957 The Dark Side Is The Snark Side.

Nintendo is offering New Super Mario Brothers 2 as a digital download. However, they sweetened the deal by offering 100 bonus coins for the Mario Club if you get it that way. I really don’t like not having a physical copy of games, but I do like getting random shitty merch for being a loyal customer, and hope that someday better things will be offered.

Recently they started offering games for download in exchange for coins. Which would be great if they didn’t limit you to 3 choices. Still, it’s better than a stylus, or a set of playing cards, neither of which I have any use for. I guess they are kind of headed in the right direction… Nintendo has been dragging its feet for a long time over basically everything. It reminds me very much of how the print industry has been trying desperately to change their grim fate.

I have been watching Black Dynamite on Adult Swim and it is fantastic. The movie it’s based on is funny too, but being a cartoon blew the doors off of the idea. I was a little kid in the general time frame the show is set in, so I have hazy memories of the world being that way. It’s almost like watching my meories being translated into a show. Except ninjas weren’t a big thing back then. I don’t remember when Ninjas became a thing actually. Kung Fu guys sure, but not ninjas the way we think of them now. They must have been in movies back then, but I guess I didn’t see them. The ones I remember were more like Shaolin guys.

When did ninjas get popular? The 80’s? I vaguely remember the Ninja Turtles appearing, but they’re so far removed… there must have been some part of the culture I can’t remember that popularized the ninja, pre turtles. There was a ninja robot in Transformers I think. Huh, I never really thought about it till now. It was like Kung Fu guys then one day Ninjas. Maybe I can research it…
TO THE INTERNET!

14 Comments

Being born in 1980, I vaguely remember something about ninjas toward the end of the decade, they just sort of appeared out of nowhere in true ninja fashion.

American Ninja! Ninja Gaiden! I mean, it makes perfect sense; Kung Fu and Bruce Lee and all that stuff was the 70’s, and then along comes the crazy, over-the-top 80’s, and so, to kick people, you also had to be wearing color-coded robes and face masks and carry smoke bombs. Unless you were a turle or rat, obviously.

You can also get some WiiWare and Virtual Console games with Club Nintendo now. A bunch of my points were about to expire a couple months ago, so I got “Excitebike: World Rally”. I’ve already beaten it, but it was still a better use of the points than most of the physical rewards.

The addition of game downloads to the catalog is a step in the right direction, but Japan’s version of Club Nintendo is still WAY better. The individual rewards are better, and the Gold and Platinum prizes are insanely cool. Back in the Gamecube days, they had these awesome Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi Gamecube controllers that “Tips & Tricks” featured several times, and always made me drool. Nintendo claims reason all other regions get crappier prizes is that most of them are much larger markets than Japan, and it wouldn’t be cost effective. I call bull on this, because those prizes generally cost a lot more points. Even if everybody cashed in on it, there’s no way they’d lose money because everyone would have had to spend WAY more money than what the prizes are worth to get the points in the first place. Let’s also not forget that these are video games, it’s not like their profits are razor-thin in the first place from manufacturing costs. I spend $100 on DS games, and the best you can give me is a pack of Hanafuda cards? C’mon…

I think ninjas really became popular, or hit mainstream in the black and swift style in the 2000s with the internet. I mean, yeah, there have been a lot of movies and characters in the past, but I feel like the ninja we all picture when the word is uttered didn’t get set in stone until recently. Maybe early 90s? Maybe I’m just being naive, dunno..

Ninja’s really came into their own, more or less, due to Frank Miller. Creating the Hand, in Marvel Comics, along with Elektra and then using them to fight Daredevil and Wolverine(which have become classic comics,reprinted many times and still available to this day)remain a major milestone in modern day comics, especially for the 80’s. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a parody of the work Miller did on Daredevil, with the Foot being a direct play on the Hand. After the success of TMNT, ninja’s started appearing all over from bad american action movies(American Ninja,anyone?) to various multi-media usage. After awhile, ninja’s became a pop-culture icon,especially with the college and teen crowds of the late 80s and the 90s, and never stopped. Then you have the whole pirate vs ninja debate of the late 00’s to factor in as well. The only other major usage of ninja’s was in a Sean Connery James Bond movie from the 60’s.

Hope this was helpful to any.

the ninja movement started back inthe 70’s with bruce lee’s enter the dragon i think and then took from there with the TMNT adn then # ninja movies gain some more moment or ost ome dependin hoe much you like th emovie surf ninja’s then the spoof ninja movie beverly hills ninja with chris farley all the while you had games like shinobi and ninja gaiden , to make them seem cool again and not just a kids thing and then games like samurai warriors and the dead or a live series to make female ninja’s super sexy but I don’t think it really didnt gain alot of momentum until people found out thqt Pirates had a inertnational holiday (september 19) and people wanted a ninja themed holiday in december which is dumb cuz december is tapped for holidays as it stands international act like ninja day is december 5th

Remember the TV series Master? Or maybe it was THE MASTER. An older man with martial arts skills teaching a young student, and they all (they including a hamster on a wheel if I remember correctly) traveled around in an old van. The villains after them would’ve been considered ninjas maybe.

kay I’ll say it:
“I didn’t *relize* how competitive everyone is.”

“relize”= realize???

I think Mr. Sho Kosugi’s film, “Revenge of the Ninja”, came out in 1983 or 1984.
It had a REALLY COOL [TV ad].
After that the USA’s, ninjas craze…sort of took off after that.

[And the 1st, TMNT/turtles comic books, came out around then as well.]

Leave a Reply to Neff Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.