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Well I’m cracking open the seal on a new series of articles that I plan to start writing that focuses on the most worthless and unsellable items that plague our rooms that we can never seem to be rid of. So what’s today’s subject matter in question? What item poses to be even more worthless than my Killer 7 and Gamera comic books, and more unsellable than that stack of 16 bit sports titles that you still have? Observe…

Now I’m a guy who defends the PSP. It’s one of my favorite systems, but not because of the software library. Let’s be honest there might be about a dozen must play experiences that can’t be experienced elsewhere in total for the thing. Everything else falls in between being bland and being terrible. Which is why ‘Peace Walker’ was such a breath of fresh air for me when it came out. It’s likely to be the last noteworthy game exclusively for the system for quite some time. Yes, we all know the reason most people buy PSP’s is for the homebrew and the emulators. It’s just a fact of life. I could write a book about the emulation possibilities and how fun it is to play shit like ‘Night Trap’ on a bus. Emulation is just one of those things in particular that fascinate me.

When the system came Sony also pushed out their own format for the system known as a UMD, the Universal Media Disc. This was of course to house the PSP games to be played on the system, but really in it’s worst incarnations can result in bad load times and speed issues. So if you can it’s recommended that you download the games from the PSN and enjoy the games without the annoying load times. I’ll only occasionally buy a UMD when it’s super cheap to save space on my ever growing collection of memory cards.

Nowadays the format is completely by-passable due to the Playstation Network, but aside from the size limit I actually like this format of disc better than Compact Discs and DVD’s for one simple reason. The entire disc is covered in a plastic cover only leaving a tiny window of exposure for the laser to read. This gives the UMD the potential to be extremely portable media that minimizes the risk of scratching discs into oblivion and can also be stored without cases. UMD’s actually aren’t that unusual, it just takes the common sense we used to have with VHS and Tape Cassettes that actually protected it’s data instead of leaving it wide open. Why this “disc casing” hasn’t been adopted into the Blu-Ray format is beyond me especially considering that Sony is a huge investor. But whatever.

And many scratches were saved...

Though the UMD game market is something that’s gradually dying and will probably be completely eliminated in a few years, something that’s already been buried and dead for about 3 years is the UMD movie market. Why on Earth anybody thought that selling movies at full price for a portable gaming system at a decimal percentage of the original resolution was a good idea was beyond me. If they were made really cheap for the format than it could’ve easily taken off, but they were selling them just as expensive as brand new DVD’s. Not to mention that the Sony TV-OUT cable hadn’t even been invented yet. So Sony completely dropped the ball on that and you can tell from the PSP GO that Sony would rather not even manufacture any UMD’s at all these days.

Now when I first bought a PSP I bought the plain black 2000 model bundle that came with nothing and I went out and bought Portable Ops. About a year and a half later I dropped it onto my hard tiled bed room floor and the UMD drive’s pieces scattered to each corner of the room. Because of my emulation addiction I went out the very next day and picked up the silver PSP carried in the Daxter bundle which came with the Daxter PSP game (which I havent even played) and the UMD of “Family Guy: The Freakin’ Sweet Collection”. To paint a picture I did a quick Amazon search to come up with a list of other UMD movies that have been sold in PSP bundles.

• National Treasure 2
• Angels and Demons
• Superbad
• NFL: In Just One Play video
• School Of Rock
• Cars

And of course there is also a bundle disc of 3 Hannah Montana Episodes sold in what is perhaps the ultimate PSP bundle of all…

YEEEESSSSSS!!!!!

As you can see there is nothing here you would even want to own let alone buy a game system for. I know they’re essentially “free” compliments or whatever, but who the hell watches Football on their PSP?!

Uhh... Could I maybe just get the machine by itself?

Back to the “Freakin’ Sweet Collection” though… Let’s forget that I don’t like Family Guy, let’s forget that Family Guy is fucking terrible, and let’s also forget that Seth Macfarlane is essentially destroying prime time animation by gradually taking over the entire line up with Family Guy spin offs. Even to the die hard Family Guy fan this is STILL a worthless release. There was also a Family Guy “movie” that had come out around that time they could’ve bundled instead and Sony even started releasing Family Guy seasons on UMD by that point. This is a collection of five of Seth’s favorite episodes which all appear to be from the show’s earlier seasons before it was retrieved from cancellation and gang raped by Fox. So the episodes picked are from a period in the show’s history where it was at least watchable and you could actually call parts of it humorous. But here’s all the shit they removed to be able to fit it onto a UMD.

• Full Commentary Track on ‘Road to Rhode Island’
• Full Commentary Track on ‘To Love and Die in Dixie’
• Full Commentary Track on ‘I Am Peter Hear Me Roar’
• Full Commentary Track on ‘Lethal Weapons’
• Inside Look at American Dad
• Seth MacFarlane Talks About American Dad
• Seth MacFarlane Talks About Family Guy Season 4

But at least they kept in the trailers for Super Troopers and Napoleon Dynamite. Thank god.

But why am I writing an article on how worthless this disc is? Sure it’s not as useless as other UMD’s you might pick up and not even as worthless as the 3 episode UMD that the Hannah Montana bundle comes with that I wouldn’t even buy as a sick website joke. The fact that it’s a part of the Daxter package which is one of the highest manufactured PSP bundles ever made makes the “Freakin’ Sweet Collection” as worthless as the game it’s packaged with. Seriously you could throw these things out to homeless people they’re so worthless, and the worse part is that even the lowest form of pawn shops won’t touch them.

It's a shame they couldn't have waited to bundle the 'Freakin Sweet Collection' with this to make the opus of shit complete.

I guess the bottom line is nobody has ever cared about movies on UMD and they’re all essentially worthless. Just like HD-DVD’s which didn’t even last as long.  And bundling anything with a system makes that item completely worthless due to their commonplace nature, or the “not for resale” sign, or the fact that they don’t provide you with the item’s proper packaging. So it is appropriate that they picked garbage like ‘Cars’ to be bundled, but at the same time, wouldn’t have good UMD’s like ‘Robocop’, ‘Air Force One’ or hell even ‘FF7: Advent Children’ helped sell SOOO many more units?

Oh man, I love Air Force One.

Sony appears to have learned their lesson on what to bundle with their portable system because now they’ll just provide you with a PSN movie voucher so not only can you PICK what you want, but you can also avoid having useless coasters sitting around in your room for you to write articles about.

And that concludes this edition of Worthless Crap. Maybe for my next installment I’ll talk about my waist high stack of PS1′s, or my collection of the 90′s Spiderman cartoon on VHS. Who knows?

Finally! The threesome of everybody’s dreams!

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Well. Well. Here’s another shit blistering issue of Gamera…

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On a visit back home I discovered this. As I couldn’t contain my laughter my parents just looked at me in shame. So I might be a little immature. But whatever.

As for the site, I actually haven’t been on the internet for the majority of this month. So once again not a lot has gotten done and I hate every time that I have to say that, but I have several (WAY too many) things on my editing board that need some loving final touches to reach completion to hit the site. While I was home I saved an offline copy of the site and tried to analyze how I wanted it to be structured and I wrote a list of some dramatic organizational changes I want to take effect in the next few months, most of which will be unnoticeable to most.

One of the bigger changes I plan on making is a new forum system that is actually integrated into the site resulting in more activity. The other big one is starting a separate site (or isolated section of this one) as a blog to be able to type these type of entries much more frequently without flooding the front page. Maybe give it it’s own feed. As for the moment however I have a few bigger priorities in the form of content, and I also won’t apply these changes until I’m 100% sure how I want to execute them.

Also one other thing. I don’t see myself making a habit out of promoting other people’s stuff here but for one of my best friend’s I will make an exception. Aaron (from Magnistar) entered this video into a contest relating to the new Sonic 4 which managed to receive an honorable mention on the American Sega blog and I was also impressed by it. I’m hoping the feedback from there and this plug will encourage him to keep moving in this direction. I’d love to see more from him.

WHAT IS THIS!?