Sega Really Knew How to Throw a Party

Here's the Sega sizzle real for the big CES show from 1994. It's the craziest most full on 90s, epileptic seizury thing I've ever seen. Honestly, I think it's a miracle Sega didn't go out of business sooner. Welcome to the next living room indeed.

Refined Links

WWE Diva AJ Lee Publicly Calls Out Stephanie McMahon Over Women's Wages and Air Time. This is kind of hilarious. Basically Stephanie McMahon (daughter of Vince, on the board of Directors for the WWE and underrated in ring performer) tweeted some bland congratulations on Patricia Arquette's Oscar acceptance speak using the hashtags #womensrights and #useyourvoice. She of course tweeted that on the same evening the only WWE Divas match on Raw as an embarrassingly short 30 seconds. AJ Lee (WWE Diva, wife of CM Punk disgruntled ex-WWE employee) responded by blasting the WWE on twitter over how they treat their female talent.

Whoops.

Homeworld Remastered impressions: A refined masterpiece. Homeworld! You remember homeworld, right? Right? Ok, so Homeworld wasn't a huge hit but it is remembered fondly, fond enough that it's getting an HD remake. I'm pretty excited for this one.

Surprise: Almost Everything About Pimp My Ride Was Hilarious Bullshit. This is pretty fantastic. It's hardly surprising but it's still pretty fantastic. I like the part about how MTV put it into the contract that you couldn't list your car on Ebay right away.

Comic Book Writers Matt Fraction & Kelly Sue DeConnick Sign Deal With Universal TV. Woot Woot! These are two of my favorite comics book writers right now, I'm excited to see what they'll bring to TV.

Retro Light Guns Throughout History. Cool little stroll down memory lane. I'm surprised light guns aren't a thing anymore. Shooting games are some of the more popular games at the 7 arcades that still exist in the country. Why hasn't anyone tried to bring that experience home lately?

Simply Delicious Shower Thoughts with Cookie Monster

Proof that Cookie Monster is one of this generations greatest thinkers.

Go Go Power Rangers!

So here's the Power Rangers fan film, reboot thingy staring Katee Sackhoff and James Van Der Beek that everyone is posting everywhere this morning. I don't know, I think it's kind of terrible but people seem to be enjoying it. I mean it looks good enough, but ugh some of the dialog. Also the plot twist at the end, why?

Straight out of Barney

Shine on you crazy internet.

The Student

I feel like this is coming sooner rather than later.

80 Facts about the 1980s

Yes this is long and yes it's a list about the 1980s but don't let that stop you from watching it. There's some pretty funny stuff here. 14 million people used to watch General Hospital every single day? That is AMAZING.

KITT's going to be on SportsCenter.... kind of

David Hasselhoff (or the Hoff as I and only I like to call him) shot a fun little commercial promoting his appearance on SportsCenter later tonight. It's pretty funny. Not like "Ha Ha" funny but like "hey there's a thing I remember from a long time ago" Family Guy kind of funny.

Fun fact: I'm 99.9% sure that David Hasselhoff owns a KITT replica. When Knight Rider blew up big in Germany he had one made so he could tour around with it. That's equal parts awesome and sad. Awesad? Sadsome?

Also it's kinds racist that he gave his keys to the black guy, right? I guess there's a reason he's so big in Germany.

Top Ten Video Games that Started as Other Games

Here's a interesting little list from the folks at Machinima of games that started out as other games. The most famous example from their list is probably Super Mario Bros II. The interesting fact about that one that they left out is that eventually the game we knew as Super Mario Bros II (which as they mentioned was a reskinned Doki Doki Panic because the real Super Mario Bros II was too difficult for an american audience) was eventually ported BACK to Japan as Super Mario Bros USA.

I'm guessing that didn't do anything to squash the idea that Americans were terrible at video games.

My Son's Top 5 Cartoons

I mentioned this on twitter a few days ago but my son is WAY more interested in watching youtube than he is watching traditional Cartoons. That doesn't mean that I haven't seen the same 5 cartoons like a thousand times. Just for fun here's a quick round up of what shows he's currently watching and what I think of them. Maybe next I'll do a top 5 youtube shows that are currently driving me insane/broke.

Paw Patrol... my nemesis. Paw Patrol is a pretty generic cartoon full of talking dogs that use teamwork and special pup packs to help out the citizens of Adventure Bay. It's Fine. It's Fine. What's not fine about it is that my kids want to watch it 30 hours a day 10 days a week. Seriously, first thing my daughter does when she gets home is grab the TV remote and start asking for "puppies". She's ONE! I've seen Chase rescue that damn chicken from the ravine more than I've seen the monorail episode of the Simpsons. I swear they just need to let that chicken die.

Whenever some old timer like myself starts spouting off about how "good" cartoons were when we were growing up I always point to Ninjago to crush their feeble argument. Seriously, watch an episode of Transformer, I dare you. They're legit terrible. Comparing it to an episode of Ninjago (Which is also just a big old blatant ad for a giant toy company) is like comparing Birdemic to Jurassic Park. My one complaint about Ninjago is that it took them like 3 seasons to pass the Bechdel Test. Seriously would it kill any of these cartoons to have more than one token girl?

Wonder Pets is the reason we have Amazon Prime. Seriously, a couple years ago a bunch of older Nickelodeon cartoons like Dora and Wonder Pets were pulled from Netflix and added to Amazon Prime. This would not stand. Something you should know about kids today, the idea of waiting for a show to be "on" is as antiquated as the buggy whip. Everything is on Netflix, On Demand or the DVR. The other day I had to explain to my son on a Monday that new Episodes of Ninjago weren't going to be on until Thursday and I might as well have been trying to explain the rules of Cricket. Spoiler: No one knows!

Teen Titans Go is probably the one cartoon my son watches that I enjoy the most. I know a lot of net nerds bag on it because it's nothing like the Teen Titans cartoon they grew up with but whatever. It's a funny show, the episode this screenshot is from is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Cyborg throws a BBQ and all the Titans (except Beast Boy because he's a Vegetarian) get the meat sweats and can't fight crime. Oh man have I been there... the meat sweats parts, not the crime fighting part.

Wallykazam. I don't even know what this thing is, but it's on a 7am when we're getting ready so he's watched a few episodes. I think the little troll guy has a magic wand that helps him spell words. Typical liberal media.

Goodbye Radio Shack

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver put together a nice little going away video for Radio Shack. Radio Shack, or the Shack as I like to call it, has been struggling in the marketplace for over a decade. It's a shame really, back when I was a kid Radio Shack was like my favorite store to visit. They had computers, TVs, remote controlled cars, all kinds of wires and switches, oh baby. I could window shop in a Radio Shack for hours.

Of course marketplaces change. If you want a computer or a TV now you go to Best Buy or Costco. Cellphones are at the Apple store, RC cars at Toys R Us, Video Games at Gamestop. Even if you're a hardcore nerd who's into DIY electronics you've probably been buying your swag online for years. With the rise of big box stores like Best Buy and do it all retailers like Walmart and Fred Meyer, Radio Shack became a small specialty store without a specialty. Off the top of my head there's like maybe 4 things I can get at Radio Shack that I can't get at Walmart for much cheaper.

Oh well, here's to you Radio Shack. You were totes cool once.

TBS Very Fast Funny

TBS speeds up Seinfeld reruns by 7.5% so they can fit in extra commercials. I'm not going to sit here and claim that I knew they were doing this but I remember thinking a couple weeks ago that one of the episodes I was watching was "off". I thought that maybe they had cut a scene completely but maybe subconsciously I did notice the timing. Doesn't matter, what matters is that TBS is a bunch of jerks. I'll bet they never do this with Big Bang Theory or Family Guy reruns. Anti-Dentite bastards.

Blown up Links

How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life. I've seen this get passed around the web a lot, it's definitely worth a read. If you don't remember Justine Sacco was the woman that posted a tweet about going to Africa and catching aids right before she got on a plane. When she got off the plane the internet had eviscerated her and she had been fired. When you think about it, it's completely insane. Was the joke in bad taste? Maybe. Was it bad enough that she deserved to have her life ruined? Absolutely not.

The Tumultuous Stories Behind The Three Worst ‘SNL’ Seasons. The good people over at Uproxx have been producing a lot of crap "buzzfeed light" articles as of late, especially when it comes to tv shows and sports. However, this article on the 3 worst seasons on SNL is really good. Not too short, not too long and actually contains some interesting tidbits and facts. More of this stuff guys, less gifs from last nights Walking Dead.

Abandoned Water Slides From Around the World. Oh man, if there are two things I can't get enough of it's pictures of abandoned places and water slides from around the world. This is like a Reese's peanut butter cup but on the web.... don't try and eat it.

Guy sneaks pictures of himself into Grammy Museum, they go unnoticed for a month. Let's bring this back to the top post. This guy actually vandalizes a museum and he's an internet hero. Justine Sacco makes a joke about race... and why not let me completely defend her for a second here. Her joke about how white people can't get aids is so absurd it's obviously a joke poking fun at white privilege AND the idea that as long as awful things are happening to other people they're not your problem. It's actually a very subversive send up of casual racism. There's NO WAY she should have lost her job over it.

Lucky for Rihanna Taco guy here all he did was make fun of the Grammys and no one cares about the Grammys.

The Man From UNCLE

This trailer for The Man From UNCLE hits me right in my spy bone (located slightly below the funny bone). I don't know why, maybe it's because I wasn't expecting much from a movie reboot of a show from the 60s or 70s that I've never seen. Wait... google tells me it was the 60s. All I know is I'm up for some good old fashioned super spy antics without all the shaky-cam Bourne Identity BS that's infiltrated the Bond movies. Is that too much to ask for?

The Further Adventures of my Raspberry Pi

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the new Raspberry Pi I bought on a whim and a prayer. Well last Friday I took the day off from work so I could sit down put it together and play with the thing for a while. I mean I didn't take the day off just to play with the Pi, I took the day off because I'd been at work for 11 straight days and I needed a break. It just so happens that I had nothing to do that day other than pick up cookies at the store and play with tiny computers.

Here's what happened, more or less.

Sorry about the poor quality of all these pictures. My camera phone has a scratch on the lens and my basement has horrible lighting. This is the Pi nestled into the case I bought for it. There weren't any screws or anything, it took all of 2 minutes to get it lined up and stick the heatsink on the processor. You're looking at the side with the Power Jack, HDMI out and 1/8th inch jack for RCA outs. The side you can't see on the top left has 4 USB outs and a standard 10/100 network connector.

Three hours of dinking around later here's what it looks like with RetroPie installed. Two big issues tripped me up getting it started. The pre-installed OS the pie came with doesn't include RetroPie the emulation software I wanted to run. The Pi runs it's OS from a microsd card, and my desktop doesn't have anyway to read/write to one even with the micro to standard sd card adapter I have. That meant a bit of swapping files around on a USB stick with my laptop, not a huge deal just time consuming. Then I realized I didn't have a USB keyboard lying around the house, every keyboard I have is a mechanical keyboard with an old PS2 adapter. But wait! My parents gave me their old computer, it's in the garage somewhere... So after an hour of going through the garage and my crawlspace I finally found a wireless USB keyboard my parents gave me. Worked like a champ. So after all that the Pi booted to RetroPie, time to get cookies.

Back home and full of chocolate creme stuffed Tuxedos, I get to work installing my snes knock off controllers and downloading some ROMs (games). Both were a giant pain in the ass. The Raspberry Pi by default boots to a command prompt and guess who doesn't know anything about linux commands? This guy. The RetroPie software I installed changes that and boots the Pi directly to the Emulation Station but to configure the controllers you have to get back to the command prompt and do a bunch of typing. Could I do it now in like 5 minutes? Sure, but when first confronted with it I was super confused. Also loading ROMs on the Pi wasn't the easiest thing in the world. Finding and downloading them was easy but for whatever reason even when I plugged the Pie into my router Windows7 wouldn't recognize it on the network. I tried the things people suggested and gave up after about 20 minutes of tinkering around. I figured I would just copy everything via USB drive again. Oh man was that a nightmare. As it turns out Rasbian (the GUI OS you can load from the command prompt) wouldn't recognize my thumb drive unless it started with the drive already plugged in. Man windows plug and play has spoiled me. Once I figured that out it was easy enough to transfer all my newly downloaded ROMs onto the Pi.

The first game I booted up was Toe Jam and Earl.

I eventually got Windows7 to recognize the Pi on the network. It involved ssh settings and IP addresses. Again, something I could do in 5 minutes now but it took at least an hour to figure out the hard way. Moving files over to the Pi is now a snap. The picture you see above is my son playing Final Fight. So far we've tried about a dozen retro games and his favorites are the side scrolling brawlers like Final Fight, TMNT, Captain America and the Avengers, etc. We've tried some Mario games but he's 5 and gets frustrated with the timing aspects of those games pretty quickly. Sonic was a big hit.

All in all the RetroPie project was a big success. The one thing I was never able to figure out is a way to map some higher-function controls to the USB controllers I have. This means that to exit a game or turn of the Pi you have to use a keyboard. The wireless one my parents gave me is a pretty good option but it's a desktop keyboard, it's huge. I'm thinking at picking up a smaller one, maybe with a built in touchpad, on amazon.

Finding ROMs hasn't been that difficult. I found practically every NES, SNES and Genesis game I could ever want. I haven't had much luck finding Commodore64 or TurboGrafx-16 games yet and the few AppleII games I found didn't load right. Still, when you consider how expensive Retro Gaming has gotten over the last couple years even if I just stick with those 3 systems the RetroPie easily pays for itself.

Welcome Home Spider-Man?

Big News last night, I guess. Marvel and Sony confirmed that Spider-Man would be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Most of the internet went "woohoo" while I went "meh".

Obviously there's one big reason to love the move, generally speaking Marvel makes good movies so if they're making a new Spider-Man movie it will probably be good. However there's at least one onion in the ointment that keeps me from being that excited. Spider-Man is now going to be in the new Captain America: Civil War movie. Why is that a bad thing? We'll Civil War the comic series kinda sucked. It turned Tony Stark into the unlikable asshole and set the groundwork for the WORST Spider-Man story every, One More Day. The one where Spider-Man sells his marriage to the devil to save Aunt May's life. Yeah, it's as bad as it sounds.

But wait Kevin, just because the comic book was terrible doesn't mean the movie has to be. Sure thing, voice in my head, but the overall conceit of the comic is flawed. The idea is that all the heroes in the Marvel Universe fight each other over the proposal that heroes should have to register with the Federal Government. Essentially they're killing each other over enhanced voter registration. It's garbage and the worst part is if it's applied to the Marvel Movie Universe you're going to have Tony Star, the guy that gave Congress the finger in IM2 on the side that all superheroes should have to register their secret identities with the government. You know the same Tony Stark that was actively hacking SHIELD during the Avengers because he didn't trust the government.

Also this means that the first appearance of the new Spider-Man will be in a plot where he's essentially playing sidekick to Iron Man. Ok, enough about me complaining. Go read some other blog where they're all AMAZING, SPECTACULAR, KAPOW over the news. I'm just going to be over here quietly listing my run of Civil War on ebay.

Murder Mystery Dinner: The Review

The company my wife works for always does a big end of the year, start of the next, company party. They spend a decent chunk of change on them, last year everyone went bowling, the year before was a casino night, one year it was 3 day cruise to Victoria. This year they rented out a room at Ivar's Salmon House and had a MURDER MYSTERY DINNER!

Now my knowledge of Murder Mystery Dinner Theater begins and ends with what I've seen on sitcoms. Quite frankly I was a little bummed when someone didn't actually die in some sort of hilarious irony. Did I mention it was an 1980's themed Murder Mystery Dinner? Everyone was encouraged to wear their best 1980s outfit. I went for preppy movie villain with my Aviators, a pink polo with popped collar and my acid washiest jeans.

The evening began like most company dinners of this type do, with everyone making small talk while waiting for the food to arrive. The twist was that a few of the MTP (Mystery Theater Players) were walking around the room, very much in character, interjecting themselves into conversations. Plot points were coming fast and furious. In retrospect it was cool but at the time I thought it was weird, we were already playing? Does someone have to say "go" first? Anyhoo, as the evening went on they went over the rules, someone died, we all got clues, it was more or less what you would expect from a Murder Mystery Dinner. There was a lot more audience participation than I had expected. Early on they picked out 10-12 people to randomly be the suspects. Each suspect was given a list of facts about them and secrets, then we were assigned teams and it was up to us to ask them all questions to try and figure out who the murderer was.

A few people were obviously uncomfortable given their roles in the show but the actors really handled it well. A couple people really hammed it up so I guess it all balanced out. Overall the show turned out to be a lot funnier than I had imagined it would be. All credit due to the MTP.

Of course the big highlight was that I figured out who the killer was and our team won. Finally, watching all those episodes of Castle paid off.

I give the whole thing a 9/10, would solve murder again.

Straight Outta Ballard Compton

The trailer for the movie Straight Out of Compton popped up on my facebook feed like 20 times this morning. Who knew a bunch of white guys that were in Jr High in 1988 would love NWA so much. WHO KNEW?!

Seriously, if you were a cool white kid from the burbs this was an album you had to own. I'm interested to see how they deal with that in the movie. Yes, NWA was all about the young Black male experience growing up in the hood but so was a LOT of hip hop around that time. Sadly I feel like NWA's lasting impression on society is a bunch of white kids that think they're hard because they bought a tape and an Oakland Raiders hat at the mall. Also I wonder how they'll deal with the whole Eazy-E dying of Aids.

Still, Straight out of Compton is a dope song.

Jimmy Fallon Went to Bayside

Here's the Save By the Bell skit Jimmy Fallon did last night that you've probably seen on your facebook feed like a thousand times this morning. It's not really the funniest thing in the world, it's more like here's a reference to something you know now laugh monkey. Still, it's impressive how little any of these people have aged (except for the guy that ate Mr Belding). They must have put something in the water at Bayside, like antioxidants and botox.

Here's that Daredevil "Teaser Trailer"

Seriously it's like words have no meaning anymore. Why is this a teaser trailer? It's almost a minute and a half long, that's a trailer. Ok, Kevin. Breathe deep.

Whatever you call this preview, I think it looks pretty cool. Some people are already panicking over Daredevil's generic black crimefighting outfit. There's a reason it's so JC Penny-tastic, this is clearly based off the Daredevil origin story The Man Without Fear. In that story Daredevil doesn't just go from lawyer to costumed crimefighter instantly. It's a bit of a slow build. I'm guessing by the end of this first season we'll see him in the more traditional red outfit everyone is accustomed to.

I'm eagerly anticipating April 10th.

Every 90s commercial ever.

Liquid Slam's ad campaign for their "Big Game" line of snacks and sugary beverages was pulled almost immediately.

Daredevil: The Trailer Teaser Trailer to the Teaser?

I don't even know what this is. A Teaser trailer to tomorrow's trailer? A preview trailer to tomorrow's teaser? It's all so stupid. It's 7 seconds of Daredevil walking down a hall and going into a door and here I am linking to it like an idiot. Oh well, you win this time Netflix. I guess we all know what I'm going to be posting tomorrow.

Raspberry Links

People In London Tried To Label The 50 US States On A Map. These Are The Hilarious Results. People give Americans a hard time for not being able to find oh lets say Mexico on a map but look at these crazy Brits. They don't even know the difference between East and West Dakota.

One (Likely) Reason Big Video Games Are Releasing Broken. This is an overly simple chart of why very large Video Game publishers are releasing crap games but its not without merit. Video games are a HUGE business and with huge businesses come huge expectations. The sad truth is that for most companies the sales lost releasing a broken game cost the company less than delaying a game until it's ready to go.

The Lego Movie Oscars Snub Is Garbage. Yeah this is old news but it's still hot garbage. The idea that How to Train Your Dragon 2 is going to win the best Animated Picture Oscar while The Lego Movie isn't even nominated is just unbelievable nonsense. It's like when Forest Gump beat Pulp Fiction AND Shawshank Redemption for best picture in 1995.

29 Women Who’d Probably Like To Forget They Covered Maxim. This is like a parade of women that appeared in Maxim back when I had a subscription. 2001 to 2003 those were some sexy times. Some lonely sexy times...

Raspberry Pi 2 arrives with quad-core CPU, 1GB RAM, same $35 price. Of course there's a new Raspberry Pi out and of course it blows the one I just bought out of the water for the same price. The only solace I have here is that the new Raspberry Pi is so different from the old one most software designed for the B+ doesn't work on the Pi2 so my retro console plans wouldn't have really worked on the new one anyway.