January 2009 Archives

This is so crazy. I was just reminiscing with Josh this week about my wife's nonplussed reaction to Star Wars. Rhonda had never really seen the original three movies until, I don't know, maybe 1999 or so, when I made her watch them. Her take on it, as I'm sure I've related before, was that Star Wars is "the movie about the little boy and the guy who flies the plane."

And now the internet is afire with this video meme, where some dear girl tries to describe the Trilogy (cap T) after only having seen bits and pieces of it. Her buddy tapes her, knowing he has struck Internet Gold, and then hilariously animates it.

I've gotta go because I only have ten minutes or so before K.K. leaves town for the week, so here's the embed.

Hans!

THE STRESSFUL ADVENTURES OF BOXHEAD & ROUNDHEAD - Crumb Factory (YouTube)
According to Cartoon Brew, when the Johns saw this animation using one of their songs without their permission, their first reaction was to give the animator their permission. Class acts, those guys.

Sinestro Corps, the Early Years (Absorbascon)
Scipio finds a 1967 Lantern tale with Sinestro leading a group of similarly ringed baddies. Scip's final line of his post is a t-shirt-worthy masterpiece.

Forbes Writer Stands By Calling Rock Band A "Shameless Knockoff" Of Guitar Hero (Kotaku)
Which is like calling Empire Strikes Back a shameless knockoff of Star Wars. Hey, dumbass, Harmonix made Guitar Hero what it was, graduated to the full(er) band experience with Rock Band... and then Activision crapped out a Guitar Hero III (which was naught but a wheels-off-the-bus version of Guitar Hero II) followed by their own shameless knockoff of Rock Band called Guitar Hero World Tour.

But hey, Rock Band has "color-coded prompts moving onscreen along a fret board" so it must be a shameless knockoff.

Twenty Minutes With Batman: Arkham Asylum (Kotaku)
Ar we actually going to get a decent Batman game? Are we actually going to get a decent super-hero game?

I admit nothing (It's Lovely! I'll Take It!)
Jon & Kate Plus 8's old house, now for sale! One must assume they took down the creepy Bible verses by now.

Final Crisis #7 (Final Crisis Annotations)
Annotations! Getcher annotations! Ya can't tell the Omega Sanction from the Speed Force without yer annotations!

I don't know when this feature showed up... if it was part of the latest DLC or if it arrived in a free patch, but it's pretty slick. The Pain replay movie editor!

I already posted this Hasselhoff one to Aeropause since I don't think many people realize that Pain added this ability.

Rumors say William Shatner will soon join Hasselhoff in the world of Pain, but I don't know how accurate that rumor is.

Here's $1 DLC Tati going through an abbreviated version of my usual Abusement Park path.

Cookie (in a Santa suit) was also a dollar, I think. Hey, Hasselhoff was like $2. I like how Cookie just SLAMS into the bikini girl in this clip.

And rounding out my $1 Glorious Ladies Of Pain collection, here's Yeony riding the bowling ball and then relaxing in the street while the cars all crash up into each other.

Fun.

Once again, I didn't really take any notes on last week's Aeropodcast (#66). All I can say is that we may have talked about "realistic" graphics for a bit, and that the newspost page has a picture of one of my cats on it.

This week's show, #67, was a good one. We dropped the word "cockshots" several times and I do not remember why. Probably for the shock value.

Anyway, last week I pretty much played nothing but GTAIV. By the time we recorded, I had completed the storyline. I want to do some heavy spoiler discussion on the podcast about the various choice points (like I did here), but Haygood hasn't yet finished the plot. We did talk a little about the first big kill point, the Dwayne vs Playboy X question. Haygood's with me on that one. I think everybody is.

The main topic was the sheer awesomeness of gaming special editions. I mention my love for these, becoming Chief Podcast Tool #001. You guys know this. I spend money on things I like. I don't cheap it through my hobbies, and I don't talk myself out of stuff simply because I have to pay money for it. Now, I'm a smart shopper and I scan for bargain prices on [non-used] games... but when it comes to Day One special edition releases of major, Joe-approved titles... that's the purchasing power adrenaline rush that I seek out. Hey, maybe you spend your money on cigarettes.

I announced that Sad Chao has a Twitter account. And now I have Twhirl so I can manage multiple Twitters without having to logout/login all the bloody time in Safari.

We had a lot of fun in the listener-submitted section. Somebody wrote in to ask what we thought various video game characters would think of the election of Barack Obama... so I put together a Top 10 list at the last minute that may be funny in an insider-impromptu way. I included gags for Okami, Animal Crossing, Guitar Hero and Portal, among others.

Avid commute-killing listener Tony asked us for thoughts about Nintendo being super stupid about sharing game export materials across friends... for example, why you can't send Brawl photos or Wii Music videos to friends who do not own those games. But yet, you can send Animal Crossing photos and Pokemon Snap photos to friends who do not own those two. It's inconsistent... and it's annoying because it seems like the Wii Message Board is tailor-made for that kind of easy file sharing. We extended the net to complain about the 360 also being gimpy in this regard, but estimated that perhaps the PS3 does the best job at it.

Well, that's ONE of my Rock Band requests.

Belly in Rock Band. Sure, it's only one song (Feed the Tree), but that's a start. Whole album please.

I also picked up Are You Gonna Go My Way (did not recognize the other two Lenny Kravitz songs), You Got It (thereby avoiding the Roy Orbison cliche song, Pretty Woman), and the Steve Miller Band Pack (in the hopes that my purchase gets us that much closer to Fly Like An Eagle).

Well dammit, I would have liked a t-shirt.

I read a parents guide to FusionFall and learned that the game pulls a 180 on all other MMORPGs by dialing down the loot drops the more you play. The game, being targeted to kids, wants to actively discourage gamers playing for ass-killing day-long jags. I'm all for that. I'm finding more and more that this is the casual MMORPG for me.

Although, that same article says that the retail Victory Pack includes a t-shirt, which it does not.

Niko Bellic, social butterfly.

A few days ago I remarked that GTAIV seemed to lack the dating angle that San Andreas had. I was wrong. On the latest Aeropodcast, Joe Haygood pointed out to me that you're supposed to use that in-game online dating service to drill through Liberty City's eligible ladies. It never even occured to me that that faux online dating stuff would actually work. Unbelievable. Game of the Year.

Oh, and I did pay for the full lapdance experience over at the Pink Triangle Club. Spicy!

The minimal way to escape LittleBigPlanet moderation.

Back during the beta, there was a popular level that used images and elements from Batman: The Animated Series. Naturally, that was shut down when Warners started combing through the user content.

So what did the level's creator do? Change all the names to hilarious third-rate knockoffs and turn all the scanned-in artwork to nicely painted sackboy cutouts. Some examples: "Master Wane," "Alfrid," "The Jokester," and "Half Face." Half Face makes me laugh every time.

But thanks to LBP's weird level promotion setup, this newly revised level that formerly had six digits of plays now can't even break a thousand.

Dollar Store Speed Racer find.

Rhonda and Clark stopped by a Dollar Store after work and came home with a handful of rare Speed Racer Hot Wheels. Delila's Flying Foxes street car, the Team Thor-axine race car, and, best of all, Taejo Togokhan's street car. These are part of the fabled second series of Speed Racer Hot Wheels that we have never seen at any big box location. And all for $1 apiece.

You know what happened here... the first wave of Speed Racer cars did not go over well, leaving Target and Walmart clogged with unsold Mach 6s and no interest in ordering the more diverse second series. So Mattel was forced to recoup the cost by the only means left: sell the second wave boxes to clearance outlets and dollar stores.

So THAT'S what those are for.

Like the other LEGO games, LEGO Batman does a fine job of letting you easily see what collectibles you have yet to collect... X minikits, missing a red brick, etc. But LEGO Batman's hostage sidequest seemed to be untracked... meaning there's no way to tell if you found/saved the hostage hidden in each level. (There's a mini-fig somewhere in each level getting his/her ass beat; you have to find them.)

But this is happily not the case! On the level select screens, there's a little smiley face or a frowny face by each mission. A smiley means you rescued that level's hostage. Frowny, the opposite.

Does anybody make a cold pizza product that you can eat straight out of the fridge without cooking it?

Like, I want to buy a frozen pizza, let it thaw, and eat it. No cooking, no microwaving. Just chewing. Why doesn't this exist?

Upcoming LBP DLC detailed.

Media Molecule announced the DLC for the next few weeks, and it looks like they're back up to form after taking a month off. Plenty of free holiday-related costumes... like a pair of very nice Chinese New Year suits. A Valentine's Day design pack that I assume will be $3 like last year's Festive Pack. The God of War preorder pack will arrive for the masses at a price. And a set of Wipeout costumes that Rhonda thinks make the sackpeople look pregnant.

Nintendo needs to get their shit together.

You guys know that I don't really care too much about online play. I don't do Halo, Gears of War, SOCOM or any of that shooter rot. I've only barely played Soulcalibur IV or Metal Gear online. I've still never tried GTAIV online. So it's not like I'm attacking Nintendo on their screwed up, double-boned online strategy simply because I am a Professional Nintendo Hater.

I'm fine with Nintendo's spin on online interaction. I love the ease and Apple-like visuals of the Message Center and Photo Channel. I'm OK with fluffy bits like the Everybody Votes Channel and Check Mii Out Channel. I don't need each system to have identical structure and exact feature parity with the others. In fact I enjoy the differences.

But I do expect that when a game is partially sold on online multiplayer, after you finesse your way through the draconian Friend Code system, that it will fucking work. AGAIN this week I had a miserable time hooking up with a pal in Animal Crossing: City Folk. This was our second try after a post-Christmas disaster where neither of us could get AC to see any online at all (blame it on holiday-bound server issues). This time, he comes to my town, fine. Voice chat a little scratchy but doable. Dapped around my village, fished, talked, etc. I try to go to his town and CRAP.

First, it took half an hour of trying and trying to even see his town on the Open Gate list. Then, even once he popped in, the game timed out of Nintendo WFC (which, incidentally, brings up a funny blue screen with a sad Mr. Resetti) and rebooted. And thanks to the Wii's complete lack of quick and easy system-level player communication, it becomes a nightmare to shoot each other simple online messages to try to discuss the problem. You can't even tell if your Friends are online, which, by this point with enough high-quality online Wii games, is a gigantic hole in the Wii's abilities. And just to rule out any local connection issues in your skeptical mind, we gave up on AC and hopped into some perfect online Mario Kart Wii.

Being able to fucking bowl by waving my arm does not make up for me having no goddamn idea when my friends are on, much less what they're doing.

I'm coming up on Level 4 in FusionFall, so here's some pictures of the adventure so far. All of this is well inside the freeplay section; I have not yet activated my paid subscription code.

For whatever reason, the game begins in the future... where the Cartoon Network locales have been ravaged by a war with the evil Fuse and his armies of goo-powered steampunk baddies. You're part of the resistance movement, organized by Dexter and led by Cartoon Network celebs.

The Kids Next Door treehouse has survived, but a lot of the map is all wrecked buildings and "infected areas." You pick up missions from people and then wander the map trying to complete them. So far, most of my missions have been Go to Point A and Kill X Enemies, usually in search of some random object that must be returned to Character B. Several large-scale missions involve warping inside some (easy) Mario-style platforming mazes.

Ha ha ha. Ha ha HA ha ha.

I think the mouse aiming is a funky when you're trying to stay locked on to an enemy. In fact, mouse use in general is weird, because it's very easy to get the mouse outside of the browser window without realizing it. Minor trouble.

The cool bit is seeing all of the Cartoon Network places and people. There's Eduardo from Foster's hanging out in the cul-de-sac from Ed, Edd & Eddy. As per Smash Bros / Vs System / Kingdom Hearts and other franchise-gluing efforts, your interest may be balanced solely on your fascination with this character mashup.

Mojo Jojo has flying monkey minions stationed to help you travel the map.

You're allowed to name your avatar yourself (avoiding the pre-generated "safe" naming system), but if you do the game mods need to review it before it becomes public. Which is why my name is currently on a temporary "Player 16272883" or whatever. The name I chose was SpongeBob SquarePants, so we'll see if that gets through.

There's the inventory screen. You're constantly picking up items and trying to collect cool themed costume bits. I gather this is an MMORPG standard, except here it's me with four Spidermonkey arms stuck on my back.

Dying is no big deal. You just get sent to the nearest Grim checkpoint.

Clearly, the freeplay is pretty extensive. I have more than a few hours clocked on FusionFall and have yet to hit the free ceiling. There's a bunch of missions available, some that advance the plot and some that are just sidebar quests for money and "fusion matter" which is just game currency #2.

I think the freeplay stops at Level 4. It seems that your avatar's level is connected to how many nanos (little floating chibi characters) you have collected. These seem to arrive in order for everyone - first Buttercup, then Numbah Two, Eddy, and Eduardo - so they're not especially differentiating since everybody has them. You can customize their abilities, which is cool.

It's all easy right now, but the difficulty keeps creeping north. I don't know if this is the kind of game you can play by yourself all the way to the higher missions, or if I'll be forced to band with other players to take down the toughest bosses. Right now, I'm ignoring all the many friend/party/trade requests. I think my Spidermonkey arms attract attention, because I have yet to see a single player who has them. They came with the $20 retail FusionFall box I bought last week, so I guess they're rare. They are, however, untradable, so I suspect most of these would-be traders would be disappointed. Not that there's a chance in hell I'd trade them anyway.

Converter Box Coupons Will Analog TV Shut Down (YouTube)
This one's for you broadcasters in the audience.

Obamicon.Me Gallery (Paste Magazine)
How did I not hear of this before? You can make your own Obama-style "Hope" poster parody. This page shows the top rated user submissions, including a "NOT LUPUS" with Dr. House and a blank one that says "WMD." Haw!

LEGO Batman Deemed Oppressive And Destructive To Young Kids (Kotaku)
A silly organization takes LEGO to task not only for approving the release of non-creative games (like, you don't actually build anything when you play a LEGO video game!), but for allowing their brand to mix with commercial properties in the first place. Some adults have nothing better to do than issue hit lists on Things Kids Like. They won't be happy until children everywhere have naught but chalk and hula hoops to play with... oh, and THE POWER OF IMAGINATION. Did you know that books can take you anywhere?

Free February Burnout Update Detailed - Restart! (Kotaku)
Yep, Criterion hears what fans say. After this update, you'll be able to restart a race without driving all the way back to the starting line. It sounds really stupid that this feature wasn't in the game, say, a year ago, but I didn't consider it a crippling lack. It was annoying to lose, sure, but I just drove a block over to a different race. I'll be back in Paradise once that sick Legendary Cars DLC hits.

Mich. police: Boy, 8, spent 10 days with dead mom (Yahoo News)
I just hate hearing stories about young kids in trouble like this. This poor kid tried to keep his life normal with his mom dead in the back room. He has no siblings and his father is previously deceased, and apparently no other relations. Plus, he and his mom survived Katrina! I hope he finds a wonderful new home that can repair his broken life.

Layer Tennis starting soon (via Daring Fireball)
Layer Tennis was really cool last year, so I'm looking forward to this version.

Console Post of the Week: Eight Miles High (Dubious Quality)
Bill Harris with another great NPD sales analysis. He covers the latest nutbag Sony spin, theorizes on the importance of price cuts in the PS3/360 war, puts the Nintendo numbers into past perspective (your neck still aches from looking up at it), and wonders if the Wii's Fall 08 lineup is a bad sign.

TUCKER TALKS TED KORD ON "BATMAN: BRAVE & THE BOLD" (CBR)
Even in the animated Brave and the Bold universe, Ted Kord is dead! Great episode, though. Taught Clark quite a bit about DC's patterns of heroic legacy.

Supermarket Sweep (Mark Evanier)
Some semi-creepy reader reports about people who go grocery shopping and eat their purchases before they actually buy them... sometimes outright stealing but more often showing up at the register paying for empty wrappers. Weird.

President Obama Takes Office (Wunderland News)
Andrew Looney mocks up an Obama Chrononauts card! We're coming up on enough "new" history to add another row to the original timeline.

Well, storyline, at least. I think I'm on the very last mission, but there was a choice point a mission prior, so I may backtrack if I am displeased with the final result.

Spoiler time.

There are several key plot points throughout the game, where you're forced to choose which supporting cast members live and die. There's a few times when you play god with junky fourth string characters (Ivan, very early on... and Cherise, on one of Dwayne's missions. I let both live. I thought perhaps Cherise was datable material, but GTAIV is very light in the eligible women department. Niko just does not roll the way CJ rolled in San Andreas.) So here's my thought process on the linchpin events where you must choose life and death for two important in-game characters.

Playboy X vs. Dwayne. I had to think about this one for quite some time, but in the end I think the decision was obvious.

In one cutscene, Niko comments to Dwayne "you remind me of me." Both men are strangers in a strange land. Niko as an immigrant to Liberty City and Dwayne as a convict returned to freedom. Both men are haunted by the past, Niko with the tragedy and treachery of war, and Dwayne's lost glory as a kingpin of the streets. Dwayne is now a man without passion, and perhaps Niko sees a warning in Dwayne's shattered self. Where Dwayne has given up - frequently bringing up suicide - Niko has become driven by revenge.

The best you can say about Playboy X is that he gives Niko a fancier cell.

If you kill Playboy, you "win" his swank penthouse apartment, which contains, I believe, the best TV set in the game. You don't get any money - Dwayne is destitute - but you get a nice new save location in the north of Algonquin island. And just to prove what a classy guy Niko is, he offers the penthouse to Dwayne first and only takes it after Dwayne declines.

Choosing to kill Dwayne kicks off a squirmy cutscene where you can feel Niko thinking and re-thinking the decision, but he does it anyway. It is unpleasant. And when Niko calls Playboy to report the deed, Playboy turns into an ass and completely severs the "friendship" with him. I'm not even sure Playboy pays you for the hit. And definitely no penthouse and awesome TV.

Derrick McReary vs. Francis McReary. You spend about half the game doing jobs for the entire McReary family. Francis is ostensibly the one brother who made good, being a police commissioner or something, but he's really as much of a thug (and more of a creep) as the rest of them. He is highly unlikable.

Derrick is a strange case. When you first meet him during the big McReary family bank heist, he's quite funny. During the drive to the bank, he and Packie McReary get into a squabble about calling the explosive C-4 or PE-4. And then as the robbery is in full swing, Derrick starts trying to console the hostages because "they've been through a lot today."

The next time you see Derrick, he's completely strung out, collapsed on a park bench like a homeless person. The game alludes to Derrick using drugs during the heist, but he is a total junkie for the rest of the plot. It seems like enough of a night and day switch between the two Derricks that it is either a complete mischaracterization or a commentary on the dangers of drug abuse.

So either slimy dirty cop or messed up career criminal?

First time through, I took out Francis, and I suspect that would be Niko's true choice. Simply because Francis is a dick. And Niko is consistently presented as a very empathetic individual, so he would likely take pity on Derrick's situation. Francis gets a very nice tombstone.

Second time through, I whacked Derrick anyway. I could be overlooking something, but I think the game advances pretty much the same no matter which brother is killed. The McRearys are sort of upset, there's a great funeral mission where you have to get the hearse to the cemetary while under heavy enemy fire, and future cutscenes are generic enough to refer to either brother's disappearance.

If Francis lives, I think you win the ability to call him during a police chase... which I guess would maybe knock your wanted level down a star? Haven't tried it yet.

So really, no great moral calamity here. Francis is probably the more true-to-Niko choice for killin', but keeping him alive gets you a buff.

Phil vs Ray. This gets set up as if you have a choice, but you end up killing Ray no matter what. You do get a few hours to drive around before you're given the order, so I did put some thought towards who I would kill.

Although Ray is pretty amusing during Niko's time with him, I would agree that he is the right kill option. Niko continually refers to Ray as a slimeball, and he is not joking. Although, even though Niko does not like Ray, and often Ray blows his stack, I do not recall any moments where Ray tries to sell Niko out. On the contrary, Ray wields Niko as a means to move both of them up the mob ladder... although Ray is certainly surprised to see Niko chatting alone with Boss Pegorino, so perhaps Ray would eventually turn on Niko as Niko starts to accrue favor that Ray himself will never achieve.

On most of Phil's missions, Phil rides along... while Ray just hangs out in his store. There's a battlefield bond there. Guys like Phil and Little Jacob and Packie would always be closer to friendship with Niko, in my view. Plus Phil has kind of a Jimmy Caan thing going on.

So Phil's more impressive hands-on approach wins him my allegiance. Even though Ray is a more interesting character.

I'll likely polish off the storyline tonight - and get my gold trophy! - so I'm sure I'll be back here later with some final finale thoughts. It's going to be a killer ending.

Let's take a look at VGChartz.com has in their quickie Year-in-Preview for DS, Wii and PS3.

DS: I haven't seriously pursued DS stuff in a while. Last year it was a few imports, Pokemon, Layton, and a last-second appearance by Ninjatown. That's not a lot. That's definitely an all-time low for me and handheld gaming. Nintendo has pretty much abandoned the DS to third party Petz titles, kids movie tie-ins and RPGs. And it shows.

2009 will bring a new Kingdom Hearts game that I'm not that excited about because it looks like more Square and less Disney and I would much rather have it be the other way around. I suppose I'm interested in Suda51's Flower, Sun and Rain by default. Possibly Rhythm Heaven, which looks silly in the way that WarioWare used to own.

But March brings GTA: Chinatown Wars, which I need to get on the preorder stick. I have a nasty feeling that somebody out there is going to drop the banhammer on the DS getting GTA. Just about all GTA games arrive with a scandal, and this being the first GTA to land on a system that is still mostly in kids' hands... well, somewhere some Crusadist is busy getting facts wrong to attack this one. Maybe I'm getting paranoid. My advice: buy it early. I know I will.

And I am in for a DSi. Although I think we're ready for a brand new architecture (the DS launched over four years ago!) and a new generation of improved handheld gaming, I'm still extra-interested in what Nintendo does with the new DS online store and included SD card support. You can see the Nintendo plan in effect: DS was a big risk that paid off, so the Wii follows the DS's lead... and now a new DS is following the Wii's lead.

Knowing Nintendo, they probably DO have a new hardware generation in the pipe for Fall 2009, and the DSi is simply a last iteration much as the GBA Micro sounded the bell on the GBA's run.

WII: There's some great stuff coming for Wii in 2009... although the early release lists include almost nothing from Nintendo themselves. Sigh. Back when Nintendo was in the doghouse, their super-secret release schedule wasn't as much of a concern because we still knew we were getting something incredible. From Pikmin to Chibi-Robo, Nintendo supported the GameCube with great games every year.

As October through December of 2008 proved, the scene is now entirely different. Not only do we not know what games are coming, there's the highly probable fear that the only games to show up will be casual frilly bullshit (plus the Play It On Wii GameCube reissues, which are nice and all, but I already freaking own all of them.) The angry sting of City Folk and Wii Music would not have been near as hot had Nintendo also fielded something meaty... either a new installment in a familiar franchise, or a risky new contender like, oh I don't know, maybe Fatal Frame 4, which is totally finished and could have shipped and been awesome and been positioned as a great alternative/addition to the light meals.

So, Madworld, yes. Klonoa, yes. That was a great PS1/PS2 series and I would love to see that magic happen again. Interested in Fragile, if only because it's from the Baten Kaitos team. Little King's Story, probably. Cursed Mountain, a hesitant yes... want to hear more about it. Same with Deadly Creatures.

Wii Sports Resort. A begrudging yes. Want accessory. I'm sure the minigames will run the same scale as Wii Sports and Wii Play... some are fun, most suck, and none are truly compelling enough for serious playtime.

Can we freaking get Fatal Frame 4 in 2009 please?

PS3: I've definitely been on the PS3 a ton more than the other two, all totalled for 2008. Huge play-forever games like LittleBigPlanet, GTAIV and MGS4 certainly help run up the clock. Plus, I've been enjoying the DLC/downloadable stuff far more, since there's actually a place to put it.

Will we really get DC Universe Online in '09? I'm watching and waiting. Fat Princess, yes. Ghostbusters, probably maybe depends. Heavy Rain will likely break me since it seems to be all about making difficult, permanent decisions with the storyline.

InFamous, again probably. Resident Evil 5, instant yes. Uncharted 2, please arrive with 100% less stupid alien monster crap. I guess there's another Ratchet & Clank coming?

Oh! And Flower!

So what's on The Don't List for 2009?

Street Fighter 4. Nothing for it, sorry. Soulcalibur partisan.

Killzone 2. Meh.

God of War 3. Of course not.

Final Fantasy 13. It's not a personal choice, I've just never played a Final Fantasy game so I can't imagine suddenly playing one now.

Sonic and/plus/versus the Black Knight. Oh, please.

Sin & Punishment 2. They're going to have to go a long way to get me in on this one, given the ghastly terribleness of the game's controls on the Virtual Console.

Punch-Out. I doubt it. Although it's nice to see Nintendo leveraging nostalgia in ways that make sense on the Wii, rather than reinventing the wheel just to add wrist-burning motion controls.

The Conduit. No interest at all, really. A bunch of completely dark screenshots in Nintendo Power did not convince.

Endless Ocean 2. Sorry, I did my part on that front already.

I restarted; GTAIV still so great.

I'm too much of a coward to look up any GTAIV spoiler material, so I have no idea how close I came to completing the storyline on my first save... but I started over anyway. Because I wanted the Trophies. That 0% on my GTA profile was killing me.

What is so astonishing to me is that, even on a second playthrough, I'm finding stuff I had never discovered during my first 50 hours in Liberty City. I'm also trying to make different choices when the plot diverges, just to see what happens. Although I'm confident that there is no way that Niko would truly choose Playboy X's life over Dwayne's. (Don't do it! It sucks.)

I'm itching for some new 'ware.

When in balls is that play-games-off-SD Wii patch coming??? There's stuff I'm interested in, but I am no longer playing that crap with shunting files back and forth across the card. How can Nintendo justify holding this back for so long? Nintendo has got to making a ton of dough off the Shop Channel, but they have to stand to make more by opening up that SD roadblock!

I would probably buy Pit Crew Panic or Maboshi's Arcade just for morbid curiosity value, but with nowhere to put it, Nintendo is not getting my money. They have killed the impulse purchase power that has thrown so many nickels and dimes at Sony's feet. Nintendo's blind spots are just infuriating.

Love among the budgies.

A friend of ours has a pair of budgies. One of them developed a nasty tumor on his foot and needed it taken off. Any time you put a bird under, there's a substantial risk that it will not wake up, and this poor little guy needed to be knocked out for the vet to tackle the growth. As our friend is tentatively agreeing to the surgery, the doctor asks if the bird has a mate, because they've found that when budgies wake up in a strange place, it helps them to have their mate right there... just like humans.

We thought that was a pretty cool fact. And in this case, it worked! When the one bird woke up, his "mate" was there to comfort him - rubbing heads, cooing, whatever birds do - and he is expected to make a full recovery.

I put "mate" in quotes because there was one more twist to this tale. Unbeknownst to the owner, the "mate" bird is also male! So those two guys are not "mates" so much as really good pals, and that was all it took to help the sick one feel better.

I bought a computer game.

Yep, my first computer game purchase in perhaps a decade is Cartoon Network's MMORPG FusionFall. I'm sure it's not a five star experience, but I am fascinated by the anime re-styling of Dexter, Powerpuff Girls, etc. I bought the $20 Victory Pack boxed edition at Target (they only had one left, which I took as an unjustifiable sign of success), which comes with four free months and a couple exclusive outfits.

It's pretty cool. You run around shooting baddies as part of missions imparted by characters from Ed, Edd & Eddy and Kids Next Door. Of course, those shows sucked, so it's nice to see Ben 10, Samurai Jack, and Foster's show up too. I'm going to see how far I get on the free plan before I redeem the subscription code.

Man, I was sweating that.

As I'm reading Final Crisis #6, I was on edge for the seeming inevitable: the gruesome death of Tawky Tawny. He's one of those guys that has to have a place on DC Editorial's secret cap list. One, he's a little-seen footnote to one of DC's most-ignored franchises (the Captain Marvel family). And two, he's a giant freaking bipedal talking tiger in a suit. It's like he wears a big sign saying "Hey Marvel Fans, Laugh At Me."

But suckadick Kalibak, because Tawky Tawny just took the reins and made you his bitch! Nice one! I was so relieved to see TT come out on top. As soon as Darkseid resurrects Kalibak, I hope Kalibak never lives that one down. Tawky FTW!

Sony keeps making up the PS3 sales shortfall by overpricing the accessories.

I don't know. I like the idea behind the snap-on wireless keyboard for the Dual Shock 3. Especially since they made the entire keyboard a virtual touchpad for onscreen mouse control, which is wildly cool. But $50? Eek. I keep looking at it on the racks and calculating the number of times I would actually use it versus that $50 cost. So far, the best I can come up with is $5 per sentence. But I'm sure I'll buy it eventually anyway. Maybe El Bankrupto Circuit City will have it on liquidation price?

We (via someone) 100%ed LEGO Star Wars.

I mentioned before that I opted to totally cheat on Complete Saga by installing a downloaded save file. I started with one that was about 30% complete, and within a few days we upgraded to a file at 100%. I feel morally lousy about it, but I did finish both other LEGO Star Wars games and Clark really doesn't have the patience to trudge through a second LEGO game to unlock stuff. Besides, he knows that Batman is waaaay cooler than Star Wars.

His favorite characters are Boba Fett and any of the R2 droids. They fly. And he likes that Indiana Jones is in there too.

I completely missed my wife's birthday.

It's not like we make a big deal about it, but I could at least have said something. But a bad week at work plus my general disinterest in birthdays to begin with, meant that I could not recall it was Rhonda's birthday even when Clark walked in holding a birthday balloon. I actually thought he brought it home from school from some other kid's daycare party. I'm very terrible.

So there's a Venn diagram for you. Mac users who bought Speed Racer... on blu-ray.

As you may recall, we got screwed over last fall when Warner Bros's Speed Racer blu-ray packaging promised an iTunes digital copy, but the code ticket on the inside was for Windows only. Mwah wah waaaaaah. I exchanged some fruitless emails with the WB Robot Email Reader, but that ended in a score with me 0, WB $30.

Until late Thursday night, when I noticed my man HotBarlo had left a comment about WB making good on their Epic Fail. I don't know how he found it, but there is now an online form that will turn your blu-ray Speed Racer digital copy code into a token redeemable on iTunes! So no more second-class WMV files! No more fooling around with Windows file conversions and Handbrake! All iTunes, all Apple, all easy. Got that, Google spiders? MAC USERS WITH BLU-RAY SPEED RACER CAN NOW GET FREE DIGITAL COPY VIA ITUNES. ITUNES!

Now, despite my entertaining volley with WB's fictional tech support team, I received no emails from them notifying me about the long overdue change in policy. Where the previous policy was "Let's dick around with paying customers and try to blame the whole thing on Apple."

No, I will not join the sheep and buy "Fred Claus." I'm not jumping into that Venn.

Big thanks, HotBarlo! Thanks to you, Clark could watch Speed Racer in the car today as we did our weekend shopping!

Why I Love Monty Python (YouTube)
This video showed up on the PlayStation Store this week. I guess there's some kind of documentary coming soon?

Steve Jobs on the Stupidity of Living in the Past and Uncertainty of the Future (Gizmodo)
Some nice Jobs quotes (including his famous 2005 Stanford commencement speech) about his past and his future.

Spider-Man celebrates Obama as "nerd-in-chief" (Yahoo News)
Sure, it's stunt casting... but should be funny. The article loses points for calling the issue an instant collector's item, but gets points for spelling Spider-Man correctly throughout. Joey Q. has a hilarious comment about Spider-Man "selling out every week." As if that means anything these days when they only print a fraction of the number of books that companies used to sell!

Army recruiting at the mall with video games (Yahoo News)
Mall kiosk features PCs with 360 controllers and no doubt lots of Mountain Dew style extreme coolness. The quote at the end says it all: the Army figures they can pump up recruitment now that Iraq news has been "better" and the economy is worse.

The Jack Kirby Alphabet (via Mark Evanier)
This needs to be a t-shirt.

And Mark posted a great Fantasy Island-era anecdote about Ricardo Montalban.

Nifty Ottoman Hides Your Rock Band Instruments (Kotaku)
I was not especially impressed with this $185 piece of furniture until I realized that the drum kit rises up out of the open ottoman like the bleedin' Choir Invisible. I hope it leaves room for the kick pedal!

I have no tolerance for gaming snobs who think they've discovered the super-secret to Smash Bros's obvious weaknesses by asking you to imagine if the series would be half as good if it didn't have the familiar Nintendo cast.

Boy, it's like they've discovered penicillin with that one! Their phones must be ringing off the hook with invitations to award ceremonies!

The theory here is that Smash Brawl (or any given Smash Bros, I'd assume) is in actuality a flawed and broken game, but our fanboy blinders hide that reality. This post from Zack Hiwiller is the latest to pretend the author is the first person on the planet to propose this forward-thinking assessment. Zack says:

Do this thought experiment: replace the beloved Nintendo characters with random IP that you have no attachment to. Is the game still good? Do you notice the vast camera issues? The control issues? The lack of polish (to be VERY generous) in the single player mode? No game with a 93 Metacritic was ever so riddled with basic flaws.

Fin.

No really, that's all he has to say about it.

I did not notice any camera issues. When is the camera even a concern? It's, like, front and center. It zooms in and out depending on how far everybody gets from each other. I guess it zooms out too far on the absurdly large levels like Hyrule Castle, but that's hardly a game-breaking error.

Control issues? I suppose it could be tighter, like some other fighting games. One could counter that Smash Bros has never been a precision-oriented game... it's fast and loose and built for casual, non-combo play. It's not centered around specific control combos like Street Fighter, and it has never been. But my key takeaway here is that not once did I ever lose a match or flub an attack and think "Man, if the controls were tighter, I would have had more fun."

And look, he thrusts, he jabs at Subspace Emissary. This is probably the only area where tighter controls would matter, because the floaty jumping of every character in the game does not work well in a platforming environment. But single-player mode is a sidebar, an extra. It is required of no one and offers almost no unlockables that you can't get in pure Vs. mode. So I'm not really going to bash Smash for including a slightly-funky bonus feature that most people A) didn't know about and B) probably didn't devote time to anyway.

And I definitely wouldn't knock it for "lack of polish." I'd knock it for being too long and too floaty.

So, yes, Zack, the game is still good. But I guess your point is that nobody would have bought it without the Nintendo connection? You're right about that. I don't know how that's relevant to you calling Brawl one of the most overrated games of the year, but there you are.

I don't understand the complaint. Well, I do understand it. It's a subtle way to backhand Nintendo fans, because we're too stupid to recognize a bad game. We'll buy anything blessed by Dear Leader Miyamoto! Please. Let's examine the sales of Metroid Prime 3, Warioland, Chibi-Robo or Four Swords. Not to mention years of steadily declining Mario Party installment sales (with the understandable exceptions of MP4, the first GameCube release, and MP8, the first Wii release).

It really is a terrible attack vector. I could name ANY popular sequel and dare gamers to buy it without the IP.

I'm not going to knock the guy further. Opinions are opinions. I'm just tired of hearing this Oh So Clever fauxnalysis of Smash Bros (and Nintendo games in general. Mario and Zelda releases have to suffer this volley all the time.)

One more thing... he does strike down Metal Gear Solid 4. On, guess what: the storyline! Gosh, it's all so original over there! His Twitter is probably aces with the Kotaku First Poster set.

The actual podcast episode title involves Russian.

The big topic was the recent surprise smackdown on 1UP and EGM. In truth, I've almost never visited 1UP.com, so I've certainly never heard their podcast(s), therefore this news really has little effect on My Gaming Univerz.

I maintained an EGM subscription for many years, just about the entire PS1+PS2 era. Sometime between 2005 and 2007, EGM struck me as having way too much emphasis on screaming about how awful Nintendo was, following the familiar tale of GameCube Sucks -> WTF Wii -> Wii OK -> Wii Sucks. So when the subscription ran out, so did I. It was clear that their audience was more into the fallacy of "hardcore" meaning "M-rated" and that's fine; it's just not what I wanted to read on the potty. I can only take so many articles about This Month's Awesome Bald Space Marine Game. Which was pretty much every cover story over and over again.

And I was one of the few PAYING subscribers, by the way. Pretty sure I've mentioned all this before.

Not to say I didn't get good stuff out of EGM over the years. EGM was the first place I saw screens/news about crazy niche titles like Fatal Frame and Katamari Damacy. Both of those games showed up in an EGM preview with precisely one screenshot and a short text blurb... enough to twist me into genuine slavering curiosity about them.

Or that could have been Official PlayStation Magazine, actually. I got them both, and at times they were largely the same mag. Just one had a cool demo disk pack-in. Man, I miss getting that demo disk. It was nice to paw through stuff I'd likely never get, just to find the one gem I HAD TO buy. I know we get plenty of free demos these days, but it's a chore to download over the various networks and manage them on my HD... so I end up playing fewer demos on the PS3 than I did on the PS2 due to pure inconvenience. I end up picking only the demos that I already think I may like, which is sort of not the point. Popular opinion says that those old disk-based demo collections are outmoded, but I'd probably prefer a big honkin', no-loading blu-ray of PS3 demos.

I sound like a luddite, but there is a beautiful art to a well-done magazine. Sure, you can get the news faster and in more depth online, but when somebody shows up with a nice page layout, well-written text, good use of sidebars and callouts and insets and high-quality production art... well, that's why magazines exist. Finding that beauty in an online source is very rare. That said, I probably would not mind much if they all went away.

My man Tony submitted a question for the 'cast's community corner (which required me to admit that I know him!)... requesting we call out a popular game/series that we absolutely can't stand. I figured the coolest way to answer this would be to go for something that I actually played and ended up hating, rather than going for something easy like "I hate Halo / Madden."

Two franchises came to mind: Oddworld and Diablo. I immediately recalled an Oddworld rant from 2005, that I wrote when Lorne Lanning announced his departure from gaming. Good! Please take David Jaffe with you. Like Beyond Good & Evil (which Tony stated I could not mention), Oddworld rode far too long on that INCREDIBLE STORY hype, that it would REVOLUTIONIZE GAMING and CHANGE THE WAY WE ALL SEE THE WORLD. Turns out, it's just another pompous high school-level parable of an abused working class finding an unlikely hero to topple the tyrants in control. Never heard that one before!

Oddworld's plot could have been a late '80s Tom Cruise movie.

And as for Diablo, waaaaaay back in 2000 I took the game to task, in a review that starts out positive and gradually gets meaner and meaner. Among other things, I suggested the game has no replay value, claimed that the online multiplayer is pointless, and used phrases like "half-assed," "utter bullshit," and "Aborted Fetus of the Year." So that should tell you what happened betwixt me and Diablo 2.

Diablo doesn't even get a tag on this website.

And, just to make sure that I keep exposing myself as a hypocrite every week, I copped to downloading an online save file for LEGO Star Wars: Complete Saga. I see it this way: I've already beaten both LEGO Star Wars PS2 games into the ground, no cheats, and this is Clark's first go at the game. So installing somebody else's save file is more akin to bringing Complete Saga up to par with my previous achievements on the older editions, just so Clark has a nice robust experience right at the start. No hours of investment to unlock Chewbacca, thank you very much.

There's also a funny riff on Dukes of Hazzard near the end, but that video chat we've been trying has been messing up my timing because I get some audio delay as we're recording. Stephen has been adjusting the audio tracks when he produces the finished podcast to fix such things, so hopefully it sounds OK, but it probably could have been funnier.

As a finisher to the story I mentioned yesterday, about Clark playing an online Kart match against a daycare classmate...

Rhonda drops Clark off at daycare this morning, and right away his friend corners them. After Sunday morning's race, I had Clark send his pal's Wii a thank you message via Animal Crossing, complete with attached picture of Mii Clark standing in a grove of pear trees. Clark also wore his Mario Kart shirt to school today.

Anyway, the friend says that he loved the picture and wanted to know how Clark got it. I guess he doesn't have Animal Crossing. Clark explained that it was AC and then invited the friend to come see his house. (Clark has a vague notion that other people can see his house in Animal Crossing, since Rhon and I do so regularly, but Clark has never seen AC:CF online.)

Then they started the post-game discussion. This is what Rhonda overheard:

Friend: Did you see me push you off?
Clark: Did you see my Clark head... why didn't you have a head?
Friend: Is that a Mario Kart shirt?
Clark: Yes... there is your head (points to Yoshi)
Friend: I like Bowser.
Clark: I like Bowser too, I like Bowser Castle.
Friend: That is hard.

And then the conversation was broken up by another friend offering them a platter of plastic fish that she claimed to have cooked.

And we all thought Justice League Unlimited was fan service.

Last week's episode of Brave and the Bold started with B'Wana Beast. B'Wana Beast! It's no surprise; he's in the open. But still! Nothing says crazy DC Silver Age like B'Wana Beast. Well, maybe Space Ranger and Ultra the Multi-Alien. I half expect them to show up too.

Clark thought Wildcat has hilarious. Wildcat spends the entire episode grumping around, sporting a perfect voice casting of R. Lee Ermey. He even breaks out his Haneyverse motorcycle!

I really hope Jonah Hex gets a whole episode, and not just the pre-intro teaser segment.

To be scanned in for weblog gold.

My comic store fielded a box of random old issues of Nintendo Power, marked at a seaworthy fifty cents each! I picked out a handful and regretted not buying more as soon as I got home. I found some classic stuff that I will eventually scan in and make fun of, or, conversely, annotate for its historical value. For example, I believe I found the first time NP ever mentioned Pokemon. Cool!

We own Bakugan.

Sometime last fall, Clark noticed Bakugan toys, and we kinda talked him off the purchase, figuring we'd circle back to it some other week. The very next week, Bakugan EXPLODED and we never found them again. I saw so many stripped racks that I thought the toys had been recalled.

Last week we finally noticed some of the core toys - the little magnetically triggered transforming marbles - back in stock. Since we had been sidestepping this purchase for so long, I told him he could get one of the $10 three-packs... and then we spent the next twenty minutes assessing the obvious value of each toy so we could find the best three-pack in the store. This week, they're just about all gone again.

Just so we're clear, Clark is three. There's no adolescent peer pressure of some kind of giant Bakugan clique in his daycare class. He was just naturally drawn to these little marble thingys. In fact, he didn't realize they transformed into anything!

Incidentally, Bakugan is entirely North American-made. Invented by a guy from New York and turned into a media property by a Canadian business, who then hired Japanese animation studios to create the accompanying cartoon!

Clark's first online friend match.

Yes, Clark has had his first online gaming meetup between him and a friend from school. Somehow video games came up and it was discovered that Clark and a pal both have Mario Kart Wii. Since then, he has been begging his Dad to play with Clark in Mario Kart online. Now, the friend is probably about two years older than Clark... so you can guess how the match went. Clark can do full laps in Kart these days, but he can't do them with any sense of urgency.

Clark did manage to one-up his pal in one area though. Because he plays off of my save file, we have the Play-as-Mii bonus unlocked. So Clark was [losing] driving around as li'l Mii Clark, while the friend was covetously stuck choosing Mario characters.

I will take this as a good sign.

On the way home from work on Friday night, I got behind a van with a McCain/Palin bumper sticker. (We still have those kind of people out here.) And I am proud to say that it took me several miles before I could recall Palin's first name.

Jim Mora Playoffs ! ? Long Version (YouTube)
The best part about this is the cute Bugs Bunny double take.

Aeropodcast #64: Airlab 2021 FirePeaks V (Aeropause)
Haygood has found a new hobby: making me go first whenever stupid "What's Your Favorite ___" questions come up.

Star Wars Force Trainer Uses Mind Bullets To Move Ball Through Chute (Gizmodo)
Crazy toy that lets kids levitate a ball thanks to a headset that reads brains. Shame the toy is pretty ugly and not very Star Warsy.

Burnout Paradise Legendary Cars Pack - Remaining Cars Unveiled (PlayStation Blog)
Riffing on Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Knight Rider and Dukes of Hazzard. I don't even particularly care about flogging dead 80s junk like this, and I want these cars. I hope they come with trophies.

Final Crisis: Secret Files (Absorbascon)
Scipio on a curious Secret Files book that is almost entirely Libra's origin story. Why wasn't this titled "Final Crisis: Libra Ascendant" or something like that? It just didn't strike me as fitting with the usual DC Secret Files paradigm.

Is There More Red Dwarf On The Way? (io9)
Just when you think they'll never do it again, they decide to put the skutters to work one last time. Apparently four half hour new Red Dwarf episodes are on the docks for sometime in 2009. And did you know that Craig Charles did the voiceover on the UK dubbed version of Takeshi's Castle, which we know here in the states as MXC? Crazy.

2008: The Blaug Entries That Should Have Been... (Tauz Blaug)
Highlights from Josh's year-in-review entry include a few little-known facts (and accompanying pictures) about ME.

Some shots of the first time I wandered online...

Jack was hosting his friends Tobias and Youtubes. By pure luck I happened to check the WiFi door and noticed his gate was open. I friended the two I did not know - you do not need Wii Friend Codes when you encounter Friends of Friends, which is a small concession on Nintendo's part - and proceeded to enjoy what I could of the woefully underdeveloped Animal Crossing online play. IE, stealing fruit. It would be really nice if the game had a live Friend list that showed who currently has open gates without having to click through all the obnoxious text and menus from Copper. Really, really nice.

Although everyone can have a seat at Brewster's, once you sit you can't type. Also, you can't all go to the City, WHICH IS AMAZINGLY STUPID.

I love the Power Ranger styled costumes. We're hoping to collect those for Clark.

The floating name bubbles are nice. They let you know who is nearby because they hover onscreen in accordance with everybody's map position.

Another cool feature is that you can now send letters to people in other towns via your own City Hall. Previously, you had to be IN somebody's town to send them a letter, which was nuts. I think you have to actually visit that town first at least once, however, you can't just send in-game messages based on Friend Codes alone.

Ever since I read that Brewster eventually offers up secret Gyroid storage, I've been hoarding them. Once again, the strategy guide just tosses that nugget out there without specifically telling you how to do it. You have to buy coffee (and drink it hot) on at least seven different occasions. I don't know if they have to be on sequential days. Then you have to have a Gyroid in your inventory when you talk to him WITHOUT BEING SEATED. He will not offer up his secret storage unless he "sees" you holding one, and he won't bring it up when you sit down to have coffee.

There's a ball of shit right there.

And I love how pro-science Blathers gets. He's all into evolution and stuff.

This has been Animal Crossing canon since the first game, but I think a lot of players dismissed this as unfounded rumor. You can't argue against the unPhotoshopped screenshot! Sable and Mabel's parents died quite some time ago when Mabel was very young. Sable is about ten years older and has been taking care of her little sister - and the family business - even since then. Maudlin!

In other depressing AC news, Lyle is the equivalent of Gil on The Simpsons. He previous job was a Bee Sting Insurance salesman, and now he works for the Happy Room Academy and hates it.

And can somebody please tell me of the purpose behind the Shopping Card? You do not require it to make deposits/withdrawals at the bank, and Nook does not notice when you carry it into his store.

Here we sit, a month away from the EU release of Fatal Frame 4 for Wii, with still no mention of a US edition. FF4 came out in Japan last July, but has sold barely 70,000 copies. In an American holiday shopping season so devoid of solid first party product, a Nintendo-published-and-marketed Fatal Frame 4 could have been quite an attention getter last Christmas. It certainly would have been an obvious snark valve for all the accusations levelled at flagbearers Wii Music and Animal Crossing, even if nobody bought the game at retail.

So I'm definitely in for Resident Evil 5, coming this March, because I am now starved for a horror game. Shame that the RE series has really never been good at true horror (at least once the cheap scares of RE2 subsided), and is now just complacent to present heroic action-adventure with tentacled, gooey, fast-moving (and occasionally entirely normal-looking) enemies. Notice I did not call them zombies.

What happened to Siren: Blood Curse? I think Sony totally screwed that one up. First of all, if you're going to start hyping an episodic video game, don't just drop the whole 12-part thing on the Store in one week and walk away. Treat it like a cliffhanger TV drama, like Lost, and put out one single episode at a time. If the game has any value at all, you can flog it for weeks on various official sites like PlayStation.blog and Three Speech, creating excitement for the next episode.

Get people talking about it, especially the shock episode endings. By week three, you publish a recap post, get people up to speed for #4 even if they haven't yet tried 1 through 3. Make it an event. Build up to the double-sized finale episode.

You'd make more money overall from people caught up in the throes of the hype, rather than waiting for the bundle download. The five-part Strong Bad game on Wii had press every month, because it was a new release every month. And while I'm sure the sales on SB#5 are far less than on SB#1 due to simple attrition, I bet Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People had far better customer retention than Blood Curse. Imagine if all five parts of Strong Bad showed up in one week on the Shop Channel. People would have played it all out in that one week and never discussed it again. Which is exactly what happened to Siren.

By most accounts, Siren: Blood Curse was a perfectly serviceable, even mildly innovative, horror game. Sony could have had twelve weeks of pushing people into the PlayStation Store. Instead they dropped Siren like a stone into a well. Siren: Blood Curse wasn't so much of an experiment in episodic gaming as it was an experiment in getting people to pay a third of the total price and never come back.

Maybe Siren wasn't that game. Maybe Siren wasn't initially written or designed for a TV-style slow-drip release, and Sony thought it was not good enough to survive an extended period of dragged-out sales. Still, unloading all twelve parts at once, individually and as bundles? It looked like a fire sale.

I settled on not buying the downloadable version of Siren largely due to oscillating rumors about a blu-ray release. As with Fatal Frame IV, only Asian and European markets got the disk version (hey, Australia too!) Seems like the US will never get such a thing, so maybe if I saw the Region 1 (Asia) Siren disk for cheap import somewhere, I'd get it. I just don't think it's worth having on my PS3 HD forever.

I think the upcoming Watchmen game is going to show up episodically. I hope it learns a lesson from Siren.

New DC Super Friends product?

Spotted at Target this weekend... a boxed set with Flash and a glider vehicle. The glider looks like a red repaint of the Batman glider that has been out (and marked down) for years.

Most interesting is the side of the box. It shows an unreleased Robin figure, repaints of Flash, Batman, Superman, and Aquaman (post-IC new junior Aquaman!), and the unreleased Hawkman figure... and only Hawkman has a NOT AVAILABLE sticker over him. It seems highly unlikely that any of these toys will see retail, as the line has been liquidated everywhere I see it. Even that really nice My First Batmobile that Clark got in Christmas 07 is now living in the discount aisle.

Back in the spring, when My First Batwing first appeared at Walmart, that box showed Hawkman and Cyborg. We're coming up on a year now with no sign of these toys. It's done.

We are dying for that Robin figure. Shame.

The TV GLC is stuck in a perennial pre-Crisis lineup.

With very few exceptions, every time the Green Lantern Corps shows up in TV, it's the same mid-80s alien corps. Ch'p, Chaselon, Larvox, Salakk, Kilowog, Katma Tui. From Justice League to Duck Dodgers to this past week's episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, it's always the same cast! I don't know if it's a twenty-year-old fanboy callout or sheer laziness on behalf of the Animated DCU storyboarders.

Also, I believe I am officially against Deidrich Bader as Batman's voice. Occasionally he nails the line, but most of the time it just sounds like Deidrich Bader. Maybe he needs another season to grow into the role.

How is anybody supposed to find your level?

Every time I go to LittleBigPlanet's community level page, it's the same levels. There's supposedly thousands and thousands of user-created levels here, so how come I keep seeing the same fifteen on the main page? And of course, they all have plays to six digits!

Meanwhile, my first level has a total of 29 plays in two weeks. How is anything supposed to rise to the top when the top is jammed with the same popular stuff?

I'm making a new level that uses the Paintinator. We'll see how that does.

Oh yes, I'll get a DSi.

With the DSi on the way this year, I'm suddenly a lot looser about letting Clark fool around with my DS Lite. Tonight he was playing Cooking Mama, where you have to scratch across the screen like nuts to grate a radish, and I barely even minded.

From the Unnecessary Purchase department...

I bought LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga for PS3 yesterday. $20. Even though I not only have both original PS2 games, but a backwards-compatible PS3 to boot. Complete Saga adds some levels and characters, and Clark has never played the game... so I figured $20 was OK. Since I've already beaten the LEGO Star Wars series to 100%, I will not feel bad about activating cheats on this one.

Big question: Why does Complete Saga (Nov 07) have online multiplayer but LEGO Batman (Sept 08) does not? Not that I expect a ton of people to play the LEGO X games online, but it seems like a funny feature to delete from the series.

Metal Gear Solid Cast Improv (YouTube via Kotaku)
You know who I love? The entire cast of Metal Gear Solid.

30GB Zunes Failing Everywhere, All At Once (Gizmodo)
This is precisely why one should never buy Microsoft products. The solution? "Wait until tomorrow."

Happy New Year from Q-Games in Kyoto! (PlayStation.Blog)
Dylan Cuthbert of PixelJunk reveals his published LittleBigPlanet levels, Comfy Sofa and Gion Festival.

Aeropodcast #63: Sporticus Maximus (Aeropause)
I don't even remember much of this one already, except that we tried using a video chat connection for the first time and it made me feel like everything I said was on a two second delay with the other guys.

Yuji Naka Discusses Prope, Let's Tap (Nintendo World Report)
This marks the first time I've heard Let's Tap described as a music game. I'm following this one because I think the Wii needs these kind of bizarre off-center niche titles. It has very, very few of these relative to the constant barrage of cool nonsense we got on PS2 (and even PS1).

We just wrapped up a big New Year's party, where the kids had a great time and the adults alternated between the Wii and the PS3 for two straight days.

And remember, 2009 is identical to 1987 and 1998, so pull out those old calendars for another year's work!