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I have only one superstition. I touch all the bases when I hit a home run. -- Babe Ruth


Points of Interest – 12/01/07

InFormers: Robots in the News

  1. I could just cry. Not only am I NOT a member of the Official TransFormers Collector’s Club, but that now means that I cannot view the Wreckers finale. Bloody hell.
  2. On a more tangible note, it is NOW that I would really, really like to get a Classics Cliffjumper, if only so I could trick him out with this cool upgrade kit.

Assorted Mushrooms

  1. Who doesn’t love a good, funny animated gif? Certainly not some people on YouTube, who’ve created 95 video collections of them so far, seemingly to music. Great way to kill a Saturday afternoon while it snows outside.
  2. Awhile ago, it was mentioned here by way of NinjaTurtles.com that EtchStar.com would begin offering engravings of the Turtles on electronics such as iPods, laptops and mobile phones, and it seems they’ve now begun. You can read the full release on the front of the Turtles site, but I just wanted to mention that during December, they’re offering free shipping to TMNT fans who use the coupon code SHPFE12.
  3. Regarding the NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures, the 5th turtle had this to say:

    5. Each NECA turtle will have the same body but unique faces/heads.

    6. Why no secondary characters included in NECA’s first wave release? Here’s what NECA had to say: “In an effort to introduce the line early in the year and to be able to ship before Chinese New Year we are going to offer the classic 4 turtles first. We will then refresh the line in Spring with variations on the turtles along with new secondary characters.”

    He also has a pic of Mikey’s face for the figure.

  4. Streamlining Vegas.
  5. Good luck getting the role of, er, “Sangoku” in the Dragon Ball movie, guy. You’re going to need it.

Video Power

  1. Don’t think I ever saw this Sonic TV Games joystick in stores. Was it ever released?

    What a queer design. Yes, that’s right: queer. As in odd. Just because some people decide to repurpose parts of the English language doesn’t make the original meanings invalid.

    Anyway, just weird they’d have Sonic’s fist erupting from Sonic’s face, though I can see that as some sort of strange metaphor for how half the franchise’s games have gone over the past few years…

  2. Postcards from the Video Game World, one of the better Photoshop Phridays as hosted by SomethingAwful.com.
  3. Remember when Sony’s PlayStation 3 controller looked like this? This is what I see in my head whenever I think
    “PlayStation 3 controller” or “Sixaxis.” Don’t know why. Kind of wish I’d gotten my hands on this, I never thought it was that bad a design. Jarring at first, yes, but not necessarily bad.

    Now, it seems that there’s the occassional knock (if anything is said about the design at all, anyway) that they’ve stuck with the same design for three generations.

  4. Despite all the BluRay, Cell-based Hokey Pokey realism of games, are they still not realistic enough? Or do you care if you see a character flip a lightswitch with his hand or not?

    Give me interestingly unreal any day.

  5. Have kids? Make ‘em a snack they’ll never forget with your own homemade Pikacheese. Or even for yourself, I guess, if you’re really, really bored.
  6. Still have a lot of my Nintendo merchandise. Thing that always irked me about this catalog, however, is that it wasn’t truly a catalog: you couldn’t buy a damn thing in it, only see what licensees were making. Finding it to buy was all on you at whatever retail outlets happened to be nearby.

    Ironically, thanks to the internet, I’d kill for a book like this…

    Just for fun, let’s see what I managed to acquire…

    …on second thought, let’s don’t. Because I’m sure no one cares.

  7. “Gaming’s cheapest and laziest moments:”

    Dennis The Menace for the Super NES was impossible to complete because the developers hadn’t actually finished creating the game.

    Um, wow. I wonder if that’s even legal. Or what sort of grief people went through over that. Barring the grief of the game itself, of course. I mean, if some idiot can sue over Halo 3, then this had to be a goldmine itself.

    I wonder what moments compare in games from today’s market.

  8. Where do you sit to do your best gaming? Me, I prefer my sofa.
  9. I swear, there are some stupid patents out there. Patents I would like to exploit. But SEGA holding the patent on switching camera angles? Give me a break.

    Also, I think it’s Namco who sucks because they’ve got a patent on playable minigames during loading times. Thankfully, it’s less an issue these days.

  10. An edition of “The Forgotten” takes a look at Capcom’s phantom Mega Man Mania project, collecting the five Game Boy Mega Man games into one GBA cartridge, giving color to all. Within, it mentions the tale wherein Capcom had purportedly lost the source code to the games.

    A little older, a little wiser now, but most of all more knowledgable, I think I know a possibility of what really happened.

    These Mega Man collections have typically been US-exclusive, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that Japanese developers do NOT like it when their source code is messed with. It’s become legendary how Yuji Naka threw a fit when SEGA of America gave one of its teams the code for NiGHTS without his permission, so that Sonic Xtreme could be made.

    And more recently, in Contra 4, it was revealed that the versions of Contra and Super C were 1-player because to do otherwise for the DS would require a change of the code, and that’s a big no-no.

    Thus, it seems that the most likely scenario here is that Capcom of Japan wasn’t about to give up the source code for the games to be tweaked for color and whatever else for this American game. And to try and release the five game without color? That probably wouldn’t go over so hot with ANYone, save for those desperate to play the games in any form at all, unable to find a place to purchase the originals. Perhaps they tried to remake it from scratch or hacking ROMs, and it just wasn’t working.

    Of course, it leads one to wonder about titles such as Mega Man Anniversary Collection, which features shoddy chop-shop versions of Japan’s Rockman Complete Works PS1 titles. Perhaps hacking stuff out was easier than adding it in…

  11. Xbox Live is $50 a year. You’d think Microsoft could do something to soften the blow come resubscription time.
  12. Rock Band: It can get you evicted.
  13. The fine folks at MoCap have created what might be the greatest game ever… er, maybe…

    “If that game’s released, kids will start reading again.”

  14. I think I remember an ad, MAYBE a review for Aero Fighters. Naturally, ScrewAttack.com remembers more than that, and fondly.
  15. Since I’m not boycotting GameSpot just yet, I guess it’s safe to say that they have an interview with Super Mario Galaxy‘s Yoshiaki Koizumi about the finished game, with some interesting notes about things like power-ups, Luigi, Yoshi, and a more traditional co-op.
  16. Speaking of Mario (as I often do), GameDaily has compiled a list of what they think are the ten worst Mario characters. Let’s see…

    Seems to be a real hate-on for Super Mario Bros. 2 characters here. I still like Wart, and I think Clawgrip is the hardest boss in the game.

    Princess Peach? Wow, harsh. And Mario himself? Frankly, I think his voice in Galaxy was an improvement over Sunshine.

    And between us (a-ha, ha, ha), Martinet’s voice is sort of what I imagined Mario to sound like before I ever heard him in a cartoon… just minus the Italian accent.

  17. Mario lists not your thing? Fine, then have a list of outrageous boobs instead.
  18. Hate snipers in Halo 3? Now, you can root ‘em out with these handy maps.
  19. Seems that while the gaming audience is growing, a number of adults are still deterred by the price.
  20. The whole releasing of Wonder Boy/Adventure Island games, among other names for what amount to the same games, boils down into quite a mess. Luckily, Game|Life is ready to try their hand at straightening it all out.
  21. The New York Times: clearly can’t be trusted for accuracy.

–LBD “Nytetrayn”

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