Eoae

I decided to rewatch WWE's Rise and Fall of WCW compilation this week. Still think the doc's kinda dry given how chaotic WCW was behind the scenes regardless of what year it was or who was it charge. But it's a fun collection of matches and not a bad way to pass a few evenings while the family is out of town. A couple things: - Was Rick Rude a lifelong heel? I think he was. He started out as a babyface jobber under the name of Ricky Rood, but was doing the arrogant heel character by '84. I don't remember "Ravishing" Rick Rude turning face anytime after that. WCW seemed to be teasing a heel turn and maybe a feud with Vader. but he suffered the back injury before anything came of it. - Speaking of Rude, "International Championship" seemed lame even at the time. Commentary mostly called it "the International Championship" instead of "WCW International Championship" which made it sound very generic. -- Never noticed it until now, but the Harley/Vader pairing reminds me a lot of Paul Heyman/Brock. Paul's a better talker, of course, but I'd much prefer to have Harley & Vader on my tv. -- That Flair/Hogan match from Bash at the Beach '94 is surprisingly fun. I'm not a big fan of Hogan's ringwork and don't really care for Flair after he returned to WCW (Heel Flair in WCW from '93 generally feels a retread of better angles in the 80's and babyface Fliar in the mid and late 90's is ugh - especially he Bischoff stuff). But... both guys were motivated that night and the formula of evil Nature Boy vs. superhero Hulk Hogan works better than it should have.

Jett: The Far Shore has been delayed until 2021. I never saw a release date, but it was supposed to be out sometime during the holiday season. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps5-galaxy-exploring-game-jett-the-far-shore-delayed-to-2021/1100-6482348/

I'm a little surprised Flair never managed to piss Vince off enough for Vince to sign Jay Lethal and put him him on tv to do his Flair impression. I'm not particularly a Jay Lethal fan (his finisher frequently requires the other guy to just stand in place like an idiot) but far worse guys have gotten signed to NXT. Lethal can come off as bland, but other times he shows a fair bit of personality. I could see something like Black Machismo catching on in the midcard.

Great Muta had a match in WCW with Steve Casey (I think; haven't seen the match in at least a decade). Muta botched the moonsault and knee'd Casey in the midsection, so the commentary team sold it like Muta decided to be sadistic and tried to injure the kid. At the time, I thought that was a reasonable explanation. It wasn't until I rewatched the match years later (and was a fair bit older) that I realized Mutoh probably just didn't get the rotation right and recovered as best he could.

Nope. Just the opposite. 20 seems to play almost exactly the same as 19, with virtually no obvious improvements. In fact, 20 manages to be mostly the same but worse in several respects. The main problem with 20 is that is seems very unpolished. Most of the issues and bugs that appeared in earlier games returned at 20. Game-breaking bugs were frequent, even after patches (they sometimes seemed to get worse after being patched). On top of that, quite a few players (and reviewers) thought the character models looked worse, lighting looked worse, collision detection was somehow worse, AI was bad, etc. I'm not sure about collision detection being worse, but, yeah, graphics seemed to take a step back. Character models looked better to me in 2K19 and the game frequently has this brown gritty look to it that reminds me of a lot of PS2 games (and some poor PS3 titles). Watch the IGN review. It runs through the laundry list of complaints and delivers an amusingly brutal assessment of the gameplay. The review score was a 4.3 out of 10. My general impression of the game was that they didn't put much effort into fixing the longstanding issues and didn't put enough time into polishing and optimizing what they do have. As for Fire Pro World, if you're looking for a physical edition, go with Day 1 edition. I think the Day One Edition was the only retail edition sold in the US. Never seen any mention of a vanilla physical edition for sale anywhere. If you're going digital, go with the Deluxe Edition if you want the dlc released for the game. I'm not certain it includes parts craft and move craft (they're not mentioned in descriptions), but I'm assuming we can take Troma's word for it. There's enough dlc in the deluxe package to make it worth the cost regardless. Parts Craft is a tool for making/uploading custom parts. Move craft is a create-a-move tool.

I'm having flashbacks to early 90's Sting when Jey talks. Poor, poor gullible smiling babyface. I laughed when Jey dropped the line about Heyman explaining that last week's tag match was the result of a miscommunication. This is the most interested I've been in a WWE PPV in years.

You're not the only one. I've never had an issue with him. Not one of my favorites, but he's fine.

Yeah, that was my first thought too. I'm probably going to hook up my Saturn and play some original Rayman this weekend.

I would guess IX and XII. IX seems to be highly regarded by most everyone. The only real drawback is that it was a conscious effort to get back to the series' roots, so if you liked the angst of VII, VIII, and almost everything after 10, this may not be for you. It's easily the most whimsical FF title since the mid-90's. XII seems to have aged poorly with some people, but got fantastic reviews from critics and players when it was released. It seems to finish high in "Best FF" articles and polls. VIII should be in that discussion, but it's polarizing. A lot of people think it's brilliant. A lot of people think it's awful. I thought it had some issues, but I liked the characters, tone, romance aspect, etc. I don't think too many people are "meh" about this one. Fans tend to either love it or hate it. My personal list goes 10, 6, 7 Remake, 8, 9, 7 original, 10-2, 12. Honestly, Square was still near it's peak during the PS2 era, so you're not really going to go wrong with anything between 6 and 12. I liked 13 quite a bit, and mostly liked the sequels, but I also feel both Square Enix and FF were past their prime by then.

Rayman creator Michel Ancel announced on social media that he has quit the video game industry to run/work in a wildlife sanctuary full-time. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-09-18-rayman-creator-michel-ancel-quits-video-games-industry-to-work-on-wildlife-sanctuary He also said his last two games (Wild and Beyond Good and Evil 2) are far enough along that the teams can finish without him.

I found the quote that gave me the impression first-party PS4 support would end almost immediately. There are a few similar quotes along those lines. Apparently, I'm not the only person that thought the "Generations" talking point meant PS5 exclusives. Seen a lot written about the surprise PS4 announcements today, with a lot of gaming press sites being critical. Sony's handling the pr aspect of this surprisingly poorly. I shouldn't have to spend 20 min on Twitter trying to figure out what the PS5 launch lineup is. Likewise, I feel bad for anyone who read that PS5 pre-orders would begin today, and then got up this morning to discover that several major retailers opened pre-orders yesterday and are already sold out. I was surprised to read today that DMC5 Remastered is also a Xbox title. Sony didn't say it was a PS5 exclusive, but I assumed it was since it was in a showcase devoted to Sony exclusives (thinking about it, Deathloop may not be a Sony exclusive either, but didn't give it any thought at the time).

I’m speechless.

Thanks. I don't know where I got that idea. I seem to recall reading an article where a Sony rep stated that the company had n interest in producing first-party games for two generations and first-party support would be discontinued almost immediately. Can't find that article now, so I either misread the comment or am just mis-remembering. No harm done. Sony now says that they've tested thousands of PS4 games on the PS5 and 99% are compatible. https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5-will-be-backwards-compatible-with-99-percent-of-the-thousands-of-ps4-games-sony-has-tested

For me, it was Mario Bros. (the original game set in the sewers, not Super). I went to a small Catholic high school where my mother taught, so when I graduated and went away to college, I suffered a bad case of freedom overload, and drank, partied, and gamed my way through the first semester. Since I rarely went to class, I spent my days in the student union and played an insane amount of Mario Bros in the arcade. Got really good at Mario Bros. and enjoyed myself overall, but my gpa was 0.8 at semester's end. Mind you, I was on scholarship, in the honors program, and planning on going to law school after undergrad, so being put on academic probation was a disaster. It was probably for the best. I pulled my act together the day after grade reports came out, and the school had an academic forgiveness policy that allowed freshmen to retake a class and have the first grade entirely drop off the transcript. I retook most of my first semester classes and kept a 3.9 GPA the rest of the way through college. 3 1/2 years later, an interviewer did wonder why my official transcript indicated I only took 2 classes (one was phys ed) during the first semester of my freshman year. ?

This is interesting, considering Sony previously gave the impression they wanted to transition away from the PS4 almost immediately. I thought they outright said that they weren’t interested in releasing titles for both PS4 and PS5. https://www.psu.com/news/sony-confirms-ps4-will-continue-to-be-supported-for-the-next-4-years/

Announcing Horizon Forbidden West for the PS4 is a really strange decision by Sony. Either they have a lot of confidence in the console and don't think they need HFW to sell units or.... they've lost confidence. Announcing Miles Morales for PS4 is equally odd. They certainly wanted us to think it was a PS5 exclusive a few months ago. Really hoping Sackboy's Big Adventure is as good as it looks. Sumo Digital has done a couple games I've really liked recently. I thought LBP3 was nearly as good as anything Media Molecule did with the franchise and Snake Pass was a lot of fun. I thought Snake Pass was a bit genius from a design perspective. The "realistic" mechanics of your character's movement were really well thought out, Thought the Showcase was solid but didn't sell me personally on a PS5 right now. Showing RE, FFXVI, and God of War 2 was fine, but the games are too far out to make me want to pre-order. Demon's Souls and DMC5 will be fine, but I'm not that excited by remasters. Do we really need a remaster of a two-year old game? I wish the FFVI remake rumor had proven to be true. That would have interested me more than XVI, though the people leading XVI make me cautiously optimistic. Mostly, my takeway from the presentation was that Sony's got a couple more great PS4 titles in the pipeline. I was more excited about the PS4 announcements than I am the PS5 launch titles.

Astro’s Playroom Demon’s Souls Destruction All-Stars Spider-Man: Miles Morales Marvel’s Spider-Man Ultimate Edition Fortnite Sackboy’s Big Adventure Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla New Call of Duty I think the Showcase said DMC5 Remastered would be available digitally at launch but not sure I heard that right. Last Showcase indicated The Pathless would be available by the end of 2020.

What is Flip even trying to imply? He doesn’t think the wildfires are real? He thinks the wildfires are pro-Canadian sympathizers? Illegal aliens? Democrats? i mean, if you’re going to espouse some wacky conspiracy theory, would it be too much to ask that you tell me which wacky conspiracy theory you want me to buy into?

I thought Pitbull was Pitblull #3.

I’m really hoping MrSashaBanks is some sort of troll, but guessing Sasha’a not that fortunate. Anyway, here’s Glacier trying to do pro wrestling things and failing badly Who needs the cryonic kick when you have his deadly wind kick? Who is the other guy? Doesn’t look like Mongo. One of the Flock? I think It’s Sick Boy or Riggs but I’m not sure.

Did you really want that match to go longer? Nash and Sid both moved at half-speed and didn't seem to care at all. Also, that PPV is probably a candidate for worst PPV ever. A lot of sloppy 5-min matches and head-scratching booking decisions. Evan Karagias losing the Cruiserweight Title to Madusa in an awful match. The Varsity Club reuniting for no reason at all as Jim Duggan's mystery partners, only for babyface Duggan refuse to tag them in so they turned on him and laid him out. The weird Hart-Goldberg-Piper screwjob ending in the main event, Creative Control becoming contenders for the tag team titles in what ended up being an intergender 3 on 2 handicap match. On and on. That whole show is 3-ish hours of WCW at its worst. The show has 2 or 3 watchable matches on a thirteen match card. Jeff Jarrett was involved in two decent matches. That's your highlight, so if you don't like Double J, you're probably out of luck. The show does have Sting correctly predicting an ally was about to turn on him. Instead of playing gullible smiling babyface, Sting saw Elizabeth's heel tun coming and replaced the can of mace she tried to use on him during the match with silly string (lol, don't ask). Not that it did him a lot of good. Liz instead handed Luger a baseball bat and Luger beat Sting up with the bat. He might have been better off with the mace.

Speaking of PS5, Sony revised it's production estimate for the the console back to 11 million units. They had planned to manufacture 15 million consoles through March 2021, but problems with the chip have forced them to revise. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-15/sony-is-said-to-cut-ps5-forecast-by-4-million-due-to-chip-woes It's worth noting that Sony originally planned to make about 6 million consoles to start with, but raised estimates due to the pandemic. The company is supposedly confident it will have enough consoles to meet holiday demand. Edit: Sony is claiming the Bloomberg story is false.

Yeah, watching it this morning, I'm thinking the Asuka Lock was supposed to be the finish and the ref called it rather than let Mickie get out of the move. Has anyone gotten out of the Asuka Lock? I'm skeptical they wanted Mickie to be the first (?) to survive Asuka's finisher. I'm guessing the Samoan Drop though a table (w/ Lana) had a lot to do with Miro showing up on AEW?

I blame the Dreamsmasher errr...cast. Dreamcast. There hasn't been much originality to console names since. I actually like the 360 name, but it's hard to keep the One, the One S, the Series S, and the Series X straight.