Top 5 - Good games that bombed commercially

This list is a bit old but who cares. I've only played one of them, Grim Fandango and that game is excellent so I'm going to go ahead and say it's a good list. I always wanted to play Brutal Legend and Beyond Good and Evil. I know you can pick up Brutal Legend for like 2 dollars on Steam. Of course you can also get Rogue Squadron on Steam now, take a guess as to which one I would rather play. Pew Pew Pew!

Just Look at This Idiot

I don't know anything about the South African Premier Soccer League but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Maritzburg United goalkeeper Glenn Verbauwhede is the worst person playing in said league. Just check out this guys buffoonery. Basically he goads the other teams players to make an attempt at the ball and then dives head first into their leagues. The balls on this guy.

Tweetbot Links

12 of the Saddest Locations and Encounters in Skyrim. Ok, I'm seriously impressed. When I played Skyrim I didn't catch any of these. Sure I've been to some of the locations but I never looked around long enough to figure out the stories behind them. Kind of makes me wonder what else I might have missed or what I might have missed in Fallout 3? I'll bet there was tons of stuff I just blew right by. Oh well, I guess that's what internet lists are for.

The Battle of 2017 Could Be Disney v Comic-Con. This is an interesting story to geeks like me. Basically Disney has scheduled their big D23 convention to happen right around the same week as San Diego Comic-Con (the big Comic-Con). Last year Marvel studios barely sent anyone to SDCC, are they going to snub the biggest comic book convention two years in a row? Probably. If Disney is anything it's insular. Why make a big splash at someone else's convention when you can have your own? Is this some sort of trend? Has SDCC's bubble burt? Who knows?

I pay some attention to the convention scene, mostly just for the blog but it's not something I follow with a passion. I will say that there have been a lot of think pieces about just how big comic book/pop culture conventions have grown all across the country. I can't tell you if that growth is unsustainable or not, but I can say I would mind if ECCC tickets got a bit cheaper.

Shocking: Microsoft's AI Tweetbot Learns How To Be A Racist, Sexist Monster In Less Than 24 Hours. I feel like this is less of an indictment against Microsoft and more of an indictment against twitter and how awful the internet is in general.

The Nintendo NX Is Rumored To Be The Most Powerful Console On The Market. Well here's one for you. Everyone already knows the new Nintendo is right around the corner. Nintendo announced just the other day they were going to stop manufacturing the WiiU later this year and it's not like they're not going to make consoles anymore. In theory they might be in the Sega Genesis sweet spot. The Genesis came out almost a full two years before the SNES and was able to pick up a lot of steam with hardware far superior to the 8-bit NES. In theory the Xbone and PS4 have a lot of life left in them, with no direct replacements in sight. If Nintendo can hit the market later this year with a console that's more powerful (maybe even 4K?) can they match the success of the original Wii?

Man just when you thought the console wars were more or less over, here we go again.

Blizzard Says No to Sexy Butts

Strap on your tinfoil hats, we have a video game controversy brewing.

I've blogged a little bit about Overwatch recently. It's an upcoming FPS from Blizzard that's been in beta for what seems like forever. The hook with Overwatch is that instead of playing as a generic space marine or vault hunter you get too choose one of several different characters to play as, each with their own personalities and skill sets. Think Halo meets Street Fighter. While I don't have time to participate in Betas or anything, I think the game looks really cool and was hoping to try it out on my new rig when it comes out.

Enter the controversy. Someone participating in the beta complained to the Blizzard developmental team that one of the characters "victory poses" was just a gratuitous ass shot and really wasn't true to the character (see above picture, the pose on the far left). Blizzard agreed and said they were going to change the pose. I know, what you're thinking WHAT A LOAD OF HORSESHIT! I'M OFFENDED AT YOU BEING OFFENDED!

Or if you aren't a Trump supporter, you probably couldn't care less. Talk about a tempest in a teapot. If you look at all of the character designs and victory poses for Overwatch you'll find plenty of fan service, so it's not like Blizzard took away all the butts. They just changed one pose for one character. Of course this led to tons of outrage on reddit and twitter. Suddenly our first ammendment rights to look at digitally rendered asses are being trampled and if you don't agree you're just a tumblrina or dirty SJW. It's so ridiculously silly.

It's funny, since Pac-Man was corrupting the minds of the youths, video gamers have been fighting a battle over how mainstream culture looks at video games. For the most part we've come a long way but every once in a while something comes along like this that just reinforces the basement dwelling, Cheeto eating, virgin stereotypes. Good job "hardcore gamers", this is exactly the kind of attention you want your hobby to attract.

The Lego Batman Movie Trailer

I'm going to get all hipster on you and mention that this trailer for the upcoming Lego Batman movie technically isn't the first Lego Batman movie. There's Lego Batman, Lego Batman: The Movie and like three Justice League spin off movies, most of which focus on Batman. The Lego Batman movie just happens to be a spin off of The Lego Movie and this first one to appear on the big screen.

Ok, now that I got that out of the way I can tell you about how pumped I am to see this. The Lego Movie was fantastic, I absolutely loved it and am still massively upset that Everything is Awesome wasn't nominated for an Academy Award. Batman wasn't necessarily my favorite character in the movie but I can't imagine them doing a Uni-Kitt/Benny team up movie anytime soon, so I'll take what I can get. Frankly I'm way more excited about watching this than I am Superman v Batman. Nothing I've seen in reviews or heard about it from friends has changed my mind about seeing that one. I'd rather see Zootopia or 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Sterling Archer Reviews Every James Bond Film

This is hilarious, watch it. Also new Archer starts March 31st. You should watch that too, I'm sure it will be equally hilarious.

Hey, Look at Wonder Woman over here!

So word on the street is that Batman v Superman kinda sucks. It probably won't be a "flop", even the worst Batman movies make money (looking at you Batman & Robin). The budget for this thing with all the advertising is an insane $300 million but with international audiences in the mix it'll still probably make $500 million and that's like the worst case scenario. The biggest issue here is that it's going to fade from the national conscious very quickly, not good for a movie that's supposed to be the foundation of DC's version of a shared comic universe.

With that in mind DC and Warner Bros have already released a still from the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. Forget all about that bad press, Malibu Stacy has a new hat!

It looks fine. I still don't understand why all DC movies have to be so monochromatic. I guess we're trading the gloom and darkness of Batman v Superman for the bronzy beaches of Xena the Warrior Princess. I guess it could be ok, I don't really know and at this point don't really care. Way to derail the hype train guys.

Best 80s Cartoon Intro

I have it on good authority that this mash up of cartoon intros from the 1980s is high-larious. I'm without sound here at work so I'm going to have to assume that's true. Really this could have just been soundless clips from GI Joe and Silverhawks and I probably would have still posted it. Man I loved the Silverhawks, Amazon had the first season on Prime for like a minute but now you have to pay for them. I really wish I had rewatched them when I had the chance.

Thanks a lot Obama.

Waste of Time

via - LoadingArtist.com

Overwatch: Recall

I'm not sure how excited to get over the upcoming Blizzard FPS Overwatch. It looks really cool, I love a good squad based FPS, especially one that has varied characters with unique skills and abilities. The thing that gets me is that it's a multiplayer fps AND it's a Blizzard game. I can't devote hours and hours just grinding away at this just to become a competent player. I need a casual game I can pick up and dick around with for an hour maybe 4-5 times a week. I mean people playing the beta are already posting these epic team kill videos on reddit.

I guess we'll wait and see. If Overwatch turns out to be a bust or just way too much of a time commitment there's always No Man's Sky to fall back on. Have you guys heard about No Man's Sky yet?

Microsoft Makes it Rain at GDC

This weekend Microsoft released a statement condemning last week's Xbox GDC Party that featured scantily clad dancers as entertainment. I for one am appalled. How on earth did I miss this story last week?

This whole thing is pretty fantastic. I mean it's certainly not fantastic for any of the women that were at the party or quite frankly some of the men. It's fantastic that in 2016 some dude-bro thought that this was a great idea for a work event. The tech world has probably had it too good too fast. You've got big companies making super bank that are fine with having beer and ping pong tables set up in the office and everyone starts thinking that work isn't work anymore. Work is just an extension of your home life. Before you know it IPAs and Ping Pong are replaced with shots of Jaeger and go-go dancers.

It's a shame this happened under Microsoft's watch. It's a black eye the video game industry doesn't really need right now. One of the local yokels on the radio this morning was saying something to the effect of "well these are the kinds of things these video games cater too". Gamers don't need that, that's the kind of garbage close minded thinking gamers have been fighting against since Pong.

The good news is that Big Redmond came out and without any equivocation apologized for the event and put it's organizers on blast. My guess is someone in San Francisco is about to get a security escort out of the building.

How far back in time could you go and still understand English?

If you're like me at all you spend like 40% of your day daydreaming about going back in time. It doesn't always have to be A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court kind of scenario, sometimes its something as simple as imagining the look on 1982 Steve Wozniak's face as you fire up Game of Thrones on your smartphone.

But lets say you really wanted to get your joust on and you did go back in time like 1,00 years. Would you be able to understand English? I mean if you already read Timeline by Michael Crichton you would know the answer is no, but if you haven't read timeline, here's a clever little youtube video telling you the same thing.

New X-Men Apocalypse Trailer

Another day another comic book movie/tv show trailer. This time it's the 9th film in the X-Men franchise... wait 9? That's can't be right, can it? I don't know, I'm looking at a website right now that says 9. I guess if you include Deadpool and the Wolverine movies it's 9.

Jeez, that's really amazing. 25 years ago little Kevin was cursing Fox Kids for playing the two part pilot of the X-Men animated series for like 6 months straight because that's all the ordered before they new it would be a hit. Now there's like a big budget X-Men movie every year. It's a golden age for geeks right now I tells ya.

Oh yeah, the trailer looks fine. I didn't really watch it, I'm sure it will be fine.

Deadpool Special Effects Were No Joke

This 4 minute sizzle reel on the visual effects behind Deadpool is really interesting. Some of the CGI is really obvious, frankly Colossus looks fake, but some of these action sequences really look like practical effects. I mean when you really break it down like 99% of the movie is computers. Ryan Reynolds doesn't even exist, he's just a personality they had to load up on Zip disk. This is why he'll never be a real movie star.

By the by, I still haven't seen Deadpool. My wife really wants to go and our free babysitting (ie her parents) have been in Costa Rica for a month and now are headed to California for 2 weeks. I like deadpool and all but I don't like him enough to pay $50 for a babysitter. Especially when they're all horned up oxy addicts that will rob you blind while you're gone. I'm on to you Sally!

Shower Links

William Regal Shared A Scary X-Ray And Advice For Young Wrestlers Taking Crazy Bumps. I'll never understand why people want to throw themselves through steel chairs and flaming tables for $25 at the local armory. Don't get me wrong, I understand why someone would want to be a professional wrestler but I don't understand why someone would be willing to take extreme risks all in the name of entertainment. Just Look at William Regal's franken-neck. Maybe take all that time it took to set up your 4 table drop from the rafters and work on your arm drags a bit more.

Silicon Valley writer: The show’s lack of diversity is accurate. I like Silicon Valley but not enough to torrent it like I do Game of Thrones. As such I've only caught the first season because an HBO free preview weekend lined up with a marathon of Season 1. It's a pretty funny show and I assume it's a fairly accurate representation of the real Silicon Valley. Sure I have no real reason to believe that, just like I had no real reason to believe Office Space was a fair representation of life in a cubical when I first saw it. It just feels real. That's a pretty big compliment for a show, right?

Anyway the take away here is that Silicon Valley (the place) is a city full of mostly white dudes. Probably a lot of Trump supporters there.

Indiana Jones Returns in 2019. Yay? I guess? Would it really have killed anyone if they had stopped making Indian Jones movies after The Last Crusade? Harrison Ford is like 107 years old. Sure he's in great shape for a man in his hundreds but didn't he break his ankle while they were filming The Force Awakens? I think Spielberg might be trying to kill him. Maybe he owes him money.

Finally, The Death Star Shower Curtain Of Your Dreams. Man, when did my dreams get so pedestrian? I mean it's a nice shower curtain and all but yikes. I guess it's all downhill from here.

How People Are

via - HappyMondayComics

Another Daredevil Trailer

I should probably stop complaining about the number of Trailers Netflix releases for their Marvel shows. They're not like a regular network that can just run commercials for Agents of SHIELD every commercial break or anything like that. They kind of have to make a big splash on the internet to drum up attention and attract new subscribers.

Also I'm perfectly ok with their decision to showcase a wet Deborah Ann Woll. She is not unattractive, which of course is a total waste for freaking Daredevil the blind superhero. Forget his radar sense, Daredevil's real superpower is the ability to attract supermodels with his frumpy suits and poor social skills.

Captain America: Civil War, Trailer #2

I don't like stories where superheroes fight each other. It happens a lot in comic books, stories where Good Guy A and Good Guy B scuffle in the first act over a case of mistaken identity but then they realize they have to team up to fight their common bad guy. I'm fine with those kinds of stories when they're contained to single issues but when they're drawn out and made to be big events like Civil War, that's when I check out.

Still Captain America: The Winter Soldier was one of my favorite super hero movies so, I don't know, I guess I'm excited? Weee?

Rematch Links

Explosion levels Greenwood Buildings. Scary news this morning from North Seattle. It looks like a gas leak lead to an explosion that leveled 2 buildings. My old comic book shop is right around the corner from all of this and most likely suffered a bit of damage.

Random gas explosions like this are terrifying because how do you stop it? What do you do to prevent it? Some 30 year old gas line breaks and boom there goes your house/place of work? Great... now I'm going to spend the next month worrying about my gas furnace and water tank.

Dana White Says Holly Holm Fucked Up By Not Waiting For Ronda Rousey Rematch. Good on Dana White for building UFC into what it is today but sweet Christmas this guy is a huge windbag. Rousey wouldn't put a date on a rematch and Holm is 34 years old. How long can she wait to get paid? If she beats Tate last weekend she makes even more money on a Ronda Rousey Rematch. Dana White's just upset because of all the money he lost by not having Holm wait for Rousey.

All the Secrets Hidden in Game of Thrones' Brand New Trailer. Normally I'm not one of those guys that's super interested in breaking down every little detail of a trailer but come on man. We're talking Game of Thrones. The whole thing is little details. Can't wait to see more Ser Robert the Strong.... wait, Robert the Stong? CleganeBowl CONFIRMED!

Alexandra Daddario and The Rock on the Set of Baywatch. A Baywatch movie sounded like an awful idea right up to the point where I saw these pictures. Now it's easily the most anticipated movie of the decade. Star Wars who?

Season 6 is Coming

So earlier today HBO released a new trailer for season 6 of Game of Thrones, or as some like to call it the SEASON THAT'S GOING TO RUIN THE BOOKS FOR US!

I'm pretty excited. Some uber nerds were down on Season 5, saying that the further the showrunners get from the source material the worse the show is. I'm not 100% sure that's accurate. The best episode from last season was Hardhome and it was NOTHING like the book. I read the books after the show's first season aired but before I got around to torrenting obtaining it in a totally legal manner. So this will be the first season where I'll have no idea what's about to happen. I think that's cool. Sure my enjoyment of the books might suffer for it, but you know what else makes the enjoyment of the books suffer? Having to wait 37 years between each book.

Nintendo's Lost Console, The Rare & Obscure iQue Player

By no means would I consider myself an expert at retro game consoles but I'm pretty sure I know a lot more about them than your average gamer. I know Nintendo originally hired Sony to work on a CD drive for them, I know that Atari Jaguars were repurposed for use as a dental camera, I know Adventure for the 2600 had the very first video game Easter egg, but I had zero clue that in the early 2000s Nintendo was selling an exclusive game machine to China called the iQue.

It's mostly just a N64 that's been built into a controller and it doesn't sound like it was very successful. Still it's a cool footnote in the history of gaming.

Darth Maul: Apprentice

A couple weeks ago I was mentioning something about a fan film that looked super professional and how it's amazing what a small team of film makers can accomplish these days. In that vein, here's Darth Maul: Appremtice. A fan film by T7 Production that looks as good as anything you'll see on TV today.... and like movie theaters from 2003.

I mean it looks good but it doesn't look THAT good. I don't know, it's something about the lighting in the non action sequences that looks not quite right. Anyway, I'm missing the point. It's a cool short film, and really really makes me long for that Star Wars TV show that Lucas was talking about 10 years ago. Can we get that thing moving?

No Man's Links

First 727 Restoration. Long story short the first 727, built over 50 years ago flew from Everett to Seattle after a lengthy restoration processes. The 727 was really the plane that cemented Boeing place as one of the worlds top airplane manufacturers. It's a neat part of aviation history and these are some cool pictures of the restoration process. Well worth a couple minutes checking out.

Breaking Down Each State’s Most Searched PornHub Term. A. That's a lot of Lesbians B. Step-Mom? Step-Sister? You people are sick. C. No Asian?

edit: Never mind, good work Hawaii.

Erin Andrews: ESPN Forced Me To Go On TV And Talk About My Stalker. ESPN kinds sucks don't they? I'll admit when the Erin Andrews nude video story first broke I didn't really think about how awful the whole thing was. I'm kinda terrible about remembering that some celebrities are actual human beings. Reading this story really made me feel bad for Andrews, what a terrible thing to happen to a person AND to make it worse your employer doesn't really believe you? That's messed up.

5 Ways We Got The Trump Campaign Wrong: An Insider Explains. This is an interesting read on what happens behind the scenes on a campaign. As horrifying as it might be to actually imagine a president Trump it sure has been an exciting campaign season. Imagine if the only thing we had to talk about was Hillary vs Bernie... snooze.

No Man's Sky Just Got Even Cooler, Now That We've Seen Its Aliens. No Man's Sky has an actual release date! Sometime in June! I don't know exactly when, I already closed the tab. I'm perilously close to actually pre-ordering this.

Bryan Singer Developing R-Rated Red Sonja Series For Television. Oh man I am down for this. I'm not 100% sure what this says about me but I'm a sucker for strong female leads, pretty much across all forms of entertainment. If done well this could be a really fun show to watch. I'm thinking Game of Thrones but with less talking and more stabbing... probably the same amount of cleavage.

Ghostbusters Trailer

So the trailer for the much talked about Ghostbusters remake hit the interwebs this morning. It looks just fine. Certainly everyone involved with the project is talented enough that it shouldn't be terrible or anything. I've never had an issue with them recasting the entire team with women. In a perfect world it would probably be better if it was half-men half women and there was like an Asian person somewhere. Maybe they could have avoided casting a black actress as the one Ghostbuster who isn't a scientist. Whatever, just make a good movie.

Also I'll bet like 20 dollars that the person responsible for increasing the all the paranormal activity is Bill Murray or Dan Dan Ackroyd.

"TED CRUZ" — A Bad Lip Reading

I have been told by a reliable source that this bad lip reading treatment of Ted Cruz is hilarious. I figure if I post it here I'll remember to watch it when I get home later tonight and actually have access to some speakers.

Not to get to political here but I find what's happening over in the Republican party fascinating. Ted Cruz is someone that the Republican Establishment absolutely hated just a couple years ago when he tried to shut down the government over obamacare funding. Ever since Republicans did it to Clinton and lost control of the congress, they're terrified of shutting down the federal government.

But now Ted Cruz looks like he might be the Republican Establishment's savior. No one wants Trump to be the nominee and while he's winning lots of states, if you could combine Rubio and Cruz into some sort of mecha-republican, they have the numbers to beat Trump. The establishment really want Rubio but the problem is Cruz is doing much much better than Rubio. A lot of Cruz supporters like him because he's a maverick, a so-called outsider who works against the establishment. If Cruz were to drop out there's no guarantee that his supporters go to Rubio. Also, why should Cruz drop out? He's in second place, if anyone should drop out it's Rubio.... well really it's Carson and Kasich, those guys are just hanging around hoping to garner enough delegates that they can feel like king makers when the convention rolls around. Actually I'll give Kasich a bit more credit than that. I think Kasich looks at Cruz, Trump and Rubio sees what most Democrats see and in completely indignant that one of those three could end up president.

Like I said up top, fascinating stuff. Also slightly terrifying that Donald Trump could win the republican nominee simply because the other republican candidates are too busy tripping all over each other. This should be seen as a big win for the likes of Hannity, Beck and Fox News. They've spent the last 15 years drumming up all this righteous anger within the party hoping they would see a revolution at the polls. Well, the revolution is here it's just didn't exactly take the form they would have expected.

The worst part of all of this is that out of all the republican candidates Trump has the most progressive tax plan BY FAR. Also he seems to be the candidate most interested in campaign finance reform. How weird is that?

Cosplay Kitchen: Street Fighter Cookies ft Chun Li

Here's Angie from The Screen Team dressed up as Chun-Li making some Strett Fighter cookies. Her husband Chad shows up dressed as Ryu and they pretend to fight. It's entertaining enough. I like this video for at least a couple reasons I'm just having a hard time grasping them right now.

I'm thinking of getting into cooking a bit more. I've written a bit about how I'm a big proponent of waffles from scratch and it got me thinking; I'll bet a lot of food tastes better from scratch. I got a new barbecue for Christmas, why not put it to work? Maybe it's time I start making my own rubs and stuff. That sounds like fun.

Kevin, I swear...

via -PoorlyDrawnLines

Ken Block Goes to Dubai: Gymkhana 8

Ken Block's latest drifting adventure, Gymkhana 8, takes him to the mean streets of Dubai. It's like if the Fast & Furious 7 had actually still been about racing cars and not jumping them from skyscraper to skyscraper.

Also he has a falcon and a Cheetah. It's insane, just watch it.