Night-Time Listenings Wrap-Up: Week of 8/20/12

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Continuing Composers’ Month, we dived into the music of Yoko Shimomura. We fought Ken in Street Fighter II. We talked to townsfolk in Super Mario RPG. We looked toward the Mana Tree in Legend of Mana. We fought some Heartless in Kingdom Hearts. And finally we fought on the plains of Bionis in Xenoblade Chronicles.

If you want to see the music as it goes up (and not wait every Saturday for these wrap-ups), remember to go to our Tumblr page and follow it. Music for Night-Time Listenings goes up every weekday at 10PM

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A Gabriel Knight 2 Slide Show (Part 1)

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Here’s something to watch if you ever find yourself bored. And yes I’m aware this is likely the most shitty video I’ve ever recorded.

Gabriel Knight 2 is a fascinating game. The acting is often terrible, some puzzles have the most obscure solutions and most of my time is spent snapping shots, trying to find the right ones to publish when it comes time for review.

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New Giana Sisters Game In The Works w/ Kickstarter (7 Days Left)

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And no one told me about this when it was revealed. *sigh* Regardless. I saw some of the art and thought “hoo boy, Pikomi’s rolling in his future grave.” Then I saw the actual gameplay. Holy shit this game looks awesome! Before I explain here, let me educate you with some Giana Sisters history.

The Great Giana Sisters was an old game made by Time Warp. It was essentially a Mario clone for the ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga, Amstrad, and other home computer platforms. And boy did it borrow a lot of Mario-like elements. It looked so much like Mario, Nintendo stepped in and ordered a cease and desist on the game’s production. This was back in 1987. Fast forward to a few years ago, and DTP Entertainment and Spellbound Interactive make a new Giana Sisters game for the DS. This time there’d only be one sister, and collecting a power up (aka mushroom) turned her into Punk Giana. The stages in this game were short, but very numerous. The artwork of the game was phenomenal, putting New Super Mario Bros. to shame.

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Review : Sleeping Dogs

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Sandbox games are not typically the most enjoyable experiences for me. Aside from Infamous 1/2, Red Dead Redemption, Crackdown…. alright, maybe it’s just GTA that I think sucks ass. Those early trailers got me pumped really fast, and the game was quite well advertised. There’s no Wei they could fuck up a game like this, right?

Just to get it out of the Wei, the protagonist, his name is Wei Shen, and yes you can expect a bunch of shitty puns in this review.

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New Video Recorder and a Clip From my Darksiders 2 Playthrough

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Some people, namely Prota believe that I have a certain fascination with objects of the box variety. It’s an ongoing joke cause I was stuck playing the Wizard in a multiplayer playthrough of Trine.

For a brief moment, I thought Darksiders 2 was playing with me, the boxes apparently coming to life. Thankfully I was wrong, but it kinda scared the shit out of me when I spent the whole clip focused on the shaking boxes.

Nintendo Power Is Dead

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There’s… really no other way to say this. Nintendo Power, one of the oldest running gaming magazines and probably one of the first magazines some of you out there subscribed to, is stopping the printers and ceasing production. Ars Technica reports that Future Publishing, who took over publication from Nintendo back in 2007, would not renew its contract with Nintendo, nor would Nintendo themselves. Future hinted to Nintendo that digital was the way to go since many are getting their news online. However Nintendo didn’t see it that way, and now Nintendo Power is paying the price. Other magazines, like @Gamer, Xbox Magazine, Playstation Magazine, and Game Informer have digital versions of their magazines available. However some, like EGM and Gamepro, died out even with those initiatives, only to come back to lukewarm reception or with production greatly diminished.

Hearing this news, I think back to more recently when I thought that the console specific magazines would still live. I mean, the mags that fell were the independent ones, not the ones tied to a First Party — They would be funded after all. I guess I was wrong. Any magazine can fall now. At the moment not much is known when the last issue will be shipped. I’ll do some memory articles later on or leave it to a podcast topic.

Source: Nintendo Power magazine to cease publication (updated) [Ars Technica]

DICE Executive Producer Still Has Hope On A New Mirror’s Edge Game

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Oh Mirror’s Edge. The game that introduced me to the “next generation.” DICE Executive Producer Patrick Bach stated in an interview with IGN that there’s still a possibility that a new Mirror’s Edge and Battlefield: Bad Company game could still be made. He stated that, “Mirror’s Edge was a game we all loved. Of course it had flaws, like all games. But in general it’s an IP we love. We haven’t killed it ’cause it’s too good to kill.” Of course when you have an idea like Mirror’s Edge, a First-Person Platformer with a minimalist aesthetic and ambient music starring a Master Kick-Asser Faith as the protagonist, you can’t just let an idea like that go. Plus the game was really short and ended on a cliffhanger. What’s gonna happen to Faith and the runners? What about Kate and her link with the blues? And what about Callaghan’s re-election campaign?

On thing’s for sure: if a new Mirror’s Edge game is made, James and I will welcome this with wide-open arms. We want to see this story through to the end.

DICE: Mirror’s Edge and Bad Company Are “Too Good to Kill” [IGN]

Square Enix Teasing A New World Ending Game?

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Oh? What is this? Looks like a new countdown clock has popped up. This time from Square Enix, and it looks like they’re teasing a new The World Ends With You game. At first it looks like nothing much. Then you hear the music. Since I’m on a big Persona 4 fix now, listening to the music, it sounds very Persona-like. Since P3/P4 and The World Ends With You shares the same Japanese-Pop aesthetic, we can pretty much draw this conclusion. Or you can just ignore my long-winded deducing and look at the bottom of the page and see that Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi are credited as Character Designers. Both worked as artists for The World Ends With You, so it’s pretty safe to say that this is a new TWEWY game. Another hint is in the URL, “subaseka.” In Japan, the game is known as It’s A Wonderful World, or Subarashiki Kono Sekai in Japanese Romanji. So Subaseka is a portmanteau of the game’s Japanese name.

I really wish I played this game when it came out. Hearing lots of good things about it, I feel pretty left out of the loop. If I find a copy though, I might transition pretty well into it–being fresh off Persona 4 and all. There’s 6 Days left to the counter. So by the end of the week something should come out of this. We’ll be there to break it.

Square-Enix Teaser Site

Ringside Rants: SummerSlam 2012

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This contains quite a few spoilers for those of you who haven’t seen the show yet. But anyways. here’s my recap and review of SummerSlam 2012!

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Night-Time Listenings Wrap-Up: Week of 8/13/12

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Composers Month Continues with smooth and catchy sounds of Michiru Yamane. We flew through the skies with Detana Twinbee!! Then we slayed some vampires with Castlevania Bloodlines. We lost a painting with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. We went even further back in time with Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. And finally we wrapped with the week with Skullgirls. Yeah, there’s no pun for that. Ms. Fortune took them all.

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The Wired Fish Podcast S3 – Episode 4 (2 Parts)

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Ahoy! In this episode, we talk about the Colorado shooting hand how this could affect general geek culture. Then we dig into EA Origin boss talking crap about Steam Sales. And finally we talk about what characters we want to see in the next Super Smash Bros. and Playstation All-Stars.

Time table of contents and part 2 after the break.

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The Last Story Launch Hits A Little Snag [UPDATE]

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Yesterday I got dressed and was ready to haul ass to Gamestop in the Hub of South Bronx to pick up The Last Story. I called the Gamestop to make sure it was there. As soon as I asked the question, I was immediately responded with “It should be here tomorrow.” And I mean he immediately answered me, like he was asked that already by someone else. Considering how pompous I feel, being a gamer of such refined taste as I in a neighborhood such as this, I thought I was the only one in the neighborhood to preorder the game. I mean, I was the only one that preordered Xenoblade here and I had to make a second trip some days later for the artbook. I also preordered The Last Story that first day too. Certainly I deduced that I was remembered.

But I digress. I equated this to Gamestop being up to their old shenanigans again. But just out of curiosity I checked to see if other gamers were having this issue. And lo and behold, I wasn’t the only one. In fact, this was affecting many Gamestops and other stores in the U.S. Confirmation of shipping delays came straight from XSEED’s Twitter. Even Canada was having issues. So if you didn’t get The Last Story yesterday, check today. But do call ahead to make sure. Looks like Gamestop’s off the hook… for now.

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Night-Time Listenings Wrap-Up: Week of 8/6/12

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This week, we continued the Month of Composers with David Wise. First was a trek through Castle Harman in Time Lord. Then we grew some ram horns in Battletoads arcade. We shot through barrels across brambles in Donkey Kong Country 2. Speaking of barrels, we heard a song from Star Fox Adventures. And finally we heard a remix Wise himself made for Overclocked ReMix.

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The Breakdown: The eXceed Collection

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System: PC/Publisher: Nyu Media/Developer: Tennen-sozai/Players: 1/Release Date: 3/29/12

The shmup genre, a playstyle that’s lived longer than most of us on the staff. As we played these games and grew, our skills were honed to the point that memorization and bullet dodging became second nature. As time went on, a desire for a more… difficult approach arose, and along came the Bullet Hell Shooter. Like watching a fireworks show, the screen is littered with bullets with narrow passages of escape. Thanks to small hitboxes, escape was somewhat easy, and pretty cool at that. So in the heap of Bullet Hell Shooters comes a series of indie games called eXceed. The three games in the series sought to change things up a bit by introducing certain mechanics to the standard Bullet Hell formula. And now, they’re in a complete little package for a small price. Is it worth getting all three, getting part of ’em, or not bothering at all? After the jump, I breakdown each game of The eXceed Collection.

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Shatter Composer Doing A Live Performance, Will Livestream If Enough People Are Interested

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Shatter composer Jeremiah Ross, aka Module, is going to do a live performance of the Shatter soundtrack in the San Francisco Bath House in New Zealand. This is NOT in San Francisco, repeat, NOT in San Francisco. This is in a club called San Francisco Bath House. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, he’s informed people on his Facebook page that if enough people are interested, he’ll livestream Shatter Live on Ustream for those that can’t make it to NZ. All you gotta do is go here and like/tell him you’re interested. The performance begins at 9PM NZ time on September 20th. He’ll be accompanied by Benny Tones (which he collaborated with before) and Jen Kyle.