August 14, 2015 by Adam Sheehan

These Orc Attacks are Bring Down our Property Value

Image: http://www.geeksofdoom.com/2012/04/10/the-simpsons-creator-matt-groening-finally-reveals-town-of-springfields-real-location

There are many worlds from many stories. Some full of dangerous creatures, others covered in frozen sheets of ice, even a few with little teddy bears with sharp sticks.

But do any of them have a skate park?

If you had to live in one of the worlds from all of those stories that we have all read, seen, and enjoyed which one would it be? If you had to live somewhere what would be the things that were most important? and I really mean live there. Not start on some random moisture farm to be whisked away to join a random old man on some damned fool adventure. If you had to spend the next 50+ years some where, where would that place be?

Let’s look at some options based on 4 key criteria most people would say are important to living some place.

1. Economic standards: Are there good jobs, is the economy growing, a total lack of goons coming around asking for protection money
2. Least likely to be attacked by bad guys: Is there an insurrection by the people every Tuesday or some galactic empire that comes a knock’n for new recruits regularly
3. Good place to raise kids: What kind of schools do they have, places to play that aren’t filled with turrets that fire lasers
4. Entertainment options and culture: What are their arts districts like, how is the local quidditch team these days, can you get froyo delivered by a unicorn

Cloud City

1. Economic standards: The gas mining business is pretty much the only game in town. But if that’s your thing, this is your kind of place.
2. Least likely to be attacked by bad guys: Well, there was this one time…
3. Good place to raise kids: Not unless you want them to grow up singing “Coal Miner’s Daughter” with a bit of a space cowboy twang to it.
4. Entertainment options and culture: Friday night is toss the droid parts with the Ugnaughts and there is that one guy with the ice cream maker. He’s really popular there.

Mushroom Kingdom

1. Economic standards: They live on the gold coin standard. There is always a need for new workers to help build towers, bridges, and pipes. So many pipes.
2. Least likely to be attacked by bad guys: I recommend moving into Toad’s house until the whole Koopa issue is dealt with
3. Good place to raise kids: The schools are lacking but the playgrounds are killer
4. Entertainment options and culture: Do you like shell games and sounds of whistles?

The city from Logan’s Run

1. Economic standards: Now work, no worries. It’s all play all the time.
2. Least likely to be attacked by bad guys: Just don’t run and you’ll be fine
3. Good place to raise kids: Not really an issue
4. Entertainment options and culture: Every kind of entertainment you can imagine, the 18 – 24 demo is king, and you really should check out Carrousel. It’s like a sci-fi Cirque Du Soleil.

Evangelion – Tokyo-3

Nope.

Image: http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/vision-aou-vs-superman-mos-1665789/

Metropolis

1. Economic standards: Lex Corp is always hiring and the newspaper industry still exists
2. Least likely to be attacked by bad guys: Bad stuff happen but as long as big blue is there things should be fine. Well, as long as Zac Snyder isn’t involved.
3. Good place to raise kids: One hell of a great role model that’s for sure
4. Entertainment options and culture: Having a dull afternoon? Just look to the sky and wait.

Sunnydale

1. Economic standards: Sunny California suburb with all the things you would expect. Your local main street stores, assortment of parks, and a subterranean mystical portal that attracts evil forces.
2. Least likely to be attacked by bad guys: 50/50 is not the worst odds
3. Good place to raise kids: A great training ground for some bad ass teens
4. Entertainment options and culture: Lot’s of choice spots to make new friends. Like dark alleyways, abandoned factories, and a variety of gothic cemeteries.

Image: http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/team-luther-strode-vs-attack-on-titan-1643640/

The Walled City

1. Economic standards: Trades a bit tight as of late. Might be a bad time to buy a house.
2. Least likely to be attacked by bad guys: It depends. Which wall are you most behind?
3. Good place to raise kids: They have this new ‘scared straight’ program that’s all the rage
4. Entertainment options and culture: Do you like running away from things?

August 6, 2015 by Adam Sheehan - 1 Comment

A Shelf is Worth a Thousand Words

Do you have a shelf? I’m betting you do. I don’t mean just a regular shelf for regular things. I mean a glorious shelf of the amazing things. The shelf that when people come to visit look up and down to see what you’re into, what you love, and how you like show that all off.

We have a shelf, or, shelves like that in our house. We call it The Shelves of Great Nerdery. A place to keep all the little things we’ve collected over the years as a showcase of what we want people to associate with us. Totems of our lifestyle.

I’ve seen all kinds of shelves dedicated to all sorts of things. Action figures lined up by release dates with each shelf a different toy line. Shelves made of old hard back books bought in bulk at an auction house. Anime DVDs bookended by anime VHS tapes. All shapes and all sizes. So what is it that makes us naturally want to build a shelf? We put things upon it like a trophy case where the ‘best in show’ ribbon came in a blister pack. Be it one shelf or a dedicated room this seems to be in our DNA for all who collect stuff of some kind.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a nicely designed shelf can say a lot about what you want others to perceive of you. Row’s of Xbox games towering next to a large TV: “I’m a gamer”. A dedicated shelf overflowing with con badges and event pictures: “I like to go to conventions”. Some shelf obsessions go even further and more specific if that is important to that person. A shelf of one brand of tea containers, new and old, that sits over a breakfast nook that has bay window with space between each container for a book: “I like to have my favorite tea while I sit and read with the sun coming through the window.”

What is on a shelf, how everything is arranged, and why it was added are all parts of the story. Let’s dissect one of my shelves as an example.

1. A custom card with the text ‘you blew it’ in fancy lettering a comic friend of mine hands out at bars from time to time
2. 12” Boba Fett figure. One of the few remaining items from my Star Wars addiction days.
3. Issues 1-3 of Ranma 1/2. The only time the manga was ever in full color. My first convention purchase ever (1997).
4. A Buddha statue from the first time I visited the Ft. Worth Japanese Gardens
5. Voltron mini figures. One of the few items I didn’t sell off of my near complete Voltron collection
6. Stack of Yotsuba manga. Because if you ever need a smile just pick one up and read it.
7. A tea cup my girlfriend bought from the now closed Japanese Sakura Taisen Cafe
8. Panda-Z imported figure that was gifted to me by an old friend who had “too much shit that needed to find a new home”
9. Prinny fans from Anime Expo the year I was told about Disgaea. A game my girlfriend obsesses over.
10. Disney’s The Black Hole puzzle I’ve had since I was 5
11. The two way pager that I got from my first college internship designing websites at Motorola (Thank you HTML for Dummies!). This bad boy saved my ass multiple times in college. I don’t think the plan was suppose to go for an extra year but I sure was happy it did.
12. 5-Barrel rum bottle from the first vacation to Belize my girlfriend and I took together. My first vacation that didn’t involve me going to a Disney park, taking my daughter to a Disney park, or some random college spring break adventure.
13. What remains of my original Magic The Gathering collection from high school. Including cards I made up that for some reason my friends actually let me play in real games.

All these stories condensed into a 4 foot space. A level of efficiency Twitter should be envious of.

Your shelf can also acts as a timeline of your fandom. The shelf you started in high school (an old wine glass rack I filled with anime VHS tapes in my case) can say just as much about you as your yearbook photo. As your fandom evolves so does your shelf. You may have even changed out your shelf entirely. Big in to baseball as a kid, Gundam model kits in college, and now it’s Criterion Collection Blu-rays and rare 35mm prints of classic films. Like moving from a 6-pack of Bud Light to bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, your tastes have grown with you.

Do you have a shelf? I would love to hear all about it and see any pictures if you got them. If the comments section below doesn’t allow pictures feel free to share them on my Facebook page or Tweet them at me.

July 23, 2015 by Adam Sheehan - 1 Comment

I Live. I Die. I Live Again: Retro Gaming Culture and Why it’s Here to Stay

Like many of you I’m a big retro video game fan. 8 & 16 bit games and all the things that surround them are my happy place. My warm and fuzzy feeling. My blanket and hot coco. Show me a Nintendo Power cover from 1991 or whistle the theme from Mega Man 2 and you might just hear me give an audible sigh of zen like calm. Putting all these feelings aside I think retro video games are here to stay. To better clarify, I think the idea of retro video games will out live the generation that grew up with them. Retro gaming culture is now part of the pop culture vernacular, and here is why I think that.

Have you seen the kids today? They think retro is cool and I’m betting many of them haven’t ever played an NES! So …what’s up with that, right? From kids, teens, to college age boys and girls there is a love for retro gaming culture that has little ties to the source material other than a ripple of an echo of murmur of an old man saying, “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.”

Yes there is a generation of kids today that have parents, older siblings, or other close influential roles in their lives that did grow up with retro gaming. Be it Atari, Nintendo, Sega, or just living in bowling alley arcades plugging in quarter after quarter in a Zaxxon cabinet. With Gen X and Y (insert Pokemon joke here) coming into the age of influence and many of them never really wanting to grow up, the seeds of retro gaming culture were spread far beyond just their childhood living rooms.

Retro gaming culture reaches beyond just playing games. My daughter loves Zelda but has barely played any of the games. Love the music, watching walkthrough videos, the characters, the cosplay, the fan art, etc. The feeling of playing the games has now extended past their plastic cartridge casings and into the emotional tethers of people’s lives. Like feeling nostalgic for something you never experienced.

EDM music has influence from retro game music, a.k.a. chip tunes. Chip tunes is a genre of music for christ’s sake! It’s not just seen as some creepy calliope music from some bygone area. The beeps and boops that made games like Contra, Super Mario World, and Ducktales so great have built a new part of the music industry. The music from the stage select menu of Japanese-only mahjong Game Boy game has influenced the quarterly sales of iTunes globally.

The expansion of the virtual console will keep these games, and with it the culture, around for much longer than they were expected too. Before you had to wait for a ‘gaming classics’ re-release port for PS1 or someone to remake Oregon Trail for Windows 95. Now games that voted for President Carter and lived through slap bracelets can be downloaded to your phone for 99 cents.

Museums! Video games are now in museums. I thought it was crazy when Luke’s X-wing was put in the Smithsonian but now we are seeing rare vintage game consoles and peripherals behind display glass as well. There is even a History of Video Games Museum opening later this year (less than an hour from my house #happydance)! Some day a confused child might ask, “Is that Samus?” when looking at the Mona Lisa.

8 & 16-bit designs. This is a style of art that has caught on quickly with pop culture fans. Not sure if pearler beads were the reason this tread started off so strong but its all over ever Artists Alley at conventions nationwide. From tiny keychain Dragon Balls to 4 foot tall Final Fantasy final bosses.

Like fashion, music, and all styles; things come in popularity and then fall out of popularity. Only to be popular again further down the road. Retro gaming culture is now part of that fly wheel. When it drops out of favor with this generation another further down the road will pick it back up. Who knows, maybe your great grand kids will walk up to one day and tell you about this new hot game called ‘Super Mario Bros’.

April 30, 2015 by Adam Sheehan

Rolling 20s with your Role Model

When I was 8 I wanted to be a truck. Not just any truck but a red Kenworth K100 so bad ass that when it showed up you knew things were going to be alright. Of course I’m speaking of Optimus Prime. After an episode of The Transformers you could find me running out the door with my friends making Transformer noises, jumping over imaginary barriers, shooting the invisible hoards of Decepticons scattered around the backyard.

I will add that back then after watching almost any tv show or movie that I thought was amazing I could almost always find some character to bond with. Causing me to run around with the same vigor and boundless imagination as mentioned above. Swinging around a broom like a lightsaber making whooshing sounds, running from imaginary giant boulders in the woods on a treasure hunt, or looking for ghosts with a PKE meter made from an old remote and some cardboard. I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences.

Going back to Optimus, there are some characters that stand out more than just an imaginary friend or the toy you always took with you on vacation. Some play a bigger role that you might not have realized back when you were a kid. A role that would help set you on a path to being a better person. The role of a role model.

First, I don’t want to discount any real life role models. Family members, friends, public figures, etc. These can of course be an amazing source for finding a role model. Here though we are going to talk about the kind that are not flesh and blood. More like ink and memorable voice acting.

A good role model is ‘a person looked to by others as an example to be imitated’ as the internet tells me. There are many of these kinds of characters in pop culture. Characters to guide us and teach us how to be better than we currently are. Show us how to stand up taller, be stronger, and to care about others more than ourselves.

Role Models Breakdown & Examples

Hard working – Peter Parker/Spider-Man
- Saving NYC from everything under the sun and still able to punch the clock as a photographer for Daily Bugle with only being yelled at by your boss every other day. That takes a work ethic on a level most of us won’t dare attempt on our good days after 5 cups of coffee.
Creative problem solver – Sherlock Homes
- Any version of Sherlock Homes owns at problem solving. From the classic books to Cumberbatch. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” I’m betting he pre-solves Rubix Cubes in his sleep.
Open minded – Samus Aran
- Samus lead the charge when it came to the extermination of the Metroids. You would think she would never side, let alone protect, a Metroid. If you have played Super Metroid you probably well remember the climactic final boss fight that can be summed up as, ‘Get away from her you bitch: rainbow laser beam edition’.
Brave – Kamina
- Three words: Pierce. The. Heavens. Determined to always keep moving forward and protect his friends no matter what they were up against. Always the first to run into a fight or push forward to make his goals a reality. “Whether impossible or laughable, we continue to walk the path of men!” Dude was hardcore with a capital H.
Have a good conscience – Clark Kent/Superman
- Truth, justice, and the American way. Do I really need to say more about the ultimate boy scout? There has been some darker storylines in the pantheon of Superman but at the very core of the man of steel he full of absolute goodness.

Over all the importance of a role model is generally expected to decrease as one gets older. The lessons and the feelings can still remain but asking yourself ‘What would He-Man do?” during a meeting on quarterly budgets with your boss might not be the best idea. One of those, “When I was a child I thought as a child; but when I grew up I put my childish things on eBay” situations. If you are reading this I’m betting that might not be the case for you. For some reason us in fandom tend to carry our feelings, attachments, and overall love for what others might call ‘kids stuff’ longer than most. The same tends to go for role models.

I’m not going to dive too far into the idea of how pop culture has changed the growth patterns of Americans over the past few decades leading us to never really growing up because that’s a much longer topic than we have time for today. I do want to briefly discuss why we choose the role models that stay with us through out the years. What makes us hold true to Yoda’s teachings and not Snake Eyes? Why find strength from Sailor Moon and not Jem? When does the calming voice in your head sound like Yuna and not Zelda?

In my humble opinion it’s because of specific personal moments in your life with a character. These could be as big as your Rainbow Brite blanket was the only thing you could save from a house fire or as small as you ate Nintendo Cereal every morning for a year and preferred the Mario side over the Zelda side.

These kind of moments puts a seed in your heart that grows into something much larger. A moment that you go back to when needing comfort, guidance, strength, and whatever other emotions you have tied to it. The role model becomes a totem for this moment and all your feelings associated with it. A stronger bond is solidified, not to be broken easily. Not even by Micheal Bay or Joel Schumacher.

What are the role models you had when you were young that you still hold dear to and what makes them special to you? I would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below or feel free to hit me up on Twitter at @neumaverick.

April 22, 2015 by Adam Sheehan

Upgrade to the latest version of your beloved past today

Near the end of 2013 Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. The proverbial follow up to their mega-hit, and my personal favorite in the series, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Link to the Past was one of my favorite SNES games ever so when I heard they were basically releasing a love letter to it there was no way I could pass on playing this game. Hell, I got the Zelda exclusive 3DS solely for this reason.

After completing Link Between Worlds I thought about how great this game was from start to finish. To my surprise this left me with a strange and uneasy feeling. Which made no sense at the time and the more I thought about it the worse it would get. This game was EXACTLY what I dreamed it would be. It delivered on all fronts. Great game play, music, story, and had everything I loved about Link to the Past at its core. Using everything the 3DS had to offer this game surpassed its predecessor with ease. So this meant that Link Between Worlds was my new forgive Zelda title right? Logic should deem this would be the case, but I just wasn’t willing to bump Link to the Past off its throne. I actually started to feel bad about how I was feeling shortly after making this realization. What was fogging my logic here? What was I clinging to with Link to the Past that I wasn’t ready to let go of yet? I’ve not usually one to fight change or growth.

In a word: Nostalgia.

I’m betting many of you have felt nostalgic towards something. That warm fuzzy feeling associated to some item, event, or place that when you take a moment to think about it you can’t help but smile. Or as Don Draper put it in one of my favorite ad pitches from Mad Men, “Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.”

My feelings of nostalgia are very strong with Link to the Past. Heck, even as I type this I’m watching a walkthrough of the game on YouTube. I love to write to old school video game walkthroughs. ^_^ I knew my nostalgia for Link to the Past was strong but when presented with pretty much the same game as if it was made today instead of back in 1991 I in no way thought it would jump in to block its successor. Like an old king past his prime not ready to pass the crown to the next in line.

This lead me to think about how powerful a role nostalgia can play when looking at updates and remakes of beloved entertainment properties.

Battlestar Galactica is a good example. The original series is highly loved by those who grew up with it back in the last 70’s. I caught this in syndication in the early 80’s so I enjoyed the series but never tied too much nostalgia to it. When the new Battlestar series launched in 2004 to great praise I remember talking with some people who grew up on the original series about it. They were enjoying the relaunch but just couldn’t detach their feelings for it away from the original series. I saw the same unsure looks on their faces I had after finishing Link Between Worlds.

This was more than just fear of change, it felt closer to a fear of loosing those good feelings tied to the past. I don’t think any of us actually believe that remaking or continuing something will negate past emotional connections but still these feelings spring up.

Does marathoning Super Mario Bros. U in an afternoon take away the time when you and your cousins played Super Mario 3 for an entire summer? Does Seeing Evangelion 2.22: You Can [Not] Advance at an anime convention lessen the semester in college when you hosted Neon Genesis Evangelion discussion groups in your dorm? Of course not. Then why do we sometimes still feel this way, maybe only on an unconscious level, even when we know it not to be true? This seems to be something deeper.

I have a theory on the possible cause for this. We are all still inherently tied to a 40,000+ year old piece of nostalgia that as a species we haven’t found a way to let go of yet. Stay with me.

Why Homer will never give up donuts and beer

The Amygdala or ‘lizard brain’ as it’s sometimes called is at fault here. This is a set of neurons in the brain that controls many of our emotions and motivations such as fear, anger, and pleasure. It is responsible for determining what memories are stored in the brain and is believed to also determine how strong of an emotional response an event invokes as well. In short, the amygdala keeps you alive by tying pain and pleasure signals to memories and doesn’t like to rewrite or rewire anything it doesn’t have to.

Part of the Amygdala’s functions is focused towards loss eversion, so you can be quite sure it will go totally agro when challenged. Using my Zelda experience as an example let’s walk through this theory.

I played Link to the Past when I was younger. Video games were very enjoyable, scarce, and important to me
- Amygdala creates a strong tie between Link to the Past and the time I first played it
- Events grow into nostalgia over the next few decades
I played Link Between Worlds as an adult. Video games are still very enjoyable, but a lot more accessible, and not as important as they use to be
- Amygdala seems similar emotions and triggers with Link to the Past
- Create pain signals to override logic to stop any chances of damaging the ties it created with Link to the Past

A survival mechanism at its best. Seriously, evolution is pretty bad ass to build this kind of emotional fire wall.

What do you think? When the feeling of nostalgia is threatened, is it part of our lizard brain that causes us to feel a bit defensive about something new? Have you ever experienced this feeling with a remake or update to something you have a special place in your heart for? I would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below or feel free to hit me up on Twitter at @neumaverick.