Posted on

The Video Game Review Thing

I’m sure no one is coming here for my opinion on the Video Games Industry, but there’s a little bit of a hubub that went on over the last week or two at Penny Arcade. Basically, one of the proprietors of that fine site said that video game review sites were corrupt, slaves to the almighty videogame ad dollar.

Part One: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/14 – Second Post
Part Two: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/26 – Second Post
Part Three: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/28
Part Four: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/28
Part Five: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/29
Part Six: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/11/30

Also, video game reviewers are in themselves broken, terrible gamers because they play games the wrong way, to complete and rate them, and not to enjoy them.

Now I’m not saying I agree with the Penny Arcade fellas or anything, but I got to play the game that kicked off the whole to-do, Assassin’s Creed. All I did for 30 minutes was run around an giant, immaculately-rendered version of Jerusalem in the middle ages, stabbing people to death. It was beautiful and satisfying and complex, and man, I sure did like killing people.

So, yeah. The Penny Arcade guys are totally right. But the point is, it’s nice to know that reviewing is corrupt in every industry! I just wish there was more money in comics to justify the kow-towing to Marvel and DC.

– Christopher

P.S.: The Penny Arcade guys are raising money again for Children’s Hospitals across North America. Check out ChildsPlayCharity.org.

Posted on

October 11th Linkblogging

ITEM: Let’s start off our comics linkblogging with a link that is almost not comics at all. Sorry. It’s just that ever since I’ve been playing Super Smash Bros., the Nintendo character fighting game for the N64, Gamecube, and soon-to-be-released-for-the-Wii, everyone’s been saying “Wouldn’t it be great if you could make Mario fight against Sonic The Hedgehog?” Alas, it was never to be with the characters destined to live on different systems and in different worlds. Until today. This is my generation’s “The X-Men meet the Teen Titans”…

Edit: I had to removed the inlay trailer because it looked like Firefox was choking on it. Sorry guys, go click the link though, the video is great.

ITEM: Over at The Forbidden Planet Weblog, it has been announced that the British Edition of Bryan Talbot’s 2007 graphic novel Alice In Sunderland has broken the 10,000 copy mark, a pretty stunning achievement for a $30 hard cover that no one wanted to publish in the first place. Much as FP did, I’m going to attribute this to a lot of hard work on Talbot’s part, as well as the book finding a natural home in its native country, being a (thinly disguised) history of Northern England, of specific interest to many of the denizens of… Northern England. Talbot’s 5 stop U.S. tour, his appearance at San Diego, and a non-stop press push in England are remarkable, and he’s set a very high standard of creator involvement for graphic novel promotion. The book is going into a third printing in the U.K., and is on (I believe) it’s second printing from Dark Horse Comics here in North America.

ITEM: I’ve been going on and on about Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tekkon Kinkreet / Black & White for a little while now, so I’ll take a little break to let Jog do the talking for a little while. Over at The Savage Critics, my favourite comics writer spends a little over 4,200 words talking about Tekkon Kinkreet, both the manga and animated adaptation, in an essay that I quite honestly have not sat down to read just yet. I plan to though, when I’m done this. As a reward to myself. If you’ve got some time to spend, why not check out the review?

ITEM: Today marks three years of The Comics Reporter. Congratulations to my pal Tom Spurgeon and all of the wonderful writers he’s working with.

That’s all for now.

– Christopher

Posted on

Japan 2007: Akihabara Electric Town

Hey there! Welcome back to my little travelogue of Japan. If you’ve missed the previous entries, they’re now all indexed under the Japan 2007 tag. I’d watch out clicking that, though, as those entries have a lot of photos for those of you on slow connections.

Just a quick note that the entries are going to lose their “Day” tags in the titles from this point on, because after this day (and even during) our trip compressed, doubled back on itself, and in big parts stopped having anything at all to do with comics. As this is a comics-related blog I don’t want to dilute the focus too much, but almost all of my photos will be going up on a public sharing service thingy sooner or later so you won’t miss anything, promise.

With that, Akihabara:

000.jpg

Patrick Macias recounts the history of Tokyo’s Akhiabara district in the excellent Cruising The Anime City: A Guide to Neo-Tokyo and since you should all read that, I’ll spare you the bio and just point out that Akhiabara is a neighborhood that is in the process of evolving from a discount electronics mecca to a hardcore manga and anime Otaku paradise. Shown above is Chuo-dori, the main drag in Akihabara facing towards the train station, I believe. We visited Akihabara twice during the trip, on Day 03, and on Day 11. The photos here are from both trips.

Continue reading after the cut:
Continue reading “Japan 2007: Akihabara Electric Town”

Posted on

UDON Comics, Zombie Video Games, and more…

So I really just posted the Scott McCloud notice because I thought having a 2-screen tall Scott McCloud on the site for a few days would be cool. Really gives you a sense of how iconic the whole thing is, doesn’t it? Anyhow, I figure I’ve got some time before bed tonight so why not do a little linkblogging?

Goku vs. Superman - UDON Comics for WizardITEM: My friends at UDON have been pretty busy lately, with everything except new Street Fighter II comic books (by the way, the Image to the right is by Long Vo of Udon, and features two fairly recognizable characters duking it out for Wizard magazine, copyright their respective whatsits).

Now, you may be asking yourself “Why is it that there aren’t any new Street Fighter Comics on the stands?” (Actually, chances are you probably weren’t, as I don’t think my readership crosses over with Udon’s so much, but indulge me for a second). Well, it was announced a week-or-two back that Udon has been tapped to do all of the art for the new 20th Anniversary edition of the Street Fighter II video game. Basically, they’re taking the fan-favourite (and best, honestly) version of SF2, called Super Street Fighter II Turbo and creating a “remix” called “HD Remaster“.

What’s different exactly? Well for starters, it’s going to be downloadable onto your X-Box 360 (only, at this point), and today’s home consoles make the arcade machines of our youth all look like PONG, they’re so much more advanced. The big difference is the level of detail in the art. Whereas the Street Fighter characters of our youth were a hundred pixels high or so, these new ones will be massive, and be better-able to capture expressions, details, every little fold of cloth… well, see for yourself:

Ryu Through The Ages

So, it’s essentially going to be like the current Udon Comics series, but playable. The primary art and style is actually by Alvin Lee of Udon, who, according to his Facebook profile is hard at work on the series, alongside the rest of the Udon team. It’s pretty rare that a licensor of Japanese material is then asked to go and work on the property for the owners, particularly in Japan. I get the sense that licensed books are sort of “Free Money” and it’s really not best to think about them too hard (which would explain some of the many, many atrocious licensed books). But yeah, doing an adaptation so good that it ends up being the basis for an anniversary edition worldwide? AND it’s a video game license that’s up there with Mario, Pac-Man, and Sonic? Kudos, gents. (Screenshot from Gamekult.com, Click for larger.)

ITEM: ZOMBIES! In honour of The Walking Dead Volume 6 finally shambling it’s way on to store shelves this week (yeah, no kidding there aren’t any fast zombies in TWD), may I present to you two chances for you to take on your own metaphor for consumerism/racism/society as a whole? These flash-based zombie killin’ games will get you all pumped up until you die, and realise that when the Zombiepocalypse comes, it’s gonna be about our brains, one way or another…

  1. BOXHEAD: ROOMS and MORE ROOMS: Okay, so you’re in a room, and you have to defeat neverending legions of the undead using a myriad of weapons. You only last until you run out of ammo. The End. Despite this, it’s incredibly addictive and mildly depressing. Did I mention that Satan is in the game too? Lots of Satans? Yeah. There’s also the BOXHEAD: HALOWEEN SPECIAL, in which you as lone-gun-toting-hero must lead groups of ‘civilians’ to safety. But we all know that in the world of the undead, there’s no such thing as safety. http://www.kongregate.com/games/SeanCooper/boxhead-more-rooms
  2. THE LAST STAND: Okay, so you’re behind a barrier, and you need to defeat neverending legions of the undead using a myriad of weapons. Sound familiar? Actually, it’s fairly different from BOXHEAD (more detailed/realistic for one), with a focus on dividing up your daylight hours between searching for survivors, weaponry, and rebuilding the only thing between you and the teeming legions of zombie hordes. Lots of fun zombie-movie in-jokes amongst the wide array of shambling (and occasionally running) corpses that you must destroy. I really like the hunting rifle, myself. http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/the-last-stand/

ITEM: Somehow I missed this, but a week ago it looks like GayGamer.net, a homocentric (heh) video game news/commentary site started up their own comics division. Cleverly entitled http://gaygamer.net/comics/, it’s going to cover the queer goings-on in the comics world. Somehow it missed my Cockphobia post. Perhaps it was beneath their notice. At any rate, posting at the blog has been a little spotty since it launched, but they just added a new blogger and it’s always good to have more queer-positive content out there.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!

– Christopher

Posted on

Catching Up: X-Files Movie?

Since my last “Catching Up” post went over so very, very well, I figured it was time for another. Here’s what the last 4 days of Google Reader have turned up:

x-files.jpg– Hollywood.com has David Duchovney confirming a new X-Files movie is in the works. According to Duchovney, “This week, they’re starting some kind of road towards doing it (the film). Gillian and I both want to be in it now. We’re happy to do it.” How about that eh? Time heals all wounds, as does a pretty thoroughly unspectacular post-X-Files career… On a related note, my employer has a ton of original X-Files art for sale by X-Files comics adaptation artist Sean Scoffield. There’s also art from the Queer as Folk TV Show, the movie eXistenZ, and the recent Underworld mini-series from Marvel Comics. Just Saying.

 

– Video Game website “Gameasutra” has an article up on being out and LGBT in the video gaming industry. The answers are very, very similar to what I hear from gays in the comics industry, so in lieu of any such articles on comics, I figured it was worth pointing out to the industry-watchers who watch this blog. Here’s a good quote from the opening:

Jeb Havens, probably one of the most visible and vocal LGBT developers, says, “It’s not like there’s only a handful” of gay people making games, “but there’s no presence or community. There’s no ‘gay’ face to it.”

I’d love to write a similar article about LGBT creators and industry folk in comics, particularly within the larger realm of blogging, but with no time to spare it’s not gonna happen. C’est la vie, but go read this one: it’s really well done. Thanks to GayGamer.net for the link.

 

– The best part about my job is selling good comics to people. There’s a special kind of magic to selling someone the first volume of The Invisibles, or giving them Scott Pilgrim for the first time. It honestly makes all of the other stuff, like selling Civil War, totally worthwhile. I was reminded of this by Matt Forsythe back in the comments to my Taiyo Matsumoto post, as it looks like just went out and dropped a bunch of coin on Matsumoto books. Nice! This is why I was so pleased to see this nostaligic remembrance of comics retail from Richard Bruton at the blog Fictions, about his time at Nostalgia & Comics in Birmingham:

“The rarest of prizes though, the really fun one was when a customer would come in and tell you that they’d read everything they wanted and could you suggest anything to read. That always made for a fun 10 minutes or so of chat and selling.

“I always sold the books to people with the promise that if they didn’t like them all they had to do was bring it back in and we’d refund the money, no questions asked. To me it seemed the only fair thing to do. After all, this wonderful customer is putting down good money for a book just because I’m telling them it’s wonderful. I’ve spent a little time asking all the pertinent questions to gauge exactly what sort of thing they’re after, but I could always misjudge their comic character and sell them something they hate.

“I’m very proud of the fact that in all my years of doing this, not a single copy has ever been returned. Not one.” – Richard Bruton, Fictions Blog

I don’t have that kind of track record, sadly, but I occasionally let what I think people should be reading get in the way of what they might enjoy reading. I’m doing my best 🙂 Tip of the hat to the Forbidden Planet Blog for the link.

 

I think that’s all for now. The contest details for the Garage Band contest are finished. They’re awesome. Posted later today.

– Christopher

Posted on

Canadian Artists on Canadian Contest for Japanese Video Game System

udon-wii.jpg

Nintendo Canada is giving away 6 custom-painted Nintendo Wii’s, each by a different Canadian artist. Of note to comics fans? UDON Artist Arnold Tsang did a pretty sweet ‘street art in Super Mario World’ design (seen above), but they’re all pretty darned cool. Better still, our friends down the street at Magic Pony are sponsoring the event, which means, hopefully, that all of the designs will be on display there soon…? Hopefully?

Canadians can head over to http://theartofwii.nintendo.com/ to enter to win one of the custom Wii’s. Everyone else can go look at them, but YOU CAN’T WIN. BAHAHAHA. Finally, it’s Canada’s revenge for being locked out of every other damned contest.

– Christopher

Posted on

Just catching up with a few things…

Kampung1. Tom Spurgeon posted his “50 Best Comics of 2006” before I did, just like last year, and just like last year, I wanna get up off my ass and actually get mine done (it’s currently in spreadsheet format). His top 10 comics are probably different than my own, though I think his appreciation of Kampung Boy in awarding it the top spot is good, and makes a lot of sense. As I said in my review (Nov 12 entry) of the book:

“Lat is Malaysia’s Will Eisner, a ground-breaking graphic novelist whose deeply personal stories about society, family, and religion, speak to us all.”

2. Do you people care about Video Game stuff? I do, but I don’t want to assume too much. Still, the Grand Theft Auto series had a serious impact on my personal life, and it’s done much to popularise crime-based narratives in the past few years in comics, so I figure the news of the new Grand Theft Auto 4 Trailer breaking late last week is of interest. It’s set in “New York” this time out, and the NY media are already over it with angry folks at City Hall pitching 3 kinds of fits. Sounds to me like the game is gonna be a hit!

3. I don’t like Project: Rooftop. There, I said it. I’m sick of seeing talented creators feed their time, creativity, and intellectual property into revitalising trademarked characters, and for free, no less. I understand the memes that this site sprang out of, out of the cultural response to and reclamation of popular culture, and I still think it’s a little misguided and unfortunate (it’s a short step from that to HAL’S EMERALD ATTACK TEAM) but at least memes aren’t institutionalised like this. I wasn’t going to go and strap myself to a target like this, but this morning Warren Ellis started up a similar thread on The Engine, inviting participants there to redesign Witchblade as an artistic exercise, and then pointing out that the Editor of Witchblade is on the forum, and it just gave me a chill. How fortunate that all of you artists get to be cheap research and design for trademark holders. How fun.

If you’re a smart and talented artist, first and foremost do whatever the hell you like. But if you’re here reading this and you give a shit about what I have to say, then please invest your creativity and skill into your own work, which you own.

– Christopher, Killjoy

Posted on

Three Diversions of Note

We can’t be reading, blogging, and thinking comics all the time, right? Right? Whilst surfing the interweb, I came across three great little flash games that I figured would be of interest to you reading here. Please note though, they’re incredibly diverting, probably too much so, so if you’ve got a deadline you might just want to come back and check these out after it’s safely past.

Note: All of these games probably require either Adobe Flash 8, or Adobe Flash 9. It’s a free download.

5 Minutes To Kill Yourself

1. 5 Minutes To Kill Yourself – http://www.adultswim.com/games/fiveMinutes/index.html
Courtesy of Adult Swim, the fine folks who grace us with The Venture Bros. and Harvey Birdman: Atourney at Law, and fucking curse us with The Aqua Teen Hunger Force, comes a game that’s so good it’s meta. You’re a bored office-drone throwing your life away in one of a million identical cubicles, while the collection of freaks that makes up your co-workers jabber on about inane nonsense. It’s enough to make you wanna take that stapler and jam it right into your eye-socket. Well now you can! You’re in control of a virtual office-drone, and you must get him killed in 5 minutes or less! Say the wrong thing to a co-worker, pee on some faulty electrical equipment, push the guys in I.T. over the edge or just pick up that stapler! The clock is ticking, and it’s either suicide or one more stupid meeting about nothing that will go on forever. It’s like “My Dad: The Virtual Simulator”. Awesome.

Desktop Tower Defence

2. Desktop Tower Defence – http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/

We’ve all been bored at work, and maybe imagined the collection of paperclips, erasers, and other detrious that adorned our desks were little invading armies. You know: The erasers have to defend the rubber bands from the invading staples? Maybe it’s just me. That won’t stop you from enjoying Desktop Tower Defence. Essentially, little enemies are entering the screen from the top and the left, and you need to situate little towers that will fire things at them and stop them from reaching the other side of the screen. Each tower can also be upgraded for better range and to do more damage, and some towers can slow down enemies, or are stronger against enemies in the air or on the ground. In short, it’s like a really nerdy table-top RPG, but completely animated and really strategy oriented. It’s great fun, and an addictive time-waster. After 5 tries I was able to beat it… on easy. I’m kind of afraid of what HARD is gonna be like.

Understanding Games

3. Understanding Games – http://kongregate.com/games/pixelate/understanding-games-episode-1 

We’ve had McCloud’s Understand Comics, and John Kovalic took a stab at Understanding Gamers in his Dork Tower series, but we’ve yet to see anyone attempt the same thing for Video Games, or at least, I’ve yet to see it. But why would a text on the nature of video games be a book? Why wouldn’t it be… a video game? It is! The people at ‘Pixelate Environment’ have created Understanding Games, a series of informative flash games that talk about the nature of gaming (if that’s too techy/nerdy for you, just think of them as ‘chapters’). Starting at the very basics of gaming and what games are, and gaining in difficulty of both concept and execution as the series moves forward, these are really informative, thoughtful examinations of what makes a game. There’s even some semiotics in there. It’s got a lot of potential, and I hope new installments make their way to the net soon. Check out Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 now.

—

I hope I’ve sufficiently ruined your productivity for the next day or two. All of these links were grabbed from Kotaku, a video-game blog sponsored by Gawker. Check’em out.

– Chris