Rant on Kids' TV

I was sick this weekend, which basically meant nothing but watching TV. I noticed that a lot of children's shows today don't have the same feeling they used to. I feel like kids' TV is caught in a downward spiral. Nick is doing sitcoms, Disney is clinging to whatever fans they still have. Though, I am fairly impressed with Cartoon Network. After a long series of disappointments, I think Cartoon Network is getting better programming. I love Adventure Time, it reminds me of the nonsense cartoons I used to watch as a kid. I like the Regular Show too. Both of these shows are funny to kids, but entertaining to older kids and adults, having many jokes that often go over the younger viewers' heads. It reminds me a lot of how Dexter's Lab used to be, like how you could watch it as a kid and find the slapstick funny, but watch it as you got older, and understand the jokes more.

Unfortunately, Cartoon Network doesn't make up for everything. But, there is HUB. It is a TV station that shows many shows from my childhood and even some from before. Today, I watched Men In Black: The series, Batman: Beyond, and an original show called Dan vs. I found Dan vs. quite amusing because of it's adult humor, but not crude, but more intellectual, while also having a silly premise. While much of the humor is nonsensical and slapstick, it also has several real life jokes, such as that one friend you have that is always a jerk and is totally pessimistic and antagonistic. It also has jokes about things like life after marriage.

Unfortunately, there aren't many of these types of shows anymore. I think that the current generation of kids is missing out on a lot of what made kids' lives in my generation so special. There are also many old TV shows being revived. Dragon Ball Z Kai is a good example. They try to remake a great show for a newer generation. Although, I don't think it has the same feel as the old one did (stupid Blue Popo). Then there are the shows that don't need to be revived because they refuse to die in the first place *cough*pokemon*cough*

I hope the state of kids' TV changes for the better soon.

Underground News: My interview with Jamie Sanders

I recently got a chance to interview Jamie Sanders, creator of Virtualnes.com and Virtualgbx.com and also part of the alliance known ans "The Emulation Collective" that creates Emulation websites that follow legal code. Meaning you can play games online without consequences.

UN: How did you get into emulation?

JS: I discovered emulation when I was 8, but it took several years, and attempts at writing other things, before I gave writing my own emulator a chance. I've always been the sort to want to know how things work, and the idea of recreating hardware in software was really appealing to me.

UN: Why did you choose to emulate in Java?

JS: I wanted to have a reliably way to play games using a web browser, and at the time, Java was really the natural choice. Flash just wasn't powerful enough at the time, and Silverlight didn't exist. Silverlight never panned out to be a good idea, and there's a lot of Flash backlash these days.

Of note, one thing I wanted to be rid of were terrible clones of (predominately) NES games in Flash that simply didn't capture the proper feeling and appeal that it does via emulation.

UN: Did you expect VNES and VGBX to get such a large a following?

JS: I'm not really sure if I expected this to be quite as large as it did, but I've met a lot of really cool and interesting people all over the world through this project, and I'm very thankful for that opportunity.

UN: What features can we expect for the coming weeks?

JS: Punch-Out!!, Zapper, and a few others that are still secret.

UN: With the announcement of VirtualSNES, what can be expected at launch?

JS: Somewhere over 100 games, and excellent sound support.

UN: Do you plan to just make emulators for the rest of your life, or do you hope to move on to bigger and better things?

JS: It's a hobby. I plan to do a lot of increasingly awesome things, but this is a hobby, and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

UN: Do you plan to make an emulator for (insert video game system here)?

JS: Yes.

UN: More for my own curiosity, what is "We can dance. We can dance. Everybody's taking the chance."?

JS: It's a reference to a 1980's one-hit-wonder Men Without Hats, specifically their song "The Safety Dance".