idiosyncrasy Today

Scathing social commentary meets the gamer generation.

Monday, July 30, 2007

N64 Rumble Pak use for Inking!

Thanks to an article over at Kotaku we here on the ethereal tubes of the interweb get to hear about this amazing factoid. Apparently in some high security prisons in the US, criminals were using the motors from the N64 rumble pak to make a make-shift tattoo needle.

By combining the motor with a tube (achieved with a pen/pencil/tightly rolled piece of paper) and then a needle or pin attached with string you have a fairly crude but effective tattoo machine.

Wow...

I have two questioned that have stirred into existence thanks to this.

1. Why do inmates have an N64? I know families in my neighborhood that still can't afford one. (see: $20 bucks on ebay)

2. I wonder if they got a tat of Mario for the good karma?

\\drew

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Building a Better RPG

I just read through this Destructoid article by Leigh Alexander and was quite impressed. For those interested in RPG's and also enjoy reading check it out. Also, gear up and get ready for Person 3 (though it has been delayed until August 15th).

Building a Better RPG

\\drew

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

MGS4 In-Game Gameplay

I don't care if you're a Metal Gear fan or not, but this looks pretty amazing.

\\drew

XBOX360's Die

Yes, that's right, popular to common belief, the XBOX360 system is fragile at best and is prone to fits of self-destruction.

As most XBOX owners know, Microsoft has increased the warranty by 3 years. Woo! I'm expecting my system to die any day now just by the law of averages. Maybe I'll call this store and ship mine back with theirs and get some sort of bulk discount!

\\drew

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

New Flash Game

This morning I found a flash game worth trying out, it's the kind of thing that makes me wish it was cheaper for independent game developers to break into the console realm, because it would make a pretty interesting Wii game.

The game is called Triangles are you are controlling 2 different games at once. You know that old thing where someone will tell you to pat your head and rub your belly? Well that's the jist of this game.

On the right screen you are moving a ball with the mouse to dodge triangles of ball destroying doom. On the left screen you are moving a ball with the WASD keys to dodge triangles of ball destroying doom. Same game, different controls, happening simultaneously. It's pretty fun if I do say so myself.

Check it out

\\drew

Monday, July 23, 2007

WETA's Warthog

Those crazy amazing bastards over at WETA have made a full sized Warthog based on the fictitious gun-mounted ride of Master Chief.This thing is fantastic, not only is it a huge model, it is actually fully functioning. It has four wheel steering, a V8, and a bad attitude. Remember, it's a warthog, not a puma, and it's beautiful. I'd totally trade in my Honda Fit for this thing.

\\drew

Friday, July 20, 2007

China slaps Teenagers with gaming limits

The Chinese government has spear-headed a new initiative to prevent teenagers from spending too much time playing online video games.

Yes, that's right.

The new laws and regulations took place last Monday, and now require Internet gaming companies to install a program that requires their users to input their ID card numbers. This will allow them to keep track of how long people have played, and people under the age of 18 will be prompted to stop playing after 3 hours and to "do suitable physical exercise".

Yep, China now requires players to input their Social Security Numbers to the gaming companies to ensure less online gaming. I like playing online games, but would I give Blizzard my SS? Hell no.

I often forget how structured China is. (see: verging on evil empire) I should have known things like this would be coming when I saw that China blocked access to internet searches, in favor of only allowing travel to governmental friendly sites.

\\drew

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Buy PS2, Receive 90 Grand

Police are currently attempting to find out where a large sum of money came from after a 16 year old boy in England purchased a new PS2 on internet auction site Ebay. Instead of finding a mangle of plastic and wires able to play last gen games the kid found 65,400 Euros.

His parents' immediately called the local authorities who promptly took the money. If no one claims it after a certain period of time the family can make a bid to get it back.

The police also have the option of not giving it back. Heh.

Imagine getting a box in the mail full of cash, doesn't exactly happen every day does it? I don't know if I would call the police. But for fear of it randomly being drug money intended to make it into the hands of angry gangsters I probably would.

Best Ebay auction ever though! Selling: 65K Euros, Current Bid: 94 pounds. I'd bid.

Full Article Here


\\drew

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

More on that pig commercial

Pig ad interview with O'Reilly.

It's pretty funny, I'll leave my 2 cents out of this, but I think O'Reilly's a douche.

\\drew

Awesome Condoms Ad

Ok, today's beta lock down day, so no big super-cool post, but check out this article about a recent condom ad being banned in some areas.

The commercial itself is hilarious, and the article is sad because people are still far too anal retentive in the US.

Full Article Here

\\drew

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Homer invades Fertility Giant's Pad

In a recent publicity stunt, a giant Homer Simpson was painted on the hill adjacent to the 17th fertility giant carved into the hills in Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England.

Pagans are up in arms over the fact that this was allowed to take place as the Homer is both distasteful and in danger of ruining nearby foliage. Likewise it seems as though they are making a mockery of the site and in turn pagans are planning to summon rain magics to destroy the Homer and wash it away down the hillside.

If I was advertising for a movie where would I put it? Beside a giant naked, aroused man with a club of course!

Full Article Here

\\drew

Parents Neglect Children for DDO

I'll try to explain this story quickly as it doesn't deserve a long explication.

A couple with two children ended up neglecting both of them in favor of playing Dungeons and Dragons Online.

The two children were both in poor physical condition but are currently doing well in foster care (see: people who take care of them).

Read Here for Full Article

My take on this story? Why neglect your children over a poor game like DDO? At least upgrade to a real MMO. Fall into the stereotypes and be an Everquest player or something. If you are going to sentence your children to malnutrition, disease and pain play something worth playing.

People make me sad...

\\drew

Monday, July 16, 2007

Scary World News

Today let's branch away from my standard rants on frivolity, gaming, and lewd-news and take a look at the scary world in which we live in.

Story 1:
Iran, yes they've been pissy for quite a long time what with all the fighting with Israel. In a news report today Iran has claimed to have 600 missile targets to immediately fire upon if attacked by Israel. This is possibly coming from talks between the US and Israel to strike at Iran to stop the Islamic republic from gaining nuclear capabilities. And as we've seen elsewhere in the world, the US likes to be the only one with the Hammer of Dawn.

Story 2:
After two explosions in Kirkuk, a northern oil city in Iraq, hundreds are left dead or wounded. (Current tallies stand at 85 dead and 180 wounded). The targets of the attacks seem to be a market place, for maximum carnage points, and the office for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a Kurdish political party.

Story 3:
US President George Bush says he thinks the US can still "succeed" in Iraq. You know, because they totally want us there, as per all of the car bombings and civil war.

Story 4:
The US House of Representatives has once again voted to pull troops out of Iraq. Now they just need to strong arm the Senate to get past Bush's inevitable veto, seeing as how he doesn't want his pet-project to end.

Excellent, it's a dark time for the world, though in all honesty it probably always is. I'll continue to hide in my comfy house, protected by thin walls, taxes, a leader verging on tyrannical offenses, and tons upon tons of nuclear weapons and soldiers.

\\drew

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Wii Zapper Finally Announced

Us Wii owners have been waiting since the console's launch and finally we have word of its inception.

The Wii Zapper! The shell will ship later this year and will come bundled with a future Nintendo title. It will also be used in games like "Ghost Squad", "Medal of Honor" and "Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles".

Here's an idea Nintendo... could we possibly get a new Duck Hunt? It's a classic game, it deserves a revisit. Just maybe. :)

\\drew

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

XBOX360 Halo Console

It was bound to happen, it happened with the first xbox. Was it a good choice? Well that's in the eyes of the beholder.

At E3 this year during Peter Moore's keynote speech, he unveiled the new XBOX 360 Halo Edition Console. Much in the style of the original it is a slap of green decals and paint on the system's case. (Well, this one isn't transparent).

Thanks to the video over at Kotaku we can see the excitement (see: no sound, then slight snickers, and a disheartened "whoo") from the crowd.

Though I like how Peter Moore recovers with, "Thank you! The fact that I can hold it with one hand is impressive enough". Yeah, the system really is heavy. He must work out.

\\drew

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

More Viral Advertising

In case some people have missed it, I would recommend reading my article on "Viral Frenzy" I wrote a while ago when Blizzard was gearing up towards their announcement of Starcraft 2.

Well another group is at it, but this time it's not for a video game, but for a new movie. Very little is known about the movie save for a convoluted trailer at the beginning of the Transformers movie (and now available on apple.com) and a string of sites possibly connected.

The only site that is confirmed to be associated with the the movie is the one proclaiming the movie's release date. 1-18-08.com

This site features 2 pictures, each flash enabled so the internet legions can move and rotate them to find "secrets". Hundreds of websites have begun hypothesizing hidden meanings in the images and have spawned further mentions throughout the web (see: idiosyncrasy today amongst others).

There is another site that is thought to possibly be associated with the movie. The site, Ethan Haas was Right, features a puzzle cube that awards players with snippits of video when they solves chunks of the puzzle as well as quotes. But in an article on aintitcool.com, JJ Abrams states that the Haas site has nothing to do with the upcoming movie, saying that there are sites out there for the movie, but the only one people have found is 1-18-08.com.

Much talk has flooded the proverbial tubes on this one, some people claim it's a new Godzilla movie, while others say that it is a movie based off the writings of HP Lovecraft.

This text excerpt is the main focal point for Cthulhu reference:
…war came, no longer from the elemental nor from the star’s rain of fire. The world was again remade, and the glow was as the coming of the sun upon the Earth. The children of the gods were again too few, scattered and divided and among them walked the ancients and those whose thoughts were not as to the towers and the marvels, but to the End and the destruction of the Earth and to the fires from which nothing could escape.
As a scholar of Cthulhu I'd like to take this moment to say that what I have seen as their arguments for such are currently unfounded. The text quips that are referenced are not (from what I can find in my complete collection of his writings) his words. Perhaps they are made to be in his likeness, but even then they are too divergent from his standard levels of mysticism and subtlety. Very rarely are end of days depicted by Lovecraft, the best readers get there are short allusions to possible doomsday events.

Likewise the wording is all wrong, Lovecraft wrote with an eloquent level of sophistication and scientific reasoning. Also, the mythos would be incorrect based on his writings of the world.

Interesting take, but I just don't see it based solely on this paragraph.

We'll see where this round of internet propaganda takes us, as the internet is simply buzzing with theories, conspiracies, and an all around hunger for understanding.

\\drew

Monday, July 09, 2007

Fantastic Aussie Trick

So a group of Aussies played a trick on a mobile speed trap that was patrolling their neighborhood. The sum of the story, the mobile speed trap was ticketed 17 times for speeding, and received the speeding tickets from itself. I love it.

It doesn't get much better than seeing local law enforcement get one-overed because they are too lazy to do their own work. I was pretty sure it was the job of police to catch speeders, not robots. Maybe I'm mistaken.

I could ramble for hours about why speeding isn't worthy of police attention anyways outside of an easy way to rake in capital for the government, but I won't, I'm tired, and bureaucracies piss me off.

I often think police should be taken off "patrol" and do useful things, like find rapists, murderers and pedophiles. I'm also down with cops pulling the trigger ruthlessly on maligned youths who will never be productive members of society, every inmate convicted of a heinous crime waiting patiently for a 1.5 million dollar injection, and people who talk on cell phones when entering a place of business. Hey! Guy on the phone! You're in line, in front of me, wasting my time and the clerk's, talk to the clerk not your BFF Jill, or I'll have to pull out my cell phone (see: shiv) and my BFF Jill (see: large plastic bag) and then take a ride in my car with a big trunk (see: car with a big trunk).

\\drew

10 Things Linux Fans won't tell you

I think we all know some person who's sure that Linux is the way to go over all other operating systems. Well here's a little piece of what they don't tell you.

Full Article

\\drew

Friday, July 06, 2007

Diggtris

Like Tetris? Me too. Like Digg? Me too. Like them together? Me too.

Play one of the best puzzle games of all time while reading the headlines of recent Digg articles (note: these are hyperlinks to the actual articles). Well played cleric, well played.

Diggtris

\\drew

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Doki Doki Hits Shelves

Judging from the video, the text quips of "Please Stop" and "Gross", and the fact that you're effectively feeling up a 14 year old possible alien witch makes Doki Doki seem much less interesting that previously thought.

Maybe it's because the gameplay seems non-existent. Let's put it this way, Japan has churned out truckloads of H-Games, they should have the formula down, but this one apparently doesn't follow suit. It ends up seeming like a real game with underdeveloped gameplay smashed together with a low budget (see: 10 Yen) porn game.

\\drew

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Happy 4th!

Have a good 4th of July everyone! We'll be back up with new posts tomorrow!

\\drew

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Doki Doki Trailer

The Japanese trailer for Doki Doki Majo Shinpan has hit Japan and in turn has made it's way across the internet tubes to the States.


In the trailer we finally see in-game footage, ranging from groping, removing sweat beads from a sick girl, to smacking pom-poms. It seems like it will be a dating sim gone wrong, but we'll see once it actually hits shelves in Japan.

Likelihood of this coming across the pond? My guess would be pretty low.

\\drew

Monday, July 02, 2007

Fallout 3 Article

Thanks to the guys over at Destructiod internet denizens can get a glimpse into the upcoming new Fallout title.

There has been a large amount of assorted hate/ spam/ admiration/ disgust over Bethesda taking the reigns of the loved cult franchise after the ill-fated Black Isle nose-dived into the depths of ruins thanks to numerous bad choices by company executives. I too was a nay-sayer being that I hated (see: despised with the flaming heat of a thousand suns) Oblivion *shields head from rocks and garbage*.

Am I wrong to think that a game should not scale with the player? I beat Oblivion as a level 2, what is wrong with this picture? I like the idea of having to progress to win. I decided to try the game again... and using their ass-backwards system of only "level'ing" you if you tier up in primary stats I maxed out all of my erroneous skills like sneak and archery (who knew that would work out so well?) and then proceeded to one-shot my way through to the end game again... but I digress simply because I'm a fan of quality game design.

Fallout 3, the much awaited follow up to 2 classic PC titles will be coming out, with Oblivion style graphics but thankfully not Oblivion style gameplay (see: Praise Jesus). The game will use the PIP still as well as action points, though it will take place in either first person mode or an over the shoulder view. Bethesda has also claimed that the Over the Shoulder view was designed for (unlike in Oblivion) so the game won't feel clunky when controlling it that way. This is the way it should be, if I'm clad in full leather armor I want to see my avatar dressed to the nines like Mad Max. It's an RPG, let me see how badass I look carrying a sledge hammer reminiscent of Gallagher, if Gallagher was a post-apocalyptic mutant instead of a balding over the hill comedian.

So there is some hope that can be kindled for us Vault-tec fans, the franchise may not yet be ruined, I'll keep the hope alive.

Full Destructoid Article Here

\\drew

Guess Word

Ever want to be able to guess an internet word form a website and beat everyone else who's also trying to guess it?

Well now you can thanks to the all new GuessWord website! *applause* yes you! Not you on the couch, but you! Right there in front of the computer screen can have your name immortalized for about 2 seconds if you guess the correct word before someone else does and in turn sparks the beginning of the next word guessing round!

Click here to play

So this would be neat if it wasn't being spamm'ed thanks to a hefty lump sum of traffic from Digg. Instead of being able to look at the closest posts and rationally determine what the word should be based on the other guessing you instead are left spam-monkeying words with similar letters as previous guessing for about 30 seconds prior to the correct word being found by someone else through luck.

Maybe this could be interesting with less people on, maybe not.

\\drew