Points of Interest – 1/15/08
InFormers: Robots in the News
- Gallery: Cybertron.ca has a nice gallery of Wal-Mart exclusive Cybertron-into-Movie repaint Big Daddy.
- Reviews: BWTF has three new Movie reviews: Leader-class Brawl, and Real Gear Highline 1070 and Photon T34.
Assorted Mushrooms
- Videos: “But, is it art?” Ok, that may not be the question you’ll be asking yourself, but YouTube user Lasagna Cat has given classic Garfield comic strips a new spin.
Personal favorite so far? 08/18/1978.
It amazes me that I’ve never come up with some of this Garfield stuff first.
- Review: Still not over yet! Now, I-Mockery takes a stab, albeit a funnier one, at Spider-man: One More Day. Be warned, there is a bit of language and such within.
- Article: 25 ways to break up a superhero marriage.
- Article: A look at Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman, 70 years later.
- Reviews: IGN looks at the latest anime releases on DVD.
- Article: IGN Comics looks back at continuity reboots as they question whether they’re a good thing or a bad thing, and how well they work and are received across both Marvel and DC, from Age of Apocalypse to Zero Hour.
Video Power
- Videos: Cool new version of Can’t Beat Air Man, with pseudo-3D 8-bit graphics.
- Newsbit: This just in: Jack Thompson is apparently against having fun learning, too.
I get the feeling that he’d probably rather that stroke victims have greater difficulty recovering and not play games, too.
- Newsbit: At least one teacher seems to get it.
- Newsbit: Some idiot from Gizmodo tried to ruin CES, and is now banned for life. Way to go, guy. I hope you’re proud.
They apologize on their website, but it seems really half-hearted. Another post is far less apologetic:
A Gizmodo writer has been banned from CES for a prank. But when I see some fellow press damning us for the joke, I feel sorry for them: When did journalists become the protectors of corporations? When did this industry, defined by pranksters like Woz, get so serious and in-the-pocket of big business? This is totally pathetic.
Serious and in-the-pocket? Protectors of corporations? Hell, they could’ve been affecting peoples’ jobs for no good reason except that they could, and that, I do not agree with or condone in the slightest. Plus, it’s interfering in business, which I believe is the primary purpose of this show. I’m hoping that if a deal was blown, that it’s one that would have made the prankster happy if it’d gone through.
And, as said on Ripten, this could be a serious setback, or at least a black mark, on future occurences of bloggers being able to attend. Irreverent? No, this was just immature.
- Video: ScrewAttack opens the vault for Off-World Interceptor Extreme from the SEGA Saturn.
- Article: IGN has compiled a list of classic games they’d like to see available as downloadable content across the new consoles. Say, think if they released Majora’s Mask on VC, they’d give a discount to those dissatisfied with the buggy GameCube version? Naaaaaaah.
Super Star Wars would be neat, but only if they included an option to fly vehicles naturally. And Star Fox 2 is a must, no questions asked.
So is Super Mario RPG, unless Square-Enix would rather bless us with a 3D remake, as is par for the course these days.
- Article: IGN’s new Retro section looks at ten years of ten innovations in gaming.
- Article: IGN Retro also revisits Virtual Boy, and looks back at what the best games were.
- Interview: X-Play co-host Adam Sessler talks to Next Generation about the evolution of the longstanding video game review show as the countdown begins to the debut of their next iteration.
- Editorial: Colin Campbell of Next Generation takes a look at how used games are damaging the industry.
Can’t say I care for the used game business, myself. Not so much in the GameStop sense, anyway, as the savings are barely worth noting for often inferior product. Of course, were it not for used games, I wouldn’t have Contra: Shattered Soldier and Neo Contra, among older games right now. Unfortunately, places like GameStop are less interested in carrying older games, or at least buying them back, so that sort of cancels that point out to a degree.
I think the big issue is simply game price. The higher the price, the tighter one’s pursestrings are going to get, and so any saving looks more palatable to many a consumer. $45 might look better than $50, but say you have a game that retails at $20 and cut off the same percentage… is $18, a two-dollar saving, really going to change your mind to go used?
(And for the record, those are just example numbers for quick reference and detailing the point. Not to be taken quite so literally.)
Of course, if Bill Gates’ prediction comes true and it all goes digital (what a headache that’ll be for consumers), then it all becomes a moot point anyway. I favor Miyamoto’s mindset in the matter: “make a game they won’t want to sell back.”
- Article: Would you ever believe that there are nine games that could get you laid? GameDaily does.
- Article: GameDaily thinks back to the Dreamcast, and some of the best games that made SEGA’s final hardware hurrah worth having.
- Article: Blogs are an unusually common type of character in video games, but usually tend to be among the most lovable. Here, Games Radar lists their Top 7.
- Article: Wow, Best Buy is just doing everything they can to piss people off these days, aren’t they? Apparently, now you can’t shop with a minor if you want to buy anything rated higher than that. And as a bonus, they’ll lie to you about what you can do to buy it! I hope that Matt D. gives them some serious hell.
- Interview: Ain’t It Cool News scored an interview with the director of that 90′s video game-inspired classic film The Wizard.
- Video: Can you imagine if the first Mario game for the Wii were played like this? I think that was a fear a number of us had before we saw Galaxy, and thank God it didn’t turn out this way. Sure, it’s interesting, and would probably be a little fun for a bit, but I think it’d get tiresome really fast.
- eBay: More Nintendo goods on eBay.
Also up is a Super NES store display. Nice.
- Article: How much of your memory is dedicated to video games? Well, this 26-year old has half of his.
- Videos: A little late for Nintendo’s Short Cuts, unfortunately, but this fan-film about two boys who get a Wii for Christmas and play it when they aren’t supposed to sounds interesting… I’ll have to watch it myself later.
- Video: Hey, kids! It’s another Earthworm Jim cartoon!
- Blogging: I saw some posters on the subway earlier for In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and didn’t think it was an Uwe Boll film. I mean, those have advertising? And stars?
And yet, there it is, as Kohler details.
- Article: Ah, Microsoft… is there nothing they’ll do to keep and please customers? I mean, they’ve got the money, that’s all they need, right?
And rubbing it in, at that. Ouch.
–LBD “Nytetrayn”