Emptyeye

As I said last week, not much happened this week. I’ve been practicing for Pianotoads, and..not a whole heck of a lot of importance happened other than that.

The big thing was Christmas, and my main loot as it pertains to the site was:

• An Alesis Drum Machine
• DDR Supernova 2
• A 320GB External Hard Drive, furthering my redundancy against catastrophic failure and loss of information (In the case of backing stuff up, redundancy is a good thing)

Now I just have to figure out how to use the drum machine, heh.

Less than a week from MAGFest now. I’m quite excited about it, even if Jess (My girlfriend, and the person I’m riding down with) is still sort of annoyed with me because (Long story short) I threw a bit of a tantrum while playing Super Mario Strikers with her, my brother and my cousin (I say “a bit of a tantrum” because I was really just annoyed–in my all-out tantrums, I actually physically attack other people with no regard for my own body. Here, I just tossed my controller–which, according to my brother, hit him in the knee [Though I assure you this wasn’t my intention]–and walked into the bathroom, which I..well, used, while I was in there). Hopefully things will be all better by Thursday morning. I’m supposed to go over her house for New Year’s, so hopefully things will be cleared up by then, for that matter.

And that’s it for now, I guess. Until next week..

-EE

Merry Christmas! Or a belated Happy Hanukkah. Or Happy Kwanzaa. Or Happy Solstice. Did I miss any holidays in December?

Anyway, whatever holiday you celebrate, hopefully it goes well for you.

This week in Emptyeye.com, once again, not much happened. Indeed, I would expect updates to be rather sporadic for the next two weeks as I prepare for MAGFest, which is now in less than two weeks. I’ve been hard at work on the challenges, and can get at least one point on pretty much all the games now. Even some of the Expert challenges (Mega Man, Batman once I figured out the secret–not to be confused with The Secret–and of course Battletoads) aren’t too bad. One notable exception is the Ghosts N’ Goblins Expert challenge, which you can read my profanity-laced thoughts on here. Without tipping my hand more than I’ve already done, I submit that several games have their difficulties misrated–Mega Man’s Expert challenge, I feel, is easier than its Hard challenge when you get the pattern down.

Recently, I received a book called Lifting Shadows: The Authorized Biography of Dream Theater. Look for a review of that soon, though I suspect that, truthfully, a review of the book will be useless in a functional sense for reasons I’ll get into when I write about it more fully.

Finally, my Astyanax speedrun is officially in the SDA queue. Hopefully we’ll see it on the site soon.

Until next week, have a Merry Christmas, or whatever you celebrate in December…

-EE

What is Pianotoads? Well, I’ll just re-print the description I gave for the MAGFest program:

“Speedrunner + Piano Player + Ridiculously Hard Game = Incredible Experience for All Involved. Marc J. “Emptyeye” Dziezynski (The disheveled one) speeds through the NES game Battletoads, making you wonder how you ever thought the game was so hard, while pianist Daniel “Kareshi” Brown (The elegant one), of Nintendo on Piano and Final Phantom fame, lends his musical skill in providing his live interpretation of the game’s soundtrack on piano.”

The thumbnail is the picture I sent for the program (Which is where “elegant” vs. “disheveled” comes from–note how Kareshi looks like he’s ready to go to a wedding, whereas I look like I’m ready for..a video game and music convention), which you can click to see the full-size picture. I’m pretty sure it’s the only picture of us together, so it went by default.

Battletoads is regarded as one of the hardest games on the NES (If not of all-time). I’m not quite sure why; harder NES games, off the top of my head:

• Gradius
• Life Force
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• The Silver Surfer
• Ghosts N’ Goblins (Despite Kareshi’s protests to the contrary)

Regardless, the game’s reputation is what it is, and my reputation, particularly amongst The Shizz (Where I’m known more or less as “That guy who can beat Battletoads”), is likewise what it is. Not that I’m arguing with this, or wishing it wasn’t so–as someone once said, “One hit is one more than a lot of other people have”–as I’ve obviously used it to my advantage here. I’m actually pretty nervous about this, and I’m not sure why–I’ve beaten the game many many times before, and I’m pretty sure I honestly haven’t done that in a non-speedrunning sort of context since late 2004 or so. Indeed, I’ve played the game in front of a small audience before; it is, for some reason, a highly anticipated unofficial event for the past two MAGFests, being as MAGFest is, or at least was (Long, dramatic story), essentially the Mecca of The Shizz. So why the nerves? I think it’s essentially because this is now an official MAGFest event, presumably attended by actual non-Shizzies, so I’ll have to bring my A-game now more than ever. Still, I think I can even use this to my advantage presentation-wise…

If you’re in the Virginia area from January 3rd-6th 2008, check out the whole of MAGFest; Pianotoads itself happens at 11AM on Friday, January 4th. All things told, it’s actually a pretty good time slot, with only early afternoon slots being more preferable–more people tend to attend the festival on Saturday, but that’s counterbalanced by the fact that people won’t be recovering from Friday night’s concerts. Prime-time slots go head-to-head with the concerts, My other options were basically Sunday (AKA “shut down/check out day”), 10AM Saturday (Not the best, for already mentioned reasons), or really late at night. So, for an event that amounts to “Emptyeye plays a game”, I’m happy with the time.

It should be great fun either way, whether I live up the hype or crash and burn, which is always a possibility.

EDIT 4/6/08: As mentioned here, Sam was kind enough to upload his recording of Pianotoads onto Google Video. Check it out here!

This is a bit earlier than usual so I can run off and play Starcraft later.

Anyway, this past week was by and large quiet website-wise as I focussed on other things. I did release a new song not long ago (literally about 10 minutes ago), so we’ll see how reaction to that is once I promote it a bit more. Speaking of promotion in a sense, I’ve decided I’m going to attempt to do a better job of responding to comments here where applicable. Hopefully, knowing that I do, in fact, read the comments you leave me will inspire more people, such as those stragglers who still download the catalog of my old music, or the person who got here by searching for “great positive thoughts when writing thesis” (Which I can only guess took them to my review of The Secret), to actually leave comments.

Dance gaming-wise, I scored another two AAAs on home versions of DDR, which you can see in full-size by clicking the thumbnails at the top of this post. My pad is going to need cleaning again, if today’s session was any indication–it’s awesome when you step properly and get a stream of misses on one arrow anyway, let me tell you. Also, I found something I wrote in my paper journal (Remember those?) about how by this time I had wanted to pass an In the Groove 13-block song. I didn’t get there, though I can pass a couple of the easiest 12s. So that’s good, I guess.

We’re less than 3 weeks away from MAGFest, which looks to be a fun time. My girlfriend is even excited about it, mainly because I’m so excited about it. Kareshi (Whom you may remember as being one of my expected main competitors in the MAGFest challenges and myself even get our own event–more on that probably tomorrow.

Finally, on the Speedrunning front, I finally got off my lazy butt and began the process of submitting my run for the obscure NES game Astyanax. Hopefully, if nate (his spelling) at SDA can work his magic and resolve the issue I had with it, it’ll be on the site fairly soon.

Until next week…

-EE

Yes, it’s a new song, finally. Well, sort of–I wrote it awhile ago, but this is my first time recording it. It’s an acoustic song called “Liberation“, and you can check it out by clicking on the name of the song or here. If you want to grab the song directly without looking at the story or lyrics–which isn’t recommended–you can do that by right-click/saving here. Leave comments and feedback for me, as I do read them.

This past week saw…well, not a whole lot happen with the site, really. I did make one update regarding a comic collection I bought, which I enjoyed and recommend. Golden Age Batman is kind of a jerk.

In dance gaming news, I managed to play more home DDR and get another AAA, which you can see by clicking on the picture thumbnail at the top of this post. That song is way too easy to be a 7-footer, but whatever. Tomorrow I may or may not head to the mall to play more arcade DDR Extreme get some Christmas shopping done. I still need to buy stuff for my dad, as well as Jess’s grandmother.

On a non-dance-gaming note, I’m counting down the days until Jess and I go to MAGFest! MAGFest is a video game and music convention that I’ve gone to for the last two years; it’ll be Jess’s first time. This year, one of the groups there is doing something really cool in the form of NES Challenges where you can win some cool gear and even money by completing enough challenges (I actually wrote about this last week, apparently, but not in much detail). I’m definitely going for as many as possible, and I know fellow Shizzie and speedrunner Daniel “Kareshi” Brown–not to be confused with Dan “The Da Vinci Code” Brown; indeed, both are only two of the over 9000 Daniel Browns in the U.S. according to HowManyofMe …compare this to the…zero…Marc Dziezynskis that the site finds in the U.S. (Yes, really. I guess I’m an imaginary entity or something)–plus who knows how many people I don’t know are hard at work at trying their hand at some of these challenges. Although Kareshi and I are both amused at two of the choices on the list, Battletoads and Ghosts N’ Goblins. These are regarded as two of the hardest games on the NES…except that each of us has played one of them so many times we could probably beat them blindfolded (I went over my Battletoads prowess last week; Kareshi has the SDA run for G’N'G. In other words, I think the two games come out to a wash for us, with possibly a slight advantage going to him (I regard G’N'G as the harder game–something he disagrees with–and Battletoads has a not-all-that-difficult-in-my-eyes Hard challenge vs. no Hard challenge at all for G’N'G).

Finally, have a booby prize for reading this far–I threw together a brief, badly played cover of the first Dr. Wily stage from the original Mega Man. I titled it “For Everlasting Peace”, and gave it the album title of “Into the Aether” because, as far as I’m concerned, it’s irreverent enough to basically exist outside my normal catalog (Think of it as the music analog of those “Imaginary Stories” you’d sometimes see in comics in the 1960s); indeed, I don’t think I’m even going to bother putting it up on the music sidebar. You can download it here.

Until next time..
-EE

Before I begin, I should point out that I’m not really a big comic book reader. I don’t say this to try and convince you that I’m not some sort of geek in a “I would never read those things!” fashion–really, my main method of exercise is a game where I thi arrows with my feet; I think I left on the geek train a long awhile ago–but rather so you know that, honestly, I’m probably not the most qualified to judge this collection from a knowledge point of view.

Here’s what I do know: The Batman Chronicles is a reprinting of the very earliest Batman stories in chronological order. I was first made aware of their existence through a post on Superdickery’s message boards. The post showed some panels from Volume 1 that would seem completely counter to modern day readers’ perceptions of Batman, especially the whole “code against killing” thing (My personal favorite example from said volume has Batman hanging a villain by the Batplane while remarking “Oh well, it’s probably better for him anyway”.). Right away, I knew I had to have this collection despite my generally not being big into comic books.

Anyway, I missed Volume 2, but picked up Volume 3. How, I’m not quite sure (Well, yes I am–I waited too long and the comic shop I drop by occasionally had Volume 3 but not Volume 2), but the point is that I probably missed out on some evolution of the Batman character (Still called “The Batman” in any expository panels here, by the way). Volume 3 covers the period from December 1940 to approximately May of 1941 or so (The last several stories are listed as coming simply from “Spring 1941″–apparently DC had several quarterly titles back in the day, Batman among them). Right away, there are several quirks of the time that will pop out to modern-day comics fans. First off, there are a lot of stories packed into those four months. Part of it was Batman’s popularity, appearing in Detective Comics, plus his own title, and here making an appearance in something called “World’s Best Comics #1″, but part of it is the story-telling format of the time too–rather than a one-story-per-issue format, the comics of the time tended to give you two or three smaller stories per issue.

From a content standpoint, perhaps partially due to the format mentioned above, you’ll also notice that Batman’s famed “rogue gallery” is largely absent. There’s a story featuring The Joker, and another with a villain named Clayface (Different from today’s Clayface, just to confuse you some more), but other than that, Batman and Robin’s foes here are decidedly more pedestrian in nature–mainly mobsters, with a corrupt publisher dressed as a witch or some acrobats dressed as devils thrown in for good measure now and again.

You’ll probably also note that Vintage Batman is…well, as sane as a guy who dressed up as a bat to fight crime gets, I suppose. There’s no mention whatsoever in this collection of just why Batman wants to go out and catch criminals (Though this was briefly covered in Volume 1–he watched his parents get murdered in cold blood), no probing his psychology, none of any of that. Generally, it’s just Batman beating up crooks. Here in this collection, we note that “Batman never carries or kills with a gun”–I can only presume that other means of killing are perfectly acceptable, such as tossing people overboard from a cruise ship.

My favorite story of the collection is probably also the strangest, which features Batman and Robin going inside several fairy-tales courtesy of a machine by a not-mad-really-but-authorities-would-think-so-if-they-knew-of-this-device scientist. It’s the sort of thing that might have been more suited to the goofy 60s version of the character, as opposed to when he was still in his relative infancy.

In short, I very much enjoyed this collection, and recommend it especially if you’re curious about how “The Batman” was developed during his earliest years.
-EE

This past week saw the end of November, which gave me an opportunity to compare how my stats looked for October vs. November. There seems to be some growth in terms of downloads, but November vs. December will be a more apt comparison–remember that I didn’t get the site up and running until mid-October. It also occurs to me that to continue the growth, I’m going to have to do at least one of two things:

1. Provide new material. Not just new blog postings, but new songs, as well as other things of more substance that I haven’t decided on yet.
2. Get the site out to a wider audience. This might actually be the easier of the two things in a superficial sense–I can put the site in my signature on various message board, mention it in places I comment on, etc. etc. etc.

Either way, though, I want as big an audience as possible as April draws nearer.

Speaking, indirectly, of music, it’s roughly five months until I’ll have to hunker down and re-record stuff for The Six Day Exile, and suffice to say I’m a bit behind schedule. The Tool-esque song is on hold because of a unique problem–namely, lack of plugs for everything I need. So instead I started working on an acoustic song which I apparently wrote back in 2004, probably soon after I got my acoustic guitar and was in that new-toy phase. Looking it over again, I like it enough that it should all work out.

What else…I picked up my new glasses this week, and tried out the DDR machine at the Brass Mill Center while I was there. I’ve been sick the past week, so I didn’t get to play as much as I would’ve liked, but my limited playtime was enough to earn the machine the Emptyeye Seal of Approval–everything is in fine shape, especially for a five-year-old game whose gameplay involves effectively stomping on the controller with your feet. Plus, all the songs are unlocked–this should be a foregone conclusion at this point, but the state of DDR in Connecticut is such that yes, this is actually a pleasant surprise. I’m wondering if this was the “good” machine that used to be at Smiles that mysteriously disappeared. Either way, though, I like it.

Finally, we’re a month away from MAGFest, along with which will come my first true vacation since…I don’t even know. I want to say September, though in reality it may have been as far back as April. I’ve taken individual days and half days off since then, to be sure, but this was usually due to doctor’s appointments and the like. It’s kind of amusing, in that I’ll be carrying over eight or so paid days off from this year–and use them up basically immediately in 2008. This year, they have a challenges thing going on with a bunch of old NES games. I’ve started going down the list and seeing what looks doable to me–I spend a lot of my MAGFest time playing games anyway; may as well try to make some money on it–and am highly amused at the inclusion of Battletoads on the list. I personally would’ve gone for Level 9 or 11 as an Expert challenge, but what do I know about the game…

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that my girlfriend will be coming with me to this MAGFest. It’ll be our first sort of vacation “alone together”, if that makes any sense. That should be fun too.

Until next time…

-EE

This was something that I got to wondering about going over my MySpace page and looking over my friends list. I’ve talked elsewhere about the fact that it seems like everyone I knew in high school in college is moving out/getting married/etc. and I’m…well, not, at the moment. That’s fine, as I honestly think the path I picked for myself, while making me a “loser” in American society in the short term, will work out far better for me in the long term, and those close to me seem to agree. That’s not really my point. My point is that, as mentioned, a lot of my friends are getting married. And as a result of this, a lot of my female friends have changed their last name to that of their husband’s. Okay. But from looking at their display names, it seems many of them are downright enthusiastic about this specific aspect of marriage.

Huh?

Now, maybe it’s because I was born with, and last I knew, still had *Checks…yep, still do*, the male genitalia and the balance of hormones that come with it, and so I can never know why this is. I do understand that there is this pressure on females in general to run off as it were and get married–my girlfriend once told me that this desire was drilled into her from the age of approximately 4–perhaps deriving from a history where traditionally, the only way for a female to be able to survive once she became an adult was essentially to get married and have her husband care for her, so to speak. And indeed, from a functional perspective I understand to a degree why someone’s last name has to go upon marriage–otherwise, your child’s full name will be something like “Firstname DadLastName-MomLastName”, their child’s name would be “FirstName LastNameOne-LastNameTwo-LastNameThree-LastNameFour”, and after that…well, it’s a huge mess.

But to me–and again, my views on this may be influenced by the fact that I’m male and so don’t really have to deal with losing my last name upon marriage–your name is really a part of your identity. Is part of the legacy of the pressure to marry a pressure to give up part of your identity…and worse, to present this as though it’s a good thing?

Any female readers (Or male, for that matter) out there, please comment on this, as I’m clearly missing something.

-EE