Captain Waycool

From the "It Can't Possibly Be Real" Files

2009-05-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

In college, I took an Editing and Publishing course in which we were tasked with creating a mock catalog for our little mock publishing house as our big project for the class. We wrote a bunch of descriptions, shitloads of copy about 20 or 30 books, and it would've been fine but for that tint of fakeness that fake things tend to have when you know they're fake (or faked them yourself). I get a similar vibe from the following copy:

Someone is dog-napping the canine citizens of Chem City, Texas! Two tween girls overcome danger and conspiracies as they set out to solve the crime and administer justice with the help of a magical bracelet. As the girls battle the Mob, a punk gang and a crooked cop, they learn something about friendship, courage and the importance of hanging with the right crowd.

I don't even really want to link to the source. I mean, I will, but I'd prefer not to. I don't want to spoil what simply must be the most perfectly cliche-ridden paragraph ever written.

Sappin' My Sentry

2009-05-26T08:25:00.001-07:00

Briefly, another game-induced dream: After hours and hours of Team Fortress 2 this weekend, rocking a spy-checker Pyro in 2Fort, I had dreams last night of an impostor Aaron Linde running around, talking to my friends and pretending to be me and such. Naturally, the only course of action was to set him on fire with my Backburner, follow up with the Axecutioner, et cetera. Do you have any idea how weird it feels to immolate and chop up, y'know, you?

Shut Up and Talk

2009-05-02T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile. Nevermind any commitments of actually returning to regular posting -- I've been busy, and will likely be busy again. Come to think of it, I'm still busy. I shouldn't even be writing this, or sleeping. I should be working.

But as it happens, I've been struck by something, and I need to vomit words somewhere about it. Sadly, Twitter only allows so many characters, and I'm much too inefficient a writer to be so constrained. Being that what follows concerns Shigesato Itoi's immortal Earthbound, I'll try not to tie that statement into a joke at Tim Rogers' expense.

So, Earthbound. I've talked too much about this game during the course of my career. Come to think of it, I've talked too much about this game period. I've been on podcasts about it, even faked my way through some investigative goddamn journalism over it. I wish I could stop. I wish I could stop. I can't stop.

One of my favorite things about the game is how it morphs into something new every time I play it, presenting itself ready for another romp and dissection. In my most recent travels through Onett and beyond, I found myself obsessing over the transition made by Ness and crew from fleshy humans to cold, steely robots near the end of the game. They do this because, as you may have heard, meatsacks can't make a leap through time intact, don't you know. The decision, like most major plot pitstops in Earthbound, is made unceremoniously. Why sure, I'd love to have the essence of my consciousness extracted, planted into a robot and sent hurtling into the past to square off against an intergalactic, shapeless, incomprehensible horror, a being of such infinite malice that you can't wrap your mind around his very existence. Wasn't I fighting hippies and animated trees some four or five hours ago?

Yes, the game does jump the shark a bit in terms of gravitas near the endgame, but that's always been something I rather liked about Earthbound, and not what had gripped me about that particular moment in the narrative. Rather, I was hung up on Earthbound's peculiar inability to determine whether or not its principle cast were mute or not.

There's really nothing worth dwelling on about The Mute RPG Hero, it's a worn out topic. Yeah, lots of heroes didn't talk in games back in the day, big deal. Where Earthbound is significant is how silent the heroes feel by virtue of the fact that, occasionally, they do talk -- but never to one another. They address the party, be it only Ness, or Ness and Paula, or Ness and Paula and Jeff. Poo, being the last party member to arrive during the course of the narrative, is never spoken to. The threshold, it seems, is this: If you're not an active member of the party, you're an NPC and may address the group. But once you're a part of the battle menu, shut your goddamn mouth and get to adventuring.

These are characters with backgrounds. Even if they're somewhat weakly developed, they're only as superficial and as fleeting as the rest of the game tends to be—characters don't stick around long in Earthbound. But beyond the introductions of the principle cast members—Hi, I'm Jeff, I came to help you because I heard your prayer, let's get this show on the road, destiny, et cetera—nary a word is spoken between them.

There are a few exceptions, though, and one particularly interesting one. In the Deep Darkness, near the entrance to the Tenda Village, the party encounters a ruined pile of what used to be a helicopter, commandeered by Pokey on the top of the Monotoli Building. When you examine it closely, Jeff actually speaks, and explains to the party that he simply can't fix it. Jeff's not remarking on his departure, as Poo does when he leaves the party temporarily to study a new PSI ability—he simply speaks his thoughts. In Earthbound, that's ridiculously rare.

So what are Earthbound's rules? What would compel Shigesato Itoi and his scenario scribes to keep the cast silent when faced with incomprehensible horror but pipe up when someone has to fuck off with a PSI study buddy or remark on a ruined helicopter?

Part of me likes to romanticize the idea, and suppose that Ness and company—in the face of destiny and irrefutable prophecy—never thought to question the challenge before them or wonder aloud, "Why the fuck am I supposed to do this?" That's not how a kid's mind works, the romantic part of my brain asserts. When a time-traveling bee warrior tells you to defeat a space tyrant, you just do it. But this is a very unlikely explanation.

Rather, it's probable that Itoi and his designers never established a hard-set rule. Perhaps there simply wasn't enough time to work on developing interpersonal connections and relationships between the party members, except for those moments of crucial exposition—like "I can't fix that goddamn helicopter." But that notion, that specter of deliberate design choice that hovers over the title, is what makes Earthbound a joy to revisit, no matter how old and stupid I get, no matter how small my attention span shrinks.

On an unrelated note, why in the hell does every M-rated game have to be showered in naked tits these days?

A Piece of Today

2008-12-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

Is it the name? I guess it makes sense that a song called "'84 Pontiac Dream" seems appropriate when paired with cars—makes a great driving song, too.

The Secret Lives of Games Journalists

2008-12-18T17:35:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago:

Ashley: God, I need to buy his gifts. And yours!

me: Nein! No gifts for me.

Ashley: Yes!

me: Nein! I hate everything. I hate things. I mean, I don't, but pretend I do as to dodge the possibility of you getting me a present.

Ashley: But it's your birthday too.

me: Hey, wait, here's an idea. You and Anthony pose for a picture wearing the most gentile, suburban clothing possible -- like, sweaters and shit -- in that standard portrait pose, where you're both looking away from the camera and smiling all big and shit.

me: And email that to me. That'd be an awesome present.

me: Gift me your embarassment!

Ashley: Anthony is down with that.

me: Wait, what?

Ashley: We're totally going to do it. Anthony is excited.

me: Seriously? You have to wear really gaudy clothes, though. Christmas sweaters, if at all possible.

Later that day:

Ashley: We're going to get like, real pictures taken. Like at a studio.

me: ... You're fucking shitting me.

December 18, 2008:

That's right -- Anthony Burch and Ashley Davis, of the internet. Maybe the holidays aren't so bad.

Don't Ask Questions

2008-12-09T09:18:00.001-08:00

It's funnier if you don't know. STRAW. (And those glasses!)

By Lamplight

2008-12-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

This is sort of what I was talking about yesterday, although unlike G-Cans, this isn't a real place—not yet, anyway. It's a proposal for a park commemorating the Tangshan earthquake in China, 1976. The swing lanterns, according to some fellow what wrote about it, are intended to symbolize hope and remembrance.

I'd like to tie this into gaming some how, but really, I've just been thirsting for visually stimulating things lately, imagery that straddles the membrane between reality and the not-so-much. So maybe I'll just post crap like that every now and then—if, by my own definition, I must tie stuff into gaming, let's simply suggest that this imagery could serve well in a game of some sort.

Now that I think about it, Chrono Trigger had one hell of an iconic lamp -- every now and then I'll spot a Victorian lamp and think of Gaspar and his bowler, the subtle nod and the "Hey."

Monuments

2008-12-07T22:35:00.000-08:00

I know for a fact that G-Cans -- the cavernous subterranean tsunami discharge system beneath Tokyo's suburbs -- is real. I know people who know people who've been there. I've even touched one of them! (She didn't appreciate it.) But it only takes so many years of untempered consumption of visual media before you start to think that almost every breathtaking image was conceived in the deepest dreams of an art staffer.

Like Fine Wine

2008-12-07T03:18:00.000-08:00

I know that nostalgia's in no short supply on THE INTERNET, but antiquated technology is strangely beautiful when viewed en masse, ain't it?

My father used to have a Texas Instruments TI-99, which came equipped with a hulking ROM cartridge bay just right of the keyboard—a gaping maw that simply demanded data of the hardest sort. It was a beautiful machine, and the first computer I ever laid hands on.

It's no wonder, though, that so many kids my age flocked to the Atari, Sega Master System and NES when those consoles were released in their age. PC gaming definitely existed back then, even on our behemoth TI-99—but the usability curve was such that to gaze upon it was to realize your limitations as a barely-educated 7-year-old boy. It took me at least ten minutes to realize that BASIC wasn't a video game.

Holy shit—some swift Googling has shed some light on our wee TI-99 library. Alpiner! With its angry birds and fuck-off skunks, Alpiner taught me to fear nature, which probably explains why I work in IT.

Part of me always feels a bit jealous when I hear colleagues talking about how badass it was growing up on Odyssey and Commodore 64 and the MSX. But in retrospect, maybe I had the upper hand—after all, I had Bill goddamn Cosby on my side.

A Lazy Bastard Reviews... [#2]

2008-11-06T23:29:00.000-08:00

Fallout 3!
How many times can an exploding skull make me cackle like a vicious 11-year-old? I don't know. I lost count.

LittleBigPlanet!
Please, please, please let Beta participants skip tutorial sessions next time, MM. My love of Stephen Fry cannot conquer the hours of tutorials between me and legitimate level-buildin'. That being said, it appeals to the side of me that likes things that are adorable—a side of me that doesn't get out much these days. Gears 2 ain't exactly cute.

Valkyria Chronicles!
Only just got this one—today, actually—and I'm still waiting for it to ramp up. The battle's intriguing, save for one element in which the logic of the world seems recursively cruel: Enemies won't shoot at you 'til you're in motion. Your turn starts and you select your unit, and God help you if a load of jerks have taken up residence in a semi-circle of death around you. "He's on the move! Should we shoot him now? Okay!"

Left 4 Dead!
Played the game proper at Valve last Thursday with some old homies, got my grubby hands on the demo today. Even under less-than-desirable circumstances (meager desktop computing power, obnoxious roommates), it still managed to impress. But fuck the Witch. Seriously. That shit will haunt me for weeks.

8-Bit Choirs

2008-11-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

I get a little Stephen Colbert when it comes to indie music co-opting video games, even though a lot of these people—many of whom are my age—grew up with the stuff, just like me. Why Stephen Colbert? Because it manifests mostly as a false persona belching irrational hatred towards something I'd never care to sample myself, for fear of it somehow infecting me. I know it's not all bad, but I blame those 17-year-old Hot Topic fucks with NES controller belt buckles—get your own culture, damnit. Also, consider getting off my lawn.

Anyway, that's a long preface to say that I really like the following track, coming by way of the Mountain Goats and my favorite guitar valkyrie, Kaki King. I could say a bunch of shit about the song and wax intellectual for a paragraph or two, but let's just stick with this: "Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle" is remarkably pleasant, and draws the mind towards one of gaming history's greatest tales never told.

Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle - The Mountain Goats and Kaki King

I'm Never Wearing My Bullseye to Africa Again

2008-10-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

Far Cry 2 is ambitious. When I saw it at Ubidays last May, I was quick to latch onto it -- 50 square kilometers of open space, full of stuff to shoot (dudes, cars, zebras!) and the ability to set the African countryside on fire to screw with enemies. It was a lot of fun at the event, so what happened between then and now?

I mean, it's plenty fun. But while crossing a mile or two of terrain on foot because some jackass made short work of my jeep, it occurred to me that these soldiers have an otherworldly ability to see me amongst brush, trees, and good ol' Next-Gen Brown dirt. Meanwhile, I can't see a goddamn thing. And these bastards are picking me off a half-click to a click away. With pistols!

And while I'm picking out shrapnel from my bicep with my fucking teeth (which, admittedly, is damned cool) and digging bullets out of my legs, they're on the horn to their buddies a mile away in a field. "What are you up to, Steve? Well, there's this guy, and he's mortally wounded, I was thinking maybe you could pick him off. Poker tonight? Rad. Later." Blam! Blood spills and I load from the last arbitrary save point I encountered. Balls.

When I suck at games these days, I'm really hesitant to blame it on the game itself, because I'm getting older and fatter and slower and such, like we do. But did I miss a cinematic earlier in the game where the enemy soldiers were replaced with a bus-load of Predators or something? Cripes, I hate sucking.

My Shit Done Got Hacked

2008-10-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

My portfolio and personal page, captainwaycool.com (don't go there! it'll give you the clap or something!), has been compromised. Again! And I wouldn't even really friggin' know about it if it wasn't for Google Chrome warning me that if I went to my own goddamned website I'd contract something terrifying and birth a horrible, ancient alien god from my chest.

I'd blame my hosting service, but it's my own fault. If the adage of getting what one pays for holds true, going with completelyfreehosting.com was probably a dumbshit move on my part.

So! I've forwarded ye olde domain to this here blog while I seek out an alternative webhosting solution. For those of you finding yourselves here but expected to be elsewhere, uh.. apologies. And tremble, dear reader, tremble. This is what I like to think of as the business end of my web presence, where I establish myself as the #1 Google search result for the phrase "conditional penis", among other things.

A Lazy Bastard Reviews...

2008-10-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

Dead Space!

Didn't finish it, don't suspect I will. Oh, that's not to say that I didn't love it. I just prefer not waking up in a cold fucking sweat at 3 AM with the sudden urge to dismember my office chair. Plus, I got a bit sidetracked by...

Mother 3!

Courtesy of your friends and mine at the brilliant Mother 3 Fan Translation effort, this is just about as beautiful a game as I had hoped it to be. Beautiful enough to supplant EarthBound as the chief administrator of the childlike regions of my stupid, stupid brain. But not even Mother 3 could hold my attention when I could be playing...

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia!

It is what it is. It's not revolutionary, nor does it bandy about hand-in-hand with that damnable buzzword, "Innovation". It's simply Castlevania -- or its modern, Metroid-esque incarnation, anyway -- and it's very good at what it does. But there's a lot of 2D in my house as of late, and when my aging and rapidly deteriorating eyes begin to squint after the sprite-based glory of my portable companion, I can always count on...

Warioland: Shake It!(!)

The night I got this game, I was in a fucking car accident. I played through the first two levels while I was on the phone with my insurance company, and managed to drop the phone twice 'cos I was busy shaking the goddamned Wii Remote. Waggling is wearing a little thin, but hell, if it can ease the pain of watching the entire front end of your car torn off while you're still inside of it, that's gotta count for something.

Tomorrow's Far Cry 2, with Fallout 3 and the beleagured LittleBigPlanet bringing up next week. It's seasons like this one that make me grateful for steady employment.

The Buffoon's Guide to Burning Out

2008-10-11T14:38:00.001-07:00

I'm a neglectful wretch. For months, now, I've often thought to myself, "It's a damn shame I don't write personal blog crap anymore. I should get back to that." Oh yes, dear readers. I was dead set. But life gets in the way, as life often does, because life is a jerk bastard who doesn't return the shit it borrows and chews with its mouth open. Jerk bastard.

Since I last bothered to put anything to paper, I had been working at Shacknews, heading here and there for events and pounding out the daily happenings in our ridiculous industry. Some dude tried to hijack a cab in Thailand and blamed it on Grand Theft Auto, someone said something about games making you fat, and Denis Dyack spoke (which, naturally, was followed by controversy). These were the nuts and bolts of my days. At least the commute—a blistering six feet from my bed to my desk—was easy.

But at some point during E3, a spark flashed in my head that said "You don't have the stones to be a games journalist." The spark arrived at Konami's suite, where I was throwing down in Castlevania Judgment against the one, the only, the whip-carryin' and hat-wearin' Koji Igarashi. I was fortunate, because if he hadn't been there, the whole experience would've been an utter waste of time. I was unfortunate, because he was there, and I was playing his game. A game in which, sadly, I was fantastically disappointed.

Nevermind that Castlevania Judgment is a title doomed by its very nature—a one-on-one fighter that's not quite a fighter, framed in Castlevania? Oh dear—I really wanted to like the game, because Igarashi was standing right next to me. And then, the dude that brought me some of my favorite side-scrolling experiences asked me if I was enjoying the title. "Hell yes," I said. Oh, the shame! But there's a line to brutal honesty. Had I met Shigeru Miyamoto, I probably wouldn't have told him that I thought of Wii Music the way I thought of my parents for saying "good job!" when I failed miserably at something difficult.

Flash forward a few months, and there I was, tendering my resignation and gearing up for something new. Now that I'm on the other side of the fence and working for the Man and such, well -- it's alarming what you learn from that perspective. No matter how many post-mortems you read or developers you speak to, being part of the development process opens your eyes to a lot of things. Namely, how hard these people fucking work. Holy shit. Not that I'm not accustomed to a day of hard work or anything, but the pacing was otherworldly -- as breakneck as coordinating an entire E3 of coverage among four staffers is, it didn't prepare me for what it fucking looks like when twenty-five people converge on a single goal and hammer out a project. It's like Black Ops -- infiltration, execution, extraction in the blink of an eye.

It's infectious, too. The standard workweek is ballooning for me because I... I kinda dig it. And there are some evenings where I'd rather just kick around at the office, screw around on my devkit and get some of those loose ends tied up than be home. That's never really happened before, and it's a neat feeling to have. A month into the new digs, it's beginning to dawn on me why games industry folks are some of the most passionate motherfuckers you'll ever meet. If you're not when you join up, you definitely will be -- it's just a matter of time.

Boxed

2008-04-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

Not game related, but it happened while I was playing a game—Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, specifically—so it more or less counts.

About an hour ago I got an IM from a friend who, like me, is quite claustrophobic. Rather than explain, I offer this (brief) copy of our discourse:

rob: dude dude DUDE DUDE DUDE
me: DUDE
me: what?
rob: i'm about to ruin your fucking weekend

He sent me a link, which led me to the following YouTube video:

Holy god damn, he wasn't kidding. The video and the harrowing New Yorker article it accompanies reveal the 40-hour confinement of Nicholas White, a production manager of Business Week who was returning from a smoke break when the express elevator crapped out. Though eight security guards took note of White via surveillance monitors, nobody guessed that he had been stuck for two days.

Movies about prisons, especially the ones that feature "the box" or "the hole" or some other form of close-quarters solitary confinement, those things absolutely terrify me. But here's the benefit to getting locked away for a week: You're aware of how long you're to be locked away. Sure, you might lose track of time, but at least someone knows you're there. At least you've got a place to sleep, water to drink, the footsteps of other souls outside your door. The things you take for granted, right?

But I'm much too lazy to let a little something like the abject terror of such a fiasco keep me from using elevators—thinking about that goddamn video every time the doors slide shut, though, is another story.

Incidentally, the cartoons in that magazine are the most awful goddamn things. It's like they took on a life of their own and decided to destroy humor forever.

I HAVE FURY

2008-02-07T15:32:00.001-08:00

In preparation for an upcoming review—and also to sate my own geeky desires—I downloaded a complete rip of Super Smash Bros. Brawl's soundtrack. Holy shit, that's a lot of music. And I mean a fucking lot. 1.02GB of it, to be exact. I'm preparing to write something for yonder Shacknews 'bout the Smash Bros. phenomenon soon, but one thing that I'll leave to Waycool is this: Of all the music to draw from Hip Tanaka's immortal Kid Icarus score, why leave out the final stage theme?

I mean, c'mon. I listen to that shit in the car because it's so damned inspirational. Fly! Fight! Win! (Alternatively: DANGER !!!!!! TERROR HORROR)

Late Nite Waycool

2008-01-15T01:23:00.000-08:00

The big news tonight: Smash Bros. delayed again. Was there ever any doubt?

Meanwhile, it's the end of my day, creeping up on two in the morning with no sleep in sight. Bouncing my sleep schedule around these days has been a little wacky on my insides -- 6 AM wakeups for three weeks, up three hours a week after and five a week beyond that. I'm becoming progressively more acquainted with the wee hours of the morning, something I haven't really done since college. But it's nice, you know? Nothing on television, no shenanigans in the apartment, everything asleep and still—computers, roommates, fridge compressor units. When it's just you and a shitload of work, the work tends to crank out a bit easier.

Did you know CBC has turned jPod into a television show? Yep, as of a week or so ago, Douglas Coupland's most recent tech-centric novel, exploring the lives of programmers at a monolithic game studio in Vancouver (which may as well be EA, you know) has been fashioned into a weekly comedic outing with none other than Alan Fucking Thicke himself playing the protagonist's dad. It's weird—accustomed though I may be to the adaptation of books to film (most often) and TV (rarely, but still occurring), the idea of something that I've read making such a debut is a little wacky. It is Douglas Coupland, though. He's the Helvetica-lovin' literary rock star of Canada, edgy but in his own special way—like Chuck Palahniuk except talented. And gay. [Update: Chris Furniss informs me that Chuck is gay, too. Okay, so Douglas Coupland is like Chuck Palahniuk except talented. Period.]

You get acquainted with characters in the theater of your mind and it's hard to separate them from what's presented to you in the transition to another medium. When I read the book, I hated the characters -- having read Microserfs almost a decade prior, my idealized image of geeky shut-in coders finding themselves in a collective effort clashed pretty hard with the consumeristic, meme-spouting Googlemaniacs of jPod. I was so pissed that I wrote a goddamn paper on it in my Canadian literature class during my senior year of college; this wasn't what I pictured game development to be like, goddamnit.

Part of me still hopes that such a place really exists. Even the most broad interest in gaming will net a juicy industry from behind the curtain every now and then—layoffs and corporate bullshit in the worst cases, the kind of stuff featured in jPod, businessmen stunting creative vision with their own attitudes on what the kids want, what will sell. When you think about it, is slapping a hip turtle with attitude into a skateboarding game so different than licensing Vader for use in Soul Calibur IV? Yes, chew on that! It is a nugget of thought.

But then you hear about places like Insomniac, studios where every input is valuable, where games are truly developed as the result of a cooperative effort. Places like these are where dreams of game development are forged, neatly inserted into the minds of wee games journalists in the making and germinated over the course of decades. And yeah, most journalists want to be in development—at least, most of 'em that I know.

What I'm getting at is that this idea of what development might be, even in the worst case scenario, is still vaguely sexy to me. I like the idea of being awash in a company culture and able to observe its effects at its most tragic, its most bizarre. And as I mentioned, not every studio is a soul-sucking, heart-crushing bastard machine—just a lot of them. But had I any gift with numbers, I swear I would have eschewed English in favor of computer science when selecting a course of study. As much as I love my station and appreciate my good fortune (and that is most certainly what it is), I'd trade any skill with words for the ability to code. If you're gunning for development it's definitely a foot in the door, almost all other thoroughfares being "the hard ways".

I ain't complaining, though—just musing on what could have been. Ever sit down and think "Man, I wonder what it would be like to be a totally ripped fireman, saving lives and getting chicks and shit"? It's more or less the same thing, except both sides of my equation—the comfortable reality and the wild, batshit insane fantasy—involve few women and little recognition. But hey, at the very least they incorporate games and a steady paycheck; for a dork like me, that's an absolutely invaluable combination.

The Writing Habits of the Earthbound Games Journalist

2008-01-05T09:39:00.000-08:00

Just about 14 months ago I made the last post on what used to be Captain Waycool, explaining that I had joined up with Destructoid but assuring my 14-20 regular readers (who loves you, baby?) that I had no intention of abandoning my post entirely. This was a terrible, terrible lie. I didn't make a single goddamn post to CWC in those 14 months, until starting up this newest incarnation — it's a mistake I don't intend to make again. So here I am again, my mea culpa and I, pleading for your forgiveness.

December was my busiest month, career-wise. I did some work for Ars Technica (links to the right, yo) and just a few days ago took a job working with the fine lads over at Shacknews. I remain the reviews editor of Destructoid, a job I love, so I don't suspect I'll be walking away from that any time soon.

And this week! Me, Ninja Gaiden II, and the one and only Tomunobu Itagaki. Got time pegged down for an interview, and I still don't have really great questions to ask him just yet, but fuck, I could ask him anything and it'd likely turn out to be solid gold. That man is batshit insane.

Also, this is something worth noting, because it hasn't happened in years: I had a game dream. A really weird game dream. With the bulk of the Rockstar catalog showing up on Steam yesterday at a discount, I figured, fuck it — I never did get around to finishing San Andreas. So I downloaded the game, and promptly looked up some cheat codes to spawn tanks and brawl with the military. Among those codes was the make CJ ripped code, automatically boosting the muscle and energy stat to the maximum. "Awesome," I thought, and promptly started beating hookers.

That night, I had a dream which featured a number of peculiar circumstances, not the least of which was that I got soaked at a whale exhibit (or something — what it was I can't quite recall). Cursing my terrible luck, I wondered what I was to do, covered head to toe in a soupy concoction of water and whale spit. And then, an idea: "I'll just go without the shirt!"

I'm a large man, the sort that recognizes the societal value of keeping one's shirt on in public, so this was an unexpected and sudden turn of thought. But in my head I recalled the cheat code — BUFFMEUP — and stripped away my long sleeves to reveal a sturdy physique beneath. Fucking awesome.

When I woke, I suppose the most rational response would have been a heightened resolve to improve myself, slim down and tone up, drink less soda and run around the block maybe once or twice a year. Not I; instead, the first thought upon waking was "Christ, how convenient would that be?", and promptly rolled over.

Indeed, this is the life of a games journalist.

Savages!

2007-12-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

You can almost hear its little SNES-2 innards begging for death.

Wherein I con my way into Gamasutra

2007-12-13T09:58:00.000-08:00

Lovely and talented Leigh Alexander descended from her heavenly terrace on high to grace mere mortal me with a spot at Gamasutra for a recent interview I conducted at Bungie. So, as of this morning, I've got me a Gamasutra byline, and it feels pretty damn nifty. Anyhow, check it out.

My Conditional Penis: Capcom clears up Poison's gender by further complicating it

2007-12-12T23:55:00.000-08:00

After years of ambiguity wrought by localization standards, Capcom has finally settled with some cold, hard facts on Poison (Final Fight, et al) and his/her gender in the latest issue of EGM. Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono lays it down:

"Let's set the record straight: In North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away to look female."

Oh, sure -- I know that this is in large part due to Capcom USA's lengthy history of canon manipulation meant to dodge the fiery cudgel of public backlash, but it still stands: gaming now has its first character with geographically dependent genital configurations. God, I love this industry.

Why I'll never be a doctor

2007-12-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

"Dr. Linde, please begin the procedure. Yes, use the magical all-healing antibiotic gel to close up those small lacerations. It's awesome, isn't it? The future sure is great, what with gels that do, y'know, that. Okay, make a small incision and we'll take a look inside -- excellent work, Dr. Linde. Now just -- HEY HEY WHOA HEY WAIT HEY WHAT HEY STOP!"

"Hm?"

"Doctor, what the fuck are you doing? You're killing our patient!"

"I'm just -- I'm detaching these pacemaker wires, right? And I was going to move it from the heart to the tray, you know, so there aren't any wires in his chest cavity. Right?"

"Are you mad? You have to detach both of the wires before you do anything else, touch anything else! If you so much as touch the first wire to remove it before detaching the others, you'll totally kill our patient! Kill him dead!"

"But it's already out of her heart. It's not even hitched up anymore, see? So I'll just get it out of the way--"

A massive hemorrhage erupts. The patient's heart spontaneously explodes. Locusts consume his brain and crawl out of his eyes.

"Hey, way to go. You just killed our patient. Well, let's start over so your reign of terror can carry onward."

Gotta love Trauma Center, where if you look at an object wrong, you deal irreparable harm to your patient.

A Very Nerdy Birthday

2007-12-06T23:50:00.000-08:00

I think my shameless love of The Orange Box is having an effect: today I received a package from the Valve Store containing a pair of bumper stickers and -- brace yourself -- a fucking Aperture Laboratories parking permit. All three of them are going on my car immediately; if only I had some variety of fish to complement WWGFD. Imagine that: a Gordon fish. Beating the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish both to death with a crowbar because Gordon Freeman doesn't have fucking time for your little fish-off.

The package came as a birthday present from the one and only Brad Rice, our features editor over at Destructoid and a hell of a guy. In one deft act he has been upgraded in my esteems from "angry barkeep with a heart of gold" to "snuggly bunny"; rest assured that the right papers have been filed to make the change official. Incidentally, this comes just days after receiving yet another Portaly gift: my very own weighted companion cube carved out of balsam wood by our video guru, Dan Lingen.

You guys are swell. I'm not used to getting presents on my birthday, if only because I tend to keep the event more or less low-key (aside from the occasional freak out about being old and irrelevant and whatnot). But I guess we've all grown quite close over the last year, right? When your birthdays roll around, keep an eye out on the mailboxes. I promise I'll try extra hard to send something that won't get you arrested.

Speaking of Aquaria...

2007-12-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

The final teaser trailer is up courtesy Bit Blot. I've been promised a review build, so expect some impressions at the usual place sometime soon. Big secret: I haven't been this pumped for a game since Portal.