loonyblog.

Spotted this outside a bar in Brooklyn on my way home tonight:

According to 1UP, Bomberman might be headed to Xbox Live Arcade. And not just any Bomberman…the Saturn version. Wow would that ever rock. Especially considering how completely absurd the regular 360 Bomberman game looks. If we have to suffer through a dark sci-fi version of Bomberman (I can’t believe I just wrote those words in sequence), at least give us the one we know, love and want to play over Arcade.

I finally saw V for Vendetta last Tuesday (I say “finally”, but the movie had only opened the previous Friday…for me, this is an eternity). I had planned on writing some big explanation of how I enjoyed it, but had a few major issues (particularly with one cringe-worthy bit of dialogue at the end). I might still write that one, but naturally I’m hopelessly addicted to a certain game that came out this week (OMG ITS SO GOOD). So in the meantime, there are a couple of other, far more interesting people than me who have blogged about the movie, and I think they say much of what I would have said.

First up is Steve Bissette, the frequent Moore collaborator (and original publisher of From Hell/Lost Girls), who points out that this is “the best and most faithful” Moore adaptation to date, but naturally “doesn’t hold a candle” to the book on which it is based. I agree with that, although a statement like that is incomplete without pointing out the crap that it’s being compared to. I mean really…From Hell? The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Or god help us all…Constantine? Shudder.

For more interesting bits of V-related blogging, I point you to Peter David, the extremely prolific writer of comics, books and other stuff. Peter makes a number of very good points about the adaptation process and how comics haven’t necessarily bee treated any worse than more “respectable” literature. (His point about The Scarlet Letter is particularly on the nose).

But really, his best point is regarding Alan Moore’s stance toward adaptations and handing money over to his other collaborators. That’s a noble thing to do, but as David points out, “Alan Moore can refuse all the money from the Hollywood versions he wants, but I daresay he won’t be turning his nose up at the increased royalties such films generate for the books.” Again, I agree.

I’ve been traveling so much lately (last week: San Francisco, week before: Sweden, week before: Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, week before that: Sweden and so on) that I haven’t had a spare moment to reflect on the tenth anniversary of QTest, the first public demo of Quake. Since my Shooters cohorts Joost and Blue already did (as did John Romero), I feel like I should probably say something myself.

From a game history standpoint, this was a landmark in many respects. It was truly groundbreaking technology, with an engine that was built from the ground up for 3D (not hardware accelerated…VQuake and GLQuake wouldn’t come until later) and modding. Many people who weren’t in the scene back then forget that while there was a spectacular range of mods for earlier id titles (there are people who still list the Aliens mod for Doom as one of the scariest games of all time), it still required WAD hacking. With Quake it became a hell of a lot easier, and led to things like Threewave CTF, Team Fortress, Action Quake and so on.

QTest was also the first glimpse at an awesome game, one of my favorite of all-time. I may have ridiculed the game with IF Quake, but I did it out of love…as insane as Quake is, with all its mishmash of different elements (medieval, Lovecraft, Aztec, id-Satan and so on), it was a kickass game with lots of extremely memorable levels. Also, Q1DM2 and Q1DM4 are the two greatest deathmatch maps ever made. Period.

On a personal level, QTest will always be a milestone, as I owe my entire career (strange though it may be), to id Software, Quake and the community that surrounded it. I came straight out of the Quake community…my first paid writing gigs weren’t Quake-related (they were about comics, actually), but my stuff was read by a hell of a lot more people once I started writing for PlanetQuake. And if it hadn’t been for good ol’ PQ, I’d have never worked for GameSpy, or started loonygames, or worked for Blue’s News (my first job out of college!), or Shacknews, or 2K Games. It’s funny how life works sometimes. It’s a bit scary that it’s been a full decade since then, but it’s been a fun decade. Both for me personally and the industry. And especially for Quake. Happy tenth birthday, QTest.

(Regarding the image: in the spirit of nostalgia, I thought it’d be fun to “borrow” the flaming Q one last time. It was originally created by Sujoy Roy)

I don’t buy a whole lot of games these days. Come to think of it, I haven’t paid for a game in at least six months. I already have so many games to play that I’m in absolutely no rush to buy anything new.

The exception of course, is Heroes of Might and Magic V. Yes, I’m a super freaky HOMM fan, and since I’m getting that other unnamable game that I’m a super freaky fan of for free this week (take a second to think about it…oh yeah, you know what I’m talking about), chances are that I was going to run out and buy HOMM V the second it came out. But pre-order? Probably not.

That was before I saw the Limited Edition Version (boldface mine). The Limited Edition Version has the same game, plus Heroes III and IV and a soundtrack CD. Plus tarot cards or some other silliness like that.

Full versions of Heroes III and IV? (Yes I already have them, but I don’t own Heroes III for Windows, and I intend my next laptop to be a Windows machine, so this is necessary). A CD soundtrack? Awesome. But of course, they had me at “Limited”.

Some very cool news the other day…Bungie and Marvel (and probably Microsoft, because, you know) announced an imaginatively titled book called The Halo Graphic Novel. There have been a lot of comics adaptations of video games in the past few years, but most of them were absolute crap. The Halo Graphic Novel however, looks like a whole different animal.

Just take a look at the list of contributors: Simon Bisley (who is painting a story, so it’s not his lazy pen and ink work), Moebius (doing a full story!), Phil Hale (again, full story!), Geoff Darrow, George Pratt, Kent Williams, John Van Fleet and so on. That’s an awesome lineup of creators. It’s a hell of a lot better than you’d expect from anything published by Marvel, which is probably because Bungie did 3/4ths of the work on the book before securing a publisher.

But really, it’s looking great. Just take a look at that awesome painted cover by Phil Hale…that’s some classy stuff. Chances are the stories will be high quality as well…I’ve never read them, but I hear great things about the Halo novels.

Hopefully this will do exceptionally well, and will inspire comics publishers to raise the budgets on comic book to video game adaptations. There’s no reason why they have to suck (in fairness, Ashley Wood’s Metal Gear Solid comics look kinda cool, but since the MGS storyline is incomprehensible, I’ve had zero motivation to read them). I remain hopeful that someday (someday) I’ll see a fully painted (by Moebius, ideally, although there are some other acceptable artists) Panzer Dragoon comic. Come on, comics industry…surprise me.

According to Billy West (by way of Can’t Get Enough Futurama), a deal for a full season of new episodes of Futurama is being worked out. This differs from the previous plan of doing direct to home video movies, as was previously believed to be the case.

Hot damn that’s good news. Hopefully it’s true. The world needs more Futurama.

Update: Sadly, it’s not true (thanks shotgun). The show’s still coming back, but just as direct to DVD movies, not a full season. I’ll take what I can get.

One of the things that I absolutely love about Guinness, is that they employ a hard-working team of full-time scientists to constantly create new forms of Guinness technology. These Guinness-fueled geniuses have brought us the widget (also known as the greatest invention of the last 40 years), the clever (but ill-fated) FastPour technology, and now, the Guinness Surger.

The Surger is a brilliant piece of beer technology. You get a small unit that you plug into a wall, put a bit amount of tap water on it, pour Guinness from a can into a pint glass and place the glass on the unit. Then you press a button, and watch as space age ultrasonic technology creates the perfect pint.

Seriously.

Watch the video. God bless those Guinness scientists. What will they come up with next?

According to Comics Continuum, there’s yet another DC-related animated series in the works (to join JLU, The Batman, Krypto, Teen Titans and probably something else I’m forgetting). This time it’s the Legion of Super Heroes, the far-flung future version of the JLA (more or less). It’s a bit surprising, but it might not suck. Some of those 70’s-era Legion comics were fun, and it is tied to Superman through Superboy.

I’m guessing this will be outside the Batman: TAS/Superman: TAS/JLA/JLU continuity like The Batman is, since there never was a Superboy in that universe. But hey, it might not suck. The Batman is decent enough, even though I decided it’s not really for me.

I know I’ve already said this, but really, eventually, everything will be released on DVD. Seriously. Yes, we already know that gems like Golden Girls (volume 5 coming in May!), Who’s the Boss? and Saved by the Bell: The New Class (the complete series now available!!!) are already available, but what’s coming in the near future for the obsessive television-on-DVD collector? You get to look forward to releases like Captain N: The Game Master, ALF: The Animated Series and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, because well…you just gotta own those.

Given all of that (and this year’s Superman movie), it was only a matter of time before Warner reached deep into the bottom of their Superman barrel and dug up the Superboy television series from the eighties. I don’t remember a whole lot about that…just that Stacy Haiduk was hot, and there was one really funny episode where Lex and Clark either switched bodies or powers, and had the inevitable scene where it’s implied that Lex is using his x-ray vision inappropriately in Lana’s general direction (hey, when you’re twelve, these are the things that stand out). Otherwise, I don’t remember much. I might have to rent this just to see if it’s as cheesy as I remember (I did however, actually watch the show on a regular basis, as part of my lifelong ability to watch really crappy stuff with the Superman logo on it).