This week I have another book review for you, covering one of David Eddings’ fantasy novels, “The Diamond Throne” – part one of the Elenium.
Movie Review – 9 Songs (and brief thoughts about the King Kong Game)
Well, my original plan of reviewing King Kong didn’t pan out for reasons I explain in the video. Instead, I’m giving my thoughts on the film 9 Songs.
Review – Splinter Cell: Conviction
Well, this is my first go at the new video review format. Please feel free to give any constructive feedback in the comments.
Brown Vs. EMA Verdict, Comment to Sen. Yee
Now that we’ve gotten a verdict in the Supreme Court case of Brown (nee Schwarzenegger) vs. EMA, I’m going to give my thoughts on this very happy occasion, and a response to comments made by Senator Leland Yee.
Who Is This Count Zero Person Anyway?
So, I’ve been blogging on this site for several years, and have never done a proper introductory post. Perhaps now it’s time to fix that.
E3 2011 – Unsold, and the Shame of the Show
Well, at long last I’m finally done with my E3 2011 videos, with my thoughts of the games which turned me off from them, and the shame of the show – a title that disgusted me to the point that I threw up in my mouth a little.
E3 2011 – SOLD!
After much delay, it’s now time for me to talk about the games from this year’s E3 that caught my interest. Specifically, I’m referring to titles that I wasn’t already sold on coming in to the event (like Uncharted), or that were announced at the event (like Hitman: Absolution).
E3 2011 – Sony & Nintendo Press Conferences
E3 2011 – Ubisoft Press Confrence Round Up
I actually uploaded this on Thursday, but I didn’t get a chance to properly get a blog post up for this until today. Here’s my thoughts on Ubisoft’s E3 Press Briefing, and the horror that was Mr. Caffeine. So, let’s make like Wayne’s World and go Doodlo-doodlo-doodlo.
EA E3 2011 Press Confrence Recap
Now more than a little late to the party, I’m moving on with my thoughts on EA’s E3 Press Briefing from Monday.
Microsoft E3 2011 Press Confrence Recap
I’ve set up a Blip.tv channel recently (which is also why I changed the name of the blog), and with my acquisition of a webcam and lapel mike, you can look forward to seeing more video content on the site soon. First up are my thoughts on Microsoft’s E3 press conference.<
Quality Control – Rock & Roll Racing
To be absolutely blunt, Rock & Roll Racing is like RC Pro-Am with some Heavy Metal & Hard Rock music, plus a psychotic announcer. To be fair, this isn’t totally a bad thing – RC Pro-Am is one of the best racing games of its period, with pretty solid controls, a game-play style that keeps you hooked, and decent racing, though the game had some problems with its learning curve.
Rock & Roll Racing basically fixes those learning curve problems and makes the gameplay a little more combat focused. You get more weapons for your car, and they automatically re-stock every lap. The majority of upgrades you can purchase between races are more ammunition capacity for your weapons, plus additional armor. Read more
Thoughts on the “war” within Anonymous
So, this interesting little article from Ars Technica came up on my Digg feed, and I felt like commenting on it – and I felt like commenting on it outside of a forum site like RPG.net.
In a nutshell, a turf-war has started among Anonymous. One faction favors the group’s current anarchic “Anyone who wants to be part of anon can be part of anon, and use our big DDOS Of DOOM” (no, they don’t actually call it that). The other faction feels that Anon should be limited to those whose Kung Fu, if you will, is strong enough. Prove your worthiness, you are admitted into the ranks of Anon. So, this second group has basically pwned Anon’s two main IRC chat rooms, as the guy running the Way of the Closed Fist faction, if you will, was the guy who was handling domain registration. Read more
Where I Read – Nintendo Power #52
It’s been almost a month since my last Where I Read, so to make up for it here’s my Where I Read for Nintendo Power issue #52 for September of 1993. This issue’s cover game is Super Mario All Stars, with Mario jumping and hitting a block. However, the inside includes guides for Final Fight 2, Rock & Roll Racing, and Enix’s RPG The 7th Saga. Let’s read on, shall we? Read more
Quality Control – Goof Troop
Capcom’s 16-bit Disney licensed games are widely regarded as being among the best platformers in the 16-bit console generation. However, of the successful titles, like Mickey Mousecapade, that they released, lurking in their shadow was a little game called Goof Troop, which has remained fairly obscure to this day. The reasons for the title’s obscurity are two-fold.
- It was based on a show that was only broadcast on cable (Goof Troop aired only on the Disney Channel).
- While all the other Disney licensed games were platformers, Goof Troop was a top-down puzzle game. Read more
Movie Review – Buena Vista Social Club
Concert films tend to follow a very specific formula: Band does stuff before performing, audience eagerly awaits performance, band performs, band and audience leave. Buena Vista Social Club follows that formula somewhat, but with some tweaks that makes it stand out. Read more
Book Review: The Chronicles of the Chinese Emperors
Movies set in historical periods or otherwise based around historical events will never go away. We will always have Victorian tales of class-based angst. Same with tales of valorious (or conniving) knights in medieval Europe. For Eastern cinema, we’ll probably always have samurai films of various stripes, and the same with various Wuxia films, discussing various martial artists and their exploits in Imperial China.
To get try and some background on wuxia films and their I recently read The Chronicles of the Chinese Emperors by Ann Paludan. The book gives an overview of the reign of approximately every emperor in Chinese history that is considered to be “officially” an emperor. Officially is in air-quotes because the book appears to defer heavily to the official Imperial histories. Read more
Manga Review – Red Hot Chili Samurai Vol. 1
Red Hot Chili Samurai is a manga that feels like it’s not sure what it wants to be. The manga follows samurai Kokaku Sento as he fights various criminals in rural Japan during the Shogunate. Kokaku’s strength and weakness is his dependance on hot peppers, which he eats regularly, and which strengthen him, like Popeye.
Like Kenshin, Kokaku and his comrades, bespectacled Ento, ninja manservant Shou, and girly-girl of action (if that makes any sense) Ran refrain from killing at all times, even if by all rights it doesn’t make sense for them to do so. However, like Samurai Champloo, the series is filled with anachronisms. Ran is introduced wearing spike-heeled knee-high leather boots with stockings and garters under her kimono. Kokaku is also introduced to a young kid who invents the Polaroid camera, the squirt-gun (modeled after the Colt M1911A), and aerosol pepper spray. Additionally, Kokaku wears a distinctive tattoo, something that would have been taboo for a historical samurai.
With the various chapters in this volume, they all have a comedic tone. Even when Kokaku is infiltrating a brothel which is drugging the women with opium (and occasionally over-dosing them), and whose owners are responsible for several murders, the tone of the story tries to stay incredibly light. This leads to a cognitive dissonance, particularly when it comes to more serious subject matter. Hopefully later volumes will take things slightly more seriously, but this volume is simply average. It’s not great, not terrible, just average.
Where I Read: Nintendo Power #51
We have another recap of an issue in Nintendo Power, just in time for a significant, coinciding event in the modern video game industry.
The issue is Nintendo Power #51, for August of 1993. Our cover game for this issue is Street Fighter II Turbo, which introduces the ability to have same character matches in the game, as well as the ability to play as the bosses, coinciding nicely with the release of Capcom’s latest fighting game to include Street Fighter characters – Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
In the letters column for this issue we have a letter from a 47 year-old chuck driver, looking for assistance with Blaster Master, and who has also been having problems with Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy. According to the writer, he got so frustrated with the game, that he nearly ran over his Game Boy with his big-rig until another driver stopped him (I presume this was at a truck stop). The writer discovered that the other driver had been stuck in the same spot in the game he was, and he got some instructions about how to get past that part of the game. I have to admit that I never thought of big-rig drivers as hardcore portable gamers before, but now that I’ve been exposed to the concept, I’m not too surprised. I wonder if the portable game systems are still popular with long-haul truckers today, and if so, I wonder what systems are popular? Read more
Book Review – The Rough Guide to Anime
Finding a “canon” of important works in any field is generally difficult to settle on. Do you go by popularity, artistic merit, influence on other works, early works of prominent creators, or a combination thereof?
The Rough Guide to Anime, by Simon Richmond – in Penguin Books Rough Guides series, probably has the best “canon” list of anime titles available, and certainly makes for the best English language primer to anime currently in print in the US, and makes for interesting reading for long-time fans and newcomers alike. Read more
Anime Review – Area 88
In the anime portions of Gainax‘s OVA series Otaku No Video, there’s a sequence where the main character is being shown the various types of Otaku that the members of his friend’s club are part of. There’s the vehicle and mecha otaku, who is a geek about engines and how things work, and so on. One of the members of the club is an animation otaku, and he demonstrates his affinity for animation by pointing out the detail in an animated sequence (taken from the DaiCon IV video). I, personally, haven’t had many moments in animation where I felt compelled to freeze frame a video and stop to appreciate it – until I saw the OVA Area 88.
Where I Read – Analog Computing #3
I’m continuing on with my walk of Analog Computing Magazine with issue #3 for May/June 1981. Our cover story is programming languages, and we have an ad at the beginning of this issue for Mosaic Electronics spring catalog, and their 32K RAM expansion board. Cygnus Micro systems is also advertising their new disk loader, word processor, and electronic Ledger. Also, COMPUTE! Magazine has a couple new books coming out.
Editorial
First up, we learn that our editors are full-time college students, and because of their course schedule, they’re going to have to ease back on their publication schedule, as not only are they the editors of the magazine, but they’re also the entirety of the writing staff. I’d cut them some slack, except they have to be all snide and snarky and talk about how other editors don’t know all the work it takes to make a magazine, something which, bare minimum Steve Harris and Dan Hsu would take issue two.
They also have a call to fight against computer piracy, as it discourages publishers from supporting the Atari 8-bit platforms over the inferior (their words) Apple and Texas Instruments systems. We also get a call for more article submissions – pity your poor, poor writer-editors.
Letters
We get a massive letter complementing them on their Composer articles, as well as a request for more advanced programming articles. There’s also a request for contact and ordering information for a few hardware manufacturers. Another reader wants to know about this “Compuserve” thingie. There’s a request for a review of a recently released Apple emulator, and information on wargames for Atari Computers. Well, if you’re a little patient on that last front, SSI will have some stuff that should scratch that itch. Finally, the director of Kurta Corporation has a correction for their review of their tablet from last issue. Apparently the $100 does more then buy you some demo software… it will also buy you the power cables for the tablet, as well as interface cables to hook it up to your computer… so you can actually use the tablet. Congratulations, you just unsold me.
News
Dow Jones has some investment management software. Microsoft has announced their upcoming release of Atari BASIC at Summer CES. Plus there’s a new assembler app coming out. Floppy drive production by Atari has also been stopped briefly to incorporate some new changes to cover reading information off of disks that were written to by drives of different speeds. It probably seems odd to you that something like this would require a significant change to drive designs, but remember that around this time consumer floppy drives were fairly new.
New Prodcuts
Temple of Apshai, the latest game in the DunjonQuest series is getting a port to Atari 8-bit systems. The game’s publisher, Automated Simulations, is also putting out the Kaiju game “Crush, Crumble and Chomp” where you have to destroy as much of the city as possible before being stopped by the military. Optimized Systems Software in Cupertino also has a new variant to Basic, called Basic A+.
Listing – Sys/Start
A program listing for an application to provide information on attached devices and whether the system recognizes something being there. Useful for troubleshooting.
Listing – Basenotes
This listing basically expands the range of sounds your computer can handle so it can do sounds in the base range. I don’t know how good bass sounds sound on Atari 8-bit systems though, especially since the sound range isn’t normally accessible.
Assembler/Editor Non-Tutorial Pt. II
This installment in the series covers the Assembler, and some of the option commands.
Review – Quality Software Assembler
This is an assembler program, if you couldn’t tell from the title. They like the program, though they don’t like that you’re required to use the bundled text editor for your coding.
Review – Letter Perfect
No relation to Word Perfect. I’ll give them props for disclosing that this is a program that’s advertised in the magazine. Unfortunately, they review commits the cardinal sin of being apologetic. The opening of the review describes it as being one of the best word processors they’d ever used, but then proceeds, in the course of using the review as a tutorial for the application, they enumerate a litany of problems with the application, to the point that they had to send the program back to the manufacturer and get a patched version back. This would be bad on its own, but the fact that the program costs $150 in 1981 dollars just makes it worse.
Listing – Towers of Hanoi
If you’ve played a Bioware game, you know this.
Atari 2600 Update
Atari has released Othello, Video Pinball, and Missile Command, and Activision has released Freeway and Kaboom. In terms of upcoming titles, we have Ice Hockey and Stampede announced by Activision, and Warlords, Asteroids, Super Breakout and Haunted House from Atari. Also, we get a heads up that 2600 carts don’t work on an Atari 8-bit system, in case you didn’t already know.
Review – File-It
Basically, this is a suite of file-management applications. They like it, and it’s actually less expensive then Letter Perfect at $40.
Review – Atari Touch Typing
If you couldn’t tell from the title, this is a typing tutor program, to help you speed through those program listings in the magazine. They like the program, though it has its problems. However, considering there’s not a lot of competition for the time, you’ll probably have to take what you can get.
We also get a little ad here for surge protectors, which is a little notable considering that now they’re practically ubiquitous.
Review – Basic A+
They like this (unsurprising), though they don’t like how it handles strings.
Review – Missile Command
This is a review of the Atari 8-bit version of the game. This version does have 2 less cities (and thus less missiles) than the arcade version, and you’re using a joystick instead of a trackball, so take that as you will.
Listing – Target Shoot
Basically, this is a shooting gallery game that you control with a joystick.
Listing – Sketch Pad
This is a basic drawing application which lets you draw lines and fill closed areas with solid colors. Nowadays this isn’t much, but for a two page listing, that’s rather impressive.
Reviews – Target Blockade & Battle Warp
Target Blockade is a multiplayer snake/Light Cycle clone, and Battle Warp is a Space War clone. These reviews also have numerical scores, though we don’t get any information on the scale.
Upload Terminal.
This is a column about online services, wit ha par for the course hating on Apple users and their computers. This issue covers uploading a program listing instead of manually typing in while connected with your 2800 baud modem. This includes a couple listings to help with the uploading process, as FTP clients haven’t been invented yet.
32K Boards
Want to pimp your comp? Well, check out these boards that will give you a whopping 32K of memory. The boards even have gold plated connectors so they won’t oxidize causing your computer to crash and you to lose your data.
Bugs and Bytes
We have some corrections for earlier listings
Program in Style
More advice on writing better code for Basic on Atari 8-bit systems.
Movie Review – Sword of Doom
It’s been a while since I put a film review together, for something outside of a genre film for Bureau42. However, what better place to get back into the swing of things than the 1960s jidaigeki film Sword of Doom.
The film stars Tatsuya Nakadai as samurai Ryunosuke Tsukue, a sociopathic-at-best samurai, who cares for nothing but the improvement of his skill. The film follows Tsukue over the course of two years, as his violent tendencies slowly get the better of him .
The script does an excellent job of making it perfectly clear that while Tsukue is certainly the main character of the film, he is not a protagonist. Literally, the first thing he does in the film is to kill a defenseless old man in cold blood, and he proceeds through the film with a sense of clinical, cold detachment similar to later anime and manga characters like Duke Togo of Golgo 13 and Ogami Itt? of Lone Wolf and Cub, which likely took a certain degree of inspiration from novel this film was based on.
However, the sense of detachment is where the similarities end. While Itt? and Togo are certainly remorseless, compassionless killers, their opponents are often even more vile creatures then they are, to keep the audience on their side. On the other hand, as the film progresses, Tsukue never improves as a person. By the end of the film, guilt and fear have come to get the better of him, but even then they are unleashed in a psychotic episode comparable, in terms of violence, with the climax of Scarface. All of this is executed wonderfully by the writers and the director, as we see Tsukue’s sanity slip further, further and further.
The film is not without its faults. Originally intended as part of a trilogy, based on the absurdly long novel (about 1,533 chapters long) of the same approximate title as the film, several sub-plots are introduced that go just about nowhere. While they do intersect with the main plot in several points, they otherwise introduce what seem to be Chekov’s guns that turn out to be little more than display pieces. These side plots are significant enough that dramatically trimming them down could easily cut the film down from its current 2 hour run-time to closer to 90 minutes. These side plots could have been resolved in a sequel – however, we didn’t particularly get a sequel to this film.
All that said, the film is extremely well done, and a wonderful example of what this genre of cinema is capable of. If you consider yourself a fan of samurai films, you owe it to yourself to see this film.
Ogami Itt?
Movie Review – The Crimson Cult
Occasionally a horror film comes about where the premise might be unimpressive, but the film’s cast commands attention. The Crimson Cult, originally titled “The Curse of the Crimson Altar” in the UK, is one of such films.
The film follows Robert Manning, an antique dealer who has come to the town of Graymarsh, in search of his brother – another dealer who has failed to return from an antique buying expedition. In the town he arrives in time for a festival celebrating the burning of a witch 300 years earlier, and he finds himself suffering from horrific and vivid nightmares that are more real than they seem.
The plot itself is nothing special. It allegedly takes its plot incredibly loosely from the HP Lovecraft story “The Dreams in the Witch House”, however it’s little more than a standard Satanic/Occult Horror film. What makes the film special is the film’s two co-stars – Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff. Both characters are similar. The script has Lee and Karloff both playing warm, welcoming, landed gentry, with each seeming to have sinister undertones. This, combined with Lee and Karloff’s history in horror films playing dark and sinister villains leaves the audience wondering who the villain is. Is Lee’s character, J. D. Morley who our hero is staying with, the villain. Is Karloff’s Professor Marshe, who collects torture instruments and studies the history of witchcraft the villain. Or are they in cahoots?
The rest of the cast’s performances are fair, and Manning’s nightmares of a “Witch’s Sabbath” are bizarrely surreal – with the witch wearing green body paint and wearing leather nipple covers, and attended by a large hooded man in an almost-too-tight loincloth. The series of sequences feel far too much like something out of a bad horror comic than anything else, and make the film more laughable than sinister.
Fortunately, Lee and Karloff’s genteel menace really help to carry the film, and help get across the audience’s confusion on who our hero can trust. I can definitely recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys older horror films, particularly those which focus a little less on the gore effects, and more on building a sense of dread and the supernatural.
Note: This film is not in print on DVD, so if you want to get it, you’ll have to go to eBay.