I have emerged from my cryogenic slumber!

Well, more like “I finally got off my butt and did something for the site.”

In case you’re wondering what caused the massive hibernation, it was one part work being totally obstinate (2 hours overtime just about every night… when you’re already scheduled to work until midnight), one part writer’s block (no less than two reviews were started and stalled because I couldn’t come up with a good angle for a video), one part outside commitments (volunteering for Strategicon and hosting Press Your Luck therein, as you may have seen on my YouTube channel), and one part abject laziness. Things have gotten a little less hectic now; I’ve managed to escape the soul-crushing vortex that is the souther California card room industry, and my schedule has since opened up. It also helps that I have a new cell phone, one with HD video capacity, so I can start making videos without being self-conscious about resolution.

On that note, let’s stop filibustering and reveal my latest work: a swift walkthrough of everyone’s favorite game of level grinding and butthoumusting, Dragon Warrior.

Speaking of Dragon Warrior, I was playing around with Famitracker (a program that allows you to compose music using an NES soundboard), and I managed to put together a decent cover of the battle music from Dragon Warrior IV:

So there’s that.

I’ll probably start on my next review (for which I already have the footage – hint hint) in the next couple of days. See you soon!

Any suggestions?

Just a quick update on what’s going on with the site.

First of all, I want to send a shout-out to WiiViewr, the YouTube channel that exclusively reviews (you guessed it!) Wii and Virtual Console games. He’s added me to his list of “Other Great Game Reviewers!”. Considering that his videos routinely score several thousand hits after just a few days, I’d like to think that a small portion of that traffic is making its way over here. If such is the case, thanks for stopping by.

On that note, I’ve recently decided that my website content is a tad on the sparse side nowadays. The reviews are still up – they always will be – but aside from that I haven’t really done much. The game show controls are pretty much obsolete since I don’t really work with Visual Basic anymore (and I’m tired of everyone screaming that MCI32.OCX or some other file isn’t working), the rulesheets have pretty much been swallowed up by Wikipedia and TV Tropes, I had to close down the message boards because they were getting overrun with spammers, and I don’t have the stamina to go on long political rants the way I used to.

That’s where you guys come in. If anyone out there has ideas either video game or game show related that you’d like to see, let me know. I’m certainly not about to kill the website – as a matter of fact, I actually gotten off my butt and written a few more spruced-up reviews, and if you go to my Capsule Reviews you’ll notice that the Wii list is now up to date. I just think I’ve been letting this place stagnate for a while, and am looking for ways to freshen it up.

Talk to you guys soon!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new champion. Of suck.

Ever since I started reviewing video games for whatever web space I was using back in 1996, Hydlide for the NES has always held the record for being the lowest-scoring game in my library. When I was scoring with percentages, it rated in the low 20s; nowadays, it languishes with a total score of seven points out of 80 possible. For fifteen years, it had the infamous title of the worst game I’ve ever played.

Not anymore.

This, folks, is what happens when a media company decides to make a video game out of one of their classic game show properties – only instead of doing a video game version of a classic game show, they do a video game of their crappy revival of said classic game show, and then give the responsibility of making this game to a company that barely did justice to The Price is Right, and turned Press Your Luck into an absolute shell of its former glorious self. (They also did the Wii releases of Family Feud and Hollywood Squares. I haven’t played either, and it this point it would take a rather sizable bribe for me to do so.) In otherwords, the short-sighted leading the inept. The result could’ve been seen a mile away.

Typically I like to do some sort of April Fools joke that is related somehow to my web presence. Last year, it was my joke review of FF3. The year before that, I did a fake Game Show Tournament bracket where the #1 ranked show was You’re In The Picture and it just went downhill from there. Prior to that, I Rickrolled all four Time Bomb videos I had recently uploaded. This year, instead of my own joke, I decided to let Ludia take care of the humor – unintentional as it may have been. Enjoy.

Voting out the weakest links (See? ‘Cause they’re links and all)

So the links have been renovated to better reflect my websurfing habits over the last 12 months. If there’s anything out there that I ought to be visiting that I don’t know of, feel free to let me know and I’ll check it out.

In other news, after playing 30 matches of Street Fighter IV and winning a cumulative total of two rounds, I think it’s pretty clear that either everyone else in the world is that good at the game, or I’m just that bad.

Link harvesting

If anyone out there has suggestions for links that I may want to add to the sidebar to the right, lemme know. I’d like to do some spring cleaning tomorrow.

I’m flattered, really.

It’s nice to know that this thing still attracts new readers once in a while.

One such reader goes by the name Eric Bailey, who is the administrator for Nintendo Legend, a website that is taking on the Herculean task of reviewing every single game that came out on the NES. Good luck with that endeavor, sir – one look at my reviews page can tell you how far I got in that quest.

Anyways, Eric had me write a brief mini-review for his site in honor of his 100th game. Here’s a hint – of the five guest reviewers he had, I criticized the game the most. My contribution probably won’t surprise anybody, but I still suggest you guys check out the site, which is coming along very nicely. If and when I ever get off my butt and edit the link bar to the right, you can be sure this site will be on the list.

What now?

Thanks to all the game footage being done ahead of time, my review for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link enjoyed a very fast turnaround.

So the question that naturally comes up here is, “What now?” As much as I’d like to review a Wii game next, given that I just spent a fair amount of money on a new HD vidcap device last month, I don’t know any worthwhile games that have recently come out for it and don’t require additional money spent on WiiMotion Plus or other kerfluffle. It’s been suggested in the apartment that we do Wheel of Fortune next, simply so we can videotape Ben, Travis and I trashtalking each other while we play the game, but the three of us aren’t going to have the same night night off for a while, and I’d like to try and get something done a little quicker than that.

Actually, I kinda would like to try to get back into writing reviews – I had a pretty good pace going until I stalled on Katamari Damacy and never really got back into it since. There’s even a handful of capsule reviews I have yet to put up. Posting videos on YouTube is fine and dandy, but that’s supposed to be an extension of this thing, and I haven’t touched anything outside of this front page in over a year. (Especially if the new video has managed a whopping 80 views in two days.)

As always, you guys are more than welcome to chime in here. It’s going to be a pretty busy month – the upcoming Super Bowl, combined with us doing game presentations for Strategicon over President’s Day weekend, won’t leave much game-playing time, but the goal is to have at least some new content by the end of the month, in one way, shape, or form.

Talk to you guys later!

Belated review update, and a quick announcement

First off, this was posted about a week ago, but I’ve been busy with the next review I’ve been working on that I never got around to posting it here.

It’s my 25th video review, for the equally monumental game The Legend of Zelda.

In other news, The Bloog is now on Facebook. If you’re a fan of the site, do me a favor and join up. Not only will you be giving my ego a much-appreciated stroking, but it’ll also help me gauge just how many people follow the site. Believe me, it’s hard to look at WordPress’ Dashboard for this thing and try to work out how many of those hits are actually mine on account of this site being my Chrome homepage.

As you could guess, Zelda 2 is the next review in line. I’ve already got the footage captured and converted, and the script written. Which means I simply have to record my voiceover and action shots and put it all together and we should be done, maybe even before Super Bowl Sunday if I act quickly enough.

FINALLY.

After six months of delays, here’s the video you’ve all been waiting for – part 2 of my Final Fantasy VII review.

As you can see from the video, I ended up abandoning the game after the train chase in North Corel rather than force everyone to wait for me to get off my butt and continue playing.

I will be starting on the next review after Christmas. It’ll be the 25th video review I’ve published, so I’d like to find a suitably worthy subject. But in light of the fiasco that surrounded this video, I’d also like it to be something relatively quick to get through. As always, if you guys have any requests, I’d be happy to hear them.

As for now, here’s hoping you all have a great holiday, and I’ll be talking to ya soon.

Oh, by the way

For those of you who have enjoyed the episodes of The Time Bomb that I’ve posted, here’s bit of news about that.

You may be aware of the fact that a group of us are planning to create sizzler reels of a handful of our game show concepts – of which The Time Bomb is included – in a more professional setting later a few months down the road. In speaking to some industry professionals who have very kindly provided some pro bono advice, they have recommended that we remove any videos of the show that are currently online. This is because it would be counterproductive for us to pitch a show idea to someone who could potentially stumble upon videos of the show in a less polished form.

Thus, if you are interested in saving any episodes of The Time Bomb for posterity, I suggest you do so before the end of the month. Next month, we will be deleting all three episodes of The Time Bomb currently on YouTube in preparation of our upcoming tapings. We’re sorry we have to do this sort of thing, but if it helps our chances of getting this show (or any of our shows) on the air, then I’m sure you’ll agree it’s for the best.

Episode 3 can be found just a few posts down. As for the first two episodes, check here for Episode 2, and here for Episode 1.