If Lego Doesn’t Make This Iron Giant Set, It’s Going to Be Sadder Than the Movie
I never knew I needed a LEGO Iron Giant until now.

The Oral History of ‘Space Jam’: Part 1 – Launching the Movie
Cartoon Brew has a whole series on the Oral History of Space Jam, and if you grew up with the movie like I did, it’s a great read.

These Are the 30 Games Nintendo Should Include on a Tiny Super Nintendo
This is a solid list of SNES games that should be included on the eventual SNES Classic Mini. I would add E.V.O. The Search for Eden and Super Mario All-Stars, but that’s just my opinion.

Rejoice: Michael Giacchino Will Score SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
This is great news. His score for Dr. Strange was great, and I hope Marvel lets him cut loose for Spider-Man and really write a great theme for the webslinger.

The NES Classic Edition is dead simple — and that’s why it’s great – The Verge
I have no need for this since I’m a big fan of building Raspberry Pi systems running RetroPie to play old-school video games, but this thing is just so awesome and cute I know I'll probably end up buying one or two.

Rogue One Will Have A Different Opening Without the Traditional Star Wars Crawl!
I think this is a great idea for the Star Wars spinoffs. I want them to feel different from the main saga movies as much as possible.

Portable Animation Tool Inchworm Just Got Updated for the Nintendo 3DS
I just recently got a Nintendo 3DS and this little animation program looks really fun.

Owlboy review • Eurogamer.net
I’ve been hearing about this game for a few years, and it looks really polished. I can’t wait to try it out sometime soon.

Nintendo President Hints of Bigger Hardware Plans for Switch – Bloomberg
Sounds like Nintendo has a few hardware tricks up their sleeves that have yet to be announced for the Switch. How about different sets of Joy-Cons in the style of Gamecube, NES, etc? I have enjoyed the Wii U but I’m ready for Nintendo to have a blockbuster console on their hands again.

TecToy unveils its new limited edition SEGA Genesis
This sounds like an interesting competing product to the upcoming NES Mini. It has pre-installed Sega games but also reads games from SD cards.

Nintendo Is Revealing “Major Details” About The Switch In January 
The announcements of the Nintendo Switch was one of last week's highlights, but don't expect any more info in 2016. Nintendo doesn't want to hurt their sales (or their 3rd party developers) for the holidays. It'll be a long wait, but I'm eager to learn more about the Switch.

The internet took a break from talking about Donald Trump briefly this week when Variety confirmed the upcoming Muppet Babies reboot that was previously scooped by ToughPigs. If you haven’t read the ToughPigs scoop, I highly recommend it. It has character descriptions and even some sample dialogue.

Muppet Babies was a very influential part of my early childhood, and this reboot comes at the perfect time. The wife and I are about to have our first kid, and it makes me so happy to know she will be able to watch reboots of Muppet Babies, especially since episodes of the original are so hard to track down.

The new show will be catered to the very young crowd (see Disney Junior) and probably not very watchable for adults. This is coming from someone who would rather watch cartoons over any live-action television, but I doubt it will be a show for us. However, I’m sure it’ll be a fine show to watch with your kids. Why am I so excited about it then?

Look at how popular the Disney Junior shows’ merchandise is. Doc McStuffins, Sofia the First, Jake and the Never Land Pirates, and more all dominate the preschool age toy aisles. If the Muppet Babies gets that kind of merchandising, we’re in for a full-on nostalgiathon. With a little girl on the way who will be at least a year old when this show starts up, that’s exciting. I hope we get new McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, lunch boxes, and everything in between.

And to think, a couple years ago I bought vintage Muppet Babies birthday party supplies for my future child. Now, in 2018 and beyond, a Muppet Babies-themed birthday party for a kid will seem normal again.

PS – I’m going to start blogging here again. Just pretend like there wasn’t a two-year gap since posts were flowing regularly.

Star Wars Battlefront I and II are both probably in my top five video games of all time. My love of Star Wars in addition to the addictive gameplay and awesome multiplayer of those games make them about perfect for me. Needless to say, I had a feeling that a new Battlefront game was going to drag me into the current generation of gaming, and I was right.

I told myself I was never going to get an Xbox One or a PS4. I have plans to (someday) build a kick-ass gaming PC and I didn’t see the point in a console other than the Wii U, but I changed my tune when I started reading some good things about the Xbox One, its upcoming backwards compatibility, and when an Amazon gift card for the exact amount of the console landed in my inbox.

My mysterious benefactor

Obviously I haven’t been updating this site much in the last couple years, but I still get a decent amount of search engine traffic thanks to my years worth of posts. Occasionally, I get a tiny amount of money from Amazon affiliate links, but it’s usually only a few dollars a month. A couple months ago, however, someone actually paid over $6,000 for an out-of-print LEGO Star Wars set (from this article) through one of my links, and I ended up with an Amazon gift card for about $350. Crazy.

Rather than use that on something I really needed, I decided that it was the universe telling me I needed to get a new gaming console so I could play Battlefront. Someone spent six grand on a Star Wars toy so I could play this game. Thanks, rich stranger.

I settled on the Xbox One because I have a history with the 360 and it just felt right. So far, I’ve been pretty happy with it. I’ve been slaying Orcs left and right with Shadow of Mordor, replaying some classic Halo 2 for the first time in about a decade, and scaring the crap out of myself with some Alien Isolation.

Then a few days ago the open beta for Star Wars Battlefront came out. I downloaded it and after struggling for a while to find a server, joined a battle on Hoth.

I definitely don’t want to judge a game by its beta, but so far I’m a little underwhelmed. Visually it looks amazing, but it just doesn’t have that gameplay that drew me to the first games in the franchise. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it seems a little too Call of Duty for my tastes. I don’t hate it, I just found that after playing a few rounds (and getting slaughtered), I was ready to hop back over to Shadow of Mordor.

I’ll still buy it and I hope the full game will change my mind, but as of now it just plays a little too much like the games that made me abandon gaming for a while.

I’ll post thoughts on the full game when it comes out. Have any of you tried the beta?

How the Father of Claymation Lost His Company
I’ve been a huge fan of stop-motion/claymation since I was a very little kid, and Will Vinton has always been one of my favorites. I was vagely aware of what happened when his studio was taken over by Phil Knight of Nike fame, but I didn’t know the whole story. It’s pretty incredible what happened to him, but it has to be said, would films like Coraline and ParaNorman have been made if the change didn’t happen? I think Laika has a bright future but it sucks that Vinton got booted from his own company.

Watch Stop-Motion ‘Usagi Yojimbo’ Short Film
This short is rough, but it was just used as a proof-of-concept for the filmmakers to get the rights to Usagi Yojimbo to make a stop-motion animated feature. I love stop-motion and I love Usagi Yojimbo (through his TMNT connection of course) so this is pretty awesome.

How Laika Pushed 3D Printing to New Heights with ‘The Boxtrolls’
I love that 3D printing is helping keep stop-motion animation alive. Laika’s movies are great and I can’t wait to see the Boxtrolls.

See the Ghostbusters Ride That Was Never Built
This would have been a really fun ride.

Inside the Wild UI Design of Guardians of the Galaxy
I love when a sci-fi movie has a great UI design, and Guardians certainly did. Beyond the screens and holograms that we’re used to seeing, it had some amazingly weird “UI” in Ronan’s ships. Just another thing that this movie did right.

Things have been quiet around here again. Sorry about that! I’ve been busy launching a new business and the only thing I’ve had the energy or time for resembling blogging lately has been maintaining the THS Instagram account, but hopefully that’s changing soon. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching geeky movies, playing video games, etc, I just haven’t had the energy to blog about it.

That said, it’s been a pretty eventful few weeks for us geeks. I’m sure you all are wondering if I’ve seen the new TMNT movie, but I haven’t. I’m really divided on seeing it (at the least I could write a bad review) but being so busy and also having so many awesome things I’m excited about has made me strangely at peace with the idea that there’s a new Turtle movie out there that I haven’t seen. The opinions I’ve read from the people I trust basically let me know that the movie is terrible, and honestly all the people I’ve had telling me it’s good have had to preface their recommendations with things like “If you don’t think about it…” or “It’s just the Turtles…” which is bullshit to me. I’ve gotten called out on Instagram and Reddit (ugh, don’t go to the TMNT sub) for being whiny for wanting a good TMNT movie, and I’m kind of over the whole thing. I’ll torrent it when it comes out on video to make sure I don’t contribute any money to Bay’s production company, and maybe write a late review.

Anyway…

Meanwhile, I’ve seen ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ twice

And it’s amazing.

I’d been excited about this movie since it was announced, way before the average movie-goer had any idea who Star-Lord, Rocket, or Groot were, and I’m so excited to see it doing so well. It was a huge risk from Marvel and it paid off handsomely, which only means they will continue taking risks and maybe we’ll finally get movies based on Black Panther and/or a female-lead film.

The movie just works. It completely nails the sci-fi side of the Marvel Universe and establishes a lot of really important things for the years to come. Remember in Thor 2 when the Aether was vaguely described by Odin? You could kind of tell they were hinting at Infinity Gems, but until Guardians they were always dancing around the subject. In this movie, we get a short, expertly crafted explanation that actually calls them Infinity Stones, and it totally works.

And Thanos, oh man, he’s awesome. He doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but the little bit he has is great. Josh Brolin sounds so menacing, and Thanos is the thing I’m most excited about for the next few years of Marvel movies. He’s not your typical dumb brute of a villain, and the few lines he has in Guardians establish that for the MCU. He’s above everyone else, and even though it will be a while until he gets proper villain billing in a movie, I think it’ll be worth the wait.

I could ramble for days about how much I love this movie, but the bottom line is that everything about this movie is well done. It’s written well, the direction, cinematography, and visual effects are all to notch, and the characters are great. Chris Pratt is perfect as Star-Lord and this movie will be seen as a defining moment in his career. The humor is as good as it’s ever been in a Marvel movie, the soundtrack is amazing, and the addition of 80s pop culture references helps make it one of my favorite movies ever. After Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I didn’t think Marvel movies could get much better, but Guardians proved me wrong. Long live the MCU.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the failed ’90s Tim Burton film ‘Superman Lives’ that was supposed to star Nic Cage, right? I’ll always remember it because as a kid I was completely obsessed with Superman. This was also the time where I started reading magazines like Cinescape and Wizard, devouring movie news and also experimenting with this new Internet thing, checking out sites like Ain’t It Cool News. Everyone was talking about the Tim Burton Superman movie. Hell, I even had a hardback ‘History of Superman’ type book that mentioned the film being in production at the very end. For better or worse (probably for better), the movie never got made.

Over the past few years there have been some costume tests leaked and concept art, but the whole story has never been told. Luckily, a while back, some plucky geeks took to Kickstarter to fund a documentary called The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?, and they’ve just released the first trailer. I can’t wait to see this. They scored interviews with Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, and a lot of other people who were involved. The filmmakers have now launched another crowdfunding campaign to get the money needed to finish the doc, and as someone who missed out on the Kickstarter, I’m going to jump on this.

With Superhero movies becoming such a big part of our culture it’s almost just as entertaining learning about the movies that never happened. Superman Lives definitely tops the list and looks worthy of it’s own documentary, but I wish someone would make a documentary that collects stories of all the other Superhero films that got lost in production hell. The Jack Black Green Lantern comedy, the James Cameron Spider-Man movie, George Miller’s Justice League, and all the rest probably have pretty interesting stories behind them too.

Via The Verge

I’m a sucker for the design aesthetic of the NES. The color scheme, the shape and layout of the controller, and everything else. I also love emulation. I’ve written about OpenEmu a couple times, and I’ve been using a Wii U Pro controller with it a lot lately. It’s great and pairs easily with computers, but this NES-styled Bluetooth controller looks awesome.

Sure, it’s got four buttons (and shoulder triggers) instead of the classic two-button NES layout, but that just means you can use it for more than NES games. The NES30 looks very well built and sells for around $40. You can use it with your phone, tablet, or computer, and it would look cool just sitting on your desk. I’m going to pick one up and hope that they release a SNES-styled version sometime in the future. I’m more nostalgic about the NES controller, but the SNES had the best controller of all time, in my opinion.

Via Gizmodo

“Spend your money at the show, not on admission.”

That’s the marketing hook that got me to bite on this year’s Indiana Toy and Comic Expo. I’ve long ignored the city’s preeminent geek event, Gen Con. I’m not a tabletop gamer so I never bothered to attend.

Indianapolis’s two latest comic conventions, Pop Con and Indiana Comic Con, didn’t appeal to me either. Their admission price and three-day schedule were too much. Conversely, I had been a few times to the Ash comic show held regularly on the city’s east side. The tiny show always left me underwhelmed.

In the words of Goldilocks, the ITCE seemed just right. In its second year, ITCE looked to be the right mix of inexpensive, condensed, and substantial. The one day event promised lots of vendors and a few extra frills. The event was held this past Sunday at the Wyndham Hotel on Indy’s west side.

Light sabers are bad for photos.

I showed up at 10:00 a.m., an hour after opening. I plunked down my $5 admission and got a raffle ticket and hand stamp in return. The event was settled in two of the hotel’s ball rooms and adjoining hallway. One room was for costume events while the other was the show floor. Vendors and attractions spilled out into the dimly lit hall.

The area was a bit crowded but not uncomfortably so. You could still make your way around easily to see what was to offer. I only had a couple traffic jams get in my way during the four hours I was there.

I quickly surveyed the scene and made my way around the perimeter of the vendor booths. I decided to attack the tables systematically, sizing up everything before making my first purchase. The assortment and placement of vendors was excellent. Comic sellers and artists were sprinkled evenly among the toy vendors.

Exhibiting artist Epyon5

Even amongst the toy booths, there was a good mix. Most sellers had an assortment of goodies but there were a few that specialized in a certain subject like Star Wars, G.I. Joe, Doctor Who, or Lego. Star Wars was definitely the most popular subject and that pleased me.

In the weeks leading up to the event I had established a game plan. This show I was determined to complete my run of vintage Star Wars figures. I only had a few of the initial 77 I didn’t get as a kid. (The final 17 and blue Snaggletooth are way out of my budget.) Knocking out those last few was my top priority at ITCE.

After sizing up all the toy sellers I found one in the hallway that had a tremendous collection. Even better, they sold themselves as a “no repro zone.” I didn’t have to wonder about getting reproduction guns and accessories with my loose figures. The seller had the three I was needing: Twin Cloud Car Pilot, 2-1B, and Zuckuss (a.k.a. the true 4-LOM). I bargained him down to $32 for the set. I also went for an $8 Wampa that was only slightly yellowed.

Objective complete, I meandered through the booths once again to spend a little longer at each. As you’d expect, some of the hawkers were chatty and others tried to ignore you as much as possible. Talking up their product was part of the fun and an easy way to coax them down on their often crazy prices.

While reviewing the attendee list before the show I noticed one of my favorite comic artists was in attendance. I needed to meet Rusty Shackles and pick up a few of his video game-related prints. Neither Rusty’s friendly demeanor nor his art selection disappointed. The tough part was choosing which mini poster prints I wanted. Rusty’s “buy two, get one free” show special made the decision a bit easier. Another $20 wisely spent.

Giving my wallet a breather, I went back to the hall to walk around. A local garrison from the famous 501st Legion of Star Wars cosplayers were in attendance. Now was a perfect time to snap some pics of stormtroopers. I also gave attention to the various cosplaying attendees I had previously ignored in order to meet my agenda.

This was my first brush with a cosplay event—you know, outside of Halloween. I was thoroughly impressed with the dedication these people put into their craft. Even the little kids in costume were fun to see. I will never find it in myself to dress up but it was a ton of fun to people-watch. Next time I’ll spend more time taking pictures of all the creations. You can tell the cosplayers love the praise.

Everything else accomplished, I finally zeroed in on comic books. I didn’t feel up to sorting through the numerous long boxes to finish my run of Marvel Team-Up. There was enough inventory; I could easily fill that list. Instead I decided to peruse the cases for my new area of concentration: weird and interesting comics.

To anyone who has attended a comic show, the scene is extraordinarily routine. Tables of long boxes in the front and a wall of high-priced issues display behind, sandwiching the booth’s proprietor. Even the price assortment seems standard. Boxes of $1, $2, and $5 issues dominated. Knowing I couldn’t afford any expensive stuff like Hulk #181, I browsed through the assortment. Silver and Bronze Age stuff was my focus.

In a $5 box I found a very unique item. It called to me immediately. It was by the legendary Wally Wood. A measly five bucks for a Wood book seemed like charity. After I got home and did some research on my purchase, I became even more thrilled with it.

A little history lesson in case you’re unfamiliar. Wood was a prominent artist in comic’s Gold and Silver Ages, probably best known for his work with EC Comics. This highly influential artist would probably have the legacy of a Jack Kirby if it weren’t for his troubled life. He committed suicide in 1981.

In 1969, at the height of Marvel and DC’s popularity, Wood self-published this Heroes Inc. book. The book cost 15¢ at a time when most everything else was selling for 12¢. It can be considered the forefront of the independent comics movement of the ’70s and beyond. I think I got a good deal for $5.

At this point, all you seasoned con-goers are head-over-heels laughing at this convention newbie—if you’ve even read this far. The ITEC event can’t begin to compare to this week’s SDCC. For a decent-sized show in the sleepy Midwest, it performed well at least in my inexperienced eyes. I’m glad that ITEC served as my first step into this larger world of conventions.

DuckTales will always be one of the things I am most nostalgic for, along with classic Nintendo and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It just always reminds me of my childhood and I love getting my hands on anything DuckTales related. I was looking around online for obscure bits of DuckTales history yesterday and found this cool promotional folder that was used to get Disney licensees pumped about their new animated TV show.

Click the images to embiggen.

They were definitely promoting the globe-trotting aspect of DuckTales, that’s for sure.

I was five years old when DuckTales ended in 1990 (and probably only watched reruns as a kid) so I definitely don’t remember if this show was as big of a deal as this promo material was making it out to be. Were people genuinely pumped about a Disney produced cartoon? Did it live up to the hype?

Regardless, DuckTales will always be one of my favorite things ever, and the cartoon actually holds up remarkably well to the test of time. I can rewatch episodes much easier than if I try to sit down and watch the 80s TMNT cartoon.

I’d love to find this promo folder in real life. It’s getting to the point where I like searching out weird stuff like this for the things I enjoy collecting. I can’t be the only one that does that, right?

Source: Sekvenskonst via Disney Weirdness