Responsible as an adult

Some people pay for their TV service by mailing a check, others pay online, but for me I go to…GameStop?!

It’s odd to say that I go to my local GameStop not just for fun anymore, but to have a legit reason and pay off a bill. Every month around this time I pick up a $50 PSN card for the sole reason to re-subscribe for another month to PlayStation Vue, my TV service that I’ve had since November when I moved into my new place.

I wrote about the service a few months back when I used the 7 day free trial before moving out, but at the time I hadn’t planned on actually using Vue as my primary way of getting TV. My original plan was to use a plain old TV antenna, but that blew up in my face when I found out I was in a dead zone for picking up any broadcast signals as there is a hill that blocks the line of sight between my place and the transmitter towers which are all un-conveniently located in one spot on Mt. Wilson.

My cable Internet provider noticed I didn’t have a TV plan so of course they tried to get me to sign up with them, but when all was said and done my total bill per month for both TV and Internet would have been $139. Jebus, I can’t afford that! The saving grace was when Sony announced Vue would be compatible with Amazon products like Fire and Fire TV Stick. With this, I exchanged the TV antenna -- which was an Amazon product -- for another Amazon item: the Fire TV Stick.

I subscribe to the low tiered plan titled Access because everything I want is on there. Sure, it would be nice to have some of the other channels found on the higher tiers, but budgeting my life so I don’t starve takes priority. And with Vue, I’m happy with what I got: local affiliates, around 50 cable channels, a DVR service, ability to pause live TV, and on demand. It may not be as elegant as traditional cable or satellite services, but with my interest in vegging out in front of the TV all evening becoming less of an interest, the clunkyness of navigating though the menus on an Amazon box don’t bother me that much.

As a nice gesture, Sony sent me a Fire TV Stick, free of charge. That’s cool since I have two TVs, but I haven’t gotten around to using it yet so it sits on my dining room table unused. It would have been really cool if they sent me it before I bought one, but whatever, I appreciate their generous gift. But I rather would have preferred if they made Vue compatible for PlayStation TV, which I already owned before I moved out. It would have made it actually useful and I would have purchased a PlayStation remote to use with it. But that more and more of a pipe dream as time goes on.

Saturday night adventures

Been tinkering with something I’ve never really messed with before: emulation.

One reason for me delving into this new territory is finally being able to play import PS2 and PS1 games that I’ve bought over the years but never got around to purchasing a modded console to play them. The other reason is finding better ways to capture gameplay footage for screenshots.

I’m really surprised at how far emulation has gone. Last time I fiddled with it was around 15 years ago when SNES emulation was all the rage. A friend handed me a CD-R with an emulator and some ROMs and said "have fun." A few nights ago I tested a PS2 emulator by using my physical copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. For the record: socks were blown off. I couldn’t believe how well it played the game with no slowdown, jittering, and the such; even though it was rendering 3D environments in real time.

Now I’m trying to get my PS1 game saves from my non-official PS1 memory card to the emulator on my PC. There are lots of hoops to jump through, but at least there’s a solution for this.

Spotted

Nearly did a spit take this morning while I was watching the news on NHK World. During their lighthearted closing story, they reported on a festival in Japan where some celebrates participated by throwing beans into the crowd as a way to invite good luck. One of those celebrities was this guy:

Oh my. It’s Segata Sanshiro!

Didn’t expect to see him on television this morning. Turns out Hiroshi Fujioka, the guy who played the role of Segata Sanshiro, is currently an actor in a historical drama TV show called Sanada Maru that airs on NHK. Based on the website, he plays the character Honda tadakatsu, “the bravest warlord in the Tokugawa family and a supporter of leyasu. His daughter, Komatsuhime, becomes the lawful wife of Nobuyuki in order to build ties between Tadakatsu and his foes, the Sanada family.”

I was wondering what happened to him. Last note I saw of him was around a decade ago when he was promoting a Rambo arcade game from Sega. Glad to see he’s doing well, but we still need to find out what happened to Hidekazu Yukawa, the Senior Managing Director of Sega who was the face for the Dreamcast in Japan. Only when we find his whereabouts will I finally be able to sleep well at night.

New entries are imminent

For reals this time. I’m just about ready to begin posting a new batch of articles and features for the video games journal. The first one should drop by next week with the rest continuing throughout the next few months leading into summer.

I’m so hyped that I may pass out as I am typing thisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

It was bound to happen

So watching all of the movies did have a big enough of an impact on me to buy something Star Wars related. But unlike a dumb toy, I got something actually worth buying.

Star Wars Arcade for the 32X. Loved playing this back in the day when it was in arcades. My first time playing the game was in the Adventuredome at Circus Circus in Las Vegas. Whenever I needed a break from all the laser tag battles and riding coasters, I would wander over to the arcade and throw a few quarters into the machine. Ah, good times. It was basically heaven for an 11 year old.

The 32X version is pretty darn close to mimicking the arcade original. Close, but not perfect. The part I’m having difficulty with are the on-rails shooter moments. You’re getting bombarded from all sides and die rather quickly. I think it’s difficult because of the sudden jumps of rendering objects when they get closer to you. One moment they are far away and then the next moment they shift a bit and are much closer, causing enemies to “teleport” slightly away from where you had the crosshairs aimed at. The game is far from rendering the 3D environments smoothly, something that the arcade version did very well.

With all this Star Wars hype, maybe Disney will consider making a new TIE Fighter or X-Wing game. Imagine playing those with today’s tech. I’m imagining it would be pretty dope.

All cranky as heck

This needs to stop:

Gives you chills, right?

Don’t get me wrong as I don’t mind seeing advertising on websites. I don’t use any web browser add-ons to remove ads from webpages or any other kinds of similar programs as I know ads are an essential revenue earning generator for many web publications, but some ads go way too far in annoyance and need to be banished from the Internet all together. The biggest offenders of them all are the video ads.

You’ve seen them, the ones that show a brief spinning swirl for a loading icon and then show a nonstop series of 15 and 30 second video commercials; using the Flash program and having your CPU fan turn on at its max, making your laptop screaming at you for mercy to close the browser window because it’s getting torn to shreds from the inside.

Ads are fine until they become obtrusive and get in your way from the content you’re trying to read. For these video ads, not only are they making your PC physically loud, but then they also bring your web experience to a screeching halt as it eats up system memory, causing scrolling up and down on a webpage to be shuddery or sluggish and causing pages to load very slowly.

Many websites have video ads but the one that uses them the most is usgamer (yeah, I'm calling them out). On regular occasion a webpage on their site may have two or even three of these suckers running at the same time. Add in the fact that I like to have multiple tabs open when crawling through their site and my browser ends up locking up to the point where nothing is responsive and I need to force quit the program. Most times I have to retreat from their site before I’m finished reading an article.

These video ads have been around for a while now and it’s been that same amount of time since the web experience, from a performance perspective, starting sucking. If website admins have the ability to select the types of ads that show up on their websites, then they really need to uncheck the box that allows these kinds of ads from appearing. Don’t worry, as I have no plans on placing ads on this site, so use it as a safety zone to retreat to if you ever get bombarded with ads like those.

Similarities regarding the word “south”

What do you get when you combine the character art from a Mark Hentemann carton like 3 South, the political humor of Seth MacFarlane, and the voice of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons? Why you get Fox’s latest animated show, Bordertown. That's what.

Didn’t even know this show existed until my dad mentioned it to me a few weeks back while we were talking on the phone. I was reluctant to watch it when I heard Seth MacFarlane’s name attached to the project. His work has been steadily less interesting for me as time goes on. The only things from his work that I care for are American Dad and episodes of Family Guy prior to its cancellation in 2002. Annnd his work on Johnny Bravo.

I decided to watch Bordertown just to see what it was about since only two episodes had aired. Other than hearing it from my dad, I’ve haven’t heard anyone else talk about it. Not from radio, television, online, anything. Episode one didn’t interest me in the least, but that’s to be expected because writers normally have to pen a watered down story that needs to include the majority of the characters to get introductions out of the way. For me, it didn’t catch my attention till the second half of the second episode. There were a few jokes in there that kept me entertained and interested in the story. From there episode three was pretty good too. The show mostly covers political, racial, and cultural topics regarding a town near the US/Mexico border.

As obvious as it could have been, I didn’t notice the character art was strikingly similar to another animated show until the end of the second episode. It’s the same character art as seen in 3 South, a show I absolutely loved back in the day that dealt with college life. The main character in Bordertown, Bud Buckwald, basically looks like an older version of Sanford Reilly from 3 South, and with the same voice as Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. There are a few other characters that look similar to other 3 South characters, so it got me on the hunt for 3 South episodes.

It’s a darn shame their hasn’t been a DVD release for the show, but some marvelous human has uploaded all thirteen episodes of 3 South on YouTube. If you never seen the show before, I recommend checking it out. To make it easy, I’m imbedding episode one here (hopefully it’s still there when you are reading this). Bordertown didn’t start as good as 3 South did, but here’s hoping Mark Hentemann, the creator of both shows, can make it as good as his previous work.

Episode Se7en

Feeling like the only human left on the planet who hasn’t yet seen The Force Awakens, I finally got off my duff and made it to the theater on Sunday to see it. And to my surprise, watched it without any spoilers.

To summarize, I thought it was a great film. Going in, I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy it due to some of the negative comments made towards it. You know, like how the movie is catering to a wider audience other than the typical white male. Some have told me it was very obvious and made it too distracting to enjoy, but thankfully that wasn’t the case for me. I thought it was quite entertaining.

And so after watching all seven movies within a small time frame, I now sort of have Star Wars fever; which is something I never had before (call a doctor). Not that I want to start collecting toys or action figures or anything like that, but I now know enough of the universe such as characters, planet names, and other trivial information to participate in trivia for the franchise and to show off my l33t knowledge of the lore, allowing me to renew my geek cred for another year. Thank goodness too, because I felt it was on the verge of expiring.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I’m a bit late posting this, but all y’all need to checkout last week’s episode of Pre-Flight which showcases nearly a dozen animated music videos. I knew some of Gill’s picks, but all of Jason’s were new to me with the exception of one. It’s an hour of awesome which I highly recommend.

This is the January 15th episode, so you still got a week to view it before they pull it from the website.

[UPDATE – 1/31]
Since the episode isn't available anymore, here’s the list of music videos that were shown; with links to view them included!

Show Review
Daft Punk - Interstella 5555 (they showed "Aerodynamic")

Gill's picks
Kanye West - "Heartless"
Pearl Jam - "Do the Evolution"
a-ha - "Take On Me"

Jason's picks
Is Tropical - "The Greeks"
Junior Senior - "Move Your Feet"
Tool - "Sober"

Music videos Jason worked on
J Dilla - "Nothing Like This"
Killer Mike - "Reagan"

Adult Swim Facebook Top 5 Animated Music Vids
Gorillaz- "Feel Good Inc,"
a-ha - "Take On Me"
Blockhead - "The Music Scene"
Daft Punk - Interstella 5555
Pearl Jam - "Do the Evolution"

Toonami Facebook Top 5 Animated Music Vids
Daft Punk - Interstella 5555
Gorillaz - "On Melancholy Hill"
Linkin Park - "Breaking The Habit"
Korn - "Freak On a Leash"
Kanye West - "Heartless"

For you perusal

I like Sega.

Well, more like I liked Sega. Today they are barely a publisher and a mere shadow of what they once were back in the day. But up until about a decade ago they were great; spreading their name across all aspects of gaming including arcades, home consoles, and portable gaming. Not only did they make fantastic software, but were kings when it came to coming up with unique gameplay experiences using hardware for their arcade games. For the most part, they were innovators, trying things out and bringing them to market before most others dared to. But at the same time it could be related to why they are the way they are today.

Throughout the years I’ve come across many write-ups about Sega on the web -- both good and bad, with most being well written -- so I decided to link a few of them here for you to take a look at if you already haven’t. They are a bit long, so get your favorite beverage by your side before you begin.

Volume 5 - Sega/Mega/Super 32X/CD 32X
While the 32X is one of Sega’s greatest blunders because it was an unnecessary piece of hardware, its tech was still impressive for the time and contains a few titles in its library worth taking a look at. If you’re curious to know about how how this piece of tech came to be and its unfortunate demise, then this article will help shed some light on the matter.

Forensic Examination Of The Dreamcast Corpse
An interesting article theorizing what may have happened to warehouses full of Dreamcast consoles when Sega decided to pull out of the hardware market. Autopsies were made to help prove the theory, so get ready to see some gory computer hardware action. It’s also a two parter, so be sure to read the second half.

Shenmue Anniversary Celebration
Even though the title is referring to Shenmue, it’s more about the creator, Yu Suzuki. This feature has him wax nostalgic regarding his time at Sega and how he once teamed with an aerospace company to make the Sega Model 2 arcade board. That’s right: games like Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 2 were built with technology intended for space!