I love the mist. It turns everything super creepy and makes me feel like I’m in Silent Hill. Just as long as the air raid sirens don’t start going off. I don’t know if I could handle the dark world.
On another note, I’m impressed at how well my iPhone’s camera cuts through the fog. In the top photo, I could see about half that visible distance. Pretty cool!
I think it’s a tad odd how excited I am for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Well, I mean, no, it’s not odd at all. A new console Zelda is always a huge deal for Nintendo fanboys. What I mean is that it’s a much bigger deal for me than Twilight Princess was. Maybe I was so excited about the Wii launch that my hype for new Zelda was diminished a bit, but I don’t remember being nearly as excited for it as I am Skyward Sword. I know for sure that I wasn’t counting the days.
Then again, I don’t think I’ll ever be as excited for a game launch as I was for The Wind Waker.
Last week I did have the privilege to play the Skyward Sword E3 demo via my cousin’s husband’s (There’s gotta be a word for that. Cousband?) Homebrew Channel. Needless to say, it only served to get me more excited for the full game. And then they invited me over to play a leaked copy of said full game the next night. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever said no to, but the demo was already more than I should have played. Legends of Zelda are big things, and I decided to save myself so that I could savor it properly. I had a big ol’ sex metaphor ready to go here, but decided against actually typing it. You can see where I was going, so it shouldn’t be hard to figure it out yourself.
Anyway, I’m really kicking myself for not saving one or two vacation days for this. Yes, I’ll play all day long on Sunday, but after that I don’t even know when my next chance to see it will be. Thursday? Stupid work. I wish it would just go away for a while.
And for old times‘ sake: ZELDA COUNTDOWN : 4 DAYS REMAIN.
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.
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.
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.
How did this truck get on top of that billboard? How is it balancing so perfectly at that angle? We may never know.
That’s creepy in more than a few ways.
This isn’t so much something odd that I stumbled upon, but rather a very convenient glitch. Now if only it would happen to the Infected and Thug zombies…
Quite often Edwin and I will sit in his apartment and play Xbox 360 game demos for the duration of an evening. Retail release, XBLA, indie games, whatever. One night I noticed that he had Hasbro Family Game Night in his game library, and that it didn’t say “demo” or “trial” anywhere. So I booted it up.
As it turned out, Hasbro Family Game Night is free, but you only get about two and a half minutes to play any given game before you’re prompted to shell out about ten bucks to unlock the game. Buying them all is a terrible idea, since you can get the disc version with all the games for as low as $20 on eBay (Incidentally, that copy is being sold by a user named “pnpgames.” Hmmmm).
Anyway, after screwing around with the trial of Jenga for an entire evening, Edwin finally decided to bite the bullet and unlock the full version of Jenga. You actually get two Jenga games when you make the purchase, but that’s besides the point. We didn’t want to play Jenga. We were out to break Jenga.
Mr. Potato Head stands on the table next to your Jenga tower, oohing and aahing as you play. He’s kind of an ass, so I was very excited when I noticed that knocking the tower over in Potato’s direction would send him flying off the table. Our goal then was to knock him off repeatedly. It was fun, but wore out once we realized that if you jiggle the blocks around just so, you can cause physically impossible things to happen with the Jenga tower. After spending some time creating ca-razy configurations, we decided it was time to move the tower.
The physics in video game Jenga aren’t exactly how they should be, and you can manage to drag the tower along by moving blocks the right way. We set a goal of dragging the tower over to the potato, and then to pull it off the edge of the table. If you’re feeling generous, Edwin managed to accomplish both feats, and I have video evidence; behold the best Xbox Jenga related videos on YouTube! Or, one of them. I can’t figure out how to embed the playlist.
Also the Potato Head glitch was pretty cool. Guess QA didn’t really take much time to screw around with the game. Live and learn, guys.
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.
Well sir, I’m gonna have to call it: November 2011 is going to be the best month ever. I’m sure that my wedding day will still be the best day of my life, but May is going to have to work really hard if it wants to compete for month.
Oh, and by the way, I’m basing this on the fact that the new Muppets movie is in theaters on November 23rd. Officially I’m very excited, but I also can’t help but wonder who opens a movie on a Wednesday? That’s just crazy. Nobody goes to the movies on a Wednesday. I’ll likely be too absorbed by Skyward Sword to remember to go right away anyway.
Anyway, The Muppets. I can’t imagine that it’s going to be a bad movie; the trailer alone is awesome. Especially that first one from a long time ago, where they faked you out into thinking it was a romantic comedy and then Kermit showed up. And it’s co-written by Jason Segel, which should be more than enough. If you watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and there’s no reason not to have), you’ll remember the Dracula puppet rock opera. I still wonder why that hasn’t been adapted into something bigger. That little five-minute scene is more than enough reason to sit through the whole rest of the movie. If you still can’t make the commitment, look up “A Taste for Love” on YouTube.
I don’t have a taste for musicals. Every time I watch a Disney movie and the characters stop what they’re doing to sing a song about how it’s awesome to be completely irresponsible (The Lion King) or how much they yearn for true love (anything with a princess), I get annoyed and wish I could skip to the next scene. Somehow, the Muppets always manage to get around it. I’m not sure why I’m so much more open to music on film when Muppets are involved, but I am. Maybe it’s because they do it so well. Head back on over to YouTube and poke around there for Muppets music video covers. There is tons of it, and for the most part, it’s all golden.
So now, really, the only way I can think of that could make November even better would be for there to be no snow. And/or for me to be able to find some time for (non-portable) video games. Things had been so good over the last few months, but in October I think I’ve logged maybe two hours in Darksiders. That’s it. 🙁
