Mattel Ultimator Review (7/10)

The 90s' hurt. Like really hurt.

Remember those blasters you lusted over as a kid  and then decades later you weep once you see their value on eBay? This is one of them, and it holds a special place in the hearts of a lot of Nerfers. We all love rocket launchers right? Big, impractical, yet utterly powerful and intimdating. Depending on the rules you play by, they can be a lethal addition to a loadout so why not take a look at the grandfather of foam rocket launchers? This is the Ultimator, you better run.

Apple iPhone X Review

Think different... because this is very different.

So here we are, ten years since Apple changed the entire mobile industry forever with a little thing called the iPhone. It's future incarnations have long been some of the most popular smartphones on the market and if anybody wanted to stay relevant in the industry, they had to beat Apple. Nowadays the iPhone has found itself in precarious position of being closely rivaled by a solid number of Android handsets and the actual device itself hasn't evolved a whole lot from the first iteration. Sure it's grown bigger and more powerful but it's still the familiar, one face buttoned phone we all remember. In a time where standing out has become more and more important, Apple probably realized that recycling the same basic iPhone design wasn't going to work in the long run, so they created the most drastic revision to the iPhone we've ever seen. This is the iPhone X; it's not pronounced "Ex", it's pronounced "Ten" because... oh who cares, let's check it out.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Review

Bigger is better.

I don't upgrade my phone every year, in fact I pretty much refuse to. Unless you're enrolled in some sort of phone plan in which you have the choice of upgrading every year, it's a colossal waste of money when your phone from a couple years ago is probably still good to go... that is if you didn't drunkenly attempt to flush it down the toilet after a night of live streaming too many tequila shots. I'm in the ballpark of trying to squeeze the most of my needs out of my old device until it becomes so shit that I can barely use it, and that's going to reflect in this review since this phone is my current upgrade. However this phone is also the forefront to an arguably difficult comeback after a disastrous launch just the other year so the stakes are high. Say hello to the Galaxy Note 8.

Nerf Modulus Regulator Review (8/10)

Rock n' roll at the flip of a switch.

Fall is here... well almost, it's still hot as hell outside but that means another thing; lots of new dart blasters. Nerf's Modulus line has honestly been pretty meh since it first started. The ECS-10 was no different than a Stryfe, the Recon MKII was pretty much inferior to the Retaliator in every way, and don't even let me get started on the Tri-Strike. So Modulus has some long needed redemption in order but how are they going to deliver it? With this: the Regulator, Nerf's first select fire blaster.

SuperMAXX 4B (Modified Nerf SuperMAXX 5000)

Well, time for a blaster mod and it wasn't really anything I had planned, just plain bad luck brought me to this point. Anyways I mentioned in my SuperTech 9000 review that it had some airtank problems; the stopper would not line up because the plastic pin that keeps it centered broke. So I went on the hunt for a SuperMAXX 5000 since they shared the same internals. Luckily I found one and one bid snipe later it was mine. So after a quick sacrifice to save the ST9k from being a paperweight, I was left with an empty SM5k shell; absolutely useless, but I had an idea. I had an extra Spy Gear Signal Launcher and after digging up some ingenuity, I built this, and it's extra painful.

Larami SuperTech 9000 Review (7/10)

As rare as it gets.

There's always a rarest something for everything and for dart blasters, this rule stands true. While the rarest dart blaster to ever hit the market is debatable, it tends to fall to Larami who built an increasingly obscure lineup in the early 90's before they were bought by Hasbro. Several of those blasters are highly illusive to this day but they've surfaced a few times over the years. This just so happens to be one of them, the SuperTech 9000. One of of the rarest dart blasters ever built, and I'm now the proud owner of one. Let's take a look at the myth and the legend.

Nerf Accustrike Alphahawk Review (7/10)

Accuracy only goes so far.

Well here we go, a dart blaster review. I've been sitting on this blaster for several months and as most of you have probably been aware of, I just haven't had the heart to review some of the new stuff I got a while back. Let's see if I have some juice left for this one. This the new Accustrike Alphahawk, and by new I really mean several months late but whatever, let's get on with it.

Microsoft Zune 30 Review

Welcome to the social. Nobody goes here anymore.

I'm pretty sure most of you guys can figure out what convinced me to do this review but nonetheless Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 threw some shade at Microsoft's long dead rival to the iPod, the Zune. Yes it's that infamous MP3 player from the mid-2000's that you saw in FYE all of a sudden and wondered what the hell it was as you went looking for the iTunes gift cards. It was a complete failure to say the least but why exactly? Let's find out.

PDP Gears of War 4 Lancer Replica Review

It's a very, very mad world.

This was something interesting I found at Best Buy a few days ago, a replica Lancer from Gears of War and the last one on the shelf at that. I've never played Gears of War in my life but hey, chainsaw guns are cool so I picked it up for the hell of it. Obviously being a mass produced prop, I didn't expect this thing to be an A-grade Hollywood replica but for what it is, PDP did a kickass job.

Apple Macintosh 512k Overview

A E S T H E T I C

It's been a minute right guys? I'm back with more crap dug up out of someone's attic for this post and I got more things coming soon. Finals have been killing me lately but I will also say in advance I won't be blogging for about a week because I'll be in California, I might post about how that goes later on. Anyways I've taken up flipping computers as kind of a side gig and this hunk of 1980's yellowed plastic is the latest thing to land on my doorstep. In case your aren't the type that spends your days listening to vaporwave, this is a Macintosh 512k and it's chuck full of history. Let's take a look.

Razer Mamba 2015 Review

The bitch is back.

Way back in 2012 while every idiot was waiting for the world to end, I reviewed my first gaming mouse: a Razer Mamba. It was a glorious piece of hardware that unlike anything I had used prior to it and that mouse has been proudly serving me to this day however it's gotten a bit old. Nearly five years of heavy use haven't exactly been kind to the old mouse, it's hardware is still performing sound but the cosmetics are starting to wear and the battery, even though it was never very good to begin with is bordering on toast. While I could have kept the old mouse going for a couple more years with some replacement parts, I figured I might as well relieve myself of what flaws it had entirely and upgrade to it's newly spawned successor. Say hello to the new Razer Mamba.

Razer Ornata Chroma Review

Light it up.

The last keyboard I owned and reviewed was Razer's former flagship, the DeathStalker Ultimate which was a fine keyboard but it was horribly expensive considering it's key feature was a bit pointless and it wasn't even mechanical to begin with. I decided to look for a more conventional and preferably mechanical replacement for that keyboard but then I found Razer had just announced this thing. This is the Ornata Chroma, one of the few hybrid keyboards on the market.

Nintendo Switch Review

This isn't even it's final form.

It's been a while since I parted ways with my Wii U, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Sure it had great games and a fun social experience but the rest of the experience just felt completely inferior to the two other consoles it was competing against. Nintendo had two options at this point, one was to play it safe and build a run of the mill console akin to the Xbox One and PS4 or take yet another risk, do it right, and hope it works out. They went with the latter and this is the result, the Nintendo Switch. It's a revolutionary new hybrid console that does a whole lot of things right, but also some things wrong. Let's dive in.

Apple Mac Pro Review

Garbage day.

Continuing onward with my exploration of the foreign Macintosh, I decided to jump straight to the top of the pile for this one. So after A bit of shopping I managed to snag a middle-spec Mac Pro for what obviously was not a cheap price. I by no means intend on keeping this thing since I already have a high performance desktop and this thing is just simply adding to the already encroaching on ridiculous wire clutter I have at my desk. Eventually I'm going to throw a bunch of parts in it and send it on it's way like I did with the MacBook I briefly covered on Twitter. However, just based off my experiences so far, I might just have to pick up another one of these in the future.

Moving Away from Nerf

It's been a good run.

I feel like I've needed to address this for a while now but I've been putting it off thinking that it wasn't going to come to this but unfortunately, it has. In recent years you guys may have noticed that I've been attempting to diversify the blog by adding different content to what was once strictly dart blaster based. This might have been alarming to some of you but I tried my best to keep a balance between the blasters and the other topics. Nowadays I'm noticeably posting less about shooting foam, actually noticeably posting less in general but a number of factors have contributed to this.

First of all I do have a life outside of this blog and recently things have gotten to the point where I'm finding less time to post, nor am I finding it any more important than work or school. Second of all my interest in the hobby has waned greatly over the past few years. To be totally honest, the whole scene has gotten pretty dull lately and I haven't had the desire to even want to review the new things because frankly, they aren't very interesting. Last blaster I reviewed nearly two months ago: the Tri-Strike was abysmal, uninspired mess and virtually everything else has gone to the same formula of chucking in flywheels. Okay, one can argue there are some gems out there and I have experienced some of them first hand but all that stuff costs money and time, both of which I need for frankly more important things. 

Blasters are expensive, I'm sure you guys know this. Especially the ones that I consider worth posting about more. I've found myself returning the things more and more often just because of how stale they've become. Trying to devote time to writing long reviews about each and every one of them has gotten so repetitive to the point that I have to mentally force myself to get the screwdriver now in order to open it up for internal shots. For instance, I got the Incisor recently and promised a review on Twitter a whole week ago but I already knew what to expect just by seeing that it takes four AA batteries and has two triggers. I got halfway through the review before I decided to put it on the back-burner. 

I am genuinely burnt out with dart blasters and don't want to do much more with them at the moment. However I wouldn't have kept posting about them if you guys didn't keep coming back. Seeing that view counter grow just tells me to keep on going, and trust me, I love putting my opinions out and I love getting feedback from you guys but some things just get old. That was the whole reason I started diversifying the blog in the first place. In case you we're expecting some sort of sentimental goodbye from me, I hate to disappoint you. Alongside the tech content I will continue to post dart blaster reviews but in nowhere near the same volume as I did in the past. Blaster news and modding are pretty much done at this point. I know this will probably alienate a lot of you guys as this was very much a key part of the blog but I genuinely don't have the time for it anymore. 

I'm going to be focusing most of my attention on new content for my YouTube channel since it's all I can fit into my schedule at the moment and I'll continue to be a complete jerk in text form on Twitter. I'm sorry things have gotten to this point but that's just life I suppose. Who knows though, I might be back in full if time(and cash) persists and the hobby gets a little more interesting than it currently is but don't keep your fingers crossed. Anyways thank you guys for all the support over the years and I'll continue moving forward. See you soon.

-YALE70

Saitek X52 Pro Flight Control System Review

Highway to the danger zone.

I recently picked up Elite Dangerous during the big holiday sale on Steam. Everything started smoothly enough apart from crashing my ship into the docking station several times and getting annihilated by space pirates I was sent to dispose of. Feeling rather unsatisfied with my traditional keyboard and mouse setup I decided to pick up a more proper method of controlling the game, a HOTAS. After meticulous research trying to find one I wasn't going to hate, I settled on the Saitek X52 Pro. This is the first time I've ever used a joystick for any sort of game and I have to say, it totally changes the ways you control the game.