Game Reviews: Central Alien Agency

(As I'd rather anticipated, I wasn't in the mood to do a Star Wars post, so instead here's a post about killing a different kind of imaginary aliens than the ones I'd have been talking about.)

Central Alien Agency is a game where you play as what's pretty blatantly a derivation of the Men in Black, with heavy influence from the movie/cartoon/comic franchise of the same name.

You're actually defending a crashed UFO or something, and when you're not actively fighting off the near-endless waves of alien monsters, you can take time to repair the ship; once it's fixed, you win.

As the above implies, you're a lone gunguy, and hordes of aliens coming in waves are trying to get you. You control the character with the WASD-arrow key substitution and the mouse (to aim and fire), and can buy new gear and other upgrades. (Ironically enough, none of the screenshots I took actually show projectiles being fired, though one does show an explosion.)

It's not exactly rocket science (other than the ship repairs, I suppose); it is, however, a lot of fun.

Below you can see four of the various types of aliens (of which there's a nicely animated bunch), including some kind of vaguely wolfish creatures, blue hovering entities, green airbag creatures, and big armored arthropod things.

And below you can see pretty much the same bunch and also a little bug that's the most basic enemy, blue bipeds with bazookas, and some rhinosaurish things.

And here we can see big hovering eyeball-worm-things that shoot eyebeams.

If you're wondering at the degree of influence from the MIB films beyond visuals, here's the most extreme instance, a gun that nearly exactly resembles the "Noisy Cricket" except for the recoil (and the fact that it appears to be as long as the user's forearm, which is probably a visual convention because the character model is so tiny).

It's also just as powerful as that massive explosion suggests. (Moreso, actually, because it's got a pretty decent firing rate.)

This is a pretty simple game that manages to capture an extremely fun formula and do that formula very, very well, that formula being "shooting game where you have a lot of targets." I could play this game for days on end.

Obviously, I recommend it.

-Signing off.

Microwave Love: Breakfast

Today we're talking about breakfast.

As with last week, I've broken the page up quite a bit and extensively edited it to remove the cooking instructions, because even with their RANDOM CAPITALIZATION they have something of a tendency to be A BIT BORING.

First up, we have water, oats, salt, water, oats, and salt.

I mean, what's going on here? Is somebody actually pouring their oats, water, and salt into three separate containers that don't look useful for measuring before mixing them? Is somebody moving their breakfast preparations between three separate labeled bowls? Or perhaps somebody's writing something in erasable marker on the side, erasing it, and writing something else?

Between this page and Hot Sandwiches, this booklet certainly wins the "Unnecessarily Complicated Food Preparation Award."

Also, that kid looks kind of disturbed at that lightning bolt greeting him from the microwave-look at his eye, not his smile. Either that, or he's uncomfortable because he's got melted butter where he should have hair.

For such a simple image, this next one sure invites a bunch of comments:

1. I love how the faucet just has the word "water" floating above it.

2. That sure is a helpful carton of milk, pouring itself. It probably should be watched, though, because if it's capable of floating, it's clearly also capable of levitation, and who knows what other mysterious powers it may bear?

3. Also helpful: That label, "2 TBS. OF CREAM OF WHEAT," which has somehow manifested to operate that spoon.

4. Ah yes, Use Milk Or Water-brand cream of wheat! My favorite!

5. That girl seems much less disturbed than the other kid.

Another simple image, another invitation to multiple comments:

1. I can tell he's supposed to be pulling the cover off of a food tray, but it looks more like he's pulling it out of the body of the food tray, as if it were actually a funny-looking tissue dispenser.

2. As far as I can tell, he's unwrapping a TV dinner for the purpose of microwaving it on a plate. That's such a strange thought to my modern sensibilities that I felt the need to consult Wikipedia, and it turns out that once upon a time you did prepare TV dinners in an oven. The More You Know™.

3. Man that guy has weird anatomy. His head must make up more than half his mass, and what's up with his protruding square buttocks?

4. Also, he's lazy, because he apparently passes his food preparation, which I will remind you involves using a microwave and thus should be easy-peasy, on to his leg-equipped plate and to the local toque-wearing cartoon lightning bolt:

Incidentally, it only just now occurred to me that it's been ambiguous as to whether these microwaves actually have doors or if you actually put things in them by handing them off to the lightning bolts, who simply phase things in through the power of illogic.

Finally, we have this image:

1. Okay, I guess that guy's not as lazy as I thought, if he went from his ridiculous pajamas to a three-piece suit in two and a half minutes.

2. So... Is this guy supposed to be "Dad" by extension, or is he thinking of his own mother? Because if it's the latter, well, I don't want to think about the implications.

3. Okay, unless you guys mean "Microwave Love in action" (which is improbable because my sister and I coined that phrase to describe this booklet), I think what you want to say there isn't "love in action," it's either "science! in action" or "technology in action." (Science! in action requires an exclamation point every time.)

Well, that's it for breakfast. Join me next time when I discuss fresh, frozen, and nondescript vegetables.

-Signing off.

BLAH

So just a couple of random things to throw at you, because I'm tired and honestly not in the right mindset for blogging.

1. Atomic Robo is a webcomic now and you should read it.

2. Through the purchase of one of those "classic gaming module" things that pack a few good old games, a lot of mediocre old games, and a bunch of crummy new ones* into a tiny new console that's often barely bigger than the original cartridges, I discovered the odd old game Chakan, which isn't much fun to play (because it's annoyingly hard) but is quite nice-looking for its age. (Its story is also the hilarious sort of thing you see in older videogames. "I beat up Death so now I'm immortal but being immortal is awful. Also, you the player will gain none of the benefits of my immortality except being able to start over again a lot.")



I've occasionally commented that I really appreciate old pixel art; old obscure things like this are a lot of the reason why.

*Statements are opinions of the blogger, although they are well-informed opinions derived from playing said games. (If I am by implication calling a favorite game of yours mediocre, I apologize. None of the new games are anybody's favorite, though, so I'm not worried about that "opinion."

Seriously speaking, almost none of the new games they added are worth even looking at; they're completely terrible, and their instructions are often completely incomprehensible, which doesn't make playing the darned things any easier.

-Signing off.

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#144)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)
The Less Massive Index (Posts #101-#110)
The Second Less Massive Index (Posts #111-#120)
The Third Less Massive Index (Posts #121-#130)

1431. Unidentified tree-like species. This species invaded colonized the planet Karra at some point. The Karrans, who are large and nearly hive-minded insectivores, were "insulted" by the species' intrusion on their planet and wiped the colonists out.

Moral of the story: Don't screw with giant psychic rats.

Rating: 2/5, mainly because of the thought of a bunch of trees invading a place; it's amusing.

1432. Unidentified Underworld species. These guys live in Coruscant's underworld, that is, the area way down around the bases of those immense skyscrapers that are normally all we can see of the place. It should be noted that Coruscant has an extensive urbanized ecosystem and that a number of inhabitant species of it are believed to have had time to evolve to suit it.

They apparently have wings and green fangs, and supposedly revere Wookiees; I'd suppose that apparent reverence could just as easily be extreme respect for big guys who are strong enough to fight way outside their already heavy weight classes (as I've noted in an older post, Wookiees can physically trounce guys that are a lot bigger than they are). One of their customs is exchanging gifts with new-met strangers to prove a lack of ill will towards them; if you reject this, they'll want to kill you. ...Okay then.

Rating: 1/5. Eh, there's nothing especially jumping out at me, and even though I often like random collections of features these ones don't have anything about them that elevates them beyond being just a generic such.

1433. Unidentified UR41-284 species. UR41-284 is their homeworld; Grand Admiral Thrawn apparently had "everything within seventy kilometers of their museum district" destroyed in response to them resisting the Empire under his command.

So, like, their whole planet had exactly one museum district? Huh.

Rating: 1/5.

1434. Unidentified Usk species. This species' homeworld, Usk, was part of Hutt Space since the time of Xim the Despot or earlier, i.e. 25,000-plus years before the era of the movies, and they were slaves of the Hutts. They eventually went extinct, and their name was forgotten by the rest of the galaxy.

Ouch.

Rating: 1/5. I'd give them a sympathy point, but honestly they're too much of a nonentity for that.

1435. Unidentified Vatleria species. They apparently abandoned their homeworld (Vatleria) and moved to the Core Worlds.

It should be noted that "Vatleria" is an anagram of "Latveria," fictitious home country of Doctor Doom, and that the story the planet appeared in was a parody of the Fantastic Four wherein Darth Vader killed a group of vaguely Fantastic Four-like Rebels with deathtraps that had themes modeled after their Fantastic Four counterparts' powers, i.e. incineration, being crushed by rocks, being stretched to pieces, and vaporization.

It's kind of adorably stupid.

Rating: 1/5. But that has nothing to do with the species.

1436. Unidentified walking plant species. Apparently, as near as can be told, this species maybe lives as sessile plants as juveniles and need to be harvested somehow to become mobile adults... maybe? (I'm extrapolating quite a bit here.)

This made it really easy to transport them as slaves, and at some point they were near extinction; Han Solo and Chewbacca rescued a group of them who were stated to be the last survivors, and were probably going to take them to the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk.

As far as appearance, goes, they seem to be basically just root-blobs.

Rating: 2/5. I might have given them a 3/5 if their nature was clearer/more explicit.

1437. Unidentified worm-textured-skinned ostrich-like species. And the award for most awkward descriptive article title goes to... these guys! (Because I'm not typing that again!)

They just kind of exist.

Rating: 2/5. They look modestly interesting.

1438. Unidentified Xantar species. They're Greys, basically, and one abducted Indiana Jones and took him to Xantar, which Luke Skywalker also visited.

In some ridiculous computer game, see.

Rating: 2/5 for the chuckle factor.

1439. Unidentified Yoberra species. A member of this species won the eight-legged-species category in a race of some sort.

Rating: 1/5. So they're fast for eight-legged types. That'd be informative if we knew anything else about them.

1440. Unidentified Zuggit species. They're apparently magenta, twelve feet tall, and have two heads.

Rating: 2/5. That's slightly amusing.

Also, this is the last "Unidentified * species" entry, and next time will see the end of the category. I might possibly take an extra week to do the article, because unless I change my mind because it'll take too long I'll be hunting up the species I missed because they didn't exist when I started the Guide. Oh gosh that'll be fun.

-Signing off.

Microwave Love: And Other Hot Drinks

Today, we're talking about beverages.

Just for the record, I've never been able to drink coffee at all-the smell overpowers me from a distance-and don't remotely like tea, so my experience with these particular drinks is pretty much entirely secondhand (my dad is an avid coffee drinker and my mom and sister drink pretty fair amounts of tea-way to follow stereotypes, guys).

I'll note that I've broken this particular page up, and excluded one of the lists of cook times for boringness.

That is either an incredibly exhausted lightning bolt, or he's seen things, man.

We have no idea of the dark things that have been taking place just offscreen in the production of this manual, as if what we've seen wasn't dark enough.

The lightning bolt gives greeting to the coffee cup. Unfortunately, this coffee cup is of the inanimate, non-anthropomorphic variety, and gives no reply.

The lightning bolt doesn't understand.

Incidentally, the implications that there are both cartoon anthropomorphic and non-cartoon non-anthropomorphic varieties of dishware in the strange universe this pamphlet takes place in is perhaps the strangest thing I've seen in it so far, and that's saying quite a thing.

The boy lightning bolts go about their business, happy as usual. The girl lightning bolt, though she has a smile on her face, has had enough of their sexist crap making her be a waitress (I mean, really), and has decided to pour out the contents of that tiny coffee kettle to show her defiance.

I mean, seriously, look at her face. She is so done.

So, how does that work, exactly? Does the microwave magically sweeten the stuff?

In all seriousness, people tell me that coffee smells good, but I can tell just from the smell that a lot of it's bitter naturally (of course, Dad likes his coffee blacker than black, having stereotypical blue-collar coffee tastes). Does reheating coffee without a microwave actually somehow cause (additional) bitterness, or is this just another of those weird, weird claims?

If you weren't already reading the titles in the Marshie voice, here's your reminder to do so.

1. So... that (anthropomorphic cartoon) cup has taste buds on its insides?

2. I checked out of curiosity: There is no hot cocoa time listing, either before or after. (Reminder: The times in this booklet are not useful. /PSA)

...Aaaaand there's the non-anthropomorphic, non-cartoon cup again, this time joined by a presumably inanimate jar of Tang.

It's frankly a bit weird to think that Tang used to come in such boring ol' jars; my entire life, it's come in funny "space-age" containers to capitalize on people thinking of it as connected to NASA and the space program.

Favorite tidbit from the Tang article:

In 2013, Buzz Aldrin stated that "Tang sucks."[7]
7. ^ Now He Tells Us: 'Tang Sucks,' Says Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin : The Two-Way : NPR

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I certainly didn't need Buzz Aldrin to tell me it isn't great (I actually used to drink a fair amount of the stuff, but will admit to it being an acquired taste).

Join me next week, when I talk about breakfast and other disturbing things.

-Signing off.

GRIIIIIIDMAAAAN

Hold everything, it's the Gridman short!



Gridman's basically what Ultraman would be if Ultraman fought computer virus-themed monsters inside computers and combined with giant transforming robots.

And when I say "basically" I mean "exactly," to the point where people speculate it actually would have been an Ultra show if Tsuburaya Productions hadn't gone to a different company from their regular Ultra series sponsors. (It's really especially obvious here that the same design crew as worked on Transformers designs designed God Zenon especially, and even the big Drago robot thing [kinda forgot his Gridman name] looks a lot like something you'd see in a Transformers series.)

Now let's get a full Gridman anime, guys. This thing's got all the stock footage you'll really need, after all.

-Signing off.

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#143)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)
The Less Massive Index (Posts #101-#110)
The Second Less Massive Index (Posts #111-#120)
The Third Less Massive Index (Posts #121-#130)

1421. Unidentified Solem species. These guys are basically some sort of green goblorcs.

Their world had an oppressive governor whose own brother led the local resistance. The governor hired Boba Fett to catch him for him, but turned out to not have quite enough money to pay the bounty, so Fett held him at gunpoint (causing the governor to be distracted during the subsequent insurrection/jailbreak) until he noticed that the guy was wearing a nice necklace that would make up for the shortfall, and ripped it off and ran off even as the governor's government collapsed. Which is kinda hilarious.

Also, there is a member of this species named Lol. Yes, L O L.

Rating: 2/5. Eh, it's kinda funny that they're just straight-up goblorcs.

1422. Unidentified species (Imperial torching). ...Oh dear, that's not promising at all.

The only known specimen, who appears to have been on fire at the time of being presented, is rather lady-shaped, and has what looks like a smaller, simpler version of the Skrilling nostril complex (only six nostrils), as well as tiny antennae and webbed fingers.

Naturally, Wookieepedia remarks that "females of the species had breasts and grew long hair on their heads," but I've got a question for you, Wookieepedia: How do you know that individual is female?

Rating: 2/5. Admittedly, the picture illustrates a species that's essentially a human with a collection of superficial features that I kind of like slapped on, but hey, superficial features I kind of like!

1423. Unidentified species (purple face). Looking at the picture, I'd say that "purple" is the last relevant adjective in the list; somewhere before that would be "split face" and possibly "flesh mustache." It's a pretty interesting look, really.

A bunch of them were killed by a Mandalorian once. They also all wear the same headgear.

Rating: 3/5. Purely based on appearance.

1424. Unidentified species (seven-ringed homeworld). This species' working name comes from the following line actually uttered by its known member:

By the seven rings of my home world--we're all going to die!

Who talks like that?

Maybe if he'd said "by the seven rings of the sky!" I'd have bought the line and it'd have properly suggested the idea of planetary rings, but as it is the line would take me out of a reading experience.

As for the species itself, the known individual has scaly skin, huge flap-ear things, and a nose that reminds me of nothing so much as a snowman's carrot nose, though it's more pencil-shaped than it is actually carrot-shaped.

Rating: 2/5. Falls a little too far on the wrong side of the silliness line, but good for a chuckle.

1425. Unidentified species (Unknown Regions). So the only thing you guys could come up with as an identifying feature for these guys was that they lived in a particular pretty large and broad region of space?

They apparently had developed a "primitive" form of space travel, and one of their representatives once met with Grand Admiral Thrawn. (Whether he was Grand Admiral Thrawn at the time is questionable, but whatever.)

What "primitive" means in the context of the Star Wars galaxy is mysterious, since, y'know, they can split planets and detonate stars there...

Rating: 1/5. Nothing to go on.

1426. Unidentified Stalsinek IV species. They guarded a temple, the only feature of which is known being a magic fountain of healing water.

...No, I'm not making this up.

Rating: 2/5. The presence of a magic healing fountain in Star Wars amuses me.

1427. Unidentified talking tree species. Okay, get ready for this.

The sole known member of this species lived on Endor.

An Ewok, mistaking him for a nonsapient tree, put a poster inviting people to a party on his face.

Totally cool with the misunderstanding, the tree pulled the poster off and looked at it, and expressed excitement at the idea of a party.

He apparently didn't go, presumably because he was a tree and trees can't go to parties because trees can't go anywhere.

I'm sorry you didn't get to go to a party, tree!

Rating: 3/5. Endor's a heck of a place.

1428. Unidentified tentacle-faced species. I looked at the picture, and thought "wait, wasn't this Rang Thang's species?"

Looking more thoroughly, Rang Thang and this species aren't quite in each other's facial structure range, but they are pretty close.

Anyway, they're okay, but they are far overshadowed by Rang Thang's radness, which is enough for an entire species. Those character designers could have worked on making a more diverse array of tentacle faces, methinks-at least more differenter types of tentacles than that.

Rating: 2/5.

1429. Unidentified tentacle-legged ornithoid species. ...I don't know how Wookieepedia can be sure that the tentacles on the individual whose head is obscured by that speech bubble are shared by the individual behind him whose body is obscured by the same tentacled individual's own body. (Look at the picture for yourself if you please.) They could just be wearing a unispecies uniform.

Rating: 1/5 if those guys aren't the same species, 3/5 if they are for the amusement factor of a tentacled bird person.

1430. Unidentified Tranthellix species. Members of this assumed species (they could just be settlers of some not-technically-native species, y'know) are known for capturing Tranthebar Mountain rippers (or should that be Tranthebar mountain rippers? The variant capitalization is very significant), birds of prey with fifteen-foot-plus wingspans, and selling them to offworlders who stage races where people strap themselves to the undersides of the great birds and ride them.

These races are apparently illegal, though whether it's illegal because it threatens the Tranthebar Mountain ripper population or because it's a darned stupid idea to strap yourself to a giant bird of prey and expect it to carry you, or both, is ambiguous.

Rating: 2/5. That's one of those things that makes you wonder "how did this custom get started?" Who first looked at a giant bird called a ripper and thought "Huh, I wonder if that bird could still fly if I tied myself to its underside?"

-Signing off.

Microwave Love: The Triumphant Return (And Eggs)

Gasp! An article series I last worked on ages ago!

If you want to read the earlier articles in their original order, here they are: "THE FUTURE," "Safety and Microwaves," "Hot Sandwiches," and "Bacon, Sausage, Baked Potatoes, and Popped Corn." I won't be offended if you do, it's been a while. (At least check out Hot Sandwiches; it has one of the greatest sentences I've ever written in it.)

Anyway, let's get down to this: Today we're talking about eggs.

So...

1. That big egg there. That guy. Look at that poor egg.

This is a guy who is not happy with his life.

He tries, desperately, to smile as he's called upon to mutilate his anthropomorphic egg brethren, to tear away their shells so that some goofy lightning bolt wearing a toque can stab them with a fork so that they can be shoved into a microwave to cook alive.

Be thankful you aren't that egg, engaging in painful drudgery, always wondering... Will I be the next egg to go?

...Um, wow, that got a little dark there.

2. Kinda funny-that egg getting stabbed is the only little foodling I can recall being unhappy about any part of the cooking process as long as a microwave was involved.

3. That little egg next over. He's ecstatic to be in that microwave, as low-frequency photons stream through his body, exciting his internal fluids into an intense boiling state. The smile freezes on his face as he gains release, release from this existence as a sapient foodstuff. The lightning bolt looks on, delighted as always, as he carries the dish to his always unseen, sinister master.

...I don't even know what that was.

4. Don't have much to say about the bottom pair of images; at this point, I'm so far down the hole of weirdness that it somehow seems normal that a lightning bolt is pouring oil onto some kind of steaming-hot surfboard-shaped cooking implement, while another pair play peekaboo from behind their great graven idol of the kitchen.

Poached eggs:

1. The title says "Poached Eggs." The bowl, being filled with water, sitting in a puddle of blood, tells me another story.

2. Inside that dish, we see yet another comparison between being irradiated by electromagnetic waves that raise one's internal temperature to boiling and basking in the rays of the sun. What did I tell you last time, guys?

3. The lightning bolt stirring the remains of that eggling with a fork is the most stressed out I've ever seen any of these toque-wearing weirdos so far.

4. As always, keep in mind that the times given by this booklet are unlikely to correspond with your microwave. Different models and individual microwaves can run quite differently from each other. /PSA

5. "DO NOT TRY TO HARD BOIL EGG IN SHELL IT WILL EXPLO"

...Guys? Guys? Are you okay? Did incautious egg cooking prematurely end your bizarre toque-wearing careers?

Obviously, a bit got cut off, but that's the fault of the booklet's printer, who clearly wasn't paying attention to where these particular letters ended up on the page.

Anyway, join me again next week when I talk about hot coffee and other drinks.

-Signing off.

ALL THE DIGISONGS

Before I listened to this English Digimon theme medley, I hadn't heard the Digimon Fusion (Xros Wars dub) theme.



I'm glad I did decide to listen to it, because now I've had the delight of listening to a song with the lyrics "little monsters everywhere" in it, which is seriously just about the best thing.

-Signing off.

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#142)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)
The Less Massive Index (Posts #101-#110)
The Second Less Massive Index (Posts #111-#120)
The Third Less Massive Index (Posts #121-#130)

(Already covered one species in this section under Sarrish.)

1411. Unidentified Nyny species. ...Okay, I gotta ask-is that "nye-nye" (long "i" sounds) or "nye-nee" (long "i" then long "e" sounds)? Because either one would sound kind of funny.

Their blood is apparently black and they have three necks. The sole appearance of a member of the species was a dead New Republic senator, who had suffered three broken necks in a terrorist bombing orchestrated by a Dark Jedi.

Rating: 2/5. Eh.

1412. Unidentified primitive race. Some of these guys once traded with the crew of a tramp freighter, known as the "unidentified tramp freighter."

How very elucidating.

Rating: 1/5.

1413. Unidentified pudgy species. Okay, these guys are sorta ugly froggish things (with a wonderful placeholder name, may I say [and by "wonderful" I mean AARRGH]), and there's some charm in the design, but said design is not done any favors by the positively awful low-poly game image used to represent them on their page for some reason.

The known representative of the species was a podracer.

Rating: 3/5. Purely because I like the non-low-poly design.

1414. Unidentified purple-skinned humanoid species. These purple people are native to some planet, where apparently they follow a Sith religion (whether more closely related to the True Sith or one of the various Sith orders is ambiguous).

Rating: 1/5. Eh.

1415. Unidentified Ryoone species 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5. These five species share their homeworld with the Lyunesi, whose article saw me joke about how I'd handle this very entry. (Note that the method I decided on is quite different from my joke.)

It's always kind of interesting when there's multiple species native to a world, and the offhand, admittedly lazy mention of these guys as background for the Lyunesi is kind of neat, even if it's a bit frustrating here. The Lyunesi are supposed to be fragile, but also really good at translating, and implicitly they are such because of living among five other tougher species-it was the niche they developed to survive in a harsh society.

Rating: 2/5 for interesting background structure.

1416. Unidentified Sarm species. This species was wiped out by a supernova that created the Utegetu Nebula, the name of which presumably comes from the palindromic Killik language. The nebula apparently contained fourteen planets which were settled by the Killiks as part of a forced relocation, though the rascally Killiks would decide to abandon these planets in favor of picking a fight with the Chiss, which incidentally was probably not a good idea, since the Chiss live in the tough part of town the galaxy and have pretty low tolerance for other people's wacky antics bullhonky attempted invasions and a bit of a tendency to wipe people out of space, though they do at least do others the favor of never opening hostilities.

...Anyway, that this species was known to exist is pretty interesting, because a nebula with fourteen habitable systems in it would presumably be pretty large and take quite a while to form after the supernova, so it would have been quite a while ago that the species went extinct.

Their known artifacts are an extensive canal system.

Rating: 2/5.

1417. Unidentified Sarrahban species. They tried to be neutral during the Galactic Civil War, but the Empire invaded them anyway.

That rascally Empire.

Rating: 1/5.

1418. Unidentified Shoon species. This species was apparently gigantic and humanoid, and a war of unidentified nature devastated their homeworld and left them extinct.

Rating: 1/5, although I kind of like the detail that they were apparently huge, because that word "gigantic" is used persistently.

1419. Unidentified Sinton species. Their homeworld was conquered by the Empire. One individual would apparently brag about his involvement in the campaign later; however, it was later established that he probably had never actually been an actual officer, and was so horrendously incompetent that it begs questions of how he even survived in the Imperial military when it had a tendency to punish its failures so harshly.

(Said individual boasted of his execution of the "Massacre of Mendicat," but said event was actually a space station falling into a star with all hands due to an egregious programming error on his part. ...Which is a pretty gutsy way for him to reinterpret history, I'll give him that.)

Rating: 1/5.

1420. Unidentified snout-nosed species. ...Yet more elephant-faced species? At least these guys are blue, instead of red/pink again.

Rating: 2/5. They look mildly neat.

-Signing off.

The Aquabats! Super Show!*

So apparently there used to be a show that was basically a cross between a cheap American-made version of Power Rangers and something vaguely akin to Adam West-style Batman, and starred an actual superhero-themed band who are presented in-universe as actual superheroes who are also a band?



...I don't often regret not having cable (heck, I don't often regret not bothering to set up for broadcast television after moving, for that matter), but this is one of those times.

*Apparently the only correct way to write the band's name is with an exclamation point. I approve wholeheartedly of this.

-Signing off.

Okay, Then, John

Randomly watching bits of some episode of Armor Hero, and I have to say...



...I never quite know what to make of the dialogue.

Especially John's.

(Yes, that guy in the stupid mask is named John [no relation]. At least in the English translation.)

-Signing off.

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#141)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)
The Less Massive Index (Posts #101-#110)
The Second Less Massive Index (Posts #111-#120)
The Third Less Massive Index (Posts #121-#130)

(Upon reflection, I've decided that since the posts are kinda sparse in interesting content for this section, I'm probably going to wait until the Star Wars stuff is finished before putting up the last index post, because the housekeeping on the indices is complicated enough already without being behind and doing at least two for such a boring stretch.

I've excluded unidentified Mamendin species because they're indistinguishable enough from humans that humans could pass for them, and that's hecka boring and also a bit dubious, and Unidentified Jerrilek species because I covered them some while back, with the note that they're unambiguously described as extinct here.)

1401. Unidentified Janguine species. This species of "jungle barbarians" had a language that was suspiciously similar to that spoken by the Yuuzhan Vong. They were apparently extinct or something for at least three hundred years, but their language had been preserved by the Mooloolians... who may have been the same species?

I don't even know, man. Frustrated as I am with some of the Star Wars stuff going on anymore, I can't say I regret the New Jedi Order books getting wiped from continuity.

Rating: 1/5.

1402. Unidentified Jomark species. They apparently built the High Castle, some kind of fortress, and then at some point after that went extinct, making them much like the Hijarnans from last week.

Rating: 1/5.

1403. Unidentified Kromus species. The planet Kromus was accidentally switched with its "sister planet" Kromol in galactic survey data, which complicated an attempt to stop a Separatist superweapon, the Starkiller (how many things have that name in Star Wars? Too many), and ultimately the Old Republic was forced to use orbital bombardment to stop said weapon, which the Separatists had deliberately built in the middle of a Kromusian city to discourage Republic forces from attacking it.

Unfortunately, the exotic hyperspatial tech in the weapon meant that it blew up good when it was destroyed, and the people of Kromus were presumably rendered extinct when the weapon's destruction "killed" the planet.

...Bummer.

Putting a stupid but realistic spin on things, this was seen as the Republic's fault, even though the Separatists had 1) built the weapon in the first place, 2) deliberately put it in a heavily populated area on an inhabited planet, and 3) fired it up while there was a Republic fleet sitting there ready to shoot it, and the incident caused multiple planets to join the Separatists.

Rating: 1/5.

1404. Unidentified Kurluvion species. Hutt pornography was being shipped to their system.

Nobody needed to know that, guys!

Rating: 1/5.

1405. Unidentified long-snouted species. Their article notes that not only do they have long snouts, they also have buck teeth. I'm sure they'd love to hear themselves described that way.

Rating: 3/5. They look rather interesting, actually.

1406. Unidentified Majoor species. They're green and cartoonish, and honestly look too human to be that interesting, although on the other hand the major characters of the species known are a busy working dad and his son who resented how busy he was, i.e. they had ridiculously human concerns, which I believe I've noted I find pleasant.

Rating: 2/5.

1407. Unidentified mammalian species. They look kind of like kangaroo/rodent/monkey-somethings. Fortunately, when they named the article they showed more restraint than the last article in this batch...

Just wait and see.

Rating: 2/5. I dunno, mammalian aliens often kind of bore me. On the other hand, these guys are a bit less typical than usual, so I think that gets them a point.

1408. Unidentified Millinar species. There are two things known of them:

1) They're hermaphroditic.

2) They apparently are the keepers of super-special lost Force techniques.

Rating: 2/5. They get a point for randomness.

1409. Unidentified Neona species. They went extinct twenty thousand years before the movie era thanks to some global warming flooding their whole planet. In the movie era, there was an underwater facility put together to examine their ruins.

...Incidentally, water erosion is like super-destructive and very few things would survive just one thousand years underwater.

Rating: 1/5. Meh.

1410. Unidentified New Republic reptilian diplomat's species. Oh gosh that's a doozy of an article name.

Anyway, they're basically frilled lizard people, which is nice.

On the other hand, there are at least two other frilled lizard people species, both of which are more interesting.

Rating: 2/5. Probably can never have too many frilled lizard people.

-Signing off.