She Got Game: "El Viento"
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- Written by Rob
Just another day on the streets of Prohibition-era Chicago.
This is the next in a series featuring games with prominent female characters, oftentimes the protagonist. Some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t. Some I might write, some might come from others. But they do exist.
There are some games that puiblishers stake their reputation on. In the 1990s, Japanese studio Wolf Team did just that. Going quite the opposite of what the rest of the industry did, they came up with an homage to Indiana Jones and all those 1930s pulp serials. The result was Ernest Evans, the first in the Annet Trilogy...and also the last. Why? Well, more on that later, but let's get to the protagonist of the majority of the games and the game that brought her to attention in the US.
I'm obviously talking about Annet Myer and El Viento, and the wild, unusual ride this melancholy masterpiece would take, and the ignominious end of it all
Add a commentA Message to New Writers
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- Written by Rob
Sometimes, it's all too easy to feel like this.(img: Hernán Piñera)
Posting this because I saw someone, a first-time writer, quit a story I liked recently because "the haters won't stop." I actually liked the story, it was relatively bug-free, and well-written. No, he (I'm assuming it was a he) quit because small-minded individuals on 4chan decided to have a field day with his story.
For starters, I'm sorry that happened. You shouldn't quit. You're a new writer, and it's inevitable that you'll have detractors.
Stephen King has them.
JK Rowling has them.
Tolstoy had them.
Tolkein had them.
Shakespeare had them.
Dante Alleghiri had them.
Fuck, for all I know, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had them - they certainly do nowadays.
The fact is, new writer, there are two things you need to understand: there are detractors, and then there are critics. The two are different, and over thirty years of writing, I can say with confidence that sometimes, they're not always easy to tell them apart - sometimes they're even one and the same.
Add a commentTruly Outrageous – And Not in a Good Way
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- Written by Ayne
Somewhere, Michael Bay is weeping because he wasn’t the one to destroy this childhood memory. (img: IGN)
Admittedly, much of what I’ve heard about the new Jem & the Holograms live-action movie is hearsay, so it may very well be that not all or even none of the rumours are true. According to Wikipedia, (which is never wrong, note the sarcasm) “In a hyper-linked social media age, an orphaned teenage girl, Jerrica Benton becomes an online recording sensation, and she and her sisters embark on a music-driven scavenger hunt – one that sends them on an adventure across Los Angeles – in an attempt to unlock a final message left by her father.” So far, the fandom has been underwhelmed at the very best, claiming that the only thing the move shares with the source material are names and the title. From what I’ve seen, they’re right. I recognise a whole lot of names (and even a genderflip: Eric Raymond, the sleazy record executive and manager of the Misfits is now Erica Raymond) but nothing about this is the Jem I remember.
Add a commentParticle Spray & Pray: Amberlight Final Review
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- Written by Rob
I have no idea how I did this.
Okay, here’s my review of Amberlight.
It’s a fractal program with a unique set of features and a nearly-decent price (more on that), and it comes up with some interesting effects. Capable of merging with your pictures and even into Photoshop, it’s a pretty nifty tool – but can it stand up against others in its class, like Chaotica?
Let’s find out.
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