I'm unreasonably excited about this.

I'm gonna sneak in this quick post before December, but this one's meaningful to me, for several reasons. I just wanted to let all of y'all know that the lead architect of the Fairchild Channel F, Jerry Lawson was honored as today's Google doodle. And it's a playable game! And it's basically Super Mario Maker!

I had one of these once! I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't fantastic, but it came out way before the Atari 2600 and was even capable of playing Pac-Man. I mean, it's a rather rough looking Pac-Man, with maybe six onscreen colors, but it definitely feels like the real deal, more so than Atari's game. Plus the marketing for this console is weirdly endearing, with Peter Max/Sesame Street minimalism for the game art and various dorky people grimacing and grinning while playing Fairchild games on the front of the console box. 

It's a very, very, very 1970s game system, is what I'm trying to express. It looks like the video game cousin of an 8-Track player. Its controllers look like personal massagers from Sweden. The Tic-Tac-Toe game calls you a "turkey" when you lose. And of course it's sheer woodgrain along the sides. It might as well have come with a pair of bell bottom pants and a lighter for burning your bra.

EDIT: Here's a direct link to the doodle and the game, for those interested.

It's-a... not bad?

The trailer for the Super Mario Bros. movie is out, and it's... kind of promising. Gotta admit, I was not expecting that! It's very colorful, the way a Mario movie should be (and the way the first film by Disney wasn't), and it's playfully self-aware. For instance, when held captive by Bowser, Luigi insists that he doesn't know any other men in colorful overalls... with bushy mustaches... and their first initials embroidered on their hats. It's gotta be one great big coincidence, right? Uh, you're not buying that.

I would watch this. I would not regret spending the sawbuck to watch this, even if it's disappointing, because I had zero expectations for this movie, and the trailer has already far surpassed them.

Ooh ooh OW OW OW!
(image from Arcade Club UK)

Speaking of Nintendo, there's a sale on a whole bunch of their old arcade games on the Switch eShop. Arcade Archives sales rarely happen, and even when they do, it's never Nintendo's own games, so if you're interested, I suggest jumping on those discounts before they end on the fifth of December. I've personally got my eye on Vs. Super Mario Bros. (the Super Mario Bros. we all know and love, with stages from The Lost Levels that we all know but don't love quite so much), Donkey Kong 3 (Galaga, but the object is to give a gorilla rectal cancer), and at least one of the Punch Out!!s.

Several other Switch titles (not by Nintendo, but nevertheless offered at tantalizing discounts) have piqued my interest, including TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection ($28), the Pocky and Rocky revival ($21), and Elevator Action Returns ($13). Plus there's the Atari 50th Anniversary collection, which is a hefty forty dollars but is nevertheless alluring due to the promise of rock solid Atari Jaguar emulation, something that's been tough to achieve on home computers and was until now unfathomable on the lowly Switch hardware. Something tells me this is going to be a very costly holiday season for old school gamers like myself.

By the way, for those interested, I'm shifting from Twitter to other social networks, including the scrappy up and comer Cohost. I recently posted a retrospective on the Mattel/INTV Intellivision there, which I think is worth a look. Before smart TVs and a game console that was thinking, Mattel promised the world "intelligent television," but how bright was the Intellivision, really? This Cohost-exclusive article holds the answer.

The Social Nyet-Work

You may have noticed that I no longer have a presence on Twitter. I put the blame solely on family jewels fondler and hair plugs enthusiast Elon "The Worst Life-Savers Ever" Musk. As you may already know, he recently purchased the social network for $44 billion dollars, then immediately went to work insulting users, firing key staff, making sweet love to himself, and kissing the ample posterior of the guy who was banned from Twitter for, uh... (leafs through notes) attempting to overthrow the United States government. I mean, it was only one government! It wasn't like he was trying to take over the WORLD, right?

One is a stable genius, the other
nearly got hanged.
(image from AllMovie)

Now look, I'm sure people are going to tell me that Elon Musk did me a favor, chasing me out of a site that's been steadily going downhill for the last six years. The thing is, I was on Twitter for fourteen years, and still have fond memories of the place. Where else could you talk directly to famous actors, politicians, and even writers from The Simpsons without being served a restraining order? It was also a fantastic source of breaking news, at least until the little Dutch boy came along to plug that flow of useful information with the finger he previously had lodged in his ass. Just look at the front page now! It's wall to wall Elon Musk! He's turned the place into a $44 billion dollar fan site!

So I'm done with Twitter, at least until it gets fumigated for self-worshipping  billionaires. Either that or the whole house of cards collapses under the crushing weight of Captain Apartheid's ego, which is more likely. "Gee, I thought the site was supposed to fall apart a couple weeks after I bought it!," Elon sneered mockingly. Just give it some time, you termite. You've fired so many engineers and scared away so many advertisers with your childish behavior that this hollowed out husk of a social media giant is probably being held together with Scotch tape, exploited immigrant labor, and crossed fingers. 

Where can you find me instead? Well, right here on Blogger, same as always. I also have a presence at Cohost, and may re-open my Tumblr account if I get desperate for interaction. Sticking to your principles is noble, but it doesn't help much when the pangs of social media withdrawal leave you chewing your nails down to the quick.

Also, in case I was too subtle about this earlier, fuck Elon Musk. Like, a whole lot.

It's a Hard Naka Life

Sometimes it feels like the drama going on behind the scenes in the video game industry is more exciting than the games themselves. Like that time the Swedish mafia launched a handheld game console as a convoluted long con, before its leader sliced a sports car in half during a joyride through the California countryside. Or that time when Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka was arrested for insider trading at Square-Enix, because he sure as hell wasn't going to make any money from Balan Wonderworld. That just happened, by the way. For all I know Naka could be in prison right now, calling his lawyer and wishing he'd never took that job at Square. (I'm sure everyone who bought Balan Wonderworld feels the same way.)

Unfortunately, I haven't been getting terribly excited about video games as of late, which is why you haven't heard much from me this month. Kiblitzing isn't dead... it's just currently in a state of boredom-induced torpor. It's not that I don't have tons, and tons, and tons of video games to play... my backlog is currently longer than Santa's naughty list. What's missing is motivation. Everything is just too much bother, especially those big-ass eighty hour long epics that all the game companies insist on releasing. You guys know I'm going to lose interest a quarter of the way through, right? It's telling that the only games I care to play these days are thirty year old Neo-Geo titles like League Bowling that can be wrapped up in a matter of minutes. 

Chronic depression and a recent attraction to marijuana probably aren't helping matters much. The latter helps with the former, but it certainly doesn't help with what remains of my creative ambition. I just don't want to DO anything anymore, and this chronically neglected blog reflects that. My apologies to anyone who comes here hoping for new content, only to find indifference.