Contrariwise

If clicking on the plus in the upper right doesn't take you to the rest of them, then try this direct link:

http://www.triangulationblog.com/p/interactive.html

Hey, folks! Some news on the ongoing series of Stargate action figures.

Series 2 (Sam, Teal'c variations, Thor) is supposed to be out this month, but various sites I've seen are still listing them as pre-orders.

The newsflash here is about SERIES 3, which is supposed to be out in Feb. 2007.

Apparently it will consist of:

Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell (olive BDUs)
Vala Mal Doran (olive BDUs)
Vala Mal Doran (black bustier outfit from her debut)
Daniel Jackson (black-ops variant)
Cigarette-Smoking Prior (no, that's not what it's called, but it's a Prior based clearly on the one played by William B. Davis)

Go here for pictures:
http://timespacetoys.stores.yahoo.net/stse3setof5.html

The previous two sets of figures having come with pieces that let you assemble the Stargate, apparently this set will come with pieces that will let you assemble a DHD. (But it sort of sounds like you won't be able to assemble the full DHD, and if this runs true to form, we'll have to wait for series 4 for that.)

Still no word on the Atlantis action figures. :(

None of these are scoops or anything, but you know, if you haven't seen them... I'm a few days behind, but I haven't seen mention or discussion of these things on my flist thus far...

( AT and RDA comments vaguely re. S10 and ship... Nothing specific or that alarming, just fodder for hmms... )

( Hey! Fandemonium's SG-1 novels will now be sold in the US! )

( More on the action figures... )

Finally... one of the radio stations that I listen to in the car in the morning does this thing called "BackSpin", which is, they pick a year, and do a block of songs from that year. It can be kind of fun, and they seem to enjoy finding some popular songs from that year that you haven't heard in a while (rather than the ones that are still getting airplay).

This morning, the year was 1982, and as this song came on, I knew it INSTANTLY even though I knew I had not heard it in YEARS, from the instrumental opening alone, but I couldn't think what the song was. And then the singing started and I was singing along, and I still could not remember the song's *name* until we got to the chorus.

It was "Don't Pay the Ferryman" by Chris De Burgh. Wow. What a delightfully cheesy song that was!

Now what I want to know is -- has anyone done a H:TLJ vid to that song? Because, *seriously*... wow, how much fun would that be?

For the three of you out there who are also interested in the Stargate action figures that are coming out, some further information... (some are now for sale on eBay; more news on variants, including Desert Cammo [sic] Daniel Jackson in the 'do-rag beloved by so many; plus, don't forget your free Jack figure avail. from some comic shops on Free Comic Book Day, this Sat., etc.)...

( Don't you wish we could get sales demographics of these broken down so that we could tell how many were being bought by slasher women, as opposed to how many are actually being bought by guys, pure collectors, and/or kids who actually intend to play with them? )

Thanks to telepresence for the heads-up on this one:

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2104&Itemid=2

If this does not link you directly, the headline for the article is midway down the page.

I find this sad, because I was personally looking forward to it. I also find it sad because the show people put some amount of effort into cooperating with the project -- MS talked about having recorded 200 pages' worth of dialogue for the game, and RDA did a similar amount, I think -- and now all of that is down the drain, wasted. And, as stated previously, I'm sad because this would have been, in some ways, some "new" Jack material that we would have gotten, and "classic" Jack, classic team, at that. I also think it's kind of a bummer from a franchise POV.

However, I do understand the problem from a marketing standpoint, that there was no use bringing out a game that would already have looked out of date. That while it might have been fun for people who were already rabid SG fans, for the game to be successful and for it to be beneficial to the franchise, it needed not to incur the contempt of people who are foremost gaming aficionadoes.

It's just... still a pity that it bombed, whatever the reasons for it having bombed.

What I hate is when you get all tied up in knots doing an art project -- the kind where you really are trying hard to make it look exactly the way you want it to look, but the more you work on it, the more frustrating it is, and then you get to a point where maybe it's okay, but you can't TELL any more, because probably no matter what, it all looks wrong. Even though somebody outside your own head will probably say it's *fine*. But you don't want it to be "fine". You want it to be *perfect*.

This happens with writing too, of course. So even if you don't draw, I'm sure a lot of you will know what I mean. Grrrrr....

In other news: "Soul Caliber III" rocks hard. I went over to telepresence's place on Friday and after dinner we played a lot of it. Now, see, in SCII, I have been modestly famous amongst my group of friends for two things -- playing Cervantes (the hulking undead pirate) 99% of the time; and what I am told is a wildly entertaining "style" of play involving frantic random button-mashing and a lot of really blistering cursing (at myself, at the controller, at the characters on the screen -- "hit him, HIT HIM YOU MOTHERFUCKER, die die die", etc.). Occasionally, for a change-up, I play Raphael, but not as often as I played Cervantes. And very very occasionally, I would play Voldo (even though he icked me out), for the entertainment value, or Ivy. But basically, I was in a rut.

So imagine my surprise when SCIII turned out to have a *whole bunch* of characters I like to play.

The new version of Cervantes is cool -- yeah, I had to check out My Man first. His costume 1/color 2 combo is good. (Seriously, the costume choices can sometimes make or break characters; in the last game, Ivy -- who is Cervantes' daughter, in some odd way, btw -- had an acceptable costume choice that was basically "Napoleonic officer drag or something". In the new game, she doesn't -- all her costumes are slut-wear, which I avoid like the plague -- and this is a great, great loss.) But, but... there are OTHERS that are cool, too!

Revenant is a new character, as far as I can tell, but the ultra-cool thing is -- he's a SKELETON undead pirate! You can now have the Undead Pirate Show-Down! ROCK ON! (Cervantes' main costume is very Blackbeard, which is why I like it -- I don't like his #2 at all -- but Revenant's is like a cross between a Musketeer and an Elizabethan. Very nice.)

I'm actually annoyed by the new Raphael -- even more than by the old Raphael, who let's face it, was a pompous twit and the only reason to play him is that he's a fencer -- because I am told he's a VAMPIRE now or something, and he's done something egregious with his hair. I cannot STAND vampires, mostly, and what I *seriously* cannot stand are froufy, self-important, pompous Anne Rice-like vampires. Bleah. But he still fights beautifully, I have to admit.

However, both costume choices for the new Yoshimitsu? (Who is, I think, some kind of ghost-samurai, whose real face you never see.) AWESOME. One is a mask that is essentially a big SQUID HAT. Or maybe it's an octopus. With tentacles and everything. It rocks in both color choices, and his #1 mask is kind of cool too.

And Voldo? Okay, Voldo is still the freak we know and love, but somehow, he's just not as *scary* freaky in this verison, if you pick his #2 costume, with is FREAKIN' GORGEOUS. Because he's wearing a Sun mask and a sort of RenFaire doublet and all in gold, in the front; but the back half of the costume is all midnight blue, and on the BACK of his head he's wearing a Moon mask. This is tres cool, because Voldo has a fighting style where sometimes, for kicks, he really does just do a lot of his fighting backwards. Only now he's got a face on both sides! It's extremely pretty, rather than just FREAKY like Voldo's costumes in SCII. And it also has the smallest codpiece of any of his costumes, which believe me is a VERY good thing.

Then there is Zasalamel. It only took them until the third version, but SC finally gives us a black character -- and he *rocks*. In both costumes. (He's.... sort of Egyptian or something, and he fights with a big scythe, and he has a good voice.) I liked playing him a lot. (I have this thing, obviously, for playing the big hulking male characters whose fighting style consists of a lot of pounding.)

And even though I didn't play him -- Rock's mastodon mask is tres cool, too. SCIII has done a fairly great job with accessories this time around. (Except for Ivy's net-fringed hat. What the HELL is that?)

And finally, Lizardman. I didn't really watch much game-play back in the Soul Edge days, so I didn't remember Lizardman, who was apparently Stephen's favorite. But the new Lizardman is awesome. He's *adorable*. He's got a feathery ruff and feathers on his tail and one of his special jumps is this wonderful lizardy kicking-gutting move, if you can get it to go right.

The other big thing about SCIII, though, is the "create a character" feature. This is fairly nifty. The only thing that would make it better would be if you got the full range of choices to start with, instead of having to go through and earn/buy them -- but I can understand the logic behind that play-design. First, Len and I created a male character named Barry, who was a bit of a hodge-podge, and also, we didn't know what we were doing. When you're creating a character, you first pick "type", only as far as I could see they don't really tell you or show you what some of the types mean ("barbarian" I got, though they should have just said "swordsman"; "ninja" I got -- but what's a "saint"? what's a "dancer"? etc.). So we picked dancer. Well... okay, the only thing I can really say is... WOW. Apparently the programming for dancer-fighters was seriously geared towards the "girls", and when you pick a guy for that, and you dress him as badly as we dressed him... let's just say I couldn't even SEE part of the fight because I was laughing so hard.

But then I created a cool girl fighter called Philomena, who was a "saint" (because we were curious), which turns out to mean "fights with a staff", which is okay. She wasn't bad. So, the Character Creation feature -- addictive, crack-like. Very smart move on the game-makers' parts.

Maybe I will try to hunt down some screen-caps, for illustrative purposes.

Swear to god, I'm closer to getting a PS2 than I have ever been...

Boy, do I know a lot of people who need this...

William Shakespeare Action Figure