The Lost Godzilla/GIJoe Crossover (Sorta)

Then there was the time that the old Godzilla Power Hour cartoon featured a cameo from the G.I. Joe villain organization Cobra before Cobra existed.

I'd call time travel shenanigans, but it's probably a coincidence, even with the fact that there's some surprising costume design similarities going on here.

-Signing off.

Getter Rays Killed the Dinosaur Stars

Okay, I'd somewhat meant to post on here earlier this week, but it's probably just as well; I've been distracted enough by various factors that it's been kinda quiet over at the new blog.

Except I just did a pretty solid post over there, talking about the Dinosaurs of Getter Robo in a fashion that's not entirely dissimilar from my old Star Wars posts.

(Warning: I swear significantly more on my Tumblr than I ever have here. That one post has more vehement swears than I think this entire blog does.)

-Signing off.

Someone Is Blogging Somewhere Else

I mentioned recently that I'd gotten a Tumblr, and that I'd link it in the future. The future is nowHere's the link.

I'm going to take at least a week off from this blog and concentrate on figuring out my Tumblr blogging rhythm. I do intend to blog here at least once a week for a while, at least, but I've formed too many habits that are detrimental to "serious" blogging here, so I'm going to see if I can loosen up a bit.

(I apologize if you're one of the people who's started following me in the last half-year, but hey, I'll probably be reblogging other people's content of the "random music" variety more efficiently this way, and that's kind of the thing I've been doing most often lately, so...)

-Signing off.

There's A Jigsaw Puzzle Game (or so) That Has A Plot*

And it's got a pretty decent soundtrack overall. (You can read about the game itself here and here.)



In unrelated news, it might be kind of obvious that my energy level on this blog has been pretty low lately, so I'm in the process of getting myself a Tumblr, which I'm hoping will turn out a lot better than my late, lamented Wordpress blog. (I'll probably link it Monday.)

*And it's actually a pretty good plot.

-Signing off.

Blah Blah Blah Have Some Music

I've posted so many Megalovania covers at this point one might think seeing the real word "Megalomania" as the title of a song was a spelling error when it's posted here.

It isn't, though.



This song's title probably inspired Megalovania's title (and at one time was apparently intended to be used where Megalovania was first used, in an old game hack).

It's funny because I actually stumbled on it completely independently of the Undertale fandom. (The video linked here introduced me to it slightly indirectly.)

-Signing off.

Game Reviews: Sticky Blobs

(Warning: I get a little angry towards the bottom and say some potentially upsetting things. I actually toned it down when I realized how awful it sounded in light of recent events.)

Sticky [grawlix] Blobs is a game that starts out all right, but by the end of it I kind of wanted to KILL IT WITH FIRE.

And by the end I mean "upon ragequitting," not "upon finishing."

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sticky Blobs has some inane excuse plot that's about collecting berries to power some kind of reactor. You have to extend your blob chains and pare them away in order to get a blob into position to touch the berry. Complicating this is that your blobs stick to everything, they're squishy and wiggly, you can only make so many, and some things burst your blobs.

This is fine at first, but the further the game goes on, the more of a dealbreaker the "squishy and wiggly" part turns out to be.

When I first started playing this a while back, I thought perhaps it was just Chrome being terrible (Sticky Blobs is a high-processing power game and grinds Chrome to a halt). Upon trying again, I discovered that while switching to Firefox helped, some of the problems I'd been experiencing were just Sticky Blobs being terrible. Mainly, the number of times trying to click on a blob makes the blob tell you you're doing it wrong or causes the screen to jerk around because you missed the darned thing shifts the game from "mildly fun" to "completely exasperating."

I can't really demonstrate, but watch this video where someone-who is definitely a much better gamer than I am, or they wouldn't be doing walkthroughs-gets repeatedly stymied by the frickafrackerating crappy controls. There are places where you can just about hear the screaming.



Gah, at the precise moment I'm typing this I'm not anywhere near watching the video and it's still making me quiver with anger. I wasn't even playing these levels and I'm angry about them!

*deep breath*

Okay, better now.

It gets worse: In an effort to bring "personality" to the game, the programmer(s) added expressions and reactions and "helpful tips" to the blobs.

Sometimes this can make a game more charming; an unstated reason for my affection for StickyLinky is that the weird twitchy "creatures" from the game often weirded me out, made me feel sorry for them, or in a few cases were genuinely really cute. It really did add quite a bit of charm.

The blobs in this game, though... They're creepy (check out their leering at that berry). They have an obnoxious celebratory dance they do when they get the berry. They make a face that says "what a dumbass" when you click and the game decides that it doesn't like your click (see above about that happening a lot) and if you don't get the message, they'll give you more thorough reminders like they're explaining it to a baby. Eventually, even their general expression that's apparently vague curiosity towards the player starts coming across as "WTF are you doing, stupid?" while their friendly expression directed at the player makes me feel like I'm aiding the enemy.

It reached the point where the main satisfaction I was getting was killing the blobs wholesale.

And I'll tell you what, when what amounts to digital mass murder is the most enjoyable part of a puzzle game, there's something frigging wrong.

-Signing off.

This Would Have Been Longer But For Reasons It Is Not*

Once before I posted a segment from an old Disney cartoon involving some rather wild speculation on what life on Mars might be like.

This is a piece from the same old cartoon. WARNING: Extremely silly. (It's really quite the waggish parody.)



Of course, I saw it because I was looking at a new posting of the other one, which is one of my favorite pieces of animation of all time, because said new posting was at much higher quality than the one I'd seen before.



That is seriously friggin' beautiful.

*In all seriousness I could probably babble for fifteen paragraphs about how much I love the fantastical speculative "biology" of the "scary version" of Life on Mars. But I don't have the time at the moment.

-Signing off.

Vaguely Predictable Post Is Vaguely Predictable*

Finally got back to using Firefox again (probably could have before this, but I was being that kind of lazy that causes more work) and thus my list of things to potentially blog about is now the stuff I was looking at over a month ago, which is kind of disorienting.

...So have an Undertale music cover!



*If you're familiar with me, anyway.

-Signing off.

YOU CANNOT FIGHT THE MACHINE

Randomly saw this commercial on YouTube, and...



Holy hell, but why is this Mr. Machine ad some kind of fascist propaganda poster?

Mr. Machine why you so creepy.

-Signing off.

BY GLOBOTRON'S GHOST YOU WILL BE REMEMBERED*

Was looking around and saw an ad for a weird Toy Story tie-in, and then followed a chain of links until-



-wait you mean this was on that random DVD that I'm not sure where it came from and never got around to opening? Really?

That makes me sad.

Wait, there's a cornball fake commercial for this toy?



Okay now I'm happy again.

*Just guessing on the spelling, of course.

-Signing off.

Quite A Weird Turtle

...I don't tend to tell a lot of personal stories on here because my life is either boring, needs more context, or is private, but I might as well tell this one.

So last Saturday I was driving to visit my parents' house (a regular weekly thing) and was on a particular road that I've driven on several hundred times.

Said stretch of road is elevated because the surrounding area is a bit marshy here and there, including at least one rather nasty trench that's almost always filled with water. It was around such a trench that I spotted an animal crossing the road.

Now, I've hit a few little animals over the years, and pretty gently bumped a deer once, but other than that nudge with the deer I've never hit anything bigger than a squirrel with a car. I did run over a turtle and a couple of rabbits on a mowing tractor back when I worked at a local factory, but generally that happened in low-visibility conditions and couldn't really be helped.

So I wasn't planning on hitting whatever this big weird lump that was ambling across the road was, and slowed down a fair bit to let it pass.

And I realized two important things all at once: 1) it was the biggest turtle I'd ever seen in the wild, probably a snapping turtle, and 2) it had just stopped right in my path.

Turtles are some of my favorite animals, and I've no interest in hurting them even when they're being annoying, so I hit the brakes. Fortunately I'd already slowed down enough that this wasn't a problem for either me or the three or four cars immediately behind me (which is a lot for the area in question, believe me).

Now, this road is kind of annoying to drive on, because it's a long straightaway with a lowish speed limit and no passing zone for a couple of miles.

So in general, I'd have been a bit stuck even if there hadn't been traffic on the other side of the road, and there was quite a bit of traffic on the other side of the road.

I'm sitting there trying to figure out how to get this enormous bastard snapping turtle to get out of the way without causing even more problems when this guy comes across the road and just starts trying to encourage the turtle to move by poking it from behind and such. (Thank you, sir, I truly appreciate it.)

Its response was to start hopping in place*.

At that point I'll admit I was thinking, "Okay, you big effing turtle, are you just trying to ruin my evening?"

...Fortunately traffic had thinned out (except behind me, where there were probably even more cars than when I started), and I had the opportunity to weave around the turtle and the guy at this point, and did.

I don't know what happened to the turtle, but I presume he got off the road safely from the fact that there weren't any enormous blood smears on the road when I went the opposite way a few hours later.

*Turtles are associated with slowness, of course, but this is less accurate than a lot of anecdotes would have you believe. I've seen turtles sprint at a pretty goodly pace when they felt motivated. (Tortoises, on the other hand, are slow as hell.) I will admit I'd never realized a turtle could pull a sort of toad jump, though.

-Signing off.

This Isn't Even Going Into The Wild Vocalizations*

I've never really talked about how much I like the band Disturbed on here for some reason.



My biggest appreciation for the band is probably just the style and performance quality of the music itself; I've only heard two or three other musicians who do something similar (off the top of my head, Ron Wasserman [probably best known for doing the early Power Rangers themes] and Masaki Endoh [mostly known for being a prominent member of JAM Project, I'd wager] are the only other musicians I can think of who capture the style of intense guitar and whatnot that I'm thinking of in more than one or two songs).

I do also really appreciate the turns of phrase that pop up sometimes, though:

I... kinda doubt that the phrase "for the apocalypse must be televised" was intended to evoke a smile, but it does. I don't know how much it does or doesn't have to do with delivery, but a lot of Disturbed's songs get a similar reaction out of me for at least one line.

Which isn't to say I can't take the lyrics seriously, just that they're completely secondary to my enjoyment of the music.

*If you've listened to more than a couple of Disturbed's songs, you'll probably know what I'm talking about. Actually, the best example of them I can think of comes not from Disturbed itself, but from one of Weird Al's polkas; obviously, Weird Al's music is supposed to make you laugh, and the high-pitched squealy approach he takes to the vocals in question makes it hilarious.

-Signing off.

When Is 1/48 An Intimidating Number?

(...Had a bit of an exhausting day because of a minor family emergency.)

When you're 1/144 or smaller.



It makes sense in context, that context being the Gundam Build Fighters anime, which 1) is lots of fun, 2) has an amazing soundtrack that I sort of rediscovered a few days ago, 3) is available on YouTube for free.

(I don't think you even need to be a Gundam fan to enjoy it, although it probably helps.)

-Signing off.

Truly A Severe Weakness

I've never really looked into the Fire Emblem games very much; I think I've been distracted by the razzle dazzle of Super Robot Wars every time I've considered it. (Yet when I look into the Advance Wars family of games, I don't have the same problem. Weird.)

That doesn't mean I can't appreciate what I've learned on those occasions I've managed to hold my attention on it, such as the following:



What I want to point out isn't the video's main subject, though, but this rather amazing summary of the extremely powerful penultimate boss's greatest weakness:

Crap acting.

I've heard much better voice acting in '80s cartoons*. (Actually, it's in the same neighborhood as a lot of '80s anime dubs, which were usually much crappier than average when it came to voices.)

*Granted, I watch the original He-Man cartoon a lot, and while that shows certainly isn't without flaw, the voice acting is well above '80s par. If you ever think it sounds bad (and sometimes it does), remember that there were like five to ten people doing all the voices, they were producing more than one episode a week just on that show alone, and they still managed to produce some genuinely wonderful actual acting (among other things, holy hell but could Linda Gary ever scream when she put her mind to it).

Also above par were several other Filmation cartoons and the original Transformers.

-Signing off.

(Fairly Brief) Game Reviews: Alien Invader

Alien Invader (hacked version linked because I'm lazy) is perhaps the funnest rampage game I've ever seen.

I suspect it'd be a little less fun if I'd played the non-hacked version, where I presume you're more vulnerable and don't get to do some cool things as often, and are more subject to a time limit. But the core of the gameplay is probably pretty fun anyway because it's awesome.

Playing as a tripod is a thing I think I've seen once or twice before in browser games, but my hazy recollection tells me that none of them were this beautiful. I mean seriously, that's a nice tripod. (Reminder: There's no such thing as a "wrong" tripod, or as I put it elsewhere, every tripod is a "right" tripod. But there is a such thing as a great tripod, and this is definitely one of them.) But that only adds to the enjoyment that this game brings to the table.

See, just walking around as a tripod would be kinda boring. Fun at first using your heat ray or whatever to incinerate things and withstanding things with your shields (I don't know how effective they are because I can't be bothered to play the game without infinite health and shielding), but it'd get old quickly. The game designer(s) clearly knew this, because rather than restricting your abilities that way, they threw in a couple of things I've never actually seen attached to a tripod before, and they're actually brilliant choices.

First is a dash step that lets you move about a screen's worth of distance in about half a second, which is really cool to watch, fun to do, and pretty useful if you're actually in a hurry to complete the game objectives (it's also part of the reason I presume the cooldowns slow things down a lot, because with the hacked version I can finish a level in fifteen seconds or so thanks to the dash step).

Second and even better is the shockwave stomp, wherein your tripod can jump, and if you do the highest possible jump will come down and just make a frigging explosion with the landing.

The screenshot only brings across a little of the glory of sticking a landing in the midst of a small army and sending them all flying, but I'd recommend playing the game at least once just for that.

Anyway, after playing this game a little, I found myself thinking "this is the perfect way to spice up tripods if you feel the need to." Because, you see, tripods are a bit played out, even if they're still great when they're just kinda there. If you want to make your tripods more impressive than the baseline by making their assault capabilities scarier, rather than going with concepts built around realistic advancement in technology and the like, come up with superpowers and tack them onto the tripods. It's a lot cooler that way.

Regardless of my alien invasion-centered nerdery, this is a very fun game and I can recommend at least the hacked version. (And you can play the hacked version with the hacks off, FYI, so there's that.)

-Signing off.

(Fairly Brief) Game Reviews: StickyLinky

StickyLinky is a puzzle game that's actually mostly pretty fun* despite a title that, well, sounds a little dirty at face value.

It mostly involves clicking linked groups of these, well, blobby things, and using them to create the "creatures," that is, things with faces, to collect those creatures.

Which is also pretty weird.

The point is, though, it's actually pretty fun, and one of the reasons why is that sometimes the obvious strategy isn't actually the correct one.

Particularly, there are certain stages where it's hard to build a stable structure and you lose bits of it all the time, and at face value these things are presented as bad (in one case, fish come and eat your things, and you're told to click on the fish to destroy them and keep the things safe). But it can actually be beneficial to have an unstable structure, because you normally have a limit on how often you can click in a stage (not in an onerous way, you have a mana supply you can potentially replenish, and it starts at fifty). So unstable structures may give you more chances to build chains than you'd otherwise get.

My poor reflexes mean that a lot of games frustrate me because they demand you do things quickly, but this game's a good one because it doesn't make such demands. You can play it in a quick-moving way, but you can also play it in a slow, careful way, and it's just as useful of a strategy.

There's also Zen Mode, which lets you play until you run out of chains instead of when you run out of mana, and it's a sort of fun diversion, though also frustrating because it's a "survival mode" and actually wants you to play somewhat differently than standard, which can take some getting used to.

I rather like StickyLinky, and can recommend it.

*I'm not actually a particularly big fan of a lot of puzzle games in general, which is why I phrase it that way.

-Signing off.

(Fairly Brief) Game Reviews: BigTree Defense

BigTree Defense is a tower defense game with a somewhat unusual structure.

It's quite simple, really: You grow a tree (or perhaps are a tree), and the turrets are "flowers" growing from its branches.

This is a pretty fun idea, and I've always liked it. (I'd meant to review this game years ago, but never got around to it.)

On the other hand, while your tree can increase in size and become pretty impressive, I find the game's balance a bit iffy.

Specifically, each time I've played the game I've stalled out a couple levels in, because the enemies get dramatically stronger around the third stage or so.

I suspect part of the problem is the nature of the game's enemies and waves. You see, the enemies are insects that are apparently invading through holes in the sky or something, and when they successfully deal damage to you and then escape, they retreat and spawn new enemies. It makes for a very tricky gameplay experience (one enemy getting away can mean lots more enemies later), and I think the enemies could have used a bit more balancing.

Also, while I like the concept, the art of the game is... a bit underwhelming. The turrets and enemies are fine, but the shape of the tree and its branches is... ugly.

If you're better at this sort of game than I am (not unlikely), it might be more fun than it generally is for me. As it is, it's fun to play with until things get unreasonable a few levels in.

-Signing off.

Bring Back Plastic Man Cartoon Villains 2016

So I watched this intro to the 1979 Plastic Man cartoon (thanks for pointing it out, snell).



And one of the first things to jump out at me was Plastic Man turning into a rickshaw.

Okay, I kind of adore rickshaws? But Plastic Man has often turned into cars, so that's definitely kind of meh.

Here's what really got my attention, though: The Clam.

Yes, this is a vaguely pirate-themed clam who is also apparently a supervillain.

And apparently, a lot of the villains from this cartoon were like this (names pulled from the wikiped page): Dr. Superstein, Doctor Dinosaur (hey!), Computerhead, Badladdin (apparently an evil genie?!), Count Graffiti, Joggernaught, and Gearshift Swift (who sells Earth to aliens for a quick buck).

Bring these guys back. Especially The Clam.

-Signing off.

What Other Board Game Lets You Use Cannons? (Genuinely Curious*)

Some while ago, the functionality of Java was changed so that old things can't be made to work even if you want them to. (At least as far as I can tell, and I did a lot of looking.)

Which ticks me off the most because of the old chess applets at the Chess Variant Pages, because some of those were really fun.

On the other hand, there's now Jocly.com, a weirdly named site that lets you play plenty of board games, including xiangqi, which is something of a drug for me**.

And it's a lot prettier than the old applets, I'll give it that, even if it doesn't have a tenth of the variety. (Big missing example: No shogi. Y U NO SHOGI, JOCLY? More understandable missing example: Yitong [see below footnote link], which isn't much of a game because one and only one side has a rook/cannon/quasi-knight composite piece that can go anywhere and kill everything.)

*I know that janggi does, but the elephants in that game make me incredibly furious, so they don't count.***

**It's the cannons. It's always been and will always be the cannons.

***Also the cannons in janggi just aren't fun the same way the xiangqi cannons are.

-Signing off.

Non-Indicative Title

This game feels like it ought to be a bit better known than it seems to be (which is to say "I know I've heard the name but I've never really heard people talk about it).

(NOTE: I watched this with the speaker off, so I've got no idea what some shrill noises in it sound like*.)



Live A Live (what the hell kind of name is that supposed to be?) has to have been one of the most ambitious JRPGs of its era, what with all the genre-shifting and sharp story twists going on.

*Rather wish the guy who did this video had used a more tasteful phrase than "ear rape."

-Signing off.