This is Fuggin’ Ridiggulous

Yeah, I’m probably gunna be all over this one when it drops.

I slag Tarantino for many, many slights (and justifiably so) but I shore am glad that he made self-referential sleaze into a bankable commodity. Anyone up for some Machine Girl?

Today’s Comedy Brought to You by the Word “Gen” and the Letter “Y”

Here is a listed criticism of the Gamecube’s version of Mega Man Anniversary on the Wikipedia entry as of August 16th, 2008 (giggle):

In addition, the A and B buttons are reversed in the GameCube version, rendering the games unplayable for most older players.

Unplayable. Unplayable.

Pussies.

Not as if this version of the first game was flattened into a bleeding cakewalk with the implementation of the save feature in the first place. I’m slapping happy they switched the fucking controls. I just beat it, on Normal, 3 lives, without resorting to cheaping out the Pause Glitch even once and thinking the entire time, ‘Man, didn’t this game used to be harder?’ …Ice Man stage notwithstanding.

Pity the older gamer? Blow me, Entitlement Generation.

The Valley of the Flood?

A quick two-off:

I don’t care if this is fake, Nintendo needs to take this cue and chase it down like a cop does a donut. Although I slightly bristle at the idea of incorporating steampunk imagery where it might not be needed. Does anyone else think that a steampunk setting is this console generation’s gimmick fix, kind of like how last generation had this huge boner for cel-shading?

The other thing! I’m assuming that Jay won’t mind a mention of this as it has pretty much been shotgunned across the face of the gaming journos today, but Unannounced: The Game has officially become Announced as Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure. Sounds like they’re angling for the Big Fish audience with that nomenclature, but the game looks roughly the same as it had back in February when it was still in demo state. Been really looking forward to this one, so let’s hope that it plays as good as it looks. More 2-D, please.

Surprise third thing! In anticipation of Mega Man 9’s imminent release, I’ve decided to break out the nearly four-years-ancient Mega Man Anniversary Collection as a sort of indoctrination ritual, but also mainly because I haven’t played it yet. Lemme ask you dis: “does anyone remember how blinkered goddamn difficult the Ice Man stage was”? I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t, as most normally-adjusted human beings tend to bar memory of heavily traumatic events from their childhoods. :The applicable phrase here is “Thumb Rape”. That’s what it feels like. Sitting there in point-blank range of my childhood launching an 8-bit taunt in full force to my face, questioning my mettle as both a gamer and as a sane adult… which in the case of the latter battle, I may very well have already lost.

And I still can’t even hazard a drunken guess as to how Capcom’s localization arrived at the name “Guts Man”. If the boss in question had a habit of disembowling himself and lobbing the offal towards you as an offensive measure, then yes, I could see the relevance.

Innovative + Balls = Lazy Yet Eye-Catching Title

This is the stuff that I habitually cruise these gaming-oriented ‘pro’ blogs for. Caught somewhere in the wild editorial brush among the Diablo III douchebaggery and that Australian goon that talks way too fast – sometimes transforming what would be a mostly humorous and sometimes pointed acid-bath rant into something that makes noises akin to a Toro chipper-shredder that’s gnawing on a gallon of Silly Putty – we get stuff like this.

The 8 Most Innovative Pinballs of All Time (presumably until the next knee-quaking Pat Lawlor masterpiece hits the street). And this is from Popular Mechanics? Shit be legit, yo.

Two of my favorites are on there and that makes me happy, although I get the feeling that one of them is only flying wingman so as not to leave the other as the sole representative from the 90’s to play the field, so to speak. But what about Funhouse? Or Safecracker? Or (and I’m being absolutely serious, here) Shaq Attack? Addams Family was a good deal of fun and all, but it was a vessel of technologies already introduced around two years prior to its release. In contrast, Funhouse (near as I can recall) may have been the very first pinball to successfully incorporate an in-game antagonist to vastly effective and to some, just outright terrifying effect. That latter reaction to the Rudy is usually a strong indicator of a person’s arguable grasp of reality, but it was there. That little bastard sitting near the back of the playfield, mouthing off veiled threats and shooting needles at you with those jerky, mechanized oculars. I sometimes glimpse him in dark corners of my room. Then the towering hellbeavers come and try to rob me of my precious leghair.

…whoa, blacked out there for a second.

Twilight Zone would be a hard one to topple, though. More than a decade and almost 20 different tables that I’ve put my boogery fingers on and few have prodded my emotions into such a whirlwind gallop as this Twilight Zone, offering the unwary player many stackable features that could be innocently enjoyed should the player actually overcome the sensation that he may well actually be tossing about with forces unknown from within the Zone itself. It certainly evokes that innocuously sinister presence that so many other artifacts from the show were seemingly shrouded in. Once the player pulls that plunger, he becomes marginally aware of the crowding presence of other pinball machines that may also happen to be in the room, as if they were bearing witness to this new challenger come to face their tribal head, flipper-to-flipper, and see if the task is met and finished without the defeating notion that the hapless player’s soul and quarters were stealthily sucked into that other dimension, never to be bartered back. Or maybe I just skipped my meds that week, dunno.