1. LittleKuriboh is at it again! I thought that YouTube had kicked him off or something, but apparently that isn’t the case, as he has shown up with Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series, episode 23, wherein we discover a STARTLING secret about… well, that’d be telling, now wouldn’t it?
2. In what amounts to a colossal ball of head-scratching weirdness, the Angriest Gamer you’ve ever seen teams up with Captain… S? to save… Christmas?

   The whole thing can be seen here at no charge to you! All in the spirit of giving, I guess.

3. A little tribute to one of my favorite Raul Julia films… Street Fighter!

   Some say the role killed the man. I say the man did such justice to the role that he was able to ascend to a greater place.

   Seriously, his Bison was awesome.

4. On the subject of video game movies which have “questionable value for appreciation” (i.e. all of them, I suppose), one cannot forget the first movie of the type, Super Mario Bros., and a gent by the name of Phlibbit has indeed not forgotten at all.

   It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m a fan of the movie, though just why may still mystify them just the same. Truth be told, I figured that I was one of the biggest fans of the movie that I know, but it seems that there are indeed bigger. In fact, I dare say by virtue of his site, Super Mario Bros. The Movie Archive, that he probably knows more about this particular film than most. There is still a lack of content right now, but if he manages to fill this thing out, then I for one will be most impressed, as there seems to be a lot of stuff out there for this movie that I didn’t even know existed.

   In the meantime, you can check out some production sketches and storyboards, some nice jewels of the collection. And when you’ve finished that, you can check out this incredibly rare “Making of” featurette that came from a videotape in the PAL territories.

   Also on YouTube is this trailer for the movie that I don’t remember ever seeing… the ones that stick out in my mind most had “Jump!” playing…

   And finally, on this topic, Mario Mario himself, Bob Hoskins, held an interview with UK paper The Guardian in which the film surprisingly came up:

   “The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a ****in’ nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! ****in’ nightmare. ****in’ idiots.”

   Fond memories, as you can see.

   Whether or not this means he hates the movie or the characters as a result, hard to say. I’d be a little apprehensive about asking, personally.

5. On the subject of Mario, someone added him, and his brother, to Mugen in complete with original sprites. It’s kind of neat to watch, but as with most Mugen, a trainwreck to listen to. Oh, and the intro to the video takes up a third of the running time. Brilliant move, that one.
6. I saw this on Family Guy the other night, and had to hunt down the clip.

   The second part is where I crack up.

7. From Igo SplashMan, a company called “Original Characters” has an interesting message geared towards making sure you buy original games, rather than pirating wares.

   Just beware of the midget… he looks a little “frisky.”

8. GameTrailers has added part IV of their Final Fantasy Retrospective to their site.

   Yep, part IV. I’ve been a bit remiss in not posting about it, but even though I’m not a huge Final Fantasy fan, it has been an entertaining bit of education in video game history.

   For those wondering, part I covers the first game, II the second and third, and III the fourth and fifth, with IV tackling Final Fantasy 6 and next week’s delving into VII.

9. ScrewAttack.com opens up the Vault again for one of my old favorites, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. I still need to get the arcade version on XBox Live.

   He says the game has two buttons, “punch and kick.” Don’t know what he’s playing, but the TMNT arcade-style games always had jump and attack; the Turtles never punched anything, using their weapons, and only occassionally threw out a kick, save for jump kicks.

   Says it’s coming soon to Virtual Console, but does he mean the arcade version he just spoke of, or the NES version? The latter makes more sense, but I don’t think I’ve heard anything on either, so…

10. “Better late than never,” or so they say.

    Ever since Zelda: Twilight Princess was announced for the Wii, people have created their own mock-ups of attachments and controllers themed around the game to work for Nintendo’s latest console, but it seemed that despite an endless array of accessories and attachments, some even loosely themed as to be workable with the title, nothing true-to-Hylian-form would ever come.

    That has changed today with the announcement of Camy Pro Gear’s Hero Pack, which features attachments based on Link’s most common armaments. The designs seem to take some artistic liberties, specifically the shield with its lack of a true Triforce symbol, but anyone familiar with the games should recognize the pieces immediately. And for about $20, it may even help some people to further immerse themselves into the land of Hyrule.

11. Ah, console launches. Remember when they used to be good? When you knew that you could walk into the store on Day 1, pick up a piece of the next generation of gaming, and get something that would blow away everything that came before?

    Well, I wouldn’t say those days are exactly gone, but people certainly aren’t quite as satisfied with what they see at launch these days. Which is no doubt why GameDaily felt the need to say “screw the launch window, it’s all about Day One” and turn back the clock to look at the best console launches ever, “six consoles that put their money where their memory slots were on launch day.”

    Of those listed, the only one I got on launch day was the Nintendo 64, and in fact, I actually got it a few days early, back when such a thing was possible. And then there was the shock and horror when I found out that my SNES connector wouldn’t work with the N64 without an adaptor. Fortunately, I was able to figure out the new-style connection and had some 3D fun for the first time.

    Game Boy Advance, I couldn’t afford when it came out. Game Boy, my dad was convinced would ruin my eyes, and he forbade me to have one. The Super NES, he couldn’t/wouldn’t see any marked improvement in the quality until he got ahold of Contra III, a year or two later.

    Now, he buys PlayStations just about as soon as he’s able. Funny how times change.

12. Pixel Perfect Productions pondered possibly profound problems persistently plaguing PlayStation 3 plus its peers to produce this piece.
13. Cool Super Mario Bros. 3 token machine.

    I’ve seen some neat Sonic arcade fare like that around here as well.

14. RMC at Go Nintendo asks, would you buy Super Smash Bros. Brawl if it lacked online play?

    My answer is a resounding HELL YES.

    Super Smash Bros. Melee was a blast, and remains one of my favorite games, and that didn’t have online play at all. Hell, I rarely got to play against anyone but the computer. So it’s nothing new to me in that regard.

    Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate the inclusion, however.

15. Digg has found a wicked pic of Mario fighting Giga Bowser over the body of a fallen Princess Peach. Pretty nice stuff.
16. Apparently, some people can’t accept that Sonic is a slow starter.

    But seriously, barring the fact that these characters’ speeds seems to only be based on what’s convenient at a given time, would you be more or less interested in the game if they made it so that Mario couldn’t beat Sonic?

17. In making the Jackass game, the producers had some tricky material to work with, such as making sure your failed stunts are as entertaining as the successes are gratifying.

    Makes sense.

    Now, a story for the game? That makes no sense.

18. Ever wonder why there aren’t more MMORPGs on consoles?

    The creator of Ragnarok Online lays it out for us.

19. Sure, it looks good, and is functional, but what happens when it comes time to do the speaker-smashing guitar swing?

–LBD “Nytetrayn”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 6:40 am and is filed under Points of Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.