Indie Games Winter Uprising, Part Negative One
I hope you all had a good Christmas– or whatever it was you determined is the reason you gave your friends and family gifts this past year. I had a great time, although this is officially the year I was too old for Christmas: I got pajamas and a gift card. This is not a complaint, I didn’t expect to get that awesome GIJoe Aircraft Carrier that I asked Santa for this year or anything, but it is just one more sign that I am rapidly aging. I figure that this means next year I’ll get some Mueslix and a guide on how to knit hats for my non-existent grandchildren. I’m still happy I didn’t get a stocking full of sorrow like the rest of the writers here, so I’ve got that going for me to close out the year. (more…)
Friend and fellow writer Billy Holiday makes his AIM Comic debut! I have no idea why it took so long because we talk frequently and laugh frequently, too. Perhaps our conversations too often revolve around sensitive gossip and characters that are unknown to the general reading population. However, when we are not being rumormongers, we frequently can be found delighting over things we have said. 
Well, we’ve started week three of this one week Indie Game Winter Uprising promotion (
Some days are worse than others. You’d think that drugs would be to blame, but no such luck. I appear to be naturally predisposed to some forms of insanity. Melissa clearly doesn’t know what to do. I am probably actually scaring her here. 
Well apparently it’s Christmas time or something. I suppose I should do a Holiday themed Humpday Gaming. If for nothing else other than to not be labeled some horrible Scrooge by people that actually like this pile of shit holiday. Yes, it’s no secret that Christmas as a whole makes me want to drink a big ol’ gallon of bleach until sweet mercy takes me away by melting the majority of my internal organs. I can’t quite put my finger on a single reason. I suppose it may have to do with the years that I have worked in retail (Protip: Retail will make you hate the majority of everything and everyone). Or maybe it is the nonstop shoving it down my throat for two straight months. Who knows. But that’s not why we’re here today. No, today we’ll speak of a bygone time when I actually enjoyed being a part of Christmas. Sitting around with family, eating tons of food, and waiting impatiently to open presents. It’s still hard for me to believe those days existed. And this little gem of a game made it all even better: 
This week’s AIM Comic is actually a montage of three or four different interactions I had with sometime-OMGJ Writer Chris, aka X-1, aka that old Scorpius. He and I had watched some awful James Bond movie, and in it, Bond had a Protective Orb that he inflated to protect himself, and a lady, from harm. Chris immediately started using one for himself whenever we talked. 
Here I have depicted a brief yet heart-warming exchange between myself and Nick Woods, a completely supportive and dear friend indeed. Like most of the people I seem to surround myself with, he offers the customary response to any hope, dream, or goal I announce to the world. That customary response being, of course, smug skepticism. ): 
If there is one legit crime that should be levied against game developers when I was a kid, it was that there was not ONE good Ghostbusters console game. To this day, it’s still hard for me to believe that developers took a concept so natural and easy (dudes blowing up ghosts with laser beams) and fucked it up, time and time again. It would be like telling a bee to make honey, and instead of what it does naturally, it went to the grocery store and bought you a bag of Bit-O’-Honey. I JUST WANTED HONEY, BEE. NOT SOME SHITTY PLASTIC CANDY THAT RIPS TEETH OUT. WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE JUST MADE ME HONEY LIKE YOU WERE BORN TO DO? This was what it was like to want a Ghostbusters game in the 80s. From the too-terrible-for-words NES games, to everything that followed for upwards of two decades, not ONE developer could take the simple task of using the Ghostbusters to make a good console game. 
