When I heard years ago that Namco and Capcom were collaborating to produce an RPG with both company’s characters, I felt merely teased in knowing that it would never be ported to America. Now I hear about this, and I am thoroughly bummed.
Cross Edge is an RPG being produced for the PS3, uniting the efforts and properties of Capcom, Namco, Nippon Ichi, and more. There’s very little information about the game at present, but this Famitsu scan tells me all I need to know. Morrigan and Etna in the same game…? Yes. Fuck yes.
Wait. No. It probably won’t be ported to America either. FUCK.
My favorite announcer in all of the Street Fighter games is the one from Street Fighter Alpha 3. Most gamers tend to disagree, but love him or hate him, he is a real person. There’s a human behind that voice and for a moment, I’d like to introduce you to him.
Greg Irwin is the man lending his voice to Street Fighter Alpha 3’s ring, from the inspirational “Beat ‘em up, guy! Go for it, man!” to the “Continue?” countdown. He’s an American musician whose career has taken him across the Pacific pond, into Japan, where he’s lived for the past 17 years.
Greg’s musical career centers mostly around “Doyo”, a style of Japanese song that’s best translated as “children’s songs”, though that may even be a misnomer. These are not songs designed for children, but rather songs that invoke memories of childhood within adults. Greg’s specialty comes from translating and performing these songs in English. According to his website’s profile, his translations have become so recognized that they’re used in Japanese textbooks.
I wish I could find a more complete list of his voice acting credits, but it’s easy to say that he’s done a little of everything. It doesn’t get weird until you hear his Japanese VO work…to an untrained American ear, I’d swear he was native Japanese.
This concludes my spotlight on the man whose voice has engraved into my mind the words, “Triumph or die!”
00:35 - I think V-Day has since moved its way up to become my top favorite holiday. Mostly because I get far more opportunity to celebrate it than I do with Halloween.
01:46 - It’s still true! For our last anniversary, I wrote out this a miniature novel inside of a card, pouring my heart out to her. Yet within the card that she gave to me, she’s written something far sexier: The Klingon wedding vows. Believe me when I say that gestures like that share a far more intimate connection between us, and thus she is declared the victor in out-romancing me.
03:13 - One of our in-jokes is that I’m totally gay for Adrian Paul or David Bowie. Ashley swears she’s going to air brush this image into a mural on my bedroom wall some day. As for David Bowie, I maintain what I’d originally stated (which started the whole gag) in that I don’t wish to have sex with David Bowie. But if I had to have sex with another man, I wouldn’t mind it so much if I found out it was him.
06:20 - Looking back, I still believe that I wanted to do something different, but most of the things that I wanted to do were too preachy. Hell, a lot of them didn’t have much to do with video games…and that’s kinda crucial for a network based on video game coverage. I had a lot more anger back then and made the mistake of using that show as an outlet for that, rather than producing something fun. But I’ll get into that more when I start covering those shows.
08:46 - This closing clip (like most of the music from this episode) is from the anime series, Gankutsuou: The Count Of Monte Cristo. I was really diggin’ the show at the time. Looking back, I don’t know why I stuck this at the end of the episode since it’s so totally a break-up type song. Not something you want tagged onto a show dedicated to Valentine’s Day.
01:10 - While Street Fighter Alpha 3 is still my all-time favorite, SFIII: 3rd Strike has greatly grown on me. So much that I felt inspired enough to enter a tournament at the last Animazement. I sucked total shit, but I had so much fun just playing. Speaking of which, the next Animazement is coming up in a couple weeks (as of this post), so I might want to freshen up my skills.
01:32 - If you haven’t checked it out, GGPO has been taking huge leaps in progress. I should probably check it out more, especially since SFA3 is now supported.
03:24 - Nah, I just suck. I’ve done a lot to improve my joystick abilities. For my PS2, I was able to get my hands on a Street Fighter Anniversary Stick, which is arguably the best stick available. For my PC, I got an adapter that allows me to use my Sega Saturn Virtua Sticks, which I feel is a vast improvement over my original PlayStation stick. Having eliminated the technical obstacles, I’m left with the bitter truth of my inferior skills.
03:35 - Matt wrote another article recently for this site on joysticks, which I thought was quite awesome.
04:03 - I can’t hide behind that excuse anymore since arcades have pretty much vanished in my area. Now if I want to battle against others, they’ll be using the ball-shaped stick and my teardrop stick is out of place.
04:43 - These days, the stick easily goes for $100+ used. I managed to get one like-new for a sweet $50.
05:15 - This was before I bought a PS2, I believe… Or at least well before my favorite fighting games were collected and released on the system. Now my Saturn and Dreamcast collect dust in my closet while I can play superior versions of all the Alpha games, 3rd Strike, Capcom Vs SNK 2, and the classic Street Fighters on my PS2. As well as some new fighters like Melty Blood or Arcana Heart.
06:29 - The arcade I’m talking about shut down about two years ago. It’s a nail salon now. I still shed a tear whenever I walk past.
09:10 - I don’t really know exactly how effective my training technique was. I think I learned more from the Animazement tourney. What helped most is that I got my sister to film my matches so that I could examine myself later. It was also handy in getting other people’s input as well. See for yourself here.
01:14 - I love it so much that I adopted it myself! I plan to do a lot with that name some day…
02:29 - I totally forgot to renew my old domain when time came, so I lost it. I think this one is better anyway.
04:37 - For our time, this was most true of fighting games, though that most recently transfered to DDR.
06:25 - It is also for the same reasons that he kept choosing Ken and Ryu as his characters, in the hopes in recapturing the feel of the anime movie’s climactic battle. Tommy didn’t play to win, he was playing to reenact a cartoon. Let’s see how that strategy fares for him…
07:44 - It’s so funny hearing myself refer to that as a “skill”. Just about any player that takes the game seriously will simply refer to that technique as “blocking”, followed by “hitting the other guy”. Hardly advanced stuff…
09:07 - Not anymore, since The Team Sportscast Network no longer exists. However, you can catch the complete collection of episodes on this site! At least, in a couple weeks…plus retrospective commentary!
Ever since the announcement that Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe was being made into a reality, I’ve had to remain calm in order to properly collect myself before unleashing my fury of nitpicking criticism. As expected, no one in the gaming community can help rolling their eyes at the concept; one that’s not only 10 years past its window of opportunity for success, but also completely absurd in principle.
No doubt as more press releases surface, I’ll contribute more to my own personal musings, picking it apart in the fashion that my fanboy blood dictates I do. But I do need to start somewhere. For the time being, I’ll prime this observational trek counting down to and a bit beyond its release with words that have already been said, yet bear repeating. Read more…
Gametrailers posted this video covering the “Top Ten Years Of Gaming”. I suppose that people love “top ten” lists of anything, but ones like this make me wonder if we’ve exhausted that gimmick yet to where we’ll have to resort to genuine journalism soon.
Anyway, I agreed with most of the choices they made; those were certainly the most memorable years that I remember in my gaming experience. The one that I have to disagree with popped up right off the bat at #10, which was the year 1983. This year was highlighted for being the stage for the infamous crash in the gaming industry. It was in that year that video game developers were pumping out hundreds of titles, all of them being garbage. With the market flooded and gamers jaded, video games faced extinction. This is something that up until the past couple years, I feared would happen again.
While I can’t deny that this year belongs on a list of the top ten most influential years of gaming, it doesn’t quite fit the context of this particular list, which seems to focus on the gaming industry’s peak moments. If I were handling this list, I would have replaced that year with 1985, which was when Nintendo revived the industry with the NES. But you be the judge…
Over at chicksdiggames.com, they’ve recently posted an article discussing video game genres that have been shifted toward catering to female gamers. My first thoughts are that given the context of the article (and the very site that it’s hosted on), I find it strange that it was written by a man. I often go to chicksdiggames.com in order to read up on women’s perspectives of the gaming industry, since they are–while growing in numbers–still the minority in the market.
That aside, I had difficulty figuring out what the focus on the article was supposed to be. At one point, I thought it was about games with male protagonists trying their hands at female characters in the lead. But then it feels like it shifts gears into being about franchises being re-skinned to appeal to women rather than men. The rest of the article just kinda falls apart near the end.
It’s poorly written, but it’s a topic that I always find worth reading about. Though I do like his “X-2=XX” joke. That was clever enough to forgive some typos.
00:51 - Bridger decided to take a long break due to starting classes around that time. Or so I hear, anyway. TSN had a rule where you had to be on the air for a minimum of 1-2 hours per week, which he was still able to fulfill through doing weekly game casting. But there was just not enough time to put into the production of a topical talk show, which I can understand. Matt was a bit bitter about losing the show, but we ended up doing out own talk show instead.
01:19 - The one thing I remember being excited about doing this rant was that it would have also been the first one that I’d actually be prepared for. Prior to this, I’d written a rant about how I’d lost my faith in Capcom, which Matt thought was awesome. He asked me to perform it on B&H. But I had to ask (more than once), “You want me to read the whole thing? Like, word-for-word?” Cuz the essay was long. Matt insisted that yes, I do the whole thing. Come show time, I got about half-way through before I got tired of hearing my own voice, realized that the piece was best kept in written form, and that the audience had come to the same conclusion a few paragraphs ago. I found a comfortable stopping point and then skull-beat Matt off-air, “Never make me do that again!” He was the “pro” and even I knew it was bad radio…
01:40 - Violence in video games will has been the topic of controversy for years and I expect it to remain that way for years to come. So I don’t comment too much on articles that the media’s “fear machine” uses to keep people stirred up and tuned in. But whenever science is involved, I respect that effort and pay attention. So I maintain that this is an interesting article that I discuss, as well as the points I make.
02:54 - It just occurred to me that I’m doing this bit live; not reading from a script. I must have had notes ready for when I discussed it live on B&H and went from there. If I do say so myself, I’m doing a lot better here than I did in my first show, which was also unscripted.
03:47 - Only in our culture can E3 be seen as a convention of blood-lusting perverts while the drunken rape and carnage of Mardi Gras be held as “tradition”.
05:01 - If I may add, I HATE sports. Well, I often have to clarify that it’s not the sports that I hate, it’s the sports fans.
06:44 - And since just about all major networks that report news make so much money off of either broadcasting sports or reporting game results, none of them will ever say a con word against them. If any anchor even hinted that sports created any kind of ill affect on our culture, the sponsors would all have their head.
09:23 - It works a lot like eminent domain, in that you possess land, pay the government taxes on it, yet they have the right at any time to take that away from you if they need to build a highway or shopping center. Even when you pay your dues, you can’t “own” anything in this country anymore. Okay, end political micro-rant.
10:07 - I see this rant as what my first episode was supposed to be, but done well.
14:34 - At the time, MTV was in discussions with TSN to either team up or buy the network for covering video game events. I took this opportunity to preach some Jello Biafra… “Don’t hate the media, become the media.”
15:00 - My logic was that if networks like MTV hoped to make money on the video game community, it was in their best interest to lift the stigma that the rest of the mainstream media had painted on it. With the power that MTV has within the mainstream, they could have greatly influenced how the gamer community is displayed, possibly starting a very profitable trend.
00:20 - Wow, I really wish I could remember where that song is from.
02:00 - I think that at the time, I was working at my day job (which is slow around Christmas time) and making some holiday cash at Sears as one of their customer pick-up monkeys.
03:05 - Amazon and Ebay are your friends!
04:19 - While that’s aided me in the past, the long-term effect has become the rapid collection of junk in her home. That, and if I got her a video or something, she’d never watch it, thus my money’s wasted. So these days I aim for less tangible gifts for my folks. One year I got them a couple cheesecakes from The Cheesecake Factory and the next I got them a fat gift card to their favorite steakhouse. That way I know they’ll be happy and that my gift will be used.
05:55 - Another factor that I wish I would emphasize about my “Rule of 5″ is that, my insult/inconvenience aside, I feel guilty when someone I care about has wasted money on me. Kinda like my previous comment. Most times I feel like, “Wow, you could have gotten me nothing and you’d have the money for yourself…or a bigger budget for buying cooler gifts for others”. I have no problem accepting nothing as a holiday gift. As long as the person I care about cares enough about me to with me a Merry Christmas and spend time with me during the holidays, that’s what it’s really all about.
06:13 - To simplify, here is my “Rule of 5″: Do not buy me clothes, kitchen supplies, decorations, furniture, or cat toys (which is technically a gift for my cat, but I gotta receive them on her behalf). None of these things will be enjoyed by me…or my cat. The only person exempt from this rule is my girlfriend, but only because she’s the only person who truly understands my tastes in these categories. Maybe my sister as well, since she is a fellow geek.
06:45 - This example was inspired by a birthday gift I’d received a couple years ago. The person bought me a t-shirt, which was kinda cool, but in a Large. I can’t wear anything smaller than an XL. I politely told the person and they responded with, “Well, that can be the shirt for when you lose weight.” Okay, first of all, how dare you call me fat on my birthday…that’s insulting enough. Second, if I were in their position, I’d have apologized and offered to take it back in exchange for the correct size. Instead this person chose to be lazy and implied that the gift was not flawed, but rather I was for supposedly being fat. Nevermind that losing weight isn’t going to make my shoulders less broad, which is the real reason why I can’t wear a Large.
06:55 - This happened to my mom one Christmas… She was so offended and almost cried.
08:40 - One year I got a wine rack for Christmas. First of all–and if I may paraphrase a quote from Wayne’s World–a wine rack? I don’t keep more than one bottle of wine on hand in my home (if any), let alone many bottles to necessitate an entire rack. What am I going to do…with a wine rack? My place doesn’t even have room for a wine rack! I ended up selling the thing for a fraction of what I’m sure the person originally paid for it. Bless the person for knowing I enjoy wine, but they probably should have bought me some bottles of wine rather than a place to store ones I don’t have.
10:01 - I just catch it on YouTube now. My tape is long dead…
00:05 - That’s a sound clip ripped from Psychonauts. It’s an under-appreciated game that I was deep into playing at the time. If you haven’t played it, do so, and until you do, here’s the reason why you should.
01:25 - Here’s a tip: Never tell your buddies these things. They will be exploited.
03:30 - I so miss doing gag gifts with my guy buddies. It’s a male tradition. Most of my friends these days are female, and they don’t respond so well to jokes like that. The exact polar opposite, as a matter of fact.
04:53 - It sucks when you have to instruct your buddies on how to properly prank me.
06:12 -Wow…another episode where the closing clip takes up half of the total time. Short and sweet.
Next time: The final set of podcast episodes! Then after that thrilling conclusion, we begin commentary on Alpha Counter, which I promise to be much more fun!
00:36 - Or so I thought. My schedule was getting pretty tight around that time, so I figured I’d have to quit the podcast for a while. Go figure, I went on to do it for another 8 episodes. My original goal was to do 50 episodes total (one episode per week for a year, leaving two for holidays).
01:44 - Every show has one of these moments. It’s a podcasting rule or something.
02:28 - And I still hold on to that writing dream! This new site is the result of that drive to write, even if it’s a blog. I’ve also been able to work it into my career in that I write for my company’s website now. One day I’ll be doing it professionally, whether it be in a journalistic context or for a commercial one.
04:11 - I made a couple dozen of those demo discs just to have on hand, but those eventually got thrown in the trash. It wasn’t a complete waste because I have a ton of blank mini CD-Rs that I can now use for other purposes. They only hold about 230MB, but they’re ultra sexy to hand to people that you’re giving data, in a secret super spy kinda way.
06:10 - I’m still in favor of independent media over mainstream. I’d love to be the guy that people in the future will say, “Yeah, I love his old stuff when he was hardcore…before he sold out.”
06:32 - If you have any kind of web-based profession, you’ll learn that exposure doesn’t exactly count for much, especially on the web. As we learned with TSN, you can get tons of exposure but it doesn’t mean you’ll make a dime off any of it. If anything, the head honchos will just start demanding you put in more work. With great popularity comes great responsibility and often times you just implode.
06:53 - Little did I know that once I joined up with TSN, I’d still have to do all the work myself, including promotions. And under the pressure of the network who wanted to profit from my labors as quickly as possible, of which I saw none. So essentially, this comment is the same as my last. Working for some established network is not at all as glamorous as it may appear to the audience. It’s like any other corporate job.
07:34 - I didn’t know at the time, but all that was supposed to be kept a secret. Later, when people asked us how much we got paid to work for TSN, I would simply respond, “I put every cent that TSN pays me back into the production of the show…and I hope listeners can tell that.”
08:47 - Oh, no… I was totally spot on with that hunch. Matt being one of the chumps that fell for TSN’s bullshit promises. God, I can’t wait to get to the Alpha Counter commentaries.
10:21 - Luckily we’re at a point where just about anyone can afford to do what we did on TSN. It’s nice to belong to a network, but it’s so not necessary. Hosting for MP3s are cheap. Running a site with some kind of feed capability is easy.
10:53 - TSN did have a couple papers they needed me to sign before I joined up with them and you can bet that I read through them letter-by-letter. Essentially, the bulk of it was making sure that I didn’t also work for or myself become competition for the network.There wasn’t even anything in the “contract” over ownership of material…to which TSN’s program manager would grow to be irritated by my regular challenging of that.
13:29 - As of this writing, this site tends to be subscribed by about a dozen to 20 readers. And I’d like to again thank you guys for your loyalty! It’s nice to see that this site has already surpassed the success of my previous work.
17:12 - You’re not foolin’ anyone, Ghosty. You know you’ll be back.
00:07 - This clip is from the movie, Pump Up The Volume. It’s about a radio pirate who runs his own talk show. Very much in the same spirit that podcasting has come to embody, as well as being the main inspiration for Rant Media.
00:52 - This music is from Jet Grid Radio, a video game that’s also centered around pirate radio and underground culture. Ya sense a theme here?
01:22 - It’s also a podcasting rule that within a few weeks of doing a farewell episode, you then come back. Podcasts only truly end when they just plain stop.
04:30 - Maybe it’s just me, but my voice sounds way better than the previous episodes. That’s kinda cool.
07:10 - Not bad for me to go from declaring that I’ll be doing no radio shows to doing two.
00:42 - Oh yeah… I know you guys have been on the edge of your seats waiting for the thrilling conclusion!
02:00 - Ugh… I forgot it was this story. You know, this might be more entertaining for listeners under 20 years old, but not for more mature people. Now that I’ve lived a little myself, this story sounds less and less profound.
04:10 - Okay, that’s why I felt like telling this story. It just feels good to talk trash about those who have wronged us. But even so, I’ve totally gotten over it and have since moved on. This recording may be the last time I’ve ever told this story.
06:09 - Some advice I’d like to offer: Don’t get yourself into one of those situations. If a girl is unsure if she wants to be with you, whether it’s between you and another man or not, walk away. Drop the bitch. No girl is worth that hassle. Much like the lessons I’ve learned from working in corporate retail and TSN, don’t be tricked by someone dangling a carrot to lead you on. It’s why they call heroin use “chasing the dragon”… You chase it and chase it, but you never catch it.
08:57 - Thank christ, Chuck has been Erika-free for the past few years. He’s now a much saner (and thinner) man today.
09:20 - I don’t think I’ve told an Erika story since. The funny thing is that I’ve been doing less Nostalgic Moment essays in general lately. Either because I’ve run out of good stories or the few I had left have become less interesting as I’ve grown up. Though I guess you could also say that a lot of ones I do have left involve people that I know read my stuff and I’d really prefer not to offend/embarrass them.
The New York Times recently posted an article about the stressful nature of professional blogging. Right away, I understood the feeling. It looks like the easiest thing in the world to most people, but the truth is that there’s a lot of pressure involved.
First of all, you have to write. And by that, I mean you have to write…all the time. When I started up this site, I wanted to use it to get myself in the habit of writing content on a regular basis. I looked at how many news sites and blogs operate and set my standards a bit lower; that being a minimum of two paragraphs a day, five days a week. Even with that seemingly easy goal, I’ve found it challenging. Sometimes there’s no real news to discuss, or at least news I feel worth discussing. I’d like to write more full-sized articles, but I usually put so much energy toward posting regularly, my energies are too exhausted to put my heart into something big. And unfortunately, at least for now, quantity wins over quality if you want to make it in this business.
One convenience of this kind of job–and they mention this in the article–is that you can do the job from anywhere. So there’s no need to deal with as many office politics, you can set your own schedule, and you can work in your pajamas (or even naked!). The trade off is that no matter what time you get yourself up for work, you’re in for long hours. Professional blogging isn’t just about writing quick blips with a link, though that’s what a lot of sites get away with. To do the job well, there’s a lot of research required. Before you begin tapping away at your keyboard, you’re spending time scouring the web for things to write about. Once you find a target, you’re in for a lot of reading on a news item or subject material in order to be properly equipped to write a credible article. Depending on what you get paid per article, you may not actually be getting a decent wage for your time spent.
Not only that, but professional bloggers rarely get to choose the subject matter of their material. Usually they’re being paid to promote a product through their blog. This can be a challenge in the creative process as well if the product in question is especially uninspiring.
One thing that the article touches on is that bloggers often suffer from poor health, particularly weight gain and heart disease. I honestly don’t think that’s necessarily a symptom of the profession as much as it is the poor habits of the professionals. There’s no excuse for not setting aside at least an hour a day for healthy exercise and balanced diet. You can just as easily eat a salad at your desk as you can a Double Whopper. Proper fitness will also keep your mind healthy so the quality of your work will improve, requiring less hours to struggle with composition.
Another point mentioned is the pressure of scooping news stories as quickly as possible. The internet culture moves at the speed of light, and if you’re late catching a news story, you’re left hungry by those who got their first. No one sticks around to watch the last horse finish the race. The few who post on it first and best get their links as the reference to everyone else, thus more exposure. I can post about the same article that’s posted by Kotaku, but Kotaku has the resources to get their first. (Well, except for one time…but I ain’t going there.)
Competition comes into play because blogging is a job that just about anyone can do. If you have a decent grasp of the English language and a passion for a particular topic, then that’s all you need to blog. And since the advent of sites like LiveJournal, people across the world have been typing away with their own commentary on what they see on and off the web. Add the popular illusion that popular web icons are modern day rock stars, and you have a flood of geeks looking to make it big. Nevermind that the reality is that even the hottest professional writers live either in a small apartment with a few room mates or are homeless. Even a friend of mine who’s a professional reviewer (for some top publications) jokes that he’s a “bum“.
Overall, I can understand the meaning of this article. I am not, nor have I ever been, a professional blogger or writer, so I can’t claim to relate to it as much as my peers. However, I do recognize that it’s important to lift the curtain to reveal that online journalism is not at all as glamorous as the mass-populous has been lead to believe. It’s work–hard work, like any job. There are a few skilled professionals that can make a comfortable living from this gig, but everyone else has to run at a constant full speed just to keep in one place. Getting ahead can risk burn out…and one trip can leave you in the dust.
So yet another reason why I’ve been slacking with updates is because the hard drive on my desktop PC blew earlier this week. Luckily I had an extra drive that I wasn’t using, so it saved me from having to shop around for a replacement. I might still buy some kind of external drive to use for routine back-ups, but it’ll be a while before I really have to worry about that.
Starting up a brand new computer or just reinstalling your current one has a similar feeling to hooking up with a new girlfriend… You begin to tell yourself, “I’m going to treat this one better!” This time, I’m going to take a more professional approach to my PC than I have in the past. I’m not going to fill it with stupid junk that I won’t need. I’ve reinstalled the essentials, but I doubt I’ll install any other software until I know that I’ll need it. And playing with settings and tweaks are plenty to keep me busy in the meantime.
Well, I almost had an “OH SHIT!” moment. I was editing some of the supplemental material for the Alpha Counter archive when I noticed that the copy I’ve had on hand of the “Best Of” episodes only has the first 15 seconds of it. Not only that, but also the copy I had on my back-up disc. Luckily, I’m a back-up freak and remembered that I have copies of all the master recordings backed up on another disc. Just in case of situations like this…or if I wanted to re-edit every episode with ABBA for the background music.
My only concern is that the people whom I’ve distributed that episode to got gypped. But worry not! For soon you’ll be able to download the full episode again!
As I get closer to the end of my podcast commentaries, I’ve also come closer to when I’ll begin writing them for the episodes of Alpha Counter. But in order to do that, I first have to go through each one and edit out the commercials. I’ve been kinda dreading that since those episodes are so much longer than the average podcast episode length. You can imagine my delight earlier today when I tested the process out and found it’s not nearly the chore I thought it would be.
So in the next few weeks, I should be finished writing/posting all the commentary for the last few episodes of my podcast. After that, I get to finally dive into the best moments I’ve ever had in radio and all that came with it.
00:40 - BotCon has been going on strong for over 10 years now. I’ve known a handful of people who have been to one, but alas I have yet myself. Though I hear it’s kinda lame now and it’s since been replaced by another as the Transformers con of choice.
00:50 - Here’s the link to the Bootleg fanzine that I mentioned. Luckily, it’s still up for download. My contribution is the drawing of Starscream. kind of an homage to a work I’d previously done for her over 10 years ago for another fanzine that she was working on back then. Details of that adventure may or may not resurface here.
03:37 - I should probably warn you guys that this is a very personal story and is most certainly NSFW.
04:54 - “The Pit” is the place where my group of buddies and I would hang out in college. It was a place in the quad at the bottom of a set of wide stairs to what looks like could be a stage. I’m sure the college used it for concerts or speeches from time to time. or at least, used to… You see, since I moved to NC, they kinda tore down the whole quad. So that place from my past has become erased.
05:52 - Even since I recorded this podcast episode, I’ve gone through a great deal of maturity. So I think that if I were to experience that situation now, I would have booted the guy’s ass off the girl, spit at her, and stormed out the door toward the closest bus stop. The only difference is if it was another girl, to which I might have totally gone for it. Why not? The relationship wasn’t ever going to go anywhere. Good times…
06:29 - When I heard that dude’s belt unbuckle, I knew it was a no-win situation. No matter where he’d plan to stick his dick, either option wasn’t at all in my favor.
09:13 - The anime club that I’m a member of fondly refers to Genshiken as “COUp: The Series”.
00:57 - Ah, Lunar… It’s a cult favorite in the RPG community. It’s a simple game, but the story is just soooo gooood.
03:23 - I recently bought an imported copy of Lunar: Magical School at one of the last Animazement conventions. It sure looks fun, but I can’t read a word of it. My girlfriend had been taking Japanese for the past couple years, but couldn’t help much because of all the kanji.
05:53 - Who needs a high level when you can afford godlike armor and an assload of potions?
07:30 - Come to think of it, I still haven’t finished that game. In the age of emulation, I could easily play my copy on my PC, I suppose. It’s just too bad I can’t transfer my game save data from my Sega CD’s back-up RAM cart, so I can simply pick up where I left off.
08:37 - Yeah, Dragonmaster Dyne goes to sacrifice himself for the Goddess Althena and Ghaleon cries, “DO NOT WANT!”
09:22 - Oh, lord… I so miss those days when I just had fistfuls of disposable income to blow on my hobbies.
10:19 - I still haven’t gotten into it. At least not all the way. I have no recollection as to where I left off in that game. Because the PS1 version is so much like the Sega CD one, I can’t remember which version I’m remembering.
12:10 - Not that I ever advocate gaming while driving, but here’s how I managed to pull that off… All I would do is go to an area where there were re-spawning monsters and move my thumb in a circle on the directional pad. Then when I heard the battle music start, I’d switch to tapping the “A” button until the battle was over. Then repeat the process. I never had to look at the game as I drove; it was all just repeated hand motions. But hey, it was an easy way to level up!
13:19 - I eventually picked up “Dragon Song” and it’s total ass. It doesn’t feel at all like the previous games. And then there are dumb gameplay elements like how running eats up your HP and you have to chose to earn items or EXP from battles. I may not try to play that unless I’m desperately bored and run out of anything else to play.
13:25 - I’ve since seen the light and totally love my DS Lite. My eyes have been opened to all the possibilities that the touch pad offers.
01:40 - This is one of those editorials that I really want to transcribe and post along with a review I’d written for the Transformers movie. It’s so funny in that half of the predictions I make in this episode actually came to pass! I so want to use this as my own big fat I-told-ya-so.
03:47 - The joke’s on me since the movie broke all sorts of box office records the summer it was released and made loads of money. Well played, Spielberg…
05:34 - Before you roll your eyes at me, please remember back to the Mountain Dew and Xbox 360 robots that came to life in the movie.
08:14 - There was a universal cry of joy when we learned that Peter Cullen was going to do the voice of Optimus Prime. And while Megatron was voiced by freakin’ Agent Smith in the movie, Frank Welker came back to do his voice in the video game.
09:36 - As I listen to this, I can’t help but think about how pretentious I was to not only write, but perform this story. Like I should think that my virginity story is any more or less special than anyone else’s.
11:45 - I could never do something like that in this day and age. Now days, someone would have posted that shit on YouTube that night!
15:09 - That’s right! More embarrassment has yet to come! Stay tuned!
I’ve seen a lot of hentai games and each one gets either more graphic or just more silly. The following video displays a game that falls under the latter.
Apparently this is a rhythm game where the object is to flip up as many girls’ skirts as possible to catch a glimpse at their panties.
I gotta say…not a bad idea. Maybe I say this because this game is far more tame than most hentai games I’ve seen, or maybe I myself have an appreciation for getting a peek at a cute girl’s underwear. In either case, the gameplay itself looks solid. Definitely an entertaining twitch game for home or at work (if no one else is around). You can play the game here.
