In 2003, Nintendo released Warioware Inc, a bizzare and unique pacakge unlike anything seen so far on the Game Boy Advance. It was a collection of ‘microgames’, short games that were to be completed in a few seconds. These games included jumping over a moving vehicle, dodging arrows, wiping the snot from a nose of an anime girl, and even excerpts from classic Nintendo games. There was nothing like it, and still isn’t. When the DS was announced, I suspected that there would be a version of Warioware which would take full advantage of the system’s capabilities, and sure enough, here it is.

Warioware touched makes use of the stylus and microphone for an all new and bizzare collection of minigames. You use the stylus to cut up food, unroll toilet paper, put out fires using a statue of a urinating child, and other bizzare activities. Each set of games is grouped according to thier main function. For instance, Jimmy’s games involve rubbing, while Mona’s involve quick cutting motions. You unlock more stuff throughout the game, including more minigames, and ‘toys’ which show off fun little things you can do with the DS. For those looking for something unique, you can’t go wrong with this. Also, check out Warioware twisted on GBA, and Warioware smooth moves comming soon to Wii.

This past weekend at Botcon, while the last year of Transformers Cybertron weighed heavily on our minds, and the new Transformers Classics line captured our attention with every peek, there was little doubt that an unstoppable force was looming ready to make or break Transformers.
Thats force was without question, the 2007 Transformers movie from director Michael Bay.

First thing anyone saw after entering the gates to the convention was a giant fist with a countdown time to the 7-4-7 release date. A quick sweep around it, there was no doubt it was the hand of Optimus Prime.

Once inside, the Hasbro booth was supplying Autobot and Decepticon car magnets with 7-4-7 printed on them. All their reps seemed trained to dodge any movie questions.

Activision had a small booth promoting the new Transformers Game, which was officially announced for Xbox 360. I pressed the reps for info, but aside from mentioning it would be multiplatform and based on the movie, they had nothing.

On Saturday’s Hasbro panel is where news finally broke. Hasbro has historically allowed no cameras, audio or video during their panel, and this was no exception. Except that they reminded us AGAIN. Michael Bay had sent over an approx. 2 minute video from the set. Prime’s truck roared through the frame, Bumblebee out ran Barricade, and smashed through a window… and then explosions. Cars flying, a bus igniting and splitting in half, mixed shots of cast and extras running from a CG menace to be added later. When the lights went up, all anyone could do was demand it be played again. As we let out of the panel, it looked like half the fans in the room were on cellphones trying to reach anyone who wasn’t attending to let them know what they’d just seen.

This was easily the highlight, but not the end. Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime mentioned during his panel that he’s signed a 3 picture deal. That doesn’t mean we get 3 movies, but it does mean Paramount/Dreamworks want him available to do a Transformers 2 and 3. Cullen also announced the Make Prime Speak contest, where fans can submit a single line of dialog for the heroic Autobot leader. Submissions end on Oct 12, and voting begins on Oct 16, so if you want in, do it now!

Finally, Botcon 2007 has been announced at the Rhode Island Convention Center for June 28, 2007 thru July 1, 2007. This is significant for 2 reasons: Its in the backyard of Hasbro World Headquarters, and its mere days before the movie’s release. Nothing else has been announced, but I’d be surprised if the red carpet movie premiere isn’t right there.

Criminal #1
Written by Ed Brubaker, art by Sean Phillips

It’s tempting to pick out any number of the books coming out tomorrow (Vaughan on Dr. Strange, Wolfman on Nightwing, Incredible Hulk #99), but the book that you might not have heard of (that is, if you don’t read a lot of comics news) is also the one I’m looking forward to the most: Criminal, by Brubaker and Phillips.

We’ve talked about Brubaker a couple of times here before, referencing his current (and extremely well-executed) runs on Uncanny X-Men and Captain America, but the first time his work caught my attention, it was on the Wildstorm book Sleeper, his previous collaboration with Sean Phillips.

It was a brilliant story of subterfuge and spy games, with each issue being joyous mess of hell for the protagonist. It challenged the concepts of right and wrong; and the clever role of super-powers (in a world with super-powered individuals) was the icing on an already glorious cake, as things were regularly viewed through a different sort of lens, making every experience fresh and surprising, much like how he’s been handling Captain America.

Now, I realize that those titles all involved super-powers, and to a certain extent the spandex uniforms that go with them, and here is where Criminal differs. It’s a straight up crime book, with nothing tying into the super-hero universes that we know and love. And that’s not a bad thing – If this inspires him to such devious heights as he took us to on Sleeper, then this will be my favorite book to come out this year. Not to mention, Brubaker is reuniting with his former Sleeper co-conspirator, Sean Philips, who you may have recently seen in the Marvel Zombies title.

I guess I’ve done enough fanboyish gushing to tell you how I feel about this comic to make me feel like a chump if the book doesn’t turn out as good as I hyped it (I’m looking at you, Boys #1). But based on the glowing track record of these two creators, it’s really hard for me to believe that it will fail my expectations in the least.

My brother mentioned to me on the phone that the long awaited 4th installment of the Die Hard series is being filmed in Baltimore. Much to the chagrin of locals, Baltimore is merely a stand-in city for Washington DC.

I don’t think theres a whole post’s worth of news here, so lets just revel at how hilariously awesome the title is.
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD.
Mother of god.

You can read all about Bruce Willis body double here.

Trailer for Die Hard 4 after the jump….
[Read the rest of this entry…]

A few recently surfaced newsbits regarding the Fantastic Four sequel:

• Beau Garrett will be playing Frankie Raye, a character that (in the comics) ultimately offers herself to be a new herald for Galactus, much like the Silver Surfer was before being kicked to the curb for turning his back on the big purple jerk. Prior to taking the role of herald, she’d had a relationship with Johnny Storm, which is confirmed as a story angle for the movie.  The former is generally undiscussed at the moment, but conveniently enough, it’d fit nicely with the story.
• Some set images surfaced HERE on the Hollywood North Reporter message boards, courtesy of memeber “seven.”  Images mirrored for your pleasure:

 

• IESB.net recently spoke with Chairman of 20th Century Fox Tom Rothman. Technically, it’s an interview, but there’s some interesting nuggets in there about the Silver Surfer in the sequel: “I will say this, we are investing a tremendous amount of money, time and care, to make the state of the art CGI Silver Surfer, to make him as great as modern technology can make him. And, the only thing that I would say is that the real, the ultimate pay off of that level of investment and doing it to its fullest possible extent, would really come if we are able to make future films. … We’re certainly putting everything that the business has to offer behind it in the hopes of doing that, in the hopes that the Silver Surfer has a long life. … I will tell you that the first teaser that we are going to put out of the movie, which will be very early in the new year, the first teaser will definitely reveal the Silver Surfer. So people won’t have long to wait to judge how well it is done.”

Interviews:

• Kurt Busiek talks about his current run on Superman, which is an excellent, excellent read. I typically find Superman dull and uninteresting, but Busiek’s doing a bang-up job on the series, and with only 3 issues out so far, there’s plenty of time for you to get on board. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. (I mean the book. Interview’s good too.)
• Brian K. Vaughan talks about the Dr. Strange mini that starts tomorrow, which sounds strangely interesting. This man can virtually do no wrong when he puts his pen to paper, so to speak, so I have no intention to miss this one.
• Gregg Hurwitz will be writing Marvel’s upcoming Foolkiller book for their MAX line, which I guess we can all preview in tomorrow’s MAX preview book. The interesting part of the article is in the middle, where he says, “I was doing a book signing in Florida with Brad Meltzer and I mentioned to him that I had always loved the Punisher. He put me in touch with Marvel Executive Editor Axel Alonso and things clicked, which led to Foolkiller.” Looks like Brad Meltzer might be opening a lot of doors for authors to break into comics.
• Marv Wolfman is writing Nightwing, starting TOMORROW. It was going to be a 4 issue stint, but now he’s on for a longer haul, thank goodness. There’s preview pages too! Go look!
• Everyone’s talking about Ed Brubaker‘s book Criminal, which hits tomorrow. In fact, we’ll be talking about it in a second…

Burger King will be offering 4$ X-Box and X-Box 360 games along with their value meals according to Gamespot. There will be 3 games which will be total Burger King propaganda featuring none other than the extremely creepy Burger King driving bumper cars, racing bikes and most disturbingly of all sneaking around and force feeding people Burger King food.

As if the King wasn’t a bone chilling enough character that I would put on par with your average clown when it comes to creepiness but now to top it off he wants to assault my colon by force feeding me those horrible Burgers?

I think this promotion is a great idea except that I don’t have an X-Box and I don’t get Burger King promotional items since the gut wrenching Pokemon promo of 1999. These issues shouldn’t affect most people…

As cheap and propagandaish as this may seem we’re still talking about what is essentially a 4$ game. Under 10$ including the meal. It’s hard to beat that.

Thanks to spooie for the heads up

Poking around the Newsarama forums, I came across a thread that revealed this image from a recent issue of Wizard, featuring the cast of C.B. Cebulski and Karl Moline’s upcoming Loners book:

From left to right, the characters are:

• Penance (former member of Generation X, insanely convoluted backstory)
• Darkhawk (awesome!)
• unknown (speculation suggests she’s a legacy character for the Silver Samurai, but nothing confirmed at all)
• Turbo (formerly of The New Warriors)
• Ricochet (formerly of The Slingers, a group that used suits and identities that Spider-Man briefly used when he was accused of murder… ah, the 90’s)
• Phil Urich (former good Green Goblin, now retired)
• Julie Power (formerly of Power Pack)
• and some sort of Spider-Girl (appearance matches May Parker in Spider-Girl, but it’s more likely Mattie Franklin – though I also staked her out for Omega Flight… maybe Arachne is the one on Flight?)

Marvel’s really repopulating the Marvel U with its female spider ladies, isn’t it? Ridiculous. Maybe they’re throwing them all against the wall to see what sticks. Anyway, Wizard has an old article on this, where they’re showing some concept art. Here they are, mirrored for your enjoyment:

Turbo	Seems to be Silhouette, the new Scorpion, and Jubilee	The UNKNOWN GIRL	Some more Turbo	Looks like Turbo mask concept sketches