I discovered this in a pamphlet that came with one of Clark's Mega Bloks sets. It really surprised me, because it's a charming, well-designed little comic stuck right after a bunch of adverts for the Mega family of products.
I mean, on a good day, Mega Bloks are a LEGO rip. On a good day, Fun Dough is just reverse-engineered Play-Doh. On a good day, the Rose Art stuff is just cheaper versions of Crayola junk.
And yet here's a nice essay about the importance of creativity. So I scanned it in and chopped it into a vertical format.
Things start getting really exciting at three, because they actually make board games for 3+. It can't be long before he plays Katamari.
Happy birthday, Clark!
New Frontier needs another 30 minutes, at least.
So I got the new DC direct-to-home-video movie, Justice League: The New Frontier, and it feels like it's missing something. Like, about half an hour of additional character motivations. There's so many people in this movie, that nobody has the time to develop into believable characters, excepting maybe Hal Jordan and Martian Manhunter. All the prime plot movers - King Faraday especially - are just sort of bullet points. It's more than a little confusing, and I'm Target Audience Numero Uno. I'm going to re-read the original comics and report back to you on this.
This ad ran in all the Marvel books during, like, all of the early '90s. I got this particular scan out of Infinity Gauntlet #5, the one where all the cosmic beings show up to slap Thanos. (Found in a 35 cent bin and given to Clark!)
Is that really the best licensing use of Hulk? As an icon for adolescent internal torment?
This is it. The Nintendo console event that overshadows all else. Smash Brawl. Nintendo will be unlikely to top this level of anticipation during the Wii's lifespan. This is the game that sustains Nintendo's cred with the hardcore while maintaining the accessibility that has made them famous. In the GameCube generation, Melee surpassed both Mario and Legend of Zelda in sales, making it Nintendo's golden child. Plus, Melee did so much that it is almost absurd to imagine the concept getting any better... and yet all reports say it do and it does.
Like I said before, it's been a good long time since Melee, and it will be another long wait for the next one. I, like Wii owners across the U. S. of A., have already begun to prepare for this nigh-holy event. Here's a brief photo-essay on my personal pre-Brawl ritual.
First, the removal of Wii Sports from the console. I swear, this was not some kind of fabricated editorial comment on the lack of high-quality, top-selling Wii games. I honestly did have Wii Sports last loaded, because I did some boxing and bowling with Clark.
I've been thinking about this for a few days now, and I know you're not going to like hearing this... but I think, I think, I think I am prepared to state my conviction that Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is a better game than Super Mario Galaxy.
I know I am on record that my disappointment with R&CF is pretty legendary. But I think my disappointment with Galaxy is even legendarier. It all comes down to the one thing that defines a great gaming experience for me: R&CF lets me explore 90% of the game at my own pace without overt direction, while Galaxy forces me to do 90% of the game in the linear platforming tradition.
It all started when I got my new HDTV. I had finished Ratchet months earlier (like, maybe even in November) and really had no inclination to play it again. In fact, three weeks ago I distinctly recall seeing it on my game shelf and thinking "Well, there's $60 forgotten."
But I wanted to see some genuine HD graphics fidelity, so about a week-and-a-half ago, I popped Ratchet back into the PS3. I only planned on playing a level or two, but I ended up playing through the entire game a second time over the next week. The whole thing. What kept it interesting for me was that, early on in this HD-inspired Ratchetfest, I happened to check the weapons store and discovered that additional weapons and weapon upgrades (up to level 10, compared to a max of 5 on the first playthrough) were now available for purchase. So then I kept playing just to see the new abilities. Then I bought the infinite Groovitron. Then I went after all the Gold Bolts. Then I found I could get a few more of the Skill Points. Unbelievably, tonight I did the first two or three worlds on a third playthrough, just because I was still enjoying all the amped-up weaponry.
I called Toys R Us yesterday morning to see if they had heard of Super Smash Bros Brawl.
They had indeed. The front desk had no idea, but the R'Zone guy assured me that they would have Brawl for sale Sunday morning. I can't get let down after that, right? I mean, that's direct from the R'Zone.
I was also informed that select Wii titles will be 50% off on Sunday, although the only game he could mention was Mario and Sonic (I assumed the Olympic game). After thanking the clerk, I headed to Cheap Ass Gamer.com to see if they knew about this, and perhaps had already posted a list of the games. No dice. I'm like Bob Woodward here.
About an hour ago, I asked my lovely wife if she could find this weekend's Toys R Us sales flyer. This may seem like an impossible request to you, with your lack of time machines, but Rhonda is tapped into a network of bargain shoppers who somehow get ahold of all the weekend deals before the Sunday circulars are circulated.
And she found it. Now, this may not be reputable. Rhon immediately disclaimed this site as not one of her trusted sources. But it jibes with the scant clues revealed by my local store, so I'm duping it here...
Defend Your Castle This upcoming WiiWare looks absolutely coolass. It's awesome to see the Wii finally delivering slick, high-quality, modern downloadable games. Finally, competition for PixelJunk Monsters and Locoroco Cocorecho.
A World of Tears (Re-Imagineering) Although Re-Imagineering does err on the foaming rage side as part of their mission statement, I do agree that the upcoming USA USA USA addition to Small World is completely tacky and ill-thought out. Also, don't miss One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing!, where Re-Imagineering hilariously points out the sad copy/paste "storylines" menacing every corner of Disney World.
Friday night I was working on some website stuff. I've come to the conclusion that the Shoutbox has to go. I'm tired of good, discussionable comments getting wasted in the Shoutbox, rather than living on the entry page of the weblog post to which they are relevant. I don't want to argue about Mario v. Ratchet inside a two inch box. Something like that deserves paragraph after paragraph. (And actually Tony, that would be a SWEET podcast episode. We need to figure that out.)
I was working on getting Movable Type to pull out the last X comments, for a sidebar display... so anyone who comments would still get a front page link and momentary shining stardom. I finished the code on it, but I'm still not sure I like it.
Anyway, I was deep inside MT on that and some other stuff, so I triggered a full site rebuild. Which failed after about five minutes (I think it takes fourhman.com about ten or fifteen to complete a top-to-bottom rebuild). Failed rebuilds are a very scary thing, although less so since I switched to MySQL about a year ago.
I don't know why I didn't hear about this before, but this is one of those ideas that proves out the age-old theory that Nintendo never gives you what you want, but instead gives you awesome stuff you didn't expect. Mario Kart Wii, for example, will create its own Channel that lets you check rankings and junk regardless of whether you're playing the game or even if the game is in the tray. Incredibly cool. Now the question is, will Nintendo allow you to download these Channels even if you didn't buy the game... because A) it would be great advertising for those on the fence about a purchase, and B) I know I'd pay a nominal fee for certain game-specific Channels even if I NEVER bought the actual game.
Ziff-Davis has gone Chapter 11.
Guess that's as good as reason as any not to renew my EGM subscription.
I am going to take so many pictures in Smash Brawl. I loved the feature back in Melee, but of course there we had no place to save the photos. Brawl lets you save them to an SD card.
Happily, the internet has already figured out how to convert the saved photos into a usable format. This awful little Windows utility does the job, with all of the usual Olde World Windows mess. IE, no GUI, horrid meaningless filenames, and extraneous file litter. But anyway, it works, and here's some of the many many photos I've taken. Click for a supersized version.
There might be some spoilers, incidentally.
During the big open movie, which does feature Luigi, Clark always asks "Where's Luigi?" Well, here's Luigi, about to get whacked in the sacks by Falco.
A few summers back, on the way back from Origins, Mike and I had this great conversation about our individual attitudes towards gaming. Tabletop, board, card and video games. It was a very long car ride. To re-create that discussion, I asked Mike to join me in a navel-gazing re-examination of that for fourhman.com. Our talk - carried out through an equally long series of emails - will cover all types of gaming, as we discuss what kinds of games we prefer and how we got that way. Expect lots of name-dropping, old war stories, and cynical judgments on the world in general.
JOE: Obviously you and I have played a ton of games together over the years, and, having been gamers before we met (which is coming up on fifteen years ago!), we ought to have smashingly good ideas of what kinds of games we prefer. I think I can outline my needs for tabletop/board/card games at the cellular level: I like lots of little pieces, I like heavy customization within the given ruleset, and I like the game to tell a story. If a game can hit all three of those, it's probably something I'm going to adore. Of course, that's in addition to the overarching concern that the game ought to be fun, balanced and challenging.
MIKE: I would have to say the types of games I most enjoy are both simple and complex at the same time. Traditional games like chess, Othello, backgammon, Scrabble, poker, bridge (it's hilarious finding anybody at all under the age of pensioner status who will play, let alone know the rules to, bridge) are quite simple to pick up and play, with a very small investment in energy. There are no six page rulebooks, T-chart algorithms or wordy directions.
GUMBY BANGING HORSES (YouTube) OK, this is so full of swearing that you're going to want to close the door or something. Kinda wears out its welcome halfway through, but the first part is great.
SECRET SKIN: An essay in unitard theory. (The New Yorker) Author Michael Chabon's fantastic dissection of the improbabilities and portents of the super-hero costume.
Donkey Kong and Me (DadHacker) Fascinating weblog entry from the guy who programmed the Atari version of Donkey Kong. Full of lots of crazy revelations, but perhaps the craziest is that Atari usually licensed the game without bothering to get resources and assets from the original creators. So this poor guy had to re-create Donkey Kong by himself, with no help from Nintendo. Amazing.
I think I only have one more character to unlock, and I honestly do not know who it is or how to unlock it. I have an idea... based on some unsubtle hints heard in one of the gaming podcasts I follow. I did a really great job of avoiding Brawl spoilers.
I personally expected just about everybody from Melee to show up in Brawl, so I don't really consider guys like Falco to be meaningful spoiler material. Out of all the folks I've unlocked (and you get quite a few for completing Subspace Emissary), two were complete surprises, and that was cool.
As I post more of these photo entries, I'll gradually reveal all the spoiler characters, so watch out.
It seems odd to us Americans, but Sonic is only five years older than Charizard. And he can't breathe fire. Weird!
Until the end of the month, the $10 Pokemon Battle Bases playsets are reduced to $5. These are the best Pokemon toys in probably forever. I'm going to do a long-winded dissection about why these are so great later in the week.
We're the reason why your Target has no Morningstar products.
Speaking of Target, we did a number on their Morningstar Foods supply this week. The various Morningstar meatless freezer food stuff (soy versions of bacon, burgers, sausage, corn dog, etc) ranges from $2.99 to $3.29. Rhonda found an online coupon for $2 off of any one box, with no limit on how many you can use. So we used 36 of them, for a total savings of $72.
Pokemon toys have always had kind of a rough road. It's easy enough to mass-produce stuffed beanies of Pikachu, but the plastic toy offerings have always been weak. Initially, you had great piles of non-posable PVC figures... which allowed a great diversity of characters to be produced but were never very inspiring to collect. They played with various forms of genuine action figures, but the necessity of attack features meant lots of characters with oddly-positioned levers and buttons and spring-loaded projectiles.
Last year, as part of the huge Diamond/Pearl push, the Jakks toy company seemed to leapfrog backwards right into boring old PVC figures again. Albeit with much nicer sculpting than in 1999. Happily, those immovable little statues have morphed to include some clever action features... the Battle Bases sets lets you keep the clean sculpts of good PVC work but does not lose the physical fun of the action figure lines.
This is a great time to tease the gaming public, since there's a hotly debated Question Mark on what new games are coming for Wii, given that we already have a Mario, a Zelda, a Smash Bros, and next month, a Mario Kart. I mean, that's it, right? This is the tactic that the Nintendo Secret Haters like to employ... acknowledge the handful of high-quality games but focus on the lack of new IP and erroneous idea that Nintendo has nothing left to produce.
Of course, the honest answer is that Nintendo will simply make another Mario and another Zelda. The N64 had two Zelda games. The GameCube had two Metroids and two Starfox games. Getting Twilight Princess and Mario Galaxy so early in the Wii's lifecycle almost guarantees we'll see at least another Zelda... in fact, I think Nintendo has already dropped hints to that effect. Mario is more ticklish; dude's in a hundred other games each year and no matter how distinctive they are, Nintendo still catches flak for whoring Jumpman year in and year out. Still, Galaxy sold so well, and Mario appeals so dearly to that audience, that Nintendo would be crazy not to pencil in another core Mario game for 2009 or early 2010. Maybe we'll get a true sequel to Sunshine! I seem to recall the Sunshine team talking about how they would like to explore other domains of the Mario Universe - like ice or forest or factory - since Sunshine was so clearly about a tropical venue. Mmmm, I do so love that word explore. Wishful thinking, sorry.
Today was Free Rita's Ice Day 'round this part of the world, although Josh and I did not have the time today to run out for some during the workday. For the third year running, Tony was not present for Free Rita's Day (even though we didn't go anyway), which stretches the bounds of coincidence. Although this year he has the best excuse ever.
So suckadick Josh, 'cause Family Fourhman went out after work.
Defend Your Castle WiiWare Trailer (YouTube) I'm going to revise my opinion on this from awesome to really awesome. It is so great to see this kind of thing heading to Wii.
MIT's Jenkins On Gamers, Youth Culture (GameSetWatch) Great synopsis of MIT professor Henry Jenkin's SXSW keynote, where he offered an optimistic view of American youth... covering gaming, fan fiction and web communities. For example:
"..this is what I found looking at fans as a population. A high number of them are pink collar workers. Their jobs require a high amount of education, but their actual work uses only a small part of what they can do. And so most of their intellectually rewarding experience takes place outside of work. Why are those skills so underutilized in the workplaces we've constructed?"
That gets me right here.
Rock Band Gets In-Game Music Store (Kotaku) Awesome Rock Band update; obviously they're just as annoyed with the PlayStation Store as the rest of us. This really underlines Harmonix's dedication to DLC, while Activision is farting around with Aerosmith.
Remember how I wasn't sure what final unlockable character I needed? Well, I had a clue, and then my first random online match confirmed it. That match also spoiled his Final Smash for me. So meh. I still don't know what I need to do to unlock him. And he's not a particularly original character, by the way.
My random matches went as well as everybody else's. I played two and they were both laggy at times. Looks like the ping distance is the critical factor, because all my local East Coast matches have been fine, aside from the occasional weird Wi-Fi drop.
We are such big fans of the Nintendog. Clark gets this huge smile on his face and jokes about how the puppy wants to get out of the TV.
Talk about a game that will kick your ass. I wasted twenty minutes on the birth-rate-of-a-mouse puzzle before I got the non-mathematical answer. Nintendo set up a bangin' Layton website, which does a great job of presenting the game's unique art style and trancelike music.
Although, they're not smart enough to make their Professor Layton Desktop Clock application a Mac widget. Come on guys... you know what I don't need? A clock as an app.
I'm a professional spectator.
As I predicted, the Smash Bros spectator mode is super amazing great. I'll watch for hours, betting on my favorites. I never bet more than 4 coins though; I'm a cheapskate. Generally, I try to only bet on team matches (since that starts you at 50/50 odds)... and I always favor characters like Ness/Lucas, Ganondorf, and Ike/Marth. The way I see it, if you're playing guys like that, you're probably good at them. If a Bonus Chance pops up, I always bet, since you can win trophies, big sticker payouts (my record is 12 or so), and triple coins.
Wouldn't it be incredible if Nintendo offered Smash Spectator Mode as a system-level downloadable Channel, even for people who didn't buy the full game? What better way to advertise it, not that it needs it. Personally, I'd adore the convenience of being able to SPECTATE! without booting a disk or leaving the Wii menu.
So I had a crazy free lunch today, plus some, and here's the receipt as proof.
Here's what I bought: three boxes of Vanilla Yogurt Cheerios, a bag of rolls, a pack of cheese singles, and a big pitcher of Sunny D. I left the store with all of that plus an extra $1.93 in cash.
Geez, so I started writing more about Mario Galaxy vs. Ratchet Future and ended up boring even myself. So you get more Brawl photos.
Tonight I ventured back into Subspace Emissary, which I finished a while ago but only to the tune of 84%. What the heck do I have to do to get the whole 100? Since I've been through most of the serious spoiler material already, I'm getting close to looking up the game's darker secrets.
The DK Final Smash photo really isn't that remarkable... except for HIS EYES.
Pokemon Farm WiiWare Trailer (YouTube) Even at $10, I'm getting this. Even not knowing what exactly is going on, I'm getting this. I just love the stylized, low-fi look to it.
Those of you on Macs or otherwise unable to get that awful bin2jpg PC program to work, try this online Brawl decrypter. Thanks to Jeffrey for finding that link!
That pic of Link sailing away might be my favorite Brawl snap yet.
Although I've more or less had my fill of the Zombies!!! board game franchise, there's an intriguing supplement coming out this summer. In "Humans!!!" you play as a single zombie seeking to infect the townspeople. I'm really interested to see how this integrates with the now-standard Zombies!!! formula.
One of my gaming weaknesses is when they combine multiple games into one mega-game. E.g.: UberChrononauts, the entire Knizia Lord of the Rings set, and when you arrange four separate Monopoly boards in a square. The "All Day Game" is like Valhalla to me.
Tori-Emaki is one of the weird Justify-Your-Eye downloads available on the PlayStation Store. For $2, you get to aimlessly direct a flock of birds across a nifty Japanese scroll... in the sumi-e ink painting style that we all know much better from Okami.
It's actually pretty cool. The art itself is very nice, and the music and sound effects follow along with what you find as you explore.
Clark is teh three.
New Frontier needs another 30 minutes, at least.
I've been thinking about this for a few days now, and I know you're not going to like hearing this... but I think, I think, I think I am prepared to state my conviction that Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is a better game than Super Mario Galaxy.
I called Toys R Us yesterday morning to see if they had heard of Super Smash Bros Brawl.
This weekend has been crazy.
Game-specific Wii Channels are a fantastic idea.
Ziff-Davis has gone Chapter 11.
Pokemon Battle Bases on sale at Target.
We're the reason why your Target has no Morningstar products.
So 
Layton is great.
I'm a professional spectator.
Coming soon: Humans.
Mario Kart Wii in stores the day before GTAIV.
