Nostalgia in the Time of Machines

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http://japeland.wordpress.com/

Game site is back on the grid

Everything you wanted to know about Speed Rally, Light Bikes and Rülerball are now all in one place on my revamped, relaunched game blog speedrally.net

March Badness, Rebooted

So io9 is doing a bracket to pick the greatest sci-fi movie of all time? Big whoop — any dweeb can mash the button for Star Wars; it takes a real nerd to sit down and watch some of the biggest stinkers, bombs and disasters ever seen on screen to determine which one is the WORST SCI-FI MOVIE OF ALL TIME.

And I was just the idiot to do it ... so back in 2005 I sent out ballots to some 60 geeks, goobers and good friends and asked them to reach deep into the bottom of the barrel and vote for the worst of the worst. I also went and watched a bunch of the nominees I hadn't seen before in short order, including the infamous night when we saw "Battlefield Earth" and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" back-to-back. ... my eyeballs bled to bring this -- bled, I tell you!

I also gave a play-by-play of each of the movie matchups, some of which are collected below.

And so, without further ado, here is the Flash intro to the contenders for "The Worst Sci-Fi Movie of All-Time"

http://japenet.net/marchbadness.swf

Here are the brackets going into the Final -er, "Fatal Four"

March Badness, via the Wayback Machine

Ok, I found half of my posts on March Badness using the awesome power of the Wayback Machine -- this will just have to do until I find the CDs with the backups of my hard drive from 2005, which are probably on some dusty shelf next to the bones of a minor saint...

Part 1 — Intro!
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050419215801/http://home.nc.rr.com/jape77/2new/it_begins.html

Part 2 — Wildcard Round!
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050419220326/http://home.nc.rr.com/jape77/2new/wildcard_results.html

Part 3 — Round 1
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050419215914/http://home.nc.rr.com/jape77/2new/round_1.html

Part 4 — Round 2
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050419220105/http://home.nc.rr.com/jape77/2new/round_2_results.html

Part 5 — Preview of the Suck 16
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050419220131/http://home.nc.rr.com/jape77/2new/the_suck16_list.html

[UPDATE: found the rest of the missing web pages. Here they are in all their, um, glory]

Part 6 — The Suck 16
http://japenet.net/round_3_results.html

Part 7 — The Awful 8
http://japenet.net/round_4_results.html

Part 8 — The Fatal 4
http://japenet.net/round_5_the_fatal_4.html

Part 9 — The Championshit
http://japenet.net/march_badness_championship.html

Back by (un)popular demand

March Badness returns! Sort of! Two years ago, I set out to determine once and for all what is THE WORST SCI-FI FILM OF ALL TIME. It was a dangerous task that nearly left me a gibbering vegetable, but dammit -- someone had to take the chance so that others may be saved !

via japenet.typepad.com

March Badness REBOOTS! When I saw i09 was doing a bracket for the "greatest sci-fi movie" of all time, I knew I had to dig up the stinky bones of the 2005 playoff to determine the WORST Sci-Fi movie of all time.

Any dweeb can vote for Star Wars, but it takes a real nerd to sit thru all these bombs to the bitter, bitter end

[update: dang, life on the internet really IS cheap... all of the links below are dead, so I'll post new ones in a bit]

Welcome to the Game Grid. Light Bikes now available

Don't know what to do with all those Light Cycles you got for Christmas? Put them on the game grid. Light Bikes is a fast set of miniature rules for 2-6 players looking to recreate futuristic duels between light-powered cycles in an arcade arena. Available now at DriveThruRPG for only 99¢

Light Bikes is a variation of Speed Rally, a fast and easy set of miniature rules designed to be used with any 1/64 scale diecast car. Whether you want to recreate your favorite characters from movies and TV, or run wacky cars in a cartoon setting, Speed Rally gives you all the rules to generate vehicles and drivers, arm them with weapons and devices, and race them anywhere. Get your copy here!

UPDATE: From now until the end of the month, all proceeds from the sale of Speed Rally at WargamesVault will be donated to Japanese Disaster Relief. 

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Veni, vedi, vox

Looks like Vox has finally noticed what the rest of us realized a long time ago...

J-Countdown and the Top 40

I suppose I should have posted this early in the summer, when Kasey Kasem finally (!) retired, but then again there were a great great many things I never got around to posting here. But hey, considering that radio stations are currently playing old "American Top 40" shows from the 70s and 80s, it is clear the format hasn't gone out of style.

Gotta say, I loved that show when I was in Middle School, when KK was on top of his game and the Top 40 still mattered in pop culture. Always thought it would have been great to hear an ATF of my own picks, and can even hear Kasey Kasem reading the lead in to some of them.

So, to take us to the top of the hour, and off to another blog, here is my own All-time Top 40. Take it away Kasey!

40.    Talk to You Later ... The Tubes

39.    Convoy ... C.B. McCall

38.    Texarkana ... R.E.M.

37.    Baker Street ... Gerry Rafferty

36.    Total Eclipse of the Heart ... Bonnie Tyler

35.    The Pink Panther Theme ... Henry Mancini

34.    The Battle of Evermore ... Led Zeppelin

33.    Head Like A Hole ... Nine Inch Nails

32.    Hold Me Now ... The Thompson Twins

31.    The Dreaming ... Kate Bush

30.    Snapshot    The Art Of Noise

29.     Barracuda ... Heart

28.     Heaven & Hell    Vangelis

27.     What A Fool Believes ... The Doobie Brothers

26.    Just Like U Said It Would B ... Sinéad O'Connor

25.    I Before E Except After C ... Yaz

24.    Word Up! ... Cameo

23.    Jump ... Aztec Camera

22.    I Must Be Dreamin' ... Cheap Trick

21.    I Did It Just The Same ... Eurythmics

20.    I Wanna Be Sedated ... The Ramones

19.    The Right Profile ... The Clash

18.    Sexual Healing ... Marvin Gaye

17.    Beautiful Girl ... Peter Droge & the Sinners

16.    I Ran     ... A Flock Of Seagulls

15.    Heart Of Glass ... Blondie

14.    Watermark ... Enya

13.    Cannonball ... The Breeders

12.    Bohemian Rhapsody ... Queen

11.    Dance Along the Edge ... Concrete Blonde

10.    Once in a Lifetime ... Talking Heads

9.    There She Goes ... The La's

8.    September ... Earth Wind & Fire

7.    More Than This ... Roxy Music

6.    No New Tale To Tell ... Love & Rockets

5.    Fat Bottomed Girls ... Queen

4.    No Myth ... Michael Penn

3.    Solace ... Scott Joplin

2.    Mercyfuck ... Mary Prankster

(Can you just imagine Kasey Kasem reading the intro to THAT tune? Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha)

Finally, before we get to #1, let me just say -- yes, I know this is a cheat, as it is actually 3 songs occupying the top slot. However, on the album, all 3 fold into each other and are meant to be played together, so we are therefore considering them one long tune. So here it is, your Jape All-time #1 hit, from The Cars!

1.    Double Life/Shoo Be Do/Candy-O ... The Cars