December 2011 Archives

Although lately the act of triggering a screenshot has a 50/50 shot at locking up the game. GREAT.

View from a shark's mouth.

This is how the missions all go for me. Something silly happens that makes me want to get a screenshot, and I either screw up the mission because I'm fiddling with the screenshot stuff, or it locks up.

I love this unexplained silliness. There I am trying to roust out a Luchadore gang and inside a storage compartment is a dancing Saints Flow mascot dude.

Third Street 4 Life. And sandwiches.

Just picked up the $20 Season Pass, which gets me three upcoming DLC mission packages that I hope are good, plus a dumb Nyte Blayde set of cars/costumes. The math better not work out that the three packs end up costing $20 normally, and the only benefit to the Pass is the free Nyte Blayde crap.

CONGRATULATIONS! You must live somewhere without commonly used public transportation!

We now have all eight elements, and all four power-up items. Can't what to see what new items show up in the remaining two level kits.

Everywhere we go, I notice that Skylanders stock is sold out. Just when publisher faith dies in plastic peripherals, along comes Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure to show that the right game and the right concept can still sell piles of plastic. People burned out on instruments, and all the gun/fishing junk has never taken off. But show up with an anything-goes toy line (seriously, the "world" of Skylanders is a mess - magic, tech, monster, pirate, ghost, dragon - all they need is ninjas and bacon) and people are ready to buy again.

All that success has not, however, led to any attention on the game's clunky bits that could use patching. I imagine there's multiple problems here... firstly, kids games rarely get patched. Developers figure kids don't notice and won't care about bugs and crashes. Secondly: I haven't seen sales figures, but if the Wii platform is leading, the relative difficulty to getting stuff patched on Wii games means Activision won't bother. I have definitely seen bizarre glitches and mistakes on the PS3 version that could use a fix. Occasional invisible enemies during cutscenes. Occasional complete game crash when dumping all the toys off and trying to replace them all at once. Occasional glitch on the Hidden Dragon Treasure item (and CONSTANT annoying sound effect on that damn thing.)

I have a feeling that even Activision was blindsided by the success of Skylanders. (I know the press was: try and find any amount of E3 reporting on the game when it was revealed, then compare to the launch when the narrative quickly became "This Game We All Wrote Off Is Actually Pretty Good.") So their resources are probably 100% devoted to the inevitable Skylanders sequel for next Thanksgiving. New toys, backwards compatibility with old toys, and hopefully plenty of bugs worked all the way out.

Maybe four-player? The Portal is big enough. Maybe online play?

As I've said before, I think Activision is going to introduce Crash Bandicoot to the franchise. Activision owns him, he fits visually (although Skylands throws a wide net, cartoon design wise), and he has not been in a decent game for years. But he still has brand recognition, and he is still worth re-introducing to new gamers. Fingers crossed.

Skylanders Kart Racing seems likely too, doesn't it? Imagine buying heaps of expandable, wacky toy cars...

Also in the same line: Blatantly Berry, Apparently Apple, Possibly Punch, and No Crap It's Cherry.

As mankind rebuilds itself in a post-apocalyptic future, there is only... best friends Finn and Jake.

It was remarked that Clark's Christmas this year was all about the color green. A Ben 10 Omnitrix kit, lots of Backyard Safari gear, and, as this will likely be our last shot at it, plenty of Green Lantern toys. Representing the not-green lobby, he got a new Hexbug habitat, the big Bowser's Castle Mario Kart K'Nex kit, a Hot Wheels Video Racer (and he is psyched to shoot some crazy footage with that), and the uDraw Tablet for PS3. Which, in about two hours of use, had yielded about 50% of the uDraw Instant Artist Trophy allotment.

Both Rhonda and myself enlisted Clark as Secret-Keeper in small gifts for us... and he is a terrible Secret Keeper. At one point he told Rhonda: "You're getting two things, one of which has pages." Followed by "Do you want to see where we hid it?"

Clark now has the first twelve DC Super Pets books, plus a random assortment of those new DC Super Heroes for young readers books. Four Green Lantern, two Flash, one Batman, one Wonder Woman, one Superman. One of the Flash books is peeking out of his stocking here...

Here's a clip from this year's "Behind the Magic: Christmas 20XX":

And, in what is sure to be the Great Meme Find of 20XX+1, I present Screaming Sweater Cat:

For my personal use, I shall maintain that file in the highest of resolutions.

Happy Chrimbus!

Nintendo dropped the back half of their 3DS peace program last week, offering up ten free GBA games. It's a good list of games, from an era that Nintendo has yet to thoroughly mine. Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Wario Land 4, and Kirby & The Amazing Mirror.

Minish Cap is a brilliant, overlooked Zelda game. Looking forward to Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, which seems like a dry run for this year's Return to Dreamland. But for me, the star is the original WarioWare. You can see the full open to WarioWare #1 here. I know we've been through a half dozen WarioWare games since the original (2003!), but the basic storyline premise of Wario deciding to get rich off making crappy cheap videogames is nothing but fantastic.

By the way, I hope some of you took advantage of Target recently blowing out WarioWare DIY for, like, $15 or less.

And I'll point out something that every gamer site has already pointed out, but I want to be sure I don't forget it (and isn't that what weblogs are for? for people to stash stuff they don't want to forget?): hold down Start or Select while a GBA game boots and the 3DS will NOT upscale the game to fit the 3DS screen resolution. The game will be smaller, boxed-in, but at least the pixels won't turn chunky.

Chrimbus may have come and gone, but is still the Season of Receiving! So I offer this late addition to your trimmed, wet Chrimbus Bush, assuming you've consumed your pound of hair as per the Winter Man's expectations. This is a collection of episodes of "The Cheap Seats," a series of YouTube shorts.

I wonder what people think who have no history with the books. "Jesus, they're doing a flashback movie about that old dude? How many more movies about Reluctant Hobbits can they squeeze out of this?"

Minor quibble: seems like a lot of key language here is not from the books. Given how drastically Tolkien changed his style and tone between "The Hobbit" and "The Fellowship of the Ring," I wonder how much of a challenge there was to make this Hobbit movie entirely and unequivocally match the Lord of the Rings trilogy?

I love the gesture in this shot.

Feelin' like we might be squirming through more Dwarves Are Wacky scenes in this one.

Thorin Oakenshield, ladies and gentlemen. The handsome, aloof, stoically proud, stubborn sex symbol for the next two films. He sings too, just like Aragorn.

Eeeee! The Shards of Narsil!

Sure is a lot of Galadriel in this trailer. #notinthebook

The only question here: Will there be a talking wallet?

Nice. Visually bookending Gandalf's very similar conversation with Frodo, many years later.

You know, the One Ring is such a minor part of Bilbo's adventure that it will be interesting to see if these films play up the Ring in any way. Clark and I recently re-read "The Hobbit," and Bilbo pops on that Ring whenever he can... I think it's on for days and days at some parts, with no ill effect.

Man, it's fun to hear that little creep again.

You remember I had to buy a new slimline PS3 (and I had the old one repaired). Well, one of the wacky joys of owning digital media is that you're supplicant to all the rules about what you can do with it. In this case, the sparse few TV/movie downloads I made over PSN.

This has not been a top priority for me, because I never used the PlayStation Video Store all that much. Most of my "purchases" were free anime episodes. So it took me until two Fridays ago to bother calling Sony Support about it.

When you buy a second unit, and transfer game data and whatnot, you end up having to deauthorizing the old unit and authorizing the new one with your PSN account. This is not anything you need technical help on, until it comes to media. TV and movies have different rules than games, and the biggest rule seems to be No, You Can't Do That.

Now, you guys know that I tend to support Big Corporate Copyright/Ownership Schemes. Yes, they always dick it up. Yes, they do a fair job of screwing over the creatives as well. But I've always felt that if you don't allow somebody to be in charge, you end up with absolutely nobody in charge... and I would rather see that creatives get paid, somehow, for what they create. Rather than just throwing everything up for everybody to take and hoping that money will find a way. I'm generalizing, I know. But if gamers did not consistently prove, over and over again, that they will take advantage of every loophole and crack every security barrier for the expressed purpose of not having to pay for shit... well, maybe we wouldn't be in this digital mess right now. Gee, why do you think Sony is now suddenly playing hardball about Store purchases (now only good for two consoles, suck it gamesharers) and limiting the Vita to only one user account?

So I'm willing to follow Sony down the rabbit hole on this. Like I said, I've never purchased any TV/movies I really care about over PSN anyway. I bought "The Simpsons Movie" (on sale) and three episodes of "R.O.D." Not a big deal, but I should still be able to access them.

Because here's the crazy part. Those video files are still physically on my old PS3. Post-repair, the old PS3 can still go online, play games, sync Trophies, everything. But the TV/movie stuff doesn't fall under that. In fact, in order to be able to even download media on my newer model, I had to deauthorize the old one. Deauthorizing the old one means not only can it not purchase-and-download new stuff, it can't even play old files that are already on it. And since the media Store has a one-device policy, I can't re-download "The Simpsons Movie" on the new PS3. Unless I buy it again.

Which, OK, them's the rules. What I don't like is that, here I am, perfectly willing to deauthorize the old device with the hopes of transferring all content to the new one and maintain the one-device ruling, and I can't. Not with media, anyway. I suppose it would be different if I was still allowed to view the media on my old PS3... that's what gets me. Following their rules, they made it so I can't watch the media at all.

So I go after Sony Support, and they're all nice and swear they can help me out... but a week plus ticked by with no change. I sort of think that the phone rep did nothing but trigger the same deauthorize/authorize dance that I did months ago, which doesn't help with media. When I sent in a follow-up email, referencing my support ticket, I got this:

Thank you for your reply. I would be more than happy to re-submit a request to have your video re authorized as a one time gesture of goodwill. We will send you an email to your Sign In ID email address with further instructions once the request has been completed.

"Gesture of goodwill"? This is not fucking Israel/Palestine peace talks. I just want to watch the first ep of "R.O.D." again because that opening scene with the giant grasshopper is wild.

At least this message specifically called out "video," which was the whole point. The line about "gesture of goodwill" was repeated three times over two emails. Definitely part of the script.

Within a couple days of receiving that message, I checked the download history on the Video storefront (which is, thankfully, a separate list from my gargantuan Game storefront download list), and yup, there's every TV show and movie I've ever purchased, free or otherwise.

So they'll help you, if you nag them. Shame it's come to that, and a bigger shame that it only seems to be getting worse. I cannot WAIT to see how Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft handle transferring files from this console generation to the next. Will they let us keep (mostly) everything? Or claim that we purchased single-use licenses that did not include future technology releases? Can Nintendo really expect us to re-buy Super Mario Bros on Wii U?

I can't figure out this sentence:

"While it's no flop when it comes to sales figures, the iPhone 4S remains one of 2011's biggest consumer letdowns."

So who's buying all the iPhone 4Ss? Consumers, right?

The notion that Apple somehow failed with the 4S is so powerful a tech lede that overwhelming evidence to the contrary can be presented in the same article, without devaluing the core sentiment that the 4S is somehow disappointing. This is fascinating stuff. Future sociologists are going to learn a lot from junk like this.

Here's the entire paragraph, from this article on Top Tech Flops in 2011:

While it's no flop when it comes to sales figures, the iPhone 4S remains one of 2011's biggest consumer letdowns. Earlier this year, Apple's iPad 2 upped its prececessor's appeal considerably, slimming the original slate down while speeding it up -- but it's tough to not be disappointed by the iconic company's most recent handset. Apple's newest iteration of the iPhone is certainly nothing to sneeze at -- it's still one of the fastest, best-looking smartphones on the block -- but it's no iPhone 5. After spending the better part of the year salivating over a reinvented iPhone with a larger screen, a thinner profile, and other untold Apple-flavored wonders, Apple aficionados were presented with the iPhone 4S -- a nominal upgrade over the previous model that touted the now much-parodied Siri app as its main selling point. While Siri is a capable (if at times perhaps too capable) virtual companion, 2011 is still an off-year when it comes to the world's must-have gadget. Patience is a virtue, and all eyes are on 2012's iPhone to up the ante.

The whole premises hinges on the fabricated, mythical iPhone 5, about which Apple said nothing. Tech writers assumed the screen will be bigger, because, according to some ancient law, smartphones have to get bigger screens. Never mind that Apple has never worried about changing the screen size, confident that a one-handed device with a entire screen reachable by one thumb is what people want.

"It's still one of the fastest, best-looking smartphones on the block" yet "it's tough to not be disappointed by" it.

It also doesn't seem to matter that Apple took a smart look at how actual human beings buy phones - on two year plans - and fielded a device that looks damn good when compared to the 3GS phone on sale two years ago. Which, unbelievably, you can still buy.

If Apple had put out a 5 with go-faster stripes and the world's biggest 3D LumioGlow ThoughtSensitive 4G-aware screen technology, then Apple would get slammed for expecting consumers to upgrade to an entirely new phone every six months. OUR DISPOSABLE SOCIETY AND PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE! :( APPLE IS GREEDY AND HATES THE EARTH :( :( :(

Oh wait, they do get slammed for that. Even while releasing highly successful phones that are complete disappointments, at intervals of a year or more.

I don't get it.

Although I do get some of the other nods on that Flop List, like Android tablets and the HP TouchPad. At least those items have lousy sales to back up the indictment.

Steelport. Classy.

It's great that Saints Row: The Third gives you the option to create a female lead who can be strong, inspiring, tough, actually dressed (the voice acting is fantastic here), and go nuts inside a game as good as the last Grand Theft Auto. Of course, you're stuck in the dick jokes and fratboy-centric world of Steelport, but it can only get better, right?

Ah, the old incoming enemy car pileup. Opposing gang thugs is so stupid.

Posing for a fan. I know that background looks unfinished, but I was by the coastline, I swear.

It kills me that you can't take screenshots by pausing the game and rotating the camera around to any angle you want. End up with a lot of shots cutting people off at the ankle.

I could lose hours mooning over the texture details in games like this. Oil spots on the road, soft lights in the windows, hanging power/phone cables. In Skyrim so far, I've seen lots of trees and rocks.

Changed my outfit, and just happened to catch the light of oncoming traffic in this shot.

I'm guessing that plane is a permanent fixture?

And there's Steelport's answer to the Statue of Liberty. Probably called "Old Dick Thickgirder" or something.

This is just shameful.

That's a toy announcement, not a game announcement, but come on.

A couple things always come to mind when news of a new LEGO _____ license appears. First, I remember LEGO reps emphatically stating that they would never do sets based on licensed properties as that would somehow damage the natural imaginative play of LEGO. That's why, during my LEGO heyday, the overall themes were given bold, expository names like "Castle" and "Town."

Second, it wasn't that long ago that LEGO Star Wars came out and was damn near considered a novelty indie title. Like, so off-center and bizarre that you had to play it. That was 2005. Since then, they've released NINE more highly similar titles - and number ten, LEGO Batman 2 is due next year.

Third. I'm still cheesed that, in the wide swath of LEGO ____ licensed games, we never got a LEGO Speed Racer.

Saints Row: The Third has a funky methodology for saving out screenshots. In the end, you get easy online access to 1280x720 pics, which is great. To get to them, you have to activate the in-game camera (which regularly de-activates itself), snap the picture and let the game save it... but not to the XMB, instead to saintsrow.com, where it awaits you creating a brand new login to sync with your existing PSN account.

And THEN, you have to mosey on over to your screenshots and approve them to be publicly displayed. Only then can you actually see full-on high-res screens... which are stored in a completely different submenu from where you approved them. Weird.

Although, if the game just dumped jpgs in the XMB, then I'd have to shift the files over to my Mac via SD card, in order to be slightly Photoshopped and uploaded here. So maybe there's a step saved somewhere in there.

Anyway. Here's my Saint:

I went for a classy look. I love that the game offers six separate voices for your character, meaning they had to get multiple voice actors to perform the entire script (plus incidentals) six times. Jesus. That's insane. In Grand Theft Auto 3, your character was mute throughout the entire game. And you couldn't even customize his appearance. How times have changed.

Here's a boring skydiving shot. You can click any one of these to see the full size original file.

Skydiving (or base jumping ((or just plain plummeting)) is a good example of this game's philosophy of fun over reality. If you jump off a building, you automagically get a parachute. You don't need to make sure you have a parachute in your inventory before you jump. You don't need to select it from the pause menu. It just appears.

I dig that you can see a speeding bullet in that last shot.

Last night Paul and I did some co-op. Which led to some thrilling chase scenes, most of which were made worse by my inability to control myself. Paul was off laying low to let the wanted heat die off, and I amused myself by attacking pedestrians with wrestling moves... a hobby that apparently attracts police attention. I may have made some missions a little more difficult than necessary.

Being able to experience any part of the single player game, in online co-op, is pretty fantastic. Although we did trigger some nasty bugs. We were doing Insurance Fraud (where you toss yourself in front of oncoming traffic to earn cash) and Paul fell through the street, out of the game. On my end, I could still hear him screaming. Which was hilarious.

We had one cutscene fail to include either of our characters, with the result being that we were stuck and failed the mission. And after the end of the lengthy Act 1 mission, both of us lost our HUD. No map, no weapon wheel, almost no onscreen overlay graphics at all. Although my screen was still showing GPS direction, so I was able to help navigate while Paul drove. The HUD returned after reloading the save.

These last two pictures are fairly typical Saints Row: The Third adventures. Strange vehicles roll in; gang members die.

I would love it if Saints Row continued on this path, trading sense and continuity for silliness and id-pleasing fun... while Grand Theft Auto followed naturally from GTAIV, with a more serious tone, punctuated by social commentary/comedy. So really, I'm requesting that dick jokes go with the Saints.

That we made!

VidRhythm is a cute iPhone/iPad app from the people behind Rock Band. You record about six sound and video samples, and the app generates a hip-enough music video. 21 premade songs to choose from. This is a good example of something that limits itself in order to be super fun and easy. If it allowed for licensed tracks or required dozens of samples, nobody would ever use it. VidRhythm exports directly to Facebook and/or YouTube, and on newer iPhones you have the option for a higher quality export. Saves to your Photos gallery automatically.

I suppose I should stop timing these things during winter, but that's when the cats' yearly checkups are, so that's when we've been getting it done.

Yes, the now-annual shaving of Annie. Man, it sucks being an old longhair.

There are revealed parts of her that you would not identify as feline in closeup.

After hearing all the raving about Skyrim, and figuring the game would be right up my alley of open world exploration games, I picked it up the other week on a Toys R Us sale. I've never played an Elder Scrolls game before, so I could give a squirt about the Rich Mythology. I made a cat person.

Rhonda named him for me, because I was already frozen into inaction by the implications of my character's physical design. I'd love to see a usage chart detailing exactly how many numbnuts get into adjusting cheekbone height and eyesocket width in games like this. It's always bulleted on the box like it's a world class, game selling feature, but I bet most people just dick with hairstyle and eye color and GTFO.

But I like my guy.

Anyway. This is pretty much the slowest game I've ever played. And it's clumsy. What a terrible beginning, sitting in a pullcart with ugly people, then standing in front of awkwardly animating enemies, all of whom possess no virtual acting ability whatsoever! I'm surprised that a game that wins such universal awards and accolades is so clunky. I was talking to some dumb guy and he slid down the stairs during the entire conversation.

Some specifics. First of all, the people are unquestionably ugly. Unstoppably ugly. They all feel like they dropped out of a game that's at least ten years old. Typical silly NPC script and branching dialogue trees, ripped straight from your D&D group's least creative player. Typical dopey game standards like "bartender who is always there at all hours leaning on the countertop, cycling through three or four stationary animations." This fantasy civilization's crowning achievement is making staircases.

The game is entirely without charm. It's very workmanlike. It's the granular gamer's game equivalent to all those cowclick games on Facebook. You're leveling up and fighting and crafting because you want to make your numbers higher, not because you're personally invested in the unraveling story and immersive environment.

As far as fantasy goes, I've noticed only one new item brought to the table: there's no cliche gender split. Women are just as likely as men to be Captains of the Guard, Shopkeepers, Wandering Mercenaries, etc. Which is nicer than expected, because as mediocre as this gameworld is, I would have thought female characters would be relegated to Gardeners, Housewives and the occasional Wise Sage.

So I don't quite get it. Seems like I spent the first four hours running up forest paths, killing maybe three wolves total. Then I get to a Conveniently Spooky-Named Tomb and have to kill three skeletons.

In the second four hours, I advanced the plot enough to encounter a dragon... who, for all the sturm and drang about dragons, amounted to a low-level boss fight against an enemy with crude repeating patterns and one stay-out-of-it's-way cataclysmic attack. Oh, but then I discovered I am DRAGONNEBORNE. Hotcha. Then I had to trek up a stupid big mountain to have a bunch of Black Bolt geezers teach me how to map something to my L2 button.

I guess the magic here is in the interactions and details. When being chased by an Abominable mofo, I liked that I could lead the monster off to go fight some lonely pilgrim I had passed on the road a mile earlier. Not that it did me much good, it crushed the stranger and I was not strong enough to kill it myself from a safe distance. (I ran.)

Maybe Skyrim will pick up as I go on. But it's not exactly making itself indespensible. And I shudder to imagine how the internet would react if, say, Nintendo released a Legend of Zelda where NPCs floated down stairs.

Saints Row: The Third is about a billion times better than Skyrim.

This one clocks in at almost a minute. I still don't have the hang of sensing how to time the scenes. The 3DS has a playback mode where you can slow down the movie after it is made, which helps a bit. Although that does not apply to the exported AVI that lands on YouTube. Also seems overall brighter on the 3DS, compared to this embedded version. I suppose we should be happy these files export at all, given Nintendo's usual stance on shifting around data.

It's not professional grade, but it's better than having the tower bar hang off the wall. I used green.

We made this tonight with some Imaginext toys and the new stop motion tool that was just added to the Nintendo 3DS. The basics were Clark's idea, but I did most of the posing. We need some kind of 3DS locking base to keep it from shifting (plus better lighting; yecchh) so Clark can create a full-on ten minute masterpiece.

I hope this movie makes a billion million billion dollars just on the strength of the concept of giving three babies Stooge hair and zippering them into a duffel bag.

I will never see this film.

I felt pretty good about this win.

Just today I unlocked the last of the secret characters (you have to get gold medals in all eight 150cc courses). Metal Mario, which is kind of a lousy cop-out. Character selection in Mario Kart 7 is just weird. Honey Queen? Wiggler?

I have over 800 coins, but there's still some hidden kart parts to unlock. No hits yet on my fourhman.com MK7 community, 10-1661-8770-3595, so screw you guys.

You can always count on Nintendo's localization team to go for unusual vocabulary words. "Makes my gorge rise"? Nice.

Finished Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword with almost 50 hours on the clock. And two AA battery replacements. It's a great game, but I was ready for it to end. It has at least one too many quests packed in there. Although the game does a nice job of adding new areas (and new gimmicks) to old zones, so it's not a total repeat when you get sent back to Faron Woods for the fifth time.

What I really liked was having the game codify what Nintendo has been telling us: that Skyward Sword is the first Zelda adventure, the seminal story that has triggered all others. It's a cute way to explain the series' recurring themes and characters. Zelda, Link, the Enemy. Although something most reviewers seem to forget... it's the player that names the hero. "Link" may be the default, but he's really meant to stand in for the player as an everyman.

The MotionPlus controls can be really annoying. You have to get really good at properly angling your sword strikes, and until you figure that out, it's frustrating as hell. One enemy - the lizard dudes - I just gave up on fighting because I never mastered the quick, intricate methodology behind attacking it.

Here's something else that annoyed me. Shields break. I bought the best shield, spent plenty of rupees and treasure on fully upgrading it, only to lose it during one of the game's final battles. So that sucked. There's an indestructible shield available after completing boss rush challenges, but hey I don't think so.

And now, the new version of the Male Question:

Two thoughts from Clark about Skyward Sword. First, he found it unusual that nobody in town reacted when all the crazy crap started going down in Skyloft. He has a lot to learn about sparsely written NPCs! Secondly, after announcing this to be his personal favorite Zelda game (out of, say, three), I told him my favorite was (and remains) Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. So he asked me to load that one up. I don't know how far we'll go in Wind Waker, but it felt great to attack by simply hitting the big green A button.

An image has leaked promoting next year's LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, which follows naturally after the summer announcement of new DC Comics LEGO sets. (The above picture is NOT the game image. That's one of the toy renders.)

I hope Travellers' Tales had a chance to read over my post from 2008 where I outline characters and groupings for a theoretical LEGO DC Universe game. Definitely would have saved them some time.

No comment on the rumored game name being LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, rather than LEGO DC Universe or LEGO Justice League. Got to let the money lead, I suppose.

This first one isn't really a game Friend Code, it's just a code to help people find your Mario Kart 7 Community.

10-1661-8770-3595 is the ID for the fourhman.com MK7 club. The MK7 online system has only been up for a couple days, so I don't know if it's any easier than THAT to meet up with existing 3DS Friends, but that code seems to be the best way for non-Friends to find your kart guild.

I played an online Grand Prix today against mostly players from Japan, and I was amused to see a guy attempting (and failing) to snake his way around the course. I never learned how to snake back in Mario Kart DS. I came in first.

Posting this next code is an example of the purest optimism.

1764-6199-3105. Yes, that's Fortune Street. We never got an online Mario Party, but Nintendo saw fit to take this one onto the innerwebs. Games of Fortune Street seem to be pretty long, so the lack of voice chat is likely a huge drag. (If only the Wii had some kind of microphone peripheral that supported... HEY.)

Fortune Street is actually pretty interesting, but you've got to be a pre-existing board gamer to even consider it. Square Enix put some Mii customization options in there that ought to be a clue about the kind of deeper Mii options we should expect from the Wii U. IE, stuff along the lines of what Microsoft has done with their avatars: pets, shirts, poses, etc.

Somebody deep within the DC Comics art department really, really likes using plain fonts and swinging around the camera perspective.

Back in 2006-2008, we had the twin series of All-Star Superman and All-Star Batman & Robin. Both of which had ghastly logo treatments.

 

It's different. I get it. It's not the usual hundred-year-old Superman logo, and it's not the typical how-else-can-we-dress-up-a-bat-symbol Batman logo. Still ugly and chintzy, but I get it. These are two very different series and they needed the cover designs to start communicating that.

However, this dorky font concept was not one to fade away. The recent New 52 initiative brought it back on Justice League (and several League-related titles):

While I don't miss the historic shield at all, this is not an attractive logo for the ages.

Just this week, I noticed the tilted font junk again, hiding in the top corner of the new Green Lantern Animated Series book.

"DC Nation" is, I believe, the new sub-brand for an upcoming programming block on Cartoon Network. Whether we'll see that DC Nation logo on-air or not, I don't know, but there it is on the comic. Not as lousy as the previous examples but perhaps eager to tilt backward more should the need arise.