It was announced today that Disney is closing down the LucasArts studio.   So no more first party games.   Depending on how they license out the games, the properties may still live on.  However, I have a feeling that they will only leverage the Star Wars franchise and leave the rest to live only in our memories.

I thought I would write-up a little homage to some of the great games that LucasArts put out that I grew up with.

Super Star Wars Series

When we were stuck at a level, we would take turns and put on “power” music.  Sometimes this was Star Wars music, but more often than not it was just a good rock song.   Once we started cruising through the game again we would listen to the game soundtrack.   We just didn’t want to miss anything.

Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle

I read a great article that covered the censorship that Nintendo enforced to get Maniac Mansion on the NES.   If you care at all for retro-gaming I would definitely read the link.

The Monkey Island Series

In recent years Tell-Tale Games has done a new episodic new version of Monkey Island.   There is a chance with that this license might actually continue.   Check out their trailer here:

Grim Fandango

Sam and Max Hit the Road

X-Wing and Tie Fighter

I hope this post takes you down memory lane.   I hope you also experienced the awesome games that LucasArts put out.   Let’s pour out some blue milk for our lost comrades.   Hopefully the licenses won’t die in this moment.   It’s almost like a millions of adventure game players screamed out and were silenced all at once.

I remember when it started happening years ago, the parody story on April Fool’s day.  It has become a staple of the online world.   Unfortunately it also means that you can’s trust any news story you read online.   The first time I noticed it happening was the late 1990′s on Slashdot.   Since then tons of other sites have joined in the jokes.

The problem is you don’t what story is true or false.   Since everyone links to everyone else for each story – you can’t even do true background research. You just have to trust that everything posted today is false.   Granted some people state that they aren’t participating (but enough sneaky sites use this to throw you off guard).   The overt big name ones, ok those are perfectly fine.   The ones that aren’t good at telling the joke – not so much.   I look forward to  tomorrow and regularly scheduled and somewhat trustworthy news.

Until then, have a video of some kittens chasing each other:

Axis of Awesome is a great band that I discovered on Youtube last year.   To be fair I only watched one video and never followed up again on them.   I did post their Game of Throne’s video yesterday.  This prompted me to look through and watch some of their other videos.

So how can they teach you to write music?   Well they have boiled down music to the essentials so you can see just what you need to create your next number one hit.

Do you want to create an all around hit?  Well this is the video you need to watch:

My news feed alerted me to this epic video that I thought I should share.   I know a few people who can identify with this.  Heck, I’ll probably identity with it when Ender’s Game comes out later this year.

For those looking for modern who – pish posh, go grab yourself a Jelly Baby.   Tom Baker is always the first that comes to my mind when you ask “Doctor Who?”.   I grew up watching him on the local PBS station WVIZ channel 25.   I found the clip below on Youtube of The Doctor selling computers.   How awesome is that?   I hope you enjoy.

This is my R.O.B.  I love my R.O.B.  I waited literally decades to get this robot and happy that I have him.   Heck, getting him was one of the last blog posts I did before I went hiatus.   Yesterday one of his brother’s took Reddit by storm.   People might have even forgotten about the safe.

In a thread on Reddit a Best Buy employee showed a picture of someone who brought an original NES (with R.O.B.) to be recycle.   First WTF, and second WTF?  The employee that took him in stated that he was going to take him in, but his manager said it would cost him his job.   I would have totally just walked out of the store with NES in hand and did the golf wave on my way out.   That of course is me, and I have a love for all things classic NES.

Mashable has a follow article on this case today.  The employee didn’t make a mad Prison Breakesque escape with the robot, but corporate headquarters has stepped in and saved R.O.B. from being crushed to death.   The cost?   He will be enshrined at Best Buy headquarters.   You know in a few years they will have forgotten why they saved him in the first placed and recycle him.     It is like being encased in carbonite in Jabba’s palace.   R.O.B. doesn’t have a rosy future to look forward to.  He won’t have people who love him surrounding him in his final Gyromite playing days.

As a side note, the employee responsible for R.O.B.’s continuing existence is being checked for any policies he might have broken at Best Buy posting this to Reddit in the first place.   He wanted the upvotes by posting R.O.B., but he wasn’t sure he wanted to lose his job.   Now he might just end up jobless and R.O.B.less.    I will state it again – I would have totally just walked out of the store with NES in hand and did the golf wave on my way out.

The news is so incredible I almost don’t believe it.   RIM the manufacturer of Blackberry devices (you know the one that almost no one you know uses) announced today that they turned a profit.   Granted, I still don’t know anyone who wants to use a Blackberry.  Unfortunately some people I know are dealing with stodgy IT departments and are forced to use them (I feel sorry for you guys).

I did expect Blackberry to hang in there a couple more years hemorrhaging their cash in the hopes of being relevant again.   They promised their new OS Blackberry 10 for what seems like 8 years, always coming and always out of reach.   They delivered this year and it seems to have worked out for them.

When the industry is dominated by iPhones and Android devices, do we look at this as a momentary blip?   Is it a sign RIM is turning things around?  Is it all just sliding numbers around on spreadsheets just to make them look profitable?  I’m not sure.   What I am sure about is that I still wouldn’t invest money in RIM for the long-term.

There have been numerous reports of the 300 GBs DDoS going on in the last week.   This morning Gizmodo discredited the effect this is really having on the Internet.    I know I didn’t notice any overt problems myself.  I have experienced plenty of network outages at work or at home over the nineteen years I have been online, but rarely anything that caused problems on the Internet.   I had to think, and there were two occasions that I did notice a problem.

The first was the week of February 2000, this was when the famous MafiaBoy DDoS occurred.  I remember not being able to get access to Yahoo and later in the week some of the other sites he targeted.   It was strange and I thought it was just an outage (which were more common back then for different sites), but there was a slowness overall with the Internet that didn’t normally occur.   No one knew what was going on and  Yahoo waited a few days to release details (if I remember correctly).    This was a 14 – 15-year-old boy and he has forever left his mark on Internet history.

The second issue would have been just a year or two earlier.   I can’t find the exact date.  It was when I was working in a small PC shop in Amherst, OH – that much I remember from a timeline perspective.   In my downtime I was attempting to read Slashdot.org the page wouldn’t load.   That was odd, but I moved on.   Sporadic sites would work and others did not.  At first I thought it was out connection, but I kept looking.

What I started to notice was sites that I knew were hosted on the West Coast were not working.   The sites that were located on the East Coast were working.   I did some traceroutes and confirmed after so many hops that the West Coast sites would stop responding along the way.  They didn’t all stop at the same place, but it was a definitely timing out.

News sites were reporting that the same problem was happening in reverse, that the West Coast couldn’t access East Coast sites.    Some sites would work, but the traffic was slow as it was routing through Asia and Europe to cross from one coast to another in the United States.   News was flowing through phone calls and being published on the their respective coasts.

What happened is that one major backbone broke between the coasts.   The remaining backbones (which there were few at the time) couldn’t handle the extra traffic and started just getting clogged and couldn’t handle the rest of the traffic.   This is an apt moment to have Ted Stevens to explain that the Internet is not a big truck, but a series of tubes:

It was just a day of time though.   No major repercussions have lingered over the years and this technical difficulty seems to be hard to find.   I might even be remembering the time wrong and it might have been the Mafiaboy attack.   Regardless, that was when I remember the Internet breaking under the load the users put upon it.   This newest DDoS, I haven’t noticed a blip.   Not even a minor slowdown.    I think I am going to fall in with Gizmodo and think this is just another tale by Chicken Little.

This last weekend I went to a local used music/movie/video game store just to browse.   I ended up walking out with seasons 1-3 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Blu-Ray and some other things.   I knew season 4 was out and wanted to pick that up also, so I went to Amazon.

Season 3 I purchased used for $30.00.   Season 4 I purchased new for 32.00.  If I had known the difference would have been that close I wouldn’t have purchased it used.   We have known for a while that Amazon is hurting traditional brick and mortar stores.   Wal-Mart can’t match the margins that Amazon is working from.   Normally though I would get a movie much cheaper at the used store than Wal-Mart.  You do run into the instant gratification tax though.

I received the instant gratification of having the seasons in my hand on Sunday.   I haven’t watched them yet, but I have them.   When I get home tomorrow season 4 will be waiting for me.   From a usage stand point I gained nothing by buying it from the used store.    I could have gotten it cheaper on Amazon.   That I find crazy.

The used store should sell significantly below the new Amazon price.   When they take merchandise into the store, just offer the seller a lower amount than they did in the past.   These good are almost ephemeral now.   So many people are watching movies via streaming or music via MP3 – physical copies aren’t worth what they once were.   I’m not saying that physical copies don’t have more value – they just don’t have convenience.

That all being said this is also a niche market.   Amazon isn’t going to put collector and antique stores out of business.    These are things that you normally can’t get in bulk or are extremely jacked up on Amazon.    Even Ebay at is  height couldn’t put these stores out of business.   So there is a market and a business model for them.   The instant gratification of needing it now will eventually slip away.   If I had wanted the movie today it would have cost me only $6.00 more than I paid for the previous season.   Insane.     That however is the world now.

As a side rant, why can’t I go to the flea market and get “cheap” comics anymore?   When I was young I used to be able to get 10 for a dollar.   Even with inflation accounted for .50 apiece would be expensive, but still cheaper than what they are offering.   Everything now is 2.00 to cover price.  All I want to do is give my son some comics, but it’s a pricey investment these days for something he will tear (we’ll work on that as he gets older).

Amazon announced it’s new Kindle lines today.   The first thing that is going to hit everyone is the price drops.   If we focus on the Android based tablet line, Amazon released the new Kindle Fire for 159.99.   This is obviously in response to Google Nexus 7 tablet.   The only thing they have via each brand is ecosystem (both comparatively similar out of the box) and price.   Let’s also be realistic.   The majority of Americans still will just look at the price and think two things.  The first is they will buy the cheapest thing available and believe it is comparative to everything else.   The second that more savvy Americans will think is that it’s a piece of junk.

Neither of those conclusions are correct.  You also have the Apple angle to consider.   Regardless of how you try to change the perception, to the average consumer Apple devices always seem to cost more than other options.   If we look at the computers, Apple might be more expensive based on specs.   The build quality of an Apple computer is far superior.   I say this as someone who used to go through a laptop in nine months before it started having issues.   At about a year I was always doing workarounds to keep a laptop usable in my day-to-day life.   Fourteen months ago I bought my first Macbook Pro, this device looks like it has barely any wear and I use it daily.

All things being equal from a specification stand point Apple will always have the more solidly constructed enterprise class device.   This goes for the computers, iPods, iPads, and iPhones.   They are a top end device based on construction and sometimes hardware specs. This makes them more expensive, but it doesn’t mean they are not worth the money.   It also doesn’t mean you need to buy a Ferrari just to drop your kids off at school.   For some people this is overkill.

Ipads are also cheap.   This in relative speaking of course.   Over the last two years companies have made many Android tablets that were on par with the iPad from a specification and quality perspective.   The bad part of this of course was that they were all just as or more expensive than the iPad.   You also ran into the issue that until the last year, most user experience on an Android device was nowhere near as snappy as an iOS device.   So you ended up paying more for a device that felt slower than the iPad.

Microsoft has announced it’s Surface tablet with removable keyboard.   The speculation is that this will be more expensive than either the iPad or a top of the line Android tablet.   They are hoping the selling point is that it runs Windows.   I’m guessing they are hoping that corporations will buy it.   Maybe they are hoping on the “wow factor”, it is a slick-looking device.   Sadly we have moved into a single app and browser-based world.   That need to have Windows compatibility is getting less and less.   To be wildly successfully they will need to break the four hundred-dollar mark.   No analyst has felt that Microsoft could sell it for that cheap.

There are different camps when it comes tablet devices.   You have Android and iOS.  On the fringes you could also find Windows, Blackberry, and Palm enthusiasts – but they are all the minority.   We are reliving the Apple vs. Microsoft wars all over again, except Android has replaced Windows.   Android also has not learned from Windows OEM’s mistakes.   The OEMs kept pushing to have cheaper and cheaper computers.   This did help the computerization of America, but the machines were buggy and broke often.   They broke because of hardware and software.   This is happening again in the tablet space.

The mythic price of course is 99.99 for a top of the line tablet.   Apple will never get there.   Amazon and Google are fighting for that spot.  There is a problem with that.   Once tablets reach that price, it will be difficult for the average consumer to ever pay more for a device.   This also means any device that costs more will be where Apple will dominate.   It will dominate on both specs and quality.  It can do this because it won’t have an artificial price restriction it needs to match so they can become the cheapest.   You also have the perception that the iPad is better because it costs more.   Some people will buy an iPad, not because it fits their needs – but because it does cost more.   You should always buy at the correct price for how you use a device.   My routine is ingrained in Apple, so until I feel like I want to change – this is where I’m going to stay.

The mythic $99.99 price point is a great deal.   I could see buying a couple extra Android tablets to play with at this price.   Once a price ceiling has been reached, people have a hard time paying more for something.   There are many avenues where this has occurred in just the last fifteen years.

Do you remember paying per the minute after you reached your fifteen hour per month ISP?  Competitors kept offering more and more hours at the same price.  Eventually the amount of hours became virtually unlimited.   This of course changed over to real unlimited Internet use.   The ISP’s keep talking about charging for the amount of bandwidth you use or doing hourly restrictions again.   They are unsuccessful so far because we made it to unlimited.   How do you talk someone to pay more for less?

We also saw this with digital music (and it’s happening again with e-books).   Ninety-nine cents became the sweet spot for buying a song.   It is arbitrary and some people think it is still expensive, but that seems to be where music is going to be stuck.   This means even if there is inflation, you will always get your music for under a dollar.   It also means as inflation occurs, the music companies will be earning less overall.

One 99.99 is the new standard for “premium” tablets such as the Kindle Fire and Nexus X in the future the only where to go is down.   With app sales and media sales it could be argued that the tablets could be given away for free.   This would impede any third-party from entering the market.   We will have Apple still being a viable company and Amazon, Google (and maybe Microsoft) controlling everything.  Innovation and true competition will go out the window due to consumers not being willing to pay more for less.  Sadly, I think that might be where we wind up in the next five years.

Enjoy your cheap devices now.   More restrictions and DRM will be imposed on them to make them more practical long-term for the manufacturer.  The real business will be the media and no longer the hardware (I would prefer the reverse).  Your data will no longer be your own and it will be harder for you to extract it.  Those cheap tablets have to be paid for somehow, and tracking your usage and targeting data will be how they do it.  In the end no device will be yours, it will be something you use – but you don’t own it.   This is what really happens when you get involved in a race to the bottom.

Yesterday IFTTT announced that they were adding support for Google Drive.  I was initially excited.   I could stop using Dropbox as a catch-all for all my IFTTT updates.  There is a problem though, access to Google Drive is all or nothing.   I haven’t allowed the service access to my Gmail account, because I’m not really comfortable with another third-party company having access to my email archives.   The Google Drive issue is also iffy for me.   I don’t necessarily feel secure giving a third-party access to all of my stored documents.   I wanted to use it, but how.

The solution was simple enough.   It doesn’t necessarily have to be tied to your own Google Drive account.   When you go to activate the Google Drive module, it will go to authorize it to any Google account you are currently logged into.   Once I realized that I created a new account on my Google Apps account for my personal domain so I had a clean account that wasn’t used for anything else.   I then logged in and configured IFTTT to use this Google Drive account.

Once the account was working and folders are created, I then shared this folder with my main Gmail account.   I dragged the shared folder into my main drive, so the files are always synced.  I can now use Google Drive with IFTTT and I do not have share every single file in my account with them.   The new account also has 5GB of its own space.   If that fills up, I will just copy the files from the shared folder to another place in my personal Google Drive space.

Being able to use the service is a win.   Being able to not share unnecessary data with a third-party you are unsure of, that is always something to be proud of.   It’s an elegant hack, with the only exception being that you have to setup an extra Google account that you won’t use for anything else.

Remember about four or five years ago when commenting was all the rage?   Blogs would have to adapt and develop new commenting systems.  Companies such as Disqus and Intense Debate rose in prominence just because they offered integrated commenting solutions that were better than native ones.   Looking around the blogosphere today it seems like a desolate wasteland when it comes to comments.

The comments and discussion have moved away from the actual content provider to third-party platforms that are no longer embedded.   For the conversations occurring on Twitter, reactions can still be track.   They are still one step removed.   Most of the discussion occurs on Facebook and hopefully other third-party social networks in the future.   Because of privacy, these reactions will never be known.

Before anyone thinks that this is a complaint about the lack of comments on my site, it’s not.   My site is a small personal niche site that isn’t designed to get many comments.   It is a place I can write whatever I like.   Sometimes the stories do inspire a conversations, but it doesn’t occur here.   It does occur on Facebook.

We could argue that comments are just a way to measure interaction with your audience.   That isn’t the true market the blogs are going for.  It’s all about the page views.   The page view business has become so intense that sites like Mashable have moved away from being the most informative site for cloud culture online to a click-fest of pseudo-Greek pulp culture.  This allows Mashable to make you click-through more pages.   It gives Mashable more page views.   It allows them to serve more advertisements and demand a higher cost because of the amount of page views they have.

Even though commenting isn’t the real business of most sites, they have lost something.   We saw it with the change in Digg.   The only reason I read Slashdot anymore is the conversations, and those are a shadow of what they were.   It’s all moved to Facebook.   The idea that your direct peer group is an echo of who you are is laughable.   I’m the perfect example of that.

Very few people on my friends list are alpha geeks.   We are separated by issues we bite our tongues on out of politeness.   We differ greatly on views from things such as pop culture all the way to religion and politics.   Only a small percentage of our friends can even have a discussion on some of our most passionate interests.   If we all liked the same things, what fun would that be?  If your whole peer group is just like you – you need to really get out more.

Commenting on blogs allowed us to find others with a similar interest.   It might be just that one story or one moment in time, but we could have a discussion.   That doesn’t really occur anymore, except on Facebook.   I thought about this while reading through Read Write Web.  They are one of the tops tech blogs in the business.   According to one analysis, they receive over a million page views per day.   Going down the front page I saw maybe four comments in total.   Each story has had tens of thousands of view, but no one stopped to leave an opinion.

I’m sure there are some lively discussions within Facebook on some of the stories.  How would Read Write Web ever know?   They don’t see this feedback, and maybe sites such as Mashable have diminished over time because of this lack of feedback.  This problem isn’t unique, most sites I visit don’t have commentors unless there is a political or religious bent to it.   Lack of discussion leads to stagnation.

What’s the point of this article?  I’m not sure there is one.   I think I’m just mourning for the loss of what used to be one of the best web experiences.   We have moved away from openness and into walled gardens.   Somehow we all consider this better because we have friends performing curation for us, and we might take the time to comment or like those stories within our closed infrastructures.   What happens when the writers don’t get the feedback?   They just write for page views.   This doesn’t necessarily give us a better culture.   When you write for the lowest common denominator all the blogs will write the equivalent of US Weekly.

Home Movies At DisneyLand – 1956 from Jeff Altman on Vimeo.

I do get readers that read my Cedar Point articles looking at the history of Amusement parks in general.  I think some of those readers would love to see the HD conversion of this 1956 Disneyland footage.   I first saw this on Mashable, but the link below the video includes the original source.

I hope you enjoy it.

Image from Atomic Books

I just finished Kevin Mitnick’s latest book Ghost in the Wires.  It is one of the best autobiographies that I have read.  I am biased since it deals with my career field of computer security.   Before the book was published there were some hanging questions that I have never heard him answer.   The most important question to me was if Mitnick did or did not pull off the previously theoretical TCP sequence attack.   He didn’t, but he did have a friend do the attack for him that allowed him to relay into the box.   He also doesn’t admit to the leaving the voicemail messages on Shimomura’s answering machine, so I’m guessing that ends that rumor also.

If you have ever heard one of Mitnick’s speeches about his life, you already know about seventy-five percent of the story.   I thought I would be bored with the book since I’ve heard most the story told by him two or three other times.  I wasn’t.   Somehow it was all still fascinating.   Since he has a co-writer I don’t know how much of the writing style is his or his partners.   Regardless, it has an easy to read style that matches his other books, The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion.

When his other books were published, I read them immediately.  I didn’t jump right into this one, because I thought it would be boring.   All through the book I could hear Kevin’s voice speaking.   That is what happens when you have heard his talks way too many times.   It was a great tale.

In the late nineties I was a fervent believer in the “Free Kevin” movement.   I was also ecstatic when he was released.  In my younger I believe Mitnick to be one the greatest hackers ever.   Part of this of course was the myth’s and the book cleared a few of those up.   There are so few books about hacking stories, so in the nineties I scooped up all I could.   These unfortunately didn’t separate myths, legends, and facts to the best degree.

A few years ago I figured out that Kevin wasn’t a hacker in at least one definition.   If you use the original definitions of making things do what they weren’t supposed – yes he is one of the world’s greatest hackers.   If you go off the theory of computer genius – he was mid level in the game.   He used existing exploits on unpatched systems and reports that hadn’t yet been disclosed to the public to do his computer hacking.   He didn’t discover vulnerabilities on his own.

What he excelled at was phone phreaking and social engineering.   There isn’t a single person that could say that Mitnick wasn’t world-class in these two areas of cyber security.   He also has the correct mindset on spotting vulnerabilities with the perseverance to manipulate them to their fullest extent.  He deserves the attention he is getting after his time in prison.   Good luck Kevin, may things always seem so bright.

Say hello to R.O.B.

 Ever since the NES was first announced I wanted a R.O.B. unit.   When I was saving my money to buy my first NES,  I almost saved the money to buy the deluxe set just so I could get R.O.B., but I decided on the action set.   The reasons were simple, the action set came with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.   The Deluxe set came with Duckhunt and Gyromite.   I didn’t want to have to buy Super Mario Bros. separately.   I also knew that R.O.B. wasn’t a great accessory.   I saved my money and continued my path into the world of the NES without R.O.B.  I would eventually regret that decision.

When I started collecting video games again about a decade ago I always searched for a R.O.B. unit.   Almost every time I would see one, he wasn’t complete.  That would have been fine, but he would go for over a hundred dollars.   I wasn’t comfortable buying him at that price without being complete. I knew once I managed to secure him, I would never track down the rest of the parts.   I waited until the next opportunity.   This last week the desire that started when I was twelve years old was fulfilled.

R.O.B. nameplate

While I was waiting on a transmission fluid change on the Jeep, I found a used video game store.   I wouldn’t say it was piled with retro games, but it had a decent selection.   It did have a Turbo Express, which I always wanted.   It also had a Sega Master system.   I purchased both.   I now have the complete NEC and almost the complete Sega lines (I believe I still need a Game Gear, but I’m not sure).   While they were ringing me up I asked if they had a R.O.B, unit in the back.

They said that they didn’t have one there.   They did however get one that was complete in the box at their other store.   They asked if I was interested.  I said it depended on the price (I was completely giddy inside at this moment).   They called the other store to see what the price was.   They quoted me $99.99 and asked if I was interested.   After I confirmed I was, and didn’t drool, they said they could get it in on Friday.  I couldn’t be happier that I was so close to ending a twenty-four year journey.

I ran over to the store on my lunch break Friday.   They hadn’t receive their transfers for yet.   I was disheartened, but returned to work.   Around four o’clock they called – it was in.  Immediately after work I headed to the store to see the prize.   The box was a little dinged up, but since I didn’t have a box it was better than nothing.    It only included the R.O.B. – no console, no Zapper, no games, and no controllers.   That was fine.

They opened the box and I saw R.O.B. in his glory with all of his accessories.   The styrofoam was in mint condition (something only a collector cares about).  It also included paperwork.   While I would have hoped the box would have been better, I had no problem parting with payment.   I took R.O.B. out to the car and headed home.

Front of the box

A week earlier a friend was telling me that someone came into his store and asked him what his NES was worth.   I guess the cables were all tore up and the system was a mess.   He did say that the box was in mint condition.   We were talking that the box was worth more than the console.   I said I would have paid fifty dollars on the spot for the box.   Who would have thought I would have my box a week later.

Top of the box

Around November of last year, I almost bought a complete NES console in the box with R.O.B. included.   The problem was that it was 300.00 and christmas shopping wasn’t done yet.  It wasn’t a good time to blow that money on myself.   It was a struggle, but since I had everything except the box and R.O.B. at home I passed.   Until this last week I was always hard on myself for letting that opportunity go.

Back of the box

Now I get to go through the task of making this box set complete.   I plan on keeping R.O.B. next to my desk as my own personal trophy.   I have an extra NES to put inside the box, but it’s damaged (so I may keep an eye out for a good condition one).   I purchased an extra Zapper when I was at the game store (I have maybe five of these).   I also have two extra controllers I can put inside the box.

Side of the box

The real problem is the games.  I have multiple copies of Gyromite.   This started about ten years ago when I found out that some copies of Gyromite included a Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES) adapter.  I have maybe five copies of Gyromite, and not one of them had the adapter inside of the cartridge.  This is easy to replace.

Worst side of the box

The real problem is Duck Hunt.  I have multiple copies of Duck Hunt, but they are on dual or triple cartridges with Super Mario Bros. or World Class Track Meet (the triple cartridge came with the power pad as the Sports Edition of the console, yes I have a power pad).  In all of my travels I’m not sure I saw a Duck Hunt solo cartridge.   I’m assuming it is rare since the only big influx are ones that came with the early Deluxe sets.  That is going to be fun to track down.

Mint condition styrofoam

When I saw the styrofoam for the first time on Friday, I was giddy.   It looked gorgeous.  I hadn’t seen mint condition NES styrofoam since I purchased my console in 1988.   It was a fantastic sight to see.   I do know that this is something that non-collectors can’t understand.

R.O.B. in the same position I first saw him

Opening up the box I saw the accessory pieces and R.O.B.   The only thing that could have made it better is if R.O.B. would have still been sealed in plastic (if he originally came in any).   If he would have, I may have had to be on the hunt again.   I don’t know if I could bear to remove him from plastic if he was still sealed.

Brightness filters

The box included the brightness filters for R.O.B. still sealed. These were included in case your television had too much brightness and R.O.B. could not register the flashes on the screen.  I would have just turned down my brightness, but Nintendo was kind enough to include this filter so you didn’t have to.

Mini nintendo box in the box

R.O.B. was included with the NES as a stealth attack in America.   Because of video game crash of the mid eighties that irreparably harmed Atari, Coleco, Intellivision, and others, retailers didn’t want to carry video games.   They thought video games were dead.   By including R.O.B., Nintendo marketed the console as a toy and “entertainment system” and not a video game console.   Obviously Nintendo’s strategy worked since the NES became the dominant system.

NES instructions guide

 One of the issues with R.O.B. is that he requires a CRT television to work.   I still have an old twenty-seven inch that we don’t use, but our other two TV’s are flat screen.   Because of this limitation I may never actually play a game with R.O.B.   That isn’t extremely heart breaking to me, but who knows how he is going to take it.

There were only two games that R.O.B. could play anyways.   The first one is Gyromite.  The second one is called Stack Up.   Stack Up came with its own setup pieces, so the challenge is to find one of those complete also.   The joys of hunting down and collecting all the missing pieces to fill in the gaps.   Neither of the games are considered very good.   I’m not missing much but not actually playing them.

Certificate of Authenticity by Nintendo

After the initial launch of the Deluxe package of the NES, Nintendo stopped supporting R.O.B. No more games would be released.   I understand that there was at least one more game that was beta tested inside of Nintendo.   I think a ROM exists it of it online.   Even if we count that, paying fifty extra dollars for R.O.B., not getting Super Mario Bros. in the box, and only having one more game you could purchase was part of the reason buying the Deluxe package wasn’t worth the extra money.

Large Nintendo poster – I used to have one of these on my wall

Over the years R.O.B. has had cameo appearances in other games.   Every time it is a joy to see him.  It’s like the easter egg that keeps on giving.   Most people today don’t even know who R.O.B. is.   It’s a forgotten piece of video game lore.

Beautiful photoelectric eyes

When I posted the first couple pictures of him on my Facebook account reactions were all over the place.   One person thought it was a Johnny Five.   I guess with the eyes I can understand it that.   It also leads to the other mistaken identity on a different picture – Wall-E.   Wall-E can’t hold a candle to R.O.B., I would like to see Wall-E play Gyromite with a skill.  Once again it all in the design of those robotic eyes that have been used in multiple robot designs.   Poor R.O.B., he doesn’t get the pop culture fandom he deserves.

Having a staring contest with R.O.B.

One R.O.B. myth that I believed for years was that he could play the first level of Super Mario Bros.   Tracking down a FAQ, I can’t find any mention of this ability.   It’s kind of disheartening, but it was something I never checked up on before (not having a unit of my own).  I’m sure there are many other myths about R.O.B. in the dark corners online, but I’m sure almost all of them are false.

All his robotic glory

The one thing I never truly realized is that R.O.B is wireless.   I just assumed that he had a cable to plug into the console.   He is completely self-contained and runs on 4 AA batteries.   When you turn him on without an NES setup, he will turn right and then back to center.   After testing his movements I removed the batteries.  I didn’t want to forget about them and discover corrosion in a few years.

R.O.B. and I signing off

Since there is no wire, I’m considering taking R.O.B. to strange places for him to pose.   Since he won’t be doing any gaming, he might as well see the world.   We’ll see if there are more R.O.B. posts in the future.  I may even get some other Nintendo ones out in short order.   Until then, I’m going to enjoy pretending I’m a lucky twelve-year-old some more.

Image from DC Comics

Yesterday I had to stay near work later than normal for a business dinner.   I had time to kill so I headed over to Barnes and Noble to find something to read for an hour.   I wandered up to the graphic novel section (I didn’t want to delve into a novel for an hour), and the new Justice League graphic novel caught my eye.

It was Justice League Volume One: Origin.   It was based on the “New 52″, which is DC reboot of the comic universe that sends them back to square one.   I thought a Justice League book would be a great follow-up after reading Justice.  It wasn’t.

Let’s take a step back.   This is my first exposure to the “New 52″.  I’m also a cranky old comic book reader that doesn’t think they should have tossed away almost seventy years of continuity because they couldn’t make it all fit together.  Of course I wasn’t going to like it, but I didn’t realize that at first.

I understand the heroes are all new and starting out, but there are just some things that don’t fit.   The most notable being Superman and Batman.  The other characters I can let go of the small changes.   I was saddened that the Martian Manhunter was not included, but hopefully they eventually work him into the League.

Batman starts out well enough.   Then so he can having a bonding moment with Green Lantern, he takes off his mask and tells Green Lantern that he is really Bruce Wayne.  It’s comical that Green Lantern doesn’t know who Bruce Wayne is, but this is just hours after they met.   Batman is not the type to have ever been that trusting.   Most of the Justice League pre-reboot didn’t know his secret identity.  I highly doubt that he would have shared is identity with anyone that he didn’t know their secrets first.   It was worse than when Alfred allowed Vicki Vale into the Bat Cave bad.

Superman being reverted to youth has lost all the wisdom and calming effect that he brought to the team.   They write him like he is a twenty year-old with raging hormones, compared to the thirty year old he should be.   The fact that he was just lashing out and angry was disheartening.   This is not the Superman I love.

Finally that the main bad guy is Darkseid also irked me.   Darkseid is a villain that should have laid them to waste.  Their lack of coherency should have been their weakness.   Things would work out better if they had chosen a lesser big bad to start the series with.  In theory for bad guys, there is nowhere to go but down.

Reading the “New 52″  I’ll just read it forever as an alternate reality.   That might calm me down and allow me to let things go.   I am sitting and ranting about a comic in a world that just thinks I’m sad for being a thirty-six year old reading comics anyways.

Image from Wikipedia

After not enjoying the Justice League story arc, I still had thirty minutes to kill.   Browsing the rack I knew I wanted to read something pre-”New 52″.  I also didn’t want a gigantic tome, since I only had thirty minutes.   I decided to sit down with Kevin Smith’s Cacophony.   I had meant to read it for a couple of years now, but never had the chance.  I took this moment to consume it.

Walt Flanagan’s artwork doesn’t compare with Justice, but it worked to tell the story.   I enjoyed the original villain they used and thought the piece worked cohesively.    It was very dialogue heavy, but that’s Kevin Smith.   He is a man who paints pictures with words.

The only thing I didn’t like was the dialogue Batman has with the Joker almost at the end of the book.  He asks the Joker if he really wants to kill him.   This is the Joker, regardless what answer he gives, you can’t trust that he is telling the truth.   Batman does seem to take it as fact.   It is something small and petty.   Overall it was an enjoyable read.   My complaints are small.   It was a nice diversion, especially after reading the Justice League book.

Image from Wikipedia

The other night we watched the remake of True Grit.   Xie was reading and I felt like watching Jeff Bridges.   After going through the list that was available on Netflix, I decided on True Grit.  I have not seen the original, so I can’t make true comparisons between the original and this incarnation.

I normally don’t like movies with a western setting at all.   I like a few that don’t follow the genre, like High Noon.   I like alternative western genre films like space westerns – Star Wars, Serenity, etc.   The traditional western though, never really pulled me in.   It is definitely a generational thing.   I remember my grand parents liking westerns – my generation wanted modern action movies and science fiction.   It’s the way things change.

When I started the movie Xie was reading on her Nook.   After about ten minutes in she asked what I was watching.   When she heard the response she rolled her eyes.   She really dislikes westerns.   A few minutes later she put down her Nook and started watching.

She commented that she liked that it didn’t feel like an old school western.   She stated that it was dialogue heavy.   It makes sense why we watched it all the way through, since we are both suckers for strong dialogue. If the dialogue hadn’t been so well written, we would stopped about thirty minutes in.

The best part of the movie was the actors took a back seat to the characters.   You didn’t see Matt Damon or Jeff Bridges on the screen.   They effectively became their characters.  Xie was the first to mention this, and I completely agree with that statement.

What we didn’t like was the ending.   We were expecting more based on the journey we had been on.   I’m sure that the original movies ended the same way. This kind of constrained the writers, otherwise I’m sure the ending would have had a bit more depth.  The movie is what it is though.   Even if you dislike westerns you might actually enjoy this.  I probably won’t watch it again, but I would encourage anyone with an interest to give it a try.

Image from Wikipedia

Justice was a great graphic novel.   I love Alex Ross.   Ever since I read Kingdom Come, I’ve wished all comic books looked like Alex Ross art.  Unfortunately they do not.  Justice however caught my eye because of the artwork and it was a great read.

I love the Justice League, and call out my old school love of Super Friends – but it was fantastic that the Legion of Doom was included.   At one point in a dialogue between The Scarecrow and Joker – The Joker uttered the line that that said they were Super Friends.   I thought that was a fantastic nod.   The Joker unfortunately was a background character in this book.   The powerhouse bad guys are Black Manta, Brainiac, and Lex Luthor.

The premise that starts in the first book is that all the super villains have a dream on the same night.  In this dream all the super heroes fall and humanity is destroyed by an alien threat.   When they wake up and compare dreams, they take this as a prophecy.   Why else would they all have the same dream?

The bad guys take the Justice League out of commission and work at becoming humanity’s greatest heroes.  They use their skills to make the sick healthy, the paralyzed walk, and to build floating cities that will save the human race from extinction.   There are some ulterior motives, but most of them are doing it to genuinely help humanity.

One of the things that came to light in the book is just how bad ass Aquaman could be.   They didn’t do much to augment the character, but Aquaman commanded most of the plot along the way.   You also discover you don’t mind that as you are looking at the glorious Alex Ross artwork.  I have gained a new respect for Aquaman.   That doesn’t place in any of my top lists, but I won’t be so quick to dismiss him in the future.

I was also excited to see Plastic Man included in the storyline.   It was a minor role, but he kept popping up here and there.   I have always loved Plastic Man (and I can’t explain why either).   Any chance to see him pop into the action just reminds you that comics are fantastic in plastic.

There are twists along the way.   I’m also assuming that you know the heroes do defeat the villains in the end.   It is a long strange trip that was spread over twelve issues.  I liked reading the trade paperback, because the wait between issues would have been excruciating.   If you like DC heroes (Justice League members especially), then you should read this book.

The other day Boing Boing posted an article titled – How The Refrigerator Got It’s Hum.   The information in the post is gathered from an article written in 1985 in a technical journal  The article is about how the electric humming refrigerator managed to beat the natural gas-powered silent refrigerator to lead to the world we have today.

I was aware natural gas-powered refrigerators existed, but it always seemed an unnecessary luxury item to me.   I also was not aware that these ran silently.   The article goes into the early inventions of refrigerators and the acceptance of them into the general population.   Natural gas refrigerators didn’t have the backing of a gung-ho electric company.  They also were built by companies that didn’t have the same deep pockets for marketing.  This all leads up to where we are today with an appliance that is probably more costly to run and is not completely silent.

The interesting thing is the other inventions that had a similar fate included in the article.   The ones that stood out are whole house vacuum cleaners, home composting straight from the garbage disposal, and chemical toilets.   All of these things still exist, but it seems we are just now rediscovering them.  The green age could have started over a hundred years ago.    Americans were just taken in by the marketing of the electric company stating their items were better.

Imagine if all homes in American today including home composting and chemical toilets.   How would the culture change if these items had been standard for our whole lives?   Another option was home based incinerators, yet with the pollution problem – I’m not sure this would be a great thing in the market today.

While most the piece is based on the invention of refrigerator and the expansion into the consumer market in the twenties and thirties, it is quite interesting.    If you have an extra fifteen minutes you should check it (original link is below).   You can also sit and question, what might have been?

To read the original article click here. You will need to rotate the PDF clockwise.

Image from Wikipedia

Yesterday it was announced that Nintendo Power will soon be publishing their final issue.   In the wide world of publishing, this isn’t go to affect me very much.   In the last decade I have maybe purchased two or three issues of the magazine.   I guess I am part of the problem.   I am now and will always be a Nintendo fan boy.   Nintendo is a big part of it.

The picture above is the cover of the first issue of Nintendo Power.   I had that issue.  Looking at the dates, I believe I purchased the first issue before I had saved up enough on my paper route to purchase my NES.  If this is true I’m sure it just fueled my desire for the system so much more.

I used to read Nintendo religiously.  For around three I had a subscription to the magazine.   The first year I managed to snag a subscription, my grandparents purchased it for me as a Christmas present.   The best part about it was that was the time they were giving away a free Dragon Warrior cartridge with a subscription.   It was my first dip into RPGs on a console.

For the most part the games I owned growing up were second stringer games.  X-Men, Back to the Future, Three Stooges, and other discount titles were what I received as gifts.   I was lucky enough to some top-notch titles, but I ended up trading games quite often with friends to get a well-rounded experience.   I loved the NES.

Since I am still in doubt where I heard about the Nintendo World Championships, it was likely within the pages of Nintendo Power.  Like the magazine, seeing a convention center piled with Nintendo games was a dream come true to my young geek heart.   I could never get enough Nintendo.   When my thoughts waned on the system, a new issue of Nintendo Power arrived and I was all set to go again.

I started dropping off in the SNES era.   I picked up the magazine more infrequently .   I didn’t have a subscription anymore so I missed out on some great strategy guides.  I lost touch and moved away from gaming a bit.   Then emulation brought me back in.

Emulation is great.  Being able to play any game you want, when you want is fantastic.   This made me want to buy the real hardware again.   Since that time I have slowly built up my retro collection.   It started with the NES.   Then I got another NES.   It followed down the road until I had two NES’s, two SNES’s, N64, Gamecube, Gameboy, Gameboy SP, Gameboy DS.   I won’t say Nintendo systems are all that I own, but they are the ones closest to my heart.   Especially the NES and SNES.

I will have to content myself with Nintendo Power issue scans from the years that I truly enjoyed it.   Somewhere along the way it lost the feel that I loved.   It is possible I just outgrew the magazine.  For a moment I thought, what if I just subscribed still?  Would the magazine have kept going?  Then I realize I’m pretty much a print is dead type of person.   I wouldn’t have read or enjoyed them the same.   It would just be a hollow grasp to hang on to something I’m past.

I still love the original cartridge games.   I will always love Nintendo Power and all the joy it gave me on rainy afternoons.   It will be missed.   I may have grown past the magazine, but you never forget those first loves.   May the magazine forever be held with fond memories and let’s hope it is leaving at the proper time.   It didn’t leave to early, and I hope it didn’t stay to long.   Once again, thank you Nintendo Power for being a part of my life.