Category: Musings

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 Coming To The HD Consoles

Anyone who remembers this popular free-for-all fighting game will happy to know that the game will be hitting XBox Live Arcade and Playstation Network this summer. Anyone who don’t know about the game… well, this game has lots of playable fighters, lots of balance issues, and lots of replay involved. A fun game, nonetheless.

Wii owners are left in the dust as the game won’t be coming to that system. Being a Wii owner myself and not owning the other two consoles, I would probably be disappointed and feel sad… if it weren’t for the fact that I already own a copy of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on Xbox… and it still works fine. Thanks.

Two Missed PPVs Yields WTF Moments

So the past two weeks saw TNA and WWE have PPVs and I missed both shows… probably because I forgot about them. However, looking back at the recaps of these shows yielded some rather questionable reactions on my part.

On the Backlash show, there were four championship matches, including the John Cena Spinner Belt being defended in a six-man tag-match while John Cena himself defends the Big Gold Belt against Edge. The other two matches has ECW Champion Jack Swagger defend against Christian Cage and Intercontinental champion Santino Marella defending against Beth Phoenix, who is attempting to pull off a Chyna.

Three out of the four titles mentioned changed hands. The one champion who left the event champion… is Santino Marella. Go fucking figure.

Meanwhile, over at the TNA camp, the Lockdown PPV event – the one where every match took place in a cage because fuck you, that’s why – featured the main event that saw Mick Foley – the man who supposedly wanted to retire with dignity back in 2000 – defeated The Man Called Sting to win the TNA World title… in 2009.

My brain hurts.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture In 5 Seconds

In the grand tradition of Five Second Movies that don’t actually last five seconds… cooked this one up around April 2009, but never bothered to look at it until now.

Truth be told, this one’s not entirely accurate. There’s not one single overdramatized beauty shot of the Enterprise to be found here.

COMIC REVIEW – Star Trek: The Next Generation (DC Comics, 1988 Miniseries)

Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987 and became a surprise hit. DC Comics, at the time producing a successful enough Star Trek comic book, would eventually produce a miniseries based on the new show lasting six issues. Naturally, the miniseries is non-canon to the larger Trek canon, so put down your phaser canons because this thing is BONKERS.

The Enterprise crew get into the Christmas spirit or something and they meet Santa Claus. There’s a three-issue arc featuring Q as an absolute madman, which may or may not be far off from the actual character; who the fuck knows. Honestly, I feel like whoever wrote that second season of Picard read this thing and made old Q seem like this Q… almost. Fundamentally, the comic takes a lot of liberties with the source material and I’m not quite how much material they had to work with when they put this series together. But reading this stuff now and knowing how the series (as well as the franchise as a whole) would turn out afterwards, this feels like some whacked-out fanfiction written by someone who has no idea what they’re doing. And I’m not faulting Mike Carlin on this one; it’s entirely possible he had little to work with and thus needed to fill the blanks.

I’ll give him this much; I was thoroughly entertained throughout. This, along with the artwork making all the characters appear buffer and more seemingly well-built with Herculean physiques – they had spandex spacesuits at the time, so I’m sure the art direction was a Rodenberry wet dream. But listen, you can debate the continuity snags (Stardates has you assuming this takes place in the second season, but it’s clearly based on the first since Riker has no beard and Tasha is still alive) and some of the minor nitpicks, but the one thing you can’t accuse this of is boring. For six issues, you’re getting some of the more wacky takes on Star Trek that you’re gonna get, almost right up there with the old Gold Key stuff from back in the days. Don’t come into this with high expectations and you’re going to enjoy this one immensely. Highly recommended for the lulz.

Obama Buries Washington Snow

Original Source article: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Obama+heats+over+Capitol+cold+snap/1227166/story.html

You know things are bad when your president thinks your capital is full of chickens because of some ice.

“Can I make a comment that is unrelated to the economy very quickly and it has to do with Washington?” President Barrack Obama told reporters prior to a White House meeting with business leaders early Wednesday morning.

“My children’s school was canceled today. Because of what? Some ice?”

“Yessir, Mr. President,” replied a swave reported, “Because of some ice.”

Apparently, President Obama was surprised by the fact that a few centimeters of snow and a thin layer of ice that was all but melted away before nine o’clock was enough for some schools to either open later or close for the day. Obama, being a man from Chicago and used to real winter weather, suggests that Washington can’t handle three centimeters of snow and that a bit of flinty Chicago toughness is needed.

Congratulations, Toronto. You are no longer the wussiest city in winter.

Now, to be fair, it can be argued that Washington doesn’t have the proper means to deal with this “extreme” weather. Mind you, they could have pumped more funds into better snow equipment, but then you’d be taking away from funding for the War on Terror… or is it the War on Christmas?

Oh who cares?

Street Fighter… EXTREME Blu-Ray edition

Just in time for the new Legend of Chun-Li flick coming out in February, Universal is also re-releasing the old Van-Damme flick next month too… but this time, it’s an EXTREME edition. It’s got some special features here and there… and there’s some content on Street Fighter IV in there too, so there’s new stuff.

So if you haven’t bought the movie when it was last released on DVD, here’s your chance to look back on one of the more campy films out there… and then shed a tear as you realize that this film, while not exactly top-of-the-line in the Street Fighter mythos, has way more personality and life to it than the Chun-Li flick… which looks more like a generic Hong Kong flick than a Street Fighter film… and not even a good one.

An Incoherent Rambling About Spider-Man’s Brand New Day

There’s word that Spider-Man has undergone a change of late. Marvel has been proudly touting its Brand New Day storyline, which is supposed to introduce the first new status quo for its popular superhero. Now I haven’t been following comics in a good couple years, but I figure let’s jump in and see how Spidey’s been doing since he opened himself up to the world.

So I come back to comics, start reading this bold new vision that Marvel has released and what do I learn?

– Peter Parker and Mary-Jane are no longer married and are apparently on bad terms with each other. Apparently this happened due to a deal with Mephisto that he would save frail Aunt May for the existence of their marriage. Yeah, that alone is pretty stupid and totally against the Parker character. How many people close to Peter have died? Did he make a deal to bring back any of those characters? That’s just bullshit! Why don’t we make a deal that brings back Uncle Ben too? Or any of the other 500 characters that have died in the Spider-Man comics… oh wait.

– Harry Osborn is back from the dead, on good terms with Peter, and hates Spider-Man… Christ, are you fucking kidding me? Bad enough we brought back Norman Osborn for that Clone Saga years ago, but now we’re brining back Harry because of this whole Devil deal? Bullshit! Again, why not bring back Uncle Ben instead of Harry? And if Harry hates Spider-Man, shouldn’t he hate Peter too? After all, Peter came out of the closet and… oh wait just a minute there, King.

– Nobody knows who Spider-Man is anymore. Don’t worry, it’s still Peter Parker, but apparently the whole thing is reorganized so that the whole unmasking thing that was much publicized, debated, criticized, analysed, whatever… never happened. Why would you do this? This is a move I expect from the Distinguished Competitor, not fucking Marvel. Again… BULLSHIT! It’s almost like they’re trying to rewrite history.

– Ol’ Jonah suffers a heartattack and his rival buys the Bugle and renames it the DB. Yeah, really fucking original. The DB. Yeah… BULLSHIT!

– Spider-Man no longer has organic webshooters, but the old-school mechanical ones. Some people might be happy with this, but I actually preferred the organic shooters. After all, spiders don’t have mechanical shooters, but I digress.

– A new heroine called Jackpot appears… and you know it’s obviously Mary Jane because she has red hair and calls Spider-Man “Tiger”. Christ! And who the fuck is Menace? Another goblin-like foe? BULLSHIT!

How do you fuck up Spider-Man?! Please tell me! PLEASE!

Okay… I guess I should be asking myself if the books are any good.

Truth be told, the stories aren’t that bad. They do try to bring back some semblance of classic old-school Spider-Man, but apparently nobody clued in on the fact that Peter is still old. The art for these books are… mediocre at best. Don’t get me wrong it’s not terrible and it’s fairly decent, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. Overall, it’s worth a quick look, but the whole rewriting of history just ruins the whole thing for me. Again, why do these things need to change? It simply doesn’t make any sense. It reeks of… BULLSHIT!

No More EGM Magazine…

Did you pick up the latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly? You know, the January 2009 issue? Do yourself a favor and take really good care of it. I mean, really good care of it. Give it a bouquet of flowers and nice treatment… it might be a collectable one of these days.

Why is that? Because that’s the last issue of EGM you’ll ever get.

If you haven’t heard the news, the long-running magazine, which would have celebrated its 20th anniversary, has been cancelled after parent company Ziff-Davis sold the online component of the 1UP network to the company that runs the UGO sites.

You know, that’s kind of sad. Especially considering what a great mag EGM used to be… before its untimely cancellation. I used to remember back when my brother would pick up some issues back in the mid-90s; those guys did some great stuff. While I haven’t been a regular reader in recent years, the couple issues I would pick up were always great reads regardless of what was featured.

So all the folks involved with the EGM run, I just want to say thanks for the good times and the fun ride… and good luck out there.