Film Review - Miami Connection

I have found the holy grail of low budget eighties action, and it is called Miami Connection. A wonderfully cheesy Tae Kwon Do kicking, eighties rocking, ninja biking masterpiece. It's the great, forgotten eighties b-movie. It's been years since I've seen a movie that I loved this much on so many levels. I can honestly call this one of my new favorite movies.

It's not your typical bad movie. It's charm isn't out of it's stupidity or the staggering ineptitude of the people making it. In fact, I'd say that for what it is, it's well made. The action sequences are well shot and it's obvious that most of the actors at least know how to fight. For example, the film's writer/director/star, Y.K. Kim runs a martial arts school in Orlando and one of the co-stars, Maurice Smith is a kickboxing champion. The acting isn't horrible. It's not good by any means, but it's serviceable. This is surprising since the only two actors in the main cast with more than one credit to their name are Vincent Hirsch, who has one other acting credit and the aforementioned Maurice Smith, who had a handful of other credits for small parts in low budget martial arts movies. This complete lack of acting experience from the cast would convince you that the acting would be a lot worse than it is.

The most prolific people involved in this movie are Y.K. Kim's co-director, Woo-Sang Park, a Korean director of 20 films and composer, Jon McCallum, who's other credits include Surf Nazis Must Die and Soultaker, another pair of classic b-movies of the era, the latter of which was made famous on Mystery Science Theater. This movie should be a lot less competent than it is.

The charm doesn't come out of it's stupidity either. And the movie is stupid. It's about a martial arts rock band that fights crime, and the last ten minutes or so has them fighting biker ninjas.

The charm is because of the film's sincerity. There's nothing about this movie that convinces me that Y.K. Kim knew it was stupid. There's also nothing convincing me that Kim thought it was anything more than it was - a martial arts movie with some ham fisted themes about peace and friendship. But those themes aren't shoved down your throat. The moments that are supposed to be taken seriously can't be taken seriously, but you also can't make fun of them because there's an obvious heart to them. This movie is a sincere labor of love on Kim's part, and the rest of the cast seems to have been in on that. You don't get that sort of sincere feeling from a b-movie save for maybe the films of Ed Wood, but in Wood's case, he's the only person that wanted to make those movies. Here, everyone seems to want to be there, and is putting actual effort in and having fun.

The movie also has an awesomely cheesy eighties soundtrack featuring such awesomely bad songs as Against The Ninja and Friends Forever. Both are worth checking out. They're horrible, but they're charming. I included the audio only version of Friends Forever, because the audio quality on the video versions was very poor, and there's a dialogue break during it. Friends Forever was featured in the soundtrack to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which is another reason I need to play that game.

If I'm not convincing you, watch the trailer. That's what got me to watch the movie. After watching it ten times in a row, I found it streaming on Netflix and made an evening out of it.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and watch this movie. It'll change your life for the better. It's not just one of my favorite b-movies. It might be one of my favorite movies ever. I haven't enjoyed a movie this much in years. Trust me on this - you need to see Miami Connection. Watch it on Netflix. If you like it enough, do what I intend to do and give the people who dug it up and distributed it money for an actual copy of the film, and some cool merch. They deserve it. Give them money to keep them funded so they can keep digging up more movies like this and distributing them to the populace.

There's a link to the distributor's page for this film below. Click on that and consider buying something after you watch it on Netflix. Companies like this need your money to stay afloat, and they deserve to stay afloat. They're people who love these kinds of movies as much as the people they sell them to. That's worth something to me. I'm considering just getting the standard DVD for the film and maybe the poster. The seven inch vinyl single is unfortunately sold out, but the VHS is still there if you want the authentic experience.

http://drafthousefilms.com/film/miami-connection

I beseech you, Draft House Films. Take it. You've earned it.

My Thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic - Part 3

I'm still playing this game quite a lot. In fact, it's been several days since I turned on my PS3. I feel like I'm neglecting it. I have found time for my Sega Genesis, though. I can always find time for some Streets of Rage or Ristar. But I'd say about 90% of my gaming time over the last week has been with Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's really quite addictive.

Last night, I signed up for a paid account. The $30 two month non recurring one, to be exact. I like to have every paid subscription I have due at around the first few days of the month, but I didn't want to wait another week to get it and all the goodies that come with it. So far, the only perks of the paid subscription I've used are the increase in experience points after level 10 and the ability to make more characters on one server.

Other things I've done recently is play the multi-player with a friend of mine. He was a Jedi Knight and I was a Jedi Consular. I went through the random name generator, and it gave me Slagrico, which might be the greatest name I've ever given to a character in any game or work of fiction I've written. I like to pronounce Slagrico like that awful early nineties one hit wonder Gerardo or whatever his name was pronounced Rico Suave. That's kind of how you have to pronounce that name, isn't it?

Anyway, the multi player is pretty fun. I haven't done enough with it to really be able to go in depth about it, though.

I also have a couple of characters on a European server. It runs a lot smoother since there are fewer players. The only problem is that on a pair of occasions, I got booted off due to a bad connection, given that the server is located on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

The other classes I've experimented with are the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior. I've had a lot more time with the Sith Warrior, but they're both very similar. I like the Sith Warrior storyline so far. You get to be an asshole, and it feels like it's in character as a Sith for you to be one. But at the same time, it feels weird for me to just make the dark side decisions all the time. I'm certainly playing a bad guy, but I'm not cartoonishly evil, nor am I evil just for the sake of being evil. It's sort of like how I write fiction. I try to give my bad guys a little depth, and have some good in them. Maybe it's a sense of loyalty to the people they work with, maybe it's a feeling of respect for a worthy adversary, or maybe they just that they don't kill without having a reason to. That's kind of how I'm playing that character, and the dark side/light side alignment is fairly even there. And it doesn't feel like I'm playing against type, either. A sith pretty much has to be at least a little evil, but that doesn't mean I have to stab puppies for the fun of it.

I'm also still loving the Bounty Hunter storyline. If I remember right, I'm at level 15 with that one, and the Jedi Knight story I just started is off to a promising start.

Also, a little fun fact: The male Jedi Knight character is voiced by David Hayter, the voice actor for Solid Snake, which is pretty cool, even if he doesn't sound like Snake at all. I still know that it's Solid Snake.

My Thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic - Part 2

A few hours ago, I put up an entry about my first impressions of Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's been about 24 hours since the first time I played, and I just got my bounty hunter up to level 10 and I'm about to make a second character, but I'm not sure what class I'm going to make.

Anyway, I figured I'd give a little bit more of my thoughts on the game.

The first thought is that at the start, when I only had two attacks and a few support abilities (shooting with my blaster pistol and firing a rocket at the enemy) it was a lot easier. I just hit the 1 and 2 keys and alternate back and forth, but not use the rocket too often so as to avoid overheating. That worked very easily and intuitively. Now, I have several other skills. I can shoot an explosive dart at an enemy that explodes in a few seconds, heavily damaging other nearby enemies (which is satisfying as all hell), I can fly up in the air with my jetpack and rain down rockets at a selected area, which isn't as useful as it sounds so far since enemies tend to move out of that area, but when it works, it's even more satisfying than the explosive dart. I also have wrist mounted flamethrowers, which also aren't as helpful as I wish they were, and a handful of other abilities. Even the ones that aren't very useful are fun.

But here's the problem. You can set up those abilities to number keys. This is fine, but using every number from 0 through to 9 and the "-" key can be a bit confusing, and it's easy to lose track of which key does what, especially if you aren't looking at the keyboard at the moment. And you aren't, because you're in a fight. Maybe more experienced PC gamers don't have this issue, and I'm aware that there's really no other way to implement this, but it's a bit annoying. It's not a crippling flaw, because with the bounty hunter, I tend to only use a handful of weapons, and even then, about 60% is the standard blaster attack, 30% is the rocket attack and every other attack is the last 10%, so it's not a huge problem.

Another problem is really just my computer. My laptop had a cooling fan in it crap out a few days back, and I need to get it repaired, and I'm not sure when that'll happen. So, for now I'm using my mother's laptop, which is about a year and a half newer than my computer (which unfortunately means it has the infernal abomination of an operating system that is Windows 8), but it's not as powerful, so I have to put the graphics in the game on very low, and even then, the game has some problems making the movements look fluid. I'm not knocking the game for this, because this problem is mostly on my end, but I'm sure that the amount of other players using up the bandwidth isn't helping.

Also, having just hit level 10, the game's giving me fewer experience points. This is because I'm a free to play user at the moment. If I were giving them $15 a month, I wouldn't have that problem. Also, I'd be able to play as more than three races, and get a lot of other cool shit.

So, my only problems are either moderately annoying issues that I can't see how they could fix anyway, or problems on my end. In any case, these issues aren't major ones.

I do forsee myself getting a paid subscription, and I also see myself making more entries about this game. It's very good, and I can't recommend it enough. Especially since you can play it for free

First Impressions: Star Wars The Old Republic

I've recently begun playing Star Wars The Old Republic, the free to play MMORPG. I want to make a few statements before I get into talking about my first impressions of the game.

One: I've never cared about MMORPG's. I don't like playing multiplayer games unless I'm playing them with friends who are in the same room as me. I don't get the point. I'd rather not play a game with some 13 year old ritalin junkies flinging around every bit of profanity their puny little minds can think up.

Two: I'm not a huge Star Wars fan. I love the original trilogy and I like some of the games, like Shadows of the Empire on the N64. My knowledge of Star Wars ends at those movies and that game. I've never played Knights of the Old Republic, but I really want to at some point.

That out of the way, I'm enjoying the hell out of the game. I haven't had any interactions with other players, which is how I like it (I'm playing on a Player Vs. Environment server, which is what I'd recommend for others with my mindset) and so far, the story's fairly interesting. I won't go into too much detail, because I'm still not far enough into it to really know what's going on with certainty. It's just something about some sort of contest, and to get into the contest, I have to run some errands for a Hutt crime lord. Of course, the Hutt crime lord is an asshole, because there really isn't any other kind of Hutt crime lord.

I'm also eager to play a Sith agent and a Jedi knight, and to sign up for a paid subscription in the near future. I'll provide my thoughts about that when I get to it.

Just a heads up - it takes an eternity to download the game. Mine took about five hours to get up and running. But it's free to play unless you want to get some extra features. There's nothing to lose if you don't like it, except for a few hours.

Game Collecting Stories - My White Whale, The Lunar Games

I think most collectors have that one game, console or peripheral that has eluded them for a while to the point where it becomes something of an obsession. To the point where you feel like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick trying to kill that damned white whale. For some, it might be a big name collector's item like Earthbound, for others, a no name game that they really want like Spider-Man: Web of Fire on the 32X in an effort to complete their 32X collection (and why wouldn't you? It's such a great console, and Web of Fire isn't infamous for being one of the worst games on the 32X... Oh, wait. ) For my white whale, there's more to it than "I WANT THIS." It wasn't even a specific item I wanted, and the reasons for my obsession wasn't that it was a rare, expensive item, but that it kept slipping through my grasps.

It was Lunar 2: Eternal Blue for the Playstation. I saw a complete boxed copy for sale on eBay with all the cool stuff that came with it, the game, the soundtrack CD, the cool collectors items... all of it. Usually, that goes for about $100, easy. I didn't have that kind of money to spend, but I did have about $70. I figured I'd just keep the game on my watch list just out of curiosity to see how much it would go for. I was betting at least $120. I checked back the next day, and it was something like $55. I was pissed. I could have gotten it. There's a very good chance that the final bidder had a much higher bid than that, but it was worth a try. I might have a really kick ass collectors item and what's supposedly one of the best RPGs on the PS1 in my collection for about half the typical market value.

That's when it started. After another lost auction for the game (just the game itself in the standard double jewel case - none of the bells and whistles) it got worse. Then I saw a copy of Lunar: The Silver Star, the first game in the series at a thrift store. I was elated. I was about to get one of the Lunar games for a few bucks. I opened the case, and there was nothing inside. I asked the people who worked there if they kept the discs separate, but they didn't. They just had the empty case.

I will own you some day... You bastard.

That's the moment when it got personal. I went to GameStop and found the PSP game, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony for $15. I didn't hesitate. I grabbed it, put it on the counter and laid down my money. I finally had one of those games. I didn't know if it was a port of the first game, the second, another game in the series I didn't know about or an entirely new game, but I didn't care. I owned a damn Lunar game. Anything else is irrelevant.

I got home, popped it in my PSP and turned it on and... giant ass crack on the screen. The PSP still worked, but I couldn't see a damn thing. I looked online to see if I could connect it to my PS3 and play it that way, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

This was the point that I gave up. This was probably almost a year ago and I had put it out of my mind. Until now.

I just bought myself another PSP. I can now at long last play Lunar: Silver Star Harmony.

I just paid over $60 for a handheld console that I don't particularly care for, passing over a replacement for my long lost Nintendo DS that was roughly the same price

If this game isn't amazing, I'm going to be pissed.

Pokebominations

Today, I discovered a website called Pokemon Fusion through a recent Comedy Goldmine article on Something Awful. that lets you create your own Pokemon by taking the face and color palate from one and putting it on the body of another. I've probably spent upwards of an hour and a half on this site making my own abominations of nature, or as I call them, Pokebominations. I figured I'd share a couple with you here, because I don't have anything better to do on a Tuesday night.

This unfortunate Psyduck wandered too close to a nuclear power plant and started to melt like the wicked witch of the west. Shame on you for laughing at the horrible fate that befell this once happy creature, once so full of life. He's got like, a minute to live and he's in unspeakable agony, and there's nothing funny about that.

This horrific monster is the stuff of nightmares. One minute, she's a beautiful young woman and the next, she's Milena from Mortal Kombat, but with sideways fangs ready to eat your throat out and enjoy it.

Beware, for a she could be behind you right now, and you wouldn't know it until it was too late.

Hey, guyth, I'm a thnake. Ithn't that neato? Hith. I'm hithing at you. I'm gonna go thlither away now.

I don't even have a theme for this one. I just love the fact that it's fat and drooling.

Hey, guyth, I'm a rat now. That'th pretty cool, huh? Well, I'm gonna go frolic in a meadow and thcare ladieth in their kitchen and make them jump on chairs and be all thcared and thtuff. Thee you guyth later, okay? Buh-bye, guyth.

I just love Weezing's face on Caterpie's body. It's like he's saying, "Aw, come on man, I don't want to be a caterpillar. I wanna be a beautiful butterfly. Don't laugh at me, man. This is who I is deep down."

Now, he's saying "Aw, shit, son. I'm in my cocoon now. I'mma be a pretty ass butterfly any day now, ya feel me?"

"Yeah, man, this shit tight. I'm the beautiful butterfly I always knew I was deep down inside my heart or some shit, like Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. I dunno if it is or not, 'cause I ain't read that. I don't bother with that stuff. I was too busy readin' 'bout butterflies. But that don't matter now, 'cause I'm beautiful and free, like a butterfly, which makes sense, 'cause that's what I is."






Now I'm a fith. A pretty fith with a lithp in the othean. I'm gonna go thwim around a coral reef or thomething.










I might have to do this again. This was kind of fun.

My Thoughts on the Neo Geo

I've been saving up some cash for a while with the intention of buying some cool retro gaming stuff. Maybe a console. A few months ago, I got myself a 3DO for $40, and it sucks, because it's a 3DO, but there are some other consoles I've been thinking about for a long time. A Turbografx 16, a special edition N64 (maybe the Pikachu one, or maybe one that's just a different color than the standard gray or black), or maybe something obscure like the Casio Loopy, that sucks, but is a fun little conversation piece.

My holy grail as a collector however, is a Neo Geo. I've wanted one since I was a kid. It's the elite console of gaming. It has all the hardware power of an arcade cabinet in one giant clunker of a console with giant cartridges more than twice the size of a Super Nintendo cart.

The thing is that I'd have a Neo Geo except for one simple thing. The price point is absurd. I don't even mean that it's high. It's ridiculous.

The consoles themselves are a bit pricey. About $250 and up is the price I've seen on eBay. That's not ridiculous admittedly, but it's out of my price range. But I understand it. It's a top of the line game console with a rabid cult following. You can demand that price and people will pay for it. Fine. That's not what I'm talking about with the price point, though.

How much do you think a complete in box copy of King of Fighters '95 would go for? Consider that it's an entry in one of SNK's flagship series. It's a game in demand among Neo Geo owners because of that. But it's not rare for a Neo Geo game, you wouldn't think.

At the moment, there's one on eBay going for $2300. No, not $230. You missed that last digit. This thing's going for around the price of a cheap used car, a semester at a community college, or a Gretsch Country Gentleman, the guitar George Harrison used. At least if you have a Country Gentleman, you can play the opening guitar part from Revolution, which is admittedly pretty awesome. With a copy of King of Fighters '95, you can tell people that you spent $2300 on a video game and have them look at you like you're an idiot, and know in your heart that it's true because you could just get the PS1 version for like, $15 or better yet, a compilation of the first several games on the Wii for like, $20.

Okay, maybe you can get another game cheaper. Samurai Shodown 4 goes for a mere $1860. Again, not a typo

At a more reasonable less insane price are copies of Fatal Fury 2 and Art of Fighting 2, where the seller's only asking for $160. I'll stick with my Sega Genesis version of Fatal Fury 2, thanks. If the only other version available was the Super Nintendo version, $160 wouldn't be that insane, because the Super Nintendo port was atrocious.

But still, the price is a little high. And by that, I mean that it's still way out of the price range for most collectors.

In fairness, there's a copy of Samurai Shodown 2, arguably the best game in that series, going for $30 with an extra $17 for shipping. The shipping seems like a lot, but the seller's in Italy, so it's actually fairly reasonable for an import, considering that the average price for shipping inside the US for a Neo Geo game is $10.



If I wanted to blow $50, I might consider buying Samurai Shodown 2 even if I can't play it. It's a pretty cool shelf piece, and if I ever do get the console, I'd have one of the best games on it already, and for a decent price too.

In any case, I know what I'm going to do if I ever hit the lottery. I'll own all of these games, put them in a glass case and bring my other game collecting friends over to my house just to rub their noses in the fact that I blew thousands of dollars on games that I can get near perfect ports of on the PS2 and the Wii for much, much less.