Miss Piggy Vs. Cutie Honey

- Remember me raving about Wanda and the Colossus? Well here’s a not so new trailer that I’ve seen about seven thousand times today alone. And Goddamn does it ever look good. Has a nice Ico meets Panzer Dragoon-ish vibe to it. I never like to be caught dead such thing, but I’ll go on record by saying it already looks like GOTY material for 2005.

- Also today, the very first “Starburst Edition” of Farscape was released. For an explanation, I think I’ll do a bit of cutting and pasting from the GAF…

“In what (to my knowledge) is the biggest double-dip in the history of DVDs, ADVision will be re-releasing the entire Farscape series over the course of 12 special “Starburst Edition” volumes. Each volume contains 6-8 episodes. Each season has 3 volumes. A new volume comes out once every couple of months from now until they get through everything. 14 new sets of commentaries have been recorded, new documentaries and featurettes have been produced, and ADVision is mining archives of footage for other stuff to include (hopefully some bloopers and deleted scenes).

The bad news: Obviously, this is a huge slap in the face to loyal fans that paid ~$100 per season for the original DVD releases. I only have the first two seasons (and only heard about the Starburst editions as I was about to order Season 3 at DeepDiscount), and I’m pretty annoyed and upset. It looks as though there won’t be any rebates or trade-in offers, but if you can get $30-40 trade-in credit at a used DVD dealer then perhaps the upgrade will not be expensive. The new discs will have all the features that the originals did, so there is no need to keep the originals around.”

… Thankfully, I’m one of those who hasn’t started collecting the show yet, due to the aforementioned high price of the original releases (though I know at least a few who have already invested quite a bit in them, so they have got to be nonplussed by this). Though I’m more happy that it’ll save on shelf space, which is actually more important to me than money.

- Still on the subject of DVDs, here’s something that’s rather neat: DVDs By Design. Basically, they create DVD box sets for show that haven’t seen the light of DVD. No word on the quality, but as we all know, in the right hands, bootlegs can often be better than the official stuff (anyone who’s familiar with South Asian bootlegs of Anime when compared with the official Western releases can attest to that). Here’s hoping for a Pete & Pete, Twitch City, or Ducktales release sometime soon.

Plus, I understand that Digimon, a fave show of mine (I’m one of the five people in the world that is aware of how utterly amazing it is… trust me on this) might be getting a proper release in the UK.

Lastly, Golden Girls just came out on DVD as well. I’m actually somewhat interested in checking it out; I have no shame admitting that as a young boy, I enjoyed the exploits of four horny elderly women. Plus, I don’t know why, but I really think the DVD box is ultra sharp.

- Hey remember Rob Schrab? He’s most famous for his comic Scud the Disposable Assassin, and also made a movie, Robot Bastard. Well check out Twigger’s Holiday.

- So apparently, Disney is going to do Toy Story 3 without Pixar. Most people are predicting that the film will be bad (I agree) and even worse, it might hurt Pixar simply by association (this, I also agree with). I read somewhere that Tom Hanks would be hesitant to do one without the original creators, Tim Allen on the other hand as to be considered a shoe-in; that guy will do any piece of shit, especially if it has Christmas in it.

- So Spike TV just announced it’s nominees for their 2004 Video Game Awards. Here’s the full list…

GAME OF THE YEAR
Burnout 3: Takedown (Electronic Arts)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar Games)
Half-Life 2 (Vivendi Universal Games)
Halo 2 (Microsoft Game Studios)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (Konami)

BEST RPG
The Bard’s Tale (InXile Entertainment)
Fable (Microsoft Game Studios)
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (Atlus Co.)
X-Men Legends (Activision)

… Oh boy, where to begin?

First off, what the fuck is up with the best performances by human male and female categories? Why, it’s just another opportunity to shamelessly pander to Hollywood celebrities, of course. And why are none of the best song nominees to be found in the best soundtrack category? And like last year, there’s simply way too many EA and Activision titles littered about (thank God Madden 2005 isn’t listed as game of the year, though watch it win that anyways!) and a conspicuous lack of Nintendo games. Why the hell does best action game only have three nominees?! Where’s Metroid Prime 2? And why is Paper Mario not listed in best RPG? X-Men Legends? Give me a fucking break. And again like last year, why are over half the games listed as best fighting games not really fighting games?!?!

The big surprise here of course is seeing Katamari Damacy listed. While it’s nice and all, I can easily see the jaded point of view that it was simply thrown out there to give the list a sense of credibility. I guess it would mean something if they actually listed the other nominees, but if it’s like last year, they won’t.

Anyway, as much as shit like this makes me embarrassed to be a “gamer”, I’ll be watching it. Course, I’ll be yelling at the TV screen the whole time, like last year.

- Speaking of Nintendo, if you go to their home-page at or near the time of this journal entry’s publish date, you’ll find a quiz that gauges interest in an adapter for the GameCube to play N64 games. Strange…

- BTW, today is one of the biggest days ever this year for games: both Metroid Prime 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 comes out today. Despite my fucking crazy schedule, I owe it to myself to at least try to fit some substantial time for at least one of them. I’ll probably pick up Snake Eater.

- Currently I’ve been playing Technic Beat quite a bit, with some Burnout 3 on the side. What do I think? Well you’ll have to find out when I talk about it during my new radio show, which I tape later this evening. At least I hope… I’m still feeling rather not so hot. I’m teetering on the edge of total sickness. Again, my crazy schedule isn’t helping things.

And it couldn’t have come at a worse time, with such a packed weekend ahead. Speaking off, before I just had the New York-Tokyo games and Anime festival to content with. But I just learned about a massive Jim Henson retrospective going on at BAM. As much as I want to check out the premieres at the Energy fest (well I sort have to due to the project I’m working on… more on that at a later time) I simply can’t pass the chance to see Muppets Take Manhattan on the big screen.

- And finally, check this awesome Flash game. So simple, yet so awesome.