Hey there,
This is just my totally shameless self-promotion for our brand-spankin' new Metroid podcast, called "Wave Beam."
Episode 1 features Metroid Metal and includes special guest Grant Henry!

Head on over to http://www.metroid-database.com if you want to listen! Thanks!

--Infinity's End

Extremely NSFW link ahead:
You can't say I didn't warn you.

As you can see, this kinda proves that Samus has been degraded into little more than a sex object. Samus got her Zero Suit outfit back in 2004 with the debut of Zero Mission, but of course NO ONE played it. Didn't you know, Metroid has never topped 2M copies in sales? Even Metroid Prime only sold a measely 1.49M copies.

Yeah, that's why you rarely see any extra merchandise for it. Big sellers like Mario or Zelda -- whose games sell 6M or more copies -- get their own goddamn clothing line. But Metroid? NOOOOO...

So fast-forward to last year with the release of SSB Brawl. Sexual innuendo from Snake and Samus's armor coming off as part of her move set allowed everyone on earth to FINALLY realize that "Metroid" wasn't a "guy." It's sickening, really. People should have known that Samus was a woman -- SHE'S BEEN AROUND FOR 23 YEARS, PEOPLE! You think all this art was made after Zero Mission came out? No f'ing way -- most of that stuff in that DA gallery was drawn in the last year, I'd bet money on it. And 9 FUCKING PAGES OF THIS? COME ON!!

You hear that? Sorry, it's just my eyes rolling VERY LOUDLY...
I'm really sick of how no one gives a fuck about Metroid. It's extremely frustrating. Sure, gamers who will stumble upon this blog will probably be familiar with the games, but even people like Dyson can be cold-hearted old fogeys who won't give the Prime games a chance because they're "FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS." Gimme a break. I was just as leery about Metroid Prime when it was announced but I ended up loving every minute of them. They're brilliantly amazing, well-crafted games. AND NO ONE CARES.

Don't diss the games because they're "Not Metroid," enjoy them because they're new, fun experiences. There are easily 50 (or more) things you can do in Metroid Prime that you still can't do in modern FPS's. I started re-playing through Prime after not touching it for at least 5 years and I can safely say it's probably the best game ever released on the Gamecube. Wind Waker and RE4 are in a very close second. But Prime was a NEW, innovative gameplay experience and it is STILL a hell of a lot of fun. The attention to detail in that game is astounding! It's just a feat of genius by the Retro team.

So I guess big N is just playing the "Sex Card" now with Samus to get some more sales. I'll admit, even I was a little surprised at ZSS's looks and her overabundance of shapely features. She's basically naked. You play as Samus, and you get to run around as a fucking naked girl. What could be better?

I truly hope Other M doesn't end up stooping to the low and have a "shower scene" or something. Now that would really put a killing blow on any shred of dignity that Samus had left as a female game character.

After Chad's blog about Muscle March, I couldn't help myself. I HAD to do the right thing. So enjoy.

If anyone wants it in different resolutions, feel free to post below and request them!

So this is more or less my nitpicky, fanboyish "review" of Watchmen which I just saw today. It's long. If you decide to read it, I thank you for your time.

There be spolers. OH yes. I warned you.

The intro was amazing. Seriously, amazing. I was enthralled by the first minute of the movie. While I was sitting there watching the credits go by, for the first time, it finally sunk in: "Holy shit. They made the fucking "unfilmable" Watchmen movie." Then the Comedian scene occurred and I was floored. I really couldn't believe it. It was the comic in movie form. What everyone says is true: almost every single scene in the movie is perfectly recreated, panel for panel, from the comic.

The movie expectedly leaves a few things out, like most comic-to-movie conversions usually do, but what they did leave out was not too important (I’ll get to that later). However there was other stuff they left in, which could have been removed and replaced with some other things, which makes me wonder when that kind of decision is made, do they compare it to other scenes? Or is it just a timing thing?

I loved this movie. In fact, there were many times where the scenes were so visually arresting and loyal to the source material that it drove me to tears (the good kind of tears) from being just so fucking perfect. Of course, I was let down by a few things. I'll start off with the good points:

A lot of the special effects/cgi were also very fun to watch: the glass castle Dr. Manhattan makes on Mars, flying around in Nite Owl's ship, the jailbreak scene, and all the fight scenes were great. There were also a lot of very gory, violent scenes. Sometimes the scenes were overly violent, like one of the first changes I noticed: Instead of Rorschach setting the first man he killed’s house on fire, and watching him burn alive while contemplating existence, what it means to be a masked hero, and deciding to take matters into his own hands, he instead cuts the guy's head open with a butcher's knife, like a watermelon.

Other things I liked: Bubastis looks purrrrfect (but he is only shown at the end and is in like 4 scenes), all the costumes look amazing, a lot of the dialogue is taken directly from the book, and I really didn't mind the "new" ending as bad as I was expecting to. Let's see... what else? Oh yeah: Rorschach steals the show. Remember how awesome he was in the book? Remember how you couldn’t wait to get to the next page that had Rorschach in it? Yeah, he's pretty much still that awesome (but he was never shown eating sugar cubes. A minor detail? Perhaps.). I think I remember reading a review that said something along the lines of “Jackie Earle Haley was born on this Earth to play the role of Rorschach.” And I couldn’t agree more. His performance is that good. And you hardly ever see his face!


Now onto the bad stuff:
DR. MANHATTAN:
Firstly, animation movements and more specifically, the mouth movements of CG on Dr. Manhattan: disappointing. Well not like Beowulf bad, but overall there were some definite uncanny valley moments. On the other hand, there are some other scenes where they did an amazing job with him. Totally convincing. That's to be expected, but I'm very sorry there were some scenes that turned out the way they did. I was happy they kept him nude for a good portion of the scenes he was in, but I’ve noticed a lot of immature comments (probably those who didn’t read the book) who don’t understand that he didn’t need clothing or much else, for that matter, to live. (Comparatively, though, they were very gracious to Doc’s member.) Dr. Manhattan talks very softly and slowly. He doesn’t have an echo in his voice or anything special like they do in the Motion Comic, he just sounds like a normal guy. Almost a little too normal...almost to the extent of sounding weak. I’m sure they made that decision for clarity’s sake, but it’s noticeable. And at times, his body movement seems like it's entirely in slow motion, which is something I'm not sure Zack did on purpose (since he's obsessed with slo-mo shots) or it was just poor, unconvincing CG. He’s also way too buff for his own good. I know Dr. Manhattan was definitely close to being a “perfect being,” but his physique is way too close to a bodybuilder, which at times is a bit unsettling, and in some scenes he comes across more akin to a big blue wrestler than a man who has no imperfections in his body structure. To this day, no one has ever been able to best Gollum for best CG actor. Who knows when that day will come. But it wasn't just the CG either: the actor who played Richard Nixon, while doing a perfect job matching mannerisms and voice, had an extremely unconvincing makeup job that stands out every time. If you can just keep telling yourself "ok, yeah that's Nixon, sure," it might not be so bad, but there were plenty of closeup shots of this actor in full makeup and it just. looked. bad.

SILK SPECTRE:
As most people have already pointed out, Malin Ackerman’s performance was underwhelming. There are some scenes that are just flat out, *poorly acted.* And I’m not usually noticing things like that when I watch movies. She also has almost no backstory at all, and neither did Nite Owl. So maybe them both having non-existent backstories is why they got together? >_> You never see the scene where she throws her drink in the Comedian’s face, you never see the scene where she goes into the den and breaks the snow globe while her parents are bickering. She doesn’t even smoke. In fact, the only people who smoke are the Comedian and Big Figure! Like, do you still think “oh we shan’t be showing bad smoking habits to the kiddies,” when you have people taking butchers knives to people’s heads? Gimme a break. The movie is rated R, fucking give me a goddamn rated R movie. Don’t peddle to me like I’m immature.
Silk Spectre was nothing more than a pretty face. She didn’t even need to be in the movie because she hardly served any purpose other than being a pretty face. She didn’t even seem convincing enough to Dr. Manhattan on Mars. All he did was look at her and realize, “You exist the way you are purely based on random chance, and that’s pretty close to being a miracle. Ok, I’ll give Earth another go.” When she realized the Comedian was daddy dearest, I felt nothing. Not because it wasn’t tragic, but because the movie never set us up to the improbability that he was her father. And they never even touched on his scar deforming his face so that he looked like he was perpetually sneering (like the Joker). They almost downplayed the scar/face deformation. And that, my friends, is tragic...almost to the point of being, dare I say it, a joke.

VEIDT/OZYMANDIAS:
The moment I saw the actor chosen for this character I questioned it. And I think in the end I was right. The actor was too skinny, too weak, and completely awful and impassionate to take on the role of Veidt. He did not portray the character well at all. And he looks like an 18-year old boy. There are some parts with him that are just flat out boring to watch. His dialogue is just completely uncompelling and flat out boring. He isn’t nearly as sinister as he is in the book, and he doesn’t come off as “the world’s smartest man” either. He isn’t the kind of guy that you just love to hate him because he’s so damn smart and clever, and way in the back of your mind you admire him and almost pity him for being so selfless and selfish at the same time. Yeah, this guy is none of those things. Sorry Zack, you lost me on Adrian.

Oh right, they introduced Hollis Mason just to have that 1 conversation with Dan, and then we NEVER SEE HIM EVER AGAIN. Guess we'll have to wait for the Director's Cut DVD, eh Zack?


Like I said before, scene for scene, the movie pretty much follows the timing and plot of the comic to a T. Right down to the little drip of ketchup that falls on the New Frontiersman guy's smiley face shirt at the end. This movie was made for fans, by a fan. It was a fan-made movie, and it really, truly tries its damn hardest to be respectful to its original source. Watchmen should have been, at the very least, a 2-part movie. At the most, an awesome mini-series. But it’s not. And here we are, and there’s nothing to be done about it. In the end, should Watchmen never have been made into a film? Probably, but at least it was still pretty damn fun and entertaining way to kill 2.5 hours.

A while back last year, while clicking through a multitude of random things on Wikipedia, I came upon the article for Caduceus. For those not aware, the Caduceus looks like this:


For most Americans, unfortunately, this symbol is synonymous with medicine or medical pratice of any kind.

Now, the reason I say "unfortunately" is because if you read through that article you might find something quite surprising. I found it surprising, anyway, and ever since that day I've made it something I love to relay to other people.

You ready for this? Ok here goes...

The meaning of the Caduceus, historically, has NOTHING to do with medicine. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
A brief mythology lesson shows that the Caduceus is the wand or staff of Hermes, who was "the messenger of the gods, guide of the dead and protector of merchants, gamblers, liars and thieves." (Wikipedia)

In short, around the mid-to-late 19th Century, the Caduceus started becoming used as (and later became synonymous with) the symbol for medicine -- it was a mistake which was used INSTEAD OF the Rod of Asclepius, which is a staff with a single snake wrapped around it. The American Medical Association used the Caduceus for a time, too, but it later changed to the Rod in 1910.

By that time, it seems, the damage was already done. The general consciousness of this country forever has the Caduceus embedded in its head for all time. Next time you're driving around town -- take a look at all the signs and ads for medical practices of any kind. 9 times out of 10 they will have the Caduceus in some form or another hanging up somewhere.

I just started playing Bioshock recently. And of course, this symbol is EVERYWHERE. All the medicine/first aid kids have the symbol on it. The medical area even has a giant metal Cadeceus sculpture hanging on the wall:


Since the time period of the game is supposed to be during the 1960's, (way past the time the AMA corrected its mistake) you would think this idea would have been something the creators of Rapture would have known about, but it looks like 2K Games made that huge oversight. Intentional or not.

I know it's a very petty and picky thing to complain about, and it definitely does not detract from anything else in the game. I am, quite literally, enjoying the lviing hell out of this game. But on the downside, 2K games have just added another notch to propagating this sad, unfortunate fallacy in the American consciousness and I felt it worthy to share with you all.

Hey all. Just another blog post that will probably just go right under the radar with all my others.

Before we had RCA as the standard for things we hooked up to televisions, and before HDMI, digital audio jacks, or any of that stuff, we had this:


So for all you old-school gamers (wonder when that's going to turn into "old-timer"...) out there,
you'll probably remember this little gray dongle that helped take you from crappy reality into the wonderful world of video games.

Now, for those that were forced to use this (and possibly some that still do) because we had to hook our consoles up to a shitass, 13-inch television in our old bedrooms, there's a little switch on the back of the console that says "Ch3/4." We had to choose whether to use Channel 3 or 4 on our television sets instead of pressing "INPUT" OR "VIDEO" on our TV's.

SO which one should I choose? Why would it matter?
My hometown unfortunately dedicated Channel 3 to something:

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY.

Channel 3 was what I dubbed "The Christian channel." Of course it was nothing more than propaganda to Christianity. Being a decided athiest by the very early age of 10 years old, I HATED this channel. It was like this, every time I was done with my games and I turned off my console. I would hear PRAISE JESUS!!! or some other crazy Christian exclaimation. I would see a big fat man with glasses and a microphone, pacing back and forth, sweating his ass off on stage. His cherry-red face - due to the combination of being burnt from tanning salons and his top shirt button being too tight on his neck - screaming about the importance of the teachings of Christ. It was horrible.

Christianity. CHRISTIANITY is why I chose channel 4. If I have anything good to say about Christianity, it was that they helped making my EXTREMELY DIFFICULT decision so incredibly easy. Thanks a lot, guys.