Years ago I would have tried to type up at least 1000 words about this sucker. Now I realize that the photos tell you pretty much all you need to know (and they’re worth approximately 3000 words). Except maybe the fact that eating one of these by yourself in a single sitting is probably a bad idea. That one should probably register under “common sense” though.
For those who are unaware, McDonald’s has the secret best coffee. Follow this fine example and ditch the Tim’s for the really good stuff. Also I think it’s probably safe to take pictures in the drive-thru lane.
I took a few pictures that night. This is the only one that even sort of turned out well.
You might think I’d have a lot to say about the concert, and maybe you’re wondering why I haven’t. It’s as simple as this: I don’t want to analyze it. There were good parts and parts I wondered about, but overall, Matthew Good was fantastic. It was the best concert I’ve ever been to, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be topped (unless Freddie Mercury comes back to life). It was everything I was hoping for and more. It was one of the best nights of my life, and I wish I had a DVD of it.
Ah, this November just gets better every day. Matthew Good was great of course, but I have even cooler news.
Remember how last year the kids at Talking Time made their own game with the Super Mario Bros X level editor? And how I was super excited about it? And how I contributed three levels of varying quality? Super Talking Time Bros. 2: SUPER SQUAD is now in production, and should be ready to roll early next year. I have of course submitted a stage, and the flame of my passion for creating Mario levels has been reignited.
The first stage I submitted is this one, and I quite like it. Zaidyer’s a fan too, which is good because he’s the project lead. It’s sort of ripped from my personal project, but totally redone. Because it sucked before. Now I’m pretty proud of it. It’s certainly more exciting than anything else I’ve made.
I submitted this one too, which I’m less proud of. I can’t exactly point out why I don’t like it much though. It was already made, I just changed the goal area to meet TTB2 requirements. Really I think I just submitted it because I wanted to have more than one level in the game. I think I’ll hit the drawing board again this weekend and put something better together.
My point here is that if you have a computer and even a mild sense of what would make a fun Mario level, participate! Even if your thing is a sucky bag of sucky suck, we have a peer review process that will help to make you a better level designer! It’s what kept the first game from being just another mess like RMN Bros. The original Super Talking Time Bros. sturned out great, and to be completely honest, I’m a little more excited about TTB2 than Super Mario 3D Land. Crazy, I know. But if you’re a Mario fan, you owe it to yourself to check these out.
This image is my desktop background. It serves as a stern reminder that I live in the wrong country.
So I’ve played a lot of video games over the course of my life up until now. Only now, real life gets in the way a lot and I spend a lot more time longing for video games than actually playing them. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s the way she goes. I’ve decided that for fun, I’m going to make a small list of game accomplishments I’d like to make in the next year. Keeping in mind of course, that this is the abriged version. I could go on for days about games I want to play.
Another note of minor importance is that these aren’t in any specific order. I’m just noting them as they come to me. Putting them in order would likely be impossible. Oh, and none of these are games that I’m actively playing. Most have been set aside in favour of other games, and a handful I haven’t even started playing.
So yeah. Ain’t nobody can say I’m not a goal-oriented person. The relevance of my goals is questionable, but I have them. Game developers really should stop making new ones so I can catch up though. Maybe just put a freeze on new games for 2012? Not that it really matters. Once Super Mario 3D Land, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Mario Kart 7 arrive, it’s all over anyway.
I think it’s probably been a whole week since I’ve told anybody how much I love Earthbound. That may sound silly, but if Stephanie were actually listening when I tell her about it, at this point she’d probably know just as much about the game as someone who’s played it. (Not that I mind her zoning out or anything. I rarely listen when she talks about shoes.)
I don’t really have anything planned today. I was just thinking about Mr. Saturn and how cool it would be to master handwriting the Mr. Saturn “dialect.”
I did have an Earthbound-related dream earlier this week though! It was kind of weird, because my party consisted of myself and Stephanie, with Jeff and Britta from Community. Maybe it wasn’t that weird. Steph’s in most of my dreams, and we watched the entirety of Community season 2 last week. I don’t remember exactly how the dream went down, but the first thing I remember was coming out of the cavern in Threed’s graveyard. We walked about the town for a bit and then headed northwest from the graveyard. Earthbound’s geography isn’t perfectly charted, but I surmise that we should have ended up somewhere in the vicinity of Happy Happy Village. Or back in Twoson, depending on how long that tunnel really is.
Where we really ended up though, was another village called “Frank.” The folks there were pretty average, and Frank (the character) was nowhere to be seen. The majority of the village was laid out along a single road, and had a sort of Japanese culture to it. That part is kind of weird because Earthbound is sort of a Japanese caricature of American culture. Anyway, the town ended up leading nowhere, or at least we didn’t venture past the end of the road. We headed back and on our way out I noticed that the village was actually populated with Happy-Happyists! Spooky.
That’s when I woke up. I’m not sure what the dream means. I’ve played Earthbound enough times to know that Frank (the village) does not exist. Maybe it’s my mind trying to convince (or remind?) me that there are still secrets that I haven’t found in the game. But I’ve played it several times, and have put a lot of effort into exploring the world thoroughly. Anything I didn’t find on my own I’m sure I’ve read about. If there are still things I don’t know about Earthbound, they’re probably pretty tiny.
Anyhow, I just figured I’d share that. It was a pretty cool dream.
I knew that having a blog that supported comments was going to invite spam, I just never expected it to be like this. Up until last weekend, it was pretty benign: a few trying to post ads, a few muttering nonsense. Harmelss little things that popped up once in a while.
I woke up on Tuesday morning to find 37 new messages in my inbox. Surely they couldn’t all be Amazon ads. Over the last three days I’ve been hammered with over 100 spam comments. And they’re all the same thing: all “people” with legit looking information and a silly message about how much they like my site. Only most of the messages are in broken English, and often they’ll say “what a great read that was” on a post that’s just an image. Also, the website of evey one of them ended with a 2K. While I knew they were all fake, that would have been the tip-off for someone less in-the-know.
So I’ve rigged my system so that you have to sign up to comment. I know that will dissuade real random visitors from commenting, but it must be done. It takes a long time to trash all those alert emails. I’ll try to find a better way, but for now that’s the best compromise I have between legions of spambots and disabling comments completely.
It makes me wonder though, what is the point of this kind of spam? There are no penis enlargement ads. Maybe the sites they claim to be from contain malicous things, but who clicks on those anyway? It’s pointless aside from wasting my time. Unless of course wasting my time is the point. In which case: well played, spammers. Well played.
The rattling of bones and wailing of zombies was too much for me to sleep through. The night wasn’t passing quickly, curled up in the corner wishing for sleep. My body had been put through so much in the last few days that I couldn’t grasp why it wouldn’t jump at the chance to shut down for a while. Guess my mind has been through just as much, and it didn’t want to shut off for fear of what might happen if I let my guard down.
I wandered outside slowly, hoping not to draw the attention of any attackers. There were a couple zombies standing on the southern end of Hope. Just standing. Once in a while one would emit a groan, but they didn’t notice me. I hoped to keep it that way.
A silent creeper was bobbing around in the water just past the ledge south of my hut. It did see me, and I knew that I wouldn’t be safe with it prowling around. The thing was too stupid to take the long road around the island’s edge, but I didn’t want to find out if it would learn better. As it bounced up and down in the water, desperately rubbing against the rock face, I swung my sword at its head. The creeper fell backwards and hissing started. As the monster jumped at the rock again, it exploded with tremendous force. I was thrown back several feet, and while my ears were still ringing I managed to roll onto my side, expecting to see the zombies bearing down on me.
There was no such danger. Apparently zombies aren’t too interested in exploding creepers? They continued to stare out at the ocean. Maybe they were longing for home too?
The creeper’s blast left a huge, jagged hole where there was once a sharp corner of rock. If I had been any closer, I might not have been so lucky as to walk away with all my bits intact.
I spent the twilight hours digging away at rock half hoping I could put something useful together with the bits of cobblestone, half hoping there was something of value hidden below Hope’s bland surface. No such luck. On my way back to the hut after my little excavation, I saw the strangest thing; on the far end of the island, I swore I could see a ghastly pair of eyes floating about. One of the zombies had gotten bored and paraded into the water, but there was still another figure there. Its body was a dark shade, visible only because stars that lined the horizon would blink on and off as the thing moved around.
Hiding in my hut seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Every living being in the place had been hostile so far, and I wasn’t going to assume the best for this new creature. I would wait until dawn and try to get a better idea of what the thing was.
I did doze off for a little while as I waited for the sun to rise, and was woken by the mournful howls of a zombie. The one that remained by the beach had caught fire, and was shambling around in circles, completely neglecting the water that was no more than two meters away. While the creatures here were fierce, they weren’t very bright.
The zombie melted away into a pile of nothingness and I got my first real glimpse at the new islander. It was a short one though, because almost as soon as the fire that enveloped the zombie extinguished itself, the other thing caught fire and burned to death. The thing could have almost passed as human-esque. The parts were there, head, torso, arms and legs. They were just all… wrong. Its head was massive, probably looked even more so because of its atrophied torso and long, slender limbs. For the short few moments it was in my sight, I felt a deep-rooted fear take over me. I was pretty sure that this was not a friendly creature.
Where the alien had stood I found a small, emerald pearl. If it did anything, I couldn’t figure out how to use it. I suppose it would just go into the pile of junk that I was collecting. Perhaps I’d be able to trade it if I ever found intelligent life that wasn’t out to kill me.
The morning was spent mostly doing the usual. Here, that meant lying about enjoying the sunshine and quiet rustling of the waves against Hope. I did get up and harvest a bit of wheat to fill out my supply of bread. Something a little less plain would have been nice.
In the afternoon, once I’d rested up a little, it was time for launch. My destination was the island not too far off the northwestern side of Hope. The boat worked like a charm. I was a little impressed with myself for managing to construct a boat that didn’t leak at all. Things were good.
Upon arriving at the new island, I started to step out of the boat and slipped as I placed my first foot into the shallow water. My other foot kicked off the boat, and as if friction didn’t exist, it simply shot away across the ocean. It stopped roughly halfway between the new island and Hope, and I did not relish the thought of having to swim out there to retrieve it.
The new island was so featureless that I didn’t even bother naming it. All of that hard work for nothing. I was beginning to wonder if there really was anything to this world besides a few meager islands and endless ocean. This island was flat, shaped like a horseshoe, and had absolutely nothing on it outside of a single yellow flower. I still wonder how it looked so big from Hope.
While swimming out to my boat, I had an even stranger and more frightening experience than everything that had happened up until now. I had just made it, put my hand on the edge of the boat to lift myself in, when suddenly my vision went black. I could still, feel, and my hand was now empty. Suddenly I saw a huge flash of white, and then I was sinking. My vision returned, and I hurriedly grasped at the sky that seemed so far above me. The air above had never tasted so good. While I was glad to not have drowned, I worried about both my blackout and the fact that my boat had vanished completely. I paddled in a circle, but it was nowhere to be seen.
If this ordeal ever ended, I pledged to myself, I would never swim again.
Making it back to the beach of Hope was tiring, and rain had begun pouring down. Though I was more concerned about what had just happened to me. Was I losing it? Was my diet of bread and bread not enough to sustain me? Maybe it was just a symptom of my combined physical overexertion and lack of sleep. If I blacked out while I was under attack by one of the many monsters lurking about these isles, I’d be done for. I dragged myself inside, finding that I was considerably less hopeful for survival than I was that morning.
