December 2000

12/23/00 10:15 AM
Putting hte Griswald family to shame...
Maybe some people just have too much time. And i thought I was one of thos people. I guess not.
    Yay, happy birthday. Whee... On a completely unrelated note, I've been wroking on a new kitbash that is not Transformers related, expect to see something sometime, but first I have ot find a mini fan for it. Not muchotherwise, just the picturs above mostly. Happy Holidays or something like that. usually for Christmass I go through and replace all the boring HR tags with some animated Chrismas lights, but I seem to have put it off too long this year. Oh well.

12/21/00 10:15 PM
The only truely fun part of any shooter is killing the bystanders...For some people, downloading large files like say, The Oni Demo, would take maybe 20 minutes. For others, like say, me, it takes a good several hours overperiod of a few days. Pretty fun game though. Kick the shit out of a bunch of people, or shoot them if you like. It's funner to puch them, kick them, and throw them around though. Or do both at once. The stairs in the first level got a bi repeditive though. It felt like every room ended in a stairway that was identical to every other staircase I'd been on. The whole thing seems kind of like a Ghost int he Shell rip off, what with the karate/gun wielding chick heroine, and the impied computer influence in the players. I still find myself wondring why I can't interact with more of the surroundings after shenmue and Deus Ex. It felt like in Deus Ex I could pick up and move just about anything. hen again, Oni isn't actually a FPS. It's more the perspective of Metal Gear or Tomb Raider.
    Speaking of Tomb Raider, I've tainted my console game collection by buying Tomb Raider: The Last Revolation for Dreamcast. I couldn't holdmyself with the price only being 10 bucks. Anyway, after playing for an hour and still not finishing the training level, I suddenly realized why I hated Tomb Raider 1 when I bought it for PC and gave the game up.
Anyway, Saturday is my birthday, and I'm turning 21, so my parents have these great plans to basically go and get me plastered, which will probably be cut short since I have to work ont he 24th at 8 AM. Welcome to Kay Bee, mind if I vomit in your bag?

12/17/00 2:00 PM
I would like to take this opportunity to complain about Gamecave No no, don 't bother actually clicking that link, the place isn't there anymore, or more it is but it was bought out bu express.com, which in turned has fucked it all up. You see a while back, when Game Cave was still Game Cave, they had quite a few import titles of games, with actually reasonable prices. also thye had a lot of cool import action figures, like Beast Wars NEO and Mega Man models. All at actually pretty reasonable prices. I mean, Thier BEast Wars import prices were considerably less than Hasbro's, and Hasbro frickin' owns Beast Wars. Now, all Game Ca... sorry, express.com has is a buch of shitty trendy shit you can buy for considerably less in any local retail store. Basically, it's fucking stupid now, and all they have are McFarlane figures. Anyway, I still don't have Lunar 2 yet, and I bought a cool Smurfs game on Atari. Well the game s cool when you manage to master the controls, my brother was playing it first and thought there was no way past the first screen since you can't jump far or high enough to get over the fence.

12/14/00 10:10 PM
when you die, you will have to watch Satan hula hoop. Try not to die...As I mentioned yesterday, one of my "hobbies" is buying things I generally don't need. Like knockoff Transformers tapes. Anyway, this year 've cut back considerably on my Anime buying. Mostly because generally Anime is too overpriced for my tastes. I think I bought the Lain DVD the other day, 1 Tenchi tape and a few other cheap ones at a flee market so far. But that was before I discovered this great store (which is unfortunately going out of buisniness, though it wouldn't be nearly as great if it were not going out of buisniness (I'm not talking about the whole chain mind you, just the local store)), anyway this great store that had all it's merchandaise at liquidation prices. God I love sales, escpecially sales where everythingin the store is 60% off. Anyway, besides a small stack of anime I found the afore mentioned Transformers wannabe tapes, and a nifty Mega Man tape. The RoboFormers tapes are incredibly poor. First, the box is made of really cheap cardboard, it's much thinner than normal VHS carboard, second, the tapes have no lables of any kind. They are just black tapes, what's more they had no been rewound before being shipped and I thought I had bought a blank tape at first. Also my VCR has made it's best effort to fix the trackin but alas can't manage to do it, so the show has this ugly static line directly across the middle of the screen. The show actuall appears to be some early 80s Anime I've never seen before, it has the same sort of animation seen in Robotech and that other one, uh.. Captain Harlock I think.
    On another note... Lunar 2 seems to have actually been released... possibly... I had heard a possibility of maybe the 13th. But I never received a call from Babbages telling me my preorder had arrived. Then on the 14th, I was at work and someone asked if we had gotten the game in, and I asked if it was even out and he said it should be. So I went next door to Babbages and asked and they said it was supposed ot have been released the day before (the 13th) but apparently thier warehouse was in a blizzard and thier piolets were too chicked shit to fly in it. No realy, I don't mind that much, at this point I don't think the game could possibly top the entertainment value I've been geting from thies whole situation. At least Working Designs is honest, ont he front page when you highlight the "Our Games" button, it has a little pop up that reads "Game Release Date Guesses". Though considering it's THIER OWN FRICKING game, you'd hink they'd at least be able to get even remotely close to the release date.

12/14/00 10:10 PM
I swear this is not an edit, this ACTUALLY appears at the begining of the movie...Sometimes I like the think I have more hobbies than I actually do. Actually mostly I shit the day away sleeping, playing video games and reading USENET. Recently I've also (once again) become addicted to IRC, not thanks to anyone in particular. Anyway, I also like to spend all the hard earned cash I earn. when I'm not buying Transformers I usually buying other junk I don't need. Like movies and used atari games. It was also 20% off for mall employees day at Suncoast Video, so I had to go off and plurge a bit. Besided getting Lain on DVD, which was, wierd to say the least, I also got the Maxx tape and a couple of the Transformers Re-released tapes. There is a reasonably strong possibility that if I can get modivated I'll make up a little page on all the silly screwed up stuff in the Transformers episodes, but for now I just have the one picture shown above. That is real, there is this ad thing for the Transformers, GI-Joe and Jem at the begining and at the end of the add it shows that picture, then Starscream pops the ballon with his finger. anyway if I learned anything from these two Transformer tapes, it's that Ultra Magnus kicks ass when he's is in "berserker mode" and using celebrity voiced in the movie version of a cartoon, then using chap regular actors for the show, is a bad idea. I mean, I seem to recall Galvatron sounded a litle more like Spock, and Wreck-Gar was a little more British and Eric Idle-ish. Anyway, I'll have to get working on my to-do list before Bush takes office and DESTROYS THE WORLD in a comical yet ironic case of mistaken identity betweent he Russians and a deer while Bush is drunk with his Texas buddies.

12/12/00 10:30 PM
Late one night, Zak's in bed....alone....again....I'm not dead yet. Sorry. Anyway, I've been a bit busy lately, what with finals and two jobs and all, but soon I shall be leaving one of those jobs (tonight is my last night actually), and tomorrow is my last final. Also I didn't get into the University I wanted to go to after I finish at my current school, but I'm not bitter or anything about it. It's just in the future, if, nay, WHEN I become famous and make newspaper headlines I'm going to clip the articles and mail the articles and the rejection letter back to the school along with a print out of the words "FUCK YOU TOO BITCH!" in big bright red bold friendly letters. Then I will use my influence (I figure if I'm making front page headlines I'll have influence) to have the fuck who rejected me fired. I'm not bitter though. Er.. otherwise I picked up another 20 dollar bundle of atari games, and entertained myself with this. And remember, as long as its used only TWICE, it's OK to reuse it.
Additionally reguarding the above picture, there are several things that can make a game. Killing a two headed squirrel with a 9 iron is one of them. Being put into a Stupid Machine (not a machine that is stupid mind you, but a machine that causes stupidity) is another. Plus some other things, but mostly the squirrel thing.

12/01/00 10:30 PM
It's almsot the same, only different!Did you know, that apparently there was a new Blaster Master game released for Game Boy? There have been so many remakes of old NES titles recently, most of them being for color only though, so I didn't bother to get them since that would require a color Game Boy, and well, I'd rather just wait for Game Boy Advanced. Anyway, I don't think words can describe how cool this game is. It's exactly what a remake should be, it has it's own original plot, that's just as cheesy as the original, but it still plays exactly the same as the original. Granted there are a few differences, but you still drive the car though jungle caves, you jump in and out into "worthless little guy mode", the dungeons are in overhead view mode and all the enemies are the same. The graphics look like they were pulled stright from the NES. Unforunately the bomb trick does not work, and you can only fire one bomb at a time, which makes some enemies a bit tricky to kill, but I havn't really had trouble with any of it yet, other then having no idea where to go after the first boss. Also they added a password so you can continue instead of playing through the long ass game again every time you die.
In other news, The snow today made the roads rather slick. I had a nice adventure running my car off into a ditch on an off ramp. Th worst part was the hour wait for the tow truck to arrive and pull me out.