A Letter to Dr. Wily from His Outsourced Robot Manufacturing Plant
Dear Dr. Wily,
We regret to inform you that we have been unable to complete your last order. We have had to cease production of your robots, and we have several questions which need to be addressed before we can resume production.
Our first question: why must all of your robots be sentient? Because of the order of construction followed as per your directions in our manufacturing process, your robots are built beginning with what we will call, for lack of a better word, the “brain”, which is then placed inside a rudimentary “skull”. This creates a terrifying entrapment in which the robot is cognizant of its own existence, as well as all the information, memories, and feelings you have implanted them with, but unable to communicate or even move. This horrible living hell they become trapped in only gets worse after the robot receives its internal “skeleton” body. The robot has to feel the sensation of being bolted to a sheet of metal, repeatedly electrified, and having 5000 degree molten steel poured over their bodies. This industrialized torture process creates robots that are mentally unstable and ready to kill everything they see (as soon as their vision sensors are cruelly and slowly screwed into their skulls).
This brings us to our next concern: your robots, which you say are for various industrial purposes, are, in effect, dangerous lunatics which likely would be mentally incapable of focusing enough to cut lumber or power electric generators without finding a way to kill hundreds, if not thousands of people in the process. Upon the completion of one of your prototypes, code named “BRIGHT MAN”, our manufacturing professionals found themselves running to shield their eyes from the flashes of incredibly intense light the robot generated. Several of our employees were completely and permanently blinded, and in their confused, blind stupor, many of them wandered into machinery and were brutally killed. One fell into a vat of molten steel, another was bolted into a sheet of metal, and one, who was actually driving a forklift and the time, went on an accidental killing rampage, hydraulically crushing and impaling many people. As plant manager, the screams of my employees, many of whom were my friends, will haunt me every night for the rest of my life.
Another issue which we have run into is the procurement of supplies needed to construct your robots. As I stated before, you have told us that your robots are used for industrial purposes. However, I can’t think of what constructive purpose a robot like “KNIGHT MAN” or “GRENADE MAN” could have. As you may be aware, military munitions are difficult for us to obtain as a civilian factory, to say nothing of the difficulty in finding thousands of medieval flails. Especially when one considers that you demanded a low price for the contract (which you promised was a test agreement for a series of lucrative government contracts), this agreement does not seem particularly cost effective for us after the semi-legal procurement of these various components.
This brings us to our last concern. After the construction of these robots, you have asked that we ship them to a variety of locations (and, curiously, place them in empty garages to “await Mega Man”, a mysterious instruction we don’t fully understand). We have several international clients, and ordinarily this isn’t a problem. However, the variety of shipment locations you have requested are remarkably difficult to ship to. I’m not sure if you are aware of the costs involved with shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of sentient robot killers armed with nuclear reactors and explosive munitions to incredibly remote locations, but suffice to say that they are prohibitive, to say the least. FedEx and UPS have also both filed several Patriot Act investigation requests against our company, which has been both a PR disaster and a legal entanglement which our employees and management, to say nothing of the company itself, may be unable survive. At least 7 of our employees have been relocated to internment camps, never to be seen again. What was left of our plant’s senior foreman was returned to our main office in a manila envelope.
Again, Dr. Wily, while we value your business, we feel that these difficulties must be overcome to ensure our working relationship can continue. We hope you feel the same way.
Signed,
Eric Fischer
Plant Manager, Prototech Industries
P.S. We appreciate your attendance at our last stockholder meeting! However, we were a bit concerned at your constant hand-rubbing and cackling. Many attendees felt your behavior was “curious” at best and “scheming and evil” at worst. Please refrain from such behavior at future events.
My Opinions: For Entertainment Purposes Only.
You may be surprised to find this out, since I’ve posted so many reviews, but I fucking hate critics. Even the “good” ones. Not just with games, but with anything. There have been maybe 3 or 4 critics who have had any kind of positive effect on their industry. The unfortunate thing about the occupation is that it so often results in people who feel that, because someone has found their opinion good enough to publish and send out to several people, that their opinion is somehow more valid or informed than anyone else’s. Again, in some cases, this can be true, but most of the time, these are people who aren’t any more knowledgeable about the quality of the art in question, or usually even any better at informing others.
An example: Nat Tate, a famous expressionist painter, had a launch party for his posthumous biography on April 1, 1998. Some of his work was exhibited, and David Bowie read from the book. Gore Vidal, who had written an endorsement for the book, was also in attendance as a special guest. Many of the most famous people in the art world, collectors, historians, and especially critics, were there, many excited to finally see such an influential painter honored.
If you haven’t guessed, Nat Tate didn’t fucking exist. His name was a combination of two famous museums in England, the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery. The event was on fucking APRIL FOOLS DAY, for Christ’s sake. But no, these various critics were too pompous (and too blatantly fucking stupid) to admit they had never heard of him. They just went right along with the hoax (which, for the record, Gore Vidal and David Bowie were in on).
A second example: Wine critics were once served two wines. One, the more expensive of the two, they described as “balanced” and “full”. The other, cheaper wine was “unbalanced”, “weak”, “simple”. Imagine how they felt when they revealed that both bottles were of the same cheap wine.
Finally, a third example: Recently, Roger Ebert again argued, completely unsuccessfully, as to why he doesn’t think video games are art. This was a mistake. The internet has completely lost its shit. And rightfully so, though I may disagree with the way some people go about doing it. He has no right to decide what is and is not art any more than I do, and that’s what critics do that offends me so much. I’m not going to flame Mr. Ebert, even though he is completely mistaken about his opinion, because he’s one of the few critics who I generally like. Not because I think he’s got some kind of insight into film that I don’t have; only I know what I like to watch. I like him simply because he is a good writer, and the way he presents his arguments is entertaining. Honestly, the funny thing is that I could really care less about his actual opinions.
And that brings me to my overall point about myself: there’s no reason you should actively want to know my opinions for any reason other than entertainment. My opinion should not help you decide to purchase a game, or think a game is good or bad. I just want you to be entertained. The reason so many people are offended at Roger Ebert’s comments is because they think for some reason that his opinion on games affects them. It does not. And that’s the way it should be. The entire idea of a critic is completely asinine; what training can you have to be a good music critic? What do you compare an album to? Your own experiences and tastes. The same thing applies to video games; who give a fuck how somebody from Game Informer feels Splinter Cell: Conviction compares to the other games in the series? He’s just some guy in California, he has no training or insight that makes him know any better than a 13 year old who has played every game in the series. What makes him different is that he has some kind of education or experiences as a writer, and that’s what he should be taken as. Someone who can express his ideas in an entertaining way through words (or, in Game Informer’s case, express Gamestop’s ideas in an infotaining way through a catalog for Gamestop’s products). And that’s all I can do. Hopefully I can make you laugh, or be reminisce, or what the fuck ever. Just don’t think that my opinion on something should mean anything to you (except on World of Warcraft; my statements about that game are not opinions, they are stone cold facts). I don’t have time to feel like some pompous, self-important asshole.
I Promise I Have Yet To Break My Promise.
Hey guys, technical difficulties have left me unable to post the article I wrote yesterday. For the record I was UNAWARE that the post didn’t actually post until today. So, later on today I will see to it that that post gets put up as well as today’s. I promise. On top of my other promise. This forms a terrifying amalgam promise, a mutant which has crawled from industrial waste to infect you with its terrible diseased claws. You’re welcome.
Random Reviews – The Adventures of Rad Gravity
The Adventures of Rad Gravity has a funny Wikipedia entry. It says that the game had “a wacky storyline,” and that Activision inserted “humorous antics” into the game. While this is true on the surface, the article fails to recognize a very important element of the game: the fact that it is about a goddamned space psychopath. The game tries to make it out like you’re just a big headed, silly space hero, and at first that seems to be the case, but when you actually play the game, you realize that you aren’t firing your “space phazor” at “alien replicoids from beyond the moon” or some silly camp stuff like that. Look at the title screen:
It looks like a fun, silly space game. Everything is cool, you get your text opening, and you beam down to a planet. Everything seems cool:
Wow! It almost seems cute! Who could think something like this is sick? After you beam down you end up on some planet.
Hmm, this city seems a little dirty, sleazy even, but I’m sure it’s just a weird design. Also, have you noticed every cyberpunk work always has neon lights with Asian characters in them? It’s a fact. I wonder why people in 1993 thought Asian type would be the chief written language in 1997. I guess that’s the kind of odd delusion you get when you set impossible future fiction 4 years in the future, like so many cyberpunk artists did. For something so cool, it had a fuckload of problems. Like cyborg Billy Idol.
Anyway, everything looks totally (wait for it) RAD (FUUUUUUCK YEAAAAAAAH PUNS) until you try to attack an enemy. Look at Rad now:
It’s hard to tell with that screenshot, but that isn’t a laser or something. That is a knife. Not a space knife. Just a fucking fixed-blade knife. Rad Gravity isn’t a fun campy hero. He is a goddammed space psychopath. I can’t even figure out why he went to this planet, except to stab MC Hammer backup dancers. I guess that’s pretty respectable, but still, a knife? He could at least use a gun, make it quick and painless. If you kill someone with a knife, you fucking enjoy it.
Anyway, this game is fairly decent, I suppose. I can’t figure out any point to it other than to brutally gut a bunch of space Vanilla Ice rejects. It’s nice to see where games like Manhunt got their start, though.
Score: 5/10
(I know I promised an article every day. And I’m sure most of you expected me to break that promise very, very quickly. Technically, I did not have a substantive article up on 4/19. However, I published it before I went to sleep, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s close enough to “on time”. Hopefully the waiting increased the enjoyment. Otherwise, I’ve got no case.)
Activision, LOL
Thomas Tippl, Activision CFO and COO: “”We treat our developers extremely well.”
Bobby Kotick, Activision CEO: “The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.” … “company culture of skepticism, pessimism, and fear” … “We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression.”
lol.
Thank God games are turning away from Japanese developers, huh? American business operations have done so much for the industry.
Tweets From the Lead Characters from Contra.
@ScorpiLance: we just landed in some river in galuga. can’t wait to kill ppl!
@MadDogBill: @Scorpilance dude i’m right beside you and tweeting you lol but lets kill those dudes
@ScorpiLance: @MadDogBill lol ok. i bet i can kill more ppl than you!
@MadDogBill: fuck yeah spread gun!!! time to get to some genocide!!
@ScorpiLance: #itsannoyingwhen someone shoots you to death when you just got a flamethrower
@MadDogBill: @sbelmontvampirehunter sorry i cant make your true blood party! ill make it up to you after i exterminate this alien race
@ScorpiLance: just killed a dude before I saw him! mang im dyin for some arbys wonder if galuga has one lol
@ScorpiLance: OMG GALUGA HAS AN ARBYS. IM SAVED
@MadDogBill: I just became mayor of the Galuga Arby’s on FourSquare!
@MadDogBill: mmm curly fries and a big montana
@ScorpiLance: @MadDogBill dude that meat slicer has a glowing spot on it!
@MadDogBill: @ScorpiLance fuck! lets shoot it quick!
@ScorpiLance: guys DO NOT visit restaurants in other countries. this meat slicer turned into a fucking 200 foot tall wall of guns with a glowing spot!
@MadDogBill: RT @ScorpiLance guys DO NOT visit restaurants in other countries. this meat slicer turned into a fucking 200 foot tall wall of guns with…
@ScorpiLance: Hell yeah we beat the first boss! time to move on!
@MadDogBill: @ScorpiLance Dude move away from me. When you look at us in profile standing next to each other our pants turn purple lol
@ScorpiLance: @MadDogBill lol sorry dude. if it wasn’t for our pants youd never be able to tell us apart.
@MadDogBill: #FF Konami tweeps! @solidsnake1987 @officialvicviper @TMNTRaph @KonamiManSecret
@ScorpiLance: fuck you bill you stole my last life! now when we die we’re both dead!
@MadDogBill: oh fuck we’re not even done with the second area of our assault yet!
These were the last known transmissions of the brave Contra team. At least, until they started their valiant mission over again with the Konami code. Then it was a breeze.
Insanity, PAX East, and the future of this site.
Sweet Jesus PAX was awesome. I no longer have any desire to go to any other convention, unless you count PAX Prime as a different convention, in which case fuck you and your semantics.I’ll get into details in a moment, but I want to bring something up first. Every con I’ve ever been to, as well as every con my friends have been to, have always had pushing, shoving, general asshats, and at least a few creepy, standoffish people. I had always assumed that was a given with nerd gatherings. You always meet a few cool people, several people you don’t care about, and several people who can’t fathom the idea of a girl who plays video games or watches anime or, god forbid, is even Asian and adorable, and decide they must capture her and hold her in their basement doing nothing but playing WoW and watching Evangelion until they LOVE THEM DAMMIT. But at PAX, there was none of this. Everybody got along, and I felt like I could start a conversation with absolutely anyone without having to worry about being invited to a violent shota party in their hotel room, a party which consists of the person who invited me, stacks of illegal pornography, and a cloud of shame and disgust. I think it was like what world peace would feel like (except for that little tablefucker who stole the code for Breach. I hope they find that kid, break his legs off, and beat him to death with them), everybody got along, even tabletoppers and video gamers, perhaps the biggest (imagined) difference of all. Honestly, even without all the amazing (amazing) variety of activities to take part in, I would probably still go to PAX just to hang out with strangers, and I hate strangers. Probably because I grew up with shit like this:
Holy fuck. If either of these... things had genitalia or orifices the blue one would be getting raped to death.
So, a log of my experiences at PAX:
March 25th – Mia (my wife) and I drove to Boston from Knoxville, TN. This was a mistake. Some cuntface hit my car in a Wal-Mart parking lot on the day the new Twilight 13-year-old girl wankfest DVD was released (we were there to buy Pokemon SoulSilver. Seriously), so the car was in the shop when we left. As a result, my shitty-ass insurance company (Progressive, long story, but never ever use them for any reason) provided me with a rental car. At first, this was some bullshit Toyota minivan, but fortunately we were able to trade it for a brand new Kia Soul, which was surprisingly badass. It was comfortable, roomy, had an Aux-In port for our iPods, Sirius radio, and a huge backseat. Also, the sleek, stylish, modern design made us feel like affluent 18-25 year olds whose primary concerns when looking to make an automobile purchase included aesthetics, accessories, and design!
This post brought to you by Kia. Or at least I wish it was so at least I'd be making money for my whoring.
The trip took -16- fucking hours. That doesn’t sound too bad at first, but if you consider that we had a total of about 5 hours of sleep the two days before we left, we were pretty exhausted when we pulled into Boston at fucking 6am. Our hotel, the Colonnade, was fucking swank. It was Hilary swank. I felt bad checking in while wearing my road clothes.
I looked something like this.
When we finally got checked in and into the hotel room, we basically just collapsed on the bed and slept for about 3 hours. When we got up, we barely had time to take a shower and eat about 20 Fruit Roll-Ups for breakfast before heading down to the Hynes Convention Center across the street to queue up for opening ceremonies.
March 26th – We got to the convention center, grabbed a swag bag at the entrance, clipped our badges to the lanyards provided (by The Behemoth! <3), and stood in line with thousands of people.
As I said, everything about PAX was amazing, and that even extended to the lines to get in to the convention center. I’ve never been happy waiting in line, least of all for something I’ve already been waiting for, for 5 months no less. But the atmosphere was incredible, I got an opportunity to snap pictures of crazy cosplayers, and, best of all, we were provided with entertainment. Get In Line Games and Evil Genius Designs had screens up with various trivia games and picture scrambles. The games were fun, but what was even more fun was the banter the creative teams had with everyone in line. Between games the screen had an old terminal-style text box where the developers would chat with everyone. They were really funny, quick witted, and were very, very up on current intarwebz culture. I don’t have anything funny to say, but I felt I should mention them because they did such a great job. Kudos. But not in a middle-management way.
We saw the lines to get in to Wil Wheaton’s keynote. We decided to go straight into the convention center instead of waiting for something we probably wouldn’t get in to. Fortunately, when we got inside, we found they were letting people in on the other end of the theater too. So, essentially, we skipped the line, which makes us sound like assholes, but we didn’t mean to do it, so hopefully that’s ok. The keynote was spectacular. People always think Wil Wheaton is popular because he was on Star Trek, and I’m sure to some of the nerd population that’s true, but it’s much more than that. He’s an extremely talented writer with a real passion for nerd culture, and that’s primarily how I know him. His speech went over how most of his lasting relationships with other people were based on gaming. Very touching. Also he insulted WoW, so that’s cool too.
Immediately afterward, Jerry and Mike (Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade) came out to the sound of Rick Ross’s “Everyday I’m Hustlin’”, which was awesome. I got to enjoy the first minute or two of their Q&A session, but the first thing they did on stage was announce the competitors in the Omegathon, their big annual game tournament. Despite the literal trashbags (big black commercial trashbags, for that matter) of applications, I WAS ACTUALLY ON THE LIST. I had a 32/70000 chance. So, unfortunately I missed most of their Q&A, but more importantly, I got to be a fucking Omeganaut. So, those of us who were chosen went out to the area out the side exit to the theater, and stood around while we were counted and checked out. While we were waiting, I was shocked to see Robert Khoo, Penny Arcade, Inc.’s Director of Business Development/PAX Business Manager and Show Director/Child’s Play Managing Director/All-Around Awesome Guy, just standing around with us. It was surreal to see people I’d idolized for years just walking around near me. (More on Khoo later.) After we were all accounted for, our privileges as Omeganauts were explained to us. In addition to the fact that we got to participate in the tournament to begin with, our special Omeganaut badges, in addition to making us look special, allowed us access to absolutely anything in the entire convention without waiting in line. I literally got to do whatever I wanted, anywhere there, without waiting behind hundreds of people. I had a fucking backstage pass. I felt so much like such a goddammed rockstar. It was like sunglasses and hypodermic needle marks just appeared on my body.
After getting our badges, my partner Alex and I had about 15 minutes to try to remember how to play the first game in the tournament: Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. I had played Mario Kart 64 recently, and honestly I’m not sure if this hurt us or helped us in the long run. After getting in what little practice somewhat applicable we could (a single game of Mario Kart Wii), and a mad rush to check controls, we sat down for the tournament (we were Team 1, so we went first). At this point, I looked over to the right, where pro cameramen were taking many, many pictures of us, and I noticed that Mike and Jerry were 10 fucking feet away from me. This almost sent me into panic mode, because as a loyal Penny Arcade reader, I know that they love Double Dash, and also as a loyal Penny Arcade reader, I felt I would need to cast myself into a lake of fire if I disappointed them with a shitty game of Mario Kart.
And let me tell you this: it was the most hardcore fucking game of Mario Kart ever played. We played on 2-person teams in Waluigi Stadium, and we managed to pull off an actual Double Dash at the first of the game. This gave us a good head start, but the other team, despite having not played the game in several years, caught back up quickly. This was mostly because I completely fucked up. There is a Penny Arcade comic from a few years back in which Jesus tells Gabe he “brings those blue sparks.” It’s one of my favorites. In possibly the most surreal, dreamlike moment of my life, 2 of my biggest heroes ever sat 10 feet away from me and yelled to me a quote from one of my favorite things they’ve done. They yelled for me to bring the blue sparks. I can’t even begin to explain how amazing this made me feel. I can, however, explain that my desperate attempts to actually do so led to me falling off of a goddammed ramp. This fucked us up, and our opponents managed to get ahead of us. The game pretended to help us catch up by giving us a bunch of great items, even including a fucking blue shell, and none of them hit anything. Even the blue shell missed (which Jerry commented that he had never seen happen). A series of mistakes they made led to us catching back up, though, and we made it to a straight-away. Specifically, the big straight-away that has a bunch of pipes and spinning wheels of fire. We managed to pull off some insane driving and make it through the straight-away without hitting anything. Our opponents didn’t do quite so well. We sped through on our last lap to the finish line, and we were right at it when we hear a whistling noise. A fucking goddammed blue shell hits us, right at the finish line. Our opponents come up right the fuck behind us, and we just barely manage to make it over the finish line right before they do. WE WON. FUCKING ITALICS.
I spent the rest of the night practicing for the next two games in the series, Geometry Wars and Rock Band. Not much went on, and after about 4 days with a total of 7 hours of sleep, we headed back to the hotel and crashed.
March 27th – Mia and I woke up, took a shower, and headed to the convention center again. The only place outside of the convention center we went to was the Trader Joe’s immediately behind it, once, on the last day. I’ve heard Boston is a nice city, and I’d like to visit it sometime. I arrived and was accounted for, and played Geometry Wars. No need to go too deep into details, but we played King mode, and I’m not a big fan of Geometry Wars, and my partner had never played it, so we lost. I stayed the appropriate “good sport” amount of time for the rest of the tournament, then excitedly ran off to enjoy the expo, which I hadn’t gotten to do since it opened.
The first place I ran to was the classic arcade room. My good friends Devon and Tiffany were waiting in line for one of the panels, so we stopped and talked for a while.
It only occurs to me now that I didn’t go to a single panel the entire time I was there, except for all the Penny Arcade panels. To be honest, not many of them really interested me, and the ones that did didn’t interest me more than the general goofing off to be done at the convention. I’m hard to please, though, so that’s not really the expo’s problem so much as it is mine.
Anyway, when we got inside the arcade room, we were greeting by a very nice woman from the American Classic Arcade Museum, who provided the exhibit and was collecting donations (if you didn’t get the hint, you should donate now). The exhibit was awesome; they even had fucking Pooyan, an obscure Konami game from the early 80s, and a personal favorite of mine. Mia found her favorite game, Space Invaders, and immediately went to work trying to topple the default high score on the machine. I did the same with Pooyan, and then next door to the classic console freeplay room.
I swear to fucking god, this was way too cool. Too cool even for me, a man who rides a skateboard, on top of a surfboard, on top of a whale to get to work every morning. This room had every classic console, from the Atari 2600 to the Dreamcast, and a metric fuckton of games. In addition to a bunch of obvious favorites, like Perfect Dark and Super Mario World, they covered a bunch of somewhat obscure multiplayer games that lend themselves to amazing interactions with other people. Games like Saturn Bomberman (possibly the best of the series) and even fucking Zombies Ate My Neighbors, which I firmly believe can be responsible for some of the strongest gamer-bonding experiences of your life. Something about that game just really makes you feel like you’ve been through the shit together. It’s like the bond between war buddies, or the feeling between two guys as they sit fishing on a boat alone, at least before they talk about touching their dicks together. Most notable, however, is the fact that they actually had the fucking Nintendo World Championship cartridge. For those of you who don’t know, this is the fucking holy grail to game collectors. It’s like the Beatles “Butcher Album” cover for record collectors, or Burt Lancaster’s dick for movie memorabilia lovers. Copies routinely go for tens of thousands of dollars on eBay. It’s a huge deal to actually see one, and here was a copy, sitting right in front of me, completely unattended. If I had wanted to I easily could have taken it. Thankfully, since for the most part PAX is attended by awesome people, no one did. Thankfully that little dumbshit that stole Breach was apparently too fucking stupid to look for something there. God I hate that kid.
After that, I met Mia outside the main theater for Wil Wheaton’s signing. I could have used my mighty Omeganaut pass to skip to the front of the line, but the people in front of me had been waiting a long time, so I would have felt like a dick. Instead, I just waited like a normal person (sigh) and talked to people in line. Finally, I was next, and my heart started beating. I had no idea what I would say. Fortunately, Mia brought up the Atari 400 we recently bought, and Wil’s eyes lit up. He began excitedly telling us that we could visit AtariAge to get the code for games other people had programmed in BASIC and use it with the programming kit we got with it. That was very endearing, and it made me feel bad that I asked him to sign a piece of Star Trek memorabilia, which I understand he hates. Blame the friend I got him to sign it for. I got him back, though. I had Wil sign it like we were best friends and we hung out all weekend. Take that, Cody.
There were 3 things that I wanted to do, that I’ve always wanted to do, at a convention. I wanted to play a hotly anticipated game before its release, I wanted to meet some kind of gaming celebrity, and I wanted to score a bunch of exclusive swag. Friends, I got to do all 3 of these things on the same fucking day. This is exactly why PAX was so amazing. After the signing, Mia and I headed for the Expo Hall, and the first thing we saw was a massive Rockstar logo. This intrigued me, but the mile long line that wrapped around the expo room Rockstar had setup kind of scared me. So, despite my reservations about skipping a line making me an asshole, I decided to use my Omeganaut badge to get in. They waved me in like a goddammed groupie. This was appropriate, because I would have fucked someone to play the game they were exhibiting – Red Dead Redemption. Even though it was a little rough looking, it played like fucking velvet. The employee guiding me through the game let me know it runs on a modified Grand Theft Auto IV engine, which I was initially worried about, but after I spent a few minutes playing the game, I found that they managed to fix every single flaw with GTAIV (which, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I totally hated, except for the multiplayer). The combat wasn’t awkward at all, and my vehicle didn’t move like I was driving a banana peel down a Slip n’ Slide covered with Astroglide. Presumably, this is because I was on a horse, but I suppose they could have put the horse on rollerblades or something. In any case, it’s going to be fucking awesome. Apparently the world is the biggest Rockstar has ever created, even bigger than San Andreas, which was pretty ridiculously huge in its own right. As I was playing, I let the guy know that I operate this site, and that I would be reviewing it. This led to me getting a shitload of extra swag. Suckers! You thought I operated a site that people visit.
After leaving, I ran into all kinds of luminaries, including Adam Sessler, Jeff Gerstmann, and others. I also swear I saw Ron Gilbert there but I can’t be sure. I even got to have a conversation with Billy Thomson, Creative Director for Ruffian Games and Lead Designer for Crackdown. He’s now in charge of Crackdown 2, which is also looking totally incredible.
A big part of this trip for me was getting to visit the Fangamer booth. If you aren’t familiar with Fangamer, you are a war criminal. There, I said it. Fangamer is the best place to score sweet, delicious swag based on pretty much all of my favorite games, including Metal Gear Solid, Chrono Trigger, and Earthbound. In fact, the site started as an offshoot of Starmen.net, the first online community I ever belonged to, and the only one I ever felt like a real part of. This means that there were actually had a lot of the key people from Starmen.net working in the booth, and this meant that I got to meet them. I was gawking at the beautiful figures designed by Ms. Camille Young (AKA Meeellla)while telling Mia about how I had belonged to Starmen.net for like 10 years. That’s when someone behind me asked what my name on there was, and I turned around to actually see Camille standing behind me. That kind of blew my mind, but I played it cool, and talked with her for a bit. She let me know that several people, including design powerhouse Jonk and her husband Reid (AKA Reidman, the founder of the site) were there. This made me happy, and a little frightened. People I had admired and talked to since I was 12 were now like 10 feet away from me. I didn’t know what to do. Fortunately I ended up getting to meet everybody, and get a picture made with Camille and Reid. Reid even remembered me, which made me feel awesome, and talked with me for quite a while. I loved them both to death. Reid was really fun, and Camille was super sweet. I don’t really have a joke to end on here, but this was definitely one of the biggest high points of the entire trip for me, and is still emblematic to me as the exact reason I wanted to go to PAX in the first place.
Later on we went to the Penny Arcade Create-A-Strip Panel. It was hilarious. I was literally to the point of tears during one part of it. I would talk more about it, but I can’t really capture what made it so funny in words. So here’s some onomatopoeia: PLONG!
After just walking halls for a while, we left the convention center and had a nice relaxed dinner at P.F. Changs, then went back to the hotel and slept like rocks on opium.
March 28th – This was it. THE FINAL DAY.
We ate breakfast at the surprisingly delicious (and completely classy) Brasserie Jo, the restaurant in our hotel (which has actually won several awards for having the best breakfast in the city). Afterwards, we rushed to the convention center, because the Penny Arcade Q&A panel started earlyish, and we got up pretty late.
The panel was pretty great, and actually had some really touching moments.
One of the best parts, and also a great example of how awesome the people who come to PAX are, was when a guy who collected all of the unofficial PAX trading cards (created by the PA forums) presented them to Jerry and Mike as a gift. Jerry told him to wait a second and walked off stage. He came back with one of Intel’s crazy new processors, and gave it to him. This was a fucking $1200 processor. That was pretty amazing in its own respect, but what was even more amazing was that the guy handed it right back to Jerry, and said “Because this is a community event, I want to give back to the community. You can auction this off for Child’s Play.” He appropriately got a hero’s welcome as he went back to his chair. Jerry referred to it as a Super Bowl run, a corridor of high fives.
Another beautiful part was when a young girl came up and let Jerry and Mike know how much Child’s Play meant to her. She related a story about how she had grown up in a hospital, in a lot of pain and scared all the time, and told them how the only thing that made her feel better was when the staff would roll in a TV cart with a broken Playstation and an N64. She said it took her mind off all the pain she was in, and that she thinks Child’s Play is a wonderful cause to take up, because she knows from personal experience how hard hospitals can be on kids. She started thanking them, tears rolling down her face, and walked away from the mic. Mike ran and jumped off stage and hugged her. Anybody who was there and says they weren’t crying is a liar and a charlatan. I’m almost to the point of tears now just thinking about it. It was beautiful.
After leaving the panel, Mike and Jerry had a signing. People had been lining up for quite a while, and I used my Omeganaut pass to get to the front of the line. Initally the Enforcer working wouldn’t let me, but then a higher-ranked (?) Enforcer said it was ok, and that I was “royalty.” FUCK YES.
Mia ran out of the convention center to the hotel across the street to get my PA anniversary book that I had bought specifically for them to sign and then forgot in our room. She got back just in time, and I got to meet them. I was terrified. I was so afraid I was going to say something stupid that I barely talked at first. I told them how they were big influences on my decision to write, and they asked me what my site was. Jerry even seemed to think the name was funny. =O I started to tell them about my game as well, but I could see there were like 3000 people in line, so I told them I wouldn’t take up any more of their time. But they actually had me come back and stand with them for a while to tell them about it! This is exactly why I love these guys so much. As massively popular as they are, they still have time to just be regular people and talk to people about things. They ran an event with almost 80000 people attending, and they still had time to have me stick around and talk to them about whatever bullshit I was doing. Jerry even gave me advice, saying to just throw myself at it, fail, learn from the failure, and start over again. For me, as an admirer of his writing on the site, the comic, and the game they developed, this was like getting skateboarding advice from Tony Hawk, or, I don’t know, web-slinging advice from Spiderman or something. It was big.
And that leads me to the last part of this article, the ominous “future of this site” part of the title. This is my 100th post. I’ve been working on this site for like 2 years or something now, and I’m proud of some of the stuff that has come from it. That said, I feel like I’m doing a disservice to both of my readers by never writing for it. I’m very, very picky on stuff that I write, and I have a few articles that I’ve written but never published because I want to fix them. I have a few projects I’ve begun but not finished, and I’d like to actually go back and finish them. But my biggest problem as a writer is that everything has to be just so or I won’t publish them, or even write them. I’m trying to get over this problem, and that’s where the “future” part comes in. I’m going to start a project, in which I write at least one article, at least 200 words long, every day for 200 days. Most of you who know me probably think that isn’t going to happen. Well, the reason I’m writing this as part of this article is that, as hokey as it sounds, I have come back from PAX a changed man. Now, more than ever, I want to be a part of the games industry. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, or when, but I will work in this industry. I think I’ve got potential, but I need to refine my talents. That’s why I’m doing this. And I’m going to goddammed well stick to it, too. So expect to see a shitload of dick jokes and Contra references in your feeds. Bitches.
