Gametrailers Top 10 Most Innovative Games

Gametrailers again came up with a meticulously researched and very well argued list, and they included several classic NES games so of course, they get a fat A+. I have my own list Im compiling, and it doesnt include any of these incredibly innovative games, but rather some of my personal favorites. What do you think are the most innovative games ever? What games changed the way you look at gaming? What blew your mind about the possibilities of videogames?

These top 10 list lists are making me all verklempt. What, you never saw Mike Meyers do Coffee Talk on SNL?

BoHeman Rhapsody

A Green Bailout

Thom Friedman
The New York Times

Many things make me weep about the current economic crisis, but none more than this brief economic history: In the 19th century, America had a railroad boom, bubble and bust. Some people made money; many lost money. But even when that bubble burst, it left America with an infrastructure of railroads that made transcontinental travel and shipping dramatically easier and cheaper.

The late 20th century saw an Internet boom, bubble and bust. Some people made money; many people lost money, but that dot-com bubble left us with an Internet highway system that helped Microsoft, I.B.M. and Google to spearhead the I.T. revolution.

The early 21st century saw a boom, bubble and now a bust around financial services. But I fear all it will leave behind are a bunch of empty Florida condos that never should have been built, used private jets that the wealthy can no longer afford and dead derivative contracts that no one can understand.

Worse, we borrowed the money for this bubble from China, and now we have to pay it back — with interest and without any lasting benefit.

Yes, this bailout is necessary. This is a credit crisis, and credit crises involve a breakdown in confidence that leads to no one lending to anyone. You don’t fool around with a credit crisis. You have to overwhelm it with capital. [Most] unfortunately, some people who don’t deserve it will be rescued. But, more importantly, those who had nothing to do with it will be spared devastation. You have to save the system. [Emphasis added - ed]

But that is not the point of this column. The point is, we don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.

When I need reminding of the real foundations of the American Dream, I talk to my Indian-American immigrant friends who have come here to start new companies — friends like K.R. Sridhar, the founder of Bloom Energy. He e-mailed me a pep talk in the midst of this financial crisis — a note about the difference between surviving and thriving.

“Infants and the elderly who are disabled obsess about survival,” said Sridhar. “As a nation, if we just focus on survival, the demise of our leadership is imminent. We are thrivers. Thrivers are constantly looking for new opportunities to seize and lead and be No. 1.” That is what America is about.

But we have lost focus on that. Our economy is like a car, added Sridhar, and the financial institutions are the transmission system that keeps the wheels turning and the car moving forward. Real production of goods that create absolute value and jobs, though, are the engine.

“I cannot help but ponder about how quickly we are ready to act on fixing the transmission, by pumping in almost one trillion dollars in a fortnight,” said Sridhar. “On the other hand, the engine, which is slowly dying, is not even getting an oil change or a tuneup with the same urgency, let alone a trillion dollars to get ourselves a new engine. Just imagine what a trillion-dollar investment would return to the economy, including the ‘transmission,’ if we committed at that level to green jobs and technologies.”

Indeed, when this bailout is over, we need the next president — this one is wasted — to launch an E.T., energy technology, revolution with the same urgency as this bailout. Otherwise, all we will have done is bought ourselves a respite, but not a future. The exciting thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the whole economy — from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.

In a green economy, we would rely less on credit from foreigners “and more on creativity from Americans,” argued Van Jones, president of Green for All, and author of the forthcoming “The Green Collar Economy.” “It’s time to stop borrowing and start building. America’s No. 1 resource is not oil or mortgages. Our No. 1 resource is our people. Let’s put people back to work — retrofitting and repowering America. ... You can’t base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America.”

The Bush team says that if this bailout is done right, it should make the government money. Great. Let’s hope so, and let’s commit right now that any bailout profits will be invested in infrastructure — smart transmission grids or mass transit — for a green revolution. Let’s “green the bailout,” as Jones says, and help ensure that the American Dream doesn’t ever shrink back to just that — a dream.

Hilarious GI Joe PSA Remixes

Are you still there? Did they leave? Phew, that was close! My blog almost got overrun by CSPAN junkies and physicists. So, I had to post nothing but cartoon intros, baseball, pizza, poker, and videogame musings for a while to let them know what the Crunchy Blog was all about. Now these GI Joe PSAs were hilarious in their own unintenional way back in the 80s, but these remixes are something else entirely. Porkchop sandwiches!

Voltron

LittleBIGPlanet Trailer

Biggest PS3 exclusive remaining on the calender for 2008, and it sure looks like fun. The whole concept is a 2D physics based puzzle and platforming game featuring photorealistic 3D graphics, with a focus on character and level customization, a highly interactable environment, and massively multiplayer coop and vs online play. If you have a PS3, check this one out fo sho, yo.

Pizza Season

So, now that Autumn is officially here, let the Pizza Season of 2008 begin! What, you've never heard of the Pizza Season? Well that wouldnt be a huge shocker, because I just invented the phrase, but I coined it to describe a phenomena thats been known for some time in NYC: in the fall, the quality and consistency of pizza goes up. Pizza Season is just like Hunting Season, but way cheesier and with a lot less blood, guts, and camouflage.

If baseball is the true religion of NYC, then pizza is the little wafer that you put in your mouth, while thanking the collective people of Italy for being culinary geniuses. If there was only one cuisine I could eat, without doubt, without hesitation, it would be Italian food. Now, I understand many of you may have been tragically brought up underprivileged in this regard, and although Ive never eaten Italian in every city in the world, if NYC isnt in the top 3 cities for Italian outside of Italy then my name is most certainly not Roscoe P Coltrane and you can call me a yellow bellied waffle eating wombat. The beauty of this situation is the trickle down effect. When you have Mario Batali and Il Mulino duking it out for supremacy in the the high end arena, there is going to be a lot of real estate left over for those restaurants that arent superstars. Translation: there is going to be a lot of awesome pizza. And let it be said clearly, Batali's pizza joint, Otto, sucks. So there.

So what exactly is Pizza Season, and why is there one? To state it simply, during the very humid summer months in NYC, its very difficult for even the best pizza makers to achieve perfect consistency in their dough, which can absorb moisture out of the air, even while it is cooking at 800 degrees. The result, quite simply, is a less crispy, more chewy crust. But as soon as that cool, dry Autumn air hits the pizza ovens and cooling racks, something magical happens. The pizza is transformed from good, ordinary NYC pizza into a sublime melding of flavors and textures. This only applies to fresh pies, of course - and ones that conform to a standard of overall high quality ingredients, preparation etc. And once the pizza sits for an hour, all bets are off. It can still be good reheated, but it wont be magical.

So what do we do here in NYC during Pizza Season? Eat pizza everyday, sometimes twice a day, sometimes more, if you go on a pizza tour. Now I know what you're thinking, Chronic, eating pizza 7 days a week cant be good for you. Ah-ha! You sir, are incorrect. Its what you eat in between the pizza meals that makes the lifestyle healthy, or unhealthy. If I eat pizza for breakfast, have a spinach salad for lunch, and then pizza again for dinner, Im actually eating decently. For starters, its vegetarian, and I can count the number of obese vegetarians I know on the fingers attached to my elbow. Secondly, although its fast food, at least at the places which serve slices rather than sit you down for full service, its not processed food in any way, its all natural: just bread, cheese, and tomato sauce. I dont know if the crap they serve at Dominoes is all natural, but if I had to guess I would say no. Suffice to say, Im not eating at Dominoes.

Bread, cheese, tomatoes. Notice how I didnt add ham and pineapple, or some other abomination that should never, ever go on a proper slice of pizza. You see, the better the pizza is, the less of everything you want on it. In the world of real pizza, less is more. Eventually, at a place like Patsy's, you get to the point with less is more pizza where the crust is so thin, and the spread of tomato and mozzarella so minimal, that you can eat an entire pie all by your lonesome. Im not saying I never get pizza with toppings, but I know that you never ever try a new pizza place and order toppings - which can either enhance and mask a poor slice or overburden a solid one with too many flavors. Toppings are whimsical, fantastical, indulgent, fanciful, and delicious - but not the regular domain of the serious pizza eater. Yesterday, I got a pizza with Peppers, Onions, Mushrooms, and Olives from Fornino in Williamsburg. The name for a pizza with that many toppings is a garbage pizza. I only order toppings from places that are renowned for the quality of their ingredients, because canned mushrooms really dont get me too excited. And even then - its just an indulgence, just to break up the rhythm of the cheese-sauce-bread-space-time continuum. Then its back to the standard - 2 slices and 2 Snapples from Danny's on the corner of Bushwick and Montrose. Its my neighborhood pizza joint, and although its not the closest to my house, nor the best in Brooklyn (Di Fara's?), its by far the best pizza in Bushwick.

I could write an entire book about pizza, but Im just going to coalesce the footnotes here. There are several different types of pizza in NYC, I grade them on a scale of 1-5, and the same place can get a 4 one day and then a 2 on another day. Such is the nature of any restaurant or food business, but with pizza its especially pronounced. Depending on who kneads the dough, how hot the oven is, how many pizzas are cooking in it, the humidity and temperature outdoors, how long its cooked, how long it cools, whether its reheated or not - these are just a few of the myriad variations that any slice from any one place will be subjected to. Of course, there is also the matter of style. There are so many different styles of pizza its pointless to try to discuss them all here, but let it be said, the two most important styles are Neapolitan (Fornino, Patsys) and NYC (Danny's, Joe's) style. I greatly respect deep dish pizza in the Sicilian and Chicago styles, but for me pizza is about cheese, and no slice in the world offers more cheese per square inch than the NYC style - and thats why its my favorite, although I eat all of the other styles regularly.

There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of pizza places in NYC, and probably only 4-5 dozen that actually deserve your time. Most are very, very generic, with bland tasting dough, overly sweet sauce and 2nd or 3rd rate cheese. Im pretty picky, and although I have my usual spots that I frequent, Ill sometimes try a new place, because you never know. The only true indicator of a pizza joints quality is how busy it gets on a off night, like Monday or Tuesday. If you still see people lining up on the off nights, its a good sign that the place is at least above average and worth checking out. Here is how you test a pizza place, and you dont have to be hungry to do this. Go in, order one slice and your standard drink of choice (as long as you drink the same thing every time you try a new pizza place, it is considered a neutral party in the taste test and should not affect results). Take a few bites. If its good, eat about 2/3rds of it. If not, throw it out after 1-2 bites.

Then, you go to the next pizza place, down the street, or the next train stop over, and try another slice. Then you go to another, and another, and another, never eating more than 2/3rds of a slice, in what is called a pizza tour. A pizza tour is a great NYC tradition, and you dont have to go to new places to undertake one, although its customary to at least try one new place per tour. Normally, you would want to start out at a new place, or one that you know to be really good, and then go from there, by neighborhood, trying different pizza places in small quantities. As long as you dont eat too much in any one place and there is some walking involved, a pizza tour is one of the best ways to see NYC and sample its triangular culinary delights. Mario Batali is known as a legendary pizza tour guide, who can polish off over a dozen slices in a half day of touring.

I dont know that I would take it that far, but if you ever make it to NYC in the fall, give me call, I know a few places we could go and check out. Dont get me wrong now, the pizza in NYC during the summer is just fine - but something unique occurs when the temperatures drop, and its certainly the best time of the year for touring the institutions, the old favorites, and the new kids on the block. If anyone asks where you're going, tell them its a vegetarian health clinic run by an eccentric hippie, with a sightseeing tour of NYC thrown in for free.