- Real quick, and as mentioned previously, I saw Superman in glorious HD last night, and it was pretty awesome. But what made it particularly enjoyable was enjoying a slice of left over birthday cake while watching it, which was Superman themed of course. I got Supe’s chin! Anyway, like many films I’ve re-watched in HD, not only did it look amazing, but it sounded awesome as well. The theme to Krypton never sounded better! As did his scream at the end, and I don’t care how cheesy and illogical him turning back time was, its still one of the all time-time greatest super hero/movie moments ever (right up there with Batman driving the Batmobile with Vicki Vale next to him, right after the awesome alleway fight in the first Tim Burton flick, or the Spiderman trying to stop the runaway train after his fight with Doc Ock).
Oh, and we also watched some scenes from Mutiny on the Bounty, the opening to one of the musical episodes of Xena, a bit or Rosemarie’s Baby, and South Park, which I really enjoyed, not because it dealt with the Wii, but because of the Buck Rogers parody (hearing that theme again was pretty intense… I was a HUGE fan of the show growing up in Korea). We were also supposed to start season 2 of Slings and Arrows, but Arrested Development was on, and it was getting late for me…
- So yeah, this is finally it… the home stretch. The PlayStation 3 is officially a little over a week away. And I gotta say, I’m pretty excited about it, even if its at purely at the level of morbid curiosity. I know I always say it, but I’ve been super busy, so I haven’t been able to keep abreast of the finer details, but last I heard, Sony had to lessen the number of units available for the Japanese launch by 20%, though Sony has stated that it won’t affect the American launch. Speaking of, I also heard that everyone who pre-ordered the system online through Best Buy had their cancelled, which has to suck, even with the $10 digital coupon. But hey, that means an extra ten bucks for whatever other Wii game disgruntled gamer may be tempted to pick up!
Meanwhile, in the “real world”, people are already camping out for the system. Crazy isn’t it? I can also think of a few other terms to describe the act. I wonder if any of those folks have read this “helpful” guide?
My take on all the pre-launch day madness, primarily the camping out part, is that its kinda retarded, at least how its done today, primarily because its expected. I recall as a kid seeing pictures from EGM and Nintendo Power of Japanese high school students and businessmen that have been online all night for a copy of Dragon Quest 3 of Final Fantasy 2 and thinking that was ultra rad (mind you, this was back when the term “rad” was commonly used). But it was awesome because it all spontaneous and unscripted. Now pre-launch camp outs are expected and pre-planned, primarily by companies that just want yet another means of grabbing headlines (hence why all those bullshit shortages are totally what companies like Sony want in the end, obviously).
But hey, it’s working! Virtually everyone I know cannot stop talking about the PS3 launch. Almost no one I know was able to secure a pre-order, so mostly its talk about “strategies” in terms of how they were going to get one, and where. And of the folks I know who managed to supposedly get money down on one, every single person with the exception of one plans of selling it on eBay for a handsome profit. Katie’s friend Drew has that exact plan, and at first I have him shit since I just think its a dumb thing to do, but hey, is people are willing to pay $1200 for the damn thing… plus, Drew’s a college student, and he could really use the money.
- Speaking of, I guess the one question that everyone has been asking is if I’ve pre-order a Wii or not. And the answer is no… simply because its all so unnecessary. One would have to assume that Nintendo is set to console those who can’t get ahold of a PS3 (figuratively and literally!), though it was nice to hear Nintendo state that 4 million of the units will be on-hand on day one since it helped to alleviate my recently increasing last minute excitement/anxiety over its launch. And again, despite my attitude towards standing out in the cold all night for a video game system, I just may end up going to the big Wii event at the Toys R Us in Times Square, at least to be on-hand as a reporter, to offer an account for GameSetWatch. Though I’m also tempted to do the same for the PS3, if only to witness people literally bash each other’s brains out in the middle of the street for the few systems that will be available. Though back to the Wii, I may just hang out at Times Square all night and just go to the Nintendo Store just a few block away since, as also expected, they will have more than enough available.
- Plus, also courtesy of Joystiq, here’s something which I never got the chance to address before, and even though its really old news, I know not everyone out there frequents video game message boards and news sites, so maybe it’ll be new news, plus Joystiq also made a rather handy chart: here’s a list of all the virtual console games at launch, and listed by region. Again, its hardly surprising to see it be so skimpy (hey, Nintendo’s still making a killing with old SNES re-releases for the GBA, hence why that section is so anemic), though I have to wonder why Gradius didn’t make it stateside. Oh well… glad I have a real copy and the actual system! But it means that playing Recca on a television seems more of an impossibility than ever (though I could always just hack my Xbox, but I’m sorta busy for that right now).
As for Sega’s line-up, its nice and boring. Hey, at least Gunstar Heroes is present! Though unfortunately for Dave, Shadow Dancer isn’t.
- Sticking with Sega for just one sec, a certain early build of Sonic 2 seems to have surfaced. I haven’t had a chance to check it out, but this just might be the version that was featured in an episode of Nick Arcade oh so many years ago (for those who have no idea what I’m talking about). I was so into the game at the time of its release and remember obsessing over the minute differences between what I saw in preview screenshots courtesy of game mags and the final product, so I was literally freaking out when I saw what was obviously a pre-release build on television (as well as hearing music from Sonic 1). Plus it also featured Melissa Joan Heart, who I had a MAJOR crush on at the time.
- Back to the PS3, it seems that the system (well, at least debug units) are finally getting in the hands of journalists, and as expected, folks who had at first written it off are all of sudden declaring it as God’s greatest gift to us since Jesus. Which might very well be true, though some are just saying that their opinions are just either being bought by Sony’s gold, or they just want to be bragarts about it. Meanwhile, those who seem to be extremely critical have been accused of expressing sour grapes for not having one.
I’ll admit it; I hate the PS3 primarily because I wasn’t able to get (a free) one!
And since I don’t watch TV anymore really, maybe everyone’s seen them, but for those who missed it, here’s one of the new ads for the system. I guess the “red e” is back? They should have brought back the purple polygon head back as well.
- Another bit of pretty old news: production on the Halo movie has officially stopped. Last month Fox and Universal, the film’s original financiers, backed out. Then Microsoft said that they would fund the entire project themselves, and even equated the Halo motion picture as an independent film (which it technically would be), but now that pull has been pulled. And its a shame really, since I was actually really looking forward to Neill Blomkamp’s feature film debut. It just seemed with him and Peter Jackson the chance of an exemplarily movie based on a game was totally possible.
Then shortly after came word that another live action movie based on the Street Fighter franchise is apparently underway, this one only focusing on Chun Li. Ummm… no. The gold rules is the more characters represented the better, since that means less time to dwell upon the fact how one dimensional the character is when you can simply move onto the next one, especially if they’re from a fighting game.
- The next phase of Microsoft’s strategy is allow people to download movies and television shows onto their 360s. The only real plus side (or negative, depending on your point of view) is that it further cements the possibility that there just might be no real winner to the format wars. Though one has to wonder how well buying and storing movies is going to work considering the relatively skimpy hard drive on the system.
The move also prompted Sony to make their asinine statement for that day:
“PlayStation 3′s content is designed for everyone to enjoy right out of the box, no matter which configuration you purchase. We would never segregate or shut out any of our consumers from our entertainment experience because they didn’t buy the top of the line system. Both PlayStation 3 versions available on November 17 include hard drives for downloading content.”
Sometimes I wish they would really just shut up.
- Though aside from Nintendo, Sony, and MS making all the headlines, the juiciest scandal going on right now is that Tomonobu Itagaki, the man in charge of Team Ninja, and responsible for the Dead Or Alive series of games, which has constantly pushed both boob bouncing physics forward while also pushing the portrayal of women further back into the stone age has been slapped with a sexual harassment suit in Japan. This thread at Insert Credit has the details, and as I already stated there, women already have it so shitty in Japan, ESPECIALLY in the corporate structure, that it must have been unbelievably bad for the accuser to make a stand like this (either that or she just didn’t want to take any shit, and in either case, good for her).
- Also via the IC forums (from the resident crazy Brit who’s brain due to his obsessing over Sonic furry-centric fanbase to exact… but I say that because I love you James!), comes word of a game that’s more or less the predecessor to Rez for the Commodore 64, Deus Ex Machina.
- But real best thing to come from the IC all week…. aside from the still mysterious “Scarface123″‘s latest Photoshop message to myself that is…. is a totally awesome thread that chronicles a bunch folks adventures in the game that I totally fucking love to hate, Second Life (NSFW btw). It’s chock full of pics, and here’s pretty much one of the few that doesn’t feature naked people covered in blood (and totally nude), furries, anime, bad 9/11 memorials, urination, discarded genitalia, or David Blane frozen in a block of ice; just a bunch of folks sitting around watching Oprah…
- Oh, and check out this vid from the game featuring POKEMANS!
- And here’s the trailer for the new Burger King Xbox/Xbox 360 game, Sneak King. Am I going to get it? Fuck yeah! It’s only $4, plus I still like their chicken sandwiches.
- Time for a speed run vid, this one featuring a Super Mario Bros hack called Air which I’ve mentioned in the past. It’s pretty crazy!
- This is something that I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of in the near future: its AiLive, and it’s tools for those who are making Wii games. Check out how it works as well as a pair of case studies.
- So I received my copy of GTA: Vice City Stories in the mail last week, though once again, been too busy to crack it open. Though now I’m more interested in PC versions of the games due to all the modding that’s been going on (and not because of Hot Coffee, believe it or not). Take this mod for Vice City that adds zombies for example (which I know has been around for a while, but I just found out about recently). The idea of Miami Vice meeting Resident Evil sounds like too much fun, and I’m assuming both MK and Katie would love a piece of that action as well (MK because she loves zombies and Katie because she loves Tubbs…. I really wish I had a link to that Tribute to Tubbs YouTube vid that Drew made handy).
- Xyanide, the Xbox shmup that no one bought or even noticed (except for me of course!) is getting a sequel on the PSP?
- And lastly, Robin just told me that Gamestops are no longer accepting pre-orders for Twilight Princess for the Cube. The reason? “Something about extremely limited quantities from Nintendo.” And… oh boy, here we go again. But the thing is, this really isn’t Nintendo’s style. Robin also read my mind when he wondered if this might turn into another Panzer Dragoon Saga episode.
For a while now there’s been debate whether Nintendo was actually going to release the game for the Cube. We’ve already lost Super Paper Mario, but to loose Zelda would really, really suck (and yes, I plan on having both versions, commence pointing and laughing… I’m just a HUGE Zelda fanboy). And even though Nintendo has stated that it was still coming out the last time the rumor of its cancellation popped up (which was only a few weeks ago too), they could just release 50 copies and go “See, we did release it!”
Anyway, here’s hoping Nintendo doesn’t go all Sega on us.
