Florida (rewrite)

“Seriously, mom. It'd be good for you.” her daughter said.

“I don't want to go to Florida. I refuse!” Olivia replied.

“I worry about you up there, mom. You're not getting any younger, and there isn't anyone up there if you get hurt.”

“So come up here, then! I refuse to associate with those hideous casino people.”

One Must Fall 2097 (MS-DOS)

I optimized the scoring system for fighting games. Tell me what you think.

The Main Menu. The music will get stuck in your head.

One Must Fall 2097 was my introduction to the fighting game genre, and it left one hell of an impression. To this day, I still hold it as one of the best fighting games I've played. Also, it is about giant robots beating each other up, and it is awesome.

No way to dodge this

“It was almost midnight, I think. I was shopping for groceries, and I had just parked my car under the streetlamp when I was ambushed by a local gang. I've lived in this neighborhood for ten years, so I know how to handle some punks trying to pull shit, you know?

One of them shouted to me as he walked towards me. “Yo, big guy! Drop the bags, and no one gets hurt.”

To Huskily Bang (FanFic Review) (Mirror)

This review for the fanfiction, To Huskily Bang, by BlakDawn.

what the flying fuck was that you dumbshit moron.

motherfucker

This Review was written by Hunter31, and is not my own.
And now, a rebuttal:

I dunno.

As written by myself. Thank you, and good night.

The New Reading List, with EXTRAS

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon.
Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm.
The Chronicles of Amber, volume 1, by Roger Zelazny.
The Chronicles of Amber, volume 2, by Roger Zelazny.
Trumps of Doom, by Roger Zelazny.
Blood of Amber, by Roger Zelazny.
Sign of Chaos, by Roger Zelazny. Or the whole series, with the last three books as they were originally published.
A History of Rome, by Cyril E. Robinson
The Grass Crown, by Colleen McCollough

A story from class, rewritten.

Based on one of the stories that resulted from a Dramatic Lit class.

     "Why won't you go to Florida again?" Jill asked her grandmother, "Last time was great."

     "No it wasn't." the grandmother, Diana, replied, "Everyone there was like me, aging, decrepit and wrinkled. I couldn't even get away from them doing what I liked to do. The casinos were full."

     Jill sighed over the phone. "You refused to spend time with us at the beach, that was your own problem."

     "Exactly. Leave it be." Diana said, pride clear in her tone.

     "Why won't you spend time with us?" Jill asked, "You always seem to complain about what happens, no matter where we live, and you never want to be with your kids."

     Diana spat out a glob of mucus. "I don't like feeling old." She began to cough.

     "Are you alright?" Jill asked, "do you need me to call something for you?"

     "NO!" Diana said. "I've just got a slight cold. It's wintertime."

     "Alright, if you say so. Call me back if you decide to change your mind, alright?" Jill asked, "we can pick you up if you want."

     "From New York City? HA!" Diana began to chuckle. "Talk to you later, Jill. Have fun."

     "I will. Love you, Mom." Jill replied.

The Review Formula!

I was requested to move this bit. I have to agree.

The Review system is essentially a list of Do's and Don'ts, here listed in full. Each Do/Don't has a respective value, for example, good pacing in gameplay earns 2 points. After all points have been awarded, they are added up, and that is the score.

Here's the list, with the meaning of each shown.

Graphics: -7 to +2
+1 Clear: The graphics make it very easy to distinguish everything for gameplay. There is never even the slightest hint that you don't know what something is, unless your eyesight is poor, or you don't have the background knowledge.
+1 Amazing: The game is so utterly beautiful that it's worth just watching as piece of art.
-1 Confusing Menus: The game's menus are hard to understand, and get in the way of playing the game.
-1 Poor enemy design: Enemies just look horrible.
-1 Poor protagonist design: The player just looks horrible.
-1 Indistinguishable Enemies: The enemies look the same, even when they attack very differently.
-1 Indistinct enemies: separating the enemies from the background becomes difficult.

Big Bang Beat - 1st Impression (Review)

s

For those who don't know the system, look here.


     Big Bang Beat - 1st Impression is a fighting game made by NRF, a small independent developer in Japan. As a result, the game's in Japanese. I don't know Japanese, and I haven't found an English patch, so I can't say anything as to the story. However, what research I could do told me that it was essentially an attempt to do what Melty Blood had done, in making a fighting game based on the universe of an eroge game. (Don't click on that link, you prolly don't want to know. Tsukihime was bad enough, and that was one with a definite plot.)

There are people, too... (Journalism)

     We've all seen them. Marketing departments fund huge amounts of money into making these amazingly funny and clever advertisements, and though they work, after the first time you've seen them, they're just annoying, and get in the way.

     So let's try word of mouth, instead. Certainly, it reaches a smaller audience, but a recommendation from a friend is a lot more effective than, say, the "Mad World" trailer for Gears of War, or World of Warcraft: Cataclysm's epic shots of an apocalypse, or the humorous "but they can DANCE!" ads for Rayman - Raving Rabbids, or

On the Snow:

On a Lighter Note

Far FAR lighter note this time, a bit of a rant.

      So, given that chances are if you're reading this, you are not familiar with Touhou Project, I'm going to start with a quick summary here, before I get into what I'm ranting on.

      The Touhou Project is a series of games, ultimately made by one man working alone, who goes by the name of ZUN. He began making the games in the late 90s, because, to paraphrase (and translate, as he's Japanese) a quote of his, the games that were available just weren't the games he wanted to play.

Here we go again (Journalism)

     When I was reading about the shooting in Arizona, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I had heard this story somewhere before. I've had that same nagging feeling that I should know what seemed so familiar about this story all day, and it hit me as I got home and took another look at the news on what happened.

     This is Columbine all over again. The same media panic over answering why first, the same general motivation of the killer(s) ("hate the world"),  the same kind of personality.

Rocket Jockey! (Journalism)

 Rocket Jockey was an amazingly fun game for early windows about riding rockets, for racing, soccer, and what was natural for the time, combat with grapples. Quite a fun game, I'd recommend looking it up.

     Ah, sports. In America, we're talking American Rugby, Football, Basketball, NASCAR and Baseball. Not that there aren't a good many other sports practiced, it's just that American culture as a whole doesn't seem to appreciate things like Volleyball, Track&Field, Ice Skating, Quake, Gymnastics, Skiing, Target Shooting, Starcraft, and Swimming anywhere as much, almost as if they're "weak" sports. A pity really, as those are the ones (football aside) that are actually quite fun to watch.

     Now, I myself rarely do actually play sports.

The book list as it stands:

Jewish Pirates of the Carribbean, by Edward Kritzler CURRENT
MEG - Hell's Aquarium, by Steve Alten. DELAYED
Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon.
The Chronicles of Amber, volume 1, by Roger Zelazny.
The Chronicles of Amber, volume 2, by Roger Zelazny.
Trumps of Doom, by Roger Zelazny.
Blood of Amber, by Roger Zelazny.
Sign of Chaos, by Roger Zelazny. Or the whole series, with the last three books as they were originally published.
A History of Rome, by Cyril E. Robinson
The Grass Crown, by Colleen McCollough

Kosharr Pirates! (Journalism)

My Apologies.

     I've always enjoyed reading. Hell, I'm told I started reading when I was two years old. Not sure how that compares, though. Be interesting to look that up. In any case, as I still enjoy reading very much (albeit, stories far removed from the three little pigs...

     ...and then I realized the next book in my pile of books to read is the complete works of the brothers Grimm. Oh well. I appreciate dark stories, and certainly, some of the other books in the pile are also quite dark. I should clarify, though. My pile of books to read is ten books tall at the moment, and is the books I'm prolly going to read in the next couple months, that I have physical copies of. There have been printed copies of fanfiction in the pile before, so when I say that I like reading, I mean it.

     Which brings me to the nonfiction book I selected to read. It's about pirates in the Caribbean. The very much NOT theme park version.

     Oh, and the pirates are Jewish.

Fives and Tens (Journalism)

   Just as a note, this continues past the jump. Click the READ MORE thing. It means there's more to read.

     Congratulations! You, and everyone else in the journalism class have not only dropped out of high school, not only now have a child to take care of, even if some of the class is gay/asexual/antisocial/robotic, but you also have no support, even from the Twenty Three other former juniors and seniors who were also saddled with taking care of a kid that quite probably isn't theirs either, let alone your family. On the bright side, though, you get a car, free of charge. Enjoy it!

     You don't get a free driver's license, though. The entire class was given the assignment, though, so a slew of former students, now homeless and jobless, were sent to the computer lab to do research with the magic of the internet. 'Cause, you know, people who lose their jobs and homes overnight have access to the internet, even without electricity...or heat. Or running water.

This blog is at least at first for journalism stuff.

Now that you've read that, however, note that the blog title is accurate, and I may post random drabbles.

On a completely unrelated note, I need to find an artist. I can't draw sprites for the life of me.