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.

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.

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?

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."

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

I just about fell off the toilet.

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.

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."

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.