In 1996, the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were on their last legs. Won over by their technical capabilities, long time publishers and developers were abandoning the 16-bit cartridge based systems in favor of new stand alone 32-bit disc based systems such as Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn. One of these publishers was Square. Before leaving Nintendo’s side however, Squaresoft joined forces with Nintendo to produce one of the best role playing games ever. Sadly, along with being the last Squaresoft product released on the Super Nintendo, this would also be the last Mario game released for the system. Even so, this game managed to push the Super Nintendo to its limits by providing cutting edge SGI rendered graphics, innovative gameplay, and a solid story line. The game starts off as any other Mario game does. Bowser kidnaps Princess Toadstool, and Mario runs off to rescue her. However, when a new enemy arrives causing chaos, things immediately spin out of control and Mario finds himself teaming up with his arch nemesis (along with a few other characters) in order to set things right.

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Eidos/IO Interactive’s Hitman series has always been the thinking man’s stealth action game. You don’t into heavily fortified military bases to take out genocidal terrorists (most of the time), you are sneaking into public locations to eliminate a designated series of targets. Simply not being seen isn’t enough, you have to cover up evidence of your presence and eliminate any cause for suspicion. You don’t just hide in ventilation shafts and cardboard boxes. Often times you’ll have to disguise yourself and figure out how to sneak your weaponry onto the mission site. Your job isn’t just to kill your target and move on, you’ll also have to avoid (or reduce the possibility of) innocents being killed. After 2 successful games and a weaker third title, Hitman returns to top form, just in time for the next generation of gaming.

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The FOX Network has announced plans to move forward with new episodes of Family Guy without the participation of creator, writer, and star Seth Macfarlane. According to Reuters:

20th TV had no comment on the matter Tuesday but confirmed that it remains in production on new episodes. The first episode finished without MacFarlane’s blessing has been delivered to Fox. Sources said it is one of three very close to completion, with others in various stages of production.

Seth MacFarlane voices Peter, Brian, and Stewie. Its not mentioned whether Seth Green (who voices Chris, but is also the writer of Robot Chicken) or Alex Borstein (the voice of Lois and also a Family Guy writer) will appear or not. This is worse than Wrong Sounding Muppets.

If ringers are brought in, I hope fans do not tune in as a show of support for a show that lived and was brought back to life because of its fans. Also one would hope the episodes are re-recorded with the regular cast once the strike is over for future DVD releases.

It would seem Marvel is attempting to catch up with the times. The entertainment giant is launching it’s digital comic library, for those of us who are too lazy to run out to our local comic book store and grab a copy of our favorite comic ourselves. Yay for perpetuating sloth in Americans even more so!

Starting today, Marvel is offering it’s “unlimited” comic library to the public at a rate of $59.88 a year (don’t know where that odd number comes from), or for $9.99 per month, and plan on showing off 250 of its current 2,500 comics for free to draw the customer in. Comics will be displayed in a high resolution format, that will be fool-proofed so users cannot download the comics to their own computer hard drives.

Because free programs like BitTorrent or Emule can’t do that for you already.

You can’t blame Marvel for trying to capitalize on it’s internet savvy customers. It plans on opening up a larger library of comics ranging from being released months ago to decades ago in the coming future, and I suppose it may have some obscure comics on its network that you may not be able to find elsewhere on the net. (though I doubt it)

No, this doesn’t have anything to do with Dave Chappell, conscious hip hop music, or a brief Fugees reunion. However, Ultimate Block Party (known in Japan as Kollon) is a fun little anime-inspired PSP puzzle game brings back memories of Tetris Attack. You arrange colored blocks in groups of four to clear them out. As with many good puzzlers, things aren’t nearly that simple. When playing against a CPU or friend, the disappeared blocks are sent to the other player’s side, adversely affecting their game screen. Blocks can glue together, become harder to move, or even cover up the playing field. Clearing out blocks can earn magic squares, which give certain advantages such as changing all the blocks in a row to a certain color and blowing up clusters of blocks. As expected, you can chain together blocks and add on to your score. You play as one of 8 characters, but there are no real differences between them. It offers a Vs mode, an arcade mode, and a single player endless mode. There is also a campaign mode, but all it is is simply Arcade mode with just one character and some intro animations. In a nice little touch, the game offers Ad-Hoc play (something that wasn’t in the Japanese release), but good luck finding another player who has a copy of this game.

Ultimate Block Party may not be Lumines, and it doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of game modes, but it’s still a solid title for casual gamers. It’s hard to find thanks to the lack of decent marketing around its release, but puzzle fans should definitely check this game out. Now that I think about it, this would make a good Xbox Live Arcade game.

In 1995, late into the Super Nintendo’s life cycle, Square-Enix, then known as only Squaresoft, released Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger was a role playing game which took place over the course of several time periods. It had an innovative battle system, beautiful graphics, an awesome soundtrack, and multiple endings. It was, and still is to this day one of the greatest RPGs ever made. Half a decade later, Square would release a follow up. While it wasn’t as critically acclaimed as the original, it would be an excellent game in its own right.
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Did you know that the modern X-Men logo was originally designed by Jim Steranko and made its debut in X-Men 50 in November of 1968 (as seen in the above post banner)? In a surprisingly interesting series of articles, Todd Klein, who has done a wide variety of work as a letterer and designer, has assembled an exhaustive analysis of logos for the X-Men related books going as far back as issue 1 of X-Men from 1963. You can see his blog here and for the specific articles, see the direct links below.

Part 9 was particularly interesting because it shows the most recent iteration of the X-Men logo and many of the other designs that were submitted with it all mocked up on the same cover for issue 233 (I suspect this is just filler numbering and lettering because we are currently only on issue 203 at retail and Whedon and Cassaday have never been revealed as the creative team for X-Men that I am aware of. Not sure what the cover art is from or will be.) I kind of liked this one:

Throughout the series, Klein offers up glimpses of logo art samples that could have been. See below for an example of that for the X-Factor logo.

I should also note that Klein designed several X-Men related logos himself, including an X-Factor logo and an Excalibur logo. I found it interesting he noted in several places that when given a choice of logos, the editorial staff often chose the one closest resembling the original Steranko logo.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Update

Let us know what you think in the comments!

It’s that time of the year again folks! The scariest night of the year, October 31st is upon us once again, and in between the candy, costumes, and practical jokes, we got a dose of some of the scariest games that have ever graced a console. One of which is an unknown chapter of a well-known franchise, and the other is a modern-day update to one of the most prolific titles in gaming. So without further ado, turn down the lights, keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times, and try not to wet yourself.
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