Weekend Links

Nintendo DS: 50 million units in less than three years (Game Revolution)

This is easily the most depressing thing I’ve seen all week. Have something on hand to vomit in. (poeTV)

And this is the most annoying thing I’ve seen all week, but at least it will wash the taste of bile out of your mouth if you viewed that last clip. (poeTV)

More “Halo 3” woes. First scratched discs, now some guys claiming that it’s not actually HD. (Joystiq)

Nintendo doesn’t give developers enough credit, leaves their names off packaging spines. (Kotaku)

Resident Evil: Extinction has a current metacritic score of 42 and was number one at the box office last weekend. Metacritic score for the previous RE movie: 35. (Metacritic, CNN)

“Chuck”, a new show about a nerd with a computer in his brain, has earned a ‘generally favorable’ response from critics. (Metacritic)

Can I get away with one more Metacritic link? “Halo 3” has earned (so far) a 95. (Metacritic)

A boy did NOT strangle his sister over “Bioshock” (Destructoid)

 

Microsoft to Replace Scratched Halo 3 Collector’s Edition Discs

Microsoft. Merely mentioning the name immediately brings to mind a hodgepodge of things related to its household status: Windows. DOS. Xbox. Word. Currently, the number one product synonymous with ‘Microsoft’ is “Halo 3″, the hotly anticipated third installment in the legendary series that was released yesterday.

Unfortunately, things don’t always go as they’re intended in Microsoftland. Hot on the tail of the massive hype surrounding “Halo 3″ were reports that the Collector’s Edition discs contained noticeable scratches.

GamePro reported on the widespread scratching, and cited bad packaging as the caus of the problem:

Two reports, including internal GamePro findings, show that the retention nub of the Halo 3 Collector’s Edition fails to keep discs into place. As a result, discs freely roam inside the special packaging and become slightly scratched.

The article went on to say that the scratches don’t have an adverse effect on gameplay; but whether or not this problem will get more serious later on is undetermined.

Microsoft has responded to the epidemic and plans to launch a replacement program.

“We are currently investigating the scope of this situation and notwithstanding the outcome of the investigation, we have implemented a plan to address it. We encourage anyone experiencing these issues to go to xbox.com/support and click on the Halo 3 Limited Edition disc replacement link. We will be replacing these discs and apologize for the inconvenience.”

Quad Says: Faulty packaging is nothing new. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bought a new audio CD or DVD and found it out if its holding when I removed the shrink wrap. It’s an issue especially prominent with boxed sets. My “Buffy the Vampire” slayer DVDs have been nicked to death because of this problem.

Unfortunately Microsoft has built a reputation not only for dominating the world of computers, but for accident-prone products. These are the guys attributed to the infamous blue screen, the Red Ring of Death, security craters in Internet Explorer, and now a plague of scratches.  But nobody’s perfect.

Weekend Links

A guy claims the Resident Evil series is racist, but doesn’t seem to have all his facts straight. (GamePolitics)

Remember “Silent Hill 2″? The original working title has just been revealed: “Party Town!” (poeTV)

IBM is researching ways to make virtual worlds accessible to the blind. (Kotaku)

Will Final Fantasy XIII be PS3 exclusive? Square Enix can’t seem to make up its mind. (Destructoid)

Microsoft is claiming that the XBox 360 has been improved. Will the Red Ring of Death be no more? (Game Revolution)

I’ve just discovered that Patton Oswalt is hilarious. Warning: filthy language here. (poeTV)

Joel Hodgson pre-MST3K. Hey, the guy who submitted that video sounds familiar… (poeTV)

“Like an advertisement for condoms”

There’s no breaking news to editorialize or major ranting to be done today, so I thought I’d share a couple of classic Youtube videos. Both have been online for a while now, so it’s not like I’m breaking new ground by showing them off.

I should warn you beforehand, though. These two clips demonstrate humanity in its absolute lowest form. They will either make you feel ashamed for being a human being, 0r help you realize that your problems are minuscule compared to other, far more broken individuals.

This first clip is of the infamous World of Warcraft Ventrilo kid. In case you missed out when it initially hit the scene (or your browser isn’t capable of playing flash videos) here’s a synopsis: a WoW obsessed brat (I’m guessing he’s 15 or 16) has been down in his parent’s basement playing the game for hours on end, and mom and dad are tired of it. First mother dearest tries to peel her fat suburban spawn away from the computer screen, prompting lots of screaming, whining, and sobbing. Then dad joins in on the chaos, proving to be just as ineffective as his good lady wife. The video ends with a lot of shrill incoherence from teentoddler, an argument over a lacrosse match, and banter between two guys who were apparently listening in the whole time.

My interest in this clip was renewed by a posting on Game Revolution. Site creator Duke Ferris said that the kid in the clip is “an agent of his own destruction” and “like an advertisement for condoms.” His simile was spot on.

And this one… oh dear Lord, we’re on the train to nowhereland fast. Here, we make a swift exit from the boredom and angst of everyday upper-middle-class suburbia, and find ourselves right smack in the middle of a trailer park. 15-year-old Victoria is determined to have herself a youngin, regardless of what her “stupid mother” has to say about it. And Tori’s had sex over 300 times! That’s right, she’s been counting!

For the life of me, I’ll never understand the mentality of talk show guests. Instead of getting professional help for these sorts of issues, they’d rather go on “The Maury Povich Show” and make total asses of themselves on national television. I don’t get it. Does the warm lighting or eye of a camera make them more comfortable? Are they exhibitionists in some way? Do they think Maury has more insight than a real therapist?

Whatever. Enjoy this heaping helping of sad!

Resident Evil: Exinction is Going to Blow

The poster’s tagline says “All bets are off”. If they only knew how RIGHT they were…

When one creates a film based on previously written work, transferring between two different mediums is hard, and staying true to the nature of the original work is tricky. Books (which give the author the advantage of omniscient viewpoint) are a world apart from movies and television, which have to rely on telling the story visually. How do you retell a novel onscreen without diminishing with the writer originally had in mind? How do you show the written word the way it was meant to be seen? It’s a difficult task, but a lot of people have pulled it off.

Unfortunately, in the case of videogames I can’t come up with a single example where anyone ever, ever got it right. Oh sure, they’ve tried, and in some instances almost made it. Regardless, game-based movies have always been a stigma on the world of cinema. No matter how much effort is put in, the end result always comes out wrong.

When comparing the two Resident Evil films that are already out, I’d call the first one the ‘best’. It was lousy, but writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson used original characters and situations so viewers couldn’t claim they’d already ‘seen’ the ending. Other than lots of zombies and flying bullets, it was the only thing appealing about that movie.

Then he wrote Resident Evil: Apocalypse and pissed away his one good idea. Not only did he cram as many characters from the video games as he could, he introduced them all in the cheapest, most cliché action-heroy ways imaginable. He gave the sole surviving heroine of the first movie amazing superpowers (hey, they’re dating in real life) and made her even more powerful at the end. (oops, did I spoil it?). And he rounded out the cast by breaking a cardinal rule of decent storytelling: throwing in a wise-cracking goofy black man. Wow.

Resident Evil: Extinction will hit theaters everywhere on Friday. I can’t reveal specific details about it (I haven’t attended any pre-screenings) but I do know a few things offhand. First of all, it’s not going to be very good. That’s pretty much common sense. Second, it’s going to include Claire Redfield and Albert Wesker, two more characters from the game series. Oh, wonderful. Are they going to show up in the same manner that Jill Vallentine and Carlos Olivera did in Apocalypse, bursting onto the scene wielding two pistols and blasting away at zombies?

Or maybe I’m wrong in thinking Extinction will be another asstastic game-based time waster. Perhaps it will end up being the greatest movie of the year, hailed by critics as the action/horror event that forever changed the face of moviemaking. Maybe it will inspire others to create videogame films that remain true to the source material while allowing creativity to shine.

Nothing’s impossible!

Donkey Kong Jr. Math Added to Virtual Console… Uhh…

Yeah, seriously. I’m drawing a blank here.

The annals of Nintendo history carry a lot of hits and misses. On one hand you’ve got consoles like the NES and SNES, games like “Super Metroid” and “Mario 64″, and the singlehanded revival of home gaming in the mid-1980s. But on the other hand, you’ll find the Virtual Boy, bloodless Mortal Kombat, and in this case, failed experiments in software.

Back in the 80s, these ‘video game’ things were still a relatively new frontier, and as parents watched their kids pump quarters into machines and blast Goombas to oblivion with hails of fireballs, they couldn’t help but wonder: “Is this good for my child?” Nintendo, which was just beginning to invade homes with the NES, had this to say in response: “Why, of course it’s good for your child! We offer games like “Donkey Kong Jr. Math”. See, he’s learning arithmetic and being educated.” Then said parents would nod in approval and walk out of the room.

What a load of cop-out nonsense. Metaphorically speaking, Nintendo was the babysitter who let you watch R-rated movies or do handstands on the roof when your guardians were away, after promising them that you’d have your homework done and be in bed by 7. I’m sure that even back then, kids who had copies of “Donkey Kong Jr. Math” kept the cartridge in the back of the closet while they were busy slaughtering vampires. Nobody wanted a damn game preaching to them about numbers.

So why add it to the Virtual Console list? If no one cared about it in 1985, why would they start now? What’s the point of Nintendo digging this forgettable borefest out of the past? I can’t fathom anyone in their right mind spending Wii Points on this, unless their money is getting too annoying. I swear more people would download Flashing Screen: The Video Game.  I sure played a lot of that when I was younger.