tegan

It's Tuesday and I'm in the mood for killing beautiful things! Sixth Colossus (Barba) Thoughts: Next time: most stamina-draining colossus!

That was the one! I hope they don't still think I'm a guy.

melodysheep continues to justify the existence of autotune.

For some reason lately I've been listening to everything that I liked in high school. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eDmCJNsJI4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc8CROIi8RY Apparently I only get two media tags? Oh well. I've also been listening to... Did I have good taste as a teenager? YOU BE THE JUDGE.

I usually use the phrase "extradimensional Jumanji from hell."Homestuck is impressive to me from the standpoint of its format. I'm sure that Scott McCloud would be cry tears of joy if he looked at the ways that Hussie's used the nature of the internet to shape the way he does comics. The musical team is fantastic, too; and Hussie is a legitimately funny guy who can write pretty consistently amusing dialogue and is good at sneaking foreshadowing into his work (or, more likely, retroactively making things seem more important than they actually are). But from a writing standpoint, I really can't stand the Lost-style bullshit that Hussie is constantly pulling. In particular I dislike that every time it seems like an arc is going to resolve itself, he instead introduces an entirely new group of characters to dick around with until they seem close to a resolution (at which point the process repeats itself until you have unfinished stories within unfinished stories like some kind of matryoshka doll of half-baked ideas). It's been ages since I read the comic, but it felt like he was just perpetually stalling for time. Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is still awesome though. That hardcover book was seriously tempting, especially once I realized that the title on the spine is deliberately left autocorrected so the book looks like it's about "Sweet Bro and Helpful Jeff." So has anyone else been following Cucumber Quest? It's by Gigi Digi, also known as Hiimdaisy, best known for a series of . It's basically like watching a playthrough of a very cute, self-aware RPG. Kind of like a Paper Mario comic.

This is still my favourite commercial ever made.

Fifth Colossus (Avion) Thoughts: Next time: most endearingly goofy colossus!

Adam and Dog (slightly NSFW) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hq0-i8GQbgw

Finished Dennou Coil! I don't really know what to say about the last couple of episodes since pretty much everything is a major spoiler, but I will say that I got a rare sense of definite closure from watching the finale. Oh, also, I love all of the crazy foreshadowing in this show. .

I used a free trial of Netflix for a month and they've been pestering me to come back ever since. I really like the idea of the service, but everything I remember of Canadian Netflix was pretty awful. They dropped every episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 except for "Pod People" the day after I signed up, for example. And the only film I could find that had been released in the previous six months was Black Swan. Can any Canadians tell me if it's worth owning now?

See, I specifically like that Mario as a character is somehow so mundane. I think it's fascinating/hilarious that in a world filled with space marines, world adventurers, and superheroes; the most enduring icon of video games as a whole has been an overweight guy with a blue-collar job and a mustache.I don't think it's coincidence that Mario, who has stayed a fundamentally boring character, has had more enduring popularity than rival Sonic the Hedgehog, who aggressively adapted to try to be as cool as possible whatever era he was in.

The Retro Duo has NES sound issues, but it's an easy enough fix with some simple soldering. And it can do S-Video for SNES titles, too! Really the only reason why I'm having trouble deciding if I want one or not is because I'm objectively better off just rebuying my games on Virtual Console. I actually already have most of my SNES games on VC already. But I really like the idea of having a cartridge unit for those games you find at yard sales and such. And for the stuff that will never ever be rereleased (ie: I keep an N64 around pretty much exclusively for when I finally track down another copy of Beetle Adventure Racing).

So I have a hypothesis regarding Rayman's lack of appeal. What if what we're seeing here is a microcosm of the Uncanny Valley, where a character can be either an icon or realistic, but if you get too close to the middle it becomes unnatural. Going back to even before Mario, the only characters rendered in early, low-fidelity game graphics that actually survived tend to be the ones that were either suitably realistic or can be boiled down to an emblematic shape. Compare the enduring popularity of the fairly realistic (for his time and medium) Mario and barely-anthropomorphized Pac-Man or Space Invader with, say, the largely forgotten weird not-quite-anything design of Q-Bert. I think Rayman falls into that same unnatural middle ground. Also, I notice that I have a deep-seated innate hatred for video game characters whose designs have unusually elongated muzzles. This includes Rayman, Yoshi, and the Rare redesign of Donkey Kong.

I really liked the demo of this, but the local EB Games broke the street date and now that there's a shipment shortage I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a copy at all by the time I can afford one. As a side note, I don't know much about Fire Emblem, but it's my absolute favourite example of taking a doofy-ass video game tune from years gone by and making it as grandiose as possible by giving it an orchestral treatment. You know that incredible theme music that the series has? It's literally a commercial jingle.

I played Metroid Prime without music this summer (and then wrote into Idle Thumbs about it!), I was amazed at how immersive it became. Just make sure that you try it with the Trilogy version. Meta Ridley was given a goofy-ass stomp attack for the Wii rerelease for some reason, and it makes a rhythmic metallic clanging noise that acts almost like a natural score. It really adds a lot to what's already a very tense personal duel.

The best thing about Metropolis is that it's basically a love letter to Osamu Tezuka. It doesn't resemble the original manga very closely, but it fully embraces Tezuka's "Star System" concept of reusing characters in key roles and playing with the expectations created by their repeated appearances. I notice something new every time I watch it. Off the top of my head: Shunsaku Ban names the robot detective "Pero" after a dog he had. In an early Astro Boy story, Shunsaku Ban's dog, Pero, had its brain removed and placed in the same robot body that the detective has. The President's secretary, Acetylene Lamp, has a candle appear on his head for a split-second in one scene. This is based on a recurring joke that started more than fifty years before the movie was made. Fifi the robot appears to be Robita, a major robot character from Tezuka's magnum opus Phoenix. The weird patched-up gourd thing that Robita picks up at one point is Hyoutan-tsugi, a character based on a doodle that Tezuka's sister drew as a kid that he would insert in scenes whenever the action was getting too serious. The anti-robot revolutionary leader is, ironically, a human version of the second iteration of the robot Atlas, Astro Boy's evil counterpart. the movie effectively serves as an end to the sad story of Rock Holmes, a major character who had a personal story arc across thirty years of manga series detailing his fall from grace. Basically it's a good movie that becomes increasingly amazing the more time you invest into it.

A livestream of Jake "Video Games" [citation needed] Rodkin fixing his Wikipedia article.

Dormin and Lord Emon are named in-game and Agro's name is called out loud, but no other names are given.

Tekkon Kinkreet is stellar. The manga is really good, too. So I started watching Dennou Coil. I'm really liking this so far. I've always loved science fiction and fantasy set in modern urban environments and I've had a recent fascination with augmented reality tech, so this is right up my alley. I'm eight episodes in so far and the highlight has been the war in the classrooms. Also, I totally called the illegals being nonagressive.

Most characters' names only ever appear in peripheral material like the manual. I have no idea why. I'm guessing because it wasn't considered important enough, considering how conservatively applied the dialogue is. For anyone who wants to know all of them:

If I can make this a general Famiclone thread for a moment; I've been humming and hawing for years about getting a Retro Duo (console version), my NES finally broke down this year, I haven't been able to repair it myself, and just now I got an Amazon gift card as a present that would cover most of the cost. All of the research I've done indicates that if you're only looking for NES, SNES, and Super Famicom games, Retro Duo is the way to go since it can still run some of the special carts that other systems have trouble with (ie: Super Mario RPG works just fine as of the first hardware revision). And as a nice bonus, it's the only one that isn't butt-ugly. Anyone have any hands-on experience with one?

Erkki I like that your New Year's Resolution is literally a new year's resolution. I'm trying to do the usual things: eat healthier, exercise more, do better at my job, improve my mental health situation, and try to meet new people and do things. Thus far I have succeeded in cutting juice out of my diet. Last year's resolutions went better than anticipated. I didn't get any dates, but I succeeded in getting a decent job, moving to a new city, finding a bigger apartment, and getting over some of my anxiety. That's a win.

Well that's sweet. Good coming out stories are always inspiring, though they also make me a little envious.I hope she meets a nice girl who can show her how to decorate a damn cake.

Fourth Colossus (Phaedra) thoughts: Next time: saddest colossus!