The Mother 3 Handbook has finally shipped! Mine arrived yesterday, and I finally found the time to sit down and go through it. I took some pictures of it to share with everybody, but they were garbage, and Tomato’s are better, so I’ll just link to that and call it a day.
The book itself is a really professional piece of work — I’d expect nothing less from the team of crazies at Starmen.net, who are the only people I know offhand who have turned being fans of a fifteen-year-old video game into a cottage industry. The guide has the same general "look and feel" as the old Earthbound player’s guide (right down to the clay models for important characters and boss mobs!), but without the, you know, gratuitous errors. It does an excellent job of guiding you through the world, pointing out secrets and hints and strategies, but in a way that minimises the amount of spoilerage; it really makes me want to go back and play through Mother 3 again so I can find out what all the damn secrets I missed actually are.
The book comes with a keen dust jacket (anybody else never seen a paperback with a dust jacket before?) that doubles as a poster featuring all of Meeeella’s clay enemies, since Fangamer is pretty big on the pack-in freebies with everything you order from them. It also comes with a free Courage Badge keychain!
… Or, anyhow, it did when I ordered mine. The keychain was a preorder bonus, and actually only ended up being available to early preorders, since I guess demand was a lot higher than anticipated. The keychain itself is a really solid piece of metal, with some serious weight and heft to it; you could do somebody a minor mischief if you hit him with the thing, or I suppose you could do him a major mischief if you happen to have it on your person when he attempts to hit you with a lightning attack. But that would be his own fault anyhow. Here’s a slightly blurry close-up picture without all my other distracting keys in the way:
Oh yeah, there’s a trailer too.
March 29th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
I’ve just been moved to a new server as part of an experimental protocol — Dreamhost is stress-testing the awesomeness circuits on their new iron, and figured that, if they could handle my awesomeness, they’d be good enough to host everybody else’s flash-based portfolio sites. Or whatever all it is that other people use the internet for. So if anything’s broken, or if anything’s not working in a way that it was working before, let me know and I’ll stamp a big red FAIL on their report cards and send them off to their fathers. If anything’s not working that pretty much never did work, well, hey.
In other, related news, the new server I’m hosted on is called Wario.
March 29th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Meta-meta |
no comments
Check this out. That is the best graffiti ever. I love how the dude’s parents didn’t notice it for an entire year. Similarly, I love how the BBC flew a damn helicopter over it just to get a picture of penis graffiti. Your tax dollars at work! I mean, if you’re British. My tax dollars don’t get wasted on shit like that. They get spent harassing the mothers-in-law of friends of famous athletes and financing mandatory universal conscription schemes.
March 25th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
2 comments
As an exciting sequel to my hilarious story from a few days ago about how I’m too stupid to tell which people are black, I’ve now made a remarkably thorough ass of myself again in a different way.
On another blog I frequent is a thread wherein the name of Shigesato Itoi‘s dog is mentioned. It’s "Bouillon." This is the first time I’ve ever noticed that it’s spelled with the i before the ll, so I post to that effect — what a moron I’ve been thinking all this time that his dog was called "Boullion," like the cubes! Everybody laugh at me, hey?
Of course, the punch line is that the word is actually spelled Bouillon, and always has been, and I am stupid for not knowing this. So congratulations to me for going out of my way to be an ass.
March 22nd, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit, Food |
no comments
We were at the liquor store tonight, since I needed to get more gin to go with my guns and gold, all of which I need for my Official Dangerous Militant Kit, and the wife spotted on the clearance rack (which I didn’t even know liquor stores had, but there you are) this "chai cream liquor" that she was way into due to her proud heritage as a coed. The back panel is pretty hilarious, so I’ve reproduced it for you here:
In case you’re not seeing it, I’ll add a convenient crop to the image to emphasise the hilarious part:
Hell yeah, relish. Pour me a nice tall glass of that action.
March 22nd, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit, Food |
one comment
It’s not for lack of trying. It’s just because I’m goddamn terrible at it.
Everybody knows I’m keen on baseball. I’ve followed baseball for years. I’ve written sixty-three blog posts about it. It’s pretty much a safe bet that I’m familiar with it. So I was reading this blog post. I don’t really know what it’s about; something about some stuff Lenny Dykstra allegedly said to some other dude clearly has an axe to grind anyhow. But I got about three paragraphs into it, so read that much. It’ll take like fifteen seconds.
My reaction upon reading the third paragraph there was "hang on, Derek Jeter’s not black." So I sez to Dave I sez, hey, is Derek Jeter black? And he’s all "well, uh, yeah. What did you think?" So I went and looked at some pictures of Derek Jeter, and I gotta say, I’m still not seeing it. So I asked the wife, hey, did you know Derek Jeter is black? And then she’s all "uh, yeah. What’s wrong with you?" So apparently I’m the only person in all of creation who didn’t know Derek Jeter was black.
Which is why I suck as a racist. I can’t even goddamn tell what race somebody is, much less belittle him for it. Except in obvious cases, like A-rod. Skin colour like that, he could only be one thing.
March 18th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
3 comments
Hey, team us rallied in the ninth inning and whupped team hey-we’re-also-from-the-United-States-so-shhhh like it’s the Spanish-American War all over again. Except that I don’t recall the Spanish-American War having a prequel where Puerto Rico kicked our asses so hard they invoked the mercy rule so we would just stop losing and lose already.
Team USA now goes on to face Hugo Chavez’ Team of Darkness in the semifinals. Team Puerto Rico advances to face Team Dominican Republic in the HAY GUYS WE ALREADY LOST bracket. Winner gets to lose to the Netherlands! Again, I mean.
March 18th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
one comment
This is interesting. It’s a leaked internal memo from the Missouri government (which I’m told is based on DHS materials) outlining the serious threat posed by the "modern militia movement." Apparently, the government rocks alliteration just as much as I do!
The most interesting thing I noticed there is at the top of page seven, where it says that militia members are frequently associated with the Constitution Party, Libertarian Party, or Campaign for Liberty. Well, hell, I’m an official, on-the-books, dues-paying member of every one of those organisations that isn’t a sham front for installing a theocratic government. So I guess I’m a dangerous maniac.
Anybody else here a crazed militant according to the standards displayed in that document?
March 18th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
2 comments
This is pretty great. Anyone want to help me start a grassroots lobbying organisation working to ban gun safes due to the obvious danger they pose to children? Say what you want about responsible use and civil rights, the fact remains that, if the gun safe hadn’t been there, this never would have happened. And what’s more important? That people have access to what is, ultimately, just another luxury on a long list, or the safety and well-being of our children? Would you want to see your children locked up in a gun safe due to some careless accident?
"Oh oh," say the gun safe rights crowd, "but it’s for protection! I need that for my own safety!" The American trigger locks are the envy of the world. Do we really need private citizens having access to these dangerous gun safes just so they can feel more secure?
Won’t somebody think of the children??
March 16th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
one comment
I think this is the dumbest news story I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I mean, I’m not doubting its accuracy, but I have to expect that "squirrel eats squirrel-flavoured potato chips" is probably the very bottom thing on the slow-news-day pile.
Wait, what-flavoured potato chips? What the fuck?
March 16th, 2009
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit, Food |
3 comments
