12/25/2007 - Christmas, Guitars, and NI DAQ

Alright, I said that I wasn't going to have another blog entry until next year, but since I found this Christmas-themed gem of a video, I just had to share it today. Guitar Hero-mania is sweeping the nation (I should know...after just attending a local GH3 competition) and what would be the most appropriate way of incorporating Christmas into it? Christmas music modded into the game? Nah! A mall Santa playing the game? That would be interesting to see, but this is so much cooler:



Now THAT'S the ticket! You know, in addition to being technical geniuses, some nerds are the most creative people you'll ever meet, and this is the proof. I've seen Christmas lights synchronized to music before, but this really brings it to a new level. And missed notes lighting up the trashcan? Brilliant. This almost makes me wish I was working in a cubicle.

12/9/2007 - 200th Post!

Wow, 200 posts already... I can't say it's not difficult going through so many YouTube videos to pick out a few gems for me to put on this little blog here. I don't know how many views this page is really getting, but I don't really care. It's just been fun venting my thoughts, and I don't feel as guilty as I would if I were just to watch videos all day without being a little productive while doing so.

So I think I'll take a little break from blogging like I did after my 100th post. I'll definitely be back in the new year with a reloaded queue of videos. So I wish happy holidays to all my readers and I have the perfect video for such an occasion. It's from the great YouTube user "ItsJustSomeRandomGuy" who made those great Marvel/DC videos. He is a true fan of the genre and produced this cool holiday-themed skit featuring Batman as a natural Scrooge-like character. Let's just say it's easier to believe a man can fly than it is for Batman to believe in the holiday spirit...

12/7/2007 - Yoshi

Say what you want about Nintendo being geared to the younger crowd of games, you can't deny that they know how to handle their mascots. Mario, Link, Samus are universally known video gaming icons and first party titles with them as the main character are almost always classic games. Nintendo has also created an industry with some of the spin-off characters from these games. Who would have guessed that a fatter, uglier version of Mario called Wario would have his own successful line of games (or I should say microgames)?

Perhaps the most popular spin-off character from the Mario series is Yoshi, the cuddly dinosaur with a long tongue and lays eggs. Yoshi first appeared in the SNES launch title, Super Mario World, as a sidekick for Mario... perhaps his first sidekick other than his brother Luigi. In the game, Yoshi wasn't that much more than just another power-up. It would let you kill enemies by having them be swallowed with its tongue, but this can be considered as an attack power=up for Mario. If you were hit by an enemy Yoshi would run away, but you wouldn't lose a life. So, in effect, Yoshi was just another notch in your "life bar". This is not to say that Yoshi did not have an impact on Mario or Nintendo in general. It proved that cute and cuddly could still sell games, even in a market of an ever-changing and aging population.

Yoshi would go on to be the main character in many games. Yoshi's Cookie was a puzzle game for the NES, Yoshi's Safari was a light-gun game for the SNES, and Yoshi's Island is considered by some to be the best 2-D platforming game on any system. Not bad for a spin-off mascot. He's also the star of this brilliant parody video:

12/6/2007 - Battletoads Wind Tunnel

A lot of video games these days are what I call rental games... meaning that they are so short that they are only good for a rental. A lot of times this is because they've dumbed down the games in terms of difficulty in order to attract a broader audience. That may be fine, but that makes those kind of games unworthy of spending $60, high-production values or not.

Back in the day (I can't believe I'm using that phrase), games were harder. A lot harder. If you went back and played the original Super Mario Bros. right now, you'd probably be surprised at how hard it is because the controls aren't as tight as they are now and the platforming is less forgivable than the newer Mario games. I've already mentioned Contra which was so difficult, they had to put in a 30-man code.

Probably the best example of this phenomenon was the game Battletoads. This game came at the end of the NES life cycle and the title characters were probably created as a response to the tremendous popularity of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This game employed a great variety of gameplay. In fact, it put itself in pretty much every genre: beat-em-up, shoot-em-up, platforming, and vehicle play. The game wasn't very long with less than 20 stages, but it was hard. My God, was it hard.

Like Contra, though, it wasn't really cheap in its difficulty. The controls were pretty tight and you had a generous health bar for your Toad. Still, this game is a true test for your reflexes... particularly in the vehicle stages. Take this video for example. It's of the FIRST vehicle stage in the game and don't let this run-through fool you. It may look difficult already, but nothing would prepare you for actually playing it yourself. I remember my cousins and myself trying to complete this stage and I think it took the entire night into the next day. We would get further and further each time we played only to get our butts kicked after the checkpoint. And there was NO WAY we could ever accomplish what this video shows: completing it without dying once.



Again, I have to remind you that this is the first vehicle stage. The other ones were even harder than this. If you could complete this game without a Game Genie, you were a true hardcore gamer, and I would bow to you.

12/5/2007 - Australian Toilet Flushing - TRUTH EXPOSED!

I was wondering when there would be imitators to the Mythbusters. Sure, not everybody has access to explosives like they do, but there are some simple myths out there that people can try to bust or confirm. One such myth is the Coriolis effect where water swirls down a drain according to which hemisphere of the Earth you're in. This urban legend has been perpetuated by such shows as The Simpsons and the X-Files. So how could you test this myth? Well, travel to a country in the Southern Hemisphere of course! And that's what these two "toilet Mythbusters" did. They just happened to be in Australia and filmed their experiment. So is the myth busted or confirmed? You decide:

12/4/2007 - Animaniacs Geography Lesson (2 videos)

Geography was never one of my best subjects in school... I just never had an interest in gaining that "world experience". It would be fair to say that I'm a bit small-minded that way, especially with the stuff going on in the world now. What would have been nice is if they made the geography/social studies classes a bit more interesting by showing fun stuff like these two videos.




They come from the cartoon series Animaniacs, which I was a huge fan of when I was in high school. I wasn't the only one as it seemed all the geeks I hung out with also watched Animaniacs religiously. It was a show that took irreverence to a new level... it would parody popular movies, TV shows, other cartoons, and even itself at times. Warner Bros. was trying to appeal more to young adults and not just to little kids, and with Animaniacs they largely succeeded.

12/3/2007 - iPod Touch Commercial

I received my iPod Touch last week and I am in love with it. It's my first iPod and I can see why millions of people are into these music players by Apple (and why Apple's stock is soaring!). Even though I'm not a huge music lover or audiophile, I can appreciate having all my music in my pocket instead of swapping dozens of CDs in portable CD players. Actually, what I'm using the most of on the Touch is the Safari web browser. It's just so useful to whip out the iPod to check a webpage or two for the information you need, instead of booting up the old desktop or even laptop computer. Again, with the SDK coming out in February, this thing will really be a full-fledged mobile computer with almost limitless possibilities.

I'm sure most of you have seen the iPod Touch commercial that's hitting the airwaves for the past month. What you might not know is that commercial is based on a YouTube video created by an Apple fan by the name of Nick Haley. Apple loved his commercial so much that they flew him out to the coast to help them re-make the commercial for the national airwaves. This, of course, is another example of the power of YouTube. While I think the commercial is alright, I really, REALLY wish they had used another song choice... like the one shown in this video:



Yes, that's right... it's "The Touch" by Stan Bush. Now, only Transformers nerds like myself would fully appreciate the song choice, but I do think it fits the product being sold.

12/2/2007 - Giving Him The Business!

I think referees for the major sports have too much power. Everything is so subjective and one referee making a bad call can affect the outcome of the entire game. I'm not saying that there should be some kind of robot watching the game or that they should install infrared sensors for the boundary lines. I just think they can adjust the existing rules to make it so that a referee would have less of a possibility of making a bad call. They should maybe make it so that two out of three referees have to agree on a call. Or maybe they could bench a ref for the quarter after being overturned by instant replay. Okay, that may be harsh, but check out this next referee's call and tell me what the penalty was for...

12/1/2007 - LHB | Cartoon/Videogame Show | 2004

So were the members of the Cal band who performed that brilliant halftime show plagiarists? I don't know, but here is the University of Texas Longhorn Band performing a very similar halftime show based not only on video games, but Saturday morning cartoons as well. This was performed three years before the Cal band did their show, though, and I can confidently say that Cal learned a thing or two from this performance and generally improved over the LHB. I think that the theme of this performance does serve to prove the point of why Saturday morning cartoons died. When video games exploded in popularity in the mid-90's, kids were no longer satisfied by the animated stories they were watching... instead they controlled their digital avatars to create their own adventures, breaking through the confines imposed by cartoon scriptwriters.

11/30/2007 - Wacky Potato Chip Commercial

I'm sure you've seen some pretty strange commercials before... some that has almost nothing to do with the product that is being advertised. But nothing, and I mean nothing, will prepare you for this next video. This comes from our friends in Japan, who I have mentioned before as having some weird cultural phenomena that we here in the West just don't get. Even with those cultural differences, however, I can't imagine how they perceive this commercial as being even close to mainstream. Okay, enough with the incredulous commentary... you watch for yourself, and you just have to say... W.T.F.?!

11/29/2007 - AFI 100 greatest movie quotes

As one of the American Film Institute's compilations, their top 100 movie quotes is probably the most fun. These are the most repeated quotes from the past century of movies and most with good reason. Some of the ones I really like, though, must be viewed in the context of the movie. Most notably, the quote from Planet of the Apes ("Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!") certainly sounds exclamatory and unique. But if you watched the movie up to the point where Charlton Heston says those words, you'll know that it was all set up to climax at that point, making it a real hurrah moment for the audience. I could easily imagine the movie theater erupting in applause at that time. It's the same thing for when Arnold says "I'll be back" in the first Terminator... it's a great sound bite for sure, given his evil Terminator monotone voice and all. However, if saw what he does next after he says it, you'll know it was a totally badass line (if you haven't watched it, I'm not going to ruin it for you).



I'm glad that a lot of the badass movie quotes made it into this list, especially those by Clint Eastwood. But I'm disappointed that they didn't have the "Yipee Ki-Yay, Motherf***er" line from all the Die Hard movies. I guess they had the censors in mind, which is too bad. It's also the reason why I didn't watch the fourth Die Hard in the theaters. By making it PG-13, they had to cut off John McClane's famous line and toned down the violence, which is pretty much sacrilege in the tradition of the Die Hard movies. I'm happy they at least put it back in for the unrated DVD, though.

11/28/2007 - Don't Give Up On Vista Ad

Now this is rich... Apple is not-to-humbly crowing about the fact that some computer manufacturers are "downgrading" to XP instead of installing Vista on their new hardware because of Vista's incompatibility issues, its sluggishness, and its higher expense. If you've seen the new Apple ads with the Mac guy and the PC guy, you'll see that the PC guy is not too happy about this downgrading trend and is trying to persuade those who will listen to not give up on Vista. The funniest of these ads is actually not on TV. A few days ago, Apple started a viral marketing campaign on some tech websites with the Mac and PC guys in an online Flash advertisement. What's really clever is how the ad was designed on the webpage, as you'll see in this video:



What's kind of ironic is that the new Apple operating system, Leopard, shares a few problems with its direct competitor, Vista. My main beef with Leopard is that you really need the newest hardware to take advantage of all of its features. My Powerbook is running perfectly fine with Tiger and I don't see any compelling features that I would need in Leopard.

What is really exciting to me, though, are these new mobile computing platforms in the form of the iPhone/iPod Touch OS and the new Google Android mobile operating system. These new operating systems really allow developers to "start over" with software that has no bloat (yet), allowing for applications that run fast, are efficient, and are a truly new experience because they have to adapt to a new user interface in a mobile device. Leopard and Vista may be the big boys on the desktop and laptop computers, but Web 2.0 and mobile apps are the future, in my opinion.

11/27/2007 - Bad game box art

Everyone knows you shouldn't judge a book by its cover (or at least that's what they were supposed to teach you in grade school, right?), but the same applies to video games and their box art. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the original Mega Man. I mean, just look at it:



How could anyone at that time imagine that it was one of the best 8-bit games of all time by what's on the box art. Mind you that this was before the internet where reviews of video games weren't as widely available. In order for Mega Man to gain in popularity as it did, people would have to look past that ugly piece of manure and spread the word that it was a good game. In my case, I played Mega Man 2 first and became so enamored of it that I went ahead and bought the original. While it wasn't as good as the sequel, it's quality certainly exceeds that of the art on the box.

Here's a compilation of more bad video game box art. I'm sure there are some gems in there, but my thinking is that most of them would qualify for a review by the Angry Video Game Nerd.

11/25/2007 - Guitar Hero 3 Through the Fire and Flames XPERT!

Alright, I've dumped on Guitar Hero before because I thought that playing the game isn't an exact analogue to playing on an actual guitar. I still feel that a game like this should be a learning facility for playing an instrument, but this video at least gives me an appreciation for the good Guitar Hero players out there. Apparently, this is the hardest song/level in the game and after watching it, I just cannot comprehend how anybody besides the original guitarist of the song would be able to keep up with the pace. I mean, it just looks physically impossible to match, note for note, the pattern displayed on the screen to the strumming of the controller/guitar. The player here is called "Conrad the Great", and I must say that he deserves that nickname.



On a side note, I'm not really into hard rock songs, but this one actually grew on me. So much so that "Through the Fire and Flames" will be the first song I'll rock to on my new iPod Touch!

11/24/2007 - POOL TRICKS

You gotta have some admiration for pool trick shot experts. Their dedication to the "sport" can lead to some pretty amazing sights that leave you wondering if physics were somehow defied in the process of hitting those balls in the pockets. It always amazes me to see the high-english shots that make the ball curve and sometimes go backwards. Some trick shots are so elaborate that they rival even the most complicated Rube Goldberg contraptions. Of course, when trick shots go wrong, they're quite underwhelming. But that's why they invented video editing...

11/23/2007 - Cal Band- Video Game Show 2007

I don't know how many people in the audience of this next video are video gamers, but I hope they all appreciate what the Cal band has performed here. This video has definitely gone to the top of the heap of my favorites simply because it tickles all of my fancies as a retro gamer and video game music lover. It must have taken the Cal band months and months to put this little halftime show together, but it was well worth it. If the halftime show for the Superbowl was like this, I would skip my normal bathroom break.



It's a little hard to see because it's upside down, but the patterns are from the games Pong, Tetris, Mortal Kombat (complete with the MK dragon!!!), Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., and Super Mario World. To think, if it weren't for YouTube, the Cal band members would never have gotten their 15 minutes of fame which they wholeheartedly deserve.

11/22/2007 - Tetris Skits

You know a video game has invaded the consciousness of the masses when parodies of it are presented in popular cartoons. Tetris is probably the best example because it's one of those games that, if you get addicted to it, will be an experience that will last with you and even haunt your dreams. There's just something about falling geometrical shapes that brainwashes even the strongest of minds.

11/21/2007 - Past Favorite: Dragon's Lair

I state in my profile that I got addicted to YouTube after watching the videos of the Angry Video Game Nerd. What really got the ball rolling was this video review of the game Dragon's Lair for the NES. It was made by a prolific video blogger (who calls himself Jedite) at a time when video game reviews on YouTube exploded in popularity. Jedite now produces a regular feature on his YouTube page called "Q & A" where he answers any question you pose to him about video games. He is such a dedicated gamer that these Q & A's are almost always spot-on factually, and they're entertaining as well... for some reason it's fun to watch a geek rant about his favorite subject.

Jedite's most popular video, however, remains this one, and it's easy to see why. Dragon's Lair for the NES is notorious for it's frustrating difficulty -- and it's not a kind of difficulty that is rewarding like Contra. Jedite spends the entirety of this nearly 5-minute video trying to get past the first level. Needless to say he does not make it, but his attempts and profanity-laced reaction is worth the price of admission. When I first watched this video, I laughed so hard that I had stomach cramps the next day.



Because of the popularity of this video, numerous requests have been made to James Rolfe for his take on the NES game. Just yesterday, The Angry Video Game Nerd finally released his review of Dragon's Lair. It has truly come full circle.

11/19/2007 - Halo 3: Star Wars

The more I watch the Star Wars prequels now, the more I think that they are not going to get better with age. I don't know... there something about trying to shoehorn in a backstory which has been told already seems redundant to me. I know that they were trying to humanize and flesh out the character of Darth Vader, but all it does it makes the character somewhat smaller in stature.

They made the same mistake with Michael Myers in the recent Halloween remake. Yes, it was necessary to see him develop his homicidal mania as a kid, but not necessarily the root cause of it. It's much scarier to think that Michael Myers was born a killer, rather than being made a killer only because of a bad home life.

The only movie that bucked this trend was The Godfather: Part II, where we see how Marlon Brando's character in the original movie was made to become The Godfather. In the prequel portions of Part II, they pretty much showed Vito Corleone as being badass from the start. He didn't kill the Blackhand to become Godfather out of revenge or out of desperation. He just didn't want to be extorted and disrespected.

Where was I? Oh, Star Wars... yeah. Well, my rant and general distaste for the prequels should dissuade you from enjoying this next parody of Episode III. They basically took a couple of scenes from that movie and replaced the actors with Halo 3 characters. The way they've done it is very seamless and it's overall very nicely done.

11/18/2007 - "I have 3, PS3's"

When watching this next video, you have to place yourself in last year's gaming environment... when the PS3 was launched with great fanfare and wait lists and inflated eBay prices. This was only a week before the Wii took the world by storm and put the PS3 to shame. For that brief moment in time, the PS3 was king of the hill, receiving insane press attention and fooling scalpers into believing that people would pay $600 for a gaming system. With that in mind, it would seem like anyone with three PS3's would be considered an eccentric in the sense of being extravagant. In the reality of today's gaming market, however, a person owning three PS3's would probably be considered an ignoramus. Still, it's a funny video that's worth recommending.

11/17/2007 - Parody of Super Mario Kart

When done right, stop-motion video is undeniably cool. You can do so much with it as to fool the audience into witnessing something unnatural merely by removing the real-time nature of video. An easy example is making yourself "levitate" by jumping repeatedly and taking consecutive pictures of yourself when you're in mid-air. The result may be choppy, and it may take a LONG time, but it's how special effects are done. This stop-motion video of a group of college buddies parodying Super Mario Kart has been making the rounds on the gaming sites, and it's easy to see why. If you've played Super Mario Kart, you'll recognize all the material... the mushrooms, bananas, and even the red turtle shells. My favorite part has to be when the star is collected and the invincibility effect is simulated by wearing different colored t-shirts in each frame. It must have been a lot of work, but it was worth it!

11/16/2007 - Cowbell Hero

Okay, so in order to fully appreciate this next video, you have to be familiar with two pop culture references. The first is the Will Ferrell/Christopher Walken "cowbell" skit whose video I've featured here before. The second is the video game, "Guitar Hero", which is a very popular rhythm game similar to Dance Dance Revolution, but uses a guitar instead of a dance mat. Frankly, I don't understand all the hoopla regarding Guitar Hero, mainly because being good at the game doesn't necessarily prepare you for actual guitar playing. On the other hand, if the instrument was a cowbell, this video game parody might actually get you into the Blue Oyster Cult!

11/15/2007 - GTA: Anime Style

So far we've seen Grand Theft Auto mods pay tribute to Superman and Back to the Future. There are plenty of other mods out there, but I think this may be the weirdest. It's based on the Lucky Star anime, I believe, and it has Pikachu of Pokemon fame as substitutes for the regular police officers. Pikachus being shot dead with blood coming out if them is a visceral sight that actually seems more violent than when regular people are shot. And when the Lucky Star girls are laughing after they shoot them... just creepy. The addition of the Big Blue theme of F-Zero as a radio selection is nice, though.

11/13/2007 - Magic Baseball Bat

Now here's something that you will never see again. It looks so impossible that it's easy to believe that it's a fake. All it is, however, is a thrown baseball bat that ends up balancing itself on the floor. I couldn't even tell you what are the odds of something like that happening. I could probably say that you'd have to attempt it 24 hours a day in order for it to happen sometime in your lifetime. But here it is... in living color and on video. And that's the beauty of YouTube, isn't it?

11/12/2007 - Contra Trailer

Contra 4 comes out this week for the Nintendo DS, and this is the one game for the system that makes me want to buy the system just for the game. Why? Well, it's because Contra III for the SNES was one of the greatest games ever! Contra exists for one reason: to kick your butt and make you like it. It's intentionally hard, but not impossibly so. Even though it may be the most unrealistic game in the world by having one guy (or two, if you have a second player) taking out an entire alien horde, it does have one all-too-realistic element to it: ONE HIT AND YOU'RE DEAD. That's right, no health bar, or hearts to give you extra energy. One bullet from even the weakest enemy will put you down... well, it takes away one of your lives at least. And that's why so many people resort to the most famous code in video gaming history: the Konami code. UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START. It gives you thirty lives in the original Contra for the NES and is so well-known that it's printed on T-Shirts.

To celebrate the release of Contra 4, I have to feature this video from the TeamAwesome crew, the same people who made that ultra-cool Punch Out movie trailer for the Nintendo video contest. This "trailer" is of Contra, of course, and it pays homage to the movies of which Contra is based on: Aliens, Predator, Commando, and Rambo. Yes, it was a time when action movie stars were muscle-bound actors, not the sensitive leading men of today aided by stunt men and computer graphics. Those movies definitely hold a special place in my heart, and so does Contra for the same reasons.



By the way, TeamAwesome... you guys rock! Hope to see more of your stuff in the future!

11/11/2007 - SF2 - Dancer vs. Baby

This video wins in the Most Creative Use of Street Fighter II Music category. Not to mention sound effects. Don't worry, folks... the baby gets up fine right after the end of the video.

11/10/2007 - Vista Oops

We all saw previously how a Microsoft product demonstration can go wrong when the product just stops working. Now here comes a Microsoft product demonstration where the product works, but works poorly. Voice recognition software has always been dodgy at best. Even after months of training the product to recognize your voice and speech pattern, there is always going to be the occasional hiccup where it confuses words that sound alike. It's kinda like that episode of Seinfeld with the lipreader. I guess it could be easy to confuse "sleep" and "sweep", but what we see in this demonstration defies explanation:



After watching these buggy Windows systems, I just hope that the air traffic control system in this country isn't run by Microsoft products.

11/9/2007 - Mega64: Super Mario Bros. 3

I think there really might be something to the theory that the creators of the Super Mario Bros. games were on something when they were making the games. When you have a mushroom as a power-up item, that's a pretty clear sign. Super Mario Bros. 3 gives us another good example, Kuribo's shoe. What is Kuribo's shoe? It's some kind of man-sized shoe that Mario or Luigi climb into and use it to stomp on enemies that they couldn't normally stomp on (spiny-shells, for example) and it gives them the ability to traverse on hazardous grounds. Oh, and the "shoe" has a wind-up control on the back for some reason.

Now, how ridiculous is this concept in real life? Well, they boys of Mega64 shows us:

11/7/2007 - Nerd Trapped in Balloon

We nerds get a bad rap sometimes. Actually, make that most of the time. It's not that we're anti-social. It's just that expending any more energy than is necessary just to be "part of the group" is somewhat illogical. I mean, we serve our part in society by thinking out of the box, being innovative and inventive, and pursuing our interests with disregard to social norms. We're not necessarily smarter than the rest of the population, but I think we give higher priority to our intellectual pursuits than most others. We come in all varieties. For a good example, go watch the movie "Revenge of the Nerds". I think it's one of our good qualities, actually. On the other hand, some nerds do give the rest of us a bad name. Especially when they film their exploits for everybody to see:

11/6/2007 - Street Blaster V Turbo 20

We saw what happened when Double Dragon was ported over to the Atari 2600. Despite its, um, primitive nature, it still looked playable and somewhat faithful to its source material. Now what happens when you try to go from a 32-bit game to an 8-bit system? And not just any 32-bit game... it's Street Fighter II, baby. To my knowledge, the only official 8-bit port of Street Fighter II by Capcom is the one for the original Game Boy. The rest, including this little gem, are pirated games.



Let's try to review this, AVGN-style (without the swear-words, of course). First of all, what's with the name change? Street Blaster V Turbo 20? I know they were trying to avoid lawsuits by Capcom, but how did they come up with "Street Blaster"? Is there a construction worker character in the game that blasts streets or something? And is this the fifth Street Blaster game, or the 20th? Or it could be a cumulative title, making it the 20th version of Street Blaster V Turbo, which itself is the faster version of Street Blaster V, which is the fifth version of Street Blaster, making it the overall 26th version of Street Blaster (unless there were Championship Editions in between).

Now look at the character select screen:

I can recognize the first 10 fighters... they look like most of the Street Fighter gang. But what about the next 10? Is that Evil Ryu? Is Blanka in a hockey mask? These look like the Bizarro versions of the Street Fighter characters? Why was this even necessary? I mean, in the original Street Fighter II, you could only choose from eight World Warriors. It's like the makers of this piece of junk were trying to give you a bonus by allowing you to choose alternate versions of the characters.

Then, when Guile and Chun-Li are chosen, the VS screen shows Blanka and Dhalsim. What the heck happened? Did they not even test this game before releasing it? Then we get to the game. Okay, it looks decent enough. But why is Chun-Li just doing her Spinning Bird Kick? All Guile has to do is Sonic Booms and she's down for the count. Speaking of which, why does her body bounce three times when falling to the ground? Boy does that get annoying fast.

So after Guile wins, Blanka says "Ha Ha, Nice Fight, Go Next Fight!" It may not be as bad as "All Your Base Belong to Us", but it's close. Then you have a Guile vs. Zangief screen, where it's Blanka instead of Guile again, and Zangief is having some kind of complexion problem:

Now that's just disturbing.

After the Guile/Zangief fight, the next opponent is Ryu, but the VS. screen shows E. Honda. Whatever. The thing is, the music for Ryu's stage is E. Honda's music as well. Oh well, they're both from Japan. After Ryu is Chun-Li again? Oh wait, it's the Bizarro Chun-Li, and the name on the HUD says Maki. Oh boy is this game crap, or what?

I do have to say that after looking at this game, I think that Capcom could have made an NES port of Street Fighter II and it probably would have been decent. I mean, the NES was certainly capable of displaying the fighter sprites in a recognizable way, and it had enough horsepower to emulate the fighting gameplay engine to a degree. Surely, if they could churn out mediocre Mega Man sequels at the end of the NES's lifecycle, they could have made room for a guaranteed success of a SF2 translation. And they could have save the rest of the world from this awful piece of garbage.

11/4/2007 - Crazy Indian Video

I now know why they use the term "culture shock". Every time I watch one of these Indian music videos, I'm speechless. What's weird is that they do try to incorporate some aspects of American pop culture. The problem is that they stuff they copy from us is over twenty years old! I mean, Michael Jackson and George Michael might have been cool back in the day, but now they are more known for their perversity. The Indian Thriller video I highlighted before might have been a nice little homage, but this one is just plain strange. What is awesome about it though is not the video itself, but the subtitles that go along with it. YouTube user "buffalax" has watch the video (many, many times, I'm sure) and provided subtitles that are not a language translation, but what the lyrics sound like using English words. The result is quite hilarious:

11/3/2007 - Cool Computer Program

Sometimes I wonder if I missed my calling and blew the chance at learn or work at a place like MIT. Don't get me wrong... I love my sysadmin job and I think I'm pretty good at troubleshooting computers. But when I see cool stuff like this next video, it makes the work I do look like child's play. This whiteboarding technology is like nothing I've ever seen. It looks like a combination of a projection display with either a touch-sensitive background or perhaps a motion-tracking system to follow the pen. There's some kind of hand-writing recognition feature to autocomplete the shapes and figures drawn. A built-in "dictionary" of physics and engineering concepts rounds out the software featureset. The integration of all these features is phenomenal. It may be something that would be very useful in physics simulation or as a design tool. But face it, you'd probably spend hours making to carts crash into each other.

11/2/2007 - The Internet Stars Are Viral

Let's face it... YouTube would be nothing if it weren't for viral videos. These are the videos that are most linked to, most viewed, and most featured in the "mainstream media". I've featured many of these viral videos on this blog, but have left out many others. I can see why some of these videos became blockbusters, but this blog is about the videos that tickle my fancy or have some deeper meaning to me that I can share. For example, the OK Go and History of Dance videos show very talented displays of dancing, but I'm just not into dancing videos too much. Now, you may ask how does that differ from the Hare Hare Yukai videos. Well, those videos are mainly about appreciating the animation of the dance, rather than the dance itself.

I'm sure I'll feature more viral videos in the future, but if you want to see something about all the videos I missed, you can't do better than this one. Destined to become a viral video itself, it is a music video set to the tune of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" that lists out in quick fashion most of the viral videos featured on YouTube and elsewhere in the past couple of years. I really wish it mentioned the Angry Video Game Nerd or the Hare Hare Yukai Dance, though.

11/1/2007 - Darth Vader being a smartass

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! This video is so cleverly edited that you'll never watch this scene of The Empire Strikes Back the same way again:



The Dark Side has never been so funny.

10/30/2007 - Castlevania - Rondo of Blood Intro

Happy Halloween, everyone! It's my favorite "holiday" for so many reasons. Of course there's the costumes, the candy, and the horror movies, but it's especially cool when I lived in Las Vegas. Halloween usually marks the time when the weather cools noticeably, and after a summer of 100-degree-plus days, it is such a relief. Also, October 31st happens to be Nevada Day, celebrated with a day off from school! Thus, every kid in Nevada has a whole day to prepare for trick-or-treating. How cool is that?

So what's a cool video to celebrate Halloween with? How about one featuring a Halloween-themed video game? And what better than a Castlevania game? A lot of people say that Rondo of Blood was the best Castlevania game. I don't know about that, but it's intro is certainly awesome:



That certainly makes me want to play it. I have heard that it is one of the most difficult Castlevania games out there though. That's saying a lot, because the only Castlevania game I've been able to beat was Super Castlevania for the SNES (a truly great game, BTW), and that was considered one of the EASIEST games in the series! So if Rondo of Blood is on the other end of the difficulty spectrum, then it must really be scary.

10/28/2007 - Superman - The Helicopter Sequence

Despite all these new comic book movies out there using the latest and greatest special effects, Superman (1978) still remains a favorite of mine. All the praise in the world has been heaped onto Christopher Reeve's performance as Clark Kent/Superman and it is all deserved. Chris is the definitive Superman and no one else has come close. The way he carries himself in flight is a special effect all by itself. Take, for example, the second movie where the Kryptonian villains also have his powers of flight. The actors in those roles did the best they could, but they all seemed stiff and unnatural in flight. If you have the Superman Returns special edition DVD, you saw how Brandon Routh had to train underwater for his flight sequences. And yet, he still wasn't able to match Chris Reeve's grace and ability in the air.

Some have complained about his bumbling as Clark Kent, but I've always liked that performance. He really does act like two completely different people, and made his "disguise" feasible. The way he was able to just modulate his voice, stand with a different posture, and change his mannerisms really did give him an alternate personality that nobody would confuse with Superman unless you looked closely enough.

My favorite part of the movie has to be the helicopter sequence. I watched that so many times in my childhood and it still excites me today. While I don't feel the peril of the situation as I did before, I appreciate it for its technical prowess and as the greatest entrance of a superhero ever. As for the spectacular music, you can't do better than John Williams. Screw Star Wars, I think this was his best work in a movie. Just this sequence proves it. The music builds, and builds, and hits the high note during the famous shirt rip. And I just love how Clark's face is off-camera during the S-insignia reveal. The director Richard Donner knows that this moment was bigger than the actor, that it was bigger than the movie itself. This was about presenting a legend that future generations will experience.

10/27/2007 - Angry German Kid

Turn the volume down on your computer for this one, folks. If Germans were worried that Hitler would give them a bad name, I think they should be even more worried about this kid. Every time I watch this, I'm speechless. Being a computer tech, I cringe when I see what he does to his keyboard. I don't know if this was all an act, but even if it was, I can't imagine that the kid didn't strain himself making the video:



I do like his little song when the game is about to start.

10/26/2007 - Bricked but Useful

Apple is getting so big right now, that they don't seem like the underdog anymore. Their stock is at an all time high and today marked the launch of their newest operating system, Leopard. There may have been lines for Windows Vista, but I doubt that they had such enthusiasm and hipness as the lines for Leopard.

With the explosive growth of Apple, though, have come some growing pains. I mean, you know you're huge when you get monopoly lawsuits left and right. This was something that Microsoft faced all the time a few years ago, and now it's hitting Apple. The thing is, some of these complaints actually have a bit of merit. Apple's iPod has such a stranglehold on the market, that Apple can really get away with charging a premium on them. Just research what their profit margin is on each iPod, and you'll see what I mean.

What's really bad, though, is that Apple has begun to act like Microsoft too. For example, take the new iPod Touch... at first blush, it does seem to be the product for those who wanted an iPhone without the phone. Unfortunately, they got rid of so many of the software applications from the iPhone that you could not use it as a PDA. What's frustrating about this is that some of these apps that were taken out had nothing to do with the phone or camera hardware of the iPhone. Apple just took them out so that they'd have an incentive for people to buy the iPhone instead of the Touch. This is exactly what Microsoft did with their gazillion versions of Vista!

Also, what disappointed a lot of people recently is their recent firmware upgrade with the iPhone. If you made certain changes to your iPhone such as adding applications or unlocking it for other cellphone carriers, the firmware upgrade would "brick" the iPhone (disable its functionality altogether, making as useful as a brick). Now, Apple probably reserved the right to do this in their EULA, but I think I would be pretty mad if I spent all that money on a device that didn't work anymore because of a firmware modification.

Well, the guy in this next video didn't just get mad. He made a video parody of the situation:

10/25/2007 - Conan - fire alarm

I don't get NBC. You'd think that they would want to advertise it shows as effectively as possible. They had a good thing going with YouTube, the most popular video distribution site on the internet. They would provide clips of content to the site that were longer than a 30-second commercial, but not give away the full show. And that's fine... I mean you have expect them to want to make money. That's what iTunes was for. $1.99 a show may be a little much when you consider that a DVD of the season would cost less in the end... but it still proved to be a good strategy. The Office only became popular after people bought episodes on iTunes and began a word-of-mouth campaign. And showing some GOOD SNL clips would coax some people into watching the show when it's live.

This all seemed like the perfect setup for NBC. But I guess it was too perfect for them. They decided to flush it all down the toilet and start up their own video site called Hulu. WTF? In the process of doing so, they took down all their content on YouTube. That's right, no more "D--- in a Box". Not even trailers of their shows. Oh well... who said corporate executives were SMART?

Well, not only has NBC taken down their channel, but their filing DCMA complaints against anybody else who would post NBC show clips on YouTube. Well, I just want to get this clip out there before it gets the axe. It's of a recent Conan O'Brien show where he was supposed to begin a skit after the commercial, but gets interrupted by a fire alarm. If the sign of a good comedian is how well he/she improvises, then Conan is REALLY GOOD:

10/24/2007 - No Reflection Practical Joke

Normally, I don't like to watch shows purely showing practical jokes like the stuff they do on Candid Camera. Something about watching others getting made fun of behind their back just turns me off. I don't know... maybe it's from personal experience or something. However, there is something so very clever about this particular practical joke that made me smile:



As you can see, perfect strangers are led to believe that they are not casting a reflection, despite seeing the supermodel next to them casting her own "reflection". This is similar to how a certain special effect was pulled off in the Special Edition of Terminator 2: Judgment Day where you see Linda Hamilton drill into Arnold Schwarzenegger's skull to remove his processor. Not many people know, but Linda Hamilton has an identical twin sister. And now that you know, you can see how that practical joke was done and how this special effect was done:

10/23/2007 - leroy jenkins

This video has been out for a while now, but it holds new meaning to me now that I'm into online multiplayer gaming. For a shooter like Warhawk, teamwork is important, especially in the Capture the Flag mode. You can go Rambo on the other team, but more likely than not, you'll get your butt handed to you. If you are able to coordinate well with your teammates (with the included BlueTooth headset), then you can tell them hash out a strategy in terms of vehicle transport, air support, base defense, etc.

In MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games), communication is even more necessary http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifbecause each player has different abilities and strengths. The biggest MMORPG out there is World of Warcraft, and while I personally haven't played it, I can see its appeal in providing sort of an alternate world where you really are "role playing" with a lot of other people online. Unfortunately, like the real world, one bad apple can ruin the whole bunch:



You gotta love how detailed the invasion plan is down to the calculation of probability of success. It makes the calamity of Leeroy's impetuousness all the more hilarious. For greater context of this video, check out Wikipedia's writeup of it.

10/21/2007 - all about Steve - Boom!

I have never seen a more persuasive presenter/showman than Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, Inc. If you've ever seen one of his keynotes, you know what I mean. Don't get me wrong... Apple products are great and practically sell themselves. But if anybody can make a PowerPoint... er, Keynote presentation exciting, it's Steve. People even say he has this "reality distortion field" that makes you believe whatever he is saying, and outside of his keynotes, you can begin to see the some of the seams of the products he touted. For example, I was convinced by Steve that the Apple PowerMac Cube was going to be a cool computer, but it turned out to be a flop. Also, I half-believed that the web-app solution for the iPhone/iPod Touch's third-party support would be viable. Boy, was I wrong!

Anyway, one of Steve's favorite things to do during his presentations (or specifically, while demoing a product during his presentation) is to say "Boom" after showing something cool. It's so succinct, that it really does represent the simplicity and gee-whiz factor of Apple products. Here is a montage of a lot of the "booms" that Steve has let out (ok, that didn't sound right):

10/20/2007 - Animal Videos (2 videos)

Normally, I'm not into animal videos, but these two fascinate me for some reason. I'm convinced that a lot of the more popular animal videos are ones where the animal featured is acting human somehow. It's as if we are amused by how a lower species can take on our characteristics or we see something in that animal that's recognizable of our own nature. Take this video for instance:



Here we have mama panda minding her own business, chewing on her food, probably daydreaming about something... and then, out of the blue, the SNEEZE FROM HELL comes out of her little baby, and it's like... DAMN.

This second video is amusing as well. Mac OS X has some pretty neat animations, but one of the most hypnotic ones is the Front Row animation which you can control using the wireless remote. Seriously, you can just turn that animation on and off for hours and still not get tired of it. Well, the cat owned by this Mac user is hypnotized as well:

10/17/2007 - TRAILER - "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" - Angry Video Game Nerd

October is definitely my favorite month of the year. The summer heat in Arizona begins to dissipate. The year is winding down. And it's Halloween time! That's right, it's the time of year when I can watch horror movies all month and not be considered weird. It's not that horror is my favorite genre, but as a guilty pleasure, it can't be beat! I've become so desensitized, that I watch horror movies now to appreciate it as an art form, rather than as an attempt to get grossed out.

James Rolfe, AKA the Angry Video Game Nerd, is also a horror movie buff and it shows... from his side projects with Cinemassacre.com to his reviews of two horror related games last year at this time: Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street for the NES. They were great game reviews that displayed James' talent as a filmmaker. They even included Freddy and Jason!

Well, this October, James is back with two more horror games: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween for the Atari 2600. Even the trailer for his TCM review is great (this is the Angry Video Game Nerd, so be warned for some harsh language):



The opening narration is a parody of the narration from the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie... an unforgettable beginning to a great horror movie. The game review even includes a parody of the Chop Top character from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2! Boy, I can't wait to see his review of Halloween. I hope he has an authentic Michael Myers mask.

Horror movies; video games based on horror movies; reviews of video games based on horror movies; reviews of video games based on horror movies by a nerd; reviews of video games based on horror movies by a nerd who is also a fan of the genre... it doesn't get much better than this.

10/16/2007 - The Simpsons/Star Wars mashup

Wow, I'm surprised 20th Century Fox hasn't sued anyone about this:



Actually, I'm even more surprised that The Simpsons crew didn't do this kind of intro themselves. It's quite well done. My favorite part is when Homer/Darth Vader does his girlie scream in the garage.

10/15/2007 - Invisible Tetris

If this video is not fake, then the person playing Tetris in this video is a god. In my prime I could beat the last level of the Gameboy Tetris, but that is NOTHING compared to the skill level of this Tetris player. It does help to know what blocks are coming ahead of time, and in this particular game, you see the what the next three Tetris pieces are, as opposed to one in the Gameboy version. I'm not sure if it would help me, but I'm thinking it's essential for this guy. Just look at what happens during the credits... the pieces fall and then turn INVISIBLE when docked in place! So he'd have to visualize what the board looks like while he is looking at what pieces are coming next AND doing it at inhuman speeds! His guy is to Tetris as Gary Kasparov is to chess...

10/14/2007 - Halo 3 Best Stick EVER

One cool thing about Halo 3 is its instant-replay and record feature. Apparently, with the feature enabled, the game constantly records your gameplay so you can instantly replay what you just did and save it to the hard drive where you can then share your footage online. That's something that really should be in every first-person shooter game because we all have had those moments where you get an awesome kill in and people basically have to take your word for it.

For example, I was playing Warhawk the other day and my opponent and I both used up our grenades, so it was going to be a pistol fight. Now, I'm not a noob at the game anymore, but I still tend to lose drawn-out pistol fights. I mean, sometimes it's hard to lock in the auto-aim while the other guy is strafing, while they seem to have no problem targeting me. Anyway, I thought I was a goner until I saw that he laid a proximity mine near to him. It appeared that he was trying to lure me to it, and if I had followed, I would have been blown up. These are smart proximity mines too, in that they don't get set off next to you if you are the one who laid it. So when I saw that proxy mine near his feet, I could have run after him and blow the both of us up. Yeah, it would have been suicidal, but a guarantee kill. Then I thought, why not just shoot the mine? Well, it was a one-in-a-million shot, but it worked! I got one shot off and it actually hit my opponent's mine and blew him in the process. Now, you have to remember that we were strafing like crazy and shooting a mine with a pistol can be difficult even if you're stationary. Needless to say, I was definitely proud of this kill, and I would have loved to recorded it, if that feature was available.

For that feature alone, I do have a little Halo 3 envy. Especially when I see some awesome Halo 3 kills. This one is especially cool:

10/13/2007 - Teabag To Fitness with Master Chief

I don't know who invented it, or in which game it was started, but the standard way to taunt your first-person shooting opponent after you've killed him/her is to "teabag" them. So what is teabagging? Well, simply put, it is crouching and un-crouching directly over your opponent's lifeless body? What does that signify? Well, it's a little obscene, so I'll let you look it up in the Urban Dictionary.

Now that I'm finally the owner of an online FPS (actually, it's a third-person shooter), I can tell you how satisfying it is to teabag your opponent after an awesome kill. Sometimes, it makes you an easy target, but you won't care. Just knowing that your oppenent is seeing his/her dead player being teabagged by you is worth getting killed over. Sure, they may go for a revenge kill, but if you kill them in the process, you can teabag them again for maximum pleasure!

With the release of Halo 3, G4 TV aired a parody of a fitness show featuring Master Chief. What is the exercise being featured? Why, teabagging, of course!



You know, that actually looks like it would burn some calories!

10/9/2007 - Mixed-up Sports Video

Just to set up this next video... Kevin Everett is a Buffalo Bills tight end who recently fractured his cervical spine in a football game against the Denver Broncos. He was temporarily paralyzed and there was fear that he would not walk again. Fortunately, he soon regained movement in his arms and legs and it appears he will be able to walk again in time.

Now, if you're a sportscaster trying to show video of this story, you'd probably show past video of Kevin Everett in a football game or perhaps footage of him in recovery, but check out what happens when something goes wrong in the editing room:



Ha! You know, what makes this so funny is that whoever that is that the cops are bringing into court HAPPENS to be in a wheelchair. And when the sportscaster says that Everett is moving his arms and legs, the guy in the wheelchair HAPPENS to start flailing and kicking his attorney. It would be hard to create a funnier news blooper even if you tried.

10/8/2007 - "after 100 times its still funny!"

If you are a student who dreads school, then I know that Sunday nights probably give you heartburn... you know, that sinking feeling you get knowing that you have to wake up the next morning after a weekend where you were supposed to relax but couldn't because you were probably doing homework instead. Well, I remember those Sunday nights well. What sticks out most in my mind is probably watching America's Funniest Videos when it was on Sunday nights. The concept of the show was simple. Send in your home videos and if it's funny enough, it will be featured on the show, and the audience votes for a winner who wins $10,000. It's definitely not high brow humor, but I could rely on it lifting my down spirits before starting another school week.

America's Funniest Videos was definitely a pre-cursor to what is now YouTube. You don't win any prizes for uploading funny videos, but you do get rated on by your peers, and really good videos can occasionally make it into mainstream media. Here is a YouTube video that would have definitely made it on AFV:

10/7/2007 - Wonderful World shadow puppet

Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls may not have been as great as the original Ace Ventura, but it had a great scene where Jim Carrey did these funny shadow puppets with his hands to the chagrin of his antagonist in the movie. Well, if you watched it and thought it was funny, you'll get a kick out of this shadow puppet display. It's not funny, but it is AMAZING:



I can only imagine how much practice it takes to get all those shapes down!

10/5/2007 - Michael Myers vs Jason Voorhees

October is probably my favorite month of the year. Mostly because the last day is Halloween and that means all the horror movies are shown this month. I'm a fan of all kinds of horror movies and slasher films in particular. The slasher characters are of particular interest because they are clearly evil and do evil acts, and yet you root for them somehow. Why is that? I'm not sure... It may be because they are shown as unstoppable killing machines and their "superhuman" abilities to take damage and come back for more elevates them to idol status.

Which slasher do I like the best? That would have to be Michael Myers of the Halloween movies. And that's simply do to the fact that I think his mask is the coolest of them all. Even though Jason Vorhees and I share the same first name, I never identified with him. The hockey mask is only a little scary and it's hardly unique. However, Michael Myers' mask is one that is really creepy, especially when you consider the fact that it's a William Shatner mask painted white. Freddy Kruger only has a burnt face and is too manic to be considered scary for me, and Leatherface is just plain grotesque (although the fact that he can RUN after his victims is pretty scary).

The original Halloween movie is definitely one of my favorite horror movies and is something that I must put on DVD ever year on the 31st. It's not scary or gory by today's standards, but it still has a great suspenseful atmosphere to it that you don't have in today's horror movies. Also, I just love the character of Dr. Loomis. Yes, it's a takeoff of the Van Helsing character of the Dracula novel, but it's still rather unique... especially for a slasher movie. While I loved the original movie, I was rather indifferent to the remake that came out this year. In fact, the only things I liked in the remake were the elements that were lifted from the original! I mean, they did get the mask right... all the other ones after Halloween 2 were pale imitations (no pun intended).

While Freddy vs. Jason was a decent movie in that it tried to present a gory showdown between two iconic slashers, I would have preferred that they make a Michael vs. Jason movie. Jason may be the stronger of the two (and he has a freakin' machete!), I think Michael would outlast Jason. After all, Michael was shot in both eyes in Halloween 2 and still kept on swinging that kitchen knife. Well, if they ever made that movie, here is what it would look like as a wrestling match:

10/3/2007 - Baby with Kungfu Face

This baby video is priceless... I think Jet Li has some competition!

10/1/2007 - Elite beat agents - Material Girl

This video is so wrong... in so many ways...

9/30/2007 - Super Mario Galaxy Trailer : RETRO Version

I don't own a Wii, but if I did, I would probably get Super Mario Galaxy. It wouldn't be because I am eager to see how the Wii controls would work for a Mario platformer. In fact, I'd be apprehensive about how the game plays based on the videos I've seen. No, I'd buy it just to say that I have every Mario platforming game for every Nintendo system I've owned: Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3 for the NES, Super Mario World 1 and 2 (Yoshi's Island) for the SNES, and Super Mario 64 for the N64. The NES and SNES games are definite classics and have reached legendary status in their genre, while Super Mario 64 pretty much defined how 3-D platforming should be like. I don't have a GameCube, so I can't really give a review of Super Mario Sunshine, but from what I've seen and read, it was only an evolutionary step up from Super Mario 64 (and heck, the name sucks).

It's actually heartening to hear that Super Mario Galaxy is the "first true successor to Super Mario 64" because that means they've acknowledged Sunshine's shortcomings, and it means that Galaxy had better be that damn good. I mean it had better be a revolutionary step up from the N64 and GC games, rather than just Mario Sunshine with a better name and Wii controls. I would just hope it had the same kind of magic all the older Super Mario games had. Being a nostalgia junkie, I couldn't resist highlighting this next video that's similar to that Super Smash Bros. Brawl trailer made with 16-bit sprites. Of course, this one is for Super Mario Galaxy:



I do have one question, though: WHERE IS LUIGI?

9/29/2007 - Can't Tase This

Well, that didn't take long! I knew that sooner rather than later, someone would remix the "Don't Tase Me, Bro" cry from that idiot Univ. of Florida student into some kind of comedy or music video. Since the video was already comedic in its own right, a music video does seem more appropriate, wit a little help from M.C. Hammer:

9/28/2007 - University of Florida student Tasered

Ahh, the college years... you have to appreciate the freedoms you are given in a college environment. Freedom to choose your classes, freedom to travel, and being able to talk like an idiot and have it labelled as "freedom of speech". Take the moron who was all over the news recently for asking inappopriate questions at a Senator Kerry forum and then being tasered after resisting arrest. In high school, he would have probably given a script to read instead of being able to ask his own questions. Outside of college, one would hope that his questions would be prescreened before allowing him to ask them.

But within the college bubble, displays of this kind of idiocy is normal... in fact, it's almost celebrated. When you're just one out of thousands of students, you have to find a way to stand out to be a "big man on campus". Fortunately, it's easier these days to stand out with a video camera and YouTube. To attract massive hits on YouTube though, you have to be even more outrageous because you are one out one hundreds of thousands. This University of Florida student decided to do just that by wildly resisting arrest and inviting the use of force, knowing that all of this is being taped. For being a moron, that might have actually been a smart thing to do.



Heh... you can't help but root for the cops in this video. Especially after the "don't tase me, bro" exclamation.

9/27/2007 - Chris Farley SNL Outtake Clips

Even though I did not watch it much, I think the Saturday Night Live era from the early 90s was the best. They had so many great comedians/comedic actors like Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, David Spade, Adam Sandler, and even Will Ferrell. People may not consider the late Chris Farley to be a comedic genius, but he was sure fun to watch. He was never ashamed that he was "the fat guy" of the show and used his portliness to great comedic effect. His manic presentation would often cause the other cast members to chuckle during a skit, even if they weren't supposed to. It's really too bad he passed away at such an early age. I'm not dying to watch "Tommy Boy 2" or anything like that, but his movies and skits would definitely give me a chuckle or two. Here are some funny outtakes of him on SNL:

7/25/2007 - Atari 2600 Double Dragon

If you were to play any Atari 2600 game right now, you'd probably wonder how anyone could play such a primitive game with such simple graphics and sound. Well, believe it or not, a lot of people did in the 80's as it was THE hot console of the day. What made it popular? Well, it basically pioneered the concept of having interchangeable games by using cartridges. Before then, you'd have game systems that played one or two games using dedicated hardware for unique controls. For example, there were shooting games that used a light gun and Pong-type games that used a paddle. The problem was that you'd have to pay a heft price for each kind of game because it was part of the hardware package, and you'd have to swap out one game on the TV for another each time you wanted to play something different. Having a central console with a universal controller that played swappable cartridge games changed all that, offering value and convenience.

What was the 2600 capable of? Well, if the programmers were clever, it could offer a fairly decent arcade translation. So many early arcade games made it over, such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Some 8-bit games made it over too, such as Donkey Kong and Pole Position. The big question is, can it handle a 16-bit game? Well, one attempt at it was the translation of the arcade hit, Double Dragon. How did it do? Surprisingly well:



As you can see, you can make out your fighter (Billy or Jimmy) against some of the classic Double Dragon foes. For example you can distinguish Williams (he wields the knife and bat) from Linda and Abobo, who can throw a barrel. Graphics aside, how do you change a game from having two attack buttons to only one button on the Atari controller? Take away the punch, of course... and I'm guessing you double tap the joystick and press attack to do a jump kick. Double Dragon was never the most complex game out there, but it's still pretty cool that the 2600 managed to get a port of it.

9/24/2007 - Ode To A Superhero

This Weird Al song is not as great as his Star Wars Episode I song, The Saga Begins, but it's still good enough to feature here. It's a song about the first Spider-Man movie and the YouTuber here made it into a music video which serves as the introduction to Spider-Man 2 (note the credits interspersed in the video). It's a good edit job with the Weird Al lyrics, footage of Spider-Man 1, and the actual credit sequence of Spider-Man 2 combined all together seamlessly.

9/21/2007 - Hare Hare Mario

Excuse me if I totally geek out right now. You know I've been highlighting these Super Mario World mods that show "self-playing" levels and the Hare Hare Yukai remixes that are also popular on YouTube. I never thought the two could combine into a mashup. So imagine my delight when I saw that a modder did just that:



That is simply one of the greatest things I've ever seen. Not only is it a decent self-playing level with some intricate cause and effect happenings, but it's all synchronized to the tune of the Hare Hare Yukai! I can only imagine just how long this took to map out each note of the song to the appropriate sound effect in the video game. And then to force the sound effect to play in a self-playing level? Damn.

9/20/2007 - Superman Reborn

WARNING: Spoilers for "Superman Returns" below:

I'm probably one of the few people out there that really liked Superman Returns. It definitely has its flaws in it, but I could see what Bryan Singer was trying to do with the movie. I mean, the concept alone of it being a sequel to the first two Superman movies was brilliant. It got us past another origin retelling and it put is back in a universe we were familiar with. As a bonus, the great John Williams score did not seem out of place as it would have been if it had been a complete reboot of the series.

There were some things I would have changed, though. Probably the most glaring disappointment was that Supes didn't fight a super-powered enemy. In fact, he didn't even throw a punch. Second, the pacing was a bit off. I would have preferred a slower opening like the original Superman. We didn't need to see him go back to Metropolis right away. I wanted to see a little more of Smallville and more interaction with Ma Kent. While the beginning was too fast, the end was definitely too slow. I mean, right after Superman threw the Kryponite island into space, the movie slowed to a crawl. I was checking my watch at that point. Really, movies DON'T need to be over two and a half hours. I mean, I appreciate getting my money's worth, I guess... but if it's too long, it becomes tedious.

I do think they might have painted themselves into a corner with potential sequels by having Superman have a son, though. What can they do next with that? I did like the metaphor of Jason having an adoptive father in Richard though. Even though Jason is biologically Superman's son, Richard will raise Jason just as Jonathan Kent raised young Clark Kent. This would not be the case, of course, if Richard wasn't a good man, but the movie made it clear that he was.

While I think Brandon Routh did well as Clark Kent/Superman (he looks so much like Cristopher Reeve), he was just a bit too young for me. I mean, I think if they were going for a younger Superman, they might have just went with Smallville's Clark Kent, Tom Welling. I'm sure eventually we'll see him in the red and blue tights, but probably not until the series ends. He does a pretty good job on the TV show, but we don't really see him in the Clark Kent "disguise". Here's a fan trailer for what a Superman movie would be like with Tom Welling in the title role. It's probably the best Photoshop job I've seen that's put into motion. The even painted the Hulk to look like Darkseid and Doomsday. Nice!

9/18/2007 - Street Fighter II Music Comparison (3 Videos)

It's been 16 years, and I still haven't gotten tired of playing Street Fighter II. In fact, I just bought the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection and I'm playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo everyday. It's the only version I've never owned on a console and it's preparation for the upcoming HD Remix on the Playstation 3. Ahh, it reminds me of high school.

Before SF2, the arcades were filled with beat-em-ups. You had the Konami beat-em-ups (TMNT, X-Men, Simpsons) and the Capcom ones (Final Fight, Punisher, Captain Commando). Beat-em-ups were fun, and the Konami ones did justice to their licensed material, but they were pretty much quarter munchers. You controlled a character with a few lives and a health bar, and you had to wade through dozens (if not hundreds) of enemies with a few bosses in between. Regular enemies would get their cheap hits in and bosses would kill you routinely. Once your lives were up, you insert another quarter, continue, rinse, and repeat. They were definitely easy money-makers, but you could have two to four players hogging the machine until they finished the game.

Here is where you can see the brilliance of Street Fighter II. By making it a competitive game, you could have a LINE of players waiting to play against the reigning champion. In fact, you would routinely see a row of quarters on the arcade machine itself, representing your place in line. You could see how good a player was by how long they were staying on the game. If you were good, you'd get your quarter's worth by beating numerous opponents. If not, well, bet prepared to spend your allowance by practicing.

Since typical matches were at most two minutes, an arcade machine with a constant stream of players would rake in the cash at an even faster rate than the beat-em-ups, and would allow a greater audience of players to play the game (especially once people saw the lines and were curious about the hype). At a rate of 25 cents a minute, a typical machine can make $15 an hour... and you better believe an arcade operator at the time knew this figure.

It's hard to know if Capcom knew that SF2 would be the phenomenon that it was, but every aspect of the game was handled with such care that you could tell that they knew it would be special. The best example of this was the music in Street Fighter II. To this day it is still one of the best and most recognizable soundtracks for a video game ever. There's no greater evidence of this fact than the huge number of remixes of the various tracks. Even though each track loops after only a minute and a half (about the time it takes to finish a round, not coincidentally), the melodies will stick in your head long after you've finished playing the game. You know, if the music wasn't any good, you could not bear to play the games hundreds of times as a lot of players have (including myself).

I can't emphasize enough how good the translation was from the arcade to the 16-bit consoles. Because the fighting engine is so complex, if the timing of the moves were off even a little bit, it would not be the same game. Capcom really performed a miracle porting SF2 over to the SNES, Genesis, and the TurboGrafx-16. Not only did they perform amazingly gameplay-wise, the music from the arcade made it over remarkably well. Here is a video doing a comparison of the music for the three different systems. Maybe I'm a little biased, but I really prefer the SNES version.

9/17/2007 - Microsoft Surface Parody

So what was Microsoft's big answer to Apple's iPhone? No, it wasn't another phone with a touchscreen. It was a ... table ... with a touchscreen. Apparently, Microsoft doesn't think there's a future with smaller and more portable computing devices. Rather, they put their money on making computers bigger! That's right, big... as in tabletop-size big! Yeah, it has a touchscreen with cool Aqua-like animations. But really, if Apple wanted to copy something like this, they could make a table of their own in a couple of months.

Microsoft says they're going to market this thing to high-end hotels whose clientel apparently have nothing better to do than to play with a table. At least they're not trying to cater to us normal people who desire usefulness and portability in their computing devices. I mean, say what you want about the high cost of an iPhone with a two-year contract... it is a BARGAIN compared to this $10,000 monstrosity. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???

Well, this video pretty much sums up my thoughts on "Microsoft Surface":

9/16/2007 - Super Mario World Rube Goldberg

Oh man, I love these Super Mario Word mod videos. Here's another one that emulates a Rube Goldberg machine with great, uh, craftsmanship. I like how the green shells were timed to get caught in the coin blocks after the timer on the switch box runs out. How Mario doesn't get killed at the 38-second mark is a wonder. Oh, and Yoshi makes it through this time. :)

9/15/2007 - 360° Light Field Display

Only one quote comes to mind when I watch this video: "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi... you're my only hope!"

9/14/2007 - Soundwave: The Touch

Rated R for using the F-Word (yeah, only three times, but that would have made Die Hard 4 a Rated R movie too)

Despite being a GREAT popcorn movie, Transformers lacked a little something that would have made it a classic. For me, I guess that it did not have enough nostalgia factor. Having Peter Cullen back as Optimus Prime was nice, but we only heard the classic transforming sound once (I thought that we should hear it every time Prime transforms). One thing they should have really done is bring back an old favorite of everybody's: Soundwave. So what if they don't make cassette player boomboxes anymore? They turned Frenzy in a CD player even though CD's are almost out of fashion these days.

Soundwave was great as Megatron's right-hand man... some would say their relationship went further than that. But the coolest thing about Soundwave was his voice. While every Transformer voice actor spoke through some kind of synthesizer to sound robotic, Soundwave sounded the most robotic. You'd recognize it instantly upon hearing it. Yeah, he couldn't do much in the action arena, but that's why he had his little henchmen cassettes.

His omission in the movie did not go unnoticed by fans, though. Here's a hilarious skit of what happened after Soundwave got rejected by Michael Bay, Inc.



Oh, and one more thing... WHY DIDN'T THEY INCLUDE THE SONG "THE TOUCH"??? Now that would have put the DVD into the "must buy" column for me. So it's a bit cheesy, but they could have at least made Bumblebee play it on the radio for like two seconds...