Everything New is Old Again

Posted by Bob on December 17, 2004: And with today's comic, my reign of terr...ific rule has come to an end. I'm gonna be talking about the comic a bit soon, so make sure you read it before I start, if you don't want it spoiled. So, go ahead and read it. I'll wait.

Are you done? Okay, keep reading. I'll keep waiting.

Okay, now we're back. You had to imagine that something like this was coming. I mean, do you really think Captain Steve would let me get rid of his favorite character? Not terribly likely, I would think. Honestly, the main reason I wrote this whole thing? I didn't like Colossus' design. Simple as that. I originally based him off of a Defender cabinet, just with a keyboard instead of the joystick, and the more I looked at him, the less and less I liked it. So, out with that and in with the iPod look. Wait a month, I'm sure I'll change it. I think two weeks after we brought Joe into the comic, I asked Capt. Steve if we could kill him off, cause I didn't like how he looked. I'm crazy like that. Look how often the characters have changed since they first appeared. Bob has stayed *relatively* similar, but everyone else has changed soooo much. With more in store too. Nothing major, don't worry. I think just haircuts and small things like that. Don't worry. Bob will still look freakin hot. Oh, I would also like to add that this comic has my two favorite Jessie expressions ever. I'm sure you know which they are.

Next week, things get back to normal with a Captain Steve penned Christmas comic. Then some more comics after that, none of which were written by me. So, if you don't like my style of writing, now's the time to get back reading!

Onto the links. I don't know why I found this interesting, but I kinda did. So, here's how to make a tiny little orange. In case you were curious.

Bob and Steve also appear this week in the latest Game-Rave. Granted, I drew that too, but hey. I thought you'd like to see it!

Here's how to be a successful evil overlord. Again, in case you were curious.

I love it when people have access to flash and nothing better to do. It leads to movies like that. God bless you, internet.

People are crazy with piercings. Example? Check this out. Kinda neat, but I know I'm too hard on my glasses to get that to stay in place. That, and I don't want steel shoved through the bridge of my nose. Call me crazy!

Here's why Best Buy is AWESOME.

And finally, I leave you with this. It's hilarious, click the link. See you in a week.

Posted by Steve on December 17, 2004: Today marks the end of Bob's little arc. He'll probably have more to say about it than I do, so I'll leave it to him.

So, there's this. Frankly, this is just boring at this point. Shit like this pops up all the time, and never seems to amount to anything. So...um...blah blah "do your job as a parent" blah blah blah "read the goddamn ratings on the box" blah blah blah. There, I'm done.

A bigger issue is this. There's word going around that EA might in fact be the fucking devil, but EA has no comment.

This really blows. EA now has zero reason to upgrade/innovate an already shitty and extremely overrated franchise, while sega/espn/take two are left out in the cold. But really, it might not be all bad. Sega (I don't understand who's franchise that is anymore, but I'll call it Sega's for this rant.) has a couple options available.

The first, and probably most obvious solution is to just convert the engine into a college game. Yeah, they had a college game before that didn't work out, but I think their game this year really made fans out of a lot of people, and plus they're the big time underdog now, with the exclusive thing with EA and it's slave labor reputation as of late, which will get them some support as well. And since EA's NCAA game is based on the same shitty, overrated Madden engine, there's room there for a good fight.

The other, possibly more interesting option, is to just proceed with business as usual. Fake player names, fake team names, put the teams in real NFL cities. The catch? Make them updateable/changeable by the user. Make rosters user changeable, and I guarantee you fans will have the players renamed/re-stated to their real life counterparts in no time. Hell, tie team names into that while you're at it. Make the file tradeable over Xbox live/whatever the fuck Sony does online, and give EA a big "Fuck You" while end users give the game an NFL license you didn't even have to pay for.

And while you're at it, go ahead and be creative. Make a really slick create a team mode, and you'll win a lot of people over automatically. And now that you're free of the NFL's restrictions, go nuts. Put in big endzone celebrations, fights between players, etc. (I'd recommend not going as far as Midway apparently plans to, but that's just me.)

I mean look, at the end of the day all this costs you are the serious, die hard, live for Sundays NFL nuts, and most of those people are already hopeless Madden fanboys anyway. The 2K5 game's biggest strength is, from my experience at least, with casual fans. People who just want a fun football game, but not something as silly as the Blitz series. People who think the engine makes for a fun game of football, and that's all they're really looking for. Embrace that crowd, and you'll be fine.

That's all for me. See you next week.