Category Archives: General Articles

Anime Theater: Basilisk

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Like kunai in the throats of our hearts, these are the days of our...apparently very misty photo shoots.

Like kunai in the throats of our hearts, these are the days of our…intergalactic photo shoots.

  • Basilisk: Kouga Ninpo Cho (just Basilisk in its English distribution)
  • Year: 2005
  • American Distributor: Funimation

When I say “love story”, what comes to mind? If you’re a literary sort of any kind, or if you ever attended a New York school like myself, then whether you like it or not, the first thing that pops into your head is, of course, Romeo and Juliet. The tale of a true, deep love unfulfilled due to the cruel auspices of fate, and the warring passions of two families, R&J has been captivating audiences for almost half a millennium now. On the other side of the coin, we have the world of Anime, where everything, even the most staid premise can be made anew by the creative madness of the men and women who make these things. So what does this have to do with today’s subject? Well, if I was to describe Basilisk in a sentence, it would be to say that someone looked at that old tale of love and loss, and said “You know what would make this story AMAZING? Ninjas.”

In fairness though, despite that rather silly description, Basilisk is a mighty enjoyable, occasionally heartrending and endlessly creative (yes, creative) little gem for anyone who’s in the mood for some high romance, but feels that there should be a body-count. Just like any true-to-life love story…

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Nintendo Ad Campaigns Retrospective [2013 Edition]

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Nintendo Ad Campaign Retrospective 2013[New to this edition is the addition of the Wii U campaign. Much of what was written from the previous edition is largely unchanged, save for some grammatical corrections that might’ve slipped by. Some parts might also have more info added. So sit back, relax, and read on.]

You have an idea for a product. You make the product. And now it’s time to sell the product. So what’s the one thing you’ll do to sell your product? Advertise it of course. This is pretty much the pattern that most product makers follow. In the game industry it’s no different. With catchy slogans, flashy graphics, and some off-the-wall shenanigans, an ad is supposed to convince you to buy the product they are selling. But ignoring all of the attempts to sell and actually looking at the ad, they always seem to be a product of the era that they were released in. So for this retrospective, we’re going to look at one of the longest living game companies, Nintendo, from when we played with power, to when we played it loud, to two guys asking us if Wii would like to play, to what we will play next.

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Live In The Bronx? Good At Fighting Games? Well, There’s A Tournament For That

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DWG Fighters Tournament

Up and coming gaming group Destructive World Gaming is hosting a fighting game tournament in The Bronx. North Bronx to be specific. We don’t see many big tournaments here in the Bronx (they usually go to Brooklyn and Manhattan). But if you’ve faced a Bronxite before, you’ll finally get to see their worth in their home turf (and ours! …well, mostly). The names of the game is Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and Super Street Fighter IV A.E. (not sure if it’s the 2012 Edition though). The entrance fee is $20 and it’s Bring-Your-Own-Controller/Fight Stick (though DWG will have controllers available should you need one).

The venue of the tournament Uptown Sports Complex, located 170 W. 233rd Street (Google Map’d that for ya! Just don’t use Street View as their image is outdated). The tournament starts this Saturday, March 9th, at 4PM. Registration is open,  so if you think you have what it takes to duke it out with the best of The Bronx, sign up! If you can’t make it but still want to watch, hit up their Twitch page as they’ll be livestreaming the tournament as well. We’ll see you there!

Destructive World Gaming main site
DWG Facebook Page
DWG Twitch Page

The Captains Speaketh – Playstation 4 Reveal

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PS4 Reveal

And so Sony has revealed the PS4 last Wednesday, and with it a new venture into a more social experience with the console itself. The controller includes a touchpad similar to the one found on the back of the Playstation Vita, only this time it is in the front of the controller and in the center of the controller. Included on the controller is a Share button that will enable players to upload gameplay onto the Playstation Network and stream it live. Sony is also pushing cloud services, which is now viable for Sony after purchasing Gaikai a while back. The games themselves will also sport a new coat of graphical paint (of course) and seek to make interaction with others more feasible.

However there are still some things on our minds about the PS4, like how much it will cost, how much will the games cost, the format of the games, and the much rumored feature of used games being block? Join us as we discuss our thought on the Playstation 4.

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Top 60 Most Wacky Bootleg Boxarts: PS2 Edition

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Top 60 Wacky Boxart

Last week, a new light was shined upon within the videogame community, followed by many faces of bewilderment, amazement, and side-splittting laughter. Coming from African game distributor Syrian Games, the games presented had boxart that can only be described as a drug-filled surrealist trip. Heads of characters photoshopped on the bodies of other characters, overly simple title fonts, and the overabundance of greenery and rainbows for relatively dark games. I mean, I’ve seen bootleg boxart before (namely from fake Famicom games), this but this a whole ‘nother level of zany. There were over 700 games in the PS2 section, and I sifted through all of them. Yes, I’m that serious. As I clicked page after page, I thought that it’d stopped be funny eventually. But it never did, and this is just the PS2 section. Rest assured, I wanted to show many of these and was initially raring to only show 20. But screw that, we’re going for 60!

So after the break, the The Top 60  Most Wacky Bootleg Boxarts: PS2 Edition.

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Fangames And C&Ds: What To Do About Them

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Cancelled fangames (2)Disclaimer: The Wired Fish does not promote copyright/trademark infringement nor encourage it. We still recommend contacting the original content holders on projects you’ll be undertaking should the need arise, and to abide by the law if a Cease & Desist is sent. Content holders are obligated to contact the author of this article should you not agree with this article. As with all of The Wired Fish, anything expressed on this site falls on the individual authors and not The Wired Fish as a whole nor our host WordPress.

On Friday, February 8, 2013, one of the most popular and most polished fangames in the brony community, MLP: Fighting is Magic, was served a cease and desist order from Hasbro, the makers of the My Little Pony franchise. It caused a massive ripple effect across both the brony community and the fighting game community. Mane6, the developers of Fighting is Magic, took steps to make sure that they would be in good standing with Hasbro when they started developing the game in 2011, namely by not profiting off the game and not accepting any donations from fans. Any donations that were brought up from tournaments went straight to charity. They stated this on their FAQ page when it was still up. While it was believed that Hasbro had no problem with the game (FAQ gone to confirm this), last Friday’s event proved otherwise.

So once again the topic of fangames has hit the forefront of the gaming periphery. Fangames are a form of expression, a way of showing adoration for a show/videogame/movie you like. In other words, it is another form of fanart. Unlike the typical form fanart – the most common being drawings – fangames take more time to make and are generally much lower in quantity. But, like some fanart, many fangames tend to be rather amateurish and crude, either making something poorly from scratch or poorly reusing assets from other games. But there are some out there that excel beyond the norm, creating new content or using currently available assets and making something equal to or beyond the quality of the original. It’s these games though that tend to get the dreaded cease & desist order, with companies fearing it being a little too close to their product.

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Weeks Away From Launch, Rayman Legends Gets Delayed To September (Same Month As GTA V’s Release)

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Rayman delayed

Like the header suggests, this is Delaying-Anarchy-Reigns levels of stupid. Previously Rayman Legends was slated to release on the Wii U on February 26th. Ubisoft then announced that the game would go multiplatform, no longer being a Wii U exlusive. I see no problem with this as I still don’t own a Wii U (yet) and might have a better chance getting it for my PS3. Plus, more people get to play the game. Then came the announcement immediately afterward that the game would be delayed to September 2013. Woah! That’s a deep delay, almost as deep as Anarchy Reigns‘ delay.

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Patent Trolls On The Loose Again, Going After… Podcasters?

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Patent Trolls

When my colleague Anthony showed this on the staff page, I very much surprised at what I was reading. I mean, the usual targets patent trolls claim as theirs is tech stuff, so something like podcasts is not even in my purview. But lo and behold Patent trolls have sunk to a new low. According to Julie Samuels of lobby group Electronic Frontier Foundation,  a company called Personal Audio are going after podcasters for supposedly “claiming that it owns a patent that covers podcasting technology.” She explains that Personal Audio is using very broad terminology to catch many in its huge web of deception. One example she presents is how they define distribution of episodes.

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Rasslin’ Rants – Royal Rumble 2013

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Finally…The Rock has come back to part time wrestling!

Hello and welcome to another edition of Rasslin’ Rants.  So yeah, the Road to WrestleMania is officially underway with this past Sunday’s Royal Rumble PPV.  I want to get this out of the way and say this show wasn’t very good.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Royal Rumble (abbreviated RR for this article), it’s a 30-man over the top rope battle royal where the winner gets a WWE or World Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania.    Seems like a good idea in theory, creating new main event people in the process, but that’s not always the case.  Sometimes, WWE uses this as an extremely lazy way of rehashing something from the past.  Such is the case for this event.  Anyways, here’s what I thought of the show.

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6:00 Inferno : Ni no Kuni (Part 4) I got a boat.

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Periodically I run a live stream called 6:00 Inferno.  Things don’t always burn, but I play games both new and old, and I’m always in for the long haul.  I might live in New York, but I like to pretend I’m from the west-coast, so I run on pacific — not eastern time.  Stream details on top of page!  

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Last time I almost became an Oliver sandwich and obtained a boat.  Watch me sail around to places I probably shouldn’t go before I get my ass kicked enough times to continue the story in Hamelin.  I really like the sailing song actually, so I hope to be able to do a lot.  Inferno starts in 5 or so minutes, be there!

The Wired Fish Podcast S4 – Episode 3

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“Live In Your World. Play In Ours.” That was the slogan for much of the PS2’s lifecycle. While the PS2’s time was long over, that thought was only subjective as games were still being made for it well after its time supposedly passed. Games like Persona 4 and Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier were showed that the PS2 still had a beating heart, but it was obvious that it’s days were numbers (or were in fact up). Finally, Sony stepped in to confirm that manufacturing of all PS2 systems had ceased in all territories earlier this year, marking an end to an era. Not since the Japanese Famicom have we seen a console stay in production this long, even after support for the game dropped to near zero. And thus we look back on the era that kicked off the new millennium, the Playstation 2.

Timestamp of Contents after the break.

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HP Reviews: Magic Mike

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My sentiments exactly.

My sentiments exactly.

Have you seen Coyote Ugly or Showgirls? How about the music video for LMFAO’s Sexy and I Know It? If you answered YES to any of them, then you’ve already seen Magic Mike.

Well thanks for reading. Until next time…

Totally not buying it?  Want me to elaborate?  Fair enough. I saw Magic Mike…willingly.  As a matter of fact, I was the one who rented this movie for my girlfriend and I to see. Did I want to see it for the black hole of charisma known as Channing Tatum? HELL NO. I just know a bunch of people who watched it and wanted to see what they were touting as “the best movie EVER”.

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Super Smash Bros. And Playstation All-Stars: What Can They Learn From Each Other?

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SSB and PSAS

As soon as Playstation All-Stars was announced and shown, the world erupted into what could be called a fanboy clusterfuck. While other games using the Smash Bros. formula have popped-up, most notably Jump Superstars, They’ve not garnered the vitriolic fervor that PSAS has gained. Being the level-headed console/pc agnostic I am, I was curious what developer Superbot would pull off. Super Smash Bros. has been largely uncontested in this genre of fighter, so seeing Playstation All-Stars, at first party attempt, appear as a contender can only be seen as a good thing for both games. As they say, competition breeds quality that is passed on to the consumer. And now that we have the console giants duking it out, what can these two games learn from each other?

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Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance “Jack The Ripper” Trailer

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metal-gear-rising-revengeance-black-and-white

New cutscene and gameplay footage has been released for Platinum Games’s hack n’ slash title Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.  The trailer showcases protagonist Raiden under control of his “Jack The Ripper” persona during a corporate raid in Colorado.  This persona has been hinted at in previous Metal Gear Solid titles as Jack was a child soldier made to fight during the Liberian Civil War under the wing of Solidus Snake.  The former was injected with nanomachines by the Patriots but repressed his memories of his horrific childhood.  Once Raiden remembers he starts to suffer with self pity but finds redemption in his wife and child during Guns of The Patriots.  His “other self,” lying dormant, surfaces during Rising and is a critical factor of his actions and mindset later in the game.

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