Sosarian Cheater

The first thing I did when I started playing Ultima Online, on the very first day, on the very first minute, I cheated.

They're Still Making Super Nintendo Games

There's a PC demo available, and the game should end up on XBLA in the near future.

I love that color scheme, and with all the bizarre characters and the awesome boss fights, I really feel like I'm enjoying an SNES classic that somehow managed to elude me for the last two decades.

Granted, the resolution is a bit heftier and you use the mouse cursor to aim your shots, which is worlds apart from working a single D-pad like in the low-bit era, but that's irrelevant because Owlboy is a game with the design spirit of bygone days more than anything in recent memory.

Even the design flaws feel like something you'd expect in an older title. The dungeon I explored in the demo was beautiful, but I was constantly flying through corridors that all looked the same, and even worse, a lot of the tunnels doubled back on themselves, so you could end up flying down something you passed through ten minutes ago and not realize it until you're two-dozen screens deep.

And there are these enemies that look a lot like the mini-boss in Brinstar whose hit detection is really wonky. I get that they're covering their weak spot with a shell but the animation is so minimal that it's hard to visually distinguish protected from vulnerable.

And then there's the whole trying-to-interact-with-stuff-while-you're-holding-someone-who-falls-off-at-the-slightest-brush-with-the-ground thing, which makes more sense as a gripe once you've tried the game out for yourself.


The entire demo was a lot of fun, but the part with the gnomes was amazing.
And not because it was horribly innovative or horribly epic or horribly anything. It was just really cool.

East Coast Earthquake

I didn't know they got earthquakes up in the Virginia/DC area, and judging by how everyone's reacting, neither did they.

Being a native Californian from the Bay Area, this is basically the perfect day for me to act like a complete, stuck-up asshole to all the locals who are sitting on the cusp of an all-out, mouth-frothing panic attack.
"Oh. Did you feel something?"
"I'll be honest with you: I've slept through bigger earthquakes than this one."
"Yeah. It's no big deal for me. I'm from California, where we aren't a bunch of fucking pussies."
Stuff like that.
I'm having a terrific day.




Oh! I totally remember something that happened to me back when I was eight years old. It was October of '89 and Super Mario Bros 2 had just come out a few months ago, so you can guess where I was.

What happened on that day was one of those ridiculous, against-the-odds coincidences you only see once in a lifetime, if ever.

And it had to do with Super Mario Bros 2.

Castlevania

And lo, did the Devil himself pick up his mighty axe and lay his blackened fingers across the strings.

And the Earth trembled.

And the angels wept like little bitches.

Sword brothers!

The Best Thing I've Heard All Day

Bethesda wants to punch this guy in the junk.

Markus "Notch" Persson, Minecraft dev, is under fire from Bethesda because his company's new game, Scrolls, bears resemblance to Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series. Not the games themselves. Just the word scrolls. Bethesda is suing Nizzotch over the word scrolls.

Scrolls.

XBLI Developers are Crackheads

If you have either played an XBLI game or developed for XBLI then you're most likely nodding your head right now.

I've got three short reviews, if you're interested.

Gayoga

Bird Bomb

I was driving along a wide, mostly empty road. The only inhabitants were four small birds chilling out in the oncoming lane.

And there was also an approaching SUV.

The driver had something resembling a crew cut. It was hard to tell because his head was such a funny shape. It was obvious from the way he was looking directly forward that not only did he see those birds, but those birds better get out of the way because he is not swerving around some fucking birds.

I pass the birds. I pass the SUV (giving plenty of room so he can drive around the birds).

Then I look in the rear-view mirror, and all I saw were downy feathers. At least a hundred of them.

Note: Never draw a perspective shot again. Ever.

This picture doesn't do the real thing any justice.

I'm serious. This bird fucking exploded. It looked exactly like when you see a pillow fight in a cartoon and all the feathers are everywhere. Just like that. Like the SUV had puked up a bag of feathers out of it's front grill.

That bird died exactly how I want to die.

Like a cartoon character.

A Religious Experience

Have you ever met a juicer?


You know what I'm talking about, right? One of those guys with 0% body fat, jogs twenty miles a day, always in a good mood? They suck down juice for breakfast, lunch, dinner; making a mockery of their own digestive tracks. "You want solid food, stomach? NO! You're getting pureed celery and carrot, just like when we were six months old!"

And then there's all the talk about how a juicer extracts the essential nutrients of fruits and vegetables that you can't get any other way, which doesn't make sense because if I wanted all the nutrients of an apple, I'd just eat the apple. All the preaching I've ever heard about juicers and their incredible supernatural properties stinks of New Age gimmicks.

Despite that, I've been curious about juicers; and today, I tried one.

Bizarre Super Powers

Everyone has flight.
Everyone has super-strength.
Telekinesis is boring,
and time travel is broken.

Screw that stuff. Those catch-all powers with their obvious uses just don't interest me. I prefer the really bizarre shit that, at first, doesn't seem useful at all; but then when you think about it you're like, "Oh, wow. That's actually pretty cool."

So do you want to know about a really weird super power?

I'm Playing This:

I like the part where she indiscriminately murders dozens of people while referencing pop songs from the '90s.

There's also a commuting scientist who somehow manages to fit the word "boner" into his own rendition of the theme song to Dallas.


(I love) Youtube quotes:

How I Fell In Love With a Gimp

My mornings consist of two simple rules:

1. Eat breakfast.
2. Watch a show.

I've performed this ritual since I was a little dude watching G.I. Joe. If I break these rules then my day is pretty-much ruined. You can't bounce back from a morning without breakfast and a show.

Now the last show I saw was great, but I just got through the finale and I need something new.

So how about I try The Sacred Blacksmith?

It's fantasy. It's animated. I'm pretty much guaranteed to love it, right?