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Episode 131 – A Magical Failure

Episode 131 – A Magical Failure

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WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew plays super sentai producer in Chroma Squad while D. Bethel gets introspective while drawing old high school characters for his “Sketch Fridays” series at LongJohnComic.com.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END: The final Doctor Who series to feature current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, and current showrunner, Steven Moffat, began last weekend with “The Pilot,” which also introduced the new companion, Bill Potts. Dan and Andrew discuss their reactions to the episode.

NERD LAW – YOUTUBE EDITION: Andrew dusts off his non-advisory expertise to talk about a recent situation that occurred during Dan’s livestream of God of War III. They talk copyright, YouTube’s priorities, and Chinese variety shows.

LINKS:

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio
-“Nerd Law” by D. Bethel

Episode 125 – Hot Sauce Box

Episode 125 – Hot Sauce Box

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WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew plays Project Highrise after receiving it as part of this month’s Humble Bundle subscription service, while Dan reads a book about the history of the Japanese game industry in Chris Kohler’s Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life.

THINK INSIDE THE BOX: With Andrew’s sojourn into the world of subscription grab-bag services, he and Dan discuss the growing phenomenon and where they think the trajectory may end up.

ACCELERATED EVOLUTION: When a YouTube star gets the spotlight from a major industry publication, his world starts to crumble a little bit despite his denial of it. Swedish YouTube sensation, PewDiePie, encountered some issues after an exposé by the Wall Street Journal causes him to lose valuable contracts and allies and seemingly sends him into a strange spiral of denial and self-pity––without losing any subscribers. Andrew and Dan look at this very strange situation and how it connects to the larger cultural issues the news media and celebrity are dealing with while trying to figure out a solution.

WORKS REFERENCED

McAlone, Nathan. “What Someone Who Worked Closely with PewDiePie Thinks About Disney and YouTube Dropping Him.” Business Insider, 20 Feb. 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/pewdiepie-scandal-came-from-the-way-youtube-works-2017-2 Accessed 20 Feb. 2017.

Ibrahim, Mona. “The Limits of Free Speech (When You Have 50 Million Subscribers).” Polygon, 20 Feb. 2017, http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/20/14675914/freedom-of-speech-censorship-pewdiepie Accessed 21 Feb. 2017.

WORKS CITED

Klepek, Patrick. “PewDiePie Criticizes Wall Street Journal Report, Says Jokes Went ‘Too Far.'” Waypoint, 16 Feb. 2017. https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/pewdiepie-criticizes-wall-street-journal-report-says-jokes-went-too-far Accessed 20 Feb. 2017.

Kuchera, Ben. “PewDiePie and Trump Aren’t Hurting the Press, But They Desperately Want To.” Polygon, 18 Feb. 2017, http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/18/14641952/pewdiepie-trump-anti-semitic Accessed 20 Feb. 2017.

Kuchera, Ben. “PewDiePie Versus the Media: Why He’s So Mad to be Losing the Fight.” Waypoint, 15 Feb. 2017, http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/15/14610652/pewdiepie-versus-the-media-disney-youtube-google Accessed 20 Feb. 2017.

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio
-“(The Majestic Tale of) An Idiot With a Box” by Murray Gold (from Doctor Who)
-“Fall From Grace, Pt. 2” by Andrew Hale & Simon Hale (from L. A. Noire)

Let’s Play – Star Trek Online (Part 1)

Let’s Play – Star Trek Online (Part 1)

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A few weeks ago, I sat down to play Star Trek Online on the PS4 (shortly after it was released), though I failed to make a post for it up on the website (until now). Watch me play through the first two or so missions (essentially, the tutorial) of the Federation quest/storyline.

Although the video has been on our YouTube channel since I first played it back on September 10, 2016, it took me a considerable amount of time to “annotate” it using the YouTube annotation system. The annotations are visible only on certain viewing platforms (web viewing, mostly) and can be turned off. It’s mostly additional trivia and Star Trek facts that I was only able to think of after I finished recording the video.

The inspiration of the annotations comes from the Special Edition DVD releases of the original Star Trek movies. Technical editors Michael and Denise Okuda wrote a series of sub-titles that included weird facts and information about Star Trek, the design, and the implementation of the movie.

Let’s Play – Final Fantasy (Part 2)

Let’s Play – Final Fantasy (Part 2)

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https://youtu.be/TNVduspTOg4"

My journey into Final Fantasy continues with the second part of my ongoing series! This time, I actually advance the “storyline” a bit and even find a boat! And by “find a boat,” I clearly mean “take a boat from a bunch of stupid pirates through the use of excessive force.”

The “crossing the bridge” sequence is one of the more memorable moments of the game for me, which I suppose makes sense because it’s so different from the rest of the game. When you consider that the original release simply started with the player in front of Corneria/Cornelia (no cinematic intro) and very little was said outside of single text boxes, that bridge crossing was the closest the game had to a scripted story sequence. It’s the kind of game element that Final Fantasy would later become inundated with, but in the original 1989 release, this was the only one. If you compare it to some of the games contemporaries, that single sequence stands out as sort of a big deal.

As a kid, I never thought too much about how the game is “staged” based on what you can get to. First, you get the bridge to the north. Then, you get a boat, but the boat can only really go to one other place. Eventually, you blow a canal to the outer sea and can go to one or two more places. Then you get an airship. Although it looks like you’re in a big, open world to explore, you’re really not. I suppose I contrast it to the original Shining Force on Sega Genesis, which divided the gameplay into discrete chapters. Once you finished Chapter 1, you moved on to the area of Chapter 2 (and couldn’t go back). At this point, I could not say which method I prefer. Perhaps, when I get to a game that’s more “open world” I’ll have something different to say.

One of the things that became apparent to me during this part of the game was the totally wacky pricing structure within the world of Final Fantasy. It’s always sort of a weird joke when you compare prices of things. At this point in the game, it cost me 80 Gil to raise a character from the dead while it cost 50 Gil to stay at the Inn. A suit of fancy armor was 450 Gil, which is a hell of a lot more than 80 Gil. Of course, it’s a fantasy world and the whole idea of how the economy changes in the presence of the ability to raise the dead is the kind of thing nerdy economists write papers about.

Let’s Play – Final Fantasy (Part 1)

Let’s Play – Final Fantasy (Part 1)

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Growing up, I was one of those kids who didn’t have an original NES. I always had PC games to play (and I played plenty of them), but there was always something magical about the NES. I never felt like any of the PC games I had could capture the awesomeness of something like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda. Luckily, a friend decided it would be an acceptable choice to let me borrow his NES for a few months some time back in 1989 or 1990, and I finally had a chance to catch up.

At one point previously, a different friend of mine demonstrated Final Fantasy to me. It reminded me a lot of the Ultima series, one of my favorite PC RPGs, which got me really excited. Unfortunately, I did not have a copy of Final Fantasy and the prospect of buying a game for a system I did not own was obviously unacceptable. Luckily, this was the era when video stores rented NES cartridges. The store my family regularly went to had two copies of the game, so I rented it one weekend and started playing.

Many Friday and Saturday night rentals later, I finished the game (with a fair amount of assistance from the official Nintendo Power Final Fantasy Strategy Guide, borrowed from yet another friend). As it was my first JRPG experience, I enjoyed it quite a bit and made a point to get myself some sort of video game console so I could play more of these games. I always kept my eyes open for JRPG ports on the PC, but that was a relatively rare event in the 1990s.

Looking back, it occurs to me that one of the things that appealed the most to me as a PC RPG player was the linearity of the game. Where a game like Bard’s Tale or Ultima threw you into “the world” and let you figure it out on your own, Final Fantasy was a relatively directed game. You begin the game stuck on an island with only one dungeon to explore. When you complete that, you get to move onto another land mass with a cave and a city to explore. Each piece gives you access to a little bit more of the world, but that little bit ends up being the next bit you needed.

I will undoubtedly have more to say about the game as I continue to play through it, but here’s to the beginning of the Final Fantasy. Final, insomuch that there have been some twenty something sequels.

Let’s Play – Transformers: Devastation

Let’s Play – Transformers: Devastation

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When I got new Transformers toys as a kid (and, perhaps, as an adult…maybe) I tended to throw away the packed-in weapons that the toys came with right away. Back in the ’80s, losing weapons was often a consequence of design; it was a problem that G.I. Joe toys had or M.A.S.K. toys had or He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (but not Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, their toys were perfect…not really, I’m sure they had the same problem)––the tiny blasters or swords fit nowhere except for in the hands of the characters. This was less of a problem for the other toys mentioned (since they could just permanently hold their weapons at the ready), but the point of The Transformers was that, at indeterminate intervals, you shouldn’t be able to see the characters’ hands because they were busy being some sort of vehicle (or electronic device or firearm or planet) and, in that case, there would be no place for the weapon to go. So, they got lost.

However, abandoning the weapons of Transformers toys was a choice on my part, not on behalf of any political agenda I held at the age of 5 and 6, but because I wasn’t buying the toys to recreate action scenes. When I spent time with my friends, the talk around playing with toys often came down to the simple binary of who would be the bad guys and who would be the good guys (the Decepticons and the Autobots, respectively, in this case) so that we could either ad-lib or reenact a decisive battle that would result in either global tyranny or peace on earth. I wasn’t particularly interested in these scenarios, possibly because I’m an only child and would often play with my toys alone, and big action set pieces weren’t fun nor particularly interesting.

TFfamily

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