Some things from Ye Olde dorkclub.com are worth saving. Most aren’t. This is:

Thanks, archive.org and Hideo Kojima.

A couple days ago there was an undead 1v1 Warcraft 3 tournament. Jeremy “Big Ol’ Dicks” Hahn and I willingly entered, simply unsummoning our buildings to lose as quickly as possible. We’re both on each others friends lists, have multiple recorded arranged team matches together, and were entering games from the same Battle.net channel. Still we were matched against each other. I won the unsummoning race. He won the game. Our starting ghouls did not reach each other in time.

That’s right, kids, The Official DORK Club Gaming Crew is once again playing Warcraft 3. As you might have guessed, we’ve generated some new Warcraft 3 Replays. Enjoy.

Australians are competitive people, Russell Crowe assures me, so it’s no surprise that they’ve beat the rest of the world and created the greatest junk food on the planet. As a nation, and as a continent, Australia has produced magical treats such as Iced Vo Vos and Golden Gaytimes, none of which appear on the menu at Outback Steakhouse. No Australian treat, however, captures the imagination like the Tim Tam. Simply two chocolate cookies with a chocolate filling – all bound together by an additional layer of chocolate – Tim Tams are the premiere Australian snack.

Though perfectly enjoyable as a rich chocolate wonder, a Tim Tam’s true potential is not unlocked until it’s “slammed.” By biting off both ends of the Tim Tam, the now exposed porous cookies act as a straw for hot liquids like coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. One then sucks their fluid of choice through the Tim Tam until it begins to fall apart, at which point it’s quickly consumed and explodes in a hot ejaculation of chocolate goodness. Bravo, Australia.

Thankfully, Tim Tams are available stateside for us Ignorant Americans. Though bastardized as “Arnott’s Chocolate Biscuits” (and available at your local Cost Plus World Market), these renamed Tim Tams are still just as slammable.

Oh, and competitive Australian band Oxo Cubans actually wrote a song about the Tim Tam slam which is actually the first recorded use of the phrase. Source: Wikipedia lol. And that’s a MySpace link. The Internet.

TIM TAM SLAM!

In the wake of my World of Warcraft addiction, I find myself trying to find another game that can match WoW in terms of community and purpose. After playing an online-only game for two years, and doing so with mostly non-asshats, all these single player games just feel so meaningless. I may be accomplishing amazing things in a virtual world and having some fun doing it, but I’m doing so entirely alone. Still, I don’t think another MMO is the solution here. Even Richard Garriot’s Tabula Rasa seems to be anything but, still firmly clinging to the conventions established by Everquest and granted immortality thanks to World of Warcraft. If only Ultima Online had acted as the inspirational jumping off point for the genre…

But I’m already way off track. The point of this post: an excellent article about rethinking the MMO over at Gamasutra. It’s long but worth the read to approximately 0% of this site’s non-existent readership.

Flagship Studios, perhaps better known as the answer to the question “what ever happened to Blizzard North?” is making two versions of Diablo 3. Hellgate London, which may or may not become yet another NCsoft-published MMO (PLZ NO KTHX) stands at the true successor to Diablo’s throne while Mythos, billed as a “casual MMORPG,” is currently in public alpha.  Head on over to the game’s site, give them your e-mail address, and pray you’ll gain entry to the test with the next round of invites.

Acceptable TV premieres tonight on VH1 and I’m legitimately excited about it. Created by Channel 101 creators (more or less) and featuring an all-star lineup of Channel 101 contributers, it’ll be the first time I’ve seen most of these people in something other than a 320×240 Quicktime window.

Much like Channel 101 itself, Acceptable TV allows viewers to vote on mini TV shows, in this case no longer than two and half minutes, in order to dictate next week’s lineup. However, whereas only viewers at Channel 101’s live showings can participate, the entire Internet gets to vote on Acceptable TV’s shows. At the moment, the Acceptable TV website is saturated with big ideas and very little clarity as to how, exactly, any of these ideas are going to be executed. Exactly which contributed shows are eligible for the VH1 airing and how (or even if) shows return after winning a week aren’t even addressed on the site. As it stands at the moment, the website is basically a bad YouTube rip off, but all signs point to the actual television program having at least some value. Hopefully it can overcome obscurity and a poor time slot and find success. The people behind it honestly deserve it.

Shuki Levy is one of the co-founders of Saban Entertainment and the man responsible for the awesome theme songs to Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, VR Troopers, and Samurai Pizza Cats (AKA the best cartoon theme song ever), and a genuine bevy of other campy ’90s shows Chris Eddy used to host. Coincidently, all of his music is available at his website.

10. The and Blocks – Tetris
Sure, sometimes your lines have eaten away at your carefully crafted block structures just so, allowing these babies to save the day. The rest of the time they just fuck you up. THIS ROW IS NOW THE NEW BOTTOM!

9. Oblivion Knights – Diablo 2

They can poison you, chill you, burn you, or zap you with lightning. They can heal others, slow you, lower your resistances, or launch waves of bone spirits. Oh, and they can one-shot a melee character using iron maiden. A hardcore player’s dream come true.

8. Koopa Troopas – Mario series

They come in a variety of visually appealing colors and are even more fun to play with after you stomp on their heads. Iconic and adorable, these guys are the stuff platforming legends are made of.

7. Scarab Demons – Diablo 2

Typical rush’n attack pack monster with limited hit points. And then it dies and showers the surroundings in charged bolts.

6. Medusa Heads – Castlevania series

The very definition of the pattern-based enemy, the Medusa Head’s sinusoidal flying arch has tormented gamers trying to lead clumsy, hunch-backed men over the giant rotating gears of spike-lined clock towers for years.

5. Regurgitators – Diablo 2

These living vacuums seem perfectly harmless until they see a nice, juicy corpse. Then the very goal of their life becomes using their hose of a face to spit the bloody remains of anything around them directly at the player. These heartless bastards will even go so far as to vomit the bloody remains of your mercenary through the air, erasing him from existence in the process.

4. Covenant Elites – Halo series

The yin to the Master Chief’s yang, elites are proof that the most dangerous opponent a player can face is themselves. Intelligent, cocky, and short tempered, they have no problem sacrificing others to give themselves a clear shot at Master Chief’s back with their weapon of choice: those god damned energy swords.

3. Fetish Shaman – Diablo 2

Like any variety of shaman, they resurrect their fallen comrades (who yield no experience for each kill beyond the first), but unlike any other shaman, they breath six-foot streams of flame and become regular fetishes upon death. These are the reason the paladin’s fire resist aura is in the game.

2. Los Ganados – Resident Evil 4

They’re not zombies, but they’re not human either. Los ganados are just dumb enough to be reckless and smart enough not to risk their lives. They constantly yell at one another in spanish to communicate, and can use any weapon they can get their hands on. Eerily alien, there’s still just enough humanity left in them for us to pity them. And fear them.

1. Itchies – Diablo 2

Character design has never been more inspired than a random grouping of colored pixels. They emit a loud, annoying buzzing sound and drain stamina with their attacks. 99% of Diablo 2 players aren’t even aware they have stamina.

In the early nineties a friendly, non-threatening man named Chris Eddy punctuated our cartoons in the greater Sacramento area. A local celebrity of sorts, he was KTXL Fox 40′s Fox Kids Club host, promoting health and safety between episodes of X-men and Eek! The Cat. Despite his rather limited influence, he became part of the local zeitgeist, known as much for his TV hosting gig as his regular appearances at local zoos, water parks, and Fairy Tale Town. Then, just as suddenly as he came, Chris Eddy disappeared back into the air waves.

LeadPipe insisted the man died of AIDS. I tended to imagine a homosexuality-related meltdown. Regardless of any personal theories, however, the man had disappeared from our television sets over a decade ago. He continued to pop up in conversation every year or so, but nobody seemed to know what had become of him. Where had Chris Eddie gone? And where is he now?

Because I am a man of limited skills and resources, I approached this problem the same way I approach all of my problems – with the Internet. The usual suspects proved uncharacteristically useless. Wikipedia yielded no results, and IMDB provides but a single, nondescript page belonging to potentially anyone (named Chris Eddy). Google image searching was fruitless while traditional Google searching technology produced only marginally readable comments to poorly written nostalgic articles that will not be linked here.

And then a break! Xanga user Idbriq works for KTXL, or at least was working for them on March 12, 2006. He writes about wearing a Fox Kids Club sweatshirt signed by Chris Eddy and the discovery that Audrey, the station manager, is married to the man. Further interneting leads to this page, listing a Audrey Farrington as the Vice President/GM of KTXL. Using this name and PURE LUCK, I stumbled upon the ZoomInfo People Directory, which just happens to have an entry for Chris Eddy (and a hundred other Chris Eddys). Here it lists Chris as the host of Cyberlife, Kids Wanna Know, and KTXL’s Fox Kids Club. It’s our Chris Eddy!

Though its single source is a mini-bio from the 2003 Sacramaneto Web Awards, for which Chris Eddy was a judge, it acts as the very Rosetta Stone to Chris Eddy’s life post-Fox Kids Club. It turns out IMDB’s Chris Eddy was the very man I was after all along. And in 2003, Chris Eddy was working as an on-air reporter and webmaster for KTXL rival KCRA (where the news comes first), and this cached article from 2004 shows that Chris Eddy was an online producer a year later.

Whether or not he still works at KCRA, or is even involved in broadcasting, is a mystery. Despite reaching millions of children that are now nostalgic 20-something Internet users, information concerning Chris Eddy is scant online. As far as I can tell, not a single image or video of the man has ever been uploaded. Still, we now know a great deal of Chris Eddy’s fate after the Fox Kids Club no longer needed a host, and I never had to leave my bedroom. Sometimes I love the Internet.

PC gaming may be dead, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t boatloads of free game floating around the digital waters of cyberspace ripe for plundering. CLEVER METAPHORS! Today: shooters buried in our intranets from the days when a computer could play a video game.

Grid Wars 2 – You’ve probably heard all about Geometry Wars, that console game for the XBox 360 video game console. Why pay 400 hard earned Microsoft points when the exact same game is readily available on the PC video game console for free? Frantic, beautiful, and filled with points you haven’t earned yet. So get to earning, boys. The Official DORK Club High Score Challenge 2007 is a go!

Minebot Arena – I’ve linked to this before. I’ll link to this again. Imagine a single screen, Robotron-style shooter where proximity sensitive mines are the weapon of the day. Then imagine a host of clever enemies that want nothing more than to avoid these mines. A perfectly fine substitute for genuine human interaction!

Narbacular Drop – Valve Computer Game Company is so sure that PC gaming isn’t dead, they’ve hired the team responsible for this gem to remake the game using the Source engine. They’re calling it Portal, which may be a more descriptive name, but it certainly isn’t as interesting. Make portals that lead to other portals. Solve puzzles in a video game world. Do it for free before Valve makes you pay for it.

PC gaming is dead. Long live PC gaming!