The Megas’s first album, Get Equipped, is a collection of ballads based on the songs from Mega Man 2. Each song endows one of the 8-bit sprites with very human characteristics and explores them. Bubble Man’s insecurity. Metal Man’s arrogance. Air Man’s isolation-fueled rage. In “Lamentations of a War Machine” Mega Man is conflicted after his victory, wrestling with the concept of destroying his fellow robots in the name of “everlasting peace.”

History Repeating is a larger, more ambitious project than Get Equipped. So large that it had to be split into two parts. In the first installment, History Repeating: Blue, The Megas continue to narrate the very human aspirations and motivations of the next generation of robotic bosses and even their human creators. Magnet Man has a forbidden attraction to Roll, Snake Man urges Mega Man to turn on Dr. Light and join the other side of the human/robot war, and Dr. Wily’s jealousy of Dr. Light drives him insane. Again. And in “(I Want to be The One) To Watch You Die,” the unofficial sequel to the band’s very first song “I Want to be the One”, Dr. Light has had enough of Wily’s betrayal and urges Mega Man to put a permanent end to his machinations.

I’m eagerly awaiting the second part of this project, History Repeating: Red. The Megas has released a small previous of their work in the form of Fly on a Dog. Again, Mega Man questions his place, but this time in the eyes of his “father” Dr. Light. Is he the scientist’s beloved son or just his favorite weapon?

Normally I prefer music that is available for free, but so far I’ve purchased all of The Megas albums. It’s worth it. But if you prefer, the band has all of the tracks from History Repeating: Blue and Fly on a Dog available on their YouTube page.

Once you start to feel the same urge to own it that I felt after listening to the freebies for a week, you can purchase it at their Band Camp page here.

Surprise, more buttons from FanGamer! Non-sarcastic surprise, one of those buttons was a special Triforce button, which got me a free t-shirt from their booth! The power to make wishes come true, indeed.

I raided the queue room a few times for swag bags, in an attempt to get all three sets of the PAX exclusive Cards Against Humanity booster cards. Unfortunately, half the extra bags I took had already been looted for their bounty and returned to the pile. Karma sucks.

GAMES

You know what doesn’t suck? Legends of the Cipher. It is a deck building card game that takes you through the life of a budding MC, struggling to climb up the ladder from local rapper to hip hop legend. And it’s a lot of fun. I sat down with the lead game designer and rapper Seth Brown, also known as Ham-STAR, and played a quick round. Simple, easy to set up and get into, and a lot of fun. Especially the free-styling part, which you can actually have fun with and make up on the spot, or recite a favorite rhyme from memory, or just use the ones printed on the cards.

I also sat down to watch a demo of Saints Row IV. I was worried that this wondrously ridiculous game would die now that THQ was finished, but Deep Silver picked up the ball and kept running. Somehow this manages to be even more ludicrous than the last installment. The demo showcased a few weapons, such as the Inflato-Ray and the Dubstep Gun. Both are exactly what you think they are. Also, mech suits, aliens, and super powers are involved. Oh, and I forgot to mention that your character is now inexplicably the President of the United States. Hail to the Chief!

COSPLAY

And hail to the cosplayers on Saturday. It seems people saved their A-Game for Day Two. There was a great family cosplay of Glados, some random Aperture Science employee, and the portrait of Cave Johnson. I also ran into a steampunk Sailor Moon and a GIANT Pikachu with working ears. It’d be terrifying if it weren’t so adorable.

I also spotted an old favorite of mine, Mr. T with his giant box of Mr. T cereal. He rocks!

ALCOHOL

“Double Johnny Walker Black on the rocks, please.” After a long day of wandering the convention hall, I decided to kill time before the concert by getting wrecked at the bar. The bartenders there take forever to get to you, but at a event that might as well be called “Queue-topia” what’s one more line.

Two drinks later, it was time for the show.

CONCERT

It was impossible to tell that this was Sam Hart’s first time performing at PAX East. His set was fantastic and he had the crowd eating out of his hand with his Mario Kart song. The Adele sample he threw in was a great touch.

MC Frontalot had an good set. No new songs and no surprise feature from Mega Ran this year (he was busy doing his own show elsewhere), but his remix of the Penny Arcade Theme with the Game of Thrones theme sample was mind blowing.

No new songs from Coulton either, but his set was hilarious. He seemed to have learned from his previous two PAX East performances that the crowd goes wild whenever he drinks water, so he trolled us by drinking refreshing applesauce instead.

Paul and Storm Storm and Paul headlined PAX this year! Zealous Arrr! They started with an ad for their web series, Learning Town. Looks hilarious. Then they opened with a completely original song, Baby Got Back. They followed that with a list of favorites, closing of course with the crowd rousing The Pirate’s Wife’s Lament. Also, Storm put on a Utilikilt that was thrown on stage during the show. Also, they had the crowd of something thousand geeks tweet an ASCII penis to Wil Whedon.

A good day and a great night. PAX East can really drain the life out of you and at this point I was definitely feeling it. Sunday is going to be a very lazy day.

Final Grade: 9.5 out of 10.

There was the usually scattering of Harley Quinns and Fionnas. I thought I saw an impressive Avengers group cosplay, but turned out they were just promoting the Marvel Heroes game. Speaking of which…

Games: Only went hands on with one game on the first day: Marvel Heroes, because the line was short. Once I played it, I could see why. Remember everything that was fun about Marvel Ultimate Alliance? Well, Marvel Heroes doesn’t. There are no variations or combos with the melee attacks or special power attacks, which makes combat very boring.

On the plus side, I got a free poster from their booth. Speaking of which…

Swag: I won the alfformentioned poster for knowing what Wundergore was. Won some free buttons from FanGamer.net, which will go well with the free buttons they gave me with my last order. They love to give away buttons. It’s also suspicious how willing they are to give away those buttons.

Also got some CAH cards and a slap bracelet. The fact that they didn’t give out any Luigi themed Swag for his big anniversary was a disappointment. Speaking of which…

Concert: The concert nights never disappoint. Metroid Metal wasn’t there, unfortunately, but VGO rocked extra hard this year to restore the balance of the evening. Especially their insane paced F-Zero arrangement. The Video Game Choir was with them and they sounded amazing in One Winged Angel and Still Alive. VGO had a new vocalist for Snake eater. She wasn’t as mind blowing at the vocalist they had last year, but she was still great.

I didn’t stay for Those Who Kill and The Protomen. I had beers to drink. Speaking of Guinness…

Alcohol: One of my favorite parts of the BECC is the big bar near the center. The had Guinness Draught in the bottle, which is a major win. Next best thing, if they don’t have it on tap. And the bar is right around the corner from the Rock Band freeplay stage, so I could take a little break from Con-Crawling by drinking a beer and watching a 12 year old crush the drums in an Avenged Sevenfold song.

All and all, this hasn’t been as amazing as previous years. It’s still been great, but the other years just set an outstanding standard.

Final Grade: B+

To be honest, I didn’t expect much. I grew up with the 80′s cartoon, I was a huge fan of the 2003 revival, and I love the 1990 movie to death. Same as most old school fans, I want these new adaptations off my lawn. But there’s only so many times you can retell the same story, so I welcome a fresh take and gave this new animated series a chance. Was not disappoint. It’s too early to know for sure, but I see potential. And a few of the things I found appealing about the premiere reminded me of the 2003 series.

Turtles! There’s No One Better!
Currently there are two other Turtles properties around right now. One a film in the filthy paws of producer Michael Bay, set to cast the Turtles as Turtle-esque aliens and pit them against General Schroeder. If you haven’t seen the internet backlash about this yet, chances are your computer is actually a rock. Call Geek Squad.

The second is the new comic book series, where human version of the Turtles are murdered, reincarnated as turtle versions of the Turtles and then mutated into the teenage-mutant versions of the Turtles. I’m not even gonna.

So if you want to see your favorite heroes on a half-shell in new adventures that won’t make your inner child cry himself to sleep, this is your best bet.

Watch Out For Shedder
The mutagen is free flowing, I’m already detecting a formula for the monster-of-the-week that’s similar to Smallville’s early seasons and its meteor rock mutations. Promises to be very Toyetic, which is a good thing. Toyetic keeps the suits happy, meaning it will be around for a while. But there are also hints of deeper overarching villain story lines involving the mysterious Shredder and a new race of aliens that look very familiar.

It should be mentioned that the action scenes are pretty tight, reminiscent of the TMNT CGI movie. Also, I appreciate the meta-twist with their first villain Snake, who does NOT mutate into a Snake. The fact that they hang a lampshade on a defied trope pleases me to no end. Bossa Nova.

They’re Like No Others
The visual style looks more like someone put Back To The Sewers, Teen Titans, and Source Filmmaker in a blender. The result looks very cute and unique, bright and cartoony. These Turtles look fun and each Turtle has a unique feature that makes them distinguishable, even without the color coded headbands.

Like the visual style, this narrative is like nothing we’ve seen already, but bits and pieces are analogous to other tales of the TMNT. There are nods to the original comic and the 80′s cartoon, but it doesn’t follow any of its predecessors straight forward. Its aware of the other roads taken, but forges its own trail, which will make it worth watching so see where it leads.

They’re Teenage Brothers
The Turtles’ personalities don’t stray far from the famous template set out by the 80′s theme song. Leonardo leads. Donatello does machines. Raphael is cool, but rude. Michelangelo is a party dude. Pretty standard, but the difference is that they are a lot younger and more naive in this iteration. We’re watching them grow into their iconic roles, rather than seeing characters already set in their ways, which is a lot more interesting. The focus for this series is definitely on them being Teenage Mutants. They still have growing up so do, so maybe there will be some surprises along the way.

Will this Next Mutation of the TMNT franchise have enough Turtle Power to survive their Manhattan Missions? It’s not hard to make children go “Ahh!”, but will they discover the Secret of the Ooh’s? I guess we’ll learn the fate of the Turtles in Time.

I made a funny.

Richie Branson is a rapper/producer who has produced Billboard charting songs for some of the industries top artists. He’s also a fan of anime and video games and other nerdy things and raps about them on the Internet. Quite well, I might add.

Last Tuesday he released #OtakuTuesdays Vol. II Mixtape, a collection of songs inspired by some of my favorite anime series and games. I’ve been waiting to hear a good nerdcore artist tackle the music from Bowser’s Castle and Branson delivers.

“I’m fly like I’m in a tanuki suit, bitch!”

Another of my favorites off of this album is Toguro Dreams, which retells the story of Toguro from Yu Yu Hakosho. True to his Otaku MC reputation, Branson highlights one of the things Hip Hop and Anime have in common: compelling storytelling. This song reminds me of other great songs, “It Was A Good Day,” “Brenda’s Got A Baby,” “Children’s Story.” It’s the same thing, but about a nine-foot tall demon fighting an undead high school student.

The other thing Richie Branson is known for is HELPING TO REVIVE TOONAMI!! And we already know my feelings about that block of programming, so I was beyond excited when Adult Swim started the hashtag #BringBackToonami earlier this year. Apparently, so was Branson. He released a rap which helped push interest even further and now #ToonamiIsBackBitches, thanks in part to Richie Branson and us, the fans! Keep an ear our for some music he produced next time you’re watching Toonami.

#OtakuTuesdays Vol. II and the equally awesome Vol. I offer 45 minutes of hot Otaku rhymes and beats that appeal to the nerd and the hip hop head in us all, all for free. If you grew up with Toonami, you need this these mixtapes. Listening to the tracks about Outlaw Star, Gundam Wing, or Cowboy Bebop take you right back to when you rushed home after school and tuned in to see something unique and impressive; two words that sum up Richie B’s music perfectly. Go grab the latest, Vol. II, right here and click here for Vol. I.

And show your support by purchasing Richie Branson’s N.E.R.D. EP here. Don’t worry, it stands for “Nothing Ever Requires Discipline,” so Pharrell won’t be suing for acronym infringement. This album features another of my nerdcore favorites, Random aka Mega Ran.

So, now that we both know who Richie Branson is, keep an eye on his website for new releases and have fun blasting all of that new music. But not too loud, neighbor. I can’t hear myself drink over here.

Cheers,
JD

To get the ball rolling, I’ll be reviewing a slew independent short films set in everyone’s favorite crime ridden city: Gotham. Let’s start with Puppet Master.

Puppet Master is an interquel that takes place between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The tone and story fit neatly into the Nolan’s trilogy, a blend of crime thriller and comic book movie. They may not have a star studded cast or $500,000 cameras, but this film manages to match the look and feel of the latest Batman movies very accurately through the sets, the score, and even the cinematography.

But let’s not be superficial. This film looks good AND it has a great personality. My favorite thing about this 15-minute flick is that it gives us the Nolanverse version of three interesting Bat-Rouges: Zsasz, Scarface, and The Riddler. Zsasz is just as chilling and psychopathic as we’d expect. And Scarface is great. John DiCrosta nails the voice and Frank Birney’s Wesker is my favorite character in Puppet Master.

And the main character, Mr. Edward Nygma, an FBI agent assigned to bring in Batman for the murder of Harvey Dent. Wil Daniels’s plays this FBI-agent gone rouge like a less insane Jonathan Crane and my favorite part of his portrayal is Riddler’s superiority complex. He’s right, if Gotham is willing to let themselves be victimized by clowns and scarecrows, why should he save them? As a Riddler fan, I would’ve liked to have seen cleverer riddles and more obsessive compulsive behavior, but the condescending looks he gives Wesker and the talking down he gives Batman and his calculated smugness throughout is quite enjoyable.

This short film is a great premise for a full length feature or a mini-series that brings other psychopaths from the Batmythos into Nolan’s world of dark and gritty freaks, so hopefully we will see more from this team.

If you haven’t already watched it, take a look here or here.