Posting yesterdays article about the Captain N DVDs reminded me about a video Frank made many years ago. I listed a handful of characters from the show like Mega Man, Pit, and Simon, but I forgot to mention the most offensive character of all, Gameboy.

That’s right, somehow Gameboy was a character in Video Land. Isn’t Captain N basically inside of an NES? I guess not since he was zapped into his TV. Regardless, how the hell did Gameboy get in there? They should have just had the NES show up as a character, along with the NES Advantage, Zapper and Power Pad. I hated Gameboy the moment he showed up on the show. They could have had so many other awesome characters join the show like Samus, or Ryu Hayabusa, but they choose freaking Gameboy. I guess it’s better that way, they already wrecked all the other classic characters, so why not give life to a piece of hardware, it’s a clean slate I guess.

Getting back on track, Frank made the following video as a tribute to Gameboy. Relax and enjoy the antics of Gameboy from Captain N, and when you’re done, maybe you’ll actually get the joke at the end of “Stroopid Test.”

Wow, I wasn’t on the Smorgas Board all day, I come home to check it out and see that someone totally sent Steve over the edge. Come on guys, support the cause, spread the love!

“You know, diggnation, this week in tech, 1up yours, all these podcasts have one thing in common… thousands and thousands of listeners.

Shamoozal Radio Podcast? Not so much, but we’re trying.

Those guys put out an episode and it’s gonna get dugg right to the front page of the Digg Podcast section. They also have corporate sponsors helping them out, but that’s neither here nor there.

Felt it was worth mentioning that the “complete” series of Captain N slipped under the radar and came out on DVD today. I use the term “complete” loosely because it’s actually missing the absolutely dreadful third season. Considering that Captain N is absolutely dreadful to begin with, saying that the third season is bad really means something. Still, it would have been nice if it were included.

For the unfamiliar, Captain N was a cartoon series released in the late 80s, during the height of Nintendo’s popularity. It was about a gamer named Kevin who was sucked into his TV while fighting King Hippo in Punch Out!. Kevin arrives in “Video Land” which is basically a hub to all other video games. There he meets up with some generic Princess, and helps fight off the evil forces of Mother Brain along with a rag tag group of awesome game characters turned lame. Seriously, when you have legends such as Mega Man, Simon Belmont, and Pit from Kid Icarus all in the same show fighting the forces of evil, you would expect amazing things. Somehow the people responsible for this show managed to take our beloved characters and completely destroy them.

Mega Man went from the tough blue bomber, to a little turd in a green suit, and says “mega” before every other word. Pit, renamed “Kid Icarus”, had an annoyingly scratchy voice, and was just as miserable looking as Mega Man. Perhaps the highest offender was Simon Belmont. If you read the “Castlevania: Bring Back the Barbarians” article, you would know that Simon Belmont is a man’s man. However, this Simon Belmont was to busy being concerned about his looks rather then fighting bats and medusas. Then again, looking at the lead characters from Castlevania games these days, maybe the guys who decided to make Simon a fairy weren’t to far off the mark.

Tuesday on the Shamoozal means DVD talk.
If you haven’t caught on to the format yet, then I’ll give you the rundown. First I’ll show what I think are the major releases listed by cover art. Then I’ll give a little info on the movie plus my personal opinion thrown in here and there. After that I’ll give a short list of some other random releases for the day because to be honest tons of random DVDs come out so I might not list every single one. Then I’ll sum it all up by giving you the best bet on what you should buy if you had to choose one. And now we proceed…

Stranger Than Fiction is about a writer who’s newest book is based on someone’s real life… but neither of them know it until the man starts hearing the narration. The Return is a horror movie which could basically be called The Grudge 3 or even The Ring 3 because it has creepy dead kids and crazy moving ghost girls. That’s the formula for most horror movies these days. The Tenacious D movie is the fictional story about how the real life comedy band formed. A Good Year is about a jerk played by Russell Crowe inheriting a vineyard where he used to live. He meets people he used to know and probably has some boring life changing event involving a chick. Tideland is a creepy movie from Monty Python alum, director Terry Gilliam. Its all about a little girl who is a part of a messed up family and needs to create her own little fantasy world to get by. Its pretty sick and disturbing at some points.

Other releases coming out are a 3rd version of Alexander because director Oliver Stone SWEARS it’s a good movie and maybe he’s thinking 3rd times a charm in order to get that point across. And there’s The Land Before Time VII (WOW!! SEVEN!). On the TV show front we get Voltron Volume 3 and Magnum PI Season 6. Robots and Moustaches baby!

Normally, I don’t pay any attention to the Academy Awards, but last night I decided to watch a little bit of the “ceremony,” a term I use lightly. It only took one shot of the crowd to make me realize how full of crap these things are. Just look at the smug look on all the actor’s faces. Honestly, you can just see how important they think they are, with their glowing smiles and nods of approval. One glimpse of Marky Mark in the crowd was enough to make my hand turn into a fist. To steal a joke from South Park, that room is probably the smelliest room in the whole world because everyone in there is just sitting in their own farts and loving it. Needless to say, I stopped watching it less than 5 minutes later.

As far as I’m concerned, these awards don’t exist anymore. I could care less what movie wins what award. The only thing I know is that The Departed won a bunch of stuff, but I couldn’t name you the categories. You know, I like movies as much as the next guy, but the fact of the matter is that movies aren’t this important. If the entire film industry crashed tomorrow, the world would move on, and it would smell a heck of a lot less too.

Yesterday marked the release of the Playstation Network’s first big EDI title, flOw. I’ve been looking forward to this game ever since I spent a couple hours being absorbed by the flash version of the game. Without going into too much history, flOw was originally part of Jenova Chen’s (one of the games creators) thesis research at the USC Interactive Media Division. I spent a couple hours playing the PS3 version last night and the following article are my general impressions on it so far (in other words I would not call this a review in any way).

The game is 1 part Tech demo for the SIXAXIS controller, 3 parts Art Piece. I’m not sure calling it a ‘game’ is fair since it feels more like an interactive experience, this is something you’ve probably heard before. The d-pad and dual-analog sticks are not usable at all (not even though an options menu), instead you tilt the controller in the direction you want to move and press any of the buttons to do a brief accelerated dash. This takes some getting used to as the sensitivity of the controller seems be a little touchy. After a while of playing it felt much more natural and I really didn’t think about it anymore.

The premise is pretty simple, you start out towards the top of the water and begin guiding your little organism around, eating and absorbing other single cell organisms. As you grow, you start to go deeper into the water where you will face more complex organisms that you must also eat. Once you reach a certain depth, you will go back to the top and be ‘reborn’ as a different type of organism (slight spoiler, sorry). I only played for a couple hours, so I’m not sure how many different types of organisms there are. For some reason it reminded me of a puzzle game, like when you get to a new song/color scheme in Lumines or Tetris. I mean this in more of a conceptual way than literally.

Movies, Movies, Movies.
Man I need to find something else to talk about on the Shamoozal besides movies. I know you guys are counting on quality updates and right now I have nothing else besides movie talk. I’m the Jay Sherman of the Shamoozal. IT STINKS!

This sure doesn’t look like Ace Ventura to me.

THE NUMBER 23 – Jim Carrey takes on another serious role playing a normal dude who reads a creepy book titled The Number 23. As he reads it, he becomes pretty sure the book is based on his life. Apparently it drives him batcrap crazy and he becomes some paranoid psychopath trying to explain the logic behind his madness. It looks extremely weird… but in a good way. I’m curious to see how it all pans out. I’m a fan of Jim Carrey comedy, but I also enjoy him in The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine which were more serious than his usual stuff. This is drastically different than anything else he’s done so I wish him luck with it but I’d rather see him do some silly comedy. I’d like to check out this one eventually but not on opening weekend or maybe not in theaters at all. Someday….

The faces of justice in Reno, Nevada

If there is something that will always blow my mind, it has to be old WWF interviews, especially any interview dealing with Hulk Hogan or Macho Man Randy Savage. When the two of them do an interview together? Forget about it, it’s absolutely insane. The following video is so important, that I feel it needs to be analyzed, second by second.

The first thing I want to point out is that I love that Macho Man is called “Madness.” Is he the only wrestler whose nickname has a nickname? He seems to have as many names as Apollo Creed. Anyway, the most important scene to point out is the opening. We see Macho and Hogan come in, hands up, fingers shaking and wiggling,

“We really don’t now what we’re dealing with here man.” Proclaims the Hulkster.

So here’s a quick story I thought I’d post up here since the Nerdlog is looking lean today.

Its around 4:30 PM and my buddy turns to me asking if I wanted to get out and go get a coffee. I work in NYC, so its no big deal to go for a quick walk and grab something to eat. We put on our coats and after dodging a bunch of deluded sociopaths in the hallway who are under the delusion that they are “actors”, we go outside.

The second -and I mean the second- we got outside I knew we just stepped into something. There were a bunch of guys who we work with out there already grabbing a smoke. The one dude is facing the corner of the building like the guy at the end of “The Blair Witch Project”, and they other two are giggling like school girls blowing smoke out thier noses. My buddy and I stop in our tracks and give them them a quizzical look. One of them points down the street, and just goes, “that guy over there is taking a shit”.

And sure enough, there he was.

The man was pop’n a squat on the corner of Astor Place like he was in the middle of a corn field. It was shocking. His multiple layers of jeans and sweat pants are balled up by his ankles as he drops a duece on the side walk. I only catch a glimpse of that, but I got a pretty good view of what he did next. In lieu of any available toilet paper, he proceeds to take his baseball cap off his head and WIPE HIS ASS WITH IT. He gives it one or two swipes, and then in one fell swoop he completed the deed in the only way that could have made it any better/worse.

It’s a wonderful Tuesdee morning, meaning its DVD Release Day. Like always, let’s just get right into the swing of things. Below is some cover art for the major releases today. Continue reading for more information and my opinion on what I would buy.

The Prestige is the latest release from Memento/Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan which is about 2 rival magicians who let things get personal in their acts. Babel is about an American couple (Brad Pitt & Cate Blanchett) in a foreign country, the woman gets shot, and the press labels it terrorism. For Your Consideration is from This Is Spinal Tap director Christopher Guest; it’s a ridiculous story about filming a low budget movie. Man of the Year is about Robin Williams as a comedian becoming President, I think Robin’s career is officially over and this may be the proof. Flushed Away is an animated movie about a rich rat having to live in the sewers with all the scum, and from what I hear, compared to other animated comedies these days, it stinks.

A couple other releases for today are Open Water 2 (how can there be a sequel?!), A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints with Robert Downey Jr, Flight Of Fury with Steven Seagal which had this review on Amazon.com, “Anyone who seeks out a Steven Seagal movie has certain expectations: Bone-crunchingly brutal martial arts action; spiritual or ecological wisdom uttered in Seagal’s hoarse monotone; and one long relentless scowl. Flight of Fury fails to deliver on all counts.” Then on the TV show season front we get Family Ties Season 1. The Keatons have officially hit DVD.