Last Friday, my sons and I drove 10 hours straight to spend the week vacationing in New Hampshire.  Yesterday, we drove another hour and a half to go to the American Classic Arcade Museum.  We have been before, and found out that at 13 cents a token, you can play Tron, Punch-Out, Pac-man, Kick-man, Jungle Hunt, Crazy Climber, Track-n-Field, and about 300 more classic games nearly all day for about 7 bucks.  Our favorite, however, is Tempest which meant that about one hour of the hour and a half drive was spent bragging about who was going to get the highest Tempest score and blast the other out of the universe.  Alas, after spending our $20 for 150 tokens, we headed straight for the northwest corner on the 3rd floor only to find a tiny sticker on the center of the screen that read "Out of Order."  Of course, we spend the next 10 minutes checking the plug in the back, hoping that the dude fixing pinball machines further down might work his magic on the Tempest cabinet, and generally looking like sad little puppies.  Eventually we moved on and had some epic high scores on Arkanoid and Crazy Kong, but when we got back, I had to find this online version.  It isn't the same without the dial, but it still brings a smile to our faces.

Wow!  This is super cool!  In this project, 20 artists recorded pieces in the key of B flat and put the videos next to each other on one page.  You can start and stop as many as you like and at different times to compose your own symphony.  I was skeptical at first and thought it would sound like a cacaphonous mess, but alas, it is really incredible!

Check out this clever little web page and try to click the guy's nose.  It isn't really that funny, but my kids and I laughed for like 10 minutes straight playing around with it.  Enjoy!

It is not often that a sequel is better than the original, but in this case the Mses runs away with the prize!

If this guy ever moves out of this place.  I am totally moving in!  Enjoy!

I've been kind of obsessed by this game for the past few days.  It is a level based platformer with a unique style and great physics.  It is also extremely hard!  I had to play the final boss level about 100 times to beat it, but the I was so hooked, I was willing.  Enjoy!

For a dark song, this one seems to make all of the people in my home pretty happy.  Thanks for this one, Griffin!

As some of you know, I have been working on a new Bollywood movie where I play both myself and the Devil.  The "Orange" network in France just released this promo vid about the production.  Enjoy!

When I was a kid, I loved Mr. T, and "I pitty the fool" who says he wasn't the coolest action hero ever!  So when I got this Mr. T Shrinky Dink "Activity Set" for my birthday, I got right to work on coloring in the different action poses and then shrinking them down to miniature size so that I could...

So that I could...

All these years, I thought that Shrinky Dinks sucked!  What a worthless waste of time.  Then, I found that there actually is a pretty cool use to this mysterious shrinkable plastic.  I actually can't believe how cool some of this stuff is.  I haven't made anything yet, but you can be sure I will post it when I do.

While searching through the collaborations of my favorite two beatboxers (Daichi and Hikakin), I was transported back to my college days at their rendition of the Mortal Kombat theme song.  My roommates and I would spend hours playing this game on our Nintendo 64 just waiting for the opportune time to show off the new "Fatalaty" we had learned from some other fan or an article we read in an issue of Nintendo Power.  Remember, you couldn't just search the finishing move combos on the web (since it didn't exist).  Everybody seemed to know 1 or 2 for most of the characters, but there seemed to always be more hidden; just waiting for someone to figure it out and be the ultimate MK master.

Since the web does exist now, just a few clicks brought me to dozens of videos showing all Fatalities for all characters of the most recent version: MK9.  I spent 15 minutes watching through them, and I was conflicted.  Part of me was truly impressed by both the creativity and graphic realism shown in each death sequence.  The other part of me was disgusted with the gratuitous violence and needless gore.  I don't think I would want my children playing this game, and yet I absolutely loved versions 1-3 from my younger days.  And half the fun, I admit, was getting to the finishing moves.  Now, they weren't as realistic, but they were just as graphic, with characters ripping off body parts, impaling their opponents on spikes and swords, and exploding blood and bones across the screen.  I have always been a peaceful person, but I genuinely wanted to see Kung Lao take off his saw blade hat and split Sub Zero right down the middle. 

In any case, as I contemplated the moral philosophy behind this phenomenon, I was reminded of something that has been left out of more recent versions of MK that I find a real shame.  In MK3, in particular, in addition to 3 fatalities for each character (including the "stage uppercut fatality"), they also included Animalities, Babalities, and Friendships where the character when prompted with "Finish Him" had the option of turning into his or her spirit animal, changing their opponent into a baby version of him or herself, or making a silly gesture of friendship.  Again, I was rewound back 20+ years to picture my friends getting annoyed that I just made Liu Kang make shadow puppets on the wall instead of setting Raiden on fire and watching his bones crumble beneath the flames (although I do admit that another one of my Liu Kang favs was crushing my opponent with a falling MK arcade cabinet).

My point is that I was inclined to use the non/less violent finishing sequences to counter the video game violence even as I was drawn in by it.  I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I can only hope that my boys will have similar inclinations as they grow older and will no doubt be faced with similar situations.

Below: a video of ALL the finishing moves from MK3!  Which one is your favorite?