It was SUCH a good game...

This particular soundtrack - Final Fantasy VIII - is so loaded for me... I miss those simpler days. Final Fantasy VIII was my biggest concern. Along with Brave Fencer Musashi. I was in high school - a freshman - and Al Gore was putting it all on the line to defeat then Governor George W. Bush.

I miss the time when those graphics were spectacular, the story a mystery, and every boss battle a royal hassle. I miss the SEED exams that we had the cheats for and the pointless necessity of capturing every card in the game. I even miss the times when we'd have done so much training only to have to turn it off.

Training to level 100...

Oh my gosh: Finding Cactuar! And then making him stay long enough to defeat and capture him!

Defeating Eden after finding it on the unmarked island via the Ragnarok...

And then the absolute best Final Fantasy boss battle in Ultimecia.

Ahh, Laguna..... And Squall!!!

I miss those days a lot. I wish they'd at least remake it. - No story edits, unless to make it longer. No game edits unless to update the system. Absolutely NO voice actors or actresses. - I would be so happy.

Ha. Reminds me of Kingdom Hearts: the epicness. I wish they'd finish that series, too...

Sorry. That was random. It's my playlist's fault. I might go off in prose dedicated to the X-Files next... I'll just... go back to writing now.

Uhm...?

Okay so... there were a lot of interesting and funny new stories this morning on Yahoo. Including the one about the lame new logo for Seattle's Best Coffee. Though I'm EXTREMELY excited about the AMC & Burger King partnerships they've got prepared for this year.

I read more about the Activision face off with Infinity Ward: it is seriously going DOWN between those two! Kinda sad, but then with the seeming split of the Infinity Ward studio, I can only imagine it will mean more and better games for us in the future - Respawn Entertainment will want to get even and surpass. Conversely, I found an oldish link about Bungie signing a deal with Activision to release a new non-Halo game/game series on multiple consoles instead of just the exclusive X-Box deal they've been sticking with for the last 10 years.

Out of all of that though, and more, I think I just... I have to talk about this:



O_o Uh..... What are they? They look like white cyclops Teletubbies made of marshmallow: Stay Puff. And what's with the pose? Either they're doing some sort of hula dance or I'm about to compare that rainbow behind them to Zordon.

They're actually the mascots for the 2012 London Olympics - and there's an even stranger video that goes with them:

( Youtube beneath the cut )

I like the animation. I guess Wenlock and Mandeville are kinda cutish? I think they're more weird looking... Apparently the yellow lights on their heads stand for taxis in London. Okay.... Weird thing to pick out. Why not do... I dunno? Big Ben for hair? I'm just saying, 'cause all big cities have lots of taxis. Mandeville (the blue one) looks like he... erm... wet his pants? And I can't be the only person looking at their hand-claw things thinking, "Crab people. Crab people. Crab people."

The particular Yahoo story says that the Olympic mascots have always been failures subject to ridicule in the past. Truth is though, that despite loving the Olympics like every other normal person on the face of the planet, I never actually knew there were Olympic mascots. I may not be the most observant person when it comes to the blatantly obvious, but I've witnessed a few Olympics over the years, and even as a kid, I never knew.

So on that note, if they were a failure everytime beforehand, why must the world continue the terrible tradition??