September 2007 Archives

Unlike last year's Mew Day, this Pokemon Event was a piece of cake.

As hoped, the whole affair was run by WiFi download. Although most people showed up expecting a line, so they didn't know where to go. The largest clusters formed around this instructional sign and over by the RZone checkout (where they were handing out the $5 coupons.) Follow the Mystery Gift instructions and bammo, everybody gets a Manaphy. Then we all run right home and breed a Phione.

Obviously most of the people there did not have Battle Revolution (and Nintendo must know it, because there was Battle Rev signage EVERYWHERE) because the Mystery Gift menu was totally unknown. The whole Wonder Card thing is woefully under-reported. Where's the Nintendo Power two page spread explaining how you download, what kinds of gifts you can download, and where you have to go to download? Nowhere, that's where... because it would absolutely kill Nintendo to have to admit that they have all kinds of secret things hidden in these games, to be revealed only at special events to be named later. Or never.

Eh, I'm still bitter about Animal Crossing, leave me alone.

The Geoffrey birthday party stuff kicked off at noon. Yeah, Nickelodeon! Bend that air!

Free instruments for the kids. Clark picked the same kind as last year.

Here's the big bonus.

If you've ever been to any kind of organized Pokemon event, you've probably seen the little Pokemon Fan magazines they give away. They're cute little adver-mags, occasionally about selected Poke-fans, mostly about tips and tricks for the games (video and TCG), and always about the latest merchandise for sale.

The mag's article on Battle Revolution has a secret code in it to transfer an Electivire into your Pearl/Diamond. It's the same code that's on the official website, as if you check there with any regularity. I imagine this will show up in Nintendo Power as well. Since Battle Rev doesn't have any kind of obvious "ENTER SECRIT CODEZ HERE" screen, you have to input the code on your profile page.

And by the way, you can find the dash on the WXYZ button. Thanks again for not including a real bloody soft keyboard, Nintendo!

As with the Surfing Pikachu and Manaphy itself, the Electivire comes through as a Wonder Card, meaning that I now have the maximum of three. I assume I can just dump one of them, now that I have all of those guys in my game.

Can Battle Rev generate Surfing Pikachus and Electivires for other copies of Diamond/Pearl, other than the one that is paired to the game? I would bet not - why would Nintendo allow everyWii to become a Surfing Pikachu generator - but I'm definitely going to test it out.

Hilariously, both the website and Pokemon Fan promise to have a new code "next month"... and it's purportedly "hot." Guess what that will be. COUGH*magmortar.

Anyway, this sure is easier than finding those stupid rare items that evolve Electabuzz and Magmar. I figured that you'd have to play Battle Rev for a million days to generate enough in-game money to buy them.

This totally validates my Battle Revolution purchase, by the way.

So what are they going to give away at next year's event (assuming there is one)? Darkrai? Ho-oh/Lugia? Raikou/Entei/Suicune? Deoxys?

Suggestive Doodles (YouTube)
Remember, it's only dirty if you think it's dirty.

GameStop manager suspended after 'games for grades' policy (local news site)
The dipass manager who unilaterally decided that he would not sell product to kids unless their parents vouched for their good grades has been tossed. Look buddy, if you want to climb on your moral high horse, working at the Peon+1 level inside the corporate moneymaking machine is not the place to do it.

And also, I am going to open a store where I will not sell you NASCAR memorabilia unless I can punch you in the face.

Tytla animation art for sale (Cartoon Brew)
An original cel of Chernabog from Fantasia is expected to sell at auction for only $800?!?! WTF.

30 Years of Very Stupid D&D Monsters (Head Injury Theater)
I haven't thought about the Gelatinous Cube in forever.

Halo 3 Fuck-upWatch!: Halo 3 Disc Read Errors Rampant (Kotaku) / Xbox Live Coughing, Spluttering Under Weight Of Halo 3 (Kotaku) / Microsoft Replacing Scratched Halo 3 Discs (Kotaku) / Fifty Minutes to Glitch (Aeropause)
Good to see that Microsoft was totally prepared for their huge Biggest Day in Entertainment launch. Bigger than Spider-Man! Bigger than Harry Potter!

The Halo Haters have already been over this, but $170 million divided by $60 comes out to a generously rounded 3 million games. Still, that's 3 million games in one day, which is huge and no other game has ever done that... but that's nothing compared to how many people saw Spider-Man 3 on opening weekend (something like 15 million) or bought Harry Potter 7 on release day (8 million).

3 million copies means that roughly 40% of 360 owners in the US thought the game was important enough to buy on launch day. Again, huge. But, as this is THE GAME for the 360, that's to be expected. I'm surprised it's not a higher percentage, actually.

You can go to The Truth and see what a best-selling video game really looks like. Halo 3 has a looooong way to go before it cracks the top 20 best-selling video games of all time. It even has a pile to climb to get inside the top 20 best-selling franchises of all time.

Microsoft is spinning a disengenous tale with their PR, although I can't imagine any game publisher who wouldn't do the same. It's just a shame that Moron News Media latches on to the simplistic blurb - "Xbox Game Outsells Everything!" - and sidesteps the proper context. But, anything to pitch a story that leads with "Boy, aren't gamers weird! You won't believe this..."

It's that time of year again. Time to pass judgement on the fall/winter release schedule and decide where to put my gaming dollars.

Oh yeah:

Ratchet & Clank Future (10/23) PS3
Yes, I know I was uncharacteristically hard on the third R&C game. The summary of that is, if you're going to spit out a new game every year, you have to work even harder to ramp it up or people are going to get bored. Nevertheless, it's been three years since I've played Ratchet & Clank, and I'm ready for it again. There's a demo coming next month that could make or break this purchase, but I'm betting R&CF will be worthwhile, gorgeous, and one of the top PS3 games to date.

Super Mario Galaxy (11/12) Wii
I loved Sunshine. I'm going to love Galaxy. I'm really interested in the two-player mode. (By the way, is anybody else hoping for the next step to be a Mario Universe MMORPG where, in addition to loads of missions in the 64 style, you can easily pick up multiplayer matches of Kart, Tennis, Golf, Strikers and Party, all in one game?)

Harvey Birdman (11/13) Wii
Gah, why is this landing on the day after Galaxy? I really want it (and it's sort of bargain priced at $40) but I may be too occupied to seek it out.

Rock Band (11/20) PS3
I need to go pre-order the $200 bundle box. Like, right away. If EB's pricing is to be believed, the bundle effectively nets you the microphone for free... although the $30 price tag for a goddamn USB mic is a losing proposition anyway. I hope the separately-packaged guitar looks different from the bundled one, so that when I do hire a bassman, the groupies know who to ignore.

Smash Bros Brawl (12/03) Wii
The Wii Game of the Year.

The Stragglers:

Rule of Rose PS2
Lately I've been trying to grab one of these for cheap on eBay, but I keep losing out.

Drawn to Life DS
This may be the game I get with the $5 coupon I'm going to receive as part of this Saturday's Pokemon Manaphy Download Day at Toys R Us. I know you're dying to see that weblog write-up come to pass.

Ouendan 2 DS
I still haven't ordered this from Play-Asia. Here's why: whenever you order from them, you get a $5 coupon off your next order of $50. At the moment, there's nothing else I want to get, so I don't want to buy Ouendan 2 and than have a $5 coupon that I won't use. Is that crazy? (Maybe I'll go for that nutty witch-touching game...)

Would Consider:

Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (10/01) DS
I'm going to end up with this at some point, I just doubt I'll rush out on day one. I have not bought a DS game since Pokemon Pearl came out in April and I've barely played anything on the DS besides Pokemon Pearl. And I'm still playing Pokemon Pearl. It makes me not want to play anything else.

Chibo-Robo: Park Patrol (10/02) DS
Waiting for reviews. Last I heard, this poor misbegotten GameCube refugee was becoming a Wal-Mart exclusive... which cannot be a good thing.

Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck (10/09) DS
Is there any hope of this game being as good as I want it to be? Using the stylus, you're the jerkball animator screwing with Daffy Duck! This could be so cool, but I have a feeling it's just going to be a complicated way to trigger crappy mini-games.

Zack & Wiki (10/16) Wii
Probably right up my alley, but there it sits in the Shadow of Galaxy. Shift this one to November; no one is going to see it here.

The Eye of Judgement (10/23) PS3
Definitely right up my alley, but I think I have to avoid it for as long as I can.

Namco Museum Remix (10/23) Wii
Mappy. But I'll wait for the sale bin.

The Simpsons Game (10/30) PS3
The release date makes me think there's another stupid Treehouse of Horror thing going on.

Ontamarama (10/30) DS
Another cool-sounding rhythm game... I need to get Ouendan 2 first.

Manhunt 2 (10/31) Wii
After all the nonsense, I want it just to prove a point. Seems more like a February kind of game though.

Dementium: The Ward (10/31) DS
I'm interested, but not convinced yet.

Half-Life 2: Orange Box (11/13) PS3
I really like the look of Team Fortress 2.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (11/20) PS3
The preview trailer looked good, but right now it still feels like another Good Because Sony Says So game, like Heavenly Sword and Lair.

Trauma Center: New Blood (11/30) Wii
I really want to see how the two player stuff works. I wonder if one doctor can use the Remote to mop the brow of the other one.

So that's my picks for the rest of 2007. I haven't ventured much beyond that, except to dream about GTA4 and MGS4... and you can bet those will be day one grabs.

Let's just get excited about this right now.

Nintendo World Report and 1UP are reporting that the next Fatal Frame game is coming to Wii.

First of all, I'm just thrilled that Fatal Frame 4 exists. Regardless of platform. They could do it as a PS2 game and I'd be there for it. But obviously Tecmo is going with Wii because they want to take advantage of the Remote controls.

Theory time.

The possibility exists that Fatal Frame Wii will be a huge departure from the franchise thus far. Maybe all third-person to simplify the controls. Maybe it's Fatal Frame: the Mini-Game Collection. But I'll be an uber-fan and assume that FF4 will arrive largely similar to the current Fatal Frame formula.

The news reports seem to be sure about Four, rather than a port of any of the previous games (although I'd buy Wii-ified versions of those as well... can you dig a Fatal Frame trilogy disk that included all the games, strung into one long narrative?). So we're likely getting a new, original Fatal Frame story. Although I can probably assure you that it will involve some kind of ancient maiming ritual and a camera that channels psychic energy. However, I would be surprised to see it land as "Fatal Frame 4"... I should think they would start a new brand so as not to ward off Wii owners who have never heard of the first three games in the series. Something like "Fatal Frame: Numberless Subtitle With Camera-Related Pun."

So what about that waggle? Historically, Fatal Frame is a third person adventure/exploration game with first person combat controls. Naturally, the Remote would handle the first person bits by pointing and gesturing.

But the Remote seems more like a flashlight when you hold it... what if you have to enter camera mode by shifting the Remote to a fully upright position, as if you're hoisting the side of a big, box-style camera? Your Nunchuk hand would probably automatically pair with your Remote hand, so it would feel like you're actually holding the famed Camera Obscura. Of course, this means the pointer of the Remote is looking at the ceiling, so we'd have to rely solely on motion sensing to change the camera's onscreen viewfinder. Point the Remote back at the screen and you leave combat controls and your right hand returns to a flashlight for third person.

The game could also take a well-deserved page from Resident Evil 4 and run the third person sections as over-the-shoulder (which is better for a pointing-Remote-flashlight anyway). Fatal Frame obviously owes quite a bit to the original-flavor RE games, so there is no shame in continuing to follow suit.

Shaking the Remote would break you out of a ghost's grip, that seems easy enough. Maybe even cause the character's arms to flail wildly (remember, Fatal Frame is not about competent, professional ghost-hunters; it's about average people trying to survive), so you could get through a fog of bats or a hallway of grasping ropes with minimal damage.

How about shaking the Nunchuk to cause gentle tingly bells to ring?

The Wii also offers possibilities outside of the controller. We need to be able to save ghost photos to our Wii Message Center and send them to other Wii owners.

We need to be able to save ghost photos to our Wii Message Center and send them to other Wii owners. Do I have to say it a third time?

Certain ghost sound effects should come out of the Remote speaker... I thought that was creepy enough in Twilight Princess, imagine it being used in an actual horror game.

I would not be above the game inserting some hidden ghosts (passive spirits who appear only for points, not for combat) that are spectral versions of your Miis.

Fatal Frame 4 should be the first Wii game to use the glowing blue disk slot as part of the game. IE, your camera's ghost-sensing filament. Play in darkness and experience that eerie ice blue lighting up your entire room.

And of course, the biggest FF dream concept: Tecmo should make a special camera-shaped controller. The wireless age of console gaming means that theoretically any stupid controller shape is possible... and far more immersive than a cabled version could allow. (I'm still shocked that Nintendo hasn't marketed a Poke Ball-shaped Remote controller.) Let's go for broke and give this real life Camera Obscura an LCD display and SD card slot, so you can use it even when not playing FF4 to take pictures around your house. Of course, these pictures would mysteriously develop with spirits appearing in the dark shadows of your snaps, just like Japan's cellphone-only Fatal Frame game from a few years back.

I suspect we'll have plenty of time to moon over this. The team tapped for this game is currently on No More Heroes, a bigtime Wii release that isn't out until next year. We're not seeing this Fatal Frame game until 2009.

This is just great. Every comics fan - and even pop culture fans in general - should check this out: "In Search of Steve Ditko," a recent BBC documentary. I heard it about a couple weeks ago, but figured I'd have to watch until it popped up on BBC America or A&E... but it was briefly available on YouTube and I was lucky enough to catch it there.

Ditko, for those of you not into comics, was the original artist on Spider-Man ('62-'66). Whereas Stan Lee came up with the concept and name, Ditko designed the costume, the web-shooters, and within a few issues he was writing the stories wholesale. The question of who created Spider-Man has long been a comics bugaboo, since huckster Stan was billed as the creator and writer since pretty much day one, in spite of Ditko's obvious and lasting contributions. In latter years, Stan yielded some credit back to Ditko, but, as you can see in the documentary, Stan the Man may not necessarily have his heart in that decision.

What makes Ditko such a fascinating subject was that he walked away from the character after some dust-ups with Stan Lee... essentially and intentionally leaving behind untold millions of dollars in merchandising that could have been his. He has refused interviews and appearance requests, and although he has done a few spare pages in the years since his Marvel/DC heyday, he chooses to remain untouchable and unreachable. I hope Marvel is keeping a Ditko war chest somewhere, because although Ditko may be an old crank who turns up his nose to make a point, his heirs may not be of such fortitude.

The comics industry began by eating its young, by chewing up and tossing aside the talented men and women who labored over the four-color page. It was not a well-respected field, haunted by geeks and run by gangsters (read Gerard Jones "Men of Tomorrow"). Even though these people created some of the most enduring American cultural icons of the century, they were poorly compensated and lived paycheck to paycheck. In latter years, reparations were made - some would say too little too late - but the tight fists of the publishing companies did open up to reward the creators. And today, the business is all about "name" talent, and fandom of particular artists or writers rivals the fictional characters themselves. Steve Ditko, about to turn 80, may be the last lost master of the form.

The special covers Spider-Man, naturally, but also Ditko's other creations... Dr. Strange, the Creeper, Hawk & Dove, the Question, and Mr. A. When I was a lad, and we went to the local library, every summer I would check out the same History of Comics book and it had reprints of the seminal Spidey and Doc Strange stories. The original Ditko Doc has this horrid angular look to him that just fascinated me.

(Although they keep showing a Ditko drawing of Marvel's incarnate galaxy character, Eternity, during the Dr. Strange bit. Methinks someone in the editing suite was a bit confused.)

Keith Giffen did a Mr. A parody in the Son of Ambush Bug miniseries (1986), reffing the character's famous no-gray-areas attitude on injustice.

I'm sure that "In Search of Steve Ditko" will turn up somewhere on US television, where I will gladly watch it again. Aside from the rare appearance of crazy hair monster Alan Moore, and the interviews with legends like John Romita (who explains why he took over the art duties after Ditko left with "I had to pay my mortgage!"), plus the unbelievable twist ending with Neil Gaiman... you get to see the normally affable Stan Lee squirm when Ross puts him in the hotseat. How often does that happen.

Since beating the League, I've been doing a lot of critter collecting. Bringing old favorites over via Pal Park, slowly working through the little post-game sidequests and the weird new evolutions (Tangela evolves now? Tangela?) More on that later.

My sister has been continuing with her game as well and tonight we exchanged the final few types required so that we could both complete the Sinnoh Pokedex. Then I hustled back to the Game Designer at that hotel to collect my prize for finding all 150...

(That's my sister coming over and pointing out that the smegging background is even identical to the one you get for simply seeing all 150, as opposed to actually catching all 150. Cheap!)

Honestly, I didn't expect anything more, after experiencing the highly similar disappointment back in Pokemon Sapphire. And to be fair, catching all 150 is easier than ever thanks to the GTS...

But still.

That sucks.

Give us a rare egg, a unique item, some stupid ribbon or contest gear. Anything. You don't even get a nugget. Instead, you get a dippy certificate that you'll never see again. It's not even one of the accomplishments that adds a star to your trainer card. It really pisses me off that the game even has the nerve to play the "You Found Something!" sound when the guy says he has a (non) award to give you.

For something that is ostensibly the whole purpose of the series, Nintendo sure doesn't give a crap when you do it.

It was like the hardest decision of my life.

Toys R Us is having it's probably-annual Buy 2 Get 1 Free game sale (ends Saturday). Which really just means they're trying to blow out inventory before all the really huge fall releases start dropping... like Mario Galaxy, R&C Future, Halo 3, Phantom Hourglass, etc.

I walked in planning to pick up Warhawk (the boxed edition with the bluetooth headset), which meant that I would have to work to maximize my savings by getting games all around the $50-$60 range. On the PS3 racks, this is tougher than we'd all like to admit.

I grabbed Warhawk, then mulled over Metroid Prime 3 for a couple minutes before grabbing that too. But what to choose for the free game?

I had a couple DS suspects in mind, but I really couldn't accept selecting a free game that was half the price of the pay games. Drawn to Life was the lead contender, but at $30, it was simply not an option. Sure, I could have finally picked up Pokemon Trozei - which I've wanted for years - but I cannot let Nintendo get away with keeping that goddamn first-year-DS puzzle game at $35. Even if I'm actually getting it for nothing, I'd still feel like I was wasting my free pick, plus somehow rewarding Nintendo for refusing to drop prices.

So back to the PS3/Wii racks.

Mario Party 8? But I'm holding out until they give me a reason to get back into that series. Big Brain Academy? Eh. Is that even worth $50 in the first place? Blazing Angels (PS3) was there, but why would I buy that when Blazing Angels 2 just came out. NHL '08 (PS3) wouldn't be bad, but I'm never going to play it unless Mike's around.

I even tried the PS2 section, but every game there was either a shitty kids movie tie-in, priced at a pathetic $20, or both. Except for Guitar Hero Rocks the '80s, EYEROLL.

Hey, there's Lair and Heavenly Sword... I guess I could get one of those for (nearly) free? As a joke, maybe. Just as I'm trying to talk myself into Lair, the roof of the store peels back and I get hit with a lightning bolt, which returns me to the land of sense.

Back to Wii. I mean really, once you pull out all the movie games, it looks like mym home collection. Mario Strikers, check. Zelda, check. Trauma Center, check. Then, down at the bottom, I notice Wii Play... but it's just the DVD case, not the box. "I didn't know they released that sans Remote," I think, "How fucking stupid." But I am wrong; the case is just one of those game placeholders because even though this is an R'Zone now, you're still expected to beg at the counter for the new games just like the old grab-a-ticket system.

So, geez. A free Remote and that crappy Wii Play disk. Why not.

I stood around for quite a bit longer, trying to imagine all the scenarios where I would need three Remotes. Not for Smash Bros, that will be all GameCube controllers. Mario Strikers, yes, but I'd need a third damn nunchuck (not today). So, Wii Sports then. And Elebits, I guess.

I swear this whole adventure took an hour. With me walking back and forth through the aisles. I got to hear some obnoxious teen sales clerk upsell some hapless parents on a store warranty and screen protectors... for that new GBA they bought.

I get in line and, as a squad of two employees figure out how to scan my $5 coupon (which, in all candor, wasn't truly applicable if you read the fine print, which they didn't), I notice the box for Boogie in the glass case behind the racks. Boogie, which was not out on the Wii shelves. Not that I want Boogie, mind you, I'm just wondering how in hell they expect to sell games when they don't even display them properly.

And there's Carnival Games. Blazing Angels 2. Oblivion. The Godfather (PS3 and Wii versions). F.E.A.R. Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition. All hidden behind the register, some even with their backs facing outward. Mother of fucking god. It was like spending all of your alloted test time on one really difficult essay, only to discover a follow-up question on the reverse side.

In the end, I stayed with my trio, Warhawk / Metroid 3 / Wii Play. It's two good games and one mediocre one, plus another Wii Remote and a bluetooth headset so I too can chomp on nachos while I play Texas Hold 'Em to the delight of all. After my coupon and two gift cards, my bill was just over $100, which is pretty freakin' sweet when you consider that Warhawk by itself is $60.

Although I did IM my sister right away and say "if you go and can't come up with three games, call me." Then I went home and played more LocoRoco.

Oh, and the register jockey told me that they have 40 Wiis to put up for sale Sunday morning, and they WILL be advertised in the circular.

Beautiful Katamari - E3 Xbox 360 Trailer (YouTube)
Let's be honest: no 360 owner gives one shit about this game, so just assume it's coming for all platforms and have done with it.

"Halo" no longer just a game for Microsoft (Yahoo News)
This article about Microsoft's struggle in the video game industry manages to not mention Nintendo once. The article is all Microsoft vs. Sony, which is sooo 2004.

Undercover: Mac Anti-Theft Software (via Daring Fireball)
If your laptop is stolen, it will start taking pictures of the thief using the built-in iSight camera and email them to you.

BIZARRO WORLD EXPOSED! (The Comic Treadmill)
Looking back at a 1960s Bizarro story, we find out that Bizarro World isn't that different from our world after all.

Die Speech Bubble Logo, Die. (Eachday)
An embarrassing collection of over 60 modern tech-sector logos that use a word balloon in some fashion.

Third "Narnia" delayed until 2010 (Yahoo News)
Are we seriously going to spend the next 15 years waiting on this movie series to complete? The first Narnia rode a LOTR/Harry Potter wave that simply no longer exists.

Cabel is on his fifth 360 (Cabel Sasser)
Go ahead, somebody defend Microsoft's shittiness to me.

I had read earlier in the week that a new LocoRoco game was headed to the PlayStation Store. If I had a PSP, LocoRoco would definitely had been a purchase, so I was more than a little interested in a downloadable semi-sequel on the PS3.

("would definitely had been"?)

Kotaku initially referred to the game as a screensaver (based on some asinine report from Who Cares Print It IGN), then discovered that it wasn't, but still pretty much hated it... but I was hungry enough to drop a couple dollars on it.

Of course, I completely forgot that today was Thursday - PlayStation Store Re-Stock Day, for some reason - so I was still looking forward to grabbing LocoRoco Cocoreccho sometime later in the week. Until I check Kotaku as Clark was falling asleep and realized that it was in fact Thursday. PlayStation Store Re-Stock Day.

And I just played it for two hours without even realizing that much time had gone by. So I'm calling my $7 well spent. The game is completely nucking futs.

The thing is, I THINK it's not at all like the PSP original, which may be throwing people off. This Cocoreccho edition is more like Lemmings, except with visuals that don't include some retarded Fraggle that an idiot decided to call a lemming. You start out with one LocoRoco or whatever the hell the little blob guy is called, and you have to maneuver him to touch other LocoRocos so they will join your marching band. Rather than using the SIXAXIS tilt controls (in the PSP game you tilted the gameworld with the shoulder buttons) to flush the guys around, you direct them with a mouse pointer butterfly... which would have worked great as a Wii game.

Once you have gathered some blobs, you sort-of guide them through the level, which is one big Rube Goldberg contraption with plenty of Line Rider-esque loops and double-backs. Some areas are blocked off until you have amassed X blobs, there are some hidden mini-game areas, and the whole thing ends in a Sabotage style cannon fight against the enemy boss blob. But the challenge is figuring out how to awaken the maximum number of sleeping dudes, because they are scattered throughout the world on platforms just out of reach until you do just the right thing to get to them.

I played for a good 40 minutes - with increasing frustration - until I discovered that you can wake up the sleepers hanging from tree branches simply by shaking the SIXAXIS.

Perhaps the cutest bit (of a very cute game) is that fact that the blobs are all singing to you, along with the happy instrumental background music. The different colors of blobs have different voices, so if you have primarily red ones on the screen, you'll hear a slightly different version of the song as they add their personal a capella to the mix, compared to if you have mostly yellow guys. It's cool to notice one of them catching a solo; their little mouths move.

Take a listen. It's hypnotic.

Not bad at all. I know it's great and all that you can buy retro games on the Wii, but I'm really more interested in new downloadables like this. Nintendo can't get their Wii Ware junk out fast enough.

flOw is pretty cool too, by the way. Whoever said that your first five minutes with flOw suck, but then in a snap you get the control scheme was completely correct. Once you get it, it's like Tony Hawk's Pro Sperm.

My other PSN download purchase, the High Stakes poker game, seems to have disappeared from the PlayStation Store. Wonder what happened there?

Hard to believe it took this long for an American Idol-branded karaoke game to show up.

And, being over three years after the first Karaoke Revolution game, this means we're up to some very full-featured titles. Good song list, a microphone instead of a headset (duh!), plenty of unlockables, and an eerie face-mapping application that puts your head in the game.

The American Idol aspect is a nice fit; judges Randy and Simon critique your performance. The Idol scheme really helps this feel like a real event, even if the judges' comments are only tangentially related to your singing. It's even more fun in multiplayer where you can actually stage your own American Idol sing-off (just without voting from the audience at home).

This is a fine capper to the series... albeit for a franchise that is likely DOA these days thanks to Sony's own SingStar and the upcoming karaoke+music monster Rock Band.

Memory Score: Laura?

Definitely one of those games that I had to have, no matter how it would turn out.

This little-known game was just barely released in the US, becoming an EB budget exclusive after years of almost total abandonment. It's an adventure game (very point-and-click in feel, actually) where you have to perform errands and talk to people until you find the right moment to kiss them. Oh yeah.

It's a subtle kind of nuts. Very Japanese, but not in the colorful, over the top style of Katamari or No One Can Stop Mr. Domino. It's subdued and charming, full of memorable characters and bizarre story fragments.

It is also unfairly, tragically, monstrously hard.

It is impossible to tackle Chulip without a guide of some sort. You just can't. The puzzles (most of which involve a lot of waiting around during day/night cycles) just can not be parsed by humans. It's not even possible in the cheap old RPG way of "I'll just level up like crazy and then defeat the boss." It's just complete nonsense from start to finish, and you need the patience of a saint to muddle through it. I died from going down a slide at the playground, for crying out loud.

That's not to say it's a bad game, or that it isn't a rewarding experience. It just is not the kind of game where you can expect to logic out solutions. You can't even expect the game to provide gentle hints. Swallow your pride and have a guide at the ready.

Memory Score: And it won't play on older PS2s, so don't bother unless you have a slimline.

I had every intention of getting Okami when it came out, but I was pretty jammed up at the time (Bully, LEGO Star Wars II, Wild World and Killer 7!) I figured it would be good, but I also figured it could wait.

And then the game sold so poorly (especially in Japan) that the studio that created (Clover Studio, previously known for the Viewtiful Joe series) was shut down completely. So no, you probably can't wait too long because I doubt they printed a million billion of these.

I probably don't need to heartily endorse Okami because everybody else did. It's a sure-fire Best of PS2 contender, but nobody bought it. I don't get it. Was it the wolf-as-main-character? Was it the Wind Waker-ish visuals? Was it the lack of established IP? Was it marketing's early emphasis on the sumi-e brushwork? Was it too Japanese for even the Japanese? What the hell went wrong here?

This is a lengthy, worthwhile, high-quality experience. It is an indictment on PS2 owners that it just squeaks in as the 100th best selling game of 2006, ranking behind such luminaries as Happy Feet and Superman Returns. And you can't blame the press, because, to a man, they were all behind this game. No, this is a marketing failure and an audience failure. Gamers are notorious for creating word-of-mouth successes... I just can't understand what happened to let this one slip by.

Memory Score: Buy it. The stylized art means Okami could have legs even when set against new-gen games.

Next time: it's cheap game catch-up time!

According to the price tag, I paid $21.90 for this, back in the days when I had no video games and was expected to make do with LCD games. Who knows why I chose nondescript Climber; I recall about half a dozen other G&W games under glass at the store.

As far as mangled English goes, this isn't so bad...

A head band that can help find swords. I agree, that is useful.

There's the fourth artistic interpretation of what Climber looks like. But since only this page shows the actual LCD "sprites," I'd call this version canon.

I guess these could be considered screenshots.

The phrasing is just so dadblamed polite.

Keep Game & Watch out of your trousers!

And by the way, this little fellow, a Game & Watch staple (well, the Watch half anyway), is named Bell Bug.

Let's see them ref THAT in Smash Bros Brawl!

I'm very nearly ashamed to admit it, but one of the reasons I worked so hard to fully exhaust Okami over the last few weeks was so I could move on to a small stack of $10 games. Talk about a sine wave.

Zatch Bell: Mamodo Fury (PS2)
Ten cent synopsis: Control both Zatch and Kiyo in a series of mamodo battles, following the storyline from the popular(?) anime and manga.

It's $10 because: It's old. This one came out in September '06 and they've probably done another half-dozen Zatch Bell games since then. Also - and I'm too lazy to look this up - I bet the Japanese release dates back to even older... this game looks and plays like early PS2 fare. That is to say, like ass.

What do you get for your tenner? A lot of misery. I mean, I like Zatch Bell. I wanted to like this game, so I would have overlooked quite a bit. But the combat controls are unreliable, targeting is a nightmare, and any battle with non-standard goals is just about impossible. For example, one battle in the first third of the game has you defending a building until time runs out... but the building has no health meter, so you never have any idea how close it is to getting asploded.

You also get a lot of use of the font Impact, the font with the worst question mark in the world.

Is it worth the ten smackers? Nope.

Genji: Dawn of the Samurai (PS2)
Ten cent synopsis: Enigmatic loner in feudal Japan takes down despotic warlords through use of magical orbs that slow down time.

It's $10 because: Again, old. The first Genji game came out long enough ago (Sept 05) that the sequel was a PS3 launch title.

What do you get for your tenner? A big ol' linear action adventure, with lots of the usual hamfisted RPG-style drama. The storyline is merely passable, with the saving grace of being told in pure Japanese audio with English subtitles.

Strangely, for a game all about combat, there's only two attack buttons. Even more bizarre, the main draw is the special energy meter that allows you to slow time so that you can execute cool-ass moves with only one button. It's cooler in practice than it sounds, and I would easily suggest this game for anybody looking for a cheap action game.

My chief complaint is that you have to save at every possible chance, or you'll end up re-doing largish portions... because the game likes to torture you with surprise ambushes by dudes that you didn't know that you weren't prepared for. My advice: stock up on healing herbs and save at every opportunity.

Is it worth the ten smackers? Yes, definitely. It looks really great for a PS2 title, too.

High Stakes on the Vegas Strip (PS3)
Ten cent synopsis: Somebody at PSN still thinks Texas Hold 'Em is cool. Let's not tell them, shall we?

It's $10 because: It's a downloadable PlayStation3 game. Just came out.

What do you get for your tenner? Texas Hold 'Em, in single-player offline and multiplayer online (with voice and video chat, if you want.) The offline mode lets you fast-forward through the computer's plays, which is cool but tends to distract me out of the game.

At this point, as long as your single-player AI is competent and the multiplayer actually works, you can't do much to screw up a poker game. It is certainly very sharp looking but it has a terrible who-cares avatar customization system. Everybody looks the same (no face modeling features), but with different shirts and hair color. And you have to play like a billion hands online in order to afford those shirt colors!

Figure this out: you can choose from a couple dozen pants and shoes that nobody ever sees, because you're sitting down... but you only have two eyebrow options, normal and bushy! Where's the Wii version with full Mii support?

Is it worth the ten smackers? I guess.

A. Whitney Brown: I Support The Troops (YouTube)
Now this guy I miss.

Lair (Dubious Quality)
Hilarious dissection of just how awful Lair is. Barely makes it past the first half-hour.

Ways in Which iTunes�s Just-Released Official Ringtone Support Is Weird, Rude, and/or Just Plain Buggy (Daring Fireball)
The new Create Ringtones feature in iTunes is pretty much the worst thing Apple's ever done. Fantastic, lengthy follow-up here. Apple has to fix this one right away, although I suspect it's AT&T holding their feet to the fire anyway. It is asinine and old-world to have the iPhone's iTunes not be able to play any damn song as a ringtone.

Kathy Griffin's Jesus remark cut from Emmy show (Yahoo News)
A comedian tells Jesus to suck it and that's instantly cut, but we'll still have to hear piles of brainless celebs thank God, Jesus and Whoever for their little statues in all seriousness, no matter who that might offend. Just goes to prove how the religious still wield ultimate control in the US.

Eating less meat may slow climate change (Yahoo News)
Because we'll have fewer animal farts. Serious.

Pokemon GTS
Nintendo's site that tracks pokemon trading. Crazily over-detailed. I could watch this all day.

First Namco's website quietly displays Wii and PS3 versions of supposed 360 exclusive Beautiful Katamari, then just as quietly deletes the "leak". (Kotaku)
I still say that new Katamari games are coming to Wii and PS3 because the franchise is gold money and the Xbox's audience could give two shits about it. As usual, the phrase "Only on Xbox" means nothing but "Microsoft paid a couple hundred to have us lie to you for a few months."

And what's with all the "Katamari sure is old and boring" talk I see out there? Get the fuck out of my house.

Tony Stark as filthy rich warmonger. Very good. Nice modern update - he's clearly funding a Middle East-based war, as we'll see. He's slimy and arrogant.

He just gave an "American Might Makes Right" speech. This is going to play well in the Red State sticks, although they won't see the big philosophical transformation coming. Which is probably fine. I mean, the first half of this trailer looks like an embarrassing 9/11 revenge flick, but it seems plain that Tony will see the error of his ways and, by the end of the movie, change his weapons company into a defense-through-technology company.

And he's funny. This is more Robert Downey Jr than Tony Stark... but it's still good casting. And it's nice to see a super-hero movie that isn't about some impossibly gorgeous young CW dropout. Downey is old.

Then he does the cha-cha.

Oooohh... very classic. Stark, beaten and enslaved, secretly forging his battlesuit. I didn't bother with screenshotting the other guy in Stark's prison... the Careworn Scientist who delivers Worldview-Changing Advice yet meets an Untimely End.

Wow. I've always liked the original blocky gray Iron Man suit, and this is just a great interpretation. It's the bucket head that never fails to get me.

Shitty, over-obvious music. First of all, Sabbath's "Iron Man" has nothing to do with this character. And it's a terrible song. It's a joke. This is some marketroid's giggly attempt at cool. Ruins the whole trailer for me. Not clever in the least. I'd have given them a pass had they just kept the riff without the pretentious vocals.

Then begins the montage, which is a pile of stuff that nobody cares about because Iron Man doesn't exactly have a huge, well-developed supporting cast. Pepper Potts? Give me a fucking break. She's Stan Lee's half-assed joust at Lois Lane. At least Rhodey's in there. So is the ??? bad guy, a nearly unrecognizable Jeff Bridges.

Yes, the bad guy has a suit too. Jesus, what else could you do? I'm sure it is called War Machine and I'm sure the movie ends with Jim Rhodes peeling it off of Jeff Bridges' broken body.

See? War Machine. (Wikipedia says it's the Iron Monger, which, once you remove the villains that are uncomfortable Asian stereotypes, must rank pretty high on the Iron Man nemesis meter.)

Super-sweet. More of this, please.

"Repulsor Blast!"

The trailer ends with eight minutes of Iron Man flying around doing nothing. WTF? I'm glad to see the guy in daylight - verifies that he's in the classy red and gold - but shouldn't the trailer end with something happening? Some foreboding dialogue? Something exploding? Downey saying something hilariously ironic from inside the suit, probably to children at a bus stop? "Stay in school, kids. And eat your iron!" BA-ZOOM!

Polished off Okami last night. (Sort-of spoilers coming, mainly about what rewards you earn after beating the game.) Really, really great stuff. I could have finished the game about fifteen hours back, but I decided to set some sub-goals to enjoy the game a little more.

Like the Stray Beads. Here's me celebrating that last bead.

The highlighted bead was the bitch. It's the Devil Gate in Kamui. It took me three attempts to clear it out... it's a series of ten ultra-tough battles that you have to do without leaving the area. I used a pile of Vengeance Slips to get through the last three waves. The whole sequence took me an hour and a half.

Getting all 99 Stray Beads was enough of a challenge. I did not buy all of the weapons (saving yen for the Brown Rage attack, which I still can't afford), and I did not feed 100% of the animals (came awful close though) and I did not go after all the collectible treasures or fish.

This was the absolute worst jump in the game. Getting TO that little island was enough of a timed-double-jump pain, but then you have to make it back. The trick is to run around in a tight circle well enough to get Ammy's speed up, then go for the jump without checking yourself against the invisible ridge that keeps you from simply walking off any given platform. Balls.

And what was on that island that I had to have? One of the informational scrolls that you can collect. Fin.

Battle-damaged Waka takes time out from the tense ending for a typo. (An itso, even.)

The results. Over 60 hours, so my prediction was right on. Funny that those last two numbers are the same. Creepy.

Those two deaths are from the Kamui Devil Gate failures, when I Continued instead of simply Restarting. Still got the "God" rating though (the pink tree icon)... I would have been pissed if those stupid Continues had cost me one of the game's secret rewards. Which are those dog heads.

As you can see, I Godded every category there, and I wasn't really trying. I didn't even know that the categories existed. They're all a function of time, really (except for the Deaths one), so anybody who devotes serious time to Okami is going to get them.

Here's the secret rewards payout. Most of those are alternate dog characters, so your second playthrough could be as Amaterasu the Boxer, I guess. The scrolls are for the artwork/video galleries and the Secret Theater (which you get for playing more than 30 hours, another time-based reward). The 100th Stray Bead is the big pearly thing and the string of beads is an item that gives you invincibility.

Of course, Okami is another stupid game that makes the shitty mistake of kicking you out of the gameworld once you kill the final boss, so to test out all of these new toys you have to start a new game. So I did. I mean, I can guess what invincibility does, but I wanted to see the dog costumes. (They're nothing special. Most of them are damned difficult to tell apart from the garden variety wolf Ammy.)

What's cool about the new game, apart from being INVINCIBLE, is that you get to keep most of your skills and items, including your money. So should I play more, I can finally get Brown Rage and see just how gross they were about upgrading the Golden Fury attack.

It would almost be worth a second run. It is such a great game, a PS2 must-have. I remain shocked and dismayed that nobody bought it.

Look, we all know that the Everybody Votes Channel is equal parts harmless and worthless. It was an act of purest optimism to assume that Nintendo would somehow use the EVC for actual market research... like, say, culling the opinions of their devoted fans about what VC games we'd like to see or whether we want to see more Zelda games in the style of Wind Waker or Twilight Princess. No, it's for finding out whether you like dogs or cats.

So, those complaints aside, just what in the hell does this mean?

How does Nintendo come up with these stats, as related to the survey questions I have bothered to answer? This is a pretty classic example of a chart that tells you exactly nothing. I can't even imagine a unifying concept that would hold those five categories as parameters.

We gotta be coming up on Reggie's September Surprise soon, and it better not just be the Check Mii Out Channel.

1993... the Game Boy is four years old and the Game Gear only two. And nobody cares.

This was such a dark time for portables. I mean, we're still five years away from Pokemon showing up. There is just nothing going on here.

PAGE 10: "This box is about to burst wide open! Because Sonic the Hedgehog is inside on Game Gear!" Better make sure to mention the GG's most important accessory, the goddamned AC adapter.

I'm not sure whose artwork is creepier... Early Big-Head Sonic or Early Fat-Body Yoshi.

PAGE 11: The Game Boy was the only system I owned in 1993, so this was the only page that mattered to me. This pink page.

Some great math at work here. The Game Boy is $50 and Tetris by itself is $20. Yet if you buy the Game Boy + Tetris bundle, it's $80. Curse you, Nintendo!

EB refers to the d-pad as the "cross key joystick." How cute.

I'm sure we all owned the Handy Boy, so let's not even bother to bust on it. Except that it was made by a company called "STD," according to this.

I've never seen a screenshot of Top Rank Tennis, but you want to bet that the box art is in no way indicative of the anime-styled visuals that are likely on the cart?

PAGE 12: Wow, so what in the hell is that. Had it not been for Nintendo's Virtual Console, I would have completely forgotten that the TurboGrafx 16 even existed. As it was, I only remembered it from a plethora of ads in comic books of the day.

So this super advanced TurboGrafx is a complete surprise. I'd suspect that this just created brand confusion - TurboDuo games vs. TG-16 games - but nobody bought these things anyway. At $300, it's easily the most expensive console around in '93, which I'm sure had EVERYTHING to do with its failure.

Funny story: the TG-16 only had one controller port. If you wanted multiplayer games, you had to buy a multi-tap for it. AWESOME.

But ho, what's this? I think we have a Love Connection...

Can you imagine a universe in which this happened:

TOKYO - Sony today announced that it is on track to sell its five millionth PLAYSTATION3 before the end of September, and to make the PS3 affordable for even more customers this holiday season, it is lowering the price of the most popular PS3 model with 60GB of storage from $599 to just $399.

"The surveys are in and PS3 customer satisfaction scores are higher than we've ever seen for any Sony product," said Kazuo Kirai, Sony Computer Entertainment's CEO. "We've clearly got a breakthrough product and we want to make it affordable for even more customers as we enter this holiday season."

The 60GB PLAYSTATION3 is available immediately for $399 in the US through all retail and online stores. The PS3 20GB model will be sold while supplies last.

In case you haven't figured it out, I just took Apple's iPhone price drop press release from earlier in the week and did some Mad Libbing.

And is it that crazy? Sony, like Apple, walked into their new, untested product with a ton of fan excitement and name brand recognition. In both cases even the most hardcore was surprised by the price. Both launches had staggering lines of people willing to pay it anyway.

The key difference is that Sony spent the months leading up to the PS3 release telling us how we should all get a second job to pay for it, that we'd buy it even if it had no games at all, and outright lied about what preview video was in-game.

I don't think anybody (outside the company) knows what the profit margin is per unit. It was heavily rumored that the $600 iPhone was massive profit for Apple, and now the $400 iPhone is costing them that money cushion. (Apple stock took a hit this week based on that speculation.) The launch spin on the PS3 was that $600 was too-cheap-for-components, the blu-ray alone was worth at least twice that, and that Sony was taking a bath on every unit sold, which does explain why they have been reluctant to bring the price down to human levels and their desperation to justify the price tag.

I contend that if Sony had not acted like dicks for an entire year, they could have sold out of those $600 PS3s. Like the iPhone, we would have bought big based on company trust. We all loved the PS2 and we were ready to love the PS3... until she turned around and spit venom in our faces.

And then, after a few months of selling all they can ship (you know, like the Wii), Sony quietly fills a few warehouses full of surplus stock and then announces a $200 price drop well ahead of the holiday season. The new $400 60gig model hits the streets and Sony expects to triple their install base... and the price is still $100 more than a launch day PS2.

Now imagine the fan backlash... the people who swallowed the $600 tag are ticked. They're no longer special. Any jerk with only $400 can pick up a PS3. What if Sony responded with this:

To all PLAYSTATION3 customers:

I have received hundreds of emails from PLAYSTATION3 customers who are upset about Sony dropping the price of PS3 by $200 a few months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.

First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 60GB PS3 from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. PLAYSTATION3 is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to 'go for it' this holiday season. PS3 is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Sony and every PS3 user to get as many new customers as possible in the PLAYSTATION3 'tent'. We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.

Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you'll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Sony tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.

Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of the PS3, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early PS3 customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every customer who purchased a PLAYSTATION3, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a retail voucher towards the purchase of any PS3 game software at $60 or less.

We want to do the right thing for our valued PLAYSTATION3 customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Sony.

Kazuo Kirai, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO

That is, of course, Steve Jobs's now-famous "apology" for dropping the iPhone price.

And, for anybody who closely follows gaming, it is just NUTS to think of Sony doing the same move.

Why is that?

A free $60 game? We all know what kind of choice you get when Sony does a free giveaway. I'm still waiting for my package, by the way.

A $200 price drop? We have been repeatedly told that Sony has no plans to lower the price. Even the recent $100 drop was just them introducing a new $600 model and bumping the prior one down to the $500 level. Moreover, Sony remains adamant that the PS3 is worth the $600, even as they fall well behind the competition that was barely a gnat on their nose in the previous generation.

Apple and Nintendo are winning because they are humble, because they respect their fans, and because they have great products. Sony and Microsoft are treading water because their corporate attitude is smarmy and arrogant, and because the products either lack interest (no good PS3 games) or are suicidally unreliable (360).

Internet People (YouTube)
This almost makes the internet worth it.

Powers Do Not Equal Personality (Roar of Comics)
Steven Padnick ruminates on the tendency of Justice Leagues to accumulate team members based on powers, not personality. LOL moment:

"If you've got four guys with omnipotent magic wishing rings, why not bring all of them? When Batman took out Brother Eye in Infinite Crisis #6, he brought Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Green Lantern John Stewart. Why? Because Batman's not an idiot."

Play With My Wii (Tony's Official Online Journal)
Tony gets a Wii! Yes, I was involved. The phrase "my first Nintendo system since the SNES" has to warm at least seven cold hearts at Nintendo HQ.

Wii Subpoenas Harvey Birdman (Kotaku)
Harvey Birdman game, a Phoenix Wright-style courtroom game already slated for PSP and PS2, now also coming to Wii. Although I found the first Ace Attorney DS game ultimately too trial-and-error to be fun, I'll be around for this... here's hoping it has a ton of voice work and animation in it.

Youngblood: Bloodsport #1.3 or Thank You Sir, May I Have Another? (Facedown in the Gutters)
Great scans-n-comments on another terrible Rob Liefeld creation. He really is one of the most horrible things in comics.

PAGE 6: Well, there's Link to the Past. That couldn't have been Game of the Decade, could it? Naw. I mean, it's a good game, but it doesn't compare to the glory of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. SF2 retains "almost every last detail" of the arcade original, fer cryin' out loud!

Gives you an idea how things worked in 1993; arcade games were top of the line, home console games were bare imitations, and home computer games were all Mavis Beacon.

Note the the SNES is advertised as having "dazzling 3-D graphics." Yeah, I guess so. But how does it stack up to the arcade version?

And can you believe how cheap the first-party extra controllers are? $18! I guess that's because you never really needed one unless one of your two packed-in controllers got run over by a bus.

PAGE 7: I always forget how much I hated the Michael Myers era of SNL until I see one of those awful, leering Wayne's World press photos.

Great first line on the Batman Returns capsule: "Batman has never been more huge."

PAGE 8: Can you believe that a Star Wars game gets a tiny little corner deep in the SNES ghetto on page 8? I know you won't believe me, but in 1993, Star Trek was king. Crazy, but true.

I hope you're keeping track of the SNES price range: LTTP (which was last year's model) starts the scale at $50... and PURE GEMS like Super NBA Basketball and Fatal Fury top it off at $68... with most games landing at $60. Man, them cartridge years were a bitch. If somebody today tried to charge me $60 for a game like Yoshi's Cookie, I'd shit down their throat.

PAGE 9: This is wild. Still selling the NES, now bundled with SMB3 for $90! Wow. Do you think that EB takes all their current trade-ins and then sends them back in time where they can sell them for big dough... like copies of the Mr. Dream version of Punch-Out for $30. If anybody is going to figure out time travel, it's these guys. I've heard them talk.

Next time: portables!

DiRT Demo: More cars. I just can't get excited about driving games. I like that this one doesn't center on keeping the bloody car from falling off the cliff, like the MotorStorm demo.

It has freakin' sweet-ass gorgeous menus, though. I can honestly say I played the demo more than I would have, just because I wanted to click through those menus. Seriously, watch this movie and try to remember that you're watching menus.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Trial Edition: I have such a soft spot for games with huge ridiculous names. I had never played any of the Puzzle Fighter series before, which could also be titled A Very Capcom Tetris. Crap falls from the sky and you line up colors. Seems fine. Sells for $10, I may upgrade to the full version, but probably not until I get a second PS3 controller (which probably won't be until I hear that they're doing a rumble version ((or when I hear that GTAIV has awesome 2P play))).

Folklore Demo: I was all set to like this one, but it's really lame. I'm surprised to read all of the OMG FOLKLORE!!! comments out there, like on this Kotaku thread.

First of all, shouldn't we be past the point where you walk into a village and all of the (three) townspeople are just standing in place, doing absolutely nothing, and repeating the same (text) dialogue when you click on them. You're telling me that's next-gen? Complete game-killer.

Folklore is getting billed as an RPG, but the demo shows a very linear action game path. Once you've read the six total sentences from the elf villagers, you walk through a route that leads you directly to a boss fight. Yes, the demo has plenty of blocked-off paths, but that doesn't seem to change the core play of walk-into-area, button-mash-enemies.

The game tries to stand out with the combat, which is kind of a Kirby / Pokemon thing. You begin with three different types of attacks mapped to three of your buttons, and as you kill enemies, you get to absorb their attack abilities. It's kinda neat in that there will no doubt be a lot of Pokemon-esque collecting and one-upping as you progress... catch Enemy G because he's the only attack that works against Enemy P, for example. Unlike Pokemon, you can switch between any of your collected baddie attacks on the fly.

When you attack, you get a ghost image of the enemy you're "using," which is okay but really junks up the visuals. Add to that the absorption sequence, which puts ghost images of the baddies onscreen, and you're seeing a lot of transparent, jumbled graphics.

Absorbing enemies is done by waiting until the right moment (a red ghost) and then jerking the controller upward like a fishing line. This is how Sony is confronting the Wii, I guess. Larger enemies require more complicated jerking motions - like rocking back and forth in rhythm - which is supposed to simulate you slamming the enemy into the ground but just turns into an annoying minigame.

Oh, and the font is just about unreadable on SD screens. I think it's more of a color problem than a size ratio problem, but I'm sure that widescreen helps stretch the text out to more legible proportions.

And the cutscenes are crap! They went for the old let's-make-it-like-a-comic-book and pretend-that's-cool plan.

The game seems like a good idea, it's just a really boring demo. NO SALE.

I hope the Ratchet & Clank demo drops soon. They're giving it away at EB with pre-orders, so we all know it exists. I could use something good on the PS3 because right now its main function is to let us watch Coffee Prince on Veoh.

Here are some thoughts from "The Last Fantastic Four Story," an one-shot comic published by Marvel, cover dated October 2007, written by Stan Lee.

Look, I get that Stan Lee is a living legend, but that doesn't mean that he shouldn't get a really good editor.

I decided that I wanted everybody right around level 60 before going after the League Championship, so I've been doing a lot of mindless training... initially up around Snowpeak and more recently just west of Sunyshore. Then I stocked up on Revives and HP healers. Although I bought a ton of Super Potions, I also picked up lots of those drinks cans you get at the top floor of the shopping mall. They're a better value.

I haven't necessarily been looking forward to this, which is why it took me so long to work up to actually sitting down and doing. I mean, the battle junk is the least interesting part of the game for me (well, second least since Nintendo bungled the Super Contest thing.) I'm more into catching all of the different types and uncovering all of the games little secrets.

Which is why I bought both Prima strategy guides and kept them by my side as I prepared for the Elite Four. I'm just going to waste time starting and restarting to get this done. I wanted to walk in at a very fat level, have a good idea of what I could do to maximize my team's type advantages, and barrel through all five matches without saving inbetween.

And of course I shot movies of each bout.

Elite Four #1 - Aaron
He's a bug trainer, but he throws in a Drapion just to screw with you. The Drapion looks like it might be a bug, but it's not. Allowing for that little problem, this was all Staraptor's show.

I had tried the Elite Four a couple weeks ago when my guys were all high-40's, and I couldn't even get a toehold against Aaron. Having a flying-type getting its ass kicked by the first bug-type in the queue is humiliating, so that should explain why I wanted to do this solid. My high-50's Staraptor had no such problems, as you can see.

Elite Four #2 - Bertha
She's all ground-type. I love when they stick to one type.

My Torterra - already the tank of the team - just went to town here. Didn't even switch anybody else in. Absolutely no thought went into this battle. Razor Leaf, Razor Leaf, Giga Drain. Razor Leaf, Razor Leaf, Giga Drain.

Elite Four #3 - Flint
This was the first battle that gave me pause, so it went longer than ten minutes (which meant I had to break the movie in two to upload to YouTube). As fun as it is to just have one dude in there swatting down all comers, there's something to be said for a longish battle where you have to switch your team around so as to take advantage of the type match-ups.

Starting Empoleon against Rapidash and Infernape was a no-brainer... although I had expected to keep Empoleon around a little longer, so the fall against Infernape was not appreciated. Look at that guy's HP; my Surf should have killed him. And then Flint had the nerve to Full Restore the Infernape! God that pisses me off.

In the second half of the battle, I get really lucky on getting past a Cute Charm to score a killing hit on Flint's Lopunny. But my Gengar becomes the team's weak link, shot down by the Drifblim and my Toxicroak has to finish the job. I REALLY should have trained the Gengar up more. I figured his coolass ghostiness would lower his handicap in comparison to my other fighters, but I was wrong.

Elite Four #4 - Lucian
I was dreading this one... the psychic specialist. I started Gengar for his Dark Pulse attack but like I said, he just wasn't up to it. He took out Mr. Mime on a lucky flinch, but was assassinated by the Alakazam. Then I jumped in Toxicroak who finished off Alakazam but then was slaughtered by the Girafarig.

At that point, I'm sweating, until I remembered that my Torterra also has a dark-type attack, Crunch. Then it became easy... Torterra > Girafarig, Staraptor > Medicham, Infernape > Bronzong.

League Champion Cynthia
Another two parter because this was a long battle and I included the big victory celebration at the end.

My big scare here was the weakness-less Spiritomb. So I started with Staraptor, figuring I couldn't go wrong with the Intimidate ability. Staraptor almost killed the Spiritomb with a couple Aerial Aces, but Torterra had to do the finisher.

Milotic was the big problem. First he Ice Beams Torterra to death, and then Surfs Gengar out the door (there's an edit there because I literally sat and thought for a minute about who to drag out next). Toxicroak gets a laugh because you can't Surf against him, but even that doesn't help much and it is neck and neck between the two for quite a few turns.

I revived Torterra because I needed his grass-type moves against the Gastrodon, so that was no trouble. Similarly, Empoleon had an easy match against the Garchomp... but only because I taught him Ice Beam just before the bout started. Then it came down to Infernape against Lucario (easy) and Infernape against Roserade (yeah).

I think my Infernape really lived up to her nickname. And it is super cool that the one that ended the battle is the very pokemon that I chose at the start of the game!

Here is my winning team... and now I'm off to explore all of the funky post-game stuff.

Staraptor level 60

Toxicroak level 60

Empoleon level 60

Gengar level 56

Infernape level 60

Torterra level 63

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN