Taylor Swift

A tribute to the creator of the first Western-designed game to become a smash hit in Japan.

Ghostbusters is the best comedy ever made about the limits of the Lovecraftian worldview:

The test is an illusion. The guy administering the test doesn't believe it has any value. He's out for his own advantage, or even just for his own amusement, and his motives are opaque to his victims. The students are flattered or hurt according to his whim, but the world in which they think they're living -- the world in which the test is valid -- is an utter fabrication. That's their circle of firelight. Their very belief in the test protects Venkman, who has ultimate authority so long as they keep playing. This opening scene's a joking restatement of the Lovecraftian (and Gozerian) horror worldview.

When you throw away your computer, you should probably format the hard drive first. If you don't, your contents are likely to end up on Classical Gas Emissions, and that's exactly what's happening in this entry.

First, I must tell you that in the 7 years I've been writing this blog, I've never had more fun putting together an entry than I did with this one. Every bit of putting this content together was fun and enjoyable!

So what did I find?



This computer belonged to a guy named Kellen Guilbault, who I may add is a fantastic guitar player. Kellen recorded a whole bunch of songs, many of them being classic rock covers. These were all multitrack recordings that were made with a piece of software called Cubase.



I initially found a handful of poorly mixed songs that were in various stages of completeness. After the excitement of finding these, I dug around in the .wav files sitting in the software's default recording folder and found more hidden gems, totalling over 80 minutes of "music".

Now although Kellen is a damn good guitar player, that's pretty much all that's enjoyable about these recordings with a few exceptions. The timing is off, many of the tracks were recorded with a cheap microphone, and Kellen isn't a very good singer. For a couple of songs, he sought out the aid of a female singer (name unknown) who does a better job. I also believe that Kellen's brother Marc is the one playing the drums.

After gathering up the songs, I transferred them to my own PC and put them into my preferred choice of multitrack software: Multitrack Studio. I remixed them and put some much-needed effects on the tracks. I could have fixed many of them with extensive editing, but editing is tedious and I would have to send Kellen a bill for my time (I found his address on his resume). Plus, the songs are extremely entertaining in their original sloppy, out-of-sync form.

We've got a bunch of Led Zeppelin covers, a couple of Stones and Beatles songs, and a handfull of other well-known classic rockers. There's also a few of Kellen's originals in this collection. The quality of the songs is all over the place, ranging from excellent to down-right-fucking-awful.

The best ones here are Kellen's "Song Zero", Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done" and The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" which lacked vocal tracks, so I sang them all and mixed them in. This is the only song I did editing on, since there was a bar missing which rendered the song useless for recording the second verse of vocals.

The worst ones are "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "House of the Rising Sun". They're absolutely atrocious renditions.

Since I did such a fantastic job remixing these songs, I Christened the collection with the name "Polished Turds" and made a nice album cover using a couple of photos I found on the hard drive.



Here's some options for your enjoyment:

Download the entire collection! (You WON'T be sorry)
Listen to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
Listen to "The Wind Cries Mary"

If you're wanting to know how much I improved the sound, feel free to hear the original mix of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

And that's pretty much it!

On September 24th, I'll be making another appearance on Amateur Hour. In the next couple of weeks, I'm also planning on releasing the album I recorded, so there's lots of exciting things coming up! Stay tuned...

[Phil's away on "holiday" for a few days. (Speaking of which, if someone would be so kind as to alert his bail bondsman, he'd appreciate it.) In the meantime, enjoy this archived interview with the world's most fascinating civilian, 'Hpasp', creator of the remarkable SAM Simulator.]

There is no more accurate, demanding, or unlikely simulator available today than SAM Simulator, which recreates in exacting detail vintage Warsaw Pact surface-to-air missile systems. It’s a one-man labor of Hercules created by an enigmatic Hungarian (indeed I know of no other kind) who goes by the name Hpasp.

He created SAM Simulator in 2006 and has been offering it for free since 2009. Over the years he’s expanded the game with new missile platforms, major features like Google Earth integration, and historical scenarios ranging from Hanoi to Tripoli. If you want to spend an evening trying to bag Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane, defending Vietnamese airspace from B-52 bombers, or cursing the cheap Soviet engineer who saddled your Shilka with analogue gauges and a mechanical “computer,” SAM Simulator is simply the only game in town.

I managed to get hold of Hpasp and ask him about his life, his game and his sanity. He spoke of Cold War tensions, semi-secretive infiltration missions, and singular devotion to his craft. And despite my efforts he carefully avoided saying anything that might provoke an international incident. Drat!

Phil Scuderi: So what’s your story, Hpasp? Reveal to us the man behind the name.

Hpasp: I’m just a civilian, with a strange hobby. I never actually served in the army.

Since childhood I was rather interested in the technical aspects of military hardware. During the ’80s, the coldest part of the Cold War, as a child I found it comforting to know that somewhere at a nearby SAM site, soldiers were awake guarding my sleep around Budapest. I never dreamed I’d someday have deeper knowledge of SAMs than a Jane’s Land Based Air Defence book.

Phil: Unless you count Missile Command, I’m pretty sure yours is the first-ever surface-to-air missile sim. How did you come up with the idea?

Hpasp: I got interested in flight simulation through Microsoft Flight Simulator, and created some free sceneries for that. I really liked the system-level simulations of Boeing airliners, with procedures, and buttons… but my frustration grew, because of low frame rates, and the huge investments needed in hardware after every new release.

In 1999, Hungary joined NATO. A year later most of these SAM systems (SA-2, SA-3, SA-4, SA-5) were decommissioned. Most of the people who had operated these systems since the ’60s were laid off.

From 2002, several books and publications started to pop up, and I started to collect them. Even the Russian media started to share the eastern side, accounts from participants of several battles. An Internet forum started in 2005, where several people who served these systems began publishing information.

As I got to know these people personally via the forum, I started to toy with the idea of a SAM system simulator. I’m not a programmer, so I learned to program as I worked on the simulator. I do it in my free time, just as a strange hobby.

Phil: To this point you’ve focused mainly on simulating Cold War-era equipment. Is that because those are the SAM systems for which you can find documentation, or does it reflect a deeper interest?

Hpasp: To keep honest to my motto “Realistic to the Switch,” I have several restrictions on selecting SAM systems to be simulated:

• I must have the original documentation of the system
• I must be able to photograph the real system panels
• I need to be in contact with those “who were there and done that,” meaning operators who at least fired lived missiles at a firing range
• The system can’t be considered a national secret in Hungary anymore–which is why the 2K12 KUB (SA-6A) is missing.

Here’s a timeline of development so far:

• 2006 – I started with the S-75M Volhov (SA-2E) system.
• 2007 – S-125M Neva (SA-3B)
• 2009 – website opened, Linebacker-II (Hanoi Scenario)
• 2010 – Gary Powers U2 scenario, 2K11M1 KRUG (SA-4B)
• 2011 – S-200VE Vega (SA-5B), SA-75M Dvina (SA-2F)
• 2012 – Operation El-Dorado Canyon (Tripoli), Nuclear Missiles (Volhov, Vega), 3DAAR (After Action replay in Google Earth)
• 2013 – ZSU-23-4V1 Shilka
• 2014 (planned) – 9K33M1 OSA (SA-8B), the first system with a visual 3D environment for the outside.

Phil: The ZSU-23-4V1 Shilka stands out as the only anti-aircraft artillery system you’ve modeled. From a player’s perspective, what’s different about using AAA as opposed to a SAM system?

Hpasp:  It is quite a deadly system, but compared to expensive SAMs, here you can feel how the Soviets were designing cheap equipment. It has a mechanical fire control “computer” with several steam gauged instruments. Compared to the 1-3 missile launch of the SAMs, with a Shilka you can fire ~55 bullets per second, for ~35 seconds long. :)

Phil: In order to simulate SAM systems, you’ve also got to simulate (to some degree) the aircraft targets overhead–their flight patterns, radar cross-sections and so on. How accurately does SAM Simulator handle aircraft?

Hpasp: As well as it can. For example, the radar cross section of the F-117A Stealth Fighter was calculated based on the observations of Col. Zoltan Dani from the Serbian Air Defence, whose unit shot one down in ’99. (He is an ethnic Hungarian, by the way.)

Phil: How have your interactions been with the sim community? They’re a notoriously tough bunch to please…

Hpasp: There’s an English language forum at SimHQ. Behind several avatars, there are people who “were there and done that” (operated these systems) in real life. So the forums are surprisingly professional as should be with “cool headed missilemen.”

Phil: What was the hardest bit to get right? Were there any systems that were particularly hard to simulate?

Hpasp: Creating the photos of the actual systems was the hardest part. Some of these are available in Hungarian museums, but some were never fielded in Hungary, so I had to travel abroad (crossing several countries and hundreds of kilometers) and organize access to those.

Phil: Wow, you traveled internationally for your research? Which countries did you visit? And how exactly does one go about “organizing access” to expensive military hardware? I’m imagining nighttime infiltration à la Splinter Cell…

Hpasp: Yeah… with these questions, we have reached a sensitive limit. :) Officially: I’m not authorized by those organizations and persons who made these trips possible, to share these details publicly.

Phil: Have you ever thought about bringing the game to Steam or other platforms? If people will pay for farm tractor sims, surely they’ll pay for this.

Hpasp: No, the best things in life are free. :)

Phil: One of the challenges of playing SAM Simulator is that you’ve got to flip very quickly between control stations. Have you given much thought to multiplayer mode to help share the burden?

Hpasp: There are several development options for the future, and this is one of them.

Phil: What’s up next for SAM Simulator?

Hpasp: Currently my focus goes towards the 9K33M2 OSA-AK (SA-8B) system, the most advanced SAM of the Cold War, before the introduction of phase-modulated arrays and digital computers.

Phil: Phase-modulated arrays? Next you’ll tell me these things run on warp power. You do know that everyone who lays eyes on SAM Simulator assumes only a madman could have designed it, right?

Hpasp: [laughs] As I said earlier, its like a strange hobby, but I collected so many friends from those people who “were there and done that,” so many invaluable dedicated books…

Phil: Thanks for your time, Hpasp.

Hpasp: Thank you.

Hpasp was good enough to send me these exclusive shots of Soviet SAM control panels–on the condition that I didn’t ask how he got them. I asked anyway but he still sent ‘em along. What a chap.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington DC that occurred on September 11, 2001, Olympia’s Unwound were forced to cancel their show that night at Cambridge, MA’s Middle East.

Perhaps recognizing the adage, “if you don’t create an Unwound show with cardboard cut-outs in place of Justin, Vern and Sarah, the terrorists have already won,” the below video clip was produced.

I’m impressed Rolling Stone commissioned an interview with Martha Wash. Nothing new, but worth remembering her ubiquity in 1990 and 1991 when Italo-disco producers and Robert Clivilles-David Cole appropriated, to use a euphemism, a voice that spoke to, according to RuPaul, “both the church and a pop ear and was built to cut through the bass of a dance club.” Black Box and C+C Music Factory thought her demo vocals, for which they paid her as little as a grand a session, thought so, and refused to reward her what a dance club might have. “I don’t mean to be rude, harsh, callous, maligning or vilifying,” “Freedom” Williams, the “rapper” in C+C Music Factory, is quoted saying. “But I’d rather look at Zelma onstage.”

The interview alows Clivilles his say:

Clivillés maintains to this day that the lawsuit “wasn’t necessary” and that there was no intentional deception on his part, arguing instead that the media perpetuated the notion that C+C had tried to pull a fast-one on the music-buying public.

Clivillés also says that, “David and I were very surprised and also disappointed when [Wash] sued us. We wanted to respond publicly to all the accusations at the time, but our lawyer didn’t want us to. I’ve always regretted not expressing ‘the truth’ publicly. When I recorded ‘Gonna Make You Sweat’ and got the album deal, we asked Martha if she wanted to be a part of the group a few times. Her response was that she was pursuing her R&B career and wanted to be taken seriously in the R&B market at that time. If it were up to us, Martha would have been on every song. But we had to throw auditions and that is how we enlisted Zelma.”

A couple weeks ago, coincidentally, I relistened to “I Don’t Know Anybody Else,” “Strike It Up,” and “(You’re My One and Only) True Love.” Did diva house ever do better? If you know Wash sung them, it remains a pity to realize how older women with gospel backgrounds have disappeared from dance music.

I’ve written before of my affection for Square Enix’s beautifully realised Hitman GO, and now (lucky me) I have the opportunity to do so again: it’s the “Free Game of the Month” courtesy of IGN.

Some PT readers have reported that the slightly Byzantine process required to redeem your free copy – which I’m told entails a loyalty oath, a geography quiz, and a small (mostly painless) hot-iron brand of the IGN logo on a forearm — can be a bit tricky, but it’s probably worth it. Hitman GO is one of the year’s best puzzle games and is reassuring proof that AAA studios can make mobile games that aren’t icky free-to-play garbage.

To get your free iOS Universal copy of Hitman GO, roll up one sleeve and visit this URL. Supplies are apparently limited so don’t dawdle.

More discounts after the jump.

Here’s the trailer for Hitman GO — if the free IGN copies are all gone by the time you read this, believe me when I say it’s well worth the five-dollar regular asking price. Squeenix have dropped a fair amount of additional content on the game since launch. There’s some IAPs in this thing but they’re the innocuous “expansion pack” variety, and all of the content can be unlocked just by beating previous levels. Also on Android.

 

Riddick: The Merc Files is no classic (it got a ho-hum from me when I reviewed it a year ago) but if it’s been a while since you heard Vin Diesel say something other than “I am Groot“, the price on this isometric stealth action game has dropped down to a buck, and there’s a loving spoonful of Vin’s voice acting in there. This one’s on Android, too, but no discount over on that side.

 

Speaking of under-whelming games, Star Command is on sale for a dollar. This early Kickstarter success tantalised us with the promise of a full-on open world Star Trek experience, then delivered something several parsecs short of that. Read my review from last year for more details on that.

Developers Warballoon recently started talking about an expanded PC version of the game that gives the player something other than muddy RTS combat to do, though the announcement made exactly no splash on the PC gaming sites. Don’t cry Feature-promising Wolf, is the lesson there, I think. This isn’t a great game but if you want to pay a buck to see what the fuss was about, now’s your chance.

 

Munin (no, not Moomin) is the Norse mythological 2D puzzle/platformer Neumann wrote about here back in June. You play as Odin’s titular raven messenger who’s been transformed by Loki into a human, and you have to solve 77 challenges (eat your heart out, Herakles) to get your feathers back. Discounted to two bucks on iOS right now.

 

Finally, Infinity Blade III, the latest installment of the soon-to-conclude fantasy action series is on sale for three dollars, down from the usual seven right now.

 

 

Today.

 

 

Last month, I took my wife to Niagara Falls for the first time.

She had been living in the U.S. since February 2013, but we never had the time to make the trip.

She contacted a friend she had known in Lebanon (now married and living in Toronto) to see if her and her husband would want to meet us there.

They did and we agreed on a Saturday.

In making the 1.5 hour drive from Rochester, NY to Niagara Falls, we stopped off at a small gas station in Buffalo.

The attendant happened to be Lebanese as well and we discussed the old country and continued to the border.

The United States’ side of Niagara Falls is underdeveloped, industrial, and claustrophobic.

It is a place stuck in fading.

The American side of the falls, however, is beautiful.

But I enjoy the Canadian side more.

It doesn’t carry the smell of a stale and silent narrative.

It is dynamic.

On going through the border into Canada, the border guard asked me what I was there for, how long I was staying, where I lived, whose car I was driving.

After answering, he let us through.

We spent the day walking around, taking pictures of the falls, talking about the politics of Toronto.

My wife was happy to see her friend.

Around 3 pm, we all decided to say good-bye and head back home.

I was anxious.

I was anxious at reentering the United States.

I hated the American border guards. I hated their tactics of intimidation, their passive insistence of guilt.

Car parked in line to cross, my gut all wrapped up.

My turn came and I pulled up:

Me: “Hi…”
BG: “Passport and identification please.”

I hand my passport and wife’s green card.

BG: “How long were you in Canada?”
Me: “Just for the day.”
BG: “What were you doing?”
Me: “Just visiting the falls.”
BG: “What is your relation to her?”

She points to my wife.

Me: “She is my wife.”
BG: “Where were you born?” (addressing wife)
Wife: “Cote d’Ivoire.”
BG: “Where do you live?”
Me: “Rochester, New York.”
BG: “Whose car is this? Why does it have Wisconsin plates?”
Me: “My brother’s, he lives in Wisconsin.”
BG: “Where’s your brother?”
Me: “Lebanon.”
BG: “Why are you driving his car?”
Me: “He’s letting me borrow it.”
BG: “Why is he in Lebanon?”
Me: “Visiting family.”
BG: “With all the stuff that’s going on?!”
Me: “It’s actually not that dangerous there.”
BG: “Let me see the registration for the vehicle.”

Here I shrug, I don’t know where the registration is. I check the glove box and hand her the first paper I find.

BG: “Uh, this is the insurance, but it does have your name on it.”

I look again. I hand her the next paper. She looks it over.

BG: “Turn off the car and open the trunk.”

She steps out of her booth and walks to the back of the car, opens the trunk, checks, comes back around.

BG: “So what were you doing in Canada?”
Me: “Just visiting the falls.”
BG: “You mean to tell me that you drove all this way just to visit the falls for one day and come back?”
Me: “It’s not that far, just a little over an hour.”
BG: “You couldn’t find anything to do locally?”

At this point I’m stunned at the absurd level this is reaching.

I shrug and look at my wife. The border guard has a sarcastic smile.

Me: “I mean, she has never seen the falls before, I was just taking her to see the falls.”
BG:  “But why today? Why today of all days?”

I sigh and shrug again.

Me: “My wife had off of work and we just decided to come out.”
BG: “OK.”

She hands me back our papers and lets us pass.

I was frustrated and angry.

My wife and I talked about what happened. She said that she wanted to mention her friends, but thought better of it.

I’m sure if we had mentioned them, they would have pulled us over and held us for hours.

I was depressed for weeks after.

I was born in California. I had never been arrested. I work for a federal contractor.

I could not digest what had happened. I still can’t.

But one thing stuck with me:

Why today?

Why today?

 

Flag.

 

America has a fear problem.

Conservatives fear the decay of religious morality and fervor.

Liberals fear a surveillance state being built without anyone’s consent.

The rich fear and deride the poor, no matter what political affiliation.

The poor fear the rich passively and actively killing them.

The middle class fears everyone.

The police fear civilians.

Civilians fear the police.

The world fears ISIS.

The U.S., for the first time in a century, has no idea what it’s doing.

Fear is infectious and polluting.

It drips all the way to the bottom, always seeking the lowest point, and festers there in the dark.

In an environment of fear, everything becomes a battle. Everything becomes difficult.

Everything becomes covered in fog.

And now that fog has settled on the games world.

This past week saw the loss of some very clear, relevant voices in games.

Jenn Frank and Mattie Brice have quit due to an overwhelming level of harassment.

Their removal and silencing is the product of the ‘GamerGate’ controversy.

The ideas GG presents are nothing new.

There have always been concerns, legitimate and imagined, regarding the proximity between gaming media and developers/publishers.

So why now?

Why today?

Because the gaming community has hit a critical mass of fear.

Self-identified ‘gamers’ are afraid their hobby and their core identities are under attack.

Without taking the time to understand, the gaming community was driven into a blind fury over Leigh Alexander’s piece on Gamasutra suggesting that ‘Gamers’ are over.

Fury burning fear as fuel.

It’s tempting to demonize en masse those active in GamerGate, considering the vile, toxic things they have done and said.

Supposing it all comes from fear, supposing at the core sits a hive anxiety about a lack of transparency in something they have emotionally invested in, then what is the right approach?

For myself, this is a difficult consideration.

I cannot approach them even-handedly after the damage they have caused.

After the misogyny, threats, targeting of women in games, elimination of diverse voices in games, too many lines have been crossed.

Their actions have made the gaming community smaller, staler, and more irrelevant to the larger world.

I cannot forgive that.

For anyone who can stomach it, the only way to fight fear is with engagement.

Cameron Kunzelman tried to engage with an actor in the GG hashtag on Twitter and managed to get to the center of that individual’s anxiety and misunderstanding of what’s going on.

It seems like the hashtag has become a repository for any and all anxieties and frustrations for many in the gaming community.

And not every fear and anxiety can be addressed.

At what point does an individual become responsible for his own fear and hostility?

At what point is it no longer the responsibility of others to have to reassure or explain themselves to the individual?

I believe that point is reached when it begins to ruin innocent people’s lives, which is exactly what GamerGate has done and will continue to do.

GG has become like that overzealous American border guard.

They only let pass with ease those who pose no threat to their imagined world and anyone else who might propose something different is interrogated, asked to prove themselves, and, while perhaps not being denied entry, are left feeling intimidated, afraid, ashamed, and guilty of something unknowable.

They pass their fear on.

It drips to the bottom.

And leaves everyone miserable and wondering:

Why now?

 

Why today?

 

 

Back when I started writing for Pocket Tactics I mentioned something to Owen about growing up in the 80’s and playing a ton of gamebooks as a kid. Now, to be honest, the only reason I told Owen any of this was because I was angling to review Sorcery! from inkle Studios. Now, normally I’m not a very convincing person but for some reason on that fateful day in May, Owen bought it. No wait, he didn’t just buy it, he embraced it, and here I am writing another review of interactive fiction. [Break's over, back to the IF mines. --ed.]

This time it’s the apocalyptic sci-fi pulp-fest Heavy Metal Thunder from newcomer Cubus Games and, spoiler, it’s pretty damn good.

Heavy Metal Thunder is a gamebook similar to those from Tin Man Games. That is, it looks and acts like a real book. There’s no fancy maps or strange combat modes, just a lot of prose and the occasional rolls of 6-sided dice. After the brilliant genre-redefining interactive fiction of 80 Days and Sorcery!, it’s hard to get excited about screen after screen (after screen) of text and yet I never felt bored during my stay in this universe. The writing can be way over-the-top and author Kyle B. Stiff can try a little too hard trying to make the lead character more badass than Jules Winnfield and Max Rockatansky put together. Bet you never would have guessed that from the title.

This gamebook exercises already-exhausted tropes like an amnesiac protagonist and invincible enemies hellbent on humanity’s destruction and it reads like a mashup of Battlestar Galactica, Mad Max, and probably a dozen or so other sci-fi staples but, even so, the author manages to capture a sense of danger, bravery and violence that is just plain fun to read. Speaking of violence, this book is loaded with it, and graphic violence at that. Don’t accidentally let your 9 year-old read it like someone I know.

The frame that holds up the story is a fairly simple and recognisable RPG system. You have 5 stats (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) that you can add points to. You can pick skills to flesh out your character (Computers, Navigation, Handguns, etc.). On top of that, you have a standard inventory where you can hold only so many weapons and so many items. Nothing about it is revolutionary, and that’s not a bad thing here as it allows the story to read like a story. Sure, every now and then you’ll have to make a Strength check or fight something, but everything comes down to rolling two 6-sided dice and trying to beat a target number.

This role-playing system in the game can be pretty opaque. What does another point in Strength get me? Why is the target number for this check 9, when the last one was 7? What exactly does my skill in Handguns get me? No idea. Once you get over that, however, it’s a simple enough system that will have you cursing at a bad roll or silently rejoicing when you roll double sixes.

The book has five chapters as well as a prologue that explains some of the game systems and an epilogue that leaves the door open for Part 2 of the story. Even without a part 2 coming, Heavy Metal Thunder is fairly lengthy and full of choices that make discovering everything in the game in a single run incredibly unlikely. For example, Chapter 1 has 496 sections, of which I’ve only explored 145. Chapter 2 has 133 sections, and I’ve only seen 60. The book also does a fantastic job with making your chosen skills and current inventory important. Nearly each page will have at least one choice tied to a skill or inventory item, which most of the time you will not possess. What would have happened if I had the computer skill or navigation? It’s definitely one that you can play through multiple times, with the caveat being you are only allowed one saved game. Want to start over? All your previous information is lost. It’s a shame considering that it appears you can carry characters over to future installments.

Heavy Metal Thunder doesn’t raise the bar for interactive fiction. The writing is too full of Saturday-morning cartoon bombast, and suffers especially from its release proximity to the wonderfully-written 80 Days. But it’s a big sweeping pulp sci-fi story of impossible odds and encroaching insanity, as well as a good old fashioned (text) shoot ‘em up. The dice rolling mechanic can mean that bad luck can ruin a game, but that’s been the case in gamebooks since The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was frustrating nerds in 1982. I had a lot of fun with Heavy Metal Thunder, and look forward to future installments. If nothing else, it will definitely fill the gap until Inkle releases the next Sorcery!.

Pocket Tactics Rating: 3/5

As usual look to Florida as a model:

Prosecutors and defense lawyers agree that the system is intended to protect police officers and give them the benefit of the doubt, though they can differ sharply on where they think the lines should be drawn.

“The system is incredibly biased in favor of the police and incredibly unfair to victims of police shootings and brutality,” said Jeff Weiner, a prominent criminal defense lawyer in Miami. Still, he added, “Of course the police are out there every day risking their lives and making split-second decisions, and nobody is taking that away from them.”

Prosecutors say the slow pace reflects the need for a thorough, rigorous investigation, adding that cases involving police officers, who must quickly make life-changing decisions, are seldom easy to navigate.

Miami, in particular, has been steeped in police-related shootings. In recent years, that history has included a botched 2011 operation that left four armed robbers dead, one of them a police informant, and seven deadly shootings in 2010 and 2011 that drew the scrutiny of the Justice Department and court oversight of the Miami Police Department.

Some legal experts point to Florida’s track record — no charges against officers in 20 years, according to the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office — to emphasize that the system is burdensome at best and broken at worst.

To understand the peculiar history of Miami-Dade race relations, look to the work of Marvin Dunn and Joan Didion’s Miami, the latter depicting the economic consequences of unleashing middle class Cuban exiles on a post-Voting Rights Act and post-Civil Rights act black populace. Then add the citizenry’s instinctual respect for life and property buttressed by several decades’ worth of “law and order” rhetoric from political hacks.

Doodling characters for BoJack gave me endless opportunities to write dumb things on clothing. Here are some of my faves from season 1.

SP-ORTS!

Final versions of these guys were made by animators: Zoë Moss , Adam Parton, and Jojo Ramos 

Accepting the challenge of naming ten books that changed me meant less than excluding recurring picks and stalwart war horses. Your experience can’t be the same as mine. I couldn’t not include poets and essayists. Wallace Stevens belongs, but in college Merrill and Bishop sounded depths I wasn’t to explore until I recognized—accepted—the most submerged part of myself; anyone acquainted with me understands how their sensibilities and mine mesh. Those interested in film criticism need to find a used copy of James Baldwin’s account of being black and gay and watching Lana Turner and Stanley Kramer flicks. As for Harriet the Spy, I haven’t met any devotees—the book is too funny and powerful to create mere admirers—who didn’t at least try to write and/or wonder why the hell their neighbors wore curlers and bathrobes to pick up children from school; it got me to notice the oddities that define us. The rest I’ve written about in some form or another over the years.

Joan Didion – We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live
Henry James – The Portrait of a Lady
Louise Fitzhugh – Harriet the Spy
Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse
Elizabeth Bishop – Collected Poems
Muriel Spark – The Driver’s Seat
Gore Vidal – Lincoln
James Baldwin – The Devil Finds Work
Alan Hollinghurst – The Line of Beauty
James Merrill – Collected Poems
Pauline Kael – For Keeps

New serial up on Hazlitt! Click below to read part one.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/comix/stealing-bugs-pt-1

Trenchalicious

HIGH Surprisingly deep, satisfying mech customization for an XBLA title.

LOW Realistically, I'm never going to get a full squad of four together.

WTF Double Fine made this? Really?

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here on jack kirby's birthday, a collage by jack used as the background for a full page splash from jimmy olsen issue 134.

what makes this beautiful thing an even more beautiful thing, is that most of the collage was built from photographs of jimi henrdix from an issues of life magazine - i kid you not. there's a great little article about it HERE

Nintendo announces a new version of the 3DS and 3DS XL. What can we expect from the unit?

The Connecticut Post’s Amy Graff reports clothing retailer Zara has taken a children’s pajama top off their shelves after someone pointed out, y’know, it kinda looked like a concentration camp uniform.

The Wild West-inspired top was meant to look like a sheriff’s uniform with dark horizontal stripes and a bright yellow star over the right breast. In fact, the word “sheriff” is emblazoned across the star, but in online images the title isn’t visible. Outraged Twitter users pointed out that the six-point star looked like the Star of David and the blue-and-white horizontal stripes resembled those on Holocaust prison wear — even though concentration camp uniform stripes were vertical.

After a social media explosion, the Spanish retailer with outlets throughout the world ditched the shirt and released an apology.

The top’s availability earlier this week is uncertain but many news sites are reporting that it was sold on a number of International sites including those selling to customers in Albania, Denmark, France, Israel, Sweden and the UK.

software for making glitch art from images, breaking things on purpose  

Services like Virtual Console and PS Classics provide a valuable service, archiving gaming's history. So why won't anyone talk about it?

Finally, a game developer that understands why we play mobile games: to insulate ourselves from the fiery love of our families and to block out the excruciating beauty of the natural world. Nightmare Cooperative’s trailer invites us to do exactly that on August 28th, when the PC game makes the jump to iOS as a universal app, just as we foretold back in July. Android is in the works for some future date.

Nightmare Cooperative is a puzzle roguelike where a small village has started a commonwealth scheme to rid itself of a troublesome nearby dungeon. The unique twist here is that when you move one character in your party, you move them all. Lucky Frame’s music toy/tower defense game Bad Hotel has been delighting players and confounding TripAdvisor search results since 2012, and this is the Scottish studio’s first game since — I expect greatness.

Watch the trailer below.