Stuck in the House Stuff & Free Games

Hey folks, I hope everyone out there is doing well. We're doing okay here near Salem MA. Currently not under lockdown but doing my part by staying away from people.

I wanted to put together a quick post of some stuff to do whether you're stuck in the house or not. A lot of it is free!

Get it? Stuck in the house?

In addition to the stuff below, the Internet Archive is an insanely huge rabbit hole you can lose yourself in. There are tons of videos, books, magazines and more like:

Fangoria archive
Pulp magazines
Home Console games 
Classic Arcade Games
 1975 Haunted Mansion Operations Manual
Coloring Books

Movies

Streaming horror service Shudder is offering a 30 day free trial for new users with promo code SHUTIN.

Also, if you're a horror fan, the Spooky Vegan has a rundown of the freaky flicks currently available on Shudder, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime.

Books

Speaking of Amazon, you can get a free, two month Kindle Unlimited trial if you sign up before April 30th. New users only.

Audible Stories has a selection of streaming free audio books for tiny tykes to teens as well as literary classics. You don't even have to sign up, just click and listen.

Fusion Books is offering a few issues of their gaming magazine Fusion as free PDFs. Each issue has articles on retro, current gen, indie, and tabletop gaming. (Links: 1, 2, 3) They're also giving away the book 8-bit Kids, which I highly recommend if you're a gamer and grew up in the 70s and/or 80s.

Comic Books

The Digital Comic Museum is an online archive dedicated to Golden Age comics. You can read online, or if you sign up for a free account, you can download them. Pro Tip: There is a search bar at the top of the page.

Tabletop Games

Cryptozoic Entertainment is having a huge sale on a lot of their games and offer free shipping with orders over $50. They have several Rick & Morty themed games, the DC Deckbuilding game, and even a Challenge of the Superfriends card game!

If you're looking to get your RPG on without actually gathering friends together, Astral is offering the use of their virtual tabletop software, with all paid features enabled, through April.

Video Games

Steam has a handful of free games:  Tomb Raider, Deiland, Headsnatchers, Drawful 2, Goat of Duty, Pleasure PuzzlePortrait, Lara Croft and The Temple of Osiris.

I grabbed Tomb Raider and Goat of Duty. Goat is a lot of fun if you like FPS deathmatch!

Epic Games has The Stanley Parable and Watch Dogs in addition to a handful of other always free to play games.

I also have a ton of unused Steam codes to give away!
Feel free to take a couple and I will update the post as games are claimed.

Battle Tribes - Grid Wave

A couple weeks ago Spy Monkey Creations let loose their most recent wave of Battle Tribes figures and this time they're going back to the game grid!

Credit: @Battle Tribes

As you can see, this latest wave of figures is an homage to the original 1982 Tron figures by Tomy. To say I was thrilled about the announcement would be an understatement. Luckily, I was able to grab the whole wave as they sold out pretty quick! Let's get a closer look at the programs.

First is the Grid Avatar in the role of Flynn. If you're familiar with the Battle Tribes figures, you know that each figure comes with multiple heads and weapons. Since we're looking at four figures, I didn't take a ton of pics of the different combos you can make with each figure. If you want to see all the parts, head over to Spy Monkey Creations.

I don't know what the official names of each type of figure are but I call this one the barbarian. Mainly because it comes with a Conan-style head and a furry vest. The shield is the closest thing any of the figures have to an identity disc and I'm a little disappointed no one else has one but I understand when they do the figures, each "style" has its own accessories.

Here's the Avatar with barbarian head and vest, although you can't really see it. They did an outstanding job with the digital markings on all the figures, especially the tiny back of the hand ones. I used a blue light here to give him a more electric look.

I got the colored lights I used at a Dollar Tree of all places! They're little plastic things that are meant to be worn on your fingers but they work great for shooting action figures.

This is the Grid Enforcer, taking the part of the Warrior. With this goblin/imp head I think it looks like a nasty virus that could infect your system. I used the Dollar Tree lights again here. They really light up the translucent plastic.

Here we have the Grid Overlord, standing in for Sark. In addition to more "normal" accessories, he's got a claw hand and a big mech fist. I usually call this one sci-fi guard because of the heads and chest armor piece.

Each of the figures has a couple of  glow in the dark accessories and one GITD head. The glowy bits are a natural way to go with Tron inspired figures but in my opinion, the heads don't work that well because they have no details colored in like the regular heads.

Fighting for the User is the Grid Champion. This guy is a wrestler style figure, which means he gets a little sidekick and a bunch of food heads, similar to the Spicy Pumpkin figure I talked about a couple months ago. Not my personal favorite style of figure because it's got a variety of heads instead of weapons.

Tron himself stopped by to show the Champion how to sling a disc.

Monthly Media Recap - February 2020

 Welcome to the February Monthly Media Recap. 

Now with an extra day and lots of trailers!

Streaming

Living with Yourself (Netflix): This was quite a bit different than what I was expecting. You see Paul Rudd and you think it's going to be non-stop laughs. Not that it doesn't have humorous moments. It's sort of a light, fluffy Black Mirror premise.

Black Lightning (Netflix): When this initially premiered I decided to pass on it because it wasn't in the same reality as the Arrow-verse. Now they went all Crisis and everyone is on the same Earth so I'm getting caught up. And I'm glad I am because the show is good and it has a different feel to it than the other CW DC shows.

Movies

The Car: Road to Revenge (2019, Netflix)
Imagine if The Aslyum was remaking The Wraith for the SyFy Channel. Except the spirit/car is a rich douchebag so you don't want it to get revenge and there are no characters to root for so you don't care who lives. If The Car had killed everyone and then spontaneously combusted, it might be an improvement. Don't let the trailer fool you, the "cyberpunk" in this is barely there.

Rating: 2/10, if you value your life, don't waste any of it watching this

Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019, Amazon Prime)

And on the other hand...this is how you make a cult movie. The effects are decent, the action is good,  and the story is "out there" crazy. I mean, how can you go wrong with dinosaurs and Nazis? This is a sequel so I recommend seeing Iron Sky first to get the full story. Trust me, they're both a good time!

Rating: 7/10

Polaroid (2019, Netflix)

Based on a 3 minute short film, this was pretty good for PG13. It was giving me a sort of an Elm Street vibe with the kids uncovering the history behind the entity and some of the "rules" it has to abide by. Fun fact: the screenplay was written by former G4 personality Blair Butler.

Rating: 6/10

These next two are part of a series (or trilogy depending on who you ask), which I didn't know until after I had watched Mad Doctor and researched it to find out it is part of the Blood Island series of movies. Truth is, there's no continuity between the movies and you can watch any one of them on its own. I also found that for a lot of horror fans, these were their intro to weirdness that is Filipino horror.

Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969, Amazon Prime)

Of the two Blood Island flicks here, I think this one had more going on to keep me watching. Although any time the monster is about, the camera does this repeating zoom in/zoom out thing that is pretty annoying.

Rating: 4/10

Brides of Blood (1968, Amazon Prime)

While Mad Doctor somehow had more to keep my attention, I really enjoyed the story (such that it is) in this one more. The creature is laughable, seeing the strings flying a "monster" butterfly priceless, and the blood thirsty trees are pretty cool.

Rating: 4.5/10

Month
New: 5  Rewatch: 0

Year to Date

  New: 11 Rewatch: 0