Note: This post isn’t meant as an insult to the developers of Robots Love Ice Cream, I’m just using the game as an example to get a discussion going on Kickstarter.

Today I was going about my boring daily routine and I got to the part where I dig through my dresser looking for a tshirt to wear. I pulled out my Robots Love Ice Cream shirt and suddenly I thought, “Hey, wasn’t this from a Kickstarter for an iPad game? Like two years ago?” I hopped on Kickstarter today to check, and sure enough it was. In fact, Robots Love Ice Cream was the third project I ever backed on Kickstarter, and it’s funding was completed un July of 2011. And the game still isn’t done.

This got me thinking hard about Kickstarter and how I see myself using it in the future. When I paid $60 to back this game, I never would have guessed it would be over two years before I’d be playing it. I’m sure it’s really hard to make a game like this and it takes a ton of time, but paying that much money for a game that you might not even like (and I’ve payed $59 less for games I haven’t liked) isn’t something I’ll be doing again any time soon, unfortunately.
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If there’s one thing the Internet is great for, it’s benefiting from other people’s hard work. If you’re wondering what kind of car to get, which dog breed would be best for your tiny apartment, or what the worst Land Before Time Movie is (actual search query that led someone here), chances are at least a bzillion people have wrote about their experiences online.

When news broke about iOS 6 being jailbroken yesterday, I didn’t pay much attention to the headlines. I toyed around with Jailbreaking a few years ago when I had an old-school iPhone 3G, but since then iOS has improved so much I haven’t felt the need. Until I realized I could play retro games on my new iPad Mini, that is.

I don’t much like the idea of messing with my phone when it’s the device that I need to be able to use to call 911 and order pizzas and such. But now I have a second iOS device that isn’t a phone and when I started thinking about playing Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and NES games on it, I got a little giddy. So, I did some quick research, found plenty of other people who had figured out the hard stuff already, and now I have a jailbroken iPad Mini loaded with ROMs that I can pair with a Wiimote.

Hopefully by sharing my resources and explaining what I did I can help you out in case you’re even lazier than me, and perhaps feel like I’m contributing a little Karma to the web in some tiny way. Just remember, if you’re doing this to your phone, as of a few days ago it’s kind of illegal, but whatever. So is playing games via emulators.
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The Top Hat Sasquatch team reads a lot of blog posts every day, and some slip through the crack or just don’t warrant their own post. That’s where Missing Links comes in. Every few days we collect the best links we’ve come across and pass them on to you.

Jim Henson & Frank Oz Talking In 1989 With Kermit & More | The Mary Sue
This is a great find, I love looking up Jim Henson stuff on YouTube.

A month with the iPad mini — Minimally Minimal
A great write-up of what an iPad Mini is like. I've had mine for less than a month and I love it.

10 Tips to Avoid Getting Burned by Kickstarter | ShezCrafti
Jaime over at ShezCrafti wrote an excellent guide to using Kickstarter (as a consumer). Some great tips here.

The Walt Disney Image Problem
Interesting article about Walt Disney. I always roll my eyes at people when they say something about Disney being a Nazi, but it’s hard to blame them when the company doesn’t do much to educate people about what he was really like.

HAL 9000 | Uncrate
Is this awesome? Yes. Is this practical? I don't think so, Dave.

Song of the South: Disney’s Most Notorious Film by Jason Sperb, reviewed. – Slate Magazine
I can't wait to read this book. Song of the South is one of the most interesting pieces of Disney history.

Steve Jobs Promotes “Toy Story” | Cartoon Brew
A very cool little piece of animation history. Great find.

Hi there! Sorry for the lack of posts over the holidays, but things got a little Cray-Cray in my neck of the woods. I got the Flu From Hell™ right before Christmas, and then Indianapolis was slammed with a blizzard [obligatory cute dog pic] on the 26th, which really doesn’t effect my ability to post here but I like using the word blizzard as an excuse for things.

This was a one-big-gift-instead-of-lots-of-little-ones kind of year, because I scored an iPad Mini. I’ll be writing more about it later, but I finally feel like I can get into reading comics again now thanks to this little device. I’ve tried reading comics on my wife’s iPad, but wasn’t too crazy about the weight and size, so the Mini is perfect for me.

I’ve caught up on the entire IDW TMNT series and I love it. Besides Comixology, I downloaded Comic Zeal Reader to handle all the digitally acquired CBR/CBZ files I had on my computer. Now I have a few GBs of comics that should last me quite a while.

The iPad Mini is an awesome gaming device too. I have a ton of games on my iPhone but now I think I’ll do most of my gaming on the Mini and reserve my phone for more phone-type things.

Besides that I got a cool little LEGO set from the new Galaxy Squad line that I’ll post in the next few days. I still have a stack of books to review for the site too.

I have high hopes for 2013 here on the ‘squatch, so I think it will be a fun year!

So, how was your Christmas?

I’m jealous of kids today. I mean, I’m a kid at heart and I have no qualms spending my time watching cartoons, buying toys, and blogging about said cartoons and toys, but to be a kid right now in the age of iPads and Angry Birds and actual Avengers movies would be pretty awesome. I got bored with storybooks pretty quickly when I was little, and I’m sure flipping through the app equivalent of a storybook on an iPad would have kept my attention at least a little bit longer.

Like the Spider-man origin story app Rob reviewed a few months ago, Disney and Marvel have released two Avengers storybooks on iOS devices to coincide with the movie, and they were kind enough to send me some download codes so I could take a look. Avengers Origins: Assemble! and Avengers Origins: Hulk are both available for the iPhone and iPad.

Avengers Origins: Assemble

The awkwardly named Avengers Origins: Assemble! gives kids one version of how the Avengers all got together. It focuses on Captain America getting frozen in the ice and the Avengers finding him a few decades later. The line-up used in this story contains Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man, and Wasp, and the threat is non other than Namor himself. I’ve never understood Namor very much (read: casual comics fan), and this app actually taught me something.

Stan Lee narrates both of these stories and it’s great hearing him read. His voice is as iconic as his face, moustache, and sunglasses, and hearing him read about his heroes is a blast. I’m not sure if kids appreciate an old man narrating their stories as much as older geeks, but I’d like to think they don’t mind.

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