Cliff Hanger

He looks like fun. As for Janet Cage, I'm kind of torn; I was looking forward to a nice MK2 Johnny to go with the retro nature of the other Kameos, but the game desperately needs more women characters, and she at least will have a fun fatality and Fatal Blow. Hope the gaps for the rest of the DLC are more like the one between launch and Quan Chi or Quan Chi and Omni-Man; I would very much dislike having to wait til May for Ermac.

I would be surprised if Punk and Kairi made the DLC cut, let alone first pack, just based on what the last two years have looked like. I'd be happy to be wrong.

One thing I didn't even think about til the show ended: they haven't so much as MENTIONED Roadblock, which is less than 2 weeks out. For the big Tuesday shows they usually start hammering the name and theme song a month out and the title matches set at least 2 weeks before, and while it's obvious we're getting Chase U v Wolf Dogs, Melo/Ilja III and Roxan ne/Lyra II, Ava's still talking like there's nothing on the horizon when making contender matches etc.

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story has a date, 3/13. I have little experience with Minter's work outside of Tempest and Polybius, but I like those games more than enough to jump at another Digital Eclipse "documentary" package after Atari 50 and Making of Karateka. I think Gen-X Euros who grew up on ZX and C64 and Amstrad will absolutely go batshit for this.

Axiom/Frazer v Chase U was fun. Wrong team won, of course. After last week I expected Crusifino to join the Di Angelo family as consigliere, why's he hanging out with Dijak telling him about all the crime he's doing? (I do kind of like Tony D deciding that they need to stop being wacky Fat Tony-ass mobsters and put business first.) Doesn't feel like they're calling Perez up any time soon, I'm expecting her to get the belt at Roadblock or SAD and have a heel run thru the summer after the last couple weeks--though if she does get drafted it's almost certainly to SD to play off Stratton eliminating her in the Rumble and keep her away from the giants. Poor Shotzi.

I wonder if this is someone who has obsessively played the original for years, because I could probably have done it in that time twenty years ago, but only because it was my bus commute game for a solid year.

Like a Dragon update: The resort management game may prove to be a Problem; Sunday I played it for 3 hrs solid in what I thought was 30 minutes. I worry that as I open up systems and zones it'll get too complicated for me to keep up with. Story-wise I'm still in Chapter 6, because between Dondoko eating all my alloted play time and dumping my first big cash reward from it into buying every job, I've just been grinding different jobs to rank 10 while avoiding my next story appointment, just as always happens to me at some point in job-based RPGs.

No, her qualifying match will be her first non-Rumble match in WWE

S1 is probably my favorite Kevin Smith thing, and I didn't know he had it in him. The first episode is a pretty good "Last He-Man Story" that could've been the end of the 80s show if the last episode were made for an older audience, and it gets better from there.

I am starting LOGH again because I am that kind of sicko.

Zen announced that they'll be bringing a new System Shock table to both PinballFX and PinballM on 2/15. I'd rather get new Williams classic tables (and preferably pre-solid-state, though I know those have a tiny audience) but I'm still excited.

Aw man, this hurts. One of my cherished memories is seeing him in 98 or 99 at a shitty, shitty club in Houston. He made fun of my friends, who were 20, for not having fake IDs and dedicated "Are You Drinkin' With Me, Jesus?" to "the sad sack motherfuckers from the Universjty of Houston who didn't bring a fake ID to my show"

So Chitose's karaoke song "Honolulu City Lights" in the new Like a Dragon game has gotten me interested in 70s-80s city pop. I've found a couple good playlists on Spotify that I've been using as bedtime music, but so far I haven't taken the time while awake to dig in and learn any names of songs or artists yet. I'm just glad to have found something chill enough to relax that much to that isn't the same 4-5 synthwave albums I've been using for years.

I am old enough to remember the days of Atari, Mattel and Coleco putting their biggest hits on each other's systems, and while Nintendo will never play along it'd be neat to see more cross-pollination like that.

About what it should have cost to begin with. I really enjoy the minute to minute gameplay but it's visually ugly, I blew thru all the 1p content too fast, Stadium Stampede was a bust, and the second season pass had half the characters of the first, an arcade mode that should have been in at launch, and a new arena that only appears when you go out of your way to pick it for exhibition modes.

Booker T is out for a couple weeks after what he described only as a "medical procedure," no word on replacement.

I only watched the first 2 matches tonight because I am up to my armpits in COVID and Like a Dragon, but those 2 matches were both fun as hell. Very glad to see Keith get signed as he's torn it up every time they've used him as a freelancer. I'd never seen Hechicero before, and holy shit. The people who've talked him up were not exaggerating. Also, I will always mark out for a Romero Special, one of my favorite submission holds because it looks silly and painful at the same time.

The dorks (here and elsewhere, and I was definitely guilty myself) used to complain when every opening had a catchphrase or signature sound effect (like SCSA's glass or Stratus's giggle) back in the aughts, too.

Gonna be really interesting to see what "minimizing" Lesnsr means for 2k24--I'm guessing it's "we can't just patch him out because he has at least one match in Showcase that we really can't re-do, but he won't have any cards for MyFaction and he won't be in any more games unless his name is cleared or it all blows over"

The thing about all the "Cody isn't the guy" stuff is that I don't actually care if he's the guy. He could win at Mania and then get knocked off the next night by another heel champ for all I care. I'm just tired of an absentee champ who does one TV or so a month and wrestles at every other PLE being the center of the universe (sorry Tiffany). Obviously the last year of business and ratings shows that I'm in the minority, but I was rooting for Cody because of that, not because of Cody. And aside from a brief period of NXT when Corbin, Breeze, etc were new I did not watch WWE at all from 2011 til Stand and Deliver last year. I can't imagine how some of the lifers feel.

I played a truly stupid amount of Sonic Generations, so an expanded remaster sounds great even if it does have Shadow.

Rollerdrome is very cool but I am terrible at it. Much like the OlliOlli series, it's incredibly difficult but everything makes sense and when you get the precision down and pull off something crazy you feel like a God. I don't know anything about Steelrising even after reading the write-up

Cody said during his GM-for-a-day night that they were doing the Women's Breakout, Men's Breakout, and both Dusty Cups back to back so it follows that we will see that start next week and run thru the March special (whatever they call shows like Halloween Havoc that are regular Tuesday shows but have a name and a band and matches set up in advance and pushed like PLEs). Henley/Sinclair, Hail/Jayne, James/Izzi and Jackson/Legend seem like locks. Probably at least one main roster team and 3 more TBD. I know it's my fault for trying to keep up with WWE, AEW and NJPW all at once, but I'd be pretty happy not to see tournaments for a little while, especially on NXT where it feels like we've had one going at all times since the Heritage Classic.

So was Dijak's "office" by the same pull down door he smashed Ilja's guts with back at (I think) Spring Breakout?

Unsurprisingly, the new Like a Dragon is hitting all my buttons. I'm mildly annoyed that apparently NONE of the romance subplots from 7 are canon, but I'm having so much fun. I can't wait to get to the western side of town and find out if the gunsmith called Bullet Hell in English has that name in Japanese or is called Danmaku.