Yeah yeah yeah

Between now and that last post, I’ve got my PC’s audio working! Huzzah! Turns out I haven’t completely forgotten everything I used to know about computers. It’s just hidden under many layers of dust and dates I now have to remember.

Many months ago Nintendo released some screenshots for a new Kirby game on the DS. They didn’t put a title to it, but I could tell right away that it was a remake Kirby Super Star. I was ecstatic. Sure, ports are generally frowned upon, but KSS is the best Kirby game ever, and given the generally tepid quality of Kirby Squeak Squad, there’s no guarantee a new game would have been better.

When I was a young ‘un, I first saw Kirby Super Star in an issue of Nintendo Power and knew it had to be mine. I owned and loved every Kirby game up until that point (minus Kirby’s Dream Course), and ran as fast as I could to tell my parents that I needed it or I would die. I had used this excuse before (Chrono Trigger, Earthbound), and it had been unsuccessful. Fortunately, my birthday was right around the corner, and what did I receive? Oh yeah. Kirby.

I played that fucking game so much that I’m surprised the cartridge never died out. I played alone, I played with my brothers, I played with friends. I played through all the games in Kirby Super Star upwards of twenty times (it took a lot longer back then!), and never got bored of it.

So naturally I grabbed the port. I had blazed through a ROM version of the original game in a single sitting not six months earlier, but was anxious to get my hands on this prettier version. And it was so much more! There are nearly twice as many games to play in this new version, and most of the new ones are really hard! Revenge of the King is a sweet “dark world” take on Spring Breeze, and Meta Knightmare has you burn through most of the original game as Meta Knight. Helper to Hero and The True Arena are great variations on the classic The Arena, and make it hard again. I used to get so frustrated with The Arena back in the day, but lately I can breeze through it without more than a couple nicks, and the new games just prove that while I’ve mastered what the original game threw at me, I’ve still got a lot of work before I can say I’ve truly conquered the fresh material.

In the end, Kirby Super Star Ultra is exactly what I’d hoped it would be: a prettier version of a game that I dearly loved in my youth. And then it’s more too, with all the extra games! Of course, it’s a Kirby game, so for the most part it’s super-easy, but Kirby games are always fun, even that unusually lame Nintendo 64 entry. Do I recommend? Hells yeah! Just make sure you have someone else to play with: half the fun of Kirby Super Star is playing God with player 2. Also stealing all the food from your dying friend.

If you don’t know, honey

It’s been a long and sketchy night. I havn’t done it in forever, but tonight I decided that it would be a good idea to reinstall Windows on my PC. Yeah. I was up all night last night backing everything up, and I’ll be up all night tonight trying to get everything back to normal.

Considering that fact that I’d pretty much forgotten what I was supposed to be doing, I think things went alright! Windows in back, and I’m connected to the internet. That much should have been obvious. It took me a while to figure out how to reconnect the website as a network place, but then I finally remembered to use “ftp” instead of “http”. I was sweating there for a while! There were also some issues with graphical drivers, but I got that sorted out easily. I still haven’t found my audio drivers though, and let me tell you, trying to blog without music is like a day without sunshine. If I remember correctly, I had a hell of a time trying to get my audio working last time I did this too. Let’s hope I figure it out quickly.

Today’s review is not really an object that can be bought, but rather more of a Christmassy memory for me. It’s also relevant now! More on that later though.

I would just like to take a couple paragraphs to talk about Ninja Turtle stockings. Yeah, I suppose I should have grown out of these a long time ago, but my TMNT fanboyism is hardly waning. The fact that I’ve kept my turtle stockings (not pictured) over the many years is not a tribute to my everlasting love of the green guys, but rather a testament to what a pack rat I am. But these are cool so they get a free pass! How could you throw out something like that?

So anyway, I bring up the turtle stockings because recently they have become part of The World’s Greatest Coincidence. See, I have two turtle stockings, Leonardo and Donatello. I suppose they sufficed when I was a child, but I’ve had a secret longing in my head to own the other two for as long as I can remember. Imagine my surprise one day when I was visiting my girlfriend’s house while her family was unpacking their Christmas decorations and I saw that they had two as well: Raphael and Michelangelo. Meant to be together or just dumb luck? I like the first option. It’s like we each had half of a pendant and came together to form the whole. It is clearly our destiny to be together.

So yeah, that’s going to be my greatest Christmas story for years to come. You might wanna get used to it now. I will totally be telling our children and grandchildren and various other relatives this story, and I figured it was perfect for a blog entry too. Of course, it’ll still be some time before all four turtles are united under a single roof (we can’t afford a house on TRU salaries!), but they day that they are… that will be magical.

Shooo-ryuken!

If you aren’t exactly in the loop, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe was released not long ago, and it’s pretty much been the talk of guys at work. I’m actually really surprised at how much people have been talking about it. I never thought Mortal Kombat was very good. At all. If I ever played it, it was just to rebel againt my parents who didn’t want me playing anything with blood in it.

What I am interested in though, is the new Street Fighter! No no, not 4. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix!

Okay, long name. But it’s great! It’s almost exactly like SSF2T as you remember it, but pretty! And rebalanced, and with more options, and with online play, and some other stuff. The point is that it still plays exactly like Street Fighter should, and that’s why I love it. Despite the fact that I am complete crap at it.

Yeah. I tried playing the remixed mode on easy, which supposedly, was really easy. It wasn’t. Not for me. I made it about four guys before I got to Cammy and I just could not defeat her. I know that I suck at fighters, but I just had to get in on this action. And you know what? Despite the fact that I couldn’t even get halfway through the fighter roster, I’m having fun with it. It’s Street Fighter! How could it not be fun?

The only qualm I have with the game is that it shows you how to execute every character’s special move, but only with an arrow. Sometimes those arrows are very twisted, and I cannot make out for the life of me what they’re trying to communicate to me. I wouldn’t mind if it said B-BD-D-FD-F+X. That is completely understandable to me. But trying to understand an arrow that goes across them twists in on itself is like trying to read a completely foreign language. Just too hard. Also I could never do the Dragon Punch even when I knew the combination so that’s not helping. In the end though, great game. But that much was obvious 15 years ago.

Just wanted you to know

Alright! Twelve days are gone and done with, and that means I’m halfway there! I think that alone is cause enough for celebration, as I’m pretty sure that none of us thought I would make it even this far. So here’s to twelve more days. I can do it!

Today’s object of my affection is season two of Metalocalypse, Brendon Small’s wonderful black metal-themed satire. If you didn’t read last year’s review of season one, the show is about a band called Dethklok. It’s full of brilliant social commentary, satire on Hollywood and the media, and violence. Oh yes, so much violence. Season one was pretty bad, but season two takes everything up a notch and almost gets disturbing. And while it’s twice as funny as well, the fact that even I’m starting to think the violence is getting to be too much really says something.

But enough about the downside of things. The show is hilarious! This season parodies wonderful things like publicity stunts, “with-it” celebrity managers, rehab, and celebrities who decide to become government officials. “Deathgov” is definitely one of my favourite episodes. The season starts out right after the first ended, with Dethklok and the rest of the world recovering from an attempt on the band’s lives, though sadly it continues on throughout the season as self-contained episodes and shows barely any interest in a running story until the last two episodes. I was a little disappointed, but then I realized that the show was great anyway, so I’ll forget about it.

I think one of the greatest things about the DVD set in particular is the special features. Like the last season, this one’s special features are all just a bunch of extra material. Not blooper reels or deleted scenes, but rather entirely new short sketches. Or, well, not short. Most of them are really long and some even make fun of you for sitting through the entire thing. My favourite has the band sitting in their band meeting closet, only eyes visible, just naming bands. It’s hilarious in its own way, and the fact that it lasts for around twenty minutes (didn’t actually time it) is the icing on the cake. It’s nice to see that even the DVD extras are taking jabs at how puffed up the importance of DVD special features is. I guess the only things that would be considered special features are two music videos for a pair of songs from The Dethalbum. Also, Nathan reading Shakespeare makes a return, wonderful as ever. That should be enough to convince fans to rush out and buy this set.

So what am I going to do with my conclusuory (yes it is a word) paragraph? Not much. How many more positive adjectives do I need to use? You know what? I could really go for some spaghetti…

Whimmy wham wham wozzle!

Have you watched any of the Futurama movies yet? You really should have, they’re all very high quality. And, you know, it’s Futurama.

So today I want to go on about the second one, The Beast With a Billion Backs. To be honest, I think Bender’s Big Score has been the best one so far, but I’ve already gone over it and I’d prefer to keep the content of this little project fresh. So this movie, while not quite as great as the first, is still a great watch.

The plot, as described by the title and cover, is that a giant tentacled creature from far-off space has crawled its way to Earth through a tear in time and space, which was created at the end of the last movie by Bender’s time-travelling antics. At first, everyone is afraid of the creature, and who could blame them? But then slowly, people are taken over by the monster’s tentacles and start to love it. And then stuff happens and I don’t want to spoil the rest.

To tell the truth, I’ve mostly forgotten what happens. This thing came out like months ago. I watched it when I got it, and then haven’t since. Oh well. David Cross does the voice of the creature, so yeah. He’s pretty hilarious. And so is the rest of the movie. And Kif dies. Sort of. I don’t know. I don’t have any writing left in me. I suppose barely using my blog over the past how many months has kind of dulled my writing bone. Not that it was ever overly sharp, but it’s certainly not as good as it used to be.

In conclusion! I like this movie. Go buy it and Bender’s Big Score right now if you don’t already own them. Bender’s Game was good too, but I didn’t like it nearly as much. Oddly, and non sequitiurly, I kind of want to play Mass Effect right now.

Don’t you know

Hey, um, sorry about last night’s weak-ass post. There was just a lot going on, and blogging was really the last thing I should have been doing, so it had to be quick. But moving on…

Another Thursday, another book to review. This week we’re looking at Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide. I’m not going to beat around the bush here, it’s exactly what it sounds like; a small book filled with ways to avoid becoming lunch should the living dead rise.

The book is placed in the humour section of most bookstores, and rightly so, because it really wouldn’t fit anywhere else. The only thing I should mention it that it’s not explicitly funny. I’ve read a lot of the big internet-loved books like The Alphabet of Manliness and My Tank is Fight!, and while the latter wasn’t supposed to be explicitly funny either, it did make me laugh a few times. This book, on the other hand, finds its humour in entirely conceptual ways. By that, I mean that the ideas are kind of funny but the authour isn’t cracking any jokes.

In any case, if you think zombies are cool, or are just interested in how to survive should they attack, I think you’ll find this a good read. I enjoyed it, but I’m a zombie fanatic, so there’s an obvious level of bias there. Just don’t mock me and then come running to me for help if you find yourself being chased by zombies. I could save you, but what makes you think I would want to?

Which is the way that’s clear?

One of this year’s most anticipated and hyped titles was Fable II. I think that for the first time in a long time, the excessive amount of pre-release media coverage actually did not turn me off the game, as was the case with last year’s Mass Effect (damn good thing I tried it anyway!) But yeah, I was totally disinterested with Fable II, but the more I heard about it, the more it seemed neat and kind of like something I would like to play. And it was!

I skipped over the original Fable almost completely, playing the PC version for about five hours total before forgetting about it in favour of games based on consoles that I owned. So it stands to reason that if the original game couldn’t start a fire in my heart, then the second probably would suffer the same ignorance that I showed the first, if not moreso. I’m not entirely sure at exactly what point it clicked and I decided I wanted to try out Fable II, but I think it may have had something to do with the dog. The idea of a game where you have a dog that follows you everywhere appeals to me for some reason.

Oh, wait, no. I remember now. I wanted to play it so that I could be the female character, have babies, and sell them into slave labour for millions of gold. I have yet to accomplish the last phase of this plan. Though one time I did whore out my lesbian wife to a con artist. That was neat.

So yeah, I really like the game. It’s got a lot of faults though. The number one problem being the lagginess. Oh, the lag! I can sort of understand why the game might slow down a bit when you’re in a huge fight or wandering around a densely populated part of town, but why are the menus so slow? It sometimes takes forever just to load the main pause menu screen! It’s ridiculous! And trying to get anywhere else from there is going to take you some time, so you may want to think about whether changing your hat is really worth the three minutes it’ll take to do it. Also the contols are not nearly as tight as they could be, but that’s not nearly as annoying as the menu lag. In fact, I’ve mostly gotten used to it.

On the upside, the game is plenty of fun! And it’s easy to accomplish things! Like Mass Effect, a large amount of the sidequests are shown to you by the game itself, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on the time-sensitive ones like in pretty much every other RPG. That has always been one of my most hated parts of RPGs, and any game that does away with that stress gets a gold star from me. The flashing trail that leads you to your objective is wonderful in certain cases, and the ability to instantly jump almost anywhere in the world is such a time-saver that it almost makes up for the menu lag. Loading times are pretty long, of course, but the areas are so large and pretty that I’m willing to let it slide.

I don’t know what else to say. I mean, I’ve got a ton of hilarious stories and other things about the game I could praise until the cows come home, but I don’t want this post to ramble on forever. I’ll just end it here saying that if you haven’t picked up Fable II yet, it’s maybe something you might want to consider. At least rent it. It’s so much better than the first.

You scream and everybody comes

I have another short post today. I know it may seem like I’m getting bored of this whole post-a-day thing, but that’s only because I absolutely am.

Wait. That came out wrong.

What I meant to say, was that I’ve been mostly out of this for so long that it’s hard to remember that I need to make a post every day, and especially over the weekend, I haven’t been getting to the computer before about 11:30 PM. And Saturdays, of course, I’m only home between the time I wake up and go to work half an hour later, so my Saturday posts have to be done after midnight on Friday night. It’s tough balancing this with everything, but the fact that I didn’t even sign on to do an entire month really helps. 24 days didn’t sound too bad, and knowing there’s only 16 left is even better. What isn’t good, is that I only have 16 shopping days left, and I haven’t even started. Fuck Christmas.

Oh! That image makes me feel better! Since Monday is cause for miscellany in ol’ review world, today I will talk about one of my favouritest treats ever: the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory’s frozen chocolate-covered cheesecake – on a stick! I pretty much love everything I’ve had at Rocky Mountain (black forest fudge in particular), but the frozen chocolate-covered cheescake is magical. I love cheesecake more than almost any other food – junk or otherwise – in the world, and slathering it in chocolate and freezing it does something incredible that makes it even better. It also goes without saying that all the best foods come on a stick, so that alone is a win.

The only downside, ironically, is the stick. It’s made of some kind of horrible, very tasty (in the sense that it has a strong taste) wood. This is not a good taste. Not at all. It’s kind of like licking a two-by-four, but without the splinters. Most things with a something inside have a delicious something in there. This cheesecake on a stick decidedly does not. Not a deal-breaker by any stretch, but it is a little inconvenient. Otherwise, the cheesecake on a stick is the greatest invention man has ever inventioned, and I champion Rocky Mountain for being the only place I know where I can find it. If you know somewhere else that sells a cheesecake on a stick, then by God, man! Why haven’t you told me!?

Doodly ding-dong tick-tock

On Sunday, I will review games from the various download services on current generation video game consoles. Today is Sunday! Here’s one of my favourite games that recently appeared on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Don’t recognise it? It’s Super Dodgeball! One of the greatest NES games ever made. I really don’t feel like making a huge post out of this, mostly because I’m lazy, but also because it’s a really simple game. It’s just fucking dodgeball. But it’s so damn fun! So yeah, if you’re really interested in knowing more, go find a NES emulator and the ROM. I swear you’re in for a wondeful time.