Dropping Like Flies

10.23.2003

It's not been a good week to have had some fame.

Road Warrior Hawk died Sunday from an apparent heart attack. He was the first of the "muscle head" wrestlers that I ever saw on tv. I remember being in awe whenever he and his partner showed up, because you knew the opponent didn't have a chance.

Stu Hart passed away last Thursday. Hewas the father of one of the largest wrestling families around. Stu was around 200 years old, and even then he could still kick most peoples ass.

Actor Jack Elam dies. Jack was in every other western that showed up on tv when I was growing up. He was almost as old as Stu.

Fred "Rerun" Berry was found dead in his LA appartment. He always referred to himself as Fred "Rerun" Berry. Showing that they're on the ball, Fred "Rerun" Berry is no longer available on the Hollywood Is Calling celebrity list

Singer-Songwriter Elliot Smith was found dead Wednesday of an apparent suicide attempt. Of the songs listed, I don't remember hearing any of them.

Evel Knievel turned 65 last week. He's still alive, which compared to everyone elses lifestyle listed here is a pretty amazing feat!

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DVD Time Again

10.22.2003

Tuesday was a good day for DVD releases, at least as far as I'm concerned.

• The Indiana Jones Trilogy, a great jaunt to some of the best/classic adventure movies made. Made nerds everywhere consider a career in archeology for at least a fleeting moment.
• Charlies Angels: Full Throttle - Pure escapism with some hotties to oogle.
• Battlestar Galactica - The Complete Epic Series - The original 24 episodes, remastered. I lived for this series when I was 10. I think it's time to revisit it.

And now for the movie that's pissed me off. The advertising folks for The Hulk DVD need to watch their starting times on the commercials. Sunday I saw a "Hulk: Buy it on DVD Tuesday" advertisement, but it doesn't come out until next Tuesday. Bastards!

And now to regress to video games. I had a chance to start out playing Def Jam Vendetta last night. So far it's loads better than Backyard Wrestling (this one actually has wrestling moves). I'm about to start the story mode, so there should be a more detailed update later.

I've also run out of comics to read,so I picked up a book I had seen on Tech TV the other day: Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic. It's about the early days of adventure gaming and the influence of D&D. I'm just in the first chapter, but it seems like it's going to be an interesting read.

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Backyard Wrestling - PS2

10.21.2003

In my continuation of finally playing the wrestling games that have been stacking up on my shelf, last night I took a turn at Backyard Wrestling for the Playstation 2. There's been a line of direct-to-video features for backyard wrestling, and it never really appealed to me. Kind of like porn with all the sex edited out. But, the game had "wrestling" in the title, so I gave it a shot.

And that's 2 hours of my life I can never get back.

Instead of picking on everything bad about the game, I should point out its positive side.

....

....

It didn't crash and turn my PS2 into a blazing inferno from the crapfest that I had loaded onto it!

That's about the best thing I can find. I'll have to go and look, but I think my old PSX "WCW Vs. The World" was better - graphics, sound, move sets.

Can you give a game a negative rating? Next off the shelf: Def Jam Vendetta. Gotta go put on my rap face. Word to you, Mom!

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Raw 2 on Xbox

10.20.2003

I've been stocking up on wrestling videogames without playing any of them for a while, so I've been thinking it's about time to play some of them while waiting for the latest Smackdown game for the PS2 to come out at the end of the month. I've been a little more critical of games lately now that I'm trying to make my own wrestling game (there'll be a more detailed explanation in the weeks to come for anyone interested), so I've been trying to pick out the things I like and dislike from what I play.

I hated the first Raw game for the Xbox. I think I may have played it for about 3 days before relegating it to the dusty shelf it's lived on ever since. The sequel is better, but not by much. This version does have a story mode, which I've come to enjoy the most of any wrestling game. The story mode is fairly limited. You try to pick who to befriend and who to hate, and along the course of a career it will affect team-ups and who you fight both during matches and between matches. That seems to be about all there is to the story mode. The Smackdown series has more of a scripted feel of things going on between pay-per-views, while Raw has you trying to make the world champ an enemy so you can try to get a title shot. Like I said, limited.

The graphics are better than the PS2 Smackdown graphics, but not up to the level of sophistication I've seen on other Xbox games. The sound is horrible (I think I could do better punching sounds armed with a Mr. Microphone). The move sets seem limiting, but I'm blaming part of that with my beginner level of play and not having the finger memory of how to do certain combinations yet. So far I've been winning matches with a repertoire of 4 suplexes, 3 DDTs, a Half Boston Crab and a Sharpshooter.

The best feature of Raw 2 is in designing your characters entrance. Everything is customizable. Music (which you can pick from music you've loaded onto the Xbox hard drive), lighting and pyro effects, customizable Titantron settings so you don't always have The Rock's entrance movie. I've had more fun playing with these settings than anything else.

So overall, the game is fair, but a little boring. I'll probably play the last Smackdown more than this version of Raw.

Next game to take of the shelf and try: Backyard Wrestling.

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Amazon - The Store, Not The River

10.16.2003

Last night I was busy installing some software I've recently acquired (is that ambiguous enough to keep me out of jail?) and decided I needed some books to teach me how to use everything. I'm just starting to get into the world of 3d modeling, and I can use all the help I can get. As I often do, I went to Amazon, searched for some Quickstart books, plopped some in my cart, and merrily went along my way.

Jerry had shown me before that you could look at your entire order history from Amazon, so I searched for that link and looked at what all I had gotten. The suprising part to me was my very first Amazon order. August 16, 1999 I ordered both The Matrix and There's Something About Mary DVDs. I was in shock in that not only had I been shopping online for 4 years, but that my first purchase from what was predominantly an online bookstore was 2 movies. I was such the rebel back in the 20th century (which has obviously been superceeded by me being such a dork in the 21st).

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