Travel Storms and Cyborgs and the Outer Zone, Oh My

I hold a huge conceit against every movie Sci-Fi channel makes. I've tried watching the Saturday night monster flicks but I usually can't take more than a few minutes before giving up. Thus, I turned to Tin Man, not expecting them to do any justice to "The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz." I came to the conclusion after the first 10 minutes, "this doesn't suck." We're not talking Shakespeare here, but the retelling is quite inventive. Maybe I should say re-imagining because this is the Wizard Of Oz in concept only. There are little tidbits of the familiar, flying monkeys, tornadoes... that's about it. The Munchkins are more like the new Oompa-Loompas, but more colors (and pissed off); No Lollipop Guild; The Yellow Brick Road isn't yellow, and barely made of bricks; Tornadoes are for dimensional travel; The Wicked Witch Of The West isn't green or ugly, she's a hottie in a chromed out bustier and shoulder armor (and she has leather clad Nazi shock troops); Dorothy is only known as DG; No dog (yet); A town of Cyborgs; The Wizard does a show in drugged out burlesque theater; The Horse Of Many Colors is a 2-and-a-half-ton truck with every color of paint from Home Depot spilled on it; The Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man aren't the Scarecrow, Lion, or Tin Man; DG is a waitress like Sarah Conner. The list goes on. This doesn't make it bad at all, however. The same kind of thing was done to BattleStar Galactica and that show turned out fantastic. BTW DG is played by Zooey Deschanel, Trillion from the new Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie.

For everyone that plays 2nd Life news has come out recently of a creative, yet simple hack that strips you of your in-game money. You are basically being virtually pick pocketed, which is bad (duhh) because the in-game Linden Dollar which can be traded for real money. This threat to you can easily be disabled with a trip to the menus.

Other little tidbits of news have popped up. Ready for the holiday season is a quick review/reference guide to the new Star Trek novels of the season. Since we sadly have no new Trek to watch the books do provide a good diversion until next Christmas. Use the guide to avoid the few bad Tribbles in the list. The best book on the list is a Next Generation book, Q&A, about Q and some connection to Encounter At Farpoint. This is on my Christmas wish list. Speaking of books, the Barnes & Nobles on Post Road in Orange is closing and a lot of books are going on sale. Now's a good time ransack their wares.

Wizard's Of The Coast is creating an online campaign for the Star Wars roleplaying game, Dawn Of Defiance, and the first chapter of ten became available this week. The game is set between Episode III and Star Wars, letting PCs play out one of the crucial moments in the formation of the Rebellion. I haven't picked up the game yet, but maybe this Xmas/Light Day I'll get lucky.

I'm beginning to think I should have a Nintendo Wii. After watching the trailer for No More Heroes, I decided it's about time to ad this to my Xmas list too, along with Super Mario Galaxy.

I looked around for a while trying to find a descent top 100 all time anime from Japan list and I came a cross one from TV Asahi. At some point I'd like to write a review of each of the series that are available in America. Gives me an excuse to watch more anime.

#78 on IGNs list of games is Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening. I never had a GameBoy but I did have a Super Nintendo, so I bought a Super GameBoy. The Super GB is fantastic, stick it in the SNES cartridge slot, then put your GB game in the cartridge. The screen was a little smaller than the TV screen but you could add a border and even change the game colors so they weren't black and white (okay, black and pea soup green). Like all Zelda games before me I sat in front of it with my full attention to get all the puzzles and absorb all the game play. I never imagined, at the time, that a GameBoy game could be this deep. It took me two (2) months to complete and it's a great addition to the pantheon.

#76 is FINAL FANTASY VII. This is one of the most important games ever made. Why it's so low on the list makes me question the validity of this list. This game moved the esoteric, fan-boy loving RPG genre into a gloriously weaved story of artistic proportions. I bought a PSX just to own this game, and it was well worth it. There isn't much more I can say that hasn't been experienced/written before. My love of Square Soft (now Square Enix) began here, and it continues to be my favorite. From the pre-rendered cut scenes to random Star Wars references, this game created the standard for future installments, brilliantly leading to FFX. This game, however, created my true hatred, Sephiroth. I don't need to tell you of my love of Aris (I prefer this over the re-release Aerith). I spent so much time with her, learning the city, understanding the resistance, traveling the world. I trained as best I could to be a warrior and spurned other women in the party just for her attention. I loved her. Until Sephiroth stabbed her in the F'ING BACK and ended my happiness, forever. I hate him so much. I ruined a relationship with the girl I was seeing to kill him. It took 20 minutes and everybody I had, down to my last spell and hit point. I thought it was over. Then he resurrected somehow, and with great joy I watched his punk-ass die again. Rewind, and I get to watch him die, again and again and again. I F'ING HATE HIM. I hope I never meet the voice of him because, so help me, I'll snap. I'll have a flashback/PTSD moment and kill him. Sorry, my therapist told me not to bottle up stuff like this.

#75 is GoldenEye 007. Best damn FPS made, until Half-Life & Halo. Using only one (1) analogue stick on the N64 you could still play the game. Prior to this was Turok, but it didn't compare. GoldenEye created a polygon filled environment that just seemed right. All the weapons and enemies, and friends, were perfect. This is a rare moment when everything in development of a game meshes, creating an experience, more than a game. The familiar music and the incredible multi-player just added frosting to the 007 cake. Proximity Mines have got to be the most important weapon created for an FPS until the Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2. This team of developers would later go on to make Perfect Dark.

#73 is Resident Evil. I have one tale to tell, a listen well. At a friends house he powered up the extraordinary PSX (at the time there was nothing like the pixilated 3D worlds of Sony) and loaded Resident Evil. I was amazed at the mansion I ran around in. Trying to get a feel for menus and clunky controls I bravely walked down the corridor of doom that introduced me to survival horror. This isn't the unsettling environs of Silent Hill, RE created the in-your-face Survival Horror genre. As I walk down the quite corridor I pulled out me pistol. I didn't trust the hallway but the reassurance of a nine-millimeter in my hand was almost as good as liquid courage. I approached a window when suddenly two (2) undead dogs burst forth in shattered glass and barking and howling. I think I dropped my controller. What ever happened I stabbed every button I could in three seconds time and to no avail. The dogs ended me in no time. I threw the controller down and never played again. I thought the first movie was great. Those few seconds of horror I experienced was well put into the movie, and then some.

Here's the viral video of the week. Don't try this at home unless you're a drunk guy with a Suzuki Sidekick, and a giant dirt ramp. See you next broadcast.

Technical Difficulties

Last night I intended to write a new post in between sessions of Guitar Hero III. Luckily (or not) my laptop wasn't wirelessly communicating with my router. Usually they have a spat for about ten minutes every evening but they're right back talking like old friends. But last night my laptop as in the "doghouse" and I couldn't get online. So, more GH3 for me. I beat Medium and have transcended to hard. You would think that with four skill levels the differences would be minor, but they are not. Adding another button each level is a huge spike in difficulty. However, trying to go for 5 stars on all songs does help subconsciously prep you for harder levels. Kind of like the "wax on, wax off" of plastic guitar prop playing. I even played a song on expert and I beat it, bearly.

I haven't talked much about anime and manga since I started this. After getting addicted to anime watching Star Blazers, Voltron, Battle Of The Planets, Tranzor Z, and (my personal favorite) ROBOTECH, I wanted more. Being an unemployed junior high and high school student I needed a quick fix of something Japanese and manga was just hitting the comic book store shelves. Akira, Area 88, Mai: The Psychic Girl, Legend Of Kamui, and Xenon all became parts of my obsession with Japanese story telling. My love affair with manga lasted many years until I could afford anime tapes, then DVDs, and sadly I haven't looked back. There are many good titles I have never even read and some I never finished. One such title is Parasyte, Kiseijuu in Japanese.

Parasyte is a story of an insidious alien takeover of people on Earth. The parasites quietly landed on Earth and began taking over people by eating their heads and assume control of the body. Not like zombies, but with a taste for the flesh of the species they inhabit. The main character is wearing earphones when he is attacked and the parasite merges with his hand. They both become strange friends and begin to hunt down all other parasite-infected humans. The original English translations have been out of print and even harder to find on eBay. Del Rey Publishing just bought the license to reissue it and it is for sale once again. The art style is unique and a great horror story , with elements of The Thing, Terminator 2, and lots of original style. Very visual even though it was never adapted to anime. A Live Action movie has been reported, with a release time somewhere in 2008.

On with my video game musings. #88 is the Star Wars arcade game. The original wire-frame Death Star attacking arcade game. As far as I remember it is the first first-person perspective game of the whole franchise, and you attack the Death Star, with the voices from the movie talking you through it. Released when Return Of The Jedi hit theaters, in 1983, this was the only thing I ever wanted to do, fly an X-Wing, destroy TIE-Fighters, and blow up the Death Star. Even Obi-Wan tells you, after the Death Star is reduced to wire-frame debris, "the Force will be with you always." This is a great game for anyone who grew up with the Holy Trilogy. And after you blew up the Death Star, you got to do it all over again, with a harder Death Star. By the third time through the trench is filled with obstacles akin to the Second Death Star. If I owned arcade games this would be on top of my wish list with Star Castle, TRON, and Tempest.

#86 is Perfect Dark. The company that brought you (and me) GoldenEye made another perfect FPS. The single player "story mode" was intelligently written, with plenty of surprises, and made you (and me, as well) want to keep playing 'til the bitter end. A point I've mentioned before in this genre is about the amount of killing. Some games become a work in tedium to kill everything to move on. Moving from fight to fight never gets boring with Perfect Dark and walks the line from movie plot story telling to FPS moments, never over-doing one or the other. Then comes the multi-player, as deep as the single player game. With so many options, even giants like Halo pale by comparison to GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, and Time Splitters multi-player. Why doesn't Halo have bots? Why doesn't Halo have random weapons? All I can say is Laptop Gun. Throw it on the ground and it becomes a machine gun auto-turret. And to top it off, you didn't need a Dual Shock to play it, just an N64 controller with one analog stick. Perfect Dark Zero is another matter. Don't confuse the two.

#81 is Space Invaders. A game so simple, the reason I loved it as a child is the same reason everyone still loves it and the genre it started. I could go on about how it started the overhead and side-scrolling shooters of the 90s. Its not only the precursor to classics such as Xevious and Zaxxon but it was the first game you played as a "survival mode." It's strange to think about but there wasn't a name for "playing as long s you can on one quarter." All arcade did this, and Space Invaders was the first to track a high score (and have music). For those that may not know, Survival Mode is just a term for holding out in a game as long as possible until the bitter end. Trek fans would refer to this as the Kobayashi Maru test. As a child I played this and Radar Scope little realizing they were Japanese. I apparently had no choice but to fall for all things Japanese even from an early age. The most import thing I can say about this game is the psychology of the people (Japanese) who invented it back in '78. There were whole arcades in Japan that only had Space Invaders. This is an un-winnable game about holding the line until you are stomped on. Sure, you have a couple extra lives and some bases to hide behind but it won't help. Sooner or later it'll be time to pay the piper. This is a game created by a country that lost a war and a people who are shamed by the loss. This may sound mean, but we won the war and invented Space War and Pong using oscilloscope circuits from ICBM targeting computers of the 60s. I don't think it would have occurred to us to make a game you lose, until Pong started making money in bars, and the Japanese sucked all our quarters out of our pockets and into the Space Invaders coil slot.

Look at the early games of the Atari 2600. Air-Sea Battle, Combat, Circus Atari, Football, Maze Craze, Indy 500, and (one of my favorites) Adventure. All these games either pit one player against each other or gives you a goal to achieve. Sure you could die, every conflict has losers, but you weren't guaranteed to lose. Play well enough and you win every time. Asteroids and Missile Command, both Atari games and seminal works themselves, still were created after Space Invaders. And to nitpick, Asteroids is you against Mother Nature (uhhh... Mother Space) with a little space ship thrown in to shake things up. Missile Command is the American version of the Space Invaders mindset, and certainly points out it's cold war origins.

I love the Terminator franchise, but I only like the third movie. Nothing really against it but Rise Of The Machines wasn't exactly on the caliber of T1 or T2. Not only do we have a Terminator TV series in the works, with River from Firefly as a Terminator, that ignores the third movie, but there is news now of a fourth offering to the theater gods. Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins hopefully will finally show us a complete future when John Connor totally kicks SkyNets ass. The whole reason for the first movie is that John Conner, and humanity, beats the AI and returns the Earth to flesh-based intelligence. Not even Neo in the Matrix could do that after three movies, and John Connor is pre-destined to win. And who is John this time around? Christian Bale, someone used to fighting for humanity in the future. Picture Reign Of Fire with a leader like Maximus from Gladiator killing Androids, Robots, AI Tanks, AI drop ships, and whatever else SkyNet has. It better be that cool. Sadly James Cameron is once again not attached to the project, but at least he's helping NASA out with the Mars program if he's going to waste my time not making movies. So it looks like we have two (2) different Terminator Time Lines to follow. Along with Back To The Future and Bill & Ted, this 80s movie helped define the current trend in pre-determination, time travel plots. Watch the new Time Machine movie to see what pre-destiny does to the original plot. See you next broadcast.

'Tis Better To Play Silent Hill And Be Thought A Fool

Near the end of the year all sorts of Top 10, 50 and 100 lists start popping up. One of the more interesting ones comes from Wizard Magazine, the Top 50 fictional weapons of all time. A definitive geek list of must have side arms, melee weapons and magic devices from movies to comics to games. Some of them even have props made that you can buy, so it also makes a decent list of props. It's interesting to note that #8 is missing. I guess the weapons invisible and can't be spoken of. Lightsabers are so cool they made the list twice, as did Star Trek with the Phaser and a Sniper Rifle that fires rounds that beam in and out of people's rooms. Why the X-Ray gun from Perfect Dark didn't make I'll never know but it could fire through walls and the scope could pick out people instantly. Between the Star Trek Rifle and Eraser's Rail Gun I guess this weapon became redundant. A couple great classic sci-fi weapons appear, including the TRON's disc and the homing bullets from that chromed-out gun used in Runaway, that other sci-fi movie with Kirstie Alley. The movie was kind of a poor man's Blade Runner, surprisingly written and directed by Michael Crichton. It's a decent enough story but looks like a product of the 80's. Not quite an early Crichton classic like Andromeda Strain or West World. Maybe if the Terminator hadn't come out at the same time we'd remember this movie more. I have the movie poster of Runaway somewhere with Tom Selleck holding the special gun and it always bothered me that it was the bad guy's weapon and Mr. Selleck never fires it. BTW I "heart" 80s Spider Robots.

IGN also has top 100. Of course it's about video games and they are posting the list 10 at time for the rest of the month, damn them. I've only looked at the bottom 20 but I'd like to add my thoughts on their.. uhh... thoughts. 100 thru 98 I never played so I'll jump to number 97: Silent Hill 2. This game belongs higher on the list. I bought it for Xbox a number of years ago and it is everything the first game was and more. The story is more personal and the creatures are even scarier. Maybe its the next gen graphics (since the first game was on PSX) but almost every creature encounter was creepy. The game made you feel uneasy throughout and hit you like a wet brick when the Pyramid Head guy appeared. I almost crapped myself in the movie when Pyramid guy showed up, thanks to this game. He's not to be taken lightly. I never beat it but I left off near the end with some crazy cockroach things eating me or something. I hate the undead and look forward to killing a lot of the during the Zombie Apocalypse if it ever happens thanks to this game. I don't even like nurses anymore, or mannequins, or armless zombies, or little children, or dogs, or static-playing radios, or undead pterodactyls, or my crazy ex-wife in a wheel-chair. No, wait, that was the first game, sorry. I still have issues from that one. And now I hear there's to be a Silent Hill 5?

#96 is Wave Race 64. As a release title it was the other reason to own an N64 back in the day. Water physics were never prettier before the N64 and Wave Race had it in spades. I bought the game during the waning years of the system, but that doesn't diminish the game play. When ever someone plays a game and there's a water fountain or a lake, invariably they try to "play" in it. I'm guilty of this and I can even remember the first time water "wow-ed" me in games. Super Mario 64 had incredible water surface reaction that was just fun to run around in and Ico's water was so reflective and beautiful it made the game even more realistic. But this was just a mild distraction to those games, in Wave Race 64 it was the whole point. You raced on wave runners and had to time your movements with the currents. Brilliant stuff. It actually added strategy to a racing title without the need for "Kart"-racing style offense/defense item collection. There was even stunt mode mini games to add playability, and it had enough reasons to keep playing it until a larger library formed for the N64. It's hard to find a game this good today and it's even available for download on the Wii.

#95 is Bionic Commando. Games used to have gimmicks that totally worked for them because the technology could really only let you do one good thing at a time. This gimmick was the bionic arm that let you move, collect and kill. The arcade was the most fun for me (I'm an old-schooler) but I rented the NES version back in the day and enjoyed it just as much. I don't ever remember being really good at it, but like Ghost & Goblins or Rush 'n' Attack, it was loads of fun. A new version of this now has gone beyond the rumor phase. Now its a serious game where the main character is so badass that his arm is shipped separately from himself. I know how he feels. I wasn't allowed to have Vera when I flew to and from Kuwait. For those that don't know Vera is my Army issue M-16/M-203 grenade launcher. Think Arnold's weapon of choice in the beginning of Predator. That thing's like something out of Aliens.

I never played #94-93 (Ultima VII) but I did play Ultima Exodus for NES which furthered my desire for RPGs on Consoles. Luckily I'm not the only one who loves turn based sword fights. #92 is Wip3Out or WipeOut 3 or W3p3O3t 3 or something with "three" in it. Defining racer for the PSX and showed high-speed polygon "Kart" racing at its finest. I say "Kart" because there were items to collect during the race to even the odds you fall behind. The AI was always a challenge, except on the slowest speeds, and learning to turn/drift/maneuver was half the fun/difficulty. The music perfectly fit as well. This franchise was so well done it has become a defining graphic powerhouse on new Sony systems, like WipeOut Fusion for PS2 and WipeOut Pure for PSP. I found the PSP version a little hard to control but it just takes getting used to. Where's the PS3 version? In the works, but PSP is waiting patiently for WipeOut Pulse next month. BTW nice Euro techno soundtrack.

I also never played 91 so you're just going to have to go to the website to see what I passed by. I did come across a reference to a new Street Fighter game in the works, creatively titles Street Fighter IV. It should probably be Street Fighter LXXVIII but who's counting. The visuals of the trailer are stunning but I wonder how much of that is game play. It sounds to be a 2D fighter but you've got my vote if they keep the visuals in the "Okami" style. Here's this weeks viral video called Italian Spiderman. Tomorrow I will talk of 90 thru 81. See you next broadcast.

That's No Book, That's A Space Station

Someone at work today asked me why Star Wars was my favorite movie. My quick response, because I've thought this through before, was that it encapsulates my childhood. I was a child at the right place, at the right time. This person also asked if I thought any other movie in the future might replace it, and I stated an emphatic no. Then I dwelled on the moment to try to Divine what movie of the future might sway me to say, "this is the greatest movie ever told." This future movie would have to absorb me so completely that the "4th wall" no longer existed, and that I would have some part to play in the outcome. And, I'm pretty sure, it would be a sci-fi epic. In other words, a movie fed directly to my brain that I play, not unlike how the Matrix feed is inputted to Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus. I'm not asking for an immersive video game, like the anime .hack//SIGN, but a fusion of movie and gaming that is not technically either but something greater than it's whole. I suppose a Holodeck is a good a description as any. Look, predicting the future is hard.

Let's dig a little deeper. Why Star Wars? As a child (as well as adult) I tended to throw myself fully in to things. With Star Wars I wanted to be a part of the Rebels, and I could be with action figures, comics books, and cartoons. If you wanted to explore the Star Wars universe beyond the boarders of the film screen you could do so on your own terms, as deep as you wanted the Rabbit Hole to go. When Shadows Of The Empire (SOTE) was released for the N64 I spent hours hunting AT-ATs and exploring Echo-Base. Now I could see what the characters saw on my own. That is the experience Lucas is making for us, sometimes successful, sometimes not. (I wanted to like Masters Of Teras Kasi but it just wasn't all there). Even today, with rumors of 3-D Star Wars still floating around, we continue to see books and comic books on store shelves. Case in point, "Death Star" by Michael Reaves & Steve Perry. Reaves & Perry previously collaborated on the MedStar duology and Perry wrote the novel for SOTE.

I purchased Death Star today and began reading after a quick (hour or so) game of Halo 3 on Legendary that reminds me, this Veterans' Day, of crawling up a beach, inch by bloody inch, towards a Nazi machinegun nest. That's Legendary alright. But, I digress. Death Star is set in my favorite era, the third era (according to the sleeve) called Classic. The others are Sith, Prequel, New Republic, New Jedi Order, and Legacy. This universe is expanding by the minute. You can start 5,000 years before the Battle of Yavin (BOY) and end a little more than 100 years after the Battle Of Endor (BOE). That's a universe. Classic covers a decade before BOY and a handful of years after BOE. One of my criteria for reading a Star Wars book is, "what is it's relevance to the universe?" In the future I would like to breakdown this question with the many books I've read but today I'm just talking about Death Star. If you want to skip the book and just build a Death Star, submit your DS Plans to the Maw Installation after going through the design process at the Lethal Alliance site.

mild SPOILER WARNING ahead! Set a few years (maybe 3) before Star Wars, Death Star's first 50 pages are an ensemble piece as characters from all over the Empire are introduced. Tarkin is present as is Darth Vader, and I am very happy to read about recognizable Holy Trilogy characters. There is even a Doctor from the MedStar series (set during the Clone Wars) still kicking around. Some of the characters are slaves, guards, bartenders, gunners, pilots, etc. This is getting to the heart of the question posed in Clerk's by Randal about what kind of people are present during the construction of a Death Star. The reason I'm reading this is for the Death Star, one of the most awesome concepts in sci-fi since Gort. The book also handles continuity well be referencing all sorts of books like The Jedi Academy Trilogy and the aforementioned MedStar series, with a touch of Teras Kasi thrown in. There's even a mention of "Stop Loss," a current term in the military that keeps you in the service as long as you are needed, regardless of your contract. Stop Loss hit many of the people in my unit when we went to Iraq. There's even some mild political allegory in here, ignorable if that isn't your thing. SPOILER WARNING! The most interesting thing I've read so far has been about Vader. He reflects on the fact that Yoda is still alive and could pose a threat, and he hasn't felt the death of Obi-Wan, something he is certain he'd notice. That answers a couple of long standing questions I've had. This book just payed for itself. SPOILER WARNING over!

Thanks go out to EmpTass for letting me play Crack Hero III with the Crackpipe peripheral that seems suspiciously like an air guitar. I can't think of anything but rockin' out now, so I intend to get it by the end of the week. I'm also still interested in Rock Band as a drummer if I can get a couple peeps who want to join me on Guitars, bass or otherwise. South Park this week was priceless. Completely up-to-date on the Guitar Hero obsessions, as well as Heroin Hero and Rehab Hero. A must see. Next best thing to the Warcraft episode. Keep your blasters charged, your Wookiee fed and see you next broadcast.