Thursday, September 25, 2008

Procrastination

Yes I'm doing it again I'm procrastinating. I do it a lot actually. I do have plans to start a weekly subject something of the kind so it would make sure that I at least have one update per week and the rest will be when I feel like it. Then when I really get into the routine of things and get my Mercenaries 2 addiction under control (52% done) I will start more and more and reach a higher number of updates per week; hopefully.

First idea is to get something like Treasure Thursday I like Thursday because I usually don't do anything Thursday .So Treasure Thursday will be a weekly feature looking at a media being game/book/movie ect... that's good but never managed to get a blimp on the radar screen or people just don't know anything about it. Basically a hidden gem or something shiny and important and non noticeable. Not a review because I really don't like giving reviews and slapping a score on something. Apart from that I really don't know what to do, seems like a good idea.


Now for some rambling to add something so this post won't be utterly useless. The reason I don't like giving a score is because sometimes people give a title a 10 the perfect number. Now this really bothers me because I believe nothing is perfect. I do this test with every game I play now, I run against a wall and see if my character will just continue running into the wall aimlessly. Since I saw Conker in Conker's Bad Fur Day run in a wall and pushing it because there is an actual factual wall, it opened my eyes a little wider. Such a small thing but now if a game just has their character continue running against a wall like it is some kind of infinite treadmill, it loses something for me, point is that for me it can't be a perfect game.

Now that my post isn't utterly useless more updates more frequently coming soon.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Awesome Anthropomorphic 90's Cartoons

The 90's is an era of awesomeness in radical proportions. Back then kids knew what they wanted and what they wanted was the most extreme thing that they could get their hands on. I was one of those kids wearing bright florescent T-shirts and equally bright shorts topping it off with my backwards ball cap and sunglasses. For some reason seems that all we wanted at the time was heroes fighting crime in the most radical way possible. I would of said in the most humanly possible but they aren't human because humans are lame (see the dilemma there?), but anthropomorphic animals are oh so tubular. As for every fad there is a source, I have yet to found the source for all the muscle bound heroes of the 80's but I am sure it has something to do with the rise of heavy metal. Now back onto the radical 90's, sure you must all know it all started out with The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were just a simple parody of every comic that was popular at the time (around 1984). The freak child of Frank Miller's Ronin , Daredevil and New Mutants (supposedly also Cerebus but I have no idea what is Cerebus). Ninja comes from Ronin the Mutant comes from X-Men : New Mutants and all I know they took from Daredevil is a parody of their masters Daredevil's master is called Stick while the Turtles Master is called Splinter. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles spawned everything from comics toys accessories ranging from bed spreads to shoes. Every kid probably saw them for the first time in their animated series where they would fight Krang and the Shredder using their teenaged ninja skills with the help of April O'Neil reporter/yellow jumpsuit fanatic. The Turtles also set the bar on the 90's stereotypes with the one serious leader, radical comic relief, badass that is too awesome to follow the rules and the smart guy that builds the machines . Now with fame comes imitators and parodies, ironically anything parodying the turtles is parodying a parody. Then the wave of anthropomorphic animal heroes come in different times in the 90's each more awesome then the next.

The first offender is Battletoad a video made by Rare back in 1992. All awkwardly named after a skin conditions Pimple, Zit, and Rash kicked ass all over the galaxy. These toads didn't have any ninja action but they could morph their bodies for a moment to kick ass, like hammer for hands, giant boot to kick even rams out of head to headbutt. Of course with the success of TMNT (Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles) someone wanted in on the cash cow, so DIC Entertainement tried their hand on making an animated series of Battletoad. Sadly the world was not ready for that kind of awesomeness so only the pilot was made, even more awesome it was written by Rare's musical composer David Wise. Here's the Battletoads Animated Series pilot courtesy of Youtube. I still can't believe it didn't catch on I mean a lines like "You won this battle toads!" or "Phycotronic!" and "Cosmorific".
Of course BIC wasn't going to stop at one failed attempt it wanted in the cash cow of TMNT. So they started the Street Sharks, I group of 4 kids turned into sharks Jab, Streex, Slammu and Ripster fought crime with their Shark power which includes being able to swim/rip trough pavevement. Don't remember much from this one apart how awesome it was. It did spawn a spinoff show from some other characters in it, called Extreme Dinosaurs. Now these guys are even more extreme than anything before even their fighting line is extreme "Lets Fossilize Them!". Once again I don't remember much from that series none of them even came close to being as popular or good as TMNT seems like they over shadowed everything at the time.

Even Hanna-Barbera jumped on the bandwagon, creating SWAT-Kats : The Radical Squadron. These guys are so awesome they don't need a group of four or even a trio, two is enough for these radical kats, heck they don't even follow rules of simple grammar by naming themselves "kats" with a "K". Seems tho that kids didn't find them radical enough, so they recharged them in little proportions firstly making them quit the squad and making them mercenaries, freelance agents of the sort, which is way more radical because these kats don't follow any rules. Something I noticed about most 90's cartoons they don't really have any story more of different fight for each episode.The last of the bunch (that I can remember) is Biker Mice from Mars, these guys at the time seemed like they could actually rival the TMNT popularity , the show consist of 3 mice from Mars injured in a war on their home planet, in consequence gives them awesome robotic limbs and cool shades. They escape to planet earth and fighting crime and evil-doers. How did they fight crime? Sure they had mouse power but their bike driving skills were way more useful and radical. These guys were big at the time for me around here you were either a Mice or Turtles fan. A war not as big as Mario vs Sonic, but memorable either way. Even with the revival of the new TMNT the Bikers got their own revival pretty much at the same time, but I think they flopped this time, because I haven't heard anything big about them apart from the single revival.

I could talk about Samurai Pizza Cats but nobody likes them.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

My first RPG experience.

Now from RPG I don't mean video games like Final Fantasy or Earthbound , I mean those real roleplaying games like the titan of them all Dungeons and Dragons! Which is the single Roleplaying game I played. So Dungeons and Dragons is my first roleplaying game I played and the only roleplaying game I played and I only played it once. As you can see I'm experienced in RPGs.

My first RPG wasn't a bad experience it wasn't an amazing experience either. I was just expecting way more from it. First I created my character a Dwarf of course, because Dwarfs are awesome, now for the class I picked Monk because monks also kick ass. The combination of a Dwarf not using any weapons is what intrigued always wanted to see a hammer less dwarf.. I'll explain my deeper liking for Dwarfs and Monks another time. Everyone seemed to of picked the stereotypes like a strong dumb character, a smart weak but magically endowed Witch and a valiant Paladin with high defense and healing. All seemed so cliché and cheesy, but I do love cheese.

The adventure I found pretty bland, maybe because I missed the first half hour because I needed to be somewhere at the time, but for my late arrival it did provide for this comical opening which was fun initiation to the game. Even so they briefed me on it nothing really amazing we had this book and we needed the collection for something magical and someones dad died, sister disappeared ect.... Seemed just thrown together. All fine tho, I never fuss about story line in a game as long as the gameplay is good. Once again I was expecting something a little more amazing, like you enter a bar have a great time drinking and singing songs of old elvish wars which are now part of kids storybooks then all of a sudden an undead army attacks! The few braves left join up with some other heroes on the quest to find the book of necronos, which leads them to a cave where the dark order of hundred years was formed and also the alter of the book of necronos... Once taken from the alter, arises an unknown horror. No time to think of black geometry the heroes leap into the abyss because anything would be better than facing the horrors that await them. All narrated by Christopher Lee, you know that kind of adventure.

One thing that bugged me was I didn't know if I was supposed to be full on character or just me doing what would be best or a mix of both. There were times where one of friend was always like "I know the answer but my character doesn't so I can't answer...!" I found it broke away from the mood of roleplaying. There was also another that Metagamed which is essentially playing like a pro using everything you know personally to win like for example not looking directly at a cockatrice (creature if looked at will turn you to stone.) It really was all fun and games nothing serious, we even had an intermission snowball fight outside which was random.

I would really like to play again someday, not necessarily Dungeons and Dragons but anything Roleplaying. All and all it was a fun day, not what I expected but fun nonetheless.

Reasoning

Now this is my first blog ever, I think that goes without saying, I don't think people around the internet has some kind of test blog before going into their "real" blog. I have another blog connected to this one it's for my university class, that's what pushed my to the ledge of making this one, surely someone from my class will find it and I will suffer from a little humiliations but go geek-hood I suppose. I was never really interested in blogs before, I did read Kotaku but I always found it to be a sort of newscast on gaming more than anything else. A blog I recently started following and looking into older post was Siskoid's Blog of Geekery, don't really know why I like it I don't even follow comics or Star Trek but still he makes it so accessible to anyone you feel like you know what he's talking about, even ending up knowing what he's talking about.

Now for the name of the blog I just wanted something simple so I took the idea from Futurama's Tales of Interest and slapped interest at the end. I might change it because it is pretty lame if I do get an idea I'll change it, or if you have any suggestions comment. Speaking of Futurama, if anyone has noticed but the tube system they use to transport people is called "You Tube" it think it is labeled somewhere on the first episode so if anyone has the DVD's a little tid-bit to check out. From my knowledge Futurama was made before the now popular Youtube. Now that's for interest, the name Nizbel if you recognized is from Chrono Trigger, I used this internet persona first in Runescape a MMORPG, then it followed me to everything that needed a user name. Nizbel from Chrono Trigger right there.


Now for a random fact on myself because you can always tell a lot by a single random fact. I dislike wearing jeans, yes I know everyone time I mention it people look at me like I'm a female dwarf, it's the first time they ever saw one and they didn't even think they existed. I realized this one day in 12th grade walking in the hall that EVERYONE had jeans apart from me. I never thought about what pants I wore at least it was comfortable. I do have a pair of jeans from conformity or something, I don't really wear them unless all my other pants are dirty.

The real stuff worth reading will be here soon.