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The red-headed step-blog of Retromags.com

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Eleven Cover Songs That Are Better Than The Originals

"Hooo boy, Areala, do you really want to go here?" Yes, yes, I think I do. Because it's my blog, and it's my opinion, and you're all entitled to it. Besides, what's better than potentially starting a gigantic flame war over music and personal preferences? OK, besides sex. Right, nothing! So here's the deal. I'm going to list some covers that are better than the originals and explain why. You're all going to tell me how correct I am or that I'm going to burn in hell for blasphemy, and eit
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Teased By An Asylum

Are you crazy? Well, whether you are or not, you should consider the research. For example, did you know that ten out of every ten people polled by Hanwell Mental Institute's top-rated researchers tested positive for at least one mental illness, and eight out of those ten tested positive for two or more? And that three of those remaining eight were found to have a staggering five or more mental illnesses according to the soon-to-be-released DSM-V? Are you sure you're not crazy? Remember: a
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Solo Board Game: Intruder

I always thought somebody should make some kind of board game based on the Aliens universe. They've made plenty of video games based on the property after all, on everything from the 2600 to the modern-day consoles with the pending release of Aliens: Colonial Marines. There was also a fun "Aliens vs. Predator" collectable card game released in the 90s. Surely somebody somewhere thought about a board game, right? Well, they did. It was called "Alien", it was released in 1979 as a board game
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[Let's Read] - Nintendo Power #10

It's been a while since my last one of these, and I find myself desiring to get back on the horse, so let's get this party started up again, shall we? Hold on to your seats boys and girls, and LET'S READ!! Hot damn, this issue brings back memories. Aside from the first issue, this is the earliest issue of the magazine that I still own in physical print format (I had issue #9 a long time ago, but it met with a gruesome accident involving Kool-Aid that I'm still not willing to discuss). In any
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Letter to My Past Self

Akira Yamaoka, for the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack, composed a song entitled "Letter - from the lost days". Sung by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, it's the narration of the present-day protagonist directed to herself some years in the future, expressing her hopes, dreams, and fears. It's a hauntingly beautiful track:   But while flipping through a book of inspirational writing ideas yesterday, one in particular caught my eye. The suggestion was to write a letter to yourself in the past. Amidst
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[Let's Read] - Nintendo Power #9

Let's Read - Nintendo Power #9 1989 comes to a close with the Nov./Dec. issue of Nintendo Power, but the big N isn't leaving the 80s behind with a whimper. They're going out with a BRICK. Or rather, a bunch of bricks in the form of a puzzle game from a Russian mathematician that would turn adults and children alike into absolute zombies in the coming months. I'm talking about none other than Tetris, and its impact on the gaming world makes it ripe for inclusion as this issue's cover feature. "G
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Sound Trackin' - Cliff Martinez's "Contagion"

Whether it's for a film, a television show or a video game, I'm a sucker for a great soundtrack. I'm even more of a sucker for soundtracks that don't have lyrics, where it feels more like an organic, singular entity than something that a dozen artists threw one track apiece at and called it a day. And Cliff Martinez reeled me in completely with his absolutely enthralling score for this year's viral outbreak disaster film "Contagion." Contagion, as a film, isn't a particularly tradition
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Are You AFRAID? You Should Be...

You want to know something? Jack Kilborn isn't right in the head. They say you've got to be a little off upstairs to write horror stories in the first place, but...sweet mother of pearl, somebody dropped Kilborn on his skull five or six times then fed his psyche into a Veg-O-Matic for shits and giggles just to see what would come out on the other end ("It slices...it dices...it warps fragile little minds..."). The most likely culprit? Joe Konrath, the real live writer behind Kilborn's pseudo
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Dire Grove - Hidden Object Games Meet The Blair Witch Project

So I've been fussing around with a few hidden object games over the last couple of months which is why my progress on this blog has been...infrequent to say the least. Some of them have been crap, a couple of them have been good, but only one has stuck out so far enough to make me want to write about it on here, and that's Dire Grove. Dire Grove is just one game in a series known as "Mystery Case Files". These have been published on a number of platforms including the Wii and the DS, b
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Having Fun With Hindsight - GamePro #136

Continuing our look at magazine editors' predictions for the future, we're going back to the year 2000 and seeing what the GamePro gang saw in their gazing ball for the years to come. Some of them are serious, some of them are silly, and some of them really want to be accurate but just fall short. Let's see what all the fuss was about back when the clocks rolled over and nothing at all came of the Y2K scare! Since this magazine is from 2000, we don't have it archived here on Retromags.
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Having Fun With Hindsight - Flux Magazine #4

You're familiar with the cliche "Hindsight is 20/20" right? Of course you are, that's why it's a cliche. But that doesn't mean that we can't have some fun with it anyway. So to get this party started, I'm going to pick on Flux Magazine for a little while. Flux was a magazine from the mid-90s devoted to comic books, music and video games. It didn't last for very long (a mere 7 issues) but it attempted to brand itself as the more "mature" alternative to EGM and the like. What this mea
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More Music Picks From Areala

Flipping through my ample CD collection for something new, I found something I bought several months ago but hadn't listened to yet. It's a sampler record from Silber Records entitled "drones, loves, honesties, sounds". I'd never heard of Silber Records before. It came in a simple cardboard sleeve, and I got it for a buck as I recall. One of those things I bought on a lark because I was curious, then forgot that I even had it until tonight. Well, I was gonna change that, so I popped it into
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New Political Resolution - The Lemon Party

So, I'm sick and tired of politics. I have had it up to here with stupid people making stupid statements that they have no intention of honouring once they get into office. We're now involved in three different military actions directly, God only knows how many indirectly, and it's just getting ridiculous. How zarking hard it is for any of you bozos in politics to just tell the freaking truth? Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, Green, Tea Partier, Blue Dog, Conservative, Liberal
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So...What's Your Favorite Song?

If there's any question that is bound to throw me for a loop (aside from "What's your favorite book?"), it's this one. I love when people ask it, because it means that they are at least faking a mild interest in my life, but at the same time I hate when people ask it because it means that they expect some sort of answer besides, "How the F&@$ should I know?" My musical tastes run from one end of the spectrum to the other, and that means that you'll find in my collection everything from 60s
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Japan, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Meltdowns: WTF Can I Do?

I've spent most of my free time today watching the news. Story after story, report after report, picture after picture, of the aftermath of one of the worst tragedies to hit Japan since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And while the tragedy may seem remote and half a world away to somebody who lives in Indiana, there's still a part of me that is shaken, awed, and ultimately humbled by what is happening right now. This blog is usually reserved for my thoughts on video games and gaming-r
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[Let's Read] - Zod Wallop by William Browning Spencer

The first time I read "Zod Wallop," I had just graduated from high school and was working away the summer before my transition to freshman status at Ball State at the local public library. I saw it on the shelf, mentally asked, "What the hell is this?", took it home, and read through it in two days. After I returned it, I never saw a copy come through again, and for a while I had forgotten about it. Then, several years ago while working at the bookstore, a paperback with an odd title c
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[Let's Read] - Nintendo Power #8

Let's Read - Nintendo Power #8 Here we are, eight issues in to Nintendo Power's run, and the big news of the Sept./Oct. issue is Duck Tales. In fact, it's such big news that the big N is devoting a dozen pages to it in this issue in addition to all the attention it got in issue #7. The best news is that Duck Tales is one of the rare examples of a licensed property game that didn't suck eggs, so I can't begrudge Nintendo for featuring this game on the cover. This issue also features th
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Roller Blade Warriors: Taken By Force

There's no way I can keep myself from writing about the most awesomely bad film I've seen in years. And given that there are actually people who read this blog on occasion, hopefully this means that one or two of you will take the time to find a copy and watch it too, because I swear that you won't believe a word I write until you too have witnessed it for yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...Roller Blade Warriors: Taken By Force! OK. Tell me, honestly: you walked into a video
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[Let's Read] - Nintendo Power #7

Let's Read - Nintendo Power #7 When I started doing this series, it was actually this particular issue that I was looking the most forward to digging back through because the cover features Mega Man II, which is one of my favorite NES games of all time. Aside from Issue 1, this is the earliest issue of NP that I have in my collection, and I believe I acquired it through a promotion that Chips-Ahoy cookies ran where if you sent in a few UPC symbols, you'd get a free issue of the magazine
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[Let's Read] - Nintendo Power #6

Let's Read - Nintendo Power #6 Welcome back folks to another exciting episode of Let's Read magazines with Areala! Today, we're tackling the sixth issue of Nintendo Power. Why are we tackling the sixth issue of Nintendo Power, you ask? Because we've already taken care of issues 1-5 in previous blog entries, and it's always best to avoid redundancies. A quick look at the cover will tell you that this is, in fact, the May/June issue from 1989, and the feature everybody will be talking
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Senscape's "Asylum" Now Accepting New Patient Applications

I'm sure you've watched the videos from Leonard Huntings by now (and if you haven't, shame on you - they can be found right here). Four simple little messages to showcase the happenings at Hanwell Mental Institute. If they didn't whet your appetite for more, then you may want to check your pulse and confirm that you are, in fact, still breathing. For a few weeks now, Senscape's website has contained those four videos, a link to an interactive teaser preview which raises far more questions tha
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Hanwell Mental Institute Fires Back

Readers of the previous entry on Hanwell here on Retrochick are no doubt still wondering just what is going on. Today, I can report that a new chapter has been opened, as it seems that the Institute itself has become aware of the videos being leaked by "Leonard Huntings" and have now issued a statement. I received the following e-mail, which originated from a real person at Hanwell (I check all my sources before reporting), and have their permission to reproduce it in full here. You can chec
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[Let's Read] - Nintendo Power #5

Let's Read: Nintendo Power #5 Ninjas didn't just suddenly become popular with the arrival of Robert Hamburger's "Real Ultimate Power" website, that was more just the icing on the cake. For the real birth of the ninja power lovefest in the western world, you have to go back to the 1980s, when ninjas were sort of like the Nazis of film and video games. You could have them commit all sorts of heinous crimes (like kidnapping presidents or hijacking arms shipments) without anyone in the wor
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Hanwell Mental Institute Mystery Deepens (Updated: 3rd and 4th Videos)

I received the following message from an individual who identified himself as Leonard Huntings (though this is possibly a pseudonym). It was apparently reconstructed from an analog source and remastered for internet distribution. It's a little creepy... Appended to this message was the video itself, which I am presenting here: It's currently impossible to know where this video orginated, as I don't know anybody named Leonard Huntings. An educated guess would be that it somehow ti
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Two Pieces of Contemplative Poetry

Occasionally when the muse strikes me, I will write. Sometimes I do short stories, sometimes I work on longer ones, but often I write poetry. These are two examples from my lunch break at work today. Feel free to contemplate their meaning to myself or to you, and discuss in the comments box. * * * * * In my heart I wrote the ending a million times. In my mind I wrote it one thousand. In my journal I wrote it four or five. In my reality It was written once With heavy editing, not my
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