Monday, February 28, 2011

8 BIT GODS AND MOUTHBREATHING MILLENNIALS

Castlevania. Level 5. Stage 15. Grim Reaper.

Oh man. I've spent a buncha of time with a buncha different Castlevania titles and this stage + boss combo still haunts me. The image above is likely a ROM capture with a game save feature enabled (save whenever, whereever you want). Just way too many hearts, full life, and III Holy Water. Yeah, no.

The stage leading up to the Grim Reaper fight is pretty rough. Way too many erratic little Igor bastards jumping around and pain in the ass regenerate-o red skeletons. Though the stage is loaded with secret hidden treasures and a rare 1up, so it's point heavy. But, points are secondary to survival here. Once you manage to survive the level and meet the boss, often beat to shit, it gets worse. Sure, it's a breeze if you've made it this far with Holy Water and II or III throw, since there's a one hit glitch that pins the undead bastard in place while he burns. But, that's pretty rare stuff and you need a pile of Hearts to fuel it.

Generally you make it there with a boomerang and a few Hearts. And even with the super useful boomerang, the Grim Reaper is a mafucker. So much so that if you do kill him, his animated scythes still remain and continue to do damage until the magic glow ball finally appears to end the level. Which has happened several times. The high of victory coupled with the horror of defeat, seconds later, is too much to bear. You basically go tin there and hoped he'd fall into a bouncy pattern on one side of the screen so that his accursed scythes would appear on the other.



Castlevania is a game of pixel precision and the Grim Reaper hucks so much crap at you from weird angles, it makes for an unpredictable maze of doom. If you fall to the floor below, you're done. Get hit and bounce in a bad direction - done. Poorly timed jump - done. I break into a sweat thinking about battling the guy. But there are those who would walk among us mortals as 8 bit Gods. The video link above is one example. Initial whip form. No sub weapon. No damage taken. Grim Reaper - toast. Amazing.

Then, there's the sloppy bastard nerds who need to get the fuck off the internet and stop clogging it with their sticky, hair covered, thumb ridden, poorly quoted pop culture video content.



This particular special person has 4 videos, totaling about 35 minutes of some of the worst Castlevania skills I've ever seen - complete with mouth-breathin' bad nerd commentary. I've linked out to one choice hunk of terrible gameplay above. It also contains piles of lovely evidence that nerd culture needs to fucking die already. It's been glommed onto by the lowest common denominator that I don't even know where to draw the line anymore. This particular videodude makes several boasts about how Castlevania was great "back in the day" (he sounds 17) when he played it and how it was his first game.

Well, I call bullshit. No one who has played Castlevania for any amount of time can wipe the 1st stage of the game from their memory. It's ingrained like breathing. Yet, this toad has difficultly hitting the first fucking candle. See below.



The rest of the damning evidence includes: several incorrect "Whip It" references, 307 jokes about the absurdity of candles producing hearts and treasure, barely completing the 1st stage, fluent verbal use of "Oh Noes" and the "I Can Has Cheesburger?" language, hand eye coordination of a salmon, Medusa sound effects, a plea to not leave negative comments about his voice, and actually uploading these videos for the world to see.

Finally, there's the fact that this shitheel is playing a friggin' ROM (which is fine, not completely hating on that fact) that has a game save feature engaged. Wow. Just, wow. Even with a mega-cheat in place he has no clue. Oh, and he complains about the lag his shitty computer produces while running the damn ROM.

I had a point to this, but lost it in the bile somewhere. Meh.

Friday, February 11, 2011

THE INTIMIDATOR OF ANNE FRANK or IF ONLY SHE HAD A NUMBER 3 CAR TO ESCAPE THOSE PESKY NAZIS

A few weeks back, three things happened at the supermarket.

1: I was in a supermarket and I hate being in them.
2: Some pizza junkie emulating Stu Spengy's diet jumped the line in front of me.
3: I saw a Time Life cover that seemed a bit off.

Can you spot the poor photo placements/choices and crummy barcode location? I guess I'd like to have been in the room during the selection of said important people while the Indy 500 was on.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

BLACK MANTA SCORES AGAIN

Besides being super rad, Black Manta is an accomplished underwater blade master and the main reason I watched Superfriends back in the day. He's a straight up murder factory, an underwater Voorhees if you will. So, I flipped through a recent Brightest Day issue because Manta was on the cover beneath the banner "Aquawar" - and was greeted with a very nice surprise being dealt to my favorite underwater d-bag. How will Aquaman belittle and ride Topo around the ocean now?

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

SNOW BLOG. NEW LOCATION. NEW VIEW.

The beginning-ish of snowmageddon 2011.

So yeah, it snows in Winter. I get it. I got it. Grew up on the East Coast, I understand it. So how come there are people driving around in snow encrusted cars, attempting to climb steep icy hills mid-storm, hitting snowbanks, and flooring it to get more traction - up here in New England? Seems crazy. They can't all be transplants from sunny Florida. It snows more here, buy some tires that aren't from Wham-O. I get that there are circumstances out of your control. But if you choose to climb a hill, then fail and slide backwards into a snowbank - when all you had to do was take another street to avoid all this - I got no pity.

Snooooooow.

Bile aside, the snow has been steady, near weekly. Seems to be a Wednesday phenomenon as I've made several trips to the comic store during blizzard conditions. (my car roof/windows/doors/hood were completely free of snow and I have decent tires - I practice what I preach) I've enjoyed it quite a bit, minus the constant shoveling. Coming from a region that crushes all snow within 24 hours (due to non- sub 32 temps, not the famously inept DC snow clearance crews) and moving to a land where it piles up and hangs out has been nice. But my perspective may certainly be biased given that my commute consists of a few steps from bed to computer. It snows, I type, I smile. No power outage either thus far. Amazing.

Perty nighttimes descend.

There have been several cycles of storms, each in the 6-12 or 18" range. I get to kick back, burn stuff in a fireplace, all while it snows against the windows soothes my brain. I can totally dig it.

Here's a round up of the snow thus far in images that I captured here and there over the past months. Plus some bonus slip n' slide car action caught from where I sit all day. My creepy peepy perch if you will.

Kids love to shovel.

The stairs are gone.

The plows aren't helping.

Snowcapades begin!

Stop going up the hill!

Reverse is your best bet at this point.

See, kids love to shovel.

Friday, February 4, 2011

I KEN DRAWL!

Looks like that big headed goof who went by lots of nicknames has gotten back into the art seat. So, hit him up at his new blog, leave amusing but useful comments, and hold him to posting more than one set of images a year. BOOKMARK AND HOLD HIM ACCOUNTABLE! See, he did a portrait of me (yeah I stole the image and made it better!) from my time traveling days. Or have those days never really started/ended? Hard to tell with time travel crap.