Oh yes, this would appear to be Streets of Fire fan art, technically speaking. I truly am a man of no shame. Depicted here is breakout singing group The Sorels as they perform “I Can Dream About You” in one of my favorite scenes.
You can download a larger version here, if that is your cup of tea.
I’m a little late on getting around to these, but I finally picked up the first Viz release of Kazuo Umezu’s Cat Eyed Boy, which is an awesome read just as pretty much everything else I’ve read by Kazmandu is. What really impresses me, though, is the design of the cover and insides of the manga. I wish I could scan the whole 360 degrees of it, but rest assured that once I have the second volume, they’ll each make a formidable pair of bricks on my shelf.
I also really like this image below, which I recklessly stole from Same Hat, and wouldn’t have minded seeing on one of the covers. That logo looks especially rad, but man, you gotta see the spine on these Viz editions. Totally worth the use of my Borders gift card.
Anyway, you should pick these up at Amazon, because the price is right, they’re thick as hell, and if you’re interested at all in this type of comic they’re worth supporting.
It had to happen sooner or later, but the news of EGM‘s demise was still pretty crushing, to be honest. I’ve been reading that magazine since Sonic the Hedgehog was a fresh face on the cover; not quite the beginning, but close enough. Even when it went through a stint of having alternating Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat covers exclusively, it was still the best thing on the rack. It certainly served to show me, for the first time perhaps, that a game magazine could be more interesting than the (admittedly awesome at the time) console-exclusive gee-whizzery of Nintendo Power or the braindead zombie cartoon ramblings of Gamepro.
You can download a PDF of issue #1 here
There have been better magazines over the years—I was big on Gamefan‘s enthusiasm, for instance—but I don’t think any gaming publication has enjoyed the consistency of EGM. I was always fond of their personalities and individual but cohesive styles of writing, and thought the majority of their major features were pretty impressive undertakings. On the videogame side of things, EGM probably had a bigger hand in getting me interested in writing for a publication than anything else. While some of the competition was perfectly happy to remain in permanent stasis, EGM grew up with its readership and the words reflected that, even if I didn’t agree with them all the time.
On the Internet side of things, I tended to consider 1up a pretty reliable source when it came to opinions on new games. But most of all, their podcasts got me interested in creating something similar with my friends, which has been a lot of fun. But beyond all of that, I think the saddest thing is that EGM isn’t going to get to leave the industry with a final hurrah. Rather, they’re forced to let out one last bubbling fart with a cover story sporting a hideous closeup image from the latest licensed Wolverine game. You can practically hear the party poppers exploding from here, can’t you?
Jeff Green’s blog post on the 1up firings sums it up kind of depressingly and certainly doesn’t make me want to visit UGO’s version of whatever the site will become. Instead, I’ll just pour some booze out for another great mag gone to the graveyard.
Unearthed from the Dudu Blaq/Dirty Earl junkyard.
Okay, this is one of the final posts on 2008, this time on the subject of music, and then I’m moving on. I’m not going to get into a big musical list, or even a small one, frankly because I’m just not that great at writing about music. It’s not my department, ya dig? I can tell you how some sounds went into my ears and how I enjoyed the result, but I can’t tell you stuff like “this track has a brief but melancholy burst of strings reminiscent of the early 70s work of Barry Quasar, but without the almost crucially alchemic blend that his late brother Theodore’s tambourine provided.” Even writing like that in jest makes me feel apologetic.
So without going into every single thing about the album, I’d have to say the one that got the most plays was Chad VanGaalen’s Soft Airplane. I first learned of this man’s many melodic talents after bumping into an embedded YouTube of his “Molten Light” video (I think here at first, but the video seems to be down), which has some great, haunting animation. Turns out he’s a ding-dong animator, and has a lot more where that came from available on the Internet.
I thought that one song might just be a fluke whose potency was amplified by the awesome video, but countless listens to Soft Airplane have proven me wrong over and over again. I like the whole thing from beginning to end, which is more than I can say for most records, so if you get a chance to give it a spin or watch his videos, do so.
I’m going to be flying out of Louisville in a bit, finally ending my extended break and returning to the streets of rage known as Hoboken. See you there.
subhumanzoids 