12/22 - Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In
I finally got the November Quickies out. Now I've got one last thing to get done before Christmas...
And while we're on the subject, I'm starting to think somebody is deliberately saying stupid shit in hopes of getting another turn with the verbal Cat O' Nine Tails. Talk about getting what you paid for, mate. And before anyone accuses me of stalking or something, somebody sent that gem to me on Twitter.
12/12 - An End of Semester Treat
Second Cracked article in the pipeline: The 6 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Video Game Design. And sweet, most of what I wrote actually made it past editorial this time! Rather than me telling you which three I wrote, I thought I'd see if people on Twitter can figure it out (one of them should be pretty obvious even if you're not a regular reader)
Because of finals I don't have any new content, only a sexy new Update Log brought to you by iframes. Hard to imagine that I've been updating this place for almost ten years now.
UPDATE UPDATE 12/13: JunkyBiggs on Twitter wins. I wrote Shadow of the Beast, Fable 3, and Dirty Harry/Phantasy Star.
11/27 - Turkey Day
Four quickies for October 2014! Also, all of Review Quickies has been updated to the new format, and everything back to 2011 has been added to the index.
Man, some of the 2011 quickies are pretty dodgy, and a handful of them looked like I never bothered to proofread them (i.e. Pluto in May 2011, which I did go back and fix). And then I hit the "Terrible Old Format" ones. You have no idea how tempting it was for me to wipe them; as well as some really questionable scores (I only rated Okami a "decent"???) the writing on those things is uninformative and just godawful all round. I only left them so that I could have something to point myself to and think "I could be doing worse!"
And with that, I'm going to go celebrate Thanksgiving the proper way: with a Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon.
11/19 - There's Plenty More Gratuitous Swearing Where That Came From!
It's my fifth (or third-and-second-half?) Cracked article: The 5 Most Unreasonably Difficult Video Game Puzzles Ever. I wrote Shadow of the Beast II and Professor Layton, though I also had entries for evolving Inkay into Malamar in Pokemon X and Y and the Nero family in Final Fantasy IX that got cut, I guess for being optional (C.K. Bond also wrote about the Black Monolith in FEZ). Also, my entries for Layton and Beast 2 appear to have been completely rewritten? Which is a little disheartening because I haven't had that happen since the Chrono Trigger entry in my very first article, and a shame because I was really attached to my joke about abusing Beast II's "ask" feature to swear at the snail when he cockblocked your quest.
In a previous update, I mentioned this article getting a setback. There was originally a fifth writer, the Brandon Drake guy I thanked in the byline. He pitched Castlevania II and I offered him Final Fantasy IX both because he pitched the bit about the sword (after I pitched the Nero family itself) and because he helped me redirect this article from something that didn't work, but when the article was finally accepted, he just... disappeared. The article was turned in a week late after I took FF9 back and C.K. Bond took Castlevania II.
So months ago I thought I'd finally dive into the Sega-16 topic featured in Odds and Ends Vol. 3 to celebrate another publication on Cracked. But it took so long for this article to get accepted and published that I eventually lost interest, especially when I doubt such a MOREC would be much more than me laughing Jim Sterling style at a man who would have an existential crisis if he ever found out Phantasy Star IV wasn't the first RPG to have combo magic.
Instead, I've converted the 2013 quickies to the new style and added them to the index. I also got a little happy with the index and included the quickies from October 2014 which I haven't actually finished writing, so I've removed those links. Also enjoy this collection of stuff I've written since my last Cracked article:
Review Quickies - Since my last article was published in September 2013, there's a year's worth of new stuff here.
Pier Solar - Let me say it one more time: Fuck this game.
Monkey Island Oddities - Yeah, when somethings sticks out as weird in a Monkey Island game, you know it's pretty screwed up.
I Am a Horrible Person and Sega-16 is Hilarious - Here's what happens when I'm still bitter about paying nearly $60 for a game that made me want to rip my own teeth out, and I need an April Fool's special and some filler while I get a major project done.
The Merged Hulk - If you're a regular Cracked reader, you might remember when this was called The #4 Most Unintentionally Hilarious Superhero Reinvention. I disagree.
11/18 - Calm Before The Winter Storm
The new design has been applied to the Game Music and File Cabinet main pages, and all of MOREC. The Review Quickies main page and all the 2014 quickies have also been updated to the new style. A while back site reader Spencer suggested an index for the quickies which I've finally implemented, but it currently only has the 2014 items on it. I'll add to it as I revamp the quickies from previous years.
Also, I'd like to shout out to reader Allan for pointing out I had confused Anthony Hopkins with Bob Hoskins in a couple quickies.
11/14 - Cheez Waffies
I'm still toying around with the layout of the main page. A little while back I changed the header and rearranged stuff to make the top of the page smaller and less cluttered. Then I changed it again to the current version with the Lemmings background. And this image may itself just be a placeholder until I can plan, draw, and possibly digitally paint a mural I have in mind. Again, if anybody has any feedback to offer, email or tweet me, or post at my forum.
Daniel X is Terrible, Blaster Master Overdrive, Ten Things I Like About Blaster Master 2, and Blasting Again Stupidity have been updated to this new format. While I was cleaning up the header it occured to me that I really needed to tweak the Q&A page into a general About/Contact page.
(And if anyone's wondering what's with the header of this update, check my Twitter feed)
UPDATE UPDATE: Holy fuckup, Batman! When I was trying to upload the re-reformatted Pier Solar review, I somehow uploaded it into the main File Cabinet directory. That's been fixed. Such are the joys of having to update the site at 2:30 in the morning because of bandwidth restrictions.
10/31 - HULK GO TRICK-OR-TREATING AS... WELL, HULK
So it's Halloween, a time for monsters and all, so here's the second chapter of the Merged Hulk. I'm going to confess right now that this was harder to write than the first chapter because I'm not quite as passionate about these issues.
Also, since people seemed to prefer the white plate style for the articles, I've applied that to both chapters. I also slightly edited it so the border doesn't "pop" and just has a solid gray border.
10/20 - You Call It Padding, I Call It Buffing
I've revamped the Review Quickies main page to the new style, and am using the first page of the Merged Hulk article and my Pier Solar review as guinea pigs for potential styles for full articles: the former uses a border of blue granite, while the latter uses a solid white plate style. If anyone wants to give me feedback on which one looks better, email or Tweet me, or post at my forum.
And carlmarksguy gets the whole bag of gold stars for catching the reference in the previous update's header.
10/13 - Oh Cripes, Polish-Polish-Polish
I darkend the blue granite texture to hopefully make the text in the updates column easier to read. If it's still a problem, I'll have to work something else out.
I've also revamped the File Cabinet, MOREC, and Game Music pages to the new format. Now to get back to work on the next Merged Hulk chapter; I have all the scans I think I'll need and maybe 40% of the words, I just need to get the rest of the text written, edited, and re-edited.
10/07 - Getting Stoned
Oh hey, did I mention I'm taking a class in web design? Hopefully this is what people have meant by making my site look less 90's-ish. For now only the main page has been revamped, and I'll probably continue to tweak it as I get new toys to play with, then when I get a style I'm happy with I'll start modifying other pages. This might also be the equipment I need to revamp the Bestiary.
Oh, and the Networking class is starting to sink in.
10/01 - FUCK SUBNETTING
August and September quickies, fresh off the grill. And since I'm finished (for the moment) with a couple projects that'll turn up soon enough, I hope to get some work done around here.
Oh, and I'm well aware of what recently hit Steam. Though to be honest, I'm sort of impressed that they're "only" charging $15 for it. I still think that's an outrageous price for that game, especially when Cthulhu Saves the World costs $3, comes bundled with another (albeit incredibly mediocre) game, and goes down to as little as a buck during the Steam sales, but I didn't see them letting their precious go for less than $30.
9/23 - Tippy-Typey
Now that I'm over my bug, I redrew the File Cabinet image for the Table of Contents. Unfortunately, in between school and an external project that got hit with a major setback (I'm not sure I can disclose the details yet, but I'll tell you what happened when the time comes), that's all I got around to doing. I guess I'll have the August and September quickies next time.
9/07 - Does This Mean the Weather's Finally Cooling Down?
Nothing major today, just continuing down the list of "Things I Really Should Have Done Ages Ago". First up, I've altered the layout of the main page so the table of contents is side-by-side with the update log, and resized the link images slightly. Second, I finally fixed the tables in the Bestiary. I also meant to redraw the image for the File Cabinet because it looks wonky to me, but I was nailed by allergies yesterday and spent the whole day groggy as fuck, so I just touched up CK's pupils a bit to make it a little less crap for now. I'll get to completely redoing it later.
By the way, I've gotten a couple emails saying my site would be better if it looked prettier, or that it looks "90s-ish"... but they don't elaborate on what they mean. I'll admit my site doesn't have any Java bells and whistles, but if you think something could be improved, you need to tell me more than "it could be improved." What could be improved? The format? The colors? The font? What?
9/02 - Five Miles if You Love Lemmings
The Genesis music for the original Lemmings has been reripped and four songs have been added, those being Ending, Intro, Menace, and Ufouria. I think I recorded the older versions of the songs by plugging my physical Genesis into my computer, but this time around I just dumped the .VGM files from WinAmp. Some time in the future I might rerecord them from the system and post both versions, because the WinAmp dumps are a little... sharp, I guess is the word I'm looking for?
By the way, I was asked what happened to the Lemmings DDR song. Well, I wasn't sure where to put it, so I just removed it for the time being. I'll probably add it to the Lemmings 2 listing when I get around to that.
I've also made a slight change to my April Fool's 2014 MOREC, since GOG.com had to delist Painkiller.
8/21 - No, I Still Haven't Forgiven This Game's Ending
Over in Game Music there's a new listing for NIER. I've said before that I think this game's soundtrack is a bit overrated, but what the hell, it's decent enough and I needed a break from Lemmings music.
And another shoutout to Whitney for pointing out I had two songs with the same description and left a sentence unfinished over in the Lemmings music.
UPDATE UPDATE: Oh, well, I just received a newsletter from WaterMelon announcing their intentions to make an action RPG for the Dreamcast. You mean these guys still haven't taken me off their mailing list after this?
8/13 - Super Chevon Boy
Two things, today. For the hors d'oeuvres, the rest of the 3D Lemmings soundtrack has been posted over in the Lemmings Music, and the Win95 music has been reistated.
For the main course we have the July quickies. So much for going back to doing those every other month.
7/30 - From Nuking a Scientist to Nuking Some Lemmings
The next chapter of the Merged Hulk is going to take a while, so I decided that in between updates to that I'm going to work on cleaning up Lemmings FOREVER. For starters I've redone the Lemmings Music page so that it's in the same format as the main Game Music page. I've also added the complete soundtrack for Adventures of Lomax and an extended, but not yet complete listing for 3D Lemmings. I'll add more songs to that one later.
There's some other versions of the original Lemmings I need to add, most notably the friggin' Amiga version. I might also have to rerip some of the current music, as I may have run it through that same conversion tool that deformed some of the Garfield: Caught in the Act music - the Genesis versions of Awesome and Twang sound warped, and others have popping sounds.
I've temporarily taken down the Win95 versions - I can't exactly explain why, but those ones are hard as hell to write descriptions for and they were holding up the entire update. They'll be back next update when I've figured out something to hammer out. I also noticed I'm missing some songs for the console versions of Lemmings, like the ending theme for the SNES version. I deliberately left Menace off the Genesis version because it just sounds like noise to me, but eh, I'll probably add it when I redo the Genesis music.
And a shoutout to reader darthlink for pointing out some typos on various pages of the site.
7/16 - HULK FEEL MUCH BETTER IN COGNITIVE FACULTIES
I had no idea until an ad related to it showed up in my email, but the San Diego Comic-Con is just around the corner. So I guess it's a great time for me to launch my writeup on the Merged Hulk, which I did a Quickie for back in October 2013. This first chapter covers roughly twenty-two books, some more thoroughly than others. As I was working on it I realized that with about 60 books to cover, I needed to stagger it out. Chapters 2 and 3 will follow.
"Yeah, right Codie. Look what happened with your article on the Ultraverse."
I'm trying to get back to that.
UPDATE UPDATE 7/20: Thanks to site reader Whitney for pointing out that I had the recent updates labeled as August instead of July.
7/04 - Odin ex Machina
So how about that Steam summer sale, guys? I myself blew the tax refund money I'd been saving on art software.
I was hoping to have that big project out in time for American Circlejerk Day, but even after busting my chops on it for the past week, it still wasn't ready. Hopefully one more week will be all I need to get the last of it written and edited. So for today you'll have to settle for the June 2014 quickies.
I've also gone back and added some old updates to the RSS Feed. I'm not going to add everything all the way back all the way to 2006, but I'll probably add the more important stuff from the past few years.
6/24 - Something Something Klopman Diamond
The Garfield: Caught in the Act section of Game Music has been completely redone. The section now features the complete soundtrack as well as the soundtrack for the Genesis version. I also reripped all the music for the PC version because the old versions were done when I had fewer tools, and in converting them from .wav to .mp3 I ran them through tool that warped the songs a bit - it was especially noticeable in the Catsablanca song.
A button has also been added at the top of the main page for the RSS Feed. It was also recommended to me that the RSS Feed should match the main page update, so I'll be doing that from now on.
6/17 - Feed Me
So, I decided I didn't want MOREC getting two Terrible Crossover Fanfic collections in a row. Instead, I compiled and edited the previous two updates with some other scraps I'd had sitting around into a third roundup of Odds and Ends.
I also finally got around to creating an RSS Feed after being asked about it by a site reader whose name was in Russian so I can't publicly thank them. It was a while back, but since I've never used RSS Feeds I had to do a little research and experimenting on what they were and how they worked. Yes, I can be a bit slow. I don't have an icon at the top of the page yet, but I'll make one up when I'm reunited with my preferred art tools. For now you can use the provided link to subscribe.
EDIT: Okay, the Russian characters seems to have been a glitch, as their name came through correctly when I contacted them. Thanks Maiku.
6/12 - Cat and Mouse
I still haven't been able to scrape together enough expendable brain cells to delve into that Sega-16 topic, but site reader Victor was brave enough to sacrifice a bit of his own mental health and read it for me, then give me the rundown. White knighting, knee-jerking, and nobody asking about that modified Witcher emblem. So yeah, pretty much what I expected. But he also tells me that Zebbe...
... keeps calling me a "he." Fair enough, most people assume I'm male at first, and even I assume people on the Internet are male unless something suggests otherwise. And no, I didn't expect him to read all the way to end of my Pier Solar review and see that "fake geek girl" comment. But this is even after another Sega-16 member tells him I'm female. So either his reading comprehension is even worse than I imagined or he wants to believe I have a dick for some reason. If I wanted to take a cheapshot at him - and I do - I'd suggest he's intimidated by the idea that a girl might know more about video games than him.
... is still telling me to "not take things so seriously", which seems to mean either "Stop THINKING so much!" or "I should be able to say whatever claptrap I want without thinking of the consequences and if you find it questionable that's your problem". I think Jim Sterling would like to have a word with you, which is primarily about art, yes, but certainly applies to any form of expression. For fuck's sake dude, show a little responsibility, admit you said something stupid, and clarify your stance on the SNES instead of giving me that "8-bit data bus" crap. Then I'll admit I fell for Poe's Law, stop calling you "Mr. SNES is 8-bit", and we can both move on with our lives. I also guess I was supposed to find that Aaendi guy (Dragonboy to anyone at Sega-16 who might be reading this) coming to my forum, feigning interest in SNES programming before spewing MRA hatred about how women deserve it if they get raped* cute?
... eventually calls himself something along the lines of a "genius of retro gaming, a saviour from the golden ages of true gaming". So either he's having a hissy fit that Manfred von Karma would be proud of, or he's just saying that in hopes that I'll "take him seriously" and tear into him. Oh, Zee-Zee, you really are too much. Come to think of it, that might be the reason he keeps calling me a dude.
Site reader Fuzy2K informed me Zebbe did eventually figure out I'm a woman, and had this to say:
Well, as you probably saw I've been so before, and it feels good actually to have someone anonymous I've never met so far away from me to feel so strong about my opinions (and what I do) that she decides to put her valuable spare time to write about it.
Then it's a win-win situation for both of us, isn't it? You get the satisfaction of knowing that somebody's spending her time taking the piss out of you, and I get to entertain my readers by verbally disemboweling a complete dumbass.
Sorry for the filler update. I've got a major project in the works, but it's taking longer than I thought it would. Expect another piece of filler in the form of some more terrible crossover fanfic next week.
* Or something to that effect; Aaendi deleted the post he'd embedded the video in from this topic so I can't really double check what it was exactly about, and I obviously never watched the video. But the gist of it was justifying/trivializing the rape of women.
UPDATE UPDATE 6/13: Victor clarified that Zebbe never actually called himself a "genius of retro gaming, a saviour from the golden ages of true gaming", just that he and his posse act like he is. Good enough for me.
6/05 - And If You're Still Confused, It's A Menstruation Joke
So a few days ago I found this in my tracker:
And tought, Oh my, I guess somebody stumbled into my Sega-16 and/or April Fool's MOREC.
The next day, my suspicions were confirmed when I found the following URL in my site statistics: http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?27778-quot-Sarcastic-comedian-quot-uses-Watermelon-and-Sega-16-forum-for-his-material. I haven't looked at the link yet because one word tells me all I need to know about the level of intelligence and reading comprehension to expect from it; hey asshole, what the hell did you think that line about me "not exactly [being] at [my] most patient time of the month right now" meant? And that aside I know the topic's going to read like the highlight of a Flying Omelette Site Tracking Adventure or the Angry Reactions page at the Bad Webcomics Wiki; full of white knighting, knee-jerking, and people assuring WaterMelon that no really, Pier Solar was totally an original, emotional experience, especially when a lemming asks you how many times you've farted in your life, and that Rudy accidentally plaguing the Goaman was nothing like Cecil accidentally burning down the village of Mist. Am I going to do a MOREC on the response later? Probably not unless I get a direct email from somebody at Sega-16 or WaterMelon, because as hilarious as that Sega-16 topic surely must be I feel like I myself would be shooting fish in a barrel by writing about it, and my head still hurts from the research I did for the original MOREC.
So screw it, I know I said I was going to go back to doing these every other month, but here's the May 2014 quickies.
5/29 - EVEN THE PASSENGER HAS A LONG LOST SIBLING
It's the update you've all been waiting a year and a half for! Today I've got a second batch of Terrible Crossover Fanfiction in MOREC. Sadly I didn't get anything as awesome as Freakazoid/Dead Rising from last time.
5/21 - We Have a New Word Today, Boys and Girls! "Spiteful!"
Ha ha, just when you thought I'd moved on! Today we look at why Sega-16 is Hilarious. Okay, honestly, I'm trying to move on, but it's just too hard for me to resist content that practically writes itself.
And a gold star to site reader Lorenz for recognizing the reference in the previous update's header.
5/14 - It's Fast, Wet, and Usually Named After Someone You Know
An update to Music Downloads with Ducktales Remastered. I also edited the Binding of Isaac listing a tad. No new songs, but I have the DLC now and updated the description for "Latter Days" now that I know where it's used.
And a gold star to anyone who knows what the header of this update is referring to.
5/05 - [Insert Joke About Cinco De Mayo and Guacamelee Here]
April Quickies. I'll be going back to posting the quickies every other month now.
I've also updated my Game Collection. I imagine some games have slipped through the cracks, but damn, I hadn't even posted my 3DS games despite owning the system for well over a year now. One reason I haven't kept up with that is I've been more into digital purchases through Steam, GOG, and Humble Bundle lately, and along with XBLA, PSN, WiiWare, and 3DSWare games I don't know how to list them; I know they're (for lack of a better word) legitimate, but listing them still feels like showing off a ROM collection.
As for recoding the tables, everything's done except the Bestiary and holy shit, that entire section needs a major overhaul. Recoding the tables has also been a good opportunity to go through and fix the code that caused the formatting problems in Firefox on most of the pages. It's also been a good opportunity to curse out my past self for writing godawful bollocks like this.
4/25 - I Know, I Know, Move On Already
No update today, just an interlude to make a couple of announcements. First of all, just when I had faith in my past self she goes and screws me. See, in the wake of Microsoft discontinuing XP I got a Windows 8.1 computer with the guts to run Skyrim on Medium settings and a screen with a 1920x1080 resolution. But due to the way I'd coded the tables the pages of my site stretched out to fill the screen and made the site look like ass. So I'm in the process of editing all those tables to look right on anything 1024 or over, and have really only gotten around to the most important pages (Suito Homu, Review Quickies, all MORECs, my best reviews). Then I screwed myself again when I automatically punched in 1024 for the width, which was actually too wide on 1024 monitors. So if the site's been screwed up lately, that's why.
Secondly, news recently reached me that in anticipation of their upcoming Genesis game (I don't know whether it's this or their SNES game that the modified Witcher emblem is in) WaterMelon has announced a collectible poster that costs a whopping $120. Yes, you read that right, $120 for a poster. High-quality paper and hand-printed silkscreen my ass, for 120 clams those things need to be hand-painted on canvas. Maybe this is their April Fool's joke, but if so it's even later and less imaginative than mine was. Now, I'm not going to do a MOREC on that because I have more important things to do right now (namely fixing my tables), and I can just let the Hulk and friends summarize my thoughts:
4/20 - No Pot Jokes From Me... Wait, Shit
So Easter was creeping up and I realized, "Damn, I don't have anything to write about for Easter, do I?" Then I realized my past self came through for my current self for once, and there was something I'd had sitting on my harddrive for a year, maybe 75% done, waiting for me to finally finish it. So here you go, a page of Monkey Island Oddities. I originally intended to complete Escape from Monkey Island before posting that, but because Escape is completely bugged up the butt on XP (on top of just not being very good) and ResidualVM only supports Grim Fandango, I never got around to it.
4/08 - Happy End of Windows XP Day, Everyone!
I talked the MOREC I mentioned in the previous update over with a friend, and decided to go through with it. So here it is, a reminder to the Internet that I Am a Horrible Person.
4/01 - Vinegar is Sweet Compared to You
I had an April Fool's themed MOREC planned for today, but kept going back and forth on whether or not I should go through with it. Long story short, I donned a laughably thin disguise and figuratively hurled a brick with my review tied to it through WaterMelon's window, then took some photos of the monkeys flinging their poo in retaliation. On one hand, the whole thing seemed extraordinarily shitty even for me. On the other hand, I'd already done the shittiest part of it, and there's some things somebody really needs to call attention to like how one of the characters in an upcoming project is clearly a modified Witcher emblem. Then some... um, unpleasantries arose at an affiliated forum, and because of some names I brought up in the MOREC I felt it would have been an extremely tasteless thing to post right now. Maybe I'll post it later when the dust settles and I'm in another especially crabby mood, or I may edit the more relevant parts into a future Odds and Ends MOREC.
But I will go ahead and post the other item I had planned to offset the bitterness of the whole thing, that being the March 2014 quickies.
Also, many thanks to site reader B16kilgore for notifying me that my Donate button wasn't working. I had a friend test it when I first put it up, but somehow it got broken since then.
3/17 - Éirinn go Brách!
It's your lucky day, everybody! I've finally got around to covering The Hypnosis Enigma. Yes, I know Lemmings are Scottish rather than Irish, but everybody's pretending to be Irish today anyway.
I also finally set up a Twitter account. If you choose to follow me, I promise I won't inform you all everytime one of the cats uses the litter box. I'm mainly going to use it for announcing site updates.
3/08 - Seriously, Fuck the Statue Park
2014 Quickies kick off with January and February.
2/14 - A Pile of Puke By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet
And what would would be more appropriate on Valentine's Day than to clean the last of the bile out of my gut onto Pier Solar's screaming face in my latest MOREC, Pier Solar Review Scraps.
Now to take my own advice and move on with my life, because I'm sure you all are getting as sick of me talking about the game as I'm getting of talking about it.
1/21 - The Kid Just Rages for the Bit
Review Quickies for December are up, as well as the Year in Review.
