Category Archives: community

An evening at EVO 2008.

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Yesterday was day two of the EVO Championship Series, a yearly fighting game tournament hosted here in Las Vegas. While I wasn’t a competitor (I’m a solidly average 2D fighter player), I dropped by for several hours to take in the scene, see the new games, and to watch the midnight screening of Bang the Machine, a documentary following the participants of a Street Fighter series tournament, all vying for a spot on the team that would be traveling to Japan and representing the United States in further matches.

So, the new games.

EVO 2008 - Viewlix cabs

Capcom had delivered ten head-to-head Viewlix cabinets for the event, arranged in an outward facing circle near the center of the BYOC (Bring Your Own Console) play area. Eight of the cabinets were running Street Fighter IV, and the final two were builds of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, a game I hadn’t seen much of prior to last night but ultimately my favorite of the bunch. Additionally, an Xbox 360 kiosk was running Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and I’d heard that Arc was on hand the day before with BlazBlue, although it was unfortunately gone by the time I arrived.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is looking great. Something like the fighting game version of Super Robot Wars, the game pits characters from various Capcom properties against Tatsunoko Production’s lineup. So far, less than a dozen of the playable characters have been revealed, but the character select screen seemed to be built for a whole lot more. Assuming licensing talks go well (the reason there’s never been a US release of the Super Robot Wars games), it could be quite the collection. I hope Mospeada, Southern Cross, or any of the other Robotech licenses are represented.

Pictures and video after the jump!
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Highlights from the show.

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So, for the few of you that haven’t been so inundated with news from E3 that you’ve said screw it and marked everything in your RSS reader as read, here are the things that really stood out for me this year.

Mirrors Edge continues to impress me, and has become the title I’m most looking forward to. Something very different from the folks that brought us the Battlefield series, I really hope EA allows DICE to shine this one up. The design is smart and the direction and story appear to be solid (hell, even the trailer provokes emotion). I think this one has the potential to be one of the landmark titles of the current generation. So far, hands-on impressions have been consistently glowing.

I Am Alive came from out of the blue, and so far little is known about the game other than that you play as Adam, an earthquake survivor in a ravaged Chicago. My personal interest in this is that the just trying to survive the cataclysmic events gameplay (think War of the Worlds, in the role of the narrator) is something I’ve been thinking a bit about, and now that Ubisoft is out the gate, I’m keenly interested in seeing how they approach it.

The Xbox 360 as a Netflix ready device announcement was enough to push me to cancel my long standing Greencine account and make the move to Netflix. I’ve since tried the streaming on my PC, and the quality is acceptable (it varies depending on bandwidth) in exchange for the convenience of an immediate stream. Not every film in the Netflix library can be watched this way, but the selection is growing. Currently, in a queue of just under 300 movies, 41 can be immediately streamed, although I’m guessing that’s skewed downward from the norm due to my preference for more offbeat fare.

Not Quite a Highlight

I really feel for the poor guys at Bungie. Building up to a big reveal at E3 most likely meant a lot of stress and late nights in the weeks leading up to the show. Usually there’s the payoff at the end, but to suddenly have your legs swept out from under you… that could not have been pleasant.

And Finally

Flower might be brilliant, Left 4 Dead is going to be a must-buy, and I’m thrilled about Chrono Trigger DS.

Anything at E3 really catch your eye?

Best of K5: Captain Ledford

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Throughout 2001 and early 2002 there ran a narrative experiment on Kuro5hin.org, a series of diaries by a user purporting to be Captain Alan Ledford, a run-of-the-mill starship freighter pilot who would drop in and publish the occasional account of his life and experiences as he hopped about space.

Totaling thirteen diaries over the year and a half (plus a final entry a couple years later, revealing the author and leading to a now-dead website), these sporadic stories were a highlight of K5 during that time, weaving a compelling tale within the everyday cacophony and discord of the diary section.

With apologies to K5 user tiamet whose 2003 article I’m paraphrasing, here are the Diaries of Captain Ledford:

Entry 1: How the hell do you figure the stardate, anyway?

I never did get the hang of keeping track of time out here. I suppose it’s because I never have to meet anyone, and nothing I ship is important enough to qualify as a rush delivery.

Things I have on board right now, for those interested:

Entry 2: Letter-opening

So my holo broke down today. There I was, talking to the first sentient being I’d seen in days, and the damn thing just stops working. I had to rush over to the old-fasioned viewscreen-type communicator before she left – the alternative being waiting around until the next ship happens to float by.

Entry 3: Finally got in

Got into station the day before yesterday, but I hardly had any time to relax then; deliveries are always a pain. I’d say it has something to do with the Tannanti tendency toward being completely meticulous about every little thing, only it isn’t because every Tannanti I’ve ever met is just as lazy as I am. It’s more to do with the fact that Outward Station, like nearly every sane station that I know of, has contracted out Receiving to some nameless corporation whose job it is to be completely meticulous about every little thing.

Entry 4: Will Work For Pay

Someone, get me off this station.

Entry 5: Got my travel on

My current run is from Outward Station to Poln, a tiny little planet just colonized whose people have decided they want a space station (they’ll probably call it something like ‘Outward Station’.) As my ship, great and powerful though it may be, is in no way capable of towing all the equipment which will be used to build the station, I’m doing escort work for the Hugeass Construction Corporation fleet of tugs.

Entry 6: Yotian Anomoly

Okay, I’m not famous, but I am old. And in this business, if you’ve survived this long, you automatically earn a certain amount of respect.

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The origin of :awesome:

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So you’ve probably seen this around:

I’ve been wondering where the smiley came from for a while now (keeps me up most nights), and over the last couple days today I’ve done some digging to find out its history. As :awesome: is part of the emoticon set for the f13 forums, I began by asking schild, f13 founder.

driph: so whats the story of the gigantic smiley anyway?
schild: some guy on something awful made it
schild: some guy on 4chan made it BIGGER
schild: some guy on neogaf made it small
schild: schild made a tiny set of smilies out of them.
schild: fin.

That gave me a place to start, and further searching on the f13 boards led to this post by Fabricated, referring to the use of the smiley by Yahtzee in the most recent Zero Punctuation:

Um no.

That smiley originated from a Cyanide and Happiness comic, and became a smiley on Something Awful’s forums long before it was beaten to death here. He’s a goon.

Ah ha, Cyanide and Happiness! I was getting closer, and a random pumpkin carving blog entry led me to the particular comic referenced:

So, the source was found, or so I’d thought.

This epic thread on Something Awful from January of 2007, over a month before the comic went up, shows the escalation of the icon already well underway.

Originally purchased and added to the Something Awful smiley roster (SA has a pay system allowing members to add smileys) just prior to the above linked thread, it took off like a rocket. Known as :awesome:, the emoticon eventually reappeared as :fuckyou: and later :iamafag: after excessive overuse within GBS and other areas of Something Awful. This explosion of popularity led to its migration onto other forums, most notably 4chan (especially within /v/), where it was embraced with great vigor and enthusiasm.

*** Interstitial! A couple more web comics that have been erroneously linked as the source at one time or another.

After learning that the original purchaser of the smiley on SA was a user named Whalley, my next step was to get in touch with him. Finding Whalley wasn’t too difficult, and we chatted for a bit about :awesome:. Still amused at how widespread the whole thing has become, Whalley told me about its genesis:

driph: you originally bought that one on SA, right?
whalley: that i did
driph: was it a BYOB invention, or did you find it somewhere else?
whalley: much to my dismay of what i started
driph: I’ve heard everything from 4chan to SA to newgrounds, etc etc
whalley: some guy in byob drew it for this tiny little offsite forum he was at
whalley: i can’t remember who it was, i haven’t looked at an internet forum for like two months
whalley: he posted it one day though and i went “THAT IS SO AWESOME”
driph: nice.
whalley: and well now it’s the mascot for 4chan and has infected the entire internet
driph: the internet is a weird place.
whalley: i have come to be afraid of it

There you have it. Even with potential loose ends to tie up (who the artist was and the site he’d originally drawn it for), this wraps things up enough for me. schild was right, :awesome: did originate at SA, and while it was enormously popular there for a while, it wasn’t until its spread to 4chan that things really went nuts. Peaking in popularity in mid to late 2007, the reign of :awesome: has not yet ended. Spend any amount of time in /v/ on 4chan and you’re bound to see it pop up, and with its continued spread across forums and exposure to new audiences, :awesome: is here to stay.

…

An update!

Yes, as sleuthed by folks in the comments, the icon (and several other expressions) was indeed originally drawn for Pokemopolis. I recently corresponded with the creator of the smiley, and with her permission, here’s the story of the genesis, in her words:

I drew the icon years ago as part of an emoticon set he wanted for their new forum software, and I think he showed you all the other ones that were designed along with it. I’m not really sure what exactly I wanted it to represent but I think the ‘ridiculous childish glee’ that it now signifies is probably close!

I’m also a member at Something Awful and the first time I saw it posted I did a double take… I even remember my mind racing as to why and HOW someone had picked up a crappy lil’ icon off a tiny website, and I’m still not sure to this day… I assume a Pokemopolis member posted it on 4Chan. At that point I thought its posting would be a one time thing, but then I saw it more and more. It got to the point where I couldn’t read SA because everytime I saw it I’d just be completely freaked out, and naturally I came to hate it! I hoped every day that it would become bannable to post it, but the next best thing was replacing the VBCode. I also posted in BYOB in a thread Whalley made saying that I had made the icon originally, trying to get him to divulge where *he* had gotten it from. Most of SA assumed it was a ‘BYOB thing’ which was probably good because they’d probably want to lynch me if they actually knew where it was from.

I never expected it to become such a widespread meme, and I can’t say I even understand why its popular or why people want to make bag pins of it (Sure wish I could get some commission for the design though haha). It still weirds me out when I see webcomics use it though I’ve grown used to it now, sometimes I even tell nerdy neckbeard types that my dirty secret is *psst I drew THAT smiley*, which makes them say “MOAR!” or whatever is cool on 4Chan this week.

Though just for clarity sake my excuse for being on a Pokemon site in the first place was that I was young and stupid. But that’s the price of Internet fame!

So there ya go, mystery solved.