12/04/2006

History WAS Made

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

First off, apologize for the lack up updates. Yet once again… and I know I’m totally a broken record at this point, but… it?s been crazy mad hectic on my end. Hence why I totally missed the Thursday deadline for my GameSetWatch column, which I feel pretty shitty about (but my next movie review is set for later this week). Simon, being the super nice and understanding guy that he is told me not to worry about it, but to make it up, I promised a quick write of the first night of the Blip Festival… which I also dropped the ball on. But Simon, and for everyone else, its coming! I promise.

But instead of talking about the past few days in another mixed topic post (btw, Fort90 Journal 2.0 is almost ready, and another change is that I’m thinking of is breaking up my entries into smaller bits, according to subject matter… what do you folks think?), let me save the Blip Fest talk for a bit later, and quickly rattle off all that stuff that’s happen since Wednesday…

- Movie night featured Scrooge, the 1970 musical starring Albert Finney, and is actually one of the best film adaptations of the Charles Dickens’ classic I’ve seen (though the all time great, at least in my mind, with always be television’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol). The best part had to be Alec Guinness, who played Jacob Marley. The man can play it all… ghost, Jedi master, Hitler. It was also nice to be reminded that my favorite time of year is right around the corner; I guess its true that the older you get, the more you forget about the festive season due to “adult stuff”. I suppose also not helping was the unusually warm weather all last week, which I actually found annoying (its winter time, so I want it to be cold, damnit). We also saw a bunch of clips beforehand, which made the evening feel like the good old days of movie night… mostly old Hollywood song and dance numbers, many of which featured Fred Astaire. Also saw the opening from the latest Jackie Chan movie from Hong Kong that was rather blah. Oh, and Slings and Arrows season 2 just keeps getting better.

- Thursday night was the opening night of Blip Fest 2006. Again, I’ll pass along a detail rundown of the evening a bit later, though I will mention right a major reason why it was so awesome, aside from the fucking amazing music, was that it afforded the chance to hang with some familiar faces, a few of which whom I rarely get the chance to see, such as Brian (aka click of click-stick fame), Steve (aka NightsB from the now defunct Insert Credit forums). Plus other peeps were present, like Job, Colin, and Dave (Mauro). Even Adam, who posts comments here as “phooky”, decided to show up (that makes two friends, of all the folks I know who, despite being self-professed gamer and techie dorks, have always scoffed at the idea of seeing people perform music live with Game Boys, and not surprisingly he too went “Holys shit, what the hell have I been missing?!”). It was pretty much a party in every sense! And it also offered another chance to lament the passing of the IC forums, since it was the reason why I met a majority of those folks I hung out with at the fest, though I’m still on the fence about getting involved with it’s replacement. Between sets, Jake (aka virt) and I decided to run a stupid movie night sometime in the future. He’s got Turkish Star Wars and I’ve got Turkish Star Trek, as well as Turkish Spider Man vs. Captain America vs. Santos.

- Friday night was the big pre-wedding dinner with Dave (Roman) and Raina, along with Raina’s family from the west coast. And Saturday was the big day: Dave and Raina tied the knot. The entire ceremony was pretty wonderful, and cute to boot! Dave’s like a brother to me, so I, like many others, am extremely proud and happy for him. He got himself a really swell gal.

I myself was not just a spectator but one of the groomsmen, which was quite the honor, and I’d like to think I did a decent job; everything went off without a hitch, all things considered (there were about a ton of logistical nightmares to deal with, but there were no disasters thankfully… though at one point I had to run to a Radio Shack for a wire for the DJ, but thankfully Queens has the one store in existence with sales folk that actually has brains and wants to help). Also, the wedding comic (Dave & Raina asked all their comic buddies to contribute comics or funny drawings for a book that was given out as gifts for the guests) turned out really nice, and even my shitty chicken scratch turned out pretty decent (considering I had to scale back from my original plans, and my whole set-up is absent, due I would image in to space constraints). Here’s one of the very few good pictures that came out…

- As for both Friday and Saturday nights, after the wedding-related portion of the evening, I hung out with Katie who was again in town. And I’ll let her describe all that went down, via her post from over at my fan club?s bulliten board, entitled MHFC Society Column: Matt buys me drinks, wears suit this weekend?

“Matt was on a Serious Business tear this weekend. We went to the same bar two nights in a row. On the first night, he uttered through gritted teeth “Christ I need a drink” and approximately two seconds after walking in the bar demanded of me, MK, and Robin “Who wants a shot of Jack??” Playing the Asian card, he was pretty drunk within no time.

Night two: Matt made his grand entrance in a very nice suit into the same bar, I think this time as his wrestler alter-ego. (On a side note, this wrestler’s signature moves are “The Johnny Spike,” “The Wheel of Woe,” and “The Tears Fall Down.”) We didn’t stay very long, and Matt later sang a West Side Story fashion song to people standing on the street. He invited these strangers to go to a knife fight in the song, and when asked if there would be girls there, he responded with “Of course there will be girls there! It’s a knife fight!” He later yelled at a couple walking down the street, “She doesn’t really love you!!” thus ruining somebody’s night but making ours fantastic.

Coming soon: lines from Matt’s imaginary movie.”

… and the highlight for me had to be the look on Todd‘s face (who was in town for Dave and Raina’s wedding, whom MK & I managed to “borrow” late Saturday night) when I told him how shocked I was when I first saw a pair of dog testicles.

- And last night was the final evening of the Blip Fest 2006, and as expected, it was pretty mind-blowing. I decided to take some pictures and hoped that my shitty camera might be able to pull off some sort of miracle, but sadly, that didn’t happen. I’m especially pissed that the following arty-farty pic didn’t come out…

… Oh well. Hopefully Brian and Colin will pass along theirs real soon. Once more, coming up soon, my semi-detail, incomplete report.

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11/29/2006

The Stage Is Almost Set…

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

Once again, a couple of things…

- I have like the worst memory these days, because I can’t believe I forgot to pass this along last time: a somewhat momentous thing happened last week. My latest Gamefly selection arrived last Wednesday and it was… Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yup, the last game I worked on at Ubi Soft, my one and only stab at designing a PS2 game. Though as mostly folks might already know, I was only around long enough to lay the groundwork, then it was taken out of my hands before I could refine the design, and then my studio was shut down.

So how is it? Well… I’m going to save most of what I have to say in my big “Super Cool: My Year At Ubi Soft” piece that I’m planning to do for The Gamer’s Quarter (though that may take a while since the deadline is right around the corner and I’m kinda busy with a thousand other things), though I will say that it took about three seconds to discover that Ubi, as expected, did not stick to my plan since it uses every fucking button on the goddamn PS2 controller, and quite poorly. But yeah… the game sucks ass. It not even on the level of bad as say… the Bouncer or Superman 64, which at least people like to point and laugh. CTHD is so bad that people who played it just didn’t want to think or talk about it afterwards.

I’ll also mention that its all the more depressing since the actual developers that were hired was LightWave, the once glorious dev team that was behind one of my fave games of all time, Bushido Blade. Again… I’ll save the full on bitching and moaning for TGQ.

- Also, I think my PS2 is dying. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is just that bad! But seriously, I’ve noticed that the drive has gotten pretty loud when playing blue discs. Which… really sucks, obviously.

- Another thing I forgot to mention before is the email I recently received… from the director of Karate Ruler. In a nutshell, a representative from Sprout contacted me and asked that I pull the video. Why? Basically, certain folks who have seen the video have left some not so nice comments. Specifically the cruel jokes that have been made at the expense of the actors involved, all of whom are special needs. And that’s pretty it; the person also mentioned that I don’t have the right to distribute the video as well, which is true, but upon closer inspection of the email, it really wasn’t much of an issue.

Ultimately, Sprout is in their legal right to ask me to pull the video due to copyright reasons. But… I plan on appealing to them, to ask permission to keep it up. Why? Because, its a great video! Seriously, I’ve been a huge fan of the film for many, many years. I’ve introduced it to a ton of folks, and many of them have become fans as well. Yeah, the vid gets a good laugh from myself and friends, but I also really admire and respect all the people involved. Its a fantastic achievement, and I kid you not, the movie is far more entertaining than some of the stuff that’s produced these days from Hollywood and elsewhere by “normal” people. And I’m pretty sure that, at least the folks I personally know whom I’ve introduced the movie to, feel the same exact way. And in the end, every filmmaker wants their work to be seen and enjoyed by as many people as possible, or so I’d think.

Regarding the shitty comments on YouTube, well, that just can’t be helped. Stupid people will say stupid shit. I could wipe them… I just don’t think anyone should pay any mind to them (and now that I finally checked again, there’s hardly any negative comments!). Anyway, I?ll be emailing the person later tonight, and hopefully something will be worked out. Otherwise, enjoy the video while you.

- Back to video games, it was recently brought to my attention, and from more than a few folks, that my coverage of the Wii launch was perhaps the biggest one that was produced. And to be honest, that’s kinda sad. Apparently, more people would rather read about people getting shot over PS3s, or paying $3000+ for just one.

Though it necessarily hasn’t been all doom and gloom. A lot of folks in the mainstream press are actually genuinely impressed excited with video games once again, and it all has to do with the Wii. There’s been tons of write ups where the author has talked about how much fun the games are, but perhaps more importantly, how accessible they are, with tons of “even my girlfriend/wife/parents/grandparents love it!” sentiments. Meanwhile, they’ve also been especially hard on the PS3 for not living up to the hype, and I’d like to think, justifiable so. Even the gaming press have been going “this is seriously it?!?!”.

As for the hardcore gamers on message boards, well, bear in mind, many of them honestly believe $600 is worth the price of admission for “the next generation” of gaming, and that any one who feels different are losers or pussies or whatever. So naturally, they?re all pretty pissed these days. Word was recently released that 600,000 of the system were sold in the first week, and there were plenty of “Who fucking gives a shit… wait till next year” comments. And it is true, that things could be different next year, but the amount of vitriol in people, who seriously acted as if Nintendo raped their kid sisters is both amusing and sad. Another factor to consider is that a lot of hardcore Nintendo fans are genuinely insane (whereas hardcore Sony fans are just smarmy and diehard Microsoft fans are often deluded) and now that they seem to have a green light to gloat is making everyone even crankier than usual. Hence why I’ve having a harder time than usual when it comes to shifting through the crap.

That’s not to say that I totally discount what the hardcore gaming community has to say. Often, they still know what’s up in relation to the general public. But at the same time, they often dead wrong as well.

- Speaking of message boards… I basically figured that there was perhaps no need, nor interest, in a Fort90 Forums, especially since things seem to be running full steam ahead with the NeoIC forums (and on that note, I have offered to lend a hand, but its remains to be seen if my offer will be taken up on).

Well I was kind wrong. Various friends I’ve spoken with apparently really want a message board on my end to happen. And to be honest, I’m glad that there’s no gap to fill now, so Fort90 Forums can be its own beast completely. But again, I’m spread pretty thin at the moment, so it may not actually happen, but I am back to wanting it to happen. I’m approaching this as an experiment, and actually try to be somewhat hands off (to emulate the component of the IC forums that in my opnion was the very best part). If its a total failure, I’ll just nuke the thing after a month and move forward. But if it sticks… so hang in there for details.

- And finally, a reminder that tomorrow is the big day. Chiptune history WILL be made, as the four day long Blip Festival finally kicks off here in the Big Apple. For those who don’t know, the greatest gathering of artists that utilize Game Boys, NESs, and other video game systems to make beautiful beeps and books will happen. Included are such local legends as Bit Shifter and nullsleep, plus other hometown faves like Bubblyfish and Anamanaguchi, as well as superstar talents from literally across the globe, like YMCK and Goto80. And if you don’t know who these folks are, first I’m very sorry, but secondly get smart.

Its four days long, and the price can’t be beat, so its worth checking out. And remember, when chiptunes becomes all the range next year, thanks to Beck, don’t you want to sound all cool and have indie cred by telling everyone you were there when it finally hit it big?

To check out the schedule, and to buy tickets, simply hit http://www.blipfestival.org/. Again, I will be there for the opener and closer! Can’t wait to see YMCK in NYC!

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11/28/2006

The “Aftermath”

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

Yet another crazy weekend has come and go, though this past one was particularly crazy. Hung out with Dave (Roman) quite a bit, it being Thanksgiving weekend and all. A few members of his extended family, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years, are in town and I got to hang with them as well, plus other stuff went down, all building up towards next weekend, which is when he’ll officially tie the knot with his bride.

But other than socializing (Katie was also in town, so got to hang out with her, which meant a trip to the Central Park Zoo, though the red pandas were total no-shows, the fucking bastards), I did find some room for video games; at one point I found myself watching a friend play Zelda for the Wii, which was the first time I ever saw the game being played in person. And that’s because I’ve actually been trying to avoid it to a certain degree…. I guess I wanted my first chance to play the game to be totally fresh, though obviously that was sort of a foolish notion, given how big the game is. And it looked totally awesome! I found myself totally giddy… then rather depressed. It had finally hit me: the new Zelda game is out and I’m not currently playing it! There’s very few titles I have to get my mits on day one, but Zelda is always at the top of the list. Still not sure when I’m getting my Wii, but at least… don’t laugh… I’m still getting the GameCube version, which for all intents and purposes, is the definitive version. At least everything won’t be filled and the sun will rise in the east (for those who might not remember, Link is left-handed in the series, so to conform to the Wii-mote, they made him right-handed by literally flipping everything over).

Hence why I’ve decided to return to Minish Cap, which I was enjoying but kinda just dropped due to some distraction or another. I guess it’ll fill the gap left my Final Fantasy XII, which I’ve sorta lost interest in. Oh, and MK gave that a spin for the first time and she found the beginning excruciating boring. And yeah… all Final Fantasy games start out way too slow.

Also, Robin took me to a drug store in his neighborhood that sells an odd assortment of old games, including really old PSone titles. I almost got Philosoma, but the disc was all scratched, so I passed, though now I’m thinking of risking it and just buying the game, in hopes of making a workable copy out of it. Though I did the get the totally brand new and totally official Sega Jump Pack for the Dreamcast (you know, their rumble pak) that you absolutely can’t find anywhere these days (hell, they were hard to find when the system was still around).

But yeah, been so busy that I still haven’t had a real chance to catch up on all the gaming news, though I’ve been hearing bits and pieces, such as how people have been playing emulated NES and SNES games other than the ones offered by Nintendo on their Wiis. Oh, and people have been doing the same on their PS3 thanks to folks loading Linux onto their system, which everyone, at least those who actually got their hands on a system to actually play them, has been really digging.

And I may as well finally clear my cache of PS3/Wii launch related nonsense by passing along the piece about the guy who thought he bought a PlayStation 3, but it was actually 3 PlayStations as well this video of a “Wii superfan”. When you realize that the guy probably has Asperger’s Syndrome, then the video ceases to be funny… that is until I change the spelling to “ass-burgers”, and then it totally becomes LOL.

Oh, and here’s some pics of some dude rolling a joint on his Wii box.

Anyway, courtesy of the NeoGAF comes (translated) word that Silent Hill 5 will be more like 2, which is great news since part 4 kinda sucked (even though I really did like what they tried).

And also from France (hey, have I ever mentioned how awesome French gaming sites are… as well as how the French have great taste in video games as well? and I’m not saying that because a huge chunk of site’s visitors comes from France) are some scans from the new Wario DS game. Which I’ve heard at least one person say looks like a shitty SNES game, but I personally love (and miss) that kind of aesthetic.

Also from the GAF comes the kind of thread that I don’t see to often, which is a real shame since I’m a big fan of them… a bunch of folks asking what happened to assorted pieces of vaporware.

Meanwhile from the IC forums, here’s something that was passed along a while ago which I forgot to pass along: a link to SNK vs. Capcom… for the Mega Drive!

As for what’s being talked about today… there isn’t anything. And that’s because the Insert Credit forums, is more or less, dead. And it all went down over the weekend (which I totally missed since I kinda had stuff to do). It’s a long story, one which I have to wonder if anyone besides someone such as myself would find interesting, that being a person who finds internet driven socialization an absolutely fascinating subject. But for those who are interested, it basically went down like this: the site is owned by a person, who had grown to develop a distaste for the forums… he just wasn’t a fan of people who frequented there and the kind of talk that went on. So he decided to shake things up by putting one guy in charge, and make him a moderator (which is someone who oversees any kind of video game message board… think of it as the sheriff, the person who sets the rules, and enforces them when necessary)… the only one actually. and at the same time reliving all the current ones. This one person by the way is one who was universally reviled by the forum, to the point that he got kicked out… a real crazy person who went nutso when banned over a year or two ago, enough to start his own forum and attempt many times to hack the IC forums, even rejoin it in disguise (often those who become so engrossed in message board antics get so in deep that they do or say something insane, which causes them to get kicked out, and since it their only means of socializing, they then become obsessed over their former “home” and it usually becomes super weird).

So yeah, this guy was put in charge (I will admit, this move, as asinine as it might have been, at least ensured some excitement… and he delivered), and immediately the vast majority of the community was up in arms. At first they aired their grievance in a very civil manner (mind you, I didn’t witness any of this, I’m just reporting what I’ve been told) but the new mod/old really hated guy didn’t want to hear any of it and at first banned a couple of people, which pissed folks off even more, which in turn leads to a lot of bans. Soon thereafter, an forum invasion ensues… and this is when a bunch of folks from one message board “invades” another by all registering and clogging the channels with crap. In this case, it was folks from both 4chan and 7chan (which I honestly didn’t even know existed!) and their idea of creating havoc was spreading child pornography, which lead to the site’s creator to go “fuck this shit” and completely pull the plug. And all day today I’ve been sifting through the “aftermath”. I tried accessing the forums earlier this morning, and when I saw it was offline, I figured the server had overloaded due to the holiday weekend or something. It wasn’t till later in the afternoon when I got an IM from James going “Dude….” that I found out all the that had happen. And since then I’ve been talking with a ton of people, trying to get all sides of the story, Some people have been hit hard as crazy as it may sound.

The thing is… I will admit that I’m pretty bummed to see the IC forums dead. It had become my favorite hang-out on the internet. Aside from enjoying all the chatter and wacky shit the place pointed towards or even produced, I actually made some very good friend there (as well as some enemies)… I also know that a few folks who check out this site is from there. So the IC forums will always have a special place in my heart. But at the same time… I’m kinda glad to see it go. If only for the fact that it had in recent times become too much of a time and attention hog for me. Plus things in general were starting to get a bit… tiresome; the personality clashes were getting annoying, as were some of the in-jokes, and the gaming discussions were, near the end damn near intolerable, with folks hating on shit for the sake of hating, if you catch my drift (which is a major problem with any hardcore video game message board, but the fact that everyone at the IC was so over intellectual about it was particularly grating). Hence why, yeah, I was almost happy to see it put to rest. It was lots of fun while it lasted. Granted the circumstances were pretty lame, though on the other hand, what better is there to go other than a blaze of glory? Having the keys given to the most hated man, having him go mad with power, and to then have the carcass be pulled apart by the vultures of the internet? That’s a helluva lot more exciting than for things to get so stodgy that everyone drifts away due to boredom. Though I will miss certain things, of course. Such as the Axe, which was the part that was hidden from the general public, where the real good shit went down (and a great haven from all the banal gaming babbling that plagued the rest of the site). Speaking off…

Okay, so why in the fuck am I mentioning all this? Well… with the loss of the IC forums (though its coming back, but the plan is for it to be re-envisioned, which sounds pretty silly for assorted reasons), and the Axe in particular, there’s a void. One that I’m kinda, maybe interested in filling. Some folks, like Dave (Mauro), Jeremiah, hell, even MK believe that it?s worth maybe pursuing, and even though I seriously don’t have time to even think for myself these days, it is tempting. Though aside from all the work involved (Dave is convinced that I could just set things up and let it run by itself with limited moderation… which was what the Axe was all about…. but knowing myself, it would totally eat up all the time I don’t have since I would want to be super involved 24/7, which would go against why I’m glad the IC forums are gone in the first place), it would just be lame if in the end, only six people joined. It’s also foolish to think that I could ever replace the Axe since, any internet community is entirely made by its members (obviously) and I could never hope to fully recapture that spirt… especially since already folks have decided to go their separate ways. But then again… I do have a pretty varied audience, and it would be really interesting to see what would happened if I offered an avenue for all the gamer dorks, indie comic book dorks, and other assorted “dorks” a chance to interact with each other, even if it was just a month long experiment or something…

Besides, I do have plans for some big changes for the site, so adding a message board might be just a nice additional thing. Or maybe it?s a totally stupid, waste of a time idea. So let me ask everyone… how does the idea of a Fort90 Forum sound?

… btw, one other idea was the addition of regular polls, so that question would be totally perfect for one, but since that’s not in place yet, I’ll just have to cull together comments and the such.

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