Panning Silver: The Wrongo Superman (Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #114)
Silver Age comics, especially Silver Age DC comics, were ridiculous. If you're familiar with Superdickery, you know that the covers were insane, the plots were stupid, and the contrivances had their own contrivances. That's what made them so awesome in retrospect. That's what brings us to yet another new experimental feature, Panning Silver, where my experience as an expert comic book shopper (or at least an expert guy-who-goes-to-the-creepy-Russian-guy's-table-at-the-flea-market-and-spends-$6) gets us issues of these insane Silver Age stories and pick them apart.
Let's start with The Wrongo Superman, the first story in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #114, where Jimmy is clearly about to be raped by Superman and his two chain gang friends according to the cover. Those are faces that say "it's a party now!"
Listing Restlessly: Graphical Ages of Gaming
Welcome to Listing Restlessly, a new and irregular feature where we look at geek concepts and try to put them into categories that make some amount of sense. There's so much vagueness in gaming ("role-playing games," "casual games," "retro games,") that we need some way to separate these ideas. Let's start with the ages of gaming, an amorphous yet steadfast concept that everyone knows but few can define beyond "today's consoles" and "yesterday's consoles."
We've used "current-gen" versus "next-gen" versus "last-gen." Well, generations change. We've used "8-bit" versus "16-bit" versus "32-bit" versus "64-bit." Well, the Atari 2600 was 8-bit, and the Atari Jaguar called itself 64-bit when it wasn't, and the 64-bit Nintendo 64 lost the battle against the same-generation 32-bit Sony PlayStation. Instead of looking at bits and vague generations, let's look at what really defined the generations: the graphics. Specifically, what they looked like, and not what drives them. Here are the new ages of gaming. Four clearly defined ages and one semi-clearly defined half-age that run from the beginning of home video game systems to today.
2012: The year of Square-Enix?
2012. The year of dragon. The year of the apocalypse. An Olympic year. An election year. The year that vampires inherit the earth
10 Sketchy Toys and Gadgets From China (That You Can Get Delivered Here)
The toys you get at Toys R Us and the electronics you get at Best Buy (or both you get at Amazon) are nice, but they're limited by pesky industrial regulations and licensing laws. That means everything you buy is relatively well-built to safety standards and any characters or famous people on them are there with the express permission of the copyright holder. That leaves out the awesome rip-off and downright strange items you can get at dollar stores, flea markets, and the dark corners of the Internet. The products imported directly from China to be sold out of trucks, on cheap folding tables, or on rusty pegs in disreputable stores. Or to be relabeled and sold by nerds for a huge mark-up, but the idea still stands.
DealExtreme brings those products online. There are plenty of web sites where you can get sketchy toys and gadgets, but DealExtreme is the least Engrish-filled one I've seen (and the most seemingly legitimate, with actual customer reviews, track records, and security things on its site). Think of it as ThinkGeek's ugly, cheaper, more-interesting-because-he-knows-how-to-score-drugs brother. It's a strange mix of relatively legitimate, generic products, gadgets no one would ever need, and toys that most likely aren't endorsed by Disney/Nintendo/Marvel. It's awesome, even if it's like playing a game of retail Russian roulette.
I found ten of the most sketchy toys and gadgets on the site that you can get shipped here. And one more that you can't (or, if you can, you probably shouldn't for legal reasons). I will only make two lead poisoning jokes in this story, because you deserve the best.
The Guide to Identifying Video Game Special Editions: Special Edition
Not all game releases are created equal. Publishers love to put out different editions of games to make more money. They repackage, add extras, and raise the price to turn a $60 game into a $150 game, or turn a $20 bargain bin game into a $40 purchase a year after the fact. Limited and collector's editions can mean you get a ton of extra stuff with your game. They can also mean you're spending a lot of money on nothing. Just because it says limited doesn't mean it is, and your game might have plenty of collectibles or you might be spending an extra $40 on a soundtrack and an art book. Here's how to figure out whether a collector's/limited/ultimate/premium edition of a game is worth it.
The Museum of Weird Nerd USB Keys
Covering tech journalism, I tend to accumulate a lot of USB drives. Companies just give them away as press kits. Most of them are bulk-purchased, get-them-for-a-nickel drives with a logo on them, but a few are truly impressive. Add to that some collectors' drives I've gotten in my endless pursuit of gaming merchandise and I bring you the Museum of Weird Nerd USB Keys.
Anatomy of the Rage Quit
Well said, Sony Vice President of _______ Kevin Butler. In the midst of a brutal ass-whoopin', Killzone 3 gamer Legit_Bitness there demonstrated brutally incompetent mega-fail, but soldiered on with the grit of a gravel-eating shit miner. There may have been rage, but certainly no quit. I think we can all take this lesson to heart. What if the St. Louis Cardinals had rage quit when getting blown out? Or Rocky? Or the American revolution?
So with Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 promising to drastically spike the rates of thrown controllers, gnashed teeth, and incredulous shrieks of "I SHOT HIM IN THE HEAD!!!" in the waning months of 2011, I thought we'd pay some tribute to the various species in the Rage Quitter genus.
More Most Metal Video Games Ever
A year ago, I looked at the five most metal games ever made. Well, since then some really messed up games have come out, and my taste for metal has evolved. Well, mutated due to nuclear waste and other chemicals. Now, over at friend-of-the-site MetalSucks, that idea has been expanded into the seven most metal games ever made. check it out, and while you're there expand your perspective on the ancient and violent art that is metal.
90s TV Sci-Fi Messianic Space Station Captain Deathmatch: Sheridan Vs. Sisko
Take a trip with me back to the mid-90s. Star Trek is still relevant as a TV franchise and a handful of other popular sci-fi and fantasy shows dominate prime time. Well, semi-dominate. Two of the best long-running shows on are Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5. These two shows are very similar. They both take place on mostly-human-run space stations. They both take place in the middle of major wars. And they both star literally messianic badasses. Ben Sisko. Captain of Deep Space Nine and the USS Defiant. Emissary of the Prophets of Bajor. Fighter of the Dominion. John Sheridan. Captain of Babylon 5 and the White Star Fleet. Co-head of the Rangers. Fighter of the Shadows. These captains are badass heroes who saved their galaxies, but who was better? Let's find out.
Warhammer 40,000 Primer: A Guide to the Grimdark
Born in the depths of the eighties, Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 (or simply 40k) has grown from a relatively obscure miniatures battle game into a multimedia juggernaut, with a library of novels, a slew of video games, four separate tabletop RPG lines and even a movie (that went directly to DVD). These days millions of fans around the world wage war for the Imperium of Man, the powers of Chaos, the enigmatic Eldar, or any one of a myriad of other factions within the sprawling universe. While a lot of people are familiar with the setting through a number of different products, 40K is often a daunting prospect to try come to grips with due to the sheer amount of available material. Thankfully, Aggrogate is on hand to remedy this! We want to help new fans, or maybe those that have only been exposed to a fraction of what this sprawling universe contains, gain a broader understanding of the setting as a whole. Read on for a glimpse into the war torn monolith that is Warhammer 40k!
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