A Thousand Words: Nitro Ball

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Nitro Ball

Nitro Ball is a 1992 Data East arcade game based on Midway’s legendary Smash TV, keeping the same basic gameplay and “game show of death” style. While a lot of their games are “we have ____ at home” in terms of quality (to the point where one brought about lawsuits ), this builds on the formula instead of copying it. The “Ball” in the title refers to pinball stages where the contestant can indulge his inner Sonic the Hedgehog, rolling around for bonus points.

The game looks great for the time and starts off in the self proclaimed “Strange Football Field”, full of garish NFL Americana and an amazing music track. Sadly the rest of the game’s style doesn’t match that great start, but it is still a fun and overlooked gem.

Review: Fireworks

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Fireworks

Legendary gun instructor and writer Jeff Cooper wrote (or rather complied, as most he had published before) Fireworks in the late 1970s. Cooper politically was the kind of person who made Jesse Helms seem like a hippie, but the more interesting part is that he was one of the most pretentious writers ever to write. The sympathetic version is that if you’re actually teaching pistol shooting, you have to be very to the point, so writing gave him a chance to stretch his mental legs.

The not so sympathetic version is that Cooper was a perfect example of the kind of person who thinks he is far more intelligent and profound than he actually is. Combine this with being very easily impressed and you have a cross between Hemingway at his worst and your uncle who’s enthralled by this thing called “television”.

This book is entertaining, albeit likely not in the way its author intended.

Animal Power

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Like WW3 1987, I might be doing re-reviews, only in this case of books that have nothing to do with a Fuldapocalypse. At least one worth revisiting is Naomi Alderman’s The Power, which got a TV adaptation after I got it and was one of the first diversified reviews on this blog.

The plot summary: Women gain comic book electricity powers. Because men have been JUST SO CRUEL a critical mass become “Magnetos” and not “Xaviers”, so society devolves into a power trip (pun intended) with the timeskip showing a cruel bizarro-Gor.

The gold standard for this kind of “see how power [pun also intended] corrupts and how oppressed become oppressors” is of course, Orwell’s classic Animal Farm. But whereas that was an allegory of revolution (and not just the Russian one, the name ‘Napoleon’ is very deliberate), this is kind of like if a radical vegan wrote Animal Farm and the message was how animal husbandry is inherently vile. Instead of the pigs becoming humanized, they’d turn into, I don’t know, Beastmen of Slaanesh depraved sadists, because HUMANS ARE THE REAL MONSTERS.

Using AI tools

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Someone asked me (and others) if they should use AI for a book cover. As you know, I’m an active AI artist, hardly the hand-art fire eater who scorches it the way Michelangelo scorned oil paints. I still immediately said “No”. Or rather, “in short, no. But rather if you want them to be good it’s going to take a lot more effort than you think.”

If you just do basic prompting, the “pull to the middle” effect of AI means the result is going to look like stereotypical AI Slop. Because it is. Or if you want a more generous interpretation, it’ll look like you used a pre-arranged template. Because a default AI generation is essentially that. In other words, rather than using its power to move past cheap stock covers, AI frequently continues the trend.

Now sometimes you need cheap quick disposable filler, and I’m not arguing against it there. Nor am I suggesting any one right way to do it. But AI or not, if you want to stand out, you still have to work for it.

A Thousand Words: Pokemon Crystal

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With Pokemon Day almost upon us, it’s time to look at the second third installment of Pokemon. Starting with Yellow, Pokemon began releasing a third version of each generation’s game up until Gen 4, at which point it turned into intra-gen sequels and then DLC. But I digress.

Anyway, Crystal has the first female playable protagonist and many other additions, from beautiful animated sprites (not seen again until Gen 5), and the first Battle Tower (a neutralized level location with high risks and reward). It still has the same strengths (large world, very dynamic feel) and weaknesses (terrible level scaling) as the rest of Gen II.

By this time the GBC was old hat and Gen 3 on more powerful hardware awaited. But that’s another story…

Mewtwo’s Massive Power

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Now everyone knows Gen 1 Mewtwo is the most broken Pokemon ever. Yet its pure power is if anything, underestimated.

Mewtwo in Gen 2 and beyond has a base stat total of 680, which puts it among other “mascot legendaries.” But since Special Attack and Defense are one stat in Gen 1, that gives Mewtwo a base of….. 744, more than Arceus and most legendary mega evolutions. And it goes against Gen 1 softies with ZERO hard counters.

Review: T-10 Heavy Tank

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T-10 Heavy Tank

Stephen Sewell’s deep dive into one of the Cold War’s most enigmatic tracked cryptids was a book I knew I had to get. I was not disappointed. Now you have to be interested in tanks to read a very long book about a tank that was only deployed in anger once (the Prague Spring). Thankfully, I’m very interested in tanks.

What makes this fascinating besides the detail is how it represents the end of the road for specialized “heavy” tanks. Yes, MBTs grew to outweigh the heavy tanks, but we see the unified end to one intentional design path taken as far as it went, with quirks like how the T-10 had a heavy instead of medium machine gun for a coax.

I love tanks. I love obscure tanks. So it’s no surprise I love this book.

A Thousand Words: Friday The 13th Part 5

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Friday The 13th Part 5

Friday The 13th Part 5 is a very strange horror movie mixed amidst the conventional genre-making slashers that proceeded and followed it. See, Jason Voorhees had died in the previous film, subtitled “The Final Chapter.” So this was subbed “A New Beginning” and it tried to keep him dead.

The movie takes place at a group home for troubled youth, one of whom, a loser named Joey Burns is murdered by an especially troubled youth. This makes Joey’s father Roy, a paramedic, snap and become a Jason copycat, cementing his ‘fame’ as the Dimitri Medvedev of horror movies.

As far as the actual film itself goes, it’s a delightful mess. The director only knew “DO THE THING” so there’s one scene of murder or sleaze (or both of course) at a very fast pace. It’s not very technically good, but you probably weren’t expecting Citizen Kane from the 5th installment of a horror franchise anyway.

A Thousand Words: Death By Lightning

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Death By Lightning

The Netflix historical drama Death by Lightning is a four-part look at the presidency of James Garfield. An obscure piece of national history that’s even referenced in the intro when workers nearly a hundred years later find Charles Guiteau’s brain and don’t know who it was, this depiction is an excellent melodramatic epic.

First off, there are numerous inaccuracies and dramatic exaggerations here. One must adhere to the maxim of Death of Stalin director Armando Iannuci: “It’s not a documentary”. That said, the characters judged in their own right are largely excellent. Largely. Garfield himself is a shallow, too-good plaster saint and his wife Lucretia is a little anachronistic “serious woman played by serious actress”, although in her case it’s made up for by one spectacular scene in the finale. Everyone else from brutish Chester A. Arthur to Clay Davis before Clay Davis Roscoe Conkling to, especially, Guiteau himself is wonderful. (Guiteau’s actor played a supervillain in a past role and it showed).

The series is very smooth flowing, and although most of the time it’s a madcap retelling of events, there’s some possibly unintended depth. Arthur’s recognition of himself as an underqualified person who fell upwards into power is a yin-yang contrast from Guiteau’s insane belief of himself as a transcendental genius. It doesn’t hurt that antagonists Conkling and Guiteau both fall into one of my favorite character archetypes: Schemers who are a lot less intelligent than they think they are.

So yes, don’t expect much realism, but this is an amazing show.