As Hellen Keller once said, “All good things must come to an end”. Well, this holiday Steam sale has not been a good thing, it has been an amazing thing. Ghostbusters for $7? Indigo Prophecy for a little over 3 bucks? Arkham Asylum, plus 19 other games, all for $50? I’m not sure how Valve has done it (I suspect Gabe Newell sold his fat soul to Crom), but some of these discounts have been crazier than Mickey Rooney when he’s on his crazy pills.

Unfortunately, once the weekend is over, the deals are too. This means you better purchase everything you want before Sunday ends, because I suspect we won’t be seeing a sale this big til…well, next December I imagine. I myself am going to have spent at least a hundred dollars before this is all over. Between the Eidos Collector’s pack, a couple of Atari games, the King’s Quest Collection, and the Star Wars Jedi Knight Collection, I’ll be PC gaming for a long time into the new year. What did y’all get during this absolutely insane sale?

Well maybe it’s not cool to like KISS anymore, but the band has always held a place in my childhood fascination. I wasn’t even thought of when the band hit its high mark so I never got a chance to enjoy them as they were around. I’ve always thought that I was born in the wrong era due to my choices in music I listen to, I firmly believe I should have been a child of the 70s instead of the 80s.

Well, Gene Simmons…love him or hate him has kept this band alive and kicking well into their 50s, so maybe one day I’ll go see them live and get a chance to geek out to tracks like this one. Enjoy ‘Love Gun’, it’s one of my favorites.

The God of fighting game systems, Daisuke Ishiwatari, announced today that all of us Guilty Gear fans will finally have our own version of the series on the PS3/Xbox 360. Yup, that’s right…instead of playing BlazBlue for the 8,000,000th time, you’ll now be able to have a chance to take your favorite characters from Arc System Works’ flagship title for a spin.

Not being a PC gamer that much anymore, I’ve never had a chance to play many of PopCap’s great games on the medium they’re normally released for…thankfully they’re good enough to make ports of most of them for the iPhone. Hell, if it weren’t for this fact, I’d never have played Peggle or BookWorm. Now, it seems that I’ll be getting another excellent game on my iPhone soon.

All you need to know about this video is that Oderus Urungus goes 1 on 1 with Jesus in a b-ball game which is just so fucking awesome. There’s that…and the fact that Jesus wears Converse shoes.

If you’ve never heard anything by GWAR…first, shame on you! Second, go out and get their entire catalogue of stuff. I personally think their best stuff is their more recent work, but RagNaRok is a damn good album too.

Finally the day has come for adaptation 25, and I chose to make this one extra special.  Before this experiment, I had seen maybe a total of 4 film adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and The Muppet Christmas Carol was always one I kept coming back to.  The blend of Michael Caine and an assortment of muppets makes for an extremely enjoyable story.  This is also probably the only version I’ve seen that featured Charles Dickens himself as a fourth wall breaking character (played hilarious by Gonzo).  I could sing its praises all day, it has fantastic musical numbers, charm, and visual effects.  But I’ll leave you with this: make sure this is on the list of movies you see before you die.  Its that good.

And so ends day 25.  Tune in tomorrow for a recap and epilogue to the entire experiment.  Crom bless us, everyone.

It’s Christmas Eve, time for adaptation 24, and I hit a snag.  I already had plans for the last two days of this experiment (tune in tomorrow to see which version I watch on Christmas!), and today was supposed to be when I went to the theater and saw the newest adaptation of A Christmas Carol.  However, a little blue film from James Cameron has seemingly pushed the movie from every theater surrounding me.  So I had to scramble…fast.  I turned on the TV and looked for any version I could find that I hadn’t watched yet.  A Flintstone Christmas Carol was an option, but it turned out that I had already missed a good portion of the movie.

I never thought these words would escape my mouth, but Martin Lawrence saved me.

Adaptation 24 is episode “Scrooge” from season 5 of the show Martin.  Having never seen the show before this point, this episode sure didn’t convince me to continue to do so.  The show is your typical 90’s sitcom, full of canned laughter and shame.  Maybe its just because the show wasn’t targeted towards me, but I can’t see how this crap could have lasted as long as it did.  As for story it can be summed up as this: Martin Lawrence hates Christmas -> 3 Christmas Ghost -> Martin Lawrences loves Christmas.  Not a whole lot of depth to this one.  There was a surprising little cameo by Jackie Chan though.

Adaptation 23 is either something you love or you hate, the Rankin/Bass Productions TV movie The Stingiest Man in Town.  If you know what you’re getting yourself into, it can be a very entertaining movie with great musical numbers, otherwise you may just see them as dicking around the story.  The unique Rankin/Bass animation style is something I’ve grown quite fond of ever since I saw their adaptation of The Hobbit.  Walter Mattheau voices Scrooge this time around, the perfect choice to play the grumpy old man.  All in all a very solid holiday entry.

Adaptation 22 is 1988’s comedic take on the Dickens story, Scrooged, starring Bill Murray.  Scrooged can best be described as a movie within a movie, as Murray plays a self centered television executive named Frank Cross working on a live TV version of the story while he himself is being visited by three spirits.  This is definitely not a version for the kiddies, the language, sex jokes, violence, and some pretty scary images (The Ghost of Christmas Future has screaming beings under his robe) may be a little too much for them.  But this is an excellent film, and its obvious director Richard Donner took great care in making sure it was as unique as possible while staying in the confines of the original story.  Bill Murray really shines as a comedian in Scrooged both verbally and physically (Carol Kane as the Ghost of Christmas Presents is quick to take a toaster to his face.)

Do yourself a favor and rent/buy Scrooged this Christmas.  You won’t be disappointed.

When I started this experiment, I knew this day would come.  I tried to delay the inevitable, pushing this movie back as far as I could.  But today was the day, the day I watched adaptation number 21, Barbie in A Christmas Carol.

The first thing that hit me was the abnormally bad CG animation.  Characters looked unnatural(or in the case of the obligatory cat, really fucking creepy) and moved around very awkwardly.  This usually isn’t a big deal but in this movie they move around a lot, constantly dancing.  Acting was noticeably awful, sounding less like citizens of a Victorian Britain and more like first year American acting students trying to horribly imitate the accent.  This version really drags the Dickens story through the mud, changing the miserly Scrooge character into a prissy singer.  The future deaths that the Ghost of Christmas Future usually predicts were instead changed to failure and poverty, yet they leave a gaping plot hole in doing so, never explaining exactly why her actions would lead to such a fate.  Yet, maybe I’m expecting too much out of a movie intended for 3-year-old girls.

Appropriately, adaptation 20 features our good friend Alastair Sims reprises the role that made him famous twenty years earlier, in 1971’s animated feature A Christmas Carol.  I’m surprised this late into the experiment to make this statement: this is the best adaptation I’ve seen yet.  The animation has a strange feel to it that I found very appealing.  It felt less like a cartoon and more like a piece of moving art.  From its vibrant closeups to its minimalistic scenes of solitude, the film is an absolute treat to watch.  While Sims sounds more than a bit under the weather this time around, he still pulls off a strong, yet not as energetic, performance as Scrooge.

Words are hardly enough to express the joy this version gave me, so I’ve provided a link to the video below for you all to see for yourself.

Adaptation 19 is Blackadder’s Christmas Carol a one-off TV special taking place between seasons three and four.  Contrary to prior generations of Blackadders, Ebenezer is a kind and generous (but still quite snarky) man from the get go.  In fact, when he’s visited by the Spirit of Christmas, its to congratulate him instead of of convincing him to change his ways.  The ghost makes the mistake of showing him the evils of previous Blackadders, whose lifestyles Ebenezer finds a lot more fun.  Ebenezer wakes up a changed man, insulting everyone he meets.

Its a pity that Blackadder is a series that has been mostly unnoticed in the United States, as it is easily Rowan Atkinson’s best role.  Those only familiar with his heavily physical character, Mr. Bean, will be pleased to find he has the wit to match.

Its back to basics with adaptation 18, the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol.  This version is a pure translation of the story, taking very few creative liberties from its source.  Darker aspects of the story have been removed, such as Scrooge’s romantic past, The Ghost of Christmas Past’s two robe children, and the ransacking of Scrooge’s old house.  Out of 18 Scrooges I’ve seen so far, this one is by far the most crotchety.  He speaks with a raspy voice, spits his S’s, and looks like he might croak at any second.  I was thoroughly convinced that the actor, Reginald Owen, was actually performing at this advanced age, but the man was only in his fifties at the time.  Excellent makeup work and acting made him appear in his nineties.

After seeing the Dickens novella skewed in every way possible, it was refreshing to see another version be so faithful.

No stranger to beating a dead horse, adaptation 17 is Bah Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas, a second adaptation featuring Looney Tunes characters made 27 years later.  This time, Yosemite Sam switches roles, taking the character of The Ghost of Christmas Present, with Daffy Duck taking his place as our Scrooge.  At 45 minutes, this version is long by Looney Tunes standards, and suffers greatly for it.  The quick sight gag and cartoon violence style of these cartoons work best in 3 to 5 minute chunks.  Any longer, as this version proves, and the cartoon just become a humdrum and jumbled mess.  The film just seems to exist for the sake of existing, and gives no reason to pick it over a number of other choices.  If you see this movie, do yourself a favor and avoid it.

Today, I look back at my childhood with adaptation 16, A Christmas Plotz, an episode of Animaniacs that aired when I was only six years old.  With a WB executive taking the Scrooge role and the Warner children taking on the three ghosts.  The episode is full of musical numbers, self-aware puns, and not so subtle adult humor that I’m surprised to this day made it past the censors.  Finally, another cartoon adaptation that does more than just piss me off.  Sure it follows the story in the lightest way possible, but I don’t seem to mind this time.  Animaniacs was known for parodying stories, and often breaks the fourth wall to let us know about it.  Overall, this adaptation renewed my faith that I will ever be able to enjoy another adaptation after this experiment is through.