DeathSmiles was released recently... and
I couldn't care less. Get yourself a copy of Sin and
Punishment 2 instead, and put the money that's burning a hole
in your pocket to good use.
Hey, has anyone else noticed that video
game deals have been on fire throughout the summer? I've
seen Wiis for $159, Xbox 360s for $129 (!!!), and a wide
variety of releases from this year either dropped below thirty
dollars or were sold with incentives to help grease the
wheels of a purchase. Gamers who bought Super Mario
Galaxy 2 from Amazon were given twenty dollars off their next
video game, and Blur, Activision's "mature" response to Super
Mario Kart, could be had for as little as ten dollars with the
right combination of coupons. Best-sellers from earlier
in the year can be had for less than thirty dollars
without a black belt in coupon-fu, including
Assassin's Creed II and Mass Effect 2. I'm not sure
what's prompting this sudden generosity from game
companies... are they trying to offset a summer lull in sales,
or are these low, low prices the result of a general
industry slump?
Speaking of Super Mario Galaxy 2, why is
the book "Sweet Farts: Rippin' It Old School" included among
the recommendations for people who bought this game on
Amazon? Is this just a joke snuck in by a fan of
one of the other systems, or was there a power-up in the game
I'd missed?
June 28, 2010... Now
That's What I Call A Power
Nap!
(yawn) All right, where was I?
Well, I've got tons 'o footage for the YouTube
finale. Not to give too much away, but I'll be
reviewing Muramasa: The Demon Blade... it only makes
sense, since my first review was its predecessor
Odin Sphere. Muramasa's a much better game, though,
with the same gorgeous hand-painted graphics but a better
combat system and less tedious inventory management.
Sure, you'll be poking around in the option menu from time to
time to forge swords and cook the pheasants that
were dive-bombing you ten minutes before, but it's more
intuitive now that you don't have to select everything from a
blasted ring floating over your head. The Japanese
setting is a better fit, too... I've always been fascinated by
the country's mythology, and it's a thrill to see its
wonderfully weird fauna spring to
life.
June 25, 2010... Can't
Stay, Gotta Split
After a month's delay, there's finally a
new review on the Blitz. Give
it a look while I get some
sleep.
June 23,
2010... Decrease the
Grease
One of my readers took me to task for
using the term "grease ball," claiming that it was a racial
slur against Mexicans. Well, he was almost
right... I actually said "grease bomb," and a quick
Google search reveals that "grease ball" is recognized
as insulting to Italians. I do
understand his concern, though. Although I don't like to
censor myself, there's no need for me to sling mud at an
entire ethnicity when I could save all the sludge for the
one person who truly deserves it. I pledge to be more specifically
derogatory from this point forward. I also apologize to
everyone but the guy from Kotaku who took
offense.
I don't want to waste any more time
talking about you know who, though.
Instead, let's discuss the latest Castlevania game,
which tries to reinvent Symphony of the Night as a
fast-paced search and destroy action game. Each player
is set in the corner of a gigantic map, and they must
race to the center where a horrifying monster awaits.
The player to land the most hits on the creature wins, or
something... frankly, I'm not sure how this game is supposed
to work. Frankly, the mind boggles just looking at those
ridiculously huge playfields. I never realized just how
large Metrovanias really were until Harmony of
Despair put things into perspective...
In iPhone news, there are two
new challengers available in the surprisingly strong iPhone
conversion of Street Fighter IV. Capcom had pledged
earlier to give players Cammy, but they've upped the ante by
including Zangief in this totally free, totally
awesome update. Special thanks to Destructoid for
the scoop.
June 22, 2010... A Sea
Monster... Ate... My... ICE
CREEEEAM!
That's my own little way of announcing
that the Disney Afternoon retrospective is back. Relive
those moments of hitting the skies with Baloo, hunting
for treasure with Scrooge McDuck, and changing
the channel when Bonkers comes on here!
Speaking of cartoons, there's a Pac-Man cartoon
coming soon to an unfortunate cable television network near
you. They've somehow managed to give this extremely
abstract game a science-fiction backstory that sounds like a
cross between a Halo spin-off and that religion L. Ron Hubbard
made on a bet. Instead of the established cast of
characters, they've introduced a bunch of annoying,
predictable sidekicks like the nutty (and by "nutty," I
mean "senile") professor and the precocious preteen
brat. Best of all (heh), the whole mess is brought to
you in 3D, which is a really convenient way to give
yourself a migraine headache should you find yourself in need
of one.
Also, it's come to my attention that a
certain craven grease bomb from a certain unreadable
gaming blog erased the conversation I linked to
earlier. Fortunately, I took pictures! I wish I
had taken more of them, but this will give you an
idea of how things are done at Kotaku.
Poorly.
For those wondering, Pheermee and
Accordeon are both former Kotaku posters. Gee,
I can't imagine why!
EDIT: Annnd it's back. Not sure what happened there,
but I'll keep this picture around for the sake of
permanence.
EDIT TO THE EDIT: Couldn't get a
response from LeVar myself, but check out these
tweets:
Does this sound like a man who was "not pleased"
with E3? Heck, it doesn't even sound like something
Geordi LaForge would say, but they're straight from LeVar's
verified Twitter account. I assume he was being ironic
by speaking in ebonics, but the underlying sentiment is
legitimate.
EDIT EDIT EDIT ETC.: Okay, okay, I'll let it go
now.
June 20, 2010... You
Want a Dreamcast Revival?
Try this... take your Dreamcast out of
the closet, blow off the dust, and pop in a copy of Crazy
Taxi. There, I just saved you ten dollars and
a whole lot of disappointment.
Sega is re-re-releasing Crazy
Taxi and Sonic Adventure in the hopes
of riding a wave of nostalgia from fans of the
short-lived and long-suffering Dreamcast. There are just
two problems with this. The first is that former fans of
Sega remember that it was Sega that killed the
Dreamcast in the first place. The second is that these
"faithful remakes" won't be faithful at all. Crazy Taxi
in particular will look and sound much different than you
remembered from the Dreamcast, or even on the GameCube where
it received a wonky conversion courtesy of Acclaim's British
subsidiary. Remember how Acclaim Cheltenham took all the
voices from the original and replaced them with
sound-barely-alikes? It only gets worse from there...
the new version of Crazy Taxi soon to be released on Xbox Live
and PSN will have a completely different soundtrack and most
of its monuments to crass capitalism altered. Don't be
surprised if your first ride demands to be taken to the "Foot
Storage Facility," or "State
Awkwardly Squeezed Between The Midwest and Deep
South Fried Chicken."
As for Sonic Adventure, well, it looks a
lot shinier than I remembered. If a blinding
plastic sheen on all the characters is a
selling point for you, by all means dive
in.
June 18,
2010... Ban-tastic!
Today, I was banned from Kotaku by Brian
Crecente. I couldn't be happier, because it conclusively
proves everything I've said about the double standards of
video game blogs, who want all the
benefits of legitimate journalists without any of
the responsibilities. The editors know this is true, and
scramble to silence anyone who dares to point out this
fact.
You don't have to take my word
for it, though! Just take a look at this thread from Kotaku,
in response to a vapid, sensationalist post by Crecente about
LeVar Burton. Rather than discuss video games, as he is
paid quite handsomely to do by Gawker Media, he shoved a
camera in the face of the former Star Trek actor and observed
that he was "grumpy" and "not pleased with E3." Hmm, I
jumped to a completely different conclusion
myself. The blank, slightly bewildered look on his face
suggested to me that he just wasn't thrilled with random,
greasy passersby blinding him with flash bulbs.
Whatever LeVar may have been thinking
("Sure am glad I don't have to wear that damn visor!"),
Crecente's best TMZ impersonation shouldn't have been
featured on a video game blog. I told him
as much, and so did a half-dozen other Kotaku
readers. However, the one person who came to defend
the indefensible, one Indy_AKA_Rex, was quickly given
special posting privileges as a reward for his
buttkissery. I don't know what happened to the rest of
these guys, but when I pushed the issue, demanding something
resembling journalistic credibility from what's fast becoming
the video game equivalent of the Weekly World News, I was
given the bum's rush out the door.
So Gawker, what's it going to
be? Are you going to claim that your
writers are legitimate journalists (as Gizmodo did
to keep its contributor Jason Chen out of
prison during the iPhone heist of 2010) or will you
hide behind the skirt of blogdom, claiming that
everything is fair game, no matter how cheap, tawdry, and
irrelevant? I may not get an answer to that question,
but one day, somebody will. Probably
somebody with a gavel, if the recent iPhone mess is any
indication.
June 17, 2010... Good
News, Everybodies!
First things first... I just signed
a distribution deal with Good Deal
Games, which will be selling my GORF
homebrew on cartridge in the near future. They'll
be sending me a test cartridge and if I approve it, the game
will be available on the site soon afterward. It's
funny... I looked all over the place for someone to put the
game on a cartridge last year, and now, a distributor just
falls into my lap. It's not the greatest timing, but you
can't beat the convenience!
Also, ECM of Waxing Erratic and possibly
Die Hard Game Fan (I never figured out if he was the real Eric
Mylonas or not!) just broke Cliff Bliszinski's thumbs in an editorial best
described as ferocious. He's not wrong about
this, you know... the "hardcore" players who are so
territorial about gaming wanted nothing to do with it
fifteen years ago. Why they persist on claiming
exclusive rights to the hobby after hijacking
it from the rest of us is anyone's guess.
As for Cliffy B. himself, I'll
grudgingly give him credit for pointing Mass Effect 2 in the
right direction... the series was a massive bore until it
adopted the cover shooter play mechanics first popularized
(although not necessarily pioneered) in Gears
of War. Past that, he's a total cockgobbler and I
wouldn't wipe my ass on him if I were out of toilet
paper. Nintendo needed to find a foothold in an industry
dominated by Sony and its cultured and discriminating audience, you
schmuck. Why the hell should you care if the company
found success in the demographics you completely
ignored? You should be on your knees thanking them for
revitalizing an industry that had grown stagnant under your
shortsighted leadership in the last decade. Without
Nintendo's "Blue Ocean" business strategy, those fair-weather
friends you call "hardcore" gamers may have lost interest and
gotten their kicks elsewhere, leaving you with
nothing.
Enough about him, though... let's talk
about what's planned for the launch of the Nintendo 3DS.
The system's got serious support from a variety of big
developers, including Capcom, Konami, and... wow, they
actually got AQ Interactive?! Wait, that's no
good! Yeah, let's go with Namco instead.
Some of the games announced for the 3DS
include Super Street Fighter IV (I'm there already!), Resident
Evil (less there), Professor Layton (my mom's there), and a
game based on professional homemaker and model inmate Martha
Stewart (so not there). Not to be outdone by
its licensees, Nintendo will release a half-dozen games based
on their most popular franchises, along with a new title
called Steel Diver (your guess is as good as mine) and a
completely reimagined sequel to Kid Icarus. This time,
Pit soars through the skies in a rail shooter similar to
Panzer Dragoon, so there shouldn't be any of this falling into
a bottomless pit nonsense that was a constant worry in the
original.
There are a lot of question marks in the
list of upcoming games published on Nintendo's web site.
I don't have the slightest idea what "Cubic Ninja" is
(although I would recommend you avoid the similarly
named adult movie Pubic Ninja) and Harmonix's
planned "music game" could be just about anything. There
is also a handful of shovelware in the list, including
not only Martha Stewart's guide to making divine snack
trays (it's so realistic you can almost taste the watercress!)
but another Kung Fu Panda game (because they weren't giving
the original away with an Xbox 360 purchase or anything) and
Lovely Lisa 3D, which I assume is not going to be anywhere
near as exciting as it sounds.
Still, the starting line-up is looking
pretty strong so far, probably on par with the top-shelf
launch titles for the Gameboy Advance. That makes sense,
since there are so many parallels between the two
systems. They were both released at the start of the
decade, both were a quantum leap ahead of their predecessors
in performance, and both were crucial in helping Nintendo
shake off a bad reputation for publishing anything with a
cartoon license. I don't think software quality is as
much a concern for Nintendo as it was during the
transition from the Gameboy Color to the Gameboy Advance, but
with Sony and its (profoundly irritating) new mascot Marcus
beating the "good kids playing bad games" drum, Nintendo still
needs to keep the mesh of its quality control filter very
tight.
June 15, 2010... Giant
Enemy Crabs II
Here's what Nintendo had to offer
handheld gaming fans in its E3 press conference:
Sony, your response?
Yikes. You know what, just get off
the stage. You don't have a goddamned clue, and you've
been proving it year after year after year by spouting off an
endless stream of soulless marketing buzzwords. When you
say things like "merging consumer trends" in a conference
intended to get gamers excited about your upcoming products,
you bare to the world just how little you think of them, and
how uninterested you are in gaming as a medium. Nintendo
shows the love for its fans, and the profits
follow... you try
to squeeze every last dime out of Playstation owners
using superlative-laden propaganda and good old-fashioned
hucksterism, and you wind up in dead last. Shouldn't
this be telling you something?
Maybe you should drop the arrogant
attitude, the transparent manipulation, and the cynical
marketing and just make some attempt at giving the
gamers what they want. It's not that lame crossover game
starring your increasingly irrelevant mascots, it's not a
knock-off of what Nintendo had done with the Wii four years
ago, and it sure as hell isn't Marcus, the sassy urban youth
with the trapezoidal mouth.
June 13, 2010... Bits
and Pieces, Pieces and
Bits
First, allow me to thank Zack
McConnell for the last fifty two bucks I
needed for the Xbox donation drive. My
formerly broken Xbox 360 seems to be working pretty well now,
so I'll keep the cash in the bank until it sputters
out on me for good and I'm forced to buy a
replacement. There's news from Joystiq that the
rumored slim-line Xbox is just around the corner, complete
with internal Wi-fi (welcome to 2006, Microsoft!) and the
Kinect peripheral. Yeah, that's what they're calling
Project Natal now. Yeah, the new
name's not really clicking with me,
either.
Second, I've finished the video review;
my first one in years. You'd think I would have gotten
rusty after all this time but it looks like I've still got it
if the initial feedback is any indication. You can watch
it... right here, actually!
Third, there's a review of the Spectrum
game Head over Heels on 1UP.com. I can't embed that, so
you'll have to click on this
link to read it. If you want the
short, short version of the review, imagine Solstice
on the NES, The Lost Vikings on the Super NES, and
CatDog on Nickelodeon thrown into a blender set on whip.
After the screaming of Nordic warriors, ancient sorcerors, and
mutant housepets subsides, you're left with an
action-adventure game that's occasionally fun and mercilessly
challenging.
Fourth, the recent Free Xbox Live
Weekend reminded me why I don't play online games very
often. It's no fun at all to be humiliated by
Split/Second players who've honed their skills to a razor's
edge. Yes Disney, I get it... I'm five seconds behind
the seventh place driver. You think you can cool it with
the big red messages that tell me this every five
seconds? I guess I should be thankful that I didn't have
Mickey Mouse waving his big red keister in my face
too.
Fifth, I've been playing Mega Zone on
the Xbox Game Room lately, and I'm starting to wonder if I
could crack the leaderboards with a little training. The
game, essentially Xevious with eyeballs, is largely dependent
on memorization, and the Game Room's rewind option would allow
you to repeat trouble spots over and over again until you were
able to play them blindfolded. After a few hours of
practice, you'd be able to master the game and get
astronomically high scores in a ranked match. On the
downside, that would probably suck the fun out of a game I've
been fascinated with since childhood. I've always
preferred the seat of the pants method of playing arcade games
to memorizing patterns... it just feels more organic and
spontaneous that way.
Sixth... there is no
sixth.
June 11, 2010... Now
That's What I Call A Music Game!
3
Sorry I've been absent for so long,
folks. I've been working on my latest video review, and
there's just one minute left before it's complete! At
the rate things are going, that should take me about... uh,
four hours to piece together the footage. Man,
I really need to find a more efficient way to do
this.
So, like Christmas in July, E3 news has
come early this year. One of the most tantalizing bits
of information is that the latest Rock Band will be tearing
off the training wheels and going down the same road as the
long-forgotten Miracle Piano System, with real instruments
that play real music. Better yet, the peripherals have
MIDI ports, allowing you to connect them to your home computer
and create your own incredibly tinny compositions! (Has
the MIDI standard improved since 2000? I don't know,
because every .MID file I've heard in the last ten years
sounds like Genesis music to me.)
The new instruments are pretty
intimidating, in both button count and price. Anybody
got $150 for another Rock Band guitar? Yeah, me
neither. Fortunately for the
tin-eared butterfingers out there, the "pro" mode is simply an option, so if you want
to continue pretending to be a rock star, you can
still do that. You can also hold onto your money for
other frivolous video game add-ons, like that hundred
dollar steering wheel you'll use only three times. Well,
that was my experience anyway.
Okay! Back to the video. I
hope to have it up in a day, maybe two at
most.
June 9, 2010... Lost
Time
First things first... the Xbox fund is
ten dollars richer thanks to a GameSpite member known as
Balrog. The donation is much appreciated, my man!
I'll try to make it worth your while with new content.
Just how long has it been since I reviewed any games,
anyway?
Right now, my first Xbox 360 is working
tentatively. Two nights ago, I logged serious time
onto both Split/Second and Sega All-Stars Racing without a
single hiccup, but today my system froze after my 3G
card dropped me from the internet. I'm keeping
my fingers crossed and hoping that the fix will last just
long enough to get me through the weekend... the free Gold
weekend. Man, I couldn't have timed this repair any
better! Now maybe I'll finally get in a few rounds of
Super Street Fighter IV, or strum through a set
of Beatles: Rock Band tunes with, ahem, a little help
from my friends. (Sorry, couldn't resist)
There's one thing I wanted to mention
about Sega All-Stars Racing... does anyone get a slight bitter
aftertaste of desperation from this release? Sega's
trying very hard to work a nostalgia angle with this game, but
I have a funny feeling that any love that its target audience
had for the company went right out the window after the death
of the Dreamcast and the bazillion crummy Sonic games that
came afterward. The playfields are blindingly bright and
the announcer sounds like he's been airlifted to Mount Olympus
to witness the kart race of the gods themselves, but somehow,
all that excitement feels forced. I mean "getting
starstruck by Big the Cat" forced. It's like going to
Disneyland, only to discover that all the characters have been
replaced by scabs from Walter Lantz Studios.
I'll talk a bit about Split/Second
later, but right now, I just finished downloading the latest
Game Room packs and am desperate to try them. Yes,
that's how long it's been since I've used my Xbox.
MegaZone, here I come!
June 7,
2010... Reanimator
As it turns out, it took just a little
bit of money and a whole lot of elbow grease to bring the Xbox
360 back to the land of the living. Here it is,
running Super Street Fighter IV in a system test that lasted
nearly two hours. It didn't crash, nor did it flash its
reds, and all it took was a kit consisting of thirty-two
washers (half plastic and half metal), eight heavy screws, and
a tube of thermal paste the size of a restaurant salt
packet. It's the kind of cheap and dirty fix
you'd expect to see in the climax of a MacGyver episode, which
is why I'm going to continue the Xbox charity drive until I
reach the two hundred dollar mark. Sure, the system may
be working now, but for how long... for how
long?
Speaking of the donation drive, today's
alms for the poor come from Kevin Lee, known as the
"Yes-Man" on the forums. He added a staggeringly
generous seventy-five dollars to the fund, and his donation is
greatly appreciated. Stop by the forum and thank him if
you get the chance!
So, the next model of the iPhone was
unveiled today... I mean officially. The
device will include features like multi-tasking (welcome
to 1985, Apple! The Commodore Amiga says "hi!") and a
gyroscope that will give players "an even better gaming
experience." You know what would really give us
a better gaming experience, Steve? An official joystick
for this damned thing. You don't even have
to hardwire it into the unit... it's got a port on the
bottom that's just begging for an external controller.
Oh wait, the begging was coming from me. It's not like
I'm the only one, though!
Oh yeah, I should probably mention
before I go that I'm working on a new YouTube video, one of
the last I'll post on the increasingly restrictive video
sharing site. After spending four hours piecing together
a minute of footage, I'm starting to remember why I quit doing
these!
June 5, 2010... I Got
Nothin'
Rule of thumb... when you don't have
anything to talk about, just post a mean parody of a
webcomic!
By the way, the Xbox fund has bumped up
a little bit, thanks to an old friend who may wish to remain
nameless. I'm makin' progress,
folks!
June 4, 2010... You Know
What? Go Fuck Yourself
Not you, loyal reader. I'm
directing this specifically at Rupert Murdoch and all the
other bumbling captains of industry who think they
have an inalieable right to stay in business, even if
they have to squeeze taxpayers dry in the process. I'm
referring to the Federal Trade Commission's proposal to slap a
5%
sales tax on consumer electronics to fund
a bailout for the flagging newspaper industry. That's
right... if the FTC has its way, it will charge you ten extra
dollars for the upcoming 3DS, fifteen dollars for a
Playstation 3, and twenty dollars or more for your
next smartphone to keep an outmoded communication
model alive. Do you read newspapers?
No. Would you be the least bit concerned if they
vanished completely? No. Will you be expected to
pay for them anyway? Hell yes!
Why does America insist
on obstructing the future to keep the past alive,
anyway? Print media isn't going to get any more
attractive as the years pass. It's not going to get any
more convenient, and it's sure as hell not going to get any
more ecological. Yet here we are, spending an ungodly
amount of money trying to save this dinosaur, for no other
reason than misplaced nostalgia. The FTC is claiming
that this is for the benefit of journalists, but if they can't
adapt to the 21st century, fuck them too. They've only
had the better part of the 1990s and all of the previous
decade to prepare for the information age. Some writers,
like Kotaku hippy-in-chief Brian Crecente, were smart enough
to embrace online media after their local newspapers hit
stormy waters. If the
rest want to go down with Rupert's sinking ship, let 'em
drown.
Lately, there's been a lot of shrieking
from the right about the infallibility of the free market, but
they obviously don't believe their own hype if they're not
willing to let big business live and die by the
double-edged blade of capitalism. The escalating failure
of print media is trying to tell you something. It's a
dying, archaic industry that needs to be replaced with
something better... something that already
exists. Don't interfere with evolution just for the
sake of some crusty robber barons without the foresight to
advance along with today's
technology.
June 1, 2010... Cooked
to a Golden Brown
Well, I did ultimately go through with
the oven fix... it wasn't much of a fix, though. Now I
can coax the system to power on, but it won't stay on
for more than a couple of minutes. I'm not sure where I
went wrong. Maybe I didn't put enough thermal paste
on the chips, maybe I should have thrown out the X-clamps and
replaced them with screws and washers, or maybe I stuck my
damned Xbox in an oven!
Anyway. I'm trying to save up
enough scratch to afford a replacement, because even if I
can get this system to work again, it probably won't
stay alive for very long. Zach "Kitsunexes" McConnell
was kind enough to donate fifty dollars to the cause, which is
about a quarter of the way there. If you'd like to add a
little cash to the "I need another Xbox 360 and this one had
better last for over a decade like all my other
systems" fund, please click the gold "donate" button in the
sidebar. Your generous contribution will ensure that
this site will be supplied with smartass game reviews for
years to come! Or as long as the Xbox 360 lasts,
anyway.
There's not much news today, aside from
the recent revelation that the next Harry Potter game will be
a cover shooter, akin to Gears of War and Uncharted.
Okay...? I guess I can't complain, though... the format
did wonders for Mass Effect 2. The streamlined combat
went a long way toward changing my mind about the
series. I just hope they don't stick in some contrived
stand-in for ammo clips, like Bertie Bott's Jelly Beans or
animated chocolate frogs or, uh, heat
sinks.
May 29, 2010... Nothin' Says
Lovin' Like an Xbox in the
Oven
Man, these red ring of death fixes are
getting seriously hardcore. Some online research
revealed that frustrated Xbox owners are fixing
their systems by sticking them in an oven preheated
to 250 (not 360) degrees for ten minutes. I'm desperate
to get my console back on its feet, but sticking it in with
last night's leftovers is a pretty tough sell.
Before I go, I should probably mention
that actor Dennis Hopper passed away. I remember him
best from Speed, but there was also that ill-advised Super
Mario Bros. film that turned Bowser into a prehistoric pimp
with blond corn rows. And people wonder why Nintendo no
longer lets Hollywood make films based on its
games...
May 28, 2010... RIP Gary
Coleman (and my Xbox 360)
It's really depressing to see Gary
Coleman get mocked, even after his death from a brain
hemorrhage last night. "Haw haw, he had a Diff'rent
Stroke!" "He's four feet under now, get it?!"
"Here's a good one... whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Saint
Peter?" That one's probably the worst, because Coleman
absolutely hated that catchphrase. You would too if it
was a constant reminder of all you'd accomplished during the
eight year run of a successful television series, only to have
it all taken away by your thieving parents.
Gary Coleman was no saint, but I can
certainly understand the rage that led him to do some ugly
things later in life. Maybe you would too if you watched
Baby Doll, an episode of the Batman animated series from the
1990s that served as a thinly veiled summary of his
life. If that's too maudlin for you, at least take a
look at Dave Chappelle's re-enactment of
Coleman's altercation with an obnoxious "fan" who refused
to let the man have his dignity. There are a
lot of cheap short jokes in the sketch, but it's nevertheless
clear that Chappelle sympathized with Coleman and shared his
frustration with endlessly parroted sound bites. After
all, this was the guy who had to wear "I'm Rick James, bitch!"
around his neck for years after his own show was
cancelled...
So it looks like my Xbox 360 has taken a
permanent vacation. The E71 error is bad mojo, generally
indicating a severe hardware failure. The only things I
can do with the console in its current state are either
send it back to Microsoft, or attempt a repair myself using
the penny trick on YouTube. Since it was purchased used
and registered by its previous owner, Microsoft may not even
be willing to fix it... they certainly won't do it for
free, anyway. That just leaves me with one
option. Anyone got some spare
change?
May 27, 2010... Los
Links Piece of
Craaaaaaap!
So much for my plan to play Sega Racing
All-Stars tonight. More news as it
happens.
May 26, 2010... Tastes Like
Burning
It's going to be like this all
week? What did I do to deserve this?! Uh, don't
answer that.
Anyway, I'm just posting to let you know
that I've updated the Conan O'Brien
page. There's a review of the Legally Prohibited Tour,
along with a half-dozen new pictures and some revisions to the
earlier sections of the article. Now if you'll excuse
me, I think I'm going to take a nap in the refrigerator.
Yes, I know you can't open them from the inside. It's
going to be a long nap.
May 25, 2010... Oh What a
World, What a World
I'm melting... melting! Where did
the rest of spring go? The scorching heat is supposed to
let up at the end of the week, but that's a long time to wait
to get the weather we should have had all
season. Now that we've gotten my bitter complaining out
of the way, let's get to the news!
Just when you thought Activision, the
official home of franchise dilution and employee
mistreatment, couldn't get more repugnant, along comes the ad
blitz for Blur to prove that they haven't even begun
to scrape the bottom of the barrel yet. One commercial
for the uninspired WipeOut clone sandbags Mario Kart and
invites the viewer to "play with the big boys,"
while another turns the game's power ups into the wait staff
at Hooters. You know Bobby, there are more subtle, less
desperate ways to tell us you have a small penis. Like
shouting it from a mountain peak with a megaphone pressed to
your lips.
What else is going on? Well, J.
Allard is leaving Microsoft, the next Rock Band will have
support for a piano peripheral, and Shaun White's
Skateboarding, Ubisoft's entry in the already overcrowded
skateboard genre, will feature dynamic topography. That
didn't work too well for the quickly forgotten Fracture, but
maybe pulling rails and ramps out of the ground will be a
better fit for an extreme sports game. It certainly
couldn't be any worse than chaining together cartoon
injuries in Go! Go! Hypergrind. Personally speaking, I'm
more excited about the upcoming keyboard peripheral for
Rock Band 3, not because of what it will bring to the game but
what it could mean for struggling synth musicians in need of a
cheap way to produce music on their computers. Just plug
it into the USB port of your computer, download some
shareware, and blammo, you've got your own music studio on a
shoestring budget!
I'll leave you with a link to my latest
feature on 1UP, which examines
the Dizzy series and its incredible edible star. After
you read it, you too will believe an egg can fly... and be
killed by raindrops.
May 23,
2010... Goo-Gone
Did you all see the playable game of
Pac-Man on Google last Friday? Of course you did... it
would have been hard to miss! It was available for most
of the weekend, but vanished early this morning. Oh
well, it was fun while it lasted! Then kind of
annoying.
The Conan performance was fantastic, by
the way... I'll probably cover it in the "About Last Night..."
section later in the week, after finishing up my weekly
Spectrum feature for 1UP. If you're a fan of Big
Red, you really ought to go to one of these shows, but know
this: if you go, go in cold. Conan repeats a lot of
segments from earlier performances, and watching them on
YouTube will ruin the surprise. Also, try to get a seat
next to the stairs, because the ivory spider and his band will
run up and down them for some quick high-fives. You
wouldn't want to miss out on a moment like this, would
you?
May 20, 2010... Too Pooped to
Pac
I thought I wasn't going to have
anything to post on the site today... until I found
this! Namco revealed the iPhone game Pac-Man Reborn today,
and answered the question we've all been asking for thirty
years. Yes, Pac-Man can poop. Not only that, but
he poops out other Pac-Men with disturbing growths on their
heads, which must make them incredibly painful to push
out. Let's hope for his sake that those dots he's always
eating are packed with fiber!
Anyway, there's a new review in the
usual place. This time it's Yakuza
3, the sequel to the sequel to the closest
thing we ever got to a sequel to Shenmue 2. I hope it'll
hold you guys over until Saturday, because tomorrow belongs to
Conan O'Brien.
May 19,
2010... Vindication
Three of the videos I posted to YouTube
have qualified for ad revenue sharing. I don't intend to
subject my remaining viewers to commercials for air fresheners
and disposable douche, but I nevertheless feel that this
has vindicated me as a video reviewer. When I posted
that first review of Odin Sphere back in 2007, it
was to offer an alternative to the YouTube status quo of
pimply-faced screamers. Years later, I've conclusively
proven that there's room for more than just the loud, piercing
voices of James Rolfe and his progeny.
Now that I've postponed my college
classes, I'm giving serious thought to one final YouTube
review for the sake of closure. Since Odin Sphere was
the subject of my first video, it's only fitting that its
successor, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, would be the last.
If I'm happy with the finished product, maybe I'll start a new
series on blip.tv, where video producers aren't in
constant fear of having their work unraveled by frivolous
copyright claims. If not, I can at least take
satisfaction in knowing that this chapter of my life has come
to an end.
Anyway, how's about that 3DS? A
picture of the system's development kit has been leaked to the
media, revealing not only the expected analog thumbstick but
two screens with different sizes and resolutions. While
the touchscreen at the bottom of the unit is the same as
it was in past DS models, the top screen is both sharper
and wider, taking full advantage of the system's rumored
"Wii-quality" graphics processor. I'm a little
disappointed that Nintendo is pinching pennies with the
touchscreen, and that it's willing to make the same mistake
Sony had in 2005 with a single thumbstick, but if this keeps
the 3DS under that crucial $200 price point, I suppose I could
learn to live with these
sacrifices.
May 16, 2010... Out of
Commission
Yeah, I haven't updated in a criminally
long time. This hasn't been a great week for me...
my time has been evenly split between moving stuff out of a
dead relative's apartment and sleeping through a stubborn
bout of depression. I'm barely functional; so much
so that it's a supreme test of will just
to play video games. Life just isn't fun for me
anymore. I don't say that as an impotent suicide threat
or a desperate plea for attention, mind you. It's
just a fact. I don't have any drive, any great
aspirations, or any hope for a brighter future. I go on
not because I wish to do so, but out of a sense of
obligation to my family and my mounting debts. So
I'm here, and I'll probably remain here for a while,
but I'm not happy about it. After being reluctantly dragged through the dusty,
seemingly endless back road of life for a few years,
you start to resent the
ride.
May 12, 2010... Sing a Song
of Super Street Fighter
IV
This must be a new record for the
site! I've reviewed a game just two weeks after its
release. You can check it out here, as
usual.
This is going to be a short update that
doesn't really update anything. I've got a long day
ahead of me thanks to family drama and the idiocy of a college
that refuses to send out loans until weeks after
classes begin. Who the hell needs books,
anyway?
May 11, 2010... Roast
Pigs
Gamers are currently up in arms over
Electronic Arts' decision to include vouchers for online
gameplay in their latest sports games. Like the Cerberus
Network before them, these coupons unlock content for the
original buyer, but must be purchased separately for about ten
dollars if the game is bought used. This offsets the
piddling five dollar savings you'd get from picking up a used
copy of a recent release from GameStop or one of its (few
remaining) competitors.
Xbox 360 owners are rightfully concerned
about the vouchers, because they already have to pay a hefty
monthly fee for online access. However, everyone
else who's thrown a fit about the coupons needs to
pull their heads out of the trough for a second and take
a few deep breaths. There's an
unhealthy attitude of self-entitlement
among today's gamers, leading them to believe that
everything must appeal specifically to their tastes, that
it must be of the absolute highest quality, and that it had
better be damned cheap or damned free. You see this in
the non-stop hostility directed at the Wii, you see it in
massively bloated games like Yakuza 3 that still fail
to satisfy the unreasonable demands of customers, and you
see it in the Humble Indie Bundle, a software package that was
constantly pirated despite a price tag that was literally
anything gamers wanted it to be.
Maybe you guys slept through your
economics classes in high school, so I'll take this
opportunity to explain how things work in the real
world. If somebody makes a product you like,
you have to buy it. That way, whoever made the
product has enough capital to make more in the future.
You can't steal it, you can't pirate it, and you can't
even buy it secondhand, because all the money you've
spent jumps the manufacturer and is funneled
straight into the pocket of a middle man. This is
what Electronic Arts is trying to discourage with these
vouchers.
As a collector, I'm not against used
game sales... it's the only way to build a
software library for older consoles, and pick up games that
have gone out of circulation. However, I'm stunned that
gamers are apoplectic about being nudged into paying
five extra dollars for a new copy of a game. Have we
really become so self-obsessed that we'd be willing to start
World War III over five
dollars?
May 10, 2010... Around the
World in 8000 RPM (also, To Catch a
Pachter)
I'm playing Yakuza 3 right now, and I'm
really impressed with the quality of the game, mahjong or no
mahjong. Walking around the crowded streets of Ryukyu
and soaking up the local color also makes me think that there
could be big business in the virtual travel industry in the
very near future. Games with a real-life setting have
become so astonishingly likelife that you can watch a travel
program on Italy and feel like you've already been to all the
vacation hotspots, without ever having set foot in
Europe. I predict that ten years from
now, we'll see interactive virtual tours, similar to
Playstation HOME but with panoramic views of the Grand Canyon,
Mount Fuji, and the European countryside replacing Sony's
obnoxious advertisements.
Speaking of predictions, Michael Pachter is at
it again, backpedaling from his previous assertion that
there would be a high-definition Wii in the near future.
When confronted with the facts (which are
like kryptonite to industry analysts), Pachter replied,
"Wait, I didn't mean Nintendo would literally release
an HD Wii! That need's going to be filled by the
upcoming Sony MOVE, just $99.99 at your favorite retail
store!" He then went on to ridicule fanboys, which is
the ultimate in hilarious irony when you consider how often
this guy (and all the other guys like him, frankly) has
stumped for Sony in the past. Hey Mikey, we're still
waiting for the Playstation 3 to overtake its competitors
in overall sales, just like you promised in 2006. And
2007. And 2008...
May 8, 2010... Little? Big?
Whatever It Is, There's More of
It
Hey, Yakuza 3 just arrived from GameFly,
the enabler for my unhealthy gaming addiction! I can't
wait to play some shogi and win the hearts of some
hostesses... what? What do you MEAN they took all that
out? Fine, fine, I'll just beat up some guys.
Americans may not understand hanafuda, but a fist to
the face is the universal language!
So, they're releasing a new Little Big
Planet, with a number of improvements over the original
game. First, the crocheted and vaguely creepy Sackboys
are getting a makeover, with tightly woven cloth covers that
give the game a more advanced look and make the heroes look
like bald Muppets. Secondly, the level design engine
will be overhauled, with support for any kind of game you can
imagine. Even the physics can be adjusted, resulting in
less floaty jumps in the traditional side-scrolling
platformers. However, there's no confirmation of
portability, so all the money you spent on custom Sackboys in
the first game may be stuck there. We'll know for sure
when the game is released, which is... well, Media Molecule
hasn't given us a solid date yet, but it's probably fair to
assume that Little Big Planet will hit stores just in time for
Christmas.
Between the Little Big Planet series and
Nintendo's latest Wario Ware games, this is shaping up to be
the era of do-it-yourself gaming. Depending on your
viewpoint, however, this could actually be a
continuation of an era that started over thirty years
ago. It's a topic I'll be discussing in greater detail
in a feature for 1UP in the near future. First though,
I'll need to thoroughly torture myself with Manic Miner for
tomorrow's Spectrum column. Who says game writers don't
work hard for their
money?
May 6, 2010... Extra Strength
Street Fighter
Capcom, boobala, I love you and I love
your latest installment of Street Fighter, but if you sell
another one of these updates, I'll have to put the hurt on
you. The ten new and semi-new characters
are fantastic (well, maybe not Makoto) and you've
mercifully retired that idiotic Indestructible song, but let's
make Super Street Fighter IV the grand finale and not
tack on any more adjectives a year down the road. I just don't have the money to
re-rebuy this game, no matter how much you sweeten
the deal in the immediate future. Hell, at the rate
things are going, I'm going to have to pawn an organ just
to keep my subscription to GameFly! You've got a good
thing going here, guys, but don't press your luck. Just
keep your hundred thousand dollars and your fabulous car and
step away from the big red button, less you incur the wrath of
the Whammy.
Anyway! ECM, the
waxing one, informs me that there's an
update to NitroGrafx, the
TurboGrafx emulator for the Nintendo DS. It still
doesn't support the whopping seven games released for the
SuperGrafx, but it does play redbook audio in the CD
games now. I suspect that'll make Rondell Sheridan of
Blood a lot more enjoyable, even if the
tunes spun straight from the disc still have a disconcertingly
digital twang to them.
May 5, 2010... Sucko de
Mayo
It may be a day of celebration for some,
but today has been nothing but the pits for me. Anyway,
the Just
Cause 2 review is finished. Read
it.
May 3, 2010... Total
Destruction from Mountain to
Shore
So, they've just announced a Smurfs
movie, complete with leaked pictures of Hank Azaria as
Gargamel and a preliminary cast list. Wow, they even got
Paul Reubens to play Chronic Masturbator Smurf!
Yeah, I'm really reaching for updates at
this point. There's a bright spot, though... I've
finished the first in a series of articles for 1UP about the
ZX Spectrum, a games-geared computer that's incredibly
obscure in the States but as close as the nearest
closet in Great Britain. Who gives a damn what computers
they used in England? You should, since the
machine served as the ground floor for industry leaders
like Rare and Codemasters. Anyway, you'll find the
article here. Dig that
crazy and not-even-remotely-stolen-from-a-Futurama-sight-gag
cartoon at the top of the page!
In other news, Microsoft is "rooting"
for the increasingly dirty dozen who refuse to step away from
Halo 2's online mode and take a damned shower.
Wait, Microsoft is applauding an open act of defiance
against itself? Is this the part where the NOMAD
explodes?
(Heh, they're offering full episodes of
Star Trek on YouTube now. Neat! Now that the
videos are there anyway, maybe they'll stop being dicks about
everyone else who posts clips. All right, now I'm just
deluding myself.)
May 1, 2010... Not Tonight
Honey, I Have a
Headache
I'm feeling pretty rough all over,
actually. I'll make this brief... I'm starting a new
column for 1UP tomorrow, and I've got Super Street Fighter IV
on order from Amazon thanks to a handy tip from ECM.
Hopefully I'll have the Just Cause 2 review ready in the
immediate future. That's about it, really. Now let
me sleep.
April 29, 2010... The
Amazing Bungie Venture
Well, that was unexpected. The
moment Bungie cut its ties with Microsoft, it signed a
ten year agreement with Bobby Kotick and
the cartoonish supervillains at Activision. That's
not the first decision I would have made, or even the last,
but hey, whatever floats your boat!
Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm
pretty much spent after a week of household drama and
oppressive homework assignments. I just finished a
fourteen plus page essay for one class, and have
to complete two (thankfully smaller) papers and an exam
in another. However, I should be back at full posting
capacity starting next week.
April 27, 2010... Let
This Be Our Final Battle
I had a press
kit from Electronic Arts about the
upcoming sequel to Dead Space, but I ated it. I'll just
say that I was very happy with Dead Space Extraction and would
welcome a sequel (even if it's a sequel to the Xbox 360
survival horror game) with open arms. Or tentacles,
or claws, or whatever it is those Necromorph things have for
appendages.
Oh, by the way, the Supreme Court is
finally stepping in to break up the fight over
video game ratings. Leland "Robots Don't Say" Yee and
Arnold Schwarzenegger (who thinks it's quite all right to blow
up the universe as long as it's in a purely non-interactive
movie) are pushing for enforcement of the ratings system,
while the video game industry is pushing back, demanding
the same freedom of expression afforded to other forms of
media. Who will win this grueling battle? We'll
find out by the end of the year. Hopefully if things
work in our favor, it will spell the end of politicians
grandstanding and fearmongering for easy votes. Well, on
this issue, at
least.
April 26, 2010... Bela
Santosi's Dead
Look, I'm not asking for Oscar-quality
voice acting in my video games, mostly because they're
ineligible for the award but also because there are more
important things to worry about. There's a lot I'm
willing to forgive, but I'm going to have to draw the
line at Bela Santosi's absurd accent in Just Cause 2. I
get that the game takes place in an unidentified southeast
Asian country (cough, North Korea, cough), but just what
nation spawned this woman? Half the time she sounds as
much Jamaican as Laotian, and on some occasions, there's no
logical explanation for her accent at all! I challenge
you to find a place anywhere that pronounces "comrade" as
"comb-raid." Not here in America, not in Thailand, not
on Kremular-4 in the outer reaches of space,
nowhere.
Annnnyway, I've got finals this week, so
the review (yes, of this game) will be put on hold until all
this test business is
finished.
April 24, 2010... New
Halo Reach!
It's 51% better at getting to those
hard-to-frag areas!
Yeah, I got nothin'
today.
April 22, 2010... Bobby
Kotick Grows Massive Breasts, Juggles Severed
Heads
There, that oughta get your
attention!
When I redesigned the site early
last year, I confided in a friend that I wanted to turn the
banner on the front page into a video game, helping the
site stand out from the rest of the pack. I never
got around to doing this, but a recent software package could
turn that pie-in-the-sky fantasy into a cake-on-your-plate
reality. It's called Akihabara, named
after the electronics district in Tokyo, and it lets you
develop 16-bit quality games that play right from your web
site, without the need for Flash or other external
players. The only downside is that it requires strong
programming skills in Javascript, and programming languages
based on C++ scare the ever-loving crap out of me. Give
me BASIC or give me death!
While I'm here, I should probably
mention that there's a pretty keen DOS emulator available for
the Nintendo DS right now. You can grab yourself a copy
of DSX86 from
author Patrick Aalto's web site, and test it out with
some of the freeware and abandonware games in the downloads
section. The emulator won't run everything, but Aalto is
quickly making progress, adding support for Wolfenstein 3D and
Master of Orion over the course of two weeks. At the
rate he's going, he'll turn the humble DS into a pocket-sized
netbook by the end of the year!
One last order of business... Sega
is slimming down, dismissing seventy-three
employees and shifting its focus from big-budget retail games
to considerably less expensive Xbox Live and PSN titles.
Mike Hayes, the president of Sega's Western division, proudly
states that this is the second chapter of the company's life,
after its decision to get out of the console manufacturing
business ten years ago. With all the cuts they've
been making in both staff and ambition, chapter
eleven can't be far
behind.
April 21, 2010... A
Momentous Occasion
I finally made good on my promise to
change the banner! This month (and for the next couple
of months, most likely), it's a tribute to Bonk's
Revenge, the best game in the Turbografx trilogy. After
the PC Engine ran out of gas, the normally mild-mannered but
occasionally manic caveman migrated to the Super NES,
where he shined like never before. I've been playing
Super Bonk for nearly an hour now, and the game is fantastic,
if a little strange. You can definitely see the roots of
both Wario Land (the shape-shifting lead character) and Wario
Ware (tons of mini-games) in this release.
So hey, what's this I'm hearing about Kotaku
getting judgmental about Famitsu giving
Metal Gear Peace Walker a perfect score? Yeah, you guys
don't have any room to get self-righteous about journalistic
integrity, thanks to your misleading,
sensationalist headlines and your habit of taking
free swag from game publishers. Oh wait... you're a
BLOG! You're not held to the standards of real
journalists, but you're always first in line for benefits
normally reserved for the
pros.
April 20, 2010... That
Shit Is Dope
It's an update on April 20th, you
dirty hippies! I'm meeting you halfway!
In honor of this occasion, 1UP revealed
footage of the game Bio Force Ape... the real thing, not that
homemade NES ROM that was offered on Digital Press last
April. The game is more bizarre than anyone could have
imagined, with the titular (hee hee, "titular") hero leaping
tall screens in a single bound and performing wrestling moves
on a cast of rubber-suited monsters. It's actually more
out there than DP's April Fool's joke!
Also, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the sequel
to Bionic Commando Rearmed were recently revealed. The
former game will be built from the ground up by
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom producer Ryota Niitsuma; the latter will
have jumping in addition to the usual gravity-defying swings
from a grappling hook. "Sacrilige," you say?
Perhaps, but I'm willing to give developers FatShark the
benefit of the doubt.
Oh yeah, I should probably point out
that the King of Fighters XII
review I've been sitting on for two weeks is finally
finished. It was actually uploaded last night, but I
needed to smooth out some of the kinks in the text before I
made the public announcement. Anyway,
enjoy!
April 19, 2010... Back
in the Saddle
Where does he get those wonderful
scoops? ECM reports on his site Waxing
Erratic that former head of Atari Nolan
Bushnell has become the current head of Atari under a
reorganization effort. I don't know what this means for
Phil Harrison, who migrated to Atari after several
unsuccessful years at Sony, but it's a guarantee that the
company's most enduring (and obsessed) fans be walking with
three legs for a couple of days.
Also worthy of note: Ubisoft will no
longer be shipping its games with instruction manuals.
Instead, that information will be encoded on the discs and
available to gamers with the touch of a button.
It's a bit surprising, but the industry has been tipping in
that direction for years now. I played Just Cause 2 last
night and the first hour and a half of the game was an
instruction manual. Hell, Red Steel 2 spent three
minutes just explaining how to connect the Motion Plus dongle
on the bottom of the controller!
Instruction manuals have been a
tradition in this industry for over thirty years,
and I'll be sad to see them go. However, with so many
games already shipping with tutorials, it's doubtful that
other gamers will even notice they're
gone.
April 17, 2010... Two
Thumbs Down
Oh Roger, you're not going on about
this again, are you? A couple of years after
poking the hornet's nest with his observation that video
games are not art, he tears it wide open by definitively
stating that video games will never be art, and
squirts bug spray into the hole by saying, "Why the hell does
it even matter to you?" Kind of cowardly to start
the argument anew, only to close the door to dissent before it
even arrives, don't you think?
Well Mr. Ebert, to answer your
rhetorical, insultingly dismissive question, it
does matter that video games are considered
art. That classification would legitimize gaming in
the eyes of the public, which has viewed the hobby as the
vapid sport of children and social outcasts for much too
long. It would help small developers get government
grants and establish themselves in a fiercely competitive
industry dominated by a handful of big players. It would
give game designers the freedom to fully express themselves,
rather than worrying about smear campaigns launched by
self-righteous lawyers. Yes, it matters... just as it
mattered in 1970, when A Clockwork Orange was struggling for
recognition as a work of art in a society determined to brand
it as crass pornography.
Can we stop giving undue credit to these
blowhards? Seriously, watching someone else
play a couple minutes of Flower doesn't legitimize you as a
critic of video games, any more than watching Spaceballs gives
me street cred as a film reviewer.
(Wait a minute, Ebert didn't even
like Spaceballs! Ooh, now he's just making this
personal.)
April 16, 2010... Heads
Will Roll
So the MPAA
and RIAA want to install file-deleting
software on everyone's computers and turn the government into
its own thug squad for enforcing copyright law? This is
the kind of shit Bastille Day was made for.
Just hand the black hood to me when it's Sumner Redstone's
turn to have a little taken off the top.
In "no shit" news, someone deep within
Activision has admitted that Infinity Ward is falling
apart faster than a five story building in
Red Faction: Guerrilla with the corners hammered into
dust. The amusing part of the story is that the insider
claims Activision didn't see this coming, demonstrating both
appalling incompetence and an unfamiliarity
with basic human emotions on the part of
the management. You treated the employees of your most
successful division like slaves, fired the studio heads to
crush their morale, withheld
royalties from the other employees, and now you're surprised
that they're leaving in droves? How could you not
expect this?! It's simple cause and effect!
You put your hand on a hot stove and it gets
burned. You poke a tiger in the ass with a sharpened
stick and it makes you its afternoon snack. You
eviscerate the team responsible for your best-selling series
and turn life for the remaining employees into an endless,
mind-numbing drudgery, and they leave to make money for
somebody else. Surely after what you people did to
Harmonix, and what Atari did to its employees who started
Activision in the first place, you would know this by
now.
Corporate culture in the United States
is so massively arrogant that
Harvard-educated CEOs will blindly make mistakes
that even the dumbest layman wouldn't consider. Isn't it
comforting to know that these self-made morons are running the
country, and that you have no influence whatsoever in their
decisions?
April 16, 2010... Hard
Drivin'
Yeeeeeah, I might need to try this
trick. All the Wii games in your
library (and someone else's library, if you're the
nasty pirating sort) stored on an external hard drive is
just too tempting to resist. Why yes, I
am too lazy to get my fat ass out of the
chair and swap discs!
By the way, that smell you're noticing
right now? That was Nintendo president Satoru Iwata
shitting his pants.
April 14, 2010... A Trip
Down Memory Lane
Just a friendly reminder... this is the
last chance you'll have to play original Xbox games on Xbox
Live. If you want to get in one last battle royale in
Phantom Dust, now would be the time for it.
All the cool kids seem to be going to Waxing
Erratic these days... what does he have
that I don't? A regular update schedule?
Up-to-the-minute gaming news? The enthusiasm for
life and this hobby that I've long since lost? Oh
wait, I remember now... pictures! Each of his posts has
at least one picture to help illustrate
his points and keep his readers entertained.
So I'm going to make like Jay Leno and steal his idea, then
make it my own. I may even ship him off to a
low-rent cable network while I'm at it.
So, I was poking around my parents' farm
earlier, and here are a few things of mine that I
found packed away:
That's a rusty Pac-Man lunchbox,
manufactured by Aladdin. Younger readers probably
remember their school lunches as a ration of warmed over
pizza and limp french fries, served by a disgruntled old woman
with the frame of a linebacker. However, back in my day,
when parents were actually expected to get off their asses and
feed their kids, lunch boxes like this one were
commonplace. This box, purchased from a peculiar barn
sale packed to the rafters with 80s memorabilia, doesn't
include the handle or a Thermos tainted with the aroma of
thirty year old chocolate milk.
Here's a Power Lords board game, found
by chance at a random garage sale. This inspired the
extremely obscure Odyssey2 video game of the same name, which
Magnavox promoted with images of a massive cobra towering over
a jagged rock face. Alas, what you actually saw in the
game was a hydrocephalic inchworm perched on some black
squares. Magnavox was the king of false advertising... I
can still remember the incredibly optimistic commercials
for K.C.
Munchkin with a massive neon K.C.
filling the screen. Then when I finally added the game
to my collection, I played it for hours, trying to find
where those jaw-dropping visuals went.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is back, and
it's in yo-yo form! I don't know who the target audience
was for this curiosity, aside from obsessed nerds like myself
who weren't put off by DS9's decision to boldly go nowhere and
let the aliens come to them. The back of the box reveals
an entire series of these old-school toys, adorned with the
faces of Avery Brooks, Nana Visitor, and Armin Shimerman
with bread loaves stuck to the top of his head.
Speaking of bizarre anatomy, I have no idea why I have four
fingers in this picture. Guess I should have worn my
white cartoon gloves today...
That's two, count 'em, two
copies of Galaga: Demons of Death for the NES. It's a
very good translation, but owning two boxed copies of the game
is a little much. At the time I purchased them, the
greedy little collector in me thought that Galaga was
extremely rare, but the rumors of its value are greatly
exaggerated. While on the subject, it's worth pointing out for irony's sake that
Bandai, which distributed many of Namco's NES games in the
United States, ultimately absorbed the company in 2005.
I don't know if that's just a coincidence or if the licensing
agreement from the mid 1980s was the start of a love
connection between the two companies.
"How to get great results with
Nads." First step- don't be me.
Now we've hit the motherlode!
These are two Game & Watch single screen games that have
been in my collection for over twenty years. It's hard
to tell from the shabby shape it's in, but the first game is a
shockingly faithful conversion of Super Mario Bros., where the
portly plumber has to race through a gauntlet of increasingly
nasty scrolling stages to rescue the princess. There's
swimming, warp pipes, and even blocks with 1UP mushrooms
hidden inside. My friend had the crystal model, with a
transparent screen and Mario replaced with Mr. Game &
Watch. On the bottom is Mario's Cement Factory, a simple
twitch action game which was recently released on DSi
Ware. Now that I've found the genuine article, I feel a
little silly for spending two bucks on Nintendo's
conversion!
Well that was fun. I need to do
that more often!
April 13, 2010... We
Have You Surrounded
I'm honestly trying to finish that King
of Fighters XII review... the problem is
that I'm surrounded by far more entertaining
games. There's Dragon Age: Origins, Red Faction:
Guerrilla, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, and of course,
that copy of Red Steel 2 that just arrived from GameFly.
Then there are all the other games that I bought in a
impulse-fueled frenzy back in January and February... the same
frenzy that's left me flat broke months later. When they
said "a fool and his money are soon parted," the fool in
question must have been one of my past lives.
Anyway! About Red Faction:
Guerrilla... I didn't like it much at first, but that's only
because the difficulty settings are comically
understated. "Casual" is really "Normal," and "Normal"
is "bend over while we drive a Sherman tank into your
rectum." I'm convinced that the "Hard" difficulty level
blows up your Xbox 360 after you press the start
button. After I dropped the difficulty to casual
and shamefully handed my hardcore gaming license to the
nearest authorities, I had a lot of fun blowing up buildings
and sending all-terrain vehicles flying with a few
well-timed shots of a missile launcher.
There are just a couple of issues with
the game, though. First, driving to each mission is
hugely time-consuming and dreadfully dull... maybe not as
mindnumbing as all the sailing in Zelda: The Wind Waker, but
not too far behind. Second, even in the lowest
difficulty setting, the Master Chief clones that dog your
every step are much too tough and far too numerous. It's
maddening to send a missile their way, only to stare
slack-jawed in disbelief as they return to their feet after
being launched from the point of impact. What the hell
does it take to kill you and your five billion friends,
anyway?
Finally, I'm pretty sure they hired
Michael "Voice of the Agency" McConnohie as your commanding
officer. With all due respect to the actor, I
hate his character with the fury of a thousand Dell
customers put on hold, and I wish that he would get
herpes, scabies, and rabies in that order. Video games
are my vacation from reality, and I don't need the party
ruined by some power-mad general barking orders at me.
Just shut your trap and let me concentrate on blowing the roof
off this Martian mansion.
April 12, 2010... TBS:
Very Conan?!
That's the word from the cable
television network. Rather than host a show on FOX, the
redheaded stepchild of the late night circuit is joining
forces with George Lopez on TBS. I guess that's
one way to reclaim the title
"Superstation..."
So anyway, the former heads of Infinity
Ward have banded together to start their own studio called
Respawn Entertainment. It's an online shooter joke, son... I say,
doncha GET it?! Anyway, after announcing that they'll be
making games for Electronic Arts, Activision responded, "No
shit... that's why we fired you in the first
place!"
In news you absolutely don't care about,
Will "Cyrus" Powers was the winner of Sony's ill-advised
online reality show, The Tester. As a prize, Cyrus was
given a few thousand dollars and immediately shipped off to
the salt mines to replay scenes from Tony Hawk RIDE 2 over and
over and over...
April 11,
2010... Journey to the
Stars
Since people absolutely insist that I
update daily, even if I don't have anything to say, I'll meet
you halfway and give you a link to my latest (possibly last?)
1UP article, a review of the tabletop version of Stargate by Entex
Electronics. It may not be as fun as the Williams
coin-op of the same name, but boy is it ever as
hard!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to play
some King of Fighters XII so I'll have a review ready for
this site tomorrow. If you're itching for
something to read until then, might I suggest Waxing
Erratic, the video game blog by
longtime Blitz reader ECM? I've been reading it for
a few weeks now and I've grown fond of his unapologetically
cynical view of the industry and its foibles.
(What's a foible? I dunno, it just
sounds like something smart people would
say.)
April 10,
2010... RAAAAAID?!
(explodes)
At the time of this writing, the Air
Raid auction on eBay is up to a
dumbfounding $13,877, with a couple of hours left to go
before it ends. It's entirely possible that the final
sale price for this piece of crap video game
memorabilia will be $15,000, which will likely make the seller
of the game very happy but the rest of us bewildered and a
little disgusted. Really... fifteen thousand dollars for
a game, and one that's not even very good? If you're
going to throw down that kind of scratch for a video
game, at least have a little style and pick up one
of these bad
boys. At least that way, you could
use it as a backup for your dryer if it breaks.
Oh yes, I probably should mention before
I go that if you've got original Xbox games, this will be the
last week you'll be able to play them online before Microsoft
switches off the servers that you've been paying good money to
access. This sucks the most for Capcom fans, who
purchased the Xbox versions of Street Fighter Anniversary and
Capcom vs. SNK 2 especially for the online competition.
Halo 2 players were compensated for the shut off with three
free months of Xbox Live, but what do fighting game fans
get? Dick and bupkis, in that order. For
shame, Microsoft!
April 7,
2010... InDSecision
I've still got 800 DSi points, and at
least three games I'd like to
download. I could grab Dark Void Zero right
now, wait a little while for the do-it-yourself fighting game
Photo Dojo, or wait quite a while for the upcoming
Shantae: Risky's Revenge. Shantae's clearly going to be
the best of the three games, but it may not be released for
months. As the song goes, the waaaaiting is the hardest
part!
Speaking of the DS, I'm a little
skeptical about the upcoming 3DS. I've made my peace
with its wacky 3D technology, but it's the price that's got me
worried. Come on, this thing is rumored to have
Wii-quality graphics and twin 480p displays which can display
images in three dimensions. How the hell is Nintendo
going to cram all that into a handheld and keep the
price under two hundred dollars? They barely
cleared that bar with the DSi XL, and that's just five year
old technology with two big-ass screens. Maybe I'm
underestimating Nintendo, but I expect them to cut a few
corners before the handheld hits stores at the end of the
year.
I promised I'd talk a little about Dead
Space Extraction in a previous update, so here goes... the
game kicks ass. It's everything that Resident Evil: The
Darkside Chronicles should have been, from the more stable
camera to weapons that actually do reliable damage.
There's nothing better than cutting a crowd of bloodthirsty
necromorphs down to size by lopping off their legs with the
line gun! I've also dabbled with Red Faction: Guerrilla,
and although it doesn't offer the instant gratification of
Dead Space Extraction, I'll admit that bringing down
buildings and practically everything else with a few
swats of a hammer really brings out my inner child.
You know, the nasty little brat who likes to burn ants
with a magnifying glass and blow up action figures with
firecrackers.
April 5, 2010... Let the
Reviews Do the Talking
There are a handful of fresh
reviews on the Atari 2600
page. Pop on over and give them a look if
you've got the
inclination.
April 3, 2010... I'm
Here, I'm Here!
Sorry for getting sidetracked,
folks. I'm still here... I just don't have much to say
at the moment. I'm a little worried about a friend
of mine, who left some odd messages on his Twitter account and
has since vanished. I swear, if he's done anything
stupid, I'm going to flatlinemyself for a couple of minutes and kick
his incorporeal ass.
(Ew, that film was by Joel
Schumacher? No wonder everyone in it was trying
to kill themselves.)
Anyway, don't expect a hive of activity
from the Blitz for a few days. I desperately need to
catch up on my schoolwork and gaming has to be shuffled to the
back of my list of priorities. I may review
the 2600 game Air Raid in honor of the
recent (ludicrously overpriced!) eBay auction, and perhaps
talk a little about Dead Space Extraction, but that's
it.
April 1, 2010... Grin and
Bear It
It just never ends well for child stars,
does it? One day, they're
annoying entertaining millions, and the next
they're robbing liquor stores and mauling police
officers. Our thoughts are with you, Byron. We'll
send you a pack of smokes and put in a good word with the
governor... or maybe the ASPCA. Whatever keeps you from
a lethal injection.
