Wassup 2008 (YouTube) You're about to like that "Wassssuuuuup" trend again.
Disney Afternoon Characters (Yesterland) Some old pics of abandoned Disney costume characters, most notably Don Karnage and Rebecca Cunningham (gentlemen, start your fanfics!) I wonder where these costumes ended up.
On Wedding Design (Cabel's Blog) Good goddamn. This has got to be the best wedding invitation design I've ever seen.
No idea what happened, but the LittleBigPlanet level I designed and published during the beta will not load. Can't play it or edit it (but it can be favorited!) Plenty of other beta levels survived the transition, but mine is a no-go. I've sent a curious email to Media Molecule.
In the meantime, I've started work on a Green Lantern-based level.
Sarah Palin, your fifteen minutes are UP. Mrs. "What magazines do I read? All of them!" can trot on back to Alaska and be stupid on her own time. What a relief that America finally turned away from voting in "people I'd like to share a beer with." Eight years of that good ol' fashioned hometown charm, punctuated by spoonerisms and malapropisms and general bungling, seems to have actually had an effect. Maybe - shocker - we can now think about electing smart people, not just people who act cute and might be fun to hang out with.
On the way out of our polling center, I asked Clark to give me an "O" for Obama.
Back in Bush v. Kerry, the electoral map went 286 to 252, Bush v. Gore was 271 to 266. Both times we had to endure the braying jackasses of the GOP calling that a "mandate from the people." I wonder what we get to call 338 to 156?
Then, on the inside of the box, the Digital Copy info sheet categorically states that the downloadable copy will not work on Macs or iPods. Not even on Windows iPods? Way to sidestep 90% of the portable movie player market, numbnuts.
What is supposed to happen is that you pop in the Digital Copy DVD, and once that has been verified via some Nintendo Friend Code-esque system, you're allowed to transfer a digital version of Speed Racer to your drive. There is some silly Windows app on the DVD that will run this download, and you're supposed to be able to choose a compatible format for either iTunes or Windows Media.
Putting the Digital Copy DVD in a Mac just gets you playback of a warning message... and there is no Mac software on there to make the transfer. And with my iMac (or any Mac) lacking a blu-ray drive, there's no way for me to use less-than-legal means to rip the film off the blu-ray and into iTunes.
Well, I'm a sucker for punishment, so I bravely sent a tech support request via WB's Digital Copy webpage...
Shake Your Betty (YouTube) Two minutes of Wilma and Betty shakin' it. Fantastic user comment: "i've tried wanking off to this, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything for me."
Or will Animal Crossing: City Folk allow city names with more than eight characters? Now that would be some next-gen programming!
But seriously folks. A new Animal Crossing next week means a whole new adventure for yours truly. My fingers are irrevocably crossed that City Folk will be more than a sideways port with minimal enhancements.
And why does GameStop not yet have the game/Wii Speak bundle in their preorder system? Hey, you know what I want? Both Animal Crossing: City Folk and the Wii Speak microphone. You know what else I want? A $10 discount for buying both in the same package (Some rumors say the bundle is $20 cheaper!) Jesus.
Hallelujah. New Pirates content.
I think WizKid's long-lived Pirates of the Cursed Sea (four years!) constructible strategy game has entered the For Existing Fans Only phase of its life. Which unfortunately means imminent death cannot be far behind. The newest release - Savage Shores - is showing up not in $4 boosters but in $15 boxed sets. The boxes contain the equivalent of 5 boosters, plus a mega-ship... so the value is better, although a $15 box is a lot less likely to be impulse-shopped than a $4 booster.
There are six boxes, each with a different pre-assembled mega-ship... and each contains one third of the cards needed to build one of two ten-mast huge-ass ships. I need to find out what boxes I need to buy so I can complete one of the ten-masters. And that will likely be the end of my Savage Shores purchases.
Hurm. I actually like this pricing/compiling scheme a lot better.
Aeropodcast #57 is up and ready for your iTunes, although I personally did not have much to say during it. We had a full house of four staff members and guest Julian Murdoch of gamerswithjobs.com... and five guys is really quite a lot for a podcast. I think three is the magic number, or four if you have a guest and/or a host who emcees more than participates.
And even though we killed the topic and community sections, we still ended up with a monstercast of two hours! I prefer not to think about poor Stephen Munn, who did not participate in the extravaganza but still edited together five audio tracks with at least three mid-show disconnects. Oy.
As to why I had little to say, the main games of conversation were junk I have nothing on... Gears of War 2, Fable II, I can't even recall the other games they talked about because I kinda zoned out here and there. I'm not a good team member, I know. I got some good jabs in there when I could, because I was paying attention some of the time.
About the only item I had an opinion on was Mirror's Edge, and Julian covered just about all of my points. I try to assemble pre-show notes of stuff I intend to say, once I know what the various topics are, and Julian unwittingly nailed everything I had written down about Mirror's Edge. But I'll recap it here.
How can the company that invented two affordable and amazing innovations in tabletop gaming - the Clix system with Mage Knight in 2000 and the tiny styrene model system with Pirates of the Spanish Main in 2004 - be unceremoniously shuttered in a four paragraph press release? Was there no way to save this company?
Boy, I remember when WizKids was just a scrappy indie game company who happened to show up with a good idea and reaped some serious success... and now they're gone. Although looking over their sum total of product lines, they did kinda have some stinkers in there.
Animal Crossing: City Folk Commercial 2 (YouTube) My sister IMs me this: "Have you seen the commercial for Animal Crossing with the two women? I don't think it's helping the cause."
fuck the south.com (via John Gruber) ABSOLUTE MUST READ. ABSOLUTE MUST READ. Clearly full of Bush II 2004-era hate, but still an ABSOLUTE MUST READ.
WTF IS UP WITH DISNEY PRINCES?! (Nico Colaleo) Nico with some great riffs on the forgotten heroes of Disneydom, the Disney Princes.
I haven't written any substantial comics posts in a while, but the last two weeks were so good that I've gotta do it.
DC's Secret Six is now at #3 and it is so good. Gail Simone is just a top writer, and giving her a sandbox of tertiary characters lets her skills shine. In three issues she has introduced an intriguing new villain and a major new artifact to the DCU.
And Nicola Scott's artwork is absolutely perfect. Her pencils are realistic in proportion and presentation, finely detailed, and full of animation and expression. I like super-stylized stuff (like, say, Pat Gleason on Green Lantern Corps), but a gimmicky style is also usually used to disguise weaknesses in the forms... there is none of that here. Her stuff is real. It is a pleasure to pick up a book that both looks and reads this well (Yes, I know that the inker and colorist have a lot to do with this too!)
But I think DC needs to figure out what's up with Cheetah's costume. If her skin is colored like a cheetah's, does this mean I'm looking at her naked ass here?
Jeez, what stupid thing to make stressful. GameStop was in fact one of the "select retailers" getting the City Folk/Wii Speak bundle, so I shifted my $5 preorder to the bundle and I think I'm done buying games for the year.
They even conned me into getting the strategy guide (%10 off with purchase of game!), although I haven't yet ripped open the protective plastic wrap. It's not that I want the guide to spoil things, I just like it as a longtime Animal Crossing collector.
I haven't decided if I'm going to make any big deal about City Folk in the weblog fashion I did for the original and the DS sequel. I have this sinking feeling that City Folk will not have enough new content to warrant talking about it to such length.
The new trailer is also hot. Gives me fucking chills. Finally, Dan Drieberg out of costume! I hope Doc Manhatten's voice gets some kind of imposing effect on it. He sounds too normal.
And I love the notion that eventually we'll get a Director's Cut with spliced in animated Black Freighter sequences.
Let's finish up the intense semifinals action and determine which cheapass games advance to the mysterious finals! But first, a recap of the standings thus far:
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Something or Other (Wii): 6 (measured in points)
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (Wii): 2
No More Heroes (Wii): 7
Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (Wii): 5
The Orange Box (PS3): 3
Slide Adventure Mag Kid (DS): 5
Pain (PS3): 2
Now follows the final trio (of six) categorical comparisons, with a potential three point maximum in each contest (although an effort will be made to limit the awards to a single 3 and a single 0, to name the best and worst in each comparison bout). Out of these seven, the top three will compete for the title of Best Cheapest Game 2007-2008, which will give the winning game the all-important VETO power when judging the 2008-2009 edition.
We tabled a prescheduled topic again this week, because Joe Haygood had plenty to discuss about the New Xbox Experience... or if we want to name it like a "Friends" episode, The One About All The Xbots Suddenly Being Forced To Make Miis, Something They All Spent Two Years Making Fun Of. Aeropodcast #58 is now available, and as it's just me and Haygood, you can bet that, this week, I have much more to say than last week's five-banger.
I was initially very critical of the new interface, since it borrows heavily from Apple, a little from Sony, and steals the Mii thing wholesale from Nintendo. It was a good thing that Microsoft released those first screens so early, because by now everybody got those complaints out of their systems and just focused on the usability of the new UI. Sounds like it is an improvement over the blade system, although the rollout has been bumpy. As a whole, it was something that 360 owners really were not asking for, but at least it has ended up a good thing.
The Netflix connection remains, for me, the single biggest feature. The avatar thing... come on. We all know that it's Cute on a system that has NEVER accepted Cute, and it's a blatant attempt to steal a feature point from the All-Crushing Wii.
However, the interface for creating avatars is very nice. Surprisingly nice. And since Microsoft is not known for coming up with good, clean interfaces, it should surprise no one to learn that Rare came up with that system. That's probably the best-received project the Rare team has done in ten years.
Nice. So even though we respectfully asked to not be contacted for further donations and fund raising, we get a letter telling us that we will receive such materials going forward anyway unless we tell them again not to contact us.
A basic rule of thumb around here is that if your game has a way to save out screenshots, I'm going to post them. So in lieu of retreading the same old weblog ground with Animal Crossing, I'm going to just run my shots and nonsensically chat around them.
I think I'm sticking with the Mii head for now. My AC character has a really lousy haircut and the Mii mask hides that. Haircuts at Shampoodle are expensive and the Q&A that leads to your selected color and style is a miserable guessing game. So, Mii. Although Mii heads can't wear hats or accessories, which is insanely stupid.
Notice my town has pears. Same fruit I had in the original Animal Crossing. I need Friends to bring me fruit. Should I re-establish Open Gate Night?
Official Sony PS3 Home Video Trailer (YouTube) In celebration of me getting into the PlayStation Home beta, here's an extremely old trailer. This is the one where the voice over says Home is "infinitely more exciting than anything on the other consoles" at the two minute mark.
I just exited the beta and she's wrong.
THOUGHTS ON THE CURRENT HEROCLIX SITUATION... (Comics Should Be Good) Interesting discussion thread about the death of WizKids and what this means for the HeroClix line. Most people seem to either have never played but collected anyway, or never played because the rules were too dense.
And there's already a saveheroclix.com! Where's the Save Pirates dot com?
If Disney is Mickey Mouse... is Pixar Silly Symphonies? (Cartoon Brew) Ooooh... a brilliant take on how Disney and Pixar can creatively co-exist. The modern Disney Animation Studios division performs the same role as Walt's classic Mickey Mouse brand (think comic crowdpleasing in the 1930s and 40s), while Pixar fulfills the Silly Symphony role (groundbreaking tech, all new characters).
My free Rock Band 2 tracks were almost lost in the mail.
People started talking about the invitation emails for the 20 free RB2 songs around early November. I didn't see any such email so I figured I was just getting mine late on the staggered rollout. And then I totally forgot about it until this week... I checked my junk mail folder and found that the RB2 mail had been grabbed by the Yahoo Mail spam filter.
Moral of the story: check your spam box.
The GameStop God of War bonus pack for LittleBigPlanet is hot.
I came into some codes for the God of War pack this weekend (more on that later!) and that was one slick preorder bonus. Whereas the Best Buy preorder only netted you the Nariko costume elements, the GameStop GOW pack gets you three costumes (as widely reported) and at least ten exclusive stickers (which was not). I actually lost count of the new stickers as I was trying to locate them in my Popit.
Numba 59 is live and again it is just me and Mssr Haygood. I even managed to drop the f-bomb thirty seconds in! Stephen will bleep it out, but the uncensored phrase in question is "I'll tell you what I don't want to talk about, fucking PETA."
I talk smack about Home, which apparently you're not supposed to talk about since being in the beta carries along your tacit agreement to a non-disclosure agreement. Which is probably bunk, in all likelihood. I mean, Home has been in beta for like a year and a half and I think fully 80% of all PS3 owners have now made it inside the beta through one means or another. For me, my beta invite arrived last Friday as Sony closed down the increasingly irrelevant PlayStation Underground. I guess the Home beta was intended as a final thank you for years of Underground membership - which was originally a pay service I think, but became just a fan club sometime during the PS2 era.
Anyway, the Underground is being folded into the more popular and accessible PlayStation.com account system, so at some point I need to work my way through that. But Home? Yeah, I checked it out on Friday. It's dopey. I know that game launching and the micropayment store and other features are not in there at the moment, but it's still fairly purposeless and entirely lacking in personality. Sony has had years to work on this - as a concept it should have launched when the PS3 itself did - and this is all it is?
And now some pictures from last weekend's VGXPO. Some of these are the exact same photos I just posted to Aeropause but whatever. Tony should have a collection of sweet cosplay photos from VGXPO, because that guy would get in anyone's face for a picture. I'll point you there once he compiles that, or when he publishes the apology for never posting them.
Here's that DDR setup I mentioned earlier. It just about killed me, but it was fun. I did a six minute playlist alongside Tony, Josh, and a bunch of other people, and got third place. Then, due to extreme body overheating, we bailed out. But the thought occurred: when am I going to get to do this again? So I jumped back in, this time for a ten minute playlist (because the emcee wanted to go to the bathroom). He even set it to tornado, the jerk, which makes the arrows float around stupid before they land on the beat. But I managed to get second place and not die. Josh and Tony spent the ten minutes snapping photos and video of the whole thing.
This week in Animal Crossing... a visit from Wendell, a look at how I'm molding the town, and of course the pro-veg cruelty-free Harvest Festival.
You know who still sucks? Wendell. Wild World pretty much ruined this guy. Time was, you'd give him food and he'd give you a rare wallpaper. In the DS version, he was reduced to a pattern delivery service, no more actual items. And just like in the portable, low-memory, card media version of Animal Crossing, you're limited to owning eight patterns at any one time (with plenty of out-of-pocket storage, thankfully) and of course Wendell has fifty or sixty designs to dole out. Want to use Wendell's patterns to lay down a fun road throughout your town? Then that's all you're doing, because the road designs will fill up your pattern slots.
"Where do [I] want it?", indeed.
Katrina sucks too.
I've already fallen back to seven year old gags... I'm teaching everyone in town to say Mitchell!
Kiss Facepainting Mini Movie! (flickr) As sort of seen on Cartoon Brew this week. OK, yes, you're great at facepainting. Yes, it's a unique idea. But no, there is nothing fucking special about how you're moving your face.
Shortly after Speed Racer was released on blu-ray, 
We tabled a prescheduled topic again this week, because Joe Haygood had plenty to discuss about the New Xbox Experience... or if we want to name it like a "Friends" episode, The One About All The Xbots Suddenly Being Forced To Make Miis, Something They All Spent Two Years Making Fun Of. 
