Why Haven't You Played This?: Darkwing Duck for NES

Nowadays the mere mention of a movie/TV-based game is met with scoffs and guffaws and with good reason; movie and TV based games suck. But, this wasn't always the case. Back in the 8-16-bit days Disney had a deal with Capcom. If you played a Disney game on the NES/SNES/Genesis chances are it was made by the same people who brought us Mega Man and Street Fighter. Such classics as DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey and Minnie were all based on pre-existing properties and are remembered fondly by many 20-somethings to this day, but one slipped through the cracks. And it's one of the best.

Newgrounds, BattleBlock Theater, Meeting The Behemoth

When I was in my early teens, my group of friends and I were too young to have the real arcade experience. For older folks going out to the arcade meant having a new gaming experience every time you went out. A huge room full of games could take months to work your way through even if they only cost a few quarters per play and the landscape was so varied. In one corner players were throwing shoryukens at each other while across the room Rick is on a mission to save his girlfriend Jennifer from the Splatterhouse.

My gaming sensibilities came of age in an era where major game releases started to get stale and homogenized. As the Gamecube lost its foothold in the industry gamers wanted more brown and green shooters and less Pikmin. We had less and less interesting titles to play each month and the indie market had yet to bloom with the advent of digital distribution, but there was one sanctuary left for the open-minded gamer. One place allowed independent game developers to share their work with the masses and get constructive criticism from the community. What was once a portal for killing celebrities or working WAY too hard for a poorly drawn picture of a naked anime girl had become a site for ideas to gestate that would become phenomenons. I'm of course talking about Newgrounds.com.

PAX East 2011: Keith Apicary Threw the Greatest Panel Ever

Stop right there. Before you read this post, the following video is required viewing:

 

Follow that up with Part 2 of the same video. Ok, now watch every Talking Classics video this guy has made. Now you are prepared for the madness of Keith Apicary.

As I said in my earlier post, therer were a crapload of attendees at PAX East this year. I was able to meet a lot of people, including some I consider idols. In fact I believe the first words out of my mouth as I met Jeremy Parish were, "You're my hero."  Met with a quizzical stare, I just went with it and he was really nice to me despite my nerdy outburst. Being an event with a lot of press, most of the guests I got to meet were writers and people I admire in the realm of "game journalism," but I happened to run into someone I consider a recent influence on my comedic sensibilities.

Arkham City Trailer Has Style

As someone who has to watch a lot of trailers, I am so, so bored with the formulaicness of them. Game publishers can drop a bunch of clips from the game's cutscenes into iMovie and overlay an ominous, generic, and wholly forgetable score overtop. Rocksteady and Warner Bros. Interactive's Batman: Arkham City's new gameplay trailer has debuted over at IGN and it's a breath of fresh air. Showing not just pre-rendered cutscene footage, but actual gameplay, the trailer also features the catchy tune This Ain't No Place for a Hero. I can't find who sings the song, but I want their album.

I'm glad to see advertising can still be stylish, not that this game would need it judging by how much people loved the first game. Personally I only thought it was alright. It's certainly the best Batman game and one of the best comic book games period, but I had my issues with it. Mostly the boss battles. The fights I even remember weren't that great and people still bring up bosses that I have to struggle to even remember fighting. Plus that final boss battle, MAN what were they thinking. 

 

Arkham City looks much better, though, and features more of my favorite villains. Two Face and Catwoman are two of my favorite Bat-characters and I can't wait to see how the open world gameplay of Arkham City works.

PAX East 2011, Manifesto

This weekend I had the pleasure to attend the giant 3-day gamer party known as PAX East. Thrown by Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, PAX (both Prime and East) has become nationally renowned as the little con that could and has grown into an ersatz nerd Mecca. Twice a year thousands of us flock to each coast to talk about games and more importantly play them in a social setting. PAX is not just a show for game companies to show off their new product, it's a haven for geeks. We don't all get to talk about games every day like those of us on podcasts or residents of more populated areas. Some gamers are holed up in their room playing Dragon Quest IX for 40 hours without getting to experience tag mode and only get to share multiplayer experiences over Xbox Live or Steam. Even more popular players never get the full gamer experience, I know lots of people who don't play games and it's a bummer.

Entering the front door of PAX for someone like me, who loves video games and really only gets to play them alone and discuss them on podcasts, is indescribable. The only way to put it into words would be to call it a religious experience. I've never walked into a room so enormous and known without a doubt that everyone in it (this year's PAX East hit 69,500 attendees) loves games just as much as I do, if not more. I got to experience amazing things like watching 1Up's Frank Cifaldi buy a $200 copy of Snatcher, crash G4's panel with Keith Apicary and 60 other people, and joining a hundred other fans of the aforementioned 1Up to get piss drunk and chat about games at a local bar. The shyest people in the country (myself included) sparked up conversations randomly with complete strangers. I even got to meet some of my heroes like Shane Bettenhausen, Nathan Barnatt and retro gaming guru Jeremy Parish, who gave me a wrist band to get into said 1Up party and secured me free alcohol for the night.

PAX is truly an experience to behold and I have a few more blog posts about it, but specifically I wanted to mention how it sparked the creation of this blog. I was able to attend a few panels over the course of the weekend, including two that I found very educational. They were on the subject of Community Management for game companies/news sites. This is a job I've always been enchanted by and have discussed with many community managers like SEGA's Aaron Webber and Kellie Parker. Both panels featured community managers from major companies like Naughty Dog, Insomniac and Harmonix and I found both to be very eye opening. I learned a lot during these talks, but a few specific things caught my ear; start a blog (boom), get some stage experience and take improv classes (come see me perform at the Philadelphia Improv Theater and let me know how I do), and love video games.

I've written for a few websites over the last couple years, both about and not about games, but I've never maintained a personal blog of my own. I've never really spent time writing something for me and no one else, something that I wrote because I just felt like it. I may do some reviews and post more conventional things like news, but this blog will be very stream of conciousness. There will be multiple posts about a single game if it takes a while to finish or I just have too much to say about it for one post. Sometimes I may not even talk about games, I'm a nerd who wears many hats. Some of them are pointy with stars on them that I wear around a table on which stands tiny figures of dragons and some of my hats have big round mouse ears. And sometimes I wear a giant foam cowboy hat that I sharpie'd "PRESS" on.

So don't expect this blog to be an excuse to tool around and broadcast it to the internet, but it's not strictly for my portfolio either. I'd really like to do at least one post a day, so we'll see how that goes. If you think I know what I'm talking about and have interesting things to say (mostly about games) check it out, but beware this blog is for the open minded gamer. Sure, I pick up a AAA title once in a while, but I spend way more money at the $3 bin than I do at the new release wall. I favor the obscure over the obvious.

 See you space cowboy...