Cliff Hanger

I did not think I could get this emotional over the hobby of anime (as opposed to actual story content).

I think you're absolutely right. However, it feels REALLY weird to have the twist before Allen shows up. Now that I'm caught up, I have cooled on the animation. You are right about the faces; I think they did a really good job on the action but the character bits are lacking. If this show gets more than one season, I'll be interested to see how Rogen and Mantzoukis acquit themselves as their characters are asked to carry more drama.

Invincible pilot reminded me why I loved the comic so much up thru about the Dinosaurus story that ran thru #100. Small changes like William being out from his second line of dialog instead of figuring it out five years in make sense, the animation is good and the casting is excellent. They moved up the Really Huge Twist (issue 7 of the comic) and I don't love that decision but I definitely understand it. Will watch 2-3 tomorrow and report back.

The first two things I think of for George Segal are his excellent one-scene wonder in TO DIE FOR and Dr. Quest in the 1990s version of Jonny Quest. Neither of them is super important to his by then well-established career, and I've spent a hell of a lot more time with Just Shoot Me playing in the background than either of those. But those were where I just kind of stopped and went "oh, why isn't his voice in everything?" He was fantastic in VIRGINIA WOOLF, of course. My dad hated that movie more than any other he'd ever seen, mostly because he only went to see it because if it was attracting protests he thought it had to be exciting. I went in knowing what it was because I knew theater and loved it. It's funny, even though he'd been playing grandpas the entire 21st century, and even though I KNEW that WOOLF was over 50 years old, my first response was still "87? Really? I figured he was like 70"

I would like to point out that Rez Infinite and Thumper are both VR-optional games. Both have cool VR modes but neither requires the rig to play. And frankly, I really enjoyed both.

I beat Yakuza: Like A Dragon and that was one of the most perfectly bittersweet endings I've seen in 40 years of video gaming. And now, for the first time since I got into the series in 2017, I don't have another one to play next. It's a little weird; I have to decide what my next "big" game is now. (Leaning toward Tokyo Mirage Sessions, which I bought the day it came out for Switch but never even downloaded) Meanwhile, that NGPC ten-pack for Switch fucking rules, but it's also reminding me how painful bonus character unlocks were at the turn of the century. On the bright side, it's reminding me why I loved the NGPC Metal Slug games but never cared for the arcade series.

This missed getting widely reported as it happened. Gene Taylor, pianist for the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Blasters, died of exposure to the cold on 2/20 while the power was out here in Austin. He was 68. https://www.austin360.com/story/entertainment/music/2021/02/21/gene-taylor-austin-pianist-fabulous-thunderbirds-and-more-dies/4535083001/

My sleep schedule is a mess so I'm up at 3am playing Mortal Kombat 11. Looks like the March Stadia Pro games are the new Pixeljunk game Pixeljunk Raiders, Pac-Man Tunnel Battle Royale and the AVICII game. I was dumb enough to buy the Pac-Man game but am not on Pro anymore, so my first thought was "maybe I can get a game without sitting on the matchmaking screen for 10 minutes"

I grabbed the Godzilla set and Parallax View!

I ducking love that the main new vocal track for Yakuza 6 is this beach-party-ass shit

It broke my heart when Housemarque said they were changing direction because Matterfall and Next didn't sell. That said, "a collaboration between the creator of the twin stick arena shooter and the people best known for them in the 21st century" is certainly a game pitched squarely at people over 40 like us.

You will not. If you are vaguely aware that once upon a time Kratos killed most of the Greek gods because Zeus fucked him over, you're set. That story is centuries ago, but it still happened to him.

It's a sequel but in a somewhat different genre (the priors all being smashy smashy button mashy combofests in the vein of Devil May Cry) and set hundreds of years after the earlier games in the series.

I bought SNK vs Capcom: Match of the Millennium on Switch and man. There is a lot to like here but ho boy is it not fun to have to unlock 8 characters via RNG

I bought the Turrican Flashback Collection, which contains the Amiga ports of the first 2 games, plus the console exclusives Mega Turrican and Super Turrican. The emulation is good. The games are emblematic of late 80s europlatformers; if you've played them before or have a soft spot for the genre you will probably be happy. (I had a pirated copy of the C64 original and got Super Turrican used when a video store was selling it) If you only know them as "classics" you haven't actually experienced, save your thirty bucks. You will probably be much happier just putting on the soundtracks via Spotify or YouTube, looking at the first game's title screen and imagining what you want the game to be like, because they are everything right AND wrong with Amiga gaming.

CBS All Access added a bunch of Nickelodeon stuff, and also the 2003 Fox/4kids version of TMNT. I have been vocal here arguing that it's the best version of the Ninja Turtles story and I stand by that.

Phil Spector has died at 81. No eulogy for a murderer, but very few producers have left as much of a mark. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/phil-spector-dead-obit-67459/

Space Invaders Forever is a huge missed opportunity. SI Extreme remains an absolute classic, but Gigamax isn't much fun outside of its gimmick (ultra wide screen game for 4, originally projected onto a building) and the mobile-to-console port of Arkanoid vs Space Invaders is so lazy that you have to use the touchplate on PS4 to move your paddle. For both this and the Invincible Collection they should have dumped AvSI in favor of Infinity Gene. You can get Extreme by itself on Steam and that's my recommendation.

Man. I completely forgot about that somehow, despite having dropped probably 30 hrs into it. Gonna blame it on (a) December games just being that lame and (b) having hung out with my little quarantine pod for the first time in 3 months for the holiday.

I miss the days of multiplayer indies like Rocket League and Mercenary Kings being free on day one so that everyone is playing the same cool new game for a month.

My Lynx carts for Evercade came today. Those were at least half the reason I bought the damn thing. Given that they don't have access to the Atari and Midway stuff now held by WB Games, they got all the most important stuff that was on the table. I wish they had balanced the carts a little better--Collection 1 has a bunch of later-era Atari/Epyx titles and some homebrew stuff by Songbird, while Collection 2 has all the early marquee titles like Electrocop, Blue Lightning and California Games, so there are 17 games on cart 1 and only 8 on cart 2. I am still really enjoying this dumb little system, and hope they can ink a deal with WB to get all the classics they've swallowed up.

So to the shock of no one, I ended up playing Like a Dragon next. It fucking rules, and the dub is largely very good. BUT I really wish they had just left the songs in Japanese if they were going to dub them without working the words to rhyme. "Bakamitai" sounds fine, but the faster hard rock songs are EXCRUCIATING, as they try to fit words into a meter they weren't written for. Remember the 90s when anime companies would go for less exact translations in favor of making it something a human could sing to the melody? Do that or just leave the songs subbed.

Final time for Yakuza 6: 46 hrs and 10 minutes, over 30 hrs shorter than my next quickest run thru one of the games (78 hrs for the Fist of the North Star spinoff) and over 200 hours less than 5. I can definitely understand why the fandom trashed it at the time; the story is a bit out there and jettisons almost the entire supporting cast, there isn't nearly as much to do and the new fighting engine was sloppy as hell. Still, the ending works for the characters who remain and it's been a really great couple years with these characters. Not sure what my next "big" game will be; I'm sitting on Avengers, Star Wars Squadrons, Persona 5 Royale and, yes, Like A Dragon but maybe I'll just focus on quick hit stuff like Fuser and Spelunky for a bit.

Stuff I'm Juggling Now: Fuser (still rules. I am still very bad at it but I'm learning. And I need to figure out how to upload "(Don't Fear the) Regulators" to Youtube because I have to say that was a kickass little mashup. Yakuza 6: The Song Of Life (story-only run because the gameplay is drastically inferior to K2 or Judgment and I really just want to get to) Yakuza: Like A Dragon (Did the 1999 prologue and it is a very weird feeling. Looking forward to getting to Yokohama so the game will feel more like its own thing) Beat Saber (now that it's starting to cool down enough that I don't have to worry about soiling my glasses and headset with sweat, 'tis the season for VR)

Fuser is very cool. I suck at it.