Classic Bite Commentary: October 14th, 2007

(2018 Update: replaced an old post with an even older post.)





Welcome to the Bite. As stated on the Blog, this is the second of four weekly commentaries. If you're wondering why I'm adopting a weekly system despite my mentioning it on the Blog, I'll repeat it here: Pretty soon, the blog will be hitting 666 posts and I want to make this something special... like the Beast From Krypton or something. Because of this, I'm going to do weekly commentaries for the month of October to go along with the weekly updates on the Webstation. Because these are weekly updates, there won't be much stuff in them outside of what would normally be posted in a Blog entry. That having been said, let's get started.

Picked up an FC Twin this past week. For those wondering, it's a third-party console that plays your old NES and Super NES games. Although I can't speak for the SNES compatibility yet, I can tell you that NES games work fairly well. I say fairly because the sound is off in some games (most notably the SMB games). It looks well-built and sturdy too. If you need to find a replacement console and can't find a new system, this is a close alternative.

This has been around for a while, but I haven't mentioned it lately so might as well. Jeff Ayers, who wrote the Voyages of Imagination compendium depicting all the Star Trek novels published over the years, recently posted a review on William Shatner's latest book offering, Star Trek Academy: Collision Course. Suffice it to say, it's a pretty scathing review of a book with a unbelievable plotline. While I haven't read the book, it's hard to imagine that Shatner (with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens no less) pulling out such a clunker... but then again, the last couple of Shatner offerings were below par. I mean, Ashes of Eden was a fairly decent read for a Kirk wankfest and The Return was a fairly solid read that gave the character a proper send-off. All the other books after that? Not worth the paper they're printed on - especially the whole Mirror Universe saga featuring Mirror Kirk being an emperor or something, which is just wrong considering humans are considered a lower form of life during the TNG timeframe. So this latest offering being below par is something I find plausible. If you want to read the review, as well as a response from Shatner's co-authors, click here.

Since we're on the linking craze, here's another article on how some Blu-Ray movies require the latest firmware updates to operate on the fancy smancy Blu-Ray players. Are you fucking kidding me? Firmware updates for movies? Who the fuck came up with this shit? And what's the excuse most of the companies are hiding behind? "Duh, consumers should push hardware manufacturers to update their firmware!" And what about the models who don't have phone jacks to update their precious firmware? I don't know about you, but I don't feel like burning a CD on a computer and run through a number of mind-numbing steps to install software just so I can watch a fucking movie. It seems like whenever they were developing these new formats, they had forgotten a little thing called user-friendliness.

Actually, to be completely honest, I think this whole firmware deal is just retarded. Remember the good old days when we had VHS and DVDs and the only thing we needed to get them to work was a functional player? Remember when all the latest video game releases required the specified console to function. There was no need for firmware updates; heck, you can even play the game OFFLINE! A novel concept that has been lost in the anals of time.

According to Rajah.com, this week's WWE RAW drew a 2.8 cable rating. Unless this is some sort of glitch and there was a problem with Nielsen's computations, WWE is entering dangerous territory... because the last time they had ratings this low was when they were getting their ass kicked in the ratings by WCW ten years. So we can safely assume that Randy Orton is the black hole of ratings... bring back Edge and have him do live sex again. It worked last time and you'll have a Canadian to screw over in time for the Survivor Series. Unfortunately, said Canadian is not named Bret Hart and thus will evidently mean nothing.

If you're looking for a PS3 and/or X-Box 360, you're in for a sweet, sweet deal. Sony will be slashing prices on its overpriced video-game console and may possibly include the third Spider-Man movie as a bonus. Not that it's a bad thing, but I want to play some damn games, not watch a fucking movie. Meanwhile, Microsoft will be bundling their X-Box 360 console with two games: a racing game and a game with Marvel characters. But at least the price won't go up. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll just stick with my FC Twin, Sega Genesis, PS-One, PS2, X-Box, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and DS Lite systems for my gaming needs.

Okay, that's wraps it up for this week. Before we do, I just want make a quick response to a particular line in one of Jim Ross' blogs, specifically this little gem:

The “Cena haters” and the anti Cena proponents, I assume, are happy that Cena is off their TV sets for now, but most will retort with the same old, worn out response of “I just wanted someone else to be champion.”

Don't worry, JR. I won't use the tired "I just want someone else to be champion" reply. Unlike some other people, I actually want Cena off my TV. The longer the better.