It's one of those days again, I'm afraid. Nothing too interesting in my life that I can write about it (not yet at least, I have something in the works, but it requires a little more time with the subject material), and there's not really something news-worthy that is also something I can go on about for four or five paragraphs. But there are a lot of little stories that I can cover in a broad swath of text, so that's what I'm going to do. First off, as you might suspect from the above image is the fact that The Simpsons Arcade is finally coming to consoles starting with PSN on the Seventh of February. I imagine the graphics will be a little nicer looking, perhaps up to par with its iPhone brother, but it will also support up to four player online multi-player since, let's face it - it's an arcade game. It's meant to be played with more than one person. I -imagine- given the type of game, Couch co-op is possible as well, but it doesn't explicitly say that. Anyone subscribing to Playstation Plus will enjoy the game at the easy price of "Free" where the rest of us can expect $10 which is likely a small price to pay for nostalgia and also playing a Simpsons game that doesn't suck.
Much like the rest of us in the same age range as I and, I suspect, the bulk of the 'main' gamers out there who do like we do - read the news about games, get excited for everything and just generally live it in a bigger capacity than most, I have fond memories of playing The Simpsons Arcade. Not sure if anyone out there knows what this is, but when I was but a tot, my older siblings would sometimes take me to a place called Chuck E. Cheese which was, well, a place where you took kids to run around and do whatever and have fun in while you either unwound yourself with a few games or just tried to catch a breather amidst the chatter and clamor of dozens of other kids adding to the shouts of your own. There was all the standard fare for a playground as well as an arcade section and little games that would win you tickets for prizes like at a midway or what have you. And while my sister loved Skee-ball and I sometimes helped with that, the real, main reason, the main draw was the arcade section where there were plenty of games, but there was also The Simpsons Arcade. And while I don't remember a single thing about the game, I remember playing it, and I suspect that's enough.
On the topic of releases and release-related news, Naughty Dog released this video above that shows the making-of process of the trailer that went out at last year's VGAs in so much as you get to see some of the mo-cap work done compared to the very, very bare-bones animation that Naughty Dog apparently shines to a mirror polish with tools that may just be infused with some sort of magic. It's a neat little look into the world 'beyond the veil' as they say, and aside from that, I daresay there's some voice-over by the main character that isn't in the trailer proper. In fact, there -is- some voice-over that isn't in the trailer proper since I just watched it again and holy shit. My interest in the game just sort of regrows rapidly to a fever pitch whenever I really think about it, only subsiding to acceptable levels when I don't. I honestly can't wait for the release and hope that some of the nonchalance its met with is slapped back in a few faces. If people are so willing to accept questionable genre attempts from other studios, then 'just another zombie game' from Naughty Dog should turn quite a few more heads than it has. But there's still time yet, of course.
The final bit of news comes from the world of Lollipop Chainsaw which, you might have noticed, I've completely neglected talking about for...well, ever now. I assure you this is intentional and for purist reasons as I know in my head what the game was, so when I play it when I buy it, and I will do both of those things ASAP, I can see where the game has gotten which will surely give it a little bit of an unfair advantage over other games, but I don't even care because it's Lollipop Chainsaw. I'm sure the graphical presentation won't impact my overall view of the game that much anyway, so no real worries there. Though I have caught the headlines here and there of the game, I've mostly ignored them by and large for the above mentioned reason, as I want to know as little about the game as possible.
But the headline "Lollipop Chainsaw Boss Battle Composer is Also a Zombie Boss" was a little too tantalizing to pass up on and in seeing that and the article itself, I've found quite a bit of new pearls of information. I think, if anything, Lollipop Chainsaw has been a very very interesting experiment on blending East and West if you really look at it: the story being written as a joint-effort by James Gunn and Grasshopper Manufacture through a collaborative effort brought about by Warner Bros., and now the fact that, while Akira Yamanoka is the main composer of the game, Jimmy Euringer of Mindless Self Indulgence is the composer for all the boss music and is, in fact, the Punk Rock Zombie Zed that we've seen in so many trailers already. (If your memory is a little foggy, he is the boss who attacks by yelling profanities which then materialize into words that fly towards poor Juliet.)
I was originally going to do a Music! post dedicated to Mindless Self Indulgence because of this fact, but I decided against it for a few reasons. The bulk of them being that while I enjoy MSI, I'm not sure I like it, nor am I sure that it's something I'd want to freely toss out here for you, since you might then take that as an indicator of acceptance and enjoyment or something. And while I don't -not- accept the music because, hey, it's music what the hell else do you need?, I also don't need to really throw it out there in the same type of post that's covered music from Nier, Chrono Trigger and the Sonic games. Which is a really fancy way of saying "I stumbled across a cover of a Method Man song and went, 'nope.jpeg'." But I did want to bring up that story at least because, hey, Lollipop Chainsaw.
That's about it for tonight though, kiddies. If all goes well tomorrow, I might just have the first review of the new year posted up. Maybe. I kind of have to decide if I got into the game enough to qualify for actually reviewing it. Guess we'll all just see how it turns out!
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