August 2008

I‘ve mentioned before that even sports can be geeky.  One of the ways I geek out over sports is by playing fantasy sports.  You can think of it as a sports-based multiplayer online game…you draft a team (live or online) and then compete with other players by making trades and waiver moves.  It’s fun to see normally non-geeky people totally turn into huge geeks when it comes to their fantasy team.

So, with football season soon upon us, I figured I may as well post my top five fantasy football sleepers.  But first a strategy note: sleepers are only sleepers if they are drafted at the correct position in the draft.  A lot of people name a bunch of sleepers that actually have a high ADP (average draft position).  If everyone is drafting a player in a high slot anyway, I don’t see how that player is a sleeper.  Value is attained in a draft by selecting a player at a time in the draft where he will give far better statistics then the average player drafted in that slot.  That’s how I look at it anyway.  So I haven’t just picked five players I thought would do great…I picked five players that are being drafted too late.

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If you’ve seen my posts here or on Aggro Me, you know I’m a huge fan of the competitive arcade gaming documentary, The King of Kong.  So I was pretty excited to see this post on Boing Boing about an article in Harper’s on Billy Mitchell and other members of the Twin Galaxies crew.  The author, Joshuah Bearman, has more info on his blog and he kindly provides a link to a .pdf version of the piece.

The article focuses more on Pac-Man than on Donkey Kong and does not really get too into the Weibe-Mitchell dispute featured in the movie.  The author ended up selling footage to the King of Kong producers and helping them fit it into the movie, but the article was begun well before that.  It does discuss the movie and it’s after-effects.  It’s a great read and a fascinating look inside the community.  Besides Mitchell, the article spends the most time on Ms. Pac-Man champ, Abdner Ashman.

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And Aggro claims the 100th post with ease!  Wow, a hundred posts already?  That’s incredible - great job Karn and Anski.  We’re just warming up…we’ve only been officially launched for a month.  Let’s see how fast we can hit 1,000.

In my largely futile search for decent iPhone games, I had high hopes for Galcon. 

Galcon is a real-time game of simplified galactic conquest.  You start off with a planet under your control, as does the enemy.  There are a large number of grey (neutral) planets of varying sizes and with different numbers on them in the field of play.  The size of the planet determines the speed at which it can produce ships for you.  The number which appears on it represents the number of defending spaceships present.  A large planet is not always defended with a high number of ships.  With a flick of your finger, you send a fleet out from your home planet to attack and conquer these neutral planets, or those held by your opponent.

As you gain control of a planet by attacking with enough ships, it will turn to your color and begin to build ships for you.  If you let a planet alone, it’s fleet size will build up and up.  Of course, you can send your fleets out to attack from that planet, or send fleets from multiple planets after a hostile planet.  You can also control the percentage of the fleet you are sending.  As you take over planets and move fleets, your opponent is doing the same.  The goal is simple: destroy your enemy.

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Have you ever re-stumbled upon something online and gone “Whoa…yeah, I have seen this before. Coooool!” and then checked it out all over again only to slap your forehead and go “Whoa! That’s done by the same guy!?”

I did that very thing just not 10 minutes ago!

So here I was sitting at my PC reading a post over at Technabob about 8-Bit Showdown artwork. Go ahead and check out the post there, it is about an artist named Scott Campbell (can you name the different featured games?). As Technabob points out, it’s a piece that he did for the fourth annual i am 8-bit exhibit in Hollywood.

Just as a quick heads-up, the show is only on until September 7th. If you are from Hollywood or you will be in the area before then, this just might be something you want to check out.

After falling in love with Scott’s depiction of these great 8-bit showdowns, I popped over to his blog to see if there were any other pieces of work there that were of a similar ilk. I have to say… Scott did not disappoint!

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Wow, we’re really getting down to it now.  Only two to go.  It may seem strange that this one is so high, since it is definitely not for everyone.  I probably wouldn’t even recommend it unless I knew the person specifically liked this type of series.  If an anime series where basically nothing much happens and there is very little action sounds awful…stay away from this one.  But, hey, this is my favorite series list, right?  This one was just a combination of some of my favorite things: Seinfeld, The Wonder Years, and a tone poem.  And for me, it all flowed together perfectly.

What is it about?  Not a heck of a lot.  No swords, no sorcery.  No giant robots, no starships.  Just a funny, poetic slice of life called:

Azumanga Daioh

Hmm…how can I even begin to explain the convoluted, deeply complex plot of this series.  Oh wait: A group of girls go to high school and hang out together.  Yep, I’m done now. 

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