Bless the Nintendo Switch Online service for letting me play obscure and forgettable Super Famicom games without having to spend 1100 Wii Points or whatever it used to cost off the Virtual Console and instantly regretting it.
I may have given too much away, haven’t I?
So back in March, WWE started up a WCW Youtube channel and they’re in the process of uploading all the old WCW shows and some of the key matches. Yes, you can watch old Nitros, old Thunders, and even old PPVs in their entirety… for free. What a world we live in… and so we’re diving into that magical bag of goodness and checking out the 1994 edition of WCW Spring Stampede, featuring the main event of Ric Flair defending his WCW World title against Ricky Steamboat in what I believe was their last-ever encounter.
It’ll be a surprise for most of you to know that in all the years I’ve been doing this PPV musings on this blog, I’ve only ever touched one Spring Stampede event and that was the last one in 2000. It’s also entirely possible that I might have another Stampede or two on VHS somewhere, so maybe we’ll give those a look one of these days if I can find them, but otherwise, it gives me an excuse to dive back into vintage WCW big boys playing with each other professional wrestling from 1994… by which I mean, early-1994, before Hulk Hogan came along and everything started to be built around his orange ass.
Let’s get on with this, shall we? I’m genuinely excited…
Added this for the Youtube crowd, but figured I would repost it here.
A new video review thing is coming tomorrow… and also a health update because it never occurred to me to do that here. Long story short… I’m feeling better than I was last month, starting some treatments to take care of stuff that needs taking care of. Slowly but surely getting back to the old routine… appreciate the few well wishes I get. The road to recovery continues…
Yeah, it’s all I’ve got.
In other blog-related matters, I do have a Bite commentary coming up that talks about my recent health scare. It should be up on Thursday. Do check it out when you can because it brings you up to speed on everything.
A casual session of Super Tetris 3 for Super Famicom, played off the Tetris Forever compilation. Endless Tetris.
Also, on a side note, starting next Tuesday, the Extra Bits channel – the other Youtube channel where I upload all the extra bits that don’t fit on the main channel – will get a new video upload. There’s no set schedule on what’s coming up. Whatever comes up is what comes up and that’s the bottom line.
Happy May The Fourth. Here’s a review of an old Star Trek game.
Also, if you’re desperate for Star Trek: Legacy, get an Xbox 360. Problem solved.
Happy Star Wars Day. Let’s play some Star Trek and talk stuff, I guess…
Yeah, so real talk… this is the first real live stream that I’ve done in a while and things are a bit rusty, as it were. As it is, I’m still on the mend, I’m still… not quite up to peak operating efficiency, but I feel confident enough that I can hold up my end of the bargain for a good sixty minutes of whatever the fuck we usually do around these parts (I think we play Tetris and pretend no other game in the world exists.)
Right now, the key thing is that this thing goes off without a hitch and by the time this post go lives, you’ll have an archive of a working stream. Anything else that pops up – we’ll deal with in the future, but for now… eh…
I only played Vice City and that was decades ago.
Every so often, someone will invariably ask why I refer to “the evil art of emulation.”
Because it is the work of pure evil… and so it must be addressed as such.
In actuality, it started off as a gag of sorts from ages ago… when emulation was a relatively new thing and people were questioning the ethical and moral implications of such a deed. In fairness, that’s something being questioned today, but that has more to do with context. Emulation is something that is more widely adopted thanks to various compilations and services offered by the people who make these consoles in the first place.
I’ve dabbled in emulation back in the day. I dabble in emulation today. I will continue to dabble in it tomorrow in some form or fashion. I’m not going to tell you whether it’s good or bad. I’m not going to tell you whether you should embrace it or not. If you don’t care for emulation or think it’s as evil as they say, I won’t argue otherwise.
I just call it “the evil art of emulation” because it’s just fun to say.
Yeah, it’s that time of year where WWE drops a whole bunch of people from their employ and one of them happens to include Braun Strowman… again.
So now he gets to team up with EC3 again so they can control the narrative, right? Right?
In all seriousness, I almost feel sorry for the guy because they brought him back a couple years ago and really didn’t do much with him. I don’t know; it seems like they just wanted another big guy and now that they got some younger big guys, Strowman’s time was pretty much done. Anyway, I wish him (and all other releases) all the best in whatever they do next.
Hopefully, Miro/Rusev gets a good run before he eventually gets dropped in favor of whatever NIL-ID prospect they fish out of the Soviet Union in five years or so.
“Johnny, the Soviet Union doesn’t even…”
“QUIET!”
-_-
How about some fun behind the scenes stories or something? Because I’ve honestly got nothing else to talk about at the moment and if I do, I’m saving it for a later date.
I make no qualms about the fact that I tend to not like my earlier video stuff. Granted, I was just starting off, I was learning what I can, and I was trying to be cute at times… which took a few years for me to get out of that particular habit. So I have no real issue in getting to a point where I want to revisit a game that I covered ages ago and give a fresh new look with a fresh new perspective based on a little more insight.
The other side of that equation is that a lot of those earlier video reviews were basically video versions of what I had written on GameFAQs, only slightly tweaked so that there’s no arbitrary scoring system. Those GameFAQs reviews, written years earlier and with even less quality or care, have not aged well. A lot of those reviews are also not very relevant; if you were to go back and read those reviews, especially those posted in the early 2000s, they do not reflect my feelings on said games today. Something to bare in mind is that those reviews were written quickly and briefly – usually to satisfy some word limit imposed. And during those early days of video posting, YouTube usually imposed a 10-15 minute on how much video you can actually post until said limits were eventually removed. Since those written reviews were short enough to cover the bases, I just used those.
In hindsight, not the smartest idea, but I worked with what I have.
In some strange way, I miss the days when you were only allowed a certain amount of time to upload video. I know people prefer the more longform videos that let you people go into every nook and cranny about stuff, but the video limits often forced you to be creative in how to present your material. It’s easy to run off and talk about a game for hours on end, going into the history of this, this, and that… but to me, a review has always been and quite frankly, should always be about “What’s the product, what are the good points, what are the bad points, and who does this appeal to?”
In terms of that particular scope, it should not take you more than ten to fifteen minutes tops to get those points across. You don’t need an two hour essay to determine whether Mega Man 2 is a good game; that’s being overly superfluous. Hell, even in terms of covering something bigger like an RPG, a straightforward review does not need to be hours on end. Context can be helpful, but all I care about is whether something is worth my investment or not and why. When you had a runtime limit, that forced you to be creative and more cohesive in your thoughts. It forced you to determine what the key points were that people needed to know about something.
That’s something I try to maintain. I don’t dwell into every detail. I try to hit the points that seem relevant, I keep my thoughts as brief as possible – or at least, try to – and I try to keep it short. That’s always been my thing.
So nowadays, I write this stuff on the side. I have a lot of things written and sometimes, I give it space and leave it laying for a bit before going back to it and seeing if there’s anything that needs to be updated. I’ve had reviews that started one way and turned into another. The Symphony Of The Night review – which languished for years – became a thing that was different from its original inception, which was much simpler and much shorter… but apparently, I had a lot to say about that one.
And so, as we dive deeper into this review recycle, there may come a point where earlier reviews are revisited and we might give some of these things another look… sometimes, you revisit things that you thought were bad and years later, you’re like “Maybe I was too hard on this.” Or maybe it’s vice-versa.
Yeah, it’s usually vice-versa.
There’s an idea I’ve been toying with for the October set of reviews – a possible revisit of the Castlevania games, with some added perspective and experience tossed in for good measure. If it doesn’t happen this year, it might be next year. I’m using the time off that isn’t spent dealing with healing and family stuff to get some stuff together for the sake of having stuff ready to go in the event that another episode happens, so at least, there’s SOMETHING going on.
But on a whole… yeah, I’ve been feeling a bit better these days. The struggle continues, but one step at a time.
And on a final note… happy birthday, Dwayne. Go fuck yourself.
Later.
dtm666 