Comic for Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

Posted: 7:30 am, Wednesday, May 3rd

I actually know nothing of Morrissey's music. 2.0 says one of her old roommates used to listen to it, and that I've heard it, though. But the titles to that guy's songs.. Wow.

Yet more new permalinks. Lulu Eightball is friggin' brilliant. I don't know why I always forget to look at it all the time. Possibly, I'm deficient. You know, like, mentally.

By the way, and I know I've talked up the BBC run of The Office quite a bit, because sometimes I like to sound really well-watched and shit like that. 2.0 and I just finally watched the second series and Christmas special of it (actually, we've got half the Christmas special left), and, dear God, I had heard the show took a turn for the darker in the second series, but that's ridiculous. David Brent became so skin-crawlingly awful that I had to actually hide my eyes for stretches of the show. Woof.

Check out this crazy in-depth Cincinnati Reds-centric blog. Wow. That is one hell of an in-depth analysis of attendance figures and trends. He links to this excellent uniform-finding site from the Baseball Hall of Fame, too. I had seen the pictures that this site uses from around the interwebs in the past, never knew this is where they came from. And the weekly Joe Morgan chat met its fiery demise.

Sox-Goat Fuckers got rained out last night - that's so anticlimatic. Well, at least the Sox won the series.

By the way, if anyone can steal good parts of a couple of stories and slap them together into something coherent, m'ise well take a look at this.

I mentioned the worst tailgate ever briefly yesterday - EDSBS destroys it properly. Ugh.

Crownover sent me the Bryant Park Summer Film schedule yesterday - and it looks fantastic. Only one flick I don't care about in the least there - two Hitchcocks, M*A*S*H, the best Pink Panther movie, a Bogey and Bacall flick... Sweet. And, speaking of movies and even though I'm sure you'll all find it anyway, here's the Onion's summer movie preview, because I don't have much else ready to go for right now. I'm at a weird place right now with the strip - I've actually got a ton of ideas banging around in my head and am having a hard time getting them into a sensical chronological order. This is quite different from the way things usually go around here, where it's Tuesday and I'm like, "Well, I've got nothin'. I had a good run." So, while I'm freaking out a little bit, at least we can all rest easily that the strip will be around for another month or three.

bullfrog

That looks so much better with the extra space. Kudos.

MJL, how can you possibly like zelda II better than zelda I?

I didn't want to be the one to bring that up, but, yeah.. That's wild, Mudge. I don't know how you're supposed to beat the seventh castle in Zelda II without being a sugar-wired ten-year old.

Side scrolling, up thrust, down thrust, the little blobs. I don't know, I just like it. You have to admit that those red and blue knights were way ahead of their time in terms of enemy AI. They actually had a defense. And you could cast spells.

I do concede a few points: (1) Yes, it did get inhumanly difficult towards the end. As a kid I never beat either game (or actually owned the NES), so that never really came into play. (2) It was pretty annoying when a townie said "...". (3) In the original, the boomerang weapon was pretty cool.

Saying Zelda II is better than the original... thats just straight up un-american. Super C vs Contra Rocky V vs Rocky IV Double Dragon II vs Double Dragon Honey I Blew up the Kids... Scrappy Doo...

Im seeing a trend here

In regards to the comic today - I find that some of the most depressing music can be found in early Bright Eyes CDs, such as this tidbit from "If Winter Ends" on Letting Off the Happiness:

but i fell for the promise of a life with a purpose and i know that's impossible now. and so i drink to stay warm and to kill selected memories because i just can’t think anymore about that or about her tonight and i give myself three days to feel better or else i swear i'm driving off a fucking cliff because if i can’t learn to make myself feel better then how can i expect anyone else to give a shit and i scream for the sunlight or a car to take me anywhere just get me past this dead and eternal snow because i swear that i am dying, slowly but its happening and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere just take me there

Trust me - not good stuff to be listening to if you're depressed. Either that or anything by Eliott Smith...

I'll give MJL some slack and say that Zelda II did have some pretty cool moments. The bosses on levels 2, 4 and 6 were pretty of cool (even if 4 was incredibly easy). By the way, I didn't have to look that up. Yikes. The down-thrust was nifty. I liked Old Kasuto. It's not a bad game, just not the masterpiece that the original has held up to be.

Double Dragon II for the NES always pissed me off. It was about the only game my buddies all beat and I never could for some reason. I'm going to chalk that reason up to the fact that it sucked. Although I do remember the leg that Marian was showing on the cover, before Nintendo's censors stepped in.. Before:

http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/msx/photos/gamecov ers/Double_Dragon_II_-Virgin_DRO_Soft-_front.jpg

After:

http://www.tomheroes.com/images/NES%20double_d ragon_2%20box.jpg

I just looked at a site recapping Double Dragon II - God, I had forgotten how much I hate that crummy game. Blargh.

The worst part was you could either punch forward or kick back and the button changed depending on which way you were facing.

That and they didnt correct the jumping from platform to platform problems from original DD, which was probably the only bad part of the game.

Throwing Zelda aside for a moment, it's important to consider that every once in a while, the sequel is better than the original. I'd smell a top 5 list coming here, but this intellectual gnat is supposed to be working...

I will say, though, that it will probably be easier to find video game examples than it will be to find movie examples. I know it's more about gameplay that eye/ear candy, but video game sequels often have the benefit more technical horsepower.

Woah... I just caught up to the rest of your comments. I'm a mouse amongst men. Frog: your recall there is impressive, I mean scary.

Wow, someone came to the site by Googling "White House Correspondent Dinner Coldbear," my dad's malapropism... Dad? Is that you? Did you find Google?

Oh, I agree - Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell *totally* outstrips Meatloaf's original work.

Actually, I have no opinion on that. Just it was the first sequel of any sort that popped into my mind. Meaning that there's something desperately wrong with me.

Wow, wikipedia has an entry for film sequels considered better than the original. I actually like the original Evil Dead better than the sequel/remake, and prefer Star Wars over Empire while admitting that Empire is a far superior film.. I have no opinion on a few of these (the Westerns, the Mad Maxes [never got into those]), but most of this seems in order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sequels_c onsidered_better_than_the_original

Video game sequels that are better than the original - how do people feel about Super Mario 2 v. the original? I know it's practically heresy (I'm chancing the un-American appellation from Wood, perhaps), but I think I like the second one. Yeah, yeah, it's not a true Super Mario Bros., whatever. It's bright, it's colorful, it's fun, and you can be Toad. Who kicks ass.

I am still a huge fan of super mario 3. Super Mario 2 still doesnt seem to me like a super mario game for some reason. Its got all the right characters but there is something that just doesnt feel right about it.

Warcraft did get it right the second time and I would agree that lately video game designers have done a very good job of keeping the parts of games that fans love and expanding on them. Movies and TV not so much because the ideas arent fresh. Frasier is the last TV spinoff I can think of that did well.

Sorry to get didactic, everytime i hear the word sequel Caddyshack II pops into my head and I go into convulsions.

Oh, come on, what about the genius that was "Joey"? No, you're right - television spin-offs are almost always disasters. My buddy Jeff once told me there were two successful movie-to-TV transistions ever made.. One was M*A*S*H and I can never remember the other.

Never played the original Warcraft, but somebody put Warcraft II on the network my freshman year. "Zig-zug" and "Yes me lord" still get laughs from Sweaty.

Mario 2 was an adaptation of a Famicon game called "Dream Factory," and has always been derided amongst vidiots as not a real Mario. I thought they did a good job with it and that it kind of stood on its own. It's kind of interesting to compare to Zelda II, honestly - it was a big change without being a *HUGE* change that set everyone off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros. _2

I liked Ninja Gaiden II more than the original, but I'm not sure if there's anything un-American about that. And 1943 (sequel to 1942, duh) is one of my top five favorite NES games.

Isn't it generally accepted that Godfather 2 is better than the original? I always thought that was the case.

I wanted to bring that one up, but I wasn't sure. I think they're considered to be almost equal. But I actually (sssssh!) haven't seen either one, so what the hell do I know?

Ninja Gaiden II v. the first one.. Whoo, that's tough. II has the benefit of not being completely fucking impossible, so that's something. The one big drawback with II is that the ending is almost the exact same as the first one, down to the castle collapsing and Ryu and Irene standing on an odd rock outcropping, watching it happen. (Again, not looking these names up - shit, my life has been wasted.)(And *what* is the deal with that rock outcropping? Who in their right mind would scale a rock wide enough for them to stand on and that's all? Stupid friggin' Hayabusa.) But I think you're right - from a gameplay angle, Ninja Gaiden II is the superior game. Good call.

Megaman vs Megaman II: I recall likely the sequel better. I never felt that Megamans 3 through 30 brought anything new and exciting to the table.

I swear that your website puts typos into each of my comments.

Tough call on that one - I thought Mega Man 2 needed the difficulty amped up by a level of 10 or so. The original wasn't as bright, but had some excellent stuff to it. I'd say that one's a pretty tough call. I stuck with the series through the first three and then called it quits.