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Chris’s fun Issue 2 – sep.-dec 2013 Inside: We go into the R-Zone 3-D block games Other interesting stuff.
Chris’s fun Issue 2 – sep.-dec 2013
Inside: We go into the R-Zone 3-D block games Other interesting stuff.
Credenza of contents. Issue 2 – sep-dec 2013
Editor’s notes - - - - - - - - - 3
What I have to say about this issue.
The Comix Page - - - - - - - - - 4
Featuring Dirty Jumble and Pencil-Vania.
VGvs. - - - - - - - - - - 5
We go 3D in this issue to find out who is king of the 3D block games.
Games of my childhood - - - - - - - 7
Pac-Guy.
Games not of my childhood - - - - - - 8
We go inside the R-Zone.
26 two-letter combos ending in I - - - - - - 9
Only “I” will care about this.
Christmas carols - - - - - - - - - 10
Deck the halls with jingle bells.
Barf-o-rama - - - - - - - - - 11
Books of my childhood.
Arts and crafts - - - - - - - - - 12
Make your own pog.
101 uses for a dead cat - - - - - - - 14
Don’t throw it out!
Chris’s fun | page 2 | sep-dec 2013
Editor’s notes Hey, kids, welcome to the very second issue of Chris’s Fun. Inside this issue are lots of very interesting things, as well as some disturbing
things, like this factoid: While searching for an image to steal for the
cover, typing in “Oprah Winfrey” in images.google.com, one of the suggestions was ‘nipple.’ I don’t want to see Oprah’s nipple, thank you
very much. After seeing that suggestion, I had to go vomit my entire
lunch out. Well, that was a planning for a jan-apr 2011 release, which the cover story was going to be about the Oprah Winfrey Network. That
never happened. Instead, we’ve come back three years later. Sorry I
forgot about this. Included in this issue is a very special 3-D version of VGvs, where we take a look at 3-D block games. And, also in this issue
is something we like to call “Dirty Jumble.” The words that you
unscramble are not dirty (that would be too easy,) but the answer contains a swear word (Oh no!)
“Chris’s fun” is published three times a year by fartco. This issue ©2013 by fartco, inc. All other characters are © and TM of their
respective companies and are used without permission. No part of this,
however, may be reproduced without the express written consent of major league baseball, I mean, me. If you would like to link to issues, or
would like this magazine in print and not in pdf form, please e-mail me
at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to ship it anywhere in the united states of America, even Pennsylvania. So there.
Chris read
Chris’s fun | page 3 | sep-dec 2013
The comix page.
Notes about the Pencil-Vania comic:
For a long time now, it has been my dream to make a comic strip about
pencils. This fascination with pencils goes back to my youth and drawing Pencilco catalogs, an imaginary store that sells nothing but
pencils. (It was inspired by the Office Max catalogs.) I just thought; why
not print it in the Chris’s fun alongside the Dirty Jumble? The pun, in case you don’t get it, is pencil-in for penicillin. I know that’s stretching
it a lot, but it was worth it, wasn’t it?
Chris’s fun | page 4 | sep-dec 2013
VGvs.
3D BLOCK GAMES Last time, we had Polar Bowler beat out Elf Bowling to become
undisputed king of the wintertime bowling DS games. Now, we have two brand new combatants. With 3D being all the rage (3D movies, 3D
TV, Nintendo’s 3DS), we’d thought we’d take a look at one of the best
puzzle games of the block: Tetris. But let’s put it in a 3D perspective!
3D-Tetris System: Nintendo Virtual Boy
Release date: March 1996
Maker: Nintendo ESRB rating: K-A (modern-day E)
Vs.
Block-Out
System: Atari Lynx (also on Sega Genesis)
Release date: 1990 Maker: Atari
ESRB Rating: n/a
Chris’s fun | page 5 | sep-dec 2013
3D Tetris Well, let’s look at the first contender. We
all know how poor the Virtual Boy sold, but I managed to get my hands on one, as
well as a copy of 3D Tetris. Well, the
well is 3D, but it likes to move. I don’t know why the stupid well can’t stand
still. I guess to show off the Virtual
Boy’s 3D capabilities, but we all knew that the Virtual Boy was 3D to begin with. As for the degree of difficulty, I’d say it’s not really all that
hard, so the game does move along at a slow pace.
Block Out When I first heard there was a 3D
Tetris game for the Lynx, I just had
to buy it. Each level is a different color (the bottom is blue, the second
row from the bottom is light blue,
etc.) And what’s better is the well doesn’t move around! So you really
have to memorize where each shape
begins and ends, or else you can end up with holes which fill the well up fast. And also, you can set the game’s settings, such as the well depth,
etc. So that’s a big plus for beginners.
The winner: As much as I like Virtual Boy, I really prefer the Japanese V-Tetris to
3D Tetris, just because the well in 3D Tetris just can’t stand still! And although you can set the degree of difficulty in 3D Tetris, and it has a
few more “modes” which I don’t care to get into, I declare Block-Out
the victor in this battle.
Chris’s fun | page 6 | sep-dec 2013
Games From My Childhood
Pac-guy The CD-ROM I have today is Pac-Guy: The Pac-Pack. Pac-Guy is a blatant rip-off
of Pac-Man, but this one is different: In all 6 of the games on here, instead of
eating the enemies, he shoots them. This adds a whole new depth of the Pac-
sperience. And yes, there will be pictures. I actually beat a game on here (which
was hard!) Pac-Guy 2. But I had some help, once I reached a game over, it makes
you go back a level instead of starting all over again! The music sounds a lot like
MIDIs, basically. And some sound effects are strange, for example, when you
shoot an enemy in one level, he clucks like a chicken, or when you get a bullet in
another, a grandfather clock chimes. On the whole, it looks a little amateurish, but
made well enough to apparently be sold at computer stores.
The end of Pac-Guy: Christmas A screen from the same game.
Edition. Wow. I played for ½ hour the guy at the upper right-hand
for this? screen shoots at you! Annoying!
I don’t really see the difference between Pac- In Pac-Guy 2, our hero lands in a sci-fi Guy and Pac-Guy: Resurrection besides the themed scenario, fighting an evil race called
title screen. the Bords.
Chris’s fun | page 7 | sep-dec 2013
Games not from my childhood.
When Apple introduced its iPad
that is a pair of glasses that is still
in the testing phase, little did they know they were stealing from a
little-known video game
company. Tiger Electronics, most people know it as a LCD
handheld video game company,
released the R-Zone in 1995. The graphics were of the Game and
Watch variety, and presumably
red because Nintendo’s failed Virtual Boy project, its graphics were shades of red on a black background. But the Virtual Boy failed, and so
did R-Zone. I got my first R-Zone from someone off the internet. I now
have five games for it. Tiger went after the big licenses, and apparently they let them. (Of course, Sega would whore themselves to whoever
cared.) Four Star Wars games were created for the R-Zone, as well as
Road Rash, Mortal Kombat, and games based on movies of the day (e.g. Independence Day) But Tiger didn’t learn its lesson on how crappy
video games don’t sell. Undeterred, in 1997 they came out with the
“game.com” handheld. While the graphics were improved from simple Game and Watch variety, they were now Game Boy variety. It also had
a touch screen, an idea of which Nintendo stole 8 years later for the first
DS. But Nintendo probably doomed the game.com by producing the Game Boy Color. Now Nintendo had colored portable video games
(although Sega and Atari had them in 1989!) And Tiger got some bigger
video game names such as Duke Nukem, Centipede, Frogger, etc. But even big names didn’t help the “game.com,” and it was discontinued in
1999.
Chris’s fun | page 8 | sep-dec 2013
You strap this thing to your head. Yes, you read that right.
I list 26 two-letter combos ending in “I” and their meaning
For a while now, I wanted to do something like this. Make a list of two
letter words that use all 26 letters of the alphabet, whether it be famous
acronyms or names or words or, well, once you read the “I” list, it all becomes clear. Sources: Official Scrabble Dictionary, Wikipedia, me.
AI – a Steven Spielberg movie BI – bisexual
CI – 101 in Roman numerals
DI – former British princess EI – educational & informational, used as a symbol in kid’s shows
FI – word following Semper in a famous Marines motto
GI – army man HI – a greeting
II – two in Roman numerals
JI – a city state of northern China during the Shang and Zhou dynasties KI – Killer Instinct
LI – A Chinese unit of distance
MI – a note NI – Thing that knights say in a Monty Python movie
OI – another word for “oy”
PI – 3.14 QI – The vital force that in Chinese thought is vital in all things
RI – Rhode Island abbr.
SI – Spanish for “yes” TI – a note
UI – University of Indiana (or Illinois, or Iowa, or Idaho) VI – six in Roman numerals
WI – postal abbr. for Wisconsin
XI – A Greek letter YI – Asian Ethnicity
ZI – Surname of kings in the Shang dynasty.
Chris’s fun | page 9 | sep-dec 2013
Christmas carols. “Deck the Bells” (sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”)
Deck the Halls, deck the halls Deck ‘em, deck the halls.
Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Better deck those halls Deck the halls, deck the halls
Deck ‘em, deck the halls
Tis the season to be jolly While the snow falls.
“Jingle Halls”
(sung to the tune of “Deck the Halls”)
Jingle bells, they jingle, jangle
Jingle bells, jingle, all of the way
Jingle bells, jingle bells jingle What fun it is to ride on a sleigh
Bells on bobtails ring and make it
Fun to ride on a sleigh in the snow Jingle bells they jingle jangle
Jingle all the way, you jingle bells.
And Merry
chris-tmas.
Chris’s fun | page 10 | sep-dec 2013
When I was a kid, we didn’t have harry potter or some dumb twilight book. We
had barf-o-rama. And we loved it. Made from 1996-7 was a series of books called
“Barf-O-Rama” by one “Pat Pollari” For the past decade and-a-half, I've wondered
whether the Pat in "Pat Pollari" was a man or a woman. (I was a kid who had way
too much time on his hands.) There was hardly a wealth of information in 1997
(but I do remember a Barf-O-Rama website way back when.) Well, now that there
is a wealth of information, I've done some digging and "Pat Pollari" is a pen name
of Katherine Applegate (author of the Animorphs series, among others.) So there
you have it! Pat is a woman! (It was kind of like the Saturday Night Live’s “It’s
Pat!” segments.) Anyway, the books were intended to gross kids out, since kids
like gross stuff. Although I’m 30 years old and I still like to sing about butts and
poop and stuff. Here’s a list of all the amusing titles in the barf-o-rama library.
#1 – the great puke-off
#2 – the legend of bigfart
#3 – mucus mansion
#4 – garbage time
#5 – dog doo afternoon
#6 – to wee or not to wee
#7 – scab pie
#8 – party pooper
#9 – pig breath
#10 – my runny valenslime
#11 – the splat in the hat
#12 – Jurassic fart
#13 – shoe chew
#14 – forest dump
#15 – hambooger and French flies
On the back of #15, there was talk of a #16 – a fungus among us, but it never got
released.
Chris’s fun | page 11 | sep-dec 2013
Arts and crafts. How to make a pog.
Are you growing tired of the fact that pogs aren’t coming back into fashion? Well don’t just sit there waiting for it to happen, make them
yourself! Here’s how you can make a pog.
List of stuff you need:
Office Depot notepads (Item #307-397 or 306-902)
An X-acto knife Avery Square Labels 2”x2” (#22816)
A drawing program on your computer or a scanner
Step 1.
Get an idea for a pog. Most pogs back in the day had either the word
“POISON” or an 8-ball on them. Some had the yin yang symbol, also (). Or you could just design something really cool looking.
Step 2. Making the labels. Since Word doesn’t have a pre-formatted label page
for Avery 22816 (not that I saw), you have to make your own. Here’s
how. In Word, click on “Mailings” and then click “Labels.” Single-click the
picture of the label and this
thing should come up:
Click on New Label.
Enter the info in the picture
on the next page.
Chris’s fun | page 12 | sep-dec 2013
When you’re done with
that, make a new page with labels. Insert your
pog images (a round
image of 1 5/8 inches.) Print the pog labels out.
Step 3: Place the label on the
back of the notepad.
(Yes, that’s why we need the notepads.)
Step 4: Cut the image out with
an X-acto knife. You
may have to cut it out a few times in order to be
able to punch the pog out.
Here are some pictures of pogs I made to give you inspiration.
Chris’s fun | page 13 | sep-dec 2013
101 uses for a dead cat. It’s a scene all too common. You walk into the living room after pooping a bunch only to find your cat died. What do you do? No, don’t
throw your dead cat in the garbage! We’ve thought of some uses for that dead cat you have laying around.
1. Scare mom Mom deserves to be scared.
2. Eat it Just make sure you have plenty of mayonnaise on hand.
3. Dog toy
Don’t buy an expensive chew toy at a pet store when you have something at home!
4. Use it as décor A great conversation piece. “Where’d you get your dead cat hanging on the wall?”
5. Sell it at a garage sale. People will buy it. Or they might think you’re crazy and haul you off to the looney bin.
6. Start a maggot farm. Sell the maggots you raise to insecticide companies.
7. Catapult projectile Have a catapult laying around without anything to put in it? Try the dead cat.
8. Science experiment See if you can make it come back to life again.
9. Get a million hits on YouTube People will love seeing you cut your dead cat’s head off.
10. New cat puppet Tired of seeing Muppets be popular? Now you can start your own puppet show.
It’s not 101 uses. It’s a typo. It’s really supposed to say “10.” We just couldn’t change it before
press time.
Chris’s fun | page 14 | sep-dec 2013
Next issue preview. Issue 3 – jan-apr. 2014
I’ll try really hard to remember to make a third issue. And not because there was so many people clamoring for it, but because there was
nobody clamoring me to STOP. Anyway, I have no idea what will be in
the third issue. But expect the expected, a vgvs., a shiny new Pencil-Vania comic, and more.
Ask me anything. Hey gang. Nobody wrote to me asking me anything, so there won’t be
an “ask me anything.” this issue. But here’s the chance to ask me ANYTHING. Do you want to know anything? They say “knowing is
half the battle,” and I know everything there is to know about
everything. So go ahead, ask me anything! My e-mail address is [email protected], so start asking right now!
Chris’s fun | page 15 | sep-dec 2013
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Chris’s calendar. Sep.
2 – Labor Day 3 – Halloween things go on sale
4 – Rosh Hashanah
11 – patriot day 13 – Friday the 13
13 – Yom Kippur
22 – Fall begins
Oct
14 – Columbus day (U.S.) 14 – Thanksgiving (Canada.)
16 – National Boss’s Day
24 – United Nations Day 31 – Halloween (Say you worship Satan and see if you get a day off
from school or work.)
Nov.
2 – Chris’s birthday
3 – daylight saving time ends. 5 – election day
11 – veteran’s day (U.S.)
11 – remembrance day (Canada) 27 – Hanukah (A rare instance of it happening before Thanksgiving!)
28 – Thanksgiving (U.S.)
Dec.
21 – First day of winter 25 – Christmas
26 – Boxing Day (Canada)
31 – New Year’s Eve
Chris’s fun | page 16 | sep-dec 2013
