The Holiday Season is well under way, and those of with kids might feel overwhelmed with countless adventures in Toys R’ Us and Wal-Mart.  It wasn’t too long ago that I remember fighting massive crowds of crabby, frustrated parents looking for that last Tickle Me Elmo.  So this year, why not do your kid a favor and prepare them for the Zombie Apocalypse in a fun and education way by purchasing Plume and Robinson’s book “There’s a Zombie in my Treehouse.”  I first heard about this book on “Night of the Living Podcast,” and all I can say is…it’s BAD ASS! 

The story is pretty simple, our hero, Johnny, has an amazing tree house where he spends many happy days pretending to be a knight in shining armor, a cowboy, or other heroic figure.  But then one day we seem Johnny sulking on the curb.  When asked why he isn’t playing in the treehouse he explains, “Because there is a zombie in my treehouse.”  Several people try to console the young boy, explaining that the zombie is all in his imagination.  So one by one they ascend into the treehouse (and this is the BEST part) never to be seen again.  There are no gory scenes, no explanation, they just simply disappear.    

The story is cute, easy to read, and has some great artwork from Len Peralta.  Perhaps I am a horrible Father, but I wish I could have read this book to Tiny when he was younger instead of “Goodnight Moon” for the 100^th time.  So if you want a unique gift for a zombie loving parent, visit http://www.zombieinmytreehouse.com and pick up a copy of this book!

I’ve never really talked too much about it here on the Robot Panic, but I’m a pretty huge fan of Lost. My love for the show turned to an out and out obsession as soon as they added one of my favorite conventions, time travel, to the series in force this last season. Something about the idea of time traveling has always grabbed me. Blame Back to the Future and the impressionable age I was in when I first viewed it for that one. At any rate, my obsession with Lost led me to few writers who many consider to be “scholars” on the subject of the ABC hit. Go ahead and laugh if you will, but these guys dig deep into this stuff. While I see these episodes as a fun hour long escapism session, these guys are finding allusions to Greek Mythology and parallels to the religious rites of passage found in ancient Mayan culture. I’m serious. So it was that while reading one of these Lost authoritarians, I was directed to the book Replay by Ken Grimwood.

Published in 1987, Replay tells the story of a 43 year old radio news director named Jeff Winston. One day at work, Jeff dies of a heart attack and rather than finding himself in the “great beyond”, he awakens in his college dorm room in 1963. Not just a dream or a twisted afterlife, Jeff realizes that he is again 19 years old and has his whole life to live over again. Jeff then proceeds on a journey of reliving or “replaying” his life from 1963 to his death in 1988 over and over again. Each time he dies and lives again, he carries with him all the memories from each of his former lives. During the perpetual cycle that his life has become, Jeff tries everything from being with the women he never married to becoming a wealthy billionaire. All the while, Jeff is trying to figure out just what the meaning and purpose of these replays are.

While Replay is a story of time travel, what makes the book stand apart is how the convention is used to tell a much bigger tale of the lives we all lead and what exactly matters. Like all great works of fiction, it’s not so much the tools or the “gimmick” that’s used but how that device is used to tell a much broader story that gives us some great character insight. While the idea of living your life over and over again may make you think of the Harold Ramis classic “Groundhog Day”, the reality is that Replay was written well before that classic film. In fact, many believe that “Groundhog Day” took many of it’s cues from Grimwood’s book. The character of Jeff Winston is a typical American who feared to take the risks necessary to make his dreams come true. In all honestly, his first life may have been lived with his dreams and direction undefined. This is something we all feel and can understand. As Jeff tries his life over and over again, his attempts at taking more risks lead to both success and heartbreak. In the process, his discovery of what his life is about and what matters most becomes more and more apparent.

The book has garnered some rave reviews, including the World Fantasy Award in 1988. Critic Daniel D. Shade encapsulated the themes of the book in his 2001 review:

“Yet in spite of all the pain and anguish we go through as we follow Jeff through his search for an understanding of why he is replaying his life, the book has some important things to say to the reader. First, life is full of endless happenings that we have little control over. We should live our lives with our eyes set upon the horizon and never look back, controlling those things we can and giving no second thought to those events out of our hands. Second, given that we only have one life to live (Jeff is never sure he will replay again with each heart attack) we should live it to the fullest extent possible and with the least regret for our actions. Everybody makes mistakes; the point is not to dwell on them but to pick ourselves up and keep on going. Keep moving ahead. Third, choices must be made—we cannot avoid them. The only failure is to live a life without risks. In fact, I believe Jeff Winston would advise risking everything for those you love and for the life you want for them and with them. To not experience risk is to fail. And what does Replay have to say to a poor, old man like me who is still going though his mid-life crisis? Just this—that every year will be new. Every day a new chance to begin again. There can be no mid-life crisis when we are living each day to the fullest extent possible. From what Jeff Winston has taught me, I would define mid-life crisis as a period of selfishness when we turn inward and think only of ourselves. Jeff inspires us to look outward toward others and think less of ourselves.”

Replay is a fantastic read and one that makes you really think about the direction of your life and the implications of only getting to live it once. For anyone at that point in your life where you’re looking at what direction to take and weighing the risks of a bold new step, I recommend you check this one out. The perspective gained may well be worth the time. Even if you’re settled into a steady life of safety, this book gives a new point of view on which to look at your life. A highly recommended read, and one that’s available for fairly cheap at your local bookstore.

The great thing about Jeremy Parish, when one takes the time to look past the creamy white skin that covers his perfectly chiseled features, is that he’s an incredibly dedicated video game historian. From running 1up’s Retro Gaming Blog to hosting the fantastic Retronuats Podcast to his excellent personal site GameSpite, Parish has dedicated a great deal of his life to reflecting upon gaming’s past. And in doing so, he’s proven himself to be knowledgeable and passionate; not to mention scrumptious.

When EGM bit the dust several months ago (before its resurrection was announced), many gamers were left wondering, “Where do I go now?” Gaming publications are few and far between here in the States, and the ones that do exist leave a lot to be desired. Parish, as a contributor to EGM, also had a void to fill. He’s professed an affinity for print and because of that he decided to put out a printed quarterly journal compiling articles from GameSpite along with added bonus features not found on the website.

Parish explains it this way:

The old-fashioned approach to getting gaming journalism into print may be doomed in America, but perhaps the single upside to the death of great magazines like EGM is that it’s opened the door for smaller, niche creations like this. There’s certainly room for work far less niche-oriented than this, to be honest, but I went to great lengths to make sure this book wasn’t taking away content or time from the work I do at my day job; someone without those concerns to worry about could easily create a self-published magazine whose content would more closely resemble that of standard gaming publications.

With a format quite similar to his previous book, GameSpite Year One, Vol. 1, the book contains 154 pages of ad-free articles and comics. The Game Boy turns 20 this year, so Issue 1 focuses on the Game Boy, its place in history, and how it effected the gaming landscape. The book is available in paperback for $12 and hardcover for $36. The format is sized at 5″ x 8″, making it feel like less of a magazine and more of a journal-style periodical. Each edition contains materials not found on the website, and the hardcover contains an additional thirty pages of content. You can view the full table of contents here and content from the book can be found here so you can take a look to see if it’s something you’d be interested in. However, I recommend the book not only based on its quality and the great content, but also to support great independent work.

I came in to work on Tuesday morning and found this waiting for me:

My dear friend Craig, knowing of my love for all things He-Man, found these Golden Books at his local thrift shop. That guy goes to the thrift store about three times per week and always comes back with some sort of awesome – and oftentimes ridiculous – treasure. I’ve gotten some great stuff from him (all with the price written in marker in the upper left-hand corner), but this is easily the best bit of booty he’s brought back for me.

So what we have here are three He-Man books, put out by Golden in 1983 and 1984. From what I can discern from the back cover, there were at least six books. This lot contains Time Trouble, The Trap, and Mask of Evil. Missing are The Sword of Skeletor, Caverns of Fear, and The Thief of Castle Grayskull. A quick look at eBay reveals that the books can be found for a buck a piece.

Paging through the books resulted in a rush of nostalgia. I swear I had The Trap as a kid. The artwork is a combination of cheesy 80s action art and just plain bad artwork. However, the cover art is fantastic, each book displaying highly detailed hand-painted covers. And the stories, as you’d expect, are steeped in 80s cheese, straight out of the cartoon. Here’s a sample:

These books will go nicely next to my massive He-Man collection, ready to be busted out when my son’s the appropriate age. Which, hell, could very well be tonight!

EGM may be gone, newspapers may be closing down all over the country, and you probably only get Game Informer because it’s free at GameStop. But don’t tell drop dead sexy Jeremy Parish that print is dead. The 1up editor and head honcho of GameSpite has just announced that their online ‘zine will be going offline. While most media is heading in the opposite direction, Parish explains his rationale this way:

No one’s going to make a profit printing game magazines in America these days. But at the same time, I really miss print: I miss the substance of physical media, and I miss single looming deadlines, and I miss pages of content without animated roadblock-style Flash ads bordering them. No one’s going to make a profit publishing a game magazine, but I realized we can do it here without a loss, and that’s good enough. I mean, I already make a living doing online game writing for a company that has no interest in taking us into print, and this site already has lots of great content that will eventually be bundled into collected print volumes. So we’ve decided to reverse the process a little and do print first: thus, GameSpite Quarterly, Issue 1.

Parish continues to explain, in his own devilishly handsome way, that online content at GameSpite will continue to exist, but it will hit the print issues before it gradually gets published online. They are apparently using the format of Japan magazine Continue, in that they publish approximately 150 pages quarterly and will charge around $10 (or more) per issue.

GameSpite Quarterly: Issue One will be ready to ship around the E3 in July. We’ll definitely post about it here, but in the meantime, please head over to GameSpite and support the great work contributed by the entire staff, not just by the suave and sophisticated Mr. Parish.

Mmm…beer…

A year ago, my wife got me a subscription to Draft Magazine, and every month since I get a serious case of the thirst the moment it arrives in the mail. Draft has expanded my beer horizons by recommending some of the best beer I have ever had the pleasure of drinking. Hell, it was Draft that first introduced me to Westmalle after they made Westmalle Dubbel the first beer to score a perfect 100 in their magazine. And I’ve lost track of the number of times they’ve mentioned Surly in their magazine, which certifies them as experts in my book.

Draft covers nearly everything a beer-lover could ask for. In addition to beer reviews (my favorite part of the magazine), they also tour cities highlighting the local beer hot-spots. They interview brewers, bar owners, and chat up the occasional celebrity about their favorite beers, and there are often recipes complete with beer-matchings. The most recent issue (pictured) lists the top 200 beer bars in the United States, broken down by region. Among those listed are local Twin Cities restaurants like The Blue Nile, Bryant Lake Bowl, The Happy Gnome, and an old favorite of mine and Hilden’s The Muddy Pig.

Draft Magazine is an indispensable resource for beer connoisseurs and for those looking to learn more about beer. Check out segments of the magazine and sign up for a subscription here.

It took me a long time to warm up to Jeremy Parish. Our reader/writer relationship got off to a rocky start. For months, I, as the reader, had been waiting anxiously for the release of Ultimate Ghosts n’ Goblins on the PSP. Being a big fan of nearly every iteration and remake in the series and believing that the theme song is one of the greatest in classic arcade history, I couldn’t wait to try out the new and shiny handheld version. I paid my cash for the game on release date, took it home, and enjoyed the hell out of it. And by “enjoyed the hell out of it” I mean to say that I let it abuse the shit out of me until I had massive rectal trauma. But that is what a GnG fan does; that’s part of the deal.

Then I read the review on 1up.com, written by some Jeremy Parish guy. I had no idea who he was, but based on the pithy review I safely assumed that he was some pansy-ass who couldn’t stand any difficulty in his games. At the very least, he didn’t enjoy rectal trauma.

In the months that followed, I paid little attention to his work on 1up until I started taking notice of the Retronauts podcast. After digging into the show and listening to several episodes, it became required weekly listening and my absolute favorite gaming podcast. I am, after all, a nostalgia whore, and Jeremy Parish, the writer at whom I had once directed my ire, proved to be an incredible fountain of knowledge. Over time, I let down my guard and began reading his blog regularly, seeking out his reviews, and finally, discovering his personal website GameSpite

More than a simple blog and more than a nostalgia repository, GameSpite is home to a fanzine-like series of articles that focus on a wide variety of games from all eras and platforms. Yes, there are the daily blog posts, but what keeps me coming back are the GameSpite “Issues”. Take Issue 6, for example, in which the GameSpite contributors, led by Mr. Parish, cover titles ranging from The Secret of Monkey Island to Contra Hard Corps to Super Robot Taisen Original Generation. The articles aren’t reviews, nor are they history lessons. Rather, they are each personal looks into what made these games great, and in some cases what made the games much less than great. But in each case, the articles are insightful and thought-provoking. The team of contributors over on GameSpite have each contributed to the loss of many afternoons as I sift through their archives and either become reacquainted with an old favorite or learn about a classic that I missed.

This, at last, brings me to the point of this particular entry. Jeremy Parish has put together a book collecting a year of articles published at GameSpite for games beginning with the letters A-L. So yes, you read that correctly: for just over $20 you can pay for something that you can get for free on the internet. At 354 pages, GameSpite Year One, Vol. 1 contains quite a few pages of “exclusive” content, but much of it can be found at the website. Nevertheless, I’m going to recommend the book not only as a way to reward the hard work of the GameSpite staff, but also because it’s damn good material. It’s not a book that you pick up and read from start to finish, though you can most certainly do so if you’re so inclined. The best way for me to read the book is to pick it up, open it to a random page and learn something new about a game. Each of the entries are around three pages long, complete with screen shots. It’s great coffee table material, and hey, even better bathroom reading. You’ll find the rare spelling error here or there, but that’s what you get with self-published material and it shouldn’t dissuade you from making a purchase.

The book can be purchased here, but if you’re on the fence I highly recommend heading over to their site to give it a once-over. Hit the Issue links on the right side. While I still haven’t forgiven Parish for his Ultimate Ghosts n’ Goblins review, the guy has more than made up for it.

It’s been a long time since I picked up a magazine off the rack and bought the damn thing, but when I saw this little gem in my local Target I couldn’t resist the purchase. Despite the steep cover price ($9.99), there’s enough nostalgia packed within these pages to make it worthwhile.

20 Years of Nintendo Power was written by Scott Pelland, who wrote for the magazine from 1988-2007, spanning nearly the entire history. The book itself clocks in at just over 60 pages and, as the cover states, gives you the history of Nintendo through the pages of the official magazine. So what you get here is not necessarily a historian’s view of the company, but a look at Nintendo through the years as told by Nintendo Power. They go by console through the generations, highlighting not only the hardware, but also pointing out a dozen-or-so key titles for each console. I expected them to just point out the big first-party blockbusters; the Marios, Zeldas, Metroids, etc. And while they did that, they also surprised me by including some off-the-beaten-path titles like Maniac Mansion, The Lost Vikings, Body Harvest, and Killer 7. Also included are looks at Nintendo’s massive collection of peripherals like the ASCIIPAD for the SNES, the NES Advantage, the Game Boy Camera, and tons more.

Continue inside for some scans…

(more…)

Here’s another walk down memory lane…

The combo platter of Retro Game Challenge and 1up’s Retro Games Blog inspired me to pick up this little item: the NES Game Atlas.

Back in the 90s, Nintendo often provided slick subscription bonuses for Nintendo Power subscribers. Often it was a strategy guide or t-shirt, but the really cool bonuses were the Game Atlas series. They put out a Game Boy Atlas, an all-encompassing Mario guide, and one or two others. But it was this NES Game Atlas that I remember most fondly.

The NES Game Atlas includes complete maps and walkthroughs for not only some of the most classic first-party NES titles, but also some of the best third-party titles like Mega Man I-III, Duck Tales, Ninja Gaiden I and II, Castlevania I-III, and more.

More images after the break.

(more…)

I’m a big fan of stop-motion animation and have been for a very long time. Whether it be the Rankin/Bass animated holiday specials or the modern classic The Nightmare Before Christmas, I have a fascination with telling a story frame by frame.

When my brother began working for stop-motion animation company Bix Pix, I had the privilege of seeing and hearing about just how much hard work and time consuming effort go into making one of these films. From the intricate and mechanical marvel of the puppets to the sewn clothing a drawers full of facial expressions, the immensity of these projects is staggering. With that said, I’m simply amazed at just what Coraline represents for the stop-motion world. That is, it simply stands as the greatest stop-motion film to date.
(more…)