Today Marks The End Of Several Long-Time Wii Services

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Forecast Channel. News Channel. Everybody Votes. Check Mii Out. Nintendo Channel. These were several of the channels the original Wii offered to owners, some since launch. Forecast Channel reported on the weather. The News Channel fed you news straight from the AP. Everybody Votes presented questions for owners to answer and tallied them up. Check Mii Out gave you a chance to showcase the Miis you created to others worldwide. And finally Nintendo Channel was, in a way, the precursor to one-half of the current Nintendo eShop experience with videos, trailers, and the ability to rate the games you’ve played. From this day forward, these channels will cease to function.

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Is Namco Bandai Teasing A New Ace Combat?

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Over the weekend, the official Ace Combat fan page (which is run by Namco) updated its facebook page with images of what looks to be a new Ace Combat game. Project Aces is the dev team at Namco responsible for the Ace Combat games. The Facebook page’s primary promotion was for Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, with the last update related to that game posted on January 31 of this year.

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FSW List 76: Top 8 Hajime no Ippo Fights

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What do you do, when everyone is blue…and punching each other.

So, there’s this show. Hajime no Ippo. And it’s about struggle and friendship and humor and self worth. And you know what else it’s about?

Boxing. That sport that involves people punching eachother a lot. So naturally, you’d expect there to be some hardcore matches in the series. This is a list of the top fights in a series filled with great fights. Fists will fly, tears and blood will be shed, and you will shout many “OOOOOOH!”s as you watch. As I list the fights, I’ll also go into some small detail of the arc of episodes that leads up to the fight, since in some of these cases, the lead in adds an extra level of depth to the matches themselves.

Note, this is from the series as a whole, so that includes the first and second TV anime, the TV movie and the OVA. Oh, and of course, SPOILERS WILL ABOUND IN THIS LIST.

That being said, let’s get started! READY! BOX!

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Nintendo: No Plans In Sight For A New F-ZERO Game

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As time goes on in the videogame industry, the Futuristic Racer genre continues to struggle. One of the granddaddies of the genre, F-ZERO, missed an entire generation since its inception on the SNES. Maybe with the Wii’s hardware, all we would’ve gotten was just another F-ZERO GX on our hands, i.e. not that much different (except for maybe an online component). But hey, looking towards the Wii U and its increased horsepower, maybe we might be zipping through the tracks in HD and with online multiplayer, right? Well not quite.

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New Dragon Ball Z Game “Battle of Z” Trailer Released, Hachi Caresses His Balls Gently…Slowly…

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Well, time to get my golden wig out…

Source: Kanzenshuu

A new Dragon Ball Z brawler has finally been announced, sans release date, but what’s been seen is quite exciting.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a huge DBZ fan. Huge. Absolutely massive. I’ve been watching the show since I was five, and even as an older male, when it should be a ripe target for my practiced snark and cynicism, I can’t help but love it.

And I love video games. And video games about Dragon Ball Z are a particular delicacy, especially since they tend to be halfway-decent. A fan boy will endure a lot to play his favorite show, but Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, waaaaay back on the early PS2, is considered one of the first reasonably fun anime games to come here. And its “threequel”, Budokai 3, is actually considered to be a really good game. So was its successor trilogy, the Tenkaichi series, with Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 being my favorite DBZ game of all time, and a personal fave for its great music, fun combat and ungodly amounts of content. Continue reading →

Gamer Review: Thomas Was Alone

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But not for long…

Title: Thomas Was Alone
Developer: Mike Bithell
Publisher: Mike Bithell
Console: PC, Mac, PS3 and PSVita

Profound. That’s not a word that I, or anyone, should ever use lightly. To ascribe something any level of profundity is to register it as a higher form of something. To say that something has ellicited a level of feeling and thought in us that deserves not only special attention, but praise. It is a difficult task to be profound, that it is.

And especially in videogames, it is hard to believe that anything can be a “profound” experience. Most lack that certain something, maybe due to rigidity of form, or an intent that they just can’t shake in the name of deeper meaning. Or maybe some try too hard. Or, in other cases, try too little and the only “profound” nature they have is to be profoundly dumb, or profoundly disappointing.

Or both.

And yet, now and then, they do make their way to us. Shadow of the Colossus, a masterwork of isolation and stark beauty. Journey, a short but painfully gorgeous adventure that acts as one big allegory for the paths we all must take in life. And now, I can honestly say that Thomas Was Alone has joined those ranks because, although it might not have their beauty or depth, it manages to do the almost impossible; to tackle what it means to exist, to understand our place in the universe and alongside our peers, and it tackles it with a sharp wit and a deeply compelling heart. Continue reading →

The Xbox One Decides To Pull A “One Eighty”

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Happy now? We finally listened.

In a recent post from Don Mattrick, President of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, on the Xbox’s official website, posts that all the Xbox One’s DRM of always being online and the restriction of not being able to freely trade the games that are released for the system to any one the consumer wants, has been scrapped!!!!! He states, “After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.” and, “There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.” Continue reading →

Yoko Shimomura To Compose Her First Mainline Final Fantasy Game

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Known for her work on Street Fighter II, the Super Mario RPG/Mario & Luigi series, and Kingdom Hearts, Yoko Shimomura will be at the helm composing music for the newly named Final Fantasy XV. Listening from early trailers of the game, if you have a keen ear for videogame music, you can probably tell that she was composing music for this game from the get go when it was still Final Fantasy Versus XIII. After the reveal of Versus XIII becoming FFXV, Yoko’s gotten a rather noteworthy promotion as far as Final Fantasy games go.

The main Final Fantasy games have been composed by the likes of Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII, Odin Sphere), Masashi Hamauzu (Final Fantasy XIII, SaGa Frontier 2), and the legendary Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy I-XI and XIV, The Last Story). Yoko Shimomura’s music, at least for the battle themes, is known for its marching drum beats and melodic violins. Other times, she’ll throw in that old-school flair for kicks. I covered her music her week of Composer’s Month, so go over there to get a feel for what her music sounds like.

Tourchlight Goes Free…For Two Days!

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Catch us while you can!

The well received game by Runic Games, Tourchlight, has gone on sale for the very low price of… free!! As a part of their “No DRM” promotion, the game will be available, with ALL its juicy stats, till Thursday, June 20th at 12:59 p.m GMT.

So get your butts into the nearest computer chair and start downloading.

The link to gold provided here

[Source]

In Memorial: Kenji Utsumi

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Ken-oh has returned to the heavens…

On June 13, 2013, the world of Japanese VO suffered a really terrible loss when Kenji Utsumi, one of the most veteran seiyu (Japanese voice actors) in the business, lost his battle with cancer, passing away at age 75.

As the Wired Fish’s resident anime geek, as well as one of a relatively low number of passionate “voice actor enthusiasts”, I find that I grow fond of certain voices. Certain actors who fill a niche well, giving me a fond thrill whenever I hear them. “Ah, there’s X actor, good to know this hero’s in good hands!” or “Oh, she’s voiced by Y, no wonder I hate her.” Utsumi-san had made a career out of voicing rough and tumble guys, his lower register voice giving many a throaty growl to characters both old and new, and I’d like to highlight a few here. Continue reading →

IO Interactive Lays Off Half Their Employees

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There can be only one!

A spokesperson from IO Interactive has said to Develop that the company is heading a straight forward path to only focus on developing games for the Hitman franchise. By this decision the company has laid off about half of their employees. The spokesperson has been quoted as saying, “However we have taken the difficult decision to cancel other studio projects and initiatives at IO and reduce the workforce in this studio, which will impact almost half of the employees currently at IO, as we make internal adjustments to face the challenges of today’s market.” This is something that is not new to companies especially in the video game business, heck it could be way worse, it can just officially shut down but this is different in the case that a wide lay off was caused by the company’s decision to officially focus on one kind of project. Continue reading →

FSW: Anime Theater: Hajime no Ippo pt. 1

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Ippo will punch your expectations in the FACE…and then apologize profusely. He’s THAT kind of guy…

Title: Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting (aka “Fighting Spirit” in its US release)
Year: 2000
American Distribution: Geneon put out the entire series under the “Fighting Spirit” title, dubbed and all, and most volumes are easily found on Amazon or similar sites. Prices range from 10-20 bucks per 4-episode volume.

Anime is wonderful for a variety of reasons. It’s fun, challenging, surprising, silly, deep, creative, horrifying, mind blowing and very, very varied. Animation here in the US is wonderful and varied as well, this is true, but in Japan, the art form is used to tell stories not just aimed at kids or adults, but of all genres and depths. The anime industry is as wide as the film industry, at the very least, and twice as creative.

So sometimes, when you’re watching the cosmic beast being fought by the young warrior with daddy issues, or the metaphysically challenging ending of a space opera-style show, or seeing a buff dude get punched through a mountain, you forget anime, and by extension, manga’s, talent for simply telling a story. For like all media, any show or story is only as good as the people making it.

And nowhere is this more exemplified than in Hajime no Ippo, George Morikawa’s masterclass in well-rounded, yet accessible and fun storytelling, set to the very terrestrial sport of boxing. A masterclass in great character design, interesting plots and how one uses such a broad, creative artform to tell a constrained, character-based story. Continue reading →

Anime-Kung Fu Theater: Rurouni Kenshin

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Watch our hero, watch him stand, ANGRILY, in front of stairs…

Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji kenkaku roman tan (according to IMDB)
Year: 2012
Availability: Not yet “officially” available here, but DVD acquisition is easy, and a localization is absolutely inevitable.

The art of the live-action adaptation is a most difficult and unforgiving field. Anime, almost without exception, is an art form that takes advantage of its unreality to tell stories that would otherwise be impossible to tell in another format. Maybe they’d require unrealistic staging or locations. Maybe the characters need to go through some shit that no real person could feasibly go through. Or maybe someone needs to get punched through several miles of earth, and well, with the exception of Hong Kong legend Lo Meng, I can’t think of anyone in the real world who could handle THAT particular stunt.

I heart him. I heart him so FUCKING much…

Because of this, most anime adaptations tend to run the gamut from “decent” to “holy shit, my brain eyes are on fire, summon the lord for the end-times have come” Some of them are uproariously bad/good times, like the old Fist of the North Star movie with Gary Daniels and Malcolm McDowell. Others are just depressingly bad, like the horrific Blood Plus movie made a few years back. And still others are just, well, BORING, like Mushishi (based off one of my absolute faves, no less). So imagine my shock when, after watching the Rurouni Kenshin live-action film, I sat back and said to myself that it was…good. Damn good. Really damn good. Miracles happen, that they do. Pretty Asian miracles in red hakama… Continue reading →

First Step Week Delayed to THIS Week, Hachi Offers to Sever Leg in Recompense

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So…some of you may have noticed the lack of much Hajime no Ippo-related writing here, despite my claims to a large amount of such things coming out. Well, that’s because it will be coming this week, for reasons that have nothing to do with my inability to recover from a drunken, debaucherous weekend at a convention, coupled with E3 coverage NO SIREE, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT.

…*ahem*. Anyway, expect all the boxing fun promised last week to instead come this week. I would also like to officially announce that First Step Week is now dedicated in loving memory to Kenji Utsumi, the voice actor for Coach Genji Kamogawa who tragically passed away last week. I’m offering this to his memory, so I’d better damn well be up to snuff.

Well folks, see you in the times to come.

David Wise Will Compose Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

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Upon seeing Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze being revealed during in our live reaction video, I expressed hope that since we’re getting another DKC game, this means that many of the songs in the game will be remixes of the music in Diddy’s Kong Quest (like DKC and DKCR). Chief amongst these remixes would be Stickerbrush Symphony, the song many consider either the best song in DKC2, the best song in David Wise’s career, or the best videogame song of all time. Kenji Yamamoto did an excellent job remixing much of Wise’s work in Donkey Kong Country Returns, so I was wondering how he’ll handle a song such as that. It looks like I’ll be getting my answer as David Wise will be teaming up with Yamamoto to compose for Tropical Freeze.

We really haven’t heard much from Wise in the videogame scene. Last we heard of him, he was making remixes for fan albums at Overclocked ReMix. Any chance we get to talk about Wise on the podcast turns into one long trip down memory lane. To see Wise come back to the series that made him a household name amongst gamers is certainly a plus for this game.

More about DKC: Tropical Freeze’s soundtrack [Destructoid]