Shot Down In Flames

I am not surprised in the least.

Sony, you’ve been doing this long enough, you should know at this point how to market a platform. Or failing that, you should look at Nintendo, or Microsoft (the Xbox part, not the rest of it) and learn from them. Let’s take a look back at what you’ve done in your ill-conceived attempts to convince people your platform is the one they need:

• Dismissing the Wii as a “toy” and a “fad”. Yeah, them youngsters and their rock’n'roll music and their fancy computators, eh?
• Despite the fact your console is quantifiably in last place, claiming you are winning the console war. Cognitive dissonance much?
• Refusing to pay up to keep DLC from being platform exclusive. DLC is no longer considered a bonus, especially if you charge for it. It’s integral now. Swallow your pride and pony up.
• Yanking out the backwards compatibility, claiming it’s costing too much to produce. Can’t help but notice you haven’t announced a price cut yet. I know I love paying the same price for less features.
• Those creepy commercials. Seriously, who approved those? Is your advertising agency on LSD?
• A noticeably lacking library. Wasn’t so bad before you cut BC, since you could just play PS2 games. Now that you’ve moved to make the PS3 a separate platform, you need more titles. In other words, “LOL no gaemes on PS3!!1!”
• Making your console hard to develop for. This is so ridiculous I can’t even think of something funny to say.

I’m not saying you didn’t do some things right; the PS3 is, in terms of raw power, superior. The combination BluRay player and console is appealing to lots of folks. Games are not region locked. And you did finally break down and put together a decent online network.

Make it happen, Sony.

But right now, your console is in last place, behind the machine it was supposed to replace, and even Microsoft has more goodwill from gamers right now than you. Cut the price and soon, throw money at developers, have your PR drones focus on your verifiable good points rather than badmouthing your competitors and making things up. Things will turn around if you make an effort. Or you can be the next 3DO, it’s up to you.

Maybe there on the edge is your hope
But you don’t look down

Cthulhu Strikes Back!

So it sounds like Muramasa: The Demon Blade will be arriving in a few months. With the follow-up to Odin Sphere finally getting a release date, and the fact that MadWorld has done fairly well in both reviews and sales, it may finally be time for me to break down and get a Wii. Since the chronic shortage seems to have finally alleviated, it shouldn’t be difficult. Other than the fact I’m chronically short on another resource, spending money, nowadays. Perhaps I need to send some peasants out to find another gold mine.

Demon Octopus or Cthulhu? Is there a difference?

Well we almost all died, and Johnny’s out of his mind,
And though we never found Yig, we had a hell of a good time!

This Is Why I Hate Hollywood Redux

When I read this I actually gagged a little.

Seriously people, if you are ever tempted to watch I Am Legend, just go watch the original with Vincent Price.

You will delight to the abilities of one of the greatest actors Hollywood has produced, and as a bonus, you won’t ever have to roll your eyes at Mister Smith’s “acting”, if you can even call it that.

I’m not being elitist here; I’m just trying to prevent another Wild Wild West.

In Blackest Day, In Darkest Knight

Oh, not this shit again.

Seriously, I sometimes thought to myself when I read Batman comics, “Well, at least they haven’t pulled that ‘Let’s kill off the Hero!‘ bullcrap with the Dark Knight. That’s why I keep coming back for more, ’cause this one title, at least, has a little integrity.”

No really, I thought that. It was kind of like brand loyalty with me. I’d dabble in other superhero books, but in the end I’d always come back to ol’ Bats. He was as believable a character as you can get on the comic book page. A normal person, who saw something no one should ever have to see, and became a little….unhinged. His exploits were incredible without being ridiculous. You can’t really relate to someone like Superman or the Flash, since they’re something other than human. But Bruce Wayne, there’s something every little boy can imagine himself as.

Now you’ve gone and tainted him for me, DC. The way I see it, this can go two ways:

1. You come up with a deus ex machina to bring him back at some point in the future. Which makes this another cynical cash grab. Also, I hate you DC.

2. Bruce Wayne is really, really dead, and he’s replaced with someone less interesting, like say (gag) Robin. Sales spike for the death issue, and then plummet to earth like Superman in Kryptonite underoos. Also, I hate you DC.

I don’t care if Grant Morrison is involved, you are seriously screwing with the franchise here. I can only pray someone over there will return to their right mind long enough to put a stop to this monstrosity. Or maybe Darkseid can just go knock some sense into them.

Didn’t you hear him? He’s the goddamn Batman.

Na na na na na na na na, na na na na na na na na,
daaa daaaa!

Brutal Planet

You know, I’ve actually been in a pretty good mood all this week. Which is odd, for me.

And then I went and stumbled on this. And I remembered we’re coming up on 10 years since Columbine.

I can speak first hand about the kind of things the Slashdot article talks about. My junior and senior high school years were quite unpleasant for me. I wouldn’t go as far to say “nightmarish”, but it is a period of my life I don’t recall fondly at all. I was awkward, ostracized and occasionally persecuted. I’m not going to claim I never contemplated violence; that would be disingenuous, not to mention a bold-faced lie. And with the benefit of hindsight, I think I can safely say it subconsciously influenced my decision to move away from my hometown the second I got the chance.

Now, I’m working as a teacher and my perspective has shifted somewhat. I’m now in the position to do something about this kind of thing. It doesn’t seem to really be a problem in Japanese schools, probably because the culture emphasizes getting along with your classmates/ coworkers / contemporaries. But I can still attempt to make a difference, to put a stop to this sort of asinine bullying if I see it, and to show that you should never be ashamed of being intelligent. As a wise nerd once said, “It may be hard for you now, but trust me: Out here?  In the real world?  We run shit.”

I’ve heard that eventually, all teachers just stop caring. It’s hard to look after hordes of other people’s children all day and not get burned out. The gradual erosion of your empathy is probably inevitable. That’s not a reason to abandon the effort though. And I am certainly going to try for as long as I can.

No jokes this time. I feel far too serious right now.

I’ve got a pocket full of bullets
And a blueprint of the school

 

This Is Why I Hate Hollywood

I shouldn’t be surprised. After they butchered my favorite video game, fireballed my favorite tabletop, and made a movie so bad I almost built a deathray, I should know better than to give Hollywood the benefit of the doubt. But then they go and do this to Dragonball:

Yes, this is supposed to be Goku.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I hate Dragonball. The show is a coordinated assault on aesthetics, nay on rational thought itself. It does not only reject cohesive storytelling, it seems actively hostile to it. Because I appreciate good storytelling, I must loathe Dragonball, with every fiber of my being.

Even worse, it is often the first show that leaps to mind when you say anime to someone in the West. “Oh, you mean like that Dragonball show?”. I want to breed a skunk-porcupine hybrid to maul these people. It’s the same when I say I like weird fiction, and I get, “Oh, you mean like Stephen King?”. Are you actually trying to enrage me, or are you just that nescient?

But the point, as I belabour my way around it, is that only Hollywood would go and take something that is already terrible, and make it worse. Are they clever enough to aim for a cinematic version of arithmetic overflow, where the movie becomes so execrable that it wraps around and turns out awesome? Or are they as I always suspected, bizarre mindless creatures that spring forth spontaneously from a pool of radioactive ooze and filth somewhere beneath the streets of California?

The mind boggles. It boggles, dear reader.

…And Then You’ll Beg

You may have already heard about this, but check out the 8.31.2008 post here for some righteous indignation. To quote:

The fine folks at GenCon raised over $17,000 for [the Christian Children's Fund] charity, which helps starving children in impoverished areas of the world–only to have that money actually turned down by the charity. The charity refused due to the fact that the money was raised partly by the sales of Dungeons and Dragons materials, which as we all know, puts an irrevocable taint of evil on the filthy lucre that us demon-worshiping gamers might want to use to, say, donate to starving children.

…

GRAAAAAHHH!!!

Yeah, you stay classy there, CCF. With all the strides gamers have made to show the world, hey, we’re NOT the insidious cult or violence-bent lunatics that the media and religious leaders paint us out to be, it’s nice to see that that you can still go ahead and make irrational decisions based on fear, hearsay and your own ignorance. Bravo!

The best part, of course, is that the only people who lose here are the kids. I’m sure they’ll feel much better knowing that the money that could have been used to provide them with food and clean water was turned down because it came from people who like to wear funny clothes and say “prithee” a lot.

Fuck you, CCF, fuck you. I’m too pissed right now to come up with a better way to express my anger, your stupidity has literally rendered me incoherent with rage. To make up for you being jerks, this year I’ll donate extra hard to Child’s Play. Maybe I’ll send them a few copies of the D&D Core Rulebook Gift Set just to spite you.

ossuary for the misinformed
you’d end up being amazed of what you’d see inside
the wisps of knowledge denied
and to think that someone’s implied it’s a better place to reside

Programmed to Consume

Still no mega-update yet, too busy. However, two things.

I bought a tie at work today. No, not on the Internet. There I was, sitting in the teacher’s office, minding my own business, when this older gentleman walks in with what looks like a large briefcase. Everybody smiles and nods at him, so I do as well. I figure he’s a member of the Board of Education, or a repairman, or something along those lines. Then he sets the case down and opens it.

It’s full of ties.

Some of the other male teachers come over to look, and nod appreciatively. He gestures me over and smiles, so I come over. He hands a few to me, so I examine them. They’re fairly nice ties, so I nod and smile back. He says something to me, and I make it clear that I have no idea what he’s saying. At this point I’m fairly bewildered; I have no idea what’s going on, and everyone else is busy and not paying attention to me and this nice tie-man. Then he says something I do understand: “Sen en”. One thousand yen. He punctuates it by holding aloft a finger, and then pointing at one of the ties.

He’s selling ties. Like, door-to-door.

What could I do? I found one that I liked and bought it. He smiled at me nicely, packed up his case and left, to a warm chorus of “sayonara”. The experience had a surreal quality, like a fever-induced dream, where even the most trivial act becomes suffused with meaning. But I’m holding the tie in my hand as we speak, and it’s pretty stylish, so it must have been real.

And to you, good tie-man, I say godspeed. May you always find welcome wherever men’s necks are undecorated.

The second thing is, today I bought this.

Damn you Sony! Damn you to hell!

I am a consumer whore.

Do we work for what we’ve created?
Just byproducts of man-made gods.

This is exactly what I mean

I think I just peed a little.

You cannot seriously expect me to think this is childish and not brain-melting incredible. You might as well just ask me to stop all this annoying mitosis while you’re at it.

I Don’t Wanna Grow Up

You know, I always felt a little awkward when I picked up a new toy or gewgaw just because I thought it looked cool. “Is this really the sort of thing an (insert arbitrary number here) year old should be buying? Aren’t I too old for this by at least several decades?”. I have always been very insecure about myself, and especially the parts of my personality that I thought the public in general disapproved of. Then today, I stumbled across this little morsel of wisdom:

I think the problem a lot of people have is they think they need to outgrow toys. I really don’t think getting older matters as long as you never stop playing.

This is a grown man about my age speaking about his love of Pokemon and Star Wars, and how he hopes to share them with his son. And it’s hard for me to find fault with his position.

So you know what? Fuck it, I don’t care anymore. I’m going to take the fact I look half my age and really start acting like it, only without the teenage angst and awkwardness. You hear that, haters? I’m going to play with my Gundams and my video games, read my comic books and watch my cartoons, and headbang to Iron Maiden, while you sneer at me for acting weird and juvenile. I will bounce from cool thing to cool thing and share my love with those I care about, while you just get older and more spiteful. And when we both die, I’ll have enjoyed my life at no one’s expense but my own, whereas the rest of ya probably have nothing to show for your existence but 2 divorces and the clap. HA HA!

And just so you can see I have already begun to embrace this:

What’s better than a giant robot? Giant Robot Samurai!

Can’t read ‘em, but the pictures are pretty

Call me Solid Snake.

Assembled Strike Noir. Kickass.

How the hell did I get here so soon