Since Jake’s original host location has since expired, and in celebration of the world being filled with the joy of his theme song alone for over a year, there’s no better time than the present for a reupload.
http://media.imeem.com/m/t7guDAriK2/aus=false/
If you close your eyes, you can almost picture his rowdy space adventures in your head. Hey, it’s Saturday, and that sounds like a great way to spend the next couple hours of your life.
Only two days into its existence and my Xbox Live Netflix instant queue is scorching up the charts. The freedom of not waiting for discs allows for some truly bold decisions; some regrettable, some not. I’ll let you closely judge the first three, pictured in some form below. Before you do, though, I should just take a moment to mention how excellent this service is so far. The video quality of Shrooms (not so much the movie itself), specifically, was phenomenal, and it streamed in its entirety without as much as a stutter.
Number three is the real humdinger. Yes, you can watch this right now on your Xbox for free if you’re a member of Netflix. Don’t blame me if you see vapors of Slamm Dunk, blame DIC.
I love the twist at the end. Just when you think it’s all about basketball, hockey and baseball, you learn that “it’s all about helping kids.”
As if Ray Harryhausen himself had been zapped like Captain N into the world of arcade games, SNK’s Prehistoric Isle in 1930 brings antiquated aircrafts face to face with the Thunderlizards of legend.
Booting up Prehistoric Isle should titillate any man, woman or child on some level immediately, but its appearance is more than deceiving. Visually, it looks like a really generic horizontal shooter, but the dangers contained within are unique to this title and this title alone. Much like every stop-motion-filled tale of the past ever filmed, Cavemen coexist with dinosaurs in some fashion, but these aren’t your average Raquel Welch rabblerousers. These cavemen are absolutely suicidal. They hang from Pterodactyls and drop down on your plane from above, gripping tight to your wings in an attempt to weigh you down and end your flight early. If that doesn’t work, they have no problem hanging back and tossing rocks from afar!
The real treat comes when you square off against the boss dinosaurs, which range from normal (relatively speaking) fare like the Stegosaur and Brachiosaurus, to bad mothers like the one above, listed only as [UNKNOWN DINOSAUR]. If they ever find the skeleton of THAT bad boy, then God help us all. Prehistoric Isle frequently volleys back and forth from straight up dinos to gigantic crustaceans and killer bugs from beyond the isle’s most tucked-away valleys. The pièce de résistance, unquestionably, is the final battle with the Tyrannosaurus Rex. He’s a fireball shootin’, plane-chompin’ son of a gun, and he’s not going down without a… BITE!
If you’re bold enough, download a ROM of this game and play through it with a close and trusted friend, because Prehistoric Isle is yet another one of those arcade games I wish I had discovered for myself years ago. Just like last time, I stole a few (read: most) of these images from this site, which also details the adventures you’ll find on the titular isle. Just look at those animated gifs! Oh, and if you want the ending spoiled, click here. Be warned, it is a mighty plot twist.
So I saw Quantum of Solace this past Sunday, not bothering to wade through the pile of mixed reviews I had heard about on the way. I don’t really know what the beef is with this hot enchilada, because it’s a solid flick that continues Daniel Craig’s stint as a more straightforward and action-oriented Bond.
I think its best feature is the fact that it acts as a direct sequel to Casino Royale. I love the old movies as much as the next guy (though the last few Brosnan entries were rank), but they don’t have much in the way of narrative continuity. They’re more like formula television, with each threat giving the protagonist another way to use a new set of gadgets and the same set of classic lines. That stuff is great, but it wouldn’t work here.
The only thing that isn’t as tightly woven as it was in Casino Royale is the action, which is all over the place both on set and in postproduction. For example, the opening parkour set piece in the last movie is really carefully executed, and there’s no issue with geography and no real confusion that I can recall. In contrast, the opening car chase of Quantum is a mish-mash of bumpers, sideview mirrors and machine guns.
Then again, that may have had to do with the fact that—for the first time since I was, I don’t know, in high school—I was sitting three rows from the front at an awkward angle. I assure you, my moldy ass would never actually choose to sit in such a seat, but we got there just as the previews started. If I get a chance, I want to peep Casino Royale again (on Blu-ray this time) and go check out QoS under ideal conditions.
Welcome to Scanline City, the only metropolis in which it is illegal NOT to constantly talk about awesome arcade games long buried beneath the previous civilization’s rubble. For those of you that have never had the luxury of visiting such a sprawl, it looks something like this:
Today’s order of business hails from the good year 1990, back when Fly Girls had naught to do but shake their asses, their inhibitions not yet restricted by our future world’s harsh decency laws. In that fantastic year, developer Toaplan released an arcade game called Out Zone, a title that I dove into last night with a properly equipped wingman in tow.
Now, I’m not quite sure what an “Out Zone” is, but if the game’s contents are anything to go by, it’s a ruthless landscape of war and violence, punctuated by killer robots, aliens, and an ever-dwindling supply of energy with which you must power your killing machine of a body. Even Wikipedia can’t save us with their special brand of synopses, so you’re on your own if you ever find yourself in The Zone.
Out Zone basically plays like a normal shooter with buff lads taking the place of aeroplanes and spaceships. What makes Out Zone unique is the level design and power-up system, the latter involving a couple of weapons that can completely alter the way you play through the stages. While the initial weapon allows full 8-way shooting, making it sometimes difficult to hold fire on a single enemy, one of the power-ups gives the player a three-way shot that keeps them in a strafing position, ideal for blowing away pretty much everything in your vertically-scrolling path.
The level design is way beyond something you’d normally expect from an arcade shooter. Stage schematics play out more like they were designed for the third dimension than a simple 2D screen-scroller. Paths diverge into alien hallways that look, well, pretty much like you’d expect an actual alien stronghold to appear. Enemies pour out of adjacent rooms and, later on, moving bridges cleverly sway back and forth across bottomless chasms that were obviously designed to confuse the architects themselves.
Bosses range from mechanical monstrosities that wouldn’t be out of place in more traditional shooters to wall-bound machinations that are straight out of a top-down Contra level. One of the more memorable encounters has one of these very constructs zapping off sections of the floor beneath you with the power of an almost surgical laser beam.
And your reward for conquering the Out Zone? A screen that congratulates you and urges you to play the Extra Game! Quickly, though, there’s no time to decide, because Level 1 boots up immediately and you’re right back in the thick of it, saddled with a single chance at success. Perhaps this is indicative of the Out Zone’s crippling curse, its denizens forced to roam the grounds in an eternal Groundhog Day loop.
It’s hard to resist such a call to arms, and that’s because Out Zone is legitimately an awesome arcade game. Picture something like Ikari Warriors if Ikari Warriors was actually really fun. Give it a constantly-repeating spin on MAME until you find a copy of its sequel, Fix Eight, and check out some more screens (and probably some actual information) on this site, one of a few from which I thieved images.
subhumanzoids 