with my love for all things planes/airships, et al related, i thought id point out the new final fantasy xii trailer on ign. the airship etc fascination all started back with laputa and porco rosso, and now we have last exile and the rockin’ airships/air pirates theme of the new final fantasy. the trailer features extensive shots of the game cinematics as well as gameplay footage, so take a look.

> final fantasy xii trailer (via ign)
> final fantasy xii website (jp)

> the other side of zelda…via penny arcade. long live penny arcade.

m3ntal note | oh…and yay for finding new hotkeys! i just noticed the other day that if you have tabs open in firefox, pressing ctrl+(1-9) jumps to the corresponding tab. woo fun. and on a minor note, if you use smart ftp, holding shift while reducing it minimizes it to your system tray. geek woo! shit, im dorking.

this ones for the fighter fans out there. another year, another tekken yo…and tekken 5 is right around the corner. a preview of tekken 5 was showcased at the e3 show last week in los angeles, and its development is looking pretty coo. in a bit of a backtrack, tekkens doing away with variable-surface arenas, flattening out everything in the veins of virtua fighter. i kind of liked the variable terrain, but whatev. other new implementations are interactive environments, a new graphics engine, and move buffering. while the ign article states that this is a new thing for the tekken series, i dont know how accurate that is. you could argue that kazuyas mist steps were buffers, as were steves feints and stance chains. and a kid i used to play with at the arcades said that you could buffer mist steps with lee. maybe their version of “bufferings” different from what im assuming it is…*shrug*

there are also new characters as well, and the tekken 5 trailer featured the characters raven, asuka kazama, and feng wei in action. raven, as ign points out, eerily resembles wesley snipes from the blade movie trilogy. raven seems to use a combination of leg sweeps and aerial kicks, which makes him a good evolution of bryan fury (who is notably absent from the trailer). maybe raven is bryan…via a brain transplant (heehee), or maybe he’s bruce whos come back from the grave to get some bloody video game-sequel revenge. whoever he is, he still looks badass.

next up is asuka kazama, who as the name implies, has some relationship to jin kazama and his mother jun. her set of moves definitely suggests a tie with jun, since shes clearly seen in the trailer using juns (and old-school jins) distinctive white heron combo. maybe shes jins long lost sis…or aunt…or juns resuscitated clone thats come looking for revenge blah blah blah. righty-o. but like the rest of the kazama and mishima clan, she’ll probably be a master juggler. word.

and the third new character shown in the trailer is feng wei, a chinese martial artist with eyebrows to rival those of kazuya. hes a distinct departure from laws kung-fu, and actually fights vaguely similar to the old-school wang jin-rey (sans the drunkeness). and if not for the fact that wang is bald, i wouldve ventured to guess that the old man he’s looking over in the trailer was in fact wang. just a guess. anyhoo, he’ll probably be set as the middle-ground between law and ling, getting a little more power at the cost of speed and combos.
while the new characters are all fine and shit…and ill def try them out, im personally just hoping they open up jin and kazuyas repertoire. give kazuya more variety in chains to link into his mist step…jin some quicker counter-attacks and more varied options with his follow-thrus. and heihachis not dead, he was just nerfed stupid in tekken 4. revert him back to his tekken 3 ass-pummeler you motherfuckers. i dont want another diaper-wearing senior citizen going around using 5 versions of his godfist, 3 versions of a useless wind godfist, and being incapable of even pulling out a demon massacre.

> tekken 5 (via ign)
> tekken 5 trailer from e3 (via ign)
> tekken 5 website

just thought id post this…an absolutely coo render of the character nova from the forthcoming starcraft: ghost. those who have played either diablo 2 or warcraft 3 are probably fully aware of the in-house cinematic rendering capabilities of blizzard. they are arguably the masters of gaming cinematics.

gizmodo posted a coo site today highlighting the maschinen krieger (sf3d) universe. nevermind that the dude who runs the site is in a ghostbusters outfit. the sites a pretty coo visual reference to maschinen krieger…created by the graphic designer kow yokoyama in the mid-80s and set in an alternate world where world war ii rages in the far future. i currently have a maxx factory safs snake eyes (u-variant) in my possession, but theres an assload more designs that are definitely worth taking a look at.

> maschinen krieger visual resource (via gizmodo)

aicn pointed towards a forum today that had posted an obscene number of new star wars ep3 images. unfortunately, the images dont seem to show up on the forum anymore. the links mustve been broken somewhere down the line. the source page of the images however seems to still be up, albeit with half their images broken also…grr. definitely worth checking out tho to see a few of the images that do work.

and speaking of jedis, it was confirmed today that theres going to be a sequel to the rockin’ game knights of the old republic. i dont game much these days, but this just happened to be one of the games that got so much attention that i had to give it a try. kotr was a hybrid action/rpg that rocked all over the place, with a seriously good story, gameplay, and surprisingly…superior voice-acting. anyone whos even picked up a controller probably knows the shite that is voice-acting in games. a few details were given on the new game…tagged “the sith lords” and taking place 5 years after the end of the first game. the surprise however is that the game wont be developed by the original studio…bioware, but a relatively new company, obsidian. the developers at bioware are some serious mofos…so obsidian will have their work cut out for them to fill their shoes.

> star wars images (via aicn)
> source galler (if above doesnt work)
> knights of the old republic 2 (via gamespot)

issues that people generally have with a gaming company like blizzard arent that they produce sucky games, or that theyre not interesting. its that blizzard takes their damn time making their games. and not without justifiable end results of course…but still. at the moment, many gamers are still waiting for the release of blizzards first console game in a long time, starcraft: ghost…which currently has a set release date of june 10. hopefully. its blizzard…keep your fingers crossed. in the meantime tho, we can only stare at the new images that slowly trickle out. poot.

> new starcraft: ghost images (via ign)
> starcraft: ghost

LEISURE SUIT
and while we’re on the topic of games, i came across this only recently…a featured lady of leisure suit larry on ign. the world has come full circle…we are getting a new leisure suit larry game! news of the game actually first broke back in october, so im a bit late…oops. for those unfamiliar with the world of leisure suit larry, lets take a step back to our childhood. every kid growing up in the 80s and 90s (male anyhoo…and with a computer) probably has fond memories of playing leisure suit larry…or at the very least trying to get a copy on a floppy disk. originally released in 1987 by sierra (the makers of kings quest, police quest, etc…), you were larry laffer, a dork and an anti-hero who thinks that all the ladies loved him. they really didnt, but that didnt stop you from pursuing them. your goal for the game was simple…get out there, meet women, impress them with your clever humor and disarming charisma, and score with them. leisure suit was one of the first mainstream games to combine humor and sex. not smutty sex or anything…just dirty jokes and a little cga/ega (and eventually vga) nudity. ah the late 80’s, early 90’s. and now we have leisure suit larry: magna cum laude, where you get to go back to college and woo a college girl as larry loveage, nephew of laffer. thank god for polygons…

> ladies of leisure suit larry: sally mae beauregard (via ign)
> leisure suit larry news (via ign)
> vintage leisure suit larry

[ current selection | suba – felicidade ]
[ feelin’ | nippy ]

hokay…two things for today. and theyre not even of the same category, but will nonetheless be placed into gaming + toys because cin3ma is ridiculously overflowing. and frankly i havent been able to figure out how to code the templates properly to show multiple categories either…so there ya go.

theres a second behind-the-scenes featurette up today on the alien vs. predator site. and this ones infinitely better than both the first featurette and the teaser combined because they take a detailed look at the alien and predator costumes. the predators in particular have a more varied look now, because theyre dealing with a whole clan as opposed to an individual. some of the classic predator weapons have also been given a bit of a face-lift. the forearm blades are significantly longer than the previous versions, and the shoulder-mounted cannons come in varying calibers…big and holy shit. the production team is also creating more alien costumes, as opposed to computer generated ones, which i think is pretty coo. the original alien movies didnt use cg, and they looked great. so definitely take a look.

home of the underdogs
theres also a coo article on wired today about home of the underdogs, the website that hosts a collection of abandonware…games so old that their publishers have pretty much abandoned them. the article looks at whats considered abandonware and whats not…and goes into why publishers even abandon a game in the first place. abandonware technically isnt even legal, but many times the publishers have nothing to gain by retaining these games. and many times theyre not even sure who owns what. many companies go under, get bought out, or merge…so the legal rights to certain games (particularly the older games) get lost in the shuffle. lately tho, many game companies have begun remaking older titles. so who knows, many of these titles might hit the shelves again.

> avp second featurette (via cinescape)
> avp first featurette post
> abandonware (via wired)
> home of the underdogs

holy shit, rockin’ the 80s. nintendo just announced that they planned to release a special edition gameboy advance sp that will feature the same color scheme as the original nintendo entertainment systems game controllers. nintendo is also releasing eight first-generation nes games like super mario bros, excite bike, donkey kong, and the original legend of zelda. wow. to quote perrin “mallrat” kaplan, marketing vp of nintendo…”I mean, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man? These are, like, the best games ever. And if you aren’t just dying to get your hands on the gnarly new Classic NES Limited Edition GBA SP, you’re a total dweeb.” ah those crazy marketers. trying to bring back words like “dweeb” and “gnarly”. heres to hoping for kid icarus yo.

> gameboy sp nes-edition (via ign)