Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game is genius, GOTY candidate

scottpilgrimvstheworldthegame

So, on Friday nights I check PSN to see what new stuff has come out, and low and behold, after much drooling over screenshots and trailers, Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game is out. I downloaded the demo, Wifey and I fired through the first level, and I bought the full game immediately.

There is so much about this game that is just so right – beautiful spritework (thanks Paul Robertson, you’re my hero!!), amazing chiptune audio, fantastic old school gameplay with a few twists, local co-op, and all in 1080p, razor-sharp low-res style 2D gold. Then there’s all the fan service to the greats of years gone by, and probably heaps of other goodies I haven’t uncovered since we’ve only played through the first level…

I need to spend more time enjoying this game. You should as well. if you have a PS3, download it. If you have an XB360, hang in there, it shouldn’t be too far away. For those unawares, enjoy a trailer:

I really should do a special on Paul Robertson as well, the man is a certified superchamp.

Has Sega finally got it right with Sonic 4?

Catching up on all things nerdy, there have been some leaked videos of Sonic 4 on YouTube:

Okay, I just checked and they’ve disappeared off YouTube 😛 So, thanks to the magic of Kotaku, they’ve hosted it themselves and it’s looking really good. I also agree with others that have stated his walking animation looks a bit goofy, but otherwise it looks fantastic. I’m really looking forward to this release 😀 I believe the Lost Labyrinth levels are the best demonstration of how “right” Dimps have it, as it’s fusing elements from the Labyrinth Zone in Sonic 1, Hydrocity Zone in Sonic 3 and Tidal Tempest Zone in Sonic CD with all sorts of awesome. Thumbs up.

You know, it reminds me of a great column (well, comment within a review, as I just found out thanks to Google :P) over at Dave’s Sega Saturn page in a Sonic R review that suggested that if Sega weren’t comfortable doing a 3D Sonic on the Saturn, they should have pushed the 2D envelope and made an amazing 2D Sonic game. I just think it’s amusing that they’ve gone back to 2D for Sonic when there has been a push since 1999 for 3D Sonic games, and while I’ll admit that I really enjoyed Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast (and the sequel as well, though there was some douchebaggery with aspects of it), the rest of the games since have been really disappointing.

I mean, just imagine a super-awesome 2D Sonic game on the Saturn – great audio handled by the machine’s magic audio chip (shame about the lack of hardware compression though :P) that continued in the electro-synth style of the original Mega Drive games, great sense of speed and massive playing fields, copious animation and colour, lashings of alpha blending (remember that the Saturn had no troubles doing transparencies in 2D [see Guardian Heroes, Silhouette Mirage and Keio Yugekitai 2] – it was applying them to 3D objects where the problems came in), the mind boggles.

Anywho, I’d better finish up this ranting as there’s one more entry to add before I head off to play some classic Mega Drive games to celebrate Easter (remember yesterday’s rant?), but before I go I’m going to add a plug for sega-saturn.com (i.e. Dave’s Sega Saturn page), because that was one of the greatest Saturn resources online when I first got the internet circa ’96/’97, and was the place I used when I gingerly dipped my toes into the wider waters of imported games 😀 It makes me feel very nostalgic checking it out again. That, however, is a topic for another post in its entirety!

What would Virtua Fighter look like if it it went in the same direction as Street Fighter?

You know what? This is funny (and a joke – read up more from the source), but you know what? It looks awesome 😀

Thanks Kotaku!

Now, Sega – where’s the announcement for the PS3 port of VF5:FS? With my nerd powers, I have the console ports of all the VF games (well, only VF4:E instead of vanilla VF4 on the PS2), as well as PCBs of VF2 and VF3, give me extra nerd love in the form of a port of this one, please!! Online play would also be nice since you added it to the XB360 port of VF5 standard 😀

Either that or give some attention to possibly making a new Fighters Megamix game 😀

Joygasm – Afterburner Climax coming to PSN/XBLA?

The wonderous people over at Kotaku have reported that Afterburner Climax looks like its coming to next-gen download services.

Why is this retro-worthy? Because it’s one of those rare cases where Sega got it right and made an arcade game that simultaneously looked stunning, was a joy to play, and echoed the beautiful and glorious blue skies from the days of yore.

And while the home version won’t have the amazing hydraulic arcade cab (obviously), the game is still a ball.

Man, if I had $20k, I’d totally buy one of those Afterburner Climax cabs. I’d have nowhere to store it so it’d have to sit in the driveway, but for that one day before it got ruined by the weather/neighbourhood kids/ninjas/etc, it would be a slice of pure awesomeness 😀