Nintendo to Hold Your Hand Through Upcoming Games

I feel an old man moment coming on…

You know, back when I was a young lad of eight, and had the old toaster-style NES keeping me company through weekends, games were tough. They were hard. They kicked your ass until you coughed up blood, and made you work to beat them. You played and you played until the hard edges of those control pads were grinding into your palms, and if you were lucky, you might have pushed a button at the right nanosecond and finished the final boss. That’s the way it was and we LIKED it! We LOVED it!

Now it’s mid 2009, and the video game demographic has spread beyond the Kool Aid sipping preadolescents of the 90s that we were. Now old people are playing, along with adults, young adults, parents, teachers, and nostalgic 30-somethings. So it’s only natural that a few adjustments would have to be made in how games are marketed and presented; but if this latest bit of news is true, Nintendo is about to go Kirby-soft when it comes to challenging their players.

The latest Super Mario Bros. will be released in stores this holiday season, and Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed that it will carry a feature called the “Kind Code.” Essentially a built-in demo player, the Kind Code will allow you to pause the game and let it play for you if you’re having trouble beating a level.

That’s right. Gone are the days of “Contra” and its insanity, of “Golgo 13″ and its mazes, of “Battletoads” and its jet ride levels. Welcome to the new generation, where Nintendo is prepared to take players by their soft hands and lead them through the big, scary games that could potentially make them sweat a little bit. Don’t worry about timing speed through those Twomps or adjusting jump distance for lava pits. Just sit back, relax, and let Nintendo do all the work for you.

Yeah, I’m a little angry about this.

Nintendo to Release Pulse Oximeter Thing

Umm… yeah.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is live and kicking, and although I’m not visiting this year’s show, I’m still able to enjoy all the good and the odd thanks to the wonderful Internet. And this is definitely the strangest piece of gaming news I’ve heard in a long time.

Say hello to the Wii Vitality Sensor, a pulse oximeter that clips onto your fingernail, hooks into the Wii Remote, and does… something… with your heart beat. I really don’t know. According to Kotaku, Nintendo President Satoru Itawa introduced the product but said virtually nothing useful about it, leaving audience members at Nintendo’s press conference to wonder just what the hell it is or what it’s supposed to do. 

Electronic Gaming Monthly to Return From the Dead

The January 2009 issue of EGM, the last issue before its cancellation.

Like a lot of gamers, I was saddened and disappointed when my favorite gaming rag, Electronic Gaming Monthly, was suddenly canned in January. For years I had been buying the magazine, looking forward every month to the tounge-in-cheek writing style and unbiased, no-bullshit reviews. Not only was it my favorite game magazine, it was the only one I would buy. Game Informer, Gamepro, Official Xbox Magazine, none of those ‘clicked’ with me the way EGM did.

So I was happy to read the good news on Gamepolitics this morning. Steve Harris, the original founder of EGM, has reaquired the rights to the magazine and will be launching it later this year under a new publishing label.

It will be a pleasure to add new issues of EGM to my already abundant stash once more. I just hope the magazine is as funny and free spirited with the old staff gone…

Manga Collector Busted for Loli Manga

"Hi! I can land you in jail!"

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when lines drawn on paper can lead to a lengthy prison sentence.

Nevertheless, that’s what happened to 39-year-old Christopher Handley.  An avid collector of manga, Handley was importing some comics from Japan that featured illustrations of children (and animals) in sexually explicit positions. Customs officials seized the books, and Handley was arrested.

The manga was of a genre known as “loli” (short for “lolita”) a type of hentai that depicts obviously underage characters engaged in sex acts. Following his lawyer’s advice, Handley pleaded guilty to obscenity through the mail and “possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children” (Wired). He faces up to 15 years in prison.

Handley was convicted under a law known as the Protect Act, which makes visual depictions of child sex, drawn or computer generated, illegal. He is the first to be convicted under this law.

Naturally, the comic community has been rocked by this news. Aside from the hundreds of comments and forum posts speaking out on the issue, The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund made a statement and Neil Gaiman wrote a novella of a response on his blog.

Before I dive in with my couple of pennies, I want to make a couple of things clear. First of all, under no circumstances do I advocate child pornography. There are reasons why it is illegal, and I don’t think it’s necessary to list them all here. And second, I’m no fan of loli or any variant thereof. I possess no loli. Since I don’t find children sexually attractive, there’s no reason why I would want to look it up.

But I think this is a sad story, and a sorry example of our legal system at work. From everything I’ve read and seen, Christopher Handley was not a pedophile. He had no real (emphasis: real) kiddie porn in his home; just lots and lots of manga, the majority of it not loli. Child porn is evil and wrong because children are harmed when it is made, but that wasn’t the case here. These were goddamned drawings. As in, someone in Japan took a pen and some ink and drew out shapes on paper, added some dialogue, and slapped the images between covers. If I drew a picture of myself shooting someone, could I go to jail for murder? What if I shot my imaginary victim with an atom bomb? Harboring weapons of mass destruction?

Furthermore, a convinction like this can and will lead to others of a similar kind, naturally. One day a man is arrested for importing loli, the next day the law is dragging someone else to the pen for owning a copy of Alan Moore’s Lost Girls. It’s an inevitable chain reaction, and will do nothing to protect real children from predators.

3D Realms Bites It, Fate of “Duke Nukem Forever” in Question

AAAAAAAAAHHUGGGGGGH *splat*

Well folks, it finally happened. After 12 long years of teasers, broken promises, and endless examples of other people actually getting work done, the company with the famous catchphrase and an exorbitant amount of time on its hands has fallen. 3D Realms is officially dead.

I can’t say I’m surprised. If one has a company that does next to nothing for over a decade except occasionally produce something, it’s not going to stay afloat for very long. 3DR’s lazy ass was sitting on borrowed time ever since the announcement in 1997 kicked off the biggest joke in video game history.

But although 3DR may be gone, Duke Nukem Forever remains in the air. Take-Two Interactive still holds the publishing rights, and it’s possible that another development team will pick it up. Then again, it could just as easily get canceled and put to rest forever. In either case, we’re likely not going to be hearing “When it’s done!” repeated ad nauseum for 12 more years.

Movie Review: Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982)

Movie Review: Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

XBox Live to Receive Cuss Filter

Warning: The above clip contains heavy profanity.

Source: Gamepolitics

Have you ever looked at the back of a video game box and wondered what the heck “Experience may change during online play” in the ESRB descriptor means? Or have you actually had to suffer through an online Halo match where some prepubescent brat on the other end dropped racial slurs and f-bombs to the delight of his elementary school buddies? Sadly, there are a lot of jerkwads on X-Box Live who have no shame about blurting choice vocabulary words whenever they can. But according to Gamepolitics today, that will change very soon.

Microsoft has just received a patent for a real-time language censorer that will comb audio streams over XBox Live and block out the Big F. The device works, according to GP’s source Ars Technica, by monitoring phonemes and overriding recognizable words with silence or beeps.

It’s certainly impressive and could prove useful, but I have one issue with it. Is it optional? If it can be turned on and off at the user’s leisure then that’s great, but if it’s a static feature, then that reeks a little of forced censorship. Hopefully Microsoft will take it easy in this area.

Mother 3/Earthbound 2 Fan Translation Finished

Back in 1995, when I was still hopelessly addicted to all things Nintendo, EarthBound was a pretty big deal. With its giant box, modern-day setting and killer soundtrack, it was easily the most revolutionary RPG I’d ever played. I definitely devoted a large amount of time to it, and still consider it one of my all-time favorite games.

What I didn’t know at the time was that EarthBound was actually a sequel, and part of a series called “Mother” in Japan. Nintendo had translated the first game, but they never released it. The ROM of the unreleased prototype is available on the Internet for those who are curious.

Around 2005 or so, it was announced that a Gameboy Advance sequel to Earthbound (or Mother 2 if you will), was being developed in Japan, along with a compilation GBA cartridge that would include the first two Mother games. Despite the cult following that EarthBound had going here, Nintendo never released either one in the States.

But things were not as dim as they seemed. A group of hackers and translators stepped up to make Mother 3 available here. And after a couple of years of hard work, the unofficial translation has finally been released in the form of a ROM patch. Simply download the Japanese ROM along with an emulator and the patch, apply it and presto! Mother 3 goodness for all to enjoy!

So after 13 years of waiting for an EarthBound sequel, it’s fair to say that I’m satisfied. I haven’t made much progress in the game yet (I’ve clocked only about an hour and a half of play time) but I gotta say, it’s great so far. Mother 3 retains the same EarthBound charm while remaining fresh and innovative. And since I’ve been sick and stuck in bed all weekend, I thank my lucky Starmen that I have something so exciting to keep my mind off my nausea.

Movie Review: Friday the 13th (1980)