Happy Memorial Day May 30, 2011

I can think of no gaming scene more fitting than this.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

Mortal Kombat Legacy Part 4 May 6, 2011

Well, we’re up to part 4 of the multi-part Mortal Kombat Legacy series.  This time, the series is focusing on Mileena and Kitana.  As this is a different story about different characters than previously shown, this has more of a classic fantasy feel (or at the least a swords and sorcerers feeling).  There are also cameos in the video by Baraka and Shao Khan.

Again, since this is machinima.com we’re talking about, make sure to remove captions or else you won’t be able to see half the screen.

Mortal Kombat is avalible for Xbox 360 and PS3.

The Anniversary of First Man in Space April 13, 2011

Tuesday was the 50th anniversary of a pivotal moment of the human race. The first man was put into outer space, and he was a Russian. Yuri Gragarin is forever immortalized with biographies, statues to his credit (which still stood following the fall of Communism) and the famous words, “The Earth Was Blue, But there was no God.” which probably weren’t even said by him.

He’s no longer alive, but I probably wouldn’t be typing on this website had it not been for his trip. The US would never have committed to a moon landing had the Russians not goaded us into it, and because of that, all the technological advances that have come were all based on the work done by NASA.

His legacy has even been immortalized in video game form.

Raise your glasses of Vodka (or in my case, Bawls), everyone. It’s been a wild ride and he is just one of many to thank for it.

Batman City of Scars Fanfilm Re-Released, Arkham Asylum’s Influence Found February 19, 2011

When I was working as a teacher, I did a segment about how the same archtypes of stories will continually find themselves into new literature centuries after they were first created.  Batman, oddly enough, is one of those kinds of archtypes.

I have been fortunate enough to be good friends with independant filmmaker Aaron Scheonke, who, along with his father, run the production company Bat in the Sun.  They are known for their graphic novel inspired style, which can be seen in many of their hit Batman fanfilms like Batman Legends, Batman: Dark Justice and of course, Patient J.

Just by looking over their filmography over the past seven years, you can see the heaviest influence to them was the original comic source material.  It was that same source material which influenced 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum game and it’s upcoming sequel, Batman: Arkham City.

A year after the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum, Bat in the Sun released their first 30+ minute Batman fanfilm in over five years, and now they’re finally able to bring it to YouTube, so I can link you to it.  City of Scars was released last year, and went viral almost immediately getting around 500,000 views in its first few days of release.  Just like other Bat in the Sun productions, they weren’t borrowing from what the previous movies were doing, they were defining Batman in their own way.

If anyone played Batman: Arkham Asylum and wished that they could see a Batman movie that was more like it, a more psychological and stylistic film with deep characters and a suspenseful story, you should give City of Scars a look.  It’ll defintly hold over those who are still waiting anxiously for Arkham City’s release!

Who the Heck is Writing Gaming News? February 18, 2011

This is just a sidebar here, but I really wanted to voice this.  Seriously, this week, I’ve had to retract two whole stories I’ve posted up in here, both made by otherwise reputable gaming news organizations.

So far I’ve made two news postings and two retractions I’ve had to make within days of each other.  Who the heck is running the news in these sites, and for that manner who the heck is running their mouths off so poorly in the developer side that they’re being misunderstood on this level?

And that’s the thing, normally I would blame the news reporters for this, but in the articles in question, their citations seemed quite clear indeed and in both cases it seems like a misunderstanding or a mistranslation.  That’s not the fault of the news people (not entirely) it’s just as much the fault of the PR people on the developer’s side who are being vague or ambiguous (or speaking in another language)!

Legend of Zelda 80s-Movie Trailer February 16, 2011

I’m a film buff.  When I’m not playing games, you’ll usually find me watching movies.  I’m usually watching these movies on my extensive DVD and Blu-Ray collections, or watching them on the Premium Channel section of my cable provider’s On Demand offering.  Now, I’ve talked previously about specific movies I’ve liked, but that was just the tip of the iceburg.

If there was one guilty pleasure I have, it’s the culture of the 80s.  I love 80s music, movies, clothing, and technology.  One of my favorite movies of all time was Cameron Crowe’s “Say Anything” starring John Cusack, Ione Skye and John Mahoney, which I saw completely without any prior revelations and enjoyed tremendously.  Other fantastic movies of the 80s include “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and of course “The Breakfast Club”.

Well something else came out in the 80s in the US, and that was the Nintendo Entertainment System.  In 1987, The Legend of Zelda was released and to this point never has gotten a proper film adaptation.

The same team that made the very popular Inglourious Plummers trailer decided to ask themselves, if The Legend of Zelda was to get a movie release in 1987, what would it look like?  Well, it turns out, it would look something like this.

Step By Step Process on How to Transfer Xbox 360 Hard Drive Data January 10, 2011

It seems that I’ve been getting the same comments back from different people who have watched my video on how to transfer an original Xbox 360 Hard Drive’s data to a new Xbox 360 Slim.

The problem seems to stem from the fact that they’re buying aftermarket refurbished transfer cables which provide no instructions on how to do the transfer process properly, or if they did, those instructions are in another language.  Because they don’t have understandable instructions, these commenters are doing the transfer procedure incorrectly, which if done “very” incorrectly can easily result in a loss of your data or incorrect formating of a 360 Hard Drive.

I’ve updated the YouTube hosted video with a step by step process.  Their problem seemed to stem from the fact that they were not removing their old hard drives from their Xbox 360s, instead connecting the new hard drive through the transfer cable.  These hard drives are so new they’re not formatted, and it’s causing an error when plugging them in through the transfer cable (they’re being confused for USB memory sticks).

So if you have a new Xbox 360 Hard Drive you want to get your old data transferred into, please read this step by step instruction on how to get all of your data into it.

Step 1: Remove your OLD Xbox 360 Hard Drive from your Xbox 360.

Step 2: Install New Xbox 360 Hard Drive into your Xbox 360, or if it’s a new 360 with a Hard Drive already installed, do nothing.

Step 3: Connect OLD Hard Drive to Hard Drive Transfer cable. Insert Hard Drive Transfer Cable USB connection to rear 360 USB port.

Step 4: Turn your Xbox 360 on, wait a few seconds for the system to prompt you if you want to transfer your content now. Tell it to transfer TO console.

Step 5: Check to make sure all your data is in place in the Transfer Content Menu. When satasfied, START the transfer process.

Step 6: Have a Coke, this’ll take a while.

Notice: Not all your files may transfer, some misc legacy data, half downloaded files, and a few other things may not go with the transfer.  This is not much to worry about, you can always re-download whatever DLC would not transfer.

Step 7: Once all the data is transferrred, log into your Xbox Live profile. You may have to re-download the latest Xbox Live Update.

You’re done.  You can transfer your Xbox License at http://xbox.com/drm so you can use your console-locked content without an internet connection on your new Xbox if you bought one.  It will not be needed if you’re transferring data on the same 360.  Also, you will not need to do an Xbox Live profile recovery or anything of the sort.

Xbox 360 HD Transfer Follow Up January 1, 2011

Happy New Year everyone, I just want to post a small followup to the Xbox 360 Data Transfer How To I posted earlier this week.

I discovered that there is some data that the transfer process just won’t bother with.  This is likely just for transfer time reasons and not for DRM-related reasons.

1. It will not transfer over any of your disc-installed games.  You’ll have to re-install any of your game discs to the new Xbox 360.  Full game data can range anywhere from 6-8GB on average per game.  It’s actually faster to just reinstall the games from the disc to wait for the USB transfer cable to send them from one HD to another.
2. It will not transfer over your game patches.  Those range in space from 2-4MB and no I don’t have a good reason to list why they would not include these.  You’ll have to repatch all of your games individually by booting them up while connected to Xbox Live and choosing to download the patch.  Your games will have to be patched in some cases to play certain DLC.
3. When you finish the process, the Xbox 360 will wipe your original hard drive.  If you try using it in another Xbox 360 (or your old one) you’ll find it’s been blanked.  This is normal.  Feel free to sell it if you wish.

A Very Gaming Christmas Day 3 December 24, 2010

Christmas is just a day away, one of the biggest gaming holidays of the year.  It’s the day a lot of us remember when we’d get the newest consoles, games, and others.  But Christmas has become more than that.  Christmas is also about those great Holiday Specials we remember watching on TV.  But while most people’s holiday tradition is to watch something along the lines of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” or “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”, while I enjoy that, there are some other more modern Christmas Specials that have become a personal tradition for me.

As I’m sure many of your families do, my family used to have a tradition where we’d spend at least some of Christmas Eve shopping at a mall.  In all honesty though, most of our major gifts by this point would already be purchased, and this was mostly just to spend some time as a family while getting some minor stocking stuffers.  I remember enjoying it because I’d get to take a last minute look at some of the gifts I had been hoping for for Christmas before getting them the very next day.  Because of the overpopulation of parking and hassle of crowds, we don’t really do that any more, but if there was one Christmas special that reminded me the most of it, it was Scott Kurtz’s PVP Christmas Special.

Scott Kurtz was the very first person to start an online webcomic with PVP.  In it, he detailed the triumphs and tribulations of the people who worked at a popular gaming magazine.  In a epic 29-page story, the PVP team goes to a mall for some last minute shopping.  Each character has their own reasons for going, and one wants nothing to do with Christmas at all.  There were a lot of funny bits in the story that have always charmed me.  Kurtz was clearly influenced by the same Christmas Specials I had been, and decided to make this story a Christmas Special of his own, while still paying respect to those same specials.  You can see that in the first page, where one of the frames has a retro special logo in it when the comic officially starts.  Other great moments include hearing that the office troll was convinced Santa Claus is actually Superman came years before General Zod would come to the same conclusion.

In 2007, Kurtz started animating his comic strips into a paid series.  The last three episodes of the series was an updated version of this story.  I will not include the movie, as he charged for the series, but if you’re interested, you can probably still buy the series off his website or Xbox Live.

Well, thank you for sharing some of my Holiday Traditions with me this week.  Happy Holidays everyone!