RubixsQube

Across the way from Disneyland is Disney's California Adventure, a second theme park which also features a video game ride, Toy Story Midway Mania, and it's more video game-ey than Astro Blasters. I'm not as big of a fan of Midway Mania, as it's mostly a ride where they put you up against projection screens, and you play little video games there, then they whip you to another set of screens. You wear polarized 3D glasses, so that's neat, and there are secret unlockables, but it lacks the charm of Astro Blasters. If they have to stop Midway Mania for some reason, the ride switches you temporarily into a practice mode where the points don't count, so it does normalize things somewhat compared to Astro Blasters. The key difference between Midway Mania and Astro Blasters is that the former has cars that have to be stopped, unloaded, moved, stopped, and reloaded, while the Astro Blasters cars are on a constantly moving track, which means that the line for Midway Mania is 45 minutes +, and Astro Blasters has a line that tends to be around 5 - 10 minutes, and keeps moving. You can then just go on Astro Blasters multiple times throughout the day to practice, if you wished.

A few things about Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters: 1) There used to be a flash game that was played concurrently as the people rode the game, and if you managed to score high in the flash game, it allowed for people riding to get multipliers for their score. This was taken out when the flash game was removed from the site it was on, but it was kind of fun sometimes to see targets light up, because it meant some 8 - 12 year old Buzz Lightyear fan on the internet was helping you out. Thanks! 2) The reason that the standard deviation on the score distribution is so huge is because of the fact that scores still accrue when the ride stops to let on guests requiring assistance. A common trick by high scorers is to get on the ride strategically in front of someone who might need assistance such that the ride stops at an advantageous position. 3) While many of the tips n' tricks discussed on the internet are indeed false, the one trick that has held up throughout the years involves shooting Emperor Zerg in the first room right straight in the middle of the chest, which nets something like 50k points. This is a pretty key target (it's worth five hits on a triangle target, the rarest and highest scoring target). If you can manage to get the ride to stop when you're looking at zerg (who kind of moves back and forth in the room), you can just watch your score skyrocket. 4) I have my target path laid out in my head for the ride, and it's pretty important that you know where diamond and triangle targets are hidden, and what triggers them. If you're shooting any other targets, you're wasting your time. A circle is 100 points. A square is 1000. The diamond is 5000, and the triangle is 10000, so who cares about a circle. The ride then becomes setting up on a triangle and staying pointing at it while you jam the button, hoping that the ride somehow stops for you. There's a triangle target right near the end that you go past over the course of like, 10 - 15 seconds that's pretty key, but it's opposite the actual thing that everyone is looking at, so you have to rotate 180 degrees. 5) That thing on the podcast, where Nick mentions that the scores got flipped? That's pretty common, and always frustrating. 6) I once went on the ride and, halfway through, I noticed that while there were a few people in front of me, the ride was empty behind me. This was mid-day in a busy month, so it was pretty confusing. The ride exits into a gift shop, and when I walked into the shop I realized that the ride operators had somehow lumped me into the entourage traveling with Nicolas Cage and his son (Weston, not Kal-El, sadly). Nothing is weirder than shopping in a Buzz Lightyear themed store with Nicolas Cage for five minutes.

Over Christmas break my family went to Disneyland and I managed to do pretty well (I'm image right). This is my all-time best score, although I've gotten 1 million+ a couple of times. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TAKE THINGS TOO SERIOUSLY I have a LOT OF KNOWLEDGE about this theme park ride.

My name is Kevin, and when I recommend books (and oh, I do, reader!), here is what I recommend: To the friend who is interested in maybe trying some science fiction but doesn't really know what to read, or why anyone would like science fiction in the first place, I tend to hand them a copy of Dune (Herbert), or The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin). I tell them: science fiction is not about ray guns and space ships and lasers, it's about thinking about what it means to be a living creature in the universe. Dune takes the idea of hagiography and overlays it on the (continuing!) middle east oil crisis. It's breathtaking writing, perfectly executed, with passages that you'll run through your head like a child and a particularly large piece of halloween candy. Left Hand of Darkness starts with the simplest idea ("what does gender do to us as a species") and opens up an cold, wintry tale of survival, and politics, and ultimately, the idea of loss and acceptance and love. To the friend who wants a challenge and maybe I can tell they're interested in seeing why literature is perhaps the greatest medium of portraying human emotion, I'll kind of grimace and place The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner) in their hands. "Listen," I'll say, "this is tough. You're going to be pretty hard up in the first chapter, specifically. Stay with it. This is beautiful. This is the human brain, and the human heart, kind of opened up and spread out." Reading this book in high school made me understand why my teachers were always asking me to look for symbols and meaning in literature. "Oh, because books aren't just a fancy way of writing down a series of events." To the young friend who wants to read a classic, exciting, terrifying adventure, I quickly find my copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth (Verne) and open it up to them. I'll find the passage that initially hooked me as a reader: "Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jökull of Snæfellsjökull, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the Kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth. I did it. - Arne Saknussemm" To the person who is willing to not look at me like I'm sort of weirdo, perhaps a close friend who knows me already pretty well, I'll buy them a copy of the annotated(!) Lolita (Nabokov), a book that deeply, deeply cares for language, and makes you understand that sin is complex, and desire is terrifying, and consuming, and sometimes you want what you should not have. (The annotated version is not a necessity, but it certainly helps) To the person who wants a quick read but I kind of want them to trick them into reading something very important, I'll offhandedly mention that The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon) is pretty gripping, while secretly knowing how dangerous it is to bring someone in on an important secret, even if that secret is a very well known book. To the person who wants something to read as summer approaches, I'll tell them to go to a library and check out Dandelion Wine (Bradbury), and read it outside, and read it on the bus, and read it in a diner, and read it sitting on a porch, maybe. Ray Bradbury is certainly most well known for his fantastic science fiction, but he also does something in Dandelion Wine that stupid Garrison Keillor and his melty voice only wishes he could. (Yes, it's treacle at times, but that's ok, reader. That's ok) To everyone, I recommend Foundation (Asimov), Middlesex (Eugenides), Invisible Man (Ellison), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Heinlein), Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), King Solomon's Mines (Haggard), Anathem (Stephenson), Neuromancer (Gibson), and so many more, some obvious, some terrible, and all worth reading. (Shoot, I am miles away from my bookshelf, and I can't think of some of the other very important books I tend to hand out, or purchase, or recommend to people. So, the list will have to end there.)

I got to play EVE: Valkyrie at Sundance last week, on a, I think, first round device. I guess I'm pretty skeptical about the tech, considering it seems pretty easy to get nerds excited about things on the internet, especially things that are Too Good on Paper. Then I put it on my head. Wow! It's super neat right from the get-go. The Valkyrie demo was just a space dogfight against the second player, starting with you being blasted out of a launch tube into the fight. The controls were pretty standard (go / go faster / slow down / shoot), but the neatest aspects was that the left bumper (this was an Xbox 360 controller) was used to lock missiles. But you had to swivel your whole head to target who you wanted to lock onto. You know what's neat? Craning your head to look around your own actual virtual cockpit after a ship goes screaming by. When I finished, I got right back in line to try it again. The pixel resolution was, as has been mentioned everywhere, pretty low, but just the experience of having this 3D virtual space you inhabit was incredible. I can't wait until they come out with the high-resolution consumer version. I very rarely look at something and think: "this is the future of video gaming" because of how weird the industry can be, but in this instance, I 100% believe that the consumer rift is going to be a megasuccess.

I am always surprised at the volume of people who think to write into the Idle Thumbs guys telling them about various bits of INSANELY OBVIOUS ROBOT NEWS. Like, at some point, a person read "google acquires boston dynamics" and their immediate thought was: "I bet that this story will just fall through the cracks unless I report it to Jake, Chris and Sean!" Apparently this thought goes through so many people's minds. In this world, the Idle Thumbs guys never, ever consume any news whatsoever, evidently. To twist one of my favorite quotes (brought up in the episode!), if you want a picture of the Idle Thumbs future, imagine a set of emails about obvious robot news stamping on Jake Rodkin's face - forever.

I bought this game for my brother (age 27), along with a 360 controller, for Christmas. He had never heard of the game, and so initially he kind of rolled his eyes, and said: "oh, a cute little Indiana Jones game." My uncle, looking over his shoulder, replied: "Super Mario Bros...in a gold mine." For the rest of the evening, I got to hear my brother slowly discover aspects of the game ("What, where did that arrow come from?") ("Why is there a ghost?") ("Why did the guy in the shop kill me?"). My uncle cautioned my brother, while carrying a damsel, to "watch out for the spikes" right before he impaled himself and her to end his run. "Watch out," he said, "you're jumping for two."

I finished this over the weekend. I am of two minds (no real spoilers): 1) The game is indeed a departure for the series, and I'm pretty glad that they took chances on shaking things up. I wasn't one of those people who saw the game and got grossed out and swore it off on looks alone (I'll save that for the Yoshi's Island 3DS sequel, which looks like all of the world's garbage), and it actually ends up being a very handsome game, even in those moments where you go into painting mode and suddenly see that everything is leaning back all weird. It controls perfectly, which is such a wonderful thing. I have a feeling that someone high-fived someone else right after they got Link's motion and speed down just so. The dungeons are clever, and it's true that you have to think about them slightly differently than in other Zelda games because the primary items are rentable. The game was pretty charming, which I have come to expect from both Nintendo and the NoA localizers, and it never lagged, which is important since that's what tends to get me in most of the recent games in the series. 2) That being said, the game still does gate you a little bit, and there are dungeons where a certain item is definitely supposed to be the primary way of solving puzzles, and the dungeons are never up to the level I've come to expect from some of the handheld games in the series (the oracle games have some real stumpers). Actually, you know, thinking back, maybe that's too harsh, the dungeons each have some fantastic moments (just not the bland, forgettable bosses). It is a little on the simple side, but I'm a goddamn adult, maybe I'm at the higher age end of the large target audience range, so that's ok. I'm not really interested in "hero mode" style difficulty, because that means that you play the same game but have to hunt for hearts more often, or avoid combat more, when what I really want is the same game but where each dungeon doesn't just lead you along one long path to the end, but rather features more moments (which did happen in this game) where you're standing in a room and checking the map and thinking: "what the heck, where haven't I gone? Where do I go now?" I think that Patrick Klepek really hit the nail on the head when he brought up how difficult it must be to make these games. They can't stray from the formula, or else everyone flips out, and yet the internet clamors for them to mix things up. In the end, I'm always glad for a new game in the series, especially on the handheld. I want them to be bold, and take more chances, but I know that this won't happen. So, I enjoy the games for the moments they make me happy, and Link Between Worlds offered a lot of that.

"Barry L. at Sea" (He'd probably use his boat, the Avalon)

Maybe I'm playing a different version of the WiiU, but I'm using the gamepad all the time. I played through Rayman Legends to completion, which utilized the gamepad well, throughout, and I enjoyed Game & Wario, and even Arkham City, which used the gamepad. I also use it when I'm watching something on Netflix and want to go to the kitchen and still continue watching some show. I'm also one of those crazy people who love the 3D on the 3DS. I keep reading so many people who disagree with me, and think that the gamepad wasted, and nonsensical, and I just don't see it in my own experience. Even in this thread, people are telling me what the world does with the gamepad, and I wonder how you all know that this is the case.

I had a short twitter conversation with Jake earlier, and I wanted to open it up to this forum, where I'm happy to have found a group of thoughtful people who take time to read and carefully respond to people's opinions rather than post gifs from TV and make inappropriate jokes. The conversation was fueled by Chris Kohler's piece on the WiiU and Mario fatigue, and it's worth a read. I generally think Chris Kohler is a fantastic and careful journalist, although there are many others who disagree! I'm actually of a few minds about his opinion. I own a WiiU and I really like it. I understand that the world's tastes in video games is quite different than my own, and that's fine, but I've been incredibly happy with my experiences playing the system. (I am in the tiny tiny minority of people who is excited about a video game because of it's local co-op options, especially when it allows people who don't normally play video games to join in.) Anyway, I've been really happy playing Nintendo games, and even the Mario games, when they've come out, because they're still well made, and offer a range of challenges, and can be played on my own schedule. The current opinion I read and hear often, however, is that these Mario games are apparently not great, and I shouldn't like them. I shouldn't even own a WiiU, either, because it has no good games, and the gamepad is never used well. I understand that these are valid opinions about things, but I just don't share them. Nintendo has made a billion weird mistakes in their history, and I'm not going to defend these mistakes, since they're ludicrous. I'm just wondering: will Nintendo do anything? (I tend to believe that the answer is no, or, at least, "if anything, very slowly") If Nintendo fails, how much of the blame would be laid at their own feet versus the weird changing face of what people want? Will people look back on the WiiU the same way everyone (including the people here) is looking back at the Gamecube? Yes, I am aware that being a Nintendo defender is not edgy, and is pretty boring, too, but grandiose articles about the Inevitable Failure of Nintendo are starting to feel the same way, to me.

I spent Thanksgiving break with some new friends of a girl I am dating. Among these people included a gay professor of queer film studies, a transgendered queer culture theorist, and a lesbian zinester/comic artist who lives in Portland (I hope that by listing this it's understood that they're much more than just those labels! It just helps to set up this discussion I had). Last night, while playing cards, I (a straight, nerdy, white male) brought up Gone Home. Initially, their response was a little suspicious, and I 100% understand. The popular opinion of video games tends to be that they're primarily made for a very specific audience, and as a result people would probably not describe the average video game as "inclusive." (This turns out not to be the case, and I'm glad that Idle Thumbs has done a good job to demonstrate the breadth of people involved in the industry!) So, I discussed Fullbright, and the tone of the game, trying to explain how video games are really coming into their own as an important new medium for art and storytelling. It's strange to me to think about how so many people focus on the "game" aspects of the term "video games," so my introduction of Gone Home mostly focused on it being mostly like a very personal, interactive fiction. While it would have been weird to pull out my laptop and play a little, I did describe a fair bit of how the game worked, and how the story was told. There was some resistance regarding the game as a possible way for straight males to engage in "lesbian voyeurism," but I was quick to point out one of my favorite moments, where Kaitlin starts to read some more of Samantha's racy writing, but stops quickly, and then doesn't let the player read any more. I think one of the great successes of the game is the fact that you hardly ever feel like you're "intruding" on Sam's thoughts in any way ("voyeuristic"), thanks to the measured, and subtle approach. So, overall, I really am glad that a video game could provide for a fantastic, inclusive conversation. I'm excited for the success of this game, and any game that takes chances and pushes back against boring standard video gamey tropes, and exposes people to new thoughts, and new experiences. What a cool world we live in.

It's interesting how Nintendo's 3D (non side-scrolling) Mario games kind of take two forms. In the first, Mario is tasked with doing something, like, delivering a Watermelon, or washing dirt, or defeating some enemy, or fixing some large craft of some sort. The second form is much more straightforward, with platforming segments where Mario's only task is to get to some established area. I've always loved Sunshine, because it just looked and felt so different than any other game that was being released at the time, which made the portions of the game where Mario was cleaning, or fighting enemies, or racing really pop. The game just blew me away with all of the small F.L.U.D.D.-less platforming segments, and you can tell that Nintendo realized how much people were responding to them with Galaxy 1/2, and 3D Land. Those games are very platform heavy, and with Nintendo's ability to just nail character movement and response, they're incredible to play. So, I salute Sunshine for doing so much, including lay the groundwork for the next few generations of 3D games.

This morning, I was fitting quasar H-beta spatial profiles on my computer while listening to this podcast, and the conversation turns to Jeff Goldblum, and Nick and Steve proposed the idea that a generation of people saw Jurassic Park and became scientists based on him. "Hrm," I thought, "I guess I may belong to this generation. Nah, that's pretty snooty of me." IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS, my buddy texts me: "Some real good Goldblum in this Thumbs. Kevin you ARE a Goldblum scientist"

"Zingle de dingle dingle!" - young Steve Gaynor[1] 1. Rodkin, Jake. "Johanns Baton" (2013). idlethumbs.net

A) I wonder, too. I wonder how you could go about testing this. I think that we, as a culture/society place too much value on taking and sharing photos and videos, and we put too much self worth into "likes" and "re-tweets" and "favorites," but when I write this down it makes me look and sound like a cartoon old man. Great! Now instead of just having to sit through someone's boring explanation of their "crazy" dream, we're going to have to see a grainy weird video of it. I wonder if we'll ever be able to understand brain chemistry in a passive enough way to record thoughts and dreams. I have a feeling (hope?) that we're a long way off.

What makes me sad about seeing people taking pictures of everything (food/sunsets/music concerts/google automobiles/themselves) with everything (phones/tablets/watches/google automobiles) is that those pictures eventually sit on some hard drive or server somewhere, and require power for that data to be written, and read, and stored, and eventually that's what we'll have left. The aliens will come down and see this dying husk of a world and think: "I wonder what this was like before this horrible virus of a species destroyed it" Gleep: "I bet that this planet was rife with a civilization that lived and breathed and experienced and loved!" Glorp: "We have their data storage mechanism! It is full of a record of what they did - oh wait, apparently there was a lot of sepia-toned fake-polaroid sunsets and boutique cupcakes" Gleep: (alien equivalent of frowning) Guys, it's ok to take some photographs for rememberin' some stuff, but also let's make sure the ratio of Stuff Done and Experienced / Stuff Photographed is way, way larger than 1.

I played Device 6 over the weekend, and it delivers. Excellent concept, perfectly executed. I think that more games need to exist exactly like this. I don't have one million hours to put into a game, but I'll definitely give a developer money if they want to provide some small number of hours of engaging content. I want to tell every person who is going to go on a five or six hour flight to get this for their iPad, since it's just perfect for that exact situation. I played it on the iPhone, which worked fine, but I could see how enjoying it on an iPad might have made it slightly easier. Overall, very, very good. Also, if you have played the game, and want to listen to a song that is played at one point in the game, you can do so here.

I have been listening to this Starcadian fellow quite a bit recently. Here's a video for the song HE^RT, from their recent release Sunset Blood. If you like, say, Daft Punk, or Kavinsky, you will enjoy this! I guarantee it. Good for driving around at night in a big city.

I am mostly just excited for that cover-art. Mario 3D World Big Band!

Real important update:

I just left PokeParis for the second time. I feel bad for my rival, who was pretty bummed at how often she loses against me. Listen, everyone in the Pokemon World. You can have up to six Pokemon in a party. I know this is true, because up in the corner, you have six slots, just like me! Gym leaders, you especially need to catch on to this fact. It's not super difficult to go out into some grass and catch a few Pokemon. In fact, you could even stock up on Pokemon of a single type, sure, providing you've really thought hard about the fact that you may have someone coming into your grass type gym with a fire type, and it might get dicey. Just get some dual types in your gym, maybe? (Yes, I understand why the game mechanics are the way they are, and I understand that I may not be the target audience) So, it's a little easy, but it's still really fun. I have a T-Rex! And Hawlucha is really fun, overall. I can't believe I have gotten as far as I have without a psychic type in my party. I'm really trying to stray from my comfort zone, type-wise. (Also, PokeParis battle restaurant...I don't know how to indicate that I am a) vegetarian and really not super interested in Slowpoke Tail, and I think it's pretty ethically suspect.)

I still can't get over how the dude is just casually wearing a ring.

Interesting stuff, Wheeljack. I wonder how much more our society will continue down this path where such a huge, huge amount of cultural effort is put into creative derivative works (fan fiction / cosplay / deviant art images of characters from tv shows and movies and comics, etc). We also have a lot of machinery in place to reward this, which tends to continue to propagate its creation (see: the rise of the nerd news aggregator site). You are right, in that just because IP laws are still in place preventing someone from straight-up using Superman / Batman / Mickey Mouse doesn't stop people from using the concept in a thinly veiled way, but I wonder why people have to do this to begin with? Is it just that the act of creating something New, and without previous referents, is far more difficult than heading down an already beaten path? I just tend to see the universe as being so stupidly full of possibility that making yet another "here is what the cast of Popular Television Show would look like as anime characters / lego minifigs / 8 bit video game sprites" seems like a waste of someone's impressive talents. (I think that this is a tangent based on what you were saying, but it's something I've thought about) (Also, thanks whoever asked about "bespoke," since I heard it a lot on the cast, and never, until the question was asked, thought that it had any specific meaning in games)

I wonder why Nintendo always gets news outlets writing stories about children being preyed on through their 3DSes (very rare / does not happen) but I don't really hear any major news media talk about how quickly you can hear incredibly offensive comments the INSTANT you turn on some chat on pretty much any online game. It was insane how quickly I heard racial and homophobic slurs when I got onto GTA Online. And I'm not even a girl! Ooof.