9/30/02
I figured it was high time to update the cartoon page. I've also added a review of The Raiden Project for the Playstation and a brief comic I drew several years ago, well before Nature of the Beast officially debuted. If it's too rough for you, there's a better drawing of Elle on the cartoon page, which I suggest you visit at your earliest convenience (NOW NOW NOW!).
No, Phil, I haven't forgotten about your giant robot reviews. I just haven't had the time to really look at them yet. In fact, I'm burning the midnight oil just finishing this update! ^^;
9/22/02
This update's a day early, I know... I just have a request I need to make that's unrelated to the commentary you'll find below.
Now I don't ask too much of you guys... just feedback and, if you're a contributor to the site, the occasional article or review. I haven't asked for donations in years, way back when I was using the original layout for The Gameroom Blitz, and even that didn't last long. I know what you're thinking, and no, I'm not going to start asking for donations again. What I WOULD like you to do, if you could, is help out a friend of mine. He's having trouble finding a job in the New York/New Jersey area, and he's nail-bitingly close to running out of food and financial support. If you know of any job offers in these two states, or one that caters to his skills in another location, I urge you to visit this site and contact him as soon as possible.
9/21/02
I'm back, and this time, I've brought some content with me! You'll find a new review in the Game Boy Advance section of the site, and better yet, a detailed opinion of the recently released e-Card reader dropped in with the rest of the features. Yes, there's actually up to the minute gaming coverage on The Gameroom Blitz... you'd better get your umbrellas, because the pigs are flying today!
I'll be frank with you guys... I was too depressed to write much for The Gameroom Blitz in the past month. But you know what? Depression is all just a state of mind, and you can pull yourself out of it if you make an effort. I just started to realize that today, when things seemed their worst. The weather washed everything with an equal mixture of rain and darkness, the friend I wanted to visit was nowhere to be found, and I just caught a preview of the latest Adam Sandler film. It was at that moment that I thought to myself, "Hey, I don't have to torture myself by feeling like this! And I don't have to stop editing The Gameroom Blitz, either! I'm just as good a writer as I've always been, and I can take all this frustration and anger I've felt in the last month and convert it to fuel for some of the greatest articles that have ever been published on the site!" So that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm not going to worry about how the next feature on the site is going to turn out, or what people will think of it... I'm just going to WRITE it, dammit! Even if it sucks, the next one will be better, and the next one will be even better than that, until the articles are excellent and the site is just as fun to read as it was two years ago!
That's a peek into the promising future of The Gameroom Blitz. Now, it's time for a Rorschach test. Look at this picture and think of a single sentence that describes it. If you've got that sentence, please feel free to continue reading.
So what was the point to all that? I just want you to compare your own opinion to that of one of the administrators from the online art gallery Yerf. He took one look at this picture and summed it up in one word rather than a sentence.
The word he chose was "bad."
I would have accepted "flawed" or even "lacking" as a description of this drawing, but bad? Not even bad as in Strongbad, the grumpy but lovable Mexican wrestler from the website Home Star Runner, but just bad. Now I'm painfully aware that my artwork could use improvement, but good grief, this is just a bit of an overstatement. I'll bet you demons to diamonds that if I showed this to a random person on the street, they'd say, almost verbatim, "Hey, that's not bad!"
Of course, this is Yerf... the administrators expect a higher standard from their artists. An unattainable standard. Most people would grade artwork on a scale like this:
|
EARLY JESS RAGAN COMIC |
LATER JESS RAGAN PORTRAIT |
DaVINCI'S MONA LISA |
|
Poor. Truly, this is the suckiest suck that ever sucked a suck Did I mention it sucked? |
Average. A rough sketch, but this man could probably be recognized by this portrait. |
Wonderful. An outstanding portrait by a master artist, featuring subtle shading and detail. |
However, the administrators at Yerf see things a little differently... like this:
|
LATER JESS RAGAN PORTRAIT |
DaVINCI'S MONA LISA |
THE HAND OF GOD HIMSELF |
|
Totally devoid of any redeeming qualities whatsoever. The artist should be hung, then shot. |
Shows promise, but the artist's technique could be refined. Also, please add fur and a tail. |
Satisfactory. The bright, warm glow could be considered a distraction. |
So I'll just have to accept that I'll never have the keys to the Yerf executive washrooms, unless I hide next to the door and mug one of the frighteningly talented artists as they leave with a trail of toilet paper (or just the contributions of rejected applicants) stuck to their heels.
I figure I can handle this one of two ways... either get really depressed and stop drawing entirely, or keep publishing crappy comics, JUST TO PISS THEM OFF! Frankly, I'd get a lot more satisfaction out of the latter course of action. Besides, if I keep practicing and study some art books, I can only get better... and when I do, the friends and artists that supported me now will stand to benefit the most in the future.
As for everyone else? Well, they had their chance.
9/14/02
You've waited this long for an update, and all you're getting is another crappy Zoo Logic comic. Sucks to be you, huh?
I'm in a disagreeable mood right now so I'm going to make this update short. I just picked up Victorious Boxers: Ippo's Road to Glory on the recommendation of some friends. I would have reviewed it... but I'm still not sure if I've even PLAYED it. I hoped beyond hope that it would have intuitive controls, and of course, since this was a Playstation 2 game, I was sorely disappointed. It's not as confusing and annoying as Teleroboxer was, but something is very, very wrong when you have to tap up, twice, to make your character duck. Where's the logic in that? All the time you spend facing odd angles that can't possibly hit the opponent is a serious annoyance as well. It's not a complete disaster- the game engine is certainly competant, although a touch bland- but because of the lousy control it's doubtful that I'll play it regularly. I'll stick around just long enough to mix it up with the bear pictured on the back of the box, but that's it.
One of my readers (a pretty cool guy I met while sifting through the thrift items at Goodwill) offered a theory in response to Microsoft's recent purchase of Rare. He surmises that there'll be another gaming crash, and that all the corporations that were in it for the money will leave the industry in disgust, just like Atari had in 1984. Only the companies that care about this hobby as an artform will remain to try to revive it, and the industry will ultimately benefit as a result. Frankly, I'd actually LIKE to see this happen, but people have speculated about another video game crash since the mid 1990's, and everyone's still waiting for it. Perhaps we won't have to wait much longer, though... as Deciheximal pointed out, companies are making the grave mistake of pandering to a fickle audience. Once they get tired of the sex, violence, and pretty graphics in today's games, they'll move on to something else... and the true gamers that felt shut out of the hobby will no longer be there to save it.
It's gotten progressively tougher for me to stay interested in video games, let me tell you. Right now, I find (clean) furry fandom more entertaining... it's also a lot more productive, since I spend more of my free time improving my artwork rather than screaming at my television after falling into lava for the sixteenth time. Yes, Maximo, that was a shot at you. Whaddaya gonna do about it, Captain Underpants? I betcha can't even reach me without tripping into a pit or getting gang raped by skeletons first. Incompetant jerk.
Uh, I was going somewhere with this. Oh yeah... the Rogue's Gallery is still a ways off, but since I'm eager to get my artwork published somewhere, I'm going to start contributing to the Side 7 archive. I would have preferred Yerf, but since they're not interested in my work (snif), Side 7 will have to do. So if you like my crummy artwork as much as you like my crummy web site, stop scratching those lobotomy stitches and head on over to Side 7... I should have something available for you in a couple of weeks.
9/9/02
Well, the Potato Festival just wrapped up yesterday, and it actually wasn't all that bad this year. They still didn't have an arcade (heck, I haven't seen one there in over a decade), but I did manage to pick up a couple of cool items, most notably that Super Marijuana Brothers T-shirt I've been raving about for the last month. It's been a real head turner so far... I've had people ask me to stand still so they can read it. That's when they whip out the handcuffs and police batons and- oh, wait, I wasn't supposed to mention that part. Heh heh!
I also found this article of clothing, which was pretty surprising. Most people barely remember SNK, much less one of their more obscure characters from the later Samurai Shodown games. I was tempted to take this jacket home with me, but it looked pretty shoddy, like something that would have melted off Homer Simpson's back while he reluctantly returned to his job at the nuclear power plant. Even at twenty dollars, I couldn't justify the price. I was, however, happy to take home a Ranma 1/2 video for a couple of bucks. There was a LOT of anime' at one of the festival booths, which was another shocker. Most of it was just pirated Dragonball Z episodes, probably taped straight from Cartoon Network, but there were nearly as many commercial releases, including a lot of films I've never watched or even knew existed. I'm kicking myself for not having bought Harmageddon... I've wondered about that film ever since I saw the footage of Bega's Battle in an old issue of Electronic Fun and Games.
So that was this year's Potato Festival, and that also marks the end of our hiatus. As promised earlier, you'll find Phil Estes' detailed opinions of Kabuki Warriors and Shikigami no Shiro on the review page. After that, stay tuned for an upcoming Bloody Roar blowout by yours truly... I've become addicted to the series thanks to its fast, straightforward gameplay and beautifully designed animal characters. I just need to scrape up the money to afford the third game, or at least rent it. It makes me wish I had a GameCube, because Bloody Roar: Primal Fury is a lot better than its drab Playstation 2 counterpart.
9/6/02
All right! I finally gots me a Super Marijuana Brothers T-shirt! I've been looking forward to getting one since last year's festival, when I couldn't afford them. I couldn't really afford one today, either, but I just had to indulge myself. It's not like there's a Potato Festival every day, y'know.
There's something else I'm forgetting, aren't I? Oh yeah! The Gameroom Blitz is finally off its hiatus horse, and the first new addition to the site is a comics page. From this point forward, you'll be able to access old Zoo Logic and Nature of the Beast strips directly, without having to stumble around blindly trying to find the links for them. In addition to that, there are profiles for the main characters in both comics, featuring previously unpublished (and pretty cool, might I add) artwork. I can't guarantee that all the links to the comics will work, but if some of them are faulty I'll try to have them fixed by Monday.
Monday's update should be a lot of fun... I'll not only include a new Nature of the Beast comic but several X-Box reviews, written by new staffer Phil Estes. I think you'll be surprised by what Phil found for the system. I'd tell you more, but it's more fun keep you guessing. We'll see you Monday, folks!
