Console Wars

Despite some particularly crushing news in the "I'm looking for a job" front (the place where I worked last year rated me as "mediocre" and ineligible for rehire), I finished Console Wars, a great 540+ page tome my brother bought me as a gift. It recounts the early part of the 1990s from Sega's POV and the team, led by former Mattel exec Tom Kalinske as they went to battle with the Big N and almost ended up winning. It's a tale of underdogs, the creation of Sonic (particularly humorous is the amalgamation that Sonic was conceived of: no spoilers) but instead of winning the big game in the end or at least a moral victory, it also has the fall of Sega: the constant battles with Sega of Japan, the rise of Sony, and how Nintendo was the hated rival (or at least rival) that got hurt before it fought back.

While it ends with Sega's loss following the botched release of the Sega Saturn and talks about a great variety of video game related subjects in that particularly heady area (and of course, since Sega is the "protagonist", it's more on them than the Big N), it also vindicates Tom Kalinske and the rest of Sega of America from Sega's more terrible choices (32X, the early Saturn launches). It also appears to give Sega more praise than it was worth, despite Sega really forcing Nintendo to play their hand and truly make a real video game industry instead of an expensive toy, it downplays what Sega did best: after all, Sega Genesis was really a rather poor system, and because it was released a few years earlier before the SNES it was absolutely inferior in every way, but they managed to make it work thanks to an innovative new game (Sonic The Hedgehog, of course) and some rather effective marketing (like the fictional "Blast Processing" compared to SNES's Mode 7).

It also made me realize why Sonic hasn't been doing too well in the last 10 years or so, compared to Mario, despite being long in the tooth, still manages to make money: Sonic was conceived as a "cooler" alternative to Mario. But while Mario is fairly timeless, Sonic just feels too much like a product of the era and was never able to really shake that impression.

All in all, I really loved it, although I wish that there was something like it for the rest of the console wars that followed. In the bittersweet ending, Sony's PlayStation goes onto a big success, but it doesn't even get to the release of the N64, which does not fare too well either against the PlayStation either. The other intriguing thing is that while Sony and Nintendo had parted ways soon after the "SNES CD" debacle (which isn't discussed terribly deeply, either, and why Philips didn't make an add-on to the SNES instead of Nintendo licensing their most valuable characters for Philips to mangle, isn't discussed), Sega had tried to court Sony to release a 32-bit console together, and that actually came close to happening. Imagine if they did. That would definitely put Nintendo in the dust.

I wondered if in pursuit of the 32-bit partner, if Sega had ever contacted Apple, which could've resulted in a far better console than with the Pippin.

Road trip stuff failures

One of my random memories from childhood include a book that may probably still be in the attic--it involved "Things to do on long road trips". Written in the days before you could entertain kids for hours with some Disney DVDs and probably designed for the unfortunate souls who cannot manage to read a book in a car (especially if you're in a place with bumpier highways--I remember how in Louisiana the road would be a systemic ka-thump-ka-thump-ka-thump as it ran over concrete sections.

Many of these things don't work properly on Interstate highways if at all, so any trip involving that was out of luck. These often included road sign findings and other businesses, but the way Interstates are designed you'll only see large commercial developments (malls and their ilk, including chain restaurants) if anything at all. There was also using stoplights by watching the other light turn red so you could accurately say "CHANGE" and watch the light turn green again.

I got the feeling it was made in the UK (no Interstates, a much smaller place to travel over all) since it was a UK publisher and had other idiosyncrasies like lights being "amber" instead of "yellow".

The old quote "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything" from Charles Kraut does work here.

Anyway, just putting this out there in case anyone remembers it.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

A review on Captain America: The Winter Soldier which I watched a few years ago, which I felt was better than the previous few films from the Marvel Avengers juggernaut--it didn't create more problems than it solved (Thor: The Dark World) or didn't focus on the adventures of a superhero with PTSD (Iron Man 3). Captain America: The Winter Soldier still follows the kinda-depressing post-Avengers problems with more on the personal problems of the superheroes, and stuff does happen in this film, with a large part of the plot figuring out who the real villains are and focusing on Cap and Black Widow as they drive around Cleveland (er, greater "Washington D.C." area) while evading a revived HYDRA. While not affecting the greater problems of the storyline, there's too many places where CATWS breaks the Willing Suspension of Disbelief makes it even less plausible than is acceptable for a superhero movie. OK, so Cap himself managed to get himself injected with a super serum that makes him go from a shrimp to well, Captain America, and gets frozen for over 70 years, sure let's go with that. But when you ask some insane things like:

- The Winter Soldier himself is Bucky Barnes, missing and presumed dead by everyone else. While cryogenic freezing is used on him as well, he's been active, shaping history by carrying out assassinations. You'd think that freezing/thawing wouldn't be too good on the body and aging (it certainly isn't good for food), as opposed to Captain America, who was frozen once and thawed. Try to not keep in mind that both men are in their late 90s but still fight like they're in their early 30s

- S.H.I.E.L.D. is a top-level government agency but they weren't aware that HYDRA had been infiltrating it and influencing it for decades? This is even more egregious since S.H.I.E.L.D. gets the best toys that the Armed Forces, the CIA, and the FBI never get.

- Absolutely no one at S.H.I.E.L.D., including the Avengers, Nick Fury, the late Phil Coulson before he died, and the President of the United States never really figured this out? I mean, they have to learn all this from Arnim Zola, who transferred his mind to a series of 1960s-era databanks, which presents another problem. It's clear that someone has been going down there, seeing how he's been upgraded at some point with a USB port, but those tapes deteriorate. Wouldn't it be better if someone replaced those parts? And he's apparently destroyed by HYDRA as collateral damage--wouldn't it make sense to make backups of him?

So yes, it has problems. A lot of problems. It was still fun, though!

In the meantime, I'm going to be upgrading the "non-blog" components of this site, including...

• A dedicated page for Games
• A semi-professional page for On the Road
• A collection of scans and other fun stuff, some from TWR
• A new project I'm working on