Dog 911...

Are You Ready For Some Mini-SNES Action?

Hot off the heals of it's very successful (and nearly impossible to find) NES Classic, Nintendo has announced that this September they will start selling a mini-SNES. $80 gets you the system, two controllers and 21 SNES Classics including: Super Metroid, Super Mario World, F-Zero, Star Fox and a previously unreleased Star Fox 2.

I'm a bit torn on the whole thing. For $80 I could put together 3 Retro PIs and load up pretty much every SNES title every made for free. Of course as cool as the Retro PI is it never quite feels like the "real thing" and I'm assuming with Nintendo's stamp of approval this is going to feel pretty genuine. I don't know, this Christmas I either want to pick up a Xbox One or a Nintendo Switch, I'm probably better off saving my cash. However if you don't want to go through the hassle of putting together a Retro PI, I'd probably jump on this. Those classic SNES titles are heads and tails better than the NES classics. Excitebike is fun to play for like 10 minutes, but the other day I put in a good 3-4 hours with my son on Legend of Zelda a Link To The Past.

Ah, why even bother thinking about it? This thing will probably be impossible to find in stores and getting one on Ebay will cost like $200. If I ever run across one maybe I'll grab it and try to flip it on ebay myself.

Everyone Play Dead!

Game of Thrones Season 7: Trailer #2

Wooohooo CleganeBowl CONFIRMED! Ok.... maybe it's not you know confirmed confirmed, but in this trailer I definitely see Sandor Clegane with a sword looking ready to chop a sucker up in the Dragon Pits outside of King's Landing. I'll eat my hat if he isn't facing off against his zombie brother Sir Strong.

This new trailer is seriously hot fire. The last one they had was cool and all but it didn't show off a ton of action, this trailer is like WHAM POW! Here's some dragons, John Snow is fighting wildlings, THIS ONE DUDE'S SWORD IS ON FIRE. I'm beyond excited.

Mammoth Links

The top ten games to watch for after E3 2017. Lists like this remind me that I need to take a break from Overwatch for a while. Of course then Overwatch starts a new event and I'm all like "I NEED THAT NEW WINSTON DANCING EMOTE" and I'm back to where I started.

The Mammoth Pirates. This is a really interesting photo essay on dudes that hunt for Woolly Mammoth tusks every summer in Siberia. It looks like horrible work, and it pretty much destroying the natural environment but I'll be dammed if I don't think it's cool that there are guys literally harvesting 10,000 year old bones out of the frozen ground. I had no idea that was even possible.

The Untold Story Of WCW’s Glacier, And The Battle To Find Personal Happiness In Professional Wrestling. Warning, this is a very long article. Double Warning, it's also very very good so find a couple minutes in your day to check it out. Glacier was a sort of Mortal Kombat knock off wrestler who worked for WCW back in the late 90s, but the story isn't 100% about him. It's hard to describe but it's sort of a slice of Americana if Americana had to fight off skeleton warriors.

It’s so hot in Phoenix, planes are physically unable to fly. Turns out hot air provides less lift than cooler air and some smaller planes can't get enough lift to safely take off. Science is kinda heartless that way, it doesn't care if you have to get to Flagstaff by 2:30. It's hot, so you're staying put.

As a follow up, I once spent a couple weeks in Phoenix when it was in the high 110s, it might even have reached 120 that summer. It was incredible. You can barely catch your breath its so hot out. No one was outside doing anything, people were barely driving around. It was like a ghost town. Like a fool I tried to go for a bike ride one day, I got 2 blocks from the house and was like NOPE.

How To

The DuckTales Main Title Sequence

Cartoons are really the only TV Shows that have cool title sequences anymore aren't they? Sitcoms now have cold opens and usually like 5 seconds of a jingle and that's about it. I'm not even sure what Dramas do. I watch a bunch but I can't even remember if say, The Expanse even has a title sequence.

Anyhoo, I like this new version of the classic DuckTales theme and I really like the new art style. If there's some way I can get over the new celebrity voice cast I might actually be able to enjoy this show.

Holy Links

How To Track Down The Holy Grail Of Subarus. I don't have any particular interest in Subarus but this article about a pilgrimage to Car Do Subaru Mitaka a Subaru dealer outside of Tokyo is pretty cool. Someday I'd like to have a car that has a really active community like Subaru does. Nothing against my Mazda 6 Wagon but there's not a lot of 6 Wagon clubs in Western Washington. I mean there totally should be, but people don't know what's cool around here.

What Microsoft got right and wrong at E3 2017. First off, Xbox One X? LOL.

The new Xbox looks like the system that probably should have come out when they launched the Xbox One but didn't because it would have cost like $1,000. Even if it's an extra $100 if I had to choose between the XBX or the PS4 Pro I'd pick the Xbox. It's the first console in a while that can sit beside your average gaming PC and look good, I mean it can't go toe to toe with a high end PC but next to a hodgepodge like mine it's very comparable.

It's too bad that while Sony was showing off all these cool exclusive games (or at least semi-exclusive map packs and DLC) Big Redmond was "stuck" showing Forza 7 and Crackdown 3. Also a lot of talk about backwards compatibility, which to me always seems weird. You have a chance to really make hay with your newest and shiniest toys and one of your big announcements is a game that came out 17 years ago? Good luck with that.

Still, if I end up forced to get a new console because those rat bastards at Rockstar won't put Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC I'll probably get an Xbox One X.

Sony PlayStation at E3 2017: The 15 best announcements. Speaking of Sony and their cool exclusive games, just watch the footage of the new Spider-Man game. Holy carp, that looks super fun. All the VR stuff they showed off looks doofy to me but I don't know. Maybe this time Virtual Reality will stick and not just be some brief fad.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2: Free DLC, better weapons, and new character classes. Do I dare get on board the hype train here? I finally got a chance to play Battlefront a few weeks ago and it was a pretty cool game. I know it got a lot of hate with your "hardcore" gamer but I don't know. What I saw I liked a lot. If they've taken that same experience and added to it? I might just have to drop the $59 and put down Overwatch for a few weeks.

Black Panther Teaser Trailer

I guess there was a big basketball game the other day and during it Marvel premiered the first teaser for Black Panther. I say I guess because the NBA has been dead to me ever since they moved the Sonics to Tulsa or something.

The trailer is super dope, extra super dope. I'm not the biggest Black Panther fan in the world but I have a pretty big soft spot for Christopher Priest's 60 or so issue run on Black Panther from the early 2000s. I'm hoping this hits that same sweet spot for me. I just watched Ant Man again a couple weeks ago and man did it hold up well. Something really refreshing about a movie where the hero doesn't necessarily have to save the planet or plant the seeds for the next Avengers movie.

Now I fully expect the last infinity gem or stone or whatever it is they call it in the MCU to be in Wakanda but outside of that I'm hoping this gives us a sort of contained techno-jungle adventure. Black Panther has a lot going on in his own world. I'm cool if Thor and the gang stay home for this one.

Should We Be Concerned

Paths of Hate

I stumbled across this animated short film, Paths of Hate the other day and holy carp is it cool looking. I have no idea how they animated it like this, If it was all computers or some sort of modern day rotoscoping but the results are incredible. I'd be down for an entire feature length film that looked like this.

Ant Man: Alien Invasion

Recently Marvel has released a few animated Ant-Man shorts by French filmmakers Ugo Bienvenu and Kevin Manach. They're kind of fantastic, in fact there's no kind of about it. They're fantastic. The animation style feels like it's lifted right out of a Tales To Astonish from the 1960s.

Marvel never really has had a house animation style the way DC has had ever since Batman: The Animated Series. I'm telling you they could do a lot worse than patterning all their animated shows and films after this. Kids love fake retro stuff these days, or at least adults buying this stuff do. Kids don't even watch cartoons anymore, too busy with their fidget spinners and all that dabbing.

Wonder Woman: Breaking Records and Faces

In case you hadn't heard Wonder Woman was a big hit this weekend. It passed $100 million domestically and had the biggest opening weekend for a movie directed by a woman. I know I've passed along tons of rumors about how there were behind the scenes issues and that the studio wasn't happy with the movie but believe me, I'm glad it was a hit. Yeah, when it comes to comics I'm a Marvel zombie but as far as movies and TV shows go I just want to see good stuff. I don't care what multi-billion dollar media conglomerate is behind it.

It's not just "Hey I like super heroes, so I want to see good superhero movies" though. A big blockbuster staring a woman, directed by a woman based on a comic book? That's good stuff, important stuff. Not important like universal healthcare for all, but its a blow to sexism and with when the president of the united states is grabbing em by the pussy a win, is a win, is a win.

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the movie this weekend. My son got invited to a birthday party (the day before the party!) so my Saturday plans were blown up. I'm going to try and check it out next weekend. I might not be able to be part of the record breaking opening weekend but maybe I'll be a part of the "not as huge of a drop off as summer blockbusters usually have" second weekend.

Ok Neil

I think I've come to the sad realization that blogging during my breaks at work has become impossible. I'm not shutting up shop or anything, I'm just going to have to do a bit more from home and later at night than I'm used to. My goal next week is 5 posts, it might not be one a day but 5 total posts. I think we can do it!