Two Big Revelations

A clearer and somewhat contradictory picture of new Street Fighter Hakan surfaced today. The Arab fighter is now Turkish and instead of being a white haired, dark skinned version of Abel he now has a mustache. I've always said that we need more mustaches in video games. Sure Mario has a mustache and he's the biggest character in video games but still: you can never have too many mustaches.

The picture is pixely, its blurry, it looks like someone took a cellphone camera to take a pic of a non-HD screen but that's beside the point. From what I can tell he looks badass and a welcome addition to the roster. I might complain a lot about this game but the now six new characters (Abel, Viper, Fuerte, Rufus, Juri and Hakan) all turned out pretty good.

And the second announcement: Power Girl is coming to DCU online. When I think of Power Girl one thing comes to mind: Boob Window. I don't really like the character and thats probably the main reason why, the boob window seems too gratuitous, too unnecessary even in a medium (comics) in which females are typically represented wearing next to nothing. The fact that Power Girl has a rack that can only lead to back problems and a mom haircut doesn't help either.

Honestly, she looks like needs to put some jeans and a polo on and drive Supergirl to soccer practice. Kotaku says that Power Girl is a counterpart to Supergirl but she looks more like her mom, I guess she was created for those nerds who are more into cougars. I don't play DCU online so they the announcement means nothing to me, still thought I'd share.

More Power Girl pics at Kotaku
Full story on Hakan at Hadoken

Tetris! in First Person!

Well prepare to get nauseous. Someone has finally taken Tetris and made it into a first person game. Now this doesn't mean you'll be maneuvering a figure composed of four squares through an urban warfare setting armed only with a gun and the knowledge that you can always respawn. No, it means that now its the screen doing the rotating and not the figure.

It's fun, sure, but it also makes you want to throw up. The upside? well its a new spin to Tetris and its free to play. It's not available on a console or iphone (yet) all you have to do is go to the following link. It'll transport you to a magical place in which TV screens were still square, the NES was the balls and Maxell had the recordable VHS market cornered.

First Person Tetris

Fuck Yeah

Great meme...or the greatest meme?

Happy New Year!

And a happy new year to all! this is not the time to talk about how quickly this decade, let alone this year, passed by. It did for sure but tonight is not the time to talk about it. No tonight is a time to celebrate in style.

And for me that means a night spent with some Carlsberg, Rockband, the Girlfriend and possibly Inglourious Basterds on Blu Ray. Indeed I am not one to go out and socialize throughout the year so I'm not about to start doing so at the end of the year. It also means a continuation of the tradition of going in to work the next day with a hangover.

As for the blog...its been a good nine months hasn't it? sure we continuously fluctuate between actual reviews of old video games (the object of the blog after all), Street fighter praise and nonsensical diatribes regarding a fictitious character killing off a skull balaclava wearing homie of mine but that's all part of the fun. Do I dare make any promises as to whats coming up in 2010? I do not, mainly because I have no idea what's coming up in 2010.

That's it for now. Happy 2010.

For my Homie

Let me take a moment to pour some of my 40 on the curb for my homie Ghost. Today while on assignment in an estate looking for information on a known terrorist in Russia we were both gunned down by a fucking traitor who then proceeded to steal our information and burn us alive with gasoline. To add insult to injury he lighted the fire using his cigar. Fucking ponce.

Ghost was a consummate badass who saved my life a couple of times and led us to success in more than a few missions. His impeccable leadership and knowledge of computers and jails got us through that crazy stage where we broke a bloke out of prison. His trademark skull mask scared the shit out of enemy combatants. Fuck he even has his own comic book! but now he's dead and he's (probably) not coming back.

Motherfuck that Shepherd guy. Now I'm gonna have to kill him.

Loser of the Week: Time Magazine. You named Ben Bernanke the person of the year? why? for not fucking up the economy even more? I thought his job was to fix this thing, it doesn't look like its getting fixed. Well unless you're a Wall Street CEO who's bonus is protected by the government. Good job Time Magazine, just two years ago you picked another consummate badass (Putin), last year you picked the most powerful man in the world (Obama) and this year you pick some moron. You shoulda picked the guys who created Twitter but you pussied out.

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is watching you masturbate play video games. In hindsight everything that Tiger Woods touched now seems inappropriate, ironic, and out of place. I downloaded this theme a long time ago and never actually used it but now there is no way I don't do it.

In related news EA has announced that they will do absolutely nothing regarding the use of Tiger Wood's in their golf game (Tiger Woods PGA Tour or some shit). This will likely be a dealbreaker for any casual fans who just might feel like playing Golf on the Xbox. I'm sure there are a few diehards out there who camp out every year to get the new Tiger Woods who will surely do the same next year but for the normal gamer? just seems like the inclusion of the adulterer would be toxic for the game.

Jumping Tigers

I have no idea what is happening here but this picture is absolutely amazing. Apparently its from a Dynasty Warriors spin off, to be precise its from the most awesome Dynasty Warriors spin off ever. Yes its a fucking jumping tiger.

Let us now expand on this topic. I've never actually played a Dynasty Warriors game even though the franchise now includes at least seven or eight games. I suppose it came out during the odd time when the PS1 was the balls and could get away with mass pixelation. Sure the newer games look better but if that wasn't enough of a turn off then the fact that its some sort of strategy clusterfuck really ruins the whole thing. I like to think that it's Final Fantasy using non-copyrightable historical figures.

The art ranges from good to passable generic Tekken copy. Don't get me started on Tekken either. The gameplay I dare not comment on as I'm sure it has its legions of fans. Still that tiger up there is really something to think about.

A Downward Spiral

The visual identity of electronics, of anything really, is of paramount importance if a company wishes to create even a modicum of brand identity in its potential customers. Hence we get stories of how Steve Jobs designs everything around a new apple release, we see official guidelines that companies put out dictating how their visuals have to be handled and so on.

The objective is to engrain an image into the consumer's mind so that as soon as a brand is named (or read or whatever) there is an instant visual accompanying it. Think of the Wii and you think of the odd remote, the over reliance on white. Think of an iPod and you think of white headphones and those shadow commercials they use to run. Think of Playstation and you instantly picture oppression and the long used PS logo. What about the Xbox?

Simple right? the green gash that was used for the original Xbox. When its laid out in black its the original, for the 360 Microsoft paired it with white. You put the gash in a globe, add some nice colors and font and you get the Xbox 360 logo. A pretty, Web 2.0 identity that says "yes we're for hardcore gamers but we also care about families, we're not oppressive oligarchs like Sony but we're not pussies like Nintendo".

But the thing is that was not the original Xbox 360 logo. When it was released the overlying visual was the psychotropic, green-yellow-white-blue, moving, mind fuck spiral. When the 360 was released in 2005 Microsoft had that spiral everywhere, but after some time (and I couldn't tell you when) it went away, replaced by the sphere and the wordmark. Sure its still used today but its hardly the primary mark. So why did it went away? some thoughts below.

Firstly the spiral is impossible to reproduce, especially on a small scale. Imagine trying to get that thing on a polo shirt and have every individual strand appear as it does on a computer screen or a piece of paper? its impossible. Any logo needs to be reproduced on all sorts of scaled and the spiral simply does not work. Add to that the huge amount of negative space in it and the fact that that space probably has to be filled with white and you have a logo that is impossible to work with.

The X-gash is not only part of the visual identity but its actually part of the controller, going to it as the main visual simply makes sense from a marketing standpoint. The spiral, at most, is part of the box and the box gets thrown into the trash after you make sure your system works.

Could it also be that a spiral as a video game logo has been done before? specifically by Dreamcast? I suppose. Though the Xbox and the DC's spirals have very little in common, I'd say nothing except for the basic shape and the fact that they both appear on machines that are primarily white in color. The thing is that by 2005 the Dreamcast was obsolete, Sega was out of the hardware business and fear of litigation should have been minimal. It probably was since the Xbox spiral still technically is part of the larger visual package.

The answer is probably a short google search away and its probably not as romantic as the shit I'd like to believe so I'm just going to assume I'm correct in assuming that the logo's uselessness and its similarities to the Sega system ultimately killed it. In the end if I were Microsoft (and I'm not) I would have gone with the one visual that comes to everybody's mind when they think Xbox 360: the Red Ring of Death.

Oh Snap!

KOF meets NBA

Well now I can't decide whether this flickr gallery of mashups of NBA players and King of Fighters is the worst thing ever or the best thing ever. I think I'm gonna go with best.

Let us now count down how this in fact is the best thing to happen to the SNK franchise in years:

-KOF: Maximum Impact brought 3D action to the 2D stalwart. This would be great if it wasn't for the fact that the characters suffered from heavy polygonitis and the gameplay was choppy at best. It also relied heavily on a few new characters who were frankly horrible.

-Bankruptcy in 2001.

-The release of King of Fighters XII with brand new, beautiful sprites. Too bad the game has been universally panned as incomplete and lacking in replay value. That games like Blazblue and Guilty Gear had already taken KOF's 2D throne didn't help, that Street Fighter made a marvelous return with SFIV didn't help either.

-There's a new KOF live action movie coming up with promises to be horrible. It's so bad that it probably already did come out but nobody cared.

Yes, the fact that somebody decided to photoshop Shaq as Chang Koehan (and keep the beard) is definitely the best thing to happen to King of Fighters this decade. Ok, except for the adorable alternate costume Leona had in Maximum Impact.

Princess

Rosalina > Toadstool

Somebody had to say it.

Catherine Says

"The political Liberty of a Citizen is the Peace of Mind arising from the Consciousness, that every Individual enjoys his peculiar Safety; and in order that the People might attain this Liberty, the Laws ought to be so framed, that no one Citizen should stand in Fear of another; but that all of them should stand in Fear of the same Laws."

-Catherine II of Russia

Or not in fear at all. Is it truly necessary for laws to be feared in order for them to be effective? I'd say fear is the necessary consequence of punishment, laws need not be made to punish. That a Citizen would follow a law because it's morally adequate instead of out of fear of retaliation should be the goal of the monarch or any other ruler.

This. Is. Jeopardy

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the U.S Congress not ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) today we present a wallpaper from the SNES version of Jeopardy (the one I derided just one post ago).

I realize that:

• nobody has ever asked for a Jeopardy for the SNES wallpaper and
• I am quickly running out of shit to post

But how can I refute an opportunity to post this picture? Just look at Jim, I cant decide if he looks more like John Hodgman or Max Headroom. All I know is he has a ton of cash, not sure if he won though as there was a woman next to Rob and I did not bother to notice her total when I truncated her from the picture.

Anyway, enjoy the wallpaper and take a moment today to celebrate whatever random occurrence I picked up from wikipedia that I mentioned up there.

This One Goes Out

To the manly, scraggly looking woman who tried to sell me Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday for the SNES yesterday for EIGHT FUCKING DOLLARS. I didn't buy it, obviously, but I found the woman's complete lack of tact to be something noteworthy. So I'm noting it here.

I don't know if the game is any good, all I know is that it's not exactly rare nor famous. It's available on eBay at buy it now for no more than $3 and those are copies that are guaranteed to work. This woman had at least six or seven games on a table (including Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy) along with the yellowest SNES systems and controllers.

She wanted 8 dollars for an open, yellowing, dubious copy of Porky Pig's haunted mansion, a game that features one of the worst Looney Toons characters and probably sucks anyway? I dont think you understand the concept of a Swap Meet. Or of fucking capitalism for that matter.

Seriously lady, what the fuck? I understand you just might find a collector or a desperate parent to sell it to but I've had trouble selling complete PS2 and 360 games for $5 to $10 and you're telling me you want eight dollars for a copy of Porky Pig you probably found in a dumpster outside of a Salvation Army thrift store?

Congratulations you're the reason for this fucking recession.

Fuck Mario

I never realized how much of a cold heartless bastard Mario actually was. Even the Paratroopa is worried. Aaaah look at those eyes! fuck you Mario, you too Luigi.

Found at Link

Low Low Prices

I was at REDACTED today and stumbled across the video game section. Not knowing that they actually carried video games I decided to see if they had any good deals. Man was I in for a surprise! if you're looking for a copy of NHL '07 look no further than REDACTED, its not on sale but as you can see the everyday low price is impossible to pass up.

Ok so $29.99 for a three year old game is not a good deal at all but it gives us a chance to have some fun. By the way, if you look for a bigger reason why REDACTED is gonna go under I wish you good luck. Lets look at some fun facts.

• This game was released on September 26th 2006, which not only means that it just turned three years old, it also means that its been at that store for three years. I'm uncomfortable with anything thats been in a store for that long.
• While Alexander Ovechkin still plays for the Washington Capitals the team no longer wears that particular uniform. Its a great sweater, that I actually own, but its outdated, the Caps went to this design in 2007. The entire league's look was overhauled, in fact, as all teams moved to new Reebok Edge uniforms, most of which were different than in previous years so the Caps arent the only team with an outdated uniform, they're all outdated.
• As of this writing the game is available on Amazon for $2.46 used, and as low as $6.99 new. I actually purchased it last year for $7.98 at Target. There have been three new NHL games since the release of 07 (that would be 08, 09 and the recently released 10), only the latest version of the game is more than $29.99 on Amazon.
• The number one movie the week the game was released was "The Covenant" which I've never heard of and the week after that it was "Gridiron Gang" which, ironically, is on FX right now. The number one single at the time was Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack".
• George W. Bush was still President, the recession has not started, the median price for a home was still on the rise, Italy had just won the 2006 World Cup, Harry Potter had not been concluded yet, Easy Tiger had not been released yet, and Michael Jackson still had a few years to live.

The point of all this nonsense is this. Technology moves much more rapidly now than it did in the past, therefore most technologies become obsolete pretty quickly. Nothing has a steeper depreciation scale than a sports game, this can be easily seen in the quantity and prices of used games at brick and mortar game stores.

The fact that REDACTED still has this game at or near the original price speaks volumes of exactly how much this store is disconnected from reality. If they cant keep control of their inventories (because this game should have been gone long ago) or their prices (because if its still there it needs to be on clearance) then how can we expect them to compete, at least as far as electronics, with stores that do keep track of this stuff?

Catherine Says

"A Man ought to form in his own Mind an exact and clear Idea of what Liberty is. Liberty is the Right of doing whatsoever the Laws allow: And if any one Citizen could do what the Laws forbid, there would be no more Liberty; because others would have an equal Power of doing the same."

-Catherine II of Russia

Sounds about right.

I'mma let you finish

Dont mind me, just adding to the Zeitgeist.

Catherine Says

"No Man ought to be looked upon as guilty, before he has received his judicial Sentence; nor can the Laws deprive him of their Protection, before it is proved that he has forfeited all Right to it. What Right therefore can Power give to any to inflict Punishment upon a Citizen at a Time, when it is yet dubious, whether he is Innocent or guilty?"

-Catherine II of Russia

What that has to do with video games I dont know. Hey I cant be expected to do all the heavy lifting around here.

We'll be back with actual content tomorrow.

Pour Vous, Sagat

So guess what? apparently Sagat is the most powerful character in Street Fighter 4. This is odd, not only is he not even the boss but he hasnt been the boss since the first Street Fighter game, the one that doesn't even count!

I noticed when I first bought the game that the I had a difficult time beating him on Xbox Live, if not in regular arcade mode, because of his overpowering abilities: he has an uppercut that nullifies air attacks, two different fireballs, a devastating tiger knee, and the most powerful super combo attacks. When I decided to exploit his height to my advantage I found myself unable to get to his side of the screen through a see of tiger fireballs. It was demoralizing and only because he was so strong I've avoided using him.

But a few days ago I ran into a small obstacle: I could not clear the 11th challenge in time attack mode, one which removes all SC attacks, focus attacks and almost every other special move. It's 12 stages long and I was unable to get past the 7th stage with my usual characters (Sakura, Guile, Zangief and Viper), I really wanted that achievement so I decided to see exactly how strong Sagat actually was.

Suffice it to say I only had to play through that whole charade once. He made easy work of Zangief, Blanka, Guile and all the annoying little characters, by today I had gotten that achievement. Now to the crux of this whole thing: its addicting, playing as such a powerful character, which moves that are not so complicated to pull off, who is so overpowering is addictive. I mean just his fuckin kick is delivered with the passion of three men!

And for this I salute you Sagat. You came back. You were humiliated in the first game, scarred in the second, humiliated again by the live action movie but you have since made a proper comeback. I mean shit, you even have action figures devoted to you, vinyls even! You've come a long way baby and its only a matter of time before you become that face of the franchise. You're the Bryant Reeves of the fighting game genre.

The Accidental Video Game Porn Archive

This website is why user generated content on the Internet rocks. Fuck, I cant even imagine the days of the AOL walled garden or the days before blogs, myspace, facebook, rss readers and so on.

The accidental video game porn archive is a site that would not have been possible in those days, not only because of the difficulty of starting your own website but also dealing with limited technology that made gathering pictures, videos and so on impossible.

But this is no longer the case and now we are able to take old video games (which this blogger loves, obviously) and meticulously gather all the instances in which pornography accidentaly takes place in them.

The results are amazing, and they are grouped into handy categories depending on what type of pornography is occurring. The owner has also made life easier on us by separating each instance by alphabetical order, all served in a layout that is deliciously reminiscent of geocities.

The archive is huge, it includes situations from old games, new games, games we love, games we dont, games we've reviewed and even some that make this blogger very uncomfortable. Its a fucking cornucopia of awesome.

Check out tons more right here:
The Accidental Video Game Porn Archive