Inquiring About The Public's Opinion Of SEGA...

As I sit here mulling over the bowl of cereal I don't have because my family forgot to buy some, I got to thinking about our dear friend SEGA once again.  You see, brand recognition and popularity is what helps keep companies in business.  So this leads me to ask this vital question...

Do you think Sega is "cool" anymore?

Where does Sega go on the Cool Wall?

Top Gear, telling you how it is since 2002.

Now.  Some of you will say, "Well of course Sega is cool!  They made some kickass games!  Who cares what people think of Sega?"  You're sorta right.  Us Sega hipsters got this little circlejerk going on and screw what anyone else thinks!  But it is IMPORTANT what other people think of Sega.  Sega cannot survive alone cause of a couple of fanboys on the Internet, they need a portion of the Average Joe gamer demographic to run out and invest in their stuff too.

See, that's what I mean about being "cool."  The term "cool" as in "genuinely interested in their products."  Being cool is important--it's how crap pop music, TV, movies, and video games manage to be relevant despite lacking any original content or substance at all.  Being "cool" is neither a good or bad thing--it's like handing off the baton or being "King of the Hill."  You gotta reach out and grab it somehow.  Sega was cool back in the 90's!  Sonic the Hedgehog!  Game consoles!  Arcades!  Kickass!  People loved that stuff.  But nowadays, everyone has written off Sega as a decayed corpse as they flock around the Western developers--FPS, RTS, adventure, MMO's with "realistic/grungy/shockingly depressing" hi-res graphics.  In other words, the complete antithesis of Sega! :(

This whole "cool" topic came about reading this compelling article about Nintendo and violent games' places in the marketplace.  Basically how the concept of "family entertainment" that Nintendo has relied on for so long has eroded over the last decade.  Think about it....what are the most popular games these days?  Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Gears of War.  Games with copious profanity, violence, and (some) sexual content.  They sell Halo and GoW toys in kids/family stores though MS/Epic shrug at the thought of directly advertising violence to kids.  Case in point, these games have claimed the "cool" mantle.  Realistic, gritty games are in vogue, clean happy games are out.

How did this happen?  You can name many reasons.  Kids look up to teens/young adults for what is cool--adults play violent games, so do kids.  The concept of a "family" has diminished--we spend less time face-to-face and have high numbers of single parent households therefore.  We've conditioned ourselves to violence and the "Jackass generation" that we hardly flinch at the idea at our of kids disrespecting each other.  I'm not a sociologist so I won't pursue the issue longer but look at this point mentioned in the article--55-60% of parents do not check nor do they even care about ESRB/PEGI ratings.  This is ridiculous.

But don't get me wrong...I'm not blaming violent games for society's problems, nor am I saying you can't enjoy these games yourself.  But these kind of games are adverse to Sega's M.O., plus don't you get tired of people realistically shooting, stabbing, blowing each other up?  Why is it that whenever anyone unveils a non-violent, colorful game, it's a cringe-inducing kids title, a shameful freemium game, or both?  Also would you let this kid play Call of Duty?  There's thousands of kids like this every day.  Boy, violence is good for them!

EDIT: This YouTube video makes another good point about game popularity--YouTube Let's Plays.  Nintendo has been vigilant in the past about taking down any YouTube gameplay videos.  Other companies, notsomuch.  I'm not a Let's Play watcher but I can see what they're getting at here--YouTube clips are basically free advertising and Nintendo better accept that soon.

And what does Nintendo, Sega's last ally in the war against gray skies, do about it?  SUCK AT EVERYTHING!  The Wii was a success cause they advertised it to that core young-adult demographic and did a great job with the motion control stuff.  Now the Wii U gives us some awkward gaming pad and is advertising itself to...little kids?  I swear, I saw a Toys R Us commercial last Christmas with little kids harping on a Wii U sales deal.  Is THIS the game console that the mainstream demographic (18-35 year olds) going to buy?  Especially with its outdated graphics and same old games from last generation?  I'm not a graphics junkie but at least Sega's new releases were top-notch technology (i.e. Scud Race/Daytona 2 being years ahead of the N64/Playstation).  Seriously, the 3DS is the only thing keeping Nintendo alive.  I still don't know how Pokemon remains relevant as ever these days, especially since all I hear from Pokemon nostalgists is bitching about how perfect Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow was (news flash--there were "bad" Pokemon in that game too) but shit, if it makes Nintendo money, then great.

Nintendo is a company I want...no, NEED to succeed in order to establish "balance" against Sony and Microsoft.  Now they are throwing their arms up and open for acquisitions or mergers?  RED FLAG!!  The fact Sega has hooked its anchor to Nintendo's sinking ship (in the form of Sonic games exclusive for the Wii U) is suicidal.

You want a kids console?  Buy a V-Tech.

Now, time for a pop quiz!  Get out a sheet of paper and writing utensil.  Write down up to five things that you think Sega has done that was "cool" at any time in its history.  You have thirty seconds, now....GO!

...

Time's up!  Compare your list to mine.  If you're like me, you've probably written down a list of things like this:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog!
2. Expertise in home consoles!
3. Expertise in arcades!
4. A backlog of vibrant blue-sky games that made fun the primary focus!
5. A brash, edgy marketing campaign!

Now, let's run through this list and compare them to the Sega of today.  Home consoles?  Sorry, Sega put the kaibosh on that in 2001 so let's cross that out.  Arcades?  Those are dead in the West and the only stuff we see are mediocre and never live up to the 90's so cross that out too.  Blue-sky games?  HA, please spare me, Sega does the bare minimum to keep their legacy from eating dust by releasing sparse, straight ports of their games to cash in on nostalgia from the fanboys so let's cross that one out.  Brash?  Edgy?  Name for me ONE bold thing that Sega has said or done.  No "Sega does what Nintendon't" or Sega screams.  Almost all of Sega's official advertising is done through their online blog site as they cut and run like a scared puppy.  So cross that one out as well.  So what does our list look like now?

1. Sonic the Hedgehog!
2. Expertise in home consoles!
3. Expertise in arcades!
4. A backlog of vibrant blue-sky games that made fun the primary focus!
5. A brash, edgy marketing campaign!

Yes, it's true, love it or hate it, Sonic IS Sega.  Sonic is the only thing that Sega has going for it...the only thing Sega hasn't given up on in the last 22 years, even dragging the franchise through the horse shit that was the post-SA2 era.  Seriously, just listen to the first forty seconds of this Giant Bomb video and you'll see what I mean.  "Sonic" = "Sega"  I'll probably talk about this in a Part 2 next time cause I'm tired and have gone on for too long, good night all.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PART TWO.

OOPS, WRECKED MY CAR!!!

Well guys, one of the least pleasant things in my life happened today.  You're not going to believe it coming from me but here goes...

I wrecked my car for the very first time.  Before everyone panics, let me get some good things out of the way now.  Nobody, including myself was hurt.  The car, for the most part, is intact.  Very little damage to everything else besides my car.  I have insurance and a AAA and the cops didn't treat me like some outlaw or adrenaline junkie.  My dad is on the way here to help me get my car fixed.  Still, I wrecked my car.

Let me explain what happened.  It's raining, I'm in the office complex's parking lot and have one left turn to go before I made it to my building.  The problem was this black pavement turns into black ice when wet.  I really had no idea until it's too late.  I can't steer or brake at 25 mph as I careen forward into a dumpster behind a fence.  No thanks to the lack of ABS but meh, it wouldn't have helped much anyway.  The air bags deployed but I wasn't slapped in the face or anything.  I was able to start the engine, turn the wheel entirely left & right, play the CD, turn on the air conditioner, and roll up & down the windows.  The main damage came from the right front light which was smashed along with some usual rumbling on the front right wheel, plus the windshield was cracked, the right door won't open, and the air bags obviously went off.

I sorta wept man tears for a while knowing that I had potentially killed my companion of seven years over a stupid incident that could've been prevented.  Thankfully, everything else went okay.  A utility worker called the police for me (lovely), the cop didn't ream me too hard with a ticket ($130), and I was able to drive the car into a nearby parking spot (boy, it would be nice to leave work and see my car parked next to yours...just needs blood on the windshield and doors).  I am feeling better about the car's chance for survival and my ability to rebound.  Personally, I would prefer not to buy a new car for three main reasons--odds are it won't perform any better than my old car (as in it handled well, was clean, and required minimum maintenance), I plan on moving to Britain in a year or two to work for Sumo Digital assuming I get a job there, and I love my old car.  It's a real shit-sucker but to be honest, if you KNEW you were going to get in a wreck some day, this is the best way to wreck.  No one's hurt and everything's being remedied rather quickly.

Still...this has to be the most punk ass bitch way of causing a wreck.  Basically sprinkle the ground with vasoline, make it rain, and don't warn people about potentially slipper terrain.  I mean, put a "slow down when wet" sign or even a speed bump for God's sake--those things suck but at least they would've saved my ass.  Had this been a wreck on dry terrain and/or involving another driver, my morale as an "outstanding driver" would've been shot to hell.  But here, I'm just fuckin' pissed and want to get back on the road as soon as possible.  I don't want to pay a bunch of money, talk to a bunch of random strangers, and wait a long-ass time to get driving again.  That's what makes this so difficult...

Really, could be a worse wreck...see my family friend who decided to ramp a ditch in his Corvette and end up deep in the woods.  Lol, really, you can still see the tire marks where he went off road.  Me on the other hand, just get a hammer and some duct tape and you're ready to go.  Finish 20 laps down but hey, you still get credit for finishing.

There is a mixed blessing among this.  One being that I get to hang out with my dad again.  Another being that I've "experienced" a wreck and have a new-found appreciation for life.  Third being that it gives me more ammo to joke about.  Like being fired or vomiting after a large meal with some friends, it's like "hawhaw, here's some funny jokes at my expense."  That's more source material which is good!

I'll probably post pics later cause I don't care.  I certainly hope I recover soon.  Plus I want to talk about the races over the last two weeks so hang on for those.  Car wrecks aren't going to break my stride.  Semi-relevant video:

HE'S SEEN THE FEAR...HE NEEDS SEGA RACER THERAPY!!!

Xbox One Roast

Congrats, everyone, you are looking at the brand new console to be released by Microsoft at the end of the year.  And yes, that's really the new Xbox One, can't you tell?

Anyway, to celebrate this glorious occasion, the game studio decided to throw a pizza party and air the conference on a projector.  Me, I was just trying to hang myself from the other room cause I knew it wasn't going to be the Dreamcast 2 so what's the point of going on???  Anyway, Xbox One...really?  What did we call the original Xbox?  Just the "Xbox."  Wait, you can't say that since you might be talking about any one of the three Xboxes.  Damn, the "first Xbox."  Well that ALMOST sounds like Xbox One cause "One" sorta equals "First."  Fine, "original Xbox."  Now that's just a mouthful and doesn't roll off the tongue at all.  Screw it, the name is the least of our worries.

Remember that rant from a long time ago?  About how games are trying to move away from gaming and more into the realm of electronic entertainment or "interactive stimulation"?  Well, the future is here ladies and gentlemen.  Games are secondary now.  I want to be able to haul my console up to my damn room just for the sake of playing games--not to watch TV, make Skype calls, update my fantasy football, or be bothered by other people in general cause those are things I can do rather easily without the need for the Xbox One.  Besides, people are the worst.  Would you really like to be FORCED to interact with other people on your game console?  Aren't we already loser nerds as it is, forced to play our games by our lonesome for hours on end?  Last thing I want is to talk to anyone, geez.

I specifically remember playing this video from a year ago at Microsoft's E3.  Oh how nothing's changed for the better.

Ah, finally, about 30 minutes into the conference, they finally mention games.  Speaking of which, I really didn't expect many games to be shown here because E3 is around the corner (though odds are that'll suck too).  But they went ahead with the same expected pre-rendered crap (they actually said "in-game footage" late in the conference, inferring everything before it was a sham) from the same games--EA Sports games, Forza 5, Call of Duty: Ghosts.  Graphics are always nice to have but I'll say this--I'll fucking lose it if these games only run at 30 FPS max.  I would rather play Xbox 360 games with 60 FPS than Xbox One games with 30 FPS.  It makes a subliminal impact on the gameplay.  I'm looking at old games like Daytona USA that run at 60 FPS and have responsive controls.  THAT GAME WAS RELEASED NINETEEN YEARS AGO!!  If we are still obsessed with graphics that bad that we need to crank up the level of detail to the point where the human eye can't notice it anymore, then fuck it, I'm done with this generation of games before they even started.

Oh, by the way, the Kinect is mandatory.  So you can do Minority Style movements to navigate the menus.  Okay, cool.  They also said the detail is now more fine-tuned than ever.  They say that "the Kinect can even recognize wrist turning" which translates to "the Kinect THINKS it can recognize wrist turning but it does such a shitty job at picking it up therefore the broken wrist turning mechanics will be shoehorned into your games, thus breaking certain aspects of the game because some fool thought that shoving the Kinect up your game's ass like a dildo was a smart idea."

Forza 5.  Okay, great graphics, the cityscape was pretty, other than that, what else is there to be expected?

Call of Duty.  Somehow,  features in video games like "feeling affection for your characters" and "character customization" are groundbreaking in the year 2013.  Oh, and lighting in the year 2013 as well.  And the dog.

EDIT: Oh, and Microsoft employees were the only one cheering.

Somehow, to suppress the fact their console is laden with a bunch of shit, they decided to announce the rest of the bad news at a tech conference proceeding the main show.  Never mind the fact that Sony's stock went up 9% at the very moment you guys unveiled the name "Xbox One"!  Here's a couple of QA questions that should alleviate maybe 2% of your concerns.  BTW, their answer to always-online is flat out deceptive--the console must be connected to the Internet at least every 24 hours to remain functional off-line.  I can see why they'd give you the 24 hour leeway in case your connection drops for a moment but still, the fact you have to sign in often is ridiculous.  EDIT: Also dawned on me, I know Microsoft has like some 3000 servers up, but what should happen if the servers (or at the ones near you) went down?  Could you even play the Xbox One anymore if that was the case??  Ya know, cause of the whole mandatory sign-in thing.  Brilliant, we've seen it before with Diablo 3 and SimCity, let's do consoles next.

Then there's no backwards compatibility.  Congratulations, Xbox One, now I have no reason to buy your console right away (assuming I felt like buying this giant VCR-shaped paper-weight) because the library of games over the last 7 years is meaningless!  And with the rate that 360's are bricking (RRoD), then it means that within a couple of years, it'll be nigh impossible to play any 360 games, awesome!!!

Also the used games debacle!  You must pay a fee for each unique console you play a game on.  No longer can you just toss your friend a copy of the game for him to borrow--he has to pay money to play it on his machine too, even if you can't play simultaneously with him.  Again, sticking fingers up the ass of the used game market.  Oh woe is me, I bought a used car, house, furniture, clothes, those are okay.  But video games aren't.  How about you stop making such shitty games and maybe I will actually buy them new instead of used.

Do the math.  Mandatory Kinect + Always Online + No Backwards Compatibility + Death of Used Games = our worst nightmares come true.  I will not be supporting the Xbox One, period.  And the fact is, I bet a lot of you people agree.  But the fact is Microsoft is still part of the console oligopoly.  How long can you hold out until you buy the Xbox One?  Look at the Xbox 360--it's debatably the most mainstream of the three console (at least in North America) because of huge library and tons of other cool features.  If the Xbox One, God forbid, starts to pick up steam after its release (and it will, Microsoft will pimp that out like they did with the Kinect), how long until you cave?  Fact is Microsoft can frankly have their way with you, you can detest it, but in the end, you'll probably give them a little more leeway, "this thing sucks but at least I can play the games I like so I'm okay," etc. etc.  Same thing with Electronic Arts and so forth--how they still continue to look good despite the fact that large swaths of the Internet hate their guts.  "Mass Effect, Battlefield, Madden...okay I'll support EA, but just this once!!!"  Whew, good thing Sonic is staying Nintendo-exclusive after all...

EDIT: Hey, here's another infograph I saw comparing the Xbox One's specs to the PS4:

Yep...stick with the PS4.

Whatever, just one more kick in the balls before I'm through.  I caught this on Kotaku out the corner of my eye.  It's the first revealed screenshot of the new Need for Speed game.

Someone tell me what's wrong here.  If you said "lack of colors" you're absolutely right.  Grey skies, dingy hues, "grungy shaders" (literally, some guy came down from Epic to lecture some artists about shades of brown).  Somehow, being colorful is "gay" while being colorless is "cool, epic, beast mode."  Well, I'd rather be gay than all those other things.  Gay as in "happy" you sick freaks.  I'm out, deuces man...DEUCES.

In case you hadn't seen it before...TV TV TV TV TV TV XBOX WATCH TV TV TV MOVIE TV EXPERIENCE MOVIE TV TV TV SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORT SPORTS TELEVISION TV TELEVISION WATER COOLER TV TV TV CALLOFDUTY CALLOFDUTY CALLOFDUTY CALLOFDUTY DOG CALLOFDUTY CALLOFDUTY DOG CALLOFDUTY 

Happy Easter Driving Updates

Alright, so...we're back.  Happy Easter and have a great day.

Let's cut to the chase--there's a couple of reasons why I've been posting less.  The main thing I've been at work for a month already.  It's a 9-hour workday (includes the 1-hour lunch) in a office with a bunch of nerds floating about.  I'm adding new features to the game but just last week, I've had to play the role of that guy who needs to find the needle in a haystack--basically, solve an easy chicken-shit problem that takes days worth of trial and error to crack and every passing hour puts your job security even more in jeopardy.  I'm kinda bummed out about work now but I'm hanging in there.  Only a matter of time before I get the experience to work at Sumo Digital, I pray to God...

And even worse is that there's really nothing going on Sega-wise...  We got The 90's Arcade Racer plugging along without me.  I'm still bitter about that.  Then there's Sega All-Stars Racing which is getting a patch to fix all the bugs and the difficulty issues but that doesn't change the fact the game has devolved into talking about two things--glitches (they're still at 'em) and tier lists.  The mystery DLC character hasn't been revealed yet and still, if that's the only extra character we'll ever get, that's a bit of a letdown IMO.  Then there's the Supermodel emulator which has basically stalled (Bart's getting a Doctorate, give him a break).  And, well...it's up to me to pull things outta my ass now.

There was also a rainstorm in Orlando which was a 30-minute hurricane that descended upon my house...really strange cause there was a very tiny red blip over where I was.  Huh, okay so it's worth posting about.

But anyway, it's really the little things now that get me by these days.  Like driving to the airport to pick up a friend while accelerating around the terminal blasting AC/DC and Metallica.  God forbid I drive 10 MPH over the speed limit but it was good fun to pretend to be a NASCAR driver.  Then there was this--on a simple trip up the road to a Checkers drive-thru, I drove through a verdant wavy part of International Drive by the convention center, near the Dave & Buster's I visited twice already.  And what I experienced was rather wonderful...

I wish I saw more happy things like this in my racing games.  More trees, more colors, more fancy architecture, more blinking signs (like those in Scud Race and Daytona 2 that flash "3 LAPS TO GO"...why don't they have those anymore???).  And how funny is it that I'm near the place that inspired the Sega-AM2 crew to make Daytona 2 as colorful as it is.  Check out the Saturn Magazine Interview with Makoto Osaki and how he mentions going to Daytona International Speedway and then Disney World & Universal Studios (on this page).  I'm so close to where this magic happened and yet I feel like all these game designers are trying to beat me down.  It's like...people don't even try to make their racing games feel good anymore--it's basically "let's make it as gritty realistic as we can and drown out all the fun."  Boo, hiss, go away bad game designers...

On the other hand, Eutechnyx may not be as bad as we thought...

But one more thing, I was on my way to work one day when I found this fun-tastic van next to me.  Tell that Aggressive Appliances of Orlando didn't take AGES to get that good, did it...???

Want to talk about the NASCAR stuff going on (like Joey Logano who "killed" Denny Hamlin) and other garbage later.  Like THIS:

TOP GEAR AMERICAN ROADTRIP

Wow, you guys, the day after my birthday (you READ the last post in full, did you???), I make the 1,635,632th 9-hour Louisiana-Florida road trip back to my old apartment for video game work starting MONDAY.  I only stopped to refuel ONCE.  I'm a boss.

I'm on a Top Gear UK kick.  I was watching it at home in Louisiana on Netflix.  One of the episodes they drive in cheap used cars along a similar route as me.  And this is one thing that happened:

I saw the Florida Road Trip episode and laughed my ass off at this part...it's so brazen that you would paint "MAN-LOVE RULES OK" in pink on the side of your truck and drive through Alabama.  No way, they just did that, trolled 'em, HAHA!!  And Fat Stig, man, the US was the butt of every joke that episode.  I didn't even bother showing it to the rest of my family since I knew they'd flip their s*** over it.

EDIT: Worth mentioning there's more controversial Top Gear episodes like this.  I recently watched the Middle East and India road trip episodes.  When they got to the parts where they showed the "baby Jesus" and the "Shit for your company/Eat English muff" signs, my laughing woke up everyone in the house....come on, get a grip people.

But I don't care.  It's the British humour I like...they make fun of EVERYTHING, including their cohosts whom they insult and sabotage their cars constantly.  I mean I kinda do that, I make fun of every video game there is basically.  And besides, here in the states were are a little bit fat and anal when it comes to these things.  We say 'MURICA, they say INGLIN', just deal with it. I love America but prefer the UK Top Gear to the US one...

Oh, and I'll just leave this here.  Yu Suzuki is considering a Kickstarter for Shenmue III.  Can we raise the $50 mil we need?  I guess so, let's find out!  *sleeps before first day of work*

THIS IS A TEST POST

I'm making a post from my iPhone for the first time! DO NOT REPLY.

Random Thought Of The Day: One of these days, I'm going to CPL and winning the big CS 1.6 tournament using a $10 Dynex wired mouse bought from Best Buy. Seems that the cheaper the mouse, the more productive I am with it. Weight ballasts and 12 buttons, bitch please...

But no really this thing sucks, I hate the iPhone keyboard...never posting from here again.

p.s. Go buy Grand Prix Story in the App Store..........

Night Drivin, Black Ops 2, iPhone, Rofl Mayans

Sup boys and ladies, we are back home in Louisiana.  So I drove 9 hours on Tuesday from Orlando to Slidell, only making incredibly brief stops because I hate staying out on the road and driving at 75-80 mph in a straight line just isn't fun and never will be.  But I did leave late on Tuesday (6 pm ET) which is sort of an Oregon Trail maneuver (what time do you want to leave?) so this meant driving through the dark, like this:

You'll notice many old vidya games use "night-time" as a common game feature.  Simply because night-time was easy to draw--just draw nothing (paint it black).  Need for graphics crisis AVERTED!

There's less traffic at night too so it ain't bad.  As for now, there's not much postin' going on because I'm on vacation, I'm at home with the family, and there's two things I want to do: enjoy the brief Christmas time with my family and get some rest.  I do have a lot of stuff to talk about but no--I want you dying of anticipation for Christmas.  As for the job offer, I still don't have anything yet.  I ought to be patient.  In retrospect there's a few interview questions I could've answered better but it's no use--I did my best and should wait post-Christmas before I get an offer (assuming I do).

Also I'm glad this Mayan calendar nonsense is over.  So tired of the world ending...I bet History Channel is crying somewhere.  Quick, someone come up with another Doomsday so they can run Nostradamus/Alex Jones specials on that too.  SPOILER ALERT for Assassin's Creed but did the game's storyline infer that the world was gonna end 12/21/12?  Ha, that game sucks, play something less violent.

But when I think of Mayans, I think of H.G. Pennypacker trying to sabotage the clothing store by stealing all the silica gel packets.  That's what the Mayans were thinking...steal all of our silica gel packets so we die in 2012...I'm crazy and don't know what I'm even getting at here.

Ooo, and how about this.  My family gave me an iPhone 5 as an early Christmas present!  Now that's pretty cool although I don't have many other Christmas presents I requested up until now.  Like the phone though, thanks Steve Jobs.  I can access websites such as this one, watch crappy YouTube videos, etc.  Hooray for technology turning me into a lazy bum because everything is so easy to do now!

Don't worry little buddy.

Oh yeah, and one more thing I want to talk about and that is Black Ops 2.  My family is now part of the "buy every new CoD" legion so we got BO2...for the Playstation 3.  No achievement whoring this time.  Here's some brief thoughts.

Zombies: Ok, so I'm a mild Nazi Zombies aficionado so I wanted to know how Treyarch pissed all over the series in its third game.  Now the only level you start with (TranZit) is basically this big-ass level (think the size of a typical Left 4 Dead map).  You start in a 50's bus station and ride around to different locations (diner, farm, factory, downtown) and you fight zombies (well duh).  Oh, and the whole world is darkened with ash and seismic activity fills the world with streams of lava.  Right, because lava makes a wonderful obstacle in every action video game  (not in Halo...according to the older kid from Spy Kids 3D, the best movie ever made).

It's really interesting though that after all this time, Treyarch still continues the Nazi Zombies mythos.  The nuked world continues from Black Ops 1.  Remember the Moon zombie level Easter Egg where (SPOILER ALERT) Richtofen switches places with Samantha Maxis to become "Lord of the Zombies" (the powerup voice changes) and Dr. Maxis nukes the earth in a vain attempt to (presumably) stop a zombie outbreak.  I usually have disdain for dark games but the way Treyarch has been teasing the community with Easter Eggs and secret fetch quests is too good to pass up.  It makes me want to learn more about the story...more than if the story was just dumped on you: "some scientist makes zombies, BLEH, who cares."

I didn't even watch the video but I copied and pasted a BO2 Zombies video for illustration purposes.  But there's much more to Easter Eggs...there's a SECOND BUS ROUTE WE HAVE YET TO UNLOCK OMGORZ GUYS.

As for playing the zombie level itself...it's okay.  Apparently the gameplay hasn't changed at all except they added work benches to build gadgets (like in Dead Rising 2) and you can ride the bus (which sucks cause zombies can hop on from all angles).  The four characters look like Walter from The Big Lebowski (or Breaking Bad), Samuel L Jackson from Black Snake Moan, and white Louis and redneck Zoey from L4D.  It sucks and I can't stand jumping over the lava cracks everywhere in the level, ha ha ha.

One more thing and that is way, way back, Treyarch (or some troll) was dropping really abstract Flash movies on this website hinting clues to the (we assume) zombies plotline years ago.  Too bad they were probably leaking info for the Black Ops 1 campaign storyline (Mason being brainwashed and Nova-6 poisoning people).  Wasted opportunity, guys.

Now about campaign and multiplayer.  Well, I stopped caring.  Personally I thought Black Ops 1 had a decent storyline and they continue that too.  But the first level--running around some open field shooting Africa militiamen with an AK47--I just didn't care about at all and after beating six Call of Duties on Veteran, I have little interest on this story anymore.  As for multiplayer, they did a fine job making multiplayer loadouts more flexible (can give secondary weapons & knives camo, can pick more than three perks, etc.) but only two or three of the weapons are recognizable to me (it's future warfare after all) so it's just not that much fun.  I mean, if we're gonna go futuristic, then it's borderline Halo and the series loses some separation with that (I like running around with an AK47 and Deagle, you know).  At least most of the MP maps are quite colorful and take place in common locations (malls, hotels) which is good since I prefer these colorful maps over the dingy ones any day.

EDIT: Starting to dawn on me.  Look at Halo & CoD.  Halo is starting to adapt loadouts and CoD is taking on this futuristic vibe. Hell, even that Drone MP map from Blops 2 looks straight outta Halo with the fancy lab doors and stuff. In a few years, the two will become one of the same.  That would suck...I wish for a WW2 game again.  World at War wasn't too bad...

I think if I'm going to FPS it up in the future, I'll probably go back to Counter-Strike.  But with the job search, Sega All-Stars Racing, and trying to finish Super Sprint, I don't think I have much time for anything else.  That's my rant for now so good day folks.

Battle Fortress Tortoise ROFL

Oh boy, well I'm certain most of you know about Battle Fortress Tortoise.  It's the capstone game I worked on for seven months.  Anyway, here's some fun beta stuff pertaining to the game you should check out.

Anyway, welcome to the wacky world that is Eric's brain.  I was approached by the team with this request--"make a game over screen."  What it should look like, it was not specific at all.  So I gave 'em a game over screen, alright.  It stuck around for a few weeks--appeared in status updates and stuff.  Here it is, this is 5 months into development:

One more bonus.  This is one of the death sounds that the snapper turtles (those things that shoot cannonballs at you) make in the beta version.  Sound design at its finest.

Hope everyone's having a great Hanukkah so far.

Team Fortress 2 Characters Can't Drive

Why are they in Sega All-Stars Racing again???

That should be their vehicle--the hod rod from Half-Life 2.

If you listen closely, you might catch some Jet Set Radio music.

Only a matter of time until Sega All-Stars Racing characters are in Garry's Mod...

Me In The Mornings

If I were a hero chao with bunny ears...

Alarm clock set to blare terrible pop/rap music in the late morning (10 am, lazy ass me)...BLAM, BAD AUTO-TUNE SINGING TO GENERIC 4/4 BEATS THAT IDIOTS LISTEN TO!!!

Hit snooze twenty times in a row until guilt takes over.

I get up and do stuff now.

Lawl, I look like Sam.  Or is it Max...I forget. 

Sonic The Hedgehog Dissected!

Hey, what's up guys!  Typical Call of Duty/"Let's Play" Youtuber intro.  So I want to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog.  Anyway, I'm on deviantArt looking at furry porn fan art and whoop, what do ya know--I run into some Sonic flash movies.  This is from a guy named Roger aka "Rogerregorroger" from the Netherlands, home of windmills, the Nintendo 64 champs and marijuana legalization before it was cool.  All of his "Sanic Gaem in X minutes" videos are already on YouTube:

Well, maybe you find them hilarious, maybe not.  But there's more!  I suggest you check out Roger's "Dissecting Sonic" series of Flash movies.  To my knowledge, they're only on deviantArt.  Each one only takes 5 or 6 minutes to watch but you should watch all eight eleven in order.

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6  Part 7  Part 8  Part 9  Part 10  Part 11  Part 2 of Part 11  WHEEEEE!!!!

The reason I bring these up is because it makes you think about Sonic games in a much different light.  Most of what is mentioned has to do with the story & characters as opposed to gameplay.  But here's a few things I learned that I basically agree with:

* You talk about Sonic characters and you will always get a bunch of haters, "no more of Sonic's friends," so to speak.  But most every video game series has a huge cast of characters (see Mario for instance) and they always get away with it.  So what is Sonic doing wrong?  Because Sonic was a character with weaknesses.  Sonic is fast, Tails is smart, Knuckles is strong, Amy is sociable.  They just worked together.  But post Sonic Adventure 2 (when most agree the series took a huge dip), they turned Sonic into a character with no weaknesses whatsoever.  Sonic shows up, kills everything, and cracks a stupid joke.  Eggman is never on par with Sonic as he has become the gag villain for too long.  All other characters are tacked on just for fan service.  People aren't complaining about the characters--they're complaining about the characters being used incorrectly.  Cheesy voice acting & dialogue doesn't help either.

versus...

* Sonic Adventure 2 debateably has the best Sonic story for the 3D games.  Even if it's in cheesy "stuff just happens" Sonic fashion, I agree with this.  The game's excitement peaks and drops like a good movie should as new information is revealed at regular intervals.  Sonic needs help and shows emotions besides "cocky and in control."  The characters are actually doing stuff and events pay off in the future and make for a satisfying story.  Meanwhile, a lot of modern Sonic games like Secret Rings, Unleashed, and Colors usually have the characters stand around exchanging time-wasting dialogue and the action only peaks near the end when you fight a boss that you saw at the beginning of the game, spoiling the surprise and making it less exciting.

* As for gameplay, this is addressed in Part 8.  Some people compare Sonic to Mario and say "if Mario can do 3D platforming, why can't Sonic?"  Well Sonic has always gone a step above Mario in terms of obstacles such as the loops, the City Escape truck chase, the Final Chase rails, etc.  Meanwhile, all Mario has to do is have Mario run around the world jumping off stuff.  Not that what Mario does is bad or that bad Sonic gameplay is excusable, but it makes you think twice about why Sonic Team chose to program their games the way they did.

Go ahead and watch the videos if you haven't already.

You're...Fill In The Blank

Edited Once

Well I got some pretty lame news.  Remember the internship that I got three months ago?  Well today, I was politely informed that my brief tenure with the company has come to a sudden conclusion.  Basically it means I was fired.

FIRED!!!

Let me explain.  The exchange today went well.  I left on a good note.  But, from the questions I asked, it wasn't because I did a poor job or I was a slacker.  It was because they basically ran out of stuff for me to do.  At least I think so--if I sucked then I wouldn't know since they didn't tell me.  I don't think I said or did anything offensive as well (at least to my knowledge).  I'm awfully disappointed, yes, but I really can't hold it against those guys since they're struggling now.  At least I learned a lot of new things, like how to use a Mac computer.  Yes sir.  It was really a good experience.

About this place that I worked at.  Well, I kept my place of employment a secret at first.  I won't tell you them now but I'll go ahead and say that it had nothing to do with racing games.  It was a startup Facebook/IOS studio with a few EA veterans in it.  That's all I can say since I don't want to inadvertently slander these guys in any way.

This studio had one semi-popular Facebook game up for at least a year before I got there.  What game it is--I'm not telling.  As soon as I showed up, my main job was to bug fix the hell out of that thing.  This meant digging into an existing ActionScript and PHP code base.  That's not bad cause at least I'm working on games and it's still interesting to me (at first).  Me and one other senior guy worked on stuff--he was the pilot and I was the co-pilot.  We were doing lots of bug tracking and QA stuff.

Well, a month later, my "pilot" was fired for seemingly no reason.  That's great--my pilot goes AWOL and now I have to fly the plane on my own.  So I had to take initiative and find bugs on my own.  I was more proficient at the Mac Terminal, Source Tree, Flash Builder (yes, we used Macs, deal with it), then it became readily apparent that the company wanted to "sunset" this game (a fancy term which means disconnect the game in 3-12 months) because the game wasn't making any more money.  Basically Zynga would stop advertising the game and hope that any existing players would lose interest so when the servers are shut down, no one would care.  And I got distraught because this game was my "baby" and I spent so much time fixing it up and now all is for naught.  I actually sort of "liked" the game too--it wasn't something I detest like Farmville, World of Warcraft, or Burnout.

Eventually for the last three weeks, I was absorbed into the "analytics" team which is basically 5-6 guys working on business software.  They took me aside and say "hey, you're a smart kid, sit in our long-ass meetings and help us out."  This included lots of PHP and Objective-C.  I didn't really have much choice since it was the only place a programmer like me could find something to do.  Eventually my task was to be a pioneer and make some unit tests or port Actionscript code to Objective-C and I basically did that...right up until now when I was fired.

Also on that same day, and apparently I must've missed the memo, one of the analytics team guys quit as well so the company was kind of f***ed at that moment.  But really, up until that moment, the whole thing was a drag on myself and the company.  I wasn't making games.  I didn't have a whole lot to do.  30 hours a week was a stretch for me and I didn't want to hang out in the office playing Facebook games as a lame excuse to say "look at these hours, I worked so hard."  And even I thought my hourly wage wasn't worth the work I was doing so whatever...away I went.

I felt so bad over the last two or three weeks.  Like my morale threw out the window.  My dream is to make racing games.  And I'm just sitting here making business software.  As for the other guys in the company, they're prototyping board games, hoping to get that blockbuster hit like Words with Friends.  I can't blame 'em but that wasn't for me and I'm sort of glad I was laid off.  Just really sucked since I was friends with a few people from my school from previous cohorts (they went there a year before me) and today, we walked downtown to Five Guys.  Ate a burger.  Talked about Reddit.  I didn't expect to be fired that day but whatever.  Bad things just happen.  Watch the news.  Enjoy every moment of every opportunity you have.

Money-wise I am fine so don't worry about it.  I'll return back to gaming school, look for more opportunities, and so forth.  Instructors there are very helpful and will do anything to help with the job search.  Right now, my main goal is Sumo Digital in the UK (of course).  Second would be Firebrand Games in Florida (no brainer).  After that, I really don't know where I want to go.  I could've stayed there in 2013 if I had nowhere else to go but I think leaving was inevitable.  Just really sucks cause some people right out of game school went straight to "great" studios like Bungie and DICE and where am I?  Back to working on Super Sprint and updating my resume...

I think I got lucky I got the job there.  After reading 30+ resumes and interviewing 10+ people, I was the only one hired and that was about a month after my interview.  I think they were reluctant to hire anybody so they just got one person--me.  And since I was on borrowed time from the get-go, I'm not surprised about what went down today.

Hey, there's one good thing about being fired like that.  As long as I didn't "suck," it's a good alibi on my resume.  Employers tend to frown on short jobs (6 months or less) because you aren't "loyal" to the company but at least I can say "I worked hard but they were downsizing and it was inevitable so you can't hold my loyalty into question."  A win for our side!

Now to eat an entire gallon of Blue Bell Cookies and Ice Cream, play Civ 5 for 12 hours, and cry myself to sleep!

Okay, a day later and I still cannot get over being fired.  Like Ricky Bobby, I saw the fear...I know I can get s***canned from my job at any moment.  Yet I can't stop joking about it.  It's like getting hit by a car--it sucks but everyone thinks you're a total BA cause you survived.  Or something...

MACFRY!!!  I WAS JUST READING THAT BLOG POST YOU MADE.  YOU ARE TERMINATED!!!

I don't even really work here (I'm an intern being payed close to minimum wage).  That's what makes this so difficult.

I like Valve, I can work for Valve.  I can make Half-Life 3.  GABEN GABEN GABEN, APERTURE SCIENCE, WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS MAKE LIFE TAKE THE LEMONS BACK, HAY GAIS DAE REMEMBER DIS GEM???  Also ponies, Rainbow Dash is my favorite.  Well that's really not fair.

Talladega, Oh The Humanity!

NASCAR is boring.  BAWWWWWW...watch the last few laps of the Good Sam "DAD I FOUND A TURTLE!!!" 500.

These cars are going 190 mph.

This is RaceBuddy--Dale Jr. on the left, Jeff Gordon on the right.  You thought changing lanes on the highway was bad, well try doing that here, slick!

Then with less than a half to go, they all died. Tony Stewart went for the block but was pit maneuvered sideways into the crowd.  I can't totally blame him...he's trying to win.  Had they made it just a few more seconds they would've made it to the finish like okay.  But no, like Ahnuld Schwarzenegger in the Jingle All The Way movie, they all made a mad dash for DA TURBO MAN action figure at the finish line and the result?  OH THE HUMANITY!!!

Good Guy Junior givin Jimmie Johnson a ride to the garage.

I know there's a good saying "People only watch NASCAR for the wrecks," and I don't really believe that's the case for most people.  I enjoy the pure adrenaline of going 190+ mph and defying those wrecks.  But when I saw that 20-car pileup, I wasn't impressed or entertained, I was saddened.  Saddened because Junior's championship hopes were shot (though Jeff Gordon is back in the hunt) but also because of the carnage that ensued.  Nobody was hurt, but there was a lot of twisted metal.

TOTAL CAR-NAGE!!

To quote Sheriff John Bunnell, a stock car is a "beautiful and exciting machine."  Man, that horsepower, that transmission, the suspension & tires, I mean I like stock cars the way they are.  I mean I don't mind rubbin' cause it is racing after all, but when a car is incapacitated, it's a damn shame.  The car sort of becomes its own entity like "There goes that Diet Mountain Dew car!" and you can't help but smile (if you're a Junior fan).  It's intent was to go fast, not to wreck.  Sure, it's meant to take damage if the situation goes bad, but I'm fairly certain every team wants to see their car finish in one piece.  And it sucks that a lot of the fans assume these things are expendable tin cans or something.  Boy, I would kill to own my own stock car.  If you owned one, would you want to wreck it.  HELL NO.

Daytona USA 2 has possibly the most violent damage models in any Sega racer I know of, but I shrug it off because A. wrecks have no real effect on car performance and B. pit stops miraculously rid your car of all cosmetic damage.  This is apparently different in real life since stock cars can take even the slightest of hits and they may be done for the day.

Besides, think of this--when a few cars wreck and a caution comes out, it's "cool" to see the wreck, but then the action stops for a few minutes.  Is that what you want to see?  Maybe time for a restroom break I guess.

EDIT: Dale Jr. lost his cool after the race and says that anyone who likes these race results are "bloodthirsty."  Said he would quit if every race ran that way.  I know he was frustrated at the moment (I was too for Junior) but I agree--if you want to see wrecks, go watch a damn destruction derby.  Or play Burnout.  I mean, G-dammit, not every car needs to get smashed like a pinata.  I'm f***in sick of it too.

But what can you say?  If there were no wrecks, then there would be no fear or excitement of going fast and apparently, too long of a green flag stretch would bore viewers out of their minds.  So as long as stock cars race, wrecks will happen and that's the breaks.  You live with it, even if it hurts your poor little feelings.  It's like finding out about the poor baby turtles on the beach trying to swim into the ocean and many get mauled by seagulls and crabs and it sucks ass but what can you do about it?  NOTHING.

Sheesus...I made a post about wrecks in racing like two years ago.  A damn good post too.  And basically all this crash talk illustrates why I have so much disdain for wreck 'em racers like Burnout and Split-Second. But I don't want to talk about those two anymore cause they make me vehemently ill when I do.

Tony Stewart the insane maniac, always looking out for the fans.
A figure 8 in NASCAR...holy s***, give this guy a cigar.

Oh, and one more thing.  Don't give me this nonsense about how NASCAR is all about the wrecks and Formula 1 is the real deal.  I think I've seen about three F1 races this season where there was a wreck ON THE FIRST TURN of the race.  Monaco, Suzuka, and some other one that got a month's worth of footage on Speed Channel (cause some driver's head was nearly taken out by a flying car).  Besides, those that talk down of NASCAR and say F1 is better probably don't watch F1 either--they're just sticking it to the rednecks.  Screw 'em, I love F1 cars but I love them stock cars too.  BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY!!!

SEGA Games Versus RACING Games

Here on this site, we like Sega games.  But we also like racing games.  Question is you had to pick between the two, which would you go with?  Would you take a SEGA game or a RACING game???  To reiterate, a Sega non-racing game or a non-Sega racing game.  It's like  Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, the 50-50 on Millionaire, or Facemash from The Social Network, just pick whichever frickin one you like more.  You MUST pick one, not two, not zero.  Here are the two quality games to choose from, choose wisely.  Seriously, just pick one.

........

A. The SEGA game.

........

B. The RACING game.

........

Wow, what an riveting psychological question...which is more important to you: SEGA games or RACING games.  WHICH SIDE OF THE FENCE ARE YOU ON???  WHERE DOES YOUR ALLEGIANCE LIE???  And I just blew it with such a shallow post and two lousy games.  Man, I am a lousy blogger.

FUNNY CAR MEME IMAGE DUMP

I have a bunch of funny car/racing/Sega memes & gifs for you.  Found 'em off random websites like GameFAQs, Reddit, every terrible website out there over the years.  And since I'm too lazy to make an actual good post, this one's for you!

Because of the large number of pics, you must hit the jump to load the page.  Don't want to crash anyone's browsers here.

Nobody Loves Sega

I feel dejected right now.  One of my good friends who runs the Shenmue Stare site called it quits.  Seems like Sega fans are just losing it as am I.  So here comes the rant.

One thing we can all agree on right now is that Sega has some problems of certain levels of severity.  I mock Sega.  I pick at them a lot because I love their racing games and they haven't returned to their prime.  But at someone who has some knowledge of Sega (i.e. the immense amount of money they lost) it's somewhat understandable.  Yet to others, picking on Sega is usually for s***s and giggles by the media.  Here's a choice quote from the infamous Shenmue Dojo  post pertaining to Sega & Hajime Satomi of the Yakuza:

SEGA is also the victim of general bias and hate from both the gaming 'media' and 'gamers' in general; both of whom are indoctrinated to believe Nintendo is the be-all and end-all of gaming creativity when in truth Mityamoto's creative output is dwarfed by one SEGA development studio and slaughtered by Yu Suzuki alone. When companies such as RARE and UbiSoft are sold or sell-out, these typical sheep are up in arms. When SEGA was literally raped, butchered and murdered slowly by Sammy, nary a word from the press or the 'gaming' community.....

Exactly my point.  The thing is I'm afraid that lots of people are just ignorant of Sega as a whole.  Sega was this "great empire," now they are to be mocked and ridiculed on seldom occasions when someone on sites like Kotaku, Joystiq, or Reddit references Sega in some way.  But let's be clear, no matter how pessimistic I seem, Sega isn't doing TOO bad.  Here's a list of things they're doing well.    They're making money again.  They aren't abusing Sonic as much.  They released ports of Daytona USA, OutRun 2, Sega Rally, other Dreamcast games so I can't totally hate on the guy.  Seriously, read the LEAVE SEGA ALONE! post from last year.  But others who have no emotional investment in Sega, they couldn't care less.

Quick--here's a pop quiz.  Answer these questions in a minute and don't look up the answers:

1. Name four Sega consoles.
2. Name two important Sega people.
3. Name five franchises originated by Sega.

They couldn't do it.  They'd spit out the usual talking points, "Sega, hmm....they made the Genesis but the SNES was better, they made the Dreamcast which failed, they made Sonic the Hedgehog which they ruined....and oh, they made BAYONETTA! (not made by Sega, made by Platinum Games with some involvement on Sega's part) Other than that, I know nothing."  And these are the same people who gush all over Nintendo, all over Blizzard, all over Bethesda, all over Rockstar, all over Valve, all over other "visionaries" like Cliff Bleszinski and Notch but when it comes to Yu Suzuki or Yuji Naka, they draw a blank.  Can't stand it.

Okay, disclaimer time: I'm not saying EVERY GAMER thinks this way.  But I have a hunch that too many DO think that way since whenever I seldom hear about Sega, it's always in a negative light.  You don't necessarily have to be a "Sega fan" to criticize them too.  Take Electronic Arts--we all beat up on them but they're front & center on the stage all the time so there's no excuse not to know about their antics.  But here's some anti-Sega media:

EDIT: Click here to see the rest of these.

Speaking of Sega's age, they're practically on par with Nintendo.  FIRST RECOGNIZABLE GAMES: Nintendo's Donkey Kong = 1981.  Sega's Monaco GP = 1980.  CONSOLES: Sega Master System = 1985.  Nintendo Entertainment System = 1985.  Though technically, there's the Famicom which came out in 1983.  But anyway, I'm just trying to get this whole "Nintendo came first" baloney out of the way now.  Also, Sega was kicking ass in arcades during the 80's/90's yet Nintendo wasn't.  But since consoles are the only thing that mattered, Nintendo gets praised while Sega gets dumped on.  Arcade success means nothing to these people.

I realize Sega got what's coming to them when they trampled the Sonic series, but it's turned around and, all petty complaints aside, isn't as terrible as it once was.  So if the media could stop running with the mantra "I can't play Sanic gaemz cause they r so bad and made for furries and kids with autism" then maybe I won't get so irate whenever I read a Sonic story on these "neutral" game sites.

Wait, what--there's Harrison Ford with a Master System.  And nobody wants to play with him.  Speaking of which, I wonder where this NES bias came from.  I don't think I was ever shown a Master System.  Not that the NES is bad (it has uh...Mario and Zelda!) but come on--it can't be as bad as gamers portray it (by completely ignoring it altogether)?

The "news" sites like Kotaku are just bad.  Whenever you do hear something about Sega, it's a gag story.  Like "Sega's brown man (Nagoshi) interviews porn stars (for Yakuza)" or "Here's a screencap of old Sonic telling young Sonic 'Your future's gonna be great!' " or "WTF is wrong with Sega making a Mario & Sonic Olympics Game?"  I only glaze over that site's stories just to check in on what's the news with gaming in general but other than that, this site sucks.  Speaking of sucking, I've noticed Kotaku has the tendency to post news/videos/pictures seen off of Reddit Gaming a day later.  Lazy reporters have nothing good to say.

Speaking of Reddit Gaming.  I've browsed that website for a good three months thus far and I'm tired of it.  Most of the posts are innocuous (funny screenshots & other stuff) but Good Lord, I'd be lying if I didn't say it was the Valve Show over there.  Don't get me wrong--Valve is a great company, all their games are top-notch, they give you the tools & source code to make your own mods (look at my CS 1.6 maps), Gabe Newell is a pretty good billionaire who doesn't afraid of anything, but is this company the ONLY game dev they focus on?  Same group think--WHERE'S HALF LIFE 3???  GABEN, PORTAL, CAVE JOHNSON, WILL HALF-LIFE 3 EVER BE RELEASED???  EDIT: This is the top Reddit Gaming post of 9/3/12:

OMFG

As an aside, I'll go ahead and say this now.  Disregarding the fact I think Half-Life 2 is good but overrated (another linear single-player FPS but your character can't talk, how clever), Half-Life 3 is inevitable.  Valve is a very successful company.  Gabe Newell is a billionaire who is always in touch with fans.  There's at least 100 million Half-Life fans out there.  There WILL BE A Half-Life 3.  On the other hand, try saying that about Shenmue 3.  Or Daytona USA 3.  Or even Sonic Adventure 3.  NO SHOT.  Sega is nowhere near as good as Valve is and all of their talent has basically packed their bags & left.  EDIT: And any "diehard" Sega fans are so far & few between that you seldom hear them among the vast "ocean" of the Internet.

Speaking of Sega, Reddit Gaming couldn't give two s***s about Sega.  No surprise.  The only Sega-related story that makes the front page of Reddit Gaming is another repost of the "Genesis Tower."

And one more thing--this is about GameFAQs.  I still do my damnest to stay off that lousy-ass website.  But you remember a while back how GameFAQs would run all those Top 10 lists and Contests to decide what the best games ever made are?  I'm dead serious--if I go to this website and am told ONE MORE TIME about how great Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Halo, Starcraft, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Portal are and how they're so much better than all other games, I'm going to punch a baby.  The same people who circlejerk their mainstream games on these websites, such as GameFAQs or Reddit, who try to lecture me on the same groupthink crap are going to make me snap.

It's just sad because the only truly apparent group of Sega fans are...Sonic fans.  And they're the ones who get raked over coals--for bickering amongst each over about what Sonic games are good or not (Sonic 3, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic CD, etc.), for being "furries," for spamming the message boards asking whether or not miscellaneous characters will be in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (omg, can we get Blaze the Cat DLC????), thereby obfuscating the point of the game which is to be about GOOD, SOLID RACING as opposed to a bunch of Sonic characters.  Really now, I like Sonic but seeing as the company now lives or dies by it gives the haters a bunch of ammo. 

And then there's other gamers.  We're at school and we're talking about what game companies we want to work.  Here's what happens:

Other Guy: "Where do you want to work?"

Me: "I want to work for Sega."

Other Guy: "Sega is a s***hole." (he's probably right)

Later that day, the same conversation occurs with another guy:

Another Guy: "Where do you want to go?"

Me: "I want to work for Sega."

Another Guy: "Wait, Sega is still around?????"

Case in point, no one knows s*** about Sega.  The hard work done by Yuji Naka, Yu Suzuki, and others will be washed away by a clusterf*** of Zelda, Mass Effect, Call of Duty, Halo, Need for Speed, and Grand Theft Auto games.  Because we all know that those were the truly "innovative" games of our time while Sega.....pssh, they sucked, no one cares.

One more thing, there's this which was great because it paints Sega in a positive light and it actually made the non-Sega blogs like Kotaku: 

And there's always some smart-aleck who chimes in, "A Shenmue 3 wouldn't work in today's age."  Which is probably true.  I mean, the expectation people have for free-roam story-based games like these is too much.  Where are the weapons, why can't I blow up hookers, why can't you run over people in the forklift, why does this game have QTE's (Shenmue invented them but now every other game has incorporated them, running this type of gameplay into the ground).  Yet at the same time, these people don't want their Zelda/WoW/Half-Life/etc games to change--it's Shenmue that has to.  Zelda never ages, Mario never ages, Final Fantasy never ages, Street Fighter never ages, but Shenmue does therefore it's overrated.  Makes a whole lotta sense.

Seriously, I did not intend for this to be a "fanboy" post but for God's sake, if you're going to launch salvos again at Sega (like every other gamer has, regardless of whether they care about Sega's well being) then cut us some damn slack since dealing with this company is a roller-coaster ride and there's been some effort recently for Sega to make a comeback.  I felt this post needed to be made cause I'm getting pissed off about this every day.  Until then, here's hopes for blue skies...someday.

Adorable picture.  The irony is the PS3's older brother (the PS2) killed the Dreamcast.  How does it feel to be related to a killer?

Danica Vs. The Shoe

At the Nationwide race at Montreal, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed spokeswoman Danica Patrick is in the lead during a caution.  That's pretty good, she might win one at last!  But some jerk-off fan throws a tennis shoe/sneaker onto the track (we don't see who it is).  Danica inexplicably runs over it and flings it out the rear bumper.  While it appears to be innocuous at first, later Danica complains about bad handling as she begins to drop back a few spots.  Eventually, pieces of her car shoot out the rear.  She would later pit and get it fixed up but not before dropping six laps.

Swear to God, watching the highlights of the race on ESPN, seeing Danica's car fall apart with the stupid rock BG music ("derrr-deee-derr-duhh"), I just about broke down into tears (of laughter).  You'll also see a Sonic the Hedgehog logo in the pic above (to the right of the tire), which is bad Sega karma.  All over a f'n shoe.  She's SOL and Oh God Help Us because if she continues to get screwed, then Sega will be doomed.  To recap: Danica ran over a shoe and ruined her chance at winning.  What the f*** is that s***, indeed...

EDIT: It just dawned on me two weeks later.  Why couldn't that have been a SONIC shoe...and give Danica a speed boost????  WWRRRRYYYY?????

You'd think being associated with Sonic would make Danica drive faster but no...it doesn't.  *okay.jpg*