October Music Wrap-Up/Alex's Halloween Playlist

The Music Wrap-Up is a monthly summary of our favorite and other notable new releases. Please support these musicians as that's the reason we're featuring them in the first place.

The Playlist is a collection of music our favorite music. Not new, maybe not notable, but great music that we love and want to share.

This new way of doing the Music Wrap-Up doesn't seem to be working out. I couldn't find a majority of the music that I wanted to feature available on YouTube. Luckily though, it's Halloween, and I've decided to also kick off the weekly Playlist idea I've been kicking around. What better time to start then with a Halloween themed version? Enjoy!

The October Wrap-Up

The Albums (in order of appearance)

Weezer - Raditude - I've really only ever gotten into Pinkerton and The Blue Album. After that I've only passively paid attention to Weezer releases. Having only listened to a few of the songs from Raditude on YouTube, it seems pretty good.

Wolfmother - Cosmic Egg - I also haven't really gotten into Wolfmother, but I know Dan really liked them at one point.

Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine - The Audacity of Hype - The best post-Dead Kennedys project Jello has ever been involved with is Lard. I've listened to every single band he has put together. Collaborations with Melvins, DOA, Mojo Nixon, Nomeansno, and on and on... all pretty "meh" worthy. This one seems pretty good though. I'll have to pick up the cd and cross my fingers.

Jesu - Opiate Sun - Jesu is one of those bands I like to listen to in the middle of the night when nobody else is awake. They really convey a completely different atmosphere.

Not Featured

Dark Meat - Truce Opium

Bell Orchestre - Who Designs Nature's How

88 Fingers Louie - Lives

Gogol Bordello - Live from Axis Mundi

The Snake The Cross The Crown - On a Carousel of Sound We Go Round

The Halloween Playlist

Here are some of my favorite slightly Halloween themed songs. Some of them aren't Halloween themed at all, but they are dark or spooky sounding enough that I counted them. And yeah, All Saints Day is technically the day AFTER Halloween, but I stuck that song in there anyway.

Trailer Park: October 30th

Trailer Park is a weekly post, every thursday, where we feature trailers for the upcoming weekend movie releases.

The title of this Michael Jackson movie is very relevant, it just so happens to be the only thing releasing this week. Well alright, technically it's the only thing releasing wide this week, but there are other limited releases. Some of them look like they might be pretty good too.

Michael Jackson's This Is It

I'm pretty sure this is going to crush everything else at the box office this week. That's probably why nobody else is releasing anything alongside it. I'm not sure how limited some of these other releases are, but my guess is VERY limited next week and then expanding in the weeks that This Is It is dropping off.

The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day

I really liked the first Boondock Saints, but looking back on it I wonder if I still would. I watched it when I was probably 16 or so, which would have been the perfect time for me to cling onto it. Still, this sequel will probably be a great action flick to see in the theaters. And when all summer blockbusters are long gone, this'll be the only one for awhile.

Gentlemen Broncos

I never saw Nacho Libre, but I loved Napoleon Dynamite. And yes, you all probably hate that movie now because you're cool and you lash back against the hype. But answer me this; isn't the backlash against Napoleon Dynamite almost the new trend? *GASP*! Now you need to lash back against the backlash! Quick! Go see Gentlemen Broncos and rave about how it changed your life and was the funniest movie you've ever seen! Just don't go too far or else you'll have to join the backlash against... you know what? I'm just going to end this now.

Other Releases:
The Fall
The House of the Devil
How to Seduce Difficult Women

What will you be seeing?

Putting Scribblenauts to the (Bird) Test

Scribblenauts is an amazing tool for entertainment, while at the same time being the most frustrating thing you have ever laid your hands upon. It's all been written before, so I'll save you all of that. I won't write about how amazing it is to be able to solve a puzzle using a UFO to lift a cow out of the way of traffic, and I won't write about the amount of times I cursed trying to get that to work.

No, instead, I am putting Scribblenauts to the test. You see, I had this idea for an article on the game, where I would hit random letters and see what kind of word I had never heard of came up as a suggestion for what I meant to spell with my jibberish. When doing that, I quickly realized that most words I have never heard of, turned out to be some strange pastry, or some strange bird.

Not knowing any pastry experts, I decided to go to my brother Aaron. He has an environmental science degree, and has been participating in bird related activities the last few years. Counting them, or something, I don't really know. But the point is the man knows his birds, so he should be able to put Scribblenauts to the test.

What were the results?

---

Bird - Crested Caracara

The Scribblenauts system took out the 'Crested' part of the name, but according to Aaron the appearance was accurate. I'm not exactly sure how much, as "Sure, yeah." wasn't very descriptive, but accurate enough I suppose.

---

Bird - Bird of Paradise

I told him to pick something more unique this time. Something that wouldn't have a generic type that Scribblenauts could exploit like caracara. I was informed at that point that Crested Caracara is pretty unique and if there are multiple types that it's only a few *cough* Bird Nerd! *cough*. Still, I was given Bird of Paradise, which sort of made me wary. I kind of expected the game to just remove 'of Paradise' and give us a generic bird. Surprisingly though, it gave us a Bird of Paradise that looked "Sure, yeah" accurate.

---

Bird - Golden Cheeked Warbler

When given this suggestion, I'm pretty sure he still hadn't figured the game out. I knew it was going to give us a generic warbler instead of the specific one that he had stated. Sure enough, generic warbler we got. "The colors are all wrong" was his response. "Well, it just gave us a generic warbler. It took out Golden Cheeked." I could see him starting to get into this little game I had created for him.

---

Bird - American Redstart

Like I said, he was getting into it. An American Redstart is apparently a kind of warbler, but it doesn't have warbler in the name. He was trying to test the game. I'm not sure if he thought the game would still give us a warbler, or if he was hoping it wouldn't have any response, but it was neither of those scenarios. It did indeed have an American Redstart, and the colors and appearance were sufficiently accurate.

---

Blue-Footed Booby

He was really trying at this point to think of unique and obscure birds that Scribblenauts couldn't cheat with. There was no way the game could simplify this name, the ESRB would have gone crazy. It would either have it or not. It had it. Beaten again, we regrouped.

---

Bird - Hoatzin

This was our final chance to beat the game without it just cheating it's way out of answering our questions. He was really thinking. He mentioned something like Quezacotl, which I recognized as that mythical bird from Final Fantasy games. I looked up the correct way to spell it and informed him, but apparently he wasn't looking for the mythical bird. Either way, the game didn't have it, which he wasn't surprised by but for a game that has Cuthulhu, not having Quezacotl is a fail in my book. The bird he apparently was thinking of was a Hoatzin, which the game did have. So I guess I'll count this as we kind of beat the game, but not really.

---

So there you have it. I like to think we won against Scribblenauts in this odd game I've thought up. Sure, it had every single bird that my bird expert could think of, but it cheated several times. And not having Quezacotl is failing in some sort of way, I just can't think of what.

Help Wanted

I am well aware of the fact that nothing has been posted on the site since Friday, and it bothers me. I'd love to be able to provide daily content to you, the reader, but it was hurting my writing.

Truth is, I've been working on several articles that I am really excited about, but I don't want to rush them out there until I know they are as good as they can be. So, in the interest of keeping a regular amount (hopefully daily) of content on the site, I've been hunting for new writers.

You may have noticed one new addition to the contributors list, but we need more. If you are interested in volunteering your writing (i.e. we can't pay you... yet), then please contact us at the email in the right hand column. Provide some writing samples if possible, and I will contact you if we're interested.

I would prefer people that will write about forms of media other then video games, but we'll play it by ear. One day I would love to have a team of people who primarily write about their favorite form of media.

We look forward to hearing from you! Sorry, that was cheesy.

Is NBC Giving Conan the Shaft?

As far as late show hosts go, Conan has always been my favorite. I can't stand Leno, I respect Letterman but he has a peculiar sense of humor I never really got into, and the constantly rotating lineup of Late Late Show hosts never jumped out at me.

So when I heard that Conan was going to be moving on up to The Tonight Show, I was excited. He deserved it, and I would be able to watch him as I hadn't tuned in regularly for quite awhile, having a kid has kept me from staying up that late.

In the last month or so, however, I am becoming steadily more frustrated. Turns out, Leno didn't retire at all. He still hosts almost the exact same show, he just does it at 10 o'clock and without a desk. He has swooped in and stolen all the glory from Conan.

Last night, President Obama was on Letterman. As we watched, I thought about what shows Obama might be a guest on. Certainly, Conan wouldn't be top on his list. The 2 big shows are still Leno and Letterman. Sure, O'Brien has inherited The Tonight Show, but NBC has moved onto the next big thing.

The only ways I would have respected the painfully unfunny Jay Leno for having not actually retired like he had claimed to be, would be if he had gone to another network or done a daytime talk show. Moving up an hour and a half, and getting rid of a piece of furniture is hardly worth the claims of TV history that NBC has claimed it to be.

I beg of everyone who is reading this, DO NOT WATCH JAY LENO! If his show is a success, it may spell doom for all scripted (and more expensive) shows on the 10pm time slot. But more importantly, it will prevent Conan O'Brien, the funniest late night interviewer to have ever graced the television, from ever getting the respect he deserves. Jay Leno is a hack, and he needs to get off the air and let the actual funny people have a chance.

Trailer Park: October 23rd

Trailer Park is a weekly post, every thursday, where we feature trailers for the upcoming weekend movie releases.

Hey uh, nobody... nobody noticed I didn't post one of these last week did they? Good, I didn't think anyone did. Besides, you all knew what movie to go see. At least you thought you did, Where The Wild Things Are got very mixed reviews. Our own Dan didn't know how to express his thoughts on it in writing. But anyway, this week is the gear up for Halloween, which means a new Saw movie. That's awesome, because it's been like 5 minutes since a new one of those.

Saw VI

Oh man! This movie is ripped straight from the headlines! You thought that puppet guy was just a sick murderer, but he has views and ideals. Healthcare decisions should be between the patient and their doctor. Damn right lunatic puppet guy! You should give speeches at political conventions or something.

Astro Boy

It's sort of like Inspector Gadget meets Mega Man then? I don't know, I never knew anything about Astro Boy. Mega Man is awesome though. They should make a Mega Man movie.

Other Releases:
The Vampire's Assistant
Amelia
Antichrist
Motherhood
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
Stan Helsing
(Untitled)

What will you be seeing?

The Demise of Split Screen Multiplayer

I was at a friend's place a little while ago, and decided to take the opportunity to play some of his Playstation 3 as I don't have one. He played a little Fat Princess, and then I did, but it got kind of boring playing online while the other person watched. So I asked if he had a second controller so we could play a game together. He took one out and started digging through the menus.

"Oh, I guess this doesn't have any local multiplayer" he said.

"Ugh, crap. Well, do you have a game that does?" I responded.

"Hmmm, Motorstorm does I think."

This excited me as I always thought that game looked good but hadn't ever played anything but the demo at Best Buy. However, he quickly realized that it also didn't have any local multiplayer. Not having much else to try, we went back to taking turns watching each other play Battlefield 1943 and Fat Princess.

Now, I won't defend everything about the Wii, but it seems to me Nintendo got some things right that Microsoft and Sony have forgotten. I don't own a PS3 or 360, so I couldn't tell you how much I would play online, but I can tell you that I've loved having the Wii for when people come over.

When family comes over for holidays, a friend stops by, or my sister-in-law's transatlantic boyfriend is in town, the Wii gets a lot of play. It makes me wonder how much a PS3 or 360 would get played when people were over, had I owned one.

Being a husband and a father sort of limits my gaming time. Personally, I think I would probably choose to spend that time playing single player games, or local multiplayer when guests are involved. Sure, I can't guarantee that, not having owned a system with adequate online support, but I have a pretty strong hunch it'd work out that way.

Are we slowly losing this element of social gaming interaction? In 10 years, will it be completely impossible to sit down with a group of friends for some game time?

Every time we have a family gathering with my wife's side of the family, I inevitably end up back at her cousin's house. Me, a couple of her cousins, their friends, and her Uncle end up playing Halo, Call of Duty or some other shooter for hours.

I'm terrible at First Person Shooters, but I'm still better then her Uncle and one of the cousins just given that I play games a lot. So it's a lot of fun to get together with everyone and play. When I get a PS3 or 360 though, I doubt that I will ever buy any of the new FPS games. With dwindling local multiplayer support, I'd most likely be left with only online, where I would get completely destroyed.

Obviously online has its benefits, and I would never say we should get rid of it, but I just wish that the industry wouldn't keep forgetting about local multiplayer. When my kids are old enough to play games with me, I want to be able to sit down and have trash talking matches with them. Is it going to come to the point that we will have to have 2 systems to play online while we're sitting right next to each other? I would hope not.

Video Round-Up: Adorable Kitty Cat Edition

Video Round-Up is a bi-monthly post that collects an assortment of videos from around the web. Whether they be music videos, creative viral marketing, just plain cool, or just plain ridiculous, they will all be found on Video Round-Up every 5th and 20th.

I wasn't sure what theme to go with for this edition of the Round-Up, until someone offered me sage advice on Twitter, "Always have a cat in every video round-up". What's better then having just one cat video? Having ALL cat videos! Enjoy this extra cute edition of the Video Round-Up.



Source: Unclear, its been reposted tons of times on YouTube

This should be a day time soap opera. I would quit my job just so I could stay at home and watch this every single day.



This is a trend I want to see continue, kitty IT guys. They won't fix your problems, but they will look adorable while they attempt to.



You may think that it's adorable to teach cats to do human things, but they are simply biding their time until their hostile takeover.



In order to further prove why cats will be the ones to take over the world, I need to disprove the ability of monkeys to do so. Well here you go. Do you really think that this thing is smart enough to rule over humans?

A Rallying Cry for More Ostrich Based Video Games

Stop what you are doing for a second (except for reading this, don't stop that). Turn off your music, and just think. Think really hard. Alright, now think about what would be the coolest animal ever to ride. Thinking?

Yeah, you're right, it probably would be a Rhinoceros. Well alright, the second coolest animal. No, Pterodactyls don't count, it has to be living.

A lion? Yeah, that would be cool. You know what, I'm just going to go ahead and rule out any animal that would kill you if you tried to ride it, so lions, rhinos, bears, and all that are off the table. Now what is it?

It's an ostrich! No... you're wrong. A kangaroo doesn't count, it'd kick you to death... and to be honest it isn't really even feasible. No, the answer is ostrich. The next question is, why if, given those few small criteria, the ostrich is the coolest animal to ride ever, aren't there more video games devoted to riding on them?

Joust was the pinnacle of ostrich based gaming. It dared to give players the most badass gaming experience ever, way back on the Atari 2600. What makes riding an ostrich even cooler? Jousting with other people riding on ostriches. So why since Joust, have ostrich centric games been on a sharp decline?

Fear. That's right, fear. Developers are afraid that if they make the ostrich game they know we all want, that one of two scenarios will play out:

1. Gaming will reach it's apex. All other video games will pale in comparison to the ultimate ostrich game we already received. Developers will try in vain to throw ostriches into any and all situations no matter how inappropriate.

Soldiers will ride ostriches into battle during WWII. Nascar drivers will race against ostriches instead of other cars, and will always lose. All cute and cuddly platformer mascots will be increasingly anthropomorphic ostriches until we get Ostman, a man with an ostrich neck and head.

Soon, gamers will give up playing these terrible cash-ins on the ostrich phenomenon and will go back to the game that started it all. All video games will cease to exist save the one and only true ostrich experience.

Or 2. People's heads explode the second they turn on this perfect ostrich game, due to a sheer amount of awesomeness pumped straight into their eyes.

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm willing to take these risks. Let's stop pussy footing around what we all really want, the one and true ostrich gaming experience. I'm here to be the one to finally say what we all know we want. We need to rise up and demand that game developers cut to the chase and make what all of gaming has been building up to. If we don't, video games will keep treading water, delaying the inevitable.

The Future of Social Networking

Occasionally I get a psychic vision of the future. Rather then keep that revelation to myself, I go the path of Nostradamus and share it with the world. I've shared with you The Future of Television, and now I present to you, The Future of Social Networking. The only thing that I ask in return is for my visions to be collected in a tome, for release upon my death, so that future generations will know my word.

We've watched social networking blossom and grow in the past few years. From the archaic sites of old to Twitter, social network sites have de-evolved more and more over a small amount of time. More and more simple by the day, maybe DEVO should have preached about this.

But what's next? Well, my Nostradamus-like mind can answer that very question for you right now, but let's take a few steps back first. When Myspace was the hot new site, people would get into the code of their pages and customize their profiles with all sorts of annoying crap that no one wanted to look at. Soon that became too much work, so websites sprung up to do it for you.

The Facebook came along and streamlined the whole process... by getting rid of it entirely. And who wanted to bother actually browsing through their friends profiles to see what they wrote or changed? Facebook just notified you whenever someone did anything that somehow involved you.

Now the newest site on the block is Twitter, which has collapsed all of this nonsense down to the simplest possible formula. An avatar and 140 characters is all you need to interact with your friends. Twitter may think they have the most streamlined social networking site that will ever exist, but I see things much differently.

I have seen a vision of the future, and it is called Gruntter. Typing out an actual thought is too much work. In the future, we will use grunts to communicate our thoughts and feelings. No longer will you see this:


acronkyoung I've had a really good day today. I got a new job, and feel great, and found out my wife is pregnant!

Instead, you will see something more like this:

acronkyoung





Personally, I'm looking forward to it. I already respond to most questions with some sort of grunt, so I can't wait until I can parlay this into the online world. And imagine if this idea works its way into blogging as well. Instead of a long winded rant about the latest superhero movie not living up to some nerd's expectations, it could just be the title of the movie and then an audio clip of someone screaming like an angry gorilla for 30 seconds. I don't know about you, but I think that would only make the Internet a little more intelligent.

Reverse Review: The Room

The Reverse Review is our method of rating a movie not by how good it is, but instead by how bad. There are two extremes to the Reverse Scale: 1 = Just plain bad, and 5 = Hilariously bad. If you watch Troll 2 with your friends and laugh about how terrible it is, then you'll understand the Reverse Review.

The Room has gained a sort of cult following, especially on the west coast. In Los Angeles, they hold screenings to packed theaters of people who've seen it multiple times. These fans have picked apart the absurdity of this movie.

Whenever the framed photo of the spoon on the table with the lead characters phone comes into view, they yell "SPOON!" and hurl plastic cutlery at the screen. When one of the countless scenes of male bonding by football tossing comes on, they begin throwing a football of their own back and forth (As closely as possible, the characters in the movie tend to enjoy playing catch inside of buildings).

I'm not a connoisseur of terrible cinema, but I have a friend who is, so I like to think of myself as better educated then most on the subject. So when I heard The Room being called 'The Worst Movie of All Time', I rolled my eyes. These people must not have seen Crystal Force 2, or Manos: The Hands of Fate. But after having finally seen The Room, I'm alright with people sticking it with that title.

This movie is ridiculous. It tells a story that I can sum up in one sentence, but it takes 99 minutes to do so. While a lot of terrible movies center around completely ludicrous plots, at the heart of this films terribleness is the editing and the acting.

While most of the actors/actresses are just simply bad, one exceeded the rest, Tommy Wiseau. The writer, director, producer, and starring role in the film, Tommy sets a whole new precedent for how awful an actor can be.

For some reason he did a voice over track for, as far as I can tell, every single one of his lines. While his mouth moves in what I can only assume are guttural grunts, his voice over lines are just as terrible as what I imagine the grunts would have been as far as acting talent is concerned.

While other movies have had far more out there plots, The Room makes up for that by never staying on track. Scenes jump around as if the editor just grabbed stuff randomly and placed them in that order. Plot points are introduced for seemingly no reason and then never resolved or even mentioned again. Characters act in ways counter productive to their motivations from the scene previous.

All of these facts add up to one thing, hilarity. Seeing this movie in a theater with a group of 10 or so fans, and 3 or 4 other couples that had no idea what they were getting themselves into, was the most fun experience I've had at a movie in a long time. I couldn't stop laughing throughout the entirety of the movie.


5 out of 5 on the Reverse Scale

And now I'l leave you with this little gem, an example of the quality of acting found in The Room. As a bonus, I noticed that Mark picks his nose right after Johnny says "Don't even ask". Keep an eye out for it, it makes the scene that much more ridiculous.

Adventures in Bad Translation

Adventures in Bad Translation is a weekly article where we gather 'round and laugh at slaughtered attempts of the English language.

Hmmm very interesting Captain America. Please tell me, why should it goes well? This one was sent in by Alex.

Man: One second honey, I need to get my baboosh off.
Woman: NOOO! Watch out for the landslip!!!
Man dies.

This one became obsolete once they came out with anti-mosquito toothpaste.

If the grass was smiling at me I'm pretty sure I would not need a sign to tell me to not step on it.



If you have any examples of bad translations feel free to send them to us.

Courtesy of engrish.com

Insufficient Funds: Cave Story

Insufficient Funds is a regular post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account.

A lot has been said about Cave Story's difficulty, but here's the thing: I really liked how tough it was. In fact, it could have been a little harder still. I like the punishment to make the reward that much sweeter (don't be a pervert).

When Mega Man 9 came out and everyone was whining and crying over the difficulty, I didn't complain one little bit. Now sure, I still haven't beaten that game, but I thoroughly enjoyed the three or four bosses that I did beat before life got in the way. I sat down and in the course of an hour or two worked my way through one stage. If the game hadn't let me save my progress at that point, then I would have been pissed, but it did. That made the reward of slowly beating it much more satisfying (don't be a pervert).

Conversely, I'll bring up Zelda: Twilight Princess. I bought a Wii at launch and was looking forward to working my way through the game. It was fun I suppose, but the story wasn't amazing and I never died the entire time. OK, maybe I died a few times, but there was never a challenge. I would arrive at a boss, run around dodging his attacks until I had figured out how I needed to hurt him, then proceed to kill him. That's not fun to me. There's no danger, no fear.

Cave Story hits in the middle of these two extremes. You're guaranteed to get destroyed by every boss you come upon (don't be a pervert) until you figure out a good strategy for dodging their attacks and getting some of your own hits in. It might be sort of frustrating at first, but it never took me more then four or five attempts before I finally succeeded. For me the difficulty was almost perfect. When you finally won the battle after your fourth or fifth try, it was much more gratifying then if you had completed it on your first.

I'll attempt to prove my opinion now. Here is a sampling of my Twitter feed while playing through the final battle of the game:

Alright, final cave. Let's get this over with Cave Story. 10:00 AM Sep 30th

If there is another boss after the doctor then I might just have to break the computer screen. 10:25 AM Sep 30th

Jesus, I'm going to have to fight the heart of the island again. I really wish I had saved that heart pot right about now. 10:27 AM Sep 30th

Goddammit. 10:34 AM Sep 30th

Now you're just being vindictive Cave Story. These bosses aren't ridiculously hard but lined up in a row without a save is just stupid. 10:41 AM Sep 30th

And that's about all I can handle for today. 10:48 AM Sep 30th

Dammit. One more try to beat Cave Story before I leave for work. It's pulling me back in. 11:35 AM Sep 30th

Somehow I've gotten worse. 11:42 AM Sep 30th

OK, defeated Misery without getting hit or using my missiles. Now I will probably still fail horribly at the doctor. 11:48 AM Sep 30th

Beat the doctor. Still no missiles used and only lost 8 more health. 11:51 AM Sep 30th

EAT THAT YOU PIECE OF SHIT! 11:58 AM Sep 30th

Now, I don't know if you can tell, but during that final tweet I have the biggest shit-eating grin on my face that you could ever imagine. I fought that bastard for close to two hours (okay, there was also a good 45 minute break in there, but still). It seems long, but that was definitely the longest I took to beat a boss, and it was the final boss. And more specifically it was three bosses in a row. When you finally get through that, you feel great.

Maybe I'm just a fan of the old-school sensibilities, but I had a lot more fun with Cave Story then I do with games that hold my hand the entire time. It felt like a game that would have easily fit into the Genesis or SNES library. It still had some of the difficulty of NES games but it threw you a couple bones to help along. And really that's how I want all of my games, just like my women, a tough nut to crack, but the inside tastes soooo much sweeter once you finally do (that one was meant to be perverted).

Cave Story is a marvel for having been designed by just one man. When it found a cult following, the loyal fans worked tirelessly to translate it to English. Now it is on it's way to WiiWare, where it can be purchased for the first time. I'd highly recommend playing it, whether it be the free PC and Mac versions located HERE, or by buying a copy from WiiWare when it comes out.

RPG Maker: Years Ahead of Convenience

I was over at a friend's house sometime last week (we're talking 2009 here), when he popped in his copy of RPG Maker 3 for some unknown reason and started adjusting terrain. This friend of mine is kind of a strange gamer. Earlier that night when Heavy Rain came up in conversation, he had logged into Playstation Home, ran to the theater, and waited through several other game trailers before the newest Heavy Rain trailer came up. Once again, this is 2009, we do have the Internet on hand mind you.

Still, his strange decision to entertain me with terrain adjustment in an archaic Playstation 2 RPG editor game, brought back floods of memories. You see, I was once very deeply and perhaps frighteningly, obsessed with the possibilities that the first RPG Maker had offered me. It suddenly struck me how completely unique that game was for the time it had come out.

For those unaware, the RPG Maker series is sort of an obscure thing. It has much more traction in the Japanese market for obvious reasons, but three of the titles have managed to make it out over here in the States.

Being an avid Role-Playing Game nut growing up, I somehow stumbled on this games existence, and learned of the possibility of it coming to America. They hinged the entirety of this possibility on one thing though, the success of Fighter Maker. The fact that the game I was so eager to get my hands on might not come out in my country if a game in a completely different genre failed, angered my nerdy little 14 year old self so much.

Either way, I was finally relieved to learn that it was indeed coming. I remember the day that I finally unwrapped it. I popped it into my Playstation, and savored in the sweet... menus... and uh... tutorials. This game was more complex then I had ever imagined it would be, but I was determined.

I would read the detailed, thicker then a phone book, instruction manual in bed at night. But the real help in analyzing and figuring out this behemoth of a task, was a fan community that had sprung up on the web. I couldn't tell you what the site was, though I suspect it is rpgmaker.net, but these people were devoted. You could download insanely detailed characters that were made via the caveman-like tools in the game, or even entire RPGs created by other users.

This is where I get to the the heights of ridiculousness that people would go to for this game. Not only did we all do this in the days before we could type up our obscene amounts of dialogue with a keyboard, but we did this before the days when our consoles would go online. So you may ask, "How'd you get your games online?" Well I'm glad you asked that. We purchased a pricey accessory called the Dex Drive that never got used for anything but uploading RPG Maker files off of our memory cards.

Sure, my friend's mother (not the Home visiting friend) was the one to actually foot this bill, and sure you could use it for game saves of any other game, but the absurdity still stands. My friend Steve and I, spent weeks studying tutorials, and hundreds of hours getting frustrated when things wouldn't work. We begged parents to buy a computer gadget that we would never use for any other game. We spent months of our lives, to create a really terrible, maybe hour or so long RPG entitled, Michigan Adventure (no, it wasn't based on the amusement park of the same name, but it did feature our English teacher as a demon and a fellow classmate as an optional character you find in a dungeon full of monsters known as Trekkies).

After that? We spent even more of our time trying to be amusing by creating Casino Adventures. It was one room. What took so long? We pushed the limits of the game as much as we possibly could to try to create fun, casino related mini-games. They were not fun. I think we had a monkey race (not sure how that was casino related) game where we had pre-programmed the results of every race based on who you bet on, so you could only win if you bet on one particular monkey. There was also a Britney Spears related sex joke and I think the bartender was a demon.

It's not about the ridiculous content though, it's about the fact that we, and everyone else, went to those lengths to make up for the game's limitations. Put that into today's context. Little Big Planet banked it's entire marketing strategy on the sort of user created experiences that we struggled to have with RPG Maker.

With all the conveniences of the modern consoles, a game like RPG Maker would be a thousand times easier. People could upload their created games right to the online servers and then download the most popular new game created by some guy from halfway around the world. Yet, even with the new conveniences, I can't help but think gamers today have lost the motivation it took to tackle a complicated game like this. I'd love to be proved wrong though. RPG Maker 4 anyone?

Is Ricky Gervais Dumbing Himself Down for America?

If you've listened to any of Ricky Gervais' podcasts, you'll know that he is an unbelievably intelligent man. He can discuss philosophy, history, and the arts with the best of them. Just listen to his series of "Guide to..." podcasts in which he tries to explain these topics to his dim witted friend Karl Pilkington.

While his British audience is no doubt aware of this fact, his small American audience may not be. And why should they be? The little we've seen of him is in the Night at the Museum movies and Ghost Town, some very run-of-the-mill movies if there ever were any. This weekend however, American audiences got their first taste of Gervais in a movie that he had both written and starred in.

Now, I haven't seen The Invention of Lying yet, but I was wary of it right away. Most notably, the trailer didn't seem to get off to a great start. We're shown situations in a world that has yet to invent lying, that have nothing to do with lying at all. A waiter hands a drink to a woman and blatantly announces to her that he took a sip of it. That's not a world without lying, that is a world in which everyone is forced to tell people everything they've done or felt.

Still, the concept of a world without lies is one rich for the mining. Imagine the places you could go with that. Really dive into what kind of world that would be. Well, after listening to the spoiler filled discussion of the movie on the /Filmcast, I now know where he decided to go with it. A romantic comedy.

Sure, you could blame the studios, but I'm just going to put out another theory completely. Gervais is dumbing himself down to appeal to an audience that he doesn't think will understand anything more intelligent. I could be entirely wrong about this, but Gervais has burned me far too many times. I am prepared to offer him on more chance, and that chance is Cemetary Junction. The first release written by both him and Stephen Merchant. Will my hopes be shattered for the last time? I sure hope not.

Trailer Park: October 9th

Trailer Park is a weekly post, every thursday, where we feature trailers for the upcoming weekend movie releases.

Wait... there's only one movie coming out in wide release this week? Really? Maybe if it actually looked good that would be a different story. I guess we aren't through the shit storm. Now I have to really pay attention to all the limited release trailers to see if there's anything good out there. I've never heard of any of these movies. Oh well, let's get this over with. I guess we'll start with the crappy wide release one first...

Couples Retreat

There was once a time that I would give a credit to any former cast member of Arrested Development. No matter how terrible the movie they were in looked, it'd get a pass because they were in it. That's over now as they have appeared in a lot of piles of shit, Jason Bateman especially. This looks to continue that tradition.

Adventures of Power

I'm not sure what to think of this. A premise as ridiculous as someone who dreams of being an air drummer, is a fine line to walk. It could be brilliantly hilarious, or completely stupid.

Bronson

I guess this is as good a trailer as any to feature. The rest don't look very good. This might be entertaining. That is if it's even coming anywhere near you. I guess it got released in Europe in March?

Other Releases:
The Damned United
An Education
Free Style
Good Hair
Peter and Vandy
St. Trinian's
Visual Acoustics

What will you be seeing?

Adventures in Bad Translation

Adventures in Bad Translation is a weekly article where we gather 'round and laugh at slaughtered attempts of the English language.

When your own computer is telling you not to use a floppy disk, it's time to get a new one.

Isn't that pretty much what they are though?

I came across this one on a local Chinese menu. I asked if they served brown rice and they promptly told me to look at the front page of the menu.

Children, drink for them.


If you have any examples of bad translations feel free to send them to us.

Courtesy of engrish.com

Video Round-Up: Dedicated Edition

Video Round-Up is a bi-monthly post that collects an assortment of videos from around the web. Whether they be music videos, creative viral marketing, just plain cool, or just plain ridiculous, they will all be found on Video Round-Up every 5th and 20th.

That's right, the Video Round-Up is going twice monthly. You'll now get double the dose of crazy, cool and ridiculous shit from around the web. Don't worry, I'll strive to make it just as stupid and bat-shit insane as before.

Here we have some dedication to the game... or obsession. More like obsession. In fact, maybe this guy should seek medical help. He's either WAY too into Half-Life 2, or he's WAY too into himself. Either way it probably isn't healthy.

Source: YouTube user TRASE666

This is more like it, the kind of dedication I can really get behind. Instead of being unhealthily obsessed with himself, this guy is unhealthily obsessed with his hatred for a childrens TV show. But at least we can all relate to his mental instability... and blow the heads off of it in order to cope.

Source: Flameknight7 - Download the mod here

How do you get attention as a street performer? You strike at the people's sense of nostalgia of course! If I were walking past and heard this I would probably just give him my wallet... and pants... really just everything I had on me. And I might pleasure him sexually... maybe.

Source: YouTube User HaggisMcMutton

Can you really blame these cops for wanting to play Wii instead of putting the tax dollars the citizens pay to good use to, you know, actually search the house for drugs? The Wii is fun. It's a party game system. These cops need to loosen up a little. After a long day of eating donuts and pulling over people caught in a speed trap, they need to unwind. Maybe you should just lay off of them. It's not like they could have been out catching more criminals in the extra time they made by wrapping up the search quicker. I already established that they would just spend it eating donuts and pissing people off.

Source: Shawn Elliott

I've decided that I can't post three YouTube videos of people that spent hours upon hours creating/learning something that others can enjoy, without posting the complete opposite. Someone who spent years and years creating something that others will vomit at, and then proceeding to shake it for people. Dedication can be a negative thing folks, when your dedication is to food.

Source: YouTube User fatboygetdown

September Music Wrap-Up

The Music Wrap-Up is a monthly summary of my favorite and other notable new releases. Please support these musicians as that's the reason I'm featuring them in the first place.

The Music Wrap-Up is going to have to go through some changes. I started it in the hopes that it would help more people discover music they hadn't heard of before. Simple, right? I'm sure I was technically doing something illegal by hosting the songs on a file sharing site in order to embed a player here for you all to enjoy, but it was all in the name of exposure.

I was trying to help out the bands I love. I wasn't putting anything up for download, just letting people listen to it. But leave it to record labels and file sharing sites to not understand that. First I was asked by a label to take down a song, which wasn't that big of a deal, but then I went to log into FileDen and my account had been shut down for breaking the user agreement.

So for now, the Music Wrap-Up is going to be run this way instead. I'll just let these random YouTube users handle all the copyright issue hassles. I would love to feature music from small and obscure bands like Paucity, a really great local band, but even if I write them and ask permission to put up their music FileDen will shut me down. So screw it. I'll just throw up links or something. It'll look a hell of a lot uglier but it'll have to do.

The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You

One of those bands that I just had to check out when I heard the song 'Laundry Room' on All Songs Considered, and I immediately fell in love.

Polysics - Absolute

Absolutely ridiculous japanese crazy batshit. I think that's their genre. Sorry I had to post an actual video for them, I couldn't find just the music. It should help you get a better taste for their lunacy though.

Strung Out - Agents of the Underground

I don't follow Strung Out very closely, I just pop in to hear their newest release and then kind of forget about it. It usually always sounds good, but just about the same as ever. Still worth posting I guess.

Volcano Choir - Unmap

Justin Vernon's new band Volcano Choir is much less structured then his Bon Iver stuff. Great stuff to put on in the background and relax to though.

Amy Millan - Masters of the Burial

One of the reasons I love Stars so much is the dueling vocals of Amy Millan and Torq Campbell. Still, I really like Amy's last solo cd. I really haven't heard this new one, but I found a video for one of the songs. It's not that great of a song compared to her other stuff, but it'll have to do.

Star Fucking Hipsters - Never Rest in Peace

I can't decide if this band is a lot worse then Leftover Crack (Stza's primary project, at least at one point, and one of my favorite punk bands) or if I have just grown out of the music they make. I do like every new demo that Morning Glory comes out with though, so my money is on Ezra making the definitive next offshoot band. That is if he'd get around to actually releasing a cd.

State Radio

Once again, this is the only song I've heard from State Radio's new cd. Not having a computer or a record store within an hour of you kind of leaves you out of the music scene. Good song though. I'll have to get the cd at some point when I have that elusive beast known as an expendable income.

They Might Be Giants - Here Comes Science

Yes this is a kids record. I have a kid. Out of all of the terrible kids music I've been subjected to, They Might Be Giants handful of kids releases is the little bit of joy in the pile of annoying. If you have a kid, I recommend buying their kids cds, instead of whatever else might be polluting your car stereo on long trips.

Control, When You Have None

I like going to sold out concerts. The kind where the crowd is so packed in, that your feet barely touch the ground. When the crowd merges into one, sweat soaked being, belting out the lyrics at the top of it's lungs. I get lost in the mass of people. I lose control, and move on the whim of the crowd, instead of on my own.

I don't often give up control in my life. If the audience didn't command me to move and dance and sing and have fun, I would just stand there with my hands in my pockets. My life is governed by control.

So when life takes me where I don't want to go, I turn to the only thing that I can control, video games. Justin McElroy of Joystiq once told a very personal story about why he plays games on a b-side episode of A Life Well Wasted. It explained everything I've always felt, in ways that I had never been able to articulate.

Recently you may have noticed a severe lack of my presence on the Internet. If you don't follow me on Twitter, you probably have no idea why. If you do follow me on Twitter, I apologize for pissing and moaning about every stupid detail for so long. Long story short, life has gotten very complicated.

Throughout the last week or so, I've run the gamut of emotions. I just didn't imagine joy or excitement would be a part of that. I pretty much gave up everything I had normally done. Writing on this blog included. Still, I'm a man of principle, and I agreed to take part in the Bitmob Game Club so I did just that.

I sunk myself into Cave Story, obsessively playing parts I couldn't beat over and over until I had conquered them. It wasn't until I recently completed the game that I realized something. I hadn't thought of anything going on in my life the entire time. I was happy and having fun instead of pissy and depressed.

I thought of what Justin McElroy had said, about games giving you control at a time when you have none. It's been this way my entire life. When I felt like an outcast in school, I would come home and turn to games. I couldn't tell you how many times I've beaten Shining Force 2. It was the only game I owned for quite awhile that had enough depth for me to obsess over.

Video games have gotten me through a lot of tough times in my life, I just never knew it. I know they'll help me get through the things I'm going through now, as I plan to pour my sorrows into Final Fantasy 7. Hopefully once I'm through the things I need to get through, I'll come back to writing in full force and tell you about all the crap I played for endless amounts of time.

Trailer Park: Oct. 2nd

Trailer Park is a weekly post, every thursday, where we feature trailers for the upcoming weekend movie releases.

Is that it? Are we through the worst of it, or is this just the eye of the crap storm? I'm kind of afraid to come out of my shelter for fear I'll get stuck in another downpour of trash.

The Invention of Lying

I really like Ricky Gervais... at least, I think I do. I mean The Office was great right? And I loved the podcasts, but uh... what else has he done? He was in Night at the Museum! Oh... right. How about Ghost Town! Yeeeeeeah, that looked terrible. Well, at least this one is getting good reviews! That's at least a step in the right direction. Now maybe I'll have a chance to be disappointed by him IN the theater instead of just before release.

Whip It

Oh! I love DEVO! Is this movie about them? Oh... crap. Well, it does have Ellen Page in it. She's kind of cute. Although directed by Drew Barrymore is kind of a scary thing to see. She might just be a budding Spielberg though. Right? Maybe?

A Serious Man

This trailer makes my head hurt. It's pretty brilliant, but all I could imagine was a crushing skull and ripping skin and... ugh. I was unaware this movie was coming out so soon. I was all prepared to catch up on all the Coen Brothers classics before this came out as I'm very far behind, but I guess I'm too late.

Other Releases:
Toy Story 1 & 2 in 3D
Zombieland
Afterschool
More Than a Game

What will you be seeing?