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...

9/13/2007 - SUPER MARIO BROS 2 Review

Like it says in my profile, I got addicted to YouTube after watching the Angry Video Game Nerd reviews. I'm pretty sure I've praised the work of James Rolfe enough, so I won't repeat myself here. However, he no longer posts videos to YouTube anymore because he's an exclusive for the video gaming site ScrewAttack. So if you're looking for an AVGN alternative, the "Irate Gamer" may be the next best thing. His reviews are in the same style as the Nerd's (some have even say he plagiarizes) and he has some pretty high production values.

I'm featuring his review of Super Mario Bros. 2 here... not because I don't like the game. In fact, I disagree with his review here, because I thought it was a pretty good game. The controls for SMB2 were leaps and bounds better than the controls for the first Super Mario Bros. Just go back and play the two and I think you'll agree. I also thought the gameplay mechanic of picking up and throwing objects was pretty innovative... just as your ability to choose four different characters with different abilities.

However, I didn't realize that the games was actually a remake of a Japanese game. The Irate Gamer explains this bit of trivia pretty well. Oh, and since his reviews are profanity laced, hide the kids...

9/10/2007 - More Hare Hare Yukai Goodness! (2 videos)

How many Hare Hare Yukai videos have I showcased? At least three, I think. Well, it's popularity hasn't died down yet. People are still trying out the dance and putting it on YouTube. Here is an extreme example though. Most of us have seen the video of prison inmates dancing to the same choreography as the Thriller music video (if not, click HERE). Not to be outdone, some prison inmates in the Philipines (they may actually be the same inmates, I'm not sure) also performed a mass dance... the Hare Hare Yukai!



Hmmm... that's pretty disturbing, actually. Well, here's something a little more mainstream... how about Pikachus doing the dance?



Aww, isn't that the cutest?

9/9/2007 - Line Rider Super Mario Bros. 1-1

If you've never played with Line Rider, it's worth at least a try. It's a simple Flash "game" where you draw an slope for the "Line Rider" penguin to travel in its sled. You can draw the slope in any manner you wish... you can include loops, gaps to jump over, obstacles, etc. It all pretty much follows the physics of gravity and friction, so it looks fairly realistic in motion.

There are plenty of Line Rider videos on YouTube, as you can imagine, some with insane stunts and courses for the penguin to navigate. Today's video, however, puts the penguin in some familiar territory: the first level of Super Mario Bros! I don't know how the artist managed to achieve this, but for nostalgia purposes, this is the best Line Rider vid.

9/8/2007 - BECAUSE OF YOUTUBE!

Watch out, Weird Al, you might have some competition here! Actually, I'm surprised he hasn't come out with this himself. It's so obvious if you've ever heard the Kelly Clarkson song "Because of You". Oh well, if it's someone other than Weird Al, it might as be someone who regularly posts on YouTube.



Seriously, this parody is really good. Months ago, I could really identify with these lyrics. It was about the time that YouTube got bought out by Google and got so much news. During that time, YouTube exploded with everybody putting up their videos to what became known as the largest video sharing site. Every day, there would be some genre of videos that I would get hooked to. From the Hare Hare Yukai videos to the Angry Video Game Nerd videos, I would just keep using that addicting feature called "Related Videos". Minutes of watching would soon become hours. Each day I would find something that I could put in "My Favorites" because it was so cool. Thus, this blog was born.

9/7/2007 - Chun-Li VS Vega

Rated R for animated nudity

If you have never watched the Street Fighter II Animated Movie, do yourself a favor and buy it or rent it now, even if you have to get it from an eBay auction. This is how you make a Street Fighter movie. Forget about that cheesy Van-Damme movie that's only worth watching to see how bad it is. Also, don't confuse this with that awful American
Street Fighter cartoon that was based on the Van-Damme movie. The Japanese SF2 movie is simply the best animated movie based on a video game ever.

What makes it so special? Well, what sets it apart for me was how it respected all the characters. They portrayed their personalities and the histories CORRECTLY. You've got Ryu on his quest for perfecting the martial arts; Ken's friendship and rivalry with Ryu; Chun-Li attempting to avenge her father's murder; Guile's gung-ho cockiness. Most of the other interpretations of the Street Fighter series played fast and loose with the characters, even the anime series Street Fighter II V. See, even if the movie is well made, if there are any discrepancies with what's onscreen and what we know about the series from playing the videogames, it brings us out of that fantasy world and makes us wonder why those changes were made. This is especially true of comic book movies.

The second best feature of the SF2 Movie has to be its fight choreography. After playing a countless number of games on the arcade, if the fights on the screen did not outdo what you were playing, you might as well skip the movie and pop in another quarter into the machine. Well, I guarantee you that outside of the sometimes overly staged CG martial arts fighting you see in "modern" computer animated movies, the SF2 Movie has the greatest one-on-one (and one two-on-one) animated battles you'll ever see. The highlight has to be the battle between Chun-Li and Vega (known as Balrog in Japan):



I never get tired of watching this scene. It's even better than the climactic Bison-Ryu/Ken fight at the end! What's cool about it is that it doesn't rely on some of the flashier special movies like fireballs. They made Vega so arrogant in this scene that you really want to see him get beat. That's why it's so satisfying to see Chun-Li stomp on his face and give him the lightning kick out the building.

I've posted the Japanese version of the movie here mainly because it has better music than the English dubbed version which had a punk rock/heavy metal soundtrack. I did watch the Japanese version of the movie first, so I may be biased, but the original soundtrack was tailored to suit the movie (and it actually turned me on to J-Pop). This scene in particular shows that... Chun-Li and Vega are aerial fighters known for their gracefulness and the music here matches that gracefulness. Also, the Japanese version shows the fan-service goodness that is Chun-Li's shower scene. ;)

9/6/2007 - In Your Face, Microsoft! (2 videos)

I've made my points about Microsoft and Apple in the past, but what happened yesterday really has solidified my position. First came the announcement that the Microsoft Zune was discounted $50 to make it $199. Now, the only real reason to discount something is to sell more of them (as long as you have the supply and can still make a profit). Everybody knows that the Zune really hasn't done that well, especially when compared to its direct competitor, the Apple iPod. Well, wasn't it curious that Microsoft would make the price cut on the exact day that Apple was introducing its new line of iPods? Coincidence? I think not.

Boy, I tell ya... if I were Microsoft or any other media player manufacturer, I'd be sweating bullets at the prospect of competing with Apple this holiday season. With the new iPods Apple introduced yesterday, they have something for pretty much everybody...except me, but that's another story (or blog entry). Everybody pretty much knew that the iPod was going to go with touch controls like the iPhone, but seeing it in reality is a different story, especially with a price point affordable to most gadget fans. Now, I'm not one to rub in the failures and the faults of others, but with Microsoft, I'll make an exception:

This is what would happen if Microsoft designed the iPod package:

It's funny because it would be true.

And this is what Microsoft's smart phone would be like:

Yeah, I could see that.

9/4/2007 - White & Nerdy in Lego

Weird Al Yankovic is simply the best. I remember watching his first parody of a Michael Jackson video with "Eat it", and it was a riot. His parodies are great in three major ways: the lyrics, which are verbally similar to and tonally in sync with the originals; the subject matter, which are always of a humorous nature and which are delved into in the most detailed way; and his performances of the parodies themselves -- parodies of songs are never any good if the performance was only above average.

Weird Al's most recent parody is perhaps one of my favorites mainly because of the subject matter. "White and Nerdy" (a parody of "Riding Dirty" by Chamillionaire) details so much about the geek lifestyle that it's almost a litmus test of how nerdy you are. Even though I'm not white, I can identify with most of the descriptions he gives of nerds in the song. Kind of scary, but hey, it's the way I chose to live my life.

Anyway, while Weird Al's video of "White and Nerdy" is hilarious, this video of the song is even more impressive in that it's done entirely using Lego pieces. I don't know how many man hours it took to create this video, but it really looks like a Herculean effort. It took a lot of dedication to do something like this, but I'm willing to bet that the creator or creators of this video fits the song title perfectly, and as such, this would have been a labor of love.

9/3/2007 - Self-playing Super Mario World Level

I've said in a previous post how awesome Super Mario World was for the Super Nintendo... especially considering the fact that it was a pack-in game. I mean, I really would have paid $50 for it (standard fare for the time) and still would have been happy with it. One of the things that made it great was the play mechanics of the game. It took all of the best gameplay elements of the first three Super Mario games and added a myriad of new ones without making it overly complicated. One modder (or probably a group of them) wanted to showcase these elements by fabricating a level where Mario does absolutely nothing but stand while the level itself moves him around and eventually completes it. It's easier to show you than to describe it:



I know everything is contrived, but, WOW. It truly is an amazing thing to see. Everything is placed so perfectly that anything that's even a millimeter off would mean death for Mario (unfortunately, Yoshi didn't survive). Rube Goldberg machinists should definitely take note of this video as this is even better than most of those contraptions, no matter how complex they are.

9/2/2007 - Soccer Players Faking Their Injuries

Soccer players must think their referees are the most gullible people in the world. Either that, or the advantage of having a red card against the other team is so high that they would resort to ridiculous acting in order to feign injury from a minor infraction. I mean, look at this collection of soccer clips demonstrating such Oscar caliber acting:



It's amazing that they're not getting hurt by just faking getting hurt. I love how some of them grab a part of their body that wasn't even touched during a tussle with another player. Hmmm... I guarantee you there wouldn't be any of this farce if there was instant replay in soccer.

9/1/2007 - GTA: San Andreas (2 Videos)

Rockstar really started a revolution in video gaming when they developed Grand Theft Auto III as the first sandbox video game. Before the Playstation 2, there simply was not enough horsepower or storage to contain a virtual world the size and scope of Liberty City, where you can use your human character to unleash havoc upon its citizens in ways that you would never dream of doing in real life. That kind of freedom to cause mayhem in a realistic environment is the hallmark of the Grand Theft Auto games and has been copied numerous times by other developers with often mediocre results.

The last Playstation 2 game of the series, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas really elevated the series by giving you an entire state to play in as opposed to just a single city. They also gave your character the ability to develop himself physically (by exercising) and socially (by dating), just to make it all that much realistic. The coolest addition, in my opinion, was the ability to ride a bicycle. Sure, it may sound like small potatoes compared to carjacking a Porsche, but riding a bike was surprisingly fun. I just wish I could do some of the cool stunts displayed in this video:



Of course, if you want to have total freedom in the game and alter its realism, you can mod it. Like that Back to the Future mod I featured in an earlier blog entry, you can do a lot with the PC version of the game. One of the coolest mods I've seen is this Superman mod, where your character is replaced by none other than the Man of Steel himself. I really like the inclusion of the John Williams score in this vid. Ironically, this may just be the best Superman video game ever made.