Eviscerate: Move the head from side to side to generate electricity.

So, wednesday was my Impromanga submission deadline. I hadn't actually started drawing pages by wednesday, I should point out, only planning. Wednesday was also the day that Feel The Magic - otherwise known, inexplicably, in the EU as Project Rub [1] - arrived on my doorstep. It is to my shame that I finished Feel the Magic first... although to be fair, it was shorter. The Impromanga pages - which start here although if you've not read any of it before you really ought to start at the beginning lest it make even less sense - took me about an hour to an hour and a half each, FtM probably took three hours total.

So, Feel the Magic. In summary, it has entertained me for notably less time before nominally 'finishing' it than Mario 64 DS, which still has a large chunk of the game to go... but I think it is on the whole more consistently fun.

I say 'nominally' finished as the game is comprised as a series of minigames, and finishing the game does not require playing all of the minigames - notably the one involving screaming into the microphone to attract the girl's attention probably wouldn't have gone down well in the office over lunch, where I played most of the game. Additionally, there are a number of hidden secrets throughout the intros that allow you to collect costume parts to dress your girl up - seriously. You can do this - and touch her inappropriately [2] - in a mode aptly titled 'Maniac'.
But yes, the minigames... FtM is easily the best game that I have ever played that involved defending your loved one from malevolent interdimensional candles by blowing them out with the aid of your bunny-eared friends. It's the best game I've played in which I had to ride a unicycle across narrow walkways between two buildings. It also comes a close second in the bowling-by rolling-yourself-at-the-pins (to Monkey Bowling, a Super Monkey Ball minigame) and painting-graffiti-whilst-being-attacked-by-loons (to Jet Set Radio, the greatest game in the history of videogames) stakes. The games are, to cliché a quote, both varied and fun. It feels like an extended director's-edition Made in Wario, to an extent, only with more sex and less moustaches. It also has the second greatest theme tune ever in the history of videogaming (second to Deus Ex, despite Deus Ex blatantly ripping off the X-Men saturday morning cartoon) which at least at the moment you can sample in this nifty flash animation that Dan has lying around - originally from Sonic Team's website for the game, IIRC.

So while I was finishing off my Impromanga submission, I ran through some of CD Baby's recommendations to me. They mail me every now and again (they send great emails) to try and get me to buy stuff and I keep shrugging and thinking I'll get around to it later. After running through the list of stuff in their editors' picks I enjoyed the following enough to order, and thus would recommend them to some degree (bearing in mind that my purchases were made rather easier by the fact that the most expensive of them is about £7.50 for the whole CD):

* Dynamite Fraulein
* The Joy Circuit - EP1
* Agnes Gooch - Now I See
* Like Yesterday - More Courage Than Most
* Jensen Bell - Modern Dating Tips
* The Bella Fayes - Far From The Discos

Of those, Agnes Gooch, Jensen Bell and The Bella Fayes stood out most... Danielle McKee, Phy, Angeles Drake and Safe Home tempted me into a second listen but didn't make the cut. This time - I mention them as much so I can come back later and check them again as anything. ;-)

I've been listening to the things they recommended me after ordering that lot as I type...

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