A Wonderful End To April (#186)

So I got the Playstation 3 yesterday, and when I got home I put it together straight away. I also got 3 PS3 games for me to play as soon as I wanted to, which included Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Generations and Kingdom Hearts: HD 1.5 ReMIX (plus I already got Sonic 06 a couple days ago). I think I've mentioned it before but I do actually have Kingdom Hearts 1 for PS2. However, despite the fact that I've started playing through the game quite a few times, I've never actually fully completed it, so since I have the HD remake now, I definitely want to play through the whole thing. Anyway, so yes, I got home and put the system together, but my fears were confirmed when I found out that there was a big problem: the cable connecting the controller to the console (try saying that five times fast) wasn't working (and also it was extremely short, which would mean that I wouldn't be able to play the PS3 while the controller was charging because the wire wouldn't reach). This made me really depressed and disappointed, especially since I would probably have to return the console or at least get a new wire which I wouldn't be able to until around Tuesday, when I go back to school after this 4-day weekend. However, I remembered my friend, Christmas Guy, who I mentioned in post #151, has a PS3 that he doesn't really use anymore since he got a PS4. So I called him and asked him if I could borrow one of his USB cables, since the one I had bought wasn't working. Christmas Guy's birthday is December 25th, and let me say, in this situation he really was Jesus. He had a few spare cables, and came on over to mine to give me one of his. The console worked fine, and the controller finally connected.

Sadly, there was another problem. As you might know, Sonic 06 is known for its terribly long loading screens, and since that was the first game chronologically out of the three Sonic games I bought, I had decided to play that first. However, I'm not sure if its the copy of the game I bought glitching out or if its something else, but the game wouldn't load past the first loading screen, which meant I couldn't even get to the title screen. I tried a few things like turning the console off and on and cleaning the disc, but it didn't seem to work, even though the disc didn't really have any major smudges or scratches. The game was second hand though, so I dunno. Anyway, I'm probably going to have to return it to CeX or attempt to get a refund since I bought it from them online. After I gave up on this though, I tried Sonic Unleashed, and that works fine. I've been playing it loads since last night and it's awesome. I actually own Unleashed for Wii, but I haven't played it for a few years. I think it's actually broken, plus the Wii/PS2 version is a lot different to the more next-gen (at least when it came out) PS3/Xbox 360 versions, so I decided to get it for PS3. There are more daytime stages and quite a lot of differences between the two versions. I actually think Sonic Unleashed is one of my favourite Sonic games. Not only was it my first 3D Sonic game and the second Wii game I ever played, giving it a special place in my heart, but this PS3 version is just really amazing, and I love both hedgehog and werehog stages.

I can't talk/type for much longer now since I'm about to go and watch Captain America: Civil War. I'm extremely excited and, by the way, I watched The Dark Knight yesterday. I loved it, it was a fantastic film and Heath Ledger as the Joker was an incredible performance. I will watch The Dark Knight Rises soon.

Oh, and my neck feels fine now.

Thomas

Civil War Countdown (#185)

It's incredible to be finally saying this, and it's almost impossible to believe, but Captain America: Civil War releases here in the UK in just a matter of hours. I just really want to say how excited I am, even though I won't be watching the film tomorrow but on the day after. It's been absolutely ages since our last Marvel Cinematic Universe film, which was Ant-Man in July 2015 (I made a review about it!), but after a crap ton of waiting, it's time for phase 3 to start. I'll obviously make a post after I watch it. It probably won't be a proper review, maybe just a short summary of the film and stuff, but we'll see. It's really, really close now!

Anyway, I should be getting the PS3 tomorrow. My neck still aches after yesterday but it's definitely feeling much better. Sonic 06 already arrived, so I'll have that to play straight away when I get home, and then of course there's Civil War the very next day. Also, I won't need the Blu-Ray player in my room much longer, since I'm pretty sure that PS3s play Blu-Ray disks. And also, after watching Batman Begins yesterday, I may watch The Dark Knight, which is the second in the series, later today. Possibly.

Thomas

PS3: Earlier Than Expected (#184)

This gonna be one of those posts where I just say a few small things, so it'll be mostly random stuff. Firstly, as the title says, I should hopefully be getting a Playstation 3 earlier than expected! I said about two weeks ago that I would hopefully be getting a PS3 around the end of May, but instead, since my birthday was on Monday and I've saved up a lot of money from that, the plan is to get the PS3 this Friday, April 29th! I've already ordered the first Sonic game that I want to play on the system (Sonic 06, stop judging) and that should arrive by the time I have the PS3, which means I'll be able to start playing games on it straight away.

Speaking of April 29th though, that's the day Captain America: Civil War comes out in cinemas here in the UK. Only two days left! I'll be watching it on Saturday at 14:00 (roughly 73 hours after this post goes up), so three days left for me. IMAX, of course.

Next, I got the Dark Knight trilogy on Blu-Ray for my birthday, and I just started watching the first fo three three films, Batman Begins, today. I'm about 40 minutes in, and it's actually really great so far. There are some elements that I recognise from Arrow, which makes a lot of sense since they're both DC and all. I haven't actually started Arrow Season 3/Flash Season 1 yet. I will soon though.

Finally, I was actually off school today. I woke up with intense pain in my neck and I've just had to go to the doctor's and get some medicine and stuff. They said it'll just get better over the next few days, but it hurts so much when I turn my head to the right and oh God it's so horrible. I just hope it's okay by the end of tomorrow because, y'know, PS3 and Civil War. Oh yeah, I'm off on Friday as well because of some thing with my school, and I'm off Monday because of a bank holiday. I get a four day weekend, which means I get lots of time to play Sonic 06 (that would sound like punishment to a lot of other people). If I'm off tomorrow because of this neck/shoulder pain then that would mean I'd be off for 6 days straight, but I'd rather just be at school tomorrow because there are lessons I don't wanna miss and I'd rather just not be in such pain.

Thomas

Birthday Post: Old Video Game Drawings! (#183)

Okay, so I forget which one exactly, but in a post a few weeks ago I think I mentioned something about some old drawings of Sonic that I made a few years ago, when I was like 10 or 11. I actually still have them dotted around my bedroom (in fact, a few of them are still up on my wall) and I also remembered that I have other drawings that aren't just of Sonic, I think I made one or two Pokemon pictures as well when I binge-watched the anime when I was younger for some reason. I know I definitely have the Sonic ones, but I'm gonna have a quick look around, see if I can find any of the others that I know I have somewhere. Since today is my birthday, I think it would be nice to post them here as a little celebration or something. Anyway, let me look around.

Okay, so I found the Pokemon pictures, plus some other Sonic ones I had completely forgotten about. I'll post all the drawings below. Keep in mind that these aren't all very good, and I was like 10, but I want to post them here, not only so you guys can see this but also so that if anything was to ever happen to these drawings I'd still have photos of them on here so they wouldn't be completely lost. Annoyingly, many of the photos are upside down so you might have to tilt your head more than a little.

Sonic

Tails

Knuckles, the first one I drew. I actually took a
picture when I was drawing it, dated 29/08/2011.

Amy Rose

Cream and Cheese

Shadow

Silver

Blaze

The next pictures are some other random Sonic ones I found.

I didn't finish drawing Sonic's shoes apparently
:)

Now for some drawings from my Pokemon obsession. 

Ash and Pikachu

Pikachu, Snivy and Tepig

Charmander looks as if he's about to devour the other two.

Bulbasaur

The three Unova starter Pokemon.

Oh, and then there's this crazy crapfest of video game references. I'm not sure what half of these little doodles mean. 

????????????

Well, that's all I could salvage from the deep depths of my cluttered belongings. However, while searching for these, I did actually find some other cool stuff that I'd like to post on here in the future. One of them's a little thing I wrote about the Legend of Zelda, the other is a little comic thing, and there's something to do with Super Smash Bros. But that's for later. For now, hope you enjoyed these pics. Happy birthday to moi.

Thomas

Iron Man in Homecoming! (#182)

It has been confirmed that Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man will be making an appearance in Spider-Man: Homecoming, releasing in 2017. This will most likely be a follow up to the events in Captain America: Civil War (releasing in less than a week by way! ...At least in the UK whereas in America there are still like two weeks left. Sorry, US citizens...), where Spider-Man will be siding with Tony Stark's team (at least initially). In the comic books, Tony designs an 'Iron Spider' suit for Peter Parker/Spidey, so perhaps something like that could come into play in Homecoming. I'm sure there'll at least be a nod to it though. In similar news, Michael Keaton, who was rumoured to be playing a villain in Homecoming, will apparently not be in the film. We'll just have to see who the villain will be, though personally I'm hoping for somebody we haven't seen before. The Green Goblin's been done in both the original Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, so I'd love to see somebody like the Vulture, the Hobgoblin, or even a more obscure one like the Shocker, I like that guy. I would be fine with seeing a villain we've had before in a Spider-Man movie though, like Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus or Electro, as I'm sure Marvel Studios would nail the performance as usual.

Speaking of which though, aren't Sony still making a Venom spin-off movie even though The Amazing Spider-Man series kinda flopped? And I even heard that they're making a separate animated film of Spidey that will be in cinema, but that sounds really weird. Speaking of which though, there are supposed to be plans for a live action Sonic movie in two or three years, I hear! Honestly, it'll probably be a bit sucky, but who knows, it could be great. I'll definitely be watching it either way :)

Thomas

List of 3D Sonic Games (#181)

Not much needs to be explained here, but because I talk too much, I will do some explaining anyway. This is a list of all the mainstream 3D console Sonic games (not including Sonic 3D Blast, and if there are any others that aren't this list, it's because I chose to leave them out). Nothing much more to say, so here we go. Gotta go fast!

1) Sonic Adventure (1999)

2) Sonic Adventure 2 (2001)

3) Sonic Heroes (2003)

4) Shadow the Hedgehog (2005)

5) Sonic the Hedgehog (2006, usually called Sonic 06)

6) Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007)

7) Sonic Unleashed (2008)

8) Sonic and the Black Knight (2009)

9) Sonic Colours (2010)

10) Sonic Generations (2011)

11) Sonic Lost World (2013)

12) Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

So yeah, those are all the main 3D Sonic games, not including any handheld or spin-off games (well, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is technically a spin-off game, but it's still a major 3D Sonic game). I've played and own most of these in different versions, but will definitely be completing my collection soon. My birthday is on Monday so I'm gonna be uploading a special post to celebrate, to do with something I mentioned a while ago.

Thomas

Wreck-It-Ralph Review (#180)

So a really great cartoon Disney movie that I haven't really mentioned before on AFN is a little gem called Wreck-It-Ralph. The film came out in late 2012 (or early 2013 for us living in the UK) and back when I first watched it (in fact I'm pretty sure it was on the exact same day that I watched it) I actually made a review. Now, this review was not on my second blog, Hedgehog Reviews, which I talked about in post... wait, let me check it... #104. Yeah, so this review wasn't on that blog, but my first blog I made about three to four years ago when I was like 11, which I will never be linking here because the things I wrote on there make me cringe to the moon and back. But the Wreck-It-Ralph review was actually alright, so I am actually going to copy and paste it here, completely unchanged. Now, let me go find that old blog... Ah, I remember now, I took it down. But I do still have the few posts I made on it somewhere, so let me just locate the Wreck-It-Ralph one. Okay, here we go. I originally published this on March 2nd 2013, which, as I said, was the day I watched the film, I think.

'Hey again! So my first post got a couple views, and I’m making another. This time the post is going to be a review of a recent Disney movie, called Wreck-It-Ralph.

 First of all, it’s rare for me to be talking about a Disney movie, because I never really liked Disney to tell the truth. Most of it seemed to be love stories, which was kind of boring (my opinion, its fine to disagree). In fact, the only Disney movies I ever really liked were Finding Nemo, Up and The Jungle Book.

But I gotta say, Wreck-It-Ralph could well be my favourite animated movie of all time, although that probably is because I love videogames. =L But yeah. Basically, the movie is based off a videogame villain, who wrecks things (which you probably guessed =P). He and the hero of the game, known as Fix-it-Felix, live in an arcade game called (Yep) Fix-it-Felix, Jr. Ralph doesn’t want to be a villain anymore, and the cast end up travelling through three games: Fix-it-Felix, a pixelated, 2D game. Hero’s Duty, a tense, first person shooter. And Sugar Rush, a Mario-Kart-like racing game in a sweet, candy world.

The film is very clever. There’s a place in the movie called Game Central Station, a large, rectangular room where all the videogame characters hang out while the arcade’s closed. The room, in reality, is just an extension plug socket, and the outlets are the portals to each game. Genius. There are also a few emotional moments as well =’)

And oh my goodness. If you aren’t already convinced that the film’s made especially for gamers, I’d like to say that there a heck load of references, from Sonic the hedgehog to Pacman =V, from Lara Croft to Nintendo, from Super Mario to zombie shooters. And great music.

And even though Fix-it-Felix Jr, Hero’s Duty and Sugar Rush aren’t real games, you can actually play them on the Wreck-it-Ralph Website! http://www.disney.co.uk/wreck-it-ralph/games/

Anywayz, got to go. You really should check this film out though.

-- Tom Tom =)'

Yes, well, as you can see, my, ahem, attitude was slightly different. But not bad for an 11 year old, eh? And most of the stuff I said is still true. I love me some Wreck-It-Ralph. Here's hoping for a sequel.

Thomas