I was talking about this with my wife the other day. Apparently there is some new sex robot that can replicate emotions and give responses. I’m sure it’s not much better than a furby. But it reminded me that we are facing a paradigm shift in technology + sex and it’s going to go common soon. I can’t remember where I read it, but there’s a quote that says “As soon as a new technology is invented, people will figure out a way to use it for sex”. It happened with paintings, the telephone, the videotape, and so on. I don’t know if the same debates occurred back then, but…
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Favorite Video Games for Each Year of My Life
Well, it worked so well for movies, why not try for video games? I’m young enough. 1981 – Frogger 1982 – Dig Dug 1983 – Jumpman 1984 – Balloon Fight 1985 – Super Mario Bros. 1986 – Rampage 1987 – Leisure Suit Larry (in the Land of the Lounge Lizards) 1988 – Super Mario Bros. 3 1989 – TMNT II: The Arcade Game 1990 – Super Mario World 1991 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 1992 – Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins 1993 – Doom 1994 – Donkey Kong Country 1995 – Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island 1996 – Quake 1997 – Blood…
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The Best Books I Read in 2016
The Only Pirate at the Party by Lindsey Stirling & Brooke S. Passey (original review) It’s funny. It’s light-hearted. It’s not too long. It’s poignant. It’s like Felicia Day’s book. And it’s full of her voice both tragic and comic. Grim at times, cheery at most. This is not the Kim Kardashian, Tina Fey, or even the Mindy Kaling. This isn’t the girl who made it (not yet, at least). This is the girl still hacking at that creativity mountain with a pick-axe. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner (original review) A fascinating slice of nostalgia for anyone who played…
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A Kombatant Returns to the Arena
All right, I’m going to explode unless I get this out first. What was wrong with High Punch and Low Punch? Why did they get replaced with Front Punch and Back Punch? What was so wrong about the way you had it? You want to be technically accurate or something? In Mortal Kombat, of all things? So I bought Mortal Kombat (2011) (a.k.a. Mortal Kombat 9, a.k.a. Mortal Kombat: The Komplete Edition, a.k.a the reboot cause our continuity makes as much sense as a plate of spaghetti). And it’s always a crapshoot whether A) the game will work on PC and B) if the game will work with my hoggled…
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Let’s Laugh at the Guy Who Doesn’t Know Marvel Comics (Part 8)
Phoenix When Jean Grey died (one of the times), she was brought back somehow and became Phoenix. I guess Professor X split her mind into a light part and a dark part when they first met. Either she was schizophrenic or had a Jekyll & Hyde thing going. Anyway, now that she’s Phoenix, she can do all the psychic stuff she could before and shoot fireballs. Plus she gets these sweet fire wings. Polaris She’s the only other person with magnetic powers, so I think she’s Magneto’s daughter or wife. But I’ve never heard of her, and I wonder what “Polaris” (the north star) has to do with magnetism. Or…
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The Books I Read: May – June 2016
The Second Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen So I never read a dungeon crawl before. Certainly not what I was expecting — not from something written in 1984 (I thought fantasy authors were better than that) — but it’s the best way to describe it. It’s straight out of Dungeons & Dragons. The main characters start by going to a town. They meet some supporting cast who are on their way to a quest. There’s negotiations and debates and arbitrary motivations. One of the characters drops out and is never seen again, like she stopped coming to the meetings. And then they break into this vault guarded by a…
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Why Video Game Movies Keep Failing
Why do video game movies keep failing? Look at this list: Not one cracks through the “fresh” barrier. Not one above 50%. Not one broke $400 million. Yet, they keep on coming. “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” is the highest grossing of them all and it had fuck all to do with the video game. Not to mention white-washing several characters. It was the John Carter of its time (which was actually at about the same time, directed by Jerry Bruckheimer, he of “The Lone Ranger” and “G-Force”, the movie about spy hamsters). “Resident Evil” movies have had some success, but they’re full of tedious action and zero…
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So Bye Bye, Fucking GTA Guy
SecurRom errors, Social Club forced login, Games for Windows, and top of it all, the game won’t stop stuttering. I bought Grand Theft Auto IV for about $30 during a Steam Summer Sale, but haven’t played it till now. I’ve been dinking with Borderlands and Star Wars. Steam says I’ve spent seventy minutes playing the game, but that’s a lie. I’ve spent seventy minutes trying to get the damn game to run. Imagine your game running as a low-frame-rate animated GIF I’ve tried windowed mode, various launch options, disabling VRAM, limiting frame rates, turning Vsync on and off, lowering the resolution. Nope, the same damn graphic stutter keeps going. Everyone…
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Idea for Making Fantasy Football Better
I’m always thinking about how to make this game a little more than choosing some players and then waiting helplessly while they get fifty points one day and two points the next week. I’ve said before how I wanted to have more agency, to act like I have more control over my team. To apply some skill into the game. And I came up with an idea. Make it like an RPG. You get equipment, armor, etc. through some means (quests or trivia questions, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter). And with those, you can equip certain players. Like give a “helmet” that gives double points for two-point conversions.…
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The Books I Read: September – October 2015
James & the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl(re-read) This wasn’t as fun as I remember. I remembered a whimsical Dahl-esque adventure with weird stuff happening and memorable characters. But on the re-read, it becomes evident that this is Dahl’s first attempt at children’s literature. Everything up to when he gets into the peach is fine, but then I started going “get on with it”. The other characters don’t have any real arcs. Instead, they all just bicker with each other while minor obstacles appear and then are solved (usually by running away). I think the movie is better. Al Jaffee’s Mad Life by Mary-Lou Weisman Al Jaffee was one of…
