Thursday, July 25, 2013

Blaster By My Side on Facebook

I've had a few people ask about a Facebook page for BBMS. While I really don't care for Facebook, it seems that a lot of people use it to follow blogs and keep updated with things there. So, I've created a page for it.

Click the image below to go to the blog's Facebook home.



Sunday, July 21, 2013

Nerf no Okite: Longshot "used" in live performance


Normally you see Nerf blasters used as props in movies and television (coughcoughTerraNova). However, here's something I noticed a year ago or so.

If you've never heard of the Japanese pop/electronic band Perfume, let me shed some light on them. While they make mainly bubbly and very catchy J-Pop music, they have a few songs that are harder and more intense. Say what you want about their music, but they have some of the best live performances I've ever seen. While it's more of a visual performance than a musical one, it's hard not to enjoy it. Some very good examples of this would be this from their JPN tour, as well as their live rendition of Edge (⊿ Mix) from their ⊿ tour.

But let's look at one performance in specific: the Perfume no Okite section of their "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11" live performance. The performance itself is supposed to be a celebration of sorts in honor of the albums they've put out over the years. The set-pieces are huge, the screens are bright, the coordinated dancing is spot-on, everything is just freaking awesome, but wait... what's this rising from under the stage at 3:31?

"A-Chan" rising up with a... Longshot?
Yep, it's a Longshot CS-6: scope, clip, front blaster and all... strangely enough it seems the bipod wasn't attached. Yeah, okay, that's great (not really, completely black paintjobs are boring as hell to me), but what's it doing? Firing a green laser, popping large white balloons in the process.

Yeah okay it doesn't sound that cool when typed out. But watching it, it's pretty damn cool. It's scripted, yeah, but come on. Lasers being fired out of a Longshot. Normally I'd get sad and say it's a waste of a blaster with fantastic potential (generally what I do when I see Longshots being used for cosplays), but I don't care because LASERS.

Clearly this is a pretty self-indulgent post. I've been wanting to share this for a long time though, and now that I have a good venue to do so, I thought I might as well. If you're willing to give the full video a try, as well as the other ones linked above, make sure to do so in HD/720p!

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Quick Zombie Strike dart pic spam


I thought I'd throw up a quick post with some pictures of the Zombie Strike darts I got at SDCC from the Hasbro booth.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Nerf at SDCC!


Today was the first day of San Diego Comic Con. I attented (and will be attending all four days), and I managed to snap some pictures of the new Zombie Strike products, which includes some not mentioned in io9's reveal. Because this post will be long, click read more to check out the pictures.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Art and fresh air!: Rebelle teaser video


Seems Nerf's finally putting some promotion out for the new Rebelle series (thanks to Nerf Centerbury for posting this).

I am in LOVE with this video. It's on par with other Nerf teaser videos/commercials, complete with slow-motion shots and upbeat pop-punk music (I guess you could call it that). The girls in the video show the same "warface" that the guys do in other Nerf videos, which is fantastic. I'm so glad that they didn't go all-out with the whole "fashionable, collective" thing that they were discussing when Rebelle was first announced. That's what I was worried about and I am very happy to see that they are not completely following through with that angle.

Another thing I like is that this video is set in an open area and not in a closed factory. I really do like the Nerf commercials, I think they're made very well, but seeing people run around with blasters in a forest is just awesome. Of course, the forest thing plays along with the whole Hunger Games thing, but honestly at this point I welcome it openly.

Definitely has the Hunger Games
thing going for it. She looks a
lot like Katniss Everdeen!
I also especially like the art that displays alongside the blaster and its name... I just wish they had this somewhere on the packaging! Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the packaging that Indigo Studios does for Nerf products, but with the Zombie Strike products having illustrated box art, it makes me curious about how other Nerf products would look with illustrated packaging.

As far as new information goes, the video doesn't show anything new. However, the Wildshot finally has an official name, the Sweet Revenge, which matches along with the kit it comes packaged in.

The Rebelle website will be hosted here in the future; for now, it redirects to this teaser video. Here's hoping it updates soon with more information on the series.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Before the storm: SDCC plans

San Diego Comic Con is coming up in a few days and I'm pretty pumped. Aside from meeting artist Aaron Diaz (and possibly Andrew Hussie, but that line's going to be really friggin' long), my main goal is to get to that Hasbro booth and cover what they have to show.

Thanks to that io9 article, I know that they'll be showing off recently announced Zombie Strike series.. mainly just the Hammershot and Sledgefire. I'm hoping they'll be showing off some other stuff, like the Rebelle series, the RapidStrike, the Revonix360, and more goodies like that.

I plan to have pictures up after the first day of the con. Videos may come a day or two later (depends if I can get a friend to come help me film). I might also put up some other choice pictures from the convention just to show off some neat stuff I saw while there.

So, stay tuned for my coverage!

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Zombie Strike thoughts

     Just ten minutes ago (at the beginning of this writing), I rushed to get the Spring 2014 Zombie Strike post up on Nerf Mods & Reviews so that I could get ready to go out for a free Slurpee adventure. While getting the post up, I was excited at the thought that I'll be able to play with some of this stuff at San Diego Comic Con (which I do plan on covering, both here and NMR). I also started collecting thoughts on the series.

     Zombie Strike, in short, seems really neat. I'm a fan of some of the aesthetics and some of the blasters coming out for it. The idea of the series is great and I know that it'll make a load of money, both from the younger crowd and the HVZ crowd. I'm also a fan of the illustrated box art, which looks cartoony, but not goofy.

 
     Some blasters that I'm looking forward to are the Crossfire and the Sidestrike. While I'm liking the Crossfire just due to sheer coolness, the Sidestrike has my interest due to the holster it's coming packaged with. Not only is it compatible with its patron blaster, it's advertised as being compatible with the N-Strike Elite Firestrike. Reading this made me excited because, well, why not stop there? Nerf knows the fans want individual accessories. Why not try and design some sort of semi-universal holster? They could somehow make it adjustable by size to accommodate "sidearm" blasters, like the above Sidestrike and Firestrike, but perhaps also the N-Strike Elite Triad, Vortex Proton, and other blasters that size.

Obligatory introduction post

Every blog has its start.

I've been considering running my own Nerf blog for a while now. I've attempted to run blogs in the past on a multitude of topics, but they were never serious projects of mine.

I've been into Nerfing since 2006. At first I was simply your wide-eyed innocent, silently reading about Nerf news on blogs and interesting modifications on multiple Nerf-related forums. My interest slowly died during my final years of high school and first year of college. It perked up in 2010 as I slowly started getting back into the hobby/interest. Since then, I've been involved with it, both offline and online.

I'm hoping for this blog to serve as a source of Nerf news, as well as a home to my opinions and stories. I don't plan to leave from Nerf Mods & Reviews at all; if anything, this may act as a supplement to that of sorts.