September 2009 Archives

OK, let's get past this bit where all my favorite companies disappoint me. Let's talk about one that only disappoints Mike (long story): Looney Labs.

Chrononauts is one of my very favorite card games. I remember demoing it at Origins the year it came out, being instantly impressed and buying it right away. That must have been about ten years ago, because Looney Labs recently announced an eleven card expansion that brings the timeline up to 2008!

"The Gore Years" is out October 23, so they have not yet revealed all the cards. But we do know that the set includes five new timeline cards, three new patches, and three new characters.

Previously, the Chrononauts timeline was comprised of four rows of eight cards each, running from 1865 (Lincoln's assassination) to 1999 (Columbine school shooting). So under Gore Years, the timeline will appear to have an incomplete row of five at the bottom, which just puts on us track for another mini-expansion circa 2015. Assuming something cool happens.

The two new linchpins are the 2000 Florida Recount and the 2001 World Trade Center attack. Kudos to Looney Labs for not only being brave enough to include 9/11 as a game event (they mocked this card up almost right after it happened, if I remember their weblog correctly), but also calling it what it is. IE, it's the history-friendly "World Trade Center destroyed", not the media marketed buzzword "9/11."

If you take a look at the timeline cards, there's already an interesting possibility in view. Gore wins the presidency, then wins again in 2004 (hence, The Gore Years). The McCain/Palin ticket appears to arise four years earlier for the 2004 election... and when Gore's two terms are up, Sarah Palin becomes the first female president of the United States in 2008. 2008 is an important diversity election no matter what the timeline!

As repugnant and frightening as President Palin may sound, this is probably a calculated response to some of Chrononaut's more left-wing-leaning events. Like, the legalization of marijuana and the firearms ban... thanks to Senator John Lennon.

Out of the three new characters, LL has revealed the minifiction for Vincent. He hails from a timeline with no Hitler, President King... but yeah, the Bush vs Saddam Hussein thing happened.

Looking back, it's interesting to see how history has already de-emphasized some of the original Chrononauts timeline. Waco as a linchpin? Really? And as history progresses, I'd tend to think that World Trade Center Destroyed would be a ripplepoint from the formation of Israel, rather than a linchpin event. But the Israel Founded card is a ripple from WWII, so I suppose you have to break the chains somewhere to keep the game structure.

Looney Labs is up to the third printing of Chrononauts, but the only differences (aside from the typos corrected from versions 1 to 2) is the addition of a couple promo cards that I already have. Also, the v3 box is one of those nasty dual-deck tuckboxes that require you to fiddle and fiddle with splitting the deck in order to get the cards back inside. Sure, a longer box looks better on the retail, but once you buy it, it is a right royal pain in the ass.

My favorite way to play Chrononauts is to combine the first set with the second set (Early American Chrononauts) for a game of UberChrononauts. Then you get a massive timeline from 1770 to 1999... and now, with the Gore Years, 2008. Although with UberChrononauts you really need at least four players; with too few players it can devolve into a game with no one ever truly interacting with each other.

After years of me slamming the fail rate of the 360, my launch day Wii finally gave up the ghost last week. The popular stats say only 6 to 10% of Wiis fail, and a small fraction of those come back from Mushroom Kingdom Repair entirely blanked of data. I played those odds and I lost.

I knew my Wii was sickly. It had been making loud and louder disk-reading noises for quite some time. It sounded like an imminent hardware failure, but since it was still running I did not send it off for a checkup. It was out of warranty anyway, so why not just wait until the abacus dies and then get it fixed. That's what I know about how computer parts work.

The Wii went quiet for good one night, refusing to boot up beyond the Health and Safety Warning. It went off to the Syracuse tech support the next day.

Now, I'm not entirely stupid. I was backing up what I could. I shunted just about everything off to an SD. Just about, because a handful of key first party games do not allow you to copy the saves off to SD. Let's tick them off: Animal Crossing City Folk, Smash Brawl, Mario Kart, Pokemon Ranch. Probably a couple others.

So while I was backing up such important saves as Link's Crossbow Training, Wii Play and Cooking Mama: Cook Off, I was gambling that my BIG saves would weather the repair storm. Turns out, they didn't.

Here's the checkbox you don't want to see on your Nintendo repair summary:

That is one heartbreaking check. All saves, gone. All Miis, gone. Friend list, Photo Channel pics, emails, internet settings. And yeah, that means a new Friend Code, so anybody who was in the address book is also about to be inconvenienced as they delete the old listing. My new code is 0407 6167 0333 6120.

Tonight, my mission was to bring my system back up to what it once was. Or, as near as I could since I wasn't about to slog through seven hours of Subspace Emissary again. First up, running system updates since the repair shop did not hand off a fully-updated Wii OS.

Then I had my sister send me our family Miis. It felt so good to see little Mii Clark hop back onto the screen. I was surprised to see that, even though she sent them to me, the Mii Channel still recognized them as my property. Weird.

I've already pleaded with Tony to send me the handful of other Miis that I know we swapped back and forth. I'll have to go hassle the other thirty people formerly on my Wii Friend List, since they'll all need my new code and I'll need their old ones again. As for other handmade Miis, I had previously uploaded a bunch to the Check Mii Out Channel, so I can restore a couple from there. Of course, nothing can be done about the loss of my 1000+ Mii Parade.

I had to re-download all of my Virtual Console/WiiWare purchases. Interestingly, I did not have to re-enter my Nintendo.com name and password. How did Nintendo's elves manage that one, eh? I suppose they attached my new console serial number to my old Shop Channel account?

Since I sort of have a new Wii, the downloaded games that I "backed up" to an SD card are useless, as they are not authorized to play on this system. So I definitely had to perform a Shop Channel download, not a straight copy back from that SD. For each game. This took about an hour. The in-game purchases for Darklord had to be done within Darklord. However it happened, I was able to grab everything again with no issues. And it still had my insane Shop Channel credit of 9700 points.

Now, about my game save files. It would not let me copy a save file over to a Wii unless the Wii had already played that game. For serious. An error message told me this. So instead of simply copying every backed-up file from the SD to the Wii (I say "simply," but there's no batch copy option), I had to put every disk into the Wii first and only then could I copy the file over. What the hell, man? I know I've copied save files over to other people's Wiis in the past?!?

At first, I was booting up each game so the Wii could "see" them. Hi, Ben 10: Protector of Earth! Hello again Endless Ocean! Then I figured out that you just need to insert the disk and let it spin up so it appears in the menu button. The Wii must have some stupid internal registry of every game it sees, and it adds to that list whenever you insert a new disk. (For download titles, I could not copy over the save until I had re-downloaded the games.)

Once I had re-established the Miis and copied the saved saves, most of the games came back no problem. Wii Sports Resort went right back to showing how Clark and I played Swordfighting last month.

This still left the big games out in the cold. So I took a step I never imagined: I hit the internet for hacked save files. It's a terrible, awful solution, I know. But I had already unlocked all the fighters and boards for Smash Brawl, and almost all the characters for Kart. I'll be damned if I'm going to go through all that again. So while the stats for those games are no longer mine (AAAUUAUGGGHHHHHH), at least I'm back to the full complement of choices for the next time we play. And actually, in Kart's case, I've got a few I didn't have before.

Since my Smash photos and replays were already being saved to SD, I did not lose those happy memories.

But of course, there's new game-specific Friend Codes. My new Smash code is 3953 6482 9682 and in Kart I'm now 4082 4973 9771. Blah. What a stupid system.

The online saves I found for Excitebots didn't work, so that game joins EA Active, Endless Ocean and Animal Crossing in the pile of Games I've Seemingly Never Played. Elebits, too. Not sure why that save file didn't survive the fire. Notice that they all begin with vowels. Coincidence?

I'm not sure what to do about Animal Crossing. Luckily, my verve for the game is not once it was once, and I'm especially glad that Clark is not old enough to truly obsess about what we lost here. Nevertheless, we had 100 hours on that game, and it is now completely gone. Our characters, our neighbors, our museum collection, our accumulated treasures... wiped. I do feel a little sick every time something else occurs to me. The gyroids I was giving to Brewster! The special Nintendo DLC items! The b&w pixel artwork! I had just received the Golden Slingshot. Oy.

Starting over means another painful hour of running errands for Nook, followed by the stark emptiness that the game dumps you in for the first month. I just don't know if I'm strong enough to build that back up.

I suppose the lesson here is to send a machine out for repair BEFORE it goes entirely belly-up.

OK, so Snow Leopard didn't immediately recognize my five year old 1310 series HP all-in-one. And then it did recognize it for printing, but not for scanning. This is an acceptable evil from Apple dumping all those ancient printer drivers from the OS, resulting in a utilitarian-proud 7gig of reclaimed space for everyone. I dug up the original HP install disk, re-loaded the whatevers, and now I can scan again.

But one thing that Snow Leopard inexplicably altered has completely disrupted my workflow: the loss of the drag-and-drop jpg to Photoshop dock.

I used to do this ALL THE TIME. I'd find an image, usually something for web use, and drag it from Safari directly to the Photoshop icon. Poof, up it comes and I can go forward with my latest clever LOLcats idea.

Now, under 10.6.1, this is completely turned off. The icon remains dead and unbootable.

Even though I am, after a month or so of Snow Leopard, fully mentally aware of this issue, I still drag a jpg to the dock at least three times a day. And every time I cry out in frustration.

I'm not the only one to be bothered by this, which is comforting because usually I am the only one to bothered by this.

Sure, there are workarounds. You can drag the jpg to the desktop, and then drag it to Photoshop. Now your screen is littered with unorganized junk files. And since your Safari window probably takes up most of the screen, the junk is likely heaped in a pile on the side, like garbage bags by the mailbox on trash day.

You can right-click and save the jpg to iPhoto. There's a great solution. Now my family photo album has a picture of those two superfat bike-riding twins.

In both cases, I am forced to manage the image with superfluous actions: I have to clean up the mess. I have to either dump the desktop files, or, even worse in my opinion, mop up the iPhoto library. Previously, the image existed only as a nebulous Photoshop doc, to be saved out to whatever specific folder I intended. With no extraneous files to shift to the trash.

It now takes multiple steps to achieve something that was one simple gesture. That is not very Mac-like. I'm stepping this up as Apple's Greatest Interface Flaw, even above that atrocious un-cleanable trackball built into every Mighty Mouse.

We've already been through two versions of Snow Leopard, 10.6 and 10.6.1, with the same problem. I suppose a future version could restore this, unless maybe this anti-feature was part of Steve Jobs' secret conversations with Apple Corps about getting the Beatles into iTunes.

Paul McCartney hates dragging images! He lulls them to their proper location!

MegaBot Episode 01 (CLEAN) (YouTube)
Funny Power Rangers parody... I enjoy the Elemental Gearbolt ref, but I might be the only one.

Review Of Meatballs (John K. Stuff)
High praise from John K.'s review of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs:

I would give this an even zero - which is leagues ahead of any other animated feature today. Most cartoon features are thousands of points in the negative.

52 Reasons 52 May Have Been The Comics Event Of The Decade (Second Printing)
Put this way, 52 does seem pretty damn cool.

Crayon Shin-chan creator dies in climbing accident (CBR)
Yeesh! Doesn't that suck.

WEIRD: Pee-Wee Herman Now on Twitter (Mashable)
I can't believe this guy is doing this again.

My Trip To Korea (Cartoon Brew)
Animation exec Linda Simensky describes her talk at a Korean cartoon conference. It is cool to see how fast the Korean animation industry has developed... from inbetweener labor for American shows to producing their own original content.

What does Jack Kirby deserve? (Toon Zone Blog)
Nice take on the legal and ethical ramifications of the Kirby heirs suit levied against Marvel. I say the Kirby estate should get an increased cut of the profits (and more consistent creator credit on appearances, like what DC does with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman), but I tend to doubt the claims of Kirby owning the whole copyright to the characters. I think the claim against Spider-Man is evidence that the Kirby group is over-reaching... but anything is worth considering until somebody shows up with the proof.

GUYS, WHAT HAPPENED TO MOVIE POSTERS? (Nico Cartoons)
A great collection of horrible, horrible modern movie posters. This is probably a large part of why I don't pay attention to movies.

It was an impulse buy at Threads. I'm kind of a sucker for Katamari stuff. And I had not yet seen anybody else wearing the Katamari Prince outfit.

I walked around the Mall, but I was either laughed at...

...or outright ignored.

I tried to kick off a Running Man chain, but nobody would join in!

A couple people asked where I got the costume. But they seemed insincere.

Not even my awesome Batmobile could turn any heads.

I drowned my sorrows over at the Uncharted bar. But eventually I realized that I had to stay in it. Somewhere, I could find like-minded individuals.

So I ventured into the SingStar dance club.

And I found my mojo!

I gotta be me!

 

Getting the right layout on your iPhone screens is pretty important. At least, it is for someone who is nuts, as I am. It took me a month, but I finally organized the apps into a loose structure that I'm moderately happy with using and viewing.

I stuck with Apple's suggested bottom-Dock Quartet of Phone / Mail / Safari / iPod. Although I seriously almost never use the phone. But I'm in Mail all the time, Safari frequently, and iPod every now and then.

Directly above that is four heavily-used apps: AIM / Twitterrific / Video Games / Facebook. Three of those should speak for themselves; "Video Games" is just a free RSS reader that comes packed with feeds for a dozen gaming websites. I like it because you can tag an article and have it post directly to Facebook. But I hate that the icon is a circle.

Across the top is Settings / Calendar / Photos / Camera. Now, Camera always needs to be in a good spot, since I'm always taking pictures. (I also mapped the home double-click to Camera.) Calendar is there purely to tell me what day it is, via icon. I never actually have a need to boot it. Settings just looks nice top left.

In the middle is a little bit of a mush. The key pre-installed Apple apps that I actually use are in there. Maps and YouTube are frequently accessed. App Store and iTunes look good in that center block. Clock and Calculator are simple, useful beasts. Contacts and Notes are kinda meh.

The junkier apps live at the top of page two. Compass / Stocks / Messages / Weather are all not in my toolkit. Weather would be useful if the icon actually showed a live report, with the current temperature and condition (hey, I'm in a windowless office all day!). Voice Memos will likely never be used. I can shunt any of these off to the slums of page three at a moment's notice.

The middle of this page is kind of a rough zone. Movable Type 4 and FTPtogo are there for webwork. The bookmark to fourhman.com could exit, if need be. iCall is there for making outgoing calls while in a WiFi blanket, since our home AT&T reception is non-existant. my6sense is supposed to pull in RSS feeds and let me share articles across Facebook and Twitter, but it doesn't work (yet).

The IGN app is nothing but game reviews, which is pretty cool. I wish it had a release date calendar. The BoardGameGeek app is a nice slimmed down version of their website. Dice Bag just simulates various polyhedral die throws. Someday, I'll need that one.

And then there's three mostly-cool iPhone games: Metal Gear Solid Touch ($3), I Love Katamari ($8), and Tower Bloxx ($1).

I've got some wiggle room as apps come and go, but I feel sort of pro about my organization now.

And wasn't that all fascinating.

Freaking Walmart always seems to score rare toys before anybody else.

I read ToyFare magazine every month. And I have NEVER seen them mention this kickass Joker figure from the Brave and the Bold line.

The back of the packaging doesn't even show him. In fact, the back of the packaging shows almost no figures at all, which is a colossal mistake in the action figure biz. Why is the full contents of the line such a blasted secret?

We found this guy at Walmart. They had about a dozen Batman:BnB figures, two of which were Jokers. I tossed one in the cart, and by the time we circled out of the toy section, I saw somebody else checking out the remaining Joker figure.

This design echoes the crazy Golden Age Joker look created by artist Dick Sprang. The figure is a little light on the paint apps for my taste, but the entire BnB has that chunky streamline angle that is light on tiny details and long on solid, bold colors. It's still a quietly menacing little man, that's for sure.

His accessory sucks, though. A lot of modern toy lines have gone into Suck Accessory mode. IE, you get some one-mold plastic gun or whatever, with no moving parts. Joker's Popgun doesn't Pop. The BnB line gimmick is that the accessories can plug into any figure's shoulder, elbow, back or leg ports... and the popgun does indeed do that.

We also started getting the Action League mini-figures, which I first mentioned back here. I'm trying to buy smart and minimize the duplicated Batmen problem, but seeing as Batman comes in nearly every pack, the issue is unavoidable. Toys R Us has a six-pack that includes Blue Beetle, Aquaman, Gentleman Ghost, Black Manta, Kanjar Ro and, naturally, Batman. So I am trying to buy around that. There is a Green Arrow/Sportsmaster two-pack that I am on the lookout for, but our first pickup was the Batman/Metamorpho set. And that was a tough call when placed against Batman/B'Wana Beast. B'Wana Beast! Unbelievable. Names like that almost make we think Ambush Bug will make an appearance on this show.

I've actually been through all 34 "storyline" levels by now, a full day before the damn game was supposed to come out! Whoop whoop!

The game lets you save your screenshots out to the PS3 HD. For the big win, the screens save as a huge 960x540! I've shrunk them here for web purposes, but it's great to have such nice big screenshots at my disposal. Unlike, say, LittleBigPlanet, which exports screens out to a third of that size.

These first three are all from the first level. It's part normal Japanese living room with a candy/toy store on the side.

There's a detail for you. His shirt says "FUTURE."

I have unlocked two Eternal levels, one being this candy room and the underwater level is the second.

The levels are divided into two sections: the King's levels are mostly dupes from Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari. They begin in black and white because you're collecting items in order to restore the King's lost memories.

The other half of the levels belong to the Robo-King, who has been created by the Cousins to act in the King's behalf while he works through his amnesia.

Even though the items are the same silly blocky designs as the PS2 Katamari games, the draw distance, graphic filters and HD visuals make it a pleasure to watch. And, unlike the 360's Beautiful Katamari, there's no mid-level loading breaks!

Typical Katamari scene: tons of craziness.

Sorry for the spoiler, but that image is from one of the final levels.

Although Katamari no longer packs that JESUS WTF punch that it had in 2004, it's nice to be back rolling things up. Katamari Forever has a nice mix of old and new, the return of the Eternal mode, new mini-games, great music, and a bunch of new Cousins to collect. I was initially worried about the game living up to the $50 price tag (Damacy was $20 and We Love was $30, if memory serves), but there's so much to do that I'll easily squeeze my money's worth.

BEEAAAAAARRRRRRR!

They Might Be Giants - Roy G Biv (YouTube)
I want to re-sing this so it's about the Green Lantern War of Light.

Brighten Your Walls With Colorful Controllers, Smiling Handhelds (GameSetWatch)
A beautiful poster of happy cartoon video game controllers.

Top 28 Red Dwarf Moments (Heckler Spray)
Oh yes, the double Polaroid!

Do You Have the Right to Flip Off a Cop? (Yahoo News)

The recent controversy over the arrest of historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. - who was charged with disorderly conduct in his home after police arrived to investigate an erroneous report of a burglary in progress - was cast in racial terms: a white officer distrusting a black homeowner. But Walczak says this issue seems to have more to do with a police officer being confronted by an angry and disrespectful person and turning disorderly-conduct laws into a "contempt of cop" law, as he puts it. "Frankly, I think having someone dropping the F-bomb is better than resisting arrest or taking a swipe at a police officer," Walczak says. "But what we're seeing too often is that police who are offended by a lack of respect, often manifested by profanity or cursing, will punish people for that."

Lego Baseplate Shirt May Be the Dorkiest Shirt Ever Made (Gizmodo)
Wow, I pretty much want this.

Continuing the excitement, here's the latter half of my favorite comic covers of the past two years.

Jonah Hex #33, Sept 2008

Hex almost always has an awesome cover. But this snowy scene from Darwyn Cooke is a favorite.

The Brave and the Bold #16, Oct 2008

Scott Kolins with a cute and rare team-up: Superman and Catwoman.

DC: Decisions #1, Nov 2008

The covers on the four issue miniseries were way better than the story. I love the ridiculous campaign slogan: "Green Arrow endorses Davis Brewster liberally!"

Green Lantern Corps #32, Feb 2009

Creepy and vile. Kyle gazing into Kryb's womb-sack at the infants she has stolen. Seeing as how a bunch of Kryb's kidnapped babies are likely dead by now, I'll wager we are in for a seriously terrible Black Lantern Dead Baby moment.

Flash: Rebirth #1, June 2009

Ethan Van Sciver has been huge on this series, and this image was so good DC used it for their house-ads. Two page spread house ads.

Secret Six #8, June 2009

Eye-catching, intriguing, and silly. Nicola Scott has a real gift for combining realistic figures with almost-cartoonish faces.

The Pepsi/Rock Band promotion ended last weekend, and I am proud to report my final tally of accumulated wealth.

I put my first code in on July 9, which is when we finally noticed the yellow Rock Band caps showing up in our area. Between then and the 27th, I entered 29 codes. These were ALL winners. Every code won for everybody, every time.

By then, the internet had discovered the Wii scam where you got 200 Nintendo Points instead of a specific Rock Band song, so I was buying Pepsi whenever we were out. It was a great deal: $1.30 (or less) for 200 points (normally $2) plus the diet Pepsi.

On July 27, I got my first loss, and my world came crashing down. At that point, I stopped purchasing Pepsi. But I put a sign on the lunchroom soda machine begging for extra caps... and it paid off big. People would bring me their caps every day. Rhonda also had office mates giving her caps.

Over the next week, my winning percentage went down to 50%. From August 5 through 19, I played 30 codes and only won six times. Terrible. But since I wasn't paying for the soda, at least I wasn't out any real money. Things were better on the next few codes, with me winning roughly two out of three tries.

Around August 27, one month after codes starting losing, we had a brief period where, again, every code won. I won on 22 codes during that weekend.

For the last week of the promotion, things seemed to settle back down to a better-than-average chance of winning. By this time, I had so many winners built up, that I actually gambled 10 of my cap codes on a shot at one of the Beatles Premium Bundles. Which I'll assume I did not win.

I held on to my winners for a while, since I was waiting to see if Pepsi would update the PS3 DLC list. They added new tracks at the end of August, but numerous issues meant that the new songs weren't working correctly until another week passed. And even then, we didn't get absolutely EVERY song... out of the three Gorillaz tracks, only one was posted to the Pepsi DLC store, for example.

I ended up with 16 free Rock Band songs, including one track for the 360. Which was caused by me clicking too fast and accidently using the 360 DLC list.

And 78 winners become Nintendo Point codes. That amounts to $156, most of which is still sitting in my DSiWare and WiiWare accounts waiting to be turned into greatness. (I had some small previous stockpile on both before the Pepsi thing happened... maybe $8 on Wii and $5 on DSi.) So far, I picked up Boxlife on DSi (which is OK), and Darklord on Wii (which is GREAT). I even grabbed some of the Darklord expansion packs, which should illustrate just how flush with Wii cash I am at the moment. I currently have $40 on DSi and $97 on Wii. Next up: Pokemon Rumble on Wii, and that Roll Your Own WarioWare DSi game, should Nintendo ever get around to releasing it in the States.

I probably only paid for 20 or so of those first 29 caps, so I'm maybe out $26 bucks on the whole deal? This is a huge personal win for me, on the backs of disinterested nearby Pepsi drinkers!

I don't care what your soda allegiance is, but $26 and the kindness of neighbors is pretty incredible to turn into over $180 worth of gaming DLC. In fact, if you ignored this deal because you're a Coke guy, you're a complete dope. Particularly if you own a Wii. Even raiding some handy recycling bins would have turned into guaranteed free money if you managed to cash the code during one of the every-code-wins phases.

That was the greatest summer soda promotion ever.

But now I have to go buy those Gorillaz songs.

Man, that Pain movie editor is such hot stuff. Here's a trio of David Hasselhoff videos. I spent Sunday night on a Pain unlock streak.

This first video is my run at beating a 6,900,000 score, which unlocks Tuxedo Hoff.

For whatever reason, the editor cut me off at four minutes, so you're missing the final ooch that put me over the 7,000,000 mark.

The following video doesn't do much, I just liked the massive car explosions.

And here's me clearing two million points on the downtown board, which unlocked two Trophies for me.

Ever since they added the video editor (and I re-discovered the super-ooch), Pain has become a lot more playable. When it launched, lots of folks were down on Pain, but these days, I feel it's a must-get on PSN.

They just added George Takei to the playable characters, at a $2 cost. Yeah, I'm smitten enough to buy that guy.

Swordfighting is Clark's favorite Wii Sports Resort mode, unless you want to count "crashing Mii planes into the side of the mountain." So here's an iPhone movie of the former.

Clark bashed his way through the first five AI opponents using this technique, and then he had to rest.

I believe that got him halfway to the 1000-point mark, which is where you unlock the ability to turn your sword into a carrot or something.

I don't know how I missed the stealth drops of these four new Fat Princess classes last month. I saw when everybody jumped on the Pirate vs Ninja crap, but I never saw the Cook and the King!

These images were all teased on the Titan dev blog at the end of August. Initially, I think people suspected the Fat Princess-styled pirate and ninja were just meme doodles on a flickr feed... but with an official appearance on the weblog with the cook and king arriving a day later, it's safe to say we're looking at future DLC content for one of the year's best PS3 downloadable titles.

I know it's a drag that network games have officially inched up to the $15 price point, but whatever. It's not like SNES games have ever been worth $8 on the Wii Virtual Console, for pete's sake.

Pokemon Rumble first gameplay - official english trailer (YouTube)
Pokemon + Robotron + Gauntlet. Fair enough.

Repentant man breeds 4,600 scorpions (Yahoo News)
Yes, there is such a thing as taking an anti-animal cruelty stance too far.

Opinion: Time For A 'Hot Coffee' Postmortem (Gamesutra)
I'll never forget being at the mall in the wake of the Hot Coffee explosion, hearing a dad explain to his wife how "that game" had "all kinds of porn" in it.

Spider-Mouse (Mice Age)
Another great look at the Disney buyout of Marvel, this time from Mice Age's Kevin Yee.

Future, past useless at my age, says actor Sharif (Yahoo News)
Omar Sharif did Doctor Zhivago for a mere $15,000. Unbelievable.

Police free 9 from fake Big Brother house (Yahoo News)
Oh my. Still, a happier ending than, say, "police find 9 in fake Saw house."

Wilson's rallying cry (Yahoo News)
Republican acts like dickbag, nothing new under the Cheney sun there. What I like about this article is that South Carolina Democrat James Clyburn correctly used the phrase "beyond the pale."

It depends on your meaning of "violent" (Armagideon Time)
Speaking of that, here's a little warning about what happened the last time nutjob right-wingers started getting screamy and confrontational: Oklahoma City.

As Predicted: A Psychic Failure (Randi.org)
Asking why psychics didn't warn us about the 9/11 attacks. Haw haw haw.

Not that I considered myself a schooled expert on the Beatles catalog, but wow, there's a lot of stuff in Beatles Rock Band that I had never heard before. I suppose I was far more familiar with their early bubble-gum lovey stuff, not so much the naval-gazing hippie bit from the final days. Except, of course, whatever made it into the Yellow Submarine movie.

There's only 45 songs on the disc, which is quite a bit low. In fact, I suspect there is a substantial Beatles Tax at work here. If you compare Beatles Rock Band, feature for feature, with Rock Band 2, BRB comes up way short for your $60. The balance is, hey, it's The Beatles, but I still feel a bit overcharged. Especially when Harmonix was already happily crowing about additional DLC-for-purchase ready to go next month... which, you know, could have been used to fill out the on-disc setlist. We were song-shortchanged on this one, folks. Half the tracks of RB2, no interchanging with RB2, no visual customization, a limited pool of future DLC, only a few venues... not that all of that is a big loss (I'd certainly rather see the cute, aging Beatles avatars than my nameless Rocker), it just adds up to making Beatles Rock Band seem a little anemic on comparison.

The highly-vaunted "lost audio" that plays between tracks really does not amount to much. It's usually just somebody noodling on a guitar, or Paul saying something like "Are we ready to go now, lads?" I'm also disappointed that the "dreamscapes" quality does not hold up across all the Abbey Road Studio songs. Sure, some songs (like Sgt. Pepper, I am the Walrus, and Here Comes The Sun) get cool-ass music videos, but a lot of the studio song dreamscapes are merely psychedelic visual effects applied to the band's avatars.

So I don't see that as substantially making up the difference. Far more interesting is the unlockable photos and audio/video rarities. You get a rehearsal vid from the Ed Sullivan Show, plus that bizarre Christmas Record, among others. The animated open/close and the transition movies are, happily, brilliant.

But about the songs. Here's how I measured up:

OF COURSE I KNOW THESE SONGS
A Hard Day's Night, Back in the USSR (although I always thought that was McCartney solo!), Birthday, Can't Buy Me Love, Come Together, Day Tripper, Do You Want to Know a Secret, Drive My Car, Eight Days a Week, Get Back, Hello Goodbye, Here Comes the Sun, I am the Walrus, I Feel Fine, I Saw Her Standing There, I Want to Hold Your Hand, I Wanna Be Your Man, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Octopus's Garden, Paperback Writer, Revolution, Sgt Pepper/Little Help from My Friends, Taxman, Ticket to Ride, Twist and Shout, Yellow Submarine

SONGS I DID NOT RECOGNIZE BY THE TITLE, INSTEAD THE CHORUS
Dear Prudence, Don't Let Me Down, Getting Better, I'm Looking Through You, The End, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

SONGS I HAD NEVER BEFORE HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE
And Your Bird Can Sing, Boys (this is Ringo doing a cover), Dig a Pony, Good Morning Good Morning, Helter Skelter, Hey Bulldog, I Me Mine, I Want You (She's So Heavy), If I Needed Someone, I've Got a Feeling, Something, Within Without You

So, about half the disc was largely a mystery to me. But at least I had a general understanding of the range of Beatles music, so even if I did not know the song, I could anticipate the sound. Which is still better than the junk you have to suffer through as part of your regular Rock Band purchase.

We need to get to the point where we buy Rock Band 3 with no tracks at all, at a huge discount, and then you get to build your own playlist from DLC songs. RB2 is really smart about crafting challenges based on the songs it sees in your unique library, so this is totally doable.

Incidentally, it was a really bad idea to make one of the Beatles PS3 Trophies "play through the entire story mode in under 24 hours." Because now that I've done that and therefore done all the songs, I'm sort of bereft of excitement after one night's playthrough!

THEN THERE'S THE DLC
Gamestop offered three free DLC songs with your preorder. Since the DLC doesn't yet exist, right now you just register your request and they'll email out codes when the songs are out. Since the first DLC batches are rounding out the Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper albums, I knew almost NONE of the songs available.

The only one I knew was When I'm 64. For my second song, I choose Day in the Life, because I think I may know that one. Of course, you can't fire up iTunes to preview any of these.

For my third free song, I went with Maxwell's Silver Hammer. Which I have never heard, but Wikipedia says that Lennon derided it as one of McCartney's "granny music" songs. So that sounds funny. I hope the dreamscape for that one involves John rolling his eyes a lot.

Still, it's great fun. The songs are the key draw, and the look is fantastic. The game definitely reminds you why these guys were so fab.

We just received our DVD/CD of They Might Be Giant's new kids album, Here Comes Science. $10 on Amazon, which is pretty great.

I had the inaugural listen in the car this morning and was struck by the near-immediate slam on angels.

Here's a portion of the lyrics to "Science is Real."

Science is real
From the Big Bang to DNA
Science is real
From evolution to the Milky Way
I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like the stories
As much as anybody else
But when I'm seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science
The facts are with science

There's also a track called "My Brother the Ape", which is about a person (presumably a young person) struggling to accept that he shares a closer kinship to apes than to, say, the snowy egret. And "I am a Paleontologist" has the line "It's so fun to think about how a species has evolved."

Now, it's not like the Johns fielded a track called "God is Total Bullshit And Here's Why," and I know that certain religious stripes have found ways to fold in the science of evolution and dinosaurs and etc. But it's always cool to think that somebody you have long enjoyed and respected seems to hold a similar opinion.

Quoth the Flans: "Although it wasn't designed to create controversy, it's still a big relief to me that the opening track, Science Is Real, didn't raise any red flags with the label. The song freely acknowledges the Big Bang and evolution, and casually conflates angels with unicorns and elves-all of which might bug some anti-science, pro-angel folk."

Although I bet They could do a hell of a job on "God is Total Bullshit And Here's Why."

As I mentioned last week, I have a room full of comics to bag-n-box. Out of the probable 400 books, I have selected my twelve favorite covers. Here's the first six.

Stan Lee Meets The Thing, 2006

Nice homage cover. The line "This Stan, This Monster" gets me every time.

Countdown to Final Crisis #23, Nov 2007

Countdown certainly was a mess. Seemed like there was a lot of good ideas in there, but nothing ever came together and it was all thrown out the window anyway. Still, the image of a dirtied, chained Mr. Mxyzptlk is pretty amazing.

Robin Annual, #7, Dec 2007

I bought this specifically for the cover. DC was using the image in a house ad at the time. It's all pointy and beautiful.

Countdown Special: Kamandi 2008

Ryan Sook does great things. I feel like his Kamandi is staring right at me. Sook did an Ambush Bug cover for a collection that DC never got around to printing.

Joker's Asylum: Scarecrow, Sept 2008

I like the cross-pollination between the Animated Scarecrow and the DCU version.

Final Crisis #3, Sept 2008

All of the figural covers for Final Crisis were brilliant. But I think this contemplative, shyly feminine Supergirl is my favorite.

I know there's a reason we don't have to go to work tomorrow, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

We're in NJ at Chad & Dana's, and we actually spent a lot of time outside. They have two little girls and Clark has had a blast playing with them. But while whiffle ball and frisbee are things that happened, it's the gaming that I'm willing to weblog. Particularly the stuff that was new to me, or at least had not been touched for a while.

Right now I'm watching Chad play Braid. This is clearly not my thing. I'm putting Braid right inside the Mega Man 9 category of games that are unconscionably difficult. I'm sure many people enjoy this. I would not. My favorite part is listening to Mike watch walkthrough movies on YouTube and try to explain the solution to Chad.

"He's going up the ladder. He's doing that crazy jump thing we talked about. He's... what the fuck?"

I can see how Braid is achingly clever. But the continuous trial and error gameplay is painful and brutish. Particularly in the time-based puzzles. The shadow man portions are much better.

Castle Crashers. Cute look. Obnoxious poop jokes. Not as instantly appealing as I would have guessed after all the hype. It's coming to PS3 at some point, and my personal jury is out as to whether I would purchase it. I really like the little animal power-ups, but the actual game is pretty spare. It's no Fat Princess.

World of Goo. The presence of multiplayer surprised all of us. But with four people trying to place goo balls and only one with camera control... it's more of a social laugh than an actual multiplayer experience. In the end, I think I'd probably prefer a mouse-based version, but I'd need to test that out.

Noelle took down another de Blob level for me. Not that I've played that one in a while, but I'll gladly take the assist on my save file. What in the hell were they thinking making those levels so damn long. Each level could have easily been cut into three pleasing sections, instead of one awful draining killer. Checkpoints, de Blob. Checkpoints.

I showed off Madworld. People will watch Madworld, but nobody ever wants to play Madworld. And that explains the sales.

Here's an experiment that you, having a brain, will fully expect to fail. And I did as well, but I had to try to get the 100% on it. If you copy a WiiWare/VC game to the SD card, then take that SD card to another Wii, you cannot play that game. I mean, of course, right? If you could play games off the SD with impunity, nobody would ever buy anything. Still, I had to know firsthand. Had it worked, we'd be playing Darklord right now.

Chad busted out the Arkham Horror last night. Very, very nice. It takes some chewing to get it set up and the basics explained, but once you're in the groove it's not bad at all. Giant co-op board games are such a treasure. I love that angle where we're all deciding who is going where and what happens next. The card-based character customization thing is brilliant.

We won - even with Mike fading and Chad and I finishing things off using Mike's character as fodder - but we had some rules wrong. So that's an introductory game of Arkham Horror, I suppose. Next time, it will be bloody. I'm going to have to get this one... it's been a regular surprise to me that I don't already own it.

We're planning another multi-day trip up here for New Year's, which will probably have less outside stuff.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Joker Trailer (YouTube)
Game. Of. The. Year.

Guy Ritchie to direct DC Comics adaptation "Lobo" (Yahoo News UK)
Error in line one: Lobo is not "blue-skinned."

Separation? What Separation? (Peter David)
A little about the blurry line between church and state by Peter David.

Sack it to Me - The "I Can't Wait Until GOTY + DEMO Next Week" Edition (PlayStation Blog)
LBP demo coming, which is long overdue. The Dynamic Theme looks great, but I don't know if any Dynamic Theme is worth $3. This article explains how the Game of the Year edition works, but at $60 there's no need at all for existing owners to upgrade.

Obama goes back to school (Yahoo News)

On September 8, in what the Department of Education is touting as a "historic" speech, President Obama will be talking directly to students across the U.S., live on the White House website. But some parents and conservatives are blasting the president, calling the speech an excuse to brainwash American children.

And then they all went to church.

Bitter Irony Alert: "Disney's Howard the Duck" (Again with the Comics)
Great article about the under-the-water battle between Disney and Marvel over Howard the Duck. And of course, now Disney owns Howard.

Who Is Nekron? (Again with the Comics)
More greatness from Brian Hughes... a look back at DC's history with Nekron, who figures heavily behind Blackest Night.

Fat Princess To Get Fatter In New Pork (Kotaku)
Yay! New Fat Princess map! Here's hoping we get a big pile of free stuff on this one. But I know I'd pay for it anyway. Awesome game.

It's that time again. Time to bag and box an unholy assortment of comics.

I've been letting my "new" books stack up for quite some time. I'd like to be more proactive about getting my comics organized and put away, but it never seems to work out that way. They pile up in a corner of the den, to the point that, the other weekend when Mike and Noelle were sleeping in the den on an air bed, they probably suspected the comics would fall on them.

The last time I put books away was December 2007. The picture above is just about every book purchased since then. That includes two Free Comic Book Days. Half of Countdown and all of Trinity. Final Crisis. Marvel Zombies 2. Sinestro Corps. The end of World War Hulk and the beginning of Blackest Night. I think the Justice League disbanded three times over that period. It is an impressive amount of periodical literature.

The sequence is as follows. Sort according to title. Loosely organize alphabetically. Start with the A pile(s) and put that into strict alpha, then numerical by issue number, bag, then stack into the holding box. Once the holding box is full, then it heads two floors south to the basement to re-alphabetize the books into the main collection.

I only had one pack of bags on me. I think I have more somewhere, but I only bagged 100 books tonight. You can see them inside the holding box. I estimate I'll need another 300 to bag the rest. That's only like twenty books a month, actually.

While I was stacking and bagging, Clark worked on his comics collection. He likes cramming two or three books inside one bag, and then using upwards of five stickers to close the flap. We had the Wonder Woman animated movie on in the background. It's better than expected and has become a new favorite.

The fun news is that this process allows me to select some of my favorite covers for a future weblog entry. Oh boy!

I do this for me, you know. I realize you couldn't possibly be interested in this.

I currently have four pre-orders in with Gamestop. Beatles (9/9), Scribblenauts (9/17), Uncharted 2 (10/13) and Ratchet & Clank F2 (10/27). In each case, I'm in solely for the preorder bonus. I did have Arkham Asylum preordered with them, but the morning I heard about the Toys R Us $30 gift card deal, I called and shifted those five dollareedoos onto Scribblenauts. I actually was going to put them on LEGO Rock Band, but it was not yet in their system and the manager thought it was DS only. No.

Obviously I must be talking about Scribblenauts A LOT at home, because I brought up a Scribblenauts movie on the Wii's Nintendo Channel and Clark ID'ed it right away. Should be fun to test his imagination by asking him what silly stuff we should summon in the game.

It seems a little too aggressive for Sony to drop Uncharted 2 and the new R&C in the same month, eh? But then again, Sony needs to have a highly successful holiday this year.

So, with those four marked as definites, here's the second round of likely purchases. Some of these I'm just waiting for Gamestop to announce some sick preorder so I can jump on that as well.

September 22: Katamari Forever (PS3). Of course. Afrika (PS3) is also out that day. Both of these are slightly cheaper than the usual PS3 game... Katamari at $50 and Afrika at $40. It's going to be tough to swallow a Katamari game at $50.

October 4: Wii Fit Plus is only $20! That's crazy great. This will be a good test of the Wii's longevity (and marketing acumen). The original Wii Fit sold so well, that there is a built-in audience for this $20 expansion. If nobody buys it, then we can call the Balance Board a fad and move on. If it sells amazing, then it's a victory for budget pricing and could lead to more "Plus" titles from Nintendo. Which makes me yearn for Smash Brawl Plus with online voice chat, full friend stats, and online buddy list.

November 17: EyePet (PS3). $40 without the camera. I think this is going to be hilarious, in a stupid way. I wish the critter wasn't so damn "cute by committee" in his design.

And then there's the aforementioned LEGO Rock Band (PS3), which was just revealed to allow a full song export to Regular Flavor Rock Band. That just officially became a no-brainer. The only missing angle is, can you play 100% of your existing DLC songs in LEGO Rock Band?

Now for the Maybes.

Here's a couple of DS games that are big iffies for September... Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. I kind of feel like I can safely pause on both, although I expect great things from them. Between Scribblenauts and Professor Layton, I think my DSi is going to be occupado for a while.

I do so love Kingdom Hearts, but this version seems to downplay the Disney angle, which does not meet with my approval.

September 8: Muramasa (Wii). I mean, yeah. I know. It's going to be a critical darling, but I'm not positive it's my bag.

October 13: A Boy and His Blob (Wii). Another maybe. I doubt I'll have the interest in this one for a while, and as a third-party title that will likely underperform, that means I can pick it up later on sale.

Same story with Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii) and Ju-on: The Grudge (Wii). I kind of forgot about Cursed Mountain (Wii), which came out last month, so it will be a race to see which horror game hits the discount first. Something here is happening to me, I just don't know which. I mean, look at what Ju-on is doing:

Why again didn't we get Fatal Frame 4?

October 20: I'm awaiting some reviews for Marvel Super-Hero Squad (PS3). It's cutified super-hero brawling in the LEGO Star Wars mode, which would probably be great for me and Clark. I'll need to see a playable character list. The inclusion of Silver Surfer would be a deal-clincher.

We don't have dates for God of War 1&2 (PS3) and New Super Mario Bros Wii, but it hardly matters as they're both maybes.

Hurm. Looking back, I've got a lot of PS3 action queued up, and most of the Wii stuff on potential.

And I still don't see any of these rising above Batman: Arkham Asylum.