Good bye City of Heroes...

City of Heroes shut down the servers for the last time last Friday...I didn't enter the game, I forgot until my friend Napua mentioned it.  I reminisced with her about the game which she got into in the past couple of years.

A bunch of us got into the game when it launched back in 2004.  I remember we loaded them onto the PCs in the animation lab at UH and had some marathon gaming sessions while waiting for projects to render.

I remember the late nights and the dreaded 15 minute warning that the servers were going to shut down for the evening for maintenance...which was probably a good thing because the servers would shut down around 3am Hawaii time.  I remember seeing the giant octopus in the harbor for the first time and the huge number of players that would show up to battle the thing.  I remember when the giant snowmen were actually a threat and you couldn't really take him down by yourself.

Maybe it was because I was a lower level and working my way up but getting into a large group was actually fun and you needed the multiple players and a variety of classes to get by.  Maybe it was the community that had me continuously coming back for more.  The one thing I did know was that I played the game continuously for about 5 years until about 2009 and even after then, I would go back time to time to run around and fight crime in Paragon City.

I played a little World of Warcraft and I still play a little Champions Online but I didn't play either nearly as much as I did City of Heroes.

So when Napua said that the game kind of went out on a whimper rather than a bang, I was a little sad.  I was already sad that City of Heroes would be gone but I think I was more sad that instead of some grand exit, some ending akin to the end of the original City of Heroes Beta where the Ritki invaded, the game ended with...

Adam West gets his star

This isn't my picture but it's such a great picture that I hope the author of the photo doesn't mind if I use it.  If I had the money, I think I would have headed out to Hollywood to witness this in person.  Adam West got his star on the Hollywood walk of fame today April 5, 2012.  Hopefully he'll be at the New York Comic Convention later this October.  It'll be pretty cool to meet him again.

Went to Reid's annual Wrestlemania party at his house.  Reid's always a good host and this year we brought some wrestling themed snacks for the party.  We brought the Pepsi for CM Punk (his logo), a can of Monster energy drink (Kane; Big Red Monster), a "pie" for the Rock, a box of Fruity Pebbles for John Cena and for the old school wrestlers, we had a couple of Slim Jims for Macho Man/Edge and a couple cans of Pringles for Paul Bearer (Percy Pringle; the Undertakers old manager).  

Kawaii Kon 2012...

We went to the Kawaii Kon this past weekend.  We usually go only one out of the three (four?) days and see our pals Jon J. Murakami and Sam Campos at their respective booths.  It's always great to see all the costumed characters running around but this year there was a couple of guys dressed as Batman and Bane from the Dark Knight Rises.  One of the highlights of the "Kon" for me.

I did think it was interesting and actually great that there were a lot of non-anime/manga related characters at this years event.  Don't think it'll happen but I think that the con could grow bigger if it opened itself up to more genres.  Still, had a good time this year at the event.

Justice League: Doom

Justice League: Doom!
I picked up my copy of Justice League: Doom early this morning before work and couldn't wait until I got home to watch it.

Based on the JLA Tower of Babel story line from 2000, this was another animated movie from the DCU.  The animation was beautiful, seemingly having an anime influence (IMO) and yet at the same time, different than the designs from the other DCU animated movies.  The one thing I really like about these movies is that there is a bit of familiarity in the animation but at the same time each one has it's own style and often times, reflecting the art work of the original artists.

I really enjoyed the story, they of course had to modify it to fit in the time frame allotted but still a great adaptation.

A great documentary on the late Dwayne McDuffy as well as a memorandum to him at the end of the film was also a nice add to the combo set.  The only thing I was a little disappointed about was that the set did not include a DCU short.  Maybe I got spoiled but it was one of the things I looked forward to in these releases (other than the feature itself).  Hopefully the next release has one in it...maybe an Aquaman story...

Ryujin Mabuya

This past Saturday 2/25/2012 CBG night at the movies: Ryujin Mabuya.  A small group of us went to check out this tokusatsu movie of the recent TV series.  I've never seen the series before and only heard a little rumblings of it because it was playing on OC16...which was a bit weird because OC16 is supposed to show only locally produced shows (from my understanding at least) but this was a show produced in Japan.

It was basically an origin movie but I think that for the most part, it is like your typical tokusatsu/sentai movie in that the movie is an off-shoot stand alone movie from the regular series.  The subtitles were a bit rough and it dragged o a little bit but for the most part, it was an enjoyable movie.  Not bad for what seems like a lower budgeted movie.  Nothing like Toei's Kamen Rider or Super Sentai movies as of late but still enjoyable if you like the genre.

I hope we can see Sam's Dragon Fly on the big screen too some day soon!

My gaming iPod Touch

 When I got my first iPod Touch a couple of years ago, one of the main reasons (other than listening to music) was so that I could play Dragon's Lair on it.  Having played almost every home version of the game that came out since the original hit back in 1983, I was so amazed that I could play a near arcade perfect version of the game on a system that fit in my pocket.

I never expected that my "music player" at the time would become my portable gaming machine.  Gone were the days of carrying around my Nintendo DS or my Sony PSP.  I still carry those around from time to time but I almost always have my iPod Touch with me.

That being said, I'm loving some of the new games coming out for the system...As a huge fan of Law & Order (primarily SVU) I downloaded Law & Order Legacies as soon as I saw it on iTunes.  It was a pleasant surprise...even more so when I read that it was supposed to have cross overs from other L&O properties.

I was a little bummed though when I found out that none of the original voices returned (exception to Jerry Orbach) and that the cross overs from other L&O franchises were limited to Olivia Benson from SVU and Mike Logan from CI.  It's not all bad as I love the animation and the stories/game presented so far (5 of the 7 episodes to date).  I would have loved it even more though if there were SVU-centric and CI-centric episodes.  I would have loved to see animated versions of the rest of the SVU crew, espeically Detective Stabler or Detecive Goren from CI.

I'll take what I can get for now because it's still fun to play and it's kind of like watching the episodes on TV to an extent...even more so when you have to wait for them to update and release the next "episode".

I also picked up Wrestlefest today.  This was a great game that my friends and I used to play at the arcade back in the day.  I enjoyed the game so much back in the day that a few months ago, I tried to see if I could get an emulator to run it on my phone...it didn't work.  At the same time, I was wondering why the WWE didn't have some kind of official app on the store.  They had the "Angry Birds" clone of Superstar Slingshot but it was just an Angry Birds clone with WWE covering over it.

Wrestlefest took the arcade game from the 90's and updated the graphics and wrestlers.  The DL content also adds to it as we are supposed to get even more wrestlers down the line I believe.  Not as fun as I remember but a good time killer on a portable device in my pocket.  Maybe it's too easy, maybe the graphics are too clean, maybe my memories of it made the game grander than what it was but not something I regret paying for.

2012 NEW YEAR

I thought I'd give this a go again...

With all the craziness that happened last year, I thought I'd see if I could try this again...blog, draw etc... Hopefully I can keep up this year.