Tales from IT – Helping a Customer With No Technical Ability At All February 17, 2022
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It’s very common for IT to assist customers who have little technical aptitude. That’s typically why they need our help to begin with. But what happens when you deal with a customer who’s technical aptitude is so poor, they can’t relay to you what they need you to do for them? Here’s that story and how I dealt with it.
This will likely be the final Tales from IT on this site. Hope you all enjoyed it!
How I Would Relaunch Captain N: The Game Master as a Live-Action TV Series February 6, 2022
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Doing something new today, folks. In the past, I’ve given my thoughts about how I would handle theme park expansions, or given my opinions about movie and TV adaptations. Today, I’m throwing my hat into the ring and giving my thoughts about how I would plan a show if I was put in charge of it.
Nintendo has seen an incredible renaissance with the success of the Nintendo Switch and its library of games. New Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Metroid games have seen tremendous success. Super Nintendo World has opened in Universal Studios Japan to high praise and is heavily expected to come to the United States in either one coast or the other within the next few years. Also, a new Super Mario movie is in development for a theatrical release within the next few years. My point is Nintendo is on top and it’s clear their franchises are still as relevant today as they’ve ever been.
However, there’s one aspect of Nintendo’s history that has remained largely forgotten except for a group of die-hard fans, and that was the animated series Captain N: The Game Master. Produced by DIC, the show was an animated adventure series that aired on Saturday Mornings during the early 90s. It starred Captain N, a human from the real world, who gets sucked into his Nintendo. He is tasked with saving the people on the other side of the screen from destruction by led by Mother Brain. Joining him are several Nintendo fan favorites including Pit from Kid Icarus, Simon Belmont from Castlevania and of course, Mega Man.
The show lasted two seasons, and featured crossover episodes with the characters that also had an ongoing animated series being produced at the time. As far as I remember, the show had no official ending, and there was no ending where Captain N is able to return to his home in victory.
It has been thirty years since the original show aired. Recently, we got to thinking a lot about the consequences of what it would be like if a show like that was done today. What if Captain N never left Videoland? What if he spent the last thirty years on the other end of the screen, and his battle against the army of Mother Brain had remained a stalemate the whole time? Then we wondered what would happen if Mother Brain was able to cross over in the real world. The possibilities suddenly became endless.
So here are our ideas for how we would bring back Captain N in the form of a live-action series for modern day.
Netflix, feel free to call me any time.
Lost Media – EA’s Alternate Reality Game About Conspiracies, Majestic January 29, 2022
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Maniac discusses a completely unremembered game from the year 2000, Majestic. Published by EA and priced like an MMO, Majestic had no game engine or executable. Players received phone calls, video messages emails and faxes, all to assist or hinder them in their quest to protect themselves and their in-game allies from whatever was coming.
Five episodes and a demo were released over the course of the game’s lifespan. They ranged in length from three to six days of real-time gameplay each and could not be replayed once completed. A second season was announced after the fifth episode concluded, but was cancelled due to low subscription numbers of the first season. Since it’s release, no one remembers it, and since most of its gameplay revolves around streaming video messages, emails, faxes and phone calls, next to nothing of the game was preserved.
What was the game about, and where might this content be? Let’s let our host tell you a story.
Magic Mouse Unboxing January 28, 2022
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You didn’t think the M1 Mac Mini was the only thing we unboxed did you? No, especially since the Mac Mini does not ship with a keyboard or mouse. For the longest time, Mac computers only shipped with a single-button mouse, while PC users enjoyed multi-button mice equipped with scroll wheels. By the mid-2000s, Apple finally released their own multi-button mouse that offered users the ability to scroll…with the caveat that it still looked like a one-button mouse. It was called…the Magic Mouse!
Many years have passed since that original Magic Mouse released and it has undergone many hardware revisions in the intervening years. Today, we’ll be looking at the most recent version which retails for $79.99 US.
If you’re a Mac user and need a mouse, then the Magic Mouse is what you want to pick up!
FAIL : How Steve Jobs Returned to Apple After Palm Messed Up January 26, 2022
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Settle in everyone, Maniac is going to share a story with you. After Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the early 2000s, he went on to revolutionize the world. However, most people don’t remember Jobs was actually fired from the company he co-founded some time in the mid-80s. The circumstances that saw his return to Apple are just incredible and it all rested on several poor decisions made by a company called Palm. Let’s take a look at what happened in this epic FAIL.
Lost Media – Star Trek: My Experience January 20, 2022
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In 1998, Star Trek: The Experience opened at the Las Vegas Hilton. Even thirty years later it was a venue that major theme parks are still playing catch up to. It closed in 2008. In 2010, a REFERENCE-QUALITY documentary about the history of Star Trek: The Experience was published on the (now defunct) website Blip. It was called Star Trek: My Experience and was created by Vernon Wilmer, a former cast member and megafan.
In 2012, Blip was purchased by Disney and shut down. All content hosted on it that was not archived was lost. Among the lost content was Mr. Wilmer’s incredible documentary which to this day has not been reposted online.
Here’s a video with my thoughts about the documentary and a plea to Mr. Wilmer for its return. Enjoy.
Lost Media – Help Me Find this 90s Disney Channel Arcade Movie January 2, 2022
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Ten years ago, Maniac wrote about a movie he saw on the Disney Channel back when it was a premium cable station. It was about a group of teenagers that had their own basement arcade and followed their antics as they played a game together. Unfortunately, he was never able to learn it’s name, and because of that has been unable to find it or any further information about it. However, Maniac has noticed that the search for Lost Media has become a popular pastime online over the past few years with its own major subculture.
With all that in mind, Maniac humbly provides his plea on for someone to assist him with finding this obscure film. In the video below, he provides all the details he remembers about what he saw happen in the movie, and the details of the search he’s done up to this point. Enjoy.
Hope this video has been some help to anyone interested in assisting with the search. Maniac has already deduced this movie would have broadcasted no later than October 1992. Due to its age and obscurity, finding information about any Disney Channel content online has been difficult, and it’s possible the only record of the movie’s existence is in the pages of an old issue of Disney Channel Magazine.
Happy New Year!
Tales from IT – Replacing a Photographer’s Workhorse MacBook Pro December 28, 2021
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Welcome back to a new Tales from IT! We’re trying a few new pieces of tech today and decided to make this video for you. One of Maniac’s oldest friends took his advice and upgraded their MacBook to a newer model. However, they did it 3 years later than they should have…and both Maniac and their friends options were very limited because of it.
Can Maniac get his friend a replacement unit that satisfies their needs AND recover all their old system’s irreplaceable data? Let’s find out.
Our First Mac – What Do We Need? December 8, 2021
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We have just gotten our hands on the next major piece of our website, the M1 Mac Mini. Since the M1 was first revealed, and it’s benchmarks for applications like video and photo editing have been released, the M1 has drawn our interest. Now, we decided to take the plunge and chose a Mac of our very own. I present the M1 Mac Mini.
This is the first Mac we’ve ever owned and we’d like to hear from you Apple enthusiasts. Post a comment below with what you think we should get, specifically any recommendations for Mac Monitors.
The Thirteenth Floor (Spoiler-Free) Review December 6, 2021
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Yesterday, Maniac watched a video by Doug Walker where he outright begged to see a film which explores the themes of what could happen if a video game player fell in love with an NPC, and all the emotional weight that entailed. I’m writing this to tell Doug that film exists. Twenty years ago, Maniac watched a film that has stuck with him ever since he first watched it. However, he seems to be of a minority opinion about the film, as it is rarely discussed in film circles. This might be due to the fact when it released, some other films…of a more striking visual language…were also out and have since gone on to become more recognizable.
How do you know if the reality you exist in is real or a simulation? If you knew the truth for sure, what would you do with that knowledge? What if I told you these ideas are not new, and they have been explored in films other than The Matrix? I’m talking about the 1999 film The Thirteenth Floor, which combined a cyberpunk-worthy story with film noir style.
So now that you saw this review, do you want to actually see the movie? Sadly, finding a copy of it on home video has been a challenge for at least the past fifteen years, although the film can be purchased digitally. While it isn’t currently available on any streaming service, it has shifted around streaming services over the past few years, and it is likely to return to streaming at some point.
Have you seen the film? What did you think of it? Write your thoughts in the comments below.
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