Largely webcomics are free, but at some point life, healthy eating, appropriate amounts of exercise, significant others, children, bills, taxes, friends, eight hours of sleep, volunteer work, free time, and society as a whole will realistically require some kind of income to justify the amount of time spent on making webcomics. They can be tricky to monetize.
One of my favourite webcomics is Space Avalanche. It is written and drawn by a guy named Eoin Ryan. One of the things that struck me was how well he could storyboard a comic to fascilitate a joke. His style directly inspired this comic and probably this one as well. Whenever someone one Twitter says they could use a laugh, I send one these:
Recently Eoin added a donation hat above his site. If he makes enough he will make one comic a week (currently new comics appear sporadically, but they are always awesome). I’ve seen similar models where once a donation level is received, the webcomic creator will do a bonus comic in addition to the schedule. Eoin’s plan is more like “founding his dreams.”
I put my money in the hat and will continue to do so. More Space Avalanche comics are worth it.
Regular internal combustion cars are the devil, and hybrid vehicles are guilt-free driving. This is the message the auto industry is telling us right now. Oddly though, there was a plethora of regular gasoline engines which got better gas mileage than even the best hybrid vehicles (thanks to Fark for the inspiration) available today, and they cost less. For example:
1980s Honda Civic CRX
V.S.
2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid
The Camry has the best gas mileage out of the hybrid cars at 41mpg (5.7L/100km) combined. Sounds pretty good. The 1989 Honda Civic CRX has a gas mileage of 44mpg (5.3L/100km) combined. What the fuck?
Why would the auto industry spend billions of dollars over the last 10 years to develop “gas efficient” (hybrid) cars, when they already had cars that were more gas efficient in the 80s? I’ll tell you why:
1. Weight. Over the years, cars have increased in weight. One reason for this is that the safety regulations over the years have changed, and it requires better and heavier safety equipment to meet. However, if the auto industry was willing to spend billions into developing an entire and very complicated new engine type, why were they not willing to spend the money into weight reduction?
2. Manual Transmission. Manual transmissions were more popular in the past, and manual allows drivers to be far more gas conscious. If you’re accelerating towards a red light, you’re doing it wrong.
3. Consumer Greed. Let’s be serious here, power windows, DVD players for your offspring, and sunroofs are not necessary in a car. While I’m sure the auto industry could put effort into making this items weigh less, the real problem is that the consumer became greedy.
4. Auto Industry Greed. This is the biggest one. The original price of the 1989 Honda Civic was $6,385. Price adjusted to 2010, this would be $11,082. Why would the auto industry want you to pay such a low price for high gas mileage, when instead they they can charge a lot more for a hybrid?
We have gone backwards with cars, and yet the industry calls it progression. How embarassing.
Apparently, it’s still Halloween and Valve has given us a very sweet treat for the eyes: the official Dota 2 comic titled, “Are We There Yet?” Check it out at: http://www.dota2.com/comics/are_we_heroes_yet/
It’s difficult to find people who have unconditional love for Game Boy music (or Game Boy for that matter). If you had video games as a kid you probably had Nintendo. Game Boy was supposed to be a supplementary system kids took on trips, but it was my primary system for a long time.
That’s OK, though. I loved that Game Boy. The games were cheap enough that getting new ones wasn’t impossible if I worked at it. I would either save allowance dollars one week at a time, trade my current games in for new ones, and then there was that garage sale where I sold all my He-Man action figures and several Ninja Turtles and bought The Flash.
Selling my possessions was probably how I got most of my games. I didn’t have the patience to save for for twenty weeks and lacked that ingenuity to mow lawns or help old ladies with chores for quarters. Trading games made each purchase more meaningful because it meant giving something away first.
In that sense, The Flash was probably my first disappointment. It gave you unlimited continues and I beat it in one night – most games weren’t like that. I spent years chipping away at Battletoads. Getting to that 8th stage was stressful. Dying there meant starting all over again. When I finally beat the game I put it down for good.
But when you only have so many games you spend time appreciating them. The Flash‘s gift is that your fearlessness encourages you to go as fast and as recklessly through stages as possible. Whether the game was easy or difficult it was usually the ones with the best soundtracks that I kept around. Going back to them now you could say the source of every nostalgic erection I have originates from this playlist.
Some Game Boy music was just recycled NES music and easily forgotten. But certain games like Metroid IIwere composed so thoughtfully they became memorable franchise history.
Across all my gaming experiences Game Boy titles were the longest. I got stuck in Final Fantasy Adventure for like three years. I was in the desert and this kid told me he would give me a hint on how to find the desert palace. I hate that kid. “Palm trees and 8 … got it?” I went back to that game off and on for years attempting all those bat-shit crazy ideas we try when we get desperate in puzzle games. I would go to the screen with palm trees arranged in an eight formation and hit the center eight times, I would charge my weapon to full strength eight times and attack that center spot, I would try hitting it with eight different weapons, I would leave and re-enter that screen repeatedly hoping to see eight enemies appear, and of course, I tried killing the kid in eight swings. But mostly, I would just walk around the whole world killing enemies, hoping to stumble into a clue. I leveled my character as far as he would go. It wasn’t until my Father introduced me to “the internet” I solved it.
“What can you do with the internet?” I asked him. “Well,” he replied, “say you wanted to know something. Just type it into Altavista and it will probably have an answer for you.”
There was only one question I’d ever had that I’d never solved. I typed: “Palm trees and 8 … got it?” A page came up that told me to walk around these two palm trees in an eight formation.
I killed that kid once more before I continued and beat the game.
So here’s a YouTuble music playlist of all those games I once owned, struggled with, loved, traded away, as well as music titles from games I included as honorable mentions. Let me know if there are some great tunes or games I missed.
I remember in university I stumbled across the music for the Southern Shrine. A friend of mine came to my room while I was listening to it and I told him that the scene in Link’s Awakening for this music was a magical experience. I tried to relate the scene to something he’d understand. “It’s like Plato’s Allegory of the cave,” I told him. “You find a cave that has no item, or dungeon, or quest, or reason to go there. It merely has an inscription on the wall that suggests your reality as you perceive it might not be correct.” He laughed at me and said, “What, did they just throw something under your rock every once in awhile to keep you happy?”
I wish they had thrown more game experiences like that under my rock. Then again, that might diminish moments like that one.
To the finder, the isle of Koholint is but an illusion… Human, monster, sea, sky… a scene on the lid of a sleeper’s eye… Awake the dreamer, and Koholint will vanish much like a bubble on a needle… Cast-away, you should know the truth!
