The Joshua Yoder Blog

 Can't believe that this amazing video game is 25 years old. And it still looks incredible even in today's graphic standards. I am talking about the gothic western classic, Darkwatch. Darkwatch burst onto the scene in 2005 for the Playstation 2 as well as the Xbox and was developed by High Noon Studios. This game is a mix between horror, western and steampunk. The story follows Jericho Cross, an outlaw gunfighter in the late 19th century American Frontier who was turned into a vampire and was forced to joining an elite group of monster hunters who set out to fight the supernatural forces. AKA Darkwatch. Cross who is voiced by Christopher Corey Smith attempts to rob a train only to discover that he had mistakenly released the vampire lord and former leader of Darkwatch Lazarus Malkoth. There he becomes a vampire himself thanks to Lazarus and soon begins his quest to save himself and to become human again. Joining Cross on his quest are Cassidy Sharp voiced by Jennifer Hale, Tala...

 Last night I was a little bit bored and was flipping through Youtube and I sound that there was a full movie of Dead or Alive, so for the heck of it, I decided to watch. I mean, this wasn't the first time I had seen the movie but it had been a while since so I figured why not rewatch it and see if I think any different about it. The film was based off a fighting video game of the same name and was created by a company called Techmo. Which I really loved playing growing up as a kid.  Unfortunately, this movie didn't really do too well. In fact, it was a box-office bomb. DOA had a movie budget of 30 million dollars, only had achieved 7.7 million dollars at the box office. Yikes! 😱 As I watched the movie last night, I could see why the movie struggled. Don't get me wrong, this was more of a guilty pleasure kind of movie and to be fair video game movies historically don't have a great track record. I appreciate the fact that they tried to follow the plot of the gaming ser...

 Now it is no secret that I enjoy reading some comic books and recently written a few blog posts about Daredevil, Punisher and even the Hand. But in today's blog post I wanted to talk about another character that I really enjoy and his name is Nightwing. For those who are familiar with comic books, Nightwing originally went by another name, Robin. In fact, he was the original Robin also known as Dick Grayson. Grayson was once part of the Flying Graysons who were murdered due to a pair of gangsters who were trying to exhort money from the circus owner but the owner ultimately refused which led to them sabotaging and killing Grayson's parents. But then Dick Grayson would be reborn as he was then adopted by Bruce Wayne, better known as Batman and become his sidekick Robin. According to creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, they wanted to create a character that would bring in younger readers to like Batman. The character was inspired believe it or not by Robin Hood. As time went by h...

 Well, with me trying to become more positive about myself, I have been looking back into the past and find ways to let go of some of the negative emotions attached to it. One such issue was going back to my time at Lewistown Area High School which as mentioned before was a huge struggle for me.  But again, trying to be more positive, I wanted to look back at that time and remember some of the good moments during that period. One of which was playing for the Lewistown Panthers baseball team. Heading into my senior year of high school, I wasn't in the best state of mind. Honestly, I really did not want to be there anymore, I was just so sick of life, never thought I was going to be anything. All I ever was going to be was a huge disappointment. I can only give credit to God for being able to get through that year. But then baseball tryouts came along and I decided to go for it again. The previous years I've tried only to fail, which in fairness, wasn't much of a surprise bec...

 With Daredevil being one of favorite comic book characters, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite villains from the series. The Hand! The Hand is an order of evil, mystical ninja who are heavily involved within organized crime. Members of the Hand also practice occult magic and use their powers to commit murder and turn their victims into servants of the Hand. The Hand made their debut in Daredevil #174 in September of 1981. The group was formed in 1588 in Japan as a secret society of Nationalist Samurai but were soon co-opted by the Snakeroot, an ancient ninja clan led by a primordial demon called the Beast of the Hand. Kagenobu Yoshioka created the Hand due to his distaste for the government who he saw as corrupt thanks to foreign influence decided to train samurai to help bring power back to the people of Japan. Name comes from the fact that the hand has five fingers, members of the inner circle had command of the five islands of Japan. Sadly, Yoshioka would soon lose contr...

 I recently completed reading my story for Hometown Sports Magazine about the 2005 Lewistown Panthers football team who finally ended a thirty years of losing seasons. In this blog, I wanted to talk about why I wanted to write about this team and how I feel the lessons that were learned about them throughout the year can still be used today.  One of the biggest reasons as to why I wanted to write about this team was because of how much of team these guys were both on and off the field. These guys have played the game of football together for a number of years and it clearly showed. Plus being a youngster, I really didn't know the history of Lewistown Panthers football. I only remember going to games because I remember my cousins playing on the team. But talking about the football team in general, to put it nicely, there wasn't a lot of success. In fact when I started this journey of writing this story, I discovered that Lewistown didn't have a winning season for thirty year...

 This past weekend was quite interesting for me and my twin brother Chad. As we got to stay the whole weekend by ourselves and took care of the house while our parents went up to Long Island New York to see our little nephew Lukey for his fifth birthday. Now my nephew's birthday isn't till this coming Wednesday but my parents wanted to spend time with him before hand. Chad and I didn't go because I was originally planning to cover a pro wrestling event for Hometown Sports scene. Sadly, it was not meant to be as they were forced to postpone their show due to the weather. But nonetheless, Chad and I had plenty of fun! It is not too offer that we get to do some of the things that we love to do. And we just decided to live it up! I got plenty of writing done, watched some video game shows on Youtube, Anime, jam to some amazing music,  got to relax and mediate, prayed, took care of some comic books and we even went out to eat at Asian Fusion. So yeah, Chad and I know how to part...

 With Valentine's Day closing in, I figure I would want to talk about the subject of love. More specifically self-love. I want to talk about this because of my life long battle with depression. You see, I am trying my best to become less hateful towards myself which has not been easy for me to say the least. Trying to say or think positive thoughts about myself isn't always the best moments in my life. Honestly, I wouldn't really know what to say. Even when I do try to say something positive about myself, I just remind myself about things like my cerebral palsy and/or my scoliosis and I go right back into insulting myself or worse. But now, I have been really pushing myself to become more positive. Despite my dark thoughts, I don't want to live in fear of myself and I don't want to live with regret not trying.  Thanks to this blog, I really have been able to look back at some of my darkest times in my life and still manage to somehow crack a little smile on my face....

The more I look back on some of these reviews of old school, games, movies, etc, the older I feel 😂. Today's topic will be no different as I look back on one of my favorite movies, especially since it is based on a comic series by one of my favorite writers. The movie is Sin City. The film is based off the comic series of the same name and was created by the great Frank Miller. Along with Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino lend their talents to the film as well and honestly, the trio did a fantastic job with the movie. I love the fact that Miller had gotten a chance to director this movie, I mean it is only right because it is his book series. This was the very first time I had heard of the Sin City Franchise as I was barely alive when the comic book first started. Needless to say I started looking the series up and it never disappointed. The movie features the first, third and fourth books of the comic book series. The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Ba...

 Hello everyone! One today's blog post, I got to sit down with Mark Bittle who is a host of the the Bartender's Jukebox podcast where we got to talk about Men's Mental Health. Get to know Bittle as he tries to suplex the stigma surrounding Men's Mental Health. I would personally like to thank Mark for taking the time to answer my questions. Hope you all enjoy our interview. JY: What inspired you to create this podcast? MB: I had a radio show and the pandemic prevented me from going to the station. I figured why not give podcasting a shot. JY: Why did you choose to talk about men's mental health? MB: It's a very important topic, that rarely is talked about. I figured why not help break the stigma of Mens Mental Health. JY: What has the response been since starting the podcast?  MB: Amazing! I've had men from all walks of life reach out. And have had a major impact. JY: What have you enjoyed the most about doing this podcast?  MB: Honestly freedom, less restri...

 Well it is official, the Philadelphia Eagles are the Super Bowl champions! It was pretty much a blow out the whole game. But again, the Eagles came out on top over the Kansas City Chiefs by the final score of 40-22 this past Sunday night. But I would also like to thank my friend Stephon and his family for allowing me and Chad to come down to their house and watch some football. This was kind of a unique thing for me and Chad because we never really been to a Super Bowl party before and it was quite an experience. First off, I would like to say thank you to Stephon and his family for allowing Chad and to come over and enjoyed the game. Plenty of pizza, french fries and chips. It was fun for me to watch the game because it didn't really matter who won the Super Bowl because I didn't have a favorite team, but I must say, I really did enjoy watching Stephon, his dad and our friend Presto, all of which are die-hard Eagles fan react to the game. I must say though I wasn't expect...

 You talk about things that left a lasting impression on your life, G4 certainly did for a young me during my teenage years. What sucks about it was it not only died, it came back only to fall flat on its face again which looking back on it, I can't really that I was surprised by it. But lets talk about the real G4 and how it was so amazing and honestly wish it was still here. Before we get there though, why don't we take a few steps back and quickly discuss before being G4. You see, when I first starting watching stuff on video games, it was either TechTV or ZDTV which both provided me some awesome content to watch. Being a geek myself, I really enjoyed seeing a channel that talked about video games, comic books, tech, etc. It was just amazing to know that there were other people out there that were just like me, I didn't feel so alone. I got to discover things that I never knew like there were these special events happening called Comic Con and E3. Seeing the events compl...

 Quite a while ago, I somehow manage to talk about my history of self-harming. I still can't believe that I worked up the courage to write about that. But I am extremely grateful of the overwhelming support I got from it. Thank you all for the love!  But now, I wanted to start looking back and confront some of the things I feel like are my triggers and why I was harming myself. And one of those issues that has had me down on a number of occasions is having a more popular and more successful older brother. His name is Cody or as many people know him as, Codeman 25! Now, I am not alone when it comes to stuff like this, there are many others who struggled with what I am about to talk about. But for anyone out there who reads this and/or struggling with the same thing, just know that your siblings do love you and it isn't worth hurting yourself over it. Looking back on my struggles with this, I noticed a few things. First, my brother burst onto the scene during his senior year of ...

 Does anybody else feel tense a lot lately? I mean where it feels like no matter where you go in the world, things just feel off? I am asking this because I'm really getting started to freak out a bit about the world we all live in. I can't shake this feeling that I have been getting recently and it only seems to get worse. Where I am getting at is that I am constantly seeing people argue about whatever topic whether it be on the internet or television, things only seem to get more intense or toxic even. Like there is a ton of misinformation being thrown around like it was a frisbee and I don't even know what exactly to believe. It's crazy because even if things that were being said were true, there ultimately will be some kind of ulterior motive behind it. I sometimes wonder if people just use a horrible tragedy just so they could gain power over people. And even when I do agree on certain things, I don't always agree with how people go about it. I wonder where do ...

 The world has certainly lost a great visionary 35 years ago and honestly, I think we need people like Jim Henson now more than ever.  It really is sad that Henson is no longer with us. Although I wasn't quite born yet as he had past away a few months prior to me and my twin brother were born. But he left quite in impact on our lives. For those who don't know Jim Henson is, he is the creator of some of the best puppets known to mankind. AKA, the Muppets!  Such great characters like Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Rowlf the Dog, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Animal, the Swedish Chef and so much more. My personal favorites are Statler and Waldolf. The Muppets originated during a short form television series that was also created by Henson called Sam and Friends. But then in 1976, The Muppets Show launched and aired for five seasons which included four Primetime Emmy awards and had 21 nominations. My favorite moments from that show include listening to both Statler and Waldolf constantly...

 Oh boy I love me some Ninja Turtles and in today's post, I am going to be talking about the 1990 classic starring the four lovable Mutant Turtles Leonardo, Michaelangelo Donatello and Raphael as along with their allies, April O'Neil and Casey Jones attempt to rescue their Master Splinter from the hands of the Shredder and the Foot Clan. 35 years later and this movie still is amazing! In fact, several elements from the animated series were used in the film. The suits used for the turtles were created by the Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Sadly, this was one of the last projects that Jim Henson ever did as he tragically passed away after the premiere (Rest In Peace Henson 🙏🙏🙏). What I found interesting about the film was that it was consider an independent movie at the time and it only had a budget of 13.5 million dollars. But it absolutely smashed at the box office making a grand total of 202 million dollars which made it the highest grossing independent film up to that poi...

 Well folks! We are here for another special moment, and that moment is the prediction of one little groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil. Will it be an early spring? Or will we all have to endure six more weeks of winter? This tradition has been around for 185 years now. According to the Library of Congress, the first known prediction was made back in 1840 thanks to a diary entry from a Pennsylvania store-keeper. Ever since then, good ole Phil has been coming out of his little home and if he sees his shadow and runs back in, that means six more weeks of winter. This lore of this tradition comes from the German speaking areas where a badger was used while say in Hungary, they used a bear. There is also a related story within a Christian festival called Candlemas which is also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary and the Feast of the Holy Encounter. Interesting fact, some Christians believe that this is ...

 This was one of the most recent cartoon series that I had really enjoyed and it is crazy to think that it is still going strong to this very day with the most recent seasons ending in 2024. But overall the Total Drama series has been a pretty fun show to watch. The series originally began back in 2007 with the Total Drama Island series and it had never stop since. The show was basically a parody of the show Survivor. Each seasons involves of a group of teens who compete in an elimination style competition, in that the contestants compete in challenges both as teams and individually for rewards and immunity from elimination. Teams would also merge halfway between the season and it becomes an every man for themselves until their are two remaining competitors fight for the big cash prize. Here is the current list of Total Drama series S1: Total Drama Island S2: Total Drama Action S3: Total Drama World Tour S4: Total Drama Revenge of the Island S5: Total Drama All-Stars/Pahkitew Islan...