Category Archives: animation / interactive / film

The Princess Better Save Herself

Every so often, Nintendo gives modern gamers a famicom, Super Mario Bros, and the original instruction booklet, and let them go at it. This year 90% failed to finish world 1-1.

We watched the replay videos of how the gamers performed and saw that many did not understand simple concepts like bottomless pits. Around 70 percent died to the first Goomba. Another 50 percent died twice. Many thought the coins were enemies and tried to avoid them. Also, most of them did not use the run button. There were many other depressing things we noted but I can not remember them at the moment.

I know it’s depressing, but playing SMB on the emulator just now, I sucked just as hard. I have also never beat it. What type of king sends a couple of plumbers to rescue his daughter instead of sending in the Royal Marines? Maybe one that’s in with goombas?

I understand why the gamers skipped over the instruction manual. Modern “manuals” are worthless. They’re pretty much two pages of disclaimers and an incomplete picture of a controller. Mandatory tutorials are much better. I also shed no tears for having to draw your own maps. However, complaining about lack of weapons, and bottomless pits are just stupid. We live In a world where video games are full of dubious “achievements”, purchasable overpowered power-ups, and games where you autoheal. It’s kind of depressing.

Previously.

UPDATE: Wed Jul 10 04:39:19 CDT 2013
Play me off, Keyboard Cat.

Partridge Family 2200 AD

Just when I thought 70s Hanna-Barbera couldn’t get more derivative, they came out with an animated spinoff of a crappy tv show with the entire style recycled from their crappy retread of a crappy animated knock off of a successful tv show.

Of course something as synergistic as the Partridge Family 2200 AD doesn’t come from just one boardroom. The story is that Hanna-Barbera was developing a spin-off of The Jetsons where Elroy would be a teenager, and I guess Judy would be a sorority girl at Universe University or some such nonsense. Anyway, when HB was shopping this idea to CBS, the CBS execu-bots, said they’d take it, but only if they added more Danny Bonaduce. So a few superficial changes later, and whoala!

I stand by my long held belief that the 1970s was the worst cultural decade in American history.

via superpunch2

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Koi Pond 2

On advice of a coworker, I downloaded “Koi Pond” to my iPhone. Gloria said that it was popular with her three year old daughter.

The “game” is just what it says &endash; it’s a koi pond. There is what’re that you can interact with (the main attraction for her daughter and Maximilian), fish to watch swim about, lily pads to place. You can spend real money to buy more fish and ponds, but there really isn’t a point to do that. There are no goals. No achievements. Just you and the pond.

Contrast this with “Koi Pond 2” where I can’t open it without facing a pond full of dead fish because I haven’t logged in and cleaned a fish filter. All the advantages of having a koi pond: watching the fish, the sense of calm, are gone and replaced with the grind of maintaining a pond, and all the guilt and the daily grind of a tamagotchi. All the traps / trappings of contemporary casual gaming are there: daily play rewards, a store that takes real money, unlockables. Far from feeling rejuvenated, I feel like my soul has been sucked dry every time I open it.

Princess Leia is a Racist Bitch

So some guy found a bunch of old Starlogs and comes across this piece of information:

April 1979: As for why Chewbacca doesn’t receive a medal at the end of “Star Wars,” this is as good of an explanation as any other.

I think the reason the wook [sic] didn’t get a medal was because Princess Leia simply isn’t that tall. He could have received his after the ceremony.

Chewbacca doesn’t get a medal because Princess Leia isn’t tall enough?

Bull. Shit.

Chewbacca gets screwed over publicly because Princess Leia is a racist / speciesist bitch.

  1. She uses a slur describe Chewbacca.
  2. When trying to think of the most disgusting thing she can think of, she picks wookies. A woman that has been in a trash compactor with a tentacle monster, thinks a person that saved helped save her from execution is grosser.

Who gets medals? The two white guys. The brown guy that convinces Han to go back, the guy that’s shooting the guns on the Millennium Falcon to save that farm boy’s ass, is the one that gets bupkis.

Fuck her.

Obama’s Secret Money Plan

Before the end of the 44th POTUS, he will accomplish something more evil than possibly be imagined. Even if it it is only the destruction of the one dollar bill. That will be evil enough to make his place in history as a brother of Satan, son of Satan, or Satan itself.

And now you know why the keep trying to put a woman on the dollar coins. Woman? Whore of Babylon? Do I have to spell it out for you?