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| January 2, 2009...
Whoops |
So, I was poking through
the Xbox Live Video Marketplace last night, and found this
slogan buried in the networks section of the
service...
This unfortunate
coincidence reminds me Thicke of the Night, the shortlived
talk show hosted by Alan Thicke of Growing Pains fame.
The series was such a disaster that even the commercials
seemed to hate it, with one ad proudly announcing "Once you
try our maxi pads, you'll never go back to thick
again!"
Speaking of falling asleep
at the wheel until the car veers off the road and into a
tree, Microsoft also let Warner Bros. sell a
World War II-era Superman cartoon called Japateurs. Yes,
Japateurs. It's exactly what you'd expect from the
title... the man of steel thwarts an Axis sabotage
attempt by throwing buck-toothed Japanese men around like
ragdolls. It's incredibly tacky and insensitive, but at
least Microsoft didn't do something really idiotic,
like trying to sell a cartoon based on that awful
Control+Alt+Delete comic.
Wait, they
did?
Seriously...? That's it, I'm out of here. If you want me,
I'll be on the Wii.
Oh yeah... before I go, I'd
better post a link to the latest Awesome NES
update. We're closing out the Rs with Romance of
the Three Kingdoms, its sequel, and a few games that won't
bore you to tears.
| December 30, 2008... New Year, New
Opportunities |
Hey, I'm writing for money
again! I'll be reviewing homebrew software for 1UP's
Retronauts blog, starting with Toyshop Trouble, an exceptional
2600 release by AtariAge. You can check out the debut of
this weekly feature, tentatively titled A Taste of Homebrew,
by clicking on this
link.
Oh yeah, there's also a new
Awesome NES
update. This one's special, because the navigation bar
has been updated in all the pages for a more uniform and
convenient browsing experience. As for the games, I've
added reviews of Robowarrior (the closest thing the 1980s had
to Bomberman: Act Zero, and that includes the mediocrity), the
colorful feline antics of Rockin' Kats, and Rollerball, one of
my all-time favorite pinball simulations. Feel free to
give that a look as well while you're here.
Guess that's it.
Enjoy the new year, folks!
| December 20, 2008... You've Got
the Look |
So hey, I got impatient and decided to
roll out the new design of The Gameroom Blitz a week
early. How do you likum?
"Stink-um!"
Quiet, Desi! Annnyway, this
is how the site will look from this moment forward. It's
very modular, making it a cinch for me to maintain and
expand. I'm especially excited about the sidebar, which
makes navigation easier for the reader and updates a whole lot
less painful for myself. The sidebar is
contained inside its own page, then
transparently integrated into the rest of the site
through clever use of the iframe attribute. In layman's
terms, it means that when I add a new feature to the site,
I'll have to update just one page to reflect the change,
rather than a hundred. It probably goes without saying
that I'll be adding a similar sidebar to Awesome NES in the
very near future.
Speaking of the future, here's what I've
got planned for the site in 2009!
WII AND XBOX 360 REVIEWS: These
systems have been out for over two years now, yet coverage of
both consoles has been woefully thin on this site. It's
about time that changed.
FOLLY OF DIOGENES: Armed only with
a lantern, Greek cynic Diogenes searched in vain for an honest
person. Thousands of years later, this cynic will embark
on a similarly futile quest... to find an Xbox Community Game
that doesn't suck ass.
SHOOTER'S MISERY: The makers of
Fighter's Misery (that'd be me and John Roche, if he feels
like it) set their sights on the cheesiest shoot 'em ups
in the galaxy. The bi-curious bodybuilders of Cho Aniki
are only the tip of the asteroid!
ASSAULT OF THE INVADERS PART 3:
This decade has almost come to an end, so it's time to wrap up
this article to a close with reviews of Space Invaders Get
Even and other titles from the groundbreaking
series released in the 21st century.
Stay tuned, folks! 2009 is going
to be a big, big year for the Blitz!
| January 1, 20XX... The Year We
Make Contact
(placeholder) |
This is the proposed new front
page for The Gameroom Blitz. In the spirit of other
gaming web sites like GameSpite and 4 Color Rebellion, the
design has taken a turn for the simple, favoring content and
readability over splashy graphics. This has the added
benefit of skinnability, as future updates could pay tribute
to all kinds of video games with only a few
changes to the background, title bar, and sidebar.
Cascading style sheets would make this process even easier,
although I will have to learn to program in CSS before this
will be possible.
This new, more
straightforward design may spread from the front page to
the rest of the site, giving The Gameroom Blitz site the
consistency it has lacked since its first major redesign in
2001. The sidebar on the right can be used to hold a
wide variety of data and links, making it extremely versatile
and applicable to nearly every feature on the site. The
only difficulty, of course, is in adapting old pages to the
new design. This may take a very long time, especially
considering that the site has grown rather large in the past
twelve years and some pages have yet to be adapted to the
previous design. |