Not a whole lot to report from the past weekend. With MK out of town, I just kinda bummed around the house, plus I’m also taking it easy till the new gig goes into full swing next Monday.
First off, yeah, no i am 8-bit pics. What else can I say, other than, they are supplied by a this very nice photographer friend of mine who’s quite busy, and they’re more of a friendly courtesy than anything else. I’m hoping she’ll be able to swing by before it closes, maybe on the final night, but if she doesn’t, she doesn’t. Beggars can’t be choosers.
Then on Saturday afternoon, I went to the Chelsea Art Museum to check out The Sims: In The Hands of Artist show (I had to miss the reception Thursday night due to King of Kong… I also missed some party at the museum of sex sponsored by the Onion… or was that the Thursday prior?), and get this, it wasn’t open because no one from Parsons came to set the exhibit up. Lame. I guess I’m gonna try and swing by tomorrow if I have the time. Though while I was there, I did check out some wacky show that was closing down on body image, with my fave piece just being this looping vid where someone basically analyzed all the movements of various runway models as they walked down the catwalk, as demonstrated by naked computer generated models that looked very… realistic, right down to the very subtle boob giggling. So the trip wasn’t a total loss.
Anyway, Dave also came along to check out the art, which made the no show twice as annoying. So with nothing much to do, and it being such a wonderful day weather-wise, I asked if he wanted to check out Cake-O with me, and he did. For those who don’t remember, while walking around the lower east side a few weeks back one evening, I saw what looked like an arcade/bakery. Since it was closed and dark inside, I could really make anything out. So it was finally time to investigate, and… it was a total bust. It’s on Allen Street, near Chinatown, and is simply a ratty, rundown space that has three busted looking arcade set-ups. There were actually no cakes to be found, just a few candy bars for sale. The place is simply an internet cafe, but instead of a bunch of PCs, there was just two kids on a crappy folding table on laptops, so something tells me its just some front for illegal activities. As for what games they had, two of the machines were Neo Geo MVSs; one had King of Fighter 99, and the other 2001 I believe. The third machine was just MAME in an arcade housing. Oh well… I’m still on the prowl for any bit of NYC game culture.
Afterwards we went down to Chinatown to show Dave the Elizabeth Street underground mall which he had only heard about. I almost bought some figures of cute animu chicks dressed up as shump fighters. Then he took me to an excellent dumpling place where they served pork dumplings that had soup in them! And then we stopped by the arcade, of course. Dave really wanted to play Soul Calibur, but there was some seven year old kid playing himself, which was a total no win scenario: either Dave challenges the kid and beats him, which would make him look like a major asshole in the process, or get beat by the kid and look the total fool. He wisely passed.
After checking out the resident geniuses at Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (that game still gets plenty of plays down there), we watched some folks play something neither of us had seen before. They have down there a test unit of Arcana Heart, a very lovely looking fighter that features gorgeous high-res graphics, a la Guilty Gear. The backgrounds were kinda bland, but the characters looked cool, and animation was pretty tight, at least what we saw. Basically its just a bunch of school girls duking it out, though there appear to be some religious overtones with some characters and moves. At certain points, one character would trigger something, causing the background to change and all of a sudden a huge demonic octopus would be seen (I guess its supposed to be Cthulhu or something). The action looked very MvC2-like, with lots of air combos and the such. If anyone is interested, I might go back and give it a shot myself.
Then we back to my place and I let Dave check out my Saturn and PSone collection; he finally got see what the fuss is about regarding NiGHTS, and also noted that there is PRACTICALLY ZERO FUCKING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CHARACTER DESIGN OF NIGHTS IN THE SATURN GAME AND WHAT HAS BEEN SHOWN THUS FAR IN THE UPCOMING WII VERSION. I also recently noticed people at Select Button bitching and moaning about how different Sonic Rush Adventure looks from its predecessor, and again, those people are fucking idiots, I’m sorry. We also gave Geppy X, Vib Ribbon, Ch? Aniki (you know, that shmup that stars two gay musclemen), Virtua Fighter Kids, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Vampire Savior (a.k.a Darkstalker 3, if only to show the Dave its cool demon fetus in the background level) and Guardian Heroes a run. By the end, Dave really wanted to get his hands on a modded Saturn!
The next day I was going to head to the Bronx to check out Fordam Game World, and then hang out with Jason, but my allergies kicked in, so I decided to stay indoors. Gotta say, while I’m really digging the freelance life, to the point that I was seriously about doing it full-time, if there’s one thing I will be happy to get back when returning to 9-5 land is health care. Anyway, I mostly just played games and watched DVDs. It was hard fighting the temptation to pop in Venture Brothers season 2, but the piles of pro-wrestling discs that’s been collecting dust helped. As for games, I gotta say, I know it?s supposed to be lame, but I’m really enjoying Hotel Dusk, the noir adventure game for the DS. I just like the mechanics and the main character thus far (especially the graphics). And many, many months after the fact, I finally gave Spartan Total Warrior a shot (I promised Sega a review many moons ago and totally dropped the ball… sorry!), and, holy shit its great! Lots of running around, chopping people’s heads off. It?s like Dynasty Warriors, just… better. Oh, and I’m finally had my fill of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection. I’ve had my fill of the two Mega Man arcade games, enough to finally relinquish that piece of shit collection, which is nothing more than the NES games emulated on the PSone, that is then emulated by the PS2, with the worst, laziest wrap-arounds imaginable. For example, you can barely see any of the b&w sketches in the gallery section and the tribute music sounds like rejected cuts over at VGMix.com. The music is where the collection totally dropped the ball; Mega Man 4-6 had their music remixed with Capcom released them for the PSone, since they figured that no one would buy them, given how 1-3 are the popular ones. So in the collection, to compensate, for 1-3, some levels feature the remixed version from the arcade game. Some don’t. Some do, but its the wrong music! I know the only people who give a shit about this are Mega Man fans, and the shittiness of this collection is seriously years old news, so I’m stop now.
Also watched volume two of the Best of Midnight Blue, which included…
- a tap dancing porn actress
- nude ballet, as well as nude disco dancing
- factoids regarding flaccid penises
- even more vintage swingers club commercials
- emergency masturbation tips for women
- the disgruntled inventor of the lap dance
- factoids regarding animal porn stars from Europe
- a woman who called herself Veri Knotty… just use your imagination
- a commercial for a machine that turned shitty pot into ultra powerful hash oil
… But yeah, the commercials are easily the best part. New York back then was just full of spa places and orgy huts. As for the strip clubs, all of them had no cover and free food! FREE FOOD!!!
As for today, my damn birth certificate finally arrived. Now I’m just one step closer to getting my passport for Japan, which I know, I’m retarded for not having already. Again, I’ll save the whole story about how absolutely and fucking over-complicated the whole process has been for a later date. I’ll just mention that it will also be nice to be in a regular office environment so I won’t have to figure out how to get copies and faxes done on the cheap. I ended up hanging out at Joe‘s, to both pick up my birth certificate and to make copies. Plus we watched some reality show starring midgets and I surfed around MySpace, to show Joe various profiles of folks I went to high school with, including Crutch’s. In turn, I got to check out the official MySpace page of the MAGMA tour, which is what Joe & I are going to Japan for. The commercial that I guess is playing on Japanese television that is on there is worth a few laughs, if you like hearing American punks bands spoken in Engrish. Again, its kind of a bummer that I won’t be there dressed as a huge mutant cereal box, but again, beggars can’t be choosers.
