colt_steele

Not the regular kind.....it struck me recently that when I retire, I will probably be just fine in a retirement home as long as there is a television with multiple input options. I have so many games backlogged that it would probably take the last few years of my life to get caught up(and by that time the list will surely only be much much larger). So in this frame of reference I wanted to come up with games that I had to play to completion before I die, either because I never played them or, much more the common instance, never finished them. If I go all the way back to begin, this list begins with the NES. So after some contemplation with the help of Wikipedia, these are the top five NES games for my bucket list:

1)Dragon Warrior III - I was completely geeking out in anticipation of this game. The first in the series were two of my most played and replayed of the NES era, and even though the term prequel had yet to be coined, this game was chronologically set before the original, telling the story of the hero the first game's protagonist was descended from. There was a short lived run of the Japanese series based on this game that I was totally glued to, even though they ceased airing it here 13 episodes in. I wanted this game like no other....and never actually got it. I did eventually begin the game via emulation, but to this day haven't finished it.

2)Bionic Commando - This was one of those games I really dug, but never had a copy of my own to chow down on. I didn't get the mechanics well enough to be able to clear the game during a rental, and simply wasn't skilled enough to do it years later in emulation.

3)Blaster Master - I didn't rent it enough times. I think I was really, really close and simply never went all the way.

4)Metal Gear - This game was so far ahead of its time, I didn't even comprehend as a ten year old that I wasn't supposed to engage the enemies in combat. It never dawned on me as a child that there was a stealth mechanic built into the game so that you could avoid detection to get through guarded areas. I want to clear the game legit one day, as well as the true sequel.

5)Ninja Gaiden - The game that actually got me thinking bucket list in the first place. The game was so ridiculously hard, and the final boss was simply unfair. I never made it to the third form, if in fact there was one, I thought I remembered hearing there was another after Jaquio. It is my one greatest regret in all of gaming that I never conquered this game.

There are of course many honorable mentions and throw-ins such as Battletoads, but I will save those for the next entry.

Nate,

Since you are the only person on the planet that actually views this, I wanted to put up a bit of background on Baeru:

He was, like many of the Arishikage clan's youngsters, an orphan raised by the clan to be a stealth agent. Unlike many of the other orphans in the clan however, he was a member of the clan by his blood lineage, his mother being the sister of the current clan head. Unbeknownst to Baeru as yet, his father's discovery of the clan head's intent to aid in the resurrection of Kalroth was what led to his demise, made to look a death in the line of duty. His mother took her own life upon her discovery of this and her subsequent attempt to remove her infant child from the village. Upon her capture and her child being taken from her she poisoned herself out of shame and despair. Ironically Baeru's affinity and specialization in poisoning techniques are one of his main contributions to his assignments.

Many years later, the plots and machinations of those seeking Kalroth's return have borne fruit, and the betrayal of Baeru's Daimyo has been exposed. Though not having shown favor to Baeru as a student, the Daimyo was nonetheless his father figure and Baeru now feels honor bound to end his corrupt stewardship, or perish trying so as to die with honor.

This really isn't about Spanish lollipops, but the name is funny to me and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since my wife found them on Amazon. Now for some fun stuff:

1)The NFL sure is a mess right now. I don't want to jot down ALL my thoughts about recent events, but one thing is bothering me about all the outcry over this player or that player is that pediatric discipline is under fire once again. When a child abuse story makes headlines all the kooks come out of the woodwork spewing about how parents should never be allowed to lay a hand on their children. I don't honestly think you will ever find anyone anywhere that advocates child abuse, but one only has to take a look around while out in public these days to see that the whole hands-off, overindulgent approach to child-rearing is not producing a quality society. People are completely self-centered and lacking any kind of courtesy or respect for the other people around them. Being around people in large groups has always bothered me - it's a personality defect - but I can't be out in public much longer than an hour anymore without starting to feel actual physical pain from the amount of anger watching people interact causes me. I don't think this is merely a result of my starting to feel my age....I think my upbringing was so drastically different from the modern generation's that I won't be able to function in a society setting for much longer.

2)I want Alien: Isolation badly. REAL badly. I think even more than I want the new Silent Hill. Probably because I've played a quality title in the SH franchise, whereas a good Alien-licensed title that wasn't a crossover with Predator hasn't hit the market since the old Alien Trilogy came along for the original PlayStation(and that game was really only above average). But I really want to experience it on a next-gen platform - currently an impossibility. WHAT TO DO?!

3)Trying to stay healthy as I get older sucks. The amount of work it takes plus fitting it in between long work hours and numerous hobbies is becoming less doable, and I hate it because I promised myself a long time ago I wouldn't totally let myself go when I got old. Where does all the damn time go....

I took the time the other day to sit down and watch the original animated film version of Fist of the North Star.Like many animes of the period, it hasn't had the best of luck in holding up with the passage of time. I still found it very enjoyable, and the trip down memory lane was rather invigorating, knowing that the themes presented here are still in my daily thoughts.

During a slow moment, I scrolled down through the comments section on Youtube. The usual smattering of randomness and bad English was prevalent, although a couple of commenters struck me in a way I was unprepared for. There was venomous contempt for both the story and the localization, which really bothered me on a major level.

In 1986, anime in the United States was virtually unheard of. The phrase hadn't even been heard over here at that time, since everything animated was unceremoniously dumped into the category of "cartoons". Harmony Gold had brought us Macross in the form of Robotech, and a few other series had flown in under the radar like Voltron and Tranzor Z, after the limited success of early pioneers like Speed Racer and Gigantor. The folks of my generartion who would eventually become known as otakus, Japanophiles and other less savory titles had almost no access to the huge cultural movement of animated entertainment. People of the current generation have grown up with unmitigated access to almost every relevant anime and manga series, and the culture has infiltrated and influenced American pop culture on many levels. There was no internet, no Toonami, no dedicated shelf in the bookstore, no home video releases. If we wanted DBZ, we had to visit foreign grocery stores and hope they rented tapes from overseas, or scour the bulletin boards and fan clubs of the day in hopes of obtaining fansubs. Our generation had to work for our anime fix, and it was always worth it at the time since American animation was so abysmal in comparison, both in terms of quality as well as respect for a viewer's intelligence.

The point I was trying to segue into with that rant being, there was something in the 80s called original video animation, or just OVA(or OAV, depending on who you first heard the term from). This was typically a one-shot production, either an original story or an adaptation of an established series. These had considerably higher budgets than regular televised animes, almost on the level of mainstream release films. In the context of manga adaptations, they were usually fan service, depicting events of their series in radically altered and/or condensed form, since a two hour video was insufficient to accurately depict several volumes' worth of plot development, and the target audience of said videos already being familiar with continuity and relevant details omitted from the production.

Without that perspective it isn't possible to judge the film on its story since it has been intentionally left to the viewer to bridge the gaps and also to note the discrepancies in events. In other words, the film wasn't made for those who weren't fans of the series, something American audiences have asked for in book-to-film adaptions for decades, yet here it was done, for fans first and outsiders secondary, and people want to trash it. How I haven't yet come to the point of sociopathy in the face of sheer ignorance is a mystery to me.

Been neglecting this here journal for a while, since no one subject has been occupying my thoughts recently. So heck, I'll just throw all the random tidbits against the wall and see what sticks.

Riddick was a better movie than what I was expecting. Vin Diesel took me completely by surprise back in 2000 with Pitch Black, a movie I viewed with zero expectations(as an aside, I tend to like movies a lot more when viewed this way). I didn't even know he was the main character until about halfway in, something I wish more filmmakers would emulate instead of keeping it on the rails of the modern day Hollywood picture formula. There was no real protagonist and no real love interest for the lead role, and the film still managed to impress me. The follow up to PB a few years later was a little too ambitious and collapsed under its own weight somewhat, but I still liked it in spite of its flaws. This one was a big question mark; Diesel is 13 years older, only just now getting back into mainstream pictures, and from what I saw of the newer F&F movies he isn't in as great a physical shape as he once was. But, there was one impossible-to-resist caveat: the trailer revealed almost nothing in terms of the film's plot or showstopper moments. Needless to say, it's a fun ride and a great return to Diesel's most interesting role.

No extra points in football anymore? I guess I can't say I'd be sorry to see them go, but a huge smokescreen has gone up in regards to why this change is necessary---Commissioner/team owner mouthpiece Goodell claims that the PAT is a play with no excitement and almost no relevance. Why bring it up after all this time, though? It was an unexciting play 30 years ago, and further back even. Ostensibly they help to prevent tie scores, but this rarely seems to be a difference maker in most games. What I haven't heard anyone say is that the sudden concern over this issue is probably due to perception by prospective advertisers that the aftermath of a touchdown is usually a cue for viewers to change the channel, since everyone knows that the PAT is just for show and that their dreaded commercials will be following it. But how can they trick their customers into buying their stuff if they've already tuned out? Maybe they'd be better off paying those ad dollars to the NBA instead.....well, PATs gotta go. They're potentially costing us MONEY!

Richard Sherman is a dolt. I don't care what color his skin is, where he went to school or what kind of family background he has. He comes off like just another rich asshole who thinks the world owes him something, and I've met enough of those that I know I don't like them no matter what race they are. Pretty cliche for him to bring race into it, now that I think about it. I didn't much care which team would win the game until all the BS drama started over his outburst, though now I hope the Seahawks lose just because of how stupid he'll look. Then again, that might be just what the league was hoping for...have we been played, America?

After reflecting upon my attempts at being a DM running a D&D game for a good-sized group of people, I've come to the conclusion that I just don't have the talent for it. I can't find a steady medium between telling a story and creating an immersive, interactive environment for players. I also don't have the glibness of speech that I can employ when writing, or the intuitive understanding of the game system necessary to run a balanced game. It's been fun in the attempt, though.

I've had mixed feelings on this debate for awhile, but after finally viewing this and this I have to weigh in. The old guard is getting increasingly bitter in their attitudes towards the non-committal gamer. I myself actually refused to play Modern Warfare 2 for the longest time because I detested what the once-a-year blockbuster from publishers like Activision were doing to the industry. I liked the game quite a bit after finally giving it a go, basically proving myself in the wrong, at least insofar as dismissing a game because it was too popular.

It's the same kind of behavior I denounce when it comes to the music and film industries, and it has no place in the way a rational, independent thinker conducts him or herself. After considering where all the bile and contempt comes from, I took a trip through time back to when I started gaming. I was more or less a lifelong gamer by the time I was five, and the next fifteen years or so were rough ones when it came to peers discovering my hobby. Gaming, as it had yet to be coined, was something that nerds did. Nerds, geeks, dorks, losers or whatever other term the cool kids used to separate themselves from the likes of me. It was something you kept to yourself depending on the company you were keeping, or you likely faced social ostracization if you hadn't already fulfilled some requirement that made you one of "those kids" in school. A couple of generations later, gaming is something all social circles engage in, in some form or other, and it's now totally socially acceptable to spend your free time plugged into a console regardless of sex, race or class distinction.

As older gamers have watched this development over the past decade and a half, some natural resentment has crept to the surface. The old guard took some pretty nasty abuse as we were paving the way for today's generation to play their games in peace, and many of us very likely resent the everyday jock/prep/celebrity types who now tout their engaging of our hobby with no shame or concession that they're doing what only losers did twenty years ago. It stings even more when we perceive that games of a lower quality are being produced which cater to those of a lesser gaming pedigree who can't figure out anything without a twenty minute in-game tutorial. But that's a consequence of our perseverance in making the industry a real success in this country, because like anything else before it, now that games make money the assholes wearing suits in office buildings now control what gets marketed, and who it gets marketed to.

I don't think games have become as poor as the person making the initial argument believes, but I don't quite agree with the dissenter's retort that games are better than ever either. It's somewhere in the middle, and games twenty years out will probably bear little resemblance to what we're playing now. As gamers, we have watched our beloved pastime grow, mature and change and now it belongs to the world. We have to accept on some level that we can't go back again and we might not even want to if we could.

Having watched the trailer several times(and listened to Adagio in D Minor several dozen times)I guess I've got the same reaction to it that I've had to every other X-film to date: mixed feelings.

I was nervous when I heard that Singer was returning to helm this movie--First Class was undeniably in my opinion the finest film of all the previous attempts, and Singer was only peripherally involved. I've felt with each subsequent release that for each thing an individual picture got right or achieved, there were two things it dropped the ball with or missed completely. For the tl;dr crowd that just want me to make my point, scroll to the bottom.

X-Men - the first picture was made in modern comics-movie early history--studios didn't know what to do other than get the rights to an IP, put the red logo in front of it, and hire at least two good actors to sell the thing. I was quite forgiving of this picture back then--it is easily my all-time favorite series and getting to see a big-budget Hollywood treatment was then a privilege instead of the present day 3-4 a year being churned out. The casting was solid, even exceptional(pardon the pun)with the roles of Xavier and Magneto being to this day two of the best strokes ever in comic(or even otherwise)film. It was also, rather unique for its time as well as today, a first film that was NOT an origin story--they simply plowed right along with it after sufficient expository. The action was good if still rather unpolished, the plot was somewhat flimsy but passable, and the characters were quite well fleshed out since the "family" was not at this point bloated to the point of just having characters do walk-ons.

All that said, it was well-documented beforehand that Singer was not a fan, either of the series or comics in general. It really shone through with how certain characters and plot elements have been handled, both in this film and the sequel. The single biggest glaring example of this was the inclusion of both Wolverine and Sabretooth, depicted as total strangers. Their rivalry is one of the most celebrated ones in all of comicdom, and this film treats it totally offhandedly. It also depicts a scenario where the Brotherhood and X-Men have not clashed previously, or at least the dialogue given to viewers does not suggest it. If this were a film expected to tank and to be discarded after its initial run, this wouldn't be the train wreck it evolved into later. The problem was that this film established a continuity, one that the sequels and spinoffs had no chance to subvert without a proper reboot, which Fox has stubbornly refused to do.

X2 - The ball was rolling, for better or worse, and the second installment scored big points in moving things forward while doing more things correctly than misfires. The additions to the cast were all relevant and well-suited to the way Singer continued the story, Nightcrawler's depiction by Cumming being to this day one of the best executed performances in comic film. The story alterations were slightly less glaring this time around, with the two biggest ones being Stryker's character as well as Deathstrike's. Neither character was really done justice, in Stryker's case a total misrepresentation of the character shoehorned into what the film's story needed him to be, and in Deathstrike's case another of Wolverine's rivals shown to have no prior connection or association. She was never a mutant, either, but the expository would have just totally derailed the picture I suppose(but why include her to begin with?). It wouldn't have hurt in either case to simply depict recognition from both her and 'Tooth, and possibly even deepened Logan's mystery. Which brings me to what's thus far the elephant in the room of this overblown post: This film irrevocably made the whole series literally about Wolverine. Every other character faded into the background, with the importance of their actions varying according to how they affected or were interpreted by this one character.

Look, I get it. Pander to what the most people want. Marvel currently has three guaranteed golden geese--characters that they could put in anything, and it would sell: Iron Man, Loki and Wolverine. Of the three, Wolvie's the only one left from before the great continuity reboot of 2008. That means until Marvel pries film rights for the X-Men from Fox's cold, dead hands they will throw that character at us until he no longer makes money(or until Jackman can no longer convincingly play the role). But to take probably the greatest menagerie of characters in comics(and potentially of film)and make each subsequent outing revolve around one character is a disservice, to the fans(who cares about them anyway), moviegoers, the actors signed to the roles and to the health of comic cinema, which is still amazingly trending after all these years. KNOCK IT OFF.

X-Men: The Last Stand - I properly spelled out the whole title of this film. That's the biggest favor anyone could do for this movie, and I won't even bother to list things done wrong here, other than the continued waste of space having Colossus as a character with almost no lines and practically nothing to do. Moving on from this film, the worst lasting effect of the damage done to the series' continuity is the scene in the opening minutes of a young(er) Charles and Erik visiting the Grey household. Still wondering how, if at all, they plan to work around this paradox. Also, he is the Juggernaut, bitch.

The Wolverine spinoffs - The first one tried really hard to do his character justice, and with the help of Jackman's portrayal they succeeded. This would have been more of a landmark if Jackman's previous portrayals had not also done right by the spirit of Logan's personality. The other thing the Origins film tried to correct(and might have succeeded under different circumstances)was the relevance and deep connection of Logan to Victor's character. All the same, I enjoyed Schreiber's take. They flubbed it otherwise. The second one-shot, this year's earlier The Wolverine, took on the character's crucial development stage, his time in Japan. Instead of being the character's history, however, it took the scenario and used it as a way to move both the character and the series forward after the debacle of the third entry. If I had been in the third movie, I would also be living in mountain seclusion. This was actually a pretty damn good movie in my opinion, though an immense plot point the film hinges on what the now broken continuity mars: if Logan never got his memory back from the stupid adamantium bullet wound, how does he remember the WW2 prison camp with such clarity? And how does he still know Yashida to come at his call? I'll have to view it again to be sure, but the film never addresses it and it occurred to me almost immediately. They should have more respect for a viewer than that.

First Class - everything about this entry, from the title to quality of performances to casting and choice of characters, is first class. Fassbender is on an absolute roll of roles(unless The Counselor is as bad as I've heard)and he actually outperforms his predecessor Ian McKellan in the role of Magneto. He makes the role both chilling and sympathetic simultaneously...simply brilliant acting. Apart from the refreshing setting, a period piece of sorts, the film even manages to give the continuity great historical significance, with real-world events and an actual president lending weight to the gravity of it all(which I believe will be carried into the next film, since the trailer sported a Nixon lookalike). The single greatest thing done wrong here was simply this: the studio missed an absolutely golden opportunity to completely reboot the franchise and wash out the putrid taste left by the third movie. They opted instead to tie in this picture with the old trilogy, which was nice in its way, seeing old actors reprise their roles in limited fashion. Fortunately, this film was saved from being totally derailed by the presence of Wolverine, who is limited to a brief but delightful cameo, one of the film's best humorous moments. Now, at last, I've come around to where the point emerges...ah, so.

After salivating in anticipation wondering if the next entry would continue the standard of quality set by First Class, I was rather shocked to hear the next one would be an adaptation of DoFP, one of the most celebrated storylines in the series' long history, despite its lasting only a couple issues. The trailer shows us no Sentinels and Trask is only in one cut away, leading me to believe that the future will be only in the opening act of the film's narration. I don't doubt that their screen time will be sufficient, and done well enough, but with such a what-is-sure-to-be overcrowded narrative, I fear their relevance will likely be tertiary. And, the moment I dreaded, the reveal that the most significant character in the film will be Wolverine once again, since pretty much the entire attempt to change the future will hinge on his interactions with the past Xavier, meaning that the old continuity will be established thanks to his efforts. I also don't doubt that all the immense inconsistencies of the old trilogy and spinoffs will be shoehorned into this film's expository somehow.

All that said and all future anticipatory griping aside, I can't f-ing wait till May.