All posts by Chris Valdez

Starting with video games, Chris' interests have led him to write game reviews, study Japanese and move to Japan to continue his studies. Of course, he has other interests, like cooking and baking, travel, and occasionally updating his blog.
Random

MTV died years ago

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Remember when MTV played full-length music videos?  Or are you so young that you didn’t even know it did that?  If so, get the fuck out. MTV is a joke now. To prove that MTV and all it stands for is even more of a joke, I present to you the European Music Awards. Current nominees for “Best Act Ever” include Britney Spear, Christina Aguilera, Green Day, Rick Astley and Tokio Hotel.  As pointed out by Wired’s Listening Post, it’s easy to see that more deserving groups, such as The Rolling Stones are left off the list.

So the stand out of the list is Rick Astley.  Good thing he’s on there, as the EMAs is having an online poll to allow visitors to the site the chance to vote for the winners.  This is great, especially because the site allows for unlimited voting.  So guess who the internet is trying to get to win?

Rick Astley.

Click that link and you’ll be taken to a site that has information (including automated scripts) to allow you to vote automatically an unlimited number of times. The easiest for most people to use will be the RickVoter. Or be like me and open up the link in 5 windows and let it run in the background. In the past 24 hours, I’ve voted for him at least 15,000 times.  Whewps!

Continue reading MTV died years ago →

Random

Fat society

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Hey yo, fat girl, c’mere; are you ticklish? Yeah, I called you fat, look at me, I’m skinny. It ain’t ever stopped me from getting busy. — Digital Underground

So I keep hearing about how we’re a fat society and whatnot, but I never really gave it much thought other than agreeing with the notion. Last night, however, I finally found the proof in the pudding. Velveeta mac & cheese that includes bacon bits.

Now, I’m a proponent of bacon, as I love the flavor. But I’ve noticed recently that bacon seems to be getting added to more items. The local Taco Cabana at my food court will add bacon to just about any item for an extra 99 cents. But as I’ve been told repeatedly, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.  And to prove the point, here are some things to think about:

Gaming

I’m so blue

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Mega ManSo, Mega Man–also known as the blue bomber–has made a return to his roots with Mega Man 9, available for Wiiware, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

Capcom has said publicly, in interviews and on its blog, that the game is a throwback to the games of yesteryear. It keeps the gameplay fron 20 years ago intact, and I’m really amazed just how much it feels like it could’ve been an NES game, except for fade-ins and fade-outs that seem a little too smooth.

But really, the game delivers. Graphics that are pixelated with few minimal frames of animation, music that is catchy and uses limited hardware to produce it, and the “challenge.”  I say challenge, because the game is hard, but it’s hard because of the many cheap deaths you may come across in your venture.

This game does put to rest a question I’ve had for years: Are games nowadays too easy, or am I just getting better?  Well, I browsed a few message boards and read page after page of comments from people complaining about how hard the game was. I feel that the difficulty is about up there with the old MMs when I would first play them.

Several of the comments were about an elephant you fight in Concrete Man’s stage of people unable to beat it. I didn’t find this to be a challenge.  Got past them in my first life (after encountering the first elephant with so little life that one hit killed me).  Then someone asked about the octopi in Splash Woman’s stage. Ugh.

Now, those are some incredibly easy enemies to defeat.  I mean, if you can’t kill those, you probably shouldn’t be playing video games.  Or perhaps at least give it more than 30 seconds before you run to a message board asking for help.

The game is wonderful and feels like something straight out of 1990. Definitely a bargain for the $10 price tag it carries. When we can have content this good come out on download services, it makes me wonder why the big three allow some shitty content to come out. Yaris and Undertow on Xbox Live Arcade quickly spring to mind.

Random

Spam, not just a lunch meat

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The other day, I decided to check out the RMo states.  You know, bandwidth, unused databases, file storage, etc.  I noticed that one of our e-mail addresses had 250 MBs in the inbox.  Wtf?  Sure, it was the e-mail account we use to collect e-mails for invalid @rain-man.org addresses, but how could that be so large?

Well, it seems neither Rainman nor I had been checking it (I thought RM tidied it up once a week or so) for the past 13 months. So I logged in to the account to find 50,619 e-mails waiting for me. Holy shit. So I emptied it out without bothering to sort through it.

Two days passed and I checked the account again. Already, there were 200+ e-mails waiting.  I guess I should be thankful this isn’t a popular site, otherwise there could be a lot more spam coming to us. As it is, I average about 20 – 30 pieces a day.

Anime

Confession

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I used to be a self-professed otaku. I was really into anime and was, what one might call, a weeaboo.  Thankfully I got out of that phase of my life, and it was at the right time too.  I stopped paying attention to anime around the time it started to become the mainstream (is it considered mainstream now?) phenomenon it has become.

I watched things like Ranma 1/2 (I even had some of the $30 tape that contained only two episodes), Neon Genesis, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, etc.  I felt that most things around then (late ’90s, early 2000s) was of good quality. But when it became popular and less underground, companies started bringing more and more shows stateside.

It used to be that there were 0 – 5 DVDs released a week.  Now?  I have no clue, but the market is saturated. Whenever I watch a show now that someone recommends, most of the time it’s crap, but people like it because it’s the hip thing. In reality, the quality, I feel, just isn’t there.  It’s sad.  Before, I could trust the localization companies to bring out quality shows I’d enjoy, now it’s rare.

Gaming

What does gaming journalism need to be taken seriously?

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Over the years, I’ve heard people argue and voice their opinions that videogame journalism needs to be taken seriously, as do games in general. Many people in society still consider games to be something meant for kids and arcades, despite many games receiving content ratings listing them for mature audiences.

Continue reading What does gaming journalism need to be taken seriously? →