"Brawl In The Family" Songs

I already discussed Brawl In The Family, a great webcomic about the many characters of Nintendo living together in harmony. Or, well, in as much harmony as you can get when heroes and villains live together not-always-so-peacefully and when so many different personalities cross paths...

The comic's creator, Matthew Taranto (AKA TriforceBun), really likes music. In fact, he was part of a project called Phoenix Wright: The Musical. And of course, he had to bring some music to his own series. Here, I decided to give you links to some of the songs that were in this comic.

I haven't shown them all; but Matthew makes a lot of songs about Christmas, since it's such a special occasion. I'll make a post about those in due time. It should be there in one or two weeks. (In fact, Christmas will be a Wednesday, so I might just put those up on December 25th!)

Why So Many Luck Games And Mini-Games?

Whether you like it or not, a lot of games are partly based on luck. The ever-famous Snakes or Ladders is based entirely on luck, as the outcome of the game depends solely on the numbers you roll and the spaces you land on. Luckily, most board and card games avert being entirely luck-based by adding a portion of strategy. Uno requires you to have a bit of luck, as you can't tell what the opponents will play against you; nor can they tell what you can use against them, so you can build your strategy. Poker is all about bluff, and Monopoly is a board game with dozens of strategies and ways to win - or lose.

Which is why I'm always ENRAGED when I play a video game and luck plays against me. Or rather, when there's just the right mix of luck and strategy, but my bad luck completely screws my strategies. (Just the other day, I tried ten times to catch Rayquaza in Pokémon HeartGold; more than half the times it offed itself because of Outrage-induced confusion.) When you play a video game, very often you'll have to rely on luck at least a little. However, the most enraging is the games - or rather, mini-games - that require luck and nothing else. I'm not in a god damn casino, I'm playing a freaking game! Yeah, I keep wondering: Why are there so many luck games and mini-games?

Flash Focus

I already mentioned previously how the Nintendo DS and its revolutionary touch screen paved the way for hundreds of new techniques in gaming, all new methods of playing games that you couldn't play before due to, well... not being able to touch the screen. There's a lot you can do with buttons, but some games are just so much better when you can tap around with your stylus. Of course, this revolutionary touch screen also brought us a large number of games... that weren't quite games.

We've had everything for the DS. Many cartridges that you would use not to play a game, but because you wanted to ameliorate an aspect of your life. Want to learn to cook? Have a recipe game! Want to lose weight? Have this personal trainer in the form of a video game! Want to ameliorate your eyes' abilities? Here's Flash Focus for you!

Yes, Flash Focus is one of those special games that aimed to make your life a little better. The result is a game that can be fun, I'll acknowledge that, but in the end it's just one more game that you'll play for a month or so until you forget its existence.

"Collabs"

One of the greater aspects of the Flash community is how it can be tied together with so many people. All nerds or geeks, all appreciating one video game franchise or another. And so, geeks who love the same franchise get together and, instead of making one long video with their collective effort, they instead each make a smaller video and group them all together to get what we call "Collabs".

Obviously, "collab" comes from "collaboration", so it's all about gatherins lots of fans from a series and just cracking jokes about it, in Flash animation form.

The most notable example of such is the Sonic collabs, named Sonic Shorts, which went on for SIX videos, with about a hundred miniature videos made about the franchise and grouped in those videos.

Look out, however; some of the comedy "could potentially" be Not Safe For Work. After all, this was made by different artists with different comedy styles and different senses of what comedy is, so some jokes could be "offensive" or just plain bizarre or yucky. But it's mostly the language, and also some of the non-seen scenes. It's not "too" bad.

You can watch all of them in this Youtube selection.

Heck, even KNUCKLES gets one later.

After the popularity of the Sonic collabs, the Mario fandom replied with this. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/429242 A Mario collab!

And a little later, the Kirby collab... http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/542162

Garfield: The Search For Pooky (Part 2)

Part 1 can be read here.

Hello, and welcome back to this review of Garfield: The Search For Pooky! Guess what? The torture continues with the second half. So far, we've had a few scenes of Garfield searching for Pooky... and many scenes where he completely forgets his goal. You know, Garfield... if you want to save your teddy bear, maybe you should at least give a damn.

This Monday, I share your pain, Garfield. Can't
tell about the next Mondays, but... Just for
this one, it's a certainty. I hate it.

When we left off last Friday, Garfield had been brought to the farm by Jon, who had no idea Garfield was on a quest to retrieve his prized possession. And now, Garfield wants to go back home. What is a grumpy cat to do when he wants to get his point across? Well, wreak havoc around, of course! Garfield's plan is to destroy as many pieces of furniture as possible in the house, to annoy granny and make her toss him out. And for damn sure you're gonna do that! By the way, this level has the biggest offender in comic drawings turned into sprites: Garfield is here pretty much as tall as Jon's mom. She patrols the rooms, spying on Garfield while he's trying to destroy armchairs. And he's almost as tall as she is! What the Hell! However, the level is simple: Just stay on the ground and claw at the armchairs you see. Easy breezy. Do that in all three parts of the level, reach the end, and you've completed this level! Jon eventually grabs Garfield and puts him outside.