get to the kitchen sink it involves climbing up drawer handles and whatnot. This viewpoint has been done before, from Micro Machines to Army Men, but Chibi-Robo's open world environment, task-based storyline and bizarre cast of characters give it the needed charm and luster. This is a very Nintendo GTA.

Of course, by February '06, the GameCube was already on life support, so poor Cheebo didn't get the marketing respect nor the sales he deserved.

Plus, that dude needs merch, pronto.

Memory Score: You found all ten Frog Rings! Now find all ten again!

OK, since it's been so long since my last Pearl update, I've pretty much forgotten everything I did. So this entry is all about stuff I did, like, in the last hour.

I popped a male Chimchar (level 1) into the GTS and asked for a female Turtwig. Then plan being to breed Turtwigs, duh. After a few days, somebody in North Carolina completed the trade. This is my first trade within the continental US. I have seen put another young male Chimchar out there in hopes of scoring a female Pinplup.

I love that you can buy Poke Ball seals in Sunyshore. I buy ten of each type that is available. I'm guessing the seal store has different stock depending on the day you visit.

I read somewhere that you can achieve Prof. Rowan's "completed pokedex" goal simply by battling every NPC trainer in the game. Did the previous games do that? In contrast, I'm assuming that the Gamefreak Designer's "completed pokedex" mission means you have to have actually touched all 150 pokemon. But as you'll recall with Pokemon Sapphire, the reward is sure to be crappy.

I've held on to this bit of high school buffoonery for the day that I would eventually have a weblog. And that day is now.

This is from my tenth grade Biology class, sometime in 1990...

I finished Chapter 3 of Super Paper Mario last night, and it was hilarious. Chapter 3 centers around Francis, a chameleon nerd who has captured Tippi for his collection. His whole bit is written to bust on otaku culture and forum fanboys. For a few minutes the game even turns into a dating sim where Francis tries to flirt with Peach. Fantastic!

Francis has a pair of rooms where he keeps his stash, both of which are filled with references to the first two Paper Mario games (although mostly 1000 Year Door, from what I could tell.) If you read the stuff on his computer, you'll find gags about the Excess Express, Ms. Mowz and Rawk Hawk. And on the top shelf is his Nintendo console collection...

Tsukiko Amano's "Chou" music video (YouTube)
This is the beautiful song used as the end theme to Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly. Hard to believe, but I'm a major Fatal Frame fan with 150+ plays of this song in my iTunes and I had never gotten around to watching this before.

Gates hints at plans for new videogame control system (GamesIndustry.biz)
Bill Gates drops the MEGATON with the statement "imagine a game machine where you just can pick up the bat and swing it or the tennis racket and swing it."

If you think all those early Wii-Remote-in-the-TV accidents were a problem, wait until Microsoft unveils the camera-enabled game where you just swing an actual baseball bat around your living room. What a dumbass.

LEGO Star Wars 2 was just as good as LEGO Star Wars 1. But also just as bad.

I mean, they didn't fix a damn thing. The co-op camera still actively works against you, often stranding players in infinite-falls or forcing unexpected dropouts. Plus, one player can "push" the camera along, dragging the other player whether they want to move or not. It's a mess, and after all the generous buzz the Crappy Trilogy Version received, it sucks bantha poodoo that nobody bothered to polish up the Awesome Trilogy Version... because they knew it would sell anyway. (I wish I'd've snapped a picture of it, but during one level the Minikit counter went nuts and it showed a final tally of 11 out of 10.)

It's even more annoying that the bugs weren't fixed because the game is, otherwise, superb. The conflation of the chibi-LEGO worldview and the Star Wars mythos is unavoidably compelling... and not that nobody tried to make Cute Star Wars happen before (**Super Bombad Racing**), but this particular package works because both licenses work. Somebody somewhere sure deserves a cookie for this, but they don't get another one until they get it 100% right.

Memory Score: Two player racing in the first scene of New Hope, using hidden cars found during a convoluted sidequest. AWESOME.

With the increase in my commute, I have solidly dug into the podcast world to pass the time. Here's my personal recommendations.

John Hodgman - The Areas of My Expertise (Abridged)

Not really a podcast, but still the funniest thing in the world right now. Hodgman just steamrolls through all these tightly written random fact things, including a good half hour just about this crazy hobos-take-over-the-US thing. I'm currently at the end of his hilarious discussion on America's 51 states.

I downloaded this back when Apple had it FREE for a week or so, which is awesome because now it's $18. I have to get the book.

And goddamn if he doesn't waste an unbelievable amount of time reciting 700 hobo names (which has already become an internet thing).

Spiderman 3 - Product Placement (YouTube)
I get the feeling this is black20.com's schtick and it's going to get old fast. But this is still pretty good. For now.

Good-bye to the Epcot Wand! (Mice Age)
At the end of his weekly DisneyWorld report, Kevin Yee reports that the tacky, misguided Mickey-wand-hand-thing is coming down from Spaceship Earth! Finally!

WWDC 2007 Keynote News (Daring Fireball)
DF takes a look at this year's so-so Steve Jobs Keynote, which was mainly stuff we already knew about Leopard and the iPhone. Safari for Windows was a surprise, but as DF notes, it mainly exists to make money. Did you know that the little built-in Google search bar in Safari generates $$$ for Apple every time you use it? I sure didn't. (I assume changing your search bar default to Google in Windows IE does the same thing, except the money goes to Microsoft.)

Spent the day at Wizard World Philly, along with Josh and Molyneaux. It was our first time, so be gentle. Both of those jerks took about 10x as many pictures, so I'll point you towards their galleries once they get around to posting them.

These top three shelves hold Daddy's PS2 and GameCube games. Although the newer stuff is still in the entertainment center (about eight games) since we ran out of room on this rack! We need to buy some bigger, better shelves.

Found during moving: the flyer my pal Mike posted when he wanted to sell his junky LeMans. This would have been around the spring of 1997, I think. You may have to know us to appreciate this.

First the upcoming Wii/PS2 game Manhunt 2 was banned from sale in England, then it was rated Adults Only by the ESRB in America. Shortly thereafter, Nintendo and Sony both tactfully issued press releases stating they don't allow AO games to be released on their systems anyway. Then today it was announced that the game won't be coming out at all, at least, not July 2007 as originally planned.

Manhunt 2 is going to have to cut out some violence, re-submit to the ESRB, and somehow walk away with an M rating. Or else the whole project was a waste... Take Two has been in shareholder turmoil as of late - despite having GTA, one of the most successful games of our times WTF - so they can't let the years of Manhunt development fall to nothing. Hey, Tarantino had to cut Grindhouse down from NC-17. It happens. Of course, video games don't usually have the luxury of releasing an unrated edition so fans can get the "true" version after the profits have been secured on the tamer material.

Microsoft Surface Parody (YouTube)
"One day, your computer will be a big-ass table." Oh, I get that it's neat to look at CG mockups of an interface that Microsoft couldn't possibly master, but Surface is not going to appear anywhere but Epcot Center and the Sharper Image catalog during our lifetime.

MS Smashes Piggy Bank To Secure GTA IV Episodic Content (Kotaku)
$50,000,000. I'm still not buying a 360. The main reason being that 360s are still prone to failure, but also because I'm not convinced that Sony won't suddenly show up with some "exclusive" feature of their own. And anyway, Microsoft lies through their ass about exclusive content. Bonus also: I have it on pretty good authority that GTA IV will be worth playing even without downloadable episodic content.

Here's something else I found during the move: photocopies of some of the earliest articles ever written about Pokemon in the US.

As you may be aware, I occasionally am known to work for a television station. Back in 1998, we received a rather amateurish packet of pitch materials for the then-unknown Japanese cartoon called "Pokemon." These documents fell into my hands because I was "into that sort of thing." Of course, when I first saw this, I was unimpressed, and the promos that went along with it didn't make any sense. (Hurm, I should YouTube those...)

Here's that Pokemon promo I mentioned.

I've been pretty sour on the console Pokemon battle games, because they've become nothing more than tedious turn-based combat porn. The N64 Stadium games at least had those cutesy minigame modes... a feature that vanished from the GameCube versions and still not found in the Wii generation. WTF? I thought the Wii was the cute minigame system? I've been lied to by the popular opinion press again!

Anyway, what really pissed me off was that Nintendo tried to hype the GameCube games as if they were genuine full-fledged RPG games. And then Pokemon Colosseum showed up packed with the suck. Walk here! Go fight! Walk here! Go fight! Walk here! Do nothing else! And I did not expect the Wii's Battle Revolution to be any better, based on the initial reports and demo movies.

I was spot-on, more or less, although Battle Rev does have some improvements. The best one being that I bought the game at Circuit City for only $40, during a sale that probably ends this Saturday. Walk there! Go buy!

Icebreaker 2 Preview (YouTube)
Impossible things still happen. Andrew Looney's long-lost 3DO game, Icebreaker 2, is about to get released! For the 3DO! Funny video follows...

The Perfect Phone (Roughly Drafted)
The iPhone has inspired a legion of Apple haters and fearmongers to crawl out from under their rocks, spewing forth unsubstantiated claims and complete lies about something they've never even touched. This article summarizes the biggest of the bigots and counterpoints with their hypocrisy in letting Windows (and other products) skate through without even a fraction of the tormented "Apple will destroy IT networks!" hand-wringing.