Things We Learned This Week

Guitar Hero, as a brand, is at war with itself.

You've seen the TV ads for Guitar Hero: Metallica, eh? The four guys whom I assume are actual Metallicas explode the Risky Business house that framed all the spots for Guitar Hero: World Tour. Where various B- and C-list celebs did sad Tom Cruise impersonations to "Old Time Rock and Roll."

Which wasn't even in GH:WT until last February, incidentally.

Now, putting aside how 1980s movie cliches make Guitar Hero look painfully out of touch anyway, what does this new Metallica commercial add to the franchise? It mocks the previous ad campaign. In fact, it pretty much shits all over the previous ad campaign.

Is that good brand management? So now, after half a year of doling out Bob Seger as if he was relevant, now we grenade Seger to show gamers who is really cool. Metallica, apparently. See, when you attack previous commercials like that, you generally attack the ads of your competition, not your own.

Watch those synced DS carts!

Something to be on the lookout for those of you who picked up non-shiny DSi's this week. Any game that connected itself to your old DS (usually for online activation) will want to re-connect once you pop it inside your DSi. Both GTA: Chinatown Wars and the Pokemon Pearl/Diamond games do this. With GTA, it was no problem to re-attach the game to the new DSi and re-upload my stats... but going online with Pokemon Pearl and the DSi expected to wipe out my in-game friend code list.

LittleBigPlanet gets King Tut, my three dollars.

One of the DLC packs for April is an Egyptian theme kit with two costumes and ten stickers. Clark still considers King Tut a favorite, so we'll be on this one right away.

You know who I won't miss? Will Wright.

Sorry, but I won't. I loved SimCity but OD'ed on the original Sims sometime after I got tired of having to micromanage daylong toilet trips. And at no point was I excited about Spore (Bill Harris suggests Will wasn't either!)

But I applaud his move to exit formal game design and just kinda do what he wants, if only because we should all be so lucky to spend our time doing just that.

Getting caught up with classic Jonah Hex.

At my local comic shop's excellent late night sale last week, I picked up the Showcase edition of Jonah Hex. This edition reprints a pile of early Hex stories from the early 1970s in unfortunate black-and-white, and they are all so good. They may all still be in continuity, too. I haven't really noticed anything in direct opposition to the current Jonah Hex series. Has any misguided writer given Jonah Hex super-powers as a way to explain his uncanny marksmanship and unearthly speed at drawing a pistol? Wikipedia happily doesn't say.

I also bought the Ambush Bug Showcase edition, which covers nearly his complete collection of books... from the first appearance in 1982 all the way through 1992's Nothing Special. The character changes drastically over those ten years, making this Showcase a very interesting consecutive read. Wikipedia says Ambush Bug will be in the upcoming DC Universe Online Game, which would be hot.

Here's something I forgot about the first Pikmin:

It's hard as balls.

Really. The level timer, the overall pressure of the 30-day clock, the fact that the stupid pikmin will walk right beside enemies (and die) despite there being a safe path just a few feet away... Pikmin can be one nasty challenge.

Why does Nintendo hate Fatal Frame?

Tecmo says Fatal Frame 4 is not coming to Europe or America, and they say Nintendo is the one shutting the door. Nintendo published the game in Japan last summer... and I know I was among the fans assuming that we'd get it around Halloween, because, you know, we sort of have that scary holiday for things like this. We never did. Nintendo Power talked it up a couple of times, but always stopped short of mentioning a ship date. Some mag in Europe thought they had a scoop and ran a print ad heralding the game's arrival. They were wrong.

Is Fatal Frame too mature for Nintendo? Is the subject matter too disturbing? The Wii has had horror games, albeit it more in the action mode than as true horror (RE4, among others.) Other horror games are forthcoming (like Cursed Mountain), but who knows what kind of experience they will deliver. The Fatal Frame franchise almost always deals with dead children, torture rituals, and deep psychological trauma. (I have studiously avoided spoilers on Fatal Frame 4, but it's a fair bet that #4 will run true to form.) Has Nintendo blinked on this one, simply because it would carry their name on the cover?

Will the publishing revert back to Tecmo at some point? They'd probably love to publish it themselves. Can Nintendo sit on this game forever? Are they holding on to it for late 2009 and haven't even discussed plans with Tecmo? That would be just like them.

Now the most important question: Is there a Fatal Frame 5 in the works and will it give Nintendo the middle finger and shift to PS3?