Category: Comics

I jammed this game a bit earlier to take a break from staring at blank text files, and boy does it ever hold up. Not visually, of course, because Nintendo 64 graphics age about as poorly as those on PSone. If Playstation is the Atari 2600 of the Pepsi Generation™, then N64 is the… Atari 7200, maybe.

But the gameplay is still out of this world (literally, hyuk!), and Koji Kondo’s score is really memorable (like Ocarina of Time in space). I remembered it being a little harder than it is, but you can always roll around searching for the secret tricks to open alternate paths. Even so, I played through the regular route twice in a row without dying once. I still need to get the “real ending,” and I recall that being kind of challenging.

One thing that really grinds my gears is how this game has more “voice acting” than pretty much any first party Nintendo game ever. Though I miss Falco’s “dub dub dub dab duh” speak, and the voices here sound like they’re coming through a Gameboy speaker, it’s a shame that Nintendo is still stuck in their world of gibberish and baby-talk.

Here’s a little anecdote about the game from when it was released. My friend Canaan asked me one day, I guess we were Sophomores in high school, “so, are you going to get Star Fox 64?” I looked at him, presumably with disdain, and responded snappily, “Why WOULDN’T I!?”

This is about as epic as it gets. Five dudes jabber-jawin’ about the new Michael Bay Transformers epic and beyond!

Listen to it here (SPOILERS)

The long two week break is over, folks, and Joseph Luster (that’s me!) Brandon Fincher and Joe Shieh are back to jam on games like Persona 3 and The Darkness, one of Hollywood’s big summer blockbusters, and more.

Go, quickly!

This was recorded on Sunday, so don’t expect any Michael Bay talk, but get ready for a senses shattering bonus all-Transformers episode, coming insanely soon!

It’s Tuesday, which means Transformers has come and gone for the especially nerdy and/or intrepid opening night enthusiasts. However, those that truly absorbed Bay’s explosive take on the toy-selling franchise will probably want to go back for seconds or thirds.

Truthfully, it’s hard to take it all in in a single sitting, even at 2 hours and 20 minutes. Even during the stretches in which robots are nowhere to be seen, you will be thinking about robots; plotting out in your mind the many ways that these behemoths will pummel one another in an upcoming scene.

The rest of the time, you’ll be wrestling with the reality that you are, in fact, witnessing a live-action Transformers movie. I don’t think this really hit me before the Autobots first banded together and “rolled out.” It’s a startling revelation, that’s for sure.

Aside from the incredible and seamless special effects, the movie’s greatest strength is that it never takes itself too seriously. Heck, it’s actually a pretty funny movie throughout. The giant HASBRO credit at the beginning is there to remind you that, like in the cartoon, the Transformers are essentially auctioning their shiny bodies off to each viewer, displaying blister-packaged action figures writ large.

Some will complain about the way that the action is shot, to which I will assume they have never seen a Michael Bay movie before. There’s a lot of wild, close-up shaky-cam action, and most of it serves to rub up and down the audience’s collective shaft right before blowing out a massive money shot.

Some will also have beef with the breaks between giant robots beating the tar out of each other, but I have enough faith in humanity to believe that these caveats will be crushed eternally once the flick kicks into what is, hands down, the most jaw-dropping final act that will be projected onto screens for the rest of the year.

For my money, “Bay dunnit.” I don’t know what else I could have wanted from a live-action Transformers movie. I think, were it a hair nuttier, it would be Bay’s very own Final Wars; it’s ridiculous enough, so maybe it just needed guys in rubber suits to take it home.

Until my eardrums are ravaged by Peter Cullen’s impossibly bassy voice; my eyes ripped to shreds by transforming robots and Megan Fox. Car-tune Week was meant to be a preface to this Earth-shattering experience, but we all know how steady that’s been thus far. Nevertheless, a “week” in JLR terms doesn’t match the temporal laws of your tiny planet.

Revere me, for I am The King of Car-tunes!