June 2008 Archives

Saturday was our last day at the con, and Clark was ready to bail. His Convention Limit seems to be about 2.5 days. By noon on Saturday, he just wanted O-U-T of the vendor hall.

But before I wrap things up, let's go back to late Friday night. After posting the big Friday update, I teleported down to hang with Mike, Chris and Alex. While Mike and Alex played some Backgammon variant (seriously!), Chris and I dived into the Pirates Board Game.

I like Pirates. Chris likes Pirates. This board game version completely sucks. It sucks so hard that I'm going to do a full post later in the week. Stay tuned.

But the real issue had nothing to do with that... we went head-to-head with Morton's List. Long version follows.

There's this obnoxious gaming group called Morton's List... the game is that people divide into teams for a scavenger hunt, with lists that include both physical objects and ridiculous stunts. One of these teams accosted Mike, Chris and Alex (I wasn't there at the time), and asked if they could borrow a rulebook to any game. I guess that was part of their scavenger hunt list. So Mike, trying to be nice and help out, gives them the rules from Chris's brand new copy of Fish Eat Fish. The Morton's Listers swear they'll return it within an hour.

Three, four hours go by. When the guys tell me this story, it makes me furious. I've never liked the Morton's List group anyway, because they're always being terrible. Like loudly marching through the convention with a big fake banner advertising a Ninjas/Pirates Peace Rally. Come the fuck on. Welcome to Internet Joke World 2003. So finding out that these asshats took off with something and have no intention of returning it just amped my blood pressure.

So around 1am, we stormed into the Morton's List headquarters and read them the riot act. Chris explained what happened, the event organizers were apologetic without really apologizing and tried to vow that their teams are released with set rules about the stuff they steal, etc etc. Apparently these guys are new to gamers. "Have you checked the Lost and Found," they asked.

OK, the rulebook to Fish Eat Fish is not a huge deal. I'm sure you can find a PDF of the rules somewhere. It's more the principle of the thing that these little shits are encouraged to hassle other convention-goers and steal things. I'll be crafting an incendiary email to the Origins organizers suggesting that they not allow these guys to play in future years, because judging by the size of the Morton's List Lost and Found, I'll wager we're not the only complainers.

But enough about that. Here's our O08 haul.

In addition to the mountain of swag you see there, I also picked up a Marvel Vs. "Coming of Galactus" set, which comes with a special Galactus deck for one player to wield against an Alliance of decks from the other players. There's also special rules to simulate Galactus eating planets (with a giant-sized Galactus card) and swatting down heroes like flies. This sounds like a cool way to play Vs... I want to do a Green Lanterns vs. Galactus game.

By the way, Clark totally owned the Naruto booth two days in a row. The first day he won a free booster, and the second day he walked off with another free booster, a free Naruto trading figure, and a free pack of Naruto card sleeves. That's in addition to the handful of Naruto promo cards that everybody got anyway, and the free starters you got for demoing. Our stack of free Naruto cards is literally three inches high.

Clark was fascinated by the fighting display, where guys sparred with foam swords and shields. If we walked by the battleground, Clark would come to a dead stop and stare. On Saturday morning the guys running the booth let him step inside and take some swings with one of the small swords.

I had to snap a shot of that Blasphemy game I mentioned...

Maybe it's great, but at $99, who's going to know. After all, I could spend $99 on...

...a box of Doomtown?!? Wow, when did Doomtown get so pricy. My basement must be rich. Five years ago, Mike and I were getting boxes of whatever expansion we wanted for $10 to $30. This vendor has a range from $25 to $99. Crazy. That was one of the most expensive games in this display, short of the Magic stuff which always goes for high prices. Just for reference, this was the same stand where I bought a box of Zatch Bell boosters for the low, low price of $5.

And a final tale from Origins 2008, clipped from Thursday morning:

Clark was not even one minute into the vendor hall when he asked "What's that smell?" I did not actually smell anything at that moment, so I don't know what he noticed... but I can't help but figure that my olfactory senses are burned out and his young, fresh nose had a first taste of pure gamer.

I shot a couple quick movies, just to show off what a gaming con looks like for those of you who have never attended... and basic statistics suggests thats all of you. I'll have those into YouTube by the end of the week.

I have SO MANY photos of Clark posing with various giant-size Pokemon structures. I'll try and limit myself.

We caught some pokesuits today... Pikachu, notably.

Chimchar was weirdly tall.

And we raided the Pokebooth for more free pencils and tattoos.

One interesting change to Origins this year is that they are now checking badges EVERYWHERE. Used to be they only needed to see your badge to enter the exhibit/vendor hall, and when you participated in a sanctioned event. Now there are Door Commies in the hallway, so you can't even get to the big 24 hour gaming zones without an inspection. The convention center, unfortunately for them, has several doors that go straight outside to North Street, so volunteer guards have to stand around there as well. The guards did vanish by evening, probably after the majority of scheduled events were done for the day, so non-paying gamers could at least get in after that.

Here's Mike, Alex and Chris playing Gloom while Clark plays with a Fish Eat Fish set.

Mike is great because he'll drive all the way out here, and then go play fucking Backgammon.

Oh oh oh. I actually saw a guy here with one of those hideous green One Laptop Per Child abominations. He seemed sad.

Our hotel room is on a corner, with a startling three views of Columbus. We're also on the 19th floor, which makes thunderstorms about 10x scarier.

Here's The Boys playing Pac-Man Vs. back in the room.

Origins has a kids room with some simple games but mainly craft project junk. Clark had a great time in there, but Rhonda couldn't believe how many parents just abandoned their kids to a room largely unpatrolled by adults and with none of the usual kiddie-security features. Even Chuck E. Cheese does handstamps these days.

This is my son putting Naruto cards in Naruto sleeves. He learned that from me.

Had a really great Kingdom Hearts TCG demo today; inspired me to care about the game again, as it's been a few months since I thought about it.

Bought Humans!!! It's good. Can't wait to see how it combos with Zombies!!! I'm not emphasizing anything; that's how it's spelled.

Also found more Eye of Judgment 2 boosters for the low-low price of $3 each. Once Sony officially gives up on this thing, I bet those boosters hit the $1 box right quick. And that will be sweet.

Picked up some closeout Zatch Bell cards for nothing. A box set with multiple boosters for $3 and an entire booster box for $5. It's worth that, surely.

The plan is to do a last lap of the vendor hall tomorrow morning and then hit the road.

Green Machine XP? (YouTube)
Gah. You guys and your Windows world just suck.

Why GTA IV Was the Beginning of the End (Gigaom)
Guy writes about how the 360/PS3 next-gen is failing because GTAIV didn't sell as many copies as San Andreas or push enough new console sales... and then gets fucking lit up in the ensuing comment war.

These Pokemon Shirts Are For Adults (Kotaku)
Seriously awesome pokemon t-shirts, intended for adults. Only in Japan, though.

Aeropodcast #37: We Are So Suing You (Aeropause)
I did another podcast with the Aeropause gang. Go download it.

Clark is pretty much having the time of his life. He is already a convention pro with his badge and backpack. As expected, the hotel TV has accessible RCA ports, so we have a portable DVD player and the GameCube in the room. I was going to bring the Wii, but I just didn't feel like unspaghettiing it. So we're last-gen this trip.

Since this is such a major Pokemon event, there is Pokejunk everywhere. Giant inflatable Pokemon, people in Pokemon costumes (like, official costumes), banners, giveaways... we keep hitting the Pokemon booth for free stickers and pencils. Right as I type this there's a huge Pikachu balloon hanging from the ceiling staring right at me.

Clark wants to sit down at every demo table, because he sees the cards and boards and the empty chairs. He demoed Pokemon because the demo guy asked if he wanted to learn to play and Clark said yes. So he sat down and Rhonda helped. He sat very still and drew cards from the deck when prompted, on the promise of getting a free lollipop. It was great fun, but I can't believe a demo guy would ask a three-year-old that question. But then again, "get 'em early" has always been Pokemon's motto.

The Pokebooth was handing out promo cards, a Shellos with an Origins logo in the card art.

Our compatriots this year include Mike, Chris and Alex. Alex is 11 and he and I spent a lot of today talking Pokemon Diamond/Pearl.

We sat for demos of both Naruto and the new(ish) Dragon Ball Z card games. TCGs are always a little thick for a good demo. You have all the terminology to learn, the phases of play. You have to be hardcore to grasp it right away. But we did them... because they were handing out free starter decks as your reward. The Naruto half also had piles of free cards, and free boosters and more if you could randomly select a Naruto card from a heap of facedown cards. Clark won a free booster.

Did the Pokemon miniatures game, which is in its second year of release and still only encompasses one-and-a-half editions. Seems to me like it's already a failure, but Pokemon USA is strong enough that they can afford to demo it. It's actually a pleasant enough game. I already have a bag of them, scored for cheap at various online stores, so now I may indeed try to play it.

Some company we never heard of had some interesting stuff, including a Apples to Apple-ish party game called Rorshach where you have to match other players' opinions on various ink blots. I guess. We looked at - but did not play - a game with one of those blatant pander-to-the-audience titles: Toboggans of Doom. I don't know who gets excited about that kind of junk, "Killer Bunnies" har har har. They always remind me of the lamest videos on America's Funniest Home Videos, the kind that are only funny if you know the person falling off the dock. Anyway, Toboggans seemed okay. I liked the art.

Right next door to the Rorshach guys was this intense game called Blasphemy, where the players all play potential Jesii in biblical times. Whoever gathers enough followers and makes it to the cross gets to be the Messiah. It's probably really funny, but it's also $100. It was a big game, in its defense. Although I was a little scared that it was an educational religious exercise in disguise. At these things, there's always some poor unattended booth with some small potatoes company hawking an ill-conceived religious game. Always. Like that's what people want. So Blasphemy is either that game in wolf's clothing, or it's the $100 antidote to those games.

I always feel terrible walking by those small-small-small press outfits (particularly the ones that do not cost a hundred dollars.) One fat guy with his handmade game... the cheap ones on pure black & white paper, some with little wooden playing pieces. Their eyes radiating confidence, but their posture already sunken with defeat. As we walked by, one of them called out "You guys like space games?" No sir, we don't.

Out of the Box offers discounts to teachers, and we had two in our party. So Fourhman.home now has 10 Days in Asia (a very nice, easy-to-grasp board game) and Tutankhamun, still riding on Clark's fascination with King Tut. Both for $20, when 10 Days in Asia usually sells for $25 just by itself. Yay teaching! Summers off AND cheap games!

Did not get to demo Humans!!! today; there was always a crowd whenever we happened by. Hopefully tomorrow. They had a zombie mannequin propped up that Clark would not sit next to for a picture.

Finished Metal Gear Solid 4 last night at 3am. Which, of course, means that I last touched the controller probably around 1:30am, hyuk hyuk.

Seriously, it was awesome. I love those characters, I love that world. I will absolutely play through it again. The ending was great. Was it gaming's Citizen Kane? No. I don't even know what that means, or why we have to torture ourselves with that kind of talk. But it was harrowing and engaging and fitting and I cried several times. In 90 minutes, there's plenty of time to cry.

Anyway, here's the usual end-of-game ranking recap:

95 alert phases shows how bad I am at tripping alarms. 153 kills is low, I would imagine. I stopped killing about halfway through and switched to the tranquilizer gun for just about everything (except the Gekkos).

My rank was determined to be Eagle, which means 150 head shots (I assume head tranqs count... I always aim for the head when putting guys to sleep.)

The other animal emblems I unlocked give a perfectly accurate account of how I play Metal Gear.

Inchworm: crawl for an hour. Yep, I crawl around a lot. I always hide in ducts, waiting for enemies to pass by.

Lobster: crouch for 2.5 hours. Yep again. Because I'm paranoid about making noise that the baddies can hear, I'm in crouch mode almost all the time. Although I alert dudes anyway, as proven above.

Hyena: pick up 400 weapons/items. Oh, absolutely. How can you not run around picking up every dropped weapon or hidden item?

Pig: use 40 healing items. Sure, lots of rations get used. In a thick battle, I have to click off the Solid Eye and put the item default on rations just so I won't die.

Jaguar: a weird gestalt ranking... Alert Phases: over 75 / Kills: under 250 / Continues: under 25. It means I ticked the enemy off, but then didn't kill them (I tranq'ed them) and didn't die overly often.

So I'm largely a clumsy coward who collects stuff, but wicked on the headshots. Sounds about right.

Origins begins this Wednesday, so it's past time to start figuring out what games and booths I want to check out. And yes, I'm already well into the phase where I start not wearing my favorite t-shirts because I want to save them for the con.

Looking over the event floor plan, I can't help but notice that a lot of big names are absent. No Wizards booth, no WizKids booth, no Upper Deck booth. Wizards (a no-show for several years now) and Upper Deck are running events, but with no booth space for demos and purchases, they're dead to me. I really wanted to stop by the Upper Deck booth for a Marvel Ultimate Battles demo and a laugh. The lack of WizKids hurts; I like picking up the convention-exclusive Pirates packs.

Should we be worried about the future of Origins when it can't attract boothspace from some of the industry's biggest companies? I suppose there's something to be said for allowing smaller companies a chance to stand out, but if you're not getting the big boys, that means they no longer have faith in the show... so what's that tell the fans?

Anyway, here's some of the games I want to check out at Origins 2008:

I'd like to demo Tomb, although I'm not sure they can do much to sell me on it. I'm interested because it's described as having a quick setup but comes with hundreds of cards and pieces. Nice. I always feel like I can use more board games, even though I rarely get the chance to run a huge Lord of the Rings-style board game these days.

I'm fascinated by Humans!!!, as an add-on to already well-mined Zombies!!! game family. The website says Humans!!! won't be around until August, so it seems unlikely that it will be on sale this week, but maybe in demo. I love modular systems, and this could be the final element that makes Zombies!!! work for me... most of the time, I find it too repetitive and the old editions I have are filled with card-interpretation problems.

Yetisburg wins purely on concept. Yetis in the Civil War! I hope this one is as good as it sounds. I can't wait until the conflicts of modern times are steeped in antiquity enough that game designers of the future can bust on them. Gettysburg ought to be a standing lesson that no tragic event in history is immune to being de-emotionalized. All you numbnuts with Never Forget 9/11 bumper stickers please take note.

Two years ago I picked up Monsters Menace America, a board game featuring giant sci-fi beasts rampaging across the US... and that concept returns in Monsterpocalypse, a collectible miniatures game. MMA has a really unfair endgame, which is why I don't pull it out that often. Maybe Monsterpocalypse will do better, although I can't say I'm impressed with the maps shown on the website. The figures look nice, but demo figures always look nice.

Fantasy Flight will be there, no doubt pitching a lot of Kingdom Hearts. Pokemon has had a big showing for the last few years, so I look forward to posing by more giant inflatable pokemon.

The coolest news about this year's trip is that the whole family is going, so Clark gets his first taste of the convention scene. And smell, I'm sure.

Not sure if I'll participate in any events this year. I always consider doing a Pokemon sealed-deck but never do. Doomtown is completely absent these days, so there's not even that tourney anymore.

There's some kind of weird DS thing going on, where you show up with your DS specifically to play DS games that are based on tabletop games, like Chess, Sudoku, Marvel Vs., Yu-Gi-Oh and the Fullmetal Alchemist TCG. WTF? How about some actual, popular DS games, you mo-rons. I'll never understand why events like this don't court the video game world... it's largely the same audience (except for the old-timer historical wargamers, but they're always over in their own wing anyway) and the video games offer so much more splash. With WizKids etc all bailing out, maybe Origins should look in that direction to fill the gap. This year's WizardWorld had onstage Rock Band competitions and there was always a crowd. Adapt or die, Origins. I'm sure the wargamers were all pissy when WOTC and Magic first stole the thunder, there's no shame in doing it again.

We drive out to Columbus this Wednesday. I fully expect to post some recaps from the hotel.

New DC Super Friends line SHOCKS Fourhmans at Toys R Us.

I've long bemoaned the lack of a DC counterpart to the Marvel Super Squad line... fun, kid-friendly two-inch figures covering a nice range of the Marvel U (Punisher in his Captain America costume! For serious!) And then this weekend we spot a tiny, happy li'l Batman as part of Fisher-Price's long-running Imaginext line.

In addition to the expected multi-Batmen figures, there's separately packaged Penguin, Joker and Superman, and a huge Batcave playset that comes with Robin and another Batman. We picked up one of the Batmen and the Penguin. I suspect Pengy to be short-packed.

You know, I read ToyFare. I read websites that cover comics and I read websites that cover toys. Why did I have no idea that these were coming out? By the way, we still haven't seen any of the second wave Super Friends figs... from whence we'll get Hawkman and Cyborg.

Chulip down to $10 new at GameStop.

This isn't especially notable except that Chulip was a GameStop-exclusive game, and that it needs to be seen by more people. Note that I did not say "played." Chulip will eat your ass.

Also note that the game is super-flaky and you need a slimline PS2 to run it because older models will choke on it. I haven't tested it on a backwards-compatible PS3 but I should so that Future Internet Travelers will find a hit when they Google "Chulip PS3."

Upper Deck Quickstrike boxes are really nice.

You may have seen these a couple years ago, when Upper Deck tried (and I assume failed) to launch a Pirates of the Caribbean card game and an Avatar card game, under the cross-compatible Quickstrike brand name. The 2P starter kits come in a swanky plastic box, with built-in trays for two decks, plus clips for rulebooks/maps/guides and a pen. And the exterior is like a DVD sleeve, so you can slip in any paper insert you want if you're not actually playing Avatar.

We found some of these at one of those closeout garbage stores. These would be fantastic for carting around tournament decks.

Adult Swim.com a no-go for Wii and PS3.

I wanted to watch the new Venture Bros online from the comfort of my couch, and neither the Wii nor the PS3's web browser could handle the version of Flash that Adult Swim.com requires. What the hell is up with that? What's so hard about keeping Flash current? Pay the lady and get your product up to standards.

So jealous of the new Metal Gear PS3 bundle.

For $500 you get an 80gig PS3, MGS4, one of the new Dual Shock 3 controllers (IE, they didn't cheap out and pack in an older SIXAXIS model) and $10 credit for the PSN game Pain. Had I been able to wait another year for the PS3, I definitely would have been waiting no longer. I was trying to get my buddy Mike to buy one of these bundles just today. Odds are that there will be another price drop (or model reshuffling) this fall, but those bundles won't come with Metal Gear.

The Dead Parrot Sketch: Re-Enactment (YouTube)
One guy does the Dead Parrot sketch. His earnestness makes it compelling.

MST3K reunion at Comic-Con (MST3K Info)
Everybody, everybody, everybody will be on hand for this epic panel discussion.

The Gabriel Method (Penny Arcade)
Friday's comic is the funniest thing they've done in quite a while.

Limbo of the Lost wiki Wikia)
So this point-and-click PC adventure game comes out and it's this huge victory for small-time publishers blah blah blah. And then people start realizing that almost every single shot of this game contains elements ripped off from other PC games, such as Diablo II, Morrowind, Unreal Tournament and Thief. Apparently what happened was Limbo's "designers" would play some other game, get to an area they liked, then take a screenshot... and then use some or all of that shot in their own game. These guys are so dead. We've all seen basement-level games that steal from existing works, but to go for a full commercial release and expect big bucks for it? What a bunch of idiots.

POSING QUESTIONS TO COMIC BOOK FANS ON THE INTERNET - A DEMONSTRATION (Comic Book Resources)
A quick example of what it's like to talk to online fans. Applicable to any interest, actually.

Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda (Richard Dawkins.net)
Careful essay about the relationships between religion/athiesm and Hitler/the Holocaust, plus a little bit about how Ben Stein and the "Expelled" movie tricked notable scientists into participating and then slandered them.

What happened to Ben Stein anyway? I thought he was smart. Guess that was an act too.

MGS4 has a sweet camera mode... I mean, MGS has almost always had a camera and let you save out screenshots, but this time there's been a drastic improvement: 2P mode. You can assign the camera to controller #2, so somebody else can snap photos while you play. I put more details on Aeropause, but I have some additional spoilery photos here.

Actually, the last two are probably the most spoilery, but you need to be a pretty big Metal Gear fan to know why.

I am not a fan of bumper sticker politics, but I spotted this heavily modded sticker the other day:

You might recognize that as the commonly found "Don't take your organs to Heaven... Heaven knows we need them here." But this driver removed the Heaven references - both of them - on his version.

Now that is a strong fucking statement. This person feels enough dedication to the organ donation program that he or she wanted to use the familiar bumper sticker, but also lives in the World of Reality where our internal organs do not travel to any mystical fantasy land upon our death. In fact, they rot in the ground. So he or she was willing to put a ridiculously altered sticker on the car, bizarrely presented so you can't NOT look at it. That mangled bumper sticker carries two huge, important messages.

Note that the Heaven bits were cut out before the sticker was applied. Not scratched off later. This is pre-mediated atheism, folks!

I suppose that if the nation's morons can derive solace from getting behind some dimwit with a JESUS SAVES bumper sticker, I can feel happy about this one.

I read this article about the debut of the new Hulk movie and ended up severely confused.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A bigger, meaner "The Incredible Hulk" crushed the competition at North American weekend box office with a $54.5 million take, but still fell short of its predecessor, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

OK, I think we all predicted that. Whenever this new movie came up, the immediate reaction was almost uniformly "Huh? Again? And it's not a sequel?"

Marvel and Universal brought the first "Hulk" to theaters in 2003, but that more introspective version failed to follow through on its muscular $62 million debut after disappointing comic book fans. Its ticket sales fell quickly and the movie ended its run with $137 million at domestic box offices.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but if Movie B has a worse opening weekend than Movie A, then it is almost impossible to expect that Movie B will end up making more money. Especially if we're talking about summer popcorn blockbusters, where the movie's only true excitement is opening week because the audience will have another HUGE summer movie to go see next weekend.

Still, the opening for the new "Hulk" was widely watched because of the disappointing overall run for the 2003 version, as well as Marvel's decision to spend up to $150 million to restart the franchise so soon afterward.

"It seems like 'Hulk' has smashed those questions to pieces," said David Maisel, chairman of Marvel Entertainment division Marvel Studios.

What questions? Did Hulk smash them because they were insightful and correct, or because they were insulting and inconsequential? Is this guy happy or sad about this movie's box office take?

Maisel added that "Hulk" was the second-strongest Father's Day weekend opening behind $58.1 million for last year's "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," also based on Marvel superheroes.

Ha! In addition to having a lower opening than Ang Lee's Awful Boring Hulk movie, Edward Norton's Super Great Hulk movie also did worse than the second Fantastic Four movie... which, if you'll recall, had ZERO buzz, ZERO interest, ZERO word-of-mouth, ZERO merchandising sales, and left ZERO prospects for a third FF movie.

But yet this is spun as some kind of incredible fucking success story for "Marvel superheroes"? This new Hulk movie is headed towards another dismal showing. But let's try again in 2010 when Ashton Kutcher decides he wants to give it a go.

I don't get it.

The best Marvel-related news lately is the the second Marvel Ultimate Alliance game will take place during Civil War. Which is super sweet. I call dibs on Thing, who spent most of Civil War in France.

Here's hoping MUA2 addresses the general messiness of the previous Ultimate Alliance/X-Men Legends games. Because even a DC guy such as myself wouldn't mind a tight, next-gen, storyline-focused, multiplayer superhero brawler set in the Marvel U.

Finished Act 2.

MGS4 has this intensity to it that makes it exceptionally hard to put down. I have now completed both Act 1 and Act 2 in one-night, four-hour bursts. And I think my longest cutscene to date was about half an hour. Some non-spoiler thoughts...

• Next-gen Otacon is pretty much Jeff Goldblum doing Steve Jobs with the personality of that bashful vulture from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.
• I'll risk any danger to get a hidden song for Snake's iPod.
• There are Playboy mags EVERYWHERE. I remember them being sort of rare in previous games.
• The voice actor who does Drebin was also Cyborg from Teen Titans.
• How cool is it that Drebin has 20% off sales on Wednesdays and Sundays!
• I really hope there's a cutscene viewer hidden somewhere in this game.

Venture Bros Season Three is total continuity porn.

And I love that. The Billy Quizboy episode was a season-and-a-half high.

I'm deep into Pokemon Pearl again.

Thanks to Pokemon Ranch. The DS was on just about continuously all weekend. I think I upped my pokedex by about 40 guys.

We watched Fantasia.

Clark's main interest was the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment. Which is probably the same reaction most people have had for about seventy years now.

Used Wii Transfer again, to play our iTunes library on the Wii.

I actually forgot I bought Wii Transfer, back in January of 2007! Version 2.5.2 was released last fall, and I just got around to updating. Since I smoothed out my WiFi, Wii Transfer works better than ever.

What a great game. Definitely going on my short list of overlooked, underappreciated games. I'll be bitching about nobody buying this one for YEARS to come.

This picture probably doesn't qualify as a spoiler, but I beat the #1 ranked assassin and then saw this:

Reason #7,437 why No More Heroes is such a great game. It plays with the form. I went for the "real" ending. I looked it up, and apparently you only get the real ending option if you have purchased all of the beam katanas. Since I'm super-anal about buying every possible upgrade as soon as possible, this wasn't even close to a problem.

However, I did miss ONE of the collectable trading cards, waaaay back around assassin #5. I was very concerned that having an incomplete set would somehow screw me up later in the game, but it did not. Turns out that finding all 50 of the (initially available) trading cards means absolutely nothing. As in, it unlocks zippo.

I've got to reveal this, sort of like how I couldn't not talk about Snake's iPod a couple days ago. This movie shows off one of the awesome experiences about No More Heroes. I can't really call it a spoiler because it happens about ten minutes into the game.

That is so goddamned awesome, I can't even stand it.

I started a second game (on the easier difficulty), just to see what's different about your second playthrough. You get to keep your upgrades, money and clothing, and there's more cards to collect... including a bunch that showcase production art. So that's cool.

Although I will definitely table the game for a while, since other milieus beckon. I have a feeling I'll come back to No More Heroes during some future downtime to be named later. Just to blast through on easy and soak in all the cutscenes.

And here's the game's intro (followed by some Japanese promo videos), which does a great job of showing off the brilliance.

Moe!

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Skateboarding (YouTube)
I think I did this maybe twice. This is the surprising skateboarding mini-game from Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, where you skate all over the top of the Big Shell. I love the punked up remix of the MGS2 theme.

One Historic Night, Two Americas (NY Times)
Beautiful editorial about Obama's ascendency.

Toon Zone Throwdown (Toon Zone)
Five-page article detailing some of cartoondom's greatest fight scenes, with five great bouts for each category... Bare-Knuckle Brawls has the expected Hulk vs. Thing battle but also that nasty rabbit fight from Watership Down. Duels goes from Tom & Jerry to Advent Children. DBZ, Naruto and plenty of other anime are well-represented in the Power Fight category. Comedy Fights includes one of those Bill Plympton cartoons as well as the Peter vs. Chicken battle from Seth "I never met a joke I wouldn't reuse six more times" MacFarlane. And the final category, Top 5 Knockouts includes a Justice League bit I've never seen plus the final Maleficent fight from Sleeping Beauty.

Wii Nearly Overtakes Xbox 360 U.S. Install Base After Strong May Sales (Kotaku)
And the bad news for the 360 continues, with the PS3 outselling the 360 for I think the first time, despite all that GTA's New Home crap... and the PS3 has been tracking faster than the 360 for several months now.

And to all of this that, thanks to the 360 hardware failure rate, there is a far larger number of working Wiis in US homes today than 360s, and you've got Nintendo owning America. As well as the world.

Here's a must-read-because-I-agree-with-everything-he-says NPD sales post from Dubious Quality.

The Pogo Special Birthday Special (Cartoon Brew)
I have that on VHS, like, an offishul version. The Cartoon Brew article is more about the rift this show created between Pogo creator Walt Kelly and long-past-his-prime animator Chuck Jones.

The Birthday Special pales in comparison to the claymation I Go Pogo special, which I also have on VHS... albeit taped off of Showtime many years ago.

Comic-book controversy is a cautionary tale (MSNBC)
A little history lesson on how the comic book industry was nearly destroyed in the 1950s, and what it means for other certain popular adults-don't-get-it modern pursuits... like gaming.

Developer Q&A: SIREN Blood Curse (PlayStation.Blog)
I'm pretty damn sure I'm going to get into this. It will fill the months until Fatal Frame 4.

I swear I just wanted to get that initial 4gig install out of the way and then go do something else, but I ended up playing MGS4 for over three hours and completing Act 1 (Solid Normal difficulty).

Did anybody report on this, this whole Snake has an iPod thing? Guess that was part of the NDA that all the review sites are bitching about.

The iPod lives in the Items menu, right alongside Snake's rations and whatnot. When you pull it up, you have to use the click wheel by rotating the right analog stick! Freaking hell awesome. And it is preloaded with a selection of Metal Gear tunes, sorted under Artist and Album and Song just like a real iPod. There's even podcasts! Yes, every so often Konami will release a new exclusive podcast (and additional songs as well) which you can download in-game to listen to while you're playing the game. Unbelievable.

The first podcast runs about eight minutes, and mainly seems to be about how and why they negotiated the iPod rights. Turns out Kojima and his pals are big Mac heads! In fact, there's Macs all over the game. Otacon seems to have half a dozen of them in his lab.

And if you want another reason why Metal Gear 4 is great, take a look at the improved girlie mag item... an official Playboy production:

After finishing Act 1, the game started another install. It only took a few minutes, but clearly the game is worried about my sleeping habits...

Also, Clark and I went to the mall this morning to pick up my reserved copy, right? Then as we're just dapping around riding the escalators, I started sweating my decision not to get the Limited Edition version. So we went back to the GameStop and traded up for it. I'm such a Metal Gear Sucka.

The limited edition comes with an extra blu-ray disk with hours of behind-the-scenes stuff. And also a slip of paper warning you not to watch it until you've finished the games, thanks to spoiler content.

It's been two years since our last visit to Dutch Wonderland. Being three, Clark is now wholly of-age to enjoy the park. There's only a handful of rides that a three-year-old can't experience. I even took him on the raft tube water slide.

As is usual with young master Clark in new situations, he was fairly sober about the whole thing. Even the rides that he really liked and wanted to go on multiple times. The water slide was a classic example... he was nervous about it, but he genuinely wanted to ride it, so he just sorta got quiet and steeled himself.

DW struggles mightily to stay on theme. The height chart delineates according to precious gems, part of the medieval theme... and not offensive to boys young enough to not be bothered by being labeled an "emerald" for the day. Not yet, anyway.

Clark is plenty old enough to realize that this ride sucks. It's so slow that the bulldozers only go around the circle twice.

Let's go on the log boat ride instead...

DW recently added a Duke the Dragon sculpture to the boat ride. So it is no longer a frightening tyrannosaur painted purple in an attempt to resemble Barney, I MEAN DUKE.

Yes, yes, we have a town named Intercourse. I wonder how many RVs across America have these impudent pot holders hanging from the paneling.

I don't know why I only took pictures of the lame rides. This train car wasn't even a ride; it's an upper body exercise machine. The track is so long that it is impossible for any child to get through it without giving up.

I've lived here my entire life and I still can't guess what the pretzel connection is. Maybe somebody around here makes them. Presumably someone Dutch. Which means German.

I'll never stop finding this funny... the monorail (one of the few still in operation outside of Disney!) loops out across the parking lot.

Allow me to plug my virgin voyage on the sunny rays of podcasting, episode #35 of the Aeropodcast, a regular feature on Aeropause.com.

We talked mostly about Metal Gear, a little about my personal gaming history... and I profess my love for Eternal Darkness, Professor Layton and Bully. Among other things.

I listened to most of it today. I seem to giggle a lot. And my old version of GarageBand stopped recording after an hour so the other guys on the 'cast had to continue without me for the last twenty minutes. Here's hoping I get that fixed before the next one.

It's in your iTunes Music Store (search for Aeropodcast) or can be found on the link above.

Pokemon Ranch showed up on WiiWare today. I fretted about the purchase for all of ten seconds and then bought it. Naturally (for me), the chief selling feature was the ability to save photos of your critters. Unlike Smash Bros, Pokemon Ranch lets you save the photos to an SD card in an unmolested jpg format. No conversion required! Here's some of our first snaps, in the original 640 x 356 size.

You get to incorporate your Miis into the ranch; I enlisted myself, Rhonda and Clark. The Miis walk around the field alongside the pokemon, randomly triggering animations with each other. You also get strange onscreen text messages like "Does CLARK like MAGIKARP?" and "JOE is repairing a fence."

Yes, it looks like an N64 game. As if that matters. There's two reasons for the low-polys... first, Pokemon Ranch can theoretically handle hundreds of simultaneously gallivanting pokemon, so keeping the models simple becomes a necessity. Secondly, there's an attempt here to Mii-ify the entire cast of 460+ different pokemon. The streamlined Mii purview brings along a sort of art deco look to character design. Some pokemon come out rather plain, but others - like that ponyta - are a refreshing take on some very familiar monsters.

You can "play" Ranch even if you don't own Pokemon Pearl or Diamond. Hayley (the ranch owner; seen in the background above) kicks things off with six of her own pokemon, and promises to add in a new one every day you play. You even get some small role in deciding what the new arrival will be. Upon quitting the game, Hayley asked me if I would like to see a cold pokemon, and when I said yes, she indicated that she would bring a Sneasel to the ranch tomorrow.

Of course, if you do own Pearl or Diamond, you can transfer pokemon from the DS cart to the Wii. You can transfer them back at any time, but you can't transfer them to another cart, or back into the same cart if the game was restarted.

Once Hayley knows you have a DS game, she'll give you tips about where to find pokemon that you have not yet caught. She told me where to find a Weezing. If I show her a Weezing before 6/19 (she picked the deadline), I may win something... but I do not know what yet.

So what do you do in Pokemon Ranch? A lot of watching, initially. The ranch will grow in size and unlock new features as more monsters are brought into the game. There are toys you can drop into the field, which I guess are just more opportunities for cute animations and silly pictures.

Clark is feeding some pokemon in that picture, but that was a random animation.

There is a parade mode. A lot of this is Mii Channel for pokemon.

Every so often, the pokemon will perform some kind of stunt, like this totem pole stackup. What a photo op!

We just missed getting a photo of a pikachu electrocuting Clark, complete with a hydrocephalic Mii skeleton.

Another view. You do not get a Free Look camera mode until later on, so your camera shots are limited to the game's randomized angles and sweeps. I'm looking forward to the Free Look.

So I'm glad I bought it. This game has already been written off by the gaming press, so I've seen very few details about what it actually does. The general assumption is that it is nothing more than a WiiWare edition of the GameCube's Pokemon Box, which was just a way to transfer pokemon to the GameCube memory card so as to clear out save space on your GBA games. While Pokemon Ranch certainly does that, there's at least some other functions to help bolster the package. Clark was snapping pictures like crazy, and then telling me which photos he wanted to keep, which already justifies the purchase in my mind.

I'm about to make my podcast debut.

For a couple months now, I have been writing off and on for gaming website Aeropause.com. This week I joined their mostly-weekly podcast for some chatter about Metal Gear and such. Watch Aeropause for podcast episode #35! Maybe I'll become a regular...

DC remembered Mr. Terrific is an atheist.

The current Kingdom Come/Gog storyline in Justice Society just keeps getting better. In the latest issue, Gog rises out of the ground, proclaims himself a god, and toolboxes like Lance start believing it. Mr. T points out that the JSA has met plenty of gigantic powerful entities before and none of them were supernatural deities. I love that guy.

And then Mr. Terrific tries to talk to Gog, but Gog can't or won't hear him, but Gog does listen to "believer" Amazing Man... which leads to some hilarious back-and-forth.

Local Disney Store closing.

Bit of a shock... the Park City Disney Store has been in operation for at least 15 years. It was the site of a semi-famous college gag where me and some pals tried to walk from the front of the store and back out without being confronted by a cast member. All but one of us got tagged almost immediately... and the guy who got through couldn't attract their attention no matter what he did.

We just happened to stumble into this store's last day of operation yesterday... I snapped a couple pictures of the barren shelves and was yelled at by the clerk.

Buffet = gateway song.

I doubt anybody was expecting a trio of Jimmy Buffet songs to hit Rock Band but it happened. I picked them up, happy to support something that isn't bland indie rock or obnoxious metal. On easy and medium, the Buffet songs are roughly equivalent to the easiest thing in the world, which makes me think they're intended to be gateway songs for Dads and Grandads who have never played Rock Band before.

Nice: unlike many Rock Band songs, this pack is pretty much the artist's greatest hits. You can probably guess; Margaritaville, Cheeseburger in Paradise and Volcano. I think they are all new recordings by Mr. Parrothead. Volcano at least is, because Jimmy has changed a line in the middle to specifically mention Rock Band.

12+ hours into No More Heroes.

I'm up to assassin rank 3. There is so much greatness in this game. I want to list everything, but it all deserves to be protected as spoilers. Plenty of swearing, truly bizarre cutscenes, clever boss fights, sexy ladies, collectibles, fun combat, nice use of Wii features... it all more than covers the ugly graphics, repetitious sidequests and lame open world.

I will say that it took me about eight hours before I realized you can kick dumpsters to find free money or secret t-shirt designs.

Finally got to this week's issue of Justice Society and found this:

I just about fell off the toilet.

For those of you not reading DC books right now, for the last few months they have been running villain-focused house ads... pairing up major league baddies like Luthor and Mongul with Successories-inspired adjectives and layout. Doing one with Ambush Bug not only harkens back to his initial appearances as a villain (He killed a guy! It's true!) but also shows that DC is genuinely attempting to turn Ambush Bug into something real.

The last time we saw the Bug for any length of time, it was in that Lobo miniseries that nobody cared about and wasn't much good anyway. The upcoming miniseries Ambush Bug: Year None is being positioned as a Big Deal. And as a longtime fan, I couldn't be happier.

Not that I think DC is somehow going to turn Ambush Bug into a villain - they're absolutely not - but sticking him in the villain house ads shows how important they think Year None could be. By all accounts, it will be a return to the brilliant in-house parody found in the second phase of Ambush Bug's existence, when Keith Giffen turned the character into his own personal soapbox for everything that was weird or stupid or forgotten about the DCU.

Is it too late to beg for a poster-sized print of that ad?

10 optical illusions in 2 minutes (YouTube)
Just what it says. Even reveals how most of them are done.

Official Fatal Frame IV website (Nintendo of Japan)
Yes, Nintendo is so behind this one. Crazy. And don't miss this round of screenshots from Famitsu! Especially bottom right. I am so goddamn excited.

Science and Nerdery, Part the Second (Second Printing)
Very funny partial transcript of a guy trying to annotate Final Crisis #1 to his non-comics-reading girlfriend.

My Neighborhood Speed Trap (Cockeyed.com)
Rob sets up his own homegrown speed trap with a toy radar gun and a tricycle in the road. Best line: "The police aren't usually as pleasant on the second visit."

Before the Fire (Mice Age)
A pictorial of the section of Universal Studios Hollywood before last week's fire. Tell you what, I wouldn't even bother rebuilding half of what was lost. King Kong was an old, crappy attraction with zero resonance with today's audiences. Big robot monkey head, whatever.

Planet 3 Studios Crams an Entire Office Workstation Into a Box (Gizmodo)
Holy crap. An office that unfolds out of a box, with TWO desks. It's a big damn box, but still. There's a YouTube video that shows the assembly but it doesn't get interesting until halfway through.

By the way, today I learned that those awful under-the-desk keyboard trays cost over $150 each. WTF?! They suck!

One of the booths at Wizard World - probably several booths actually - was hawking bootleg DVDs. These are always a common sight at conventions. Many years ago I bought a bootleg VHS of an unaired American Red Dwarf pilot at a Star Trek convention... so I am not un-complicit in these crimes against copyright.

Anyway, this particular booth had a Batman fan-film trailer in perpetual loop and I must have stood there like an idiot and watched it half a dozen times, while Josh was pulling X-Factor trades. Here it is, "Batman Legends":

Setting aside the lack of big-budget CG effects and the quite likely non-professional cast and such, why do I think that looks about ten times better than every Batman feature film ever made?

I like that the costumes look straight off the page... there's no obnoxious need to coat people in body armor. And it's not that I'm an absolutist, it's just that, to me, a simple fabric costume seems much more realistic than the walking tank Bat-armor theory. This Batman might even be able to turn his head, unlike any screen Batman since Adam West.

The unbridled fan-service is what gets me. I'm not even a big Batman fan, but seeing Mad Hatter, Riddler, Nightwing and Harley in addition to the usual cinematic Batman cast is just great.

Here's a few more... let's hear it for film school students!

"Grayson," about an adult Dick Grayson taking up the Batman legacy after Bruce Wayne's death.

"The World's Finest," with Catwoman and Livewire (?) running up against Power Girl.

"World's Finest Heroes: Superman and Batman," a nice stab at the mythical Superman vs. Batman movie.

This is one of those games where the good bits far outweigh the bad bits, even when the bad bits are really bad. Like Disaster Report, Odama, or, well, Killer 7 (another Suda 51 game, the guy who made No More Heroes and is about to make Fatal Frame 4). Remember how I said it looked like a PS2 game? It might even be a PS1 game. Or at least an early Silent Scope-style PS2 game. I mean, there is some seriously ugly shit in this one. As in Killer 7, there is an effort to use stylized graphics to cover up the low-poly, bad texture, nasty-ass models... but it's not as extreme here, which ends up not really helping matters.

But come on, you save your game by taking a dump.

See, that's precisely what I mean. I don't care how lousy the driving controls are, you get to watch Travis Touchdown visit the toilet.

There's some ugly for you. Checkerboard floor. It reminds me of the mansion in the first Resident Evil.

Still, this game bleeds a fun, anarchic style. Note the pixellized S icon in front of Travis, and the retro-looking font. That kind of old-school stuff is all over the game. It's so nice to see a game that attempts to do something clever with menus and mission points and all the boring standards that have become modern game design cliches.

"Coconuts are worth more than human life!" Non-sequiturs abound in Santa Destroy.

You can really see the high-contrast shadow effect here. In No More Heroes, shadows are either pitch black or non-existent.

Standing outside the Beef Head video store. Compared to GTAIV, the city environment is an embarrassment.

There's plenty of swearing as soon as the game begins, and not just in text conversations.

Check out Travis's pad. Looks like an N64 on the shelf.

The hotel room also features his pet cat Jeane. If you select her, you get to click through one of a few animated sequences. Completely unnecessary, but I swear to you that I click on that cat every bloody time I'm back at the save house, just because.

Occasionally Jeane gets stuck on the ceiling fan:

The meat of the game is these various linear assassination missions... where you walk through a very limited environment killing people until you get to the boss. I just beat the third boss, which was the first real difficult section for me.

Before each boss, a really incredibly cool thing happens... an underutilized Wii feature that I won't spoil. But it's something that I can guarantee the other console makers are going to put into their next machines.

Combat is a blast, thanks to some well-implemented Wii Remote controls. Travis has a light sab--- beam katana, and how you hold the Remote is how he holds the beam sword. The game really only cares if you're holding it tilted up - for a high stance - or tilted down - for a low stance, but it does bother to animate the blade moving at all the points inbetween. The enemies will guard themselves high or low so naturally you have to come at them from the opposite position.

A button swings the sword, B button does a context-sensitive physical attack... either a kick to break a guard or a grab to suplex an enemy into the floor. Apparently you learn several kinds of suplex maneuvers, all performed by specific flicks of Remote and Nunchuk (following onscreen prompts). Once you get an enemy does to near-death, you can do a killing move by slicing the Remote in the random direction shown (again, onscreen prompts), which nicely duplicates the feeling of sending a katana through somebody's torso. All in all, it's not so much waggle that it will annoy you, which is nice.

Between the assassinations, you're expected to tool around town on your gigantic motorcycle and find ways to earn cash and level up. This is generally the sucky section, especially when you screw over a side quest and the game makes you drive across town again. I don't mind re-driving in Liberty City. In Santa Destroy, it's another story.

There's a lot to like in No More Heroes. There's a lot to hate, sure, but there's enough bizarre, interesting takes on Our Blessed Gaming Conventions that makes it worth the trouble. Although I wish I had started my game on the lowest difficulty. I kinda just want to experience the thing, and not have my ass handed to me over and over again.

Sam and Max video on Nintendo Channel.

It's buried several pages in, but there's sort of a preview of Sam and Max Season One up. It's one of those fake CG blooper things, but it's still pretty good. BUYING IT.

Also, does anybody else think that TV Show King looks ok? From the demo movie (also on Nintendo Channel), the questions look way too easy... but the basic concept of a simultaneous 4P quiz show with Wii Remotes seems like something that should have happened in Wii Year One.

Wow on the No More Heroes.

$30 at Target. Do yourself a favor and go get it (if you're over 18). Play it for just thirty minutes and I can almost guarantee you will be pleasantly surprised at least three times. Very, very different stuff. I'm definitely going to have more about this one later.

On the negative side, it looks like a PS2 game.

Every time I try to play something new, I end up losing hours to Mario Kart, GTA, or just dapping around on the Wii.

I still haven't done anything with Zack & Wiki or Portal. I understand Portal is not that long, so one of these nights I'm diving in. And now with No More Heroes in the mix, I'm feeling like completely tabling GTAIV because it's nice to have something completely incredible waiting on the near horizon. Even if I let it sit until August, it will still be awesome. And what about Metal Gear.

The problem with me preferring all of these story-focused games is that the longer I dally on completing them, the greater the chances I'll stumble into a key spoiler somewhere.

Bachelor glassware get.

One of the booths t Wizard World Philly was selling these nice glasses screened with images of various super heroes. Just like the ones you may recall from the 1970s. They did not take credit, or else I would have come home with four of them. I'm keeping an eye on their website for any specials. At the show, they only had Marvel glasses (the classic Ghost Rider glass was really, really nice), but they had a sign that a DC set was coming soon.

Nintendo Power ran out of Phantom Hourglass guides.

The renewal bonus for sticking with the new publishers of Nintendo Power was a strategy guide for Phantom Hourglass. Which I didn't really want, but whatever. Anyway, they ran out of them, so I got a poster book instead. There's some nice imagery in there, even covering games that you either forgot about (hey! a THIRD Metroid Prime game!) or notable third-parties (Okami, that Sonic DS RPG)... but I can't say I really wanted a bunch of magazine page-sized posters with staple holes in the middle either.

Under Nintendo's ownership, the annual freebie of a t-shirt or some rare trinket was a much better deal.

So yeah, Galaxy Colosseum.

Freakin' Nintendo. They love to tell nobody nothing.

The latest Mario Kart online tournament takes place in a battle stage that nobody knew existed - the Mario Galaxy-inspired Galaxy Colosseum - and features a goal that does not appear in the main game - a boss attack round similar to the event challenges in Mario Kart DS. You have to knock a bunch of Spiky Topmen off the platform.

Isn't this classic Nintendo? Here's something certifiably awesome - completely new content only available during the special online tourneys - and they never say one word about it.

Now the question is, can you somehow unlock Galaxy Colosseum for offline play... or is the level not even physically on the disk? I can't imagine Nintendo actually doing this, but what if they could keep crafting new stages and releasing them for limited-time download-only online play? INFINITE KART.