Oh my! Sound effects!

Alright, I had to share this. My dad is watching this movie The Spiderwick Chronicles on the television, and I'm sitting here on my living room-PC listening to Vangelis and drawing stuff that will probably never see the light of day. But what do I hear coming from the television? I hear the first part of the roar of Dogadon, the fearsome dragon-fly boss from Donkey Kong 64's Angry Aztec! You know, that "Eeeeehhr-ROOOARGHGH!"... without the latter part. Apparently, his roar was either a stock sound effect, or it was merely stolen.

...just had to share this. And here's a nice drawing of a stylized African sunset I doodled up a while ago.

Take a look at Death

...And no, not at Gregg. Only if you feel like getting cussed at.

Have we ever realized how many characters die in Rare's games? Not just "game over", but just plain die, never to return, with sometimes irreversible results? Few games have the guts to actually show it, but like usual, there's always exceptions.

Conker's Bad Fur Day
Characters die by the dozen here, but we never really care, do we? Well, I know I didn't. When Conker died, he got confronted with a pint-sized Grim Reaper called Gregg who possessed a colourful vocabulary, who claimed Conker's got as many lives as he thought he'd get away with, to which the squirrel usually ended up unharmed.

Death wasn't really taken seriously in this game. I just laughed at those poor Uga Buga cavemen who were to be devoured by some deranged Yoshi-clone with sharp teeth. But near the end, I couldn't help but weep. Why? Berri, of course. Conker's girlfriend, ruthlessly killed by a mob boss's gun. As she lay on the ground, Conker tried to wake her up, but it was too late.

Later on, the airlock opened (they were in space or something) and she got sucked out into the endless abyss of space. So to this day her lifeless body is floating around in space. I wonder how Mario will react if he sees her on his space adventures like in Super Mario Galaxy.

On animated movies + bonus short fan fic!

Alright, I am sorry for posting an off-topic post. This is just the only place I could post it without bounds... And if I offended anyone, my sincerest apologies.

I have watched animated films all my life, as some of you have probably heard before. Same for that, I have watched all of Pixar's films and enjoyed them all, some more than others. However, Pixar has been disappointing me lately... much like a certain game studio. Rare decides to make sports' games, and Pixar makes a sequel to one of their least imaginative films, Cars. However, Pixar will release a new movie with new characters after that (that includes amazing scenery, which I like being a forest fetishist) whereas Rare proclaims to not disappoint their old fans but having said nothing about Banjo nor Conker.

But what is it now? I think I may end up liking Dreamworks better.

Dreamworks animation studios has long been known for negating Disney's clichés and themes and happily avert fairy tail-like tales. (Did I say fairy tail? I meant fairy tale, of course.) All of this with a good helping of pop-culture references and gross-out jokes. And let's not forget their massive case of sequelitis, with the worst offender being Shrek who currently has four movies on his name with a spin-off in the works! Their first computer-animated film, Antz, did not really know which audience it wanted to appeal to, having been marketed as family enjoyment, but containing mature themes such as decapitated ants and the word damn. It's 'this Kong's one hell of a guy!' all over again! Well... and the decapitated head part I guess Conker and the zombies? Oh well. Apart from that, they appeared to be more in it for the money, pumping out sequels just for the funsies.