It’s been a pretty rough couple of weeks over here in WPL land so I’m attempting to do one thing at a time. I’m back, Vista-free, and semi-underwhelmed after the roughly fifty bucks I dropped at the shop last week. I know my slavering hordes of fans have been hanging by a thread the past 10 days to find out what I thought of my purchases, so wait no longer. And grab a napkin or something, you’re slavering all over the place.

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The Castlevania Adventure: The Adventure
System: GameBoy
Genre: Action/Platformer
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1989
Country: US

People try and say that the second Castlevania is the worst Castlevania game ever made, but apparently they had absolutely no clue that this one existed.

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Well, Turok has finally come out on my gaming medium of choice and I figured I would give it a chance despite already knowing the console versions were silly, broken messes. I mean, come on, the game has been out for a while and porting it to the PC is the perfect opportunity to fix the myriad of issues that existed within this dinosaur killing party.

SPOILER ALERT:
They didn’t fix a damned thing.

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I’ve reviewed a couple real crappy things for this site over the last few weeks so this was a huge breath of fresh air. In “Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon”, everything that sucked about Diary of the Dead is done well. It is like a cathartic removal of the terrible taste that Romero’s horrible mocumentary left in my mouth.

This is a movie that takes you behind the scenes of exactly what it takes to be a slasher superstar. In “Behind the Mask”, it is a world where the greatest horror movie icons aren’t movie icons but actual mass murderers. This documentary goes to show the sheer amount of preparation that goes into becoming one of these legends. The film crew follows around a man by the name of Leslie Vernon and his exploits into becoming the next great horror superstar.

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Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
System: NES
Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1990
Country: USA

Not much needs to be said to familiarize you with this game. This is one of those titles that you can use to prove whether someone is a douche or not. Castlevania III is without a doubt one of the greatest games ever made. You don’t even need to read the rest of this review, that is exactly what I’m going to tell you throughout it.

I felt like this game was the perfect game to use as a send off to my old “random rambling” review system. It served its point, but after a while it was actually more boring to write than the structured system I’ll be using now.

Plus I get to use these neat graphics.

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Felt like doing another one. Six albums chosen at random from the first six songs my computer spits out at me, this one has a little bit for everyone. And by everyone I mean metal dudes and pretty ladies.

Oh, and if you are here for the loud stuff, or just want to continue thinking of me as the strong, tough, manly man I must seem like, you should probably avoid the last two albums posted here altogether.

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After re-reading the third-to-last paragraph of last week’s entry and looking at the shipping list for this week from Diamond, I was fully prepared to plant foot squarely in mouth. I didn’t really see much to get excited about and the timing couldn’t have been better to make me look like a dope. But then through some divine providence, two books that weren’t even technically on my pull list were awesome.

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There are times when somebody explains the premise of a movie to me and I decide that there is no way the movie can be bad. It was right after the movie first got released and I asked someone if it was any good, someone who knew my taste in Zombie movies was pretty general and that I even enjoyed Land of the Dead (although I hated the Dawn of the Dead remake with a passion, and many people swear by that). My good friend told me, and I quote “It was the Blair Witch project but with zombies, and it is still George Romero.” Read the rest of this entry »

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
System: NES
Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1988
Country: USA

Castlevania II was, obviously, the follow up to the surprisingly popular Castlevania. Looking back, while Simon’s Quest held that popularity initially, it added many elements to the series that turned off some gamers. The irony would be that, years later, these elements would come back into play in the newer generation of Castlevania titles.

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Nothing super big to report, just in case you didn’t notice I have added a link to the sidebar to the forums. They were only open for a short period of time last year, but I figured what the hell? If Amy Winehouse can get herself sorted out in rehab, why can’t we have a populated forum userbase?

….

Wait, she did what?

This is probably where I should insert some pun about biting, or the movie having bite, or the movie never really finding a direction to sink its teeth into. I am far above leading in with a hackneyed pun or uncreative play on words about this film in order to seem cute all while alluding to the films dark, cringeworthy premise.

This is a movie where a southern virgin uses her tooth filled pita pocket to bite off a bunch of dude’s dicks after they wrong her.

What? It isn’t like kids read this. This is the internet.

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Castlevania
System: NES
Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1987
Country: USA

Oh Castlevania, how I love you.

Castlevania shares the distinction of being one of the very first games I ever owned for the NES, I used to play it religiously. I mean, literally, I would chant and take communion from it and everything. I didn’t even sue when late one night, I heard Castlevania enter my room and…

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A decently-large slate of books this week saw the release of the second part of Marvel’s ‘08 “event book,” yet another Bendis/Maleev collaboration (already), Barry Kitson drawing Spidey, and even the conclusion of a Superman arc that started about a year and a half ago. Despite all the internet-cracking-in-half, my book of the week is a little less auspicious.

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I just wanted to point out that earlier this week word hit the blogosphere that last summer, John Favreau flew Brian Bendis, Mark Millar, Joe Quesada, Tom Brevoort, and Axel Alonso out to the set of Iron Man in order to have them offer critique and input regarding the film as it was in production.  Apparently the comics braintrust convinced Favreau to focus on Stane/Iron Monger as the primary villain in favor of using the Mandarin, which was the original idea.  Bendis also claims he wrote the Nick Fury scene at the end (SPOILER ALERT LAWLZ).

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION HOLLYWOOD?  No wonder Iron Man was such a good blend of comics source material and popcorn movie presentation.  These people are the custodians of decades-old legacies.  Let them be involved in the film-making process.  Imagine if Warner ever actually attempted to get Batman writers or editors to contribute to a Batman movie.  Maybe one would eventually turn out actually resembling Batman in some way.  Hmm.

P.S. I officially declare this the Summer of Nick Fury.

The ‘08 WPL revival rolls on. This week saw yet another budget-priced “world building” exercise by DC prior to a Crisis series, Skrulls everywhere, and a big ol’ bucket of kung fu. I spent more time this week watching Iron Man than reading comics but here we go.

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With this weekend’s release of the big-screen adaptation of Iron Man, the summer movie season is officially upon us, which means it’s once again time for me to submit you, my IAC faithful, to my idiosyncratic take on nerd-friendly cinema. I know it’s only the first weekend of May, but Ol’ Shellhead just threw down the proverbial repulsor-equipped gauntlet.

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