Video Games – Page 113

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus

Getting right to the point, I’ve loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for as long as I can remember. I always had the newest toys when they came out, I own all three movies and the soundtrack from the second. I even went to the freaking live concert and still own the cassette tape of said concert. Even to this day do I frequently obsess about the TMNT. I visit the website regularly, own the first couple waves of toys, and watch the show whenever I get the chance. And of course, combining my two greatest obsessions, I own all the newer TMNT video games.

If you’ve read my Christmas article, you know I got the first set of games around December 25th of last year, and how I loved them so. The GBA game, in my opinion, was right up there at the top of the “best GBA games ever” list. It was the perfect beat ’em up side-scroller, with excellent graphics and a great aural experience to boot. I played it through several times, and even my brother who doesn’t really like video games (particularly of the side-scrolling sort) got really wrapped up in it at one point. So could Konami pull through and make the sequel better? Take a look at the box art, and judge this book by it’s cover.

Does it not scream intense? The last game’s box art was kind of disappointing and plain, but the moment I saw this one I thought “Wow. This game is going to kick ass. The box alone looks like it’s going to kick ass.” But enough about the box art. It’s only so relevant. Though probably the most entertaining picture that’s going to appear in this article. You’ll also notice that It proudly displays 4-player action on the corner there, though for some reason they made the French part to be more outstanding to the eyes than the English. Anyhow, they’re really trying to promote the ability to have 4 players with the new releases. Probably because the first games had very little opportunity for multiplayer. The console had only 2-players at max, and the GBA version was single player only. It’s a great feature, considering the material, and coincides with Nintendo’s newfound obsession with playing together. (Not that they never cared about it before, they’re just really going at it now)

So with the sweet-ass box art and a new multiplayer feature, you’re definitely wondering by now how Battle Nexus stands up to its older brother. While I’d love to say that the second game is without a doubt leagues better than the first, it’s just different enough that you can’t properly compare the two. Whether you like Battle Nexus or the first game better will overall depend on what kind of game you like, because although they are similar in many ways, the differences really set them apart and make them two entirely different games. In other words, this game takes the foundation that the first laid down and builds it up way into space.

Oh and speaking of into space, I guess that’s where I’ll start. As the first game covered the major events of the first season of the show, Battle Nexus highlights the bigger events of the second season. Or at least the first half of said season. The game opens with a recap of how the first season ended and the second started, with the Turtles being teleported to a planet galaxies away and saving the Fugitoid from both those evil Federation guys and the Triceratons. Right now, you’d probably want to have seen at least two or three episodes of the show to have any idea what I’m talking about. In any case, that’s about as far as they follow the actual plot set forth by the show.

So after that, you get to the start screen. Ooh. Lightning. Then it’s start new game and such, and you’re treated to a really long (and the only, so far) cutscene that fleshes out the more skewered story. You see, while it follows the basic plot of the cartoon, they changed it around a lot so that they had something to make a decent game out of. In this story, the Turtles and the Fugitoid escape to a secret lab. There, they can use Fugitoid’s teleportal to go hunting around for crystals to power up the teleportal, because it can only get you so far without the proper amount of crystal energy. But then the biggest fault in the game comes into play.

Somehow, back on Earth, Baxter Stockman has managed to hack into the teleportal’s system and made it so that when a turtle uses the teleportal, he will be taken to his destination, but his weapon(s) will be teleported some distance away. How he managed to do this, I’ll never know. I guess you could find plausibility in it because (bigass spoiler, if you care) Shredder is an Utrom and has all that knowledge and stuff about how life does actually exist on other planets, plus all the technology necessary to make something that could affect something that far away. Oh and I guess I should mention that instead of the Turtles being teleported from the basement of the TCRI building (the Utrom’s Earth base), they just get magically warped right out of their lair out of the blue. Oh. Wait. Maybe it was Shredder’s doing. I can’t really remember. It was a really long cutscene.

Either way, once you’ve cleared the hurdle that is picking your difficulty level, you get to choose which mode you want to play. There are three, and I’ll start with the obvious choice. Like I said earlier, you’re mission is to warp into enemy territory, steal crystals, and go. It’s a simple task, and made simpler in easy mode, because you don’t actually have to get the crystals to progress, but you do only get to play the first three of five worlds. A fair trade, I’d say. The greatest thing about this game is that it’s at least twice as long as the first. Maybe. I’m not sure, because I don’t want to do the math. The first game had 17 levels (including bosses and vehicle levels), and this one has 5 worlds with 6 levels apiece. So that’s like 30 or something. And as with the first, there may be more once you’ve completed all the standard levels. I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet.

I mentioned earlier that when the Turtles would teleport, their weapons would be taken somewhere different, no? Well, that’s the biggest problem and genre-changer for this game. In this game you start every level sans-weapons, with only an infinite number of shuriken to defend yourself. Needless to say, shuriken are pitifully weak. So your first objective is to get to your weapon. Just because Metal Gear Solid was such a huge success doesn’t mean that Konami has to start incorporating stealth into every second game they make. Boktai was understandable, but not Ninja Turtles. Yes, ninjas do play the stealth card frequently, but Ninja Turtles games have always been about busting heads and such. Not hiding in doorways to elude security. They did it well, but I’d still prefer more action.

Oops. There’s the Metal Gear again. At least the level design is really good. The way the last game worked, you had a set of levels for each Turtle, but in this one you get to use any Turtle in any level. So with that in mind, they made every level with puzzles and spots that could only be solved with specific Turtles, so you have to play through each “on foot” (more on that in a while) level with at least two Turtles if you’re out to get every last crystal, which is requisite for any progress in hard mode. It adds a little bit of life to the game, and the levels are rather big and allow for a lot of exploring so it doesn’t get too dull.

So as I was saying, the shuriken blow as weapons, and you really can’t do much until you’ve gotten your weapon. Chances are, if you try to kill something without your weapon, you’re going to get killed. You could always be really careful and throw a star, hide, throw a star, hide, and so forth, but that takes forever. Luckily, grabbing the weapon makes everything so much easier. Enemies will fall with minimal effort, and you’ll be kicking ass all over the place. On easy, that is. The game is actually quite difficult on normal, and I can’t imagine what horrors reside in hard mode. Triceraton soldiers are an actual threat on normal mode, and in situations where you have one on each side of you, you’re pretty much screwed. The other enemies aren’t that bad, but bosses can show you a thing or two about getting your ass kicked. More on those guys later.

A little ninja action and even more MGS reference. In the next game the Turtles are going to be communicating by codec and April will recite famous quotes and proverbs when you save. Yes, enough of that, it’s time I told you about the levels where you don’t run about slicing things apart. Every world has three normal action stages, two vehicle stages, and a boss stage. And there are several kinds of vehicle stages. The first is the muta-board stage. Pretty much just jumping and shooting anything that comes at you, but there is a tough mini-boss in the second one. There isn’t much to say about it, except for that it’s probably where the idea for Race Mode (more later) came from.

There are also some mini-ship levels. I’m not sure what they’re really called, but the thing looks like a little spaceship, but isn’t, cause it doesn’t go into space. Whatever it is, the levels play out kind of like R-Type, with the side-scrolling shooting and all. Notably, the third boss is fought in this kind of level. Lastly, there are real spaceship levels. Which are just simple rail shooters. Just aim and shoot. Enjoyable, and it gets pretty frantic if you’re playing anything above easy mode. There may be different kinds of vehicle levels later on, but I’m not that far yet. Only finished easy mode and the first world on normal up to this point.

I think I mentioned that the bosses are tough, right? Well if not, I’m tellin’ you now. The bosses of Battle Nexus are no picnic. Of course, everything I type from this point will be in reference to normal mode, because easy mode is easy all around. The first boss is the huge sewer worm thing seen in the first or second episode of the second season. He rolls around, shoots, and chews on your head. Not a huge trouble, but you won’t beat him without taking damage. The second guy is the real trouble spot. Beating his is hard enough, because he’s got a really big hammer, and it hurts. The worst part is that you have to beat him with Mikey at one point to collect all the crystals, and Mikey, well, we’ll say Mikey isn’t exactly the strongest of the four terrapins. I just managed to scrape by with Leo, who is the strongest, and it took me at least ten tries to do it. The third boss, the spasmosaur (fought in the Triceraton gladiator pit on the show) isn’t too tough, because it’s a shooting level, and once you’ve learned a safe spot, you’re good to go. I haven’t seen what the next two worlds have in store, but I’m pretty sure that the Shredder’s going to be in there at least twice. And he was hard as Hell to beat in the first game.

Take the advice. There is no satisfaction in beating Easy mode unless you’re as completist as I am. You do get a password for the GC version, and it’s not a bad password at that, but still. Easy mode is a bit too easy. I don’t think I died even once. But I digress, because there is still much more that needs to be reviewed. Though I’m thinking that thins is getting to be just a little long. I’m around 2100 words now, and I can tell that there are going to be quite a few more, because there’s tons more material to be covered. And you know what happened last time I wrote something that ended up being twice as long as a normal article. That’s right! I didn’t just put that picture that says “To be continued” there for kicks. It’s time for another two-pager, people. So click below and zoom to my favourite was of artificially making my articles look super-long!

(pretend there’s a link to a new page here

Ah. It’s been way too long since I’ve written a proper article, never mind a whole two-pager. If you somehow got to this page first, I’m not sure what the shell you did, but don’t do it again. You’re scaring me. Anyway, on the previous page, I summarized what makes the story mode go round. If I had been reviewing the first TMNT game for the GBA, I’d be done by now, but Battle Nexus has a lot more going for it.

After you’ve had enough fooling around with the Story mode, there are still plenty of challenges for you, and possibly some of your friends to try to accomplish. Firstly, if you haven’t done so, you can go through all of the levels and collect every last crystal lying around. And if you’re completist like me, you’ll even go so far as to finish every level with all four Turtles. That could take a long damn time, so I don’t suggest trying it unless you plan to have a lot of time on your hands. Or, you could just move on and start playing through one of the secondary game modes: Race Mode and Battle Mode.

First up is Race Mode. It’s probably not exactly what you’re expecting. I bet you’re thinking a crappy wannabe kart racer? No? Well, yes, it is back to the Muta-boards for the boys in green. All it is is the four Turtles racing against each other for some sort of glory. Maybe it’s what they do in their free time. Maybe it’s just something Konami thought would be fun. To their credit, it is pretty fun. Until about race 4 or so, where it starts getting tough.

Yay. Look at all of that fun. But really, it’s a simple game. No real attacking or anything. Just holding the “gas” and jumping when necessary. But there are a couple little elements that can give you the edge or destroy you completely. And they take form of coloured ground panels. Basically what happens is that when you drive over these panels, you can press down and get some sort of bonus thing. For example, blue makes you go real fast, and red makes you kill any turtle who you come in contact with. Some are a little more complicated, like yellow which launches you over walls too high to leap normally. This would be fine, but you need precise timing, or you’ll just be flung into the side of the wall.

Reminds me of something blue… something about a hedgehog… But at least in this game you can go fast and not really have to worry about dying. There are 15 courses available, and according to the manual, if you manage to tough it through them all you get to see an ending of some sort. Also, if you manage to do well in the GCN version, you can get some passwords to unlock three bonus courses. It’s not much, but it beats the hidden bike race mode from the first game. That wasn’t fun at all.

But if you don’t like the racing too much, you can go to a seriously challenging mode: the Battle Mode. It’s laid out exactly like Race Mode, in that there are 15 levels, an ending, and three unlockable levels. Or arenas, or maps, or whatever they call them. The thing I’m most worried about right now is the fact that they called it Battle Mode when in reality, there isn’t much battling. In fact, in this mode you want to avoid battling as much as you possibly can. Maybe it was named more for the multiplayer version. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. What I do know is that it’s time for the next picture.

The goal of Battle Mode is to collect so many crystals in a short span of time. At first it’s pretty easy, but then they throw in Triceratons and blocks that need breaking. Some levels even just have a lot of springs that you need to find away to navigate around. And after you’ve finished a map or whatever, they give you a second, harder challenge. I don’t think the second rounds need to be completed, but it sure adds a lot of difficulty to the game. I’ve yet to finish either the Battle Mode or Race mode yet, so I’m not sure what the caliber of these supposed endings are, but I’m going to guess that they won’t be much more than a picture that says “Congratulations!” or “You’re the Race/Battle Champion!”. Really, they’re just extra modes thrown in to add multiplayer and a couple more hours to the game’s life, so you can’t really expect much. They are entertaining though, and sever well as an entertaining break from having to find your weapon in every damn level.

Oh yes, I never yet mentioned that if you get to close to a Triceraton, he will grab you by the neck and bite off your face. At least I assume that’s what’s going on. The animation makes it look so, and it takes off a pretty huge chunk of your life bar, so I’ll stick with it for now. Ooh… And speaking of right now, I think I had a little too much candy… It’s time for me to take a little break from the old writing that I’ve been doing inconsistently all day. I’ll be back before you know it, because let’s face it, no matter how long I’m gone, it’s not like I can really make a commercial break happen as soon as you’re done reading this here paragraph.

(Returns 27 minutes later, having emptied the bowels and completed Battle Mode.)

Well, I finished Battle Mode, and I must say, I was definitely expecting too much from the “ending”. All you get is character art of your chosen Turtle over a background of his weapon and some pretty confetti. It didn’t even say “Congratulations”. I would normally say something along the lines of “That was totally not worth it.”, but indeed it was, as it provided me with material enough for an extra filler paragraph. Because we all know that this second page is definitely not going to be either as high or mighty as the first was. I suspect that Race Mode will yield the exact same results, but perhaps with a different character pose. Oh, right. I got a password too. Not sure what it does, but it had better be good. It’s not on the code list at GameFAQs, so I can only assume that I am the first person ever to finish Battle Mode.

So, now that we’ve seen all the game’s content, it’s time to do the actual review. I think I always start this part with that sentence or a paraphrase of it. I mean, there has got to be something more original to say. Well, I’ll figure that out if I ever review anything again. As usual, I’mma start with the graphics. Just like the first game, they’re fabulous. Character sprites are large and well animated. Each turtle has tons of original animations, (on a side note, they all swim the same except for Donatello, who really gives ‘er.) The bosses are huge, and tend to launch a lot of projectiles, and so far I haven’t noticed any slowdown at all. Backgrounds are good-looking and interactive, but even thought they take place in two different locations, the first and second worlds look way too similar.

Sound-wise, the game is pretty good. The butchered intro is gone and replaced with a quaint recap of events leading up to the game, and is fully voiced by all four Turtles and the Shredder. Of course, all the voices are the same actors from the show, and it manages to work out very well, with only the slightest bit of fuzz. Of course, you also get the various Turtle voice samples throughout the game, and the stage clear “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!” clip. Sound effects are where they should be, with metal-on-metal clangs, laser guns, and other assorted thwacking sounds. The music is decent enough, but barely memorable. It all fits, but it’s nothing you’re going to be humming afterward. You’re probably best just to turn down the sound and put on some headphones.

The gameplay is the most important part, and there’s a lot to cover. The mini-games come first, as they provide mostly backup and multiplayer. They’re pleasant distractions from the main game, but not much else. If they were a little more fleshed-out, they could probably last by themselves, but as it stands, mini-games are what they were made for, and all they’ll ever be. The main game has been slowed down a lot since last year’s entry, with the emphasis being mostly on stealth rather than fighting off scores of punks and ninjas. It’s still fun, but it doesn’t feel like Ninja Turtles until you’ve gotten the weapon. Plus, enemies are usually few, with no more than two ever attacking at a time. On the upside, these enemies are a lot more deadly than those from the first game, so it evens out in the end. The vehicle levels are good fun, and serve the good purpose of keeping the game mostly action-oriented. The game offers a significant challenge, and might be even too hard on hard mode. I’ve yet to give it a go.

Other things to note are that the controls are mostly spot-on, except sometimes it’s hard to attack and run away before you get clobbered by a hammer or get your face eaten off by a Triceraton. In the first three worlds, there is not a single mouser to be seen. It’s kind of expected, but TMNT games, since back in the NES days, have been all about clobbering hordes of mousers for me, so I’m slightly disappointed. There are still two worlds to go though, so I’ve still got hope.

Overall, it’s a great game. If you enjoyed the first game, you’ll probably have a blast with this one too. The stealth aspect is annoying at first, but MGS fans should get a kick out of it. I know it was totally worth my money, and the only thing I still yearn to see is more connectivity between the GBA and GC versions besides the password trade-offs. There wasn’t anything disappointing, so I’m not going to make up anything just so I can tack something negative onto the conclusion. Straight up, it’s a solid game and deserves a spot in the libraries of any gamers who enjoy platformers and/or beat ’em ups. And I’m under 200 words away from 2000 on this page, so I’ve gone and rambled enough to fill up two pages to my personal expectations. I guess there’s only one thing left to do. And that’s knowledge that you just wasted (x) minutes/hours of your life reading this tripe. It’s not so bad I probably spent about 4 times that much writing it.

Talk about your mix-ups

Well, I knew I would be busy today, but it turns out I was a lot busier than I had previously expected. Long story short, I decided that buying a set of drums was a foolhardy and premature idea, so I didn’t. And then I went to watch my obligatory yearly hockey game. You see, the older two of my bros play hockey, and I have to go see one game for each a year, and I got one out of the way today. I did get dinner, coffee and Fun-Dip out of it though, so it wasn’t a total waste of my night.

Anywho, this means that the review will be postponed until Monday. Otherwise, everything is still moving pretty smoothly. I get to wear a costume to work tomorrow, and since I really have nothing else, I was thinking along the lines of shirt ninja. I’ve got a shirt, and a toy sword, so it should come together nicely.

That’s really all I had to do, explain why the review isn’t up yet. I got the pictures and stuff done, just need to write it up. And fortunately, that’s the less boring part of the process. Oh, and I saw some review of the Sims 2 on TV today, and my mom was watching too, and she thought the idea and process of “WooHoo” was absolutely hilarious. Plenty of great car ride funnies too, since I spent the greater part of the day in the van with the family. Oh boy, today was a hoot. Thank God I didn’t end up having to work after all.

I’ve been thinking… no, not really.

In an effort to make the blog here a little more interesting and less annoying day-to-day events, I’m going to start making posts more subject-oriented. That means more posts like my little reviews or Band of the Month. And today’s topic is none other than one of my favorite things in the world: pillows.

Yes, pillows. The mysteries that surround these fluffy bundles of joy are many, but I have one in particular that I would like to tackle today. Why is it that sleeping-type pillows are always rectangular? It’s a question that one would never really think to ask, but it must be asked nonetheless. And I, I shall figure out why this is so. You see, I was pondering the question today while in the midst of catching a few – as the youth say – “z’s”, and I think I came up with a few reasonable answers to this perplexing puzzle. It’s really quite simple you see, for if a fellow such as I could deduce why this is, than surely most everyone else should be able to come up with some sort of solution on their own.

Firstly, and most visually obvious, is that fact that the rectangular pillow simply matches up with the shape of the common bed better than any other familiar pillow shapes. If you’ve ever placed say, a circular or ovalular pillow on a bed, you’ll notice that it simply does not look right. In the most plain way of saying it, the focal point of the bed is the pillow, and if this does not look right, prospective nappers may shun the bed and go off to find what they may think is a better bed. And while the bed is still perfectly good, if it cannot attract nappers, it will go unused and never fulfill it’s role in the circle of furniture life.

A second, and also important point is how the napper will rest on the pillow. While a circular pillow would seem like a more natural shape to seek for a sleeping-type pillow (since it matches the shape of the human head), it will not provide the same type of support as a rectangular pillow. You see, while nappers nap, they tend to roll from side to side, and along with them goes their head. If a napper were using a circular pillow and were to roll to one side, the napper’s head would invariably lose it’s spot on the pillow and be left with no fluffy support. Whereas with a rectangular pillow, the napper can roll the width of the bed, and always be on the pillow due to the rectangle’s wide shape. As one should be able to tell, a square pillow would fail as well, because it also lacks sufficient width. See diagram 7.2B for visual reference.

The last point that I would like you to take notice of is the fact that the rectangular pillow is also the stereotype pillow. It is used all of the time in many, many different forms of media, ranging from comics to movies. Rarely do we see any other-shaped pillows in such mediums, as they are both not as popular, and simply do not adhere to the first rule, as when we see pillows in media, they are almost 100% of the time on beds.

The information in the three points above is clearly enough proof as to why the rectangular pillow is the pillow best suited for being slept on. They are both more visually appealing and more efficient than any other sort of pillow can be when placed in such a situation. I believe that I’ve made my point quite clear by now, and I’m gonna stop typing all scientificky-like now. Back tot he good old ramble-speak.

If you feel cheated by the clear stupidness of this post, I’ve decided to add in a few links just for good measure. And kicks, too.

The Essay Generator – It’s a neat little internet doodad, and I’ve gotten my kicks from it. Be sure to check out the potentially hilarious Proverb Generator as well. Oh, and the other stuff on the page, too.

The Strangerhood – You’ve heard of Red Vs. Blue, right? Well, the Stangerhood is the new production from the same guys that uses The Sims 2 instead of Halo. I haven’t downloaded Episode 1 yet, but the trailer makes it look pretty good. I expect gobs of hilarity. After all, RVB is actually featured on X-Box demo consoles.

MegaMan Zero 3 review – Because I haven’t done one yet. I actually do plan on doing it, but it’s unfortunately near the bottom of the to-do list, right above my review of Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. Which will also be around… Eventually.

Lik-Sang.com – My new best friend. Finally, I can import video game such and suches from all over the world! One of the very few sites I want to buy stuff from that accepts PayPal. Stupid ThinkGeek. Maybe I’ll even save up and buy the super-rare, super-cool Panasonic Q. Unfortunately, it’s also super-expensive…

Good riddance to bad work

I’ve been thinking it over, and I like my job, but I detest working. Full time, anyhow. It’s just way too much for the guy who’d never worked a day in his life to take in all at once. But I’m not going to give up because it’s a little rough, that wouldn’t be like me. Not anymore. I guess it’s time I started facing reality and stopped running from everything that showed even a slight sign of hard times.

But enough of my whining and revelation crap. I’m gonna start sounding deeper than I actually am. Ugh. So the band of the month isn’t decided yet, and I haven’t made the September archive either, as I’ve been working all morning and napping until like 20 minutes ago. Naps are great. They make me feel happy. You should totally try them out. All the cool kids are doing it.

I’ll have the BotM up either Sunday evening or some other time around then. as for the archive, that’s easy, so I’ll do it up now… or not. But first, there are important things to take care of. Things like links.

SuprNova.org – It’s not the site you need to see, but some things the site provides. Do a search “Mario Big Band” and download the result. It’s a sweet live performance of a bunch of Mario and Zelda tunes. Just the Wind Waker theme alone is worth downloading the entire package.

Halloween X-E – Matt’s favorite time of the year has come around again, and that means another Halloween countdown along with it. That’s one article – albeit a short one – a day. No wonder I idolize the guy.

GameFAQs – Character Battle #3 is nearing it’s end, and it’s looking to end up much like it did last year – with shitty results. Don’t let that weener Cloud win again. Help fight the good fight by voting for anyone else and telling your friends to do so as well.

Shopping for Danger – The third installment in the best G.I. Joe parody ever – Cheat Commandos! How could you possibly resist? Rock, rock on!

There you go

Yay for me! Yay for a day off! I’m gonna make $564 every two weeks (before deductions)! It may not seem too impressive, but it’s $564 more than I was making before. And that’s if I don’t take any extra shifts. And speaking of that, it turns out that my shifts on both last Saturday and Sunday were extra, so I could have had the weekend off, but I didn’t really have a say in the matter. They just told me to come in on those days.

In other news, I finally did that article I was supposed to do last week. This is just my first day off since Friday, so I’ve had a lot to do lately. You can find it here. Or at least I hope so. I have a history of bad links.

I also bought Donkey Konga. God damn it’s fun. And I’ve become more accepting of certain musics. A lot of the stuff on there is poppy or not what I would normally listen to. The only songs I can’t stand are “Rock Lobster” and the children’s songs. I mean, they have “Bingo” on there, and it’s remixed in this “funky” new way with the kids yelling stuff like “Go Bingo, go Bingo” and “You can do it Bingo!”. You can do it Bingo? Geez, he’s Bingo, not Lil’ Brudder. He lives on a goddamn farm. He doesn’t need encouragement. Stupid Bingo. On the upside, there are some great songs on it like “Rock This Town” and the “Kirby: Right Back At Ya!” theme. And, it took me this long to figure it out, but the Pokémon theme is a kickass song. Sure, it’s a song about Pokémon, but it’s got a sweet guitar solo and, well, just awesome music. But yes, overall awesome fun to be had. Even the one of my brothers who doesn’t do much gaming at all thinks it’s a brilliant idea.

I guess that’s it for today. It’s been a nice little break, but it’s back to the grind tomorrow, and Saturday. Ugh, Saturday. So damn busy.

The kid is beat tonight

Wow. Working sure is different than lazing about all day. Not really in a bad way, but it’s sure a huge change for me. Anyway, work is great. It’s easy shit. Either I’m punching in orders and making change or pouring coffee. And on the odd time I get to lift heavy things that the womens can’t handle. I guess I never mentioned that 90% of all the employees are female. Yep. And I’m the only guy working on storefront. Ever. Only all the women that are posted there as well are far too old for my liking. Except for one, and she just happens to be my current partner. We’ve even started up a friendly rivalry after working together only twice. Funny how everything seems to be coming together at once for me. In any case, I love my work.

The biggest downside is that not being in school, I’m working full time. That’s five eight-hour shifts a week. It could be a lot worse though, so I’m not going to complain about it too much. The other bad part is that I’m on my feet for the entirety of those eight hours and then I walk home. By my own will, of course. But that means that by the time I get home, both my legs and back are totally burnt out, making moving an unacceptable option. At least my parents aren’t bugging me to help out around the house or to get a job anymore. And I’m starting to smell like coffee, which would be rad, but I’m not all too fond of the stuff.

In non-work related stuffs, I’ve bought MegaMan X Command Mission, the first real MegaMan RPG. Boy it’s sweet. It’s not quite as active a battle system as Tales of Symphonia, but at least you actually use all the buttons rather than just choosing “hit” or “potion”. Lots of neat customization options, but not too far from most of the usual types of RPG cust opts. Graphics are superb, flawed only by the common little oopsies that come along with cel-shaded graphics. And there are a lot of nice little bonus options and mini-game-esqe features like treasure hunting using the GBA as a radar, and being able to pick the color of X’s “cape”. And speaking of X, If you’ve seen anything about the game, you know that he’s been totally redesigned. At first I was a little bugged by it, but looking at all the new characters and even Zero and Axl, if they’d left him as he was, he would stick out because he’d look so plain. And lest I mention, the game is fun. The bosses can give you a run for your money if you don’t play perfectly, and the story is usual MegaMan X fare, just without all the plot holes (so far, anyway). So yes, worth buying if you like RPGs or MegaMan, and definitely worth a rent if you’re not truly into either. Not a groundbreaking title by any means, but I like it good.

I’m still trying to summon up the will to do that article, as I’ve got a new game to play and such, and writing articles is kind of long and uneventful. I’m gonna do it, just not today. Probably Sunday. There’s another one in the works too, and I’m thinking about adding more to that there new art gallery. Updates will now probably be a lot more spread out, as I’m probably only going to post on my days off. I like the idea of sleeping workday evenings away. So yes, I’ve covered everything I wanted to. Stay tuned to find out what happens next on this wild rollercoaster that is my new/working life!

Everybody Konga!!

Sorry it’s late, but the new gallery is finally online. And it looks pretty slick. Or so I think. It’s not full yet, because there have been many distractions in my way, but I did get it up and running. And that’s all I really intended to do.

In other news, having a job has totally overwhelmed me. I didn’t even do anything today and my head is running in circles. Oh well. They did let me go an hour early, which segues nicely into the bigger events of the day.

First, and very most importantly, I went to Toys R Us. Why did I go there? Well, you see, there’s this thing I’ve been obsessing about lately. It’s what they like to call “Donkey Konga”. It’s not out until the 29th, but TRU conveniently has a demo station. So I went and I played the crap out of it. Well, maybe not that much, as I only played one song. But I do intend to go back tomorrey and have at it again. Anyway, the game is a blast. Even though I was only playing on “chimp” level, it was fast-paced and exciting. Through the whole jam session I was smiling and trying to restrain myself from really giving ‘er and acting like a lunatic in the store. I even used subdued claps when they came about so as not to attract too much attention. But Hell, that game brought me more joy than most things have lately. The only thing that upset me was that the demo didn’t provide any of the songs I wanted to play (read: the Legend of Zelda theme and We Will Rock You). Totally buying it.

But it got better. I found two really awesome things in the store, and I’m going to review them by the end of the week. Maybe you won’t see the awesomeness they bear, but I love both of ’em, and I’m glad I picked them both up without hesitation. But that’s all I’m telling you for today. Just go and enjoy the pretty pictures.

And God said “A small coffee and a chocolate dip, please”

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and there is much to tell. But I’ll get to all the other stuff later. Firstly and most importantly, I’ve finally got a job. The call came in this morning and now I’m the newest donut wench at Tim Horton’s. Yay for me. Now I’ll be able to afford my precious when it arrives later this year. That is assuming that I don’t screw up too badly at giving food and such to people. If I’m lucky, they said they might even place me on dish washing duty, a task at which I excel. So yes, I’m a little nervous about giving up most of my time to actually do something, but overall I’m overcome with much joy. And if absolutely nothing else, I’ve finally got something to go on the ol’ resume.

Second of all, I broke down and bought one of the new Pokémon games. It was mostly for the wireless adapter that came with, but you all know I enjoy my Pokémon, so I won’t bother making up any other excuses. The game itself is great, being a port of the first game (which was my favorite) with a whole bunch of new stuff crammed in. The bulk of new areas and quests come after the credits roll for the first time, but there are tons of new gizmos and such for you to toy around with before then. Most outstanding though, are the graphics and music. While they look a lot like the Ruby and Sapphire versions, these new games have a few little extra touches that make it just that much sweeter, like coloured text! And a pretty new font to go with it. The music remixes are great, and hopefully they’ll attract a little attention from the OverClocked Remix community. I’ve always wanted to hear the battle theme in metal, but there isn’t a single Pokémon remix on there…

Thirdly, SKY CAPTAIN! Flippin’ awesome movie. The kind a man like m’self, who doesn’t buy many movies, would buy. And not even because of all the special bonus crap they’re bound to pile on the DVD. Yes, it’s that good. Well, I thought so anyway. The plot goes a little here and there about halfway through, but I’ve never been too picky about a bad story, so it didn’t bother me at all. The only thing I didn’t like is that there weren’t enough of them big robots that steal the spotlight in the trailer. Nope. To be honest (tiny spoilers here), they really don’t play as much a part in the movie as the trailers might have you think. But again, great action flick, go see it.

And last but probably not least, I’ve opened a Geocities account which I plan to use as space to house all of my recent scanned stuff. It’s a little different that what I’m used to, so it might take me a while, but I intend to have the “second” gallery up tomorrow after work. If it’ll happen, I’m not sure, but keep your fingers crossed. Or not. Just do what you like. So I guess I’ll be seein’ yahs then.

“Tonight I dine on turtle soup!”

Ah. It’s nice having everyone else go off to work and school all day. It won’t last long though, so I’ll be making sure to relish it. I’ll be noting a few important things today, and that will probably tide over my need to post for a week or so.

First things first, I finally got around to watching my old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DVD. It took me all day to watch those nine episodes, and I loved every minute of it. It’s hard for me to remember the show at all, since the last time I watched it on TV must be well over 8 or so years by now, and watching a couple episodes really brought me back to the good old days. Damn, do I feel old saying that. Anyhow, it was an overall pleasant day, dog crapping all over the living room aside, and I even learned a couple things (none relevant to anything, of course). You remember when I complained about how there were only five “regular” episodes on the TMNT DVD? Well it turns out that those five episodes are indeed the entire first season. And then the four bonus episodes are from season ten, two of which are from a 5-part mini-series that aired in Europe as a pseudo-movie. “Never before seen” my ass. Ah, the things I would never have known without the good old TV Tome.

In other news, my brother has been spending entire days on the computer lately because… He’s got a website? Arooo? I guess I should give you the link, as I would with any other website I mention, so here you go. As much as I hate to say it, there are a couple funny things there. Most are horrible spelling mistakes, which is for the most part only funny to me (I find spelling errors funny because I’m great at spelling, like a mathemagician (Yes, I think people who are good at math are using magic (God I use too many parentheses)) would with mathematical errors), but there are a couple other things that made me laugh out loud as well.

I gots me the Pikmin 2 a while ago (I just couldn’t resist. I’m weak) and it is a truly amazing game. I played through Pikmin several times over because I loved it so much, and the sequel is about a zillion times longer. I haven’t finished it yet, but I am drawing close, and I’ve only barely scratched the surface of the excellent (and hard!) new Challenge Mode, which just happens to allow cooperative play. The 2P-Battle mode is also a blast, featuring a sort of capture the flag gameplay, but substituting a marble for the flag. Plus, you almost have to work together with your opponent to stomp the neutral enemies roaming about while still trying to get away with his marble, giving it a kind of Four Swords-esqe mix of cooperation and competition. If you were putting off buying the first Pikmin even though you loved it, this is exactly what the doctor ordered. Definitely a wad of bills well spent.

Still haven’t fixed the banner… I want to, but it’s just a task that I don’t have the patience to complete. Can’t put it off forever though…

That’s all for now. I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything that I wanted to say, so I’m out. This is RyanMan reporting on the scene for Torrential Equilibrium News. Back to you, Gene.

The Dick Turtle Surprise Bag!

I’m sure that everyone has seen a surprise bag sometime in their life. They were a very common item in the candy section at dollar stores, and I’m sure that they’ve been other places during their lifespan as well. I know that lately the surprise bag population is starting to dwindle, as I’m seeing less and less of the things every time I visit a buck store. In fact, I haven’t seen any in town for the longest time, and the only place I’ve seen them in the last 5 or so years is at the Bargain Shop out in Lac du Bonnet. And even there they don’t restock the things.

So while we were out there this past weekend, I made it a point to go find one. Sadly, the Nintendo Surprises are totally extinct, and even the Nintendo gum packs are gone without a trace. So I had to settle with one of the lesser brands of surprise bags. I had two choices at hand, one was a pack of random “fun size” candy packs, but the bag displayed what would be in the pack, and that just totally kills the surprise. So, I went with my second, less sanitary-looking choice.

Holy crap, does that look like a poor-ass grab bag or what? Here are a few close-ups, just so you can further absorb the crap that is Dick Turtle’s Surprise Bag.

Firstly, what the hell kind of character is Dick Turtle? Aside from the obvious attempt to rip off the old Ninja Turtles (which raises further questions about how old this thing is), he doesn’t look a thing like a turtle. Who names a turtle Dick? And why would any Richard want his name to be shortened to Dick. You have Rich and Rick, two perfectly good nicknames. But Dick? Come on. Thta thing on his back doesn’t even look remotely like a shell, and instead looks more like air tanks or something of the sort.

And then we get to the bottom of the package, which has promises of cosmic candy, toys and novelty. For some reason, I think that I’m going to be disappointed with what’s inside. I mean with a package like the one above, how good could the contents possibly be? And what are the chances that they’ll be “cosmic”? Why does Dick Turtle have rockets for feet? Since when did turtles need or even want to go to space? At least that kind of supplies reasoning for saying that the stuff inside will be “cosmic”. Turtles are nature’s D student (according to Stewie, anyway), so there’s no way that NASA would accept them. He must be working for those greasy Russians.

The back side isn’t much better. It’s just got Dick Turtle in his usual pose and a list of ingredients. The biggest problem with it is that it’s supposed to contain various crap, and they’ve gone ahead and given a list of ingredients. I guess that most candy is pretty similar in composition, but I’m sure that not all of it is made with the exact same substances. Also on the back is a small note that says “Minimum: candy 20G – 1 toy”. Well that just fills me with hope for what’s going to be in here. I guess it’s time to take a gander inside.

Is this a warning not to take anything that’s inside this bag? I certainly don’t know Dick Turtle, or who put this compilation of what is probably going to be crap together, so I should probably just toss it all out right now. I wonder if Dick Turtle thinks that accepting advice from strangers is okay? But… Wait a minute! Something is wrong right here! It seems that
Dick Turtle may not be exactly who we once thought him to be!

A ha! I knew taking candy and toys from him would be a bad idea. Dick Turtle is actually a space pirate! That slick bastard thought he could sell his crap by taking off his shell and eyepatch and putting on a happy face, but now I’ve seen the real Dick Turtle, and I’m not going to fall for any more of his trickery! But seriously, who the hell made this? Their character has no continuity whatsoever except for that he remains the same species. And I never quite believed that he was really a turtle in the first place. Let’s just hope the rest of this bag o’ crap is as good for reviewing as the bag itself.

On the opposite side of Dick’s advice card is a small maze that I definitely don’t have the attention span to complete. In fact, I don’t have the attention span to write a whole paragraph about it.

The first thing that I grabbed from the bag after that card was this little piece of candy. As you can read on the wrapper, it’s a “Yolk um’s” candy. I have never heard of this candy before, and therefore am surprised. There you go, Dick Turtle. Your bag was a complete success. You surprised me. It says that it’s cream filled, and it doesn’t look like the type of thing that should be cream filled, so I’m not going to eat it. I’ve eaten many a cream filled object, and I’m sure that this one will be a let-down, since I’ve only ever seen its kind in a Dick Turtle surprise bag. Of course, it could be a really popular candy that I’ve never heard of, but I’m better off safe than sorry.

Next up is… a shitty piece of plastic shaped vaguely like vampire fangs. I don’t think any one could review this, so I’ll just take a picture instead.

It was a good movie. I know my representation is a little inaccurate, but I wanted to make the reference. Anyhow, the teeth had a strange taste to them, and I now have a strange rash on the inside of my top lip. I guess this is one of those times where you have to suffer for your art. I should probably have dusted off the hat first, too.

You see, there was an alien head ring and a small toy hockey player, and there was no way I could review them both separately, so I forced the ring on to hockey guy’s head. On the upside, the alien ring was certainly of a “cosmic” air, so the bag wasn’t totally wrong. On the downside, I was feeling the bag before I opened it up to try to tell what was inside, and that hockey guy felt a lot like one of those awesome mini-ninjas. I was so disappointed when I learned the truth.

And the last thing in the bag is… A coffin? Could this be an omen of things that will happen should I eat the rattling stuff inside? Hmmm. Now that I examine the coffin more closely, I can see that there is something written on the top. Just gotta take off the sticker and…

Oh God! It says Mr. Bones! It’s gonna be full of crappy pizza! Augh!

That’s all I’ve got. Sorry.

Inside the coffin was a bunch of candy pieces. And they were some kind of old-looking. They were supposed to be coloured all rainbow-like, but they were also covered in a thick, white dust. I assume it was simply sugar, but you can never bee to careful when dealing with possibly-decades-old candy. There was one really cool thing about them though.

The pieces were all shaped like bones and such, and could be pieced together to form skeletons. I didn’t have quite enough pieces, and they crumbled to dust at the touch, but I did arrange them as if they had been locked together into proper shapes. Well, as proper as you can get when putting small candy bones together. I wasn’t going to eat these things either, because they didn’t even bear the telltale smell of candy, and I wasn’t about to put any other foreign objects in my mouth after the fangs.

That’s all that came in the bag, and I can’t say I’m impressed. Surprised, but not impressed. The candy was old looking and probably poisoned, and the “toys” were boring and common. I still wish I hadn’t put those fangs in my mouth. I’m also pretty pissed at how they totally changed their mascot halfway through the bag. But I guess that it’s not exactly made for people like myself. It really is more of a children’s novelty. In the end though, it made some great review material. There really wasn’t a lot to review though, so I thought I’d add in a little bonus material.

It’s not much, but I was making a bunch of characters on my brother’s “Smackdown: Shut Your mouth” game this weekend. It’s not only a great way to while away the time, but it also satiates my need to create. I made a lot of them and decided that since I did pretty good jobs on the ones based on real characters, I wanted to show them off a little. So I took some screencaps and here they are. Make sure to click on the pics to see some more stuff.

You see? I’m good at making stuff. The only one I’m not totally happy with is Vivi, because I wasn’t sure exactly how he looks, so I kind of had to make it up as I went. Overall, though, I’m very happy with how well I think they all turned out. The article here was a little shorter than I’d hoped, but I didn’t have that much material to work with. I can’t just ramble on forever about five pieces of crap and a plastic bag like I can with a game. Oh well, no biggie.

In the end, I’m just really happy that I’ve made it to 1000 hits. I thought 500 was pretty damn big. And the fact that the site is almost two years old is just the icing on the cake. I never really figured that I’d care about the site longer than a couple of months (just look at Quest for the Cube), but I’ve made it a lot farther than most personal web sites do, and I’ve even had some people who don’t know me e-mail me with compliments. Hah, I guess this December, I’ll have to throw some kind of celebration event. But that’s something to think about another day.