Fighunter

Lately the Internet has been crammed with a whole bunch of strange websites and content that in brutal honesty, the world might be better without. Fortunately most of these don't get to popular to appear on your search engines or flooding your e-mail accounts. Some people may argue whether a website is good or not since opinions always vary. Newer versions of Mozilla Firefox include page rankings for each website on a 1-10 scale (1=worst,10=best). Sites like Google, Myspace, and Youtube have a relatively high score while http://lolcats.com/ was given a smaller score as a "Page of importance". With all these opinions over Myspace vs. Facebook or Yahoo vs. AIM who's to say what would be a better use of your time? If your smart you'd say going outside, but otherwise the choice is all yours after all the internet can be a wonderful thing if used correctly.

Today I'm going to look at one of the things on the internet that went right. http://fighunter.com/ ,Created by Pseudolonewolf, is a website with mostly flash games(a form of online game often found online using Macromedia Flash). The website mostly consists of RPG's so would be a must for any RPG nerd. Unknown to most of the public for a long time Fighunter.com(named after one of the first games on the website) didn't become popularly known among the internet-savy until the release of it's game SMECOF, a side scrolling shooter game with RPG elements. Of all of Pseudolonewolf's games(all created by himself)SMECOF is by far the most original on the website. Most previous games use similar elements of all other RPG games such as Warriors,Mages using Fire, water, lightning, MP, HP etc. SMECOF steers away from the classic RPG genre and brings us into an extremely advanced star system with ongoing struggles caused by the deadly Cyber Orteks(Dragon shaped cyber beings). Another theme setting this game apart is the fact that you play the role of one of the Cyber Orteks terrorizing the Draco System rather than playing as a typical hero trying to save to world.

With every one of his games being unique with in-depth story lines, self-composed music, and many in-game jokes revolving around several subjects Fighunter stands out as one of the most brilliant websites out there and definitely deserves more popularity and support among the world.

What is a blog?

As blogging has become a hobby of mine I started to loosely mention it one day to one of my friends when we were bored and when he learned it was a video-game blog he put out his own definition of a blog. He described a blog as an online diary where you posts things of significance during your day, also mentioning that someone with more of a life would be able to blog about other things than video games. Curiosity led me to wikipedia as it always does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog. They describe a blog as "a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video." Upon reading more into the page it also notes types of blogs including online diaries, like my friend described, and Genre where someone blogs about one specific topic(such as me!). Gaining this knowledge I felt less weird and was able to jump back into the blogging network knowing that, even if the majority of our class blogs about their lives, I can blog about video games and keep my title of Blogger.





With that problem in the past I can focus on the old subject at hand and the reason why you're here, VIDEO GAMES! For today's topic I decided to go with a classic precursor of video gaming, Pong. Contrary to popular belief, Pong was not the world's first video game. In 1971 the video game Computer Space became the first coin operated commercial video game of all time(Pong was released in 1972). None the less Pong is still known as the ancestor of all modern video games worldwide as it was the first successful in popularizing the concept of video games. Due to it's simplicity and famous history in video games many versions of Pong have entered reality to keep Pong alive in the brains of children everywhere that could be learning to play an instrument. It can be amazing to see how much progress video games have made in their short timeline and we certainly should owe it to many for their claim to fame over the years.

All your blog are belong to us!

Zero Wing was an old Japanese shoot 'em up game made in 1989 and became known across the web in 2000 when people started taking notice of the poorly translated cut scene in the beginning of the game. This was due to the fact that it was rushed to be released into Europe causing many lines to become butchered and hard to listen to. It came by the internet when people started coining the phrase "All your base are belong to us" . The gameplay itself was good but the countless amount of errors and internet parodies made this game hard to be remembered as a good thing. Wikipedia includes several quotes from the cutscene demonstrating it's quite funny grammar errors such as "Somebody set up us the bomb". In entertainment it's importaunt to be funny so as a game this may have failed miserably but at least a lot of people got a good laugh out of it.

One word of advice to any fellow bloggers out there reading this is to learn from this game's mistake and check your grammar in any entries before submitting. After all this is English class and nobody wants to look like a fool (though hopefully you'll never make a bigger joke than this game did.) For anyone who hasn't seen the opening cut scene it's definitely something to check out when you have time. The worst part about this is the fact that Zero Wing was actually a decent game and could've had great potential but this shows what happens when things are rushed. A simply series of grammar errors in an introduction marked this game as one of the worst games even though it wasn't the game itself. If something could be done I would've marked it as a worst video game moment since I respect the English language but to say that Zero Wing is a bad video game is going to far. The intro cut scene can be viewed at this link http://carcino.gen.nz/images/index.php/068fee9d/35d450bc

Deoxyribonucleic acid-mon?

Many video games have spawned from all sorts of ideas but only one has a strange controversial concept that remains untouched by this class. Pokemon. Most people recognize Pokemon as that one old show for kids where people catch animal-like creatures known as Pokemon which possess various superpowers. As ridiculous as the idea sounds both the show and video game have become known worldwide by both kids and adults. As a kid growing up with Pokemon I slowly watched the show grow into the multi-billion dollar corporation it's become. As I grew up I also looked back on the older episodes from the first season and saw that Pokemon was more than just a kid's show, often times containing content that I usually overlooked until just recently. A few episodes would involve people who had a tough childhood. The character Brock grew up as taking care of his nine younger siblings without his parents. The character Misty grows up with an inferiority complex when compared to her three other sisters. Many times Pokemon has close ties to the enviornment as well. Many episodes will envolve the fictional crime syndicate, Team Rocket commiting many forms of abuse towards Pokemon including destruction of habitat.

Moving aside from this idea I realized that even the names of the Pokemon have clever name puns that I'm pretty sure most 5-year olds wouldn't figure out. The Pokemon Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan are both obvious parodyies of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. See the resemblance? Despite all the clever pop-culture references Pokemon once had, it seems that the cartoon industry once again fanned it's greedy wings and now Pokemon is yet another half-baked show that, although enjoyed by kids, contains little to no areas of discussion-worthy topics it once had.

Recently I was riding in a car with a few friends to get some pizza when one of my older friend's son coughed and in response my friend simply said "Koffing!" This was a reference to an original Pokemon who's name was Koffing (pronounced coughing). We soon got into the discussion of all pokemon with name puns and when I said DNA my friend responded by saying "Deoxyribonucleic acid... Deoxys!" Of all the Pokemon name puns before hearing this I never really put any thought into that name but as the more I thought about it the more I realized that Deoxys was a very clever name pun of DNA. This is seen evident by the shape of his arms in the movies and games.Diagram of DNA and Deoxys.

As you can see Deoxys has spiraling arms not unlike that of most DNA structures. Also in the Show Deoxys was described as a virus that mutated. This could be relating to the fact the DNA is on a microscopic level just as Deoxys once was at the beginning of it's lifespan. Now in my opinion I don't think Most kids know what DNA is and if they do they certainly can't memorize what it stands for (I know I can't). So with all that said I think it's safe to say that Pokemon will be remembered as more than just a mindless kids show.