Latest Posts by hitstun - Page 7

Fire Your Representatives!

Serious time here for a minute. If you can legally vote in the US, it’s your responsibility to read about your ballot and vote in the mid-term elections on Tuesday, or you have no right to complain about the outcome.

Who is your House Representative? Did they participate in the budget stalemate that shut down the government for 16 days? Did they vote for CISPA, a cybersecurity bill that would have allowed the NSA to bypass existing privacy laws? If so, vote against them and fire them. This includes every Representative from Ohio except Tim Ryan.

UPDATE: Every House incumbent in Ohio got re-elected. It’s like the whole state rose up in unison and said “Government shutdowns? CISPA? Sounds good; do more of that.” Way to fail, Ohio.

The blog will return to its regular goofiness next week.

Source: My Ballot — Columbus Dispatch Voters Guide, Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a lot of searching; EFF helped; image from Wikipedia

John Hathway – Magic Rocket Station (another)

Time for another dual-monitor desktop wallpaper with a lot going on. pixiv artist John Hathway puts on some Susumu Hirasawa music and draws Mahocho, a vertical city of magic users that use flying brooms, rockets, and jetpacks to get around. The scale is so big you need a fisheye lens to see it all.

Oh, speaking of witches and brooms, this Wednesday on my weekly Instagib stream I’ll be playing the super rare Magical Chase, emulated of course.

This was actually my wallpaper back in August but I saved this post until Halloween time. Is that bad?

Source: 「MagicRocketStation(another)」/「JH科学 コミケ3日目マ24a」のイラスト [pixiv] via Udon’s Pixiv Almanac; also Bullet Heaven

Street Fighter II: Mastering Great Combinations and Strategies

Oh, Capcom. When Street Fighter II Turbo came to consoles in 1993, they put out this campy VHS tape of totally valid strategies from old school Street Fighter legend Tomo Ohira. LordBBH compiled a highlight reel of all the character intro voiceovers. If the cartoonish racial stereotypes were any worse, this would be Punch-Out!! Underneath it are the full VHS tape and Mike Z’s parody from the BlazBlue Calamity Trigger limited edition DVD.

Source: SF2 HF – Capcom USA is silly – YouTube and its source Street Fighter 2: Mastering Great Combinations and Strategies (VHS); also BlazBlue Strategy: Iron Tager – YouTube

Vadim Makhorov – Hong Kong Rooftopping at Night

No, this isn’t from a video game! This is a photo from a rooftop in Hong Kong’s Wanchai neighborhood overlooking Causeway Bay and Happy Valley. Rooftoppers Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov took several trips to Hong Kong scaling skyscrapers, taking pictures, and even hacking a huge billboard.

Source: 55.jpg via Hong Kong | ontheroofs and What's up Hong Kong? – YouTube via ontheroofs, both via TwistedSifter’s outstanding Picture of the Day feed, and information from comments on Vadim Makhorov’s Facebook

Rob Scallon – Angel of Death

Hold onto your hats! Versatile string player Rob Scallon just released another Slayer cover. This adds to his playlist of metal on instruments that aren’t metal with the description “If I wasn’t going to play Slayer on my banjo then what did I buy it for?”

Source: Slayer – Angel of Death (Banjo cover w/ solos) – YouTube via YouTube subscription

BANJO OF DEATH!!!!!

Kaido – Death of Stars

While looking around on pixiv and adding bookmarks, I found out that good artists tend to have really good bookmarks of their own. This is how I find stuff like Anime Galactus destroying some planets. Also, things that users tag as “Futsukushii”, “Hisense”, and “Click Recommended” are usually great picks, and this one has all three.

Actually, she seems sad about this. I guess that's where all the ice came from.

Source: 「星の死」/「カイドウ」のイラスト [pixiv] via Ask’s bookmarks via several recommendations for Ask’s art

MixerProductions Sonic Mashups

Video game mashup artist MixerProductions found out that the sound of 16-bit Sonic games makes for natural hip-hop beats. Now every time I play the Flying Battery zone, I’m going to hear MC Hammer in my head. It’s been stuck in my head for days, and now it’s going to be stuck in your head too.

Yo Dawg, I herd you like Sonic, so I put Sonic in your Xzibit track so you can spin while you spin. OK, no fair mashing up Michael Jackson with himself.

Source: MC Hammer vs Sonic – Cant Touch This Battery – YouTube via Backloggery livestream chat. Also here and here.

Quake Live

Quake Live is a refreshingly fast and simple first person shooter straight out of the 90s. It was merely a free-to-play version of Quake III Arena until a few weeks ago when they added weapon loadouts. You now start with one of four primary weapons and one of four secondary weapons. If you want to start every life with a railgun and a shotgun, now you can! Quake Live made its debut on Steam this week, so find me there and join the fight!

If all the guns and killing put you off, how about Jazzpunk’s take on it? It’s full of gaming references like this.

Source: Quake Live – Official Steam Launch Trailer – YouTube via Rock Paper Shotgun, also Jazzpunk – Wedding Qake & PolyBlanka vs. Some Honda – YouTube via a DuckDuckGo search

Yatsude – Country of a Thousand Nights and Ten Billion Mornings

That’s my best guess on the translation of the actual title “Sen no Yoru to Hyaku Oku no Asa no Kuni”. Anyway, this is my new desktop wallpaper, and it really is shockingly good. It’s the kind of fantasy town I want to live in, but it’s almost realistic, too. I highly recommend logging into pixiv to see this in its full 1800×750 glory. I’ve been mildly addicted to pixiv lately, and I plan to post plenty more of this stuff one image at a time.

Oh Yatsude, your scene splits my dual monitors perfectly so.

Source: 「千の夜と百億の朝の国」/「ヤツデ」のイラスト [pixiv] via 「ヤツデ」 's Works – Illustration [pixiv] via the recommendations page that came up when I bookmarked Yukihiro Nakamura via One Morning Train

Street Fighter IV Ultras Without Cinematics

In Street Fighter IV, Ultra Combo animations actually move characters awkwardly around the arena, but those transitions are covered up with camera angle changes. This video removes all of that camera work and reveals what happens just outside the frame and between cuts. Gen, Guy, Yun, and Rolento all have Ultras that teleport all over the stage. The wallslams you see aren’t anywhere near near the actual walls of the stage so that the victim isn’t in stuck a bad corner situation after the combo is over.

Source: USF4 Ultras w/o Cinematic Camera, Full Stage View, no HUD (v2) – YouTube via VGJUNK and Shoryuken

Laibach – Final Countdown

I like these music posts, so here’s another one. Laibach is a Slovenian martial industrial band that has been active since 1980 and are known for their cover songs adapted to their own dark totalitarian style. This one from their NATO album has 1994 Yugoslav war themes and 1994 CG to match.

Source: Laibach – Final Countdown – YouTube via the NATO album via their version of 2525 played on Geeknights

Susumu Hirasawa – Sign

Susumu Hirasawa is a master of massive thundering sound. He wrote this pounding opening theme for the Berserk game on PS2. I have no idea what’s going on in Berserk but this makes me want to watch some Satoshi Kon movies.

Source: Berserk: Millennium Falcon Hen Seima Senki no Shō – Opening – YouTube via I dare you find a more awesome opening. – Anime, Art, Arcade Sticks and Vidya Gaems via [K]ayinworks via Trynant

hpknight – Saturday

pixiv is basically the Japanese DeviantArt, full of talented artists I’d never have heard of otherwise. I picked up Udon’s Pixiv Almanac last year at PAX East and I craved more. I’m now subscribed to pixiv Top Weekly – Top 20 which gives a good balance of quality and quantity. Other pixiv feeds are available at PixivRss. If people like this post, I may do some more like this in the future.

You can click each image below to visit its posting on pixiv. If you register an account there, you can download the full resolution image. Also, this is a good time to remind you that I write mouseover text for almost every image on this blog, which you can see whether you’re on my site or reading my RSS feed.

(This post and the four before it were all one post over on my old blog. Tumblr doesn’t support mouseover text, so I’ve copied those over as plain text for each image’s post.)

That sky is pretty! I use this as the wallpaper for my Grub menu to choose which OS to boot into. I think I was actually linked to this one by a Tumblr blog I followed, but I forget which one. Sorry.

UPDATE: Added Google Translate-based guesses for all titles and usernames to bring this more in line with my other pixiv posts

Source: 「土曜日」/「嗨P」のイラスト [pixiv]

Tsurukame – Hanasaki Ecological

This is my current desktop wallpaper. I have a dual monitor setup, so it looks like Marisa is throwing a star bomb onto my left monitor. I actually got this one from a Tumblr I'm going to call F'Yeah Pixiv that sadly isn't updated anymore. It's one of the last things posted on that Tumblr. (My old blog had all work safe text, but when I’m reblogging a user named fuckyeahpixiv-blog, I guess that idea goes out the window.)

Source: 「花咲エコロジカ」/「鶴亀＠１日目Ｈ-45ｂ」のイラスト [pixiv] via fuckyeahpixiv-blog

花咲エコロジカ | 鶴亀

Ling – Wolf Hood

I saw this today and got to thinking about the practicality of using a floating balloon as a fish bowl. If you had a large enough balloon filled with about 95% helium and 5% water and fish, it should float. There are further complications though: How would you feed the fish? How do you clean the fish bowl part? Would replacing air with helium have an adverse affect on the fish? Would the uneven pressure distribution break the balloon, dropping water and fish on whatever's underneath it at the time?

Source: 「オオカミずきん」/「靈」のイラスト [pixiv] via pixiv每周排行 – 前50

Asano – Taisho 103: Battleship Island

This reminds me of the Imperial Boy background art I posted here several months ago. So much detail! I'd make this my wallpaper but I can't crop it to 16:9 without losing lots of details.

Source: 「大正一〇三年・軍艦島」/「浅野」のイラスト [pixiv] via pixiv每周排行 – 前50

大正一〇三年　軍艦島

TBS様「WADAIの王国」 という番組で別ver.をセット背景に使って頂きました。

Gashi Gashi – E-can

The animations on pixiv are just a series of PNGs animated in HTML5. Luckily, Gashi Gashi also posted a GIF of this on Tumblr, so I'd added that here. When Mega Man charges up a shot, he starts flashing, but everything else that's the same color as Mega Man flashes too.

UPDATE: Gashi Gashi posted this animation as a GIF on Tumblr, so it’s here now.

Source: 「Ｅ缶」/「ガしガし」のイラスト [pixiv] via pixiv每周排行 – 前50

RIP Justin.tv 1997-2014

UPDATE: I’m getting tired of these videos that don’t even stay online for four years. The original Vimeo video is private now, but somebody re-posted it to YouTube. Twitch got better and I stream there now.

In May 2009, I started a weekly video game stream on Justin.tv. Justin.tv was just getting video game streams, but people also streamed videos and webcams and hosted communities with their own forums. It was great. Over the next couple years, they removed the communities and forums, shoved all the gaming streams into a buggy new site called Twitch, and left the rest of Justin.tv to rot in obscurity until it finally died today.

I still stream every Wednesday night at Instagib. It’s not 2009 Justin.tv but it’s the closest anybody has come since. We’ll miss you, Justin.tv.

Source: Goodbye from Justin.tv via Sweetielise’s stream title today, “RIP Justin.tv you had a good run!” Also Vs. Super Mario Bros. World 7-4 – YouTube, recorded May 2009 on my Justin.tv channel.

New Games From Columbus

I’ve updated the Bakamo Studios site with a new post about three locally developed games that could use some hype right now. While you’re waiting for Evo 2014 Championship Series to start, why not watch these trailers?

Lemma – first-person parkour playground

Breaking Block – polished creative Arkanoid-like

Hatch-It! – cute ice physics puzzle

Source: Columbus Game Developer Spotlight » Bakamo Studios which sources Evan Todd, Smiling Cat Entertainment, and Multivarious Games

Challenger with Commentary

I like Instagib, but it’s a lot more difficult to get good stream highlights onto YouTube from there. This run of the 1985 Japanese-only Famicom game Challenger was so watchable and the chat was so random that I jumped through the technological hoops to get this posted for all.

Challenger is famous for its control scheme which is backwards compared to modern games. On the NES controller, you would press A to shoot and B to jump. I actually played this on a Power Joy by Trump Grand that I bought for $5 at CORGS-Con, but it has the A and B buttons reversed. It makes the Power Joy terrible for most games but perfect for Challenger.

The video features Skype chat from myself, Jdetan, and Kinkaido, so of course it’s NSFW.

Wow, it's been a long time since I've had an actual image on this blog, right? Anyway, the top of the N64-ish controller actually has a pointy bit that functions as the Zapper. The trigger is where the N64's Z button would be. It doesn't work well.

Source: Challenger with Commentary – YouTube, which is edited from an .flv archive of my Instagib stream (Instagib.tv deletes archives after 24 hours), uploaded to YouTube, downloaded from YouTube as an .mp4, and finally edited in Pinnacle Studio 14 like my other videos. I really need to find a better way to do this. Also, the camera on my phone.

How Americans Eat Hamburgers

UPDATE: Joe Inoue deleted his video and then uploaded it again with a shameless plug at the end.

I put some ketchup on a frozen hamburger today and remembered this old video from Japanese American rocker Joe Inoue joking about how we Americans love our burgers. He went on to make some anime opening songs and a new English YouTube channel called VellySillyBilly.

Source: HOW AMERICANS EAT HAMBURGERS!!! – YouTube

Yumi’s Odd Odyssey/Sayonara Umihara Kawase Stage Time Attacks

Two months ago, I told you I was hooked on this game. Since then, I’ve played for 47 hours, reached every door, collected every backpack, and got every survival mode ending. I’ve also brought the heat to the North American version’s leaderboards with dozens of stage times in the top three. Since this game helpfully lets you save replays, I get to show you how I got there. Enjoy!

0:03 F1 → F2 11″83 0:21 F11 → F12 11″63 0:38 F20 → F21 21″83 1:04 F20 → F37 28″86 1:38 F39 → F40 13″90 1:57 F28 → F29 13″26 2:15 F29 → F18 29″83 2:50 F29 → F30 15″73 3:11 F30 → F31 13″53 3:30 F31 → F32 16″83 3:51 F32 → F33 13″80 4:10 F32 → F42 24″73 4:41 F42 → F43 38″86 5:25 F43 → F49 16″56 5:47 F22 → F23 8″16 6:00 F23 → F24 9″43 6:14 F24 → F39 2″13 6:25 F24 → F35 9″03 6:37 F35 → F36 14″86 6:57 F36 → F37 19″20 7:22 F37 → F38 20″40 7:47 F38 → F41 7″16 7:59 F38 → F47 15″63 8:19 F44 → F45 6″73 8:30 F45 → F46 18″46 8:54 F46 → END 35″46

Source: Yumi’s Odd Odyssey (Sayonara Umihara Kawase) Stage Time Attacks – YouTube recorded with my phone’s camera

Zeta Gundam montage

UPDATE: Voltan’s video is gone, so I’ve replaced it with another montage from Destroy All Podcasts that seems to include the same clips.

Uh oh, I got too distracted by PAX East, Tetris victories, and Sayonara Umihara Kawase that I almost forgot I have a blog and a good video to post to it. Zeta Gundam is a show about giant fighting robots in space, but people sure hit each other at lot. YouTube user Voltan made a supercut of all the satisfying slaps, punches, and kicks that turn whiny pilots into brave fighters.

Sure, let’s run Kajet’s version too. Why not? 2007 YouTube, go!

Source: Zeta Gundam montage – YouTube and ZETA PUUUUNCH – YouTube

PAX East 2014 trip and Twitter

I’m on my way to PAX East 2014 with three of my friends, about to ride the Metal Gear Line to Boston. The 19-hour train ride each way is basically a mini-convention full of gamers that are also going to PAX East. I’ll be using my normally-inactive Twitter to arrange meet-ups with friends, and I’ll be keeping tabs on Facebook and #pax IRC too. For those of you that are headed to PAX East, let’s meet up and play some games! If you’re not going to PAX East, why not? It’s 60,000 people meeting up and playing games. What’s not to like? I’ll post some pictures at the end.

Tweets by @hitstun !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");

I was going to post the Geeknights PAX East 2012 highlight video here, but the video's thumbnail includes a pony on one of their badges. I'm trying to avoid ponies, but with Kinkaido and the other bronies from my stream here, I probably won't be able to hold them off for long. We're picking it up at Bryan on the northwest corner of Ohio. I probably won't be able to dodge ponies there either. Resistance is futile.

Source: PAX East 2014 and PAX Community Wiki

Yumi's Odd Odyssey/Sayonara Umihara Kawase

The best grappling hook in video games has finally made it to the West! In the hands of an expert, the title character can climb all over everything and fling herself across the screen while stressing the elastic fishing line to its breaking point. Beginners can stick to the main route, but everyone else gives it the finger and looks for shortcuts, backpacks, and hidden exits. This series is very speedrun-friendly and has always let you record replays of your fastest stage times.

It you’re looking for a nice, challenging 2D platformer, pick it up on the North American 3DS eShop for $30. That sounds like a lot, but it’s the lowest price I’ve ever seen a game in this series and you won’t be disappointed. Most of the players on the English version’s leaderboard hang out in this NeoGAF thread which I’d love to post in but NeoGAF has a weeks-long moderation queue for new members. UPDATE: I have now posted there.

Source: Sayonara Umihara Kawase Promotional Video English Subs – YouTube which is a fansub of the Japanese trailer

Poleovermania Mario 3 Collections

Super Mario Bros. 3 has been out for 25 years and we still keep finding new ways to break it. Poleovermania puts on a master class in tool-assisted Mario 3 trickery and shows off dozens of the game’s lesser-known bugs. When I play the game, I can only do some of these tricks, usually by accident.

Source: マリオ3小ネタ集 – YouTube (Mario 3 Clip Collection), マリオ3小ネタ集2 – YouTube (Mario 3 Clip Collection 2), and マリオ3無限1UP集 – YouTube (Mario 3 Infinite 1UP Collection) via the name of a song by desk that he wrote for a Marvel vs. Capcom 3 bug video

Feedly and RSS Feeds

Feedly is where I spend most of my time on the Internet. It’s the window through which I organize and read posts from dozens of other sites in one long page, and you should use it too. If you frequently read a news site or blog by visiting their front page every time, you’re probably doing it wrong. Read the rest of this post for links to some RSS feeds I recommend and links to subscribe to them in Feedly or your favorite RSS reader. You’ll be hooked.

I don’t want to spam up the main feed with a lot of links, so you’ll have to click through to the real post this time.

Here are some RSS feeds to get you started. Click the links open the feeds in Feedly so you can follow the feeds there. For those of you with other RSS readers, click the (RSS) after the feed’s name to get its RSS feed. Here we go:

House of Hitstun (RSS) | stuff from the Internet Bakamo Studios (RSS) | my game company RT (RSS) | world and US news from Russia WBNS 10TV (RSS) | manageable amount of Columbus news ESPN (RSS) | sportsball headlines Consumerist (RSS) | Consumer Reports news, tips, and complaints Shoryuken (RSS) | fighting game community news and videos SlickDeals.net (RSS) | bargains from the Internet Wired Science (RSS) | Wired Space Photo of the Day and more Noirlac Sourced (RSS) | nice old video game backgrounds xkcd (RSS) | snarky stick figure webcomic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (RSS) | high quality serial webcomic Sinfest (RSS) | open-minded webcomic I posted about Did You Know Gaming (RSS) | video game trivia I posted about Botchamania videos (RSS) | pro wrestling outtakes I posted about Classic Game Room videos (RSS) | retro gamer reviews all video games TASVideos Top Rated Movies (RSS) | best new tool assisted superplays Building Feedly (RSS) | updates to Feedly service

Yes, I really have 1,889 unread articles, some dating back to 26 days ago. The biggest backlogs are RockPaperShotgun (269), my YouTube subscriptions feed (261), UsVsTh3m (208), and DarkSakura's blog It's All Around You (160). They're all not accessible at my work so I can't catch up on them there.

Source: a screenshot of today’s Wired Space Photo of the Day from NASA’s Curiousity Mars rover’s Mastcam on my Feedly home page in Pale Moon

Slightly Left of Centre - Love The Way You Move

Anime Hell comes to Ohayocon every year with silly internet videos like this that are best watched in a group like a captive DeVry anime club. Next time, I’m taking notes! From Russia with funk, this is Funk Overload.

Oh, you were looking for something more horrible? Stick this in your USB port, then!

Source: Slightly Left of Centre – Love The Way You Move | SLC | Funk Overload [Original Music Video] – YouTube and other YouTube

Artist Alley Arcade Stick

I’ve always wanted to put some one-of-a-kind hand-drawn art in my Qanba Q4RAF, so at last weekend’s Ohayocon, I brought a blank template and and asked a couple of the artists there to draw their original characters. The team of Iota Soul knocked it out of the park with Killer Bee on the left side. Kuroitenshi added her D&D fighter on the right side and gave me some crucial advice on how to complete the design from there. I drew some Vewlix lines at the top, put it in the stick, and changed all the buttons out to black and white to complete the hand-drawn sketch look.

This replaces my previous art on that stick, which is all about Kohaku from Melty Blood, a series of really nice doujin fighting games that never made it out of Japan.

(What follows is the mouseover text for all seven images, edited slightly because they’re plain text on Tumblr now.)

So many photos on this blog lately. Maybe I should have made a Tumblr instead. Problem is, hitstun.tumblr.com is already taken. Some jerk registered my name, posted once, and abandoned it. (Four years later, I checked and hitstun.tumblr.com was available again, so I snatched it up and moved this post there.)

For this post, I'm actually doing the Facebook cross-post as a photo upload instead of a link post. Since it's a photo, I get to tag Killer Bee and Fighter to include links to their creators. (Closest I can do on Tumblr is a link to Kuroitenshi’s fighter.)

Here's a scan of the finished design that is now in the arcade stick. Click the image for the full 300dpi version.

I retired the Melty Blood stick art last night at Fight Night at Donatos on OSU campus. I played Melty Blood for the first time in months.

For some reason, Wordpress is having trouble with my full size designs. Click the photo for the 300dpi version.

Also, here’s the template I printed out for Ohayocon. Click the template below for the 300dpi version, and it will print at just the right size for the Qanba Q4RAF.

You'll want to actually click this for the 300dpi version that fits the Qanba Q4RAF. If you’ve got an Eightarc Fusion, just remove the Start button. (Not sure if Tumblr corrupts the DPI settings on these images, but just make sure it’s 300dpi before you start working with it.)

Sources: A white and red Qanba Q4RAF, buttons, and bubble top from Video Games New York, replacement plexiglass from Focus Attack (out of production), Iota Soul, Kuroitenshi, Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code PC version, Zerochan, and the Qanba thread at Shoryuken

Jamaican bobsled team raises $30,000 in dogecoin

You know Bitcoin? The crypto-currency that’s about as fake as real money? It’s apparently big enough that there was a need for an alternative. Liam Butler likes that doge meme so he created dogecoin. He also liked Cool Runnings so he started a fund, Dogesled, to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the 2014 Sochi Olympics. They raised 27 million dogecoins, or $30,000.

I…I couldn’t make this stuff up.

So meme. But money? Much real. Such surprise. Wow.

Source: Jamaican Bobsled Team – Dogecoin Fund via RT