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The Hooksexup Insider
A daily pick of what's new and hot at Hooksexup.
Scanner
Your daily cup of WTF?
Hooksexup@SXSW 2006.
Blogging the Roman Orgy of Indie-music Festivals.
Coming Soon!
Coming Soon!
Coming Soon!
The Daily Siege
An intimate and provocative look at Siege's life, work and loves.
Kate & Camilla
two best friends pursue business and pleasure in NYC.
Naughty James
The lustful, frantic diary of a young London photographer.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: kid_play
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Super_C
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: ILoveYourMom
A bundle of sass who's trying to stop the same mistakes.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: The_Sentimental
Our newest Blog-a-logger.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Marking_Up
Gay man in the Big Apple, full of apt metaphors and dry wit.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: SJ1000
Naughty and philosophical dispatches from the life of a writer-comedian who loves bathtubs and hates wearing underpants.
The Hooksexup Video Blog
Deep, deep inside the world of online video.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: charlotte_web
A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Prowl, with Ryan Pfluger
Hooksexup @ Cannes Film Festival
May 16 - May 25
ScreenGrab
The Hooksexup Film Blog
Autumn
A fashionable L.A. photo editor exploring all manner of hyper-sexual girls down south.
The Modern Materialist
Almost everything you want.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: that_darn_cat
A sassy Canadian who will school you at Tetris.
Rose & Olive
Houston neighbors pull back the curtains and expose each other's lives.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: funkybrownchick
The name says it all.
merkley???
A former Mormon goes wild, and shoots nudes, in San Francisco.
chase
The creator of Supercult.com poses his pretty posse.
The Remote Island
Hooksexup's TV blog.
Brandonland
A California boy capturing beach parties, sunsets and plenty of skin.
61 Frames Per Second
Smarter gaming.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Charlotte_Web
A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Zeitgeisty
A Manhattan pip in search of his pipette.
Date Machine
Putting your baggage to good use.

61 Frames Per Second

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  • Fifty-Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right

    It’s hard to overstate our love for Kurt Kalata’s Hardcore Gaming 101. Every time HG101 runs a new series retrospective, it makes me punch myself directly in the forehead while wondering either a) why didn’t I think of this or b) why have I never heard of this game before? Option b was the dominant thought while I was checking out the most recent update. HG101 contributor Jave has a look at the unlicensed Genesis and NES monstrosities known as Action 52. I’ve never heard of Active Enterprises’ Frankenstein Monsters before reading the piece, but now it’s a moral imperative I seek them out. Unlike the myriad bootleg NES and Genny game cartridges that jammed variable numbers of existing games into a single package, Action 52 is a collection of fifty-two originals, all of them apparently awful.

    The retrospective is a great read on its own but particularly interesting is the theory Jave floats in his introduction: terrible games lead to good games.

    Read More...


  • Up All Night: Dark Sector

    Dark Sector was one of the very first games for “next-gen” consoles ever seen by the public. When it was revealed in 2004, everyone was saying, “Oh, man. Look at those hot, hot graphics.” They were also saying, “What’s up with all the idiotic Guyver rejects hanging out in space?” Yes, despite its bleeding edge technology, Dark Sector was looking generic from the start. It’s cool though. Digital Extremes spent the next few years playing a ton of Resident Evil 4 and made some important changes to Dark Sector’s look and play before it came out this past March. First on the list of changes, dark-and-tortured protagonist Hayden only looks like the Guyver for half the game. Instead, he looks, controls, and moves exactly like Leon from Resident Evil 4 (he’s got darker hair and no leather jacket. Big differences!) Second, Dark Sector would no longer take place in space but in an evil future Russia overrun with some techno-plague that makes regular dudes into zombies (making it Easter Europe instead of Western Europe is hugely innovative. Hugely.) Finally, they added a smear of kill.switch’s duck and cover mechanics that are all the rage these days to compliment the Resident Evil controls. The final result of all these changes? Dark Sector came out as what it looked like: a silly generic mess of a game.



    But what a silly generic mess it is!

    Read More...



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about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia's prized possession is a certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


CONTRIBUTORS

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

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