Author: BreakmanX

Ok, stick with me here, folks, today’s post is not about video games. Hey hey hey, where you going? It’s still about games, dammit, get your ass back here. Those of you who know me know that I’m into gaming of all kinds, not just the video variety. Those of you who are subject to the kind of tunnel vision that video gaming’s bright lights, wild spectacle and immediate gratification generate may not even be aware of the existence of other types of games outside of Monopoly and Poker. I assure you, there is an entire world of gaming…

You can find the entire archive of pictures here , but Alison and I wanted to bring you the highlights. Enjoy. The broadcast table, with Weezer rambling on about something…It’s interesting to Alison, anyway.

What the hell happened to my Wii? Better yet, what the hell happened to Nintendo?! I’m beginning to believe that Nintendo is recovering from that severe head-up-the-ass injury that took place between 1996 and 2005. First they release Zelda, Twilight Princess… and the people rejoice at its beauty and depth. Then comes Super Paper Mario… and the people rejoice that the 2-D platformer is genuine, and has a lot of creative heart. After that comes Super Mario Galaxy… and the people rejoiced as Nintendo breathed life into a STALE genre, and single-handedly saved the platformer from certain doom… Then came…

The showdown has begun. Mario Kart Wii vs. Grand Theft Auto 4. Personally, I’m thinking GTA4 will edge out the Kart, but with the sheer number of Wii systems that have been sold, Mario Kart has the potential to outdo the competition just from playing the potential numbers. My mom has already mentioned buying it for my youngest cousin, so I know the word has certainly spread amongst the Wii’s significant casual player base. While only time will tell who will win in terms of sales, what I can tell you is the ups and downs of Mario…

Growing up, I’ve always had the desire to do something creative.  It started out with various things.  I’d always try to find new and different ways of doing things, whether it be in Video Games, school, or anything else in my life.  As I grew older I knew that I had to have some sort of job that utilized this or I would simply lose my mind.  I never really thought of it much as choice, more of a calling. The more I thought about this, the more it came down to film.  There is nothing else that combines everything…

Some of you may recognize the title of this post. For those of you who are not Trekkies, you’ll still probably know it as the first half of a well-known proverb, but so you know, it’s the title of the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which probably had the highest popularity-while-airing of any of the many Treks. Don’t worry, the title is not alluding to anything you’re probably not already aware of as a listener of the show, but I felt it necessary to talk about it here. This weekend is the big BreakmanX LAN Party,…

***I fixed it*** Thank God. No, this is not my original post. My original post was lost in the sea of NOT FOUND errors that you have seen strewn all over the site. It is weird to go to bed seeing a pretty site and wake up to the horrors you see before you. We’re still not sure exactly what happened, but only sure that it wasn’t us that did it. With all the moving around of our current host, I think it is some sort of corrupted file issue. At any case, they are working to resolve it and…

No, this is not my original post. My original post was lost in the sea of NOT FOUND errors that you seen strewn all over the site. It is weird to go to bed seeing a pretty site and wake up to the horrors you see before you. We’re still not sure exactly what happened, but only sure that it wasn’t us that did it. With all the moving around of our current host, I think it is some sort of corrupted file issue. At any case, they are working to resolve it and said they would have it resolved…

In addition to the many slowdowns the site has experienced lately, we are also getting odd not found errors all over our site. I apologize for this inconvenience, and all the inconveniences, and hope that our service provider rectifies this quickly.

His name was Jump-man, and he was a construction worker. One day while at work he’s witness to a giant ape (recently escaped from the zoo) that grabs a woman passing by. This ape proceeds to climb up several flights of scaffolding, woman thrown over his shoulder, and at the top mocks the construction worker. The construction worker, pissed off at his horrible early 80’s union dues, decides to take his anger out on the ape and maybe even save this damsel in distress, hoping to get a date. As he approaches the first girder, the ape proceeds to jump up and down, the sheer…

So PlayStation 3 is predicted to outsell the Xbox 360 – again – in the month of March, and I didn’t have anything to do with it. Didn’t catch that? I lost. Failed, really, when the 14th of April rolled around and I was still PS3-less. Hindsight is 20/20, but Helen Keller could’ve told me that this was a stupid fucking bet, yet another product of my overactive medulla badidea. Break tried to tell me as much on the Show – good advice apparently passes through me like Casper the Friendly Ghost – while I still had time to back…

I’ve long been a fan of the Fantasy genre, with its swords and magic, strange creatures attacking scantily clad damsels, and thinly veiled erotic allusions hosted by aged wizards in pointy hats. Video games, especially RPGs, have long been home to the newest and most stunning incarnations of this imaginative realm of fiction. One might even say that there’s an over-abundance of fantasy games in existence. I would never complain, there’s precious little I love more than picking up a sword, hacking down an evil Necromancer and saving the day (except maybe BEING an evil Necromancer). Despite that, my first…

OK, so the show is over, but the LAN party is rockin! If you’d like to watch it go here. Show will be up soon.

You’ve probably heard it said that the best things in life are free. Any gamer, however, will tell you that’s a load of Pokéshit. We have to pay for our jollies; Smash Bros and Final Fantasy don’t come cheap. Or do we? Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not sanctioning piracy of any kind. There are just plenty of other ways to have fun, all of them legal and free. Sometimes, though, the trick is finding the good stuff, sorting the wheat from the chaff. There’s an awful lot of junk out there, but it’s worth it to…

When you label someone as a "gamer", in the back of your head somewhere you know that some game or series got them hooked on gaming. For guys, this could be anything from a 3-D FPS on their first PC to an RPG on the old NES, to even (the new "gamers") GTA, Smash Bros., or BioShock… Guys, for once in their lives, are more complicated than the female of the species. For girls (95% of the time) the game that gets them hooked is: 1- Dr. Mario 2- Tetris 3- Harvest Moon And usually in that order. Harvest Moon for…

Now, I know this is not game related, but it is related to the site so you’re just going to have to bear with me on this one… I’m sure that some of you have gathered that there is a sort of connection with The University of Kansas and BreakmanX.com. Q, Maul, and I all have degrees from the institution while Richie has attended classes there. In fact, besides Richie and VDG I’ve met every other host on the show through KU. Besides current members of the staff, I also met Weezerjedi, Jack Burt0n, and Afrotect on campus as well. …

Welcome, friends, to the first of what should come to be many interviews with stars from all corners of the media world; interrogating them on their video game histories and habits. Our first guest is one of my personal favorites, Emily Perkins, best known for her leading role in the Ginger Snaps werewolf trilogy, and recently seen in cameos as (fellow KU Alumnus) Mandy Patinkin’s final collected soul in the series Dead Like Me, and in Juno as the girl who’s boyfriend’s junk smells like pie. Our Canadian readers will also recognize her as a recurring character from the hit…

Welcome, friends, to the first of what should come to be many interviews with stars from all corners of the media world; interrogating them on their video game histories and habits. Our first guest is one of my personal favorites, Emily Perkins, best known for her leading role in the Ginger Snaps werewolf trilogy, and recently seen in cameos as (fellow KU Alumnus) Mandy Patinkin’s final collected soul in the series Dead Like Me, and in Juno as the girl who’s boyfriend’s junk smells like pie. Our Canadian readers will also recognize her as a recurring character from the hit…

Ok, you guys got me. Here’s the real post. It starts with an initial investment, $60. That gets me a new release title that I’ll play for about two weeks, based on fun and replay value. Then I take the game to a local game reseller, get store credit – usually around $30 – and buy the next game I want. This is my method for buying games, started months ago, and I’ve got my reasons. Buying new releases almost guarantees they’ll be in stock and in good condition (I’m impatient). Rolling the value of one game into the…

*Side note: After reading part 2 of 3 a friend of mine e-mailed me and said that I left out a Zelda game that should have been mentioned, The Minish Cap. While it IS a game in the Zelda series, I chose to keep it off of the list for the reason that I don’t think it makes a good starter game for getting into the series. Even though when you look at the story line, Minish Cap PROBABLY happened before all of the other game, I will argue that its "Start-off stance" is not so great because the game is…

There probably isn’t a person alive (at least, anyone that would read this site) that isn’t fully aware of the ongoing struggle and perpetual asshattery of the RIAA. For the purpose of this article, I sum up for you: The RIAA is an organization that represents the major music labels, and they’re really pissed at the internet. The internet lets people download music for free, so of course, they don’t like this, because they’re losing money over it. You can make all the rationalizations you want, you can say that downloading exposes music to people who wouldn’t have gotten…

Zelda: Game Boy to N64 The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – Original Game Boy and GB Color – 1993 The first time that Link appears on a handheld, is also the first of many times that he ends up somehow on an island. Though graphics are minimal (4-bit B&W or Color with the DX version) the game actually has a few improvements to the Zelda scheme of things. Now, instead of using the sword and one implement, you can actually change out both hands, so that you wield two implements. Link also gains the ability to jump through…

Part 1: Whether you are a casual gamer or a hardcore enthusiast, you have to give respect to the Legend of Zelda series. Started back in the mid-eighties by Nintendo, the series has influenced gaming culture as a whole in so many ways it’s mind bottling (Did you just say "mind bottling’?!) Think of it this way: The Legend of Zelda on the 8-bit NES was the first of it’s kind in MANY categories. It was the first console video game EVER to feature a SAVE option with a battery backup. It was one of the first console…

My recent, or ever-loving, fascination with Sonic the Hedgehog is something that I’ve talked about at great length on the show on and this medium and is almost as omnipresent here as my love of 2d games. Well it has finally happened, someone at SEGA decided that 2d was the way to go with Sonic the Hedgehog. Don’t believe me, check this out: In case any of you are still skeptical of this, SEGA confirmed this to the German magazine SEGA ON and then quickly had them pull it. Until the story was pulled, SEGA also said that this…

Come one, come all; delve into the wonders of our latest picture blog! Pop culture merchandise is bigger than it ever has been. Twenty years ago, finding toys, clothes, trading cards, anything with comic book or video game tie-ins was a rare treat. Sure, you could find some movie related toys, like Star Wars, but if you wanted to find a Link with Sword Swingin’ Action!… good luck. For some reason, it took the pop culture markets a good fifteen years or so to realize what a cash crop was growing in gamer culture, but now that they’ve caught on,…

JDogindy suggested the Klampons from Donkey Kong Country 2 as enemies for Mystic Forest. I’ve included the Klampons, complete with sound effects, and even their mad chomping when they hurt Mario. If you’ve played the first public Beta, you may have seen this stage as a quick power-up station. Mystic Forest is World 2-2 in Super Mario Fusion. It is a medium-difficulty stage. Unlike other levels I’ve made so far, Mystic Forest is a completely original level, not patterned after any specific game (though it uses graphics from Actraiser and SMA4). Super Mario Fusion will have original-themed levels as…

So I’m going to have to ask you guys to bear with me today. Normally I try to be productive with this space – history lessons, industry news, wild speculation, and the like. I’m not posting here to waste your time, I’m posting here because I usually have something to say about games. But today is different. Today, I’ve got something very special to say to a certain someone, and it can only be said here. Over two years ago, a girl walked up to me and introduced herself – Alison. Bright blue eyes, a shining smile, bubbly personality, and…

And on the 8th day, the Lawd Gawd had a Son. And the Son, whom He had nameth Jesus, looked forth into the future, and he did say: "The peoples of the world, I willst bringeth them to my bosom, for I doth love them all. Excepteth they that reside in 4chan. I fucking hate those guys. Forsooth." I’ve had some interesting experiences on the internet the past few weeks. See, I’ve come to expect a certain kind of friendliness from the internet. Yes, I know, big fucking mistake. But hear me out. Most of my internet community experience…

Destructoid.com editor Tron Knotts contributed some custom Mario sprites for a new suit for Mario! It even has its own power-up icon. When Mario picks up the Spartan Sphere, he turns into Spartan Mario! As Spartan Mario, he has a powerful Energy Sword melee attack. When I can think of another power or ability Spartan Mario should have, I’ll add it in. If you have reasonable suggestions for Spartan Mario, let us know! The top suggested abilities for Spartan Mario: *Energy Bar for the Energy Sword, which depletes each time it hits an enemy. *Rechargeable Energy Shield. It…

I’m sure by now many of you have heard that I came down with something. Basically, I’ve been completely incompacitated all week. Sometimes when you are sick you can squeeze some enjoyment out of it by playing a game here and there, but I’ve been so sick I haven’t even been able to do that. Today, one day short of a week later, is the first day I feel any improvement. Here’s hoping that keeps up. I’m looking forward to playing Smash Bros. with my classic controller once I’m feeling better. The idea of using the classic controller to…