Okay, this is a little later than I had hoped to have it up earlier, but I wound up having to place a call to my dad, among a few other things. At least now I have a place to ship Metroid Prime Trilogy so I can get all the goods!

I really do need to update more, even if it’s just one or two items. I’ll see what I can begin squeezing in. For now, here are some articles I found interesting that I wished to pass along:

1. Via GoNintendo, Game Informer has a cool feature titled “Beyond the Polygons,” which looks at some of the quirkier stuff that happened in the development of some recent titles.

   My favorites, of course, are the Ghostbusters: The Video Game stuff. I’d love to know why only the male avatar in the Wii game can “slime launch.”

2. Of the 8 Multiplayer Weapons That Grind Gamers’ Gears, I’ve only felt the wrath of two: Red Shells and Meta Knight. And frankly, I find neither to be especially problematic, even if there are those who think he should be banned.

   No, my problem is the blasted Blue Shells. They used to be cool, but have become a cheap item with no real purpose in my opinion. So you’re in eighth place, and you launch the shell to wipe out first place. And that helps you… how, exactly? It’s like an item based on pure, petty spite.

   One commenter and a defense I often see of the Blue Shell is that it can be avoided, with a certain bit of tricky driving and… a Mushroom. Something which rarely, if ever, falls into the lap of a driver in first place, who just so happens to be the exclusive target of the Blue Shell. Wonderful.

3. Here at PoisonMushroom.Org, we’re not actually all games, all the time. We’re just mostly games, the vast majority of the time. But there are other topics of interest that cannot help but to be shared.

   For instance, there was that bit about the Saved by the Bell reunion Late Night host Jimmy Fallon is attempting to put together. Well, it seems that SBTB has caught on since then, with a few stories following from it.

   Perhaps most galling, though, is People magazine snubbing not only Dennis “Mr. Belding” Haskins from a recent reunion photo shoot, but Dustin “Screech” Diamond as well, even going so far as to crop him out of an inset picture from the old days which featured him.

   Seriously, I think it’s probably not too far off the mark to say that Saved by the Bell probably defined Diamond’s life for years to come following its finale, and to this very day. Why on Earth would anyone want to take that away from him? It just seems wrong.

   No, actually, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t just seem wrong… I’m pretty sure that it is wrong.

4. If you have any interest in sports, or sports entertainment for that matter, then you’ve probably heard that last week, Shaquille O’Neal was the host of WWE Monday Night Raw. There should be a highlight reel inside, but there isn’t, thanks to a copyright claim by World Wrestling Entertainment. But for the time being, you can still check some of it out here and here.

   While it wasn’t bad, I was a bit disappointed. There was so much Shaquille O’Neal lore that could have been drawn upon for this. I’m not sure what music he came out to, but it definitely should have been one of his rap songs, if it wasn’t. If it was, good job, WWE.

   Then there’s fighting. He should have broken out some of that mixed martial arts stuff he knows, break out a little bit of that Shaq-Fu, rather than just shoulder-ramming The Big Show.

   Finally, and I can sort of understand why they might have wanted to keep this buried, but I think that during match featuring Triple H, he should have given Hunter a hand by passing him the sledgehammer he used in the movie Steel. Or, a close approximation, at least.

   And that would have made for one Shaqtastic Raw.

5. Finally, if you’re on Twitter and have a thing for mad scientists, you might want to check out Dr. Wily’s Twitter feed. It’s actually rather funny.

   What isn’t so funny, I’m sorry to say, is the counterpart feed, _Rockman_ (named for the Japanese identity of Mega Man, for the uninformed). It tends to be a bit… melodramatic. You know the saying “I’m not suffering from insanity, I’m enjoying every minute of it?” That applies well to Wily’s Twitter. Clearly, all the suffering is on the shoulders of _Rockman_.

Well, that’s it for now. Check back soon for more updates, and part 2 of my Game Boy feature will be along come Friday night.

–LBD “Nytetrayn”

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 1:43 am and is filed under Points of Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.