New Silent Hill Homecoming screens make your tuesday a little more unsettling...

Kotaku did a pretty good job of hiding these pics from the kids who might want to download them and use them as wallpaper. But I dug around with Google Chrome and found a few. The pics below are from the PC version. The Xbox360 screens weren't as big (or filled with zombie nurses). Anyway click and enjoy:

























Source: Kotaku

I didn't want to post this, but I just plain couldn't resist...I have a man crush on Frank West you see.

That picture up there...THAT is a nice piece of PR my friend. That makes me want to do the unthinkable. It makes me want to buy what I'm sure will be an inferior port (demake?) of one of my favorite Xbox 360 games.

Not only that, but it's good enough for me to link back to Destructoid twice in in one day.

You can check out jagged Wii Screen shots if that's your thing...but I'm just going to post up the AMAZING pre-rendred art of Frank and Isabela.

Silent Hill 2 demake makes me want to pick back up on my C++.

Lately, I've been kind of down on Destructoid. I've had to many shit heads post bitchy little "meh" comments on my blog over there. Plus, Retroforce Go!, has sort of worn out it's appeal. I'll never get tired of Chad, but the rest of those guys are too uninformed and or too single mindlessly obsessed with obscure genre's for my tastes. But today the Estrogen Filled Center of RFG posted up a pretty sweet article today which may have redeemed the robot. At least for a few weeks.

Essentially it's a demake of Silent Hill 2 called Soundless Mountain. It is supposed to be as if it was made for the NES, but according to the programmer Superflatit is really closer to a GameBoy Color game in terms of graphics and programming.

Anywho...check out this video of a game that I would buy if it came out on an NES cart (destructoid has a video up to, but it has a damn pop up add in the player and I don't like that...but it's essentially the same as the youtube below):

Some man meat for the Beeb...

It might not be as sexy as the Jake Gyllenhaal pics I posted up a while back, but Becca's a big fan of old Mark "y mark" Walberg. And I was a big fan of the Max Payne games. So these just seem like a good fit for both our interests. Anyway, Check out these pics that I'm linking from Kotaku

Quick update on the site layout.

There's going to be some exicting new things coming to the blog sometime soon.

Two tiny things have been introduced that I'd like to comment on.

First, I posted the first in the series of Cabs in the Wild feature.

Second, I have removed the huge (and I thought sweet) JPG background image. I was getting some complaints that it was interrupting load times and displaying funky on some people's machines. So it's gone for now.

Let me know what YOU think of these features and changes, I'm going to be working on the site's layout and functionality and I'd love to know what you think.

An evening at Nocturnum. Boise's best (only?) goth club.

Becca at Nocturnum is like Roger Federer playing a pick up game at the Whitset golf and Tennis club

You know that a goth club is going to be interesting when:

a) doesn't have a proper web site
b) it is held in a bar that usually hosts Greatful Dead cover bands
c) is in a state that stops selling alcahol in stores after 7PM
d) you hear about from your Dad.

Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for you) Becca and I headed out to just such a club on our first night in Boise. It was...interesting. The music was a strange mix of modern stuff like Zombie Girl, musty old Classics like TKK's "Daisy Chain for Satan" and random Electro (Zombie Nation) and Metal (Rammstein). All poured into a mix. The DJ didn't really have theme or a flow...it was like a hot topic employee's ipod put on shuffle. It wasn't bad, but if I didn't already like going to industrial clubs, this one wouldn't be the one to win me over.

The highlight was the drinks. I ordered a Screwdriver, a Beer, and a bottle of water...and the guy said "that'll be five bucks" and I said, "no I wanted a screwdriver, a beer, and a bottle of water...not just a bottle of water." and the guy blinked and looked a little closer at me and said, "yeah, that'll be five bucks".

So all things considered, I bought three beers, two mixed drinks and three waters and spent less than 20 bucks includidng tips for the whole night. Fuck, in LA 20 bucks is parking for some clubs. Incredible.

Anyway, here's some pics...these poor kids don't have a website of their own and one of the chicks wanted becca to email them to her so she could put them on her myspace. Can you imagine that? No party pics site for these poor slutty goth girls? They'd double their attendance with even a simple angelfire free site.

Anyway, prepare yourself:

Arcade Cabs in the Wild - Galaxian

Galxian

Location: Buzz's Coin Laundry Sherman Oaks

I found this cab at a local laundramat. It's not in the best shape, but the control panel and marque are still looking great. I played rounds while I waited for my clothes to dry and the thing still plays like a dream.




The side panels are scratched and faded, but it's still pretty cool too see the original side are, so many cabs now a days are refirbs with generic side art.



The front panel art is in a little bit better shape. The cool "invader" design still enticing to drop in a few more quarters.



check out the old Midway logo on the coin box. This hardware must all be original. Incredible!




The Joystick and fire buttons are a little grimey, but they still worked fine.



Like the joystick, the instructions have about 30 years of grime built up, but it's fascinating to see the instructions, this might be the only time I've seen an intact galaxian instruction decal.




My favorite part of this cab is the "Start Game" font. I just think it look so cool



From the Galaxian wikipedia entry:

Galaxian expanded on the formula pioneered by Space Invaders. As in the earlier game, Galaxian featured a horde of attacking aliens that exchanged shots with the player. In contrast to Space Invaders, however, Galaxian added an element of drama by having the aliens periodically make kamikaze-like dives at the player's ship.

The gameplay was relatively simple. Swarm after swarm of alien armies attacked the player's ship that moved left and right at the bottom of the screen. The ship could only fire sparingly by default, but rearmed instantly when an enemy was hit. The player would defeat one swarm, only to have it replaced by another more aggressive and challenging army in the next screen. A plain and repetitive starfield scrolled in the background.

Galaxian was very successful for Namco and introduced several "firsts". Although true color (as opposed to a color overlay for a game that was otherwise black and white) began appearing as early as 1975, Galaxian took graphics a step further with multi-colored animated sprites and explosions, a crude theme song, different colored fonts for the score and high score, more prominent background "music" and the scrolling starfield, and graphic icons that showed the number of ships left and how many rounds the player had completed. These elements combined to create a look/feel that would set the standard for many other 1980s arcade games such as Pac-Man.

The "official" highest score in a game of Galaxian was achieved by Gary Whelan of Manchester, England on 13 August 2004 when he managed to amass a total of 399,290 points.