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

New video recording device!

Second in a row Red the fuck Alert! There's a **NEW** device for capturing footage from a console that I suggest you L@@K at - the super imagnitively titled "Game Capture". Check it out here. Admittedly, it's a little bit pricey, but I'm glad to see this. I never got why Adaptec stopped making Gamebridges so quick, so here's hoping Roxio keeps this in production a little longer. Actually, this looks pretty much like a Gamebridge, but the connection is Component instead of the gamebridge Composite. Of course, who knows if you'll be able to tell the difference once YouTube is done manhandling the footage, but it can't hurt. Even better, this thing looks like it works under 7 and Vista, whereas the Gamebridge drivers only work on XP. Unlike the previous post, I don't really care if you get this or not, just thought I'd pass it along. If you do end up getting it, Roxio gave me a coupon code that should save you some cash when you check out: FRIENDS10

Quick plug

Red the fuck Alert! There's a new POV boxing PC game out! "Dream Knockout". Here's the purchase link. You can see some screenshots and shit on the author's deivantart page.

I'll tell you right out that I already purchased this game and it's pretty good. The author plays with the POV perspective in a refreshing way, and really, people, we're not gonna get more of these games if you don't go out and buy the ones that are already out! (All right, my only caveat: You're playing as a submissive, so even on the "I admit I'm a worm, don't hit me so hard" difficulty mode, I got my ass beat twice. Aw.) I might see about doing a playthrough for a YT video, but I'm probably gonna ask the author first out of courtesy - I'm not sure if he wants some of the stuff to stay as surprises. Now go check it out!

Oh, PS: Arcana Heart 3 is also out on the PSN. (Get Dream Knockout first, it's half the price)

PPS: Photo unrelated, sorry. I wish Blogger would add support for the caption tag. Got dang.

** Update **

Permission granted! Now if I can just get the sound to work. Woof!

A quick plug

Just a quick note: If you're bored this holiday season, why not check out my OTHER youtube channel? The first series, "Operation: Balls Punch" is a little bit one-note, but I'm extremely proud of the second series, Operation Robots, paticuarly the third in the series, which I think is going to go down as my most enduring, beautiful work. Beautiful and touching.

If you're curious, I'm the guy with the green T-shirt in Operation Balls Punch, and the robot on the left in Operation Robots. The Sarah Palin-looking lady in Operation Balls Punch and pink robot in Operation Robots if, of course, Kitten Hammer. Two episodes also have a special guest star (although I don't think the second episode with him in it's been uploaded yet). I wrote all the episodes (except "Wife is Right"), and she directed all of them, so it shouldn't be long before we get those Oscars now!

I tried (a little)

Since the Knuckle Pine series (FINALLY) turned out so well, I thought I'd go for a P4-esque ONE MORE! and try to get some Panda Moderns videos, one each of On the Ropes and Pit Viper. (Thus the image for this post. Get it? [Spoilers: It's a panda]) Unforchies, these aren't Flash games like the Pine series; They're stand-alone exes, and both of them are too processor-intensive for my piece of shit old PC I've been using to record windows game footage with. (My new computer is a beast that can handle it easily, but I can't make Hypercam record any sound). The resulting videos are de-synched; The On the Ropes one is just plain desynched, but Pit Viper's video is totally destroyed, in a way that I actually find kind of funny. So, sorry, Panda Moderns, no free advertising. Well, unless people are reading this blog post and go click on the links up there. Heh. Anyway, I might be able to use Fraps since these are standalone EXEs (which is the whole reason I was using Hypercam in the first place - Fraps doesn't recognize the Pine exes as games). We'll see; I already used up half a day futzing with these (my cat helped by running in and hitting the one exact button on the keyboard that stops recording in the middle of the first Pit Viper video). Anyway, here's the messed up videos for your enjoyment. On the Ropes isn't too spectacular (in fact I'm not sure why I uploaded it), but take a peek at Pit Viper. Yeeee.

On the Ropes

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2KSRJJRH

Pit Viper

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YNE7OQP9

** Update **

Fraps doesn't recognize either game to record, so, so much for that idea. Maybe if I put it on my old laptop. Hmm.

On the Ropes review

Yeah, thought I forgot about these? I'm just lazy. There's a reason there's a tag for posts called "laziness".

Name: On the Ropes
Price: $18.22 (as of 12/1; review text has an earlier price from when the price was lower)

What we got here is a 3D first person boxing game. Actually, this game feels a lot like the western version of the Pine series, so I'm probably going to be comparing them throughout a little bit. In fact, these are both first-person boxing games where you nail the girl if you beat her - but where Pine is a blonde cartoon, this lady is a blonde 3D Poser model. Hmm.

When you launch the game, you've got just Tutorial, Start, and Exit. The Tutorial is, uh, a tutorial, and Exit quits. Start puts you into the ring with your opponent:



The bar at the top is her life, and the bottom is yours. During the match, buttons appear on the screen, her attacks or yours. Click on the button to either block her punch, or hit her yourself, that's all there is to it. Whoever runs out of life first loses.

The game's difficulty seems balanced just about right, which is to say I lose about as often as I win. I've found that if you have trouble, keeping the mouse moving or hovering over her face can help. Unfortunately, most of the actual gameplay is just waiting for the buttons appear, which isn't terribly thrilling. The only thing happening on the screen is your opponent breathing and your hands moving slightly while you wait for a button to show up. You can't take her top off during the match or anything like that - it's very straightforward.
I have to say I do prefer Knuckle Pine's more turn-based boxing more relaxing and easier to enjoy, but this game does rectify one of my complaints about that series, which is that Knuckle Pine is all luck - this game's all dependent on your skill. So marks for that, I guess, but I'm not a big fan of twitch reactions, which is what you'll need for the buttons.

So that's the match. If you lose, you just fall over, and she stands over you while the screen fades for like three seconds, and you can try again, or not. I'm going to make the same criticism as the Pine games here, which is, why doesn't anything happen to you if you lose? Hmph.

Anyway, if you win, your opponent gets thrown - yes - on the ropes:



Clicking any of the icons punches here there. On all these screens, you can punch her as long as you'd like, but it's the same animation and sound effect all the time, so it gets old pretty fast. (Since there's a sound effect for each button, maybe they could be randomized.)
When you're ready to move on, clicking on her chest removes her top, which gives you another menu.



Same as before, although now you can punch her in the tits, and I recommend you do, because the animation for it is hilarious. I don't know how to make an animated GIF, so I tried to capture how it looks with this screenshot, but you probably gotta see it to believe it.



Anyways, from here you pull off her bottoms, and then you can stick it in. This removes the punch icons (thankfully) and gives you two: One of a hammer - I have no idea what this does; I assume clicking on it makes you thrust faster - and one a little white fountain. Click that, and you spurt on her crying face. Nice.



And that's it, it just takes you to a "AGAIN?" screen. There's nothing else to the game; It's lacking the Pine game's endless boxing or jump straight to the end mode, which I think is a shame. unfortunately, there's basically no replay value, since there's only one girl, and only one set of things you can do to her, and you'll have to go through the not particularly thrilling boxing match itself to do them again.

Overall, I think this is a good first effort, but there's some definite room for improvement. To begin with, taking the endless boxing mode and skipping straight to the end aspects of Knuckle Pine would do alot to give the game some more bang for the buck; I also think a discount may be in order, considering the compitition - as of right now the game costs $17, which is the same as the latest Pine game, which I think you'll get a lot more playtime out of. It's hard to recommend at this price, and I think cutting it by 3 or 4 dollars would go a long way towards making this game more attractive. All in all, though, this game just needs maybe a few extra girls and a few extra things to do to them, and we might have a winner. In fact, if it's too much work to make extra girls, how about some basic things like changing her hair, etc?

Can I also make a suggestion to both this and the Pine series: How about an option to make the player a woman? We're not all mixed fans. Well, I guess that might not work in the ending. I dunno. I'm just spitballin'. New boot goofin'. Probably time to wrap this up.

Recommended? Sure, if you know what you're getting into. You read the whole review, right?

Knuckle Pine review

(drumroll)
And now, the first DLsite game review!
Knuckle Pine

Name: Knuckle Pine
Price: $7.64

Knuckle Pine is a very simple first person boxing game. The premise is that Pine here thinks she's such hot shit that anyone who beats her can have thier way with her, and you're stepping up to the challenge.


The game itself is, as stated, very simple. You and Pine both have life bars on the left and right side. At the bottom of the screen are four squares. Clicking on one reveals a value, 0, 1, 2, or 3. Pine also gets a number, and whoever has the higher number lands some punches and does some damage.

You can click on her chest to take her top off, and then further clicking on her chest has your boxer kind of brush her nipples with his gloves, which makes her very angry and provokes a strong counter punch.
The timer bar on the bottom counts down, and if it hits zero, the game picks a box for you - as far as I can tell, the CPU picking a box for you has just as good a chance as topping Pine's number as you do. I guess this is uh... one hand mode? Gross.

Honestly, I found the game to be exceptionally easy; I had to go out of my way to lose - I took her top off and then kept attacking her nipples until she knocked me out. (More on what happens if you win or lose later.) The game's biggest weakness, I think, is that the boxing match itself is really short - one of you is gonna be knocked out in under a minute. Pine could put up more of a fight, too, but I wouldn't want the game to be too hard. You can always get her top off and then attack her chest if you want to handicap yourself - but, again, since the matches are over in under a minute, it's kind of pointless.

So, after the match is over, one of two things happen. If you win, as promised, you have your way with her; you click though some scenes of her getting nailed. The first part where you're fingering her is in third person, then first person when you're actually giving it to her. When you're done, she's upset and punches you out, which brings up a YOU WIN? screen and the credits.
If you lose, though, nothing happens except Pine says GOODBYE BABY with her thick accent. I kind of wish something else happened when you lost; let Pine have her way with you, so to speak - have her take off those shorts and sit on your face, something like this. Maybe in the sequel.

Once you've cleared the game once, you see this screen on startup - top option plays the intro, middle option takes you right to the match, bottom option takes you right to the fucking. Actually, the middle option might make it so you can box Pine forever; After clicking it once, our life bars never went down, no matter what I do. I'm going to assume this is a feature and not a bug.

(Update: I've been told the menu options are Begin Match, Free Battle, Pine's Room - "Free Battle" must be endless boxing mode.)

Being able to choose which part of the game to go to is nice and adds a little - I don't want to say replay value, but being able to skip to the part you wants makes it a lot more likely that you'll fire the game up again. Which is good, because you'll be done with it in about five minutes. There's something to be said for not having it take half an hour to beat your opponent (with some games we'll be seeing later), but the boxing part could stand to be a lot longer. (Or you could do Free Battle.) As long as you know what you're getting into length wise - if you see yourself beating up poor Pine repeatedly - it's hard to go wrong for $7 and change. And, yes, I'm going to be dazzled by the cheap price as we go through these games.)

(I tried to get a picture of her victorious with her top still on, but even without chosing an option, Pine can't lose unless I throw the match by getting her top off and making her angry. )

Recommended? With reservations; Read the whole review instead of just this, lazy.

Do bear in mind the game has two sequels (linked in the post below this) - they both feature more stuff than this game, so you may want to consider them instead. Then again, I haven't written a review for those yet, have I? Harumph!

DL Site games

So, I just now discovered the english DLSite (thanks to this site), and low and behold, there's some very interesting games on there. I toyed with the idea of trying to make YouTube videos out of them, but I think in the end it's not really suitable - they're either all short, or they have nudity (damn it youtube, everyone has nipples, what's the big deal) or they're in Japanese and I don't want to deal with the endless LOL WHAT DOES THIS SAY SPEAK AMERICAN DUR comments. So instead I'm just going to review them here on my blog. Amazing, right? Here's the lineup of games I'm going to tackle (in no particular order):

rengokuring - menu-based wrestling game?
rengotougi - the sequel
Knuckle Pine - boxing game. Reviewed here.
Knuckle Pine Dash - the sequel
Kunckle Pine TURBO - the second sequel.
OL Fight - Uh, looks like you beat up a OL. Haven't tried the demo yet
On the Ropes - boxing game. Reviewed here.
Pit Viper - a spiritual sequel.
Misaki fights underground battles in the erotic wrestling - Heh, I love discriptive titles.
Fight Club WILDCAT 2 - actually, I have no idea if this is a game or not. Supposedly "This work has several ending patterns which change depending on your choice", which is good enough to get it on this list.
Fight Club WILDCAT 3 - See above.
Harenchi Wrestling: I don't know exactly what this is, but it frankly looks pretty terrifying.
Bokkoboko!!: Again, not sure if this is really a game. One way to find out. Reviewed here.

Obviously, this is going to be a long and ongoing project. If you think I'm missing any, drop me a line or leave a comment and I'll add it to the list.

** Update **

I forgot to mention this, but I'll update this post with a link any time a new DL site product gets reviewed.

And now some plugs

Still working on the WAS image pack; It turns out pixiv is jam packed, so it's probably going to be awhile. Should be quite a spectacle when it's done.
In the meantime, I thought I'd plug some of my favorite video creators. I know I'm forgetting some people, so drop a comment if you're missing.
In no particular order:

SplitRyona: All kinds of stuff, mostly tending towards 2D fighters lately. He helps me out by sending me links to PS2games to make videos from, so go give him some views.

Calpal80833: Wrestle Angel Survivor 2 slideshow movies. Produces WAS2 movies much faster than me, either because he's doing slideshows, or because he isn't a lazy slob. Try making a request here if you don't want to wait for me to fill it. (Don't double dip, though!)

IzunaOtoshi:
The last word in Love Upper videos. Killer backround, too.

M42 Productions (link goes to blog):
The Highlight Reel tool in Smackdown vs Raw 2009 is used to create spectacular matches that look totally different from a normal Smackdown vs Raw match (IE, all the boring stuff is cut out). YouTube yanked these for nebulous (look it up, kids) violations of the "community guidelines", so the link goes to his blog, where you can get the matches direct in higher quality.
Bonus points: The videos include sound clips besides the (literally) two female CAW sound effects SvR09 ships with.

Topless Superheroine Wrestling Leauge (goes to Yahoo group):
Yes, this is just what it sounds like. Haxxxxxxxx are used to remove the tops of superheroines created with Smackdown vs Raw 2008. 18+, of course.

Lapere: Smackdown vs Raw videos. I already posted what is, to me, his masterpiece down below where a chunky vampire beats up Sarah Palin. Here's his channel.

Puppet32ca: Original Rumble Roses videos. Still a great looking game, honestly.

That's everyone I can remember right now; inevitable head-slapping update coming soon.