It's Black and Bruised month!

(Public service announcement: I don't recommend typing "black and bruised" into Google Image Search - lots of depressing results.)

Time for another one-game month! This time it's the goofy, cel-shaded boxing brawler Black and Bruised from the PS2. Heck, why don't I just let the request speak for itself:

Now I don't blame you if you've never heard of it. It flew under the radar years ago and lasted like a month before hitting the bargain bin but thats not to say it's awful. I mean it's not good but it's not awful.

But you know what is awful? The fact there are like zero good videos of this game on youtube! The ones featuring everyone's favorite boxing babes (Janet, Holly, etc) are all camcorder crap. We need a pro like you to fix this!

Now I love what you're doing with Wrestle Angles Survivor 2 and RRXX but I think it's time to dust off this old overlooked classic.

Well, never let it be said I don't have a good video capture device. The only caveat I'll issue here is that some of the matches are going to be pretty short - this is a "boxing-based" game, not a boxing game, so there's not a lot of fancy footwork and blocking, it's mostly the two women throwing punches at each other's face until one of them can't get up. I mean, I can run away from the opponent to make a match last longer, but not only does that feel kind of contrary to the game's spirit, but it also is probably pretty fucking boring to watch. So I didn't! There's no Knockout Kings 2001 style 30 minute duels here. Whether you prefer this style or not, I guess you'll just have to watch the videos to find out.

Oof!

Well, so much for business as usual, but let me plead my case here: I somehow got sick twice in the shortest month of the year (one stomach bug where I couldn't even keep down half a bowl of white rice, and one horrible cold I'm still fighting off). Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed the Knockout Kings 2001 month. I was going to post another video today showing off the illegal moves you can do to get yourself disqualified, but honestly, they're not that great (maybe it's just me, but I can barely tell what's happening). So instead of throwing that up on YouTube, you can download the raw video files here if you want:

https://rapidshare.com/files/8471231/Illegal_moves_1.mpeg

https://rapidshare.com/files/2763149701/Illegal_moves_2.mpeg

Alternate download (RIP, Crapidshare):

http://www.wupload.com/file/2667384332/Illegal_moves_1.mpeg

http://www.wupload.com/file/2667384342/Illegal_moves_2.mpeg

Video one has punching in the clinch, and elbows; Two has headbutts and what the game calls low blows, although they just look like, um, elbows. (Also, I couldn't pull the moves off for some reason, so that's me fucking up, not St. John being drunk or whatever.)

So that was February! March is going to be another Rumble Roses month (and, fair warning, my wife is flipping out for Mass Effect 3 coming out). As for April, we'll see - the current plan is another PS2 boxing game that rhymes with Glack and Gruised. Stay tuned :X

** Update **

I'll just leave this here.

It's Hideous ECW Wrestling Game Month!!!!!!!!

Yes, it's that time of the year again - put on your hideous holiday sweaters, make a nice fire, put on some Christmas music, and gather the whole family to watch low-polygon versions of Dawn Marie and Jazz punch each other in the groin.

December will have five Saturday videos, the first two being the relatively sane ECW Hardcore Revolution, and the last three being the dumpster-match craziness of ECW Anarchy Rulz (because poor literacy is kewl). These are some games I'd never played until just now, and although the graphics have aged about as well as any polygonal PlayStation 1 game, I am impressed at the sheer number of match types. We'll see how many of them I can show off in five videos (spoiler alert: five). Stay tuned.

** Update **

First video!

I'm back & HOLY SHIT what did they do to YouTube??

Well, I'm back. How was the vacation? Awesome, thanks; We went to the Epcot Food & Wine Festival, and I finally got to go on Soarin', which holy shit, nobody cares about hearing about my vacation, do they? Let's leave it at that I'm rested and relaxed, and should now be responding to messages and comments much sooner*.

Also, jesus god, what the hell happened to the YouTube front page? And I thought them fucking around with the way the channels look was bad. Holy hell. Well, um, stay tuned for December; Check back on Saturday for the first match of another special month, and check back here for the big announcement. Can this top two extremely polygonal women hitting each other with sinks and traffic cones in the WCW bathroom? Amazingly, the answer is yes. Cue shocked emoticon to end post on:

:0

* As in probably within three weeks instead of six

Vacation time woop woop woop woop!!!!!

It's that time of the year again - time to pay ten month's worth of mortgage payments to jet down to Disney's Polynesian Resort for 2 weeks of fun, sun, fun in the sun, sun's fun in the sun that has fun with the sun whose sun we are having fun with.

Ahem. As you can tell, I'm excited. As noted, pretty much at least the first half of November is going to be a wash. I'll try to upload a 100% body 0% muscle match for Thanksgiving and make some lame jokes about how they all ate a lot of turkey and mashed potatoes ha ha etc. Otherwise upload activity is probably going to be pretty light, and responding to comments/messages is going to be not at all during the first half and at a slower pace during the second half (okay, who yelled "is that even possible"). Wish me a nice vacation, and if you see a slouching guy who needs to shave with his wife with big boobs in the Polynesian, yes, I will sign autographs.

2011's remaining schedule

You may have noticed there was no WAS 2 video this week; The simple fact is that I'm running short of WAS 2 requests, so these might get cut down to every other week or just filled with my own whims in terms of matchups, depending on how I'm feeling.

So what about Saturday videos? Well, you may disagree with me here, but I have to say Supremacy MMA was kind of a bust; Turns out neither one of the female fighters has any submissions at all (!). I mean, I could do story mode, but it's basically just the same fight over and over again. I was kind of hoping to get a little more material from it, but those are the breaks. So what's on tap?

Well, October is probably going to be business as usual, which is to say Rumble Roses on Saturday and, like above, possibly every other WAS 2 on Wednesday. I'm working on some side projects, but I wouldn't expect to see any of them until 2012. (Wait, you want to know what I'm actually working on? Okay, you talked me into it - Knockout Kings, Black and Bruised, and Ready 2 Rumble Round 2 for the PS2, primarily.)

Why won't any of these be ready in November or December, you ask? Well, November is going to mostly be a wash; I'm going on vacation to Disney to celebrate the second anniversary of my wife turning 29, and I'm going to be gone like 17 days or something ridiculous, and when I get back both Skyrim and Saint's Row 3 are going to be waiting for me, so I don't anticipate that November's going to be terribly productive.

December, however, I am cooking up another theme month. Let's just say you may not want to remember getting dismembered in December. Although you probably wouldn't be able to remember anything because you'd probably be dead after getting dismembered. Anyway, stay tuned.

It's Hideous WCW PlayStation Wrestling Game Month!!!!!!

Oh, fuck. Here we go. Yes, it's WCW playstation wrestling game month! The card is:

August 6th: WCW Nitro

August 13th: WCW Thunder

August 20: WCW Backstage Assault

August 27: WCW Backstage Assault again

Now I'm gonna be really honest here: Nitro and Thunder are garbage. I'm sure these were more impressive when they came out, and I'm willing to forgive the graphics since every polygonal game on the PlayStation that isn't Final Fantasy VIII is hideous, but the gameplay - my god, the gameplay. I've been spoiled silly by Smackdown's sensible and easy to use controls where you have a button to lock up; Nitro and Thunder have WWF Warzone-style moves where you press < O O or v X X or whatever to do a piledriver, and everybody has the same moves and god damn it is bad. And that's leaving out the insanity of having random wrestlers do run-ins (the first trial match I wrestled, Rey Mysterio ran in to beat up one of the Nitro girls).

Backstage Assault I perversely actually like the best, even though it's a mess of a game. I'm just gonna come out and admit it - I kind of love Backstage Assault just for the novelty value. In this era of PG-rated WWE games where DIVAS can't use weapons at all, it's just downright fucking weird being able to boot this game up and make Stacy Keibler kill Torrie Wilson by repeatedly hitting her over the head with a ceramic sink or iron bar.

So that's what you have to look forward to; I await with baited breath your angry comments and annoyed emoticons. This is truly going to be the greatest month in the history of our sport('s hideous decade old WCW wrestling games)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

August is a surprise month!

Big news: Next month -August, assuming I live that long with this heat wave - is going to have a special theme. No Rumble Roses videos on Saturday; All four Saturday videos are going to be very, very special. What is it, you ask? It's not Game Boy Boxing Month (still working on recording those). So what then? Well, let's just say that these four Saturdays may very well be the greatest nights in the history of our sport. And if you enjoyed Hideous Playstation Boxing Game Month, you're really going to enjoy this, and you should also probably get your eyes checked.

Have I said too much? All right, more than that, you'll just have to wait and see. Cherish the next two Rumble Roses XX videos, they're the last ones you'll be seeing for a while. Stay tuned - the announcement will go up on the 5th of August, with the first video on the 6th. w00p

Schedule musings

I've been thinking a bit about the video schedule; I'm pretty comfortable the way it is now with 2 a week, but I'm wondering if we're reaching the point where that's too many and it's just becoming numbing. Now don't get me wrong, I love Rumble Roses XX and it's basically custom made for people like me (and you, I'm assuming, if you're reading this) - but I wonder if it's getting over saturated; The fact that the customization is so bare-bones really limits how much you can do, and I feel like I've explored messing with the sliders/costumes almost as much as I can. This doesn't mean that RRXX videos would go away entirely, but maybe they might be cut down to one a month so they don't all blend together after a while.

So what then? Four WAS2 videos a month, one Rumble Roses XX video? I don't know; Then you risk overloading on WAS2, I think, although that game has so many charecters I think it's going to be quite a while before that happens. What I'd really like to do is maybe switch to a one video a week format; WAS 2 - Rumble Roses XX - WAS 2 - video from another game. (Maybe that's a little complicated, but what the fuck; You people are smart, you'll figure it out.)
Of course that leaves the question what "video from another game" entails. What I'd like to do is track down every sports game with ladies you can pair up in existance and see if I can make videos out of them. The downside is that videos like this take much longer to produce. Put aside the difficulty in getting the game and unlocking the ladies in the first place (which is annoyingly applicable) - there's still technical issues, and more troubling to me, the actual playing of the game. After grinding for money for 400+ hours in Rumble Roses I can probably play it in my sleep (it got to the point where I could literally win a tag match with my eyes closed). It's not so bad if there's a CPU versus CPU mode, but if there isn't - here I'm casting a sidelong glance at Wade Hixon's Counter Punch - I'd prefer to actually display a tiny amount of skill, if only enough so that the game doesn't look like indiscriminate flailing.
All that being said, the method I prefer is to present a bunch of games, and whichever one strikes a cord I can record more of (so make sure you leave comments/send requests if you see a game you want more videos made out of).

So that's what I'm thinking of doing. If you have any comments, by all means let me know - I tend to lean towards whoever I'm hearing from at the moment, and I doubt most people have read this far, so your opinion will probably have some weight. I'm still thinking this all over, so I dunno when this switch is going to take place - probably pretty soon since I'm running low on Rumble Roses videos. I might, if I can find any spare time, record Gameboy Boxing Game Month, and then when that's over go into the new schedule. Or, of course, this could happen
and I'll be sent to prison for bitches for the rest of my life; We'll see.

General schedule & video & ampersand update

Not a lot going on right now; Supremacy MMA's coming out in June, which will yield two videos (Video 1: Felice "Lil Dog" Herrig vs Michele "Diablita" Gutierrez; Video 2: Michele "Diablita" Gutierrez vs Felice "Lil Dog" Herrig) and I'll probably be making some videos out of the PlayStation "Kickboxing" game (which is apparently similar to playstation "Boxing" game, amazing graphics and all). There's some other stuff I'm tinkering with, but it's all on the back burner for right now. Instead, I thought it'd be fun to count up how many videos I have in the can and waiting to post. (drumroll)

Wrestle Angel Survivor 2 has 11 videos - 2 months and 3 weeks' worth - currently ready to go. I actually cleared out my to-be-recorded list, so this is a good time to make a request; It should be recorded right away, even if it isn't posted for 3 months.

Rumble Roses XX has 15 videos - 3 months and 3 weeks' worth - waiting to be uploaded. (Not including one relaxing video that's just a tag team breathing after the match is over). If you have any simple requests, this is a good time for them, as all I have left on my to-record list is big tag matches or single-move specials, which take hours to set up, record, and edit into one six-minute video. Ugh.

So that's that - another Rumble Roses XX Picture Pack will be coming soon, and if anybody knows a good PlayStation emulator that can both use DexDrive saves and record video easily, drop me a line. (Don't suggest epsxe, please; Darn thing crashed my computer last time I tried it.) Rar!

** Update **

Supremacy MMA delayed. Well, fuck.

March is Mirror Match Madness Month! Moo!

Well, I think that went pretty well - Knuckle Pine month is all wrapped up, and it's no longer -7 degrees outside on a daily basis. Ugh. You may have noticed that Wrestle Angel Survivor hasn't been getting much attention here lately; Ever since TryFirst took down the roster pages, there's not really much to add, and while I'm still working on an update pack for the big image bomb from back when, that's way on the back burner.

However! A mirror match posted a while back seemed to be a big hit, so what the fuck: March is officially Mirror Match Month for WAS 2. Now, did I make March Mirror Match Month because I'm a alliteration-appreciating American? Affirmative . Anyway, each WAS 2 match in March will be a mirror match. As for the Saturday videos, I'm not so sure yet. I have a half-recorded idea to make Persona vs Persona matches in Rumble Roses, where the normal and Superstar versions of the face personality team up against the normal and superstar versions of the heel personality. In a case where there's barely any difference (Dr A, I'm looking at you) it's just a fatal four-way. Except that of course I have ten of those, and there's only four Saturdays. So fuck it, I dunno what I'll do yet. You'll just have to stay tuned, I guess.

** Update **

Also, I just now realized I messed up my own schedule and forgot to upload the last Knuckle Pine video. Uh, that's next Saturday, I guess. Woops.

It's Knuckle Pine Jelly Time!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Left: She's a boxer with blonde hair and blue trunks, close enough)

A commenter on one of the tournament videos asked what Knuckle Pine is, and seeing as how it's now offically Knuckle Pine month, here's the short answer for all you noobs out there: It's a series of three first-person boxing games in which you box with, and then have loving intercourse with, a lady boxer named Pine who apparently has decided this is how she's going to become the next Mike Tyson, or maybe she just can't admit she likes you and wants to see how far you'll go to get in her blue bikini bottoms. You can see a detailed review of the first in the series here. I've been meaning to review the other two (see this post for a list of all the DL site reviews) - so look for that this month. Also, valentine's day is this month, and luckily since I've already decided on the theme of Pine's various games, I don't have to try to come up with some kind of special valtentine's day video. Boom.

Anyways, that's all the big news, if you count "I'm finally going to post reviews of the other two Pine games" as big news, which I guess nobody does. That's probably medium-small news. However, I'd also like to use this opportunity for a disclaimer: No matter how nicely you ask, unfortunately, I can't provide free copies of any of these games. The artists who make them aren't going to continue to produce games if everyone downloads them for free instead of purchasing them. And besides, these aren't $60 investments - as of this writing, the first game in the series is a whopping $8, and the final game in the series is under $20. If these games were hard to get ahold of, that would be one thing, but all you need is a credit card and $8 to download them from the english DL Site. Or maybe even a debit card. Does that work?
I guess I'm rambling, so let me wrap this up: Because of YouTube's policy that you can show a woman getting cut in half but you can't show her nipples, Pine's boobs will not be appearing in any of the videos. If you don't want to buy the games but want to see her breasts, check this post, which also includes a behind the scenes look at recording videos that you don't have to read. Never let it be said I don't give the fans what they want (bare boobs)!

Rumble Roses Good Vs Bad Tournament Round 3

Last round, the good girls were facing a formidable task, with only two of them left facing off against six bad girls. Lo and behold, they won both of their matches, and now in the semifinals it's all evened up - one good and one bad girl will wrestle in each match for the honor of moving on to the finals. The matchups:

1/8: Sgt. Clements vs Makoto
1/15: Noble Rose vs Sista A
1/22: Final!

The two winning girls will meet up in the finals; The winner will, of course, receive a special prize if I can work up the courage to pay someone on deviantart to draw her covering her nether regions with the championship belt. Boom!

I'm going to try and post a palette cleanser in between the round that's just concluded and the semifinals (Jan 1st); However, I'm running low on completed videos, so, uh, we'll see. Either way, stay tuned!

** Update **

I just realized January has FIVE Saturdays in 2011; No idea what's going to run on the last week (February will be starting Knuckle Pine month). Fuck!

** Update 2 **

It'll be Noble Rose vs Sgt. Clements for the whole bag of chips on 1/22. People have expressed an interest in having a match between Candy and Sista A to see who comes in as first runner-up, so I'm going to record that as well. The girl who comes in #2 in the tournament by winning that match will receive, like the overall champion, absolutely nothing.

Pine's Bikini Top Stays in the Picture

Finally some good news! You might remember the trouble I was having making some postable (IE, no nipples, which is clearly the number one thing to worry about nowadays) videos out of the Knuckle Pine series of DL Site games. Turns out there was an obvious solution I was missing: Just re-record the matches until Pine actually keeps her top on. In the second game, it will come off if you hit Pine with a strong enough punch (kids, don't try this at home), so I just recorded matches until I had a run of terrible luck at picking numbers and went down to defeat with her youtube-acceptability destroying boobs safely covered. Viola! This might be the only case in history where the starlet's big break comes when the director convinces her to keep her clothes on.

That takes care of the first two games; The third one, Knuckle Pine Turbo, which I got two videos of (I need four total - one video of the first game, one of the second game, and two of the last game makes a month), doesn't have Pine's top fly off, so that was easy. It took a lot of work, but they're all in the can. As an aside, I really do mean to review more DL Site games, but I'll just tell you now that Knuckle Pine Turbo really makes the second game look bad with some commonsensical fixes (I don't include Pine's top no longer randomly coming off a fix, although it did help me record these videos). So that's probably coming up after the RRXX Tournament wraps, which should be - February? Dang, kid. Well, stay tuned until then and enjoy the tournament. I'll know if you don't.

Rumble Roses Good Vs Bad Tournament Round 2

Well, Round 1 is in the can, and I have to assure that even though I like bad girls, I'm as surprised at the results as all of you are. The good girls have been decimated. Out of eight possible slots, only two good girls survived; Makoto and Noble Rose are the only two faces in the entire tournament, facing down no less than six heels. The only good news for the forces of light is that there are so many heels two matchups in this round are heel vs heel, which means at least two are going to be eliminated for the next round. Of course, if two other matches go the wrong way, there will be only naughtiness left.

Next week is probably going to be a break from Rumble Roses videos (since we just had 8 in a row for Round 1). That also means the last match of Round 2 will be uploaded on Christmas, however, which seems a little weird, doesn't it? Well, I dunno, it's not like I have any other videos to post. Huh. Well, we'll see - hit thatdrumroll, please. The matches, pulled out of a hat, are:

12/4: Sgt. Clements vs Mistress

12/11:Makoto vs Rowdy Reiko

12/18: Sista A vs Great Khan

12/25 (Why, it's CHRISTMAS day, sir!): Noble Rose vs Candy Cane

And that's all. Stay tuned; I have no idea what's going up next week before the first match of Round 2, so I better get cracking.

** Update **

Okay, I figured out what's going in between rounds; If you're a fan of hideous polygons, don't miss next Saturday.

Oh crumb (forgot to upload a video edition)

Well, you might be wondering where Wednesday's WAS 2 video is (although since the views for those are down to like 220 per video, maybe not that many of you are). I could make up an awesome, good-looking lie like I was out saving orphans by defeating gangs of roving nazi bikers in brutal hand-to-hand combat, but the truth is, I came home from work, put in New Vegas, and played that until I basically passed out. So yes, I just plumb forgot. Actually, I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened sooner! Anyway, it's a little late to upload the video now, I think, so to make up for it, I'm gonna upload TWO videos next Wednesday (10/27); I'll upload one in the morning before I leave for work, about 8 AM EST, so after processing it should be ready during the day; if you're bored for 4:37 on your lunch break, you can check it out. Um, plus buffering time. Now back to your reguarlly scheduled programming.

** Update **

Video one:

** Update 2 **

YouTube's decided to leave the second video as (Processing) for five hours, so I'm re-uploading it. God damn it!

** Update 3 **

Finally:

Double X Tournament!

So you might remember the Rumble Roses XX Singles Tournament, which got interrupted by Mr Seagate pulling a blarg im ded. The good news is my wife's addicted to Civ V, which means I can use the xbox to record the tournament, so it's pretty much all in the can at this point. Barring any disasters, the first match should go live Saturday, October 2nd. The first round is 8 matches, so it will span every Saturday of October and November. The first match, going up the 2nd (of October; man that's a confusing sentence), will pit Noble Rose against Anasteshia; The other seven opening round matches will be all the other girls except Yasha/Benikage, face persona versus heel persona. After that names will be picked out of a hat (possibly literally) to determine the second round matchups. I'm going to market this as a Face vs Heel tournament, although since I'm leaving it up to the CPU, who knows how many faces and heels are going to be left by the second round?

The winner of the tournament will receive nothing (lololol), because there's really nothing to give, unfortunately; I could put the title on her, but you wouldn't be able to tell anyway. Maybe I'll scrape up $15 to commission the winner wearing a title belt and nothing else from someone on DeviantArt or something.*

So that's that - stay tuned. Wednesday WAS programming will continue as usual. I know the area on my YT page listing the current status of WAS requests is way out of date, but I don't have time to update it right now. I need an intern around here or something.

Last note: Do I need a tournament tag for posts? Maybe I do. Fuck it, let's have a tournament tag.

* No, I won't, but if someone else wants to, I'll tell you who won ahead of time. Spoiler alert. Should I have put a anchor link from the asterisk down to here? Man, I really do need an intern. Shit!

Vacation time!

Time for my vacation, suckers. No videos will be posted while I'm in Europe, so there will be no new videos from when I leave on September 11 (yes, I'm flying out on September 11, and no, I didn't notice why the tickets were so cheap until after I had the tickets) and return on September 18. Although I might be jetlagged out and just go to bed on the 18th; we'll see. If you're bored, go back and watch some of the recent videos over again; I worked hard on those, ya know, and the view counts are going down. Hmph!!

In any event, there's probably another edition of Rumble Rose pix from Live coming; I might even post it before I leave. The things I do for my fans!

Tournament time!

There's been some interest (spoilers: two people) in a Rumble Roses tournament, which got me thinking. Originally someone was asking about a tag tournament; I'd really like to do one of these, but RRXX tag matches take for fucking ever, because of the endless RESCUE elbowdrops the computer spams, so I'm thinking maybe a single tournament. I'd like a Heel vs Face tournament, at least initially. I'd also like to get the number of entrants on each side down to 8 (devides much easier that way). I'm gonna eliminate Yasha/Benikage right off the bat, because she sucks, and she's tough as a wet noodle. I'm also gonna eliminate Evil Rose, because I don't like her and she has a 0% chance of winning the tournament; I'm also going to eliminate Dr Cutter, not because I don't like her, but because there's no difference aside outfits from Ana and Dr Cutter, and I have to get rid of another person to get down to 8 on 8.

So then, I have to think about how the initial round is gonna run; I could start it with each wrestler up against her alter ego (with the odd women out of Noble Rose and Ana taking each other on); After the first round, I have no idea who'd have won, so it'd be up to the CPU from there on in. I think that's the way it's going to go; that way past the first round you'll have only the face or heel version of a particular wrestler in the running.

Winner gets... well, I guess nothing, really. Reiko's the champ right now, but I don't know that there's a Non-Title Match option. Maybe beach matches? Ahh, we'll see. Anyway, stay tuned.

Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggh

Well, I hate to keep posting bad news all the time, but here's some more: My department at work, which is normally four full time people plus four part-time people, is right now down to one full time person. Guess who that is. (big Al Gore sigh)

So the long and the short is, video production is going to continue on pace (spyware infections nonwithstanding) - but you might notice a dropoff in anciliary activity like responding to comments, etc. All's I can say is, if someone out there wants to offer me $$$CASH MONEY$$$ for recording obscure/unpopular wrestling games, well, I'm all ears.

On the flipside, I've been messing around with the Rumble Roses body/muscle sliders - expect more info and hopefully a video (or two!) about this soon. And yes, I know, I'm WAY behind on the Smackdown vs Raw videos. Some advice for aspiring Smackdown vs Raw video directors: Don't make your wife your head-co-writer, then let her get addicted to Star Trek Online. She's promised we'll film another episode this weekend (malware attacks permitting), so we see. Horf!