Posts categorized “Video Games”

Link of the Month:
Lackadaisy
A webcomic about prohibition-era St. Louis has much of what you’d expect from such a thing: speakeasies, flappers, pinstripes, tommy-guns, moonshiners, heavies, and dames. But you might not expect that it is one of the most lushly-illustrated webcomics I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it makes other webcomics look like they were drawn by four-year-olds using their non-dominant hand. It’s also meticulously researched and strives to be as historically accurate as possible. And let’s not forget that it’s hilarious and dramatic and thoroughly entertaining. And it’s about anthropomorphic cats.

Album of the Month:
JP Inc.: An Album of Distinction
You might know JP by his former musician name of Pleaseeasaur. In his new identity, JP has crafted a concept album: JP Incorporated is a company that crafts “Music Themes for Quality Television Programs.” The album is a parade of howlingly-funny horrible theme songs for horrible-sounding TV shows, such as “Lietenant Custard & His Banger of Time,” “Family Comedy,” “Gymnastics Dad,” and “The Internet” (and those are all just on the first half of the album), interspersed with some commercial work, such as the recurring “Common Scents” and the heavy-metal band Crap Factory. The songs are all purposefully incompetent and sometimes hilariously and aggravatingly accurate, especially to 1980s TV theme songs. Take a listen to some sample tracks here:
The Internet:
Situations:
Jacuzzi Air:
And here’s the video for “Jazzbot Xtreme”

Game of the Month:
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
One of the most visually stunning Wii games I’ve ever played, Epic Yarn re-tools the familiar Kirby franchise and spins a new game where everything is composed entirely of yarn and fabric and buttons. But it isn’t just a visual style; the side-scrolling platformer gameplay is based almost entirely on incredibly creative ways to manipulate and interact with the various fabric environments and yarn characters. Kirby’s Epic Yarn is simply a joy to play, and is a surprisingly relaxing and happy experience. It’s low on the challenge level (much like Lego Star Wars, you can’t actually die), but the whole point is to be able to experience the lush fullness of the game, not get frustrated by its challenges. So much fun!

This year’s Halloween I decided to integrate my costume and my pumpkins. Here’s my costume:

ASTEROIDS!!!

I went as the ship from Asteroids. It was fun! I went to Home Depot and bought one of those swivel joints that you’d use to make a lazy Susan. Then I made the ship out of black foam board. The outline of the ship is just a couple of layers of masking tape. I mounted the ship to the lazy Susan joint (with three layers of foam board padding to push it farther away from my body for easier swiveling) with some screws and hot glue. And I attached the other side of the lazy Susan joint to another three layers of foam board that I attached to my body with two belts (one above the joint and one below).

I also made an asteroid outta foam board and masking tape, with two smaller asteroids. I glued some velcro to the backs so that the little ones could attach to the big one out of sight. I also got a handful of ping-pong balls to use as the ship’s bullets! I had a friend slowly attack me with the larger asteroid while I threw ping-pong balls at it. When I hit it, he disengaged the smaller asteroids and dropped the big one. Just like in the game!

My punkins were carved to match:

And just for fun I also threw in the UFO:

Pretty much everybody agreed that it was the best of the Fools’ costumes at this year’s Fools Play Trick or Treat. But the competition wasn’t really that stiff…

That’s Jamie the Ginger Fool as “Batman,” me, Geoff the Yellow Fool as “Harry Potter” (really), and Mike the Blue Fool as Zordon from Power Rangers.

James won the best costume in the audience competition as a red knight from Castle Crashers. It was very good, though I didn’t get a picture of it. Tia went as a 1960s-style alien space babe, with a beehive hairdo and fantastic boots and silver ray guns and everything. Pretty awexome.

Hween night was spent in the traditional way: Wii Bowling and making a metric tonne of Reuben sammitches and eating my wife’s Russian potato soup with sauerkraut. But I don’t have to tell you about that myself. Our good friend the Unintentional Housewife was there, and she blogged all about it! So go read her posts about my Reuben process and about my wife’s dee-licious soup. Also, Marvel’s X-Men’s “X-23″ was there, and she brought some apple crisp, which was also delicious. Saves me the trouble of having to write about it myself!

Yesterday I did many things in Tacoma in the evening. Let’s kick it:

Tacoma Art Museum

Carrie had to teach in the evening, but fortunately I did not have to go it alone. I picked up our friend Laura and we headed on down to the Tacoma Art Museum. Why? Well, for one thing it’s free on the third Thursday of every month (in the evening). For another—more important—reason, it was the opening celebration of the Mighty Tacoma exhibit, which involved an exhibit of a whole bunch of photos taken by local Tacoma artists, including our good buddy Neighbor Gary. He had six photos up—three black-and-white (silvered gel prints) and three rather large color prints. Gary was there schmoozing with all the people who came to gaze at his photos, and so, coincidentally, were my in-laws. They were on their way to their wedding dinner and had decided to stop at the museum.

One part of the exhibit was the opportunity to get your picture taken with a digital camera that then uploaded your image to Tacoma Art Museum’s Flickr stream. A slideshow of all the photos taken was transmitted to a big flat screen monitor mounted to a wall of the exhibit, so that you could be a part of the show! Carrie’s dad had absolutely no interest in being a part of this, so I posed instead with Carrie’s mum. She wanted me to do something “silly,” so I struck a pose that I think is rather indicative of our relationship:

She thought it was very funny.

Laura photo taken as well, and also participated in another interactive part of the exhibit where you wrote down your thoughts about Tacoma on a sticky note, then read your note out loud into a camera before sticking it on a wall of all the other sticky notes. I assume that the videos will all be edited together at some point.

Also, there were free cupcakes from Hello Cupcake.

Tollefson Plaza

At 6:00 our friend Katie was s’posed to be dancing across the street from TAM in Tollefson plaza, so Laura & I headed over there but nothing was yet happening. So we went back to TAM where there was a beer garden put on by the Harmon. They were showcasing a steamed beer, which was tasty but a little flat.

After the beer we went back to Tollefson and watched the dance, which was put on by a troupe called BQdanza, which unfortunately does NOT have anything to do with Tony Danza. Much dancing took place in the water in Tollefson, which must have been very cold by that time in the evening.

Dorky’s

The show was over by 6:30, which was a bit early to call it a night. So instead Laura & I hiked the nine blocks up Pacific to Dorky’s Bar Arcade, which right now is only Dorky’s Arcade because they haven’t gotten their liquor license yet. We played many a game of pinball, including Cyclone, Bride of Pinbot, Evel Knievel, Supersonic, and Space Riders. Culture at its finest.

After we ran outta coin we walked back down Pacific to my car and I proceeded to drive Laura back home… or so I thought. While en route, she got a text message and asked me, “Do you wanna go to an art gallery?” Seems a couple of her friends were going to go. And the gallery was two blocks from where we were.

Fulcrum Gallery

The gallery was the Fulcrum Gallery in Hilltop. They were showing the “Street Botany” series by Maria Jost. I’d love to give you a link to her blog or website or whatnot, but I just can’t seem to find anything. So here are a couple of images from them:

They’re these incredibly detailed illustrations of plants that grow in urban areas, but there’s usually something whimsical or odd about them. Like if you look closely at the dandelion one, you’ll notice that whole, tiny dandelion plants are actually growing on the little ball at the center of all the puffs. Another one was an illustration of various mosses arranged to look like clouds. In recent weeks posters had been made of the whole series and plastered up around town. I like them. They’re science and they’re fun.

After looking around the gallery for a while (and having a bite of cheese) we left before Laura’s friends ever showed up. I took her home then came home myself. The ey-end.

Link of the Month:
Sexy Witch
This is a fun and fascinating blog that is chronicling the various ways in which popular culture portrays Halloween-style witches as being sexy throughout the decades. Many images are, unsurprisingly, NSFW.

Game of the Month:
Plants vs Zombies
Yes, this pseudo-tower-defense game is all the rage among geek circles now. But y’know what? Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s bad. So get off your “too cool for school” high horse and just play the damned game because, guess what? It’s really, really frikkin’ fun.

DVD of the Month:
Dario Argento’s Phenomena
An insanely-packed, weirdly-conceived, and at times truly-disgusting movie from Argento’s oeuvre. This mid-80s horror/slasher movie includes such things as psychic connections with insects, maggots eating corpses (lots of that), Donald Pleasance with a Scottish brogue and in a wheelchair to boot, a monkey with a straight razor, trippy sleepwalking dream sequences, Patau syndrome, fog-filled Swiss woods, heads going through panes of glass, and Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly’s first starring role. It’s a complete mess, but it’s a Dario Argento mess.

Link of the Month:
Vacation Rentals By Owner
For the past few years Carrie & I have used this website pretty much every time we’ve gone on vacation. Why stay at a hotel or motel when you travel someplace when instead you can stay in a house or cabin—sometimes for an absurdly inexpensive amount? VRBO is a catalog of vacation rental properties that honestly will make your vacation much more individual and personal. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Album of the Month:
Anamanaguchi – Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game
Anamanaguchi is one of my favorite instrumental rock band. They consist of guitar, bass, drums, a Nintendo Entertainment System, and a Nintendo Game Boy. Their music is a fusion of 8-bit Chiptune sounds and traditional rock. As such their music is perfectly suited for the retro-chic stylings of the Scott Pilgrim video game. This soundtrack will appeal especially to any fans of Hip Tanaka and Yuukichan’s Papa.

Game of the Month:
Metroid: Other M
Nintendo again takes a big risk with one of their most-beloved franchises: Other M is surprisingly experimental for such a mainstream game, especially in terms of the play control scheme(s). It adds many surprising elements to the franchise, like cut-scenes and close-quarters combat systems. At its heart, though, it is still a Metroid game with its definite emphasis on exploration and hidden item collection. Not flawless by any means, Other M is a bold choice to be admired and, ultimately, enjoyed quite a heck of a lot.

This has been all over the internets the past few days, so I thought I’d add my own two cents to it.

Here’s the story: Warner Bros. acquired the Mortal Kombat franchise recently, and there has been some noise about making another live-action movie, a reboot of the franchise. So director Kevin Tancharoen (who directed the recent Fame movie) hired some actors including Michael Jai White and Jeri Ryan and made this short film as a proof-of-concept to pitch his vision to Warner Bros.

And except for some awkward insertions of catch phrases from the game, I think the result is shockingly excellent:

If such a film actually gets made, I might actually want to go and see it. I do think that with all the buzz surrounding this video that Warner Bros. would be fools not to let Tancharoen helm this movie. But then again, I am talking about Hollywood executives, so…

I was going to post footage from the Dumbfoundead/Open Mike Eagle/Nocando/Threeni show that I went to last night, but the sound from the footage I recorded was all blown out and it sounded basically like bursts of static. Other people recorded it, but they haven’t posted it online yet, so I can’t post it here for all y’all.

To tide yourselves over, please indulge in Super Mario Crossover, a version of Super Mario Bros. where you can play as Mario, Link, Simon Belmont, Bill (from Contra), Samus Aran, and Mega Man. Yes, it is actually as awesome as it sounds. Just click the image:

(via Newgrounds)