Now, although I’m a huge wrestling fan, I usually let our resident wrestling dude cover all the wrestling stuff, but this news was just to big and had to get posted now. Starting on 2/16 in New York and ending in England on 3/4, the Samoa Joe Farewell Tour will be happening. Yes, that is right. After countless amazing matches in ROH, Samoa Joe will be leaving the active roster for the first time in years.

This is a huge blow to ROH currently, but lord knows they have tons of talent to fill his spot on the roster. Sadly, none of them will be quite like Joe. I would use this opportunity to list various matches of Joe’s you should check out, but that would be ridiculous. Just find anything he did in ROH starting with his trifecta of matches with CM Punk and his absolute battle with Kenta Kobashi.

Just going out on a limb, I’m going to assume with TNA growing (albeit slowly and still containing garbage like Sting and Double J) Joe figured this would be a better career decision… and I can’t really argue with that. If I hear someone call him a sell-out I’m probably going to have to hit them with a chair. Sure, I along with most diehard wrestling fans prefer the glory that is ROH to the almost WWE-lite feeling that TNA has seemed to find themselves railroaded into… but for a guy with the sheer talent that Joe has, and especially considering all he has accomplished in ROH, there really isn’t much left for him to do in that fed.

Either way, I hope he kicks somebodies head off on the way out.

Fun spotfest opens
Video game announcing
Fuck your explosions

No, you aren’t seeing things, this is still technically my ‘ROM-A-Day’ column, I’m just toying with new names and form

ats to see what sticks. If you have any comments or suggestions for what to rename this column, e-mail them to me at gavin@inanothercastle.net. In this installment, instead of simply reviewing one game, I decided to tackle an entire series.

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It was a big weekend of wrestling as me and some friends hit the Ring of Honor show in Edison Saturday night, stayed up all night afterwards watching matches, and then some of us got together again to watch the Rumble last night. I rarely check out WWE PPVs these days aside from a Smackdown one that looks promising from time to time, but I’m glad I took the chance and chipped in my $5 for this one. It was a very solid show and a good time all around. The ROH event on the other hand was a bit of a disappointment, but still decent. I’ll go into a little more detail after EWWMAGGAAA and Estrada throw these steel stairs into the ring.

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This week, Newsarama reported that effective immediately, Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s WildStorm series, “The Boys,” was being cancelled. Although DC has not commented on news of the cancellation, the book’s imminent end was all but confirmed by Robertson. “The Boys” is about a government-sponsored, anti-superhuman black ops unit, and is chock full of Ennis’ usual over-the-top violence, gore, sex, language, drugs, hamsters… basically all the stuff we fanboys want for our hard-earned $3. Being a self-confessed Ennis nerd, and with “The Boys” being among my favorite books of 2006, I’m pissed about this, and here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

For my inaugural post on the new IAC, I wanted to take a minute to write about the Wii’s Virtual Console service and the massive amout of irony, glorious though it may be, contained therein. I should probably preface the rest of this entry by saying that even though I love games and I keep up with the hobby (or what’s left of it) pretty regularly, games just don’t have that same magic for me they used to. I like playing action games, and by that I don’t mean twiddling a pair of analog sticks in circles so I can manipulate a generic, heavily-armored, one-man death machine in 3D space while he shoots even more generic laser beams at still more generic aliens. What I mean is, I like 2D shoot-’em- ups, beat-’em-ups, whatever-’em-ups.

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This review is based on the singleplayer portion of Rainbow Six: Vegas V1.03.

For the most part, squad-based shooters are not my cup of tea. I mean, the idea of realistic team-based combat seems like a bulletproof concept for a game, but rarely does it ever turn out that way. Something about memorizing the 65 different buttons required to force feed my “teammates” commands every 35 seconds just gets to be a bit taxing after a (poorly designed) level or two. Well, my friends, today I am here to tell you that this is certainly not the case with the newest installment of the Rainbow Six series.

With breathtaking graphics, uncharacteristically good teammate AI, adrenaline pumping sound, and (nearly) flawless gameplay, Rainbow Six: Vegas will have your jaw on the floor from the moment you fast-rope in. While there are a few things that I would like to have seen done differently, in this title the pros vastly outnumber the cons.

Let’s start with the good, shall we?

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Hey, my name’s Christopher and I’m here to talk PRO RASSLIN. Normally I’ll be writing about the Japanese scene, the US indies, and some older stuff. But there’s a new fed coming to TV that sounds awful on paper, but is actually shaping up with the potential to be something awesome, and I want to let y’all know about it.

Wrestling Society X is MTV’s version of pro wrestling. There’s a featured band that plays on each episode (Black Label Society appears in the pilot that airs Tuesday). The fed is generally supposed to look UNDERGROUND and gritty with an intentionally run down ring and venue. And the interviews are supposed to have a “reality show” twist. With only a half hour to play with and Vampiro & Sean Waltman (123 Kid/6 Pac) as their big name singles wrestlers, it sounds like this is a sure-miss promotion, right? Surprisingly enough, maybe not.

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This review is based on the vanilla, unpatched, unmodded M2:TW.

I should probably preface this by saying that I really am not a huge fan of the RTS genre. Sure I played Starcraft and Command and Conquer, but they don’t really have a long shelf life with me. I’ll be addicted beyond belief for a week, maybe two, and after that I’ll occasionally break it out to play online when I don’t feel like playing Counter Strike.

The Total War series has been the exception to that in the past. Rome: Total War was one of the few strategy games to hold my attention beyond a cursory interest. I was hoping that Medieval 2: Total War would just build on that fact and possibly get me into the genre earnest.

Did it? Well, yes and no.

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I would like to use this as an opportunity to point out that most movie reviewers are idiots. Not necessarily because of their mental capacity, but because of their overwhelming desire to show that only they can appreciate cinema and that if it isn’t an overly complicated film about romance in southern Tunisia staring Cate Blanchett it is absolute garbage.

The reason I want to mention this is because that fact is none more evident than in seeing the reviews for the newest installment of the Rocky series, ‘Rocky Balboa’.

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Have you ever wondered what you could possibly add to your PC gaming peripherals to take your game to that next level? Do you already have your dream rig, but still yearn for more gratification from your overall gaming experience? Well, if you’re tight on cash but still looking for that missing link between your computer and your pleasure centers (You know, the ones in your brain, not in your pants), then I urge you to consider purchasing a pair of eDimensional AudioFX Force Feedback Headphones.

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Where do they get those wonderful toys? As in this GLORIOUS invention known as the internet. How I praise thee. I like to call myself a religious metal fan, an even more so, a religious cartoon fan. So when I heard Brendon Small (The god of “Squigglevision,” and the creative genius behind Home Movies) had introduced Dethklok to the world, I became very interested in witnessing the “apocalypse of metal” with my own eyes. Sadly, I am no longer 15 years of age, and have what some people refer to as a “nightlife.” A nightlife that encompasses a slue of random activities, but none of which happens to be sitting down at certain times of certain days of the week to catch shows that I can now *massages side of CPU tower* torrent with the stroke of a key.
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Game: Disney’s Toy Story
System: Genesis
Release Year: 1996

When Toy Story came out, every kid with a Genesis believed they saw the future of gaming. The graphics looked like what you dreamed about at night when your head hit your Ghost Busters pillow and you were sucking your thumb. Simulated 3-D that actually LOOKED 3-D, none of that crap they tried to pawn off on you before. No. Those days were over.

This was as good as games were ever going to get.

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Imagine how much better everything would be if humanity stopped breeding. How much better would things be without those tiny, whining, sniveling, pooping Winston Churchill look-alikes forcing their parents to waste time and income? No annoying little kids crying in the movie theater or clogging up lines in the mall with their tantrums. Video games, television, and movies could be as vulgar and violent as they please now that there are no children left to ruin everyone else’s fun.

According to Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of P.D. James’ novel “Children of Men”, this is not the case. In a childless world everything will fall apart even worse than it has now. In a decaying London in 2027, now that humanity has gone sterile, humanity seems to be having a very hard time adapting to a childless future.

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I’ve had this CD pre-ordered from the interwebz for a while now, so when I heard it leaked I wasn’t going to bother being an internet pirate. Curiosity got the best of me, though, and I’m pretty happy it did.

If you aren’t familiar with Hot Cross, then you probably aren’t familiar with Saetia, You and I, or Neil Perry. If that is the case, you are really missing out on life and need to remedy this situation immediately in order to become a better person.

I’ll give you a few moments to do that. I’ll wait.

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Fuck you. No, not you personally, I like you. I like you and I don’t even know you. Yet, you don’t know me. The you I was referring to is you, the reader. You don’t know shit about me. And frankly, I’m ok with that. So instead of the carbon-copy inaugural speech, why hello, my name is Mr. Who-gives-a-shit, and welcome to the bi-weekly Fuck-if-you-care, I’m treating this as I would treat any random encounter with a stranger…*scratches balls, and extends hand* Hi, I’m Mr. Irrelevant. Now enough with the formalities, let’s cut straight to the money shot, because you know that’s the only reason why you, or anyone for that matter, owns the internet. Well, that and WOW.

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Game: Akumajou Special – Boku Dracula-kun
System: NES
Release Year: 1990

When I originally began doing the ROM-A-Day bit on the old IAC site, it got quite hard to get through. The sad fact is that there are many horrible, unplayable games in existence for the classic consoles we all have retro-sex dreams about at night. I pigeonholed myself into having to make a solid attempt at beating every game I play, so I was forced to churn my way through absolute shitstorms of 8-bit hatred. I grew to hate the rules I set forth for my own column due to so much Japanese nonsense like mahjong and RPGs about sexy anime girls and robots.

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To keep with the ‘Best of 2006′ theme I started, and to stall until I can get more writers aboard/get my hands on more things to write about, I was going to do a long piece about the best moments in television the last year… but I didn’t.

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Pirates, Vikings, and Knights II

I think so.

No review needed.