SNATCHER
I went right back into playing Snatcher for the Sega CD on Sunday morning.
I finished act 1, however I have an open guide with me now for moments where I’m 100% stumped. This game makes Cobra feel like a walk in the park with the amount of options and at times it can get really frustrating when you’ve missed one little option in the menu and need to backtrack. It’s worth it as there’s an immense sense of satisfaction when you complete an area and make progress. This game throws gritty cyber-punk story elements in your face with hard violence and adult situations. Plus if you are a Kojima fan or remember the good old days when Konami was great you’ll enjoy spotting references, cameos and recycled elements from past/future games.
When I was 12 I used to go to W.H. Smith’s in the mall to buy all my books and by chance that’s where I would find copies of Sega Mean Machines. It was an imported UK Sega gaming magazine which would come to $12 an issue and once a month my dad would give me $15 to fetch it. Against better judgment I would take these to school to read on my lunch but I got picked on by the girls in my class. I eventually started eating lunch in the computer lab because I didn’t need their shit. They were all into 90210 and still played with Barbie’s which I thought was obnoxious. Anyway, I got my first glimpses of Snatcher in the pages of that magazine and was blown away at how violent and sexy looking it was.
This is exactly what I wanted video games to be when I was a child. It was the same kind of excitement you’d get watching a movie or reading a book though it was way more stimulating because of how invested you felt towards the characters and story. It’s just great that this game is everything I’ve always dreamed it would be and that I can actually play it as it’s one of those elusive rare games for the Sega CD. I am a collector, but there are some games I’ll never own simply because of a collectors market.
DANK ART
Almost everyone I watch is getting ready for the 1CC Marathon Pasky is organizing. This is amazing news for me, not just because I am in it, but because a lot of my favourite games are being practiced and in turn means better Dank Arts as I am more excited and familiar with the games streamed.
Lord BBH was practicing NARC and I think he’s going to stick to playing it on Thursdays along with all the other games he’s entered. I love NARC. I remember seeing this game in arcades and thinking how insane and amusing the whole concept was. It’s a crime fighting game on drugs- everything is to the extreme and it doesn’t hold back in its zaniness. Mow crack dealers down with a car, arrest criminals or shoot them down, face off with the Big Boss at the end for some of the most “on drugs” end bosses you’ll ever see. It doesn’t just say “Drugs are a Crime”, it punches the message in crimes face for your amusement. Did I mention I like NARC? BBH also had his 600th Viewer Extravaganza on Saturday where for hours he played nothing but requests from his followers randomly for several hours. I sat in for most of it and made a bunch of fun Dank Art for the occasion. I like the randomizer, though I squirm when the viewers choice comes up as everyone always wants BBH to play the worst game in the list rather than the obvious good choice. I get that some games are really terrible and are an experience, but when total garbage wins over a quality game it’s not as entertaining for me unless I can salvage it with something supremely dank. Oh well- you take some and you lose some.
On certain Sundays, iast has a Shmups Randomizer which is totally worth checking out if you are into Shmups. Since a lot of Shmups are technical in design or focuses on the shooting itself it’s harder to come up with concepts for Dank Art. When I can capture something from a game I get very excited. It’s also a great chance for me to actually draw planes, cars, or any vehicle as it’s a challenging object for me to whip up quickly.
Fantastic Planet has this passion for PS1 games and though he’s not on a mission to play every single one like Puri Puri, he finds crazy over looked titles and tries to complete them just out of the sheer challenge. Occasionally he’ll do a Time Gal playthru (which I am a huge fan of). This was a strange Magical Girl style game called chou kousoku gran doll and it had a very strange Magical Girl ending. I think I am the only one who’s done chou kousoku gran doll fan art,
Pjoxt is a wizard and likes games with Wizards in them because that’s what the society of Wizards do when they are not out wizarding. I have this amusing back story that Pjoxt works at his local Wizard factory and it’s basically a large building with many different hallways and rooms where he walks around performing acts of wizardry and occasionally all hell breaks loose when some clumsy hero with a sword comes in & starts hacking up the place. You THINK being a Wizard is like Harry Potter, but it’s a lot of dungeon crawling, hardcore strategy, complex quests and endless wizardry conquests to dark terror core metal. That’s what I think when I think of Wizards.
I also like tuning into ex_Mortis’s casual streams as he plays a random selection of whatever he likes and it’s more about hanging out and enjoy the game and the chat- kind of what I really like about video games with friends. Just hanging out and enjoying the game together on a lazy afternoon instead of wasting it in a pub or a shopping centre (do people still think shopping is fun??)
Murphagator was playing one of my favourite beat em ups for the Sega Genesis Streets of Rage 2. This is a rare occasion when I couldn’t photograph or upload the Dank Art mainly because I’m at work or working in a cafe with really crumbs internet and too many people. I loved this game as a kid not just because it was fun and I loved pretending I was Blaze turbo kicking the crud out of everything. I had an overactive imagination as a child and had this whole back story for her and wanted to dress up as her for Halloween. My mom thought the costume wouldn’t be appropriate for a 11-year-old girl. Blaze is incinerating class over other girls from games I could have dressed up as (looking at you, Camando-ass Cammy… who I dressed up for Halloween when I was 24 :/)
I couldn’t sleep much this week so I was happy that Macaw was doing 1CC attempts of The Super Spy, a game that is dominated by BBH. Don’t believe me? Look up the strategy guide he wrote for it here. It’s a “Punch-Out” style Neo Geo game where you fight a team of terrorists who try to take over buildings and bring down the establishment. You don’t get any weapons on starting, but you pick up things like a knife that rusts super fast or guns that hostages have recovered. Theres also only one female bad-guy character, but she crazy bad and majorly difficult. Her name is Pink & she’s like top-tier Femme Fatale. I showed some concept art to my buddy Sarah who loves to paint FF’s and even she commented that she was dangerous. Why not make her the final boss? I could totally see the world’s evilest terror group being run by a woman. Besides lots of Super Spy, Macaw played a bunch of interesting DOS games, the stand out one being Robinson’s Requiem. It’s a space survival simulation game where your character is stranded on a strange planet and you got to explore this dangerous landscape while using your wits to survive. When I was in grade 6 (and I think for most Canadian’s in grade 6) I was forced to watch Voyage of the Mimi and do all the painfully ridiculous educational programs that came with it. I always figured this style of education was a total cop-out when I was a child because all the teacher had to do was press play on the giant TV and stand in the dark classroom as we all ripped on it. The only good thing that came from this was the computer game which was my first time playing a survival strategy game. Maybe it’s worth hunting it down and streaming it someday as I do have very fond memories of hiding in the computer lab playing it and other edu-tainment video games on those ancient Apple IIgs. Also waggon wheels, configurations and Pirate Booty streams.
The softer side of things
I said good luck to Rebecca on Wednesday. She was our office summer high school student this year at my main Social Media job. We had a going away party for her and as difficult as it was for me to take a day off work I kinda owed it as a friend to be there.
I work with some incredible women and I wish I knew girls like this when I was growing up. I always felt a terrible dread when I wasn’t accepted around other girls when I was younger and it made going to class and building on strong and healthy relationships later on in my life a challenge. Though as I get older and stop giving any real fucks about what people think about me I’m starting to build on stronger relationships. I like people for being beautiful and real beauty lies in how kind you are and what you can give of yourself. If I could give Rebecca any sort of advice on her road to becoming a woman is to look for those qualities in people and the sooner you start making yourself happy instead of looking towards the acceptance of others you’ll stop giving all the fucks and enjoy life.
Yes- we bought her a selfie stick as part of her going away gift. Get over it- look how much fun it is.
I write this knowing the day before I was attacked by a man at my other job simply because I couldn’t provide him the service he wanted. I hate talking about the more horrible things that happen to me, but they happen. I don’t know what is going thru the mind of a 40 something family man when he’s calling me derogatory names and throwing a cell phone at my face, but that’s what happened. I stood there like a zombie sighing”oh no not again”. It brought back a lot of terrible feelings and stress I’ve been trying to deal with but not because of the attack but with how dead & defeated I accepted it. If this was younger me I’d be screaming, fighting back, but there I was just taking it and realizing that was worse than the attack itself. I couldn’t sleep, I was breaking out in hives, I was exhausted and I found it really hard to enjoy anything. Some days it was like all I had to look forwards to was making art so thank you for streaming and giving me a reason to keep going.
Greg spontaneously called me on Saturday and dragged me out of this terrible funk I was in from all the stress.
We went for lunch and we drove to Georgetown where we visited Wastewise, one of the larger recycling depots in the area. They recently shut down the Burlington location and the Goodwill shut down in town so it’s one of the few reuse centres still running. Some people wont even go into a second-hand shop or they get turned off by the smell or sight of what they think is trash, but if you can handle it you might find some treasure. Theres also an allure that you are buying things on the cheap so you can get trapped into buying a bunch of crud you don’t really need. Taking photos of such finds is one way of treasure collecting without bringing home things you don’t need. Places like these are the last stop before the landfill and you can only think it’s the bottom end of someone’s failed garage sale. The day’s of finding anything worth value at these places are long gone though it’s nice to walk around and check things out. We also stopped by The Game Hoard in the mall where I picked up a copy of ESwat which was iast’s choice for Funkdoc to 1CC on his stream.
Pro tip: If there is a Sega Arcade port of the game I’m going to hunt it down and own it.
I felt worlds better after getting some fresh air, lunch and making piles of art later in the afternoon for BBH’s extravaganza stream.
I also had pie. This is the pie I had. I was so happy to have this pie that I sang the pie song. It’s basically this song but replace all instances of “high” with “pie”. I should make this my new karaoke song and order a slice of pie so I’m ready for the occasion when my name is called.
Got a problem with pie? Deal with it. Also, whats wrong with you?
