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In case you hadn't heard, the WiiU has an unexpected third-party (second-party, actually - Nintendo published!) exclusive. Some people are... less than thrilled about this.
The poor darlings.
The poor darlings.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Off To Work
I'll be getting on an airplane for The Escapist Expo very soon, which means updates to this blog may be a bit on the sporadic/late side from now until Monday. Stay tuned.
Nintendo Being Nintendo
The WiiU's dates and prices have been announced for Japan, and will be announced for the U.S. later this morning. The main non-pricing/tech related news is that it looks like the flagship launch titles will be New Super Mario Bros. WiiU and Nintendo Land.
I haven't seen much of "Nintendo Land," but I dig the "symbolism" of its existance: It's a Wii Sports/Play/Resort installment, but this time set in a virtual Nintendo-themed amusement park. I like the optimisitc (on Nintendo's side) vision of what that represents: that the "Casual-core" Wii newcomers of seven years ago are now part of the broader Nintendo fan-culture (we'll find out if that's precisely TRUE soon enough.)
Moreover, though, much as I'm supposed to roll my eyes at the "regressiveness" of the New Super Mario Bros. juggernaut... and while, yes, I'd RATHER be playing a successor to Galaxy or something truly new... damn it, y'all KNOW me. The first console of the Eighth Generation is launching... with a 2D Super Mario Bros. side-scroller. That's kind of awesome.
I haven't seen much of "Nintendo Land," but I dig the "symbolism" of its existance: It's a Wii Sports/Play/Resort installment, but this time set in a virtual Nintendo-themed amusement park. I like the optimisitc (on Nintendo's side) vision of what that represents: that the "Casual-core" Wii newcomers of seven years ago are now part of the broader Nintendo fan-culture (we'll find out if that's precisely TRUE soon enough.)
Moreover, though, much as I'm supposed to roll my eyes at the "regressiveness" of the New Super Mario Bros. juggernaut... and while, yes, I'd RATHER be playing a successor to Galaxy or something truly new... damn it, y'all KNOW me. The first console of the Eighth Generation is launching... with a 2D Super Mario Bros. side-scroller. That's kind of awesome.
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
EPISODE 75 ANNOUNCEMENT!
Episode 75: "Easy Does It" will debut next Wednesday September 19th at 11:00pm CST right here on ScrewAttack. As ever, Advantage Members can watch it starting now.
ALSO: As announced in the episode-proper, Episode 76 will be our first ever "ASK IVAN" installment, wherein fan and viewer mail will be answered by Ivan the Intern. You can ask your question in the ScrewAttack comments page or the comments here (leave some form of name, anonymous questions will not be answered) concerning games, pop culture or anything else you'd want to Ask Ivan about.
Stay tuned for the episode for more details.
ALSO: As announced in the episode-proper, Episode 76 will be our first ever "ASK IVAN" installment, wherein fan and viewer mail will be answered by Ivan the Intern. You can ask your question in the ScrewAttack comments page or the comments here (leave some form of name, anonymous questions will not be answered) concerning games, pop culture or anything else you'd want to Ask Ivan about.
Stay tuned for the episode for more details.
Monday, 10 September 2012
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
EPISODE 74: "Rusty Pipes"
A few weeks ago, my colleague Jim Sterling did a video on what he so as the waning (or, at least, "water-treading") state of the Super Mario Bros. franchise which, along with a general sense of "I've gotta get to this at some point" regarding the matter, inspired me to undertake this episode... which is NOW SHOWING on ScrewAttack!
ALSO! The "wraparound" segmentsof this episode includes, among other things, a Golden Age enemy, my terrible impression of Sean Connery and the ultimate reveal of what The AntiThinker's return means for the continuing adventures of The OverThinker.
Embedded video (and SPOILER TALK) after the jump:
SPOILERS BELOW
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So... "gotcha," I guess. The AntiThinker WAS back... for about five minutes. I've been planning this bit, broadly, since before shooting wrapped on "War of The Thinkers." AntiThinker was always going to go away for at least two "arcs," then come back but in an unexpected context. Not long after that, the notion of adding "evil robot" ("RoboThinker," who you'll probably see in the metallic flesh next episode time permitting) to the evolving bad guy character-roster (alongside "ninja" and "demon") and "Terminator parody" seemed like a logical way to go about doing it.
THEN it occured to me that A.) I hadn't really done a Dragonball Z parody yet, either, and it seemed like a natural fit for the show; B.) DBZ's Androids/Future-Trunks/Cell episodes WERE a Terminator riff and C.) a version of The OverThinker in Trunks' purple hair, blue coat and sword ensemble would (hopefully) be inherently funny... it was suddenly an obvious manuever: Let "OmegaThinker's" debut be taking out AntiThinker in a parody/recreation of the "Oh no not MORE Frieza epis-OH! Frieza's DEAD just like that!?" debut DBZ gave Trunks.
ALSO! The "wraparound" segmentsof this episode includes, among other things, a Golden Age enemy, my terrible impression of Sean Connery and the ultimate reveal of what The AntiThinker's return means for the continuing adventures of The OverThinker.
Embedded video (and SPOILER TALK) after the jump:
SPOILERS BELOW
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So... "gotcha," I guess. The AntiThinker WAS back... for about five minutes. I've been planning this bit, broadly, since before shooting wrapped on "War of The Thinkers." AntiThinker was always going to go away for at least two "arcs," then come back but in an unexpected context. Not long after that, the notion of adding "evil robot" ("RoboThinker," who you'll probably see in the metallic flesh next episode time permitting) to the evolving bad guy character-roster (alongside "ninja" and "demon") and "Terminator parody" seemed like a logical way to go about doing it.
THEN it occured to me that A.) I hadn't really done a Dragonball Z parody yet, either, and it seemed like a natural fit for the show; B.) DBZ's Androids/Future-Trunks/Cell episodes WERE a Terminator riff and C.) a version of The OverThinker in Trunks' purple hair, blue coat and sword ensemble would (hopefully) be inherently funny... it was suddenly an obvious manuever: Let "OmegaThinker's" debut be taking out AntiThinker in a parody/recreation of the "Oh no not MORE Frieza epis-OH! Frieza's DEAD just like that!?" debut DBZ gave Trunks.
What Is Sony's "Console Wars" Movie?
Sony Pictures, you may have heard, has bought up a bunch of domain names relating to a movie project called "Console Wars." Yesterday, HitFix's Kris Tapley ambiguously tweeted that he'd heard of the project before and described it as "The Social Network" but for video-games.
So... a non-fiction drama about corporate-rivalry in the video game world? Interesting. But what would it be about - which "war" are we talking about?
It would be almost comically cynical and gauche for Sony to make a movie about a business they are one of the three major players IN - even in a "names changed" fictionalized version everyone would be able to tell which one is supposed to be Playstation, making it impossible not to be looking for moments of self-aggrandizement. Also, the movie would probably be current-gen because that's when the mainstream audience/press started caring about the games industry... and most of the "drama" in Generation 7 has involved Sony tripping over it's own shoes in some way.
I'll get called "biased" for this, but the only remotely movie-worthy console-biz story of Gen7 is the Wii: a company that used to be on top, now struggling on the verge of collapse, making a hail-mary pass that everyone says is insane and will fail based largely on the ideas of it's chief creative guy (Miyamoto as Billy Beane from "Moneyball," basically) ...only to see it become a giant restorative success. Like The Wii or not, that's the story.
The "Great" Console War, of course, was Nintendo vs Sega in the 80s and 90s (back when consoles actually had totally different sets of games and such) but I agree with Devin at BAD that it'd be hugely unlikely for Sony Pictures to be so gun-ho to make an 80s period piece featuring almost-exclusively Japanese actors.
That said, if Sony really does want to make a movie about the game business where their brand gets to be the underdog turned conquering hero, the "birth of the Playstation" would be the way to go: Screwed-over in a VERY public and humiliating way by the industry's top dogs, turning the remains of that screw-over into thier own brand, ultimately getting-over on aforementioned top-dog by innovating where they refused to? That's a movie. On the down side, there's no way Nintendo is going to agree to let their logos, names, products etc. be seen in that movie; which you'd kind of need...
So... a non-fiction drama about corporate-rivalry in the video game world? Interesting. But what would it be about - which "war" are we talking about?
It would be almost comically cynical and gauche for Sony to make a movie about a business they are one of the three major players IN - even in a "names changed" fictionalized version everyone would be able to tell which one is supposed to be Playstation, making it impossible not to be looking for moments of self-aggrandizement. Also, the movie would probably be current-gen because that's when the mainstream audience/press started caring about the games industry... and most of the "drama" in Generation 7 has involved Sony tripping over it's own shoes in some way.
I'll get called "biased" for this, but the only remotely movie-worthy console-biz story of Gen7 is the Wii: a company that used to be on top, now struggling on the verge of collapse, making a hail-mary pass that everyone says is insane and will fail based largely on the ideas of it's chief creative guy (Miyamoto as Billy Beane from "Moneyball," basically) ...only to see it become a giant restorative success. Like The Wii or not, that's the story.
The "Great" Console War, of course, was Nintendo vs Sega in the 80s and 90s (back when consoles actually had totally different sets of games and such) but I agree with Devin at BAD that it'd be hugely unlikely for Sony Pictures to be so gun-ho to make an 80s period piece featuring almost-exclusively Japanese actors.
That said, if Sony really does want to make a movie about the game business where their brand gets to be the underdog turned conquering hero, the "birth of the Playstation" would be the way to go: Screwed-over in a VERY public and humiliating way by the industry's top dogs, turning the remains of that screw-over into thier own brand, ultimately getting-over on aforementioned top-dog by innovating where they refused to? That's a movie. On the down side, there's no way Nintendo is going to agree to let their logos, names, products etc. be seen in that movie; which you'd kind of need...
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