The warm hug of nostalgia

Hanging out with a friend (or group of friends), gathered on couches around the TV, playing video games. I'm sure I'm not the only kid in my generation for whom this is a classic scenario. It still happens from time to time in my life, too - I got to sit down and play Street Fighter IV with my man Nick last time I was in Portland.


What you see when playing Retro Game Challenge: Not just the game, but the two kids playing the game...(okay back in 1980s Japan, but still). Image from gamersinfo.net

I just picked up and have spent a little bit of time with Retro Game Challenge for the DS, which has a convoluted history and in-game story, but plays on the imagery of sitting around and playing games with your friend. I caught the buzz for the game after hearing about it on every single gaming podcast I listen to, and that word of mouth convinced me to track the game down.

The game is actually based off a Japanese TV show, Game Center CX, in which the host is challenged to complete a variety of classic video games. Retro Game Challenge is a game based off that - you still have to face challenges put down by Game Master Arino, but the translation is done so that it's a way for you to escape imprisonment in 1980s Japan.

Okay. So you play lovingly crafted games based off 8-bit video game tropes (space shooter, 2D racer, ninja platformer, basic RPG). Big deal? Well, as the screenshot above shows, the game goes on on the top screen; on the bottom, it's you and your friend (apparently Arino c. the time period) and get to hang out as kids playing games. Arino chips in - "AWESOME!", "INCOMING!" - and when you even select to go play a game, it shows your character scooting on the floor over to the bookshelf.

Sure, you're lounging on tatami mats in a very Japanese apartment playing a Japanese Famicom lookalike...but man, the sentiment is there. The Internet is great and all, but sometimes you miss -itting down with a friend and playing pass-the-controller to play a single player game. Sometimes it's the childhood nostalgia that gets you the most.

Who watches "Watchmen"? I just did

Yes, it's accurate; but is it good?

Just returned home after seeing Watchmen on the big screen - didn't make a midnight showing Thursday night because of going to the Nuggets-Blazers basketball game, and didn't go last night because I would have slept through it! But I made the trip tonight and have some thoughts.

Primarily I'm just really, really glad that Zack Snyder made the Watchmen movie that he did because, in his own words, if he didn't somebody else would have - and if somebody else would have, it most likely would have been changed (more) from the original source and sucked.

This movie categorically does not suck. It is as good a transition to film as there will ever be - I don't even mind the alterations to the ending (deciding to cut out a side story entirely necessitated the movie to end the way it did). Costumes, setting, tone, everything was truly faithful to the book. I love the beginning montage during the credits as an introduction, even if they did take a couple liberties with things insinuated in the book.

And while I swore up and down I wasn't going to be influenced by the voices and writers who said "it's *too* faithful and a touch limited as a movie," I am forced to agree - simply because this isn't the right medium for it.

With a regular novel - like, say, The Lord of the Rings - before the movies, the books did not live as a visual medium. Like all novels, it was up to interpretation and your mind's eye to paint between the lines that (in that case) Tolkein set out for characters, settings, everything. We know Frodo is a hobbit and that he most likely has certain traits, but the way he looks and talks is up to the reader's interpretation.

Same with how scenes are acted out. While there might be occasional blocking in a novel, it's not as specific - or, indeed, graphic - as within a comic book or graphic novel. While Snyder may have had a handy, dandy storyboard in the form of the original Watchmen, that in my mind is a bit of a set of golden handcuffs - you have to get it absolutely right. Any deviation and the fans go wild.

The other major gripe I have is going to sound banal and snobbish, but so be it. Watchmen the book works absolutely perfectly and is a masterpiece of late-20th century literature in part because it uses its medium so well in telling the story. While the movie is still good, some scenes drag on film where they'd make much, much more sense on paper in ink. Flashbacks - especially for characterization of both Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan - worked much, much better in the graphic novel than they did in the movie, and that's more down to the medium actively helping the storytelling more than anything else.

One minor gripe with the movie (besides the necessary evil of cutting out "The Black Freighter" sections, which led to altering the ending) is that it paints some details in much bolder strokes than in the book. Without giving away too much, background details related to The Comedian and (in the book) old-time heroine Silhouette - which are done very subtlety in the graphic novel - are given much broader strokes in the movie, which is as much a function of the movie format as anything else.

While Watchmen the movie is indeed rather awesome - I think those who haven't read the books will enjoy it, even if it does drag a bit in the middle - for no fault of its own, it falls short of living up to the source. In most book-to-novel cases this has to do with cutting content, but for these, it's more because it's not set on the right stage. And that is through no fault of the movie.

The power of stupid memories and cheesy jingles

I hope to god this embeds properly, because it's been making the rounds of sports sites and is awesome.

There's a music store across the street from my office that says, "Without music, life would be a mistake." Even though I would sound like a strumming monkey were I to pick up a real guitar, or act like a three-year-old given a couple of wooden spoons and pots and pans if I sat behind a real drum kit, I love music. Love it, love it, love it. Specifically listening to it (playing Rock Band gives me the ersatz creation feelings I crave, in lieu of above-mentioned lack of real talent).

And while it's said that scent often triggers the strongest emotional connections, music has those, too. What's funnier is how songs like the above-embedded YouTube clip - of John Tesh's "Roundball Rock," much better known as the iconic NBA on NBC theme song - work into a sports fan's heart and well up memories on its own.

It's silly, it's stupid, and performed live or found on MP3, it's a long-ass jingle. But just that spark of "Roundball Rock" brings up so many images of the NBA because the period that song was used to introduce NBC's coverage was a watershed for the sport: Jordan. The tail end of Bird and Magic. Hakeem and my Blazers. By the end of NBC's coverage, Shaq and Kobe were forming a terrifying combination as the Forum was about to come to a close for hoops in Los Angeles.

Quite possibly the greatest era in one of my favorite spectator sports is encapsulated in that wonderfully early-90s-tastic song.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way about "Roundball Rock," and I know the NBA isn't the only sport to have a signature tune. Across the pond, Formula 1 coverage on the BBC in the United Kingdom had one opening song for an entire generation - the ending bass-riff from Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain." From the late '70s through to 1996, the visuals might have changed, but the rising shriek of guitars accompanied the intro. So when the BBC won back Formula 1 broadcast rights starting this upcoming season, there was little doubt there'd be speculation about The Chain returning:



Sure, that's fan-made, but lovingly so and if the real thing is close then I wouldn't be surprised. Having seen older intros as well on YouTube, I get it.

Just like how - as cheesy as it is - the ever-altered Monday Night Football theme still ties in emotions. Or how Canadian fans consider the Hockey Night in Canada theme to be as part and parcel to the coverage as legendary commentator Don Cherry's flagrant suits.

I would say it's as important as hearing other theme songs for popular TV shows or movie series, but though I may be biased as a sports fan, the connection with the intro theme song is greater - for the same reason why sports make for some of the best human drama. Nothing is planned or staged out ahead of time, and it all unfolds, real-time, right in front of your eyes. The connection with sports teams runs deep, and, just like how a college fight song can be universal to school alumni, the theme song for certain sports stand out.

It doesn't always work - most of the ones in major American sports right now are forgettable at best, though Baseball Tonight's jingle is pretty good - but the transcendent ones stick with you. Which is why I'm going to try to make "Roundball Rock" into a ringtone-sized MP3 file, again, and set that on my phone, just to see if I run into another sports geek who wells up with stupid emotion at the sound of John Tesh's master work as much as I do.

From the "Fastball in the wheelhouse" department...

Somehow I can't see it marching down the red carpet. Photo from flickr.

So apparently there's a new documentary about the 24 Hours of Le Mans that is set to debut the weekend of Sebring.

That's not the exciting part. I'd be happy to see something like that regardless. But - BUT - it's called "Truth in 24," it's made by NFL Films (!) and is narrated by Jason Statham, aka my friend's official mancrush.

I don't quite remember asking for something so awesome (NFL Films has amazing cinematography and is a superb company, it focuses on Audi's march of dominance, pretty sure it's shot in HD, etc.) but I'll take it. Oh, and it's debuting on ESPN.

That's my jaw dropping to the floor, and me wondering if I can save enough to buy an HDTV by then. Should be absolutely awesome to see in full glory.