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Who Is This Guy?

Hello Hello. My name's Tristan Leder. I'm just a native San Franciscan Nerd. Here lie my Thoughts, Hopes and Dreams. Occasional rants as well. The Weekly Accident has been my pride and joy since the Spring of 2008.

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Entries in video games (2)

Sunday
May312009

Not much to talk about. Won't bore you with a podcast. 

DateSunday, May 31, 2009 at 4:31PM

 So no new show this week. The podcast almost seems to becoming an every other week sort of deal. Though, that sort of defeats the purpose. Hopefully I’ll be able to shape my shit up over the summer.

Part of the reason it’s been tough to put out tons of shows lately is just the end of the year crunch. Especially in the past week, it’s been a barrage of tests and finals. Can you say three day math final? Yeah, that happened. Not to mention the fact that my SAT subject tests and AP exams just got over a couple weeks back. It really has been just non-stop test action. But now, the testing has really let up. I’m essentially done with school, save a Physics final on Wednesday, which I’m not too worried about.

Because of all this testing and what have you, it’s been a little tough to have time to do other stuff. And by “other stuff” I mean go out and see movies, listen to podcasts, watch this damned Kung Fu movie I’ve had from Netflix for the past month. However, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t gotten out. Well okay, maybe it does, but who’s judging? I mean we had out last dance on Friday, the Cardinal Carnival. That was slappin. Good times, good DJ. He didn’t just play the radio hip-hop hits that you’re used to hearing at a run of the mill dance, really mixed it up.

Been playin’ some Magic Cards. Tried making a red/white deck recently. Pretty I might have a new favorite card, Hearthfire Hobgoblin. I just like the way it looks, it’s not a terrible card either. I just kind of like the “Hobgoblins” in general. They make me giggle.

I’ve had some time to play over some of the DOTA-like game “Demigod”. Now, I don’t think it is quite as good as DOTA, yet. Graphically, it’s much better. The rendering is great, and blows Warcraft 3 out of the water, which is to be expected from a game that came out so far after. The game play though is lacking something. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, but for some reason, just not as enjoyable as DOTA. I don’t know if it’s the lack of a diverse character pool to choose from, the fact that game feels Unresponsive every now and then or what. I do like the fact that there are two distinct types of heroes, Assassins and Generals. Assassins focus on dealing damage and killing other Demigods, while Generals will often summon units for the player to control and will either positively affect allies or negatively affect opponents. However, these classifications can sometimes pigeon hole the heroes into seeming similar and slightly stale. Overall though, it’s not a bad game. I don’t suggest buying it if you aren’t familiar with the DOTA style of play.

So that’s the Weekly Accidental Wrap Up. Hope you enjoyed it. I leave you with a video of my Physics class. This was an actual class. The man you see is my teacher. Perhaps this answers questions about why I’m not too worried about my final.

 

16/17 Physics Class from Tristan Leder on Vimeo.

AuthorTristan Leder | CommentPost a Comment |
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Tuesday
Apr142009

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

DateTuesday, April 14, 2009 at 9:40PM

You know, you may not know, but arcades were hot shit in the days gone by. You'd go there with friends, bring a pocket full of quaters. Maybe challenge eachother, see who could get the higher score in a game. Now being as old as I am, I was not able to completely indulge in the arcade experience. I would however play the ocassional arcade style game, with the big machines and joysticks, maybe at the local pizza shop or what have you, only occasionally making it to the gaming Meccas that are/were arcades. I', sure many of you readers out there have similar experiences invloving Metal Slug and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. I know you're there.

King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters is a look into the aracde culture that is still present in the world today. The docuementary is focused on the world of competitive retro arade gaming, centerin mainly around two characters.

The first character we meet is Billy Mitchell set a high score in the arcade game Donkey Kong back in 1982. He now (from what I could tell in the film) runs a chain of successfull hot wing restauraunts. The other character we meet, and who's journey we follow throughout the movie is Steve Wiebe, a teacher at high school in Washington who sets out ona journey to break Mitchell's high score.

The film starts off giving some backstory on Mitchell and the competitive gaming scene as a whole. The arbiters of the who retro game shindig is an organization known as Twin Galaxies. They say whether or not a high in a game is legit or not. If it isn't registered with Galaxies, then your score is useless.  From here we meet Wiebe, and learn about his "interesting" past and what exacly motivates him.


The rest of the film follows Wiebe through out his journey into retro-game stardom. His triumphs and his failures. The good times and bad. His wife and kids. Playing Kong for ours on end while his son yells at him about the fact he needs to poop. Ahhh, good times.

This documentary is by far one of the best I've seen. It's interesting, it's original, it's funny, it's just outright wacky. What really gets me though, is the story. Though this is a documentary, you could easily market it as just a normal movie, and I would be totally cool with that. Most documentaryies, like the recenetly seen Helvetica, focus so much on information about the subject that it's almost more like a text book that just happens to have a video component. Now, I know that's just the nature of the beast when it comes to documentaries, but Fistful of Quarters is different. It has story. It has characters that we can not only relate to, but by the end of the film, feel for. It doesn't shove facts about this culture of yester-year down our throats, rather presenting them smoothly in a manner that gels with the over-arching story. The way the film handles what it is, is extraordinary. You have a movie about 40 something year old nerds who spend most of their time playing video games that rest of the word seems to have forgotten about. Tell me that doesn't sound like a topic that could be easily be made fun of. The movie in no way, shape or form seems to be poking fun at the people who truly love the retro games. It's their passion. Who are we to make fun of it.

The story, sensibility and overall eccentricity have landed high on my list of must see movies. If you haven't had the good fortune to see it yet, this movie is worth your time.

 

I give it a:

15/17

AuthorTristan Leder | Comment1 Comment |
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