The whole concept of discussing video game consoles is nothing new, but Castle Vidcons is something that has really caught my eye lately.

www.castle-vidcons.com

They makes comics based on current events and issues with our 7th gen systems (which evidently, there are many), and illustrates with them many in-depth metaphors in an old, historic style.
They are quite literally, console wars, with King Wii at the moment, winning, though not without revolt.

They're great, the artwork is well done, the jokes are current and actually funny in this new context, and King Wii is an absolute dick.

Really.

It's just that games are really fucking addicting lately.

So, I decided to invest in a USB Gecko for it's hacking.
It's a device for the Wii that enables homebrew and hacking, I mostly got it for it's cheat code function.

The result? I can pull shit I couldn't have pulled before on Smash Brothers, such as playing as the dark characters that appear in the Subspace emissary, neat eh?

You can see what I've taken so far here:
http://www.brawlsnapshots.com/snapshot s/tag?tag=usb+gecko

So far, this includes the characters from the great maze being playable, the shadow bug forms being playable, and playing on normally unplayable stages, hopefully I'll be taking some more interesting snapshots soon, I think it might be possible execute multiple final smashes if I'm lucky.

I should try learning how to create cheat codes actually, maybe then I'll be able to do even better things?

So, life lately has been a bit boring, despite busy.

College work has been a bitch, but now I'm in the clear.
The past month or so was spent entirely on a heavy amount of coursework, in graphics and ICT.
The graphics work was mostly exam work, with a lot of development. I managed to sneak motherfucking Tetris into my exam work, fuck yeah. I also snuck in Garfield minus Garfield. The final work was simply digital photos of screws arranged as letters and modified into a font. The theme of the exam was transition, whilst you had to make either a book cover for someone like Edgar Allan Poe, or a type face.

As for my ICT, that was the real bitch.
The coursework was to make and document a database of some sort for an actual person you maintain contact with. It's a critical piece of coursework that accounts for 40% of your grade.
However, most of the year we only had 50% of the support we were supposed to have for some reason, which didn't help.
At the last month or so though, I managed to pull 134 pages out of my ass, ouch.
I scored 108/120, 90%, fuck yeah.
With that, I'm on to pass A2 ICT without a hitch, all I need is another 17 marks on my exam. (Exams are out of 90, piece of cake.)

And then there's Psychology, it's just studying, revising, examination, that's it.
I'm set to get a B in the subject, it's odd how the filler course actually turns out to be my best course.

To cope with the boredom, I've been getting new things for my DS.
I may have Brawl, but I can't exactly play that when I'm away from home can I?
To start off, I bought a CycloDS. Like my old R4DS, it's a Slot-1 Flash cart for the DS, the real kicker is that it has realtime save functionality, so I can save and load at any point in any DS game!
It also has a number of other good functions like slowdown, LCD adjustment, accessible clock, CycloDS is a great thing to have.
I decided to complement it with a EZ Flash 3 in 1. That's a Slot-2 Flash cart.
With it, I can download GBA games onto my Cyclo and load them into the EZ Flash, letting me play GBA games.
It's great because, well, carrying multiple DS, GBA games, nothing sticking out, yay!
I already made my own skin for the CycloDS, it's modified from my iGoogle homepage since the style appeals to me.

There's some other nice things I guess, I found a copy of Super Mario All Stars for £2.50, fucking bargain, a game like that should have cost £2.0.00 in store.

And to close, uh, here's some weird Dedede Icecream I made.
Have you ever, just looked at a fabric or carpet and seen like, an outline of something? That's kind of how this image came to be.

I may as well post them.

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/911 4/bowsersmistakecopygd0.png
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/300 7/creepysmilevg7.png
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/970 0/stickerstj5.png
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/102 /lucariosadrf3.png
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/726 3/auraoverloadbz4.png
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/971 1/lucariosaysfuckyoukg3.png
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/399 /lucariosonucaislj1.png

And if anyone feels like brawling me, send me a PM.
Chances are if you looked at my last news post, I added you now.

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A lot of the time, when I play my beloved Smash Brothers brawl, I like to take snapshots, and as such I post them to sites like www.brawlsnapshots.com.
But that's not enough, when i've got 200 great pictures here, there's but one thing I can do, fit them all into a 10 minute youtube video for everyone to watch, haha.
I took these all myself, i've taken well over 2400 but not all of them are worth showcasing.

Also, on a side note, I've FINALLY got Brawl online! Here's my friendcode:
3780-8379-8384
I live in the UK, so if you want to Brawl me, it's probably best if you live near me, alright?
The Southern-most part of the UK too, in Portsmouth.

If you want to brawl me, drop me your friendcode and email, I'll email you if I want a challenge, hopefully it'll be lag free too...

Here's a picture of who I main, compiled with graphics ripped straight from brawl.
I mostly play as Lucario though, but I'll play as Pikachu, Toon Link and Luigi too.

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Not much has been going on lately, I've been playing Brawl, doing college work, that's about it.

It's been a number of months since I made anything in flash, the problem is that I don't have any ideas for two reasons.
1: I'm not doing any bloody sprite movies.
2: There's no way I'd do a clock crew movie right now, even though I do have an idea.

I am tempted to made a movie about brawl or whatever, but fuck that, chances are it would get over-rated as hell and then people would just complain about me appealing to an easy audience.
Why can't I just make something I'm passionate about without someone having to bitch at me? Gah.

Ah whatever, I keep making shit that isn't flash movies though at least.
Over at Smashboards.com, there was a recent Avatar submission topic, with brawl out and the ability to take snapshots found superb, I made over 550 avatars for them to use, every last one of them out of my own snapshots too. (Download them here if you want)
I also keep making comics for some reason, not really for any purpose other than getting weird daydreamish ideas out of my head during boring lessons.
Since I have a hobby of taking Snapshots during brawl matches, I upload my stuff to Brawlsnapshots.com, a number of them have been featured on their site too. Take a gander, you might see something that'll make you laugh.
Yeah, there's a lot of Lucario, but that's just because I play as the character most of the time.

That's about it really, I'll close this post with two things.
Hopefully soon, I'll be able to play Brawl online as I'll get a new router, my current one is terrible (netgear wgt623v3).
And to finish off, you might've seen that funny picture of Sonic turning into a werewolf, I decided it would be funny to make something out of it.
Maybe you've seen this animated gif somewhere else before? Because I made it, got it?

Well, yay, easter.
Not really much to say is there? Easter comes around, everyone gets lots of chocolate, hooray.

I made a little easter comic, not much.
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/188 5/brawleasterct7.png

And I got 6 eggs this year, some very nice ones too.
Actually, probably the best easter I've had, there isn't one egg here that I don't like.
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/488 5/brawlloversofchocpz7.jpg

That's about it really.

It's been about 6 weeks since I started playing Brawl now, and in the meantime I've been getting snapshot after snapshot, well over 700 so far.
I've decided to compile a video of 200 of them on youtube, I hope you find them funny.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cB_Uv-2q dxs

You might notice that a lot of them are of Lucario, that's simply because I main as the character.

Maybe this Lucario obsession of mine is getting a little sick...

In any case, I got some neat stuff done recently, first off, Brawl!
A brilliant breakthrough in Wii hacking has brought forth a great tool for Brawl players, the Snapshot Decryptor.
In a nutshell, you can take snapshots in Brawl, take them off your SD card and make them into jpegs! Ain't that grand? So here's a couple of my favourites.

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/476 4/al08022900351binoutqt4.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/921 1/al0802291037binouttb3.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/660 6/al0802291021binoutzj5.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/216 5/al0802291020binoutgv7.jpg
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/432 6/al08021915084binouter2.jpg
http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/867 4/al08022422034binoutdz0.jpg
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/993 0/al08022900201binoutgu7.jpg
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/876 2/al08022900266binoutqf4.jpg

I've been posting these and more on the Clockcrew Brawl Thread, on GameFAQs and Smashboards.com, people love them and it's great that I can share these.
Some people have even been using the images creatively for captions and YTMNDs.
I love taking screenshots, there are some brilliant things you can do, and some questionable.

In any case, Brawl Snapshots are now incredibly easy to share, so long as you're a Windows user.
I can't wait to see what the world has to share.

Next order of business, merch.

So recently, I thought it might be nice to have some sort of Lucario decoration for my room, so I did a little checking on my beloved play-asia.com.
Surely enough, they had one thing for sale a "Talking Luke Rio" figure.
...Luke Rio? Appears to be bad translation, ironically it sounds like it could be a real name that would fit a Lucario.
In addition to that, I got a nice Kirby Plush doll and a Zelda Gashapon Figure.

They all arrived in the mail today, very nice.
When I opened the box though I was a little surprised, I knew the Kirby would be big, it's listed as 30cm, but I was expecting "Luke Rio" to be small, it's listed as being 48mm...
It's actually 260mm, go figure.
Not that I'm complaining though, it just surprised me a little, haha.

And finally, third order of business, another Lucario comic.
So when I looked inside the box for Luke Rio, there was a little japanese leaflet about the toy.
Basically it's a talking toy, but it works with another toy, Sir Aaron's staff from that Lucario movie.
From the looks of it, presenting the staff to the toy makes it talk as well, but when I thought about that, wouldn't that be.... bad?
If you've watched the movie, Lucario was trapped in that staff for centuries and felt betrayed, so I decided to show this through a quick 2 hour comic.

And so I guess that's that, Brawl snapshots are awesome, Lucario and Kirby toys are awesome decorations, comic, well just say if you like it or not.