Posted by Michael Sacco on Dec 31, 2010 in Videogames
It’s always neat to see prototypes or early versions of video games and looking at how they differ from the final release. Shadow of the Colossus had a bunch of colossi cut from the game before release, for example. But it’s not just recent games; Lost Levels got their hands on a prototype for the original NES Legend of Zelda, and they discovered that the game was actually made more difficult for its retail release. In the prototype, it was easier to acquire rupees, dungeons had less enemies clustered together, and the enemies come in less-threatening combinations. I guess it isn’t just confirmation bias that makes me think that NES games are just flat-out harder than other games. They did it on purpose! Read more…
Marvel’s been dropping cameos of their lesser-known heroes into their movies ever since they took charge of their film universe. Anyone who saw Iron Man or its sequel caught glimpses of heroes like Nick Fury or gear belonging to Thor or Captain America; it’s all part of an effort to unify the film universe and make it easy to introduce new characters. It appears that 2011’s Thor will be no exception to this rule — rumor has it that one of the stars of the upcoming Avengers movie will be making a cameo. And that Avenger is none other than Hawkeye! It’s just a rumor, for now, but it makes a heck of a lot more sense than the other recent rumor that Demi Lovato snagged an Avengers role. Read more…
Back in November, Kotobukiya decided to take a few photos of their Star Wars ArtFX statues while attempting to recreate some memorable scenes from the holy trilogy. Given that they only had Darth Vader, some Stormtroopers, and Boba Fett to work with at the time, I’d say they did pretty well for themselves. The statues are incredibly detailed, and thankfully lack the need for finer details like facial features, etc. No doubt that would have made their job a little more difficult.
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Dec 30, 2010 in Videogames
You can snag yourself a free episode of Telltale’s Back to the Future: The Game, that is, if you want to wait until February to play it. The deal has been going on for awhile now, but Telltale Games – the guys behind the recent Sam & Max, and Monkey Island titles — are giving away that first episode to anyone who registers via this site. Of course, if you’d rather just buy the game outright, you can download it right away and start playing. So far, it’s recieved mostly rave reviews, so I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to wait. Still, pretty awesome of Telltale to just hand out the first episode for free. Read more…
I’m kidding, actually. I use my iPad all the time — I just wish it was more than a glorified ebook reader. Sure, I have a few apps that I use all the time, but aside from watching videos on services like Hulu, Netflix, or streamed over my Air Video server, reading books and playing a few games pretty much covers it. I’m not sure Apple will ever add functionality for the device – at least, not this generation – so I’ll take my added functionality wherever I can get it. In this case, it comes in the form of an HDMI adapter.
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Dec 29, 2010 in Videogames
Check out this amazing video of Hironobu Sakaguchi’s The Last Story for Nintendo’s Wii. The battle system looks fantastic and seems to mix a number of popular elements. In addition to the classic menu-based combat we’ve seen in his previous titles, we’re given a bit of action-oriented stealth gameplay as well, and it looks fantastic. Unfortunately, the game will be a Wii exclusive, so it might lack the visual polish that we’ve come to expect in modern roleplaying games, but to be honest, none of that really matters to me so long as I actually enjoy playing it. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 28, 2010 in Comic Books
This is the upcoming cover of Batman: Europa #3 which will be released in March 2011 by DC Comics. What blew me away about the cover painting by Spanish artist Diego Latorre isn’t just the high quality of his craftsmanship — but the fact that building Batman out of Eiffel Towers is a brilliant editorial touch. Now I won’t say if this is the best Batman cover I’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly up there.
Like most viewers, I found Deep Space Nine far more entertaining than Star Trek Voyager, and a worthy successor to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Unfortunately, the series never really gained much ground in the litterary world – at least, in comparison to The Next Generation, or the Original Series. As a result, Pocket Books relaunched the series in order to bring Deep Space Nine in line with the current Trek timeline, as established by the Next Generation and Titan novels.
I always assumed the Empire owned stock in Starbucks, but I guess I was wrong about that. Instead, they apparently grow their own blend. ThinkGeek claims these unique beans as being hand-roasted by Stormtroopers, but let’s be honest, when has the Empire ever employed stormtroopers for manual labor? All kidding aside, I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that this coffee has been branded so shamelessly, or the fact that I really want to try some. These beans actually come from Africa and Indonesia and are an officially licensed Star Wars product, for what that’s worth. Take a risk and dabble in the dark side for only $15 a bag.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 27, 2010 in Comic Books
I think one of the more interesting comic book series I’ve been following has been The Wizard of Oz which is illustrated by Skottie Young. This is the cover for the Oz Primer which will be released in March, 2011 by Marvel Comics. I really love how Skottie has liberated his artwork from the 1936 MGM film and reinvented the characters to make them his own.
