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Gaming

Gaming, Sketchup
Holy shit
07.17.11 | Permalink | Comment?

Alright, so I failed at the catching up on the blog thing the other day. I’ll try again tomorrow. Right now, there is more important things to discuss than my lack of sticktoitivness.

Remember back in January I posted some concepts I had modeled of arcade cabinets, inspired by my favourite games? Well, just yesterday I was playing Call of Duty: Black Ops on the new DLC maps and I noticed something. On the map Drive-In, there is an arcade with some cabinets and a few skee-ball lanes. Two of the arcade cabinets are Call of Duty : World at War “Uber Shooter” machines, which I got incredibly excited to see. I can’t help but wonder if I had something to do with inspiring this prop.

Kotaku posted my designs back in January, and these maps just got released at the end of June. Is it wrong to think that someone from Treyarch saw my design and thought it was a good idea? or is this the ramblings of a depressed egomaniac desperate for some form of recognition?
Gaming, Life, Photos
Cobra tattoos make Pew Pew Pews
05.26.11 | Permalink | Comment?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I bought a tattoo shop from a creepy old douche. A short time later I booted the douche, and had a fun time working in and owning the shop. During those years I got tattooed weekly. When I finally sold the shop about eight years ago, I decided to slow down the pace at which I was covering my body. I figured I had plenty already, and plenty of life left in which to finish the job, but mainly I wasn’t keen on the idea of having to pay full price (or at all) for the work. Slowing down the pace means, I’ve been tattooed once since I left the shop.

Last week, my good friend Tony Mike (who has become my other main zombie killing partner, whenever Holly isn’t available) got a tattoo we had been talking about. It’s a Raygun from Call of Duty Nazi Zombies, which is one of our favourites, and absolutely essential to survival. Tony works at a nice shop in Burlington, with his good friend and roommate, Franz. Franz tattoos, and often the four of us (Franz, Tony, Holly and I) team up to kill zombies together. Tony set us up with some appointments on Saturday, so Holly and I both got the beautiful blaster above.

I now know what I want for my next few tattoos, and who I want to do them. Now it’s just a matter of time and money.
Gaming, Video
Call of the Cobra
05.26.11 | Permalink | Comment?

This is a video I made of me playing the new zombie map on Call of Duty. I shot the video with my camera, then uploaded and edited it using the Playstation 3 video editor/uploader function. I mostly made this to show my friends I play with regularly how awesome I am when I play solo, and also because none of us were aware you could get the Wunderwaffe by killing George Romero. I’m still not sure if you get it for killing him when playing solo, or if it’s got to do with how early in the rounds I killed him (normally I kill him closer to round 12 or higher). Either way, if you’re into the COD Zombies, check it out. And if you’re not into COD Zombies then the video is probably equally as boring as reading to this point has been.

But, unless someone has a Wunderwaffe pointed at your head it’s your own fault I suppose.
Gaming, Video
Mother’s Day F-Ballin
05.19.11 | Permalink | Comment?

As I previously mentioned, I recorded (or rather Holly recorded) the inaugural match on the new Foosball table. For those who are interested, the match is a little over seven minutes in length, and although I dominate my mother the entire time it begins with me scoring a goal on myself.

Also featured in this video is my inability to win without gloating, and my father’s obsessive compulsive need to make everything perfect.

Go Cobras!
Gaming, Life, Photos
Foosball flashbacks
05.19.11 | Permalink | Comment?

A couple weeks ago Holly and I drove up to Toronto in her work van built for hauling bodies, to obtain the Foosball table pictured above. It was kindly donated to the Cobra game room (currently located in my parent’s basement) courtesy of Jon and Laura. Apparently Laura had it for years, but rarely (or maybe even never) used it. When she moved out she left it with her parents. Recently they decided to move, and wanted to get rid of it. I was more than happy to take it, and my parents were kind enough to allow me to add it to the pile of stuff I keep at their house.

When I was a kid I loved playing on the table at Rack and Roll with my friends. It wasn’t our favourite game to play, but it was the cheapest. It was also one of the few games where, if you were quick (or smart and sneaky), you could prevent the ball from ever falling into the goal, and a 50¢ game would last until we got busted or bored or a fight broke out.

Once, when I was about 14 (mum, you may want to stop reading around here), myself and a group of friends went to smoke a couple joints and kick a hacky sack around at an elementary school (after hours of course). A couple minutes after we finished our “session” a cop dressed in a Kevlar vest, army boots and aviators came walking around the corner with his German shepherd. I think everyone panicked at that moment, but some of us handled it better than others. After calling backup, searching us all, expressing disappointment, confiscating the first pipe I ever made, and giving us back all our pot the cops then informed us all that they’d be paying each of our parents a visit that evening. They told us we had better be there when they arrived, so to head home now and inform our parents that they were on their way to break the news – your kids suck and are evil.

Dallas and I may have only been 14, but we weren’t stupid. We decided the cops had just tried to get us to rat ourselves out. It took some convincing on our behalf, but we eventually got everyone to agree that the best thing to do was ignore the cops advice and go play Foosball. Now whenever I play Foosball, I think of the night we outsmarted the cops.

I took a video of the first game played on the new table (The Cobras Vs. The Cobra Mums), but I’m not having any luck getting it to embed on this post. I’ll post it later using Gage’s computer. My HTML functions are messed up when using Linux ever since WordPress updated.
Gageisms, Gaming, Photos
Puny PPSH
05.02.11 | Permalink | Comment?

As many of you already know, we’re all really big fans of the Russian made PPSH sub-machine gun in this family. Ask any of us what our favourite zombie slaying tool is, and I guarantee the answer would be the PPSH.

Gage is in the process of learning pneumatics and hydraulics right now. His class was assigned a project where they had to make something move using either pneumatic or hydraulic devices (syringes), so Gage chose to make something from Nazi Zombies. We’re creating the game’s Mystery Box, and are decorating its base with things you would see in the game. I decided to attempt to model a PPSH out of this Crayola clay stuff we found at Michaels. I think it turned out pretty good, and I’m amazed that my idea for blending two browns to make a wood grain finish sort of worked. I have modeled a PPSH in the past, but that was different.

I will make a post about his entire project once we’re done, which should be later tonight. Hopefully it works as good as it looks.
Gaming, Life
Joe Rogan
05.02.11 | Permalink | Comment?

For my birthday, Holly got us tickets to see Joe Rogan at Massey Hall last Friday. I figured it would be a great show, I like every stand-up special he’s done and I enjoy his views on all kinds of things. I wasn’t really sure what to expect since I hadn’t ever been to a large comedy show like that before. I was surprised to see that there was an opener, and even more surprised to learn he didn’t suck. He was on stage when we walked in, and did about 20 minutes or so before introducing a special guest, Doug Benson. I was excited when they announced he was the special guest because I also really like his stand-up, and his movie Super High Me. He didn’t do as long of a set as I had hoped, but I think that’s because he had two shows the next two nights himself, and a lot of the people there would be seeing jokes twice if he did too much. Or maybe he was just ready to go get super high again.

It was a great show. I heard all new material from Joe Rogan, and discovered a new comedian I like. Thanks to Holly for taking me and being awesome as always, and thanks to Jon and Laura for getting the tickets, providing us with a place to crash, and all the other delicious treats. After the show we stopped at Gamestop and Jon picked up the new Mortal Kombat game. I grabbed a copy of World at War for Ryan-O to hopefully entice him to start killing zombies with Holly and I. We got back to Jon and Laura’s place and Holly got comfy, cracked a book and passed out before Jon and I got ourselves ready for 5 hours of intense Mortal Kombat – a perfect way to end the night!

I highly recommend checking out all three of the comedians above, as well as (if you’re a gamer), the new Mortal Kombat. All are very entertaining.
Angry Art, Gaming, Sketchup
Cobra cabinet slips through cracks
02.18.11 | Permalink | Comment?

I was looking through some of my renderings this morning and realized I had forgotten to post this. When I originally posted my arcade cabinet concepts I made the mistake of claiming it would be impossible to render the machine and include the screen shot and other imported images that appear in the model. I figured it all out the day after I posted the cabinets, then spent a day avoiding my machine while it struggled to pump out a few low-res images which would hopefully look real. They aren’t as good as I’d hoped, but they still look okay.

I avoided posting them right away because there was an abundance of arcade cabinet images on the front page of this blog already, and although these look much cooler than the previous ones, they’re essentially the same thing. Then I forgot all about it.

The way I fixed the problem was actually incredibly simple and gave me a bunch of ideas for fun things to make in the future. Basically I have to turn the images into textures, then do a little fiddling and adjusting until everything looks right. If I wasn’t so busy with the book right now, or if I had another machine, I would do some sweet renderings of the other cabinets I designed. For now, they’ll have to wait.
Angry Art, Gaming, Sketchup
Cool guy looking to meet other cool guys who want to play games together online – Nothing sexual
02.10.11 | Permalink | Comment?

In case you forgot about my love for all things video game, I will reiterate it now; I love video games! I especially love online games I can play with my friends. This seems to be getting ever more difficult to arrange however, and I find myself getting frustrated. The problem is that not all my friends game and of the ones who do, not all play what I play or when I play. The other day I gave Jon shit for not putting his project on hold so we could kill some zombies, and I told him I was working on a flier to help me recruit some new cool gaming friends that game more games than him (borrowing an idea I saw on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Above is my idea for a graphic for said flier. I didn’t spend much time on it (maybe half an hour), but I really like it.

This morning I pitched an idea to Jon for a gamer networking site that connects online players with people who share similar interests and online ethics that would otherwise never find each other. He agreed that it’s a decent idea, but he’s got far too many things on the go to take on another project. If I didn’t feel the same I’d consider taking it upon myself to learn the necessary programing to create such a site, but who knows how long that would actually take. I have no idea what is involved in turning my concepts into reality (but I hear it helps to have a moustache). Jon suggested he first create a site that connects programmers with knobs like myself who are full of ideas, but lack technical knowledge. I think that’s his passive aggressive attempt at telling me to find some other programming friends while I’m out canvassing for gamers.
Angry Art, Gaming, Sketchup
Co(bra)taku
01.27.11 | Permalink | Comment?

For years I have been reading Kotaku on basically a daily basis. It’s a great source for all things game related. One thing I like about their site is that they feature a lot of fan made art and game related crafts. Another thing I like is that they seem to share my love for the old arcades. I decided to send them some images of my Bully cabinet, and they were kind enough to post them on the front page.

I’m happy to finally contribute to that community after years of following it quite loyally. It’s also neat to have a place to show these things to people who appreciate them. My blog doesn’t get a lot of traffic, and what little it does seems to shy away from commenting. I am really enjoying reading the comments people are leaving, even though the majority of them have nothing to do with my creation. It’s just neat to see how many other Bully fanatics are still out there.

Here’s some of the nice things people said:

“Bully is easily one of my favorite games ever. I would literally drool over this arcade cabinet… awesome, awesome stuff.”

LucasReis

“Bully was such an awesome game. I’d love to have this.”

Chewblaha

And here is my favourite comment thus far:

“Take the exercise bike out. Nothing can glorify exercise for me. Not even awesome games. NOTHING! ”

SgtBarry

Another neat thing… I think the first ‘tweet‘ in history that had (indirectly) anything at all to do with me was posted by one of gaming’s most notorious writers, Stephen Totilo.