• 22May 13

  A Little Notice Regarding Time and Whatever

  Heya, everyone! If you're reading this, there's a good chance you are one of the 900-ish people who tracked me and caused me to track back! By the way, if you tracked me and haven't gotten a notice I tracked you back, I tried but GS's friending system is a silly pile of dookie butter.

  Site glitches aside, I thought I'd take a quick second to let you all know what's going to happen with me this year and how it'll affect my time on GS. Yeah yeah, I know I'm not on here a lot anymore as is, but I wanted to make a non-editorial blog for the first time in forever and thought this would be a good chance to speak from the...er, keyboard.

  Some time 'round the start of September, I'm gonna be starting my Master's program for Library Sciences and, because a Master's degree is commonly known to sap one's social life (including the pretend ones) completely, I'll be even rarer than usual. Don't worry all about 10-ish of you regular readers, I'll be able to Soapbox whenever I feel like it because a fun fact is that a vast majority of my soapboxes are spontaneously written with no real editing or preparation to speak of (you probably noticed anyway maybe but whatever). To be frank, I treat them like writing exercises so I can keep myself from falling into dumbitude. But yeah, this is probably all just dumb stuff anyway.
  
  On a side note: it's fun to look back on my first soapboxes from '08. Man, I was a TERRIBLE writer back then and if you call me a terrible writer now I swear to God I will cut you. Something else to note is that my entries from way back had over ten times the amount of commenters...maybe I should be dumb?

  Also also, I looked at my earliest blog posts and holy hot poop, I want to punch myself. Yeesh.

  Okay, I'm rambling now and this really isn't funny.

  Guess I'll click that submit button now.

  • Posted May 22, 2013 8:49 pm GMT
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• 22May 13

  The Hottest New Gaming Console! EXCLUSIVE!

  READER APPRECIATION STUFF:

  First off, let me say I appreciate you all giving me feedback on the Chinese Knock-Off Gaming blog. I considered making it into an editorial series and plan to do another one some time in the future! So yup, I greenlighted myself or something. But seriously, thank you for your feedback, regardless if you liked it or not (or just thought it was okay). Anywho, on to the next subject:

  EXCLUSIVE: HOT NEW SEXY GAMING ACTION!

  Ever since the dawn of humans, there has been a drive to innovate, dominate and consummate. However, people have had trouble combining all three without the use of questionable substances and flexible ethics, trying once in the 1960s with the practice of "free love," and once again in the 1980s with the widespread trend of "fresh powder" and something called "synthesizers." Lately, though, there has been a severe lack of sexily-dominant innovation. Gone are the days of "good vibrations," "pet rocks," and "quotation marks." How will anyone innovate? How will anyone dominate? How will anyone sexy?

  Today is the day everything changes! TODAY is the day where folks will be able to combine their need for the new, the ultimate and the sexually attractive!

  TODAY, I present you with:

  

  Some crap from the 90's that not a lot of people outside Japan owned!

  
  Yes, gamers today are striving for something new, something hot, something they want to make sweet, sensual love to. Well too bad, get sad; the new generation of consoles are more interested in having relations with your pocketbook than your pretty little mass of gray matter! However, there's plenty of innovative sexy dominance to be had with the amazing Some crap from the 90's that not a lot of people outside Japan owned:

  First and foremost, gaze upon those hunks of corded plastic at the bottom of the image: these newold devices called "wired controllers" allow the player to hold something in their hand that manipulates the image on-screen and, most impressive of all, there are absolutely no batteries or recharges required! The old-school design allows players to believe they're playing an old, outdated console because THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING YOU STUPID IDIOT! Get ready for the future yesterday with the ability to control poorly-rendered 3D characters on your spankin'-new CRT! As any gamer worth their weight in cartridges knows, though, controllers are not everything. There's also menus!

  Tired of menus? Tired of having to start the system up, select the game tab, then select the game to play the game inside the thing that plays your games so you can play a game? With the all-old SCFT90TNALOPOJO, all you have to do is use your finger or equivalent appendage on the seductive "power button" and you'll get a little swishy animation, followed by the game thing you put in!

  (game things you put in sold separately on e-bay for high prices)

  But gamers, true gamers, I'm talking about the kind of people who would honestly find it completely awesome to actually be a game, want more than a controller that's not going to run out of battery power when the ******* boss has just one-half a bar of health left after you've spent all ******* day just trying, I mean REALLY trying, to get it so you can 100% the game and be done with it (****); and a start-up screen immediately followed by the game. Yes, true gamers want that thing you put in there that has the game in it!

  GAME COPIES!

  Oh heck yeah, you know you want a game copy. With this piece of 90's dinosaur crap, you will be able to take a disc and play it RIGHT AWAY! That's right, no installs, no patches (even though sometimes you wish there was one)! SCREW THAT NOISE, you want to just start playing video games so you have a good excuse to snack on junk food! Boy oh boy, does this thing have games, too:

  You want a Japanese dating sim where you're hitting on Japanese high school girls like a creepy old man minus the creepiness of hitting on real Japanese high school girls? YOU GOT IT!

  You want a poorly-rendered adventure game with voice acting done by people who you suspect have severe speech imp-imped-problems and/or brain injuries? COMIN' RIGHT UP!

  You want a side-scrolling shooter where you play as a mess of blobs shooting at giant husks of corn while wacky music plays? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU BUT YEAH WE GOT IT!
  

  You want it, you silly person
  

  Social networking is also something that exists but who cares, you just want to share these wonderful games with someone! Your buddy wants a game copy, too. However, your buddy is far too poor and jobless and moochy and probably is stealing from your wallet when you're not looking to afford the cool games. How do you solve this problem? Easy, you lend him the game and he can play it! That's right, you don't have to have them pay a fee or break their legs for stealing $20 from your stash (the latter is recommended, though), you just have to give them the game and it plays! JUST LIKE A REAL GAME!

  With all these dominant sexy innovations, the old hunk of Japanese plastic from the 90's is by far the biggest bang for your buck. For only about $40-50 used at some used game store or online retailer, you will be able to enjoy all the obscure games of yesterday, today!

  I look forward to you enjoying old stuff and complaining about the graphics!

  • Posted May 22, 2013 10:54 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 4Apr 13

  Chinese Knock-Off Gaming: Pikachu Y2K

  Gaming has evolved quite a bit over the years, hasn't it? Big franchises have popped up like fleas on a mangy junkyard mutt and, like fleas, there are some black sheep (or black fleas, whatever I dunno) in the family that are considered completely foreign from their family. Case in point: Chinese knock-off games.

  Chinese knock-offs span every category of product, so it's probably not going to shock you that games are not exempt from its scope. However, what's really shocking is what kind of bizarre, crappy, and sometimes even cool games you can find on the Chinese knock-off market. The first in this series of spotlights is a fun little platformer called Pikachu Y2K:

  

  Pikachu Y2K is, in all essence, a classic Mario-styIe platformer starring the titular electric pocket monster mouse thing. Going by the aforementioned description, you'd think that this all would be a fun, neat little game that, in essence, would give you a generic experience. HA, joke's on you: this game is nuttier than squirrel feces.

  First off, Pikachu Y2K doesn't immediately drop you into the action. To start off with, you're given a short cutscene in which a mad scientist and his pet cat phone Pikachu at his home because they want a magic purse back. Oh, by the way: did I mention that the text says that Pikachu's real name is Felix?

  

  So, er, I guess Pikachu will now be referred to as "Felix?"

  After promptly hanging up and using the force to reel in his magical purse, Felixchu sets out on an adventure to...erm...not try to let the mad scientist guy get the bag from him? Honestly, he could have just stayed home and called the cops on him, leading to an arrest and avoiding all the ensuing nonsense but hey, I'm talking about a Chinese knock-off 8-bit platformer so why should I be caring so much?

  Anywho, Pikachu Y2K's gameplay is pretty standard platforming fare, ridiculous premise aside. Sadly, it's a little sub-par for a side-scrolling platformer since its rules aren't very in line with Mario, as you can die from jumping on enemies. With stomping on their heads out of the equation, how can Felix-the-Pikachu deter people from snatching his purse?

  The purse, of course!

  Yes, instead of jumping on enemies, PikaFelix disposes of his foes via a Tom and Jerry-styIe boxing glove that pops out from his bag of wonders.

  

  The animation doesn't include the bag, though...

   Given all this, the game seems pretty disappointing, right? Well, what makes Pikachu Y2K a little bit cooler is the ability to collect power-ups that transform the bag into various weapons such as singing, driving a car, riding an air balloon, and even driving a freaking tank.

  

  Also, it shoots bombs with faces.

  Take a moment to soak all this in: there's Felixchu in that image up there driving a tank in a happy pixelated 8-bit world. Yes, there exists a game where you can actually play as Pikachu driving a tank. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Seriously, the war game market is virtually untapped for the entire Pokemon franchise and here you have the Chinese knock-off market taking the initiative while Nintendo sits on their duffs, scratches their heads, and puts out a Gamecube game consisting entirely of watching fake television shows with Pikachu all day. Y'know, because we really need something like THAT on the market, while the idea of Tankemon goes completely over their heads. In a way, this instantly makes Pikachu Y2K better than a good deal of the franchise's official games from recent years.

  Aside from the brilliant idea of putting Pikachu in a freaking tank, the rest of the game, like I said before, is pretty generic. The regular enemies aren't even other Pokemon, just some stupid little bird sprites and regular fishes...though there are a few walking trees here and there for no real reason. Ents aside, there isn't really that much to talk about in terms of enemy design and, on that note, there isn't much to say about the level layout. Really, the only thing on showcase here is how bizarre the overall premise of the game is and, beyond that, it's a sub-par platformer.

  One last thing, though: the Game Over screen kind of bugs me:

  

  ...What's in that garbage can to the left? Seriously, can anyone give me an idea? I don't have one.

  VERDICT:

  Graphics: 8 - Pretty decent representation of Pikachu. Besides, the entire thing's running on an NES, so I'm not that picky.

  Sound: 6 - There's a fun little tune in the first level, then it repeats in the second, the third, fourth....yeah.

  Gameplay: 6 - It's functional, but there's no pizzazz beyond the power-ups.

  Story: 10 - PIKACHU IN A FREAKING MAGIC PURSE TANK!

  Overall: 7 - It's worth checking out for about an hour, but not farther beyond that.

  So that's all for Pikachu Y2K! Be sure to stay tuned for more showcased Chinese knock-off games!

  (also, please someone tell me what's in that garbage can)

  • Posted Apr 4, 2013 1:56 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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