The Moment of Truth (and Dare)

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(Thanks, Jay Partridge!)

I’m sure that I noticed exactly when people stopped taking the idea very horrid fact of a still thriving pandemic a whole lot less seriously here where a few too many people have died from it or assorted complications arising from it. By my estimation, it was about two weeks ago, give or take. I know this because I live across the street from a car wash and in the past few months, it’s been busy there, but mostly quietly so. About two weeks back, a sudden blast of loud music woke me from seven floors up. It was some person who drove up and yes, was blasting their music for all to hear too early in the day.

I was of course, annoyed by this, but I did take it as an alarm clock of sorts as I’d overslept (again) and dragged myself out of bed. A pot of coffee/chicory blend went to brew up and it was decided to kick off another Groundhog Day of mostly staying indoors and side-eying both the news and my backlog of work to do.  It’s harder to concentrate on fun stuff with actual life now a lot less fun, but it is sort of a necessary non-evil these days. To be honest, I liked the solitude for the most part except the MIA partner in crime part. But that’s part of the job description when you have a new virus, a new potential thing to kill you added to all the other things than may or may not set your expiration date to SOONER THAN YOU’D CARE FOR. “Did you hear? That guy died when he slipped in the shower while trying to dodge the plague!” makes for a rather poor epitaph.

Well, a funny one, but still poor.

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Presents of Mind

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So, it was my birthday last month, but I don’t celebrate it these days like “normal” people do. I tend to just wake up and be thrilled to be breathing, move on and let a new year pass hopefully without any bad stuff occurring. Cake is optional these days (Hey, diet? You doing OK?). I also don’t do presents unless I get surprised with one, but this year, I decided to pick up a few things for myself with a bit of extra money I had left over. A little retail therapy, if you like. It’s been quite a year or few years, is all I’ll say about that. Anyway, here’s a small list of what I got myself:

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“I can stop anytime I want to…”

I wanted to cut back on the caffeine and someone suggested trying mixing chicory with coffee, so I went with Community’s 100% chicory, as I have a few large canisters of coffee here and I like experimenting when I get the chance to do so. Finding the correct mixture for my tastes was an interesting thing as well, but I did try a pot of pure chicory first but found it a bit too strong. Well, that was my fault, but it did remind me of some of my first attempts to make coffee some decades back where one person liked it and another had her eyeballs practically leave her skull. Let’s just say I got a lot better at the making coffee thing since then.

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Arrow’s June Bugs Will Get You Hopping

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Here’s a nice set of Arrow/Arrow Academy releases coming your way this month. Get ready to catch them all:

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New from Arrow Video US and Arrow Academy US:

DREAM DEMON [Blu-ray] (6/23)

THE MAD FOX [Blu-ray] (6/23)

 DJANGO [Limited Edition Blu-ray] & [Steelbook] (6/30)

-GW

(Not So) Random Film of the Week: The Omen (1977)

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“Never work with children or animals.” – W.C. Fields

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Hell is other people, indeed…

Now, I’m quite sure Gregory Peck very likely wasn’t thinking of this well-aged quote while shooting The Omen, but I get a chuckle out of maybe thinking he was because he surely goes through all nine circles of Hollywood hell in dealing with his demon-bred son with the quirky birthmark (Harvey Spencer Stephens) and a couple of dogs that get to attack him (and his stunt double) with relish (or whatever it is dogs use as a condiment. Maybe… Chow Chow Picalilli?).

If his character had lived to be in the inevitable and somewhat silly (but still kind of scary) sequel, Damien: Omen II, I’m sure he would have also wanted to kill a few mockingbirds (a murder of crows, if you will) if one of them had ever decided to give him the old “good luck” airdrop plop, but (uh, spoiler alert?). he doesn’t live to see that happen (end spoiler). I’d make an Atticus F(l)nch joke here. but I don’t want to push my luck.

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“Isn’t he a little angel?” Uh, not really. You’ll see…

Then again, there’s an air of bleak inevitability in Richard Donner’s film that pervades every frame and it’s not hard to see from the opening titles onward that Jerry Goldsmith’s sole Oscar winning score (more on that later) was predicting some very bad things to come. I was too young to see this back in 1976, but I recall a schoolmate telling me his parents took their four kids to see it and they were all traumatized to some extent, but it was all they talked about for weeks.  As the family was pretty religious, my guess now is that was one surefire (heh) way of keeping them in church.

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Package Lander II: The (Not) Quickening

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(Thanks, tarash oniani!)

So, in the middle of this more very urgent chaos taking place, I have 19 pounds of someone else’s medical supplies here. They’ve been here over a week and it’s FedEx’s fault for “just doing their job”. Hi, FedEx. Anyway, here’s the deal: someone ordered whatever is in this box and had it shipped here, but they seem to have mixed up their address with mine or the person who took the order scrambled the numbers or couldn’t read someone’s handwriting properly. I say this because just over two weeks back, I got two large boxes bundled together that for the same person.

After about 45 minutes to an hour spent going to the FedEx website which constantly sent me to an automated call line no matter what I tried, I held on for a live operator and explained the situation. The problem seemed to be solved when he said the box would be retrieved (which took a few days), but guess what?  It wasn’t.  A week or so later, another large box labeled medical supplies arrived and was left at the door before I even had the chance to open that door and explain to the driver this wasn’t the correct address. FedEk was called again, and almost 52 minutes of looping muzak later, someone said they would be picking up the box… and that was what, almost a week ago?

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That’s Entertainment?

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stop the world

Where’s the brake pedal, please?

Yeah, I’m still here – just thinking about too much stuff as I guess we all are these days. Or most of us, as a few folks clearly aren’t much for sensible thought. There are a lot of half-written things here because it’s hard to concentrate on being entertaining when the planet is spinning in “Stop The World – I Want To Get Off” mode, whee.

(Thanks, RetroAlexander!)

Anyway, I’ll pop in here later in a more “reviewery” mode as I’ve actually been playing a load of stuff that’s been quite good, but I don’t want to give the total impression that I’m totally clueless to all this distress going on. The blinders were, in fact, never on here. I just keep my annoyance with many things in check with the insane hope that we figure out one day that we should maybe have a test for leaders like the ones they give sanitation workers or some other public employees or maybe even the those that choose to volunteer for medical research for a few spare dollars to live on.

Some music to lighten the mood (not by much, though):

(Thanks, IamPersonMan!)

-GW

GET! nakana.io Has Freebie Games For Switch Owners

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But you need to act fast. Go here for details: http://nakana.io/offer

Hello,

you can get our 3 currently released games on Nintendo Switch for free (EQQO, Lydia and Soul Searching) if you already have or now purchase one of them or one of two other games from our friends QubicGames (Blazing Beaks or Mana Spark). This offer is valid until 30 May, end of the day!

After playing, please share your impressions about our titles on our Discord and Twitter!

We’re also hosting a giveaway there to win Switch keys for our upcoming game Infini 🙂

-GW

Review: SEGA AGES Thunder Force AC (Switch)

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Memories, Golden Space Roast Edition…

1990’s Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis game, Thunder Force III was such a great and very challenging entry in the series that it got an enhanced arcade version in Japan called Thunder Force AC, which has now come back as the latest SEGA AGES release on Nintendo Switch ($7.99). It’s a game I used to play along with a ton of other space shooters on the Genesis as well as developer M2’s second enhanced port of a Thunder Force title (Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar) that’s a must-buy.

You get a flawless version of the game with the new ability to play with three other ships from other titles in the series (you’ll need to play a bit to get to three of them), and the game is another example on a fine example of M2 making a good game even more stellar on Nintendo’s platform. At the time it was released, the game was quite the spectacle with its parallax scrolling, some fancy warping effects, plus a few other neat visual tricks. Oh, and the music was (and is) perfection and thankfully, you get a music player function in this version.

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Crumbling World: Well, There Goes The Fantasy Neighborhood

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It’s been out for a few days now (wait, what day IS it?), but I’m backlogged and brain-soaked here, so the news is late. Dume Arts’ intriguing looking Crumbling World is on Steam and itch.io and it’s on the (very) long list of games I need to give a shot. Take a gander at the trailer and description below while go I put on a pot of half coffee half chicory, please (yeah, I overslept again):

Set in a sinister, slowly decomposing land where humanity has been driven to corruption, aligning with dark forces for survival, players must traverse gorgeous diorama-like levels in an attempt to bring back the age of light – before the world literally crumbles away entirely beneath their feet.

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May’s Sudden Arrows Make Me A Bit Jumpy

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Oops. With too much going on here and more on the way on a few fronts, I missed a few too many emails and have been getting to them when I can. Anyway, this month’s Arrow Video and Arrow Academy releases are below, all of them dropped today and I barely ducked out of the way as they landed all around me:

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BLOOD TIDE [Blu-ray] (5/26)

WHITE FIRE [Blu-ray] (5/26)

THE WOMAN [Blu-ray] (5/26)

SOLID METAL NIGHTMARES: THE FILMS OF SHINYA TSUKAMOTO
[Blu-ray Box Set] (5/26)

These should do the job in keeping some folks inside for a spell, I think. Back in a bit – it’s been a very long day here.

-GW