You can join in too

Well, the tall one is now officially a high-school graduate. My parents feel very old, despite the fact that they are decidedly not.

My wisdom teeth came out last Wednesday, which I may have mentioned before, and things did not go nearly as well as I’d hoped. I mean, the surgery and everything went off without a hitch, but it took many days to heal! I had to call in sick on Sunday! I’ve never called in sick to work before… On the upside, for the most of my downtime, I had Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition by my side to ease the pain. Well, my pain anyway. I can’t say the same for all those ganados. More on that tomorrow though.

So anyone else really like Zelda’s redesign for Brawl? I love it. Though to be anal about it, it’s Link who was originally a brunette! God damn.

In any case, I’m sure I must have mentioned this before, because I’ve told like everyone I know about it, but the official Smash Bros site is updating every weekday. It’s usually nothing big, but on the odd days when they reveal a new item or remixed song, I’m a very happy me. The soundtrack, as it currently stands, is probably going to be a two-discer at least, and will totally be worth buying. The current handful of samples that are up on the site are fantastic. Motoi Sakuraba’s take on the menu screen theme is wonderful, and it’s just the menu theme. I really hope he gets to work on at least one more track, and I’m looking forward to Akihiro Honda’s and Yoko Shimomura’s contributions in particular.

But yes, the daily updates have pretty much been my reason to wake up in the morning for the past couple weeks. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m quite excited about this game. I know I’m getting my hopes up, but is it too much to ask for any Capcom character to show up? Doesn’t have to be MegaMan you know. Arthur? Dan Hibiki? Nemesis? If Solid Snake can make the roster, I’m sure any of those are valid nominees.

Don’t let me down, my sweet baby

So yeah. I was poking around the internets last week and came across the Odin Sphere artbook. Needless to say, I was impressed by the art direction, and the magnificent care that obviously went into creating even the minorest of characters (I love the mandragoras!), and the scenery is just fantastic. Of course, the brilliant art is what everyone agrees on about the game.

I happened to be in the mall on the weekend, and while I normally try to avoid the chain, I decided to stop into the EB and peruse their wares. As luck would have it, they actually did have Odin Sphere in, and, well, you know how I am with money. BUT! I have to say that it was $50 well spent, because just as I’d presumed, the game is right up my alley. There’s a fun combat system and what’s looking like a solid story, but the real enjoyment is in the very elaborate item juggling system. At least, that’s where I find the meat of the game, being an obsessive-compulsive packrat. If you watched me play Odin Sphere, you’d probably think it’s just all dull gardening and item mixing, because that’s what I’ve been doing with the bulk of the time I’ve spent with the game. To Hell with progressing the story! I want to make a potion that will fill the entire screen with phozons!

So anyway… Crap. I was totally going to make a completely different post today, but I guess that got derailed kinda quickly. Maybe I’ll get into what I’d intended to be today’s topic during the next couple days. I’ll have nothing better to do, because I’ve taken the next three days off in hopes that that’ll be long enough to recover from having my wisdom teeth torn out of my facehole. Which happens tomorrow morning. Not looking forward to that. I love eating, and unless I heal like a motherfucker (for which history will vouch that I do not), I won’t be able to eat anything but milkshakes for a while. Not that I don’t like milkshakes, but I’m really going to miss meat. And candy. Mostly the candy.

My rock is in you

Back from my little vacation at the cottage. And just in time too!

My copy of Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii: Osu! Tatake! Ouendan! 2 arrived yesterday, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. I enjoyed Elite Beat Agents to no end (still play it quite a bit, actually), and I’ve gotta say that the J-Pop soundtrack in Ouendan 2 is far less of a problem than I’d originally expected. In fact, most of the songs are really good. And it’s maybe even a little harder than EBA too, as I’ve been playing “Sekai wa Sore o Ai to Yobundaze” on Hard for like an hour, and I still can’t manage to get past the last part. But then again, “Jumping Jack Flash” took me a long time to finish too, so maybe they’re equally difficult. We’ll just have to wait and see how far into Very Hard I can get on Ouendan 2.

In other news… Er, I don’t know. There was somehing else I meant to say today. OH! Wait… No, nevermind. I’ve long since forgotten, and I don’t think it’s coming back. That means time for more Ouendan!

Revenge is always fun

I don’t know what I was thinking when I assumed that most Wii users would prefer a physical challenge over a mental challenge. It certainly didn’t hit me that most people voting would likely be lazy, physically inept gamers until after I had locked in my guess. To tell the truth, I’m really surprised that it came as close as it did. Maybe Nintendo really is reaching out to new people.

You know, scratch that. The thing that truly surprises me is that I still find the Everybody Votes Channel interesting.

I can get back on

It’s been June for a few days now, and with another week of vacation looming on the horizon, I guess there’s no better time to get the Band of the Month post done with is the present. This month? RUSH!

Yeah, that’s right. It’s mother fucking RUSH!!! I don’t know… I kind of get excited when talking about Rush, or listening to Rush, or thinking about Rush… Odd obsession aside, I obviously love the band. For a while back in the day I really couldn’t get why everyone seemed to like them so much, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I still don’t quite understand it, but Rush is up near the top of the list of my favourite bands.

What better time to do a Band of the Month on Rush than June? The answer: May. Seven days ago May to be particular, when they released their most recent album: Snakes And Arrows. I only picked it up yesterday (what in God’s name took so long?), and to tell the truth, I was really looking for Harlequin’s new disc, Waking The Jester, but had no luck there. Snakes and Arrows was technically my consolation prize… Damn. It’s odd though, because I’ve heard their new single “Far Cry” on the radio tons of times, and each time I said to myself that I should go pick up the CD, but it never really happened until yesterday. Odd.

Anyhow, Rush has a pretty nice place in mainstream entertainment too. Not only is “Spirit of Radio” the Trailer Park Boys Movie theme (not to mention that the Big Dirty Band was founded by Alex Lifeson and features Geddy Lee), but there was a whole episode revolving around them in season four; it remains one of my favourite episodes. The wicked instrumental piece “YYZ” is one of the most fun songs to play in Guitar Hero 2, and Fry’s “Rush mixtape” is one of my choice Futurama moments (right behind every scene with Zoidberg in it, and the entire “Roswell That Ends Well” Episode).

Official site

Rush on Last.fm

Wikipedia: Rush

Wikipedia: the Big Dirty Band

This song’s about anal

I got a frightening E-mail the other day, letting me know that Pandora would no longer be providing its service to Canadian interwebbers. I thought it was just a really bad joke, but it turns out it’s true. This makes sadness. I’m sure there’s some crazy garbage I could shove into one of my web browsers that would keep the site from detecting my location, but then I remembered that I have well over 25 gigabytes of music on my hard drive, and my CD count is coming around to about 200. So yeah. I’ll miss the occasional new bands that I like (gotta thank Pandora for Gary Hoey and The Pink Spiders), but overall, I guess sticking iTunes on random play is more than good enough to fill the void.

I knew he’d mention them eventually, but I beat Matt to the Shrek Snickerses by one day! So check that out to see what someone who knows how to work a camera thinks of them.

All the old people on the internet have really been abuzz this week. Why? Apparently everyone in the world already knew that ActRaiser is an awesome game, and they’re just delighted that it’s shown up on the Virtual Console. Me? I tried the ROM once, died and gave up. Turns out I missed out on a wicked game.So I plunked down the 800 or whatever Wii Points it cost, and I’ve got to say it’s my best purchase yet. Tecmo Bowl notwithstanding, in three days, it’s already the Virtual Console game I’ve spent the most time with, and considering I’ve got Super Mario 64, StarFox 64, and A Link to The Past on there, that’s really saying something. But yeah, ActRaiser is an Enix game, so of course it’s awesome. I’m hoping for maybe some Wonder Project J in the future… or even better – a new Wonder Project specifically for Wii! But God forbid Square-Enix makes a sequel to a totally original game when they can keep inundating the industry with more and more Final Fantasy garbage (and occasional Dragon Quest goodness).

Baby I’m on fire

You’ve probably all seen that ridiculous Shrek-endorsed peanut butter M&Ms commercial. You know the one. Yeah. That dumb one where nothing really happens. The thing they fail to mention is that Shrek slapped his face on far more candy than M&Ms. Like this Snickers bar with “Green Shrek Filling”.

Yes, I’m completely incompetent with a camera, but you should be well aware of that by now.

Despite its intense blurriness, the Snickers is, predictably, the exact same as a regular Snickers bar. Only difference is that some of the delicious insides are coloured green. And I actually had to preen away most of the rest of the bar to get as much green in that pic as I did, because there’s very little of it in there. I’m not going to complain though. I bought it mostly because I love Snickers, and only a little because I wanted to eat a Snickers with green on the inside.

Hookers!

You know what I love? I love when companies deliberately deprive themselves of my dollars by not distributing their games to more than 5 stores worldwide. I was going to pick up Odin Sphere, but it doesn’t show up at all on Best Buy, Future Shop, Microplay or Wal-Mart’s websites (or in-store, I checked). Toys ‘R’ Us most definitely doesn’t have it, and EB’s website has become even more useless than it used to be. There’s no way I’m setting foot in an EB unless I know they have what I want. The only retailer website that brings it up is HMV. And considering that I have to drive at least twenty minutes to get to an HMV which sells games, and even then they probably won’t have any copies, it really just doesn’t seem worth it. And it’s a shame, because Odin Sphere seems like a game that I would really enjoy. Oh well. Sorry Atlus, I love you and all, but you really have to work on making your games more available.

On the upside, Nintendo is localizing Picross DS! For those who didn’t know, I am addicted to Picross, and I’ve been pitching for a Picross DS since long before the handheld even came out. July 30 seems so far away… I might just be better off importing it and saving myself like a month of waiting.

Also, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80’s might have a stupid name, but the track list is shaping up nicely. Poison! Quiet Riot! Eddie Money! Twisted Sister! More the Police! This is making for a very happy Ryan, I cannot lie. A little pissed that they’re probably gonna pull a GH2 and release it on the 360 a couple months later with more tracks, but I guess that if there’s any video game franchise I’m willing to pay out the ass for, it’s easily Guitar Hero.

Rock so hard I sink ships

I was going to spend the short amount of time I have before work this morning playing Pokémon, but there’s a fire in my lungs, and it just needs to be getting out. So, today, you’re going to witness one of the very few actual bloglike posts here on the TE blog. And by that, I mean it’s going to be nothing but complaining about people complaining!

We’ve all seen Spider-Man 3 by now, and half the people liked it, half of them hated it. Why so much hate? Apparently the fact that once the alien symbiote bonds with Peter Parker, he goes “emo”. And this completely ruins the movie for some people. Now, I was a little perturbed myself by Peter’s makeover scenes, but for a completely different reason. You see, the fact of the matter is, you’re all complete douchebags. Peter Parker never turns emo. Not once. He doesn’t even come close. “But he moves his hair a little emo-ish!” you scream in defense of your moronic ideal. That’s waht makes you even more of a douche. And my near-constant typos are what make me a douche.

If you think the fact that Pete pulls down some of his hair over his forehead makes him emo, you clearly have no concept of what the word means. You’re just throwing it out there because you heard someone else use it and you need to be the loudest in the sea of idiots who accuse everything of being the latest big buzzword. That sea of idiots is commonly called “the internet”.

But seriously, emo haircuts are so different that it hurts me on the inside to know that people have misconstrued Parker’s hairstyle as such. For one, emo hair is always dyed some colour. Be it jet black, jet black with red highlights, or jet black with blonde highlights, it is always dyed some colour. Peter’s hair in the movie? It’s not even an overly dark shade of brown! Fuck, you guys are stupid! Probably the worst part of this trainwreck chain of opinions is that you’re calling him emo based solely on his hair. Peter exhibits not one other trait of someone who lives the emo lifesyle at all in the movie.

Generally speaking, emo kids will haul themselves up in their room all the time so that they can do stupid emo things, like cut themselves, blog about their feelings, and write crappy poetry. Did Peter Parker do one of these things in to the movie? No! Amazing! You might say that Pete spent a lot of time in his room, but remember that it was solely to listen to that cop radio so he could find and destroy Sandman. That’s not emo, kids. That’s determination. And maybe a bit of unhealthy obsession.

We’ll also take a look at the fact that if anything, Peter has a more active social life after the symbiote bonds with him. He prowls the town, dancing quite happily (as you’ll notice, emos will always be depressed), and even though it’s a dumb scene, it totally conflicts with calling him emo. Emo kids dress like shit, and Pete’s fashion sense actually got better as he got eviler. Hell, he even pops his collar, which is totally the “in” thing to do, and you may note that no emo kid in the world would ever, under any circumstance, dress in any fashion that would be considered “in”. Especially the popped collar.

I got sidetracked by the fashion thing, but let’s get back to the social scene. If an emo’s girlfriend broke up with him, he would proabbly sit in his room, slicing his wrists to ribbons and writing shitty poetry with his blood. What did Peter Parker do? He went out and picked up a hotter girl (though nearly any girl is hotter than Kirsten Dunst), and proceeded to take her to the jazz club where his ex was working, and made a huge scene just to piss her off. Emo? Not in any way. That was just a really big dick move.

I really would like to go on some more, but for the sake of I can barely keep my ideas straight, I’ll cut out here. I’m not trying to say Spider-Man 3 is a perfect movie or anything, because it’s far from it. God knows that there are many, many problems with the film, but Peter Parker being emo is not one of them. What I am trying to say is that you should really know what you’re talking about before you go criticizing something. Peter was many things in the movie; a crybaby, a prick, and kind of a douche, but he most certainly was NOT emo.

Oh, and Spider-Man 3 is still my favourite of the trilogy based solely on Bruce Campbell’s fantastically hilarious cameo. The rest I could take or leave.