Updated Wednesday & Friday Evenings
New Update
Nick - writer - posted on Wednesday, 03/04/09 22:50:14 EST
Hey everybody. Sorry for the lack of updates. Due to life, work and Street Fighter IV, I haven’t been keeping up much with the site as of late. Here’s a news update of what’s been going on.
2600, CI and I returned to Castle Video two weeks ago and checked out the new CSI pinball machine. The game was a lot more fun then I thought it would be. Considering Pinball News gave the game the same score as Indy 4, I wasn’t looking forward to it. Thankfully the game is fun to play, and has a lot of cool multiball modes to keep the action flowing. The centrifuge spinner is awesome, but sadly, due to the way it is, only two balls can be out at a time. I could see three getting to be too much for it and breaking. If you have played Pirates of the Caribbean, think of the spinner, but on acid, it’s really fast.
2600 and I are in the works on a new internet radio show with 2600’s friend from college. We’re not sure when we’ll tape the first episode due to everybody’s schedule, but when we do, we’ll have it here.
The site will be getting upgraded soon. We have some of the artwork we want to do ready and we’re also going to see about embedding videos from Blip and Youtube onto the site, so you don’t need to click links to go to another page to view the videos.
Some people are wondering where the comic has been and why there aren’t any. Well the reason why is 2600 is doing print comics for Video Game Trader Magazine It’s the same characters, but with a whole new story. Check out their site, you can subscribe to the magazine, or you can also buy the issues and read them online.
2600 and I are also working on a new feature for the magazine, called Made in Japan. We plan to do reviews of our favorite import gaming gems so make sure you check it out. 2600 picked Bangai-O for his first review and I of course, went with Twinkle Star Sprites, so keep checking it out to see what games we’ll pick next.
Due to 2600’s computer crash, most of the videos were lost, but thankfully he still has them on the tapes. He’s going to have to re-do the Arcade Hunters into and a couple of other things, but the videos will be coming in a few months. This summer we plan on hitting a lot of places as well as going back to PAPA for the duration of the tournament, so hopefully I can limit myself on how much pinball I play in a day, because that took more money out of me then any convention I ever went too.
I’m also trying to see about going up to the Tokyo Game Action auction. Andy hasn’t let anybody know of a firm date of the auction, but it sounds like it will be in the early summer. This is going to be the final event at TGA and it sucks it’s to sell everything off. As I said before, when we find out more about the auction, we’ll let you know. We plan to do everything we can to make the auction a huge success to help Andy and Chie raise the money they need to pay off their bills.
I’d like to give a big thanks to Ito and John over at Retroware TV for having our Batman video as their featured video on their site. Thanks to them, the video got over 3,000 hits, many from people who didn’t know there was a company still making pinball machines. Tomorrow night Ito will be having a live chat. I’ll be there, so be sure you go and check it out.
I went though our link exchanges and saw many of the comics haven’t been updated in a while. So I’m putting the call out to any other web comic folks that would like to do a link exchange. If you’d like to exchange, just contact me and we’ll work things out, we’re always happy to promote other people.
Well that’s about it for this week. I’d like to keep the two update a week schedule, but with nothing to really talk about, I’m just trying the best I can to make sure the one update has a lot of info in it. I know we haven’t been keeping up with the comic, or been posting much on our forums, but we are still here and we will have stuff for you guys in the future.
Thanks again for checking us out and we’ll see you soon.
NYCC Saturday Review
Nick - writer - posted on Friday, 02/13/09 19:57:47 EST
As promised, here's my very long writeup I did of my trip to the New York Comic Con this past Saturday.
New York Comic Con 09 Review
I already wrote about Ghostbusters, but here you'll see my thoughts on House of the Dead: Overkill, The Conduit, MADWORLD, X-Blades and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.
The whole show was just way too big (And crowded) to see all in one day, it sucks that it's so expensive to commute to the city with the price of train fair and cab rides.
Well, I'm going to go head off and use the free BETA pass I got for Champions Online. Till next week, have a good one.
Ghostbusters The Video Game Impressions
Nick - writer - posted on Wednesday, 02/11/09 18:46:05 EST
Hey everybody. I visited the New York Comic Con on Saturday and really enjoyed it. I just wish I had enough time to go through the whole dealers room, but when 4 rolled around, I had to go hit up the panels I wanted to see.
I'll have a full report on my Saturday at the New York Comic Con on Friday, but for today I leave you with my impressions of the new Ghostbusters video game from the fine folks at Atari.
Ghostbusters, First Impressions
It was really nice getting a sneak peak at the game and I can tell you right now it's going to be well worth the wait. It's a good thing Atari held the game's release back to June because they're putting a nice polish on the game and not only does the game look nice it plays amazing too. So now the Genesis/Mega Drive Ghostbusters won't be the only good Ghostbusters game.
We also have a bit of sad news to report. On Sunday Andy sent me an email telling me that he would have to close Tokyo Game Action due to the flood they had in December. All of the games will have to be auctioned off to help pay for everything. The auction will be taking place in May and when I get more news about it.
See you on Friday with my report of the New York Comic Con.
Two New Videos and New York Comic Con
Nick - writer - posted on Thursday, 02/05/09 20:11:59 EST
Hey everybody, this was supposed to go up yesterday, but I had a problem logging in, but better late then never I always say.
This week we have two new Street Fighter IV videos for your viewing enjoyment. C.I and I visited Tri-County Flee Market and spoke with Bryan again and he kept telling us to visit Peter Pan, which we will in the future when all of us are together.
We got two videos, one of CI’s first time and my second time using Abel. I keep screwing up his air grab, Falling Sky, while I try to go into his punch and grab combo that he has.
As always, if you want to see the latest videos, hit up our Blip.TV Channel. The videos are there first, then they get put up on YouTube. The Batman pinball video got flagged due to the Danny Elefman song, but I got a replacement song and hopefully 2600 will edit it and throw it up onto YouTube.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions on YouTube as well as my inbox, regarding Tokyo Game Action. A few weeks ago their site went down. You could access their forums, but even that went down as well. After going back onto DDRFreak, I saw there was a thread for TGA and Andy did respond saying, the site was down but he’s working on getting it up soon, but he has meetings to work out so he is still working on getting TGA back on it’s feet. We here at Press Start wish him the best of luck and hope to see you at TGA soon.
This weekend is the fourth New York Comic Con. I will be attending on Friday, while CI is under the weather, he’ll try to make it Friday, if not he’ll try to make it Saturday and Sunday. Last time I spoke to 2600 he said he was coming home for the weekend and if he gets the chance, he’ll try to come on Saturday for the convention.
I’m looking forward to meeting Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade, Batman The Animated Series Producer, Bruce Tim and hopefully Peter Laird will be back so I can get my TMNT graphic novel autographed. I had it since I was a kid and was angry I didn’t get it signed last year.
Regarding conventions this year. We were asked about doing panels for I-Con again this year. We’re still trying to iron out stuff. We don’t have a panel of our own this year but we’re going to see if we can join on any panels of discussion.
Funspot’s tournament is a week before Animazement in North Carolina. Depending on which guests they get will decide on which one I go to. Being the Sailor Moon fan that I am, I’m angry that I missed out on the guests they had last year and I hear their trying to get the creator, Naoko Takeuchi to come as well. If on the slight chance that does happen, you’ll have to pry me away from there. Even if my car breaks down, I’ll walk there to meet her, because she hasn’t made an appearance at and American Convention since Comic Con in San Diego almost fifteen years ago.
Otakon sounds out for the most part. Even though I helped out with two other panels and did out 10 Games panel, solo last year, I just didn’t have that much fun last year. I heard a lot of other people didn’t like last year’s convention either. Maybe it’s just I’m getting older and I’m not into much of the newer shows their offering.
The biggest reason for skipping Otakon is the fact that PAPA 12 is the week afterwards. Plus we have some sights to hit in Pennsylvania and I want to make sure I get ALL of PAPA this year and I know 2600 is sore for missing it last year so I know he wants in and the same goes for C.I. I just need to go slow with the money there. I dropped ten bucks in change faster then dumping it on the floor.
Well, that’s it for me for this week. Sorry for not uploading last week, but there really wasn’t much to talk about. I will have pictures and videos from the New York Comic Con on Wednesday. See you next week.
New Video! Batman Pinball!
Nick - writer - posted on Saturday, 01/24/09 3:35:02 EST
Hey everybody. Well after a very long delay, the videos are back! 2600 whipped up his editing magic for us and went above and beyond the call of duty and got a pretty sweet video on Stern's new Batman pinball machine.
Batman..the pinball machine.
The game is a lot of fun and much better then Stern's last game, Indiana Jones. The game plays really fast and smooth, there's a lot of different multiball modes and fun shots to hit. The only problem is the voice work. They didn't get many of the real actors recorded lines, but some of the more memorable quotes are in the game, including some from the late Heath Ledger.
In other absolutely awesome arcade news, we'll be seeing a spiritual sequel to Hydro Thunder in 2009! It was announced over on our good friend's, Arcade Heroes that Raw Thrills got some of the old team responsible together for Hydro Thunder together to work on a brand new racer.
H2Overdrive
H2Overdrive looks damn nice and I can't wait to play it. They say the cab is going to have the classic throttle lever just like Hydro Thunder and being able to pull off tricks in the middle of jumps for more boost time looks like it'll be a game that will welcome everybody. Once we see it in the arcades we will get some video footage and a review for you.
Well that's it for this week. 2600's hard at work on more pinball videos as well as finishing up the video we took at Castle Video last month, so stay tuned for that!