Bat-tastic!

This post nicely demonstrated how out of touch I am with the world of video games. Traveller's Tales, the makers of the super-fun LEGO Star Wars games, are working on video game expansion of the LEGO Batman sub-franchise. This news was apparently announced in September.

I'm not even that big of a LEGO fan. These games are just good, silly fun.

Have you seen this jedi?

My folks got me Lego Star Wars II for Christmas. My daughter Elizabeth and I really enjoyed the first installment but this one really improves upon the original. The one thing that's a problem is that we can't play Elizabeth's alltime favorite Star Wars character, Mace Windu, right out of the box.


Although Lego Star Wars II only covers A New Hope through Return of the Jedi, I was expecting Mace Windu to be available because of the new character editor feature. As you finish levels new character parts are unlocked for use in the creator. It seemed like finishing a level added people from that particular adventure to the editor. But I cleared the entirety of Empire Strikes Back and still no Lando parts. Purple lightsabers are an equipment option, but I seem to be unable to build the one dude known for wielding such a device.

In the meantime, I made Leia Organa, Jedi Princess:


This image was made with Mini-Mizer, a cute little Lego People graphic program that does all the work for you. My Princess Leia in the game has the traditional buns on the side of her head and a purple lightsaber. The blue pants are just cause I thought she needed some color with her traditional all-white look.

I R the Champion

Last week I finally won the world title in Legends of Wrestling II for the Xbox. I've been playing this game off and on since September of last year. A few weeks back I hit a bad spot where Kid Skull found himself unable to advance in 'career mode' because I couldn't win this one battle royal in St. Louis. I played that same battle royal a few dozens times. Eventually I edited Kid Skull to be bandaged up and wearing a leg brace and such. The poor guy took multiple beatings at the hands of Harley Race, Bob Orton, Bob Backlund, and the One Man Gang.

So I switched wrestlers and played my heel, Jeff "The Flatulent Beast" Hogan. He's your basic Mary Sue vehicle. He has a goatee and everything. "The Flatulent Beast" is one of the pre-loaded wrestler nicknames the announcer knows, so how could I resist calling my guy that? Jeff "No relation to that other guy named" Hogan ended up defeating the Iron Sheik for the big belt, just like the Hulkster did back in 1984. How cool is that? And I successfully defended the championship against the eighth wonder of the world, Andre the Giant. Awesome.

And the 'coins' I earned for my world title victory allowed me to finally buy access to this guy:

I originally bought Legends II because Andy Kaufman was available as a playable character. And it only took me 15 months to finally unlock the dude. Man, do I hate unlockables.

I think for my next trick I'll set up a tournament where Andy wrestles a bunch of women. Only one female character comes with the game, a fictional Southern promoter named Belle Jackson (of course). But you can build women wrestlers with the character creator/editor. I've got a couple, my favorite is Alice 'the Anvil' Anderson.