Books Read 2023

Graphic Novels

A lot of rereads because I picked up print copies…

  • Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years

    Lois Lane: A Celebration of 75 Years

  • Wonder Woman: A Celebration of 75 Years

  • The Love and Rockets Companion: 30 Years

  • Alias Omnibus by Brian Michael Bendis

  • Batman Adventures: Mad Love Deluxe Edition by Paul Dini

  • Transformers : Evolutions - Hearts of Steel by Chuck Dixon

  • Batman: The Brave & the Bold: The Bronze Age Vol. 1 by Bob Haney

  • Love and Rockets: The Covers by Gilbert Hernández

  • Penny Century by Jaime Hernández

  • Maggie the Mechanic by Jaime Hernández

  • Esperanza: A Love and Rockets Book by Jaime Hernández

  • Tonta by Jaime Hernández

  • Angels And Magpies by Jaime Hernández

  • Perla la Loca by Jaime Hernández

  • The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. by Jaime Hernández

  • Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? The Deluxe Edition by Alan Moore

  • Transformers: Lost Light, Vol. 1 by James Roberts,

  • Marvel Masterworks: the X-men 3 by Roy Thomas

  • Marvel Masterworks: the X-men 4 by Roy Thomas

Gaming

  • Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games by Matt Barton

  • Boss Fight Books #28 Final Fantasy VI by Sebastian Deken

  • Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: Castlevania by Kurt Kalata

  • The Secret History of Mac Gaming by Richard Moss

  • The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal by Laine Nooney

  • Super Nes Works Volume I: 1991 by Jeremy Parish

  • NES Works Volume III: 1987 by Jeremy Parish

  • 50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon by Aaron A. Reed

Fiction

Again, some rereads because I picked up print copies…

  • The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

  • Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

  • Sweeney Astray by Seamus Heaney

  • The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid by Seamus Heaney

  • The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables Robert Henryson, Seamus Heaney (Translator)

  • The Translations of Seamus Heaney

  • The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

  • The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

  • A Doll's House and Other Plays (Penguin) by Henrik Ibsen

  • Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

  • The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson

Non-Fiction

  • The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek

  • Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire (edited by Jehad Abusalim)

  • The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction: 1948–1985 by James Baldwin

  • Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights by Omar Barghouti

  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Norton Critical Edition (translated by Marie Borroff)

  • Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester by Derrick A. Bell

  • Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? by Judith Butler

  • Life Against Dementia: Essays, Reviews, Interviews 1975-2011 by Joe Carducci

  • Abolition. Feminism. Now. (Edited by Angela Y. Davis)

  • Cinema 1: The Movement-Image by Gilles Deleuze

  • Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball by Luke Epplin

  • Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle by Silvia Federici

  • Silence is No Reaction: Forty Years of Subhumans by Ian Glasper

  • Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

  • Superheroes, Movies, and the State: How the U.S. Government Shapes Cinematic Universes by Tricia Jenkins

  • Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones

  • The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones

  • Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future without Policing & Prisons (edited by Colin Kaepernick)

  • Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies (edited by Colin Kaepernick)

  • Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution by Neil Lanctot

  • The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings by Martin Luther

  • Knowledge Socialism: The Rise of Peer Production: Collegiality, Collaboration, and Collective Intelligence (edited by Michael A. Peters)

  • Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World by James E. Lindsay

  • Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Premilla Nadasen

  • Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew by John Oller

  • Revelations of Divine Love (Penguin) by Julian of Norwich

  • Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 12-1565 by Walter Simons

  • Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart

  • The Hours Have Lost Their Clock: The Politics of Nostalgia by Grafton Tanner

  • Wages for Housework: A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972-77 by Louise Toupin

  • As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 1957–1977 by Val Wilmer

  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Oxford) by Mary Wollstonecraft

Top 100 Retro Games: Baseball Stars

Baseball Stars
Nintendo Entertainment System
SNK
1989
#9

During the 8 bit era there were so many baseball games both licensed and unlicensed. I had already fallen in love with baseball via WPIX Yankees games and Micro League Baseball on my Apple II. I loved the depth and strategy of the game and got mixed results from NES games. Major League Baseball had real teams, but wasn’t that great. RBI Baseball was really fun but a bit mindless and random. Bases Loaded, and especially Bases Loaded II, almost got it down right. The pitching and batting interface was excellent and worth investing time in a season, but the fielding, especially when playing now, is very poorly implemented.

I played all of these games a lot trying to make the best out of them. Everything changed when Baseball Stars came out.

The first time I encountered Baseball Stars was at a friend’s house. He had rented it earlier in the day and when I came over to hang out. I sat down and began watching him play the game.

I remember the home run image, with all of its pomp, really drawing me in. A few innings later, my friend climbed a wall to make a catch, which absolutely blew our minds. When he fell over a wall later, we could not even believe what we were seeing in front of us.

I rented the game myself a few days ago and then bought it a few weeks later. One of my favorite aspects of Baseball Stars is all the little things about it that really made the game sit apart from others: you could climb walls, you could stop runners, and trick the AI, and generally the play control was so smooth. There was a woman’s team, and you could buy women to play on your own team. The additional RPG elements that allowed you to level up your players as you played through a league season added depth that allowed me to play the game on and off for at least three summers that I can remember.

Like I said, I kept playing Baseball Stars for a lot of my adolescence. Every summer, I would put together a team of friends and people from school. In private, some of them thought this was cool. Many just thought it made me a dork.

Because you could put women on your team, I could put a few crushes in my lineup. My heavy hitting, after some leveling up, lady catcher was my big middle school crush. All of my pitchers were her friends.

The bottomline is Baseball Stars gave me an outlet to have a space where I had friends that I did not have in real life. Looking back, that is unfortunate, but at the time, it was part of surviving.

I cannot stress enough how much video games saved my life back then. Games like Baseball Stars gave me that outlet to get away from the horrors of my day to day life at school and, once my father was unemployed and then having to commute three hours a day in a horrible economy, at home. I escaped into them and, at times, still do today.

I hate how so many episodes of this podcast have this sad tinge to them. It is one of the realities that made me want to do it though.

I am pretty proud of the fact that when I began playing Baseball Stars this summer, I remembered the code to get a pretty good team from memory. It does not guarantee domination though as some players will have pretty oblong skill sets that need to be leveled up. I did win the quick league I created, but I picked up a few losses along the way. The ability to do RPG style leveling up in a sports game felt revolutionary, just like it did in fighting games like River City Ransom, even though now it would be mundane.

The game still plays well. The play control is so good and very smooth. Fielding was often the aspect of the game that was not as good back in the NES days, but Baseball Stars absolutely nails it. I can pick this game up now and feel like I am 11 years old again. I sat down each afternoon and played a game in my league, and it felt totally natural to play this game despite it being over 25 years old. Much like other games of the era like Tecmo Bowl, there is a timeless quality to Baseball Stars that will make it playable forever.

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Books Read 2021

  • Green Arrow: A Celebration of 75 Years

  • Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold

  • Palestine: A Socialist Introduction by Sumaya Awad

  • Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America by Russ Baker

  • Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

  • Small Magic: Short Fiction, 1977-2020 by Terry Brooks

  • The Last Druid by Terry Brooks

  • I Remember Death By Its Proximity to What I Love by Mahogany L. Browne

  • Star Trek: Alien Spotlight by John Byrne

  • The Watcher and Other Stories by Italo Calvino

  • Into The War by Italo Calvino

  • The Road To San Giovanni by Italo Calvino

  • Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino

  • Under The Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino

  • If I Were Another by Mahmoud Darwish

  • Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas by Henry Dumas

  • Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas by Henry Dumas

  • Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd

  • Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice by Jesse Hagopian

  • Ibsen's Selected Plays by Henrik Ibsen

  • They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie Jones-Rogers

  • We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Abolitionist Papers) by Mariame Kaba

  • Transformers: The Manga Volume Three by Masumi Kaneda

  • Eternals: The Complete Collection by Jack Kirby

  • The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists by Naomi Klein

  • Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

  • Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language by Seth Lerer

  • Legends of Localization: The Legend of Zelda by Clyde Mandelin

  • Transformers: All Hail Megatron Volume 1 by Shane McCarthy

  • Transformers: All Hail Megatron Volume 2 by Shane McCarthy

  • Transformers Historia by Chris MxFeely

  • Thick: And Other Essays by Tressiue McMillan Cottom

  • The Wrestling Observer Yearbook '93: The Year of Major Beginnings and Major Endings (Wrestling Observer Newsletter) by Dave Meltzer

  • The Wrestling Observer Yearbook '97: The Last Time WWF Was Number Two by Dave Meltzer

  • The Major Works by John Milton

  • Strong In The Rain: Selected Poems by Kenji Miyazawa

  • Milky Way Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa

  • Night On The Galactic Railroad and Other Stories by Kenji Miyazawa

  • Night On The Milky Way Train by Kenji Miyazawa

  • Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa by Kenji Miyazawa

  • Growing Up with Manos: The Hands of Fate: How I was the Child Star of the Worst Movie Ever Made and Lived to Tell the Story by Jackey Newman

  • Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams by Robert Peterson

  • River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey by Sister Helen Prejean

  • Straight Edge: A Clear-Headed Hardcore Punk History by Tony Rettman

  • Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing by Stuart Schrader

  • The Monsters and the Critics: And Other Essays. J.R.R. Tolkien

  • Star Trek: Way Point by Dayton Ward

  • Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism by Jillian York

  • Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Episode 87: Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy was a massive influence on me when I was growing up. Honestly, I'm not sure if I would have ended up the person I am today without it. Join me, won't you, for a pretty long episode discussing this plus how the game holds up today.

Instead of a Patreon, consider donating to our Extra Life charity drive. We are raising money for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We raised $445 in 2020. So far in 2021 we have raised $11.

On Thursday nights around 7pm I stream old and new games until around 9pm. Check out my Twitch page for more information and a tentative schedule.

We are also on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher. You can also download episodes from the Internet Archive.

You can view our game ranking list here.

Episode 86: Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection

I thought it would be fun to go through the game in the Konami arcade collection that came out in the recent past. We've done this for a few collections and it's always fun. Thunder Cross rules!

Instead of a Patreon, consider donating to our Extra Life charity drive. We are raising money for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We raised $445 in 2020. So far in 2021 we have raised $11.

On Thursday nights around 7pm I stream old and new games until around 9pm. Check out my Twitch page for more information and a tentative schedule.

We are also on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher. You can also download episodes from the Internet Archive.

You can view our game ranking list here.

Episode 85: 500 Words About Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

Fire Emblem is a series I came to much later in life, so I was excited to check out its origins. In our newest 500 Words About episode, I discuss the game's flaws as it also lays the groundwork for what is to come in what has become a fairly solid series of games.

Instead of a Patreon, consider donating to our Extra Life charity drive. We are raising money for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We raised $445 in 2020. So far in 2021 we have raised $11.

On Thursday nights around 7pm I stream old and new games until around 9pm. Check out my Twitch page for more information and a tentative schedule.

We are also on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher. You can also download episodes from the Internet Archive.

You can view our game ranking list here.