As you know, we’ll be playing the elusive Nintendo World Championships 1990 game during our charity drive in December. In order to do so, I needed to buy a reproduction cart from Retrozone, a site that specializes in all sorts of really cool retro gaming stuff like USB adapters for old gaming controllers, to dev kits for the original NES. While I’m not quite sure how it’s legal that this place is able to sell reproduction carts, I won’t question it, because they do awesome work over there. In fact, thanks to the fact that the whole package was so nice, I was inspired to write this quick piece.

While the game came at a rather steep price, I’m willing to say that you get what you pay for. These guys go all out on their presentation, right down to having the custom box shrink wrapped. The game comes along with a full color booklet they put together that includes tips from the two top players from back in the day, along with some other cool memorabilia from the Nintendo World Championships back in 1990. They even include a fold out poster from the event. The game comes in a brand new black slip case, and it’s housed in a custom see through blue case. It’s clear these guys didn’t just hack open old donor carts, they’re actually producing their own brand new ones.

The original NWC’s carts also included switches cut into the plastic so that Nintendo could set different time limits for the whole game. This reproduction cart also includes these switches, which I think is rather awesome. The switches are set to the default time of 6 minutes and some odd seconds, but the manual included with the game provides you with a chart that tells you what switches to flip for different times. Really cool stuff.

The Transporter 3 – Jason Statham is once again Frank Martin, the transporter. This time he must deliver the kidnapped daughter of a Ukranian government official from Marseilles to Odessa on the Black Sea. On the way, he’ll of course have to deal with thugs trying to stop the safe delivery.

Four Christmases – A married couple (Vince Vaughn & Reese Witherspoon) must attend four Christmases due to both sets of their parents being divorced. All in one day while keeping their sanity due to the dysfunctional relationships. Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Jon Favreau, and more also star.

Seriously. I don’t post often about sales or whatever, but I can’t help but point out what’s going on over at the Playstation Store. Sony, unlike their competition, actually has sales on their downloadable games, and this Thanksgiving week (starting today) they’re offering some really awesome stuff. Unlike the rest of the awesome sales that are happening on Friday, you don’t even need to leave the house. You can find the strange, and addicting PixelJunk Eden (above), stylish puzzler, echochrome, the quirky zombie strategy title The Last Guy, along with Capcom’s update on Commando all for five bucks each. There’s another title in there too, but that one isn’t what’s important here. For whatever reason I opted for Street Fighter HD, and now thinking about it, I could have bought three of those titles for the same price! For shame! Though really, when you get down to it, you could buy all of these games for less the price of a brand new retail title. The sad part is, you’ll end up having more fun with all of those than paying full price for some over hyped and bloated holiday title. Thats the truth.

So anyway, before you load up on turkey this Thanksgiving, stop by the Playstation Store and get one of these sweet games. I’m tired of PSN not getting the love it deserves.

I don’t normally promote my professional work here on the Shamoozal so I hope no one minds. Last month, the team I am on wrapped up producion on an animated special based off of Nickelodeon’s “Naked Brothers Band”. The show starts off with a live-action segment featuring Nat and Alex as they open their fan mail. One letter asks them to make an animated show with the band memebers as super heroes, and so away we go.

The character animation is done in Flash of which I was apart of the team. There was like around 400 shots, and each of us had to do around 80 shots or so, not to mention our design team which did a herculean amount of backgrounds. We only had one CG guy handling all the cars, robots, SFX, and who lent a hand in compositing. I think our director, Mark Salisbury, lost his mind at one point…in fact I don’t think he found it yet. It was slightly brutal, but I think the final product came out really well and moves along at a really nice pace.  It may not be a Shamoozal fan’s cup of tea, but maybe you have a little brother or sister who might dig it. It airs tomorrow night, Wednesday, November 26th at 8:30 EST on Nickelodoen.

Hancock – Will Smith is one of a kind. He finds out he has superhuman abilities but falls out of favor with the public. He becomes an alcoholic screw-up bum… but still has powers. So a public relations professional (Jason Bateman) presents some ideas that can get him back in the good graces of the people. Charlize Theron also stars as the woman that comes between them.

Meet Dave – Eddie Murphy IN Eddie Murphy!!!!! Murphy is the tiny alien captain of a spaceship that is shaped in his likeness but as large as a human. Murphy must command his ship to perform normal human duties but puts his crew in jeopardy when he falls for a woman.

Space Chimps – an animated tale about the grandson of the first chimp astronaut and his partners blasting off into space to rid a far away planet of their evil leader. Voiced by Andy Samberg, Stanley Tucci, Jeff Daniels, Patrick Warburton, and Cheryl Hines among others.

Today you can check out our new mini-site for the upcoming Marathon by clicking here. There you can read a tentative schedule for our plans to get an idea of how things are going to work. I happen to think we have some pretty good stuff going on, I hope it works out. And also, here’s our latest press release.

NATIONAL PARK, New Jersey – Shamoozal.com is proud to present the ‘NES Holiday Marathon’, a live 12 hour event to raise money for charity.

Beginning December 13th at 12PM EST, the Shamoozal staff will host a retro gaming themed event that will be streamed live through Ustream.tv. With a focus on variety of content, Shamoozal plans to shake-up the marathon scene by injecting different activities into their 12 hour schedule.

“No doubt about it, we’re going to be playing a ton of Nintendo games, but the focus is going to be less on the completion of these games and more about celebrating them.” says site owner Phil Summers. “On top of all the gaming, we’ll be offering different types of incentives to get people to donate their money to such a great cause.”

I’m sure that Manfre posted this up last week in the trailers thread on the Smorg, but I wanted to make a little post about this because I can’t wait to see this when it comes out. It’s directed by Henry Selick of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, and is based on Neil Gaiman’s short book by the same name. It follows the story of a girl who stumbles apon a small door in her new apartment which leads to an alternate world where things are certainly off-kilter. It sounds like a cross between Being John Malkovich and Alice in Wonderland which sounds like a recipe for success to me.

Visually, it looks stunning. Its clearly being done by puppets and sets and not pixels which I find refreshing. I like the fact that I am reminded that an actual human hand is what’s making all that stuff move around on the screen. There is an enormous attention to detail here, and the characters move with expert fluidity in this trailer. Myself, I was terrible at doing stop motion animation while in school so I am always really impressed by anyone who can do it convincingly and on the level that Coraline is on.

All that said, clearly computers play a huge role in today’s stop motion productions. A computer allows the animator to instantly review his work which allows them the chance to nail an action down. However, this doesn’t mean the computer is doing all the work. For example, if an animator makes a mistake or doesn’t like how a particular action comes out, he must do the whole thing from the beginning (salvaging what footage they can of course). Its great seeing new technology put to use this way as the results really bring the medium to a new level.

Last night my nephew decided to drop by my town in Animal Crossing in order to trade fruits and also see how my town has been turning out. When the clock struck 8, we bought knew it was time for some tunage by the one and only K.K. Slider. I’m here to report that I’m still completely enamored with K.K. Slider, all these years later.

For those who don’t know, K.K. Slider is a fictional musician that exists in Animal Crossing. Every Saturday night at 8 pm, K.K. will show up in town and perform some of his own music just for you. The character performs acoustic jams and his voice is this strange electronic voice which is either the most annoying thing you have ever heard, or the most charming thing you ever heard. I’m in the charming camp. After he performs, he gives you the song to bring home and pop into your music player. The thing is, I can’t be the only one that just loves to jam out to some K.K. Slider. A quick search on YouTube, and it seems like loads of people have already uploaded their experiences from last night. Best of all, people are as dorky as I am, having WiFi jam parties for the event. Take a look.

Today I went to the Video Game Expo in Philadelphia to actually try and get an idea if maybe it would be worth getting table at next year, and of just to see how the convention is, and to also get my classic gaming fix. Maybe it’s just that Philly’s convention center is small compared to say, the Los Angeles convention center, but the show as a whole seemed rather underwhelming. It seemed to be geared more towards people interested in competitive gaming, with loads of Guitar Hero and Rock Band kiosks (aren’t those games like so 4 years ago?) and a huge LAN section, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any highlights. I was actually able to check out loads of cool classic games and even meet some cool people.

One of the coolest parts of the show was the “Retrocon” section which specialized in classic gaming systems. It was a rather small venue tucked away in the back of the convention center, but it played host to probably thousands of games and systems. I easily could have dropped hundreds purchasing unique consoles, rare games, and stuff straight from Japan, like Rockman 4 for the Famicom, or Mother 2 for the SNES. Instead of chose to just stick to NES games to try and stock up slightly for the coming NES Marathon. With a bit of bargaining (thanks to my buddy Tu for telling me thats how you do things) I was able to snatch a few great games at a fairly awesome price. Come on, RC Pro Am for 4 dollars? Mike Tyson’s Punch Out for 12? GI Joe and Megaman 3 for 8? Check eBay folks, you can’t find these games at that price (especially when you factor in shipping). Just to be able to check out all this great classic stuff and nab these few games was worth the price of admission alone, not that the price to get in wasn’t half bad to begin with.

Another highlight was getting to meet the folks from PBC Productions of Captain S fame. They were a cool group of guys that seemed down to earth, and they even gave me some advice as far as attending cons. They suggested we check out one called MAGFest in Virginia, and it actually looks like a really cool event, but I think it’s going to happen too early for me to be able to attend. It takes place on January 1st through the 4th, only leaving me two weeks to prepare for after our marathon. Considering Christmas is so close and I’ll finally just start making a bit of moolah again at that point, it’s looking like we might have to wait until next year in order to make the trek to that. Who knows though, stranger things have happened. They also gave me the tip that James Rolfe was wandering around, but I never ended up bumping into him. Oh well, he would probably rather be left alone.

As some of you might know, I spent a good portion of my week working on a promotional video for our upcoming NES marathon. While we did well for ourselves last time, things were thrown together within a week and we didn’t really have the time to really try and push it. All we really had to promote ourselves last time was our fake press release and a quick ad at the end of “The Last Copy” which was only seen on the Newgrounds version of the short. Now that I have plenty of time, I can put a little bit of effort into trying to get some more positive word out.

I decided to make a promotional video in hopes that it could maybe catch on. Part GFGames episode, part showcase of our previous work, and a hint at what is to come in the next marathon, I hope this video helps us get the word out. There are plenty of marathons these days (our pals at GoNintendo are doing a similar one tomorrow, which I’m positive will be a huge success for them) and I’m hoping this video will help push us more towards the front of the pack. We’re not huge enough to where we can just say “We’re doing a marathon” and automatically have a built in audience for it. We really do have to earn every single viewer that we get. Well, why not see for yourself?