December 2006

12/12/2006

You Get To Make Hot Dogs!

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

- The big bit of gaming news today (in case you haven’t heard) is that Dragon Quest 9 is coming out for the DS. I cannot overstate home how gigantic this is; Dragon Quest is easily THE biggest, most popular video game franchises in all of Japan (even more so than Final Fantasy, believe it or not), and instead of coming out on a next-gen platform (I think its not such a crazy thought to assume that whichever system was announced to receive it, let’s say either PS3 or Xbox 360, would have a guaranteed ticket to the top of the mountain), the next proper chapter (not a spin-off, like Rocket Slime, but the “real deal”) is hitting the DS.

On, and there’s a neat looking Dragon Quest spin-off first person hack and slash coming out for the Wii as well.

Regarding the hardcore gaming audience’s reaction to this, if you go over to NeoGAF, you’ll find this thread, which my friend Rob summarized it being filled to the brim with “Nintendo fanboys heralding it as the second coming, Playstation loyalists who are genuinely taking it personally, otaku who think the step back in graphics will be the end of mankind, and XBox fans just kinda shuffling their feet with their head down. In other words: Monday on GAF.”

EDIT: I just checked, and its fucking 78 pages long. Oh my God.

- Though the real big news of the day is that Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess finally came out today for the GameCube. And unfortunately, the entire release is becoming a huge fiasco, since for whatever reason, Nintendo decided to produce only a few copies, and now everyone’s scrambling for them like crazy.

Well, actually, it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out why Nintendo’s not bothering to produce many copies, even if it seems like they’re missing out on another chance to make some easy money. Because the bottom line is that its going to force people to buy the Wii version… and the Wii if they haven’t done so already, which is more important to Nintendo than anything right now.

But still, all those promises that the game would definitely be coming out on the Cube… which wasn’t totally empty in the end, but this is still a huge slap in the face of all those who waited patiently. No solid reasons have been given as to why there’s such a low print run, though its not like making Cube games is all of a sudden tricky or costly thing for them to do; Nintendo is the masters of just making stuff that isn’t that necessary or just plain redundant. Game Boy Advance SP with improved screen anybody?

Anyway, so now panic and frustration is starting to spread across the board(s), followed by the after-effect, such as the expected tales of underhanded bullshit from Gamestop employees. You know, the jackasses that tells everyone to pre-order copies, but in the end, they horde 95% of the stock for themselves so they can eBay it and then leave the customer in the dust with nothing.

In another fine example that further illustrated the total uselessness of pre-ordering, I had my copy reserved with BestBuy.com for over a month now, and when I checked my order status this morning was listed as “back ordered”. So I simply went “fuck this shit” and headed up to the Nintendo World Store, which had a small stack of them. So yeah… I finally have my copy, and I’m happy. And yes, when I get my Wii, I will also get Zelda for that as well (though I just want the Cube version, since it is after-all the “definitive” version).

EDIT: So now I’m hearing that the game might not be that hard to get ahold of after-all. All the Best Buys in the city just got their copies about an hour ago, and a few friends had no problems getting theirs. Which is good! Though I do feel bad for kinda spooking them into running out to buy the game in the first place. But hey, its fucking Legend of Zelda. And yeah, kudos of Nintendo for not doing a Panzer Dragoon Saga on us, though its might still be too early to say anything just yet.

Elsewhere in the news (mostly stuff that fell through the cracks the first time around)…

- Remember when I mentioned how you can now use your Wii-mote on your Mac? Well, and Star Wars fans are gonna go ape-shit over this one: introducing WiiSaber, which does the same thing, but adds lightsaber sound effects into the mix.

Once more: when the fuck is LucasArts going to announce a proper lightsaber game for the Wii?

- Sticking with the Wii for just one second, according to Steve Totilo, the Bob Ross game for the Wii, as well as DS, is still on track, just with a different developer.

- So a fan created Cave Story comic book adaptation is in the works. And… I personally don’t think it looks all that hot. Its trying to be all dark and stuff, which I really can’t dig.

- Earth Defense Force X is coming to America! YES!!! This is simply awesome news. Hopefully Oneechanbara X is next. Or maybe… Senko No Ronde X?

- And Radirgy is arriving here as well? As Radio Allergy? WTF. I also find it funny how the last GameCube game (at least in the US) might be a Dreamcast shmup.

- Courtesy of the SelectButton forums (I think? I kinda forgot… sorry) comes something that I know MK will dig: Zoo Keeper (a fave DS game of hers) online, along with a few other really cutesy games.

- Time to check out some box arts. First off, I had no idea Cooking Mama was coming out for the Wii. And best of all, you get to make hot dogs!!!!!!!!

Here’s what the box to Virtua Fighter 5 will be looking like, which btw is still pound for pound the best damn PS3 game that I’ve played thus far, and which makes up exactly 50% of any burning desire to get the console (with the other bing MGS4, naturally):

And I hate to brag, but I’m gonna get the chance to play VF5 tomorrow! But more on that later. Anyway, this also recently surfaced: the cover to Lumines Plus for the PS2:

I swear to God, more than anything else right now, the lack of info regarding Lumines for the PS2 pisses me off the most. First off, its supposed to be a straight port of the first game for the PSP, but nothing’s been made definite yet. Second, it was supposed to come out last month, then it got pushed to February, and now it might be coming out this month. Jesus fuck, what’s the deal here?! And the reason behind my frustration is that it will literally decide if I get a PSP or not. Though I’m still interested in Every Extend Extra, even though I hear its not so hot… as well as the PSP version of Gunpey (I’ve been playing the DS version for the past few days and just can’t get into it)…. along with Exit. Plus there’s still WipeOut… I used to have a hard on for Ridge Racers, but I think I ruined that my listening to the soundtrack too much… still curious to see what a train-wreck Katamari 3 is…. what little of Loco Rocco I played was pretty disappointing, but I want to give it another chance… I also heard that the PS2 version of Tokobot is better than the PSP original… I still want to play Mega Man Powered Up despite the goofy art direction… I already have Ultimate Ghouls and Ghosts and I don’t know why. Oh I do: I’m a Capcom fanboy 100%. But anyway…

Back to the subject on-hand: the box-art is not bad, though I was hoping to see a return to the original art from the Japanese PSP release. Oh well.

Here’s the cover to the new Wii Sonic game:

You know, as much as I want nothing to do with Sonic these days (the PS3/Xbox 360 re-boot makes me want to hang myself, the Genesis redux of part 1 makes me want to cry, and the new PSP game just bores me to tears), I will admit that I had fun playing the new Wii game recently. Plus, I’m pretty amazed that no one has thought about having Sonic actually wear a ring thus far, so I want to see how that plays out.

- Though back to the PSP real quick, and onto the subject of… viral marketing. A very dirty word these days, but a result of the times we live in, since popular media these days is not just coming at us from all sorts of angles, but its also interactive. Like all things, when its done well, it can be quite compelling, awesome even. For a good example of excellent game related viral marketing, ilovebees comes instantly to mind.

As for poor examples, Sony is at the top of the list, and it would seem that they’ve completely topped themselves with all i want for xmas is a psp. It might very well be the most annoying thing that Sony’s brilliant marketing department has ever come up with (even worse than the fake graffiti from last year). Shit like this seriously kills any desire to get a PSP, and this article that talks about it being exposed illustrates how dangerous such tactics can be (Lord knows I cringe every-time I see an Apple ad, the one with the guy in the business suit, and the douchebag).

Whereas Nintendo has a site where you run around like a cute little snow dude.

- Also time for the obligatory YouTube video: this one features an entire scene from 1-1 from Super Mario Bros 3 recreated entirely in Legos.

Oh, and here’s another one that Katie just passed along, of a fat kid playing DDR. Hey, he’s still better than me.

- Meanwhile, over in Japan, things, as expected, are far more insane…

Dear God, this is beyond amazing.

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12/11/2006

The True Face Of Horror – OR – You Tell Me Folks…

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

Unlike the past couple of weekends, this last one was rather low-key and pretty chill. Meaning no weddings, chiptunes, or dressing up in a monkey suit for the Weekly World News, which to be honest, I was rather happy about. I really needed some downtime to recover, and I got some of that, finally. Though there was the IGDA Holiday Party on Friday night (again, if there’s a party, I’s gots to be there). It was fun, though it was both funny and kinda depressing that virtually every single conversation I overheard basically had “… so I’m working on this Xbox Live Arcade game, and…” simply because I’m not!

I mostly just hung out with my peeps from the NJ Chapter, plus Dave (Gilbert), who was recently called an “underground sell-out” in a recent interview btw, as well as Nick Fortugno from gameLab, who promised to let me know when his next live-action game takes place. The shin-dig itself was most impressive; the revitalized NY IGDA continues to impress, and this most recently party was a far cry from the days of being crammed in a tight corner of the Large Animal office, fighting over one last slice of pizza. This time around the action went down at the Gibson Guitar Center, and like my last visit on the behalf of Nick Mag, Guitar Hero 2 was projected on a huge screen, but everyone got the chance to mess around with the real things in their showrooms.

As for Saturday, I got together with Jason to work on some upgrades for this here site. The new journal page is almost ready, with some added features, that might come in handy and useful, and not just myself… though thing which might not make the cut is the addition of polls since we can’t find anything that will fit in nice and neat. So I in the meantime, I’m just going to have to ask questions directly for a response, like this following one, even though I’ve already asked it before (and haven’t gotten much feedback on… hence why having a handy poll option but be the way to go):

One particular thing which gets me just as many compliments as complaints is the length of my blog entries. I get pretty much the same number of people telling me “I really like that it’s long! It seems like a real conversation, and not just boring bullet-points…” as I get “Dude, your entries are too fucking long.”. I also hear plenty of “I like that what you write about is all over the map”, as well as “Dude, there’s too much stuff. I can’t keep track sometimes. Again, TOO FUCKING LONG.”

Though to be honest, the complaints are starting to outweigh the compliments. I guess, one solution would be to simply split up my posts, to make them stick to a certain topic or category. Just only talk about video games in one, and that’s it. And only talk about, say, movies or crazy homeless people exclusively in another. Which I guess makes sense, since I hate the idea of people missing stuff that I think they would like because of too much of something else they’re not into. But what do you guys thing? Yay, nay, or whatever?

Also, some might have already noticed that I have done away with the Reviews section of this site. The plan was for me to conduct formal video games reviews and to house them there, but due to a variety of reasons (most of them technical… more on this in a sec), I just haven’t gotten things together. I did recently start to pass along links to my video game movie reviews from GameSetWatch, but considering that I already do that around here anyway, plus I kinda already review games and other stuff around here also, just having a separate section just seemed redundant. I still plan on doing game reviews, but they’ll simply be incorporated in this page (which to be honest, is where 99/9% of everyone goes to anyway), and perhaps be a bit less formal that originally planned.

Though what I REALLY need is to figure out a way to play PSone games on my Mac, so I can do screen captures and the such…

Plus, others might have also noticed that Reviews has been replaced by Forums. And yeah, I’m still going make one (hopefully there’s still some interest among a few of you out there). Again, it’s coming. Soon.

Later on, I joined went over to Robin‘s, where him and MK were working on the new Friends of Lulu Anthology. Robin had Netflixed See No Evil, starring one of my favorite pro-wreslters of all time, Kane, and Robin’s a big-time fan too, so we all watched with total lust in our eyes, and hearts (okay, not all of us; MK made fun of us by going “You guys are totally gay for Kane!”… and we were). The movie, as expected, totally sucked ass. Primarily problem? Not enough Kane.

But what makes Kane so special anyway? Well, its really hard to explain why I’m such a fan of the guy… but let’s just say that even by pro-wrestling standards, his “character” is totally insane. First off, it should be noted that he’s this big goofy looking guy who had tons of shitty gimmicks previously. Once he was an evil dentist. Another time he was simply known as “The Christmas Creature”. Nuff said. Eventually the WWF (now WWE) came up with a decent character for him: an anti-social, somewhat dimwitted and therefore easily led astray muscle man, one who was totally scarred, both physically and mentally, from a childhood incident involving fire. This not only required much of his body to be covered, meaning he had an awesome looking mask, but his vocal chords for whatever reason were also damaged, meaning he had to talk with the assistance of one of those things that hardcore smokers that have lost their voice boxes use. I myself watch wrestling, not to see two dudes with first and last names running around a ring in simply skimpy black tights and “grapple”, but to see psychos, vampires, zombies, and Europeans fights with each over ridiculous crap, and Kane represents “the good old days”. And as wrestling became more popular, more “real” in the late 90s/early 2000, everything began to shift, but not Kane. Well they did make him more “edgier” but the results were pretty damn hilarious. Believe it or not, there is such a thing in professional wrestling as “character development” and eventually Kane became less of a dangerous loner and over time part of the gang, enough to gain enough confidence to drop the voice box, so he could say with his true, albeit tattered voice to “suck it”, with much fanfare from his mostly adolescent fan base. Which of course led to him being double-crossed by his new friends, making him totally nutso-destructo once more, but worse. Eventually, in another attempt to add depth to his character, they introduced the notion that he had a girlfriend at one point that is now dead, and his main nemesis at the time had sex with her dead corpse leading up to their big Pay Per View match. Later on, in a fight in which the stipulation was that he had to take off his mask if he lost, he did indeed loose, and instead of revealing horrific scar tissue underneath, which had been what been supposedly been covered up all this time, it was just some regular, somewhat doofy looking dude. So then his gimmick became that he had gone through tons of plastic surgery to look normal, but in his mind he was still scarred, which at one point led him to go bonkers yet again, enough to light the guy who was interviewing him on fire. Then later on, he fell in love with a girl and forced her to marry him, in the middle of the wrestling ring, of course (and anyone who knows wrestling knows that wrestling weddings are the absolute best). But there’s much more, enough that the WWE even had a book published to help keep track and connected all the wacky storyline stuff (such as clarify how it was originally mentioned that he was raised in a cage, without any human contact, then at another point it was explained that he had an indie career, which was how he met his girlfriend while on the road). Did I mention he can also shoot fireballs? I could just go on….

…. Sorry, I really didn’t mean to go on and on about pro-wrestling.

Anyway, speaking of movies, I finally emailed the person representing Karate Ruler, and the studio behind the movie, and stated my case as to why the vid should not be pulled from YouTube, and… this past weekend, I got a response. The person saw where I was coming from, and is letting me keep the video up! Yay! So Karate Ruler will still live (and rule) the internet! And thank God for that.

In other YouTube related business, I also recently got the following comment in regards to the dumb white hardcore/punk/emo kids at some shitty show vid that’s also fairly popular. Basically, according to “hi2u2sir”:

“youre a fucking bitch who doesnt know jack. check out the boston beatdown tell me hardcore is emo fuckwad.”

Thanks “hi2u2sir”! As always, all comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Okay, instead of going straight into video game talk, I guess I’m just going to end things right now, and save all that stuff for my next post (like I said, I’m gonna try to break things up into categories). So one more upload, a bit of some cop show parody in Japan. It’s not the funniest thing in the world, but I simply LOVE the theme song!

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12/08/2006

The Very Last Dreamcast Game… For Real This Time… Seriously

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

Alright, another belated entry. A lot of stuff going, as usual.

- First off, after an over one month absence, I’m back with another installment of my column over at GameSetWatch. Though once again, I dropped the ball and get in done in time for yesterday. I had hoped to file it last night, after the MTV holiday party, but I ended up staying longer than expected (translation: I got far drunker than expected), hence why it was submitted only a few hours ago. Again, sorry Simon, I’m an asshole (but hey, I hope you still enjoyed by Blip Festival coverage!).

BTW, my latest piece is on Tron, a long-time favorite of mine. It’s not up yet, but should be later today, or tonight. Just check by later if its not up by the time you’re reading this.

And speaking of later tonight, I actually have another holiday party to attend, this one for the IGDA, but truth be told, I still haven’t fully recovered from last night’s… but hey, if there’s a party, I am there, simply put.

- Earlier this week, the spiritual successor to the Insert Credit forums was launched: SelectButton.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve decided to restructure my time in regards to how and where I spent my time online, hence why I originally was not going to follow the shell-shocked folks formerly known as ICers to their new digs (I’m sorry to say this, but upon witnessing the after-math, a few people’s handling of the situation made me seriously rethink any possible further involvement with the community). But I then realized that it couldn’t hurt to at least keep tabs on things since quite a few of folks at the old IC boards did provide some truly excellent game related info. And then the chief architect behind the new place asked me to be a front-page contributor, hence why I said “what the hell, sure”.

So you can check out my first “contribution” (its basically something I had been wondering about for a while, but had been both too lazy and busy to ask previously) right here: its about an old Takeshi Kitano Famicom game that has a certain degree of controversy and infamy surrounding it. And hey, some folks were able to provide some solid info, including clarification on the “Friday Incident” (which funny enough, happened on a Tuesday).

Since its only a week old, there’s really not that much to report thus far, but there has been at least one truly killer topic: someone translated a thread from 2chan by some guy who connected his Wii to a 1.5 inch TV.

- Also found out first from SelectButton that Kenta Cho has a new shump out called Titanion. Looks (and sounds) fucking hawt.

And speaking of shmups…

- Guess what time it is? Yup, time to talk about yet “the newest last Dreamcast game ever” (actually two). First is Trigger Heart Exelica, which is coming straight from Japan (of course) next February. I’m definitely gonna pick this one up.

Second is Last Hope, which is actually from Germany and is a port of I think the last Neo Geo home cart game ever produced. Its coming out later this month I’m also guessing and is available for pre-order from Play-Asia. It’s even coming out for the Neo Geo CD, plus the cart is still available for those who want it (for those who are, as Brandon puts its, “rich/have mental problems”).

- But wait, there’s still more stuff about Dreamcast! Over at GSW, in addition to mentioning Trigger Heart Exelica, Simon also pointed out a homebrew title that’s in the works called Age of the Beast, which seems very much like Final Fight/Streets of Rage (though it looks a lot like Capcom’s old Dungeons & Dragons side-scroll, beat’em up, due to the subject matter). It’s by the same folks behind Beats of Rage, the Steets of Rage/King of Fighters cross-over.

- Simon also recently pointed out a veritable treasure trove of assorted unreleased games, which included a few Dreamcast titles like Dee Dee Planet. Once again, God bless the Dreamcast.

But there’s also footage from tons of other games, and from a whole slew of systems, such as Viewpoint 2064 for the N64 and Super Mario’s Wacky Worlds for the CD-i. The person even posted the K Project (Rez) pre-production video that Gamespot posted which I wanted to pass along, but was afraid of them breathing down my neck. Well, enjoy!

- Also, going back to shmups real quick, GSW has exclusive first impressions on Platypus, the 2D claymation looking shooter which some might recall me first mentioned a long whiles ago.

- Back to Insert Credit, the forums may be gone, but its still a wealth of info, which recently passed along info regarding a proper Pocky & Rocky sequel (at least the original arcade version), Hot Air, a game that combines Lemmings and Yoshi’s Island, a hot new Sega light gun shooter called Too Spicy, and these awesome looking Shadow of the Colossus one coin figures…

- And now going back to freeware/doujin games, its been a really big week. Aside from Titanion, this week also saw the release of Knytt, the latest game from the brains behind Within a Deep Forest. And thus far, its been a monster hit, which takes a lot of inspiration from Ico, SotC, Cave Story, and Seiklus, which even the creator helped to point out…

- While checking out a topic on Knytt over at NeoGAF, someone pointed out a game called Noitu Love and the Army of Grinning Darns, which I had heard about before, and had planned on posting about it, but sorta forgot. Well here it is!

Also, someone else pointed out The Underside, which is such a blatant Cave Story rip-off that its kinda not funny.

- Let’s talk about controllers real quick: uber game hardware hacker Ben Heck is at it again, this time with a single handed 360 controller.

- So now you can use your Wii-mote on a Mac! It’s true.

Though Windows users shouldn’t feel left out.

- On a related note, I really haven’t had much time to check out the major news. Though for the most part, from what I’ve gathered, most of the chatter revolves around people loosing their grips on their Wii-motes, often accompanied with pics of their smashed plasma screens (there was this truly awesome pic from some Japanese blog, but I lost the link and I can’t find it at NeoGAF…), plus Sony’s PS3 controller seems to be super flakey as well (most are blaming it on the often unreliability of Bluetooth, which as far as I know, is susceptible to all sorts of interference).

Here’s yet another Xbox 360 vs PS3 comparison piece, this one from Gamespot, which many feel is a bit superior to the one 1UP.com ran recently. Can’t say I feel too bad for Sony… their constant over-hyping is finally biting them in the ass, with Nintendo and Microsoft taking full advantage of the situation (one had a dirt cheap new system, comparatively speaking, and offers a genuinely different and compelling new game play experiences, and the other has finally hits its stride and had a fairly kick-ass online experience). Though to be fair, developers have been playing around with MS’s machine for a while now, and they haven’t had nearly as much time to sink their teeth into Sony’s new toy. So its a definite wait and see situation, but its nice to see that MS has taken full advantage of their one year lead time and is ensuring that the next-gen war is going to stay interesting.

- For those who didn’t catch them, here at the latest real-time screenshots from Gran Turismo HD…

… which was recently cancelled btw. Sony and/or Polyphony decided to pull the plug and concentrate on Gran Turismo 5. And while I was really impressed with what I played at the Sony event (again, it looked about a billion times better than what I had previously seen), its a smart move to work on a proper sequel instead of spending time on a souped up re-make… one that would, once again, cost approximately $500+ to get the same content which the original game provided for just $50. But anyway, those are some pretty shots, are they not?

- Meanwhile, on the portable front, some bad news: Elete Beat Agents has been deemed a sales disappointment by the president of Nintendo himself. Oh well… though its hardly surprising, and one should be happy that it even came out in the state after-all. But as one GAFer also suggested, I too blame Sk8er Boi.

- And check this shit out… Nokia wants to get back into the handheld gaming scene once again. My fave part is this quote:

“The consumer will have to make a decision: does he wants a standalone gaming device with a limited browsing capability or a phone with an MP3 player, a camera and a bloody good games platform?”

WTF. Is this the same fucking idiot who called out Nintendo by saying that no wanted to play on system with the word Boy in the title? Anyway, I guess the guy who runs the Sidetalkin site might have something to look forward to.

- Oh, so its the holiday season, so guess what fellow gamer dork (and my good friend) Job’s girlfriend got him? First is the Legend of Zelda Game & Watch that he’s wanted for so long…

But second is this original animated cell from the old Zelda cartoon that was part of the Super Mario Super Show…

Hey Job, some advice: marry that gal.

- Also, a few non-game related stuff: Job also passed along info on a Goonies animates series that never happened.

- And MK passed this along what very well might be the cutest thing that Missy Kulik has created this far: a very happy apple.

- Finally, and I came across this myself the other day… for all the Transformers fans out there, here’s Shockwave’s Burden.

BTW, last night I explained how, even though I know the new live-action Transformers flick is gonna suck balls, I still intend on seeing it on opening night on midnight, and how I’m dragging my girlfriend, whether she likes it or not, the folks at Nick Mag promised to hooked me up with a press screening when it happens, to save myself the $10 and MK the aggravation. Those folks at Nick Mag sure are nice folks I tells you.

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