Geek with Family

Paul Robertson’s Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 is finally finished and online. If you have any love for sprite animation  reminiscent of SNES and GBA 2D video games you must see this animation. PBCBSF2006 depicts two street teens bloodily battling their way through legions of zombies, IM groupies, monster caterpillars and alien octopodes to save their girlfriend from the maniacal Pirate Baby. Super awesome.

Thanks Joystiq (BoingBoing posted about this the other day but the link wouldn’t load).

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As a lifelong geek, I’ve never had much desire to exercise. As a kid I was always as skinny and weak as Neon Genesis Envangelion’s Shinji. My adult life, or at least the last ten years, I’ve struggled with weight loss. With the birth of Toddler_o_Geek (then Newborn_o_Geek), I stopped dieting and trying to exercise and really gained a lot of weight in a short amount of time. With weight related health problems looming, I must exercise for at least an half hour a day, doctor’s orders. After a few weeks of using a boring peddling machine while watching Invader Zim, R.O.D. OVA, or Blood+ at 5:30 AM, I ordered Red Octane’s DDR clone bundle, In the Groove, plus 2 Ignition 3.0 Dance Pads (one for me and one for Wife_o_Geek or Toddler_o_Geek, though she prefers a bamboo inlayed serving tray we keep on the ottoman, it’s more to her scale). I had to wait a few weeks for the bundle to show up (backordered), and then another week for the second dance pad. Now I could join all those obese elementary school kids I keep hearing about, and dance away from diabetes and heart disease.

Continue reading Red Octane’s In the Groove and Ignition 3.0 Dance Pads Weight Loss Plan Review

Popularity: 6% [?]

When you have a family, you constantly have to deal with differing sleep schedules. Toddle_o_Geek goes to bed by 8 PM, Wife_o_Geek passes out by 10 PM and I like to stay up till whenever. Those times when I stay up late or even when my wife is enjoying some other form of entertainment in another part of the house (usually Desperate Housewives) I can’t raise the home theater’s volume to a level where I can hear a Eastern Bloc commando sneaking up from my back left speaker. LTB Surround Headphone ads crept into my periphery vision while reading home entertainment magazines for the past few months. Curious, I checked out their website and immediately decided I couldn’t afford their nice wireless surround headphones. A few weeks ago, after reading one too many reviews involving wireless audio that mentioned hiss, I abandoned the wireless headphone idea likening it to leisurely riding a bicycle down an expressway, not pleasent. A scouring of a few online forums (they’re never wrong) led me back to LTB. Maybe I could afford some wired surround headphones.

Continue reading LTB 5.1 Personal Home Theater Headphones Review

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Toys! You like to pose their arms and legs, turn their heads, aim their guns and slash their swords. With more points of articulation than you can count, today’s toys are more appealing than the static, fixed pose statues that they are replacing. We are moving forward with toys making intelligent decisions regarding artful sculpting of details versus poseability.

Continue reading Playstation Killed the Anime Star - Metal Gear Solid Action Figures are More Appealing than the Next Gundam Reincarnation

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Oh no, six zombies, including two fat cops and a hooker, are backing Leon, the Raccoon Police Department’s newest and last member, into a corner of the under siege police station. Grabbing at his holster he draws his inadequate 9mm and pops off some shots into the incoming undead. Blood bursts and flows from the blooming chest wounds but the flesh-eating monsters are not falling down. Leon pulls off his last round and you press the O button for the inventory screen, no bullets left, only a knife and lighter at your disposal. Looks like it is time to hit the dreaded Reset button on the top of your Playstation. You have played this same scenario ten times now and you are losing hope that you can help Leon defeat the Umbrella hordes. Resident Evil 2 is earning its dusty grave under the TV along with all the other black CDs that you got stuck on and did not feel like starting over again. You could never earn your A license in Gran Turismo, defeat the enemy forces at "Golgorand Execution Site" in Final Fantasy Tactics or bring down Metal Gear Solid’s teleporting Ninja. Maybe I am just projecting. Continue reading Cheating’s Cheap Thrill - I Cannot Believe GameShark Erased My Gran Turismo Save

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Otakus’ troubles with members of the opposite sex have plagued them since the dawn of information. This stereotypical attribute overshadows any of the good traits associated with the obsessive hobby of collecting useless trivia and merchandise.

Continue reading Otaku’s Shame - Hiding Your Hobbies to Bag a Babe

Popularity: 11% [?]

A sensitive, clockwork knight; an innocent, prepubescent, heir to great weapons of unwieldy and unimaginable power, a hermit scientist/wizard, a washed up mercenary, and a busty thief all thrown together against the faceless shadows of evil and their monstrous henchmen. Battle Chasers, Joe Madureira’s jump into creator owned publishing, pulls all the most loved themes from Japanese RPGs into the pages of a comic. And did the comic industry ever need this genre explored! RPGs are so analogous to comics that comic creators should be kicking themselves in the pants for not thinking of this sooner. I can’t wait until the rogue’s gallery of Battle Chasers take their first ride in an airship, call upon spirits kept in precious gems embedded in weapons and armor to vanquish an enemy boss or grow tired of the endless random battles that they must endure just to build some experience and earn some cash. I anticipate that every Square or Capcom plotline and original inventive device will be exploited by the folks at Image. But who cares? Battle Chasers is still well worth the $2.50 simply because it is completely unoriginal, it gives the fans what they want–familiarity.

Continue reading A Plot So Common It’s Like Coming Home - Familiarity in RPGs

Popularity: 6% [?]

I have always sucked at video games. In fact, I have never beat one. On average I am extremely lucky to get to the second level of the game on the easy setting. FMV special ending cinemas are not a treat I’m destined to see any time in the near future.

Because of my fear of closure and death I always give up on the game in the middle of the very last level. Falling for all the traps in the last castle of Legend of Zelda, I give up. Unable to beat the queen-alienesque uber-boss in Phantasy Star, I give up. After 40+ hours of wasted Saturdays roleplaying my way through Final Fantasy III (VI), I give up on the last maze, not even coming close to teleporting to the boss. I can’t win, my fear overrides my desire or hope for a sense of accomplishment.

Continue reading I Beat a Video Game! - I Just Wasted 20 Hours of my Life!

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Sitting down on my couch with Playstation gamepad in hand is one of the least relaxing things I can think of. Videogames are far too frustrating and physicially challenging for my tired 25 yr old hands. They just leave me with a headache and a sore thumb. The challenge that most of today’s games present is one I can’t live up to. I was horrified when I read in a video game magazine’s preview of Final Fantasy VII that it would actually be harder to finish than the original Japanese version. That is the last thing I need, the best video game of all time, that I had been waiting for month after month is designed to kick my ass. I don’t have much time to play a 30 second bout in a fighting game, let alone a 50+ hour RPG. I really don’t have time to die and find my way back to that point. In anticipation of FFVII’s release and monumental challenge, I went to Asahiya Bookstore and bought a couple Japanese PSX magazines, a FFVII art book, and a FFVII strategy guide. I can’t read Japanese, I’m only in the first stages of halfheartedly learning the kana, so purchasing all this expensive foreign material is the most otaku geekout I could muster. To help me, I look at all the tiny screen shots, study the broken english titles for some clues, consider vandalizing my Playstation console with the free stickers included in the strategy guide, then I do all these over again, just to save some time and frustration when I’m playing the game. I start to sculpt Cloud Strife’s right leg for inspiration and in admiration of Squaresoft and after I step back to get a better perspective on the project I shelve the pathetic lump of clay. All this wasted time and money just so I don’t have to backtrack in a game where backtracking can be fun and beautiful. Rationalization: I am an otaku boyscout, always overly prepared with useless trivia about childish entertainment.

Continue reading I’m Afraid to Play FFVII - The Fantasy Wrecks the Reality

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