I Stand On My Soapbox: Wireless Controllers Need a Locator

I Stand On My Soapbox is a series of editorials that cover more specific topics in the games industry and community. These articles are a little more extreme than normal editorials published here, and could just degenerate to outright ranting. Have fun and enjoy the show!

“The next generation is a wireless one.” That was the slogan for the Xbox 360 controllers that were advertised during the launch of the 360. This was going to be the new standard, as opposed to previous gens where your wireless fix came from third party manufacturers, or you spent more money on the official one. But this generation, nah-ah, you got a wireless one right in the box. Before you knew it, that slogan proved very true, as the PS3 and Wii controllers were wireless too. Finally, no more lowering or raising the wire to let people pass, or them tripping and potentially dropping the consoles from whatever precarious ledge the console was perched on (like my Gamecube… 6-foot-drop, still lives). So far, the only thing that is wired on the consoles now is the TV cables and the power supply (and you know they’re not going wireless anytime soon), and they’re in no one’s way. So with this new found freedom to game anywhere in the house without worry of bodily harm to the console, I have one question: Where the hell did I put my controller!?

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Say Hello to Nyu Media, Your Newest Niche-Game Publisher [UPDATE]

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In a world full of Battlefields, Call of Dutys, and Skyrims, it’s nice to play something out of the ordinary (and a helluva lot more colorful). So far, there’s primarily Atlus, NIS America, XSEED, and Ignition that cater to the niche market by bringing over Japanese games that the big guys are too scared to publish in the U.S. Well now you can add Nyu Media to the mix. They’ll be specializing in bringing doujin games over. “The high price of imports, limited distribution, and the language barrier have prevented gamers from fully enjoying many quality doujin games,” says founder Seon King on the company’s new page in regard to how hard it is to acquire these games and support the often small dev teams. So far they have six games they’ll be publishing this year, with more on the way in 2012. The gaame will be available on PC through regular distribution platforms. No word yet on if they’ll be publishing the games as downloadables on consoles and/or handhelds. You can hit up the company’s website to see what they’ll be bringing over.

[UPDATE] I’ve contacted Seon King, and he said that they’re in talks to release these games on online platforms like Steam. On the handheld/console front, they’ll also be release games on smartphone devices. There are currently no plans to release these games on PSN or XBLA (Understandably so since these services can have some steep hosting fees).

New Doujin Publisher, Nyu Media, Publishing Japanese Indie Games [Siliconera]

Spain to Capcom: “Que Carajo Estas Haciendo Aqui!?”

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Man, no one’s a fan of Capcom lately. Just when you thought Capcom couldn’t piss off Spain again, Capcom reveals that they’ll be dressing Magneto in the King of Spain’s royal clothes. Now, this probably isn’t all Capcom’s fault. Magneto wearing the outfit in question is actually a throwback to the comic House of M in which Magneto is seen wearing said outfit. The Spanish Royal Family had issue with the depiction of their King’s garb and sued Marvel. They’ve settled this a long time ago. Guess no one gave Capcom the memo to not open those old wounds, as now Spain is going down on Capcom for using the outfit as DLC for Magneto and is threatening legal action. It’s currently available on PSN and XBL, so get it while it’s hot!

Capcom May Have Pissed Off The King of Spain [Complex]

Retro Weekends – Donkey Kong Country

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Picture if you will, two rivals, Nintendo and SEGA, in the middle of a very heated war of consoles. SEGA enjoyed the #1 spot after releasing their Genesis, competing against Nintendo’s NES. They steal not only Nintendo’s thunder, but third parties as well that had enough of Nintendo’s draconian bullshit during the 80s. They shelve Alex Kidd and replace him with the hip, the cool (and sometimes creepy), Sonic The Hedgehog. Nintendo, not willing to bow down, release the Super Nintendo. Now the companies are on even ground: two companies, two 16bit consoles, each with their strengths and weaknesses. Nintendo is pulling ahead and netting good game after good game from both them and third parties. A new format is on the rise: the CD. SEGA would invest money into it and make the SEGA CD add-on, with FMV games being their main push. Nintendo, they still got their cartridges, and still kicking ass. SEGA’s frustrated, as their CD format ain’t cutting it. So, they return to cartridge format and make the 32X, capable of rendering polygonal 3D graphics. Nintendo? They’re still sticking with their regular SNES cartridge. Not only that, they release this behemoth: Donkey Kong Country.

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Gamestop To Hide New Games Behind Used Games

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In a message to Canadian Gamestop/EB Games employees, Kotaku has reported that one of the employees has has come forward to show what the new policy is. According to the employee, there will no longer be new or used games, just games. To make matters worse, all new games will be behind the used games on the shelves, and it’ll be hard to tell them apart since they’ll have the same stickers. This’ll be a huge problem for games that utilize online pass codes like Mortal Kombat and Saints Row: The Third to play online, as buying a used game means having to fork over more money to play online. “I can confirm this 100% we were given instructions last week to start this,” says one employee to Kotaku. “We were told that we were to merge all used games with the new games and have them sectioned off by one of four specific genres they gave us.”

Later in the day, another employee has come forward claiming this to actually be false. Kotaku has contacted EB Games (which is owned by Gamestop) and have yet to hear back from them.

EB Games/GameStop Gets Rid of Used Games Section [Update] [Kotaku]

Here comes a new challenger!

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After a little more than a week, a few thousand matches, and a hand cramp or two, I think a review of Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 (Umvc3) is in order. I am very impressed with the overall rebalancing of the game. It seems Capcom really took the time to research problems within the original and tried their best to not make the same mistakes. For example, the DHC glitch is now removed from the game and I couldn’t be happier. Continue reading →

P4U: Aigis No Longer Alone – Mitsuru and Akihiko Join The Fray [UPDATE]

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Atlus you cheeky bastards, leading us to assume that Aigis was the only P3 representative in that fighting game you’re making with ArcSys. Shame on you! But I digress, Atlus has revealed recently that Mitsuru Kirijo and Akihiko Sanada from Persona 3 will be playable characters in Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena. Since this takes place some time after Persona 4, you already know these two aged when you consider when P3 took place. Akihiko has now lost his shirt and is sporting a huge scar across his chest (that looks like it came from a bear). Mitsuru now looks like a spy for the KGB and is now wearing a fur coat, and hot damn am I okay with that! They’ll be sporting their ultimate Personas, Ceasar and Artemesia respectively. The official website has been updated to show these characters. Screens after the break. Now if you excuse me… Continue reading →

Kirby’s Adventure + Japanese Commercial = Kirby’s Epic Yarn!?

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Looks like it. I encountered this commercial yesterday after looking up some more recent Wii game commercials. I click on this thinking it’s Japan’s Epic’s Yarn commercial. Besides it looking like it was recorded with a VCR, the video looked normal. Then the gameplay footage is shown. I’m like, “what…? Kirby’s Adventure?” I’m thinking “must be an extra in Epic Yarn.” Then the old Japanese “Nintendo” splash is shown to end the CM. I’m thinking “nah, this guy must’ve edited something.” I look up another video, and it’s true, this was the real deal: this really was the Japanese Kirby’s Adventure commercial! So that means someone at HAL looked back on this commercial and thought, “You know what, let’s make a game outta this!” I gotta admit, this is pretty cool. The only other time I’ve seen Nintendo take cues from their commercials was when they took the Chandelier Dragon from the Golden Sun US commercial and added him to the game in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Retro Weekends – W-Gundam Zero Custom Model Kit

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This past week I spent much of my time playing through Persona 4. It’s been a while since I played it and I last left off at the sauna right before the Kanji fight. Well, cut to yesterday, and now I’m up to the the secret base dungeon. In between that, I took a quest where I had to make a mech model for this guy. It was an ema request, so I I figured “eh, why not. The fox’ll give me a discount.” So, I made the main character build the model, and then the slight nostalgia trip hit me… the seemingly tedious job of building a mech model was actually fun when I had one. And it was the only one I ever had.

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Hidden Message in Sonic CD

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Hello everyone. Feeling sleeping yet? It’s just about 2AM as I’m writing this (don’t ask). So I figured I put something up before I go to bed.

Not too long ago I came across the vid you see up there. It’s a hidden screen in Sonic CD that you can access by stringing together some numbers in the Sound Test menu. When you press play, this screen pops up. The message “Fun is Infinite (represented by the symbol). SEGA Enterprises” is shown (but in Japanese) amidst a creepy Sonic background and the very eerie Sonic CD boss theme. Suddenly, the “Fun is Infinite” thing just got a hell of a lot creepier. There’s also the “Human Sonic” variant with different music. I’m pretty sure many people already know about the hidden messages/pics, but it doesn’t hurt to put them up anyway. Well, goodnight then.

Protect IP Act/SOPA Must Not Pass, Will Cripple The Internet

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Fellow Fishes, we’ve come today to discuss a serious topic. A bill titled “Protect IP Act,” or PIPA, is being evaluated by Congress right now. They started hearings for the bill on Wednesday, November 16 (yesterday at the time of this article). There is another bill in congress, called “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or SOPA, that is meant to be combined with the PIPA bill. What these bill call for is basically for sites like BitTorrent or other sites like this that provide illegal content to be shut down. Thing is, these bills are too broad in defining what a “rogue” site is. Anyone can be defined as a “rogue.” The Entertainment Industry is the one that wants these bills to pass, for they feel DMCA is not enough for them. In trying to “Protect IP” and take down sites with copyrighted material on it, they will instead hurt the internet and what makes the internet awesome. Currently, under the DMCA, anyone who has copyrighted material on their site is given time to take down the offending material. The worse that could happen is you’d be fined. With PIPA and SOPA, it will be a felony to have a video of you singing karaoke, and be put in jail for 5 years. That’s right, you will be no better than that crackhead down the block, or that rapist on the loose. To make matters worse, these bills are set to fly through congress. This KYM article (and the video in it) can explain things in better detail.

While we at The Wired Fish don’t support piracy, this is not the way to combat it. Sites like 4chan, Know Your Meme, DeviantART, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Facebook, 9gag, Halolz, the Channel Awesome network, ScrewAttack, etc. would be affected, and even shut down. Youtube will be a largely different place to be in. NicoNico will be gone as quickly as they started. Let’s Players like Chuggaconroy and ProtonJon will be gone. Smaller sites like us would have to leave, and our videos taken away. These bills cannot pass!

Do your part and send a letter to congress (trust me it doesn’t take that long). These bills will change the internet as we know it, and it won’t be pretty. Do you want the internet to be like China’s? (no offense). Do you want the internet to be run by a bunch of little Shinra Corps.? Then stand up and knock this bill out. We got one bill knocked out. We can do it again!

Ono: There will be no Super Street Fighter X Tekken Turbo

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In an interview with Gematsu (via Gamepro), Street Fighter X Tekken producer Yoshinori Ono was asked if there would be any extra versions of this game. Ono responded by stating that if there’s to be any extra versions of the game, it would be handled similarly to Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition instead of Super Street Fighter IV and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. In other words, it’ll be done as a downloadable update for those who already have the game (and probably retail for those who don’t have it yet).

To put simply, you will risk being a sucker… again.

Interview: Yoshinori Ono on Street Fighter X Tekken, fighting games [Gematsu, via Gamepro

Naoto and Teddy Ready to Kick Ass in P4: The Ultimate In Mayonaka Arena

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Big blogs, I am disappoint. How could you talk about Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim and not talk about this!? This is big news here! Naoto and Teddy have been revealed as playable characters in Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena, a fighting game being done by Atlus and Arc System Works (of BlazBlue and Guilty Gear fame). They’ve actually been revealed for some weeks already, but not a lot of blogs seem to be mentioning it. I guess it’s somewhat of a forgone conclusion that the P4 crew would be playable, but it doesn’t hurt to let the public know anyway. You can check the official website to see Naoto and Teddy (though the info is in Japanese). They’ve also added Twitter icons for any Twitters users out there to use. And for you wallpaper fanatics, they’ve got a wallpaper available a well. You can find those in the Special menu in the bottom. Teddy after the jump.

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Anime Theater: Black Cat

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God, they all look like they work at a 50's gay bar...and we wouldn't have it any other way...

Imagine, if you will, the final lap of a 10 lap footrace. In front, you have the gold medalist. He’s obviously going to win, as everyone suspected from the start. And about 10 feet behind him, you have the runner up. The silver medalist, the guy who never really had a chance of winning, but by maintaining his pace he’s shown himself to be a respectable contender. No one will argue that he’s as good as the guy in first, but he’s won a few fans in the audience, and will be remembered fondly.

So they approach the finish line. The first place runner crosses with elegence and ease. The second runner up is about 5 feet from the line. He then shits his pants and falls down. Everyone sees it. His pants dirtied by the tragedy that just took place, he gets up and stumbles over the line, still the runner up. And the audience cheers apprehensively. Yeah, he still came in second, and the rest of his run was great. But holy shit, that ending. It’s kinda hard to forget that he SHAT HIS PANTS AND FELL DOWN.

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[NYCC] Hands-On With Zelda: Skyward Sword (2 Parts)

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Several weeks ago at New York Comic-Con, The crew tried their hands at Nintendo’s latest entry in the Zelda series, Skyward Sword. Suikoinfinity and our buddy Osjua tried their hand at the Bird Race and Boss Battle demo, while Steven “DPX” tried the Dungeon demo the following day (with commentary help from Allison B., who we met at the Con). Hit the jump for the Dungeon demo video. Continue reading →