Sunday, March 23, 2008

Netscape is dead, It has ceased to be.

Old but important news, AOL has officially announced that they will end the development and support of Netscape browsers.

I remember Netscape. It was the first browser that I ever laid eyes on. I was in the seventh grade when we were first introduced to the internet. We were to research a class project dealing with our future career choice. It was then that I did my first web search. My topic? SEGA!

Anyway, I was fascinated by this Netscape thing. I didn't understand it at the time, begged my parents for it, they understood it even less than I did. Little did I know that three years later I would be playing with html and making stupid fan web "shrines"... Little did I know that thirteen or so years later I would be making a living working with the internet.

Thanks Netscape...

Read AOL's Official Release Here

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Super Smash Brothers Brawl: Mario vs. Sonic

I never thought I'd live to see the day where Mario and Sonic would be in the same video game, let alone two. Mario & Sonic go to the Olympic Games was a nice, honorable way to bridge the gap for SEGA's superstar and Nintendo's number one. Still, it wasn't until the official news started curculating that Sonic would finally make an appearance in Super Smash Brothers Brawl that things got exciting.

Roughly twelve years ago my bestfriend empee3 and I were just starting to become close friends. She was an avid Mario fan, a collector of Nintendo Power, a girl who liked her Goomba's flattened... I was an obsessed Sonic fan, a collector of Archie's Sonic comics, a girl who liked emeralds and rings... We should have been rivals, arguing over the superiority of our games, but instead we became friends. We respected each other's love of the characters and the games that made them.

To make a long story short, I shared with her my comic collection and my love for drawing, together we started a fan comic. Colored pencils and Sharpies in hand our fan comic "Mario vs. Sonic" was born. We never finished it. We laughed about how great it would be to see them together in a game and we sighed at how it would never be so. We grew up and moved on but our hearts remain true to the characters that inspired us and our childhood.

With Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Nintendo has brought unimaginable gaming possibilities to us. I look forward to sharing the game with her this weekend. I hope it brings back as many wonderful memories for her as it did for me. We now have rekindled hope for a Sonic & Mario adventure game.