A nerd confessional

I’ve been priming myself up to see the latest Star Wars movie by watching episodes one through six on DVD. Surprisingly I’ve been able to avoid any spoilers, seeing that basically every human on the earth has already seen it based its record blowing box office sells.

To be honest, I haven’t seen any of the movies with the exception of Episodes IV and I until recently. I originally saw episode IV for the first time back in 1997 when they re-released the original trilogy in theaters, supposing getting folks ready for the prequels that were scheduled to debut for the years to follow. Then I saw episode I in 1999 when it first debuted, and that was it!

It wasn’t that I hated them -- I actually liked the films; but I don’t know. I guess they were neat and all, but nothing beyond that. Then flash forward to a few years back when I got the DVDs and watched the originals, but basically forgot all that had happened story-wise since then (oops). Then a few days ago I decided it was finally time to watch them all. So for this round I started with the prequels first by watching episodes 1 – 3 and then the originals with 4 – 6.

So here’s my ranking of the movies. I know this is going to be very controversial to some, but I don’t care. If you have a complaint, take it to Lucas himself...or Disney. Ranking is from best to worst.
- Episode 1
- Episode 6
- Episode 3
- Episode 4
- Episode 5
- Episode 2

Now before you drop that monocle into your martini glass, please note that I never saw the full og set in its entirety until not too long ago, so I never experienced it the way you did. But if it makes you feel any better, I thought episode 2 was the worst. Nothing really happened and the CG hadn’t aged very well. There was only one part in that story that was worth of interest, but everything else seemed to be just a bridge for Episode 3.

I’d like to discuss what I liked and hated in details, but for people who haven’t seen the movies, I’ll save you from any spoilers (plus it’s late and I’m tired (and lazy)). But you can take my ranking with a grain of salt as I never cared for any of the games except for Rebel Assault II and the Sega’s 1993 Star Wars Arcade. The only other Star Wars game that’s ever caught my attention was Star Wars 1313, but they axed that one while it was in development, so it shows that the Force is weak with me.

Even though I’ve been hearing mixed opinions about the latest film, I’ll keep my expectations in check and hopefully enjoy it the same way I did for the other films.

Echoes of 2015

Another year, another list of music I have for you to check out. And for once both Bonobo and TOKiMONSTA didn’t make the list for 2015. *gasp*

ODESZA - "All We Need" (ft. Shy Girls) Remix by Robert DeLong
JimiJames - "Movie"
Lapalux - "Don't Mean A Thing"
Jamie xx - "Girl"
Funkin Matt - "Rapture"
DJ Snake & AlunaGeorge - "You Know You Like It" Remix by Tchami
Alpine - "Up For Air"
ZHU - "Hold Up, Wait a Minute"
What So Not - "Gemini" (ft. George Maple)
ODESZA - "Light" (ft. Little Dragon)

The one-two punch

My head is still spinning from the double dose of asshattery I saw during the weekend. The first incident should be a federal offence, but the second one is just a misdemeanor.

I realized I must have been near the annual gathering of the douches on Saturday while I was walking through a parking lot. You can tell because of how one of the attendees parked their Mustang by taking up four spaces. Not two, but four! Two I can somewhat understand when it comes to the raised bro-style trucks that are famous in this area for taking two spots. Their trucks are so big that they spill over across the next space. I don’t like it when I see it but at least there's an explanation as for why they take up more than one space. But for something like a Mustang and for it to take up four spots! That turd was flaunting it!

And then a few minutes later down the road I saw this guy:

Not as bad as the Mustang, but riding a bicycle like that out on the streets where the seat and handlebars are raised by a few feet with no practical reason but to show off. Come on! Keep that junk in San Francisco. Well, now that I think about it, he was probably an attendee at the conference too.

I should be fine by tomorrow, but in the meantime I’m just gonna lie down for a while and rest a bit.

Working stiff

Came across this the other day:

Payroll, a game where you experience the daily life of an office worker. Now, while I’m not sure how many people out there want to play something based on the drab, day-to-day lifestyle of a white collared worker (probably only a few, if any at all), but the game does a fine good job at portraying it.

Be thrilled by the task of getting a cup of coffee from the employees’ lounge. Gaze at the wonders of a cubicle farm. And be shocked by the horrors of the fax machine breaking down midway through sending a message.

Seriously though, even when I live this kind of life every day, I found this game to be pretty fun. I guess much of it comes from the ascetics of it looking like it came out of 1995. In fact, ’95 seems to be the theme as the setting looks like it takes place during that year, what with all the technology spread throughout the office. Adding to it, the fake box art has the old school Windows logo, reminiscent of Win 95. But, of course, there is also the way the game looks.

Holy cow does it look primitive! But at the same time that’s its charm. When walking around the office, the environment is in 3D, but your fellow co-workers are sprites, as they tend to pivot so to always face your direction as you walk around them. The textures are low, low res, having everything look extremely blocky or pixelated, but are rendered well enough to interpret what everything is.

Even though the game’s visuals are very basic, the exploration is huge. I love games that cram a lot of interactive objects into small environments, similar to some of the areas found in Duke Nukem 3D like the arcade in the movie theater. For Payroll, interactivity mostly just involves sound effects like picking up a phone and listing to a ring tone, or hearing someone speak like adults do in the Charlie Brown Peanuts cartoons.

Some of the art assets are neat to pick out. For example, if you turn on one of the hulking CRT computer monitors, you’ll catch what looks like a web browser with the horribly basic interface from that time. In addition, the IT room has nerd posters hanging on the walls like Mulder’s “I want to believe” and one of the Tardis from Dr. Who. It’s a lot of little things, but it makes the world feel alive and lived in.

Supposedly there are multiple endings to the game. For me, I’ve played the game twice but only saw one ending. I’m planning to keep playing to see what the other endings are, which is not asking a lot since the game takes less than 30 minutes to complete. The game’s music helps with this as it’s a repetitive, jazzy styled midi-like track that has a nice sound to it.

Interested? Then click this link to get to the purchase page. At minimum, the game is only $1, but you can name your price so to help out the indie developer. Come on, that’s less than that drink you have next to you. At least, that’s what I’m imagining it to be.

A Sunday stroll through the museum

For Christmas I received a few gift cards for PSN to finally finished collecting the remaining volumes I needed for the Namco Museum.

Quite beautiful, right? Seeing each volume’s cover art sprawled out across the Vita’s home screen spelling out Namco looks so incredibly rad. But even radder is the content found within the games.

These collections are a real labor of love as they encapsulate many of Namco’s earlier arcade hits from the 1980s. All of the games in the collection use the code from the arcade versions and even have options for the DIP switches to modify game settings. Heck, as a museum piece, they even include an image of the arcade board!

Speaking of which, the game takes place in a museum where you walk around in first person view. Each wing of the museum is dedicated to a certain game such as Pole Position. When you enter a wing, you can view advertisements and merchandise for the game and when you get to the end there is an arcade cabinet where you can play the actual game.

The collector in me wants to really get the physical copies of the games, but cash and free space are more of a premium, so I’ll stick with the digital copies instead. But if I were to collect them I’d go all the way and get the Japanese versions that include the super cool case to store them all in, including Namco Museum Encore which never got a US release.

If you are a history nerd for games like I am and have a Vita, or a PS3, or even a PSTV, then give this retro collection a try. Volume 1, at least.

Later, 2015

With only a few hours left before we say hello to 2016, I want to take a moment and thank everyone for reading this site. Not sure if there are any regular readers for it, but I hope the content found on it is enjoyable or at least interesting. And after the New Year, the first week of January is when the third year begins for internet-tokens.com. Time sure does move fast! In a few days from now, we will be closer to 2020 than we are to 2010. Zoinks!

But before we say goodbye to 2015 and the holiday season, I’d like to show one last piece from it before it ends. Check it out:

I saw it the other day while at GameStop and it looks so cool! I thought it was going to be way expensive like $15 dollars or more, but nope. It was a nice and easy $4 something. The package is so cool too that I don’t want to take the ornaments out of it. So next year, rather than ornaments on the tree, they will be next to the tree. Crazy? Yep. But that’s how I live life.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Hand of Five Poisons

Took a while to get this posted even though I watched it live. No real reason for the delay except for it aired during the week of Christmas, so I was busy getting some last minute Christmas gifts, wrapping them, and doing other miscellaneous things before the special day arrived.

Since this is the last episode, I figured I would hide it behind a link to prevent spoilers. So if you want to read my ramblings about the season finale, click the link below (or the title of this post).

'Tis the season

I’m off to celebrate the Christmas with family, so I’d like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas. Oh Yeah, that’s right, I said it: Merry Christmas. No politically correct nonsense here on this website. You can go to Starbucks or any other retailer to get the ambiguous Happy Holidays greetings.

…Ah, what the hey, I’m in a cheerful mood. Just so no ones left out:
Merry Christmas!
Happy Hanukkah!
Happy Kwanzaa!
Happy Festivus!
Happy Holidays!

Miracle at 129 West 81st Street, Apartment 5A

It seems like everyone this past weekend was waiting in lines to see what is probably going to be the biggest, record busting film of all time -- Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And just like everyone else, I was waiting in line too, but not to see a movie about Jedi’s, aliens, robots, and such. No, I was waiting in line to see Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment!

Hulu, who earlier this year acquired the rights to stream Seinfeld on their service brought an exhibit of sorts that includes a replica of Jerry’s apartment from the show to a gallery in Hollywood. In addition there were props and other interactive pieces to gander at up close. The event itself is called “Seinfeld: The Apartment” and was up for a few days between Wednesday, 12/16 through Sunday, 12/20. We went there Saturday morning, and boy were we surprised to see how long the line was.

Although, we shouldn’t have been surprised considering Seinfeld was (still is) one of most popular shows of all time, so it was naïve for us to think that. The line for this gallery event was long; like really loooong. The entrance was on Melrose Ave. in Hollywood, and the line for it snaked down the street eastward, turned onto Melrose Alley going west, then up La Cienega Blvd northward about one block. This is where the line started for us when we got there at 11am.

Around the half way point (about 2 hours waiting in line) signs were setup as a way for cheap entertainment, but were still enjoyable and broke up the mundane from standing in line nonetheless. They were contests where you submit your answers via Instagram to earn prizes. Some games included matching quotes from the show, guessing quotes via emojis, and singing the theme song to the show. Well, more like mouthing the bassline than singing actual lyrics.

Weather was mixed as standing in direct sunlight was bright and warm while standing in the shadows of buildings felt like a drop in temperature of about 20 degrees. It rained later in the evening so I’m glad we got there in the morning. While in line, a video production crew walked by a few times filming everyone there. One time as they passed by, they interviewed someone a few spots ahead of us. Not sure where any of that footage is going to air at, but probably on Hulu’s “behind the scenes” kind of thing or on the Seinfeld website. Probably the latter because the mic had the Seinfeld logo as oppose to the Hulu logo.

While waiting, you’re able to observe and soak in a part of Hollywood living. People there dress trendy, wear goofy sunglasses, and saw my share of young, skinny dudes wearing beards waking down the street. Meaning, I saw a bunch of hipster doofuses. Heck, we even saw a guy pushing a baby stroller with a dog sitting in the carriage. We saw him walk into a store with the dog still in the stroller…he walked out 30 seconds later, probably asked to leave. And since the event was on Melrose Avenue, there were a ton of trendy businesses where half the names don’t really tell what the store is selling. Some of these businesses even have graffiti as their front décor (so edgy). At the same time, there were a bunch of “for lease” signs on the windows, so I’m guessing most stores there have a short life span and go out of style like the clothes everyone there wears. Glad I’m just visiting and don’t live there.

After rounding the corner and passing a food truck, we were at the front of the line; nearly four hours later. The front of the building has a portrait of George in his sexy pose. It was surprising to see that it was actually painted on the building rather than being a wrapper covering the front of the entrance. Once we were inside, it was a total eye full.

The gallery was setup like an amusement ride, like a haunted house where you follow a set path and go through a number of rooms. The first room was a large open space with quotes from the show spewed across the walls with green and black colored text. There were many ushers there (who by the way were all wearing white t-shirts where the front was an outline of the puffy shirt) willing to help by taking pictures of you or your group as there was a bunch of things to stand next to and take a picture with. There were many interactive exhibits there and that’s why so many of them were there to assist with taking pictures. More on that later.

The first room with the quotes on the walls also had the booth from Monk’s Café where the characters of the show would normally meet up. Unfortunately you were not allowed to sit on it. Along the wall were a number of props laid out on display. Each had a display stand next to them which also noted the season number and episode title where the prop was seen. Some included the Tropic of Cancer book, the Maestro’s bent wand, and the photo of George’s boss being photoshopped out, but then hand drawn back in. Next to the props was a parody portrait of The Last Supper, but with all the writers for the last episode with Jerry in the middle as Jesus.

Around the corner was Puddy’s Jersey Devils hockey jersey. That was displayed behind a glass case, but next it was the Frogger machine. In front of it was an iPad that showed the clip from the show where the arcade cabinet was seen. I forgot to check if the first place score had the initials G.L.C. Next was the Tweety Bird Pez dispenser placed on a theater chair from the episode where Elaine busted out laughing when Jerry placed it on her while they watched a piano recital. By the way, sorry for the poor quality of photos. Me, plus phones, plus shaky hands equal blurry images.

While waiting in line to see the replica apartment, there’s a spot where you can view people sitting and posing the same way George did in the show, similar to what is painted on the front of the building. Surprisingly, many people did this, with ushers acting the part of the flamboyant photographer telling their muse to stick out there hand and do the tiger claw. The crowd went wild when a super skinny guy went “all the way” and took everything off but his underwear and posed for shots. The crowd went wild again a minute later when a dad placed his baby in the same pose too, but unlike the skinny nerd the baby was fully clothed.

Seinfeld’s apartment was fully replicated and was cool to walk around. They captured the apartment hallway, the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and hallway with the bike hanging on the wall. Sorry, but I don’t want to share the majority images here of the apartment as I’m in many of the shots, but to focus on video games, I took a picture of the shelving that has his stereo and VHS tapes. And it’s true: up close you can see he has a copy of games like Tetris, SimCity, and Super Spike V'Ball. It makes me wonder if Jerry had an NES next to his TV.

When you leave the apartment, you exit through the hallway leading to his bedroom, but instead of the bedroom it’s the next room in the gallery, which is a Festivus setup where you can get a picture of cardboard standups of both George and Frank Costanza with a banner overhead reading “Another Festivus miracle!” All around, you are surrounded by dozens of unadorned aluminum Festivus poles. This was probably the cheesiest part of the gallery, but with it currently the season for the holiday, it had an excuse to be there.

What was cool, though, was seeing a vinyl replica of a brick wall that had signatures from what seems like everyone who has worked on the show. I didn’t recognize the majority of the signatures, but I did see some familiar names like Kathy Griffin, Larry Thomas (the Soup Nazi), and Jerry Stiller. Another interactive piece is standing in front of a red curtain, a mic, and a spotlight so you can reenact Jerry’s intro scene where he’s doing standup comedy.

Towards the end of the gallery you’re back in the front room with more props to look at. Some of them include the Superman figure on the shelf in the living room, George’s sable Russian hat, and the script to the final episode signed by the cast. When you leave the gallery, you are given two items. The first is a Festivus postcard and second is a box of Junior Mints. I thought that was clever.

It was a pretty cool experience and I thought it was worth the wait in line. If I were to add something to make it better, it would have been neat to have a Seinfeld store towards the end to buy related items from the show like shirts, DVDs, or dumb things like a Tweety Bird Pez dispenser or a pack of John Voight pencils. It also would have been cool to see a video playing while waiting in line for the apartment room where each of the cast members are thanking everyone for coming to the event, or possibly even having one of them show up to the gallery unexpectedly, but that’s just wishful thinking.

Happy Festivus, everybody! Now let the airing of grievances begin.

Like a daredevil

I really don’t give a hoot what the critics have to say, but I really wanna play Devil's Third. Problem is (1) I don’t own a Wii U and (2) the price for the game skyrocketed shortly after its US release; at least it did for the physical copy. So for the time being, I’m not going to be able to play it any time soon.

From what I’ve read from people who played it sounds like it’s just a big mess, trying to dabble in many different types of gameplay but really doesn’t do any of them well, making it a mediocre experience. If that’s true then that’s a real shame to hear because Itagaki did some great stuff while working at Tecmo with the DOA and Ninja Gaiden series’. And knowing this game has been in development for over five years adds on to the pile of bummer regarding Devil's Third.

As of now, I compare it with being on the same level as Duke Nukem Forever. Everyone hated it, but it was a game I still wanted to play due to its incredible length of time being developed and with all of the mystique it had tied with it. It was just something I wanted to experience for myself and ended up having a good time playing. Not great, but good. Same goes for Devil's Third: a long dev cycle and from a guy who made some great action and fighting games. Hopefully it will eventually find its way on to the PC or PS4 so I can experience it myself. Even though it may be bad, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.