The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
by Jeffrey Matulef
February 5, 2009

"What makes it so good?" you may ask, curious reader.  Well it is a Zelda game, so that may give you a start, but I'm not into recommending something simply because it's part of a franchise I love.  In fact, I do just the opposite; because I love Zelda so much I hold it up to the highest possible standard there is and will scrutinize every detail that is less than perfection.  And while no game is perfect, Phantom Hourglass is about as close as they come. 

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Bionic Commando Rearmed
by Jeffrey Matulef
February 2, 2009

First things first, if you haven’t played the original Bionic Commando from 1988 (also known as “Top Secret: Hitler‘s Revival” in Japan), you’re going to struggle with the controls. The game looks like Contra, but there’s no jump button. It’s a bit of a case of forgetting everything you know; after 20 years of being trained to jump over enemy fire that is no longer an option. You can only avoid enemy fire by ducking under it or deflecting it with your bionic arm. Mega Man this ain’t. 

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Silent Hill: Homecoming
by Jeffrey Matulef
November 5, 2008

Silent Hill may be one of the strangest franchises in gaming. Known more for their vivid, nightmarish atmosphere and mythology than any sort of gameplay, the Silent Hill games were always an extremely divisive prospect. I played the second and third installments of the series and felt like they had sluggish controls, an awkward camera, poor combat, bland level design, obscure puzzles, inane fetch-quests, mediocre voice-acting, and yet, for some strange reason, I couldn't stop playing them until I had reached the end. The sights and sounds of Silent Hill were guaranteed to be unique and surprising, and though the stories were sometimes nonsensical, they were intriguing enough to keep you coming back for more as you tried to piece it all together.  Most of these things are true about the series’ most recent outing, Silent Hill: Homecoming, but many of these aspects are ever so slightly improved making it my favorite Silent Hill yet.

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Bioshock
by Jeffrey Matulef
October 8, 2008

I'm generally skeptical of any game that promotes itself as being inspired by Ayn Rand, but Bioshock is the exception.  Winning numerous E3 awards both in 1996 and 1997, Bioshock was to be the game for the Xbox360 (and over a year later, the PS3).  Combining elements of first-person shooters, survival-horror-games, and action-RPGs, Bioshock sought to transcend genres altogether and be nothing less than the greatest game ever made.  Not that game creator, Ken Levine was ever that cocky, but it was hard not to buy into the enormous potential that came with Bioshock.  Of course, having that much hype is as much a curse as a blessings, as there's little to no way a game could possibly live up to such lofty expectations.  But does Bioshock have the chops to what so few games have done and live up the its' enormous hype train?  Read on, dear reader, and find out.

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Metal Gear Solid 4
by Jeffrey Matulef
October 8, 2008

There are four things that Metal Gear Solid 4 has proved to me: 

1.) Live-action can be used effectively to enhance a videogame. 

2.) The Metal Gear Solid series’ oft nonsensical plot can also be used effectively to spin a good yarn. 

3.) Videogame cutscenes have finally reached  the standard set by movies and television. 

4.) Mullets can look gooood

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Mega Man 9
by Jeffrey Matulef
October 3, 2008

Depending on who you are and when you were born the name Mega Man may mean a myriad of different things for you. It'll either bring back wonderfully nostalgic memories of childhood or a soulless franchise that peaked in the late 80s that Capcom has unfathomably refused to let go. Personally, one of my greatest videogame memories ever was taking turns with my brother playing Mega Man 2 until we'd eventually beaten it. This may have had to do with the fact that this was in the preinternet days, so hints were not readily available and as a child I didn't exactly have the funds to go around buying games left and right, so I had yet to grow cynical of rehashed game design. But in that time and at that place Mega Man 2 was quite possibly the greatest thing ever. 

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The Midway: #9 - ACE Spring Conference Report
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
July 2, 2008

I awoke bleary-eyed to the sounds of the alarm at three in the morning. I hit the snooze button, but knew I could only do that once, as we had a 6 AM flight, and thanks to the TSA, we needed to be at the airport with at least an hour and a half to spare, for shoe removal and a full body cavity search. When the alarm woke me the second time, I got up, showered, and hustled my still snoozing wife into the shower herself. My brother was in town visiting, and the three of us had a long night of drinking that ended barely 2 hours prior. I was not happy. 

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The Midway: #8 - Postcards
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
March 12, 2008

As anyone who’s read any other installments of this column would attest, I love amusement parks. But anyone who knows me well would say that I love collecting things even more. I think if I were to poll the readership here, most of us would confess to collecting something in our lifetime.

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The Midway: #7 - Stuck on a Roller Coaster
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
November 14, 2007

Every five years, my wife and I renew our wedding vows. At five years, it was on a beach in Sanibel, FL, fifteen was by Elvis at the Graceland Chapel in Las Vegas, NV, and this year, our twentieth, we renewed them at Fenway Park prior to a baseball game. This is the Midway, however, and this column is about our tenth anniversary, when we held our vow renewal on a roller coaster, and got stuck.  Getting stuck on a roller coaster is not a whole lot of fun, especially if one is upside down. Luckily we were not quite upside down, but it still sort of sucked, especially in full wedding regalia.

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The Midway: #6 - Dark Rides
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
September 5, 2007

It starts as the heavy car lurches forward, and the ride operator lifts the lap bar so you can enter it. The car moves forward slowly, approaching a set of painted doors, known as “bang doors” in the industry. The car forces the bang doors open, and you find yourself plunged into the darkness.  From this point on, you are at the mercy of the ride designers who will place several “tricks” along the serpentine track for the riders to experience. These tricks can be as simple as a loud buzzer in the dark, generally the first trick, as it lets the operator know when the car has passed a certain point in the track, allowing them to send another car through, or complex tricks like the “Girl to Gorilla” illusion. I’ve always been fond of the super cheesy paper mache monsters that lean forward as the car approaches. This is a dark ride.

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Dead On The Kitchen Table - Part 4
by John 'Pender' Zarate-Khus
August 8, 2007

The bitch of finding a replacement gamer in your area.

It all started – well, shit, it actually started years ago and involved the Filipino mafia from Northern California, a U-Haul, a doomed affair and a late night call to borrow the infamous 9mm Baretta pistol – and to be truthful, for me it started when I first discovered Penthouse magazine under my brother’s mattress.

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The Midway: #5 - Roller Coaster Boot Camp
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
July 18, 2007

It all started with a trip to the emergency room.

It was Saturday June 16th, and we were waiting on a table for dinner at a favorite restaurant.  I had been suffering for two days with right ear pain, but I didn’t want to go to an emergency room, since I knew we’d be there until the wee hours.  We were leaving for Cincinnati in the morning for our coaster trip, and hadn’t packed yet. I finally relented, as the pain was becoming unbearable, my wife’s nagging was too, and I thought that my ear (that by this time resembled Dumbo’s) might explode on takeoff. We left without eating and walked about a quarter mile to the ER. I was pissed off and sweaty from the heat, and when we walked in, I think they thought I was having a heart attack, as they brought me right back. Twenty minutes later, with two antibiotic scripts in hand, we headed out. This is unprecedented in ER turnaround time!

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The Midway: #4 - Sideshows, Freaks, and Medical Wonders
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
May 23, 2007

“Step Right Up! Step Right Up! See the half boy Johnny Eck, who walks on his hands! See the Lion Faced Man, whose entire body is covered in fur! See the armless girl who does everything with her feet! See the Siamese Twins, joined forever at the hip! See them all and much more for just one thin dime!”

So went the ballyhoo, or pitch to get the audience inside the tent or building that held what were known as freaks, or more sensitively, medical curiosities and human oddities. Though more commonly thought of as part of traveling circuses, there were many amusement parks across the country that housed small permanent freak shows as part of their sideshows. It is important to realize how amusement parks were operated at the turn of the century. There was usually a nominal fee to gain entrance, which went to the owners of the park. The rides and attractions were individually owned and operated, some by the parks owners, and some by private investors who rented space in the park from the owners.

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Dead On The Kitchen Table - Part 3
by John 'Pender' Zarate-Khus
May 16, 2007

Player character death never gets old. 

Each time it is different. Sometimes you can see it coming. Other times it happens so fast you had no idea it was that close. 

Just this last week I had a player of mine start out with the toughest character in the group, but before the evening ended – the character was dead.

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The Midway: #3 - Top Ten Steel Roller Coasters
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
March 20 , 2007

On reading my top ten wooden coasters list a friend asked me how I could write a top ten steel coaster list after saying some less than complimentary things about them. Let’s get this straight. I love and enjoy steel coasters; they just don’t bring me the same level of excitement I get from wooden coasters. Unlike wooden roller coasters, which basically come in two types, there are a myriad of different types of steel coasters. Types of steel coasters include looping, corkscrew, mega, hyper, stand up, boomerang, and inverted. There are also coasters classified as flying, Linear Induction Motor (LIM), suspended, shuttle loops, and mine rides. There is new innovation in the industry constantly, and it is a rare year that a new style or type of coaster does not debut. As I approach my forty fifth year on the planet, my enthusiasm for going upside down five or six times in three minutes has waned precipitously. This is particularly true of the old fashioned sit down style looping steel roller coaster. Inverted coasters, where the tracks run above the riders heads, and your legs dangle beneath your seat are my favorite type of looping coaster, as you’ll no doubt tell from the list. Get ready and strap in for ten great rides!

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Dead On The Kitchen Table - Part 2
by John 'Pender' Zarate-Khus
March 1 , 2007

If God were a human, he would want to be a Dungeon Master.

Why not?

I know if I were God, I would be a DM.

The ancient Greeks thought so. Their gods were the gods that had it all – power, wisdom, vanity to a fault – literally. And yet they would spend their Age of Power playing with humanity. I don’t think it was by chance that the ancient Greeks had a 20-sided die long before Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson ever existed.

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The Midway: #2 - Top Ten Wooden Roller Coasters
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
January 24, 2007

Although I love almost all roller coasters, the traditional wooden roller coaster, or “woodie” holds a very special place in my heart. There is something about that shimmy, shake, and give that really speaks to me, much more than the antiseptic smooth ride that most steel coasters provide.

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Dead On The Kitchen Table - Part 1
by John 'Pender' Zarate-Khus
December 29, 2006

“Your group proceeds down the darkened hallway when you hear a rumbling. The stone beneath your feet shakes. Dirt and dust falls from cracks that begin to appear. Before you can react, the ceiling collapses – the trap has sprung! Everyone roll a saving throw to see if they are caught in it.”

The rattle and clatter of dice.

Silence.

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The Midway: #1 - The Birth of My Love for Amusement Parks
by Mike “kimfair” Carvalho
December 27, 2006

Clack, clack, clack went the chain as we ascended to the top. My hands were white-knuckling the safety bar, when a string of muttered obscenities burst forth from my mouth. Shit, shit, fuck, shit, fuck, all the way up the 98 foot lift hill, until we plunged over the edge.

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A Day At Magic Mountain
by John Felix
September 2006

It's a long drive.

A very long drive.

Once you've driven out of your way, far enough to imagine you must be lost and decide you should probably turn around and go back, you finally come across the next freeway you have to merge onto. Then you have to drive some more. For the most part, I will not be using this specific article to compare Six Flags' Magic Mountain to Disneyland, but the drive.

The Goddamn drive.

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A Year In Disneyland: Part 4
by John Felix
July 2006

Here’s a self-indulgent piece that I hope doesn’t come off too much like immature gloating: I was invited to Disneyland’s mysterious Club 33 this month.

For those who aren’t up on their Disneyland knowledge (count yourself lucky, you’re not a horrible nerd), Club 33 is a secret club located in New Orleans Square, right next to The Blue Bayou restaurant. Originally planned to be Walt’s little hang-out (he died shortly before its opening) for entertaining corporate investors and all those cool people that you will never know, Club 33 is now a safe haven for insane people who have a lot of money and don’t mind waiting up to five years only to pony up $10,000 for a single membership.

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