Sony's Orbis

The next-gen consoles, by rumors, are stacking up to be quite the beasts for every ones enjoyments.

Rumors have recently surfaced for Sony's Playstation 4 or better known as the "Orbis". The claims of the Orbis is that it uses an AMD CPU and GPU and has a release date around the 2013 holiday season. Development kits are already suspected to be possession by 'select' gaming developers.

The CPU and GPU being discussed is and AMD x64 CPU and AMD Southern Islands GPU. The Southern Islands name is associated to a high end range of pc cards that boasts screen sizes of 4096×2160 and a full 3D gaming experience in 1080i.


While all this sounds great there are two major draw backs to the new Orbis. The Orbis is stated to not be backwards compatible with PS3 software but the most controversial downfall is that used games will no longer be able to be used on the system. The hardware is speculated to tie a game to a particular PSN account or even through some sort of digital download.

(In order to be non biased I feel compelled to inform you that the "X-Box 720" claims to have the same lock out on second hand games.)

The gaming industry stands on a back bone of its gamers. Part of said back bone is that of the used gaming community. Since the Atari, borrowing games and/or selling and trading games has always been a part of the gaming community. Video rental stores used to be a staple and in today's day and age, gaming parties.

Taking off of this to a personal aspect, I myself will buy a game and take it to a friends house to play and in my opinion, this helps push the gaming sales. No one wants to pay $60 for a game that no one knows what its like. I know my friends don't. I may be one of the daring but I'd hate to see a world where we push ourselves to only playing Mario, Halo, Gears of War, Street Fighter, and Final Fantasy. Without being able to rent a game or borrow one from a friend or even taking one to a friends house would kill not only the secondary market but also push all gamers back into solitude. Sure there's the advent of online gaming but gaming is social at its core. We all like to get together and play.

So what do you guys think about the revolution in gaming with the new Orbis? Ho do you feel about not being able to play used or shared games?

-"Nurd" Pat!

Upkeeping a Collection

Good evening fellow Nurds!

This update is all about keeping up a collection. No matter if your collection is open for display, just a collection in a toy box to be played with, or even keeping them in their packages, many things can ruin a collection.

If you do keep a collection and intend to keep it mint in package a couple things that you can experience is deterioration of packaging due to access to moisture or even the yellowing of the clear plastic that is the bubble showcasing your figure. Yellowing can be caused my age, access to elements like sun light, and even nicotine.

When you keep a collection out for display or even in a toy box there are other worries to consider. Not only can the color of your collection be tarnished by the elements but you also leave yourself open to wear and tear, scratches, nicks, and even breakage.

This posting happens to deal with Snout Spout from my MOTUC collection.

Snout Spout sits on my shelf. He has ever since I got him, and that's where he still sits as I'm writing this. If you checked out my MOTUC page then you would have seen this picture.

For those not familiar with Snout Spout, he has a robotic elephant head and is the heroic fire fighter of Eternia. He happily sits to the left on the fourth shelf down.

Still can't find him? Maybe this helps.

Snout Spout, from Mattycollector.com had an issue with his elephant trunk. The trunk was made of a spongy material like nerf and was able to be poseble able due to a wire in the trunk. After sitting on my shelf for two months, the material cracked and split. Obviously this is a problem.

With all the characters in the MOTUC line, most head sculpts are unique and every character generally sells out the day they are released. This type of a situation leaves you with few options. No other character has a head that resembles Snout Spout and since he is no longer available on Mattycollector.com the only way to get a replacement is on the secondary market.

Having to collect from the secondary market, for those not familiar, means purchasing from another private collector, secondary stores like BigBadToyStore.com (which usually sells out via preorders), or even ebay.

In my particular situation I was able to obtain one via another private collector and didn't have to pay an outrageous price for him. Matter of fact, I paid the $20 which is the equivalent of what he was priced at on Mattycollector.com. As of the time I'm writing this, I'm waiting for him to be shipped. It also took weeks to find someone who had one available for a price that I was willing to pay so patience is also a factor when looking to replace a piece.

Alot of different scenarios can happen when you try to keep up a collection such as I do, therefore not everything is so simple.

I hope you enjoyed this little insight as to what can damage a collection and a further insight as I had to replace a character in my own.

3/21/12 Update

Welcome back fellow Nurds!

Its been a while since our last update. Since then there has been a few technical issues such as having to reformat a computer, loss of content, as well as a few others. With that being said, there's been alot of updates I've been wanting to add so sit back and I'll take you through them.

Toy Box

The Toy Box page will showcase various other toys and action figures that are not part of my MOTUC collection. You may find such things as Hasbro's Marvel Legends, Transformers, Bandai's Thundercats, among others.

Game Case

The game case is where you will see a collection of games, new and old, as well as showcasing collector's editions of games.

Glossary of Terms

From time to time I may use terminology that the casual browser may not understand, so for better readability by all, therefore a glossary of terms will be implimented.

These are just a few of the tweaks that I've been wanting to add to make this page a richer experience for you guys.

-"Nurd" Pat!

Witchblade #150

If you ever wanna feel like a dodo, here's a good example. Run a nerd blog and go to review a comic, just to realize your about 3 months late because your local comic book shop can't won't carry enough stock for someone to walk in and pick up a copy.

That said, here we are, 3 months late, but I finally got a hold of Witchblade #150, first print, cover A, and to me the book felt like a bit of a swan song for the series.

Sara Pezzini is the bearer of the Witchblade, a powerful and mystical artifact that takes the form of a deadly gauntlet. As as New York City Police Detective Sara, along with the Witchblade, investigates the city's most supernatural crimes.

Witchblade #150, The End of an Era, finds Sara under the eye of Lieutenant Phipps of Internal Affairs as he offers her 24 hours to decide between her career or the Witchblade.

We see Sara go back to where it all began, back to the Rialto where she is confronted by the Witchblade as it takes a human like form. Sara is shown moments from her past, and where she understands that if it was not for her, none of what has transpired would have come to pass.

*SPOILER*
In the end, Sara has to make a choice between the Witchblade or her career as a detective. Citing that she needs time away, Sara walks away, not only from her job, but from Detective Gleason, her boyfriend.

Being a reader of Witchblade for several years now this issue feels like Sara Pezzini has come full circle and ready for a new beginning. Until now Sara has always walked the beat and its felt that she has used the Witchblade as a tool. When confronted by the Witchblade Sara had made the statement that she didn't like feeling "powerless." I feel that Sara has given into the Witchblade and that her decision to leave the force was not her decision after all, it was her destiny. Now after leaving her career and Gleason behind, the Witchblade can take her to fill a much larger role. It feels Sara has a new calling and its exciting.

Getting into the nuts and bolts of this issue, it was written by Ron Marz with artwork by Stjepan Sejic. The writing is superb and easy to follow. It honestly didn't take me long to read this issue because it didn't get too wordy like you can find in some other books. A lot of the panels can be told simply by the artwork. It sucks you in. The work in Witchblade, to be digitally painted and printed on a monthly basis, is top notch. I've been a fan of Stjepan Sejic's work for some time now but there's not an issue that doesn't seem to amaze me every time I pick it up. Overall the writing and artwork come together eloquently and I find it an easy read.

Witchblade #150 ends with lots of goodies (which I don't have any pictures of).

We get to see a 6 page preview of Witchblade #151 with a new artistic team, Tim Seeley (writer) and Diego Bernard (artist). The change in style brings me back to the beginnings of Witchblade so it all feels new again. While Ron Marz and Stjepan Sejic seem to be moving to Artifacts (also published by Top Cow) and I wish them the best of luck, I look forward to Tim Seeley and Diego Bernard and all that they have in store for Sara Pezzini.

Witchblade #150 also includes a time line of the character, a Creator Hall of Fame, and a look back at every cover for every issue that brought us to where we are now. The look back of covers is by far my favorite of all the goodies because it covers so many great works from Stjepan Sejic back to Michael Turner, rest his soul.

Witchblade is one of those books I just can't seem to speak highly enough of. It is truly as masterful piece of art every month.

I do have only one regret of Witchblade #150. That is that I couldn't pick up every cover.

-"Nurd" Pat!

New Avengers Trailer

Today the new Avengers trailer came out and it is fantastic! There's about 95% brand new footage in the new trailer.

In the trailer we kind of get an idea about how everything comes together for the Avengers and we also get a good look at the mobility of Loki's new army.

Rather than here me go on and on about it though, enjoy.






Awesome isn't it?

Now up until this point we have not actually seen the Redacted leading up to my assumption that we may not actually see them in an on screen form until the movie actually comes out to theatres. 

The movie releases on May 4th so we might get another trailer for the Avengers before then. If we don't, this is it people. I hope your ready. I am.

"I still believe in heroes." - Nick Fury

-"Nurd" Pat!

Guardian Heroes

Guardian Heroes is a game that I remember fondly from the Sega Saturn and am happy to recieve if on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live. It is considered to be one of the greatest games on the Sega Saturn by not only critics but also by fans.

Guardian Heroes is a side scrolling action/adventure hack and slash game that also incorperates elements of an RPG as well. The game allows you to earn experiance points  to customize six attributes: Strength (determines physical damage per hit and distance enemies fly when the player hits them), Vitality (increases HP), Intelligence (governs size and strength of spells), Mentality (determines how many MP the player has and how fast MP are recovered), Agility (increases the speed at which characters can do physical and magical attacks) and Luck (modifies damage the player gives and receives, in addition to improving Nicole's selection of spells).

In Guardian Heroes your band of unfortunate misfits include:

Samuel Han (Han)

Physically powerful, Han can inflict a lot of damage even against guarding opponents (as his tackle bypasses blocking), but his movements are slow, and he cannot use much magic. He also has a flaming attack, similar to Ginjirou's lightning attack. He jumps high in the air, ignites, and comes down in flames on his enemies. As he is slow-moving at first, raising his Agility stat will make up for his initial lack of mobility. Han starts the game wielding the sword of the Undead Hero, until it is reclaimed by its true owner. In one of the story arcs, he may acquire a similar sword which grants him the stat bonuses he originally had when wielding the Undead Sword.

Randy M. Green (Randy)

Randy has many spectacular attacks and a large variety of elemental magic, including fireballs, lightning bolts, pools of ice and a devastating laser-like heat ray. However, like a typical sorcerer character, he suffers from low vitality. Randy's familiar, Nando, assists Randy during the story mode of the game, and is available as a playable character in Versus mode. In melee, Randy attacks with multi-hit attacks, his Dancing Wind attack being one of the most effective melee attacks around.

Ginjirou Ibushi (Ginjirou)

Ginjirou has an emphasis on mobility. He has a large variety of moving attacks, but this can also work against him. He also has a number of lightning/thunder attacks. Though his attack power is weaker than Han's, the sheer number of hits he is capable of dealing to enemies makes him a formidable character, and his lightning attacks allow him to deliver more hits to any single target than any other character in the game, meaning he can rack up combo points very easily and gain levels just as quickly.

Nicole Neil (Nicole)

Nicole has weak attacks and random magic. She has a smiley face emblem on her amulet and most of her magic attacks incorporate a smiley face. She is the only hero who can use healing magic, but as a drawback her attacks are the weakest of the four heroes. Experienced gamers quickly learned about her Barrier ability, which damages enemies until they are forced away from her; if an enemy could not be forced away from Nicole (e.g. the Barrier pushes the enemy against the wall), then it would suffer grievous wounds until the barrier wore off. If the enemy were to block the barrier attack and was standing against the wall, which would effectively trap them in place, the barrier would deal massive amounts of damage, often leaving only a bit of health afterwards.

Serena Corsair (Serena)

A well-balanced character, Serena (possibly meant to be Selena) the Knight has a wide variety of moves and a good selection of magic spells, the majority of which revolve around cold and ice. The most powerful of these are her Angel Breath, which creates an umbrella-like field of ice particles around herself when used, protecting her from physical attacks and freezing anything close to her, and the Valkyrie Javelin, which is similar to Randy's Super Magic Fire Blaster, but it freezes attackers instead of burning them. Serena joins the player as an NPC in story mode, but is later unlockable as a player-controlled character. Kanon later reveals that Serena is actually the surviving heir of the murdered Khans, making her a legitimate contender for the throne. She is the only hidden character that can be played in story mode.

Undead Hero

A powerful warrior who died when the Khans were killed. His body returns to life when his sword is accidentally brought to his grave. He reclaims his weapon and goes on a rampage, until the heroes realize that they can control him. In the game, the Undead Hero is a NPC who can be given simple directions by the players: Follow, Wait, Attack, Defend, and Berserk.

 Long before the beginning of the game, a supreme being created the universe to find ultimate warriors to hire as its personal soldiers. In the past, humans merely existed, cowering in fear as a vicious battle was waged between the Earth and Sky Spirits. The Sky Spirits decided to bestow incredible powers unto the humans, effectively making powerful wizards for their own gain. With their new-found powers, the human wizards joined the effort against the Earth Spirits, banishing them into the darkness. Soon after this was accomplished, the Sky Spirits grew fearful and jealous of the humans, and banished them all into the very same darkness with the Earth Spirits. Mankind instead opted for a more physical approach to life, and the Time of the Sword began.

Several decades before the game begins, one of the human wizards, Kanon, managed to escape his imprisonment with the Earth Spirits, and came back to the surface so that he might eventually get his revenge on the Sky Spirits. There, he brought his case up with the existing khans; since they did not trust him, he destroyed them and replaced their kingdom with a wizard kingdom, with puppet khans to do his will. Things were not entirely rosy for Kanon, however; the former king prophesied, prior to his death, that should his reign and the Time of the Sword be brought to such an abrupt end, then eventually the sword would again resurface and in turn bring an end to Kanon's reign. As a precaution, Kanon banished most every existing sword in his new kingdom, but he overlooked one particular sword, belonging to a fierce, anonymous warrior who fought especially valiantly to the death during Kanon's takeover. Also, the former princess, Serena, survived the ordeal, and joined the band of knights to try to bring about Kanon's end from the inside.

At the game's start, four warriors - Han, Randy (with his pet rabbit, Nando), Nicole and Ginjirou - find the sword of the valiant warrior. Just as they decide to begin relaxing for the remainder of the night, Serena bursts in, hastily warning them that the knights have learned of their possession of such a powerful sword, and are coming to take it back, no matter the costs. The four flee their home as it bursts up in flames during the invasion, then escape the town via their separate ways, rendezvousing at the graveyard nearby.

Upon reaching the graveyard, they discover the leader of the Black Knights, Valgar, awaiting them, and accompanied by a very powerful robotic warrior. The five do battle with it, but fail to do a large amount of damage to it. Finally, as Han resolves to use the new sword against the robot, the sword is struck by lightning, electrocuting Han and causing him to lose his grip on it. The sword, now seemingly with a life of its own, floats over to a large mound nearby, where a zombified warrior in golden armor arises from the dead - the same warrior who valiantly fought to the death so many years ago - and claims the sword as his own. Enraged, he easily obliterates Valgar's robot, and begins to attack Serena. Nicole, uncertain of what to do, politely asks the warrior to stop attacking them - to the five's surprise, he does so. Quickly realizing that the warrior is willing to act on any command that they give him, they resolve that, with this new ally, the time to begin an attack on Kanon's new kingdom is at hand.

The story mode alows you to play solo or also play with friends via Xbox Live.

Guardian Heroes is also known for having a branching off story mode that allows you to select what path you will follow which not only increases the replayability with increased story elements but also multiple endings.

Guardian Heroes also does include a versus mode that allows you to play with not only the basic 4 playable characters but also with any other character you defeat in the story mode. Everyone from the Sky Spirits down to the Civilan Wimp are playable.  And with leaderboards to keep up with who is the higheset ranking with each character, theres no reason to not try them all.

Personally, having both the Sega Saturn version and now the remasters Xbox Arcade edition, I thought I would give it a good test run for comparison.  From the minute I started at the main menu all the music was familiar and a pleasure to my ears. I must say that from the get go, Guardian Heroes is a beast, even on the Normal difficulty settings. I will be the first to tell you that the original debug code that allows you to use Serena from the begining and start with 200 experience points does not work. Needless to say, its gonna take me a minute to get through it or to call out for some back up because this game is rough.

Guardian Heroes on the Xbox 360 is getting reviews of 8.5 and 9 out of 10 depending on who is reviewing it. This game gets two thumbs up from me because thats all my momma and the good Lord gave me.

Guardian Heroes can be found on Xbox Live for 800 Microsoft points.

-"Nurd" Pat!

Fearless Photog

Happy Action Figure Friday everyone!

To kick off AFF (Action Figure Friday) I received Fearless Photog in the mail today. Fearless Photog is the first of the 30th Anniversary of Masters of the Universe line up.

As we covered in my Matty Sale blog Fearless Photog was created by a fan in a contest and has now been 20 years in the making. At first I wasn't sure how well I would enjoy this character once he was announced. I thought "Oh God, this is gonna be a crap figure." but now that I have him in my hands I absolutely love this figure.

Of course as with all MOTUC figures Fearless Photog comes in a white mailer box. Nothing fancy with this box. I will say that for the new mailer boxes he was relatively easy to remove, not like Demo-Man was.

So we do see printed on the box the Masters of the Universe Classics logo and the name Fearless Photog clearly printed on the front.

On thing I thought would be a nice touch is if instead of the Masters of the Universe Classics logo we got the 30th Anniversary logo on the front. It would really help set this collection apart from the normal subscription while still unified since it still says Masters of the Universe.

Here's the man of the hour, Fearless Photog. Ok, so I don't have a picture of him in his package. When I got him I wasn't thinking about a blog post and I was excited to get him out of the package.

The package is your typical MOTUC packaging so nothing special there. There is a burst on the package that would normally say "The Original" however for Photog is states "Created by Nathan Bitner."

Fearless Photog comes with what you see here, himself, a shield, and a blaster. Pretty standers type accessories since everyone has about two.

You can see the "running man" emblem on his chest. As you move Fearless Photog the running man actually moves as well.

Fearless Photog's head is shaped like a movie camera. Which is a really awesome design. The curvature at the bottom of ....only what I can assume would be a chin line does hinder the articulation a little bit when you try to move his head to the side.

One other notable feature is that his head also has a telescoping zoom with the use of a lever. The lever is hid near the back of his head and becomes visible in his profile as it slides forward.

From what I gather from forums and Mattycollector's facebook page is that some people receive Fearless Photog with a cracked lense in the front of his face. Taking a close look and under a light I didn't see such a crack in mine. I do see "inclusions" from how it was made in order to rest in the molding so the head can be put together, but no crack. Maybe I'm not seeing something that is there, but then again, maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones.

In this picture you can clearly see the running man on his chest and in the above picture, hopefully, you can see how it is supposed to move.

Fearless Photog's accessories are a shield and a blaster. The shield is made of two parts. The first is a grey backing and the front is made from a yellow translucent plastic to look like a camera lens.

His second accessory is one that wasn't created by Nathan Bitner. The original design of Fearless Photog did not include a blaster. The Four Horsemen (4H) have designed a blaster that takes its design from a movie camera.

One thing that I wasn't  happy with was that the paint app could have been better. Some of the back on his leg seems light and dirty and even the yellow seems a little dirty. I'm not one to really complain about paint apps, but this one is a bit of an eye sore.

In this picture you can also get a good look at the film reel style belt for Fearless Photog.

Overall, with Fearless Photog, the joints are solid and we get to enjoy the standard articulation as we get with most of the male MOTUC figures. While the paint apps leave a bit to be desired in some spots, Fearless Photog is  vibrant edition to the MOTUC line and a great way to kick off the 30th Anniversary of Masters of the Universe line.

Nathan Bitner, if you or anyone who knows you are reading this, thank you for this wonderful and completely original design of a character.

And to quote a follow collector that I read  couple days ago, paired with Roboto, "Yes, these are the droids I've been looking for."

-"Nurd" Pat!