This Week's Status Quo Sunday Has A Picture Of Me Flexing In It, You're Welcome

ANIME IWAI SCHEDULE IS OUT!

Let's brake it down day by day:

FRIDAY! 3000 Brigade Presents: Iwai-vor Series!
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM, Panel Room 3

A Tag Team Throwdown where you and a partner can pummel your way through the competition to win the Championship Belt in some old school N64 Wrestling games! There will be thrills, chills, spills, and maybe one of the commenters will wear sly costume! Flashy outfits and ridiculous promo cutting encouraged.

We will also be playing Smack Talk Showdown to break any ties.

The belts are looking really nice this year, and actual effort is being put into them!

SATURDAY! 3000 Brigade Presents: Red Carpet Brawl
8:00 PM to 9:30 PM, MAIN EVENTS

This year's 3KB Extravaganza! A smashing Smash Bros. Show! Who will show? You'll have to go to know! Sexy dances, pulse pounding action, and a beloved Nintendo Character may or may not die!

Also, here's me as Wii Fit Trainer from last year's show:

I look even better from behind ;)

I can't say who I'm going to be in this year's show, but it will be making the most of my beefiness. There is a piece of fanart I would like to recreate if I got 1000 Facebook Likes or something like that, but it's too close to do such a thing. 

Afterwards, there will be a Meet and Greet where we can answer all your questions in character.

There will also be another event on Saturday I Might be a part of, but that's All tentative.

SUNDAY! Hardcore Nerdcore Punk Rock (aka my concert!)
3:00 PM to 4:00 PM, Panel Room 1
I've been working on A LOT of new stuff, and I'm going to be playing it live to close out the show!

I'll also have copies of Dino Hunter MD: The Sound Track back on sale, and of course the usual headbanging madness that ensues. A lot of stuff I did at Mini Iwai worked well, so I think I might have done something right for once... 10 years in...

SPEAKING OF 10 YEARS IN...
This Saturday at 8 PM, I'm going to be doing what the original purpose of this blog is/was:

Playing through all of the songs from the original Rock Band on a real guitar...

 ...via Rocksmith 

That way it's all organized, less stressful, and I can even level up certain parts if I want to git good as a little incentive.

JAM OF THE WEEK: "Hellbent" by Mystery Skulls


The latest in the "Mystery Skulls Animated" Series, this covers a track from Mystery Skulls's 2014 album, Forever, "Hellbent". The rest of Forever is slower paced, meant to let the lush tracks more room to breathe and be felt. "Hellbent" is WAY MORE AMPED UP, but it doesn't suffer at all.

Even the music video, animated by an independent team lead by MysteryBen27 is able to keep up. What I loved about previous animated outings, "Ghost" and "Freaking Out" is that there is movement on every beat, even if it's a simple head bob. Obviously, it's a faster song, so the actions are going to be closer together, but it's all spaced out enough to where it's not confusing.

HOWEVER, the same is happening to this series as what happened to Kingdom Hearts: The first one starts off on a simple premise, the second introduces more elements, and the third builds on it even more as it goes deeper and deeper into its own lore.

Also, here the song doesn't start until about 2 minutes in. The story is still easy enough to follow, and everything is clear enough on a careful watch. 

Even if you want ALL THE LORE, you only have to watch 12 minutes of well done music videos, instead of 100+ hours of gameplay.

Echo Chamber Post Game Episode 86

TRIGGER WARNING: FUCKING AWESOME PODCAST

-The best thing about these episodes is that I always go "MAN! I should totally animate that!" then I think "Fuck! I have a 8-to-5 job! Fuck!" 

-YuGiOh is always a tricky dick with me. Though I did take my brother to a sneak preview event for one of the sets a few months ago, and pulled a $50 card. He should have sold it, but instead he traded it for stuff in the decks he'll never play. I try to get him to go to the stuff my FNM location has, but he always finds some reason to bail "I DON'T HAVE MY PERFECT DECK! I WORK! I DIDN'T DO SO WELL LAST TIME!"

Unlike Magic, sets don't really have a theme, like Theros and Greek/Roman mythology. Instead of playtest and design making sure the flavor of the card and mechanics are juuuust right, YGO just goes "YO, MOTHERFUCKER, HAMBURGER ROBOTS!!!" and calls it a day. Then it puts a page and a half of rules text on the card whereas MtG would go like "Hexproof" or "Trample" only occasionally giving you reminder text.

BUT YO, HAVE YOU SEEN THESE HAMBURGER ROBOTS? USE THEIR LASER EYES TO ZAP THE BELLY BUTTON OF THE HIPPO KING DEVIL LANCER AND HIS CROWN FALLS ON TOP OF YOU FOR 7000 LIFE POINTS.

"Not so fast, Yugi-"

WHAT?

"I activate my trap card, Digital Data Apocalypse! It allows me to exile 5 cards into the the graveyard, including your Hamburger Robots!"

HMM! I BELIEVE IN THE HEART OF THE CARDS!!! AND MY FAITH HAS REWARDED ME WITH...GO-GO HENSHIN SYNCRO PYRONMATRIX!!!

you get the idea. But doesn't that sound like a REAL Yu-Gi-Oh match?

Interesting premise, but you can tell the game was meant for maximum drama and parental confusion, as the original manga was DBZ with cardboard rectangles instead of fists.

Now that I think about it, Yugi Moto isn't that good at the game. His power seems to just topdeck whatever he needs and POWAR OF FREENDSHUP!!!


-Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD Remix comes out December 2nd.
No Persona til then :(

-Speaking of Kingdom Hearts, this is always relevant:


-The image Mystakin was talking about:


I wonder what the FFXIV equivalent of pot would be like. Phoenix Down? Ether? Salve would seem to fit the bill, since it sounds so much like salvia.

-Rocksmith, still a good game. This week's DLC, The Libertines, was underwhelming, but it's always good to see them mix shit around from week to week. As long as they go metal one week, then punk, classic rock, alternative, etc. it should keep people happy for at least the next edition. Rock Band had a lot of off weeks as well, but it also had the Rock Band Network in later incarnations to help smooth things out.

I'm approaching the point where some songs I have to slow down and go in to Riff Repeater, and I think that will be the point where most people either double down on "I WILL MASTER YOU GUITAR-OO BAN-KAAIIIII!!!!" or go "Eh, I'll play this Radiohead song I kinda know again." only to drop it after another month. 

-THE BAZ IS IN SHOVEL KNIGHT

If you don't know who he is, watch here.I'm glad Matt and Woolie managed to fit this guy into so many awesome videjo games.

Shovel Knight is pretty dope. $15 bucks get you a mishmash of all your favorite NES Platformers, that manages to be its own thing. AND it's got a New Game Plus.

Status Quo Sunday Embraces The Darkness In My Soul

Dark Souls 2 came out, and it got me playing Dark Souls 1 again. It's still hard, but I feel like going through it a couple times, and learning to level up my Warrior better definitely helped out a lot. I'm only mentioning this because I'm working on music again (HINT HINT).

Last Wednesday I streamed some Rocksmith, thinking about doing it this Wednesday as well, maybe I'll change up the games every so often, who knows?

I found out I'm in Reverbnation's Top 10 Rock Artists for my area! I'll be putting more stuff up on there as well, since it just makes multi-posting stuff easier, as well as hopefull getting my music out there.

Speaking of which, a couple of conventions are getting back to me, and I'll be sending out follow ups and registration papers, and all kind of other neat things, so I can get some live shows before... well, hopefully at one of them I'll have something big to announce regarding the album.

Now, this weekend, while I had some fun playing DnD, Magic and watching UFC fights, there were some sad times, and I feel like 2 Green Day songs cover the situation well:
Wayne Knight died in a- Oh, wait, he didn't? I was gonna play "Time Of Your Life" but I guess not.


Also, Fred Phelps is on death's door. So...

Rocksmith Thoughts

Wanted to post this up while I was still thinking about it:
1. I've been playing guitar for almost 5 years, and I can still say this is worth getting. There's a lot to do here, and there is always something to push you out of your comfort zone.

2. Rock Band 3 and this game can happily coexist on my shelf. Rocksmith is for me, Rock Band 3 is for me and my friends.

3. No punk, save for "Go With The Flow" by Queens Of The Stone Age and "Song 2" by Blur (and that's with a very liberal interpretation of punk). All of the songs are focused around riffs, as opposed to chords. It's a smart decision for a teaching game, since it places finger dexterity and learning to find the frets as a main priority.

For example, the first two songs in the "Campaign" mode are "Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones and "Next Girl" by The Black Keys. The latter was the first song I mastered, whereas the former gets tricky in the pre-chorus. Regardless, they're two songs that get you used to the idea of moving your fingers.

4. The song list really is as hit or miss as it gets. A lot of the classic rock stuff really connects, but a lot of the new music is indie and alt rock and takes some getting used to. A couple breakouts for me were "Angela" by Jarvis Cocker, and "Where Is My Mind?" by The Pixies. The Tom Petty and Eric Clapton songs were a lot less fun then I was expecting, until they got to the solos, and while I haven't mastered them yet, it'll be a bitch when those sections get harder.

5. Speaking as someone who is partially colorblind, it was pretty easy to tell the difference between the strings. One of the problems I have is "finding" the strings by going up and down. Something like "Rebel Rebel" or "Sweet Home Alabama" throw me off.

6. One thing I noticed with the adaptive difficulty: It starts you off with single notes, then once you "master" that section, it moves up to chords. However, whereas you would be playing the full rhythm with the single notes, it slows everything back down when chords are introduced. The progressive difficulty thing is very well done.

7. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Higher Ground" and "Plug In Baby" are the Squat, Bench Press and Deadlift for me of this game (for now at least).
"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction": 83,735
"Higher Ground": 91,935
"Plug In Baby": 100,329

8. This game is totally fucking up my head with the RBN difficulty stuff.

State Of The Bastard Address January 11th.