11/25/02

Soon, we'll enjoy a very special time that comes only once a year.  Nope, I'm not talking about a Gameroom Blitz update... I was referring to Thanksgiving.  It's one of my favorite holidays, but one that's quickly forgotten by most Americans.  I can't understand why, because Thanksgiving offers that rare combination of family and top-quality food that no other holiday can top, not even the mighty Christmas.  Thanksgiving brings everything from plump roast turkey to creamy, satisfying pumpkin pie to your table... while Christmas loads you up on a bunch of sweet nothings like candy canes and cookies.  If you're "lucky", and I do use that term loosely, you might get some Christmas ham, but there's no way a greasy chunk of pork can compare to moist slices of warm turkey breast, accented with delicately seasoned stuffing and zesty cranberry sauce.  I'm not knocking Christmas, folks... I like Christmas.  Christmas is good.  But Thanksgiving is good eatin', and that is as the old saying goes the fastest way to a man's heart.  It's also the fastest way to clog his arteries, but that's a risk I'm more than willing to take!

Speaking of potent edibles, I just served up some hot, fresh food for thought on the site.  You'll find new Game Boy Advance reviews, additions to the ColEx, and a new Zoo Logic comic... just the thing to start off your Thanksgiving week right.  If you need second helpings, I've got reviews of X-Men: Next Dimension and Rachet and Clank baking in the oven.  I'll be sure to let you know when they're done.

11/21/02

Normally, I don't update on Thursdays, but I just had to share this hilarious song with you.  It's the theme from Fightin' Spirit, a one-on-one fighter which somehow got lost on its way to the Neo-Geo and wound up on the Amiga computer instead.  Everything from the graphics to the characters right down to the fonts and loading screens will convince you that it's on the wrong system.  You also get the same high quality you'd expect from a Neo-Geo game, which is a relief after some of the other Amiga fighters I've played.  Elfmania and Mortal Kombat II are instant candidates for Fighter's Misery... Mortal Kombat II is especially ridiculous thanks to a typically poor conversion by Probe (it actually pales in comparison to the Genesis version!) and the option to play with a one button controller.  That's right, kids, just one button controls most of your character's moves.  The scary thing is that it's actually responsive and intuitive, but you can't help but feel that the game's functionality has been compromised when you could play it with an Atari 2600 joystick. 

It's not just Mortal Kombat II, either... a lot of Amiga software is like this.  You'd think that Commodore would have given the system a more complete joystick to complement its advanced hardware and superior gaming capabilities, but some Amiga users were still slumming with a single action button even after Genesis players had upgraded from their stock controllers to Sega's excellent six button arcade pad.  I simply can't understand this... if you're making a game machine that blows everything else on the market away, you might as well include a controller with at least four buttons so your customers can enjoy it.

I've got two things to mention before I go.  The first is that I'm changing my plans for Fighter's Misery... I'm not limiting myself to twenty games as I'd planned to do in the past.  Playing Mortal Kombat II on the Amiga and Survival Arts on MAME made me realize that there are just too many cheesy fighting games out there that simply can't be ignored.  Besides, limiting myself to my original twenty choices stifles my creativity.  It's been so long since I've tried Battle Monsters that I don't have much to say about it... but boy, I have plenty to say about some of the lame Street Fighter II clones I've played more recently.  Getting rid of the twenty game limit lets me review anything I want, whenever I want to, and that should make Fighter's Misery a lot more spontaneous and fun to read.

The second is that, yeah, I'm probably giving the editors of Penny Arcade more grief than they really deserve.  A couple of my readers pointed out that while Tycho and Gabe don't hesitate to bash people and websites that irritate them, their targets of ridicule are rarely as helpless as the victims of Something Awful's brutal (yet increasingly predictable) reviews.  Furthermore, Penny Arcade is still fun to read, which is a whole lot more than I can say for Something Awful... I swear, hatred and resentment have never been so dull. 

Having said all that, I still think my "Weenie Arcade" parodies are funny.  Hey, somebody has to.

11/18/02

You wouldn't know it from this installment of Zoo Logic, but I actually like Penny Arcade.  I'm just a little upset with the editors of this comic, who've let their egos grow to the size of mountains.  You'd think it would be bad enough that Penny Arcade has become so self-centered, but apparently, Tycho and Gabe are convinced that they need to make things even worse by attacking the editors of other web comics, using the most inflammatory rhetoric possible.  Maybe the editor of MegaTokyo is willing to shrug off the allegation that his comic is a "stroke-mag for pedophiles", but what about his hundreds of readers? 

I don't care for MegaTokyo myself... the artwork is great, but nobody needs a comic devoted to l33t speak.  I've read enough of that confusing crap to last me three lifetimes already.  However, if I did regularly read the comic, you'd better believe I'd be angry about Tycho's irresponsible blanket statement.  There really isn't much I could DO about it, though... except deflate his self-image a little with a comic of my own.  Maybe he and Gabe will find the humor in my parody, but if they don't, at least they'll better understand how the rest of us feel when they act like insensitive jerks.

Well, enough of that.  Let's talk about the future of The Gameroom Blitz.  What would you like to see on the site?  I've got several ideas but I can't possibly turn them all into features.  One thing I'm dead set on doing is adding new profiles for the staffers, but I'll need their cooperation to make that happen.  Everyone who writes or has written for The Gameroom Blitz in the past will receive a form in an E-mail over Thanksgiving weekend.  I'd like them to both fill out the form and supply a picture of themselves.  I'll use the photos to draw charicatures of the staffers, which will be placed in their profiles instead of the sprite art I've used in the past.  I'd like to have all this finished and added to the site on my birthday, the second of January, so if you guys could help me achieve this goal by filling out the forms when you get them, I would really appreciate it.

Everything else is still undecided.  I thought about adding film reviews to the site after watching the unlikely combination of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Jackass.  However, this is probably best left to the likes of The Flick Filosopher or even Toastyfrog... I do enjoy a good movie every once in a while, but I'm not what you'd call a film expert, and having little experience with the art and science of film making, I couldn't analyze them as thoroughly or as accurately as the editors of other sites.  I'm sure I could do a better job than that Ain't It Cool News guy, but let's face it, who couldn't?  He spent half his Blade II review talking about oral sex, for crying out loud!

Getting back to the topic of video games, I know I'll have to completely redesign The Re-View Mirror.  It's much too large to fit on two pages... I'll have to split this section of the site into multiple categories.  Here's my question, though:  what categories should I use?  Seperating the reviews by system seems obvious enough, but that would result in nearly a dozen pages, if not more.  I'd hate to force the readers to hop around that much just to check out the latest reviews.  I suppose I could go the Digital Press route and offer an index, perhaps with the five newest reviews at the top of the page.  I'll just need to whip up a layout that's appropriate for this site, yet fairly original and easy to use.

I'd also like to expand my coverage from game consoles to computers... I'm not talking about today's computers, but rather the older self-contained units produced by all the companies Intel and Microsoft ran out of business.  You know the ones I'm talking about... the TI 99/4A, the VIC20, and of course, the Amiga.  I'll probably throw in the X68000 for good measure.  It was never released in the United States, but man, you wouldn't believe the power of the hardware, or quality of the games.  Castlevania Chronicles was originally an X68K game before it was ported to the Playstation, and there's another Konami title, Gradius '90, which to this day remains exclusive to the X68000.

As you can see, I'm going to have a lot on my plate this Christmas.  In fact, I'll have so much work to do that I'll have to put the axe to other projects, starting with... yep, Rogue's Gallery.  My apologies to the three people who were actually looking forward to this site, but a web page devoted to my silly, juvenile drawings just isn't going to appeal to anyone else.  To be honest, even I'm not that excited about the idea anymore.  If it's any consolation, though, I'll post more artwork on this site, as well as the Kingdom 'Arts section of the Digital Press forum and Side 7, when (if?) they start accepting new contributors.

Now that I've attacked the topic from all sides (and batted around the wasp's nest I like to call Penny Arcade), I can go to bed.  Night, folks... I'll see you in about a week.

11/11/02

You've suspected it all along, but this update makes it official... I'm a pandering hypocrite.  I've always had reservations about the Grand Theft Auto series, even when it went from one of the worst games on the Dreamcast to one of the best on the Playstation 2.  The much publicized ability to lump two crimes into one by having your way with a hooker, then beating her to death for a quick refund, really disturbed me.  I wasn't the only one who felt this way, either.  The tasteless content in Grand Theft Auto 3 had earned it the nickname "Granny Sodomizer"; not from the likes of Donohue or Senator Joseph Lieberman, but from other gamers who found the game's content very unpleasant and even unnecessary.

One of my friends made a great point, though.  As nasty as Grand Theft Auto can be, it could be worse.  Some players (who've somehow managed to stay out of their local mental institutions) have asked DMA to include children in a future edition of Grand Theft Auto, and the designers have ignored and even spoken out against their demented pleas.  So fear not, citizens of Vice City... your children will be safe anywhere, at any time.  Unfortunately, the rest of the population still has plenty to worry about, at least until DMA starts making Grand Theft Deterrent games.

I'm sorry to say that I don't have much else to add to this update... after screaming at the last boss in Sly Cooper for thirty minutes, I developed a sore throat that was quickly followed by other cold symptoms.  I've got great ideas for both comics and articles, and I've finished the layout for Phil Estes' Robot Rodeo Roundup.  Maybe we'll see all of this and more on the site once I start feeling better and get caught up on my homework.

11/6/02

OK, nobody blink.  If you do, it'll be November, and I don't think anyone's ready for that.  So just resist the temptation... staple your eyelids open if necessary.  Excellent... just stay strong, people!

<BLINK!>

Aw, crap... didn't I tell you people not to blink?!  All right.  Well, I guess I'll just have to accept that the year is almost over.  On the plus side, this also means that a lot of great games are coming out very soon for the Game Boy Advance, and, er, all those other systems. 

Seriously, though.  I just picked up a copy of Nintendo's demo DVD and was blown away by not only the quality of the disc itself, but the many fine products available for the GameCube.  Some of the minigames in Mario Party 4 are breathtaking, and Metroid Prime is just as amazing, even if it doesn't quite fit the mold of the typical Metroid game.  Plus, the GameCube is getting the kind of third party support its predecessor lacked, making the system a lot more tempting than it was a year ago.

And now a little somethin'-somethin' for the classic gamers.  The Intellivision had a somewhat selective audience, much like the N64 five years ago or the XBox today.  However, if you just happen to be one of the system's fans, you'll want to grab yourself a copy of Nostalgia.  Joe Santulli of Digital Press recommended it some time ago, and he's right... it really is the best Intellivision emulator around.

I guess that's it.  Enjoy the new comic and reviews.