Bucket Wheel Excavator

July 16th, 2017

‘Twas mayhaps ten moons since I be purchasin’ this one:

Bigger’n any before methinks. A kings ransom it cost too! Me hews burned with the lifting:

The innards are here fer ye to assess. The manual itself be breaking a titan with its weight!

Makin’ the thing was the devils work! I be capable of some smarts meself, but this was summin’ else! It took hours and days and me fingers were worn to the bone during.

Horribly, the act got tougher as it went. “The things too big!” I says to old mate Yossie, as she mewed from unner the table! How was I gonna gets the pieces into one thing?

But I never give up! And in the end, with a bit of sweat, a bit of blood and even a sprinkle of forbidden magick, it all cames together! Here she is:

I dunno how because it’s much too complex for an old dog like meself, but the beast even works when the dials are turned and the switches switched! It’s slow as a legless horse though, and clicks and vibrates like it’s gonna blow! I think I’ll be keeping the magic far away from it for this reason.

It’s too, too big too. Too big! Why they make summin’ this big?

And who’s the fool like meself who be buyin it?

Posted in Crafts, Toys | 3 Comments »

The Last Nightmare

July 7th, 2017

I had a dream last night in which I watched the entirety of The Last Jedi (the upcoming Star Wars film) and it was terrible! KLS suggested I blog this since it’s so vivid in my mind, so here we go.

I was watching the film in a church with a large crowd. A gigantic screen had been hung over the altar and we were filling the pews and everyone was excited. It seemed to be launch day so no one had any knowledge of the film in advance. The church may have been my childhood church, St Marys of Charlestown.

The film opened in some sort of meeting between a few SW characters (Poe Dameron, Han Solo, Lando) and a bunch of DC superheroes. They were in some giant computer room talking to the computer. I forget details here, but I do remember Clark Kent (holding an umbrella like the 7th doctor) was the prominent character.

The film then cut to a lengthy sequence (easily over an hour) where a group of heroes went on a mission to a rocky desert planet to find a software upgrade for C-3PO so he could wield a lightsaber. This was in fact the main plot of the film: 3PO was for some reason the chosen combatant to fight the ‘bad guy’ but had to be prepared. The First Order was in the film, but the specific villians such as Snoke or Kylo Ren weren’t. Instead those roles were filled by DC heroes (not villians) including Silver Surfer and Aquaman.

During this desert sequence the film progressively became more stylized until it ultimately became a full-blown cel animated movie in the stule of 1980s Hanna Barbara cartoons. The group of heroes by now included Kent, Solo, Lando, some girl (not Rey), Garazeb (from Rebels, who was tiny and looked like Yoda) and a few others I forget. They were fighting off crab monsters and giant worms to get to some shrine in which they found the upgrade for 3PO as well as armour that they bolted on to him which made him strongly resemble the robot Maximillian from Black Hole.

It was bad. Really bad. I was grief stricken at how awful it was and at this point I exited the church to look up comments online. Almost everyone had the same reaction I did (horror) but a few praised the frequent Coen Brothers references (none of which I caught) or the fact the director had projected the animated portion onto a mirror then filmed the mirror to make it more ‘dreamlike’. Meanwhile I was disappointed like I had never been, but returned and kept watching.

I recall the film used licensed music (including Tainted Love by Soft Cell and some classical piece I can’t recall) and the characters broke the 4th wall more than once. CGI battle scenes were heavily obscured by fog (to minimize the workload?) and the sets became increasingly minimal as the film progressed. It also eventually returned to live action as well, with elements introduced during the animated sequence being retained. For instance while they (Clark actually) piloted the Millennium Falcon to the desert planet, they left it there and instead departed in a ship that was nothing more than a giant hollow metal cube with a tiny control pedestal rising from the middle of the floor. There were no windows or exterior or interior detail at all. When the film returned to live action, this ship still existed as a set.

Anyway the finale was in a city that resembled the Gold Coast with the exception of the buildings being closer to the ocean. The actual final battle was C-3PO vs Aquaman with 3PO using a lightsaber. Aquaman was 80s-era in his classic outfit, and he fought by throwing big balls of water at the heavily armored 3PO.

While this was the end of the film, it didn’t in any way seem like the end of the story. There was some subplot involving Luke (who was briefly in it) and Poe Dameron and involved flashbacks of Poe flying in the attack against the first Death Star and apparently being some very old friend of Luke. There was also another subplot involving a planet that had stopped spinning because of the Silver Surfer but that’s all muddy in my memory.

Anyway it was a real nightmare dream. When I awoke I was momentarily confused and upset before realizing it had just been a dream at which point the relief was real 🙂

Let’s all come back and re-read this in six months and see just how close to guessing the actual plot of the film I ended up being?

Posted in Miscellaneous, Movies | 2 Comments »

Cracker Night 2017

July 5th, 2017

Yesterday was July 4, which meant fireworks! Of course we’d already had a pretty good ‘show’ last Sunday, not to mention letting the odd ‘cracker’ off here and there over the last few weeks. In short: a fortnight of fireworks!

We drove to NH a couple of weeks ago to buy some since they are cheaper there and you can get ‘launchers’ which aren’t legal in NY state, and between than trip and the ones we had bought locally we had a couple of hundred dollars worth to set off. This was 60+ fireworks, most that look like this pre-firing:

Some are slightly exotic, like those that ‘light up’ via cellophane ‘windows’ at the front:

Or the hand ones, very creatively named:

We even got – for the first time – some ‘smoke’ fireworks. We learned that in Vermont these are all that is legal!

As I said we had a great time setting these off the past few days. Lots of sparks and pretty colours and loud noises! Cracker night is every bit as good as it ever was!

As I have the past few years I’ve made a video of some highlights. I hope you enjoy it 🙂

Posted in Family, Home, Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »

Regret?

June 30th, 2017

I own about 2000 video games, almost all of which still have their box and manual and are in ‘as-new’ condition. A couple of dozen are even ‘mint’ condition (still in the factory sealed wrapping). About 50 maybe were used. It’s a big collection, and contains some real gems worth many times what I paid for them.

Virtually all of these are recorded in a massive Excel file that I’ve been keeping for over two decades. This arose because I used to have to keep records for my contract reviewing I did years back, but I’ve kept it up ever since. This is what I use for my annual ‘year in review’ posts regarding my collection (as well as the system-specific posts).

I’m pretty pleased with my collection – more so in recent years as I’ve sunk myself more and more into retro gaming. I do believe that one day I’ll set them all up again and be able to play decades worth of games whenever I wish. Very few of these games are what I consider ‘bad’, and I would enjoy replaying almost all of them.

This is one of the reasons why I regret something that happened over an 18 month period from June 2000 until Devember 2001: I traded in for store credit exactly 92 games. I can’t say for sure I regret doing this, but I certainly wish I could go back and tell myself it was a terrible, terrible idea. Granted I got decent money for them (trading in wasn’t as much of a scam then as it is now) with which I purchased many (about 44 actually) new games, but I do still wish I owned every single game I traded in. The principle reason I did this wasn’t for the money, it was because of space (we were in the apartment then). Plus EB Games was trying to move into used game sales and were offering very generous prices in those days (about half new retail cost).

This post discusses these tradeins in detail, including prices, specific game titles, and the ones that I probably should have kept in my collection 🙂

Dreamcast

I traded in only six Dreamcast games, for which I was given approximately $100. Three of these were (bad) RPGs, one was an action game and two were Capcom fighting games. Today, the approximate value of these games would be about $154, which is less than I paid for them back when I bought them.

No regrets therefore from a price point of view, but I would like to play Armada again.

Gameboy Advance

Why did I trade in GBA games? It’s not like they take up much space at all!! The list – only four games – is arbitrary as well. A mystery then, but one not worth spending too much time on since the four games only cost me $63 in total and I got almost $50 in credit for them!

However…. one of those games – Klonoa – cost me only $19.99 new, gave me $12 credit, but can easily fetch $80 today! In fact the four games today are worth over $135, or more than double what I paid. Given the four of them in boxes could have fit anywhere, I probably should have kept them!

Gamecube

I only traded in two games (Pikmin and Super Monkey Ball) and could easily buy both of them today for much less than the trade-in credit I got in 2001 were I interested. Which I’m not 🙂

Nintendo 64

I gutted my Nintendo 64 collection, trading in a whopping 16 games (more than half what I had bought), which gave me about $430 in credit. While Nintendo 64 games haven’t started spiking in price like NES or SNES games, they are creeping up and today these 16 are worth about $550.

One of them is notable, Kirby 64. I bought it with credit, and traded it in only 14 days later for $40! Today it could fetch $80. I don’t particularly miss it, but I do miss games like Doom 64, Jet Force Gemini and a few iconic N64 games such as Starfox, Mario Kart and Paper Mario. Why on earth did I trade in Nintendo first party classics?!?

Sega Saturn

I only traded in three Saturn games, none of which were good. For Baku Baku, Golden Axe The Duel and Winning Post (a horseracing game I actually purchased new for $60!!) I got about $65 in credit. These three games today are worth over $250 combined!

Why so high? It turns out Winning Post was a rare game even when it came out. Coupled with the unusual genre, and the fact it’s apparently a pretty good game, means it commands a high price now – up to $200 in good condition. I probably should have kept that one 🙂

Playstation

Here’s where the regret gets closest to the surface. In those 18 months I traded in 44 Playstation games (from a collection of about 120). This was more than any other system, and I estimate I got about $530 in credit from all these games.

Some were bad, some were middling, many were good. And a few were great. Perhaps more than anything else on this list I can’t easily explain just why I traded some of these in. When I look at how much they have appreciated in the years since the decision to part with them becomes even more inexplicable.

Take the two Tomba games for instance, which were great platformers. Or the three Playstation installments from the Armored Core series – all of which I played to death. Or Koudelka, the first installment in the fantastic Shadow Hearts RPG series. Or Tales Of Destiny 2. Or Tron Bonne. Why oh why didn’t I keep these games?

All 33 today would retail in good condition (with box and manual) for about $1400. A couple are worth more than twice what they cost back in 199x. Tron Bonne alone is a $200+ game… that I traded in for about $9. If only I had known!

Playstation 2

And then we get to the PS2 era, which was a young console during this period. Even so I managed to dispense with 17 games for this system, many within months of buying them. For this I got about $380 in credit, which was good in the day, and on which most was spent getting more PS2 games!

Today… these games are worthless! In fact I could buy back all 17 in good condition complete for probably $150! Only one is ‘worth’ anything (Grandia Extreme, about $30) but I have no desire to own or play it any way!

In other words, I made the right call on the PS2 games I got rid of 🙂

Sega-CD

Here’s a bonus. I actually have seen about 20 additional games leave my collection in the last 24 years. Some of these were returned to the shops, some were given away to family but one special game was sent to Victor Ireland, boss/owner of the company Working Designs who I reviewed games for.

Vic had been very generous to me over the years, sending me lots of free games and even getting me a Japanese N64 before they were out in America (not to mention Pokemon for the gameboy before the USA release). I knew he was attempting to complete a collection of the entire USA Sega-CD library and I actually helped him with this, sending him a few games that I stumbled across that I knew he didn’t have. Some of these games (such as Space Adventure Cobra) I purchased two copies of and kept one. One game though was in my own collection, but had been quite rare, so I just gave it to him. That game was Keio Flying Squadron.

I had bought this game in very late 1994 for the Sega-CD and loved it. It was a shoot-em-up featuring a cute girl and lovely graphics and had a good amount of challenge. I played it a lot and thought it was a great game, especially at the very low price of $20 new.

I kept it for 8 years, and then in 2003 sent it to Vic since I knew his Sega-CD collection lacked only a very few games and this was one of them.

Here’s the reason he never found it: it’s super rare. As a result it’s now easily the most expensive Sega-CD game. In fact it’s worth $1200. Yep, twelve-hundred dollars. And I gave it away…

(But had I kept it would Keio even be my most ‘valuable’ game? Are you interested in the answer to that? Should I do a post on the gems in my collection? Let me know…)

Posted in Games, Otaku | Comments Closed

The Tsuchinoko

June 21st, 2017

It’s time for another cryptid post, or in today’s case a ‘UMA’, since that’s what cryptids are called in Japan (it stands for Unidentifed Mystery Animal).

Ladies and gentleman, the Tsuchinoko!

First reported in the 7th century, the tsuchinoko is a snake-like creature about 60 cm in length. Rarely sighted, this creature is said to be native to mainland Japan (Honshu) and is either just an animal or a supernatural creature depending on who you ask.

Tsuchinoko are said to be able to jump, can apparently move very quickly and may even have a poisonous bite. The more unusual attributes of the creature include rolling along with its tail in its mouth, teleportation (in a literal flash of light) and even intelligence! Some say the creature can speak and is very deceptive, often telling lies to obtain its favourite drink: alcohol.

There seems to have been a surge in interest and sightings of these beasts in the last decade or so, elevating it from myth into a full-blown cryptid. Some notable sightings in western Japan lead to well-publicized (but fruitless) searches and in one case even a skeleton (that was a simple snake). In 2008 one district in Japan – possibly as a tourism stunt – offered a $1 million reward for anyone who found one!

As with the flatwoods monster (which I blogged about a few years back), tsuchinoko are quite popular in video games, either appearing by name or as an influence in games including Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid, Pokémon and numerous RPGs. 

So what is this thing? Do they really exist? What could have inspired it?

Take a look at this photo of a skink, which I present in its original form and with the legs edited out:

Looks a bit like our tsuchinoko doesn’t it? It seems likely therefore that the origin of the beast first drawn and described in the Kojiki in the 7th century was just… a skink!

That said, this hardly explains what an old woman in Okayama saw in 2000. The tsuchinoko, she said, had a human-like face and paralyzed her with its sight!

Maybe there’s two creatures here: the skink relative and an evil demon snake. What do you think?

Posted in Animals, Miscellaneous, Nature, The Unknown | Comments Closed

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