Top of Cool

Lego Star Wars for the win!

Alex at “These Damned Machines Are Killing Me!” (where IS Amit, anyway?) has posted a review of Lego Star Wars. It pretty much sums up how I feel about the game as well, and I would just add that co-op really is a blast to play.

Alex also noted the awesomeness of the scene in Lego Star Wars where Darth Vader debuts. It literally gave me goosebumps. Be forewarned, Lego Star Wars is chock full of Episode III spoilers, but if you’re like me, you know the entire plot for the movie anyway. In case you don’t, let me supply some spoilers here:

Darth Vader wins.

Console Clone Wars

I came across this website. I don’t remember exactly how, but when it said Console Clone Wars, I was immediately sucked in. Apparently, it’s a list of consoles that were pretty much rip-offs of other consoles. Like this one, the SpliceVision, a clone of the ColecoVision:

Here’s another one of my favorites. Apparently this one is an NES clone, that looks like an SNES. *shrug*

Oh, ha ha. Here’s another good one. It’s an NES clone. (I’m not making this stuff up.) Look familiar?

The Time for Inaction has come!

I read this today.

A little part of me died inside. The part of me that loves football, as well as creativity and innovation in video games. Any hope for the kind of advances in gameplay and design that were evidenced by Sega’s NFL 2k5 has just been completely smashed.

I absolutely refuse to buy any EA Games in the foreseeable futures. A boycott, if you will. Here are my terms…
Read the rest of this entry »

Decisions, Decisions

I’m having a hard time deciding what I want my blog to focus on. I thought at first it would just be a hodge podge of whatever I wanted to rant about. Now, I’m thinking I want to focus on just one area. I can’t decide what area that should be, though.

Politics. I’m always thinking and reading about politics and political issues. Man is a political creature.

Video Games. The video game industry is very intriguing. Started by a bunch of hackers and engineering students in dark campus basements, in my lifetime it has grown in a multi-billion dollar industry. Right now, in the video game industry there seems to be a constant battle between those who are most like the original game designers. People who desire interesting gameplay, fascinating stories, and visual masterpieces that are some of the best video games made. (Half-Life 2, Katamari Damacy, Knights of the Old Republic) Set against the heroes of the industry are a hardened cabal of marketing people that subscribe to the view “game design for profit, not necessarily fun”. EA being the prime example.

So, I guess I should decide what subject I want to focus on.

Or maybe I just won’t focus on either, yet. Maybe I’m not ready to make that decision.

Sigh.

In the meantime I think I’m going to switch web hosts. The current web host seems to be completely unable to allow outgoing trackback pings from Movable Type. There’s all sorts of posts I would like to trackback and comment on, but I can’t because the tech support guys at my company just can’t quite figure things out. They’ve been working on it for like 3 months. Well, sorry guys. Time to say buh-bye to you.

Democracy for the win!

I saw this pick posted over at Ace of Spades HQ.

A lot of people criticized Bush’s Iraq plan because they claimed that Democracy would never work in the Arab world and that the Middle East did not want freedom.

To quote Halo 2: “There are those that said this day would never come. What are they to say now?”

Well, it’s about time…

By way of EvilAvatar.com, I see that a trailer has been released for a brand new Stargate SG-1 video game to be released on PS2, Xbox, and PC.

I have been waiting for this for soooooo long.

The triailer looks pretty good, and appears to take place before Lost City. Apparently, it’s going to run the Unreal 2.5 Engine. Sweeeeet. Anyway, check out www.stargate-alliance.com for all the relevant details.

According to Robert “KKK” Byrd, I’m a Nazi

I’m a conservative Republican, which in Sen. Robert Byrd’s (D-WV) book makes me analogous to being a member of Hitler’s Nazi party.

In case you haven’t seen Sen. Robert Byrd before, here’s a photograph:

Need I say more? I think not.

Jackson’s Junction has a GREAT post with video of Byrd’s comments, and also response from Bill Press.

WHAT ABOUT FIREFLY, YOU IDIOTS!?!?!

This makes me so ANGRY INSIDE!

Enterprise needs to be renewed, for the sake of fan loyalty, for being quality TV, for bringing imagination and hope for a better future to our homes, but over all that, for inspiring us so strongly that we have fought all our adult lives to bring that future closer to our children and to us.

Sometimes I feel like a lonely voice lost in the wilderness… If space travel is so dang important, SPEND THE MONEY ON SPACE TRAVEL INSTEAD OF POORLY-WRITTEN, BADLY-ACTED, QUASI-SCI-FI TV SHOWS!!

My favorite quote definitely has to be:

Star Trek has inspired us, and particularly Enterprise, with its superb theme song that tells so much about our struggle to move space travel forward.

Superb theme song!?!?

As far as I’m concerned, this is worse than a Star Wars fan saying that the prequel trilogy is better than the classic trilogy. We all know it’s not true. Enterprise is not good. It could be good, but the current crap is simply not worth it. I demand quality programming, not more seasons of UTTER GARBAGE.

Trek fans lose my respect

In follow-up to yesterday’s comments, I’ve decided to go on and on about something stupid that happened last week.

From a SciFi WIRE news article:

Fans of UPN’s soon-to-be-canceled Star Trek: Enterprise took to the streets in Los Angeles, New York and other cities on Feb. 25 to urge Paramount to give the show a fifth season. About 300 people marched at the entrance of Paramount Studios in Hollywood, Calif., to protest UPN’s decision to cancel the low-rated show at the end of the current fourth season.

What the crap is this? Pah-the-tic. I like Star Trek. I would even consider myself a trekkie… er… whatever. But these kind of shenanigans are what make me want to crawl under a proverbial rock. Fat girls dressed up as Klingon brides don’t bother me. The William Shatner look-alikes don’t bother me.

McCallie said that the protests and fund-raising are the fans’ attempts to get Paramount “to wake up and fund the fifth season themselves.”

That kind of crap bothers me. If you are protesting the cancellation, you are NOT working in the best interests of Trek fans. BECAUSE ENTERPRISE SUCKS EGGS THROUGH A STRAW! The more Enterprise that is broadcast only hurts the Trek franchise. That’s right. Enterprise denigrates the Trek goodness that was TOS, TNG, and DS9. Voyager? Meh. Voyager is only notable in that the decline of Trek really began happening during Voyager.

The Fall of Trek can pretty much be summed up in three words. SEVEN OF NINE. Trek fell when the powers that be (whether Berman or Paramount suits) decided that big breasts and catsuits would do more to increase ratings than ingenious story-telling or non-cliche character development. After all, that’s what made TOS so great, right? Kirk schmoozing scantily clad women? Hmmmmm… no. Don’t get me wrong, Kirk is the man. I mean, when Kirk beams down, he’s gonna be kickin’ @$% and chewing bubble gum. (I digress… my trekkie-ness cannot be contained.)

No no no, it wasn’t short skirts that made Trek great. It was writing. Back in the day you had Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon writing for Trek. I know, I know, those authors complained about their story ideas getting changed around from what they originally wanted, but guess what, I’d rather have an edited version of a good sci-fi story than the crap Berman and Braga have been shovelling out for the past four seasons of Enterprise.

Which brings me back to Seven of Nine. When I watched the first episode of Enterprise which spent five minutes on a greasy rubdown between the chief engineer and the “Seven of Nine-esque” Vulcan science officer, I knew EXACTLY how this whole Enterprise thing was going to end up. Well, that and time-travel-as-plot-device is getting old.

Time Travel and sci-fi used to be cool. Remember those times? It was when Kirk and McCoy went back and let the Nazis win WWII. It was that time when the Enterprise-D discovered Data’s head buried beneath “ancient” San Francisco. Awesome. Then it started getting old. Sisko went back in time to a bunch of riots. Meh. Oh look, DS9 has a tribble episode, how cute! Meh. Don’t even get me started on Voyager.

Speaking of which, why is it that anytime Braga gets his creative mitts on Trek, we end up with some half-witted time travel escapade? Case in point: the 2-hour fangasm called “The Last Episode of Voyager” where Bermen and Braga managed to take bar none the best villain Roddenberry EVER came up with (in Trek anyway) and turning them into limp-wristed panty-waists. And how was it done? Time Travel. Brannon Braga wrote Generations and First Contact. Both have some form of Time Travel. And not more than a passing thought is given to exactly how all this time travel is going on. In First Contact, it was as easy as flipping a switch. Damn, I wish I had that switch. “Break-the-laws-of-physics switch, turn on!” Meh.

So, in summation, here’s what Star Trek needs in order to be worth watching again:

1. New executive producers. Berman and Braga: YOU ARE FIRED!
2. New writers. And hire people who have proven track records at writing sci-fi.
3. NO MORE PREQUELS! Roddenberry himself talked about how he wanted the technology and ideology of Trek to shock people. The NX-1 flying tin can concept just doesn’t work.
4. Sulu. Best. Character. Ever.

And I swear, if I hear anymore of this crap about people donating money to pay for more Enterprise episodes… you darn well better give Joss Whedon a call, first. At least his series was ORIGINAL.

Battlestar Galactica: Forging a New Frontier… for real

There are some criteria that you can use to decide if you should be watching the new Battlestar Galactica. (edit: If you match any ONE of these, you should watch it.)