Posted at 7:56 AM Jul 06, 2009
By Caleb GoellnerConsumer culture is a mixed blessing. We have cool gadgets, free network TV and junk food available at every whim. This utopia comes with a hefty price tag, though, and it's not just free will or individuality or whatever the hippies like to argue - it's awful videogames. Capitalism is alright most of the time and gamers understand that their precious platforms ain't a charity - it's all about supply and demand, which is why historically, the number of games touting established licenses practically merits its own genre. Pimping a movie tie-in, cartoon or sports star can be ridiculously lucrative and really, there's nothing wrong with the practice as long as the games accomplish the prime directive: being awesome and fun. Unfortunately the lust for money has pushed many developers into releasing less-than-stellar games in the name of branding over the years. The quality of these games ranges from simply uninspired to straight up unplayable -- smacking gamers with IPs like a canoe paddle to the parietal lobe. Read on to examine the ten corporate games most worthy of snob scorn and hippie hostilities.
Read more "The 10 Most Heinously..." >>
Posted at 8:03 AM Jul 03, 2009
By Chris Cummins
Photographer, poet, songbird,
Vulcan, TV salesman, Friend of Bigfoot. Leonard Nimoy is all of these things
and more. Working steadily as an actor, director and writer since the early
1950s, Nimoy has proven himself to be a true Hollywood renaissance man over the
years despite never truly being able to emerge from the shadow of Mr. Spock.
His ambivalent feelings over this matter are discussed at length in his memoirs
I Am Not Spock and I Am Spock, both of which should be required
reading for nerds everywhere (Zachary Quinto may want to check them out as
well). As you are doubtlessly aware, Mr. Nimoy recently emerged from a
self-imposed break from the entertainment industry to take high-profile roles
in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek and Fringe. In honor of Leonard Nimoy's
welcome return to the public eye, let us pay tribute to his greatest
achievements that didn't require the donning of rubber ears.
Read more "The 10 Awesomest..." >>
Posted at 7:55 AM Jul 02, 2009
By Kevin J. GuhlThe greatest action figures of the 1980s never really went away. G.I. Joe, Transformers and Masters of the Universe have persisted in some form in the toy aisles during the last 25 years. Even Voltron continues to get new toys on occasion, but there is one big '80s toy-based property that has yet to get its due -- Thundercats.
Thundercats was perhaps not quite popular enough to be among the upper pantheon of 1980s action figures, but it was certainly close and is fondly remembered today by 30+-year-olds. Sure, Thundercats lives on in the kind of nostalgia-based t-shirts and bumper stickers that one would find at Hot Topic, while a CGI movie is reported to be in development. But given the amount of relaunched '80s toys in '00s-era toy stores, it's insane that there have not been new Thundercats figures in stores! It's hard to believe that no toy company has obtained the rights to produce more Thundercats toys, be they reissues of the originals or, better yet, new figures of the characters made to today's higher standards. Mattel's Masters of the Universe Classics series has proven that a direct-to-collector toyline with smaller runs can be successful. Let's hope that happens for Thundercats, or that perhaps we'll get an excellent wide-release toyline when and if the new film happens. Until then, here are the 12 best Thundercats figures from the original LJN series.
Read more "The 12 Best Thundercats..." >>
Posted at 8:06 AM Jul 01, 2009
By Caleb GoellnerSummer is a time for many wonderful activities, most of which involve pretending it's any season other than summer. As sure as sunshine, unpleasant heat merits the pursuit of cooling oneself with efficiency and, if possible, fun. That's where swimming pools come in. But cool water isn't really enough, is it? Most folks demand more of pools than simple refreshment and plastic pool toys respond in kind, delivering the best in floating, squirting and swim-inspiring technology. But that's not all; many pool toys bear the marks of nerdom's greatest licenses, providing boys and girls a blessed incentive to prevent personal heat stroke. Continue reading to discover why, when it's time for fun in the sun, it's best to beat the heat with these nine nerdy peripherals.
Read more "The 9 Greatest Water..." >>
Posted at 7:57 AM Jun 30, 2009
By Shaun ClaytonThe era of the Saturday Morning cartoon is over. Sure, a few cartoons air on Saturday mornings, but these are few and far between -- it hardly compare to the '70s and and '80-s, when all three major networks had 'toons on from 6am until football or wrestling. Hell, there were so many animated shows that networks were always desperate for new series, and were willing to air anything -- anything -- just as long as it filled 22 minutes of airtime. It didn't matter how stupid the concept sounded, hell, it didn't matter if kids even liked it as long as they watched it... which is how so many incredibly stupid cartoons made it on TV, only to thankfully disappear one season later. Here are eight of the worst.
Read more "8 Saturday Morning..." >>
Posted at 8:03 AM Jun 29, 2009
By Todd CiolekIt's no wonder barbarian fantasy is the genre of choice among many sexist, mediocre film directors and pulp authors. No other school of fiction provides such an immediate excuse for men to be violent warriors, for women to be easily exploited objects, and for plots to make no real sense. When you're filling a story with bulked-out cavemen and curiously well-groomed women in fur swimsuits, few people will bother criticizing your narrative subtexts.
No one really expects barbarian tales to be smart, and the same goes for the protagonists of such tales. After all, that's their appeal: they're brawny, fearless types who shun the suffocating depravities of civilization and hygiene. Of course, most barbarian chroniclers miss the point of this and end up with heroes who aren't just simple-minded; they're full-blown stupid, and so are their stories. And with the explosion in Conan the Barbarian imitators since the 1980s, we've seen lots of stupid things.
Read more "The 8 Dumbest Barbarian..." >>
Posted at 8:05 AM Jun 26, 2009
By Jason F.C. Clarke
As many readers so gently pointed out, our last list of famous geek arguments may have been incomplete. Well, fear not -- we've compiled a second list of incredibly nerdy topics for you to hash out in our comments below. Read on, brave geek, and then choose your side -- but choose wisely! Or arbitrarily. Whatever.
Read more "10 More Famous Geek..." >>
Categories: Daily Lists, Nerdery
Tags: Aliens, He-Man, Nerd Fights, Nintendo, Predator, Robocop, Sega, Star Trek, Star Wars, Terminator, Transformers
Posted at 8:03 AM Jun 24, 2009
By Adrian Beiting
Watching a movie that prominently features a really cool toy is a
double-edged sword. On one hand, you've just found out about some cool toy that
you just have to get your mitts on. On the other, even when you get it, it's
probably not going to be nearly as awesome as the one you just spent 90 minutes
drooling over because Stan Winston and Pixar didn't make it, some toy company trying to spend the least amount possible did. Thus, here is a
list of toys from movies that we really wanted, and the crappy actual movie toys we got instead.
Read more "The 5 Most Disappointing..." >>
Posted at 8:05 AM Jun 23, 2009
By Kevin J. GuhlTime travel is a magic tonic for the writers of
Star Trek. For some reason, episodes about time travel generally manage to be more creative and interesting than the average
Star Trek episode, even in seasons that suffered from mediocre writing. Outside of "The Wrath of Khan," the two most arguably well-received
Star Trek movies were
The Voyage Home and
First Contact, both of which focused on time travel. It's no wonder that the most recent
Star Trek film threw in time travel as a crucial plot element. Success! In fact,
Star Trek has gone back to that gravity well for more than 50 episodes and movies, and that's not even counting the fact that whole seasons of
Enterprise were focused on time-traveling alien terrorists. The crew of
Voyager used the plot device so much that the time cops had to stop by and give them a warning about it! (Maybe that was the writers wryly telling themselves that, as well.) Either way,
Star Trek has produced so many good time travel stories that it's hard to narrow it down to a manageable list. These 14 movies and episodes, however, prove that no one does time travel quite as well as
Star Trek.
Read more "The 14 Greatest..." >>
Posted at 7:57 AM Jun 22, 2009
By Todd CiolekFew games warped kids quite like
Mortal Kombat did. Violent, controversial attractions have clung to the game industry ever since the 1970s and Exidy's
Death Race, yet Midway did something special by putting
Mortal Kombat into arcades back in 1992. For a quarter or two, any passing child could try out a digitized, blood-spurting battle to the death, and they didn't need home systems, the Internet, or permission from mom or dad.
Mortal Kombat was soon a massive, gory success, with all of the parental complaints and hand-wringing it deserved.
Mortal Kombat also got the imitators it deserved: garish, horribly made fighters that made even
Mortal Kombat 3 look appealing. This also makes
Mortal Kombat clones a bit more interesting than the even larger field of
Street Fighter II knock-offs.
Street Fighter II started the whole fighting-game craze, but it was a more sedate and cartoon-ish game, and its copycats were usually bland and forgettable. We'd much rather look at
Mortal Kombat rip-offs, with their eye lasers and dismemberment and fireball-spewing crotches. One note: don't look for
Killer Instinct or
Primal Rage. Next to what we're covering,
Killer Instinct and
Primal Rage are high art.
Read more "The 11 Worst Mortal..." >>
Posted at 8:06 AM Jun 19, 2009
By Kevin J. Guhl
Some of you might be clinging onto the notion
that Topless Robot has a shred of good taste left. Well, today's list should
put that notion to rest, as we explore the wonderful world of porno parodies.
For just about any popular movie or TV series you can think of, someone else
has already thought of a dirty
version of its name and spent a sweaty L.A. afternoon filming a low budget sex
romp that might have a fleeting similarity to the source being parodied, if you're
lucky. Nevertheless, let us today salute the ability of the porn industry to
create parodies that make us chuckle and snort. Ah, the porn world's thorough
grasp of juvenile humor is second to none. Here are the most
"clever" porn parodies of belovedly nerdy shows and movies in a shocking safe for work list in the sense there are no pictures of nipples, and only a few drawings of nipples, and no videos whatsoever. Unless, of course, your work frowns on you looking as censored porn movie covers while on the clock.
Read more "The 14 Most Amusing..." >>
Posted at 7:50 AM Jun 18, 2009
By Patrick CooperIt's a fact that one day the robots are going to kill and/or enslave us all. It's even in the Bible somewhere, trust me. This notion of creations turning against their masters has been a staple of fiction for centuries; from the Jewish folk tale of the Golem to
Frankenstein to
Battlestar Galactica. However, these cautionary tales still haven't swayed those with the means of construction from playing god and building blasphemous, soulless machines that will one day eat our kittens and take away our cable. People have been writing about and even designing robots since BCE, but the real robot renaissance began during the Age of Enlightenment and carried throughout the 18th century. The unveiling of new robots would pack theater halls and museums from London to New York City and even royalty couldn't resist the draw of these eerily real creations. Some merely played instruments and some simulated defecation, but no matter how innocent the action, they're all permanently written in the blueprint of our destruction.
Read more "The 7 Greatest Robots..." >>
Posted at 8:00 AM Jun 17, 2009
By Shaun ClaytonSo, you bought a Wii when it was hard to get. You and your friends had a very fun time with
Wii Sports, probably while drunk. Then you played the heck out of
Super Mario Galaxy. Then... nothing. More than a year of crap Wii games passed, and you went back to playing games on your PS3 or Xbox 360. The Wii just sat there, increasingly covered in dust, occasionally throbbing blue as a
meaningless update was downloaded. Happily, now E3 has passed, and there's a reason to eventually turn the Wii on again --
Metroid : Other M, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and... well, there's probably some other games, too. But aside from those two oases in the desert, you're still likely to have one underplayed Wii for the next several months. Here are some ways to eke some use out of the system.
Read more "10 Uses for Your..." >>
Posted at 8:00 AM Jun 16, 2009
By Adrian Beiting
The '90s were a great time to be a toy fan, and TV did its part to act as
source material for some of the greatest toys to be minted back when Ricky
Martin was still she bangin' on MTV.
From syndicated fare like Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules:
The Legendary Journeys, to network mainstays like Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, The X-Files, and animated classics like X-Men and Batman:
TAS, it seemed like just about every license imaginable was getting its
representation at the local Toys R Us.
Despite this toy renaissance, there were shows out there that didn't get
their ticket punched to the Christmas Tree Express, for one reason or another. Whether just for laughs or for serious,
plastic campaigning, these 10 TV shows from the 1990s should have gotten the
toy treatment.
Read more "The 10 Best '90s..." >>
Posted at 5:00 AM Jun 15, 2009
By Chris Cummins
Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer
went to college and his roommates endlessly quoted Monty Python and the Holy
Grail? It rang true because
the comedy of Monty Python has permeated every aspect of modern life. For
proof, look no further than your inbox--the junk e-mail there is called "spam"
because of a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch. It's been 40 years since the Pythons
first hit the airwaves and their blend of wit and absurdity hasn't lost any of
its impact. Although John Cleese, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and
Terry Gilliam occasionally reconvene for retrospectives, they have not
performed as Monty Python in any substantial way since 1983. (Graham Chapman
remains dead, and as such unavailable for any possible reunions). Remaining on
good terms, the surviving members have each embarked on successful--if wildly
uneven--solo careers. Featuring everything from unnecessary nudity to Bruce
Willis, this list examines the best and worst non-Python projects by Pythons.
Wow.
A brief disclaimer before we begin: the films, TV shows and
books included here are strictly ones in which the ex-Pythons exercised some
degree of creative control. In other words, that awesome episode of Cheers in
which John Cleese played a marriage counselor is ineligible for inclusion here.
(Though you can probably expect it to turn up in the inevitable The 5 Best
(and 5 Worst) Projects Featuring Monty Python Members in Supporting Roles list).
Read more "The 5 Best (and..." >>
