Monday July 4, 2011
When I saw an announcement for the upcoming TEKKEN: Blood Vengeance land in my in-box, naturally I assumed it was the latest in the long line of sequels for the classic fighting game series. After all, since TEKKEN reinvented the fighting genre both at video arcades and on gaming consoles in 1994 it's spawned over 15 sequels and counting.
But TEKKEN: Blood Vengeance isn't a game at all, but a CG movie (IE: Shrek and Toy Story!)
This comes as quite a surprise after last year's live-action TEKKEN movie couldn't even get a theatrical release in America. Luckily Blood Vengeance did...at least once.
For one night only on Tuesday, July 26th at 7:30 pm (local time), select theaters will be showing TEKKEN: Blood Vengeance in full-on 3D along with bonus featurette interview with the director and producer of the "TEKKEN Project"...Alas there is no actually mention of who that is. It could be the game director/producer Katsuhiro Harada, or the film's director Youichi Mour who also directed the animated openings to TEKKEN 5 and TEKKEN 6: Bloodline Rebellion.
So far the only DVD release of the film is slated for Europe via anime specialists VIZ media, but Bandai Entertainment has announced plans to release it in North America by the end of the year, there just hasn't been any news as to who will be distributing it.
More Video Game Movies
Saturday July 2, 2011
Throughout the '80s the major mass-market personal computer in the United States was the Commodore 64, but across the ocean in the United Kingdom, the desktop that was that was being booted up in the family living room was The ZX Spectrum; and much like the C64, the Spectrum had a huge library of 8-bit games.
Now classic Spectrum and Commodore game developer/publisher Elite Systems Group has launched the ZX Spectrum Elite Collection, an iOS (aka iPhone and iPad) app that is a gateway to purchasing and playing their enormous library of ZX Spectrum games. Titles include Turbo Esprit, Jack the Nipper, Manic Miner, Saboteur, and the historic experiment in 3D isometric gaming Ant Attack.
While very few of these titles are known to American audiences, they enjoy a huge nostalgia factor for retro gamers in the UK which has spawned an enormous cult following...plus they're really good too (well...at some of them are).
The ZX Spectrum Elete Collection is basically a portal to purchasing ZX titles, which means from within the app you can purchase games to add to your collection, then play them on your iPhone or iPad (us Android owners are out of luck yet again). You can buy the bundled packs (Vol. 1 - 4) which include a large variety of games, as well as some select titles that can be purchased individually.
While the app was originally intended for a UK audience, it's also available to iTunes App Store customers in North America, making these titles available stateside for the very first time.
More on the ZX Spectrum
Wednesday June 22, 2011
Next month the politically incorrect bad boy of gaming celebrates two decades of blowing up alien scum with the 20th anniversary of his very first game, Duke Nukem.
This hasn't been the best birthday for 'ole Duke as his latest outing, Duke Nukem Forever has been getting land blasted by critics. What were they expecting, Shakespeare? Half Life 2?
So in honor of the muscle bound king of offensive gaming's two decade milestone we're gonna count down the days to his big b-day by showcasing a different Duke classic every week, and to get things started take a look-see at his gaming debut.
Back in his formative years Duke wasn't as hard edged as he is today. He never swore or disrespected a lady, and drank soda instead of beer. Heck the big guy even watched Oprah! Don't believe me? Take a look at the shareware beginnings and discover the truth behind the original Duke Nukem.
Saturday June 18, 2011
"Take a cue from the Q, yeah it's Q*bert!"
That was the theme song to the short lived and super rare Q*bert cartoon, part of the Saturday morning animated series Saturday Supercade.
Now for the first time in 27 years the Q*bert cartoons are available again as part of Crackle.com's streaming Minisode offerings.
The good news is that this is the first chance anyone has had to see these classic, weird, and wonderful cartoons in over two and a half decades. The bad news is that these aren't the full episodes. Instead Minisodes are severely edited down versions of shows, boiling down a full-length program into a 4 or 5 minute summary.
In response to the hit Pac-Man cartoon airing on ABC, rival network CBS picked up Saturday Supercade, a 30 minute animated series with each episodes consisting three cycling cartoons based on popular '80s video game characters including Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Frogger, Kangaroo, Pitfall, Space Ace, and the weirdest of them all, Q*bert.
The cartoon itself was a mix of Smurfs meets Happy Days with a dose of '60s beach party films, transporting the title character Q*Bert from the pyramid playing field of his video arcade game and into a 1950s culture based town of Q*Berg. Along with his gang of horn nosed straight laced teens, Q*Bert is constantly tormented by a gang of punk greasers made up of his arcade enemy counterparts Coily, Ugg, and Wrong Way.
While it stinks that the full-length shows aren't available, at least these Minisodes give old-school fans and newbies the chance to see this piece of video game pop-culture history once again.
