BLOGTASTIC
29/March/2008
This is adorable.
"I AM OPTIMUS PRIME. SINCE I HAVE ARRIVE ON THIS PLANET I HAVE FOUGHT MANY
BATTLES WITH MY NEMISIS MEGATRON . I HAVE SUSTAINED MANY BATTLE WOUNDS MOSTLY
SUPERFICIAL BUT ONE PART OF ME HAS COME OFF! ( MEGATRON LOOKS WORSE! ) I AM A
PROPER COLLECTORS PIECE AND COST A FORTUNE NEW AND BOXED. HOWEVER NOW I AM A
VERY FUN TOY AND WELL USED BUT MY TIME HERE IS OVER. MY CURRENT OWNER IS A GREAT
WARRIOR AND A GREAT FRIEND HOWEVER SINCE I HAVE AGED I MUST BE FOUND A NEW HOME
PERHAPS MORE PEACEFUL?!! I STILL TRANSFORM AND I HAVE THE PLATE I STAND ON AND
MY GUN. YOU CAN SEE MY DAMAGE IN THE SECOND PHOTO. I AM VERY HEAVY AND MADE OF
METAL SO POSTAGE FOR ME IS HIGH FELLOW AUTOBOTS BID AND BID WELL SO I CAN ROLL
OUT TO A NEW HOME!!! CONTACT MY OWNER IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS"
If I hadn't already bought the figure twice already I'd be very tempted to get this as well. Knowing me, that probably won't stop me.
Saw 10,000 BC last night. Short review: Enjoyable visual spectacle popcorn flick. Great action, and not a sword in sight!
Long review: I forgot how much fun it is to be surrounded by stupid people in movie theatres. We were seated behind a group of four yobbos, who felt the need to laugh and point at anything slightly different from their culture; or just anything in general. Beaded headdress lady! Point and laugh. A bit of blood on her nose! Point. Some guy landed crotch-first on a branch! Point for ten seconds after the scene had ended. The girl running in slow motion happens to have her bosom bouncing! Nudge and point and laugh, and maybe groan.
Yeah, total popcorn flick. Muscles, action, monsters and romance. I enjoyed it, but Steve didn't. I think he was looking for something more sophisticated.
25/March/2008
I went clothes shopping yesterday and got myself a suit, plus some shirts. I like to feel pretty :]
I also nabbed myself three PS2 games for £20 in a buy-three-for-the-price-of-two offer. Taito Legends 2 rocks so hard. I was going to get Capcom Classics Collection but it wasn't part of the offer, and the only games that really grabbed me in that were Ghouls & Ghosts, Bionic Commando and Final Fight, so whoo for better choices. It helps that I can name at least ten games from this compilation that I enjoy. And it doesn't have fifty million versions of the same fighting game. Diss?
LEGO Star Wars, similarly, rocks pretty hard too. I've only completed the first episode, but it looks a pretty great and should be super great once a bud gets involved in some of that 2-Player action.
Klonoa 2? It was the game I was looking most forward to, but the disc is scratched to high hell. The BIOS shows, but the game never starts. And since I actually played the game, that means I can return it for a refund or store credit or any of that jibba jabba. =(
And just today, box load of toys arrived, all in varying condition! All were pretty grimy, though, so the worst ones are getting a hot water and soap bath as I write.
Best inclusions were definitely Energon Downshift and G1 Snarl, who's face had fallen off in the box. Downshift is just a more kibbly Wheeljack; and Snarl, although one of the Dinobots nobody remembers, is awesome to have. Many thumbs up!
It also included the entire Generation 2 Aerialbots group, though missing a few arms and lacking the accessories to merge into Superion. It's nice to have a bit of history, what with my Transformers mostly being the newer and more poseable ones, but... well, the Aerialbots suck. They're self-centred jerkheads in the fiction (though they do get themselves killed pretty quickly in the Dreamwave comics, so that's kind of them) and all but Silverbolt look more or less the same, except in slightly different colours and with slightly different chests. I'm surprised Slingshot is only missing his nosecone, as he's apparently notorious for breaking apart, but yeah, I can't say I'd want to hold onto these. They better be valuable.
There was some robot that looks like Motormaster included, but wasn't, and he was layered in lime scale, rust, ground-in dirt. He smelled like a nightmare. Thus, the original owner must have had a grand old time with him. I'm happy to have him. But first, soap bath!
Armada Tidal Wave was in the box... in several parts. The smelliest parts are getting soaped and watered, so hopefully I can piece him together afterwards. I can re-enact the opening sequence of The Many Adventures of Galvatron and Friends, episode 2!
RiD Prowl was included, missing a few bits. He looks a bit crap, really. Like a basic robot had car parts slapped onto it. I'd like to say I could use him for customizing, but God knows about that.
Some guy named Pyro was in the box. He's okay. His arms, feet and waist are likely to deteriorate thanks to the gold plastic, but I can at least salvage the head. It's a good head. Plus: G2 Talon. He's nice looking, but his transformation just involves pulling the nosecone down. Fascinating. And what appears to be a morphing Power Ranger enemy. It has an interchangeable head. It's weird.
Best of all, however, was the Titanic. I just thought it was a simple Titanic, but nope. It's a Transformer! One without a head, though. It's incredible.
All in all, a worthy haul for £15.
24/March/2008
Today's observation: A sewer grating had a flyer stuck on it, which read "FUN-FILLED!" in yellow bubble text. I didn't get to confirm if it did.
23/March/2008
So, Sonic Unleashed. There was news of the name being copyrighted just a week or two ago, and already there's game footage.
It's a multi-platform console title.
And it's 2D-style side-scrolling with behind-the-character 3D segments similar to Wildfire.
But the gameplay appears to be unchanged from Rush.
I have no proper way to respond to this other than...
Can't you do the whole of something right, SEGA?
(Rush sucked, for those who've forgotten my opinion)
21/March/2008
I wasn't aware Stewart Miller carried knockoff action figures. My opinion of them has grown more positive! (I wanted to take photos but I can't find the camera lol)
They're called DYNA WARRIORS. Basic enough, but the back of the packing is the best part.
Transformations, the other figures in the line. Sounds basic enough, right? No biggy. Then you look closer and you see that there are...
FUCKIN' NAZIS
"Fight your way through Nazi lines as you command the Allied Assault."
Jesus.
There's also some mobile phone game (text HALLSALL 2ALLIEDASSAULT to 84010, if you dare), but it sounds pretty dodgy to me. Not to mention I'm so unhip and don't have a mobile phone. And the games are charged at £3 each! Thatcher's Britain.
The £2 I got was a tow truck from the Robot Masters line, where it's known as Wrecker Hook with a black and flame deco, and also from Machine Wars as a black-coloured Hoist. This dude is red and translucent blue. The arms like to pop off the ball joints and he doesn't like to hold his flail, not to mention his knees are scarily stiff, but it's pretty rad. Plus if I ever try customizing anything I could paint it to look like the original green and orange Hoist.
The big guy turns into a fire engine, kind of. The front looks like a fire engine and it says "FIRE DEPT." on the sides, but the rest looks like a standard carrying truck. It's an okay vehicle mode, though why a fire engine would need a radar dish is beyond me.
The robot mode rocks for all the wrong reasons, though. The arms are short and stubby and have a decent range of motion, but the body is just plain black so they included a big Optimus Prime style truck front to slot onto the chest. This makes the figure more colourful and complete looking, but also prevents the arms from doing an awful lot.
There's also two extra hands that can't slot into the arms anywhere, though they can be held by the hands. Ironically?
The crazy thing is that without the head piece, the head is small and has a visor and mouth plate. Not to mention the general aesthetics of the robot and the overall truck mode, it evokes the look of G1 Onslaught! I wonder why they included this in a line that's nothing but Robot Masters.
And thanks to the wonky box layout, I thought this was a combination of two robots, one of which was Optimus Prime. It wasn't. =(
There's also a tiny bull dozer that can transform into a robot, but it's not well planned out. Sure, it can stand up, but you can't exactly see which side is what. The head is blank on one side and has detail on the other, but it doesn't look much like a head. Not to mention that the only way the arms can move is backwards, thanks to the wheels preventing them from moving in the way they are arced. Whoops!
Overall, £6 well spent in the category of amusement. Probably not worth getting for genuine play or display value.
Long, long after I sold Animal Crossing, I read the archives Sardius' blog and am reminded of his joys with the game. See, my problem with it was that I treated it like I would with a regular game. I aimed for perfect completion, to get every legendary item, to get every fossil, and to catch every fish. I used the townspeople for the sole purpose of being given jobs as an errand boy, delivering and trading items.
I didn't have fun.
So now I downloaded it and I'm playing it and
Well, uh, I'm given the choice of downloading a huge GameCube ISO and playing it on the very slow Dolphin emulator, or downloading the 11mb N64 ROM and playing it, at the expense of knowing what the hell's going on.
Guess what I chose!
See, it's funny, because the few words I understand are hilarious.
And one of the villagers appears to love me, but, you know, I can't really comprehend them.
It's almost cool to be bossed about by Tom Nook once more, but not when I've no idea what he's talking about.
HELP ME OFFICER I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DOOOOO
Seriously. I'd like to play Animal Crossing again, but I imagine I'd only enjoy it if it were on a computer so it could be a simple lets-play-this-for-five-minutes thing if just to send love letters to male penguins and get stung by bees. Playing it on the PC, I can comprehend it as a game wherein I take it easy and just have silly fun; on a console, I image it as totally hardcore gaming that requires a solid month of playing, determination to remove all weeds and all that bunk.
Playing it on the PC is the only way I will enjoy it.
That, and if I could understand it.
(I take it a translation is out of the question?)
And I don't know if anyone who comes here for Random Action Hour actually looks at the other places, or even this blog for info on when it's coming out of hiatus.
Well, uh, who knows! I don't know. I tried to get back into the groove yesterday but I just found it very sloggish and dull. I've been working creatively recently (hard to believe, I know!), and yeah, I just prefer stuff that's new and mildly challenging. Writing a synopsis of a cartoon while making a few snide comments is okay, but I'd like to do stuff that involves more from my angle. Yeah, I'd love to get Transformers finished once and for all, but basically having to summarise what happens and maybe throw in an MP3 here or there just doesn't excite me as much these days. I'd probably be more interested if it were something more obscure and in desperate need of coverage, like Ultimate Teacher, then yeah, awesome! But... Transformers is summarised over at Teletraan-1, and it's easily available on YouTube. Just throw in mentions of cartoon logic and hey presto! It's fit for Random Action Hour!
(on that subject, I was once thinking of allowing viewer submissions for that place, namely for one of Galvatron's buds who offered to cover Street Figher II V back in 2006, and haven't heard from him since. Hm!)
Also I was looking through the stuff I got from the Chinese supermarket outing yesterday, and...
There is Thomas the Tank Engine pocky.
I repeat, pocky has been made under the brand of Thomas the Tank Engine.
Oh, how I wish this was a tale for another time, but I doubt I'll ever find an explanation for this item's existence.
17/March/2008
I happened to witness the Saint Patrick's Day celebrations today while visiting a Chinese supermarket, and I'm very glad I missed out on it for the entire time I've lived here. Drunken youths in unflattering fashion, wearing silly green hats and building brick walls in the middle of roads, as well as quoting Monty Python. The police were brought in an hour later and the public disobedience was promptly quelled. Why does no one ever try to keep up the party when the police are around? Seriously, just break dance in your yard or something. You just look even more stupid standing motionless and moody while the police go about the streets.
My hombre said I was getting a demonstration of both Chinese and Irish culture in our outing. I personally believed it was a demonstration of Chinese and yobbo culture. I'm probably just too snootily upper-class to appreciate the rowdiness.
The Chinese supermarket was radical. So much crazy crap I'd no idea what it was! Plus the hustle and bustle style ambience, despite being something I normally don't prefer elsewhere, just seemed to work there. Regular supermarkets are just so slow and doddering that the cramped crowded atmosphere just added something else. Plus they had some great chewing gum style candy in fantastic apple flavour, not to mention a Doraemon night light and a whole ton of other wackiness. Such as barbeque fried dough.
Barbeque fried dough.
Crazy stuff.
I also watched Teen Wolf. I didn't expect it to be a "be yourself" feel-good movie, but it turned out to be a pretty great one. Plus "dicknose" is a great term that I should begin working into my regular vocabulary.
16/March/2008
Sweet criminy, it's only when you meet another nerd who shares your interests that you realise what a super mega nerd you are. I show someone my collection of Transformers and in zero seconds it turns into a conversation of longer smokestacks, poseability, show-accuracy, TV shows we missed out on, voice actors and god knows what else. And I got an offer for my spare 20th Anniversary Prime that he intends to tighten the joints on. Galvatron was right to lose interest in the series.
But... at the same time, why does this feel good? I mean, very good? Almost what I assume coming out of the closet is like to a very positive response. Reading so much on the series, being so obsessed and only having myself and maybe one or two other people to share it with, and then suddenly hey, another super nerd! NERDY INFORMATION SPLUUUURGE
If that person had been a woman we probably would be jumping bones so
fast in a relationship that didn't really extend much beyond our
obsession with the toyline and subsequent fiction surrounding it. Or, you know,
just be acquaintances. Love at first sight ain't something I believe in.
It's things like these that make my beliefs in whether or not I should cut down on the obsession get jumbled. It's buying figures that I never really do much with, but at the same time it's just so wonderful!
A bullet would be a very efficient answer to all this.
Possibility for next week: Video games? On this blog? It could happen!
Also, good lord. I'd been spared of what American news was like for a good long time, and now I wish it was longer. We just report lots of deaths here for our slow news days. Can't the USA do the same? I mean they've got fifty-something states to work with.
Today's sentence that has made me laugh for a minute every time I've heard it: "I totally just added a fucking ham to my wish list."
15/March/2008
I once stuck to the straight and narrow.
I minded my Ps and Qs.
I aimed to buckle up and fly right.
And then I made a YouTube Poop.
Why do I feel so sinful now?
God knows how long it'll before my vocabulary is reduced to "UCTIONS UCTIONS UCTIONS UCTIONS" and "THAT'S MAMA LUIGI TO YOU MARIO (heesh)".
(only four people will actually understand this if my assumptions about this place's readership is correct)
Being a resident of Ireland, it should go without saying that I'm at least vaguely religious. I used to go to the Kingdom Hall before deciding that I really needed my sleep as my health was pretty awful, and my whole family, more or less, is Christian. I believe in God, but my beliefs don't really go further than that. Praying and all that just isn't my style. I really just believe in God because it makes more sense to me than the scientific explanations. Monkeys evolving into humans? Sure, okay! Birds being the modern day version of dinosaurs? Possibly! An explosion that created the universe? Now wait just a minute.
The problem with being religious, even in a very vague sense of the word, is that every time you say you're "thinking" or anything like that, fellow religious folk assume you're having doubts in your faith. For example, I often struggle with getting to sleep because my mind wanders. People assume it's about life and the faith all that. Not at all. It's about all the plot twists I have planned for my writings!
Sure, I doubt that there's a big Resurrection that'll make everyone alive and hunky-dory, and I doubt there's going to be much at all after death, but I still believe there's a God. Maybe not a loving God as all media portrays, but a God none the less, who may not give a shit whether you're a servant of The Satan or asking why good things happen to bad people. My belief is that he's just letting the world go as it goes. He was there to sort out shit in the Biblical times, obviously, but now we've gone onto the moon and made microwave dinners so we're left to wipe our own asses. Ain't nobody gonna save yo ass.
And I'm content with that. Sure, if He exists and does in fact come back to sort out all the crap we started, then cool, that's pretty rad. I suppose it's a case of having ambiguous faith. If I was totally 100% certain there was going to be a 1-Up after I died, but there wasn't, then I'd be a little pissed. But I'm just a person who goes "well if it happens, it happens. I'm not a betting man!" So basically if this life of playing video games, collecting toys and being a waste of space is the only life I've got, then let it be. I'll try and enjoy it. If there's more, then hey, more chance for variety and to break the mould.
You've got to admire God for creating the world and turning into a burning bush and all that, but I can't imagine Him going out of his way to save everyone who worships him, y'know. That's a lot of ambiguity to work through.
Basically this whole ramble started because I came across a blog that made the obesity epidemic into a religious debate, and had this little bombshell in the comments:
"Had they believed God, not one person on earth would starve to death. The
conclusion is: Why are there so many starving people on earth? The answer is:
Because of those people who do not believe in God — like YOU!
INDEED!"
God is a fan of popular vote, it seems. And also a fan of punishing someone for another person's beliefs. I mean, he could just make the non-believers starve to death, rather than have them responsible for people who were just minding their own business. It'd be like a new flood, except more edgy and news report worthy.
Today's observation: I should stick to talking about whether or not Mirage and Huffer survived the battle of Autobot City.
12/March/2008
It's bad enough when television makes me angry, but cereal boxes? I need to get out of the house more.
Mood:
this is just one of those days
Listening to: The Strawbs - Pick Up The Pieces
Playing: The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
You know those days where you want to be creatively productive, but you just can't? So you end up deluding yourself into believing you're being productive by playing video games, but by only playing the ones you find ludicrously hair-rippingly hard, so your delusion of productivity is then replaced with immature anger? And then you get angry so you want to be creatively productive, so the whole thing just repeats? Yeah. One of those days. Goddamned Bomberman Fantasy Race. I love it and I loathe it!
My dad's been playing Four Swords Adventures, which is great because I don't think I've touched the game since 2006, so it's nice to see progress from the start once more. The game's multi-player capabilities are flawed thanks to Nintendo pushing that stupid GBA-GCN connectivity, but it's a fun little game and I really do wish more games like it were made. I'm showing him the ropes and doing the tough fights for him, and he does the rest. Even if I'm not actively taking part in the game itself, it's great fun and very nostalgic. We played Goof Troop together years ago, you see, so this kind of puzzle gameplay is pretty much what he excels at. He'd work out how you'd kick the tiles to slot them into place while I would clobber the pirates with barrels and potted plants. We never actually got through the last stage together, and work, school and more modern consoles meant we couldn't really play it much more after that, so it's fun to relive those times.
Losing at Bomberman Fantasy Race because of the ludicrous random element isn't, though.
Total splurge-a-thon, lately. I bought the complete series of Dai-Guard, which can be summarised as "office workers, saving the world, in a giant robot!" Steve got a DVD of it years ago and we loved it, so I thought we were long overdue for a look at the rest of it. Haven't actually gotten to parts I haven't seen yet, but it's a fun and cute little series. Lots of "through teamwork we will triumph!" moments despite the politics of the Dai-Guard company, because just opening a vent on the robot costs a buck and a half. It's kind of weird watching anime after Cromartie High, what with it's dub being incredibly brilliant, but the great little lines make up for it. It's also got an a cappella theme tune so that's awesome.
I also watched two episodes of Black Lagoon (as hinted by this month's first entry), loved the look of it and have bought the whole series, but it's yet to arrive. In a nutshell: Modern day terrorist pirates with an office worker onboard. And a woman who's manlier than the men. Moral questioning and psychological attacks and plenty of explosions. If it screws that up then I may lose faith in Japanese animation for another three years.
In addition, I bought an Energon Megatron for £11 and got a complete 20th Anniversary Optimus for £32 somehow. Time to sell the accessory-lacking one I already have for mega monies on Amazon!
Regarding Random Action Hour, as I said on the 7th, it's on a bit of a hiatus. Galvatron and I are a little sick of Transformers at the minute, somehow. For me it's a case of "give me a break from it and the passion will be back later," but no idea of Galv's views. I think Transformers are still great, even though I should probably be interested in more mature things by now like political commentary, analysis of the human mind, and video game reviews; but it's just a little much all at once, y'know. We wanted season 2 and season 4 covered for the site, but right now we just want to work on something that isn't sassy commentary on the antics of two warring mass-shifting robots.
07/March/2008
Dear modern society,
Why do we still have daylights saving time?
I get the basic drift of getting up earlier to get more sunlight in the day and all that hokey pokey, but changing time just doesn't seem like the way to go in my opinion. To me, time is one of many essences of the universe. A clock is our clunky human way of measuring it that's probably wrong from the "official" way. Thus, to change time just so kids don't have to walk home from school in the dark seems like sacrilege.
Sacrilege worthy of really turning back time and assassinating William Willett. What else has the bastard done anyway?
(screw daylights saving time)
In unrelated news, Random Action Hour's on a bit of a hiatus at the minute because my heart's just not in it at this point in time. So I'm working on a walkthrough for Bomberman Fantasy Race. Hopefully someone will care!
01/March/2008
What is it with anime fans being so proactive? First against drunk drivers, and now smokers!
Also, why is it so hard to find an anime that's accessible? I admit I've enjoyed a few episodes of Bleach and One Piece, but seriously, when a show goes on for three hundred episodes, has multiple movies and an ongoing continuity-important storyline, it's just a little too daunting to make one bother with truly watching them. Which is a shame, as they look like good shows, but I don't think my interest could hold through that long, especially the "filler arcs" that everyone keeps talking about in hushed tones and spite in their voices. It doesn't help that there's a glut of school and romance related crap that I don't care about unless it's Cromartie High School which a lot of shows aren't. Sadly.