SOPA

"Sometimes, it takes a crazy person to see the truth. If so, than I'm a freaking lunatic."
-Stephen Colbert



She wants you to click on her. Now that we've got your attention:



One of the reasons I love the Internet is that it's a digital Wild West: Anything goes, limitless possibilities, all kinds of people. You can find out something about anything if you search hard enough and no matter how screwed up you think you are, there's always someone somewhere in the depths of the Internet that will agree with you, will listen to your ideas, to appreciate whatever you've posted online.
That place is here, the Internet - our digital frontier.

Here, you and I are free to be ourselves.
Here, you and I are not alone.
Here, you and I are not censored.

Please don't let them take that away.

Balloon Fight

I'm so glad my 3DS is back from Nintendo! The L button got busted during an online Mario Kart 7 match right when my Ambassador Games arrived back in December and I find it semi-frustrating to defeat online opponents with items using X instead of L (read: personal preferences = comfort zone). I've missed playing two of the GBA games offered, Metroid Fusion and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, since a friend has had them since '05. Still waitin' on those!

Now my Metroid and Fire Emblem collection is  complete! Now announce an international release of that new 3DS Fire Emblem...

Of course, earlier this week my PS3 decided to die on me right as I was finishing the Final Fantasy XIII-2 demo (which I was thoroughly enjoying), so I'm without a convenient entertainment hub for Hulu Plus, Netflix and my first -technically second- Final Fantasy IX playthrough. I had put my first time off back in '10 around the end of disc 3 when other new game had arrived and I'd forgotten how much fun and charming IX is and was quite eager to finish it before getting to XIII (lost track of time when Christmas rolled around - came and went far too quickly this year, methinks).

But now my PS3 has my disc 3 hostage, dammit!! Looks like I'll only have time to go through XIII again when my system gets back for "internal damage repairs" and I assume I'm one of the few 1% (semi-toopical!) who're lucky enough to essentially get screwed by YLOD'd (Yellow Light of Death-ed). I had wanted to get through Final Fantasy X, X-2, XII and XIII before my Collector's Edition of XIII-2 arrives in early February, but now I know I'll only get time for one game before that arrives. One gets fixed, another decides to break it seems...

Enough of my personal misery! Now, on to another cultish Nintendo game:

A lotta NES Nintendo games that didn't quite became popular franchises are harder to find simple logos for.

Mach Rider

Happy New Year an' all that jazz!

Social schedule got a bit of a busy week, with a Downtown Disney stroll doubling as a B-Day dinner, some friends coming over more often for games, shows and movies, a random get-together with best friends to eat ox tail (tasty and a bit bony), play Munchkin and watch all three Robot Chicken Star Wars specials. Good week, and more eventful than I'm used to.

Now, on to a cult classic Nintendo game of sorts, known to many by its cameos in various other Nintendo compilations such as Smash Bros.

Difficult to find a large logo for this one, so here's the American box art.

Hyrule Historia

While debating on how to tackle smaller NES and Game Boy games on my self-imposed chronologically-correct way my mind works, Nintendo released their Hyrule Historia art book/encyclopedia over in Japan and I can't stress this enough:

This thing has gotta make it out of Japan.

It's not the first time Japan's withheld such Word of God goodness. I've almost gotten over the fact that we'll prolly never get all the Kingdom Hearts Ultimanias, fantastic strategy guides that go super in-depth on the beauty of the Kingdom Hearts universe with interviews, artwork and what-have-you. But it doesn't mean I can't hope.

Mainly posting this week about the fact Nintendo's revealed the official timeline for their The Legend of Zelda series. Whether or not you believe this is a public fragment of Nintendo's alleged and highly-classified document that houses how the games relate to each other doesn't matter to me, since I've lurked around enough comments sections and forums to know this is exactly the kind of thing that can break a fanbase in half (or three!). As far as I'm concerned, this is the official timeline until proven otherwise. And seeing as how this was edited by Eiji Aonuma himself and published by Nintendo, this is all but fact in my eyes.

An illustrated guide to the timeline, with an interesting development:

Most enticing part about this reveal is the existence of a so-called Failure Timeline.

Ocarina of Time was known to have created two timelines back when The Wind Waker was released, resulting in the Adult and Child timelines. This led to us fans to try and compile the then-ten titles released. (No, the CD-i games are not canon and I have no intention of playing them.)

As of last week, I had settled on my version of the timeline after thinking over the series and replaying most of the titles this year, which was as follows:

Metroid: Zero Mission

Man, I completely forgot about actually retro-reviewing every game I care about! Well, no more! Off to continue spouting my opinion in a sea where no one really cares what I think and how I rate things!

There's something about myself I've realized that bothers some people I know - I give most remakes the benefit of a doubt, especially when it comes to video games. For films, it depends if I've ever seen the original or on trusted word of mouth. Modern movie magic can help out a film I otherwise wouldn't've given the time of day to. When it comes to video games, I'm on board a good 95% of the time. Unlike films, a game must be actively played to advance anywhere and can definitely benefit from the advancement of technology and the lessons learned from other iterations of a series and inspiration from other titles to make the experience smoother and enjoyable, as Metroid has.

While I have multiple access to the original Metroid for NES, I prefer and will henceforth be referring to the remake Metroid: Zero Mission for GBA that released back in '04. I find it a much more accessible game than the original, to be honest. It controls a lot better than it did back in '87 (diagnal aiming is a godsend) and is more accessible for it, with more clearly defined goals. Whether or not that's an improvement depends on what you think makes a Metroid game. The extreme feeling of isolation is diluded somewhat with a map and clearly-marked goals, but the original's hidden passages and secrets are nigh-impossible to decipher to the modern gamer if they're not completely obsessed with 80's gaming mentality or have an extremely good memory.