Snake Creeps Down

Ryder is doing some investigating to find out the importance of M.K.’s pendant. Waldo tells him to ask his grandfather, who Ryder hasn’t seen since he was a child, but not surprising since he’s living in the badlands in what looks like a peasant’s living, which is a stark contrast to the lavish life style as a baron’s son. Interesting thing is his grandfather (who by the way is played by Lance Henriksen!) appears to be a leader of a religion. It appears he knows about M.K.’s powers, but kept it a secret from Ryder.

With Quinn’s health deteriorating, he -- surprisingly -- takes Jade’s advice of having part of his clipper army take place of the cogs in his opium fields until they can get more recruits. And to top it off, he has her take charge in leading the task! Lydia, now understanding what the cogs toil with every day by assisting in the opium fields is beginning to understand where Jade is coming from and wants to be her friend more than her rival, but we’ll see if she sticks to what she says.

And as for Sunny, things are getting tangled for him from all sides. Quinn wants him to stop seeing Veil so there’s no resentment from her with the patient-doctor relationship he has with her, he found out the friendship between M.K. and Tilda and needs to hide it from the other clippers, and knowing that The Window has figured out who she’s been looking for: M.K. And time is not on his side too because Veil can’t hide her pregnancy forever, so he needs to decide on his escape. Next week’s episode is the season finale, and the preview makes it look like it’s full of action and drama, so can’t wait to see it!

Buyer's remorse

I really love Patlabor. I think most of it comes from the interactions between everyone at the division and how all of them have unique characteristics of not only their attitudes and emotions, but the skills they bring to the job as well, adding layers to each character. It definitely causes for some funny moments when you mix a hot head with a stern leader; a quiet and humble person with a nerd; or all of them seeking advice from a lazy leader who just goes with the flow.

When it comes to anime I, for whatever reason, prefer comedy over action. Don’t get me wrong though as I love action (my collection is mostly filled with action titles more than anything else), but comedy is something I always look for first.

Of course most shows with action have a little bit of comedy stirred in, but Patlabor flips it around by having comedy be first and action second. Well, I guess the comedy part might be more of a slice of life type with the show since the majority of each episode has the cast of characters dodiling around their workplace but then get serious when it comes to going out on field to an incident.

It took me over a course of about two years to collect the whole set of DVDs for the Patlabor TV series. I got the last set a few months back on eBay when I saw someone selling it for a good price. The series was released in three large sets where each one included four volumes. It was licensed by Central Park Media and distributed by U.S. Manga Corps in North America in the early 2000s but the company went under back in 2009, so I’ve been collecting the sets that were released back in the mid-2000s. And since they normally license odd anime shows from the ‘80s, I figured this would be the only way to get the series with English dubs because of their unique selection of titles. But I was wrong.

I never checked Amazon for Patlabor episodes. I only checked on eBay. And when I recently saw that they re-released the whole series on Blu-Ray, I was totally ticked off. Are you kidding me?! These new sets are beautiful! Look at the covers for each volume!

I was totally surprised to find out another company got the license for Patlabor and not only released the TV show but the OVA, movies, and specials as well, and each of those have gorgeous covers, too. The back cover is no slouch as they got a section on it that shows what part of the Patlabor universe that volume is for, giving a handy visual reference for every volume. The U.S. Manga Corps versions have no competition with the re-releases and I now regret spending all that money in acquiring those ones when I could have gotten the Blu-Ray versions where they take less shelf space and are uprezzed to 1080p but keeping the 4x3 aspect ratio; which is what I prefer!

I guess that’s the lesson for today: research everywhere before buying.

Two Tigers Subdue Dragons

The Widow is setting up for the barons to go at one another, making them believe the other has is against them. For example, she captured one of Quinn’s clippers and sent his head to him with a message making him believe it was from Jacobee, the baron he wants to bond an alliance with.

Sunny, trying to train M.K. to control his special powers didn’t know how strong his actually were, causing him to get knocked out in one punch. But it looks like he’s on his way to do so.

Meanwhile Quinn finds out there’s a slim chance of hope for Veil to get rid of the cancer residing in his brain, but this contradicts her father’s statement where he said there was nothing he can do and he wouldn’t live to see the Winter solstice. This puts some doubt into Quinn because she said that her father was better at resolving cancers than she was, so the idea of a slim chance for a cure coming from her puzzles him. As of now, it doesn’t look like he knows that she knows that he killed her parents.

Behind the scenes, The Widow seems to have teamed up with Ryder, having him believe that he can’t become the baron of his land unless he gets rid of his father. So he sets up a trap when Quinn and Jacobee meet. A battle between the two breaks out, but Sunny was able to supply some evidence showing that The Widow was behind it, so they stop with just a few clippers that survived between the two. By the way, this fight was pretttttyyyyy, pretty good.

Finally, Sunny feels he needs to leave now, so with the help of Waldo, he gives him a ticket out of there by allowing him to meet with the River King who can supply him with a ship out of the region, but the trick is he as to bring back the head of someone who killed a number of cogs that were being transported via a ship under his command. To Sunny’s surprise…it’s M.K.! *Dramatic stinger music*

PSX 2015

How 'bout that PlayStation Experience, huh? Lots of cool stuff was announced there including the deets on Street Fighter V, the remake of Final Fantasy VII, and a whole butt load of information about PlayStation VR. The biggest treat from that was hearing that Rez would be coming out for it called Rez Infinite! And bigger during the stage demo was seeing that Tetsuya Mizuguchi was the one playing the game in a fancy jump suit that’s essentially the 2.0 version of the Trance Vibrator. So that’s what he’s been up to recently.

But unlike a port of the game like Rez HD was for the 360, it will supposedly include a new level called area X. This is all so cool and probably the reason why I’ll now need to buy a PlayStation VR when it comes out.

Also at the event, Tim Schafer dropped by to show what they’ve been working on for the Day of the Tentacle remastered version and then announcing another one of his adventure games from the LucasArts days is going to be remaster soon as well: Full Throttle. THEN he noted his crowdfunding campaign for Psychonauts 2 and how there will be a Psychonauts game for the VR called Rhombus of Ruin.

There was more, so I suggest checking out the stream if you want to see the rest of the announcements. Lots of cool stuff is in the works for PlayStation and here’s hoping 2016 is just as good as 2016 is/was.

Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them.

Wow, this mod for Star Wars Battlefront is insane. It adds a filter to the game that makes the terrain look incredibly real. When I first glanced at the screenshots of this mod, I totally thought they were photos taken from a set. As dopey as that sounds, it’s true!

Greatly named the “Toddyhancer” mod, it was created by a dude named Martin Bergman who previously made a mod for GTA V that made the game look more lifelike, too. With that one it made the world look like you were viewing it through the lens of a camcorder, but Toddyhancer makes it look like you are actually there. Well, at least to my peepers it does.

It’s an unofficial mod and I heard it drops the frame rate considerably by like 40 frames, so in action it probably looks terrible, but with just screenshots, boy does it look good. With this tech, we can finally make a Rebel Assault 3 that doesn’t need to have sets or actors to make the scenes because the tech is good enough now so we don’t have to deal with real stuff like those anymore. Yeah, RA3. SOMEONE NEEDS TO DO THIS!

White Stork Spreads Wings

Quinn is full of surprises! He beings by declaring war on The Widow and storming into her compound. With thanks in part to his small army of clippers they were able to take over and have The Widow and her elite soldiers retreat into hiding in the woods. This act would put him in hot water as the other barons see this as him unbalancing the powers each one possesses. He’s done all this while he’s still struggling with his health issues.

Back at the Fort, Ryder’s own health is deteriorating after he stepped into a trap set by nomads hired by The Widow, which left his brain swelling. Quinn’s newly second wife, Jade, has a solution but it involves someone who practically hates his guts. At time same time, Quinn’s first wife is getting cheesed off with Jade, which he mainly has around just for fun time. Man, lot of soap opera-esc relations are starting to crop up.

Elsewhere Sunny begins M.K.’s training so they can split town, but a visit to Waldo -- who’s confined to a wheelchair -- makes him realize how weak he is in both mind and body. And finally Sunny has to meet up with an old acquaintance who’s a clipper for another baron in hopes to form an ally so things could cool down because of Quinn’s little war.

Black Mamba has spoken

Earlier this week Kobe announced that he would be retiring at the end of this season. This marks an end of an era for the Lakers as he’s been with the team since 1996. That’s a long time. To put this timeframe in perspective, he started playing for them shortly before Space Jam was released in theaters. Oh my!

Anyways, whenever I think of the Lakers from the ‘90s, I always think of this magazine ad for NBA Courtside 2: Featuring Kobe Bryant for the N64. Kinda sad that the joke in the ad became the reality of today, but I guess that’s expected from someone who’s played a high impact sport for over 19 years.

Also, I forgot he used to sport a mini afro back in the day.

Listen

I’d like to point out how awesome the Dreampod podcast was this week. They had a special guest from Retro Sumus to discuss the deets regarding their current project and future ventures. Towards the end they gave the Dreamcast Junkyard an exclusive on something they have in store for a special release for one of their games. Super cool stuff.

Serious just for a sec

With Thanksgiving just passed by, I figured it would be appropriate to let everyone out there who is reading this dumb little personal website of mine know just how lucky I am, even though things don’t usually line up the way I’d like. I’m not the type to be all preachy about things, so I won’t, but this year I feel more grateful for what I have more than ever before.

Ok, the regular shallow topics I like to discuss will return tomorrow.

Fist Like a Bullet

It’s official: Into the Badlands is a great show.

I was wondering if beyond the pilot, every episode following would be a downhill slide in quality. Heck, even The Walking Dead’s second episode was kind of a snore fest. But it was the opposite for the second episode of ItB. Things are building up pretty well in terms to adding complexity to the story, so we are seeing more characters being introduced and others more fleshed out, including crossing into the Widow’s territory.

M.K. runs into Matilda, the Window’s daughter, while escaping from Baron Quinn’s fort. She decides to help him out by taking him to her place to hide for a while, but the Widow is suspicious of M.K. and is also looking for him because she knows of his special powers, which she is planning to use as a tool to take down the other barons. The thing is she doesn’t know if M.K. is the person she is looking for. At the same time Quinn learns some important information regarding his health and puts pressure on Sunny regarding his loyalty to server him. All of this is setting up for what should be an awesome episode three.