Category: Idiot Box

A post full of thoughts in no logical order

Wow, its been a while since my last post. Not a record by far, but almost two weeks is a long time in the current TE era. I’ve been pretty good about slapping something up every few days for some time now, even if it’s just a dumb photo that I found entertaining for a few fleeting moments.

In an effort to start getting though my gigantic backlog of books – Wait what? Books? Yes books. I have a lot of them, but I haven’t read most of them. Anyway, I’ve decided I want to read more, so this week I’ve been making an honest effort to always have a book with me on the bus. Whether I’ll keep going once I’ve finished my current book, I don’t know, but here’s hoping!

The lack of blogging around these parts can be attributed mostly entirely to Pokémon White 2. Obviously. I blame Game Freak for working in a rather extensive achievement system. For every objective you clear, you’re presented with a medal, and when you get so many medals, you get a rank up. It’s not actually deeper than Xbox achievements or PS3 trophies, but the fact that the game makes such a big deal out of the medals makes them that much more appealing to collect. Too bad some of the requirements are completely ludicrous. Check out the list here.

I’ve been working on a big new post over the last little while. I think it’s going to end up being this month’s article, if just to fill the hole. Unfortunately, it is about video games. But it’s a little different in that it’s something of a history lesson with a little review packaged in for those interested. I don’t know. It’s not something I care about enough to link to on my Facebook page or anything, but it’ll have to do.

I’ve been reading Monster Planet this week, the last of a trilogy whose first two parts I’ve already talked about at length. I said that I thought Island and Nation would make great movies, because both of them are pretty briskly-paced and feature a fairly original take on the zombie genre. However, Planet takes it up to eleven and goes into full-blown crazypants video game territory. Now, instead of the occasional smart zombie who can control the mindless masses of undead, there is a whole cadre of liches, each with a unique magic power. It’s gotten kinda ridiculous, but I’m already two-and-a-third books deep, might as well git ‘r done. Full write-up coming soon!

Speaking of spooky things and video games, I’ve begun playing Silent Hill 2 again to half-assedly get into the spirit of Halloween. I thought I was going to do it right this time, playing alone in the dark, but I messed that up. Since I’m playing the HD Collection edition, my experience is being totally controlled by achievements, and as such my current playthrough has been paired with some extensive map-making and step-by-step instructions on how to get through the game as quickly as possible. At the very least, by the time I’m done with it, I’ll have become a master of the game.

I borrowed my brother’s copy of Cubivore to round out my October gaming palette. While the camera is awful and the overall experience is a little shallower than I’d hoped, I think it’s good enough to slake my thirst for Tokyo Jungle. For now.

Have you watched the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon yet? It’s fairly good! Not quite as good as the new TMNT comic series, but it’s definitely worth watching. I will admit that I’m a little disappointed that its demographic skews considerably younger than the 2003 TMNT series. I blame Nickelodeon. Though I suppose the best way to revive a franchise is to make sure it’s what all the li’l kids want for Christmas. A world where Turtles are plastered on every damn thing again would be a world I’d love to live in.

Xbox Minecraft got a big update recently, which is enticing. The price didn’t get cut though, so I’m still not buyin’ it.

I’m bad at getting into the Halloween spirit. I haven’t watched a single cheesy 80’s slasher flick yet. I feel like I’m failing pretty hardcore as a nerd. The Wife is forcing me to take her to Paranormal Activity 4 this weekend though, so I guess that’s at least one “scary” movie for the season. I just have trouble committing myself to 90-120 minutes of uninterrupted watching.

I don’t have nearly as much trouble watching TV or Let’s Play videos. Over the last two weeks I have watched both seasons of Better Off Ted, most of Arrested Development‘s second season, and Brickroad’s Metal Gear LP. Ted is… well, it’s okay. I enjoyed it as much as I did because it co-stars Portia de Rossi and Andrea Anders, both of whom I find very funny. The list of actresses (or even actors, it’s not a sexist thing) I really like is pretty short, but those two are definitely on it. It should be obvious that I much prefer comediennes to “serious” actresses. I also love the way de Rossi pronounces the word “anything.”

I don’t think there’s anything else relevant I can say so that I can add another tag to this post.

Oh, wait! New Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate trailer? Oh Hells yes!

Nostalgia trippin’

Hey, so does it mean you’re old when just the air can cause waves of nostalgia to wash over you? Because I’m totally getting that right now. It’s been a beautiful fall day, and the first real one as far as I’m concerned, because it’s just got that feeling to it. I love this weather, and it brings back memories of everything I’ve ever associated it with. I have no way to properly convey these feelings in words, but I can feel them in my heart and I need to get them out somehow, so I kept a running list of every memory that came back to me today because of the cool autumn air. Here’s what I got:

  • Trick-or-treating in general
  • Beating Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes for Nintendo 64 one Halloween night
  • Playing Silent Hill for the first time
  • Daily visits to the Heath Sciences Center
  • Watching Criminal Minds on Stephanie’s laptop in my car
  • Guitar Hero 5
  • Visiting a small corner store downtown that smelled like curry, and buying Pepsis at said store which also smelled of curry
  • Treehouse of Horror
  • YTV’s Dark Night specials
  • McDonald’s Halloween McNugget toys
  • Driving around with the family to look at Halloween houses
  • That old McDonald’s Halloween cassette tape. “Spooky Sounds” or something of the like?
  • Pokémon Silver Version
  • The beginning of Christmas madness at Toys ‘R’ Us
  • Donkey Konga
  • Traipsing through yards covered in crunchy, fallen leaves
  • Finally earning my driver’s license
  • Purchasing my first car (I still love you, Spirit)
  • The beginning of hockey season, and all those dreadful practise sessions
  • Carving jack-o-lanterns
  • The last family trip to Fargo
  • Chasing a bunch of egg-chucking hooligans down the street while dressed as the red Angry Bird
  • Playing Rock Band 2 at a Halloween party, and my sister-in-law commenting at how intense I looked while I was playing
  • Creating the alias “Tito Sanchez” for reasons I cannot recall
  • Going to a corn maze and haunted house with a group of friends, and being thought of as a goofball (not in a good way) by the females of the bunch.
  • Playing Magical Starsign in the upstairs storeroom of Toys ‘R’ Us instead of working
  • My brother’s friend Brent dressing as a woman for Halloween, and being called “Brenta” for many years afterwards
  • Not giving out free cookies to trick-or-treaters at Tim Hortons
  • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, for some reason. I don’t know why, because I never played that at Halloween time
  • Pillsbury cookie rolls, with pumpkins coloured into them!
  • Enjoying those cold, foggy mornings where nobody’s around and silence abounds
  • The many times I said I’d participate in (or at least check out) a zombie walk, but never did
  • Pumpkin pie
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • Specifically, “This is Halloween”

The power of Mabel

So I’ve been watching this new Disney cartoon lately. It’s called Gravity Falls and it is the best kid show on TV. That’s a pretty bold proclamation, but I’m willing to stand behind it. And that’s competing with such wonderful things as Adventure Time and… well, pretty much just Adventure Time. Does Regular Show qualify as “for kids”?

Yes, that’s the image I’m going to use to try to sell this. Do you have a problem with it? I don’t. Pants are terrible and should be abolished.

Anyway, Gravity Falls. The show is about a pair of twins, Dipper and Mabel, who are sent off to the eponymous town of Gravity Falls to spend the summer with their great uncle Stan. I should note here that he is referred to as “Grunkle Stan” and that “grunkle” is quite possibly the best word ever. Take that, pickle. In Gravity Falls, weird stuff abounds, and most episodes so far have had a sort of creature-of-the-week vibe to them, but it’s pretty clear that there’s more going on here, and that should it make it to a second season, things aare going to get a lot deeper. Kinda like Fringe. No, exactly like Fringe. Which is good, because that’s a really awesome show too.

One of the things that I really love about Gravity Falls is the level of detail in the show. There are coded messages in the end credits, crazy single frame inserts, creepy recurring men in the backgrounds, and loads of tiny continuity things. For example: in one of the first few episodes, Dipper is chased onto the roof of Grunkle Stan’s Mystery Shack, and ends up knocking the big S over. In every subsequent episode, whenever there’s a shot of the Mystery Shack, the S remains slumped over. Also, apparently some characters have four fingers and others have five? You may think it’s an animation flub, but Dipper finds a mysterious tome in the first episode, and on the front cover is an image of a hand with six fingers. Mysterious!

Part of what drew me to the show in the first place is the silky-smooth hand-drawn animation. Check it out!

You just don’t get that level of beauty with butt-ugly Flash animations. I honestly can’t wait to buy the inevitable overpriced blu-ray set so that I can enjoy it in full HD goodness.

And since we’re sort of on the topic, my other favourite part of the show is Mabel. She is adorable, wears a different sweater every episode, and is Goddamn hilarious. Every time she opens her mouth, I invariably end up laughing out loud. I don’t know the last show that made me laugh so much, never mind a single character. The rest of the cast is great too, but Mabel makes Gravity Falls. If I ever have a daughter, I hope that she ends up with a little Mabel in her, because that girl is charming like nobody’s business. Even Abed from Community cannot hold a candle to her sheer lovableness. She does a Legend of Zelda “item get” spin at the end of the first episode, for crying out loud!

If you want to know more about Gravity Falls, go torrent you some episodes. It is so so so worth it. But don’t take my word for it, here’s a link to the Talking Time thread for it, where I done stole that movin’ picture from. Read up while you’re waiting for your torrents to finish.

Share It Maybe

You can probably guess that I’m not a huge Carly Rae Jepsen fan. She’s pretty much the embodiment of cookie cutter pop music. Nothing special or original going on there. Anyway, it seems that one song, “Call Me Maybe,” has become something of an internet meme. Which would annoy me if her music was bad, but as it is she’s merely uninteresting. Far more tolerable, but a bit less hilarious than Rebecca Black.

Anyway, here’s the best thing I’ve seen to come from this particular meme.

Awesome stuff like this is why Sesame Street has persisted so long in such a cynical world as ours. Also, check out this hilarious video with Kermit and Cookie.

24 sentences of materialism

Alright kiddies! I totally forgot to do a “24 Days of Materialism” feature this year, and the best thing I could come up to sort of replace it is this: The 24 Sentences of Materialism. It’s basically the same concept, I choose 24 things I like and tell you to buy them, only this time I’m ripping off the long-dead Video Game Article‘s “One Sentence Reviews” feature. So here’s a list of video games, albums, books, and TV shows that I love and think you should buy for yourself or your loved ones (and also a link to a related webpage for each). Honestly, I think this is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. It’s terribly difficult to express everything I want to say about a product in only one sentence.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – Take one part Ocarina of Time, one part Wind Waker, mix well, and then tweak everything just slightly: provides a surprisingly fresh Zelda experience!

2. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite – Why not help persuade Capcom to bring MH Portable 3rd or MH3G by picking up what is easily the best game in the series to date (that is available outside of Japan).

3. Groove Coaster – A rhythm game that’s incredibly simple, but will still suck you in with its trippy visuals and eclectic track selection.

4. Volchaos – A rather superb Xbox Indie game that brings back the glory days of video games: short, challenging levels, and a great sense of satisfaction when you get them right.

5. Fallout 3 – I don’t know why I don’t spend more time with this game; it’s so unlike anything else I play and all the more wonderful for it.

6. Super Mario 3D Land – The game that justifies the 3Ds’ existence.

7. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island – Getting this game (and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap) for free because I paid too much for my 3DS makes it totally worth it.

8. Anima: Ark of Sinners – It’s not really very good, but you can see potential shining through the blandness and kludgy controls.

9. Tron Legacy Soundtrack – Oddly enough, this is probably my favourite music to listen to while playing Minecraft.

10. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – The Live Anthology – Just slightly less than four hours of pure delight.

11. Bound Together – Who could ask for more than an Earthbound tribute remix album?

12. Back in Blue – I love OC Remix but don’t generally love their albums, but this Mega Man 9 tribute is awesome all the way through.

13. Private Line – 21st Century Pirates – There must be something in the water in Finland, because they’re so good at hard rock/metal.

14. How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack – This one really should be mandatory reading for every human being.

15. The Forever War – Best novel I’ve read in… forever?

16. 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth – This comic collection goes beyond hilarity and does its best to teach you some very important lessons.

17. GameSpite Journal 10: The SNES Turns 20 – What kind of gamer wouldn’t want to read a book all about SNES games?

18. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1 – A huge, beautiful history lesson.

19. Futurama Season 6 – The first few episodes are kinda weak, but the quality shoots up after that and has me very excited to get BD set of the second half.

20. Community Season 2 – Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas.

21. Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour – It’s like Criminal Minds if Criminal Minds sunk all the budget into the script and had first-year college students do the rest.

22. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (80’s) – Campy, cheesy, corny; whatever you want to call it, it’s all goofy nostalgia.

23. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood – I liked the original series, and this one is better in every conceivable way.

24. Fringe Season 3 – Somehow this show has gotten to a point where I feel it might be better than LOST.

TE @ C4

It’s gotta be… weeks now since I went to Central Canadian Comic Con. It was cool, I must say. Though I guess I’m not as much of a nerd as I thought it was because it was (local) Nerd Mecca and I wasn’t super-psyched about it. Oh well. I took a few (blurry) pictures while I was there. Everything from Minecraft to papercraft, and even one ass that did not belong in that costume. Actually I took a few pictures of those, but I figured one is enough to prove my point and deleted the rest. Be thankful. There’s an alternate universe where this post is all pictures of asses that shouldn’t be seen by human eyes.

         

         

              

         

         

              

              

         

Pointless potential

So I’m mostly just doing a test here to see if I can post through my Wii. If you’re reading this, I totally can!

Proofreading from here is going to be a bitch though. The Wii’s tiny little text input window was totally not meant for this kind of work. So if you notice lots of little typos of the “jsut” and “anythign” variety, assume it’s a post written from the comfort of my bed. Which might make this worth it. Now unless I need to post an image, I have one less major reason to turn on my computer. Poor, neglected compy.

In related news, I’m on my third Wii console now. Not because I’m Nintendo’s bitch and keep buying each new colour or anything, but because Netflix is a horrible Wii murderer. Well, maybe it’s not Netflix, but all the evidence points to that conclusion. Let me start from the start.

Once upon a time, little Ryan was super excited that he got a message from Nintendo (via WiiConnect24, which is otherwise useless) that said he could now download a Netflix channel for his Wii. Little Ryan downloaded that channel with all the gusto, and immediately dove in. The first movie that queued up, completely by chance, was Confessions of a Nymphomaniac. Little Ryan felt a different kind of excitement and watched it. His love for Netflix bloomed instantly. Life would be wonderful from now on.
After watching more movies on the Netflix channel for hours, Ryan turned the Wii off and left to do other things for a while. He came back even later on, but when he turned on his Wii, it showed a horrible message:

“System memory has been corrupted.”

Little Ryan was devastated. His best friend had suffered from an apparent brain aneurysm, and he didn’t know what do to. The next day he turned on the Wii, just to see, and to his delight it worked! Little Ryan jumped for joy! For a while, everything seemed perfect, but then the Wii stopped working for real. It did not recover from the memory corruption, and had to be sent away to be replaced with a new console.

Little Ryan was depressed for the two long weeks his Wii was gone, but he was ecstatic when it returned, still loaded with all his Virtual Console and WiiWare purchases. Only while the license to download them was retained, they refused to play on the new console. Little Ryan set about re-downloading them all, painful a task though it was. At the end, he downloaded the Netflix channel again, and set about to watch him some River Monsters. Man, Little Ryan loved him some River Monsters.

Days and weeks went by uneventfully. Little Ryan and the Netflix channel were living happily together until one morning Ryan woke up and his Wii said

“System memory has been corrupted”

Little Ryan was devastated. Again. His Wii was dead again! But it pulled through the crisis, and Little Ryan continued to Netflix. Over the next few months the error came up again. At first it seemed to happen randomly, but as the fall set in, it started to happen every time Little Ryan tried to turn on his console. He eventually gave up and sent it in for repairs.

When Little Ryan received the second replacement Wii, he vowed to never download the Netflix channel again, because it was the devil. Four years, Little Ryan and his original console had spent together, and never had a problem. Now Little Ryan and his third Wii get along just fine, and there is no Netflix to be seen.

The End

So yeah. That’s what happened in a nutshell. The really sad part is that I loved the Netflix channel. Yes, Canadian Netflix lacks most of the AAA movies, but who cares? There’s so much on there to watch anyway! I felt like a kid in a candy store every single time I booted that channel up. I always found something to watch, and ended up watching tons of stuff that I’d have never even heard of without it. I owe Netflix a great deal, and I’m sad that I can no longer use it through my TV.

I do still subscribe to Netflix, and occasionally use it through my iPhone (mostly during workout time), though I’m a little skeptical about loading it up on my 3DS. Who knows what it’ll do? I’m certainly not signing up for Xbox Live Gold just for Netflix. One monthly fee is enough. I intend to find a cable that can make my iPhone do TV-out soon so that I can watch stuff on my TV, but it’s still not the same. The Netflix Wii interface was a little clunky, but it was nice. Better than the iPhone interface anyway. Oh well, those days have passed, and for now I live with Netflix being more a fond memory than anything else.

Go Green Machine!

Over the last month or so, I’ve been trying to sneak in an episode or two of the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon in whenever I get a chance. I own all the DVD sets after all, so I should probably actually watch them.

Now, I hear a lot of people groaning, and I stop to wonder why. I’ve heard many people who used to love the old TMNT get a hate-on for it these days, and all these people are stupid idiots. The most common reason I’ve heard for ex-fans no longer liking the show? Because the Turtles use an excess of 80’s slang and are therefore out-of-date. Here’s the thing about that: they don’t.

If you actually stop to watch the show, you’ll notice that the Turtles and the majority of the characters around them don’t use slang very often, if at all. And none of it is particularly dated. Leonardo’s vocabulary is often very proper, even eschewing contractions here and there in an effort to sound more mature and leader-like. Donatello is very similar, only he doesn’t have the air of superiority that Leo does. Raphael is the Ninja Turtle Chandler. Or Chandler is the Raphael of Friends. There are two exceptions to this rule:

1. Michaelangelo. Yes, he uses an excess of slang. But it’s not really just random 80’s slang popped in there to be cool  rad. It’s 80’s surfer slang to be specific, and it’s there because that’s a part of the character’s personality. He enjoys extreme sports, surfing in particular. 2003 Michaelangelo is the same way, but using 2003 lingo.

2. When people are referencing Michaelangelo. This is always prefaced by an “As Michaelangelo would say…”

So eat that, kids; your detraction doesn’t hold water. Maybe stop to watch an episode or two of the show before you make criticizms. But I do sort of understand. The problem is that the marketing for the show really pushed those slang terms. It was (and still is, to a degree) rare to see a piece of Turtles merch that isn’t plastered with words like “Cowabunga!” and “Tubular!”

As for me, I really like the show! (As I should, given how much money I’ve exchanged for all those DVDs.) The animation steadily improves with each season, and voice/colouring flubs happen considerably less often after the first season. There have been many instances when a one-liner has actually made me laugh out loud. More surprisingly, the lion’s share of those LOLers have come from Krang of all people. Brain people. Brain monsters. For example:

Rocksteady: Do we really have to ride in those [modules] again? All we do is go up and down, up and down
Krang: Sounds like a perfect job for a couple of yo-yos.

Fantastic! Sure, it’s not exaclty the wittiest stuff ever written, but it’s pretty damn good for a cartoon for children. And the narrative is pretty impressive for a kid show too; the entire first season follow one big plot thread, and the second season’s episodes can generally be split between two major storylines. Season three is pretty much 80’s Transformers (Turtles/Autobots stop Shredder/Megatron’s zany plans to steal an energy source), and I haven’t gotten any farther than that.

And yeah, if it degenerates into a “crazy caper of the week” type of show with only a semblance of an overall story, that’s still been more than enough for tons of other shows. Like Trailer Park Boys. Think about it. Each episiode is another one of Ricky’s wacky adventures, and each season begins with the boys getting out of jail, and ends with them going back in. That’s not how every season rolls out, but it’s the basic template. TMNT is the same: Turtles go on a wacky adventure each episode, each season opens with Krang berating Shredder over their latest failed assault with the Technodrome, and the Technodrome returns and then gets transported to a new nowhere land (Earth’s core, Arctic Ocean, etc.) at the end of every season.

Needless to say, I’m still a fan. It’s not the best old cartoon out there, but it’s certainly a contender. Mostly I just wanted to address the outdated slang issue. There are plenty of things that you could pick at and not like the show for, and if they’re reasonable arguments I’ll let you be. But picking on TMNT because of a vocabulary issue that isn’t actually there, I cannot abide.

Lucky as the wheat grass grows

I’d like to think that the world would be a better place if nerdcore supplanted whatever garbage hip-hop they play on the radio these days, but Average Joe just doesn’t want to hop on the bandwagon. I don’t understand how people, especially nerdy people, can not be into nerdcore. It’s quite often smart and funny, and covers so many more themes than club-approved rap, which is always the same dumb thing. But whatever; different strokes I suppose. Me, I love the stuff. (Duh.)

I just bought Beefy’s With Sprinkles on iTunes, after much deliberation. I’ve heard him feature in a couple MC Frontalot tracks, but was wary of paying money for an album from an unproven artist. A new Frontalot album I’d slap down the cash for without a second thought, but a rapper I’d never even heard one song from? The previews seemed pretty rad though, and at $10 it wouldn’t be a huge loss. Personally, I feel there wasn’t a cent misspent.

Beefy’s a pretty competent rapper, but what I really like here is that he’s not such a computer geek, and focuses more on video games and comics. This is great, because I always get lost in the more technology-oriented songs. “Zero Day” is up there on my list of favourite Frontalot songs, but I feel stupid when I listen to it because I don’t get it. I had to read a lot of Wikipedia pages to even grasp the basic theme of the song. Yeah, maybe it comes with the added bonus of learning, but I like when people write songs that I can easily relate to or understand, like Beefy’s “Game Store Girl” or “Sidekick”. Also he makes a referenece to Zack & Wiki, which is so many kinds of awesome.

As much as I just want to sit here all day typing about how much I like Beefy and nerdcore in general, but there’s a point to make! Like every rule, there are exceptions to this, but in general I am not a fan of music sampling. Seriously, I know rappers are generally talentless hacks, but they could get their producer to write up a shitty six-second looping beat instead of appropriating someone else’s music for their (usually) inferior song. Mostly I just hate hearing music I like cut and pasted into some garbage rap.

Beefy is the exception here. I don’t know how many of the songs on With Sprinkles use samples, but there are at least a few I recognise; most notably “Duh-nuh Nuh-nuh Nuh-nuh” and “One of These Nights.” But the real stand out here is “Uncanny” which samples the theme from the ’90s X-Men cartoon. Not only is it great to hear the tune, which I hadn’t expected at all, but the whole song is about getting up on Saturday morning to watch X-Men on FOX Kids.

This song is pure nostalgia, and it is me. When I was nine? Hells yeah I was up early on Saturday watching X-Men (and Spider-Man, and Ninja Turtles, and Mega Man, and Samurai Pizza Cats, etc etc). I even had the whole box of cereal in a giant mixing bowl thing going on. And I know many other people who did the same. It’s a wonderful, happy song that really brings on the warm fuzzies. And the X-Men theme is here for a reason. It’s not there because Beefy was too lazy or talentless to write his own music, or at least have some written for him. It’s there to enhance the experience of the song. The X-Men theme is to “Uncanny” as mutant healing factor is to Wolverine: it’s not really a defining feature, but it’s certainly cool and the song/character wouldn’t be the same without it.

While the song makes me feel all good inside, it does have a sneaky, unpleasant facet that is inherent in many things that invoke nostalgia: it makes you realize that stuff just isn’t as good as it used to be. Listening to “Uncanny” makes me think about why I don’t still get up early in Saturdays (that I don’t have to work) and watch cartoons all morning. The long and short of it is that there just aren’t very many really good cartoons on these days. Ben 10 is easily the best superhero cartoon produced in years. Batman: The Brave and the Bold seemed like a charming throwback at first, but then he travelled back in time to help Sherlock Holmes beat a ghost? I know comic book plots can get even more ridiculous than that, but sullying the good name of Sherlock Holmes is unforgivable. Johnny Test is fun in the same way that Dexter’s Laboratory and Johnny Bravo were, but wears thin pretty quickly. Pretty much everything else ranges from. Don’t even get me stated on the stupid My Little Pony craze.

I don’t even know if FOX still airs a cartoon block on Saturday mornings. When they rebranded it as the FOXBox,it started off pretty rad, with shows like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, Kirby, Shaman King, and Ultimate Muscle. Last time I checked in though (which was many years ago), it had been all but taken over by girl shows like Winx Club and Bratz. Apparently at some point they ran the Biker Mice From Mars reboot, which I’m very sad to have missed.

So yeah. Kinda got off-track there. To summarize: Beefy = good. Sampling = usually bad. Biker Mice From Mars = awesome.

It’s running through my brain

Yesterday I discovered the Playstation Store for the first time. This is both fantastic and not good at all.

I suppose I knew that it existed. As I understood it though, it could only be accessed via PS3 and then the games could be transferred to your PSP. If that was ever the case, it’s not anymore. And now I have access to PSOne Classics, and my credit card bill is going to inflate dramatically.

I’ve already bought Breath of Fire IV, Tomb Raider and Gex 3: Enter the Gecko. BoFIV and Tomb Raider because the kids at Gamespite keep telling my how good they are and how I missed out, and Gex 3 because I remember playing and enjoying the N64 version as a whippersnapper. In retrospect, it’s a game that only a child should enjoy; a second-rate Banjo-Kazooie.

The most interesting thing about Gex 3 is that it’s just loaded with pop-culture references. And this was in an age before Family Guy. At least, Gex: Enter the Gecko (Gex 2) predated Family Guy by about a year, and it used the same schtick. After a little research, it seems like Enter the Gecko was actually released before Banjo-Kazooie, making my comment in the last paragraph a little backwards, but you’d think that Crystal Dynamics would have learned from the best for Gex 3. That is to say, the best for 3D platforming collectathons anyway.

I actually cannot wait to dig into Tomb Raider. I remember hating the demo with a passion, but I’ve heard enough people say that once you get around the lame controls and gunplay mechanics there’s a great adventure buried in there. I hope to excavate this supposed relic. Hyuk hyuk.

And Breath of Fire IV? I’ve played the first dungeons in the first two BoF games, and have delved a bit farther into Dragon Quarter (which I need to get back to…), but otherwise I have very little experience with the series. RPGs also seem better suited than complex action games to be played on a system that’s missing two buttons and an analog stick from the original controller. Also, I probably don’t need to buy a third copy of Final Fantasy VIII. Though I inevitably will. The idea of being able to play FFVIII anywhere is way too tempting. And when I can, I fear my 3DS and all other PSP games I own will become completely irrelevant. The only thing that’s really stopping me from doing so right now is the fact that my tiny memory stick is full and I don’t want to buy a new one.

In conclusion, I’m glad the most these games go for is $10 (sans tax!). That’s considerably less than people are trying to make me pay for used physical copies! Hooray!