It figures that in less than a week I came around and fell in love with the upcoming Contra 4 for the Nintendo DS. It wasn’t just 1up’s glowing preview of the title, the classic sprite based graphics, and the fact that is just looks freakin’ fun as hell. I simply love the fact that Wayforward is treating the whole thing like a throw back to golden age of Contra, complete with exploding bridges, jungles, and characters based on movie icons.
I may have hated the fact that Wayforward added Mad Dog and Scorpion as separate playable characters, but after getting a load of this art I couldn’t help but love it. Finally, for the first time ever Arnold, Stallone, Vin, and Snipes are joining forces to stop evil. And I seriously can’t wait.

My wife and I are looking for a house, and before we blow all of our savings on a down payment, closing costs, paint, carpets, and whatever else we end up needing, I wanted to “future proof” my house with the latest tech. She agreed to let me buy an HDTV (because she secretly wanted one too), but I was also able to worm a Playstation 3 into the mix. Personally, I had zero plans to buy a next gen system until some major price cuts started. I was perfectly fine relying on my Wii to get my gaming on. Besides, my wife basically told me no more video game systems after I bought a Wii (yeah, right). Anyway, a week ago Best Buy had a deal going on where if you purchase a 40-inch 1080p Sony HDTV, and a PS3 together, and you’ll save 600 bucks. For the first time ever, I wanted to own a video game system for something other than video games. I explained to my wife that if we get a 1080p set, we might as well take advantage of it with a Blu-ray player, that player being the PS3. She agreed, and I went into Best Buy later that week and bought the TV and the PS3. Unfortunately, the TV was back ordered, but I was able to walk out with the PS3. I didn’t mind, because I don’t have anywhere to put the TV right now anyway.

With the “deal” I was forced into buying one of two PS3 games, either Motorstorm, or some baseball game. Naturally I picked Motorstorm, which is really a fine game (and it looks amazing) but I decided I didn’t want Motorstorm. I thought about doing the old switcheroo at Gamestop (if they take advantage of us, we can take advantage of them) and getting Virtua Fighter 5 instead. Then I remembered just how much I wanted to play Odin Sphere for the PS2, so I went to Gamestop and traded Motorstorm for Odin Sphere and Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, paying only a 10 dollar difference. I couldn’t be happier, but the result is that I now had no game to play on my shiny (really shiny) Playstation 3. Before people go crazy, I know Motorstorm is a good game, but my thought is that in a year from now Odin Sphere is going to be 60 bucks on eBay, while I’ll be able to find Motorstorm as a Greatest Hits for 20 bucks at any store.

After spending a day or two downloading a bunch of different demos to get a feel for what the system had to offer, the machine sat on my floor for a week and I haven’t touched it since. One problem is that I have a million systems hooked up to multiple TVs right now. I had thought about replacing the PS2 with the PS3 (much like I replaced my PS1 with the PS2 all those years ago), but then I’d have to buy additional hardware just to transfer my saves, and plug in my old controllers, not to mention the fact I can’t play Guitar Hero on it regardless (since it doesn’t recognize the guitar). On top of that, I don’t own any games for it, and since I don’t have the TV, I won’t be watching any Blu-Ray movies for a while. Coupled with the fact that I’m finally getting into Final Fantasy 12, it looks like I won’t be playing the PS3 for quite a while. As a result, when I came home from work today I packed it all up and put it away.

I would watch this… for all the wrong reasons of course.

UPDATED AT THE BOTTOM IN BOLD at 2:08PM

There’s a lot of people who don’t watch professional wrestling. But there’s also a lot of people who do, which is apparent by the sold out crowds at arenas all over the world. I guess not so much now as maybe 90s through early 2000s but somehow they managed to keep me aboard through high school, college, and still now as an adult in the working world. If you watched it in any of those eras you might have heard of a guy named Chris Benoit. He was never really the top guy in any federation. He was small in height but made up for it in a very technical style that would keep you interested in his matches. I was always a fan. He could wrestle the big guys and the cruiserweights and actually help them to put on terrific matches.
Of course I didn’t know the guy personally but I’ve watched enough wrestling specials and heard enough shoot interviews to honestly say he was a good guy. He was a teacher to younger and even veteran wrestlers. When I went to Royal Rumble in Philadelphia a few years ago, I actually rooted for him to win against the Big Show to go to the Main Event of Wrestlemania XX. I was there when he won that shot. Then a couple months later, he won his first and only World Heavyweight Championship as the underdog in a match against 2 future Hall of Famers in Triple H and Shawn Michaels.

Listen, I know wrestling is a male soap opera. It mixes planned storylines with athleticism. Yes, they know who is going to win each match. But unless you’re over with the crowd then they’ll never give you that opportunity. You cant just walk into the ring acting like an asshole and win matches. Management and fans have to see something in you in order to give you a “push”. Benoit has been in the business for over 20 years and won all kinds of different titles and big macthes. You don’t last that long on a television show and win titles unless you’re pretty damn good. Like I said, I’ve always been a fan.

I saw on Joystiq, that DOOM co-creator John Romero has posted a pack of unreleased MIDIs from the game’s soundtrack. Considering that I played the tar out of DOOM when it was originally released in 1993, I was pretty excited. Not only did that game give me nightmares, but I also happen to like the music in all its synth glory. I remember thinking that it reminded me alot of Alice In Chains and NIN, and I didnt realize how right I was.

Romero says “there’s a reason these weren’t released - they’re not very good”, however I beg to differ and believe it was more a case of copywrite infringement that kept these from being put into the game. Not only did these unreleased tracks remind me of my favorite grunge bands, but they were EXACTLY them. I was shocked that half of Alice In Chains’ Dirt was on there as well as Stone Temple Pilots, Slayer, and a few others I couldn’t quite put my finger on though sounded familiar to me. What shocks me even more is that most comments on Joystiq and Romeros blog don’t even recognize the music. I guess I am indeed getting old.

Doing some further research, it appears that John Carmack had given music CDs to DOOM’s composer Bobby Prince as reference material. The idea was to use these as a spring board to define what the game’s music should sound like. I think that these tracks were exploratory attempts to see if they could even recreate the sounds and melodies used by contemporary rock bands to push the limits of the day’s harware. Remember, this was 1993 and most PCs didnt even have sound cards in them yet.

I think its also fair to say that DOOM’s soundtrack infuenced a few modern day artists in return. Trent Reznor of NIN has been qutoed as saying he played DOOM a whole lot, and which years later he was then asked to write a soundtrack for id’s Quake. He was also asked to do work for DOOM3, but id and Reznor parted ways when a deal could not be reached. The Smashing Pumpkins sample the “exploding barrel” sound effect on their double CD, Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I can’t remember how many times I heard the Imp’s hiss or a dead soldier’s grunt used in some Hollywood movie.

Shooter – Mark Wahlberg is framed for an attempt on the life of the President. Now he’s on the run while trying to prove his innocence.
Black Snake Moan – a sexaholic who is ruining her life is kidnapped by an old Southern black man so he can “cure” her. Samuel L Jackson is the man and Christina Ricci is the chick.
Dead Silence – a bunch of puppets come to life to avenge the murder of their owner. So the puppets go on to murder people. From the people who brought you Saw.
Pride – a new teacher at a Philadelphia high school puts together an all African American swim team.

Also hitting shelves is Monk Season 5 and Miami Vice Season 5.

Not too much going on this Tuesday.
I heard Shooter was OK, Black Snake Moan got some good reviews, Dead Silence looks like garbage, and I have no desire to see Pride. I guess I would go with Shooter just because it seems like its action packed. Marky Mark doesn’t usually disappoint. But then again Christina Ricci looks pretty hot in BSM and you know she’s doing some nude scenes in that bad boy. Sorry ladies, maybe you should just go check out Marky Mark. Maybe he’ll have a shirtless scene or something.

I saw this image posted today at AnimationNation.com, and the first immediate thought that jumped into my head was “boy that sure is ugly”. I think I was in shock.

There’s a lot of the character design that seems to be at odds with itself. The truck grille that makes up Prime’s torso has that strange curve to it where the rest of its form is boxy, geometric and flat. The chest is bent awkwardly giving him an odd stoop or rather a hump back appearance. His head sits strangely between his gooey shoulders. Overall, I am disappointed so far. Its an unappealing drawing.

However, I’ll say this. It’s the first ever image to come from a new series in the works that is apparently more in line with the original animated series from the early 80’s. Who knows how far the concept has moved along since this poster was done considering the new series is still seven months away.

Our Wizard World table was missing something last week, and that something is 500 stickers branded with our amazin’ logo. If something could have went wrong with these stickers, it did. The first problem is when I ordered them. I filled out all the info saying that I wanted all of these stickers in black and white. The site then tells me that I’ll be getting the stickers within 7 to 10 business days which gave plenty of time for them to get here before the show.

I get an e-mail back from the company a few days later telling me I accidentally picked red and black stickers and not white and black. They wanted to double check that is what I really wanted since I sent them a black and white image. I’m sure that debacle set the order back by a day or two. On top of that, I get an e-mail saying that the stickers would arrive on or before June 20th putting it days after the show. I also realized that I forgot to throw the stupid “.com” onto the logo. As you know it, the show comes and goes, and the stickers arrived on the following Tuesday. Now I’m stuck with 500, dot comless Shamoozal stickers. Chalk up another reason for me to be a Whore Daddy.

In an  effort to give these bad  boys away, I set up a little something over in the smorg. Oh, and if you want to take advantage of it, you gotta be a member of the Smorgas Board. Whoops.

You know, I’m really burnt out on this whole Manhunt 2 story. I know that for some strange reason gamers have to get behind every Crusade-of-the-week that comes along with petitions and jokes about Jack Thompson, but honestly… what is the big deal? I’m pretty sure that if this game was not a Rockstar game we wouldn’t be hearing nearly as much as we are. The whole thing reeks of a publicity stunt. When Take-two releases the M+ rated version of the game in a few months the sales will be through the roof as a result of this ‘controversy’. I’ve read so many “I’m buying it day one as a matter of principle” posts on the various game sites that it turns my stomach. Are you people really that desperate to make a statement?

Let’s imagine for a second that the game in question was called Pedohunt in which the main character has to prey on children in a suburban town and molest them. These despicable acts would be executed using the Wii-mote. Let’s say that the artistic vision of this game is to put you in the mind of a child molester to experience the shattered psyche of a lunatic. Would anybody blame the ESRB for giving this game an AO rating? Would anybody be shocked that Nintendo and Sony would have rules in place to prevent a game like this from being released on their console? I’m sure you’d get a few hardcore “hey man, it’s freedom speech” idiots, but for the most part no one would shed a tear over this game getting buried. Where do you draw the line between a game where you rape children or a game where you brutally decapitate people using chicken wire?

I’m not talking about people’s personal freedom to choose what interactive entertainment they want to experience. I’m talking about a company’s right to decide what games are allowed to be played on their hardware. If you want to play a game like Pedohunt, you have every right to design and develop a game console and create the game for it. No one is stopping you. If you’re really that upset that you won’t get to experience Pedohunt the way it’s “meant to be played”, maybe you need to take a good hard look in the mirror.

The General Johnny Manf posted this pic this morning in The Smorg, and I got pumped. Personally, I hold the Indy movies on a higher pedestal than the Star Wars movies. It suddenely dawned on me that there is an entire generation of kids who probably have no idea who Dr. Jones is. With Speilberg directing once again, I know its gonna be great. I had alot of reservations about whether I thought a new Indy movie would be any good. I mean, I already witnessed almost a decade of Lucas doing a royal number on my childhood memories, and I don’t think I can handle it happening again. However, I saw that pic, which according to indianajones.com was taken by Speilberg himself, and I couldn’t help but get pumped. I mean, a new Indiana Jones movie is being filmed RIGHT NOW. And its going to be released in less than a YEAR FROM NOW.

Count me in!