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.

SO IT BEGINS

"Where are the funny photos of the robotkid from Gencon?" I hear the 5's of people cry into the interweb's series of connected void tubez? Well, it got dropped this year. Choke on this for now. And as Gencon is over and done with, the depression has faded, and I physically moved several states up the coast (hooray Northern movment!), I can crawl out of my digital hidey-hole and once more profess the word that the good people are forced to hear in their brains if they click and then read this page.

From what I've read and seen, Gencon didn't really produce any goodies I simply had to have. Outside of the annual "This Sucks" return trip Wendy's salad thrown down in disgust, of course. So there, suck it Gencon, you blew anyways. (though I think this looks kinda neato, and Darksun would have been fun to nab)

So what to fill the time then? Moving into and the fixing up some busted ass foreclosure built in 1928! The electrician dude found the orginal blueprints stuffed up in some nook in the basement. Neato.

So we moved. It was a semi-epic journey of slapdash new truckery. Rented and filled the biggest thing you can get from Uhaul, a 30ft truck. The pick up process was actually efficient and easy. Just doesn't happen at Uhaul. Remember Ghostbusters 2? The angry red goo levels under each and every Uhaul in America must be phenomenal.

Got it home without too much danger as it was all 495 type drivin'. But, wheeling it through the tiny streets of Takoma Park was a chore. Backing it in to the driveway, I hit a sign post with the rear bumper. Some buzzer went off in the cabin. It kept going off. It wouldn't stop. Some light on the dash lit up too. I performed the nigh impossible task of backing it into my tiny ass driveway and now it says the brakes are fucked up. I don't buy it for a minute. Some janky sensor has to have shit the bed and is now blaring this horrible beep. I tried encasing the side door speaker in foam to deaden it. It sorta worked, but the teeth jarring noise remained. No way was I gonna make it 8+ hours with that shit going off. The though of taking back the truck for a new less busted one was making me naseaus.

Then it hits me, it's just a damn speaker. So I dig around and find the well hidden wire that leads to the left door. Only took the popping off of 3 plastic panels. Oh and look, it has a handy snap connector. Noise problem solved. Brakes worked fine. About 8 hours in, the busted brakes dashlight turns off or blows out. Don't care. So, like I said problem solved.

Some brave folks decided to head North with us as support vehicles and bonus moving goons. The 3 vehicle convoy included my own personal lane clearer in the form a small pick up truck. I signaled to turn and the determined robotboy would get in that bizzatch first, indicating it was safe for me to change lanes. So very helpful. After about 3 too many traffic jams and hours wasted, we hit Connecticut. 95 cuts through the length of that bastard. Ugh. Around midnight, I've had enough of driving. So, with an audio book blaring on the phones (Dark Tower III) I go for it. Turns out the truck has a speed restricter. Maxes out around 80. The pedal just goes limp. So I keep it at 80ish, 30ft of shit barreling through the black towards Rhode Isalnd.

Finally, we get there. 2 shocks await. One, a minor shock, the outside porch lights are glowing this insane, clown-like color-rama which slowly fades from soft pink to blue to green to yellow and back again. Wow. 2nd, the contractor dude in the house that day didn't leave a key behind. Hooray. So we boost up through a window. Nothing like some friendly neighborhood B&E to kick things off right. "No, I swear officer, I own this clown-lit dump."

We crash out, and luckily the next day unloading went super smooth. Bang, 8 people and it's done. And the weather was fab, I only sweat through 2 bottles of Gatorade. Still nice out too. Likin' this Northern thing a great deal. (may begin to bitch come the Nov doomfrost-times.)

Now, we're here, and so it begins.