Weekend Fun: My Favorite Hunger Games Stuff From the Intertubes

A lot of people seem to dislike the internet meme-fying everything under the sun these days, but I'm not going to lie - I kind of love it. The Hunger Games has not disappointed in this regard, as there have been any number of crazy and wonderful things tossed about. Here are a few of my favorites from the last few months, and I'd love to see more if you know of any I may have missed. Check 'em out under the bread jump:

Mini Chibi Bootleg Star Wars Phantom Menace Figures and More Street Fighter Ones Too!

A few weeks ago I posted what I thought was my complete collection of mini Street Fighter bootleg figures. It turns out I had two more 2-packs hidden deep in my garage. Even deeper into the garage was a pack of 9 Star Wars: The Phantom Menace glow-in-the-dark chibi bootleg figures. I didn't get these at a yard sale, they were actually a gift from my mother-in-law probably about 10-12 years ago, and they are AWESOME.

Click through the jump for the full collection of Star Wars figures and the additional Street Fighter figures as well. 

Sidekicking Ass

One of the true tests of the greatness of a video game is thus.

How often do you dip yourself back into its cool inviting waters long after the game has been released and well after you have moved on to play other games? In my history of playing games, at least in my history with sticking to any single console, in this case the X-Box 360, there are a few games that spring to mind that I would consider to be in a category of specialness where I would be happy to devote a weekend to going back and playing through an entire story scenario, from the beginning if need be, just because the game was that cool. And even if the graphics have aged a little? Well that's OK too, because you know the game is THAT good. Think of it as going back in time and spending an evening with a super hot ex-lover that really gives good...well, you get the point.

That's what makes DLC (Downloadable Content) so AWESOME. Because it allows for an extended longevity of games, pumping fresh new content into games LONG after their release, giving guys like me, who like revisiting the past, reasons to go back and not spend money on new games, just a few bucks on some new content to give a little life to a game I've already got.

Looks like Batman: Arkham City is getting some more DLC TLC, which is fine with me...and it may or may NOT be story based, and may or may not be Harley Quinn-centric, and may or may not feature a playable Robin, according to this Gamespot report. I hope it is all of the above. One of the things I enjoy is the Challenges, but one of the things I would TOTALLY dig on is a real honest to goodness playable add-on story for Batman: Arkham City. And if they make Robin playable? So much the better.

This whole thing got me to thinking about some other games I often like to dust off and spend some quality time with now and again. Maybe that will be what I work on for next time. It's not a bad subject, it will just take some effort. Top Ten List's are fun, but good one's take time. Maybe I'll do a Top Ten List of The Best X-Box Games (360 Compatible) to Revisit on a Rainy, Dismal Weekend If You Don't Have Any Significant Obligations Like Life and All That Shit.

Too wordy?

OUT.

Glitches in Skate 3 and a few others

I can watch video game glitches like this all day. They crack me up

I have a few more videgame glitch videos after the jump. Let us know what your favourites are

The Best Music of the First Quarter of 2012

So far, I've really enjoyed a lot of the new music that's come out. There's been good, there's been bad, but I figured I'd offer up some highlights of what's come around so far. If you're interested in a broader playlist, you can subscribe to my "Favorites of 2012" playlist, or simply add some of the stuff I'm linking below the jump:

Celebrity Apprentice Recaps: Episode Seven!: Ding Dong!

Now this is why I watch reality television. After a string of sluggish and uncharacteristically bland episodes, Celebrity Apprentice blasts back with a Tolkien-sized 3 hour episode which sees TWO major players fired, and a THIRD contestant remove themselves from the show in a flurry of emotion!

Thank you.

Aubrey, you are the most awesome, talented, prettiest, smartest person in the universe.
May you never get fat, old and obscure.

Wanna see rage, arrogance, conceit, incompetence? The mighty smited? Evil punished?

Join me after the jump where things (kinda) EXPLODE.

What's Out? 4th of April 2012

It's a bit of a light week for new releases. The whole list behind the cut:

Rear Window Timelapse Video

I've never seen Rear Window, but now I feel like I need to.

What I can say though.. is this 3 minute timelapse video is pretty magical, even without seeing the film.



Rear Window Timelapse from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.

Stryder's Favourite Comics - 3/28/2012

Wow it's April all ready!  Game of Thrones is back on TV, and The Avengers will be out in theatres before we know it!  Not to mention all the other summer movie fare!  Looks like a busy year!  Of course, it's NEVER too busy for COMICS!!

Superman #7 - It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a new creative team!!!  Yes, the new creative team debuts for Superman this month and provides a shift in mood for the Man of Steel.  Gone are the more cartoon-y pencils and dialogue....this version of Supes is more mature and more in keeping with the rest of the New 52 universe.  Not to say that it's gotten suddenly dark, just that it seems much more grown-up than that first 6 issues.

Right on the first page we have both a grittier and a more heroic looking Superman than we've seen thus far shielding a mother and young boy from lasers capable of damaging a brick wall...selling me on the pencils immediately!  Superman goes on to battle some type of battle droid and eventually the being who sent it, an alien (I guess) calling himself Helspont of a race called Daemonites.  You can tell he's the bad guy because his face is a big glowing skull.  Seeing as He-Man is not around, he has decided to hassle Superman instead!  This of course causes lots of trouble for both the Man of Steel and his alter-ego, Clark Kent, who will now have to explain to Lois why he let her down, AGAIN...Okay, I'm teasing but actually this issue was pretty cool!  I'm quite interested in issue #8!

Oh one other thing of note...we learn a neat thing about Superman's costume in this issue.  It is "Kryptonian Biotech" and can metamorph itself from an undershirt into the full costume.  Makes more sense than having all that stuff just stuffed under his jacket...Looks cool too...keeps the iconic pull-open-the-dress shirt pose!  Nice!

Of course there's more after the JUMP!  There ALWAYS is!

The Book Was Better Podcast: Ten Minute Teaser for Episode 15!

Although Jess and I get unreasonably and inexplicably aggressive in this hi-larious 10 minute teaser episode of The Book Was Better Podcast, listen to it to hear about the incredibly insane and awesome novelisation that we'll be discussing next week! Seriously, you guys. When you find out what it is you are going to shit! Do not miss this one!

CHECK IT OUT HERE.

Nerd History: Why You Should Be a Baseball Fan

Comedy Central

Ah, baseball. America's pastime, and one of my favorite things in the world. I've been a Red Sox fan for as long as I can remember, and it's been a long, cold winter without baseball to warm me up. Opening Day 2012 is tomorrow night in Miami (if someone hits a home run, we get to see this go off), and I love baseball for all sorts of reasons. Unfortunately, baseball carries a bit of a stigma - the season is long (162 games) and the games, at 3 hours plus, are overextended and boring. I don't agree, and I think you'll find that there's a lot for even your most hardened nerd to find interesting about baseball.

Tiny Avengers Terrorize Target.

The other day I lambasted the Avengers (C)Rap so it's only fair that I now balance that with the far better Little Avengers commercial for Target. This time far more age appropriate kids are seen loving the shit out of their favourite superhero franchise and are seen burdening their ever-pleasing pack mule of a mother with a veritable mountain of merchandise for a film that hasn't even been released yet. Admit it. We've all been there.

Check it out! Little Thor has some chops...

It's a pretty cool ad, especially for those fancy Thor and Captain America kids. The other two? I can see it now...

Fat Kid: Aww... why do I have to be the Hulk?

Executive: Pipe down, Fatty! Let me apply these prosthetics to make you ugly.

Black Kid: Hey! Do I get to be Nick Fury?

Executive: No. You get to wear a costume that covers every inch of your skin. 

Black Kid's White Stunt Double: Actually I'll be wearing the costume.  

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

F**k Yeah Game of Thrones!: Episode One, The North Remembers/Joff Rulez OK!

I’ll admit, I haven’t read the books. And I don’t always remember all the names. And sometimes I have to make names up like Sir Badassington and Lord Flibberty-Jibberty. But I totally love the unexpected mace to the face that is Game of Thrones and have been eagerly awaiting the series return.

Recapping/reviewing such a rich, character-laden, plot-heavy show is a daunting task and I won’t even attempt to recall everything in order, nor cover every aspect. But I do want to savour its flavour, and share with you the often gut-wrenching, mind-boggling, visceral experience of watching the show.

Series Two opens with what is very much a set-up episode. We take the grand tour, catching up on the current status of all our beloved, unloved, and utterly despised characters - as well as a few new players who have pulled up a chair to join Westeros’ favourite throne game. There are no earth-shattering twists here, but there is an overriding feeling that something big is brewing. It’s like leaving faulty Christmas lights near a leaking air-conditioner, or a box of fireworks on top of a heater. You’re assured that, very soon, something spectacular will happen.

Join me after the jump to find out more!

Tuesday Bounty! Glorious Bounty Likes Being a Robot!

It's Tuesday again and that means a) a brand new page of sci-fi/humour webcomic Glorious Bounty drawn by dependable Edward J. Grug III and written by me, and b) you're another week closer to death!

When we last left the Bounty crew, Deevis and Bruce - in their powerful and fancy new robot bodies - were leaping between rooftops to escape an angry alien. Unfortunately not-so-fancy robot PK doesn't have legs and plummeted into a filthy alley, crushed and begging to be abandoned. Will they abandon PK? Read on...

Click to embiggen or read it at the official site.

Never read Bounty before? Shame on you! Here's CHAPTER ONE. You have a lot of work to do!

Watch Wil Wheaton And Friends Play Board Games!

As exciting as it sounds to watch other people play board games, Wil Wheaton has managed to make it work... by co-creating a web show where we do exactly that.

TableTop is a "Celebrity Poker" style 30-minute web show where a group of people plays a board game in front of cameras. There is more to it than that though... It's presented much like a reality game show, with scoring between each round, confessional style interviews, and a losers couch at the end of the episode.

Today was the launch of the series with the first episode, Small World (the Risk meets D&D battle game by Days of Wonder). Here's the full episode:

The next episode (April 20th) is the Settlers of Catan. After that, who knows.. but from the first trailer I know I spotted Munchkin. Keep an eye on http://www.geekandsundry.com for more information on TableTop and their many other upcoming web shows.

Ready Player One Is The Hunger Games For Gamers

I’ve never been much of a “young adult” reader. In high school I read the necessary books (most of the time), and looked away when half the kids I knew read Harry Potter and the rest read the Left Behind series. Instead, I immersed myself into 80’s movies, NES emulations on my school’s IBM PC’s, and, yes, listened to a lot of Rush.

Now that I actually read novels, Ernest Cline has written a book I could really have used ten years ago.

Kickstart The Week: Ultra Ape Poker Playing Cards by Reagan

Playing cards have been going really strong on Kickstarter in the past few months. The artist decks have been really awesome. And now, there are ape decks too!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1762124010/ultra-ape-poker-playing-cards

Click through the jump for more images and info.

Tokyo Jungle

Why hello innovative crazy idea, I have missed you.

In 20XX, mankind left Earth leaving animals to fend for themselves. The once busy streets of Tokyo are now home to lions, tigers, chickens, and various other animals. All of them are now fighting for survival

To survive the Tokyo Jungle, you'll need to seek shelter from predators, learn to discern between edible and rotten food and produce offspring to continue into the next generation

This feels like a new Katamari Darmacy sort of game to me. The 3d models are stylised and definitely characterised. There's a wicked sense of humour behind the game and honestly videogames have been lacking some humour lately.

OH and the greatest addition to this game you can see after the jump....

Nerd History: The Kray Twins

Doing Nerd History early this week because this is too fun not to share. Reggie and Ronnie Kray were professional gangsters in every sense of the word. Torture, murder, armed robbery, organized crime - you name it. They were some of the most famous and most important criminals in the 1950s and 1960s in London. Their story is really interesting, and too much to recap here, to be honest: a good starting point is this official account and this horrible-looking website with a ton of great information. If you're into crime and crime bosses, this is something, especially if you're on the American side of the Atlantic, that you might not know.

Why am I bothering to highlight this? Well, it turns out that the Jay-Z and Kanye West song, er, "Ninjas in Paris," (okay okay, real song here) actually namechecks these twins. The line "wanna find me / that (poop) Kray" is not a goofy Kanye-esque shortening of "crazy" as assumed, but is likely a reference to these Twins who went into hiding. Go figure, right?

Mass Effect Saturday Morning Cartoon Trailer!

The fine folks at IGN have debuted a faux trailer/opening of what a Mass Effect based Saturday morning cartoon might look like. If you ever saw the brilliant Saturday Morning Watchmen then you already have an idea of what to expect.

You could watch it at IGN with their breaking new stories, timely reviews, original content and sexy Jessica Chobot, or you could just watch it here we post random crap and have uncomfortable silences:

Despite all the childish controversy about the (admittedly devastating) ending, I absolutely adore the Mass Effect series and would have a hard time finding a game with comparable emotional investment. I've been meaning to write up my thoughts on Mass Effect 3 since completing it some weeks ago but in the unwarranted nerd shitstorm that's followed it, I'm having trouble pushing past the bullshit and finding the right words. I feel genuinely sorry for Bioware but I guess we often hurt the ones we love the most.

In the meantime I'm hoping that if I write enough about pop culture on the Internet I might be made into a romanceable character in Mass Effect 4. Watch out for me lurking suspiciously around the Normandy's women's restrooms. 

The Avengers Put the C in Rap!

Listening to audio from Hasbro's New York Toy Fair presentation I, like many, experienced bewildered revulsion at Hasbro's shockingly unironic Avengers Rap, which sounds like it was written 23 years ago by a toy executive holding a Christian rap group at gun point. When it debuted at Toy Fair the impossibly happy female spokeswoman assured everyone that they were proud of the rap and they thought it would go "viral". Perhaps. But not for the right reasons.

Check it out for yourself. It's one of the few raps I've heard which praises the awesomeness of rich, powerful, white guys...

I'm not sure what I find more odd here: The fact that the "kids" shown using these plasticky role-play items look far too old to be playing with them, or the fact that in real-life it will probably be mostly far older adults that will be actually buying them.