Introducing: the Singing Mountain podcast

I've been a fan of Drew Mackie's Back of the Cereal Box blog ever since I first came across it--which was shortly after it made its debut in early 2003, if memory serves.

If this is the first you're hearing of Back of the Cereal Box, boiled down, it's a pop-culture blog. Or, as Mackie himself puts it, it's a "record of the weird ways pop culture intersects with [his] life."

Often, it's a record of how pop culture intersects with his life as a gay man who has long loved video games.

Considering all of the above, it shouldn't surprise that Mackie piqued my interest when he revealed his plans to launch a podcast about video game music.

Singing Mountain is the result of those plans. In the four podcasts he's published so far, Mackie's discussed Super Mario RPG, the Mega Man series, The Great Giana Sisters and EarthBound.

That's not the full extent of what's covered in Singing Mountain's initial batch of episodes, mind you. The latest ("Ric Ocasek in Moonside"), for instance, focuses on EarthBound while also bringing Mackie's childhood, The Cars, Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory,” the litigiousness of Beatles and even Janet Jackson into the mix.

Hell, Mackie may even introduce you to a new word or two if you keep your ears peeled. He certainly expanded my vocabulary a bit when he dropped the word diegetic into his commentary on Onett's arcade theme.

See also: posts about The Nichiest Podcast Ever

Why Sega's Laser Ghost should have been named Quinceañera of the Damned

Those of you who have only been playing games for the last few years may think North American box art has always been on par (or nearly on par) with the art that graces the covers of Japanese releases.

Unfortunately, that's far from the case--a fact that's made painfully clear by looking at the box art that appeared on your average 8-bit, 16-bit and even 32-bit title.

The worst offenders of the above-mentioned bunch: The great majority of the box art produced for Sega's Master System and NEC's TurboGrafx-16.

That's not to say all of the art that appeared on the cases of those systems' games stunk. For instance, Laser Ghost's cover art (right) was pretty darn nice, all things considered.

Strangely, as Back of the Cereal Box's Drew Mackie points out in a recent post, the game's name has little to do with its intriguing cover art--or its content.

What name should the marketing folks at Sega's European arm have given the game instead? Mackie offers up a number of hilarious suggestions in the aforementioned blog post, with my personal favorite being Quinceañera of the Damned.

To see Mackie's other suggestions--as well as footage of both the arcade and Master System versions of Laser Ghost--check out "Laser Ghost! (May Not Contain Ghosts or Lasers)" at your earliest convenience.