YouTuber Bill McClintock has discovered a rather amusing melding of Metallica and Huey Lewis & the News:
I think this one is vying for my favorite of his offerings against this Kool & the Gang duet with Quiet Riot.
All right, denizens of the Mojave Wasteland, the Frontier has arrived!
by Aaron Williams on January 17, 2021 at 11:25 AMA freakin’ heeyuuuge mod for Fallout New Vegas dropped over the weekend, called The Frontier. Here’s a little trailer:
Drivable vehicles! New power armor! Yao guai polar bears! And… they recommend starting with a new character. If you can get the game running first.
I loves me some New Vegas, and while I didn’t have the massive bugs that others reported when the game first came out, things have often gotten worse for players as time has passed. Bethesda’s Gamebryo engine is about as stable as an unpatched copy of Cyberpunk 2077 being run on a Nintendo Wii that’s been set on fire. This is often due to players adding an enormous library of mods coupled with running the game on technology that is to the poor 1’s and 0’s what a copy of Word is to users of cuneiform tablets.
If you’re not comfortable with using the NexusMods site and its Vortex mod-wrangling software, you might want to wait for the Steam version of the mod to come out. I’ve no idea when that’ll be, just “when it’s approved.” Even then, there’s no guarantee it’ll be headache-free. I had to poke at Vortex quite a bit and I still had issues with the game stuttering and losing half of its functionality sometimes when I’d get past a loading screen.
As all of the ancient saves I had were characters that were walking gods with armor and weapons that relied upon a plethora of mods, I think I have to start over if I want to play this new expansion. I know there are quick-start mods that will put me over the level I need to be for The Frontier to trigger, but where’s the fun in that?
A note: If you get it working, you’ll be able to tell it’s loaded thanks to a new loading screen, some new sound effects when you get optional quest objectives, and a new loading graphic: Instead of a roulette wheel, it’s the spinning chambers and muzzle of a revolver. Once you have that sorted, you have to be level 12 and have spent 12 in-game hours in the game (which can be done by just pressing the “wait” key and letting 12 hours go by in 12 seconds). You’re given the quest to visit the Frontier, and that’s about all I’ve seen thus far, so I can’t really spoil anything. I believe based on metrics like map area, weapons, quests, etc. it falls somewhere in between Fallout 3 and New Vegas for size and scope so be prepared to spend some time with this new game space.
As usual, I’m sure the people of the Mojave (and surrounding DLC lands) will be fine with your character leaving the fight over Hoover Dam and what-not for (probably) months to go trek off to Portland. It’s not like anyone else is going to show up to move things along, right? 🙂
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A local thrift shop contained a significant portion of the Cosmos…
by Aaron Williams on December 7, 2020 at 12:03 AMI went thrifting recently and happened upon an artifact of such overwhelming nerdy nostalgia that I knew I had to possess it the moment I saw its cover:
It’s the soundtrack to the Carl Sagan era of Cosmos on vinyl! I’ve told my wife that if anyone loves me this Christmas, I’ll get one of those record album frames under the tree. The interior is pure 70’s layout and NASA porn:
Sadly, the record is a little warped, but I suppose I could fix that with some time and weighty texts. Even so, I can listen to its contents via the magic of YouTubery:
Ahhh, Vangelis. Such a huge part of my Sunday evenings watching PBS as a kid. My soundtrack from that age was this, the intro music to the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who, and right before the station signed off, a segment of Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler. Ol’ Jack was like a used car salesman teaching astronomy; I just couldn’t look away for some reason.
Anyway, ’twas a cool thing I found that I hope to have on my wall soon. Maybe someday I’ll bump into Neil DeGrasse Tyson and he can autograph it.
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As we head into the holiday season, here’s some best (ship)mates…
by Aaron Williams on December 4, 2020 at 1:37 AMIn case you’ve never seen it, the following bit o’ frivolity is based on Marlon Webb’s “When You Go Out With Your Best Mates” video. Once you’ve seen that, this next bit should make sense.
There! I know I feel better.
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Just vote. I mean, at the very worst, one can think that by doing so they’re sticking it to someone they don’t care for. It’s not the healthiest reason, but hey, perhaps it’s enough to get the nation engaged again. I’ll be headed to the polls with the family sometime tomorrow morning. I suspect they may try to vote me out of the house, but hopefully that’s not on the ballot.
Did I mention we all need to vote? Vote!
And there’s this:
• Just when I thought I couldn’t think Tom Lehrer was any more amazing, he’s releasing his songs into the public domain. Now, so far there’s none of his performances or mp3s or anything like that, just the sheet music and lyrics. But if you want to re-record “The Old Dope Peddler” (something 2-Chainz had to ask permission to do a while back) and can produce decent musical output, go nuts!
• Perhaps this shows that A.I. is more worried about humans than we thought, as a computer-driven camera covering a futbol match in Scotland decides to target a bald ref’s head rather than the ball.
• If you don’t quite recall every hit song of 1990, this mashup should refresh your memory.
• It’s rumored that Oscar Isaac is in talks to become Marvel Comics’ Moon Knight for a Disney Plus TV series. I like the direction they’ve taken the character in the comics, as someone who’s probably only behind Deadpool for being considered out of his mind. My only question about these shows is if they’re integrating other bits of the MCU or trying to make it stand-alone.
• In the Mandalorian series, we were introduced to a couple of speeder bike troopers who were a lot more self-aware than most of their fellows, noticing they couldn’t hit anything with their blasters. The Auralnauts took that idea and ran with it, giving us the Existential Troopers.
• Like a few thrift-store artists, one “Dave” at Arrowhead Vintage & Handmade Goods makes stale generic paintings into more nerd-worthy images. I like how it’s not all Star Wars, especially when classic away teams from the USS Enterprise show up in a landscape.
• And finally, if you don’t mind a little tension (and something that was more appropriate for Halloween), here’s Horror Poster Nightmare. You have a limited amount of time to find six differences in eight sets of horror movie posters or the dynamite some madman is dangling between the images will go off. So I guess it’s from an upcoming Saw sequel?
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Because I like to hope for things on occasion that may never happen…
by Aaron Williams on October 19, 2020 at 4:51 PMHere’s a gameplay trailer for a hopefully-someday overhaul mod for Fallout 4 that lets you play Fallout New Vegas in F4’s game engine:
Also, since Microsoft now owns Bethesda Softworks as well as ineXile, that means they now run the two biggest post-apocalyptic role-playing game franchises, Fallout as well as Wasteland.
So I’m wondering how long until the Wasteland franchise becomes a West Coast prequel to the Fallout series? I mean, it wouldn’t be the craziest thing done to the lore, right?
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In the spirit of the way Star Trek and our current world is going, we have a new t-shirt!
by Aaron Williams on September 25, 2020 at 3:26 PMIn the spirit of when whoever your favorite ‘Trek captain is goes rogue, bends the regs, or (in the case of the Picard series), tells the Federation to go warp core breach itself, we’ve got a design perfect for commanding your unaffiliated starship in. Drawing from the classic “No Gods, No Masters” slogan and the anarchy symbol from countless punk rock posters, we’ve got a delta shield for an increasingly chaotic frontier.
It’s just the thing for when you decide that giving phasers to cavemen would be pretty fun to watch and making crop circles on planets that haven’t discovered warp drive yet is a great means of creative expression. And until October 5th, you can use code AWILLIAMS20 to get 20% off of any of the shirts I’ve designed! So if you’re not ready to thumb your nose at the Admiralty, we’ve probably got something else that’ll round out your wardrobe.
You could even wear it under your uniform, and they probably wouldn’t know… unless there’s some kind of really disturbing scanning technology I didn’t know Starfleet used. Maybe check to make sure it won’t show up in the transporter pattern buffer first.
Note: Management is not responsible for any demotions or loss of command, though if that does happen, you’ve got your outfit ready, right?
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If you haven’t seen the new trailer for the 2020 version of Dune, here you go:
I’m a pretty big apologist for the David Lynch version of Dune, especially given when it was made. They didn’t have wire-fu down yet, so they had to make the fighting technique called “the weirding way” in the book into a sonic weapon. What made that interesting to me was how they leaned into it, going so far as to make Paul’s Fremen name, “Mua’dib” an utterance that would make the sonic gizmo fire out a lethal blast. I also think they nailed the costumes and sets for a decadent galactic empire, the cast was top-notch, and I still love the soundtrack by Toto, especially the closing melody, “Hold My Hand.”
I also still quote the scene where Emperor Shaddam IV meets with the Guild Navigator, who remains one of my favorite practical effects in a sci-fi movie.
Anyway, in the new trailer, I’m not too jazzed on mumblecore Paul who can’t even say “yes” clearly, and he’s the second lead actor this year (the other being Robert “Batman” Pattinson) who looks like casting directors are big fans of The Cure’s Robert Smith. Still, the sets, costumes, and actors have a sufficiently alien-future look to them. What really caught my eye is the ornithopter vehicles. They were basically mechanical dragonflies, and a casual image search shows that a lot of Dune media, video games, etc. just made them insect or bird-shaped airplanes, not wanting to try to literally make a craft that flapped its wings, as the book described. From what I see in the footage (at the 2:06 mark), they pulled it off without making them appear like some kind of steampunk contraptions that you’d expect to see on a world of giant bugs rather than as a standard imperial craft.
So it looks pretty good, but it’s got to beat seeing nerd-favorites Kyle MacLachlan, Brad Dourif, Patrick Stewart, Dean Stockwell, Sting, Max Von Sydow, etc. all in the same film.
On a side note, the actress that played the creepy spice-altered Alia has gone on from being the most adorable child to ever wield a Gom Jabbar to having a mile-long IMDB entry. I’m sure this was foreseen by the Kwisatz Haderach. Or she beat the odds for child actors and had a really good agent. Whichever. 🙂
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A song from 1985 is the basis for a D&D-based Kickstarter.
by Aaron Williams on September 2, 2020 at 4:14 PMWho remembers The Dead Milkmen? They were a punk/rock group from the 80’s, and one of their most well-known songs is one called “Bitchin’ Camaro.” If you’ve never heard it, you can hear this send-up of rich kids talking to each other right over here.
Anyway, this song has apparently resulted in an adventure module officially endorsed by the band called “Lost Tomb of the Bitchin’ Chimera.” There’s a bit of salty text in the pitch, so any younger eyes you’d rather not view such things might want to look away:
Can we maybe convince Weird Al to do a line of RPG products at some point? Maybe a special splatbook for Bards?
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Yakko Warner sings the names of the countries of the world (that Americans can currently travel to without restrictions)
by Aaron Williams on August 28, 2020 at 4:24 PMHere in America, our COVID-19 response has made us a bit too risky to just allow us to wander the globe willy-nilly, so Wakko Warner of The Animaniacs has an updated version of his “Nations of the World Song” listing the places that don’t mind USAsians popping in on the spur of the moment:
If you’re nostalgic for the original version (perhaps to use as a homeschool study aid), here you go.
Look for the original voice cast to come back on Hulu’s Animaniacs revival this November. Maybe we can get Frekazoid someday, too?