Pressing Buttons

Konami and their crazy game names...

It's like a wedding around here. Below you'll find links to something old, and something new. Regarding the issue of something blue, well...I just took care of that. But borrowed? That's a fit harder. Would a quote work?

In regards to the power creative people should have in the video game industry, Tim Schafer (Psychonauts, Grim Fandango) said, "We are the unholy terrible giants of the gaming industry."

   

So possibly you've seen this already....
Alright, you've seen it tons, what can I do? With Hideo Kojima unleashing the ridiculously amazing names of MGS4's bosses, I thought I might as well drag this one back out of the gutter.

But I did promise something new*.....

After searching through the titles, that had to be my favourite. Mix Tapes are just so lovely, I'm glad to know the Belmonts had recognized their necessity. Stumble upon your own here. Be warned though, some are incredibly lackluster, as they don't continue the Castlevania name equation; "Weird musical term + sad/dark emotion/object" (Symphony of the Night, Harmony of Dissonance). I know, sometimes Castlevania's powers that be don't follow this rule, but it's a cool rule. Like not smoking when you're pregnant.

You know those lame "Skateboarding's not a crime!" shirts? I want one that says "Castlevania's awesome names aren't a crime!", or "The Castlevania equation; Legalize it!".

*new to me.

A piece of history...UNEARTHED!

(photo from, obviously, game-rave.com. I can't get a direct link to this article, which promises updates "soon", but it's something to mos def definetly keep an eye on)

Personally, this is much bigger news than any mummy they pull out of the ground.

James Cameron should've scrapped The Last Tomb of Jesus, and focused his efforts on this beast.

This is truly something for the books.

This little machine (which hopefully turns out to be a true image of the fabled machine) changed gaming forever, it ended the reign of one juggernaut, and gave birth to another.

The brief history is that Nintendo orignally made a deal with Sony to co-develop a CD based "next generation" system together, possibly even an add-on system to the SNES, similar to what the Sega CD was to the Genesis.. They dubbed it the Play Station. Things soured when Nintendo, in their power crazy days, decided to announce the end of their partnership with Sony by announcing a newer deal with Panasonic. A deal which resulted in nothing.

Sony took their initial concept and made something called the Playstation. They deleted the space between the words, and in the meantime, took Nintendo to task.

Wow.

It's amazing, because you can see that the system above even has the same looking controller ports that the SNES had.

Wow.

Nice to finally see some effort

If you click on anything else today, any one thing, make sure it is this.

This is such a serious matter that I had to modify that font three ways from Sunday just to ensure that the point was made of its importance.

By the way, it's footage from Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers for the Wii.

They needed a title that long just because they're that damn serious.

What I love most about the footage is seeing some actual effort from a third party. Now, now, I'm not saying people aren't trying. Boogie looks great, as does Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (chronicles, and the telling thereof, are the latest thing. It's the biggest game title trend since "BLANK of War"), but this is just mind blowing.

But I should've seen this coming. Game Designer's Studio really churned out a looker with FF: Crystal Chronicles for the Gamecube. Which, believe it or not, I actually managed to pull off complete 4 player games. We all had a lot of money to blow back then, some more than others (one friend bought the game, all I needed was some dinky cable for only $20, I got the sweetest deal of all time that day).

But this...this is just leaps and bounds better than a lot of forthcoming Wii games. It's astounding really. I mean...how does it control. And is that a FF character....that's cool? Unbelievable. I was getting sick of all the "I'm a lady!" male protagonists. It was starting to become....accepted.

Either way, it appears that perhaps this iteration of the series will focus on single player, while the DS version (FF:CC: Ring of Fates) tastes like multiplayer action. Not bad. All my friends own DS' now, so shacking up with those lot should be easy enough just to get my Ring of Fates on. And yeah, that's how I'll say it.
"Hey Dave, you ready to get your Ring of Fates on?"
"You know it, I got my ring toe all ready for it."
"You're weird, Dave."

It's the place to be.

If you like reading, I bet you like listening too.

And if you like listening to things, any sort of things, you should really check out Platformers.

It’s a gaming site that rose from the Penny Arcade birthing canal, which others call the forums.

Basically, three dudes get together and talk games. And these conversations become podcasts for the world to enjoy.

Talking with your friends about video games is BACK, in MP3 form!

What's really important about the Platformers is that they are educated gamers. They're not those guys who hang out at EB Games and tell the staff a bunch of hogwash about how Miscrosoft is skipping Halo 3 altogether, and moving on to 4 because "3 will actually be coming out on the PS3, because it's better and stronger!" These guys can actually carry on a conversation, and an intelligent one at that. And if you want to get involved, you can. The site welcomes guest contributions, and one can even guest on a podcast.

I’m quite a fan of the site, so much so that I even write for them fulltime, in forms outside the medium of blogs.

So check it out, you can even ignore the stuff I’ve written, that way you won’t see me as a mere shill.

In all honesty, I just want you to enjoy playing video games, and to realize that a community exists for you. Not only that, but an intelligent community that won't resort to name calling and other such tomfoolery. So enjoy it now in case the internet dies.

So click, and be merry.