Category: Commentaries

All my commentaries – written or video – collected under one parent category.

Classic Bite Commentary #91 – December 26th, 2009

(2023 Update: Another long-lost Classic Bite Commentary dug up from the ashes, never having seen the light of day until now. This was around the time where I abandoned all hope of every relaunching the Webstation and focused more on the new Blogger space; hence why this never saw the light. It’s a bit of a shame, because it’s one of the more level-headed commentaries I wrote back in the day. It’s also one of the first times where I considered shuttering the Bite commentaries for good and that would only come along a year later.)

Hello, everyone. It’s another Bite commentary for you to read… although I’m not quite sure how long I’m going to keep doing these.

In case you’re not aware, I’ve started up a new blog; dtm666.blogspot.com is where you’ll find it. And I’m actually quite liking it, so far. The thing is easy to operate, I can write and publish posts rather quickly, and it seems to be much more versatile than the usual stock. I’m going to be brutally honest here; I’m almost considering putting all my chips into this one blog and close off the rest of the stuff. Considering how many times I have launched and relaunched the Webstation over the years, maybe I should go towards something where it doesn’t take much work to get things published.

Not that I dislike the whole webpage making process; I like to think that I’ve learned quite a bit and I consider to be something useful… but at the same time, I’m kind of wishing that I can have a stable web presence instead of one that’s always closed off because I’ve had a sudden brainfart and decide to redo the whole site all over again. I’ve heard the complaints from the few people who bothered to e-mail me regarding this and I thank you for your messages. I try to stick with something, only to mess around with a new layout and decide to go for that instead.

And then look on in disappointment as my wonderfully-constructed webpage layout is hammered with a billion ad banners that practically destroys the whole thing. That’s what you get for sticking with a free webspace provider… and I get that. I just wish I had the foresight to stick with something simple and… just stick with it altogether.

For now, we’ll continue as we always have, but I did wanted to bring up a couple things that might be worth talking about.

Running Thoughts On… The Irate Gamer’s Super Mario Bros. 2 episode

Something a little new that I want to try and this is partly inspired by another blog that I’ve recently come across a month or so ago. Now you’re most likely aware of the concept of the angry video game reviewer; a guy who takes an old game or whatnot and swear constantly while “reviewing” the game. It’s a concept that was popularized by James Rolfe a.k.a. the Angry Nintendo Nerd, now known as the Angry Video Game Nerd.

Now, as with any popular fad, many others would jump on the bandwagon and do the same thing the Nerd did. Some did well and made their own name, while others didn’t. Of all of these Me-Too reviews, one of these have earned a certain amount of infamy for his content and that person is the subject of today’s initial project.

Chris Bores. Also known as the Irate Gamer.

Now I’m not going to dwell on the whole plagiarism deal. Most people have already made up their minds and I’m not going to throw my two cents in there. It’s beating a dead horse and that horse is really starting to stink up the joint. Putting aside the alleged copying, when you get right down to it, Irate Gamer episodes tend to be inaccurate in regards to certain details. The most evident of this would be his recent “History of Video Games” in which a great deal of his information is flat out wrong.

Now this is not going to be one of those Anti-Irate Gamer summaries (there’s already a good blog serving that role) and it isn’t going to be an overview for the most part. This is just some thoughts I’ve had while watching his videos, along with any additional information I can provide, either through my own personal experiences or from other notable sites with significant information on a particular subject matter.

So without further delay, today’s dissociative post will be concerning IG’s “review” of Super Mario Bros. 2 for NES. SMB2 was originally released in Japan as a very different game called Doki Doki Panic for the Famicom Disk System, featuring different characters and a couple other elements. Japan did get a real SMB2, which was essentially Super Mario Bros. with a couple minor additions and rock-hard difficulty. When it came time to bring SMB2 over to North America, a decision was then made to convert that Doki Doki game into the SMB2 we all know and love… or loathe in some cases.

Now I’m going to go on a record and say that SMB2 isn’t exactly a favorite of mine. In fact, there was a time when I absolutely hated this game… or at least, that’s what I kept telling myself and anyone else who would listen. I don’t know why I did because when I first played the game, I liked it just fine. Was it outside influence perhaps or pressure to get in with the cool kids because they all hated that game due to its dubious origins? I don’t know, but there was a period where I didn’t really like this game. However, playing it recently, most of that hate or intense dislike seemed to have been forgotten, and I consider this to be a great game considering its unique history.

One thing is certain: my brief hatred for this game had nothing to do with the Irate Gamer’s video, which was just wrong on a number of levels. So without further adue, here’re my thoughts when watching the Irate episode.

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Classic Bite Commentary #90 – October 31st, 2009

Decided to wait until Halloween to put this up… welcome to another wonderful edition of the Bite, where I just ramble in text form. Until recently, I was going to start up by posting a new video llog (so you can HEAR me ramble about random shit rather than READ my ramblings), but things didn’t go ahead as planned and so things will have to wait until I’m good and ready.

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Classic Bite Commentary #89 – September 27th, 2009

Things have been progressively better since last we met. I’m presently in a state of perceived insanity, but no real danger zones. Let’s not dwell on this right now, please? I’m sure there are those concerned about my health and your concern is greatly appreciated, but it’s easier for me to not dwell on this… and dwelling is something I’m REALLY good at. So let’s just move on, okay? Okay…

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Classic Bite Commentary #88 – September 1st, 2009

Welcome to another Bite commentary… and one that’s going to be fairly brief because this is less a commentary on the state of the world and the bubble of interests that serve as the background fodder for my little corner of the Interwebz or whatever we’re supposed to be calling this thing… but rather, this is going to largely focus on “the big picture” change that I’m going to be toying with.

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Classic Bite Commentary #87 – August 15th, 2009

It’s been a while since I wrote one of these, hasn’t it?

The last time I’ve written a Bite commentary was WAY BACK in March 2009. A few months behind on stuff… and to be perfectly honest, not that many posts have been appearing on the blog, either. Unusual considering I’ve managed well over a thousand posts in a period of five years – an uncanningly disturbing statistic in itself. So let’s get it out of the way…

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Classic Bite Commentary #86- March 29th, 2009

So it’s been a good couple months since my last Bite commentary and outside a couple blog posts, not much has been coming out of my end. Since there’s been a bunch of stuff that has happened in the two months since then, I won’t go into great detail as to what has happened with me and other stuff worthy of interest… in quick point form. So here we go:

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Classic Bite Commentary #85 – January 28th, 2009

Hope everyone has had a good holiday season and new year. So far, 2009 has been pretty much meh… but other than a couple high points and the usual endurance of Montreal cold weather and a broken water main downtown, things have been pretty average. Nothing to really complain about though…

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The Winners And Losers Of 2008

Original Posting Date: December 31, 2008
DTM Blog Post No. 1078

Not much to say here, since I’ve already said quite a bit back then…

Generally speaking, 2008 was a bit of a mixed bag. If you were a political history whore, something magical happened down south. Otherwise, you were a Quebecer voting twice in a calendar year within a three-month span. But let’s not dwell on that… the year’s done. Let’s move on… but not before looking back on this past year of mediocrity and historical crap.

Continue reading “The Winners And Losers Of 2008”