I Love Being Strong; or Radio Wada.

What is the point of an adult content warning click-through without some form of adult content?

Holy crap. This was probably one of the most draining gaming experiences I've ever seen. As tempted as I am, I'm going to refrain from giving away the ending. But... man. The final moments of the last match are equal to the final moments of any Rocky film you care to name, which for those who don't know me is almost the highest praise I can lavish on something. (Warning: you need an hour of free time, and won't be able to multi-task very effectively due to subtitles. With that in mind I demand that you enjoy.)

Topic to come back to: Game Center CX. (At least I've finally seen some! So happy and grateful!)


A bit of gaming lately, but not all that much for obvious reasons. The demo of Doom is now available in your browser. (Notes for optimal performance. Less tabs plus opening in separate window equals smoother running.) Downsides: no music, first episode only, no persistent save. Upsides: it's fucking Doom.

(An edited paragraph of mediocre commentary on 8bit Killer, with the only thing of substance being my statement that it would be nice if indie game makers could give we, their players, an extremely broad estimation of the amount of time that it may take us to complete their game, in hours, if it's linear like that. Although with the presence of any kind of save system it becomes less relevant. But would still be nice. Also, though I wasn't blown away by 8bit Killer, the creators' pending Hydorah certainly looks promising.)

I've been obsessing over a particular Flash game, very casual, difficult and supremely addictive. I've been trying to do something funny with it. We'll see how it goes.


Aw, what the hell. Why would I try to tease you guys while I work on my little nonsense fan homage? It's Too Many Ninjas. While the term "casual game" is pretty fiercely debated amongst the professional dork elite, I hold up TMN as a perfect specimen of same. (Actually, it's more a battle between gaming's thinkers and its marketing people.) With anything this seemingly simple, the love is in the details. Your samurai's interstitial animations, the almost imperceptible lag in striking, the dignity of his poses, the beauty of the background, the audio cue of level advancement, the fairness of the hit detection, the soft -swish swish- as the ninjas jump around (which took me quite a while to even notice and identify), the satisfying clang of katana against hira-shuriken, the sense of quiet elation when you deflect two simultaneously incoming shaken, and, though it has nothing at all to do with anything, the pedigree of the creator's doctoral career in bioethics at Princeton. Dr. Foddy, my thanks to you.



Top score so far is 106. That, by the way, for those who missed it, is what we call an, ahem, challenge. (The actual online top score is 180, far out of my range, but this is a local competition.)

A short and favorite Kotonoha scanlation of a strip, The IT Revolution, from Radio Wada, a manga artist about whom I know very little other than that I like what he does, and he's cool in that heta uma (bad 'n nice) way that I've been digging this past year and still haven't written about. This is the full strip, to be read from right to left.



Star Trek observations: is a yeoman just a female space chick? Ship combat pre Next Generation is without shield percentages, which eliminates a back and forth exchange of barrages and turns it into a slower, more methodical rock paper scissors affair, often with hours of deadlock and then split second resolution in the form of near instant death (I say near instant only because the other ship has to survive long enough for the enemy captain to tell Kirk how much he admires him). Different, and kind of cool. Of course, in TNG phasers can't be set to overload, and you can't nearly destroy the Enterprise by pushing it into Warp 8 for too long, in effect increased mechanical fragility, also sometimes rather cool. Another TNG feature missing from TOS is the Enterprise's low, droning CPU-cooling-fan-underwater hum, nearly never not present. I imagine that if you could go in and just strip out that audio track there would be a palpable sense of something amiss even if you weren't able to identify what was different.



Digging those short skirts, of course. Uhura's got some stems, man... damn.

(I'm going to say this in the way that Joe would if he were the one relaying it to me.)

Oh my God, [eyes widening] Oooh my God.
Via (what else) Wikipedia:
"Nichelle Nichols planned to leave Star Trek in 1967 after its first season, but Martin Luther King, Jr. persuaded her to stay, stating that she was a role model for the black community."

I will resist the urge to make terrible, "I have a dream... of Uhura," jokes and just say: that is dope.






Ah, so torn. New banner time? Screen-grabbing is my new favorite pastime, and a wonderful source of post imagery that I feel some sense of accomplishment over, but am I updating faster than visitors can see them? Still have to make my mega banner reprise post at some point, which will help alleviate my guilt, so... new banner! (Take that, Sexy Videogameland, with your annual banner updates! I'm so fresh my three readers are actually missing content!)

Exclamation overload!!! ... !!!

Deep breath. Okay, we're good.

Lastly. So readers may be wondering, "My god. Is it true? Does Lin Swimmer actually -gasp- prefer Kirk to Picard?" Oh, readers. Do we know one another so tangentially? My heart can never truly be led astray. (I feel like a very silly writer right now. Where is my gravitas? Please don't find me, Dr. Foddy.)