- So I went to Bust Buy and finally got the chance to handle the new Simpsons Season 6 box set. What a piece of crap! It’s even chintzier in real life.
BTW, here’s a pic of the next couple of sets with the same stupid theme. Note how Marge’s hair is a bit smaller than it should be. I’ve seen what the Homer head looks like inside and its a mess; all the DVDs are in loose slips, which means they’re guarantee to get banged around or drop out when you simply open the box. And again, regarding the cheapness of the shell, a Simpsons box set is something that’s meant to be passed around and shared, but I’m certain one of Homer’s eyes will get scratched or banged up in just minutes of not being on a shelf.
But at least you can get a regular box if you really want it. Though I sorta hope Fox reconsiders the whole thing and just re-issues the latest set with the box sometime soon. And considering that I wasn’t the only person at Best Buy who handled the Homer head with utter disdain, I have hope.
- Meanwhile on Friday I got super jazzed by the news of a Ducktales DVD release. There was no solid info then, so everyone was trying to guess if it contained the whole series or just the first season (which is the only good one… season 2 introduced Bubba Duck and the show immediately jumped the shark) was of no real concern to me. Far as I was concerned, Disney would have to work big-time to fuck this up.
And they did, because now it seems the first volume won’t have the first five episodes which made up the pilot movie, which is easily one of the top episodes. Jesus fuck, why Disney why?
- In gaming news, the big bombshell is Nintendo’s announcement that Zelda will be delayed until 2006. The reason cited is to give Zelda the extra time it needs to be the best possible game it can be, which seriously, is more than enough for me. Lord knows that Wind Waker definitely suffered from being rushed out to market. Plus my current backlog of games will probably take me well into the upcoming holiday season.
Plus you have to give Nintendo credit for having the guts to do this since not having their biggest title in years during a very crucial holiday season is going to really hurt them. Already people are saying that they should just give up on the GameCube version, as well as the system entirely, and just port it to the Revolution.
- Meanwhile. the DS gets a modest, but still very nice, price-drop later this weekend, to coincide with the release of Nintendogs. It will now $130. The Game Boy Micro’s release date and price has somewhat been “leaked” by various mainstream press sources. It’s now supposed to come out in September for $100, which most people choose not believe. I really think that’s too high (it should be around $60), but I certainly don’t doubt Nintendo asking for that much.
- Oh, real quick, here’s a new vid for Super Gunstar Heroes which just might be game of the year for the system.
- With Sega, whenever they give you a reason to love them, they also still make you hate them; some new info regarding the Sonic Gems Collection has appeared on various message boards and LiveJournals and its confusing to say the least.
First came word that the US version of Sonic CD would only have the American soundtrack. Once again, I’m a big fan of the Spencer Nielsen music and all, but the original score is fantastic, and admittedly more “Sonic-like”, so it just makes sense to have both. Well now comes word that the Japanese PS2 version (the game’s a Cube exclusive in the US) has both, but only plays the music for whatever country the system’s language is set for. Meaning if you’re system is set to Japanese… not the region code of the system itself, which once can only change via a mod chip, but the language setting in the main menu… you’ll get the Japanese soundtrack, and if its set to English, you get the American soundtrack. Apparently this does not apply to the Cube version since the Japanese score is not found on the disc. I’m guessing there wasn’t enough room; PS2 discs can hold around 4 gigs of date, the Cube’s can only hold about 1-ish. Got all that?
So does that make the Japanese PS2 version the definitive version? Well it does have Bare Knuckles (Streets of Rage) 1-3, but so does the Japanese Cube edition (once again, they were removed from the US version to get that E rating). But the version of Sonic the Fighters on the PS2 is apparently using the same, somewhat wonky Model 2 emulator that everyone has in action via the PS2 port of Virtua Fighter 2, which is less than perfect. Meanwhile, the Cube version is apparently much closer, and some have even said that the game was completely re-written for the system.
Why can’t Sega just make something easy for once?
- And speaking of lazy, it seems the upcoming of Princess Crown for the PSP, the sprite heavy beat-em up for the Saturn, is going to be just a straightforward port, which means it won’t take advantage of the widescreen and instead employ a border to fill up space. Jesus Christ. Hey, speaking of…
- Here’s a pretty interesting article about video games being produced by religious fundamentalists, and not the same people making games based on the Bible that most everyone knows about. These are all about Allah.
- Oh, and this is pretty sophomoric and all, but UK Resistance just posted “exclusive screens” from Sega’s Where Do Babies Come From. Yeah, not very creative, but you know stuff like this is not too far away (I already posted info about a vaguely porn-ish game for the DS not too long ago if you might recall).
- And for those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s a really nice interview with the man behind the Castlevania, which besides touching upon the series, talks about the future of 2D gaming in general.
- So it seems Keep America Beautiful and the National Council to Prevent Delinquency is asking the USRB to give the Marc Ecko game (which has a really long and stupid title which I refuse to repeat) an Adults Only rating due to the possibility of it inspiring kids to graffiti-up the streets. It should be noted that there’s no killing of folks, which San Andreas, the last game to get the AO rating, featured plenty of. Jet Set Radio faced a similar situation when that game was coming out, but was easily rectified by a nice little warning in the beginning of the game that reminded kids to not “try this at home”.
Now I know this sounds totally ridiculous, and I’m usually no conspiracy theorist, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was all some marketing ploy devised by Mark Ecko to drum up interest for the game. I gotta say, I am so sick and tired of this guy; there was a good couple of months where no matter what game magazine I leafed through, there was some interview with the guy where he rambled on and on about how game designers today are “lazy” and all they create is “bullshit”. He even had the gall to give a speech at the Game Developer’s Conference where he put all the professionals in attendance to task for their lack of innovation. And in all these interviews he is now in the business of making games and is going to show how its done and whatnot. So what does this idiot off the streets go and do? Create a game, which he claims to be groundbreaking and all that bullshit, that’s basically a rip off of Jet Set Radio.
You know, you can bitch and moan about how such-and-such sucks, because it may be totally true, and it sometimes feels good to spout the obvious, but if you are going to criticize an entire industry, that one doesn’t even totally understand, and have the audacity to bold-face insult them right in their face, you better bring something else to the dance other than some busted wanna be title that’s oozing with “street attitude, yo”.
And here I am, the asshole, giving him more attention that he deserves. Bah!
- Anyway, in the real world, and maybe this is big news already, but a ton of people went nuts trying to get $50 iBooks in Virginia earlier today. Typical crazy Apple users of course.
