"What?... yea i'll do it later"

I just want everyone to know that I love you, I value your readership, I am genuinely concerned about getting some blog posts up, but most important of all; i'm defiantly NOT ignoring you to play Prototype...

Raccoons: The Big Bug Scourge of the Skies

I am sick. Sick to death of how we as a society continually turn a blind eye to the real problems facing our great nation. Naturally, I speak of raccoons. Unfortunately, our nation’s broken school system fails completely at teaching adequate raccoon awareness thanks to uptight PTA committees that fear potential controversy. If you’re one of the unfortunate folks who don’t even know to keep a raccoon preparedness kit in every room of your house, then read on, and prepare to be enlightened.

Some basic facts: You are probably larger than a raccoon, but they will still best you in combat because they are devious cheats. Conventional attacks mean nothing to raccoons. If you punch a raccoon in the face, it will just laugh at you, and then probably go rape your mom. NEVER ATTACK A RACCOON WITH A BLADE. They bleed acid, like in that movie “Raccoon” and its thrilling James Cameron directed sequel, “Raccoons.” While it’s completely unadvisable to initiate violent conflict with a raccoon without backup from your posse of bros, you must always exercise your Raccoon Risk Reduction Responsibilities:

First: If you see a pregnant raccoon, you must do everything in your power to abort the birth. If you’re unfamiliar with standard raccoon abortion protocol, you can pick up a kit at most Walgreen’s locations that includes a hammer, a corkscrew, and a plastic baggie for stem cell containment.

Second: Friends don’t let friends let raccoons drive cars. While it looks like they could probably steer pretty well because they have those grabby little hands, they lack both the “cognitive capacity” and the “long enough legs” to safely operate a non-raccoon modified vehicle.

Third: Be a good citizen. Not all midsized creepy mammals are raccoons. Beavers, for example, are terrific creatures that will let you enter their cool underwater houses if you prove yourself to not be a total racist. Nutria are kind of like beavers except they’re uglier and less talented with architecture. Skunks are still assholes.

Finally, you need to familiarize yourself with the history of the raccoon/human conflict which has been documented in the following films.

The Great Outdoors:

The movie poster alone features one of the most terrifying images of a raccoon ever. Here we see a raccoon staring menacingly with its dead eyes as Dan Akroyd and John Candy brazenly ignore the laws of physics. To make this scene even more disturbing, we must remember that John Candy was later killed by a raccoon. At the time, it was widely reported that he died from “Overweight Comedian Syndrome” but this was all part of a cover-up by raccoon sympathizers in the media.

Are We Done Yet:

Here we see rapper/thespian, Ice Cube, seconds before his untimely demise in this unusually dark family comedy. The raccoon is trying to convince witnesses of his innocence by employing the “cartoon googly eyes” tactic. Give it up, you monster. It didn’t work for Scott Peterson, and it won’t work for you.

Daddy Day Camp:

This truly disturbing film depicts a series of raccoon assaults on humanity. On the poster, we see a duo of raccoons (with skunk allies) using mind control to force a group of children to butt-rape Cuba Gooding Jr.

The Hound That Thought He Was a Raccoon:

This “classic” is practically a raccoon recruitment film in which an innocent hound is corrupted and converted to the ways of raccoonism. The image here seems to depict the pair hiding in a tree after committing a heinous act of arson.

I hope I’ve done a public service here today. In this time of terrorist sleeper cells and economic disarray, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the real enemy could be hiding in our own garbage cans. Always remember that your best weapon in the war against raccoons is awareness. Awareness, coupled with fire.

Update

Just a quick follow up to the Blizzcon news, Kotaku just posted the trailer for Cataclysm which you can view here

Suburbia in the 90s Was Weird

Oh shit, no one's posted anything in over a week! This calls for a copout video post!

Please consider the case of David Wagner. Sometime between 1990-1992, David and a couple of his idiot friends in Ames, IA, decided to kill one of the long suburban afternoons by fucking around with their Dad's camcorder. What ensued was the type of shame that any self-respecting adult would do anything to hide. Acid-washed jeans, awkward-white-kid-dancing in a school hallway, "street slang" which was painfully misused even in the early nineties, and unfortunate mullet/glasses combos were committed to Super 8 tape for all eternity.

And that wouldn't have been so bad if this video just resided in a shoebox in Dave's attic somewhere. But no, it appears that this tape fell into the wrong hands. Cruel, unfeeling hands, who unconscionably put this video up on YouTube for all the world to see.

Now, this video was posted three years ago and has a paltry 11,000 views. But I'm confident that with Shyeah's immense readership (hi mom), this video will surely have gone viral within ten minutes of this posting.



via FilmDrunk

B to the C

The big news today is of course Blizz fucking con. Kicking off about an hour ago I'm sure we're in for a few sparkling brown nuggets of info over the weekend that will be sure to have about 15 million people frothing at the mouth, I speak of course of the main thing that I'm sure is at the top of every ones mind attending blizzcon right now. CATACLYSM!! dun dun duuuun! what was a rumor over the passed few weeks has just been confirmed via live coverage from Kotaku which you can check out here. Cataclysm is of course the upcoming 2010 WOW expansion and will feature:

Level cap raised to 85
2 new races (Goblin for the horde, Worgen for alliance)
Kalimdor and Eastern kingdoms have been transformed
New race/class combos (ie. Tauren Paladins)
And much moar!

Adding to the anticipation of Blizzcon was a rumor of sorts, or "accidental slip" from the Korean version of Diablo 3 featuring the 4th unknown race. And assuming it gets confirmed over the weekend that will bring the roaster of playable classes in Diablo 3 to Witchdoctor, Barbarian, Wizard, and Monk. Huzzah!

For those attending Blizzcon (or watching the paid direct TV/Internet stream) get an exclusive WOW in game pet Grunty the Murloc marine which is pretty rad also Ozzy Osbourne will be taking main stage to headline the music portion of Blizzcon.


Check out more over at Kotaku's live blogging coverage
Or View 16+ hours of Blizzcon on Direct TV or streaming on the internets

In Such A Savage Economy - Comic1

Here is this weeks comic, click to enlarge. Enjoy!

Spent Cartridges #1: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Spent Cartridges is an ongoing (maybe) series of columns devoted to classic (or sometimes just old) video games. Join us as we explore the past and prance about in the clovered fields of nostalgia.

There are only two things is the world that I take completely seriously and regard with undying reverence. The first is the teachings passed down in the Wu Tang manual by the prophet RZA, and the second is a series of video games about killing Draculas.

I’m of course talking about the Castlevania series from Konami in which you take the role of various and sundry vampire hunters in a quest to finally rid the world of Vlad Tepes Dracula. The history of the series is actually quite complicated, and I’m sure I’m a big enough dork that I’ll explore it in more detail in future articles. Today, we’re just talking about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, originally released for the Playstation in 1997. Up until this point, the Castlevania games had stuck fairly closely to their formula by consistently being really good, and really hard, platformers with a flair for supplying terrific atmosphere and music.


Did I mention the English translation and voice acting sucks? It sucks.

Symphony of the Night was radically different from its predecessors though, largely in thanks to designer, Koji Igarashi, who would go on to be in charge of the whole franchise for 12 years and counting. Igarashi had always dreamed of directing a Castlevania game while developing Japanese dating sims for Konami and finally got his chance with SotN. Apparently he thought the Castlevanias of the past were limiting their audience and lasting appeal by being too linear and challenging. His solution was to open up the game world, loosen up the series’ traditionally stiff controls, and adding RPG elements, that made the game conquerable for even the least experienced action gamers.

Structurally, he basically ripped off Super Metroid, which when you think about it is a completely terrific thing to rip off. Everybody loves that game but nobody (at the time) really copied the formula, and even Nintendo waited a gajillion years to bother making another one. The basic idea of Symphony is that your progression through Dracula’s castle was limited by your character’s abilities, and as you became more powerful and retrieved new relics, new areas would become accessible to you. Can’t reach that passageway on the ceiling? Wait until you get the high jump power up, or learn how to transform into a bat. That kind of thing. It works well, and while there is an invisible guiding hand directing you down the “correct” path, you’re totally free to wander into whatever areas you want.

Having just recently finished SotN for the first time since it was still new, I’m happy to announce that it holds up extremely well. In fact, I’m amazed by how much stuff the younger me missed the first time around. Combining the shield rod item with a shield for example, can cause special effects and power ups to occur. That seems obvious now, but it’s things like this that make SotN considerably deeper than your usual platformer. Another thing I discovered that really surprised me was a reference to my favorite author Kurt Vonnegut. There’s a boss enemy in the game (named “Legion” in future games) that is a floating ball of brainless zombies. In SotN the creature is named “Granfaloon” which is a reference to Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle where he describes a granfaloon as "a proud and meaningless association of human beings." Naturally this intersection of my favorite things gave me a great big nerd boner.

Castlevania is a series that once had a reputation for being notoriously difficult, but with SotN things may have been taken a little too far in the other direction. If you spend time exploring beyond the required paths and looking for secrets (which you absolutely should do), you’ll naturally level up to the point that few areas will offer much of a challenge. The second castle (an inverted version of the first that opens up after you avoid the “bad” ending) is considerably more challenging, but still pretty easy compared to Castlevanias of old. Ultimately though, this lack of challenge didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the game much at all since it’s still such a deep experience.

I wasn’t going to say much about the story at all because despite being a lifelong fan of the series, the story to the Castlevania series is one of those simplistic, yet totally complicated clusterfucks that only seem to happen in Japanese video games. The basic idea is that Dracula comes back to life every hundred years to menace humanity, and uh…this is one of those times I guess. In this one you play as Alucard, son of Dracula (har har) who is totally rebellious and metrosexual and wants to kill his dad and fuck up his house. And I’m serious about the metrosexual thing. Alucard is consistently depicted as a very beautiful lady. SotN is a direct story sequel to the also totally excellent Rondo of Blood, so if you care about your video game vampire continuity, you should play that too I guess. Normal people however, can stick to the basics and not worry about it. If you’re weird or something though, feel free to check out sites like this. Nerd.

Symphony of the Night is one of those “secret” classic games that is well-renowned amongst gamers (dorks) but kind of unknown to more casual enthusiasts. If you’ve missed out somehow, this game is available pretty much everywhere these days. It’s available on PSN and XBLA for just ten bucks, or can be unlocked in the Dracula X Chronicles for PSP. OR you could go to Japan and buy a used copy of the janky Saturn version that never made it to the US. Whichever is most convenient.

(special shout outs to the works of Jeremy Parish and friends for inspiring this ludicrously nerdy column. If you like old nerd stuff their work is required reading. Him and his cohorts can be found at GameSpite and the Retronauts blog.)