I was over at the local mall today buying myself a new pair of glasses. I decided to take a trip to Samgoody, aka the most over priced store on the planet, and see if they had anything cool. Samgoody is an awful store by the way. I was trying to browse through their Playstation collection and it was a nightmare. Nothing is in order, it’s this mix of old and new product, and everything is ridiculously expensive. There was a used copy of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter which looked like it was wrapped up in a shit, and was going for 20 dollars, where as I bought a copy for myself at Gamestop a few months ago for 6.99.

Unfortunately, there are no more specialty shops in this mall, so this store is the only place where you’ll find cool American and Japanese toys that you likely won’t find at Toys R Us. Case in point, the new Jack Bauer figure from McFarlene. I wrote about this figure before, but it looks like it finally came out. At 20 bucks, it’s a little steep. Problem is, even if I found this thing on the net for cheaper, I’d probably still end up paying around 20 dollars with shipping. Since I’ve been looking so flipping forward to this figure, I didn’t mind the price so much. Heck, I’m on vacation too, I’m allowed to toss away some money if I want (glasses not included).

Of course he doesn’t look as good as the prototype, but it’s damn close. The problem is I don’t really have room for this figure anywhere. I’m debating taking it out of the box, not that I’m anal about that stuff, but sometimes certain figures look better packaged. This one might be one of them. For the Bauer fan, it doesn’t get much cooler than this.

In South Jersey, there aren’t many options when it comes to buying rare and classic video games. Obviously we can look up anything we want to on eBay, but nothing beats browsing around, holding items, looking at them, and salivating over their very presence. High off my Gamestop haul from a few months back, I asked an acquaintance where I could find old Dreamcast games (since the one Gamestop was clearing out DC titles, but only rubbish like NFL2k). He pointed me towards Next Level Videogames, a privately owned joint that was apparently only 30 minutes away from my house.

The Great Wall 

Whew! What a weekend so far. Today was the second day of the convention and foot traffic picked up a whole hell of alot in general from yesterday. There are tons and tons of toys and comic books to look through that if you were a hardcore comic-head, you’d loose your mind.

There’s all kinds of stuff going on. Sony has a pretty cool section with a bunch of playable games for all their platforms like “Lair” for the PS3 and “God of War” on the PS2. Unfortunately, we dont get much time to peruse the isles as we’re off to the side away from all the commercial tables and booths. There are a bunch of panels and what-nots happening from industry professionals. There’s a whole bunch of cos-players walking around, but most of the time I forget I have a camera and I don’t get to take their picture. However, we DID have a run-in with a particularly famous internet-celeb that we’re just gonna’ have to tell you all about later.

So in short, the con is going pretty well for us at The Shamoozal. We’re not exactly widely known. Most passerby’s look at our characters and don’t think much of them because they’re not your classic, comic book super hero, nor are they highly rendered artwork with cross hatching and shading. Most people don’t understand that these are ANIMATED characters that actually move, and that the characters are simple in design for this purpose. However, we do get some people when they walk by and see our work they get it. They like what they see and understand it. A few people even recognized our shorts and some actually laughed at a joke in them. Of course, this makes us feel all warm and giddy inside that I promptly peed myself like a child. Hah.

We Jack Bauer fans have a lot of waiting to do over the next few months. Okay, so this past season of 24 certainly wasn’t the finest in the series, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss spending Monday nights with my favorite CTU agents.

That said there is a whole world of 24 out there, including plenty of ways to spend time with Jack while we wait for Day 7 to arrive in January. You might be surprised by the amount of options, ranging from books to video games. Take a look.

Neca is working on a series of Castlevania figures which are due out before the end of the year. The smart folk over at Neca realize that the Simon Belmont from the original NES cover art as a barbarian is “the man” and have based their figure on his appearance. I think it’s a great decision, and I’ll be hunting that figure down the moment it’s released. Belmont has never looked better.

It’s not all barbarians though, as the other figures are Alucard, Dracula, and a Succubus. All of those designs are based off of their Symphony of the Night counterparts. You can find images of those figures (minus the Drac Attack) over at Neca’s Myspace page. My guess is you can expect to find them around the time Konami ships the Dracula X Chronicles for PSP. Can’t wait.

I certainly was a child of the 80’s. I remember when the very first episode of Transformers was aired, and then witnessed the glut of cartoons based off of toy lines sprawl across television. It was quite a spectacle. In an earlier post, nerdlogger “tdb” suggested we do a post on one of the other cartoons with transforming vehicles: M.A.S.K. I thought it was a damned good idea.

M.A.S.K. stands for “Mobile Armored Strike Kommand”. Dig that “K” in there. Now, if you ask me, Ed Boon and John Tobais must’ve been a huge fans of this show when they came up with Mortal Kombat’s title. That “k” just gives it that 80’s edge it so rightly deserves. It already has an insane cast of wacky characters none of whom wear the same uniform yet all belong to the same klub (hah I’m so clever), so all it needs now is a jamming 80’s theme song sung by some hair band wanna-be. Lucky for us it does:

With the release of the new theatrical Ninja Turtle movie, simply titled TMNT, I feel it’s time to take a moment to share a little retrospective of my favorite green machines. When I hear the words “Ninja Turtles” I can’t help but think back to my youth, the days when Turtle Power meant something, and when saying “radical” was acceptable, and cool.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Ninja Turtles; I hated them. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I remember a kid in my class brought the toys into school one day. A friend of mine and I were playing around with them when we decided that they were “stupid,” and proceeded to act like assholes and tear off their heads (that was when they had the soft heads). Immediately we realized we did bad and tried to reattach the heads, but failed. So we left them in a corner and probably went and ruined something else instead. Youths… a bunch of assholes.

It’s Valentine’s Day, the biggest pile of shit holiday ever conceived by a greeting card company. Still, one can’t help but think of their ’significant other’ on a day like this. I’m pretty lucky to have a wife that not only tolerates most of my habits, but also partakes in them with me. The first fight my wife and I ever had was over a game of Mario Kart 64, we had a whole racket going on to scam Tom Nook out of Bells and we were introduced at our wedding reception to the X-Files theme music.

So if you’re currently spoken for, what kind of geeky activities bring you both to mutual nerdgasm? Give us some feedback…

Remember when you used to go to the grocery store with your parents, and after checkout you would beg them to let you buy a little toy from those 25 cent machines? Yeah, those capsule machines were really cool when you didn’t know any better. However, once you hit a certain age, you realized that the toy inside sucked. It sucked big time.

When I went to Japan a few weeks ago, I discovered that feeling as a kid all over again. Capsule toys are huge in Japan, and some of those capsule toys are really cool. There are literally thousands of different machines to choose from, so the chances are you’ll find a machine you like and pump a couple hundred yen into one.

Honestly, before I went to Japan, I think I finally managed to squash my need for wanting toys. I had told myself that they are a waste of money, and that I simply don’t have the room for them anymore. The truth is, they are a waste of money and garbage, but when garbage is as cool as this stuff, it’s hard to resist.