DC comics have traditionally done well when animated for the small screen. The universe established with Batman the Animated series which concluded in Justice League Unlimted this year is probably only surpassed by Star Trek for its amazing ability to take multiple series and tie them all together.

Live action has fared less well. George Reeves had a good run as Superman, and Adam West and Burt Ward certainly made TV history as Batman & Robin (even if the show was more parody than adaptation). But The Flash got one season out of CBS, Birds Of Prey was panned and canned, and Smallville seems to be losing steam in its 6th year.

Apparently someone more than a few years ago thought the Justice League would make a good show. The Movie Blog is hosting the pilot for this show, which you can download right now. You could download it, but I’d advise you not to. Its so bad. Guy Gardner and Barry Allen are roommates. Atom’s costume makes me laugh just looking at it. Martian Manhunter is the only one who doesn’t come off as completely terrible. The “big 3” are nowhere to be found. These are all things that were possible to fix with casting, writing or simple asthetic choices.

The thing they couldn’t fix is the visual effects, which are pretty good for 80s TV, but do a disservice to the characters because they’re so distractingly fake. Green Lantern’s ring powers form goofy umbrellas or helicopter blades. Atom fights a kitten in local news weather quality green-screen.

Anyway, yeah its bad. Horrible actually. I think I’m having an allergic reaction thinking about it.

The Xbox 360 wireless headset came out yesterday, despite being delayed several days, much like the Live Vision Camera before it. It comes in a rather large box (roughly the same size as the camera) and similar to all the other packaging Microsoft as made for their accessories. This is the first official headset that Plantronics has NOT made for Microsoft (someone correct me if I’m wrong) as the official wired headset still is.

The headset is built relatively solid and feels a lot like many of Motorola’s bluetooth offerings. In fact, if you wear a bluetooth headset, you’ll feel right at home here. The design is fairly simplistic and like a bluetooth headset, it features a minimal amount of buttons. You’ll find a ‘power’, ‘find’, ‘volume up’ and ‘volume down’ button on the piece, nothing more, nothing less. It has a padded earpiece and a rubber loop that goes behind the ear. It’s very light, about the same weight as your standard bluetooth headset and it features an adjustable boom mic. I know I keep saying “bluetooth”, but this headset apparently runs on an RF signal, just like the controllers. [Read the rest of this entry…]

The official story, as propagated by the vampire controled media, is that actor Wesley Snipes is wanted for tax fraud in the amount of 12 million dollars. Snipes is still at large and should he not turn himself in he will surely be pursued by the authorities in time.

The real story is that Wesley Snipes can’t have broken the law because he doesn’t exist. Wesley Snipes is an alias of vampire Eric Brooks, known to those who fear him as “Blade” or “The Daywalker”. Eric uses the Snipes persona to hide among humans while his true purpose is to hunt vampires, the enemies of humanity.

Vampires and their familiars, uninfected humans who work for them, have infiltrated all levels of our society including the police, government and as we see here even the IRS. By fabricating these bogus charges against Snipes the world’s eyes will now be on him and the vampires will simply wait for him to be apprehended before killing Eric or even worse using him in one of their nefarious plans.

Should you see this man please don’t help our vampire oppressors by reporting his whereabouts to the police. Give him a sandwhich, a few bucks and something with 4 wheels and a tank of gas. It may be the only thing that stands between us and annihilation.

A new Villains trailer is available for the Marvel Ultimate Alliance game RIGHT HERE, and it’s actually pretty sweet.  It showcases a large number of villains, lists off some of the heroes, and shows off some of the battle locations in the process.

While all the heroes that flash by super-fast at the end are already listed on the official site, many of the villains shown are not, so here’s a rundown of who made an appearance:

• Doctor Doom
• Loki
• Fin Fang Foom (incorrectly spelled as FING Fang Foom)
• Blackheart (Mephisto’s son)
• Mephisto
• Mandarin
• Ymir (a frost giant, one of Thor’s enemies)
• Ultron
• Kurse (another Asgardian enemy of Thor’s)
• Ulik (a rock troll, ANOTHER Asgardian enemy of Thor’s)
• Arcade-Bot (presumably a robot of Arcade’s)
• and Galactus

So clearly, the game’s going to spend a decent chunk of time dealing with Asgardian problems, which hopefully means we’ll actually be in Asgard.  This is some good thinking, as it can lead to some scenarios and scenery which will be completely unique from not only the rest of the game, but from other comparable games (like X-Men Legends, or the upcoming Justice League Heroes). By the way, if you’re too lazy to poke around their site yourself, you can find a full listing of currently revealed heroes and villains after the jump.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

For those of you just joining us, the Buried Treasures section is where I spotlight a game that, while it may not be as well known as the Mega Men, Final Fantasies, and Contras, it’s still a classic in it’s own right.  This week’s entry is the Parasite Eve series from Squaresoft years before they merged with Enix.  These two games strayed far away from the norm as you can get, eschewing the mideval/fantasy plots of other games and placing it within a Modern day setting with guns and a heavily laden sci-fi plot.  The first game was an RPG with Resident Evil-esque survival horror elements.  You play as Aya Brea, a New York police dectective attempting to prevent a catostrophic outbreak while discovering the secret within her own genetics.  The series deals with the origin and purpose of mitochondrial DNA (Yeah, I’m lost too, you’ll just have to play the game to understand).  The first game introduced a strange, but innovative targeting system which would allow players to target any part of thier enemy.  (This targeting system would later show up in another Square title, Vagrant Story.)  Also, you could upgrade your weapons, attaching any adjustments you could find on it.  When you beat the game the first time, the New Game+ opened up, allowing access to a secret area and the true ending.  The only bad part of this game was that there were no shops, so you had to rely upon whatever you found in chests or whatever was dropped by enemies after battle.

Parasite Eve 2 was a Resident Evil-esque survival horror game with RPG elements.  The combat was real time, and the weapon sphere and upgrade systems were unfortunantely gone.  Thankfully, by earning credits from defeating enemies, you could buy things at any one of the game’s shops.  The plot was designed so that players didn’t have to play through the first to understand the second game.  There were a number of hidden modes and weapons (including Squall’s gunblade) you could unlock in the game, and the plot was as science-heavy as in the first.

You should be able to find these games used at about any decent gaming store, so you might want to check them out especially if you’re a fan of Resident Evil. or are just tired of the same old RPG conventions.  Also of intrest is the movie and novel of the same name.

“The Nintendo Difference” – a promo video released before the GameCube launch, with a lot of footage of games like Raven Blade and Donkey Kong Racing that never came out, in addition to a look at Kameo (which eventually came out on Xbox360) and some clearly pre-rendered concepts of Mario Kart and Metroid Prime alongside the infamous Legend Of Zelda Link/Gannondorf fight.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

In 2000, Capcom and it’s biggest rival SNK combined thier forces together to make one of the biggest fighting game crossovers since, well, Marvel vs Capcom.  The result had lots of potential, but the point system made the gameplay painfully unbalanced.  Thankfully, it was followed up upon a year later with what to this day remains the biggest 2-d fighting game ever.  Lots of cast members joined from both companies’ various catalogs, from Fatal Fury and Street Fighter to Samurai Showdown and Darkstalkers, and even lesser known games like Rival Schools and Last Blade.  Capcom adopted SNK’s playing system well and managed to integrate it’s own.  With the 6 grooves, players could play thier favorite characters how they wanted.  In short it was fighting game bliss.

A side note, the Xbox version is the only version with online play, and it was one of the first games on Xbox Live.

Richard Linklater’s film adaptation of the story by Phillip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly is the semi-Autobiographical story of Dick’s own battles with substance abuse and his perceived course of the drug war.

Published in 1977, his bleak outlook gave us only 7 years until everything we say and do is monitored. Obviously, the current world climate nearly 30 years later is coming closer to that becoming a reality than ever.

Keanu Reeves plays the role of Robert Arctor, an undercover narcotics agent who has to ingest dangerous amounts of the drug he’s trying to get off the streets in order to maintain his cover. The drug “Substance D” causes brain damage and combining that with his already split identity causes Arctor to slowly lose grip on reality. Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder, and Rory Cochrane round out the cast as Reeve’s perpetually stoned friends.

Linklater took great care with the visual style of this movie, using a rotoscoping technique where actors are filmed and then had animation cells and computer effects painted over the original film. While the film rarely takes upon any action that one might associate with producing a feature in such a manner, the story calls for some events and visuals where the medium is pitch perfect.
With Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Minority Report already successful adaptations of Phillip K Dick stories, this one is much more subdued, a lot less action packed, more paranoid, and as a result, more faithful to the source material.

The score by the Golden Arm Trio with songs by Radiohead and Thom Yorke assists the ambiance of a “world getting progressively worse.”

Some may be turned off by the film’s lack of motion. Its also hurts that a so clearly science-fiction concept in its time resembles life today so closely. Had the film been made 10, 20 years ago in the same way, it would’ve seemed revolutionary and controversial. But its concepts are so accepted as fact or eventualities that it becomes too easy to pick apart the drama and characters.

But thats OK. Not every head trip movie has to be for every person who liked head trip movies. Certainly Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas was a failure in theatrical release, but a favorite on dvd years later. A Scanner Darkly may take a few years to reach its ultimate audience.

I can say, however, that I enjoyed it.

Trailer: A Scanner Darkly