A fishy situation

I’ve been trying to focus on writing articles lately, and I think it’s been working out well enough. I published five of the things in just under a month, and I don’t feel like quality even took a hit for the increased pace. Not that I’d set the quality bar very high to begin with.

That said, I think that the article blitz is over. There are still a few in the works, in various states of completion, but I don’t have any sort of set time frame for finishing and launching them. I’ll probably write a thing about Picross e2 next week, since that’ll likely be what I do this weekend. Will there be enough material for a whole second article? Who knows? Not I.

Anyway, the reason I logged into WordPress is mostly to put into words my bewilderment at my own incompetence. What incompetence, you ask? My total inability to fish in Animal Crossing: New Leaf with the sound turned off. Weird, I know. As someone who has endlessly talked up how much time he spends fishing in that game, it’s striking to me how bad I am at it without the audio cue.

If you’ve never played Animal Crossing, here’s how it works: You equip a fishing rod, walk up to the water, and press the A button to cast. If there’s a fish swimming around (represented by a black shadow), it may notice your lure and start nibbling at it. It’ll swim up to the lure up to five times, making little “tick” sound effects, each time with a random chance of actually biting. When a fish does bite, your bobber is pulled underwater and a big “bloop” sound effect plays. Depending on the rarity of the fish, you have about second or less to press the A button again to land the fish.

Sounds really easy, but you’ve gotta have a pretty good reflex, especially with the rarer fish. The problem, it seems, is that while I can generally land fish pretty well while the sound is turned on, I just can’t do it without the audio cue. I was playing on the bus this morning while listening to Retronauts and couldn’t catch a fish to save my life. Compounding the issue were the facts that it was early in the morning and raining, which are both conditions that rarer fish will appear under. So not only was I unable to catch anything more than a few worthless barbel steed, but I was most likely missing out on some rare catches too (rare fish usually sell for lots of cash).

Oh well. It’s mostly just interesting (to me) that I respond faster to aural than visual cues. I would never have thought this, because my hearing isn’t exactly great to begin with. And that ends my little ramble for today.

2013 Surprise Bag Article

You may not know this, but it is a real challenge to find a surprise bag interesting enough to warrant review. I’ve long considered the surprise bag review to be one of TE’s Things, but lately it seems all my efforts to find a half-decent one are coming up dry. Did you know that I haven’t posted a surprise bag article since 2006? Yeah, seems like I probably should have staggered them out a little better. But how was I to know I’d still be doing this seven years later?

I have picked up a few surprise bags over the last few years, even made special trips out of the city just to hunt for the things. But alas, I haven’t found one that’s even been worth a blog post, nevermind a full-fledged article. It’s killing me too, because for the last year or so I’ve really wanted to do one up proper. It just seems like all the surprise bags out there are filled with garbage so bland that I can’t make up reasons to make fun of, or they’re licensed and actually a pretty decent way to spend a dollar. I suppose that in hard times I could write up something about a good surprise bag, but what’s the fun in that? I don’t think anything will ever live up to that one that was like 20 years old. I’m beginning to worry that I’ll never see Dubu gum or Baby trading cards again.

My search endures, however, because I refuse to give up on the idea that surprise bags can be truly surprising and contain more than a couple generic suckers and maybe a Dubble Bubble. Also, nostalgia. The thought of a certain nearby city is inexorably linked with a certain notorious surprise bag in my mind, and I cannot think about one without the other crossing my mind. The memories of the fun I had opening and reviewing those other surprise bags lingers as well, even though I know that it likely won’t ever be as exciting as it was back when I was truly devoted to this craft.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is… wait… what?… What is that?

Continue reading 2013 Surprise Bag Article

The more things change

Show of hands, who remembers Video & Arcade Top 10? Hm?

Yeah, so there’s exactly two YouTube channels dedicated to uploading episodes of the old game show, with 15 and 9 episodes available. The second one seems to be a copy though, as it’s only got one episode that the other doesn’t. But that’s besides the point.

I’ve been watching these episodes because reliving my childhood is what I do best. It’s kind of funny the sense of wonder and excitement that I feel while watching the show. It’s like I can recall how the world used to seem so amazing, and how I’d get so excited just to watch a game show with maby a minute worth of clips from a video game I’d like to play. Now I’m a grumpy old man, and nothing is quite as wonderful as it used to be, but man oh man, is there a lot to love about V&A Top 10.

If for some reason you don’t know what V&A Top 10 is, it’s a game show that ran back in the nineties (fom ’91 to… 2006! Holy crap!) that featured a quartet of kids playing video games in hopes of winning said video games. Of course, only the first place kid would win a copy of the game (as well as some other swag, like a watch). Places two to four would get comparatively crappy consolation prizes, like the Donkey Kong shampoo and bubble bath pictured above.

The stakes had never been higher.

One of the most entertaining parts of the show is watching the kids’ faces as they pay the games. Sure, you can get that same picture-in-picture feature on youTube let’s play videos, but it’s so different on V&A. These kids are focused. They are driven. This is the most important thing they will ever do with their lives, and if they fail, they will forever be shamed. They just look so serious when they’re playing; it’s totally adorbs. And then when one of ’em loses a life? You can feel the agony.

Winners are usually decided by how many points or items each player has, but one episode in particular caught my attention. In this episode, the kids were playing Donkey Kong Country 3, and the winning condition was to have the most bananas when time runs out. What? If you’re not familiar, bananas are to Donkey Kong Country as coins are to Super Mario: collecting 100 will give you an extra life and cycle the counter. So, the savvy player would collect 99 bananas and then just sit there until time runs out and he wins. Your average kid will go for that 100th banana, though, and his life will be thoroughly ruined when his counter cycles back to zero.

I guess maybe there are other factors playing into how the winner is decided, but you’ll notice that it’s unlikely if you’re paying attention. The hosts have little to no actual knowledge of the video games they’re going on about. All their story synopses and protips are coming right off of Nintendo-branded cue cards. Hell, the hosts make huge mistakes that no gamer worth his or her salt would ever make. Like calling ROB 64 (from Star Fox 64) R-O-8-6-4, or pronouncing the “chaos” in Chaos Emerald as “kay-oh.” Aceptable pronounciation errors to the common man, but “Oh my God what a poseur” moments for gamer nerds like me.

On that same episode, a new group of kids were wrangled in to play some Kirby Super Star, and maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention, but I didn’t hear any winning conditions announced at all. Doesn’t help that A) KSS has no point system, and B) the kids were playing different games; there was at least one playing The Great Cave Offensive while the rest were on Spring Breeze or possibly Dyna Blade.

Of course I didn’t give two craps about all that back when I was a kid. No, I was content just to watch a TV show about Nintendo games. And that was probably the real intent of the show. Back in the pre-internet era, it was the only way to see any game footage outside of actually playing a video game. I know that it sold at leat a couple games to me that I wouldn’t have been overly interested in otherwise. So good on you, Video & Arcade Top 10.

I really have no idea what the whole “Top 10” bit was all about, as there was never a Top 10 anything on the show. They did do a few countdowns, but the Top 5 was for what the most popular laserdiscs (!) were at the time, and then a Top 3 of video games. And I have no idea how the games were selected either. Who would rank Turok: Dinosaur Hunter second on any list? And how in God’s name did it beat out A Link to the Past? Man, the nineties were strange times indeed.

And that about concludes everything I wanted to say about that. I was considering padding this out and calling it a full article, but then decided against it. Why? I’m lazy. That’s literally it.

Canada Day 2013

Canada Day is a pretty important day for me. Not because I’m some sort of super-patriot or anything, but rather just because I thrive on traditions and nostalgia. Seriously, I’m fairly dependent on doing the same things over and over forever because they’re safe and comfortable. I’m fully aware of this, and I wouldn’t ever want to change it about me. Who needs excitement and variety when you can just enjoy the things you already know that you love?

That said, anyone who knows me will have a pretty good idea of where I am and what I’m doing at any given time during the Canada Day weekend. Or, at least one day of the Canada Day weekend. It rolls out a little differently each year, but all the pieces are usually the same. That said, I still feel compelled to write about my Canada Day adventure because it’s one of my favourite days of the year. It even beats out my birthday now that I’m old and don’t get presents any more.

This year was the biggest Canada Day change-up in, oh, probably the last six years or so. The obvious change, of course, being 2008 when my wife and I started dating. That was also the year that my grandparents sold their cottage and moved to the city, which may have changed Canada Day more than anything. Important because that was the year my family stopped doing the usual Canada Day stuff, but luckily the tradition lives on because my wife’s family has always attended the same festivities that mine used to.

Oh, and the images are clickable if you want to see bigger versions. Though why you’d want to see a super-sized version of the crack through my windshield or crappy pictures of fireworks is beyond me.

Continue reading Canada Day 2013

Ranking the Queen Album Covers

I’ll start off with a rather painful admission: I don’t know anything about music. I know about bands and a little about the industry and how to tell a hack from a real artist, but that’s about as far as my “expertise” goes. And yet I love to pass myself off as someone who truly understands music. I suppose it comes from my inner hipster’s need to have superior taste to everyone else.

The problem this presents is that I still long to talk about music as if I know anything about it. Look back through the archives for posts tagged “BOTM” and you’ll see some of my finest attempts to pass as a connoisseur. I think the fact that My Chemical Romance was the first or second Band of the Month put that dream to bed before it even really got going.

So, in the spirit of talking about music without actually talking about music, I’ve come up with a brilliant plan. Actually, I didn’t come up with the idea. It’s stolen wholesale from Dinosaur Dracula, and I won’t even bother trying to pretend it was my own stroke of genius. I may be a hack, but at least I’m honest about it.

More to the point, I’m going to review and rank all of Queen’s studio albums. Well, the album covers, anyway. Just in case the article’s title didn’t tip you off. I don’t really know a lot about art design either, but I’m certainly more qualified (at least in my own mind) to talk about that than the actual music contained within.

I think this intro has gone on more than long enough now, so let’s maybe get down to business, yes?

Continue reading Ranking the Queen Album Covers

Drawing time?

I found this image on my computer the other day while looking for images to use as my Facebook cover. I went with something else in the end but… I don’t even remember what I drew this for. Or when I drew it. All I know is that I really like it. It’s kind of a tragedy that I have absolutely nowhere to put it but on this blog. Sigh…

grouphuge

My 10 Favourite Things About Kirby Super Star

One of my most favoritest games, and indeed the Super Nintendo game I’ve gone back to the most often (with Super Mario World coming in close second), is Kirby Super Star. If you aren’t from North America, you may know it as “Kirby’s Fun Pak” or maybe even “Hoshi no Kirby Super Deluxe”, but it’s always been Kirby Super Star to me.

Released in 1996, I absorbed as much of the game as possible through Nintendo Power, and made damn sure that my parents knew that I had to own this game. It was featured in the August ’96 issue (#87), and I’m pretty sure that was the most excruciating month of my parents’ lives, because I was nothing short of obsessed with the game and the idea of getting it for my birthday. Unfortunately, being nine years old, I probably didn’t understand the concept of release dates, and it actually released almost two weeks after my birthday. I don’t recall exactly how or when I finally obtained it, but I’ll assume that I saved all the birthday money I got that year for it.

Anyway, I have a frothing love for this game that will never be quelled, and even though I have the updated DS port, Kirby Super Star Ultra, I’ve only ever played through it once and always go back to the SNES original to get my fix. Why? I don’t know. The remake is absolutely better, and even more jam-packed with Kirby goodness, but the original has a strange, nostalgic appeal that I simply cannot deny.

The greatest tragedy of this website here is that in the 10+ years I’ve been running it, I’ve never played proper tribute to the game. So that’s what I intend to do. I could simply go the modern route and do a video Let’s Play of it, but I’m kind of tired of doing those at the moment. Also I’ve lent my PS2 controller to a friend and would have to play with the keyboard. And you don’t want to hear me bangin’ on the keys throughout a whole video series, now do you? (I’ll probably do it one day but that day is not today.)

Continue reading My 10 Favourite Things About Kirby Super Star

This is giving in

Hey I totally haven’t even thought to mention that I’m now on the Twitter. Yep. I still think it’s pretty stupid, but I’ve officially joined the legion of twits.

Please follow me @TheRyanDS

It’s mostly a way to push articles and anything I upload to YouTube, but I do occasionally tweet some unique stuff. Nothing really worth seeing, but just stupid thoughts that I feel an unusual need to share. I suppose that’s pretty much the point though, so I guess I’m right at home there.

One slice is not enough! – Picross e

Picross e is Nintendo doing a very good job of teasing me and the scores of other picross fans out there.

Released on the 3DS eShop (explaining the lowercase “e” in the title) just over a week ago, Picross e is easy bait for us picross fans. It’s only $6, and having a digital Picross game on my 3DS is like a most wonderful dream come true. It’s even more appealing than DSiWare’s Brain Age Express: Sudoku.

There are two things I need to get out of the way before I talk about the game proper, and the first of those is that I am an absolute picross maniac. This is very important for you to know, so that you can balance this review against my unstoppable bias. I love picross, and have spent many,many hours playing the various Nintendo-produced picross video games into the ground  It is my first true love, and the one truism you can apply to me is that I will always buy the new picross game.

The second thing you should probably know is what exactly a picross is. Picross is a puzzle game where you’ve got a grid of squares with a bunch of numbers around the edge, and your goal is to chisel out the correct squares to make a picture. The numbers are indicative of how many target squares are in each row and column, but don’t say exactly where they are. So you have to use the powers of logic to deduce which squares you need to chisel. I’ve probably explained this somewhere on this website before, but it’s probably best to make sure; picross isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as it should be.

Continue reading One slice is not enough! – Picross e

Be excellent to each other

I received this in my work email inbox on Wednesday afternoon, and I’ve never wished anything harder than that I was the one responsible for it. Alas, I only dream of being able to come up with anything so radical as this.

I was inspired to draw this thing though.

Don’t ask me how I went from Bill & Ted to Sixteen Candles. My mind works in mysterious ways.