Category: Entertainment

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I’ve started installing games on the new computer, some of which I haven’t played in over a year.

Arcanum seems to work fine, and maybe now I can actually play it. (It stopped working on the old computer, so I moved on to other games.)

Heroes of Might and Magic IV installs fine, but Game Update can’t find the server to grab patches. I assume that’s because 3DO doesn’t exist anymore. If I’d been able to just download the installers and save them locally, I’d be able to run them. So I’ve got a fully-patched copy on a computer I’m getting rid of, and I can’t install it on the new one. This is a major problem with download-on-demand software updaters.

Arcomage, the card game embedded in Might and Magic VII, which was later released stand-alone, and is a fun puzzle game to while away 15 minutes…refuses to install on Windows XP.

And now the good news. Since Ubisoft bought the rights to the Might and Magic brand, I went there looking to see whether they had picked up support of any of the older games. They do have the patches… and I just learned that Heroes V is in the works!

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Class Dis-mythedPhil Foglio once again illustrates the Myth Adventures universe in the next book in the series: Class Dis-Mythed.

I don’t know how much of it is Jody Lynn Nye’s influence and how much of it is just Robert Asprin being re-energized about the series, but since they started collaborating the books have improved drastically. The new ones have much more of the feel of the early series, before Asprin burned out on it and spent a decade working through writers’ block.

(via the Studio Foglio newsletter.)

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A thought: the original Teen Titans are beating the Justice League when it comes to passing on their super-genes. Leaving out possible-future stories and backstories, it comes down to just Aquaman of the core group, and Green Arrow as the most prominent member outside the “Big 7.”

As for the original 5 Teen Titans (now in their mid-twenties):

Speedy – now Arsenal, has a preschool-aged daughter, Lian (by way of international super-villain Cheshire).
Wonder Girl – now Troia, had a son Robert with her husband, but both were killed in a car crash.
Aqualad – now Tempest, has an infant son Cerdian with his wife Dolphin.
Kid Flash – now Flash, nearly had twins, but a villain beat his wife Linda so badly she not only miscarried, but lost the ability to have any more children. Update Nov. 2005: Time travel altered the attack, and Linda gave birth to healthy twins (who have yet to be named in print).
Robin – now Nightwing, no kids.

And of course if you do add in future stories, all five had children in Kingdom Come… who came back to visit the present-day mainstream DCU in “Who Is Troia?” in 2001.

Admittedly the mortality rate is high, but the 60% 80% birth rate certainly beats the core League’s 14%.

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I don’t know if it was the show time we picked or just a matter of who sits where in the theater (we were about halfway back), but the largest demographic group in the audience when we watched Revenge of the Sith was not teenage boys, thirty-something men, families with kids, or twenty-something couples, though there were plenty of all of those. It was teenage girls. And they weren’t tagging along with dates or with families. They were out with their friends on a Friday night, willing to pre-order tickets and wait in line for an hour, looking for people they knew and chatting on their cell phones during the interminable bad-music-and-advertisement pre-show.

This was hardly a geek-only audience. If anything shows that a sci-fi movie has hit the mainstream, it’s the presence of thirteen-year-old girls with Hello Kitty blankets in the audience.

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There’s an interesting similarity between the covers of the latest issues of Teen Titans and Astonishing X-Men.

Professor X and Superboy

For those who may be wondering why Superboy is bald: he’s a clone of Superman, but Earth’s cloning technology isn’t up to creating a 100% Kryptonian. So they used human DNA as well to create a hybrid. Early in this series he discovered the human donor was Lex Luthor. He’s been a bit… conflicted about that discovery.

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A collection of comments, thoughts and images, some highly spoilerish and not all of them canon.

1. I framed through the end of the Vader vs. Obi-Wan battle in A New Hope after being a bit confused by it last night. Watch closely, and you’ll notice two things. First, Vader’s lightsaber appears to go through Obi-Wan’s, about an inch above the hilt. This I can pin on imperfect special effects and then get on with my life. However, the second thing is that Obi-Wan’s robes start collapsing before the lightsaber even touches him. Kelson, watching it, said, “Does Vader even connect with a body?” I don’t think he does. Which looks like a very plausible solution to the disappearing-Jedi conundrum: if Obi-Wan wasn’t actually killed in action, then all evidence points to non-violent death being the only way to disappear.

2. This time through A New Hope, I had the strange experience of mentally hearing a parallel voice track for Vader, with Hayden Christensen speaking many of his lines. I don’t know how much of this is my own overactive brain (fueled by coffee and Honey Smacks, no less) and how much is a reflection on the acting/directing/writing, but it’s very cool.

Continue reading →

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We went out to see Star Wars: Episode III last night. And for once, we weren’t disappointed. This is the kind of movie the last two should have been. There was a feeling of urgency throughout this movie that wasn’t present until the first battle of the clone army in Attack of the Clones. A lot of it does depend on having seen the original trilogy, particularly where Anakin/Luke parallels appear… but I have to say, the final shot was absolutely perfect.

We re-watched the previous two movies and the Clone Wars cartoon over the last few weeks, and having seen the entire trilogy, I look at it this way: Lucas gave us 4 hours and 20 minutes of prologue to Revenge of the Sith. That’s all Episodes I and II are: Palpatine setting up his dominoes and getting everything ready to trigger his ascension to Emperor and elimination of the Jedi.

We had already planned to pick up the original trilogy this week or next, and finish the entire series by the end of the month. On the way home I remarked, “You know, I’m not completely insane, so I won’t suggest watching Episode IV now.” Katie replied, “Actually, I was thinking about it.” We ended up watching Star Wars: A New Hope (second-worst title in the series, but it gets a pass since it was tacked on in re-release) starting at 11:00.

It’s strange. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones didn’t really change my perspective on Darth Vader much, aside from wanting to add “Now this is pod racing!” to the Death Star trench. Having actually seen the transformation, I really do see Vader differently. Probably closer to the way Luke sees him in Return of the Jedi. Especially in the first movie, where Tarkin is pulling all the strings and Vader is more of an enforcer than a leader, he really seems like someone who is doing what he has to do, like Londo in Babylon 5. Katie said that he’s gotten used to power, and is unwilling to give it up.

One of the great things about the prequel trilogies is seeing the Jedi in their prime, at least as far as their martial arts are concerned. The climactic duel between Obi-Wan and Vader above the volcanoes of Mustafar is no exception. Unfortunately, going from this movie to the original makes the rematch on the Death Star look pathetic by comparison.

Oh, yes: Ewan McGregor is seriously channeling Alec Guinness in this movie.

On to spoilers. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Continue reading →

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