A Boy And His Blog

Warning: You may find this blog boring. If you choose, you may skip to the section labeled "My point."



With modern video game consoles and their wide array of online content (i.e. Wii's Virtual Console or Xbox 360's Live Arcade), I have noticed a resurgence of classic gaming...and I love it! Be it re-release or remake, keep 'em coming. Top prize goes to Mega Man 9, which is a completely brand new game in glorious 8-Bit, made to be an original Nintendo game. Of course, they didn't distribute cartridges, so it's only available as a download. But I'm not complaining about that. Quite the opposite. I love my Nintendo more than a limb or any family member. So to get "classic style" games in the midst of big, graphically lavish, 20 minutes to load, explodie modern games, is a dream come true. Maybe I'm getting old? "Back in my day, we only needed two buttons, sonny!"

As much as I adore the Nintendo Entertainment System, I can't deny there were some terrible games that came out for it. And there were fan favorites that just never seemed very interesting. If you were to fill a room full of nerds and have them make a list of the best NES games, everyone's list would be somewhat similar. They would all have Super Mario Bros. 3, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid and then seven of their favorite titles (that are probably just as universally adored). One such game that could likely rank on these hypothetical lists is a game I could never get into, no matter how hard I tried. A Boy And His Blob. I know, I know, you're thinking, "Get to the goddam point, please."

A Boy And His Blob is about a boy...and his blob...Blobert, actually, who when fed jellybeans can transform into a useful object that corresponds with the respective treat. Licorice jellybeans turn Blobert into a ladder and tangerine turns him into a trampoline. You use these abilities to progress through the levels collecting treasure (and more jellybellys). You and Blobert must face the evil emperor to save Earth and Blobolonia. Sounds...okay? It was actually pretty boring. I don't know if I ever figured out how to get out of the first stretch of sewer, literally, at the beginning of the game. Again...what's your freaking point?!

My point: Although I'm not a fan of the original, I'm really excited for the Wii sequel to A Boy And His Blob! It has its own style yet retains the flavor of the original. It looks immersive, adorable, and fun.


I think a majority of my excitement may be rooted in my love for these classic style games, and it makes me forget that I never liked the original...this may be no exception. But I'll give it a whirl based on principal. 2D games are still hanging on in the 3D age(Braid and Mega Man 9 sales reflect this), but they're few and far between. More than anything I just want more games like this and fewer first-person-shooters. Thanks for indulging me.

And Away...WE...Go!

Away We Go follows Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph), an unmarried couple who are preparing to have a child together. They live in the middle of nowhere in a house that looks like a sneeze could blow it over. They can work from home (or via telephone) so the only real tie to their current residence is that it's close to Burt's parents. With Verona's parents deceased, they want to be close to Grandma and Grandpa. But when Burt's folks announce they'll be moving overseas, the couple decide to take up stakes and go searching for "home". They plot a course hitting up major cites that have one acquaintance or another that could be their friends if the choose to start their new lives there. As you'd expect, misadventure and hijinks ensue.

Away We Go is certainly a charming little film. Its characters feel like real people in real life situations. Granted, they're strange, uncomfortable situations with odd-ball (and often loose) acquaintances, but never anything outlandish. Or least it wouldn't feel that way if the film treated them a little more seriously. With the exception of the leads, Burt and Verona, every character feels heavy handed. I don't blame the characters in the script so much the actor's use of the characters. It's like they read the script thinking they would be alongside Maya in a series of SNL sketches. That sort of over-the-top caricature acting works if that's what the source material is requiring. Take Christopher Guest movies, for instance. But I don't feel that's what Away We Go was trying to be. It' a sweet, poignant film about love, family, and the meaning of home. Oh, and being scared silly of bringing a life into the world. How can you care for a life when you don't even know how to live your own? As their journey progresses and they encounter bad parent after bad parent, you start to realize they're going to be wonderful parents. This hits you during an impromptu puppet show the two give for Burt's neice as they are tucking her into bed. Maybe love is family and family is home?

Overall, I enjoyed this film. It was hard for me to warm up to it, and again, I wish it took itself a bit more seriously, but the good bits outweigh the bad. Don't force jokes to try and make things funny. Let the humor of the situation reveal itself. You may want to strangle almost everyone Burt and Verona meet along the way(Maggie Gyllenhaall's character LN! Ugh!), but that makes you love the couple all the more. Life can be scary and nobody has all of the answers. People are different and there is no definitive right or wrong way to live your life or to raise a child. In this case it took a cross country trip and a lot of soul searching to come to a conclusion they knew all along. As The Beatles say, "All You Need Is Love".

A Wii Bit Of News!

Nintendo has some great things in store for Wii in 2010! First up is Super Mario Galaxy 2! Now, Super Mario Galaxy could be described as "the most fun had playing a video game" and it'd be totally true. So a sequel (with Yoshi!) is very welcome! But wait! There's even more Mario heading your way! New Super Mario Bros. for Wii. Four player classic style Mario? Who do I make the check out to?



No three words are sweeter than "New Metroid Game." There has never been so much as a blemish in the series' history and I'm sure Metroid: Other M (from Nintendo and Team Ninja!), is no exception. So...totally...sweet.

I'm also super excited for the update to A Boy And His Blob, but I'll save that one for another blob, er, blog.

Oh yeah, and something called Zelda? More on that as it develops.

Ditto

Does it make me a bad person when Patrick Swayze's dire health condition--so dire, in fact, that his publicist has to publicly deny rumors that he is already dead--makes me want to watch Ghost? Yes.

Terminator: SAVE ME!

(Remember when they'd send one of us to do what thousands are incapable of?)

In the start of the film you witness a prisoner put to death via lethal injection. To keep it clichéd, this is administered by mustachioed, grimacing Texans in ten gallon hats, stroking their gaudy bolo ties. As the fluid slowly drips down the vial and is being pumped into the convict's veins, all I can think is, "Save some of that for me!" It's generally a bad sign to long for death when you've yet to reach the 10 minute mark. I'm sure plenty of people will like (or love) Terminator: Salvation, but I'll take T3 over this any day. T3 is not a good movie, but it at least feels like a Terminator movie (albeit by ripping off its predecessors). Salvation does not. A few music cues and the use of classic lines and names from the series doesn't make it a part of the series. It doesn't even feel like it was influenced by Terminator. It feels like Aliens meets The Road Warrior...plus every other action movie you've ever seen.

And boy is it an action movie! There is never a moments peace for these poor characters you couldn't give a shit about. I personally am sick of watching stuff blow up. Correction: I'm sick of watching stuff blow up for two hours straight. If I want explosions and shooting and no story whatsoever, I play video games. This movie opens the door to many questions but chooses not to answer any of them.

Here are a few I had: Why is Skynet doing this? What is the purpose of wiping out humanity? Why are Terminators humanoid if they don't need to be disguised as humans? Shouldn't the machines be threatening or at least hard to thwart? How did Christian Bale manage to be a more annoying John Connor than Edward Furlong? When will they realize rappers can't act? How many times are they going to say Kyle Reese (it could be a drinking game)? Why is it that Marcus Wright (a Terminator, for anyone who didn't see the trailer) is the most human character in the film? ( It must be his strong human heart).

Marcus is easily the most interesting character in the film, so it's sad he doesn't just destroy John Connor and the resistance and travel back to a time before this script was "written" and start fresh. Terminator: Salvation is as unnecessary as a junior novelization or comic book adaptation. It doesn't contain anything you needed to know, wanted to know, or didn't already know about the mythos. But it's big, expensive, and explodie, so if that's what you're looking for...go play Halo.

Japanese Spider-Man!

Back in the late 70's, Marvel had made a deal with Toei, a Japanese film and television company, that allowed them to use the Marvel characters in any way they saw fit. In exchange? Probably large sacks of money (with a large $ painted on them) that were hand delivered to the states by Godzilla himself. The result? The shittiest best Spider-Man ever!


Peter Parker, or rather Takuya Yamashiro, is a motorcycle racer who acquires not only radioactive spider powers, but also a giant battle cruiser called Marveller that transforms into the fighting robot Leopardon. He endlessly goes head-to-head with the villainous Professor Monster, Amazoness, and their evil army of Iron Cross Group soldiers. I'm totally serious. And did I mention it takes place in Angel Grove? ( it doesn't)

You can stream the first 11 episodes of this exilharating 41 episode series over at Marvel.com. Here's episode 9, which had my favorite title, "Motion Accessory is a Loveful Beetle Insect Spy." Enjoy! (and if you don't feel like sitting through the whole thing, skip to the 20:00 mark and watch the last few minutes)



Note: Although I like the image of Godzilla carrying bags of money over the Atlantic, in 1978 he would've been property of Toho, a rival company to Toei. Although Toei now owns Toho, back then I'm sure the business deal probably went down with suits and wire transfers. Not giant lizards.

Star Trek

A recent Onion video (that you should watch here) pretty perfectly sums up my feelings for the new Star Trek film. Fans complain, "the movie is fun...watchable." And it was! But was it Star Trek? Not really.

Naturally, any big budget studio picture is going to do everything in its power to draw as wide an audience as possible. Unfortunately in this case, that means heavy handed action scenes (that get progressively less exciting), jokes that feel out of place (or aren't funny), and Tyler Perry (who is Madea). But cornball humor and the awful scenes of stupid kid Kirk aside, Star Trek was "fun...watchable."

It may even be better than Star Trek V. But what isn't, right?

To my surprise, Chris Pine did a fine job handling Kirk. Actually, the cast in general surpassed my expectations for them. For the brief spurts of time they actually spend together, they have good chemistry with one another. They carry an overall feeling of "Hey, we're having fun." It's just sad you don't get to spend very much time with anyone.

One problem I had that isn't solely aimed at this film is a matter of me being utterly tired of CGI everything. There are entire scenes that exist only for the sake of squeezing in more effects. And they're boring! They take away from time you should be spending with the bridge crew, but big summer movie = tons of unnecessary runtime supplements (aka. filler). I also don't like a few design elements, namely the ships (all of them), and the bridge itself. It doesn't feel like a place where commanders would give orders. It feels like a place where the crew would ask, "Will you be purchasing the touch or the nano today?" But hands down, my biggest complaint is the use of solar flares, or just glares in general. Every single scene is layered with glares that are a mix of diliberate lighting to gain the effect and adding the effect in post production. It's super distracting. It was like watching the film outside in the sun, but through a window.

Back to the subject of not being very Star Trekky, the movie is referred to as science fiction, but is more appropriately: fiction...in space. You won't find any science here. Or philosophy. Or exploration. If they could have left out a handful of those arbitrary scenes and tried to incorporate these elements (that Star Trek is known for), they would have had a better film.

Nevertheless, the movie accomplishes what it set out to. It's big summer fun that people will like, it'll make a ton of money, and will be forgotten pretty shortly. It uses the line, "To boldly go where no man has gone before." But it didn't. It went where most movies like this go: safe, standard formula...because (sigh) it works.

I by no means hated it. But I'm just as far from loving it.

MVC2 Is Coming To XBLA!

Say what now? Nerds would know (inherently) that the above title reads Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is coming to Xbox Live Arcade! This is MEGA news! The original arcade game, circa 2000, has certainly withstood the test of time. Nearly a decade later it remains to be one of the best fighting games ever made. The home console versions (Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox) are highly sought after due to a limited print (Capcom was loosing the Marvel license) and will run anywhere from $40-75 on ebay! The steep price tag has always been a factor in my never owning the game. That's not to say the game isn't worth the money, I assure you it is, but the Xbox and PS2 versions were...lacking. Elements were added that weren't needed or desired and the gameplay handles differently; a bit slow, clunky. The Dreamcast version, however, is the identical twin of the arcade birth mother due to the use of the NAOMI system (for coding), which the Xbox and PS2 weren't compatible with. That's the trouble with ports, things will often get lost in translation. So when news broke that the original version was coming to Xbox Live for a mere $15 (1,200 MSP), I swallowed my tongue, coughed it back up, then sang praises toward the heavens.

Why is this game so great? What's the hubbub, bub? Well, it's Marvel dudes, um, and Capcom dudes...and they totally fight each other! With a roster of 50+ playable characters, and some of those being Wolverine, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ryu, Chun Li, and Megaman...I'd buy it if it were only those six. But I can almost guarantee your favorite Marvel character is represented. But what really sets this aside from most in the genre is the 3 on 3 battles.

Player: With so many awesome characters available, it's hard to decide which one to play.

Developer: You can have three at a time!

Player: Insanity! (Head Explodes)

It plays like any standard fighting game only your off screen pals can aid you during battle or simply "tag out" and take over as one of them. You're only defeated if all three of your characters health meters are drained. Each character has their own set of moves and combos plus group moves that include your whole team.


Here, poor Ryu is getting a makeover from a trio of badasses using said group move. He didn't stand a chance.

Update: A tentative release date of June 29. I'm counting the seconds.

Want.

I don't know if you are like me (you are probably not like me), but if you are--in the sense that the school year is almost over and you are knee-deep in shit FINAL EXAMS--I'm hoping this will cheer you up.

Even if your depression is not Finals related...well, GET OVER IT anyways. Why? Because of this:




Also, I realize I have filed this post under "Puppies and Kitties," and a slow loris is neither a puppy nor a kitty, so I offer this bonus:

From The Daily Puppy:

"This little duchess is a six-week-old Samoyed. Her name is Luna and she is a furry and cute little puppy who likes to chew on everything. She loves living with us and we love living with her. She has brought unbelievable happiness and joy to our lives."







You are welcome.

For Love & Street Fighter: Episode 2