Charming British Guy Doing Terribly At A Bunch Of Turbografx 16 Shmups.

We've peeked into the world of Steve Benway before, and I've finally set aside some time to take a decent tour of his Youtube channel. And boy, did I not set aside enough time. With 614 videos on just his main channel, he is quite the busy retro-gamer. Becoming familiar with the charmingly self-effacing "watch me play very badly" style of his gaming videos, I resolved with no small bit of schadenfreude to open this post with a vid of him tackling what is admittedly one of the most difficult games on my favorite video game system. The Turbografx 16 actually has several nail-bitingly difficult shooters and, God bless him, he jumps right in and plays them anyway. You can see the results here.

Beat My High Score: Mooninite Marauders W/ Meatwad Still Alive.

So yeah, Mooninite Marauders is a pretty old-ass game, but I decided to take it on in a direction I hadn't pursued before. If you've ever played it, you know it's a pretty good idea to sacrifice Meatwad at the beginning, because he sucks (his shots are single and slow) and is replaced by the far superior Master Shake (who has the awesome triple-shotgun).

Well, now I've been trying to see how far I can make it while toughing it out to keep lame-ass Meatwad alive. If you think you have the patience, I'd like to see how you do.

Current High Score: 49650 at Mooninite Maurauders w/ Meatwad Still Alive

Beat My High Score: Juno First

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 88580 at Juno First

Birds That Love Dubstep.

Beat My High Score: Donkey Kong 3

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 89000 at Donkey Kong 3

Beat My High Score: Mr Do

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 29550 at Mr. Do

Beat My High Score: Jumping Jack

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 16740 at Jumping Jack

Whoa. Ronnie James Dio Songs From 1958. Whoa.

Beat My High Score: Crush Roller

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 4190 at Crush Roller

John Cheese's New Ghost Hunting Debunk Video.

Beat My High Score: Kick Rider

I don't know what it is, but something about this game makes me totally strap on my bastard pants. I REALLY LIKE THIS GAME, and I'm not even sure I'm playing it right. I get on that bike and I just kick everything. All of it, ever. It is all ripe for the kicking. I kick the other motorcyclists. I kick over the tandem bikers apparently out for a stroll on a racing strip for some reason. I tried kicking the cars and trucks, but they kept knocking me over until I reluctantly stopped. I find myself crashing and flying over embankments because I'm so focused on the kicking I have no attention left for riding.



Last time I played it, it froze on the following win screen. It probably wasn't supposed to do that, but it was the only thing that would stop my kicking rampage.



Current High Score: 63146 at Kick Rider

A Cartoon Character I'm Starting To Hate Worse Than Scrappy Doo.

You know that sinking feeling you get when you know things have just went really wrong? I can't even look at this guy without feeling that.

Not going to give any direct reference to the site this guy is from, but if you've seen him you know exactly what I'm talking about. When your browser goes all green and you're constantly redirected to his site, you know you've caught that particularly nasty bit of malware that's been going around a lot lately, the one that pretends it's an anti-virus program while disabling your real anti-virus programs.

Damnit, I can't even look at his irresistably punchable face. The browser goes green, and everything inside my skull goes red.

I hate you and everything you stand for, fake anti-virus malware website mascot. Please to go away somewhere and die very painfully.

Maximize Your Score At Google Pac Man.

Couple of hints I've discovered if you want to squeeze in a last minute high score on Google Pac Man:

1) If you right click within the game play box, it pauses the game. Take a quick smoke break or whatever.

2) The ghosts don't behave traditionally when you get a power pellet. Instead of running away from you, they simply reverse direction. Timed right you can get the vulnerable blue ghosts to run right to ya.

3) A good place to do trick number 2 is while camped out in the letter "G". That one extra power pellet really makes some stellar scores possible.

I'd love for you guys to post links in the comments to screenshots you've taken of awesome Google Pac Man scores!

Admin Edit: Looks like Google Pac Man is a permanent feature. Rack up some high scores, guys!

In Which Ralf23 Is A Creepy Internet Stalker, And Invites You To Be, Too.

So recently, the website Openbook came to my attention. It's a search engine specifically for Facebook status updates. It's motto "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life. Whether you want to or not." invokes an ominous tone, so I guess it's supposed to be making a statement about online privacy or something. But then, I've never been quite sure how private people really wanted or expected Facebook status updates and other forms of Twitter-esque microblogging to be. In any case, I'm pretty much on the fence on whether this thing is really creepy, or just kinda creepy in an an obtuse, indirect way.

In the interest of journalistic integrity, I decided to spy on myself first, and compare notes with the rest of the Facebook community regarding opinions on that new Windows 7 commercial (where they included an overdubbed and re-appropriated version of the "Zombie Vs. Shark" viral video). I'm not particularly reassured by my findings.

For entertainment purposes, I've plugged in searches for favorite Dorkstuff topics (mostly vintage computers/games) and got a surprising number of relevant hits for many of them. I was actually trying to see how obscure I could get with a couple of them, but apparently people still dig 8-bit stuff on Facebook. Check it out:

23 Enigma (Hey, there's me again!)
Apple ][e, ][c, ][gs
Atari 2600
Castlevania
Clash At Demonhead
Commodore 64 (and related search "C64")
Rankin-Bass
Ren And Stimpy
River City Ransom
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
TRS-80
Turbografx 16

Instructional Videos Of All 40 Drum Rudiments.

Over at Freedrumlessons.com, they offer short demonstration vids of all 40 international drum rudiments. You can also check out their Youtube channel, if you want to skip the written theory part and just watch the videos.

"Why Don't You Come Over Here And... Party With Grandma!"

via Everything Is Terrible.

MORE SEXY ROBOTS. MORE SEXY.

The Old Robots Website is a website devoted to all those awesome robots from the 80s and early 90s, and a godsend to us children of the 80s who used to page through the Montgomery Wards Christmas Wish Book and dream of owning an Omnibot 2000.

The Mountain Goats Will Cure Your Bieber Fever Dot Com

It's like the URL equivalent of Trapper Keeper art (Justin Bieber FTL, Mountain Goats FTW!), and makes about as much sense, but I'm fine with that.

ROBOTS. SEXY ROBOTS.

Weebl's newest cartoon is the sound of the future. It's made by sexy robots, or so I hear.

So, Um, Is This That Justin Bieber Thing I Keep Hearing About On The Cable TV?

BABY! - watch more funny videos

Seriously, is it? I'm frightened and confused now...

Awthum Empire Interview With VidKidz.

Vidkidz are pretty awesome. Destroyed For Comfort has had the pleasure of working with them a couple of times and they do great projection work. Click here for Awthum Empire's interview with them.

A REGULAR GUY SEEKING A REGULAR GAL.

You laugh, but this guy already lists about three things that could make him a better catch than me. And can you really afford to be so picky in these insane computer times we live in?

I Can't Possibly Be The First One To Think Of This - Volume 1

SOURCE 1
SOURCE 2

Beat My High Score: Van Van Car

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 48000 at Van Van Car

Creepy Facebook Ad Is Creepy.

I was kind of a late starter to the whole Facebook thing, and now that I'm on there and found most everybody I know, people are fleeing in droves. Many of the reasons they've given were perfectly reasonable, privacy issues and such, but one has just never seemed to match up with reality for me.

If Facebook has spent the year or so I've been on it gathering some sort of database on my interests to customise the ads that show up, something has been going horribly, horribly wrong. Why else would I be getting this ad for what I can only assume is a referee job for some Italian sport that has recently come into fashion:



And when the ads aren't completely baffling, they advocate a position so far removed from my personal beliefs that it's staggering:



Seriously, it's like I've got a personal Tea Party protest marching up and down the right margin of my Facebook front page.

I mean, Facebook can offer adspace to anyone they want. I'm not arguing that. But if the ads that show up on my front page are generated based on the interests they have logged for me, I can only infer they're deliberately chosen to upset me and piss me off. That just seems, well, counterproductive.

I'll be 33 next month; a postage-stamp sized ad in the corner of a social networking site is hardly going to inspire me to reverse my political stance. Have they just given up on ever getting click-through revenue from me and want to be bitchy about it now?

Then a week ago I get the ad that nearly makes me delete my Facebook profile right then and there:



Then I shake off my knee-jerk indignant response that I was already a teenager by the time Paxil was invented, much less possibly prescribed to anyone in my family, but frankly I resent what you are implying there Facebook. I shake off the idea that Facebook could somehow have access to my medical records or even my Myspace blog (where I've mentioned my experience with Paxil), because that is the kind of thoughts a crazy person has.

Frankly, even as a randomly generated ad, it's creepy enough.

Then it hits me. Paxil was invented in 1992. That would make the kids of some of the first prescribed patients 18 now. A bunch of 18 year olds with emotions running rampant. Probably away from family for the first time in college and confused about life. And there, in the corner of their social networking site, is an ad suggesting that all that confusion could be blamed squarely on a parent.

Damn, Facebook. You shady.

Beat My High Score: Shao Lin's Road

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.


Admin edit: In the comments section from a different post, a guy claimed to have reached a score of 755,300 at Shao Lin's Road. Unfortunately we were unable to arrange a situation for him to provide proof of my defea-OH HOLY SHIT...



What do we have here? Looks like I managed to OH HOLY MOTHER OF GOD-



What's that? Is that what I think it is? Is that me just fucking totally fuckstomping the fucking fuck out of that fucking score, pic or no pic?

'Cause that's kinda what it looks like. Just sayin'.

In all seriousness tho, thanks for writing in Tony. It was fun taking you up on your challenge.

Current high score: 127700 at Shao Lin's Road. Bitches.

The Extent To Which The Internet Has Broken Me.

Did you watch the video? If you haven't already seen it, it's of an unweened cat that suckles the air around him, flapping his little tongue around. It's very cute, and very funny. So how terrible of a person does it make me that the following was the very first thing I thought of:



You can be honest. It makes me a pretty terrible person. I know. I wasn't always this way, tho. The internet has broken me.

Fine, then. Go follow the fucking cat on Facebook and stop looking at me that way. You know you laughed.

While you're here, you might as well leave all your most terrible, um, "cat" licking jokes in the comments. It will please me.

Rani23 Vs. A Kimchi Bloody Mary.

No, I haven't fallen off the wagon. Yesterday actually started my 11th week of sobriety, if anyone's keeping score. Just wanted to show some goodwill to my non-sober friends by sharing a recipe I discovered a couple of years ago which for a while became the greatest thing in the world to me and anyone that didn't have to kiss me. The recipe is geared to fill that big-ass goblet in the picture (about 12 oz or so)

Kimchi Bloody Mary

- About a shot and a half of your favorite non-infused vodka
(although I'd LOVE to hear about anyone trying this with bacon vodka)
- A shot glass of Kimchi Brine (SPOILER: this is a VERY spicy Bloody Mary)
- A shot glass of lime juice
- 1/2 a shot glass of two parts Tobasco sauce and one part Worcestershire sauce.
- 1 Cup of tomato juice
- 1 Teaspoon of horseradish, and 1/2 Teaspoon each of black pepper, red pepper, crushed garlic, and celery salt.
- Garnish with two leaves of kimchi cabbage and a liberal dash of dried celery, as well as pickled okra and a celery stalk if you have it (I didn't at the time of the photo).

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.

Beat My High Score: Bomb Jack

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 88660 at Bomb Jack

Guy Who Wrote Battlefied Earth Apologises, Blames It On His Penis.

JD Shapiro did a bad thing, and he's sorry. He penned the initial screenplay that germinated, like psychedelic mushrooms in a cow turd, into Battlefield Earth; the main difference being that people have actually paid money for mushrooms and don't have to pretend to enjoy the experience ironically later.

This year, the movie won its ninth Razzie for "Worst Picture Of The Decade". Battlefied Earth was released in May of 2000. Think about that for half a second. In nine and a half years of the decade of Gigli and Catwoman, where Hollywood thought sequels to Basic Instinct and Baby Geniuses were a good idea, not one movie topped Battlefield Earth in straight-up fuck-awfulness. That's actually kind of impressive, in the same way getting crushed by some stray remaining piece of Skylab would be impressive.

You can go ahead and Google that last joke if you need to. Noone will judge you.

So anyway, Battlefield Earth, and its ridiculous overuse of Dutch tilts (whatever the fuck those are), was pretty bad (just to give you an idea how entwined the two are, the pic at the top of this article is one of the first GIS images for both "Battlefield Earth" and "Dutch Tilt"). In a recent New York Post article, JD opens up by apologizing to anyone that paid to see the movie in the theater. The opinions of all five of them (four of which were John Travolta) have not yet been reported.

He then blames the whole thing on his penis. No, really. He even refers to it as his "Willy Wonker". No, really. Willy Wonker. It's right there in the article. As far as vaguely topical pop-culture euphemisms go, "Willy Wonker" is somehow even worse than "The Kracken" (and any subtexts regarding the releasing of such).


It does make a better euphemism than "blobfish", tho. Barely.

To the disappointment of those of you reading this article with Guy Fawkes masks on like it's still 2008, JD doesn't really give up a whole lot of dirt regarding Scientology. He took some vitamins, hung out on a boat, drank some scotch and couldn't get laid. You probably had a more interesting time during Spring Break, the way he tells it.

The rest of the article consists of him relaying his version of the "Executive Meddling" entry on TvTropes before ending on a weak birth control joke. The end.

In any case, he's sorry, and he damn well should be. Really now, Willy fucking Wonker? What about Battlefield Girth? Little Hubbard? Terl, Ker and Johnny Goodboy? Hell, even calling it his "Operating Thetan" could have garnered more laughs. Then again, snarky or not, he's still the guy who wrote the script for Battlefield Earth. He hasn't exactly set the bar particularly high for himself.

Beat My High Score: Time Pilot

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 123800 at Time Pilot

Beat My High Score: Dig Dug 2

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 93900 on Level 12 at Dig Dug 2

Beat My High Score: Bubbles

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 47080 at Bubbles

Beat My High Score: 1943

I'm not claiming to be some sort of video game master, but the above is a score I achieved on an actual arcade machine. No emulators, no codes. Can you beat this score? If so, upload some photographic evidence and link to it in the comments. Then I'll come back and try to beat your score.

In this case, it's currently: 180930 on 1943

Also, in case you didn't know, that is part of the ending sequence. So you gotta beat it too.

Spooky. Glitchy.

Besides Julia Segal's absolutely hilarious one, the Tumblr account I check out near-daily is lowmoralfiber, which is maintained by a 20-year old Norwegian noise musician. He seems to share my love of malfunctioning electronics, drone/noise, and early 80s RPG computer games. Enjoy.