Yesterware

If the internet isn't careful, Chuck Norris might just have to give it a roundhouse kick to the face. And then where would we all be? I've been hearing a lot of really funny un-facts about Chuck Norris lately, things like: When Chuck Norris sends does his taxes he sends in blank forms with a picture of himself crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has never had to pay taxes...ever There are about a million more, everything to Chuck roundhouse kicking his wife to curing blindness and then roundhouse kicking the formerly blind man. I even got into the fun and made up some of my own like: Chuck Norris was once shot in the abdomen by a 10-gauge round at point blank range while drinking a glass of water. The slug fell to the floor and Chuck finished drinking without spilling a drop. He was disappointed, however because his lawyers refused to let him use video footage of the incident to advertise the "Total Gym" exercise machine like he had intended. "Result...

So I went to the movies on Saturday to catch a couple flicks - End of the Spear and Underworld:Evolution, and we had time, so we went ahead and saw Tristan and Isolde as well. Here's what I thought of them. End of the Spear Rated PG-13 A group of missionaries move to the Amazon basin to try and make contact with the indigenous peoples to spread the Gospel of Christ. This is the true story of their life and death struggle, and devotion to their faith. The story centers around the Waodani tribe, a group made famous in the area by their willingness to shed blood. The mundane aspects of real life necessary to frame the story sometimes cause the pacing to feel a little slow and bland, but the irony is that when you see the strength these characters gain through their faith, it is a challenge to remember that this is a factual account of something that actually happened - it's that profound. There are moments of excitement interspersed throughout. There are also healthy doses ...

One of the main driving factors for me to buy an XBOX 360 was to play Final Fantasy XI. I was a bit miffed to find out that Microsoft lied when they listed it as a launch title. The Japanese XBOX 360 was shipping with a beta version of FFXI so it was kinda obvious that there was no way they would make launch. Anyway I thought I was going to have to import the goofy thing to get a chance to play it, but lo and behold the February issue of the Official XBOX magazine shipped with the North American version of the demo...Yay! So I got my hot little hands on the demo today and I had a chance to find out all the little things that I wanted to know that nobody ever bothered to explain. It's a beta, of course, so some of this may change before the game is released. Right now it's set for August of '06. Graphics: The game supports 1080i and it looks gorgeous. The textures look to be straight out of the PC version, so essentially it looks just like you're playing on the PC ...

I went out to buy three games that were supposed to be released today, and none of them are available. I double-checked the release dates with 1up.com, with the publishers, and with EBGames.com - they all say the games are available today. Why is it that I can never go out and buy a game on the release date? I've been told by a couple of EB and Best Buy managers that what gets published as a "Release Date" is actually the date a product ships. This seems a little silly to me because, quite simply, if I can't buy something on that date and take it home and hug it (hugging is optional) then it's not really "out" yet. Do game companies have so little respect for consumers like me that they feel they can make a promise like a release date and then not make good on it? (I'm not talking about release dates that are pushed back. I'm talking about ones that aren't - Mega Man X Collection for example) I don't even care that the games come out ...

Developer: Game Arts Publisher: SquareEnix System: PS2 Number of Discs: 2 Version Reviewed: Japan ( USA version box pictured) Number of Players: 1 Release Date (Japan/U.S.) Aug 04, 2005/Mar 01, 2006 -Overview- Grandia III is THE best RPG I've played in the 128-bit console generation. Nothing lights a candle to it in my book. Grandia III is actually the fifth game in the series including Grandia(Saturn, Playstation), Grandia II (Dreamcast, PS2, PC), Grandia: Parallel Trippers(GBC), Grandia Xtreme(PS2). Good Points: Finely-tuned battle system, gorgeous belongs-in-a-museum art design, unparallelled character development, awesome story, eye-popping special effects, steady pacing, excellent voice acting (Japanese version - I have yet to hear the US rendition). Bad Points: No widescreen support. Difficulty seems to triple when you start disc 2. Gameplay - Grandia III has taken the awesome battle system from the previous games and tweaked it to perfection, allowing for very intuitive an...

My fondness for the 1985 animated film Vampire Hunter D has always been a bittersweet one. I first saw the movie late at night on TBS in 1994. I absolutely loved the animation style, the very dark subject matter, and silent and deadly main character. When I tried to describe it to people, words failed me. I spent more time than I can remember pouring through TV guide hoping to see that it was coming on again so I could tape it. Unfortunately, I didn't have Internet access back then. No Internet=no Google. No Google=how the hell did we ever find anything back then? Well, I used to use the phone book. I called every store in the yellow pages under "Video Rental/Sales" until I found a Suncoast that actually had a copy of it in their "Japanimation" section. Yay! So I bummed a ride to Suncoast and bought it right up for the handsome sum of $30. (Man, I can't believe how expensive anime was back then!) Unfortunately, the copy I purchased just happened to not have...

Transformers are the coolest toys. I still remember getting one for my birthday more than twenty years ago. It was Starscream. I didn't know he was a "bad guy" at the time. In fact, it was a relatively new concept for me to actually like the bad guy, but the Decpeticons were cool too! Anyway, I just completed my collection of the "Commerative Series" with Astrotrain. He just arrived in the mail from Hasbro Direct (The only way to get them outside of Ebay.) It's rumored that there are only going to be 3000 made. Most of the other transformers in the series were available at Toys 'Я' Us or Amazon.com (posing as toysrus.com) but alas all good things must come to an end. Astrotrain is the 22nd and currently last in the series. All in all I've managed to score 26 domestically reissued transformers from Generation 1 - those in the commerative series, and the four Autobot Mini-Cars that were re-released as keychains (what's that about?) And yes, I e...

To anyone who's a huge video game nut, this is probably old news, but Square Enix has made a direct sequel to the uber-popular Final Fantasy VII, but it's not a game, it's a movie and if online retailers can be believed, it will be released in North America on DVD on January 10th. I, for one, can't wait. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Final Fantasy VII is the game that arguably put the Playstation on the map - it is the largest single contributing factor to Sony overtaking Nintendo for domination of the video game market. No, it wasn't Sony's marketing genius or amazingly disposable consoles, it was Final Fantasy VII. Traditionally Final Fantasy games have only been linked to one another by a few coincidental characters, and some loose themes. For example, nearly every Final Fantasy game has a character named Cid. Most of them have large birds called Chocobos which are used in place of horses for transportation. But the games thems...