Salads

I was going to comment with all this website talk on how odd it was in this global interconnected age how dependant we still are on one or two blogs or other sources translating. Even with a big multinational product like NJPW most of the stories miss us. I'm going to convert that sentiment into my dismay at not knowing the salacious deets on this current potential scandal. How is Goto involved? Is he the type who likes to watch? Who was fucking who? Where can I find these Shibata nudes? Is this what their dome match was actually about?

Ok, if we're talking Inoki-ism in the later years let's go through the golden age of title booking that was New Japan from 2003. Let's see how many events are left unfucked. I start following around a similar time to Kev and the Nagata MMA losses missed my attention, but I can add the detail that for at least one of the fights Nagata was only informed he would be participating about two weeks prior. May 2003 - Nagata's record breaking IWGP run brought to an end by Takayama who was still hot from his shoot fight against Don Frye the previous year. This is fine because Takayama is great. November 2003 - That year's G1 was won for the first time by Hiroyoshi Tenzan, felling special guest tournament entrant Jun Akiyama in the final. In hindsight the biggest job New Japan ever got out of NOAH in their entire working relationship. Tenzan won his resulting title shot to make a feel-good moment for the fans seeing the long time company bridesmaid break out and get his glory. Probably would have felt a lot better at the October dome show when most G1 winner / champion matches take place. Inoki didn't think Tenzan was legit enough to main event the show and punted the challenge a month down the line in favour of a 5 on 5 elimination tag match between Inoki favourites and New Japan. Every home grown talent jobs leaving Suzuki and Sapp standing tall. Fucked. December 2003 - Tenzan fails in his first defence. Shinsuke Nakamura becomes the youngest IWGP champion in history with only a few pro wrestling matches under his belt. Fucked. February 2004 - Nakamura vacates due to aforementioned injuries following a new year's eve MMA loss and dome show victory days later. Fucked. February 2004 - Hiroyoshi Tenzan begins his second reign after winning a one night tournament for the vacant title. A shame for Nagata, who was meant to win before Tenzan moonsaulted a knee into his face. Fucked. March 2004 - Kensuke Sasaki wins his first championship since returning to the company as freelance. Tenzan managed to squeeze in a quick defence before dropping this time, leaving him with a win/loss record of 1-2 while champion over two reigns. Fucked? March 2004 - SIXTEEN DAYS later Sasaki drops the belt to BOB SAPP. Fucked. June 2004 - After a reign consisting entirely of beating the big young hope of Nakamura at the dome, Sapp vacates following a convincing MMA loss to Fujita. Fucked. July 2004 - Fujita beats Tanahashi for the title in yet another tournament. Better than Sapp, I guess. October 2004 - Sasaki pins Fujita (one successful defence) for the title in two and a half minutes after Fujita forgets that being pinned is bad. Already mentioned, and I'll second that the show up to that point was good stuff. Fucked. December 2004 - Sasaki drops the championship to begin Hiroyoshi Tenzan: IWGP Champion attempt number three. Let's be optimistic. February 2005 - Tenzan's first title defence after losing a non-title bout at the dome. Oh boy. Real big match. New Japan's Tenzan against All Japan's Satoshi Kojima. Former tag partners, both trying to lead their company as champions. IWGP heavyweight and the Triple Crown both on the line for the first time in history. The match went an astonishing fifty-nine minutes and forty-nine seconds. Kojima wins by knock out. More astonishingly, the result was booked as a draw. Tenzan legit couldn't hold on for those last eleven seconds. In hindsight the stalling towards the end makes sense, as does Nakamura going nuclear when Kojima purposely drops the IWGP belt on his way out. Which leads to... (fucked) March 2005 - Satoshi Kojima vs three year part time pro Shinsuke Nakamura, time limit draw. Fucked because it was clearly an ego thing to prove NJPW guys could go the distance. I never saw it but I'm guessing at the fan's expense. May 2005 - Tenzan becomes a four time champion by getting his belt back from Kojima at the dome with a head droppy TTD variant if I recall. July 2005 - A magnificent second successful career title defence for Tenzan by beating Scott Norton in Italy before dropping the belt to... *drum roll* Fujita! Inoki clearly angsty seeing New Japan fucking themselves for six months without his help. Fucked. October 2005 - Swapping a shooty unreliable monster with a foreign shooty unreliable monster, Brock Lesnar is your new IWGP champion. No title matches occurred between Fujita winning and losing the belt, and he lost it in a three way so that Chono could take the fall instead. This is coming off of Fujita guesting in the G1 that year and winning every match except a highly emotional final against Chono whose victory was an emotional tribute to the recently deceased Shinya Hashimoto. Fucked. July 2006 - Brock Lesnar's nearly year-long reign comes to an end. After beating Nakamura at the dome in under ten minutes and winning dream title matches against Akebono and Giant Bernard, he no-shows a supposed loss to Tanahashi and vacates the title. This is the kind of 'vacate' that involves refusing to give the belt back. Fucked. July 2006 - Hiroshi Tanahashi starts his first reign as champion after winning a tournament becoming only the second full time home-grown champion after Tenzan since Nagata. His first act as champion is to remove the picture of Inoki from the New Japan dojo and spends the rest of his career on a crusade against strong style. Everyone lived happily ever.

English commentary at the end of the NEVER match: 'Goto wins the big one!' Bridesmaid no more.

Jeddy nailed it.

Seven days into 2017 and seven titles scratched off my pile of game. I'm back to work on Monday and if any of you own shares in my backlog progress, now is the time to sell.

PS2 is still comfortably the best way to play PS2 games, but even though I prefer physical the PS Store is superb for original Playstation games. The selection is fantastic and the prices are cheaper than physical (usually the opposite for Playstation 2.) If you make multiple accounts that gives you more sales and access to games not released locally that would be prohibitively expensive otherwise. Also there are a few options for how to play them. The PS3 can output to CRT if you have one, PSTV's been mentioned and both Sony's portable consoles run them without fail. For example you may want to stick to PS2 and grab a PSTV or even a PSP (with tv out cable?) to supplement it for the gaps in your library you can only get online.

There are enough Tigers out there to do a proper ten man and still have leverage to leave IV out.

I'm liking it. Muscle Orchestra 2!

I'm going to assume Jado is the inferior booker because he's Jado.

Lingo Guide I'm already hating on anyone who would buy and use a Joy-Con Grip rather than play with a split controller as God has always intended. Also prayers for home console pokemon are about to be answered.

You're thinking of a one night tournament they held in Feb 04 for the IWGP after Nakamura vacated. He delayed Nagata's second reign by another three years with a precision moonsault knee to the face. There were quarterfinals held earlier that night so it doesn't quite fit the question but every year I've no idea who will win the G1 until someone inevitably gets injured then I'm convinced it was meant to be them.

I've always thought this was what was needed for Austin to pull off his heel turn. Keep the kick to gut and turn but go for a snapmare to million dollar dream or something. Save the stunner for an instant face turn.

TIL that dying wasps are quite happy to lay still for an hour until they can summon the strength to dart at you for a petty sting before their last breath. Time for some more EDF.

Had a dream that for the new era Roman Reigns was repackaged as 'Big Sexy' Leo Kruger.

In case Mania doesn't live up to its promise they also announced another game for 2017 by the team that made Colors and Generations AKA the only good Sonic games from the last decade.

I award myself no prize for guessing the venue for that set of results.

I also started a log of number scores a few years back, only I buck the 'yes / no / maybe' scoring trend in favour of a possibly now retro ten point scale. Yes, it does feel like overkill to go into that much detail and yes sometimes it's a struggle to pin a precise number on something but the tiers are well enough defined in my head that sometimes a game is right between two of them and I briefly consider switching to a twenty point scale before feeling silly. It's also not that useful for bad games because once I decide playing a game isn't something I'd advise I tend to stop playing it rather than keep on going until I've gathered enough feedback to make a claim on exactly how much not worth playing it is.

Recently I've been underwhelmed by playing NES Remix and felt it was a cruel tease of the games featured. The timing of this announcement has probably bagged a sale.

I've never been able to take Naughty Dog seriously after seeing their opinion of Limbo. It's a straight up bad game.

Played Starfox Assault and Gotcha Force for Gamecube. Bad news: I did not enjoy them. Good news: Having sold them on ebay I am now a millionaire.

All of a sudden I'm taking Sasaki's grudge against Choshu for screwing him out of money more seriously

Had a dream where I became the owner of two arcade machines but one of them was Pokken.

It might be worth trying to play those games on Wii U. When in Wii mode the bar across the top of the gamepad becomes a sensor bar. It's about three inches wide so it can be used with off-TV, but you can output to your monitor of choice at the same time to free it up as a short distance sensor.

Spent a bit of time scrolling through https://twitter.com/reasonjp today. A bunch of translated J-Wrestler interviews that I thought was worth sharing.

Wasn't a fan of SOTN when I played it and one of the big contributors to that was the Crissaegrim falling into my possession and me using it because I thought it was there to be used and not to hot butter slice the entire game into droplets.