"Where do you want to go today?"

Hover!

What’s that, you say?  You’ve never played Hover! before?!  The classic game from Microsoft that was shipped with every copy of Windows 95?  Huh?  Were you passing the time with Minesweeper and Solitaire instead?  Bah!  The only way to redeem yourself now is to play it.  But don’t fret as it may be easier to play this 19 year old game than you might think!

(Nine exclamation points and question marks were used in six broken sentences.  Not bad for a day’s work in online journalism.)

Delineation

Christmas was pretty dope.  Christmas eve was spent with my immediate family as we watched a number of Christmas movies like Elf -- which is funny, but don’t really care for; A Christmas Story -- a tradition to watch with my family; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation -- my all time favorite Christmas movie.  We broke holiday traditions and had enchiladas for dinner.  We normally would have a giant sandwich or, from earlier times, tamales.  But yeah, it was delicious!  I haven’t had a good plate of enchiladas in a long time.  They were jammed packed with meat and cheese with a good helping of spanish rice on the side.  After two full plates I was in a food comma; trying to sober up with a balance of salt with sweet by consuming a good helping of cookies afterwards.

Christmas day was spent at my aunt’s place where I mingled with relatives from my mom’s side and caught up with a cousin that still lives in the area.  And speaking of Christmas, one of the gifts I received was on a book I wanted from the Bleach series titled Masked.

The image above is from the back side of the book (which I think is the cooler looking side).  As described in the image, it’s the book that provides profiles for characters that appeared in volumes 21-37, meaning the Arrancar arc of the story.  I really loved this arc and wanted a book that covers the details of everyone who was involved in it.  Just by glancing through the book it looks way better than the previous book, Souls., which provided character profiles for the Soul Society arc.

Hope your holidays were good, too!

"The jerk store called..."

Earlier this year I created a number of comics of Seinfeld scenes and placed them into a 16-bit form.  I was going to let them disappear underneath the many layers of blog postings, but decided they were too precious to let that happen.  So instead, I’ve gathered them all together and gave them their own page to shine on -- like prized possessions on a mantel.  Click the link to the right of this very webpage (just below the Games link) to check it out.

Consider this regifting of material as your Christmas present from me to you.  Merry Xmas!  Or rather...Happy Festivus!

You’re so sweet

Using the holiday season as an excuse, I’ve been indulging in a large quantity of sweets.  My largest step in accelerating towards getting diabetes comes from this concoction of sugar and calories I created a few weeks back.

It’s a cookie you can get from Costco called Chocolate Chunk Cookies.  It’s a chocolate cookie with chunks of chocolate in it and the bottom half of the cookie is dipped in dark chocolate.  Yikes!  That in itself is bad, but to top it off I add some whipped cream to it.  And there you have it!  A holiday treat no one will want to pass up.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few hours worth of running on a treadmill to work off the sleeve of cookies I just consumed.

Journey through Phobos with a master

Just saw this cool interview John Romero did with IGN.  LTTP, but was still neat, none the less.

But it wasn’t your traditional interview.  They did this while playing through the first episode of Doom.  He gave some insightful details of the game’s development and the level designs as they played through the game.  Both the interviewer, Ryan McCaffrrey, and John Romero were incredibly knowledgeable of all the game’s secrets while playing through it in co-op mode in, I think, Nightmare mode.

That old school feel

Glad to see the Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick project, Thimbleweed Park, has made not only its initial funding goal, but has almost doubled it!  And there’s still 37 hours to go!

I so would have loved to have donated for the project to get the boxed copy of the game, but funding is a little tight now -- especially after all the Christmas shopping I’ve just finished doing.  If I had gotten that PS4, I would really be deep in the red this month!

I still can’t believe how they’re really sticking to that graphic design of having the game look like it was built with the SCUMM engine from over 20 years ago.  Will definitely be grabbing this one when it gets released.

HTM-helL

So apparently I used outdated HTML practices when writing those VG Journal entries.  More specifically, those green tables that showcase the game box and release information.

Since I caught this early, I’m planning to go back and fix those tables for all of the VG Journal articles.  I’m doing this incase my rebellious, rule breaking code renders the content in the tables in a weird way for a web browser like Chrome or during an update to the CMS.

In addition, for the rare instances when I steal use an image from another website, I’ll credit the source where I got it from somewhere in the article.  I might also note what version of the game the article is based on along with other platforms the game has been released for, too.  But that’s a big maybe.

Champagne problems

*sigh*  It’s been just about a week since I lost the opportunity to get the PS4 20th Anniversary Edition.  I was convinced to get it because I noted a while ago that it would be the perfect console if they went back to the color of the original PlayStation.  I said this because I was getting a bit tired of all the consoles being black; including all of my home entertainment electronics.

You see, I’ve been a fan of PlayStation since the beginning.  I own all three consoles, the PSP, Vita, and plan to get a PSTV some time soon.  My gaming library is easily eclipsed by PlayStation name.  Seeing the 20th anniversary PS4 was a beautiful looking device with the original grey color, the brightly colored PS logo, and the controller symbols embossed on the lower half made me want this more than anything I wanted in a while.

Since this special edition was in very limited quantities, I watched PlayStation’s twitter feed like a hawk all Saturday morning during the PSX event.  I kept watching it even after the event ended.  Around an hour later I did the foolish thing by being a responsible apartment tenant and vacuumed the living room.  When I checked the twitter feed again I noticed they posted the link to get the PS4 10 minutes earlier!  During the three some-odd hours of watching that feed, they decided to post during the 15 minutes I was away doing something else!

By the time I got to the store page the servers were already slammed.  For an hour I tried to get through the purchase process, but whenever I tried to get to the next page I was greeted with a 404 styled message.  I constantly went back to the previous page, refreshed, and tried again.  Over the course of an hour I crawled my way through the process until I got to the final confirmation page.  This is as far as I got.  I tried for a while but I eventually gave up.  I tried again a few hours later but was greeted with a message noting that they sold out.  Dang.

I guess it wasn’t meant to be.  So instead I celebrated Sony’s near quarter century in the gaming console market by downloading the 20th anniversary theme on my Vita.  It’s a very clean theme and one I might keep for a while.  I love the music and how they sprinkled the start-up jingles into it.  It would have been perfect if they had the SCE, THX style jingle play whenever I swipe the start screen to get to the home menu.  In addition, I’m also planning to load up my Vita with a few PS1 games later this weekend.

Happy 20th anniversary PlayStation!

Ixnay on the Hombre

Following the wildly successful album Smash, The Offspring’s fourth album Ixnay on the Hombre had a tall order to fill.  Radio stations filled the airwaves with hits such as "Come Out and Play" and "Self Esteem."  Two years after Smash is when we would find out what they were up to.  What they felt was a good successor to, at the time, their best-selling record.

Released in February 1997, Ixnay on the Hombre debuted in that post-grunge era, which was a brief point in time during the mid-late ‘90s where alternative rock stations looking for new music had no sub-genre to focus on.  Grunge, while still having huge playtime, was a fading star.  With Nirvana’s tragic ending and Soundgarden looking like it was on the brink of a breakup, the grunge movement was winding down.  Nu metal, which ruled from around late 1998 – 2003, was still a while away from entering the scene and making everyone crazy-angry.  If anything, this was prime time for The Offspring to release a new album.

It is interesting to note that Ixnay was the only album to have a title that was more than one word.  Before it there was The Offspring (I know, that’s two words, but you know what I mean), Ignition, and Smash.  In hindsight you can see it as a flag of sort that marks the end of the punk sound the band was known for to the more pop-punk sound that the band created during the records following it.

While the band members where the same since the first album, the record company was different.  Since the late ‘80s they were with Epitaph, a record label founded by Brett Gurewitz from Bad Religion.  Due to disagreements between the label and the band, they parted ways and signed with Columbia Records to begin a fresh start with them.

After opening with a snarky disclaimer chuckling at the Parental Advisory stickers placed on records labeled with explicit content --which Inxay came with --, and how it humorously tries to shield youngsters from lyrics that may depict the harsh realities of life and how they may promote thought provoking questions, the album’s first two songs "The Meaning of Life" and "Mota" immediately bring those realities front and center as if to compliment the disclaimer and show their case for why the Parental Advisory sticker is silly.

With these two songs, you’re greeted with fast music and quick lyrics.  The guitar is the instrument that sticks out the most with these two tracks and really sets the correct mood you need to be in when listening to this album.  Kind of like how the first few songs of a concert would normally do.

However, when it comes to true speed, the track "All I Want" is the one to look for.  It’s short, loud, and incredibly fast.  With lyrics encouraging the quiet ones that are bottling up their anger and opinions, it symbolizes the violent actions of a cork bursting from a bottle and having all that pressure alleviate all in one short moment.  "All I Want" is also the debut single released for the album, which got a lot of airplay in late ‘96/early ’97.

To contrast "All I Want," "Gone Away" slows things down a bit.  That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, and actually, I really like this song.  Sure, it does differ from what The Offspring is best known for, but this is an excellent example of switching things up but also keeping the familiar sounds which are associated with the group.  It’s has some gravity to it and tells the emotions of someone who just lost an important person in their life.  Love the intro to this where it’s just the drums followed by the slower paced guitar chords.

Accompanying this song is a music video that really sets the visual tone for the track.  For starters, instead of everyone wearing t-shirts that this Southern California band is known for, they instead are all wearing collared shirts (with the exception of Ron the drummer who’s shirtless), a simplified way of showing the more seriousness of the video.  It’s also interesting to see how all the members are separated from each other, which I guess represents the loneliness one feels when in this situation.  Finally there is the brightly glowing light bulb that Dexter sings to.  It’s the only source of light in the dimly lit slaughter house and acts as an emblem for the person that was lost.

Tracks 5 and 6, "Cool to Hate" and "Leave It Behind," have a lot of angry emotions behind them.  I guess you can expect that with a song titled with the word "hate" in it; however, that would be true if you take the song at face value.  I buy the opinion that “Cool to Hate” is a sarcastic/satirical take on the trend of people hating everything.  This is pointed out in the line, “I'm only happy when I'm in my misery.”  The actual angry song is "Leave It Behind" where there seems to be friction between two friends.  Well, former friends, I guess.  I get a sense there is a heavy amount of emotion in this song and the lyrics are the cause for it to radiate with white hot heat whenever I listen to it.

"Me & My Old Lady"…oh my!  Lots of sexy talk in there, but the relationship between the two seems to be not based on love but pleasuring each other’s desires.  Also, the guitar parts of this song are really reminiscent of "Come Out and Play."

Of the more upbeat sounding songs on Ixnay is “I Choose.”  With it, you get a catchy tune that includes hand clapping for rhythm with a cool guitar solo near the middle where Dexter goes all rock star on us.  I get the theme for the song revolves around life and how you live it, but I’m unclear whether it’s discussing someone’s suicide or living life to its fullest.  If I had to pick, I would select the latter because of this line towards the end, “And I'll never know when I hit the ground.”  This implies that since, with suicide, you know when your life will end while this indicates it will be an encounter that he’ll never see coming because he’s too busy partying life to its fullest.  Points go to Dexter for including a reference to "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."

The music video for “I Choose” is the first and only video directed by Dexter himself.  It takes place at an airport where we see a young man walking through it to get to a plane.  While walking, he sees a lot of interesting characters hanging around the terminal.  The band is also seen walking through it and gets on the same plane as the young man does.  It’s a fun video to watch, to say the least.

An intermission follows “I Choose,” and the second half of the album really accelerates due to a number of short songs; one of which is “All I want.”  "Don't Pick It Up" is another fun track (instrumental wise) where we hear of few stories about what not to do.  They include things like picking up dog poop, catching a disease, and dealing with a transvestite.  Obviously all great life tips to keep in mind.

The broken home theme I hear in most Offspring albums is heard here with "Way Down the Line."  Basically an explanation how humans turn into what their parents are, but focused on the negative sides such as kids who get beat will beat their kid, and kids that were abandoned by their father will get with someone that will leave and abandon their own kids.

Probably the most beautiful song from Ixnay is "Amazed."  Dexter’s singing really shines here and the harmony in the chorus gives the song an extra punch.  Some say it’s regarding suicide, but I think it’s more about someone hating the world because everyone is fitting the trends and doesn’t care about anyone but themselves.  But I have no solid clue as to what the phrase “shiny face” means, so I can’t make a solid case on this.  The last track "Change the World" seems to follow the political meaning of the album’s title where Dexter says it means “’fuck authority’ or ‘fuck the man.’”  Looking back at when the album was recorded in 1996, this was a general election year so many were on the campaign trail touting how they were going to change the world.  I can imagine a punk band like The Offspring probably didn’t see Washington and local governments with a positive outlook, so this song was dedicated to all the fat cats they were disgusted with seeing on the TV all that year.

Tracks from Ixnay had a lot of time on the radio but would be eclipsed a year later in 1998 when the juggernaut Americana dropped with the hit single "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)."  After that, Ixnay became this void that was between the pop songs that began with Americana and the grouping of albums from their earlier days that got them successful.

The album did not go ignored as a few songs from it were used in Sega’s arcade game Crazy Taxi.  Anyone who’s played this game would often make a reference to the song that begins with the lyrics “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” which is “All I want.”  In addition, “Way Down The Line” and “Change The World” were used for the soundtrack, too.  Interesting to note that Bad Religion was also picked for the OST, which seems odd considering how there was some heat between The Offspring and Brett concerning the band’s label contract.  In any case, it was a great game with a great soundtrack and Sega somehow made it all work well together.

Ixnay on the Hombre may not be the bands most popular album, but it’s the one I enjoy listening to the most.  I normally would select a few songs from a record as my favorites, but this is the rare occasion where I can’t because the whole album is freak’n amazing.  If you have never listened to Ixnay and you’re a fan of punk music, you need to do yourself a favor and check this one out.  You can thank me later.

Late night surfin’

It’s been a while since I watched Last Call with Carson Daly and it’s been an even longer time since I saw someone on that show that I like (to be honest I don’t watch the show all that much).  I caught last night’s episode and to my surprise they were showing The Melvins.  Yep, that sludge metal/grunge/whatever rock band from Washington state that gave us hits such as "Night Goat" and "Honey Bucket."  I really love the lower chords they use in their music; it makes it a really unique sound of music, especially now a days.

The two songs they played last night were “Onions Make the Milk Taste Bad” and “Sesame Street Meat.”  Both of these tracks are on their latest studio album, Hold It In.