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Fallout is coming to your streaming device via Amazon.

by Aaron Williams on July 3, 2020 at 3:48 AM
Posted In: The Idiot Box, Video Gaming


Bethesda Softworks is teaming up with Amazon to bring you Fallout: The Series, or perhaps it’ll have no secondary title. According to Variety, it’s going to have “the games’ ‘harsh tone,’ which making sure it is still ‘sprinkled with moments of ironic humor and B-movie-nuclear-fantasies which players of the epic franchise know and love.”

It’s from the same people making Westworld, so I expect it to be competently written. I’d say that it’s going to be a hard sell for new viewers given the setting is “what if the future was Atompunk that then got itself nuked,” but then again I wouldn’t have bet that a show involving android cowboys would work in this day and age when westerns are about as hot as any hopes of another Young Guns sequel is. I can see a few other things this show will have to establish that may or may not fly with viewers and/or fans:

• Radiation and nuclear stuff is magic, and technology is a heck of a lot more robust than in real life. Two of the conceits of the Fallout franchise is that radioactivity (with the help of a Forced Evolutionary Virus) creates mutated creatures, and computers that run on vacuum tubes (as well as their power sources) can function for over 200 years. Of course, we’ve had some pretty similar tropes in Star Trek and the like, so maybe this won’t be as difficult as I imagine.

• For the most part, everywhere looks like the Australian desert. This is mostly in keeping with the Road Warrior vibe of the first game as well as it taking place in the desert southwest. When Fallout 3 came out, it’s been 200 years after the bombs fell and the DC ruins are still full of burned trees, no vegetation, and sunbaked soil. Maybe they’ll blame climate change?

• If it’s set in the same place as one of the existing games, the lore is going to be all over the place. Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 did a number on previously established canon, especially when it comes to certain factions, ghouls and if they need to eat or drink, etc. A TV show is going to either have to either set up its own continuity (kind of like how comic book movies do) or they’ll do the best they can with what Bethesda gives them. I think it’s best if this is front-loaded to the viewers somehow so they know what to expect.

• Aliens exist, but I hope they stay out of the show until at least season 2. They started out as an Easter Egg and then they got their own DLC in Fallout 3, leaving the game with a ship in orbit that… I’m not sure why they were there in the first place. I’ve seen theories that they may have helped cause the Great War, but even if they didn’t, I’m not sure why they stuck around all this time. And apparently the ship *has* been around that long, if not longer, given the game has frozen humans dating back to feudal Japan on board.

That’s all the panicked thoughts I could come up with while not heavily caffeinated. Again, this could be a decent production, if not actually good. I’m just hoping Todd Howard stays out of the creative process. He’s not great with main quests, and since a linear narrative is pretty much one big main quest, perhaps he should leave it to others and maybe go back to fixing bugs with Fallout 76?

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Probably the best game/thing value for money right now, and a good cause…

by Aaron Williams on June 14, 2020 at 4:40 PM
Posted In: Video Gaming

Itch.io is selling a Bundle for Racial Justice & Equality right now, which consists of over 1,200 items, most of them video games. Among the ones I (and my son) liked:

• Sky Rogue, a retro-ish air combat game that takes me back to my misspent youth playing Skyfox.

• Hidden Folks, a black-and-white hand-drawn “Where’s Waldo” sort of game where all of the sound effects are made by someone with their mouth.

• Celeste, one of the better platformers I’ve played in recent memory.

• The White Door, from the developers of the Lynchian Rusty Lake series of point-and-click adventures.

• One Shot, a game where the less you know about it going in, the better. But it’s good.

• Knightmare Tower, one of the launch yourself as high as you can games, where you can buy upgrades and stuff, but you also have arcade-style combat on your ascent.

And that’s barely the tip of the iceberg. If you want new RPG rules, settings, or just sourcebooks to crib from, there are *loads* of them in the bundle, as well as assets for making your own video games. Anyway, it’s available for just over one more day as of this posting, and it gets a thumbs up from my kid and his library of games his mother wishes he wouldn’t spend so much time playing!

Banner image above is from Syscrusher, a retro-ish first-person shooter where you blows up robits. It’s also a part of the bundle.

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A small bit of super-humor to take our minds back to happier times…

by Aaron Williams on June 3, 2020 at 3:16 AM
Posted In: Sequential Artistry, The Internetonomicon

I think this needs to happen at every convention… once we have conventions again:

For those who’re not aware of the origin of this particular dance, it’s from this internet classic by Marlon Webb.

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Want to watch me cosplay as Ram-Man for almost three hours?

by Aaron Williams on May 20, 2020 at 2:03 AM
Posted In: Mystery Clip Theater, Stuff with magic and swords, Tabletop Gaming

And when I say “cosplay,” I really mean “wear a cake pan on my head while playing an RPG with the Dead Gentlemen.” We played a Masters of the Universe game, where I gained a new respect for the power of teamwork, friendship, and a cybernetic neck:

They’re streaming five nights a week over on Twitch, and who knows? I might be allowed back on the air as soon as the complaints stop.

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With apologies to Peter Jackson and probably Howard Shore…

by Aaron Williams on April 24, 2020 at 2:50 AM
Posted In: Cineplexia, You call that noise "music?"

This was something made a while ago, but I just ran across it. Even The Lord of the Rings somehow works when paired with ABBA’s “Mamma Mia”:

I wonder if the battle for Minas Tirith can be set to “Waterloo”?

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No offense to Stephen King, but people are citing the wrong apocalypse fiction.

by Aaron Williams on April 3, 2020 at 2:05 AM
Posted In: The Idiot Box

If you find post-apocalyptic fiction a little upsetting nowadays, feel free to skip this post.

For those out there who dig “what happened after” stories, you’ve probably seen comparisons of COVID-19 to the novel, “The Stand,” where a weaponized flu strain wipes out most of humanity. There’s also a Dean Koontz novel being brought up called “The Eyes of Darkness,” but it’s for a “prediction” in the text that’s not really a prediction. Anyway, these and other tales of humans vs. viruses don’t really parallel the current pandemic, in my opinion, and there’s an often-overlooked gem that was canceled too soon but is still worth watching, I think: Jeremiah.

Here’s the opening from the first season. It hasn’t aged very well, but you can get a feel for the aesthetic:

The setup for their humans-b-gone is called “The Big Death,” where a virus that can be transmitted by touch kills everyone over the age of puberty, leaving a world where kids had to raise themselves in the aftermath now run things. The main character, Jeremiah, thinks his father might still be alive, and in searching for him, he finds a brewing conflict between a group of survivors at a place called “Thunder Mountain” and those who want to take over the world by force. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but my main arguments for seeing it are:

• J. Michael Straczynski wrote it, so the plot is thought out, well-structured, and… sadly had to be rushed at the end.
• If you liked Samwise Gamgee from the Lord of the Rings movies, Sean Astin appears as an intriguing character named “Mr. Smith.” He talks to God, by the way.
• The world as presented in this show is one of the reasons I couldn’t ever get into Jericho, because I liked this one so much better.

The main issue with the show is that the suits at Showtime canceled it after only two seasons. They told JMS this around the middle of season 2, so he had to cram two to three seasons worth of plot into the shows remaining. Things move very fast, and while you get a sense of where the show was headed, it would’ve been nice to see it in its entirety.

So if this is something you might want to take in, it’s streaming on iTunes and Amazon Prime. And in a kind of weird parallel to our current obsession with toilet paper, there’s a scene where the chance to use a working toilet after years of roughing it is given cinematography and music normally reserved for romantic reunions. You gotta love that, right?

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Free games from itch.io (and one other)…

by Aaron Williams on March 18, 2020 at 1:13 PM
Posted In: Video Gaming

Itch.io has a large number of free games available for your self-isolation needs.

There’s also Goat of Duty on Steam, which is currently sans cost. It’s a multiplayer goat-based FPS where physics seem to be a bit optional and goats are outfitted with robot arms with which they can wield weapons.

It’s not the strangest game I’ve heard of, to be fair.

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A souvenir for the convention we’re all a part of…

by Aaron Williams on March 17, 2020 at 1:56 AM
Posted In: Om Nom Nom!, T-Shirts

So there’s an event coming to town that’s so big it’s literally closing everything else down that isn’t involved with the sale and transportation of toilet paper, and I thought it deserved a commemorative t-shirt:

Be sure to look at the back graphics at Offworld Designs for even more questionable humor.

While this is all in fun, please do follow the CDC’s guidelines and stay as safe as possible out there. We’re in somewhat uncharted territory, and while I like to satirize, I also plan to sanitize, and I hope everyone else can manage to do the same. And here’s hoping all of our conventions and game-gatherings are back in our nation’s many multi-purpose areas as soon as possible.

In my neck of the woods, school is postponed until April 3rd at least, which means my wife and I are trying to come up with a halfway decent simulation of 4th grade for our son while he looks longingly at the Xbox and PC. I’m not sure what I’m qualified to teach, though I’m sure I’ll be given several choices in short order. I just hope there’s not a quiz when it’s all said and done.

During this shut-in time, I’m also trying my hand at crafting some ginger beer, though I’m sure it’s far from the best, as I’ve been making do with boiled (then cooled) water rather than distilled. I’m leaving it in the bottles to get fizzy, so there’s a bit o’ alcohol in my beverage product along with authentic yeast-sludge at the bottom. I’m told by a professional taster of mixed drinks that I’ve maybe created a weak wine cooler, booze-wise. Still, my goal was carbonation and more ginger than the usual store-bought stuff, so I think I succeeded. Also, it appears to be difficult to give myself food poisoning with this method, so that’s a big thumbs up.

And while the experts say alcohol and ginger are unproven to help prevent disease, I’m going to pretend they do, especially as my favorite saucepan now smells like ginger snaps. At least I’ve got a t-shirt to remember this experience, in case I actually manage to make some kind of ginger-moonshine concoction that makes recalling the past a bit of a challenge. 🙂

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A new sci-fi YouTube series that’s got a homemade vibe.

by Aaron Williams on March 11, 2020 at 3:54 PM
Posted In: Articus Pharticus, It's got Robots and Lasers, Mystery Clip Theater

There’s a YouTube channel I’ve been meaning to feature here, and I think that time has come. It’s called “CreateSciFi,” and what I love about it is the many videos about building your own spaceships from common household items. It’s a testament to what was called “kit bashing” as well as the techniques that film studios once used to create their stellar vessels: You had someone in a model shop, and they got creative with existing model kits, hardware, and whatever was at hand.

Note: This is where I insert my pet theory that the Borg Cube was originally made from all the spare model kit trees that the people who built the miniature spaceships had lying around.

So anyway, the channel has launched a series called Zenith Run which is fun to look at given its retro-film aesthetic and all the handmade props:

Be warned, if you delve too deeply into their video archive, you might find yourself at your local Dollar Tree store picking up random objects with the intent of gluing them together.

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A long-overdue linkdump.

by Aaron Williams on January 24, 2020 at 2:06 AM
Posted In: It Came from the Internet, Science ahoy!, Tabletop Gaming, You call that noise "music?"

Because the song is a bit tarnished from Fallout 76, I vote that “Country Roads” be featured in the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077:

If the game bombs, we might have to consider the idea that John Denver has cursed his own music and haunting all projects that license it.

Moving on:

• Firstly, rest in peace to Monty Python alum, Sir Terry Jones. Apart from his work in one of the most famous comedy groups in the world, I’ll always remember him for his very enjoyable BBC series, Medieval Lives and Crusades. The “living paintings” in that latter one really stuck with me.

• From the Lovecraft story, “From Beyond,” here’s one propmaker’s version of the Tillinghast Device. It’s perfect for your next cult rave.

• And turning to actual issues of mental health, here’s an interesting look at a notebook from an asylum inmate in the 1930’s and the odd journey they took.

• Here’s some truly loaded dice for your next D&D session: They’ve got sapphires and a $300 price tag, so even if you roll a 1, you can claim it’s only the finest quality critical failure.

• Speaking of special-interest items of rare quality, if there’s a zombie in your life that turns up where its nose used to be at pedestrian gray matter, perhaps it would prefer to dine on a hunk of human brain that survived for 2600 years. That’s some well-aged nosh, there.

• Turning to the theater, start coming up with joke names for songs and see which ones actually show up in the upcoming Karate Kid musical. I can’t wait to see the “wax on, wax off” choreography along with a chorus line of people sweeping the leg.

• And our ending game is a bit like the one available on Steam called “Hidden Folks.” This one is Heartreasure, and your goal is to click on hearts to unlock new areas. Sometimes the unlock for one place is in another, so if you can’t find the trigger, move on to a different zone. Also, it helps to be able to tell where notes are on a treble scale.

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