Today was a veritable Nerdpacolypse for my girlfriend. We hit the local comic shop for Free Comic Book Day, and saw Spider-Man 3.

FCBD is a magical day of the year when your local comic shop has special sampler comics or actual full issues to hand out FOR FREE. I love it, because there’s all these crazy indie samplers with stuff I normally wouldn’t think to look at. Unfortunately for me, Macon’s comic shop isn’t that hot. It turns out the free books go out in groups. All shops large and small get about half a dozen different books, and then there are two more additional packs of books that go to larger stores. All I got today was this years and last years Simpson’s comics. Still, that is better than nothing at all I guess.

Spider-man 3… I won’t spoil anything for anyone. I liked the movie a lot, but it has some faults. It’s Lord of the Rings long, and that makes my ass hurt. I was mentally yelling “wrap it up” during the closing scenes. I liked the two major bad guys, but I think it would have been so much better if they had just left one for Spider-man 4. One just sort of exists, and the other doesn’t get nearly enough time on screen. None of that killed the movie for me. It is good, but it isn’t as good as Spider-man 2. I guess I’m just happy it isn’t an X-men 3. Ugh.

Now for the really bad. The theater we saw it in was filled with babies. Not people bitching about the inclusion of this character and how they got that character wrong. No. Real babies. People brought infants to what had to be a 3 hour movie. On top of those brilliant parents, there were a lot of people in the theater who could not handle any part of the movie that didn’t involve punching people in the face. If two people are sad on screen, and one of them cries, that is COMEDY GOLD. I understood it in 300 (which got the same reaction with the audience I saw it with), but the actors in this film were pretty good, and it wasn’t that hammy.

Basically, I’m rapidly becoming an old man who will only see movies with explosions or fighting on an afternoon or a Sunday. These damn kids can’t take a movie about a man in underpants punching people seriously!!!!

Oh, and I may have my thesis turned in on Monday. I’m sure I’ll mention it here at some point, and then I’ll probably never have to mention it ever again!

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When I was a kid, my mom would more or less let us get any cereal we wanted. Actually, that’s half true. She let us think that, but she was really getting us any cereal she had a coupon for and lots of awful cereals my friends never got to try had lots of coupons. Normally we stuck to the Pebbles and the Cookie Crisp, but once in awhile we’d get something a little strange. Here are some of my “favorite” memories.

Nerd Cereal

Nerd cereal came in a normal box with two thin bags of cereal inside for each of the different flavors. Nerd cereal was a cruel, cruel mistress. At first It tasted quite good and was very crunchy. Unfortunately, 30 seconds later you were left with a disgusting soup of fruit flavored milk mud. Disgusting.

OJ’s

OJ’s was an orange flavored cereal. In the spirit of the chocolate cereals the exist to this day that leave you with chocolate milk to sip up, OJ’s was awesome enough to leave your milk orange juice flavored. This cereal lasted one year, and I was about 5 when it was out. I remember that EVERY time my brother and I picked out cereal, we pondered a box of OJ’s. The part of my brain that wants to dress up a little dog as Theodor Roosevelt said YES. The part of my brain that remembers to put on pants in the morning said NO.

Nintendo Cereal

It’s a cereal! WOW! That lyric haunts me to this day.

Nintendo (or NIN! TEN! DO!) Cereal was an other split box production like nerds. I think this was made by Ralstons. They were and continue to be the go to people for media tie-in cereals, and if I am not mistaken, they also make pet food. The taste of their cereal should be a dead give away. Most of their stuff is rebranded generics or a weird mix of stuff. Donkey Kong cereal was just Captain Crunch. The Crunches were supposed to be barrels. Spider-man cereal was chex mix “webs” and marshmallow spider-man shapes.

The Mario side was sort of Mario shaped Trix pieces. It wasn’t bad, but nothing to write home about. The Zelda side of the box was a fucking nightmare of horror. It tasted like death, and the only edible bits were the chex mix “nets”. The Zelda series didn’t include a net of any kind until years later, and even then it was a bug net. (NERD RAGE!!!!!!)

Smores Crunch

This is the greatest cereal I or anyone else has ever had. Do not confuse this with Smorz cereal. That crap has nothing on Smores Crunch. It even ends with a Z like a sad parody of itself. Smores Crunch was basically Golden Grahams, but the pieces were drizzled with chocolate junk instead of boring ass nothing, and it was mixed with little marshmallows. OH MY GOD and you could make Smores bars with it! They were like rice crispy bars only FROM HEAVEN!!!! (You can still make these with Golden Grahams, but you’d be fooling yourself.)

Today is like a little nerd christmas for me.

Marvel Comics’ often delayed mega-event Civil War is wrapping up today with the shipment of issue #7. I know a lot of non-comic readers like to keep up with at least the major changes to a popular characters mythos. People know Superman died and came back, that he’s married, and that he is a registered sex offender in Colorado.

The basis of Civil War is that a terrible tragedy sparks the creation of a registration law for super-powered peoples and others who would throw on a costume and call themselves crime fighters. On paper that sounds like a sane and rational course of action. In practice, they’re sort of stating the argument that registering people who can shoot lasers out of their hands is like registering people for being Jewish. The only reason your eyes don’t roll back into your head reading that in the comics is because the pro-registration people are presented as jerks who will beat you half to death and stick you in prison forever for not signing a piece of paper. That paper can also be used to blackmail you into doing the government’s dirty work if they feel like it.

The conflict so far has resulted in a few D list character deaths and some major A list shake ups. Everyone knows Peter Parker is Spider-man, and Iron Man has gone from fun drunk to a mustache twirling villain of the “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” sort. Also Captain America now only starts sentences with “In the America I remember we didn’t…” and all the X-men are in space including and except Wolverine who is everywhere.

All this leads into this summer’s comic event “World War Hulk”, where presumably Hulk will walk around the Earth punching everyone individually in the face for being a dick. In “World War Hulk: Frontline”, we will see the face punching from the perspective of all the people getting punched in the face. The “World War Hulk: Poster Book” will have the covers of those two books as two-fold posters to tape to your wall or something. Should be great. I can’t wait to see NFL SuperPro get punched in his stupid face.

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Here’s another DS review. Why game reviews? I need something to write.

I don’t own this game, but I played a co-worker’s copy for roughly an hour after work a couple of weeks ago. In this 60 minutes, I absorbed every bit of information anyone would ever need to know about this gem of a game.

Elite Beat Agents is a rhythm game for the Nintendo DS similar in concept to Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero. Unlike those two games though, you don’t get to make a spectacle of yourself (retard at the mall in an Invader Zim shirt or drunk, bad ass pretend rock and roll Jesus in your friend’s living room respectively in my personal experience). In this rythm game, you stare intently at your nintendo DS poking it to the beat of the Avril Levine song “Sk8r Boi”. The inclusion of this song fills me with a joy bordering on glee. The song and artist who created it are so awful as to be comical.

Despite my hopes, this version of the game is not about FBI officers who happen to be really good at masturbating. These government agents are good at dancing to beats, and use their “power” to cheer common people through ordinary tasks such as helping a babysitter get the kids to bed so her boyfriend can rail her, preventing a gay wedding, and summoning the spirit of a little girl’s dead father in the most fucked up 4 minutes of my game playing history. While the job remains the same, it should be noted that the original Japanese version of this game starred cheerleading nazis.

There’s been a lot of bitching by fans of the original game. The original was a Japanese exclusive, but those smelly dorks with long unwashed hair at the store in the mall with those little war games with orcs in tanks imported it. Most of the bitching is about the soundtrack. The freedom loving AMERICAN version’s soundtrack is apparently “gay” and “lame” and “teh suxorz LOL kekekekkekekeke >___<” The original soundtrack was a collection of J-pop songs. J-pop is DDR music in the Japanese moon language. It’s also fucking garbage in Japan, but American Japanophiles worship every dog link that country squeezes out. It’s crap. Our version has YMCA, a song all about where to score some of that sweet gay man sex. Thanks Elite Beat Agents!!

As for the actual game play? You poke dots. Or something. It’s sort of fun if you like poking dots all day.

No one cares what the maker of some mildly popular student cartoons thinks, but the internet was built so that anyone could show off their inflamtory opinions to the world. I also need to write in my blog more to justify even having one.

When I was a little kid, my dream was to work at Electronics Boutique. It was heaven. I could be around video games all day long and play whatever I wanted. Games were also really expensive, so the salesmen had to be very wealthy. When I was about 21, that dream came true.

Working at a game store sucks. First of all, every loser who hangs out at the mall wants to work in the game store. Thanks to this endless supply of idiots, the pay is pretty low. We aren’t talking Hot Topic low; they have an even bigger supply of dorks because girls want to work there, too. The food court people took home a few more dollars an hour than me. The only reason I didn’t make minimum wage was because they needed to at least try to hang on to the few employees who didn’t rob the store blind. I never once stole from the store, but luckily my assistant manager stole all sorts of stuff an implicated me, ruining any chance I had at getting a raise or a key to the store when I became the head sales associate. My store discontinued the head sales associate when it was my turn.

I wrote first of all like I had a huge list. There is one, but I’m drifting way off topic…

Working in a game store opened my eyes to a couple of things about gaming. For example: Madden is retarded. For the last several years, the game has been nothing but a graphical upgrade and a roster update. For the diehard fan, I suppose that is reason enough to get a new game. Frankly, I don’t believe it’s worth the full price of a new game, but that’s just me. What killed me is that people would hound the store for days before the game came out, and waited in lines on launch day. Some people attempted to camp out, but the mall was having none of that. All this for some slightly better graphics, a roster update, and stadium mode where can sell hot dogs and beer and change the color of the seats or something. On top of that, a popular game rarely ever sells out for more than a day or two at a time. Some niche market RPG about gender questionable child with white spikey hair who can summon earth guardians by singing into a microphone add-on may sell-out for a week or so, but the next Grand Theft Auto will always be available somewhere. My point is that Madden is always going to be available for purchase after launch, and I don’t get the rush to buy it in the first place.

Now game systems hurt my brain, too. If you live in this country right now, take a little trip down to the toys’r'us, wal-mart, target, or bestbuy. Chances are there is a group of well fed (euphamism!) people camping out infront of the store. I’m assuming you know the PS3 and the Wii come out this weekend… actually I think the PS3 launched last night? Well chances are the Wii lines will be forming now.

Anyway, where was I… oh, yes. These people are idiots… and I used to be one. I spent the night at a Toys’r'us in Baltimore for the Nintendo Gamecube and the Sega Dreamcast. I sure know how to pick a winner.

There is little point to getting a console on launch day. Launch systems have a higher rate of failure than the systems produced in later batches. That Dreamcast I waited up all night for only lasted about 8 months before the drive died on me. There were stories all the time about 360s and their dreaded red lights. Working at a game store, we got a criminal amount of PS2s and Xboxes back after they launched.

Nintendo usually puts out a solid product. This is anecdotal, but my launch Gamecube still works fine. They have another problem: games. The Wii may turn this around, but the gamecube had no games of interest for months after it was released. Sony has a worse problem in that they only have one game of interest for launch, and it’s out-classed by 360’s new Gears of War.

No one asked for my opinion, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway. If you really want a new game system, you’re probably best off getting the Xbox 360 right now. The Nintendo Wii is cheap enough where it is awful tempting, but I’m curious what the attitude about the system will be once the initial hype machine dies down. If it keeps up, I’m getting it sooner, rather than later. The PS3 is a tough sell right now. If you do not own a 360, I would wait and get the PS3 in 6 months to a year. There will be games then, and the probable bugs will have been worked out of the hardware.

There’s also the whole blu-ray vs HD-DVD thing. Frankly, I cannot afford a HDTV and couldn’t give a shit.

My rant sort of tuckered itself out… I was just killing 30 minutes waiting for my laundry anyway.

In closing, get a DS. This thing kicks ass.

I have a Nintendo DS. A lite, but not the pink one. I should have waited a few weeks. This may not come as a surprise, but I enjoy owning the “sort of gay” version of anything I purchase.

This will hopefully be the first in a series of reviews on the games I’ve played for the DS. First up…

Rocket Slime

Rocket slime is an adorable top down adventure game in the Zelda formula with a twist. The twist is that every so often you’ll hop in a giant, adorable tank and rain hell and destruction on some other adorable tank in an attempt to kill their adorable crew of bunnies and cats first.

The plot of the game is troubling to me. You are a slime in the Dragon Warrior RPG world. I’ve never really played a Dragon Warrior game, but I know enough to tell you that slimes are a common low level enemy you grind into oblivion in an effort to level up high enough to stand a chance against the first major boss or two. I think the blue ones are weak against fire and the red ones against water. That could be final fantasy. Whatever, the point is slimes are like the more adorable goombas of Dragon Warrior. They are cannon fodder.

In a period of peace between the RPG Dragon Warrior games and the slime genocide each installment brings, the slimes have settled in a town dubbed Slimia. Within an hour of playing the game, you should come to some pretty chilling conclusions about the sociopolitical structure of Slimia and the economy of this town. First, it appears that a full third of the 101 slimes living within the town are royalty. That’s right. A full third of the population are living off the labor of the other 2/3. Sort of.

There’s also a large religious sect in town. At least half-a-dozen slimes make up the church power structure, with just as many hardcore faithful who remain in the temple praying night and day. After the town’s destruction at the hand’s of outside forces, priority number one is the reestablishment of the church. The church is where you “save” your game. So the church saves? Interesting.

We clearly have a corrupt theocratic puppet government, but are they oppressing their own people? It doesn’t appear so, despite a massive housing shortage. Like I said, there are 101 people living in town. Even with the church folk and royalty accounted for, that leaves at least 15 to 20 families of slimes who need homes. There are only about 5 or 6 houses in Slimia. Many slimes just wander the street day and night, and very few have any kind of job to speak of. Still, they all smile. They all seem healthy. The state seems to be providing at least food and health care to the people. Where is the money coming from?

In your adventures throughout the land you will encounter a number of trains and barges that you can leave items and slimes on to be transported home. You uncover the economic mystery the first time you throw an enemy onto the train and return home. Back in Slimia, your once hated foe is friendly as can be. On top of that, there’s only one of any given type. Throw cat monsters onto trains all day, but there will only be one uncharacteristically friendly cat back at home. Clearly the monsters are being brainwashed and sold into slavery. Those that aren’t can be forced into the dangerous job as a crewman on your tank. The life expectancy as a crewman is short, but this is mostly due to the fact that I will often throw crewmen into the guns as ammunition because it is funny.

The peace of your corrupt theocratic slave state is interrupted one day by an invasion of mildly retarded platypus things. The slimes put up a mild resistance, but are quickly put down by a bombardment by a giant adorable platypus tank. Every last slime in town is taken prisoner except you. You, having eaten a flute, are confused as a baseball bat and thrown in the river. Knowing this game is Japanese in origin, you were probably originally confused with an adult novelty item in the original Japanese translation. In the original Japanese version the Platypus things were dressed as Nazis and the enemy tanks all looked like school girls and you defeat them by firing penises at them followed by some sort of rape mini-game using the DS stylus. Rated E for everyone!

The rest of the game is all about you freeing the 100 captive slimes. There’s no slime POW camp to speak of, though. The slimes all seem to have been thrown in treasure chests and left randomly throughout the land. Why? I could see how a few could be misplaced here and there through bureaucratic mix ups but all of them? Perhaps the platypus things are squeamish about genocide? They aim to starve the entire nation of slimes to death, but don’t want any mass graves left as evidence. If years later someone were to encounter a series of corpses in treasure chests, perhaps they’d think it was all the work of a deranged serial killer? I don’t know. I haven’t actually gotten to the part of the game where they explain the motivation of my enemy. I’m really not sure that part is ever coming.

One more thing of note I didn’t know where to place: there’s a rival. In a Japanese RPG, there is almost always a rival. This is the guy who wants to fight you all the time for no real reason. Right before the boss of the game he will either be brutally murdered by you or give his life saving you from the boss. There isn’t much rhyme or reason to it, but he usually has better hair than you and gross animu girls always write the grossest fan fiction about these characters. The rival in this game is a slime with a tank who attempts to beat the crap out of you once per level. The game dubs him “The anti-hero of Slimia”. My understanding of an anti-hero is that he is a scum bag that fights for good. Both Wolverine and The Punisher are anti-heroes. The Punisher is a mass murderer who only kills criminals and the occasional homeless derelict, and Wolverine is a mass murder and blatant pedophile (see: Jubilee and Kitty Pryde). This slime guy is working directly with your enemies in an attempt to destroy you and Slimia. This means either he is attempting to destroy this evil slave state and anyone who would support it (me without much choice if I want to progress in the game) while working for a genocidal regime, or the makers of the game have no clue what an “anti-hero” is.

In closing, Rocket Slime is an adorable multilayered game where there are no heroes and everyone loses.