A Blog Both Wonderful and Strange

Got another video game here. As you may be able to guess, it is a sequel to Dark Forces, which I previously covered . Once again, you play as Kyle Katarn. With a beard this time. Oh yeah, as you can see, that image of our hero is a still from a live-action cutscene. If you weren't aware, there was a period in the '90s where it was cool for video games to have real live actors portray the characters in cutscenes. This was one of the games that got this treatment. And I'm actually a fan of it, at least in this game, which is the only one I've ever played that has this feature. The acting is fairly good, but the rest of the visuals in the cutscenes are dated, but I don't personally mind. And there's a tiny bit of what some may call "so bad it's good," but I just call it "the '90s definition of awesome." In this game, Kyle is out to stop a group of Dark Jedi from reaching the Valley of the Jedi, which contains an area of h...

Here we go. The first Star Wars video game I'm going to cover. I played the PlayStation Classics version on PlayStation 3, so yeah. Being a first-person shooter and having come out in 1995, this game plays pretty much like Doom. Honestly, I'm not really a retro gamer at all, but I can play Doom -like games any day. But they're not my favorites, mostly due to how dated they are. I don't just mean the visuals - I take no issue with the graphics in games. As long as I can tell what's going on, I'm fine. But what really gets me is some of the level design. It's easy for me to get lost in a lot of these games and it takes me forever to figure out where I'm supposed to go and what I'm supposed to do. I understand that's just how these games were designed back then. It's just not my cup of tea. I think I read somewhere that this game, when it was early in development, was intended to be an adaptation of the original film, but the devs decide...

Felix Leiter. Probably the closest thing James Bond has to a good friend. It's hard to tell that in the movies, though, since he's been played by a different guy nearly every time he's been on-screen. (top row) Felix Leiter, Felix Leiter, Felix Leiter, Felix Leiter (bottom row) Felix Leiter, Felix Leiter, Felix Leiter, Felix Leiter Despite being a recurring character in the books, Ian Fleming never really gave us much background on Felix prior to assisting Bond while in the employ of the CIA and Pinkerton Detective Agency. So, that's where Edward F. Koehler, PhD comes in. I was casually exploring Wikipedia, as I often do, and I ended up on the Felix Leiter page. As a seasoned Wiki editor, my eye caught a bit of something that seemed promotional rather than encyclopedic: Written with speech-to-text by Gomer Pyle So, I thought that maybe this was referring to a pair of new Bond books I somehow had not heard of. I consulted Google and found s...

Here we are. My summer break is over. Well, it's been over for almost a week now. Here are some things I accomplished. Happy to report I did not find any severed ears. I did watch  Blue Velvet , however. Film/Television Here I have listed every single film I watched over the summer, in order with the date I watched each one, and linked to IMDb, in case you're curious. Streets of Fire   (1984)   - May 5 Touch of Evil (1958) - May 6 It Happened One Night (1934) - May 7 Lifeboat (1944) - May 8 On the Beach (1959) - May 9 None But the Lonely Heart (1944) - May 10 The Florodora Girl (1930) - May 11 Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) - May 12 Trainspotting (1996) - May 12 Blue Velvet (1986) - May 12 Silent Rage (1982) - May 13 Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) - May 14 Freaks (1932) - May 15 The Fly (1958) - May 16 Soylent Green (1973) - May 17 Gilda (1946) - May 18 The African Queen (1951) - May 19 Memento (2000) - May 19 The Punis...

Hello and welcome to a series I'm doing. So I have made the decision to read all of the books in the Star Wars Expanded Universe - that is, the Star Wars works outside of the films and The Clone Wars  that were released prior to April 25, 2014. I will not only cover the novels here, but the games and comic books. But mostly the novels, for that's where most of the EU 's content is. I will cover the novels in order, except for the Han Solo and Lando Calrissian Adventures, because I accidentally forgot they existed between reading Splinter of the Mind's Eye and Heir to the Empire. I'll go back to them before reading the Han Solo trilogy . I will not be covering the novels intended for younger audiences, however. At least not right now. So don't expect to see any Jedi Prince stuff here. Anyhow, let's begin with the one that started it all: Alan Dean Foster's 1978 novel,  Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Now, you may or may not know the history ...

I am a huge Star Wars fan. Always have been. My mother has frequently recalled that I was regularly humming Star Wars music as early as two years old. Being a huge Star Wars fan, I am not without my opinions. I LOVE the original trilogy, I don't like the prequels, and I love the sequels so far. I even love The Last Jedi . If that previous sentence made you stop reading, you may just be why I'm writing this blog post. Not because I want to convince you to like it, though. Not at all. This goes a little deeper. Remember how I said I don't like the prequels? Well, just two years ago, I would not have left it at that. I would have gone on a tirade against these three films and ruined three podcast episodes over it. You see, two years ago, I was the worst kind of Star Wars fan, one that is all too common (or, at the very least, all too vocal). I was a crybaby. To be fair, Luke had every reason to cry here. But it makes a good thumbnail. You may not like me using th...