Halloween!

I wish I could go out and scare people or run around in a costume and get drunk (last year) but I have work today and early tommorow.

Gonna be some good scary movies on during the weekend though.

Here is the promo for the scary movie I created in college:



Also the skit I wrote for Ralph's web show and skit comedy DVD.

Hammer Films are sweet.

The Angry Video Game Nerd has pissed me off in the past with his poor treatment of Sega products, but his respect of the Saturn and Dreamcast has warmed my heart to him.

Now he is doing a pretty kick ass collection of videos on the horror film genre. It's good. MUCH better than his "Angry Video Game Nerd" stuff. Hopefully James and Cinemassacre will keep on doing cool projects like this...



Mad respect to the Hammer films. Dracula was such a badass in those films. Not like the shitty ass emo self loathing pussies in most of todays vampire genre films.

This was the vampire before Anne Rice turned them all homosexual.

No walks in the fall for me.

Yet another hunter killed a person in a hunting accident yesterday.

It's amazing how many dumbasses with no hunting / gun permits are out in the woods these days shooting anything that moves.

It sucks that I can't go for a walk in the woods without worrying about getting shot.

New games. Yakuza! Yeah!

Wow. When you consider it "Yakuza" the game doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Anyone that would have been watching my character would have saw him go into a Sega arcade and play a crane game for a stuffed bird, then get into a brutal street fight (during the middle of which he stopped and ate a club sandwich) then go into a corner store and look at girly magazines. The amount of random crap you can do seems impressive at first, but quickly becomes stale. What the hell am I gonna do with a stuffed toy???

Overall though it'a a decent game experience. I got caught up in the story and I am enjoying the combat system. (I like how if you try to throw bigger enemies you have to tap 0 or they will squash you). I also like the "hidden" key thing. There is a row of coin operated lockers in a certain building in the city. Finding keys for these lockers means you can pilfer whats in them. I already got a cheap knife and a special armor item.

Speaking of items you have limited space to carry them. So while it might seem like a good idea to load up on junk food from a health store you might want to keep some slots open for extra items that crop up now and again. The game is good at giving you really items during fights (at least during the first few hours).

It was well worth the $6 I paid for it. In fact besides "Beyond Good and Evil" this is the only game I have gotten recently that has grabbed my attention enough to force me to play for hours. I really got to play Shenmue so I can directly compare the two.

I also got PSU and Manhunt. PSU I got mint.

"Online Guerilla Marketer" AKA corporate Shills.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_62/363-I-m-Evil

I wonder how many "people" I know from message boards and blogs are just Corporate OGMs...?

Seamus the Leprechaun...I am looking at you...

...


...Though of course he would be a corporate shill for naughty pictures and not games...


...I could be a corporate shill. If Sega was still supporting the Dreamcast...

Confessions of a Game Store Clerk

Read this and laugh.

http://www.gamesradar.com/us/pc/game/features/article.jsp?releaseId=2006032219817514003&articleId=2007040314469812037&sectionId=1003

-In retrospect I gotta say that some of these clerks must have been "Upper Middle Class" and never worked in retail before. They come across as jerks who never had to work at a REAL shitty job, like being the manager of a gas station like I used to do during the gas price hike.

Then again, everyone should get to whine about their job.

Wow. A ton of posts. Game scrounge update for October. Complaints about Pawn shops.

I have been posting alot lately.

In any case here is the October issue of:

GAME SCROUNGE.

October was a GOOD month.

A new pawn store opened/reopened in town.

I got a copy of Powerstone 2 and Gauntlet for the Dreamcast for $4. EXCELLENT. Now I have powerstone 1 and 2.

I got a CRAPLOAD of rare RPGs for the playstation. Lunar Silver 2 (Only the game) Suidoken, Tree of Mana, Final Fantasy Tactics. I over-bid for them though. I paid about $8 a piece. I didn't get the copy of XenoGears because I already had a copy. I am kicking myself now though because that game is RARE and my copy is more beat up than i remembered. I also picked up copies of Parasite Eve 1 and 2 for nothing. Which is cool because they are rarer than I first thought.

I am still kicking myself because now I know that the owner would have sold me them for alot less than that and he probably got them for like .75 each. I suppose I made a positive impression though and I will probably get some better prices in the future because of it. However, the kid he has working there is short a few bricks. Some dude came in and sold him 4 CRAP games for like $20. The kid would have to sell ALL the games and he would only get a profit of $5. What the hell. It's gonna be impossible to unload shit games like that. This pawnshop is gonna go down because of crap like this. But I heard the owner is gonna sell to new people soon anyways.

Another thing that pissed me off is that the kid said that they wouldn't be buying any more Dreamcast stuff to sell... This drove me almost CRAZY. They had 11 Dreamcast games in total there. I bought 6, another person(s) bought 5. IN A WEEK. They sold ALL of the Dreamcast games in stock in less than a week... And now they are not going to buy any more??? WHY? You made profit on them! You sold me in a short period of time. MEANWHILE you are buying up new gen SHITE for WAY too much money for little profit, if you sold any. WHICH YOU HAVEN'T. You have NOT SOLD ANY OF THAT CRAP IT'S STILL SITTING THERE. Meanwhile nearly all the PS1 stuff you had and ALL the Dreamcast stuff has been sold in record time for a pawn shop...Holy Shit you are paying $10 for a shit copy of perfect dark for the 360 that is selling at Gamestop for $15...And yet you won't accept Dreamcast stuff that people ARE GIVING AWAY to the other pawnshop that YOU COULD ACTUALLY SELL AND MAKE A PROFIT.

So yeah. I could complain about this mis-mangement all day. This jackass seems to be more interested in making a quick buck on stolen shit from Crackheads than making actual money. The cops are gonna shut this stupid place down soon because of this. What a freaking waste of storefront space...


From the other pawn shop I got Rygar for the PS2 for $5 and Yakuza in MINT condition for $6. I think the Yakuza purchase was pretty good since I saw it for like $17.99 in Game Craze.

Gamestop has a Buy One get one for %50 off. So I picked up FF Crystal Chronicals and Beyond Good and Evil. Beyond Good and Evil is AWESOME. I can't believe that I saw before for like $5.00 and didn't get it. If you like Zelda GET THIS GAME. This is one of those games that the stinking masses of gamers missed out on.

I also got Zone of the Enders which is kinda cool but pissing me off because my copy is crashing during the save game section...DAMN. I think I might go into the game a bit more and see if I can save in a different spot. In any case the game was worth $5.00.

In addition I ended up purchasing Lunar and The Phantasy Star collection for GBA. Now I officially have enough RPGs for the GBA that if I ended up on a desert island with nothing but a supply of food, batteries and my GBA collection I would still be playing by the time rescuers arrived 3 years later.

"Sorry I haven't finished with these yet. Could you come back in about 4 months?"

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell calls new games trash.

I got a smile out of this one.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/gametap/bushnell-defines-pure-unadulterated-trash-gaming-314795.php

"as much as I applaud the beautiful, fantastic production guys of Halo 3, it's really Doom 1 in different clothing."

I personally never bought a copy of any of the Halo games. I played them at friends houss and even beat the first Halo game (it was short an unstatisfying). I found the multiplayer to be inferior to Half Life mods like Team Fortress and Counterstrike.

But come on Nolan! Doom was a MUCH better single player game experience than Halo is.

Seaman 2 came out today.

01. Seaman 2 (PS2) - 33,000

Wow. The Japanese really love Seaman.

In any case I hope it comes out in North America.

Interesting reading and listening. - Considering the popularity of video games. And a brief ramble about my past online multiplayer experience.

NPR had an really interesting portion on "Talk of the Nation" the other day. I will post a link soon.

A Vet from Iraq just posted this article about gaming:

http://homefires.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/way-beyond-pong/index.html

It was good. However, the real treat was the responses. This was the best one.

"Interesting. Forty years ago, I and my friends would be routinely criticized for playing Avalon Hill boardgames, most of which were wargames. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

— Posted by Geoff "

Nice.

There was also a response that complained about Guitar hero for some reason and that got me thinking on another track. It said it was nothing like playing real guitar and was just about pressing buttons quickly in synch with a program.

I was watching Youtube awhile back before "Guitar Hero" became popular, there was a video of a Japanese video game where the player hit buttons quickly in tune to the music and graphics. There were a ton on comments about how stupid the game was and how it was just another "Japanese Memorization" game. Yet when you get down to it, that EXACTLY what GH is. Just pressing buttons in synch and memorization.

Take away the gimmick controller and change the music and it's pretty much exactly like any other rhythm game.

So how much is the popularity of games based on how popular they are perceived by society in general.

For a very brief time I played MUDs online through telnet and the Internet. In terms of gameplay I believe they were FAR superior to World of Warcraft. Plus back in 1998 they were mostly FREE. It was all text of course, but you were playing with MANY different people in a very complex world.

Now add some pretty graphics to that and add monthly fees and you have Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. And of course the game gets dumbed down. And restricted. There is less freedom. Yet the same sort of people that would turn their noses at the weirdos playing an elf in a text based game eagerly play WoW.

I personally stopped playing MUDs because there seemed to be no point. They were always adding new content and new people were always joining the game. The only way to be really good in the game was to spend ridiculous amounts of hours playing the game and use a shitload of cheap tricks like macros and keystroke programs. There is ALWAYS going to be someone else who has more time on their hands who will ruing these types of games. In any case I never got into them because I couldn't play with other people because of my busy schedule.

Then came brief interlude with Half Life and it's MANY online game modes like Team Fortress. I got so good at online multiplayer "Action Half Life" I would ALWAYS get the number one slot for kills and points scored. Yet I eventually walked away from that too. I had a decent Internet connection in college and I played a lot. Those were the only reasons I was good at the game.

In fact MOST multiplayer games are like that. "Skill" in the game just means you have enough free time to play it alot. That's when I got more into the single player PC and console games. Looking for a good, fun experience in a game is what matters. It's supposed to be a brief BREAK from work. Not work itself.

Now most gamers are coming to the same conclusions as I did about 6 years ago. It's stupid to spend time and money on games that you can ONLY excel in if you happen to have plently of free time.

This all comes back to the original comment on that Iraq Vet story. 40 years ago people were having the same arguement. Everything changes, yet everything stays the same.

You must look toward the future and make sure that EVERYTHING in your life, INCLUDING games have some sort of real value and are not just the result of society telling you what you should or should not experience and enjoy.

...Wow...I always post the best stuff when I have had an 18 hour day working and only get 4.5 hours sleep...

Stewart talks about the Dreamcast

2.04 into the interview.

Gamestop manager, 21 gets killed during robbery.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/crime/gamestop-manager-killed-during-robbery-313396.php

The details are a bit unclear but it seems the most logical scenario is that the robber was a druggie and put too much duct tape on the managers face.

It's a possibility that he meant to kill him it's a possibility that he didn't. However

I worked nights as a manager in a gas station chain store for almost two years. This could have easily been me. If it wasn't for the fact that I gave free soda and coffee to policemen, Forest rangers and sercurity guards (Hell ANYONE with a gun and a uniform) I think my work enviroment would have been alot more dangerous.

I am pissed off at alot of the comments about how "he didn't mean it" and "This kind of thing happens". Having attitudes like that and pretending that this sort of crime is not preventable and looking at stats saying that crime isn't as bad as it once was is BULLSHIT. We need to be doing better than this.

We need to stop this "war on terror" overseas, shore up own borders and deal with some of the the shit that is happening in here. What the HELL happened to the "war on drugs"? And I am NOT talking about marijuana or any other substance that might end up damaging or killing the user. I am talking about Crack and Cocaine. This poison has killed way to many people and has made any urban area in this country a more dangerous place to be. A shitload of criminals are making WAY too much profit off this shit too easily. For the money we are throwing away in Iraq we could be protecting our own country, getting the educational system out of the gutter and taking down the criminal infastructure that results in shit like this. We should bring back the old school mental health centers for people who's brains have been fried by drugs. Instead we let them get high in jail or let them walk the streets.

People think that a crime where a 21 year old manager gets killed is a shame but they can't do anything about it. They shrug and say that it is just how things are and at least they are better than they were according to statisitics. Bullshit. We can be doing something about it. Law and Order in this country works when the public tells the elected leaders TO MAKE IT WORK.

Instead we are just a bunch of scared little children who say that bad things happen and there is nothing we can do about it. Because that's what the rich people who run this country tell us while they relax in their secure gated communities and out- of-country villas far away from any crime. We have been fed these lies about how there is nothing that can be done about these problems for so long we believe them.

A ton of Sega intros.

I think the "Log" intro for Ren and Stimpy was pretty good. Also the dinosaur intros for Jurassic Park were pretty cool.

Good.

Dreamcast Haters....MUahahahahahhaha! Worst movie ever.

So I guess this guy tried to make a video saying that the Wii and PS3 were better than the Dreamcast buy having the two newer consoles shoot the Dreamcast with AK47s.

Wow. What a great idea.

Watch how it turned out...



Wow. So the dude doesn't know how to edit anything and can't even get his own programs to work properly. And he keeps the video up.

Anyone who knows ANYTHING about video games respects the Dreamcast. Only morons who know nothing and do stupid crap like this hate the Dreamcast.

Idiots.

Requiem for a Dreamcast..

The sad story of how the Dreamcast was defeated by a cheap DVD player.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_85/479-Requiem-for-a-Dreamcast

I suppose in those days DVD was a big thing. Now you can buy one for less than $40.

Lame.

Benny Hill + Typing of the Dead.

Benny Hill was cool because it had comedy and attractive women. Plus the old guy got beat up alot.

Andy Punches - Skit from the Lonelt Island Boys on Saturday Night Live.

This is what I love about the Lonely Island Boys.

They take an idea like this, which has been done before, and they add the extra bit of awesomeness to it.



I think this idea goes much further than the regular sight gag. Though Andy's physical comedy is still pretty simple you can tell he is getting better every day. And Zombies for no reason? You can tell the Lonely Island Boys are with the new generation. Though it seemed tacked on it works because the viewer probably thought that the skit was going to end on the "Murder" gag.

These guys need their own skit comedy show on ABC to replace that Cavemen show which predictably isn't going anywhere.

Play this game. Flash Portal.

If you are like me and cannot install Half Life 2 because you do not have internet access at your home you can at least have fun playing flash portal.

http://www.armorgames.com/games/portaltheflashversion_game.html

Quick hint: The first 9 levels are cake (at least in terms of dying). Then your creepy (alien?) captors start to really try and kill you.

Nice flash game.

MORE excellence from Zero P.

I am so glad that that I found this site. This is an excellent review of Bioshock showing how the whole experience has been dumbed down for consoles and that PC gamers have ALREAY PLAYED better games than this. System Shock is great. Bioshock doesn't expand much and is cut down because most console gamers can't handle all the cool shit that PC gamers have gotten used to. Of course I love console games, but for the most part they are not as complex as PC games.

So now we have PC game ideas getting dumbed down for consoles and PC games concentrating TOTALLY on Online Multiplayer shit. I am getting depressed. Lucky for me I have Dosbox.



And the whole "Two endings" thing is pissing me off too. Woot.

Another review from Zero Punctuation

I agree.

Making fun of Richard Garriott with an English accent.

I loved the Ultima series. Except for Ultima Online which I don't play because I hate paying extra money every month.

In any case I guesss Garriott is coming out with another game series and Zero Punctuation made a video about it. It pretty much sums up my feelings about MMORPGs.

Bruce Campbell doesn't back off from a fight.

The original ad for the "Evil Dead, Hail to the King" Dreamcast game.

I played through the game. Meh. It's average.

Bruce Campbell's voice acting made acceptable though. Plus there were undead hillbillies and undead evil boyscouts.



Bruce Campbell never backs down from a fight.

Sonic! Smash Bros Brawl!

It does my heart good to see Sonic beating the vermicelli outta that plumber.

Wow. How cool is that game shaping up to be? I loved the N64 and Gamecube version for multiplayer. Shit...now I might eventaully have to buy a Wii... Ah well I can wait until next-next gen comes out and all the non-gamers sell theirs.

Console games? No time. PC gaming.

I am f'ing still pissed off about the whole "I can't play HL2 because my home cannot get internet access" thing. (You have to register online when you install it, which is a PAIN)

Despite that I have been playing some other PC games. In fact I have a crapload that I haven't installed yet.

And of course work has been rough too.

Oh. And I got a crapload of PS1 RPGs and a copy of Powerstone 2 from a pawn shop.

Rarh!

Pretty cool gaming tat

http://www.thebbps.com/blog/2007/10/03/leave-luck-tat/

It's got Jill from RE1 and RE3. Pretty cool.

This could have been Shenmue 3...

Take a look at this preview.




In a perfect world this would be Shenmue 3. Playing on the Dreamcast 2.

Cavemen on ABC

There is a new TB show being produced based on an ad campaign.

I am conflicted.

First off when I saw the first ads I thought "They are just copying the old Saturday night live skits with Phil Hartman". Yes this idea, straight down to the makeup and the way the cavemen speak is EXACTLY like the Phil Hartman skit "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer", were an unfrozen caveman becomes a lawyer.

Yet the concept is still a winner for a commerical or short skit.

Yet make a WHOLE SHOW based on an idea like this?

They had better pull out some AMAZING writing to make that work.

The fact is that we do not need another sitcom. We need a goddamn SKIT COMEDY SHOW THAT IS ONLY SKIT COMEDY.

The success of the Dave Chappell show and that piece of shit "Mind of Mencia" show clearly display what people want. A SKIT COMEDY SHOW.

Stop putting single actors like Sarah Silverman in their own shows and MAKE THEM collaborate with other people to make them create a true skiot comedy show. Silverman was SO FUNNY when she was on "Mr. Show, with Bob and Dave".

So instead of getting something we all wanted to watch we get "cavemen" Wtf.

We need a decent skit comedy show.

Japanese kids still play the Dreamcast and Saturn.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/hard-proof/japanese-kids-like-nes-better-than-psp-305306.php

Wow. So according to that "4.8 percent still play the Dreamcast, and 5.1 still play the Saturn" Wow.

That's actually some pretty big numbers. I suppose quality of games beats out new gen.