Only because the animation really impresses me. Otherwise, eh.

How is this a trailer for a Korean MMO? Wouldn’t this be a kick-ass Rockman anime?

Anamanaguchi | A Take Away Show | Airbrushed from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

I love these guys so much.

I have a few friends who will typically opt out of buying a new game until the hype and price drops to save themselves some considerable money. It’s a great strategy, that’s for sure, but it misses out on one of the best reasons to pick up a multiplayer game upon release: the shared conversation and the most active period for the community.

Everyone's playing StarCraft 2 right now. EVERYONE

Since I installed StarCraft 2 a few weeks ago I have played games and reconnected with at least seven or eight friends I haven’t talked to in years. These are guys who I’d otherwise never get a chance to see, talk to, or play games with because we’re all too busy doing our own thing. The Gamers With Jobs folks like to mention “being a part of the conversation” as the motivation behind buying certain games. It’s not the best reasoning to buy a game, but it’s not the worst either.

I fully understand budget concerns when buying new games, but I also think that there’s nothing like being there for the beginning with everyone else in the world.

The Heroes of Final Fantasy Week 3

One of the first major features on this blog was a Villains of Final Fantasy series that ran for 13 weeks covering the main enemies of every numbered Final Fantasy game from I to XII including X-2. With Final Fantasy XIII launching in the states in just over a month, I figured it’s high time to give some recognition to the teams who are actually responsible for bringing those villains to justice and saving the world. I bring you the Heroes of Final Fantasy.

Week 1 – Final Fantasy
Week 2 – Final Fantasy II

Kinda chubby

The Onion Knights are actually a band of cipher protagonists with no real personalities or backstories. Later remakes of the game attempted to revise this and shoehorn in some identities and personalities to the characters, but the fact remains that the protagonists of FF III are nobodies in the same way that the cast of FF I are nobodies, only this time they have so many different class combinations that it would be prohibitively difficult (i.e., I don’t want to do it) for me to list and describe them all.

Coolness

Who are these four mysterious warriors and why do they fight? No one knows. Would I invite them over to my house to hang out? No way. Too boring.

1/10

Hero Quotient:

Killing Chaos or an inter-dimensional, trans-existential beings bent on destroying existence is kind of impressive, I guess, but that’s what everyone does in an FF game. Mastering a bunch of jobs and skills seems pretty hard, so I’ll give them a small boost for that.

4/10

Ok, these guys look kind of cool. Reminds me of Amano

Scott Pilgrim mania hit its peak two weeks ago with the release of the PSN game and the movie coming just a few weeks after the sixth book made its way to stores. The book is in a really strange position for mainstream acceptance. Most people see it and think “hipster”, which isn’t at all accurate. It’s more gamer than hipster, but its protagonists are young, twenty-somethings who are trying to get their act together and get started in life.

An image O'Malley created as a joke to describe his comic.

Funny thing about indie comics and Brian Lee O’Malley in general, this series has been in the works since 2005 slowly working up to its recently released finale in 2010. That’s five years for six books, but it’s not a race, fellows. In fact, the added time probably did the book some good since it allowed O’Malley time to think about what he wanted to do and totally flesh out his stuff.

The books start out rougher than the finale, but they do steadily increase in quality and should definitely be read at some point if you like comics and video games at all.

Not too Cera-y. Worth watching

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the movie adaptation, has seen seriously sub par box office numbers since its release two weeks ago. Grossing only $20 million, the movie, despite its strong ad campaign, seems to have been missed by nearly all of its intended audience. The video game nerds don’t properly know that it’s so heavy in references, everyone thinks it’s about annoying hipsters, and the hyper-kinetic film style seems to be putting off the mainstream and the critics. Shame, too, because it’s actually a fun movie with a neat visual style that captures the spirit of the books insanely well.

The world is like Captain Falcon in this analogy.

Another part of the problem is that the target audience is doing a lot of internet viewing (AKA pirating) of the film and not hitting the box office. I feel really bad for O’Malley and Edgar Wright (director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) who put together a great movie that no one is seeing.

One final point about the movie: I actually enjoyed Michael Cera in it. He wasn’t bad and he wasn’t Cera-ing it up too much. He was more Scott Pilgrim than Cera, which is what he’s supposed to do and that’s a welcome respite.

Screenshot!

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is another great part of the media empire that Min and I have sunk countless hours into playing. More loyal to the books than the movies, the game is a beat-em-up in the style of River City Ransom, the classic NES Kunio-kun game that started the franchise. It’s been a lot of fun and I can’t wait to finally beat it this weekend when Min comes over again.

Real t-shirt for fictional Scott Pilgrim's fictional band

What’s going on in this video? Who can tell.

I just know that it’s strangely hilarious and awesome and the song’s not bad either.

My friends have been talking about sacrifice and I’m feeling out of the loop. Today I’m gonna talk about sacrifice too.

The sacrifice hit and the sacrifice bunt.

These two stats are among my favorite because they represent something rarely seen in modern American baseball today: small ball. Today’s MLB player is much more concerned with blasting a home run than bringing in a run with a well-placed pop up. MLB pitchers focus more on their devastating fastball than being able to drop a simple bunt on a given day. It’s atrocious.

Sabrematricians will tell you (probably correctly, I haven’t run the math) that the sac bunt or sac hit is more statistically damaging than worthwhile. The probability of scoring, according to them, is not significantly increased enough by exchanging an out for a base. It’s now “Common Baseball Knowledge” that you shouldn’t play like this, yet you still see successful managers, like Joe Maddon of the Tampa Bay Rays, make great use of this antiquated play. In fact, that’s probably why it’s so useful.

Consider the state of the modern third baseman before the slight shift back into defense in baseball. His job was to be big, burly, a slightly better defender than the first baseman, and to hit home runs. The hits he gave up being bad at his job would be made up for with his bat. As the league accepted this as truth and third basemen became less defensively sound, the field of play was ripe for someone like Joe Maddon to exploit it. More bunts down the third base line mean more chances for the sac bunt to turn into a bunt hit instead because the third baseman is not a good defender, see what I mean?

Beyond the power of the sac play in today’s baseball, I’d also like to touch upon the feel-good nature of the sac hit or bunt. It’s not glamorous, but it’s one of the few moments in life you’ll have where you are rewarded for a good deed. See, in a sacrifice play you’re giving up your at bat to do what’s best for the team. You earn an out to move a runner. If you were strict about your statistics measuring, that would drop your batting average each time you did it. However, because baseball is a feel good sport, the sac hitter does not have an at bat counted against him and just gets an increase to his sac count. Happiness all around.

Here’s an interesting interview with Penn Jillette, famed magician and skeptic. Below you’ve got a famous trick of his that I happen to love.

Here’s another fantastic NPB catch from 1981 between the Marines and another team I can’t quite decipher.