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In my effort to show my fiance how much I love him along with trying to get linked in a gaming blog (ZOMG KOTAKU LOOK CAKE), I decided to spend quite a bit of cash to get Kelvin a surprise groom’s cake that was video game related. I know his favorite game of all-time is either The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past or Super Metroid (I forgot the order already), so I wanted to do one of those. I’ve already seen some pretty awesome Zelda cakes, so I’d figure I’d go for something Super Metroid related. The only Metroid-related dessert I’ve ever seen that was any good was some super-cute gelatinous metroid, so I was curious what something would look in the realm of cake. For this task, I enlisted the highly-Yelped cake artisan Debbie Goard of Debbie Does Cakes.

My first instinct was to go for Samus’ helmet, but then I thought that maybe it’d be weird to pretty much be eating Samus’ head. So I originally sent a request to make a cake looking like Samus’ gunship, based off this First 4 Figures statue. Oftentimes, her ship shares a lot of similarities with her helmet, so I thought it’d be a good substitute. But after some thinking (and consultation with other folks who’ve played Metroid), I went back to the helmet because it was more recognizable, even to gamers who haven’t played Metroid games. (For the Metroid nerds that suggested I do metroids or Mother Brain… come on, there’s a bunch of non-gamer old people at the wedding…)

I sent Debbie links to another First 4 Figures statue page and the Metroid Database, but she was still having a hard time deriving the shape. What I ended up doing was, when Kelvin wasn’t home, busting out Super Smash Bros. Brawl, going to the trophies section, and taking video of relevant Samus trophies, zooming in and rotating so that the helmet could be seen at all angles. I even went through the effort of beating Classic Mode to get another trophy for more reference. I made the videos flv and sent links of the videos to her.

Debbie was cool with the idea, despite being a non-gamer and having no clue as to what Metroid is. All communication was through email, though once the payment, reference links, and order form was sent and all details were finalized, I didn’t hear from her ever again. I never got a preview of the cake (though it seems like she posted it on her flickr the day before my wedding), but based on her past work, I was fairly comfortable she could pull something together. And indeed she did. The final product at the reception:

Awesome. I didn’t get to see Kelvin’s expression seeing the cake since he ditched the bridal party to hang out in the reception area prior to the official bridal party entrance, but I’m told by groomsmen and other nerdboys that he was pleased to see the cake. Kelvin told me that, before he saw it, people kept asking him about what the cake was, and he had no idea what they were talking about. Ever wondered what the inside of Samus’ head looks like? Well, here ya go:

Samus brains = chocolate cake with chocolate chips and mint buttercream. Kelvin’s a fan of mint chip stuff, so this was best closest custom flavor I could get with Debbie’s repertoire of flavors. The cake is a bit on the sweet and heavy side for me, especially in comparison to the main wedding cake from La Patisserie, but it wasn’t bad at all. You can see from the cake slice some sort of weird sugary clay stuff used for sculpting the front. (It’s the yellowy stuff in the slice picture. It tastes like… sugary clay.)

Overall, I’m pretty stoked with the final product. The restaurant originally thought it was the wedding cake, so it hogged the wedding cake table spot until the real wedding cake people arrived and had to convince the restaurant otherwise. Too bad I didn’t maximize my nerd cred by having a Metroid wedding cake as well. Yeah, too bad.

Note: I’ll add more pics from other people (from pro photog, different angles) when I get them.

Picture yoinked from Debbie Does Cakes’ flickr, prior
to exposure to high humidity (it POURED that day)

Edited 11/11 to add: Apparently a couple people have discovered the cake through Debbie’s flickr, including Geekologie and Metroid Quarantine, with the latter getting on Kotaku, and then GoNintendo and back to Metroid Database (we’ve come full circle!).

Debbie told Metroid Quarantine:

The cake was a mint chip cake hand carved from round cakes, stacked, and iced in buttercream and then covered in fondant. The metallic parts were made of belgian modelling chocolate and painted with silver highlighter dust. The entire cake was airbrushed to add color and dimension to the metallic parts as well. The cake was a surprise for the Groom, he and the bride are huge fans of the game.

And yeah, all the parts that were neither cake nor buttercream didn’t taste too good. (Fondant in general is quite nasty.) I don’t remember how the modelling chocolate tasted, but I still have half of the helmet in my freezer, so I’ll have to make note of how it tastes later.

New thing I learned today: The idea of a groom’s cake originated in the South. It’s a cake separate from the frilly main wedding cake that often reflects the groom’s interest. The legend surrounding the groom’s cake is that if a single woman takes a slice of the cake and puts it under her pillow the night she receives it, she will dream of her future husband.

Saw this on GoNintendo last week. I’m actually semi-excited for LEGO Batman (I mean, it’s LEGOs and Batman!!!), so I’m excited for these toys as well. I’m not excited for eating McDonald’s at least once week for the next 8 weeks (well, I guess I technically don’t have to, but since I’m there anyway), and I think it’s lame that these LEGO toys are even stinking LEGOs. Their limbs are contorted, and I doubt they can be taken apart. Despite this, I’m still sold on them. As the weeks go on, I’ll make sure to update this post with pics as soon as I get some toys.

Edited 9/17 to add: WTF, the McDs by work sells toys individually for a $2.39!!! What a stinkin’ ripoff! I think the most expensive Burger King toys I’ve gotten in the past were $1.50 (but most places were $.99), and BK has way better quality toys. I mean, for 10 cents more at McDs, you get a burger, small fries, and sippy cup drink. I, of course, am now getting Happy Meals in conjunction with my Filet o’ Fishes, tho I’m splurging an extra $1 to get chicken nuggets and not have to eat their disgusting burgers. Bleh. At least they’ve switched back to cardboard boxes for the Happy Meals.

Too much happening in my life at the moment with work, wedding planning (argh, must figure out invitations ASAP), Watchmen reading (awesome book, btw), etc. Because of current state of the economy, we’ve been keeping an eye on the housing market, so that plus wedding/honeymoon booking… taking a good look at our finances is also giving me headaches.

Yet I still find time and money to buy four shirts at Threadless, where everybody and their mom buys T-shirts. I last bought shirts in December, and I wanted to swear off Threadless for a while. But then the bastards came up with this shirt a few months back:

Police Quest is one of the first games I played as a kid (which, now that I think about it, is kinda bad with the drugs, gambling, murders, etc. in the game), and it got me into adventure games which got me into computer and video games in general. All games I had at the time were pirated (5¼” floppies, ah the memories), and I remember spending so much time at the beginning of Police Quest 1 wondering why the hell my squad car kept getting flat tires, preventing me from leaving the police station and resulting in an instant game-over. Apparently, the physical game manual mentions explicitly you need to check your tires before leaving the station. Tricky Sierra and their tricky copy-protection methods.

Anyway, I really wanted that t-shirt homage to PQ. Threadless is having a $12 shirt sale right now. Not as good as their $10 shirt sales of past years, but their sales this year have been weak sauce so far (at least for the above shirt), so I bit with the $12 one. I also ordered this reprinted shirt which I always thought was cute. (The other sheep shirt I ordered last year ran out of stock after I ordered it, so I never got it :( )

I ordered a couple shirts for Kelvin without his permission. I’m not going to post which styles I got here in case he hates them :P

New thing I learned today: The Seminole tribe of Florida owns the entire Hard Rock Cafe chain (aside from the Las Vegas Hard Rock Cafe). The Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood, FL (I didn’t know FL had a Hollywood) is also a full-fledged casino with slot machines and card games outside of poker.

Kelvin just sent this to me, and I thought it was epic win for EA. The video is in response to a glitch in Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘08 posted by another Youtube user.

Awesome commercial. I’m almost enticed to get Tiger Woods ‘09.

They’re usually $19.99 and don’t go below retail that often. It was in last Sunday’s ad (saw it on CAG), so this Saturday is the last day to get them. Stock shouldn’t be an issue, but if they run out, Target will issue rainchecks good for 45 days. I didn’t buy anything on Xbox Live before until this week, so I stocked up by getting 4 cards :P

It’s a good time to have points right now, with Xbox Live’s “Summer of Arcade“. As soon as I got the cards, I bought Braid (majorly trippy puzzle game… time travel is always awesome) and Geometry Wars 2 (pretty seizure-inducing colors also = awesome). I’ll probably get Castle Crashers next, next week assuming it lives up to the hype. Considering these downloadable games range in retail from 10 to 15 real life monies, any penny saved helps! I’m not sure what to do with the other 3200 points, but I’m sure I’ll eventually figure it out…

I read about this alarm clock on Kotaku, and considering its cuteness, utility, and relevance to the Metal Gear Solid universe, I of course had to get one. I missed out on pre-orders at NCSX and Play-Asia, but luckily NCSX got more in (and now they’re still available for order at both NCSX and Play-Asia, at least as of 8/26). Freaking $45+ after shipping… at least it came in two days. Thanks to USPS Priority shipping, I was able to get this on a Saturday and have a go with my new toy.

For reference, here’s a Youtube video of, I’m guessing, the promo video for the clock from Konami:

The GA-KO (or is it Ga-Ko? Or Gako?) alarm clock comes packed in an unsealed cardboard box, with technical diagrams of the duckie decorating the outside. It’s got minimal packing, just a clear plasic baggy for protection and a piece of white cardboard to support the top of its rotund head. Because it isn’t sealed, NCSX stuck a business card in the box as reminder as to where you purchase your clock from. Along with the clock, there is a folded instruction sheet.

The clock is made of typical plastic, nothing that feels particularly extra durable. Above the feet the ducky’s surface has a matte finish, while the feet are smooth and shiny. The paint job on the eyes is okay; they look pretty even and spherical, but if you look close enough, you can see the paint job isn’t perfectly in the indented lines. On mine, the lower part of the eye white bleeds out significantly, but it still looks circular. The head is loose to allow for the head shaking, and its free movements makes the clock seem flimsier than it is. The copyright stuff is imprinted on the back of its head.

Are you looking at my butt?

The bottom of the feet hold the batteries. NCSX says three AAA batteries are required. (Edited 8/26: Looks NCSX finally fixed their listing.) Play-Asia says two AAAs are required. Both of them are wrong. The GA-KO alarm clock has a bizarre battery requirement of two AAAs and one AA battery. Kelvin guessed correctly that the different battery types were for different functions: the AA is needed for the clock, while the AAAs are needed for the alarm. Sliding the battery cover off, there is another battery cover for the AA slot, which is sandwiched between the two AAAs.

How to set the clock isn’t obvious, as the only things visible initially are the alarm on/off switch on its arse and the snooze button on one of the feet. A good push on its behind makes the tail area come off, revealing two knobs for clock time and alarm time setting. The speaker is also more visible, but the tail panel has sound slots anyway, giving away the location of the speaker.

Junk in the trunk

Setting the clock is identical to any cheap-o plastic analog alarm clock you’ve ever owned before. You turn one knob, which moves the minute and hour hands, to the right time. The second knob is turns the small yellow hand, which you place to the approximate hour hand location of your desired alarm time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the cute timer function that Sunny seems to use in MGS4, where you twist the head and 3 minutes later you’ve got perfect eggs.

When the alarm rings, the clock sounds just like the Metal Gear Solid 4 timer. The duck shakes his head at you and says repeatedly all cute-like “Gah-gah! Gah-gah!”. The head-shaking isn’t quite as vigorous as the timer in the game.

Hitting the snooze button causes it to snooze for 5 minutes, and after 20 minutes, the alarm clock completely stops with no more snoozing. So you snooze 4 times and that’s it. This is kind of weak sauce to me, as I prefer the more traditional 9 minute snooze time, and I don’t like an alarm giving up so quickly. I can definitely snooze for more than 20 minutes. Also, even though the alarm switch is still set to ON, it won’t ring again until you turn it off and on again because of its ghetto state machine. (btw, I’m pretty sure all this info is correct because, along with actually trying out the alarm, I translated the #5 instruction on the instruction sheet with my elementary Japanese skills and a DS Japanese dictionary. Rakubiki Jiten FTW!)

I originally got this to use as an alarm clock, but I think the lacking snooze features will relegate this clock as a desk or shelf decoration. I’m not a fan of the snooze button location either; I’m pretty sure my natural instinct in the morning is to smack its shaking head. Still, the GA-KO alarm clock is a cute, somewhat useful, collector’s item that any Metal Gear Solid fan wouldn’t mind having. Would they mind paying $45+ for one? I guess that depends on the fan :P

New thing I learned today: While in the US we say ducks go “quack quack”, in Japan ducks go “ga ga”.

For more international animal sounds, check out this page, which I found through someone else’s blog post about the GA-KO alarm clock.

Saw this on Kotaku. Leave it to the Japanese to come up with crazy shit like this. This set of figures is going to be sold on the Japanese Konami store website in December for a little under 3000yen (~$27). As sick and twisted as this is, I so want this. I really really really hope import sites will have this available, cuz my money is ready. My favorite one is probably Raiden, tho Otacon is pretty cute too.

On a side note, why the hell is Snake blonde?

New thing I learned today: Figumate is a cutesy brand of collectible figures, similar to Kubrick. The popular chibi-style toy brand is owned and made by Konami.