New iPod and Apple's position in portable gaming

Recently in Apple's event in San Francisco, they revealed the new generation of the iPod nano. What's different this time around isn't the design, but features. The design is practically the same as the last generation iPod nano, but it features a new built-in video camera, speaker, FM radio and pedometer. The new iPod nano is available in stores for the same price as the last generation iPod nanos, which are $149 and $179 for the 8GB and 16GB versions.

For people with an iPod touch or an iPhone, you can easily tell that there is no shortage in terms of applications and games for your device. Many of these applications I find to be useless, although some are pretty useful(i.e. flixter, remote, etc.). The games on the iPod touch and iPhone are a little more interesting though. Apple is challenging Nintendo and Sony in terms of portable gaming and seems confident in their position. This actually surprises me.... I mean have you played the games on an iPod touch or iPhone? I'm not talking about those crappy ones that don't even pose a threat to the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Most of the games that you play on iPhone and iPod touch require touch controls that mimic actual buttons. I've downloaded Resident Evil Degeneration on my iPhone and find it difficult and annoying to play. You have to press buttons to switch between times when you want to walk or shoot. For people that complain about Resident Evil 5's control scheme, you haven't seen anything yet until you've played Degeneration. The lack of tactile buttons on the iPhone is a real turn off in terms of portable gaming. Games are easy to play on the DS and PSP because they are made for gaming; the iPhone and iPod touch however, is not. The fact that the high profile games on the iPhone and iPod touch play by mimicking real buttons shows the weakness in Apple's devices.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing games on my iPhone; I just don't think that it will surpass the DS or PSP. I've heard people complain about texting on the iPhone because of the lack of tactile buttons, and this is the same case for gaming. Tell me what you think and even argue with me if you want to, do you think Apple can succeed in terms of portable gaming with what they have now?

New Sonic Game Announced: Will SEGA Get It Right This Time?

This news was pointed out to me, by a particular somebody... (I'll give you a hint, he is the only other person working on this blog currently and his name will give it away.)

But there is a NEW Sonic game coming out! IN HD! IN 2D! Holy mother of Swiss cheese!

Anyways, apparently Sega has listened to their fans and has released Sonic Unleashed, but this time keeping him on a short leash, for good measure.

Although this sounds like the game of the century for the Sonic Team, you have to consider their history... Their past games have not been exactly... well... excellent. This is because many people disagreed strongly to the 3D platforming torture that has been a new found tradition in recent sonic games, but according to the NEW TRAILER this game will be built "from scratch" to avoid their past mistakes.

To me, this is both a good thing and a bad thing. First off, SEGA cares WAAAY too much about story line, and in doing so, they tend to force gimmicks and extra, unneeded, game mechanics (cough werehog cough). This means that, there is a fairly strong chance that behind the "AWESOME 2D AND HD" is going to be something along the lines of "NEW WORLD, 7 MORE RARE STONES TO COLLECT, NEW CHARACTERS THAT MIGHT AS WELL BE THE SAME ONES BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL. FREAKING. ANNOYING." If Sega manages to avoid that, then the game can have a fighting chance.

Secondly, I actually enjoyed the "Hedgehog Engine" from Sonic Unleashed, it was GOOD. The fact that Sega is "rebuilding" their engine, means that there will not be any more sliding, drifting, boosting, and grinding... or at least none that are similar to Unleashed. Who knows, they might impliment an even better engine, but all I am saying, is that the previous engine was good enough, and I don't see why they would throw it out so fast.

Finally, take a look at this picture (which can be found on THIS teaser site):


The tile set looks a bit familiar... Could that add the chance that this whole game is actually a REMAKE? Who knows? Time will tell.

Final Fantasy XIII price=wtf?

If you guys have been keeping up with the press coverage on Final Fantasy XIII's premiere party, you probably learned that the game will be coming out on December 17, 2009 in Japan. There is no set release date for America, but Square Enix did say that it would be aiming for Spring of 2010. Another surprising piece of information was that the game would be priced at 8800yen, which is about 95 american dollars.

I've been excited about Final Fantasy XIII now, and if there is some kind of English translation option for the game(which I doubt), I would buy it in a heartbeat so that I wouldn't have to wait till next year. However, after looking at the price, I'm starting to have my doubts. 95 dollars for a game? I don't even remember seeing anything about it being a collector's or special edition either. I really hope the game isn't 95 dollars when the game is released in the states, that'd be too much for a game in my opinion. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one turned off by the price point.

What could Square Enix be thinking making the game so expensive? Are they so sure that everyone would still buy the game even at 8800yen($95)? Tell me what you guys think.

Videos: Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Sean vs. Edo

A friendly from Zedd's smashfest on 9/6

Videos: Double KO Promo Video - BlazBrawl

Video I put up on youtube to HOPEFULLY get more people to come to this site :d



Youtube version can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnB1swii07E
Holy crap do you see that? It says "wii" in the URL!

Videos: Blazblue match 3 and 4

Double Feature!
Sonik(Ragna) vs. Chozo(Hakumen)

Sonik(Ragna) vs. Chozo(Hakumen)

Rooster Teeth Contest Submission: Part 2

For those of you who don't know what Part 1 is, click
http://double-ko.blogspot.com/2009/08/videoes-roosterteeth-contest-submission.html
for details...

Did you look at it yet? Good.

Now click this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU1Ivdo1cwA

Yep, my entry got in, I'm pretty happy now.

Videos: Blazblue match 2

Sonik(Ragna) vs. Chozo(Arakune)

Videos: Blazblue match 1

Hey everyone, we're going to be uploading Blazblue videos daily for the next week or so, so check back everyday for new videos!


Sonik(Ragna) vs. Chozo(Arakune)<--I hate that guy

Edit by Chozo: I didn't know how to use the bugs yet in this match

1 Step Closer to Ruling the World

By now everybody already knows of Disney's $4 billion dollar buy-out of Marvel. This event, to many comic enthusiast, is probably one of the most traumatizing things since they realize that the booth babes in comic book conventions are only there because they are getting paid. (And if you didn't know that... whoops)

People are now expecting Hannah Montana advertisements plastered on every page of the latest issue of Hellboy, or "It's a small world after all, starring The Hulk," or maybe even a mix of Kingdom Hearts and Marvel Ultimate Alliance... actually that last one is something I would like to see.

My point in all of this rambling is that to most people, this is the worst thing that could happen to their spandex wearing super powered over-lords of justice, but I write in a slight DEFENSE (yes defense) of Disney.

Think about it, what is and has Disney been known for all it's time of existence? MOVIES. Not many people realize this, but movies starring Marvel super heroes are some of THE MOST expensive movies to produce. The Iron Man movie alone cost $160,000,000 to produce. (You are never going to see that many zeroes in your wallet, unless there is a decimal point before them all.) Along with that, their next movie coming out, Thor, has been rumored to be $300,000,000. (That's THREE HUNDRED MILLION!) With numbers that high, the $4 billion seems like a good step in helping Marvel.

So Re-cap:
Disney is best known for making movies AND Disney has the money to pay for all the expensive movies Marvel is making. See what I'm saying? Besides, I think The Hulk holding hands with several small dolls of ethnic minorities would be a sight to behold.