When I first played Resident Evil, I lost my trash. I was jumping in my seat, squirming on the ground, covering my eyes, and doing my best to power through the dark rooms, just to make sure I didn’t have a heart attack. I was eleven, so back off, alright?

The concept of zombies roaming around a mansion eating police officers who are trapped inside the building by brain-crazed zombie dogs is priceless. Resident Evil invented a genre all it’s own for video games: Survival Horror.

The thing that I loved about the game was that it was basically a movie that I could control and work my way through. The length of the game, when played right was about the length of a movie. The game utilized the elements of lighting and cinematography as best it could. It even had live action actors for the biggest cut scenes. And while it all looks cheesy today, at the time it was cutting edge, inspired, and like nothing else ever done.

What makes the game cheesy isn’t the story line, however. What really killed the game was the horrible voice acting (like the classic, “Don’t. Open. That. Door.”) and the over the top cinematic clips full of the worst actors fresh out of community college. But if you look past all this, you’ve got a pretty good story.

I’m not going to go through the entire story. If you want to read about it go here:

Ok, so it’s not Shakespeare, but seriously, it was only a couple of tweaks away from being a good zombie movie. It has twists and turns and hot girls and dudes with big guns-sounds pretty much like a Hollywood blockbuster to me. So, when it was time to make a Resident Evil movie, why change it up?

I had a lot of problems with the movie. For one, the game was already a movie. Take away the element of being able to move the characters around yourself and OMG, Movie! Maybe the script could have used a few tweaks and there shouldn’t have been nearly as much running around alone, looking for pegs and what-not, but these are all little things that could have been changed over night. The game even mapped out the camera angles for the director. How much more do they want?

The second giant problem I had with the movie was the martial arts. I wanted to pull my heart out every time 5^thElement jumped in the air and kicked someone. There was never a punch or kick button in the game. There was an attack where you kick a zombie if it was biting you, but it was nothing like jumping off walls and doing back flips. It was unnecessary and ridiculous. There wasn’t even a jump button in the game. Resident Evil is known for its controls. They keep you grounded, the moves you make are very choppy, and they take a lot of getting used to. The movie didn’t fit the game what-so-ever, and only lead to more problems.

Like my third gripe. Where were all the guns? The shotgun, one of the games staples, was in the very last scene of the movie, and that’s it. The hand gun was there, and the knife, I think, and that submachine gun type weapon that’s usually in the games, oh, and the sniper rifle…wait, sniper rifle? Yeah, don’t remember that in the game. I don’t remember a lot of the weapons in that movie being in the game, actually. It’s not like the game didn’t have awesome weapons. Rocket launchers, grenade launchers, shotguns, magnums, it was pretty solid. So what they hell were they thinking?

One of the coolest things was pointing the shotgun up and blowing off 2 zombies heads at once. Why couldn’t they do that?

Let’s also talk about the characters. In the first movie they decided to not only leave out all the awesome characters from the games, they also decided to introduce 5thElement as some kind of T-Virus powered killing machine. Now, I’m not sure, but wasn’t Tyrant…well, never mind.

When part two came out I was happy to see they added some familiar characters…well…I was happy for about 3 minutes. I’ll just talk about two characters. First, there was Jill (a whole movie late, mind you) and then there was Nemesis. All I have to say about Jill’s character in the movie is “Wow.” She just kind of stood there and said a few little tiny things from time to time that didn’t matter at all. She was a total after thought. She was nothing like she was in the game and she was defiantly not worth having in the movie. All she did was cause headaches to die hard fans like myself who wanted to see her put her knee down on a zombie’s head.

Nemesis was probably one of the coolest bad guys in video game history. He was big, mean, scary as hell, and best of all- he came in a can. They had it right for the most part, but then at the end…was he crying? Oh, that’s right, they messed up the story and made him a former love interest of someone, I forget who, and he cries at the end. Why? WHY!? He’s a killing machine! He’s not supposed to cry.

Oh! Then he helps the STARS team and sacrifices himself to save the day. Have any of these people even heard of the original video game.

*Le sigh

I didn’t even see the third one.

What it all boils down to is that they had the goose that laid the golden egg, and they cooked it. I mean, all the games have been movie-friendly to the point where it shouldn’t have been hard to change mediums without changing the story too much. Really, the movie and the game were still very similar: zombies, big guns, all the characters were badasses, the evil umbrella corporation, , and giant monsters. Why not keep the places and characters we’re familiar with?

The stuff they added they didn’t even really need. The Resident Evil games were trying to recreate zombie movies. What great zombie movie had crying monsters and karate?

I remember Ebert reviewing the movie and saying something like it was a bad movie based off a bad video game. It was an amazing video game, you pretentious slob, and if you shut your mouth and did some research maybe you’d know it. The problem wasn’t the game, it was the movie.

Now, I hate Ebert and have for a while because he thinks video games will never be as serious an art as movies. He’s an idiot, but it’s not all his fault. If all he knows about video games is pong and these shitty movies, no wonder he thinks that way.

These movies are killing the industries reputation as art, and it’s definitely letting the fans down. So, if anyone out there can hear me that matters, PLEASE! Do something different. Please.

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I also remember the day I learned another valuable lesion. The year was 1993 and the Super Mario Brothers movie had just come out. Fast forward about 3 hours to find me dissatisfied, disappointed, and disgusted.

Again and again, bad games came out based on movies and bad movies came out based on games. What was going wrong? Why couldn’t Hollywood get it right?

Well, lets look at Super Mario Brothers, since it’s pretty much the biggest target. The games were all a giant success, even Super Mario Brothers 2, which wasn’t quite right compared to the other games. But the face of Nintendo on the big screen? Live action?! With John Leguizamo?! Where did the movie go wrong?

Well, the truth is that the movie went wrong where many movies went wrong: It strayed away from the game far too much. The same problem happened with the Ninja Turtles movies and some other comic book movies, where you walk into the movie thinking “Oh man! I can’t wait to see all my favorite characters!” And you leave thinking “WTF?” Just like that. In all caps.

I still haven’t forgave the Mario movie. It was a horrible piece of garbage. The Goombas were dinosaurs? They didn’t even look cool. And seriously, Daisey as a main character over Peach? And what was going on with that slime? Was there ever any slime in Mario? And discussion about evolution? Anything about alternate dimensions and worm holes? No. But it seemed to the producers of the Mario movie that making a movie out of a video game is a free license to do what ever the hell you want.

Now, this might be true with older video games like Pitfall, or Frogger because they don’t have any kind of story-line. Mario’s story was a little weak. Save the princess doesn’t always translate into an epic blockbuster. But why demolish the entire Mario universe? Why change the Goombas so much? Or why make Bowser a real guy and not at the very least a monster of sorts?

By destroying their foundation provided by the games, the movie makers end up with a jumbled mess of a movie with familiar names of characters and places that look nothing and act nothing like what we remember from their source. Why not look at what is given to the story already and build on top of it?

I don’t know.

Anyway, the movie that i had the highest hopes for, and the movie that i thought would redeem the video game/movie cross over was Resident Evil. Now, I’m not going to get into that here, but it was a massive failure. The worst part is, some people who played the game actually liked it. Farts to them. All of them. They’re wrong. So wrong, in fact, they’re stupid for even bringing up the thought.

Check out my next blog for more details on why the Resident Evil movie blew hard, in case you didn’t know already.

I just want to close this blog by talking a little bit about video games based off movies. These are insane when you think about it. Often time movie studios will demand the game be released in conjunction with the movie, like a certain amount of days before or after the release in theaters. The problem here is that a game isn’t made like a movie. No one really knows how long it’s going to take. Even the most reliable game developers don’t quite meet their deadlines on a regular basis. So when you go out and pick up a game based off a movie, just remember that it’s been rushed out of the oven and might have some cold spots in there.

That said, this genre of game has moved a long way from Goonies or Rodger Rabbit. I remember picking up Spider-Man 2 and being amazed. I remember sitting in the theater and turning to my friend Justin about 3 times during the movie and telling him how I “can’t wait to do that in the game.” Well, guess what! I got to do it all in the game. And since there wasn’t enough to make an epic game in the film, they added some cool stuff. Tons of side missions and extra bosses really added new angles and more bulk to the story.

I’m not saying video games based off movies are all gold. Far from it. Many still have giant problems and horrible issues that make them unplayable. But what i am saying is that there are more fine examples here of how to move from genre to genre than in movies. The Spider-Man 2 game was a prime example of these examples.

Imagine if Super Mario built up from the game to make the movie instead of breaking it apart and then gluing in all the pieces they liked with other stuff they just made up out of no where.

God, i hope someone important is reading this.

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Looking back today, it wasn’t I that was the problem. 

I also remember the day I learned another valuable lesion. The year was 1993 and the Super Mario Brothers movie had just come out. Fast forward about 3 hours to find me dissatisfied, disappointed, and disgusted.

Again and again, bad games came out based on movies and bad movies came out based on games. What was going wrong? Why couldn’t Hollywood get it right?

Well, let’s look at Super Mario Brothers, since it’s pretty much the biggest target. The games were all a giant success, even Super Mario Brothers 2, which wasn’t quite right.  But putting the face of Nintendo on the big screen? Live action?! With John Leguizamo?! Where did the movie go wrong?

Well, the truth is that the movie went wrong where many movies went wrong: It strayed away from the game far too much. The same problem happened with the Ninja Turtles movies and some other comic book movies, where you walk into the movie thinking “Oh man! I can’t wait to see all my favorite characters!” And you leave thinking “WTF?” Just like that. In all caps.

I still haven’t forgiven the Mario movie. It was a horrible piece of garbage. The Goombas were dinosaurs? They didn’t even look cool. And seriously, Daisey as a main character over Peach? And what was going on with that slime? Was there ever any slime in Mario? Was there ever a discussion about evolution? Anything about alternate dimensions and worm holes? No. But it seemed to the producers of the Mario movie that making a movie out of a video game is a free license to do what ever the hell you want.

Now, this might be true with older video games like Pitfall, or Frogger because they don’t have any kind of story-line. But most games have something to go off of.  Even Pac-Man had those awesome little intermissions.  Mario’s story was a little weak. Save the princess doesn’t always translate into an epic blockbuster. But why demolish the entire Mario universe? Why change the Goombas so much? Or why make Bowser a real guy and not at the very least a monster of sorts?

By destroying the foundation provided by the games, the movie makers end up with a jumbled mess of a movie with familiar names of characters and places that look nothing and act nothing like they originally did. Why not look at what is given to the story already and build on top of it?

I don’t know.

Anyway, the movie that I had the highest hopes for, and the movie that I thought would redeem the video game/movie cross over was Resident Evil. Now, I’m not going to get into that here, but it was a massive failure. The worst part is, some people who played the game actually liked it. Farts to them. All of them. They’re wrong. So wrong, in fact, they’re stupid for even bringing up the thought.

Check out my next blog for more details on why the Resident Evil movie blew hard, in case you didn’t know already.

I just want to close this blog by talking a little bit about video games based off movies. These are really insane when you think about it. Often time movie studios will demand the game be released in conjunction with the movie, like a certain amount of days before or after the release in theaters. The problem here is that a game isn’t made like a movie. No one really knows how long it’s going to take. Even the most reliable game developers don’t quite meet their deadlines on a regular basis. So when you go out and pick up a game based off a movie, just remember that it’s been rushed out of the oven and might have some cold spots in there.

That said, this genre of game has moved a long way from Goonies or Rodger Rabbit. I was amazed with the Spider-Man 2 video game. I remember sitting in the theater and turning to my friend Justin about 3 times during the movie and telling him how I “can’t wait to do that in the game.” Well, guess what. I got to do it all in the game. And since there wasn’t enough to make an epic game already in the film, they added some cool stuff. Tons of side missions and extra bosses really added new angles and more bulk to the story.

I’m not saying video games based off movies are all golden. Far from it. Many still have giant problems and horrible issues that make them unplayable. But what I am saying is that there are more fine examples here of how to move from genre to genre than in movies. The Spider-Man 2 game was a prime example.

Imagine if Super Mario built up from the game to make the movie instead of breaking it apart and then gluing in all the pieces they liked with other stuff they just made up out of no where.

God, i hope someone important is reading this.

For the first time in my life, i have cable.  Ok, that’s kind of untrue.  When i was about 10, my dad started stealing cable like most lower-middle class apartment dwellers did in the mid 90’s.  Unfortunately, my father’s conscious got the best of him and he decided that freaking out every time a cop car or cable van drove down the street wasn’t worth the 30 or so free channels we were stealing.

Today, I live on my own and since my roommates wanted cable, I have cable.  I could have done without it, but it’s just easier to do things like this than to force myself not to watch TV in any room but my own.

One of my exgirlfriends, we’ll call her Devil Bitch, was lactos intolerent.  She couldn’t eat anything with even the smalled amounts of milk or she’d need to go to the hospital.  As we were dating she was taking these pills that allowed her body to be able to tolerate more and more products with more and more milk.  When we first started dating she got a call from her doctor and he said she could eat cheese, so she had her first slice and couldn’t stop.  Imagine never having eaten cheese your whole life, and eating it for the first time at the age of 19.  She ended up eating the whole block.

A few months later we were out when she got the call saying she could eat ice cream.  I was more excited than her at first.

“It’s ice cream!”

“It’s just ice cream,” she said.

I was raving all the way to the beach where we got her a soft-serve cone of ice cream dipped in chocolate.  I started her off on vanilla.  I didn’t want her to go into shock.

You know that look on a kid’s face when he goes to Disneyland for the first time?  Or when his favorite cartoon is made into a movie?  I never thought adults can have that same look on their face because there isn’t anything awesome left to experience for the first time (except maybe sex, which is debatable, because most people’s first times don’t make them smile too wide).

Most awesome stuff, like ice cream, is given to us as kids.  Ice cream, candies, theme parks, board games, video games (Ok, maybe i still get way too stoked for video games), it’s all wasted on us as kids.  But i saw Devil Bitch eat ice cream for the first time at the age of 19, and for the next hour we sat at the beach so she could try stawberry and chocolate, so believe me when i say, anyone can be a child again.

What I’m getting at is this: I thought cable was going to be for me what ice cream was for Devil Bitch.  I was wrong.  I have about 200 channels, some are horrible all the time, most the rest are horrible 50% of the time, and maybe 3 (G4, Discovery, and The History Channel) are really decent at least 75% of the time.

But suck mostly or suck on the slim, i’m still paying for all of it.  So, guess what, i’m watching it all.  I’m going to watch shows on Lifetime, O!, USA, SciFi, whatever, and i’m going to review them just for you, Tom.

I was going to write about video games, but this is too long as it is.  Thanks for reading it all.

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I just got done LOLing at kyle’s post of that funny photo thing. If you missed it, here it is. http://dumpedimage.com/uploads/1/man_suit.jpg

Oh, SNAPS! I’m back. And it took me long enough, really. I know, Tom, sorry I’ve been away for so long, but I’ve been a busy bee as of late. I’m going to try to catch you up on it.

New job. I’m working at a local community college. I started the job 3 weeks ago and I have grown to hate it. The people are nice enough, but the work is lame. I’m a robot that files and collates and I want to kill myself when the day is done. Sometimes I feel like I should have stayed at the Boys and Girls Club and continued to force help upon kids who don’t want it. Really, what’s more depressing? Working a job with absolutely no substance, or working a job where you try to force substance into the lives of others? Substance is a funny word because it means so many things.

New place. I’m shacked up in my grandmother’s old house with my buddy, Lenny, and soon with Max. It’s going well enough so far, except for the fact that I started working mid way through the last week of the pay period. I’ll spare you the details of this debauchery and just cut to the chase: I’m broke as a joke.

A couple solid things in my life that keep going right now: friends, family, and Smash Brothers.

My girlfriend, Steph, won SERIOUS points when she bought me Smash Brothers because I couldn’t afford it. On the off nights when she can’t be here and I can’t be there, the warm glow of the television and the sweet sounds of Nintendo keep my mind at ease.

I’ve been lucky enough to have people over and have some good times. If it wasn’t for the amazing people I have as friends, my money and health woes would be getting me down for sure.

Oh, I didn’t mention that before. The health thing. One of my wisdom teeth is growing in sideways or something I think. Headache city, population me.

Anyway, expect way more posts and way more good times now that my internetz and together again. Also, I have cable for the first time, so get ready for some reviews of TV shows and Channels.

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also max told me about an awesome band. It’s made up of 5 14/15 year old British kids who are amazing. Everything i love about music is present and accounted for. It’s like they figured out how to take all the best parts of what I think are the best bands and mixed them together in the perfect combination.

and to top all of this awesome off, for dinner tonight I get pizza pretzels we got from whole foods.

speaking of which, I have decided to start a hydroponics organic farm in a warehouse or something. It’s going to be awesome. And to start so I can perfect everything for a larger scale joe and lenny and max agreed to let me use garage space to set up a small vegetable farm. I’m thinking tomatoes and cucumber, I’m nut sure yet. but whichever vegetables I choose I’ll be starting a huge step towards what I want to do and I’ll get to see some of my best friends more often then I do now. Win, win, win.

and as a parting gift as I leave you tonight, here is a funny post from 4chan.

http://dumpedimage.com/uploads/1/man_suit.jpg

You don’t have enough delegates. OK? You just don’t, maybe if this was a republican race you could somehow pull it off but its not. the delegates are split based on the vote and as such you just wont be able to make it. It’s even highly unlikely that you will even be able to win in the popular vote category. I think it should tell people something when everywhere you go, your numbers drop. What kind of person loses popularity as people get to know them better. Not like it’s hard to see why people would continually decide to turn away from you. What with your lying, your shady background, your mockery of your political opponent, your apparent contempt of the American people, your complete lack of grace, and of course your willingness to break rules which you have previously agreed to. And not just to break them, but to break them for the sole purpose of benefiting yourself. I can understand what you’re trying to do here Hillary; even if I don’t agree with it I understand it. What I can’t understand is how someone could watch all of your shenanigans and think that any of these qualities would make a good president. What person who believes in a democracy would accept a leader chosen not by the people of America, but by a special 300 people who, unlike their historical counterparts, don’t even have the decency to make the decision in a “smoky back room.” I don’t think the kind of very patriotic person you pretend to be would stand for something like that.

And uncommitted super delegates, you need to vote and put Hillary out of her misery. She can’t seem to be able to stop herself. And don’t give me any of that let the states finish voting otherwise you’re just disenfranchising the rest of the voters. Lets not kid ourselves, OK? Unfortunately for them that’s how this works. Since McCain has become the presumptive nominee for his party not a single vote cast in a republican primary has mattered even one bit. And not a word about disenfranchised voters. It’s just the way it works. So lets make it work.