04/06/2006

A Big Hit At Parties

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

First off, a couple of personal plugs: yesterday a couple of stories I wrote for other places finally went live. You can check out my 24 hour mobile game mosh report over at Gamasutra, and you can find out how I did at Rockstar’s Table Tennis tournament this past weekend over at GameSetWatch.

But I’ll be honest here by saying that I’m not exactly proud of my inaugural piece for GameSetWatch. It’s probably the worst thing I have written that’s managed to get published, at least in my opinion. Though in my defense, since I’ve never written for GSW, I just didn’t know how to approach the subject matter, since the site doesn’t exactly do straightforward preview of games. I know it’s a blog-type site, and even though I do my own, GSW isn’t, so I’m still trying to “find my voice.”

Also, the second Unlucky mini has finally been printed up (thanks to MK, who made them alongside her own comic for this weekend’s upcoming San Fran show)! It’ll be available for purchase at the store once I can figure out how to get PayPal properly configured; I forgot how I did it the first time… maybe that’s because Jason did it for me? Or, once again, if you’re in California, you can always pick up an issue in person at APE, along with Pale Fire, which is MK’s new book.

I had dinner with MK yesterday after work, before she had to meet up with Robin downtown to take the train to JFK. One of the things brought up was a how particular Brooklyn comic chick, who’s work I’m a big fan of, is going to be at the show, and that’s great and all, but she also thinks I’m a huge asshole or something. I’ve never had much luck with women, but when it comes girls from Brooklyn that make comics, they seem to especially hate my guts, and I really have no clue why. A few years back I went out on a date with one particular girl, who shall remain nameless, but nowadays is somewhat of a darling of the indie comic world, and I recall it going very well, but she never gave me the time of day afterwards, which left me seriously confused. That was until I discovered years later through a friend who had heard it on the grape-vine that one of the stories I told her our date, about the time I got e. coli poisoning, seriously disgusted her, enough to make her not want to deal with me ever again (which is really weird, because that story, in which I was vomiting and diarrhea-ing at the same time, enough to loose 30+ pounds in 24 hours, and almost seriously die, is usually a big hit at parties).

But yeah, most women who make comics in my neck of the woods cannot stand me for whatever reasons, along with every other female on this planet, regardless of interest or location, or so it would seem. And as I asked why this might be, or if I am at all that offensive or annoying to MK (I also pointed out to her that by dating me its at a sign that at least one female doesn’t find me uber annoying), a woman who was sitting right behind her and in the process of heading out looked at me and said in absolute seriousness, “Yeah, I find you pretty annoying too.” WTF?!?! Though MK theorized that it might be because she had overheard me talk about how I really want to kill my roommate’s annoying dog. BTW, IT WAS A FUCKING RHETORICAL QUESTION, YOU FUCKING CUNT!!!!

Afterwards I met up with my editor at Gama (and now GSW), Simon, who’s in town on “holiday”, at a bar near Washington Square Park. It was finally nice meeting the guy, with whom I’ve only spoken to online for years now (and who’s been kind enough to hook me up with one writing gig after another). One fun fact about Simon is that he’s the guy that everyone knows, primarily due to his heavy involvement in the chiptunes/mod scene. So I suppose it’s no surprise that everyone else who came out were all chiptunes folks: Jake (virt), Jeremiah (nullsleep), and Josh (Bit Shifter). Plenty of interesting things was discussed, some of if I can’t disclose (you know… industry insider stuff), and the rest is foggy due to the booze. But I do recall talking about how fucking crazy furries are (yeah… I realize that I talk about this almost every day now), the Frag Dolls (and how there totally needs to be a group of all female hardcore shmups players), past and present superstars from the world of chiptunes and the mod scene (there’s just so much I don’t know about and have to listen to), as well as talk about Jeremiah and Josh’s upcoming world tour (especially their Japanese leg, and how there’s going to be a mobile chiptunes unit, along with a BBQ component?), plus all the crazy tools of the trade (such as how someone’s hacked a NES cart to act as a SIM card reader… not surprisingly, all the guys talked lots of shop, and even though I could barely keep up, ever bit of it was ultra fascinating), the awesomeness that was (well, still is really) the Game Boy Camera, and how we all almost went blind back in the day with the Virtual Boy.

Once everyone was nice and drunk, we all went around the corner to Taco Bell to soak up the booze (its apparently a tradition between Jake, Josh, and Jeremiah). I felt a bit odd at first, considering that I had Mexican fast food (Chipotle) with MK earlier in the evening, hence why I mixed and matched from the KFC menu as well (variety is the spice of life after-all). Anyway, and as mentioned before, tomorrow night is the big chiptunes fundraiser show (for more information, just hit the official site), so if you haven’t check music created on Game Boys and NESs yet, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE PEOPLE!!!

5 comments

04/03/2006

What A Show

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

It was yet another jam-packed weekend…

Friday during work, Jeremiah, aka nullsleep, reminded me via IM that there was a chiptunes show at the Tank later that night. The original plan was to spend the night at SVA scanning MK’s pages for Pale Fire; with 40+ pages to do, I assumed that it was going to take all evening. So when I said thanks, but Id have to pass, Jeremiah simply replied with: “No worries, I’m not playing … but you’re going to miss Virt’s nyc debut.” And that was enough to haul my ass down to the 2nd floor labs to one of the nice flatbed scanners and get it all done in less than two hours. There was even enough time for dinner with Joe and June. Afterwards Joe showed me pages from his upcoming bible comic (which was written by Stephen Baldwin… yeah, that Stephen Baldwin, brother of Alec, star of Usual Suspect and Bio Dome). I tried my best to convince both of them to come along to show, but no dice; it’s so frustrating since I know all my friends would totally love it, but no one seems willing to give hearing a guy make music from Game Boys live a chance. Though they did promise to go this Friday’s show, which is actually pretty important, since it a fundraiser for the upcoming chiptunes world tour. At least Robin was game once again.

I ended up running into Jeremiah on the way there (we were both on the same train), and he passed along some bad news: he wasn’t able to get a copy of Judegement Silversword, the WonderSwan shooter that goes for $200-300 on eBay, despite the fact I was able to refer him to a Japanese site that had it for just $60, because he couldn’t get ahold of anyone in Japan to order from him, and its now sold out. He also had to remind me how awesome Under Defeat is, and its driving me nuts that I still don’t have the cash to pick that, and Radilgy up.

There were three performers in the line-up; first was Tristain Perich, aka One-Bit Music, who’s music comes from I’m guessing one of his One-Bit Music devices, which he accompanied with drums. He did a Misfits and a Fisherspooner cover, or so said Robin (I’m so out of the musical loop, so I couldn’t tell… hence another reason why I wish Joe had come, being a big Misfits fan and all). Next was Josh, aka Bit Shifter, and he rocked the house, as expected. And finally, the main eventer, was none other than the man himself, virt.

I’ve been listening to his work for years, back since 2000, which was when I was first discovered the game music remixing scene. The guy’s considered one of the true innovators of the remix scene, and one of the biggest movers and shakers as well (I won’t bore everyone with a long story, plus I don’t know all the details, but basically, the entire scene was just one place, OverClocked ReMix”, till a few folks, including virt, got sick of the way things were run, and decided to form VGMix, which really opened things up). Truth be told, I haven’t paid attention to things on that end for a few years now, but I still listen to his Faxanadu and Balloon Fight arrangements on a regular basis. Hence why I absolutely had to see this guy live, and up close; its funny because for the most part I just sat back and watched a bunch of young kids dance around to Tristain and Josh, but for virt I had to be up front, while all the kids decided to just sit back… virt’s stuff is not the (relatively) friendly, dance-type stuff, but as hardcore as game music can get. You can tell who the virt fans were in the room, and while some may have been wondered why one guy got on his knees to do the Wayne’s World “we’re not worthy” shtick, I certainly wasn’t. The guy is easily one of the top talents in the scene worldwide. Among the many highlight was his “what if Castlevania was done by Capcom” piece (or “If Mega Man and Simon Belmont had a child, what would he sound like?”), which was fucking mind-blowing, immediately followed by a shooter mix that totally sounded like a PC Engine/Turbo Grafix (I’m not sure if virt literally used a HuCard, but I wouldn’t put it past him). That and his sound rig, which was a keyboard, mixer, and even a laptop, all patched directly to a NES.

The next day I took part in a tournament for Rockstar’s new table tennis game for the Xbox 360 where I faced off against a bunch of other NYC based game reporters and bloggers. I went on the behalf of GameSetWatch, which is where you’ll find my write-up in the next day or so. But I will say this… its a damn fun game, with a definite Virtua Tennis vibe in terms of play and appeal.

Later in the evening I went to the MF Gallery to once again see Joe paint the body of some roller derby chick….

… There was actually two other artists painting a second roller derby girl.

The crowd was easily the most Studio 54-esque I’ve been around in a while, with art-farty types mixed with punks and Lower East Side locals. At one point this bald Spanish guy comes in to gawk at the woman and tried striking up a conversation with Mike Moosehead, whom I was sitting right next to. At first he’s totally incoherent, but later made sense, and Mike being the nice guy that he is, tried talking with him, who by the way was the sweatiest motherfucker I’ve ever seen. No joke, the guy’s bald head was literally gushing perspiration, and it wasn’t even that hot in there. And after about five minutes, the dude went in for the kill by trying to sell Mike some bootleg CDs. There was also this homeless looking guy who I just figured was some eccentric looking avant guard artist, till I realized that it really was a homeless dude (though others made the same mistake by trying to chit-chat with the guy, and sorta became the life of the party for a small while). He finally got kicked out after he spilled his drink all over himself (he was primarily there to mooch off the free booze), but I didn’t see the spillage take place, so when I turned around, I though the dude peed himself. And then there was this pare with crazy costumes that came in: a girl dressed like a big blue cat and a guy who had all these multi-colored moth balls all over his suit…

BTW, there besides seeing two naked chicks getting painted, there were plenty of other fine art to see at the gallery proper, like this awesome print which they were selling for just $40!

When the place became too hot and crowded, I made my exit and went back home. MK arrived later in the evening to spend some quality time together for the rest of the weekend, before gearing up for APE. We mostly just sat around watching old sketch comedy; I finally introduced her to SCTV, which was sort of a big deal for me since its seriously like my most favorite show of all time. As a small child, I was so gay for the show…. I used to dream that it was a real network that ran 24 hours… its hard to explain, but yeah, I was sort of a weird kid. But yeah, its the show that all true comedy aficionados know, respect, and love, and I was super happy that MK even liked some of it (despite the fact that it hasn’t aged well in certain aspects, plus its rather inaccessible). After that was the classic SNL, which this time around was from 1985 and guest starred Pee Wee Herman. MK was getting pretty tired as it went on, but I insisted that she stay up for the classic Dinosaur Town sketch (in which Pee Wee has to save the local dinosaur amusement park/musuem from foreclosure by getting everyone to look for a Coke bottle with a mouse in it for a “million, billion, trillion” dollar pay-off from the soda company).

We slept in pretty late the next day (even more so than usual thanks to the change it time), watched some more SCTV, then went out to Rocketship to pick up some comics; MK had to get the new Becky Cloonan book, East Coast Rising, and she managed to snag the very last copy!. Afterwards went for some food, and ended up spending about 30 minutes driving around the same six block radius in an effort to look for some parking near Rice. Have I ever mentioned how much driving around Brooklyn (and NYC in general) totally fucking bites? Though on the plus side, it funny running into all sorts of folks on the streets, such as how we ended up running into (not literally though… more like passed by) Dean Haspiel and Alex from Rocketship who were on their bikes in a weird bit of “whoah, small world!”-ness. Eventually we found a place to park, and as expected, dinner was damn good (though I decided to try the Thai ice tea, which was disgusting as fuck… its basically sweetened ice tea with some super sugary dairy creamer mixed in). Then we went into Manhattan, to SVA, to scan the final Pale Fire pages, and finally returned back to Brooklyn and watched the first two episodes of the new season of Trailer Park Boys. The Cheeseburger Picnic must certainly did not disappoint! Before heading out, MK played with my DS for a bit, including Zoo Keeper and Electroplankton, which led to one of the nicest things that MK has ever said to me: “You’ve got great taste in games!” Yeah… I’d like to think!

Anyway, if you’re at all in San Francisco area this upcoming weekend, be sure to hit the show and get a copy of MK’s new book! …. Oh, and the second issue of Unlucky will be on-hand as well!

2 comments

03/31/2006

Don’t Believe Anything For The Next Day Or So

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

After a supremely stellar last weekend, it’s been back to the grindstone all this week. For the most part I’ve been working on the book (I’m still behind schedule, but I’m at a more comfortable place), working on freelance work, and chasing down future work. Though other stuff has been going on…

- First up, something non-video game related: on Tuesday a coworker passed along something which I was totally not expecting: the first two episodes of Trailer Park Boys season 6! Apparently the new season doesn’t premier till mind April, but the producers decided to give a sneak preview by releasing episodes one and two online. I haven’t watched them yet…. I’ve been holding out till this weekend when I meet up with MK… but the second episode is called “The Cheeseburger Picnic” so you just know its going to be awesome.

The film comes out later this summer, and I have no idea if it ties in with the show, and if so, how. I also don’t know if there’ll be simultaneous US/Canada release, but if not, then MK and I will have to make sure our trip to Montreal coincides with the premiere.

- On Wednesday Sega stopped by the Nick Mag office to show off Super Monkey Ball Adventure, and I have to admit, it wasn’t that bad. I still feel that “adding context” to the earlier games, which were purely action/puzzle driven, so therefore everything was super abstract, is sorta dumb, but they are doing it in a rather neat (and dare I also say logical?) manner. It was nice to see some of the old, tried and tested (yet still very much fun) stuff incorporated with some rather neat new concepts, such as a multiplayer Jenga game that looks totally hot.

- Later in the afternoon I met up with Joe (Salina) for a trip down to the Chinatown arcade, because of a tip we got stating that Senko No Ronde had returned. But it turned out to be bullshit; the game was nowhere to be found, which fucking pissed me off, primarily because it was the first chance I had to listen to Katie’s radio show and I had to cut it short.

At least I got the chance to test out Neo Geo Battle Coliseum, which was pretty fun. And now more than ever, I seriously need to be my PS2 modded.

- Afterwards I went to Jeff Rovin’s for movie night. Watched some Buster Keaton, as well as a few scenes from Aleksandr Nevskiy. The feature was CQ, which is about a young American film editor who’s living in France that attempts to “discovery the truth” by making a documentary about his mundane life, all the while talking the helm of a crappy big budget Barbarella-esque spy flick. It was pretty good, though I dare say its strictly for folks who love cinema, and therefore don’t mind semi-masturbatory movies about people who make movies.

- Speaking of films, (co-workers) Steve passed along an article earlier this morning stating that Shia LaBeouf will be playing the lead human in the live-action Transformers flick. Hey, not a bad choice, but then again, I’m naturally biased towards anyone who’s an Even Stevens alumni. And the conversation which sprung forth led to me explaining to a student who couldn’t see what all the fuss is about, but that’s because she wasn’t a fan of the show, that the upcoming film will in fact be very relevant to her, as well as everyone else in our culture today, simply because it will mark the ultimate attempt at cashing-in on 80′s nostalgia, ever. In fact, the live-action Transformers movie will be what makes 80′s nostalgia jump the shark and finally put it to rest.

We also talked about another upcoming film adaptation, the Da Vinci Code. I haven’t read the book, nor will I probably ever, but I’ve already figured out the ending: Tom Hanks running away from the Pope, who’s angrily shooting at him, while the Vatican is burning down (the fire was started by the burning bush, right after Hanks spoke with Jesus Christ, who’s been locked away as a prisoner for the past 2000 years). The dramatic escape will be Hanks flying away on that one man, flying device that’s drive by bicycle pedals and bat wings that Da Vinci designed way back (you’ve all seen it and know what I mean), with the 20 year old clone of Mona Lisa by his side. BTW, the wings of the device will be made from the Shroud of Turin. And to that, Steve mentioned that its actually extremely close to the ending of Angels and Demons, the other book from the same author, save for the Jesus still being alive part, which is apparently in Code.

- Because I’ve been so busy, I really haven’t had much chance to keep tabs on gaming news. I have heard that Sony is going to offer PSOne games for download to the PSP, taking a cue from Nintendo (and Microsoft) obviously. That’s neat, but I have to wonder how games which used both sets of shoulder buttons, as well as the other analogue stick might fare, meaning they won’t be straight-forward ports.

I also know that some folks were getting all excited over the new of a PSP port of Cave Story, that also had with the blessing of the game’s creator, Pixel, but the whole thing seemed like bullshit to me (mainly because the cover art that was shown screamed fake to me… check out the jaggedy font for instance). Though I believe its was proven fake yesterday from Pixel him(or her?)self.

Some are speculating that it was just a big joke, and given what day tomorrow is (April 1st) its hardly not surprising, and certainly won’t be the last. The same exact song and dance takes place this time of year: a shitload of fake news items gets thrown about and various folks read, believe and spread them. And you have the Bob Ross people announcing a Revolution title, you just know its gonna be particularly hellish this year.

- For you Michael Jackson fans out there, the latest chapter of his adventures in the world of old Japanese Nintendo games, Michael Forever, is now available. This time around, Princess Peach goes totally nuts!

- Check out this super neat guide that shows how you can turn any NES cart into a portable USB drive.

- Time for some NSWF content: here’s an overview of some random sexy mahjong game features a bunch of awesome animated gifs (again, its NSFW). Notice how all… defeated the women look.

- And finally, I know its super old at this point, but those who’ve missed it, here’s a video of some kids who’s go totally fucking batshit insane on Christmas morning over their new Nintendo 64.

Obviously the star of the show is the boy, who’d head your convinced will literally explode at certain parts, but notice what the girl does to the box near the end, while the boy is looking at the remote control car. It’s a little…. ummm.

3 comments