mechs are much cooler than patriotic speedboats.

it’s possible i’ve been watching too much anime lately… ’cause i used to love patriotic speedboats.

(from castlevania II)

i’m getting married next year (august 21, 20XX).

and my band has a new album.

but i’m not very good at keeping the internet informed of my life.

2008 was a pretty great year in music – 3 of my 5 favorite bands released albums (4 if you count compilations), and i saw 4 of them play live. i got to see an old favorite that broke up almost 20 years ago play (sweet baby), and a live incarnation of a fictional band put on one of the best shows i’ve ever seen (dethklok). once again, i’ve got enough songs for my year end mix to fill 2 cds (though i will probably try to narrow it down to one disc’s worth – more on that later).

FULL LENGTHS

1. Genghis Tron “board up the house” (this will kill you!)

2. Lemuria “get better” (finally, a full length!)

3. Now Now Every Children “cars” (15 year olds that make better music than everyone you know!)

4. The Fatal Flaw “we are what we pretend to be” (new stuff from joel reader of the plus ones / mtx)

5. Spiraling “time travel made easy” (“victory kiss” is the jam of the year!)

6. Cruiserweight “big bold letters” (their best yet!)

7. Fizzgig “reset” (guitarmy!)

8. Death Cab For Cutie “narrow stairs” (a song i really like is up for a grammy. this is weird.)

9. Tokyo Police Club “elephant shell”

10. Chris Walla “field manual” (death cab’s guitarist says some silly things, but more of his songs should make it on to their albums!)

also of note:

EPS

Now Now Every Children “not one but two” and “in the city” (even better than their full length)

The Loblaws “won’t stop” (the first new mutant pop release in years!)

The Jealous Sound “got friends” (3 new songs and 2 remixes of the first song, one of which is god awful, and one sounds like the matt sharp tegan and sara remix.)

MUSIC THAT IS AWESOME, BUT DOESN’T REALLY QUALIFY FOR “ALBUM OF THE YEAR”

Mega Man 9 soundtrack (8 bit goodness!)

Dr Octoroc “8-bit jesus” (nintendo xmas carols. way more awesome than it sounds. get it for free here.)

The Brother Kite “(inside) waiting for the time to be right” (incredible remixes of their 2006 album!)

The Anniversary “devil on our sides: b-sides and rarities” (almost everything they did that wasn’t on the 2 lps or the superdrag split. lots of gems here)

Lemuria “the first collection” (all of their early stuff, most of which is out of print, now available on vinyl!)

The Ergs! “hindsight is 20/20, my friend” (another collection of mostly out of print tracks by one of my favorite bands)

Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog (the only musical i’ve ever loved!)

BIGGEST SURPRISE

The Mars Volta “the bedlam in goliath” (they made a new record, and it’s not awful! i’d even go so far as to say that the first five songs are very good!)

runner up: metallica made an album that’s almost listenable! (see below)

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS

I didn’t get a free dr. pepper. jerks. (no one expected “chinese democracy” to be any good, so the actual album’s not really a disappointment, no matter how long it took to come out.)

the ergs! breaking up.

Alkaline Trio “agony and irony” (i’ve liked each album better than the last, but i can’t even listen to this all the way through.)

the mix on “death magnetic” (the best songs metallica’s written since the black album – i know, that’s not saying much – but the mix makes it sound like your speakers are blown, or like you need to adjust the tuning on your radio.)

also, new albums by weezer (not surprising), sigur ros (unfortunate), and keane (meh) were not very good.

so if you look up at my header, next to “blog” and “CO profile” you’ll see a couple of new things:

first, “top fives (and tens)”, because i like making lists. i will probably update this regularly.

second, “old tour blogs”, because all my old tour blogs are scattered across myspace and livejournal, and i wanted them all in one place. nothing new here, just me being OCD. i may eventually supplement them with pictures, but only if i’m really bored.

so how could the rest of the game possibly live up to a prologue like this?

well, for one, the “round start” screen looks like a megadeth album cover:

peace sells... but who's drowning in blood?

you play most of the game as Mark, a baseball bat wielding kid, which sucks. the bat has extremely limited range, most enemies are faster than you, and many fly and/or shoot things at you. every stage has at least two bosses (most have three), many of which are very large and move quickly, making it extremely difficult to avoid getting hit. Mark has an enormous life gauge, stretching all the way across the screen, but it starts out less than a quarter full, and seldom gets above half. a couple of times each level, you find a large green and white pill that transforms you into Bert, the alien bird thing. Bert can fly and shoot lasers out of his body, so why he is so desperately in need of the help of a little leaguer, i can only guess (maybe he hates earth children?). But you only get Bert for about 30 seconds at a time, and then it’s back to mark, who kind of resembles a member of devo, minus the flowerpot.

the enemies you will face include such horrors of character design as:

a dead dinosaur

that's okay... you'd probably have killed me anyway

a haunted well

killed by a plate... how embarassing!

a bouncing fried shrimp (which turns into an onion ring, and then a skewer of some sort)

with teleporters! for no reason!

a punk rocker with a washing machine

maybe he likes sonic youth?

whatever this thing is

um... i'd rather not.

royce, a caterpillar on a bed

and the severed head of tutankhamun, who was apparently related to the shredder.

and finally, after all these abominations and more, you get the ending. does it hold up to the incredibly bad intro? you be the judge. (some text repeated to show “animation”)

And, Mark went home.

ooooo... glowing treasure!

oh. the queen of spades.

moonchild, the child-like empress?

i wish that was how the neverending story ended...

BRAINS!!!

in the middle of the day. i think his pillow is a fishbowl...

if i dreamt this game, i'd leave home too.

Bandai board room, 1989:

“well guys, we’ve made a terrible game with a story that makes no sense. now all we need is an ending… something zippy, that will tie up all the loose ends. I know! It was all a dream! Or was it?”

Further research into Bandai’s other NES titles (chubby cherub, frankenstein: the monster returns, dynowarz, etc) may be required… they seem to have a thing for space knights fighting monsters. which might be even better than little leaguers fighting fried food!

Monster Party has (arguably) the best prologue of any game on the Nintendo:

(scrolling text typed below screenshots)

saw a bright star.

that the star fell and landed right in front of him.

in my world.”

“Come and help me.”

.”

“How?”

]]> http://gonkdroid.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/monster-party-part-1/feed/ 1 hobaartron http://gonkdroid.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/not-as-easy-as-it-looked/ http://gonkdroid.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/not-as-easy-as-it-looked/#comments Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:28:35 +0000 hobaartron http://gonkdroid.wordpress.com/?p=154 ]]>

i saw this on boing boing, and i had to make it.

(design courtesy of spitefuls.com)

some of the directions were a little vague (“somehow, tape (1) to (2)”), so a little improvising was necessary.

next: i may attempt their Hindenburg design. but this one looked to be the easier of the two, so i’m a little worried as to how that one will turn out…

the worst/most awesome NES cartridge artwork in my collection:

10.

i’ll get you, space dog!

9.

chess. as re-imagined by emperor palpatine.

8.

the cover art for the next ratatat album?

7.

lorenzo lamas with megaman arm canons saves judy jetson from all sorts of crap.

6.

it is a mystery…

5.

take a break from conquering alien worlds with a relaxing game of billiards! on the moon!

4.

night vision makes figure skating less boring. but only marginally.

3.

zach morris battles sharks, robots, and spiders in the land of computer pyramids.

and treasure is involved somehow.

2.

always use both hands on the monkey bars, or all the loot will fall out of your fanny pack!

and the worst/best cartridge art in my collection:

1.

having never played this, i can safely say it is the best video game ever.

so i got a twitter account

http://twitter.com/aaaaaaaron

but i’m not doing too well at finding people i know on there, so if you have an account, add me so i can follow you too.

(nintendo blog coming tomorrow. probably.)