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(01/28/18 1:51pm)
By Tanner Kinney
The first week of the spring split is always an explosive one. New teams have entered and are battling it out with the former kings. Massive roster shifts tend to inevitably shake up who’s at the top, and many power rankings look like they were put together by frauds. As I fully admit from the start that I’m a fraud, I will say that I misjudged the power of certain teams. Then again, only one week of games where each team has only played two games is a bad judge of the power of teams. Many teams take a while to gel and become powerhouses; while other teams naturally click, but struggle to have the natural ability to hold their high ranking. So, which teams are struggling, which teams are succeeding, and which matches next week are going to be the ones to watch? Let’s get into that.
No king rules forever, my TSM (and CLG)
The biggest shock of the first week was that two teams that topped many analysts power rankings, including my own, floundered and failed to pick up a win. Both Team Solomid and Counter Logic Gaming not only failed to pick up a win, but got completely crushed in one or both of their matches. It was strange to see players like Hauntzer and the bottom lane (bot lane) of Zven and Mithy get completely routed by their counterparts on the other side. Were teams like 100 Thieves and FlyQuest just better than analysts expected, or are there problems within the teams of CLG and TSM that might need to be addressed? Let’s take a look at a couple of the matches that were good examples of what happened.
TSM versus FLY was supposed to be an easy win for TSM. Simply comparing the teams, people like WildTurtle and Stunt competing with the former kings of Europe seemed laughable. FLY wasn’t even using their starter in Fly, instead using former Gravity mid laner Keane, who is the substitute and mid laner on FlyQuest Academy. Even Flame is only considered just slightly better than Hauntzer, though people who genuinely believe that are delusional. I haven’t seen enough of AnDa to really rank him against MikeYeung, but even then it would seem that, on paper, TSM has 3 out of 5 roles that are just straight up better than FlyQuest. On top of that, FlyQuest lost the day before to a stellar Echo Fox showing, so the cards were almost completely in favor of TSM.
Despite this, TSM got routed by the FlyQuest roster. TSM had a strong start, holding a sizeable advantage over FlyQuest for much of the mid game. Eventually though, good teamfighting from Keane, AnDa, and Stunt manage to tear TSM apart and swing the game in FlyQuest’s favor. The deciding factor of the game, however, was FlyQuest’s vision control and, particularly, Baron control. While they gave up two (relatively useless) Cloud drakes to TSM, FlyQuest picked up every objective that mattered. They never really lost the leads they made while holding the Baron buff, and frequently got picks on a rough looking MikeYeung. MikeYeung getting picked near the very end of the game allowed FlyQuest to push without fear, and a pair of good ultimates from Flame’s Gnar and Keane’s Azir sealed TSM’s fate.
While blame was passed around between the European bot lane and MikeYeung, the person who took the brunt of the blame was TSM’s mid laner, Bjergsen. This weekend, Bjergsen put in a good scoreline of 5/0/5, not dying once, but many believe he failed to make an impact, calling him a “KDA player.” One Reddit thread in particular pointed to one play from their game against Team Liquid, where Bjergsen recalls while his team engages a fight. Even though Bjergsen tried to return to the fight, his teammates had already fallen. I disagree that this was all Bjergsen’s fault. This was a fault of communication throughout the whole team, which seems to be TSM’s current biggest issue. Fortunately, communication can be fixed, and perhaps we’ll see a much stronger TSM after this wake-up call of a first week.
CLG versus 100 Thieves was, admittedly, a match anticipated to be fairly close. While CLG failed to beat Cloud 9 (C9) the day before, C9 looked like a much stronger team than 100 Thieves. On top of that, even though 100 Thieves looked good in their match against OpTic, no one expected OpTic to be that great. In fact, OpTic actually was beating 100 Thieves in the early game. CLG has always been known as a strong team early game, one that can create leads from good early rotations from Huhi and formerly Aphromoo. Now that I write that though, I guess it’s really no surprise how 100 Thieves beat CLG, since that amazing playmaker in Aphromoo just so happened to be on the other team.
The thing here is that 100 Thieves didn’t just beat CLG; the Thieves completely stole the game away while CLG was sleeping. The CLG botlane got completely embarrassed by Cody Sun and Aphromoo, with occasions where it seemed that Biofrost just was running it down. Reignover also got picked off a number of times, much like the day before. While the top and mid lanes didn’t completely get trashed by their lane opponents, the whole unit of 100 Thieves just performed better than CLG. I’m not sure I could pinpoint exactly what on CLG isn’t working. Personally, I think Reignover is still underperforming, and that CLG is missing that shot-calling voice they had in Aphromoo. Both Biofrost and Reignover aren’t the leaders that CLG used to have, and that could end up hurting in the long run. Someone will need to step up. But, as a CLG fan, I’m very familiar with having faith. If I had no faith, why would I even be here?
New kids on the block have a bunch of hits
The big story of the first week was that the new teams are performing very well, minus the Golden Guardians. The standings may not show it very well, but 100 Thieves, OpTic, and Clutch Gaming all had very strong performances in the first week. 100 Thieves went 2-0 for the week, completely destroying CLG and having a very good showing against OpTic. Clutch Gaming may have went 1-1, dropping a game to a very strong looking Echo Fox, but all the things that worked with EnVy before are simply heightened in this team. They took down the Golden Guardians with ease. Even OpTic, despite going 0-2, showed a lot of promise, as they gave Team Liquid a much harder time than TSM, and did a good job challenging 100 Thieves in the early game. The only new team that failed to deliver was the Golden Guardians, to the surprise of no one. The only reason their game against C9 even had a chance to go in favor of the Guardians was because Hai picked up Zoe, an incredibly strong champion who picked up a 90% ban rate in the first week.
Some of the older members of the LCS who formerly stayed in the low end of the bracket have also climbed to the top. FlyQuest, while not at the very top, have shown their team CAN perform on a higher level, and may potentially challenge more top teams in the future. Team Liquid, of course, stunned the world by not completely choking. They absolutely styled on their opponents this week, and will a be a huge target in the coming weeks. If you can beat this Liquid roster, you have a chance to go places. Echo Fox also delivered two very strong performances this week, going 2-0. While Echo Fox’s games may have been against “weaker” teams, they also just simply showed how strong they were, with former SKT top lane Huni crushing FlyQuest with his trademark Lucian top, much to the enjoyment of Echo Fox owner and former NBA superstar Rick Fox.
https://twitter.com/RickFox/status/954901842022027264
Games to watch this weekend
TSM versus OpTic on Saturday at 6:00 pm EST:
This game may not seem exciting, but as an armchair analyst, the predicted last place team who seems to be performing reasonably well in OpTic are facing the predicted first place team who so far have failed to find a win. If TSM can’t beat OpTic, there are going to be some serious questions that will be asked about this TSM roster. At the very least, TSM needs a victory to bring some confidence back into the team.
100 Thieves versus Team Liquid on Saturday at 8:00 pm EST:
Two currently top of the table teams are battling to not get an L on their record. Both teams are looking very strong mechanically and as a team, with both having good team environments and communication. Will the loser start to tilt and go on a losing streak? That’s the main question. Either way, the game should be very high quality.
Cloud 9 versus 100 Thieves on Sunday at 6:00 pm EST:
I haven’t talked about C9 much, because they performed to expectations. I’m interested to see how they perform against the very strong 100 Thieves roster, especially the jungle match-up with Svenskeren taking on former C9 jungler Meteos. The memes for this match should at least be high quality, as Sneaky and Meteos were once the best power couple in the LCS. They battle on the rift, with Meteos and his new love Ryu challenging Sneaky and his current love Jensen. Will love bloom on the battlefield? Absolutely, yes please.
Golden Guardians versus CLG on Sunday at 8:00 pm EST:
Similar reasoning to the TSM match being one to watch. I don’t think Golden Guardians are as good as OpTic is, so I highly don’t they will be able to beat CLG. However, if they do, things are going to definitely be wild. This next weekend may decide if CLG or TSM start doing roster swaps or not. I don’t think they should this early in the season, but teams have made weirder roster decisions.
That’s it for Week 1 of the NA LCS. Will Team Liquid be able to keep their dominating performance up this next weekend? Will TSM be forced further down in the standings, or will they pick up wins against teams they are supposed to beat? And when does OpTic play? These questions and more will be answered this weekend. And for those curious about power rankings, all three of you, I’m not going to do more rankings until more games are played. Another list will probably be made during the off-week of the LCS, so watch out for that. For now, remember to ban Nunu in all of your solo queue games because Riot decided he was going to be the next overpowered champion. Thanks Riot, can’t wait to see that in the LCS in a couple of weeks. Absolutely mental.
Sources: Reddit, YouTube, Twitter
Images: Esportsranks
(01/21/18 12:25am)
Another year means another season of the North American League Championship Series (NA LCS) is upon us. A number of huge changes were made since the last summer split, but I’m only going to talk about the most important ones here: franchising and format shifts. The NA LCS was completely redone to include security for teams. Previously, the worst teams would have to compete against challenger teams to keep their spot in the championship series, but now teams simply had to buy into the LCS for a spot in the new franchising system. While fan favorites such as Immortals and Dignitas went down, new blood enters the split with some teams bringing in fanbases of their own. OpTic, a popular organization within the Call of Duty competitive scene, is launching a team in the NA LCS. Several other teams funded by NBA organizations also have bought spots in the LCS. It’ll be interesting to see how these more “professional” organizations compete against the old guard of TSM, CLG, C9, and TL.
(01/20/18 8:41pm)
By Tanner Kinney
Another year means another season of the North American League Championship Series (NA LCS) is upon us. A number of huge changes were made since the last summer split, but I’m only going to talk about the most important ones here: franchising and format shifts. The NA LCS was completely redone to include security for teams. Previously, the worst teams would have to compete against challenger teams to keep their spot in the championship series, but now teams simply had to buy into the LCS for a spot in the new franchising system. While fan favorites such as Immortals and Dignitas went down, new blood enters the split with some teams bringing in fanbases of their own. OpTic, a popular organization within the Call of Duty competitive scene, is launching a team in the NA LCS. Several other teams funded by NBA organizations also have bought spots in the LCS. It’ll be interesting to see how these more “professional” organizations compete against the old guard of TSM, CLG, C9, and TL.
The format has also shifted from best of three series to a now best of one — meaning surprise strats and the random upswings and downswings of normally successful teams are back on the menu. Formerly, when the NA LCS was a best of one format, you’d have teams like Complexity or Team 8 who only served to play spoiler to the teams at the top of the table — dubbed “blue shell” teams by the community. Will they return this split? No idea, but it’ll be exciting to see.
The predictions I make here are purely speculative. At the time of writing no team has played yet, aside from a couple players from OpTic subbing in for their academy team counterparts. The rankings are based on perceived power, synergy, potential to overachieve, and potential to self-destruct horribly. Things are likely to change as the split goes on and we start seeing results, but as of now, here are my power rankings.
1. Team Solomid #TSMWIN
TSM made a lot of changes during the offseason, keeping only two players from their previous World Championship team. But are these changes for the best? Absolutely. TSM kept their two hugely successful solo lane carries in Bjergsen and Hauntzer, while picking up Zven and Mithy, who were widely considered one of, if not the best bot lane players in Europe. By sheer star power, these four alone make the team a force to be reckoned with, and should be able to communicate fairly well as a unit. The only questionable part is jungler MikeYeung, who impressed during Rift Rivals on Phoenix1, but couldn’t make waves during the rest of the season. To be fair, Phoenix1 was not a very good team and had many issues that beyond MikeYeung’s control. An aggressive, shot-calling jungler like MikeYeung could be TSM's ticket to success. Then again, previous TSM junglers had been aggressive shot-callers before joining the team and essentially losing their teeth. They are still likely the strongest team with the least chance of completely tanking.
2. Counter Logic Gaming #CLGWIN
I'll admit to a little bit of bias here; I was a CLG fan during previous seasons because I enjoy being horribly disappointed. I have my reasons, however, for placing them so high in my ranking. CLG has the team most likely to gel instantly. With no perceived communication issues; existing synergy between the three returning members of the roster (Huhi, Darshan, and Stixxay); two replacements who at least break-even in terms of what is being gained; Reignover serving as an easy upgrade to OmarGod; and Biofrost as a much stronger mechanical support than Aphromoo had been, CLG is promising this season. The potential problems with CLG lie in strength of shotcalling and Reignover. Losing Aphromoo meant CLG lost their strongest shotcalling voice for Biofrost — who was reportedly kicked for not communicating well with TSM. Reignover was also incredibly inconsistent towards the end of his run on Team Liquid during summer split 2017, being a non-factor in many games. At the very least, CLG should be stable enough to not hit the bottom of the table — unlike the next team.
3. Team Liquid #TLWIN
On paper, Team Liquid has one of the best rosters of any team in the LCS right now. Their team has been completely overhauled by adding Impact from C9; Xmithe, Pobelter, and Olleh from Immortals; and the legend himself, Doublelift from TSM. This roster is incredibly stacked with existing synergy outside the top lane and three players who recently competed together on Immortals and Doublelift and have played with Xmithe and Pobelter in the past. On top of that, every player (apart from maybe Impact) is in the top 5 in their role at the lowest within the NA LCS. That’s all well and good, but there’s one huge problem with this team: Team Liquid itself. Team Liquid has somehow managed to squander any potential their teams have had since 2016 and has ended both of the last two splits at the bottom of the table before trying to use money to patch the holes in their terrible teams. Liquid owner Steve Arhancet has spent all the money in the world to get this stacked roster and, while it could possibly even be better than TSM, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another TL roster barely breaking the top 5.
4. Cloud 9 #C9WIN
Second only to TSM in terms of current fanbase in the NA LCS, Cloud 9 made some roster shifts that unfortunately lower the team's overall potential. The previous Cloud 9 roster made it to quarterfinals at worlds, but thanks to TL’s massive checking account, lost their rock in Impact. Losing Impact and getting Licorice, while not a terrible swap, is a complete downgrade. Picking up former TSM Svenskeren for jungle may also be seen as a downgrade, but Sven has shown himself to be a strong player when given the proper tools to play the game. On top of that, C9 kept their main powerhouse players in Jensen, Sneaky, and Smoothie, so they still have a lot of potential to climb high in the standings. With the top lane as stacked as it is this season it might be hard for Licorice to make much of an difference in the game. It’ll depend on the bottom half of the map for C9 to win games, which they definitely can. There just will be more pressure on Jensen and Sneaky to perform at and beyond their normal levels. And if Jensen doesn’t perform, all they need to do is bring in the ultimate NA talent GoldenGlue. Raise your VaultBoys.
5. Echo Fox #FOXWIN
Here’s a team that’s probably surprising to see this high up. I put Echo Fox in the middle of the table, but they could easily swap with the next two teams beneath them. Echo Fox is a fantastic organization that spent the past two splits plagued by some truly awful players. Even with better players in 2017, the constant roster swaps when things started going poorly made Echo Fox look like a complete joke. Thanks to that delicious NBA money, Echo Fox has finally picked up a roster that has probably the most volatility of any team currently in the LCS. Former SKT Huni in the top lane is a monster, Dardoch and Fenix have had games were they popped off, and the former Dignitas botlane of Altec and Adrian was absolutely rock solid, if a bit underwhelming. If Huni, Dardoch, and Fenix are firing on all cylinders and have completely amazing performances, Echo Fox could easily compete with teams like TSM. Huni and Dardoch, however, aren’t really known for being consistent. Huni can be a complete terror in the top lane or play dumb things like Lucian top into Maokai. Dardoch can be a presence around the entire map or tilt and flame his teammates who are former world champions. It’s a tough call, but I’d like to believe Echo Fox can finally break the top five this season.
6. 100 Thieves #100WIN
The cool new kids on the block who’ve developed probably the strongest fanbase of the new teams, it seems 100 Thieves focused on building a brand first before building a good team. Not a bad idea, of course, and the players have had good performances in the past, but there’s not much in the way of synergy. In addition, mechanically, it could be argued a couple of these players are washed up and might just quit halfway through the season. Both the jungler Meteos and midlaner Ryu of Phoenix1 had issues with burnout during the last season, and support Aphromoo has been noted to make a lot of really questionable plays in lane despite good shotcalling. Top laner Ssumday of Dignitas and AD Carry Cody Sun are good players, but will they be strong enough to carry if the rest of the team slumps? I’m not convinced. Still, it’s not a terrible roster, and they could easily break the top five. I don’t think they’ll be able to compete with TSM or Team Liquid, but definitely can style on some of the weaker teams.
7. Clutch Gaming #CGWIN
While Clutch City Gaming (now just Clutch Gaming, apparently) came into the LCS with one of the best worst names of the new teams, their roster is just looking like it’ll struggle to break the top five. While players like Lira (formerly of EnVy) and Febiven (formerly of H2K Gaming) are both superstars in their own right and the bot lane of Apollo and Hakuho (also formerly of EnVy) are fairly solid, this team simply seems like a slightly better version of EnVy. EnVy wasn’t terrible, of course, but still stayed towards the bottom of the table during their time in the LCS. Synergy and communication were always a struggle for EnVy and, while getting rid of some problematic players like Seraph helps, it’s still a problem. The biggest question mark for me, however, is on toplaner Solo, who has never looked very impressive on any team he’s been on. If the team performs like EnVy did, but slightly better, they could place somewhat higher, but I doubt they have the ability to break the top of the table.
8. FlyQuest #FLYWIN
FlyQuest is a team famous for doing really well, then doing really poorly, then doing really well again. The former FlyQuest team had three washed up members of the golden age of C9 trying to regain former glory, but they couldn’t cut it mechanically. Fortunately, FlyQuest has made some changes. Unfortunately, I’m not sure these changes are going to help them all that much. FlyQuest lost the leadership of Hai who, despite being a lackluster midlaner in terms of mechanical skill, could shotcall and make ambitious plays like no one else in the league. Players like Flame and Fly are good of course, but there isn’t too much in the way of synergy for this team. The bot lane of WildTurtle and Stunt in particular seems very lackluster. We’ll have to see how they perform to really judge how their synergy is really going to play out, but as of right now, I doubt FlyQuest will be able to make it very high unless Flame pulls off a miracle.
9. Golden Guardians #GGSWIN
That delicious NBA money did not save the Golden Guardians from picking up a roster that looks like it was taped together last minute. Players with no real synergy in Contractz (formerly of C9) Lourlo and Matt (both formerly of Team Liquid) and Deftly, who was pulled straight from the challenger series, don’t seem like they can bring star power or good team play. At the very least, GGS has the benefit of the shotcalling legend Hai in the midlane. Hai can micromanage even the worst teams into pulling off some cheesy wins, but it won’t be enough to climb the standings once teams get used to their shenanigans. The only positive thing I can say about the Golden Guardians roster is that they probably aren’t going to be the worst. That spot belongs to, of course:
10. OpTic Gaming #OPTWIN #GREENWALL
Oh, poor, poor OpTic. The ultimate meme team coming from Call of Duty, I had hopes you would pick up a good roster so I could torture my friends by screaming #GREENWALL. If anyone lost the off-season in terms of getting a team together, it was OpTic. Every other team has at least one player who could pull off a miracle and drag their team across the finish line. FlyQuest has Flame, Golden Guardians have Hai’s shotcalling, Clutch Gaming has Lira, all of them can single-handedly win games. OpTic’s best and most consistent player is PowerOf€vil, who only left Europe and joined OpTic for that sweet, delicious North American dollar. I’d like to believe he won’t just cash his paycheck and phone it in, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Surrounding Po€ is Zig, a top laner who failed to make really hard-carry games on Phoenix1; Akaadian, who both carried and tanked Echo Fox depending on whether the week was even or odd before being benched for Grig, unbenched, then benched again; Arrow, who was wildly inconsistent on Phoenix1 and rarely wins lanes against better AD carries; and old man LemonNation, who is admired for his ability to draft good team comps, but is easily the worst support (mechanically speaking) in the entirety of the LCS. So, OpTic has a horribly weak botlane, an inconsistent jungler, a toplaner who only found success on Rumble and Kled, and a mid laner playing for the money and not for the glory. I may be repping that OpTic flair in my solo queue games, but I’m almost certain this team isn’t going to get anywhere near the top, let alone above 9th place.
Once the season starts, we can talk upsets, surprises, chokes, and amazing hail mary plays, but for now we only have predictions. If you have your own prediction and they don’t line up with mine, just remember that the only thing really on the line here is my reputation. If OpTic somehow ends up in the top five past the middle of the season, I’ll exclusively play Kindred for the rest of the season. That should make up for the dishonor I’ll have put on my name.
Images: YouTube, The Score Esports
(01/20/18 7:08pm)
Nintendo, for all their blunders and missteps over theirs years as a video game developer, have always had one goal: to innovate. Maybe not in software, if the New Super Mario Bros. series is any indication, but definitely in hardware and peripherals. The only reason people in the US even were interested in the Nintendo Entertainment System at launch was because it was marketed not as a disgusting games console, but as an entertainment system with a goofy robot and a light gun game packaged in. I’ve always respected Nintendo, even when they send projects out to die due to bad marketing, naming, lack of support from third parties, and strange decisions made by the suits at Nintendo because of this innovative spirit. VR is the new hotness, but way back when it was the old-new hotness, Nintendo was at the front delivering the worst possible VR experience anyone could have anticipated. Okay, so the Virtual Boy was a mistake. But, for every mistake, they have a huge hit with the Nintendo Wii or, recently, the Nintendo Switch. So, now that the Switch is raking in that dollar dollar, what will Nintendo do next? What peripherals will they create to support the wide range of functions that can be performed by the Joycons?
(01/20/18 12:50am)
by Tanner Kinney
Nintendo, for all their blunders and missteps over theirs years as a video game developer, have always had one goal: to innovate. Maybe not in software, if the New Super Mario Bros. series is any indication, but definitely in hardware and peripherals. The only reason people in the US even were interested in the Nintendo Entertainment System at launch was because it was marketed not as a disgusting games console, but as an entertainment system with a goofy robot and a light gun game packaged in. I’ve always respected Nintendo, even when they send projects out to die due to bad marketing, naming, lack of support from third parties, and strange decisions made by the suits at Nintendo because of this innovative spirit. VR is the new hotness, but way back when it was the old-new hotness, Nintendo was at the front delivering the worst possible VR experience anyone could have anticipated. Okay, so the Virtual Boy was a mistake. But, for every mistake, they have a huge hit with the Nintendo Wii or, recently, the Nintendo Switch. So, now that the Switch is raking in that dollar dollar, what will Nintendo do next? What peripherals will they create to support the wide range of functions that can be performed by the Joycons?
Nintendo decided that to think outside of the box, they’d need to understand the box. What makes the box, how the box operates, and how they can use the box. They then cut the box, made cutouts within the box, and are now going to sell the box and some rubber bands within another box for $70. And it’s kind of amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Bd3HUMkyU
If you haven’t seen it, on the day I’m writing this, Nintendo announced the Nintendo Labo. Nintendo Labo is a series of cardboard with pre-cutouts that you follow instructions to put together into a fishing pole or a piano or a robot backpack. It reminds me of when I went to Steak and Shake and got the little car cardboard cutout with the kids menu that you have to fold and create a car with. That was, of course, only three months ago because I am a sad, pathetic, man child.
https://twitter.com/SpaceDoctorPhD/status/953763271278039043
The cardboard Nintendo is selling isn’t just cardboard peripherals you have to construct for $70. I don’t think Nintendo would be that stupid or ambitious. The Nintendo Labo also comes with a number of packed in pieces of software, each one corresponding with a specific cardboard construction. Each peripheral has slots that you place the Joycons in, and somehow the Joycons can do things like tell a little cardboard RC car to go forward when you control it with the tablet screen of the Switch itself. I’m not quite sure how, though the peripherals are surprisingly complex contraptions with a number of rubber bands for maximum quality. I’m just going to assume Nintendo is performing actual witchcraft, as Nintendo does. Of course, once you construct these cardboard peripherals, you can personalize them with markers and stickers or whatever. If I were designing one, I’d probably paint hot rod flames on the RC car. Or maybe bunnies. Or, to find a balance, bunnies INSIDE the hot rod flames. Shut up, at least the bunnies are on fire.
If you understood that sick reference, then there’s a good chance you aren’t the market for this product. During the announcement for the announcement, Nintendo made it clear it was designed for younger kids. It serves as inspiration for kids to get into engineering, spurring their creativity similarly to that of Lego (or maybe Minecraft for the kids of today). Just looking at some of the peripherals, my big meaty claws would probably snap them in half by accident, or I’d break a string or rubber band, or I’d break the thing trying to build it. Younger kids, however, probably wouldn’t have as many problems. Of course, they’d still break because children find a way to destroy everything. In terms of breaking it through gameplay though, maybe they wouldn’t break them so easily. I’d hope not, considering it costs $70 dollars. Or does it?
https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/953765569639133184
The ingenious thing to me about the Nintendo Labo is the fact that the pieces of the peripherals can be easily replaced using other pieces of cardboard, or string, or rubber bands. Well, maybe not easily, but it’s definitely possible. So kids who inevitably break everything they love will be able to have their new cardboard robot backpack repaired with relative ease, assuming the broken parts aren’t too essential to the function of the peripheral. A parent with a bit of technical knowhow should be able to put it back together. In theory, of course. I wouldn’t be able to put it together because I can’t even construct a bowl of Kraft Mac and Cheese, but other people might be able to. Perhaps even the kids themselves can rebuild their toys. They have the technology, the ultimate power of cardboard! Plus, Nintendo also said they would give replacement cardboard sheets as well, so it’s not a complete loss.
https://twitter.com/MllePilgrim/status/953781441321754624
Nintendo may not have announced the virtual console, or the internet browser, or Mother 3 (it’s not happening, give it up), but they did announce something that I have to admit looks pretty cool. If I was a small bab with a Nintendo Switch, I’d 100% want the robot pack because even manchild me kind of wants it. It’s a smart way to do peripherals that can be customized, destroyed, and rebuilt with relative ease. It’s not a bad idea, and the fact they announced this doesn’t mean virtual console is dead, so stop complaining, and don’t email me with complaints.
https://twitter.com/Faulerro/status/954060570105450496
At the very least, scalpers will now be able to scalp LITERAL CARDBOARD, a step above scalping Mario cereal. On top of that, this is the first recorded instance of actual hack fraud Michael Pachter being correct in a prediction about the games industry. So that means the apocalypse is finally upon us. Remember to buy Nintendo Labo on 4/20 for $69.99 before the world collapses, everyone!
https://twitter.com/Doctor_Cupcakes/status/953750840044605440
Sources: Business Insider, Youtube
Images: Twitter, LRM Online
(01/15/18 6:24am)
(01/13/18 7:28pm)
WARNING: THIS ARTICLE WILL CONTAIN MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING. IF YOU READ THIS AND HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE, THEN COMPLAIN ABOUT SPOILERS, DON’T EMAIL ME WITH COMPLAINTS. THEY WON’T BE HEARD. THANK YOU.
(01/13/18 7:12pm)
On January 7th, 2018, the 75th annual Golden Globes had another award ceremony. Now, I’m still in the boat that all awards shows are fraudulent unless the things I like win, but I completely forgot about the Golden Globes. The last thing I remember from the Golden Globes is Jennifer Lawrence making a complete embarrassment of herself during a backstage interview, and that was two years ago. I also remember hearing a number of jokes about Sofia Vergara’s “golden globes” which was definitely not funny either the first nor fifty-eighth time I heard them. Yet, this year, a stunningly amazing speech from Oprah Winfrey rocked popular culture, and definitely got my head turned and listening. A speech that, perhaps, could be “presidential.”
(01/13/18 9:00am)
by Tanner Kinney
WARNING: THIS ARTICLE WILL CONTAIN MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING. IF YOU READ THIS AND HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE, THEN COMPLAIN ABOUT SPOILERS, DON’T EMAIL ME WITH COMPLAINTS. THEY WON’T BE HEARD. THANK YOU.
It’s been a while since the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but the ripples of its release are still being felt. The film was heavily hyped up before release, and fans had a reason to be excited. While J.J. Abrams took Star Wars in a relatively safe direction with The Force Awakens, this new film had Rian Johnson, who was given full creative control over this project. Disney decided not to meddle with the second movie in their major blockbuster trilogy, giving full power to some guy who previously directed Looper and… not much else. It was a bold decision by Disney, and even if there was a bit of meddling from the higher ups, it was obviously a new an original take on the story J.J. Abrams established (or rehashed, if that’s what you prefer to say). Rian Johnson went in and took all of the fans expectations about this new Star Wars movie potentially being too “samey” and turned it all on its head. But how did the people feel about it?
Well, it certainly wasn’t a remake of The Empire Strikes Back. I’m not entirely sure it was a Star Wars movie, to be honest. I’m also not sure I’m not still watching the movie, considering I went into the theater a clean-shaven lad and left with a full beard. Seriously, that movie felt like it went on for days and days. Still shorter than Batman v. Superman felt, at least.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi released to critical praise, much to the delight of fans. Unfortunately, much to the dismay of fans, the movie itself hurt them. Check out the Rotten Tomatoes scores for both critics and user scores. The gap between the two is unusually massive, scarily so. The polarizing nature of this movie can be seen around the internet as well, with people conflicted on whether this movie was a masterpiece because of all the subverted expectations and new changes, or if it was a complete pile of pungent Porg poop for the same reasons. It seems there’s no middle ground for opinions on this film; you either love it and all of its weirdness or hate it and Rian Johnson for destroying everything you love. But what about The Last Jedi is making people so angry, and is there a good argument behind the wall of flame? Well, I did a bit of research and, along with my own opinions, came up with a few reasons as to why I think this movie is so polarizing.
The Story Structure is a Complete Mess and Nothing Happens
https://twitter.com/wnydapu/status/642787498578608128
This complaint is probably the one most based on the movie itself as a movie and not as a continuation of the Star Wars universe. The Last Jedi has a runtime of two hours and thirty-two minutes, a single minute longer than the messy slog that was Batman v. Superman’s theatrical cut. The Last Jedi, however, isn’t one story being extended to this runtime. It’s secretly three different movies all loosely related to each other, trimmed down and compacted into one very big bowl of spaghetti. Typically, Star Wars fans would love to chow down on a big bowl of Star Wars Spaghettios (which is a real thing, of course), but not when Rian Johnson toucha their spaghett! The major points boil down to the movie containing a lot of unnecessary fluff with no substantial character development. Everyone sort of just returned to where they started in the story, except Kylo Ren and Rey. It was essentially a filler episode, except we didn’t get to see the cast go to the beach or a hot spring, only a pointless casino. We did at least get shirtless Kylo Ren, if that counts. More like WIDElo Ren if you ask me.
https://twitter.com/jedimemes/status/951185355394502659
This complaint I completely agree with. There were a number of parts in the movie that just seemed silly, unnecessary, and wasted time. The movie, at its core and at its best, is about Rey learning the truth behind the Jedi and the Force. She and Kylo have both found their answers and want to take a different approach to going above all the politics, the Dark Side and Light Side, and try to get the other to join them in their quest to just end all the fighting. At the end of it all, Kylo’s frustration leads him further down the Dark side, and Rey has a new determination to join the Resistance and be the Jedi hero she was destined to be. If the movie was a nice hour and a half about Rey’s development, her interactions with Kylo, and where they end up respectively going into the finale of this trilogy, it would have been a pretty fantastic film.
https://twitter.com/cevangelista413/status/950112202014502917
The film is bogged down with other characters, unfortunately. Nothing wrong with the new cast, I happen to love them all and their characters. I actually think, contrary to some people, that Rose was a great new addition to the cast, and am excited to see her character hopefully get more development in the next film. She deserves more development. Poe is a great character, and John Boyega is still amazing as Finn. It’s just that their subplots only served to pull the movie down. They are constantly failing, losing, and yet there are little consequences to their failure. They end up right where the movie started, except with Rose and Finn having a… romance? Sort of? Their subplot could still be a part of the film, but trim it down significantly; or choose to focus on either Finn and Rose in Casino Night Zone OR Poe dealing with the unhelpful Admiral Holdo who wouldn’t take 3 MINUTES to just TELL POE her plan, which would have resulted in LESS casualties. Poe’s not in the right either, but come on, just give the man a hint before he almost gets both of his friends killed.
The only quick thing in their subplots is that Captain Phasma is once again defeated in under five minutes. Great character you got there, Star Wars! She did just as much for in this trilogy as Boba Fett did in the original trilogy!
Your Snoke (And Rey Parentage) Theory Sucks
In The Force Awakens, director J.J. Abrams left the audience with his infamous “mystery box.” The mystery, this time, revolved around Supreme Leader Snoke and who Rey’s parents were. A little mystery is a good thing, I always believe, because it gets people talking. There were hundreds of fan theories written by hacks like me about how Snoke was actually Jar Jar Binks and that Rey is actually the secret love child of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Some Lady™. There were theories that Rey is a Skywalker, and actually Kylo’s long lost cousin/sister. Or, perhaps, Snoke willed her into existence to become an avatar of the Dark Side, but instead she chooses the Jedi and ends the trilogy killing a God with her cast of misfit friends she discovered along the way.
Rian Johnson opened up Abrams’s mystery box, and this was the result:
https://youtu.be/GB7mHxdHlRY
Needless to say, I’m not shocked Rian Johnson burned it all to the ground. It was better this way.
There’s a part of me that thinks Rian Johnson is a genius troll, intentionally making Snoke Some Guy™ who gets killed and Rey’s parents Some Junkers™ to piss off the Star Wars fans who treat it with a cult-like fascination. Let’s be honest here, they are so invested in their own headcanons that they would’ve been disappointed anyways. As a fan of chaos, I enjoy Rian Johnson doing that to piss people off, and think it was amazing to watch so many fans get their days ruined. As a fan of good storytelling, not giving ANY backstory to Snoke or Rey’s parents, despite it being an important plot point from the Abrams story? Kind of a let down. I can see why people would be upset about this, but personally, I thought it wasn’t a deal breaker. They should let Rian Johnson handle a big superhero film, I want to see the MCU fans squirm next.
You Aren’t Funny Star Wars, Get Off The Stage!
These complaints are ones I actually heard before going into the movie. Allegedly, The Last Jedi was a quip-tastic movie on the levels of Guardians of the Galaxy. The thought of having to sit through another movie as devoid of comedy despite trying really hard as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 made me instantly worried about the movie. Before going into the theater, I was genuinely worried this film would somehow be worse than Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, which I had seen earlier in the week. I can say that the movie wasn’t as loaded with humor and quips as I expected, and there were some jokes that made me laugh, but I also will agree that the humor was out-of-place and coming from the wrong characters.
There were plenty of good jokes. I thought the scene where Luke mocks Rey’s understanding of the Force was very funny. I thought Luke going through his everyday business despite Rey’s pandering was a good touch, if less comedic and more just interesting to watch. I thought some of the lines delivered in the first interaction with Rose and Finn were amusing, and made me instantly like Rose as a character.
I also thought that Poe probably should have been quiping more than he was, considering he is the snarky hothead. Additionally, while I thought Luke was funny, I do think, along with some reviews I’ve read or watched, that his character probably should have been MORE bitter and jaded than what was portrayed in the film. Redirect some of Luke’s humor to Poe, and it feels more balanced. I mostly just hated all the meta-jokes during the terrible final act of the film, where it seemed like George Lucas had his hands on the script during the process. It’s like poetry; it’s eye-rollingly dumb to read when it’s coming from a complete hack. The humor didn’t kill the film for me though, and I don’t think it’s really that strong of an argument against the film other than addressing some errors in characterization. Besides, we all know the funniest part of the film is when Leia FLIES THROUGH SPACE LIKE MARY FRIGGIN’ POPPINS because that definitely happened and I thought it was hilarious.
Also the part where Luke milks some strange smooth walrus for some green milk, then takes a drink while giving Rey crazy eyes. I clapped.
Does It Suck?
I guess at the end of this article as unnecessarily long as The Last Jedi I should probably give my thoughts on it. If you couldn’t tell, I actually quite liked a lot of it. I left the theater feeling like I ran a marathon, but once I got out of that funk I realized I enjoyed the movie. It made me more interested in Star Wars than before, even if it was just because I wanted to see what makes other people hate this movie so much. Over time, however, I accepted that the film was a bit messy. It has problems, and some are even legit complaints against it. I think once all the anger dies down and people abandon their petitions to remove The Last Jedi from the canon, most people will find the movie is a lot like the Force: it just exists. It’s good in some ways, and bad in others. It exists, and only the people who obsess over it will find complete good or evil within it. At the very least, for better or for worse, it is certainly the most interesting Star Wars movie of the Disney bunch so far.
I will admit that I didn’t cover some things that people complained about because I liked them. The lightspeed kamikaze done by Admiral Holdo was cool to watch, but incredibly dumb once you think about the impact it has on warfare within the Star Wars universe, and the fact that it probably shouldn’t have worked. The scene in the throne room where Rey and Kylo take on Snoke’s FIGHTING POLYGON TEAM was also a really cool nod to some extended universe weapons, even if it was a bit unnecessary and seemed to fill the action scene quota. To me, they don’t impact the film enough to make or break the experience, but I thought it would be a good idea to add them here.
I just wonder what Abrams is going to do with this complete destruction of everything he tried to set up and establish. I think it would be funny if Abrams just retcons everything saying it was all a bad dream of Rey’s, and all of the fan theories are correct. It’ll be like MadLibs, each fan fills out their own plot points and then they get to hear auto-generated voices saying the names and lines they want to hear. The perfect Star Wars movie, where only the true experts determine what happens: the Star Wars fans.
https://twitter.com/tara_atrandom/status/943646671816265729
Sources: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Change.org
Images: Rotten Tomatoes, The Verge, Screenrant, YouTube, Twitter, Inverse, Imgur, We Got This Covered
(01/13/18 8:00am)
by Tanner Kinney
On January 7th, 2018, the 75th annual Golden Globes had another award ceremony. Now, I’m still in the boat that all awards shows are fraudulent unless the things I like win, but I completely forgot about the Golden Globes. The last thing I remember from the Golden Globes is Jennifer Lawrence making a complete embarrassment of herself during a backstage interview, and that was two years ago. I also remember hearing a number of jokes about Sofia Vergara’s “golden globes” which was definitely not funny either the first nor fifty-eighth time I heard them. Yet, this year, a stunningly amazing speech from Oprah Winfrey rocked popular culture, and definitely got my head turned and listening. A speech that, perhaps, could be “presidential.”
As in, Oprah might run for President in 2020 against current President Donald Trump, who will likely go for re-election. So yeah, we are exactly twelve days into 2018 as I’m writing, and this year is already delivering the hottest surprises of the decade. Hoo boy.
To give a little context, Oprah was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment.” Apparently. I didn’t even know it was a thing before Oprah’s speech, but you’ve got previous huge winners like George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Woody Allen, and Jodie Foster within the past decade. Honestly, just judging by the little blurb, Oprah probably should’ve won this award years ago for her outstanding contributions, but then again, what do I know. Regardless, Oprah won it this year, and delivered a speech that was simply breathtaking.
https://twitter.com/lukewaltham/status/951941214491873280
Oprah tackled the issues of sexual misconduct in Hollywood (timely, considering fellow winner James Franco received accusations very shortly following the event), race, gender, all the major topics of the modern age. This speech was expertly delivered, and definitely made her sound, well, Presidential. I’m not an expert in sounding Presidential, I’m a fraud with a keyboard who couldn’t form a coherent sentence in person without jumping to twelve other topics, but fortunately there are experts who can break down why it’s so Presidential. I’m just here to deliver my hot take on what I think about Oprah running for President being a possibility. Well, two equally hot takes from two different perspectives.
Yaaaaaaaasssssss Queeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen Slaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
It’s clear a number of Americans aren’t interested in politicians running for President anymore. The idea is that politicians aren’t trustworthy, typically. A lot of them are allegedly bought out by corporations, or are old and crusty and probably suffering from too much dementia to make good decisions. People are tired of hearing the same tired lines coming from the politicians and then seeing nothing actually change. At least, in some parts of America. Other people believe political qualifications are actually important to be in a political office. A bold declaration, that one. Too sensible for my tastes.
https://twitter.com/AnneRiceAuthor/status/951977463407575040
Since President Donald Trump grabbed the nation by its genitals, there have been a number of celebrities talking about running for President themselves. You had Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson prominently talking about a Presidential run, and of course Kanye West talked about running in 2020 because that’s just what Kanye does. The public themselves have deemed certain people to be good Presidential candidates, but for the first time a candidate makes themselves a strong contender for the title. As a fan of competition and watching people slay, YES PLEASE RUN OPRAH!
Oprah is similar to President Donald Trump in the sense that they both are strong business people, have had a successful television show (or two), and have been in the popular consciousness for decades. If name recognition and a well-known TV personality are both important for a candidate in the new age, only Oprah would have the kind of clout President Donald Trump had during his run. Even Trump knew this, considering once when he talked about running for President he mentioned Oprah as a good candidate for Vice President. I’m not sure if a thumbs up from Trump is any longer a good thing in the eye of the media or a number of people, but it’s something. Oprah can bring people up and tear people down. I’d love to see Oprah and Trump duel in a political debate because I think, once the gloves come of, we could get some amazing (or amazingly awful) lines from both candidates. It may not be pretty for the state of the union, but it’ll be good entertainment. Two TV personalities battling verbally could make some good entertainment.
https://twitter.com/Thrilliamneff/status/950583298375303171
Maybe I’m promoting Oprah for all the wrong reasons there. In reality, that’s just on top of her personal accomplishments and the fact she’d be a symbol for the ideals of diversity and strength. She’s a strong speaker, and stands for people who need powerful people standing up for them. That’s commendable, and would make her a strong candidate in the eyes of the disenfranchised. She came from nothing and built herself up to where she is now. She’s a symbol of hope for people desperately searching for it. She’d be great, because she is great. And that’s just great.
A Logically Bad Business Decision
https://twitter.com/brianlilley/status/950781430879092742
Now, I would say Oprah running is a great idea. However, I have to admit that I think, logically, that it’s a bad idea for her brand. Yeah yeah, the brand is less important than potentially helping the nation, but let me reason with you here. Running for President is not easy. It has never been easy. It doesn’t matter who you are, you will get torn down, picked apart, put back together, then burnt to a crisp. Every single part of your life, past and present, will be put under a microscope and analyzed by political pundits on both sides of the political spectrum. Even relatively small-time politicians can find their careers in ruins simply by running for a party nomination.
In an attempt to not sound like a fraud, here’s a legitimate historical example: My personal hero, former Indiana Governor Paul V. McNutt, ran for the nomination for the Democratic party in 1940. We all know that FDR took that nomination because, well, of course he would. However, Paul McNutt had all of his dirty laundry and potential problems aired, like just a tiny bit of financial fraud and other minor mistakes he made during his time as governor brought to the forefront of the conversation. He wouldn’t re-enter the political sphere in any sense after that, other than smaller government positions. And that was in the age of pen and paper. Now that everything's online, it’s even easier to dig up dirt to fling at your political opponent. Both candidates during the last election were nearly destroyed by the internet digging up as much as possible to destroy the candidate they opposed. It’s happened before. It’ll happen again.
https://twitter.com/ingebelisabeth/status/951554420210270210
This isn’t just bad for mental health, which it certainly is taxing for. From a business perspective, if you are already a multi-billionaire with a huge brand and public image, why would you run? You can only DESTROY your brand, your image, and definitely your family and their brands and images as well. If your business isn’t politics, you have no reason to try and make it your business unless you really just want another title under your belt. Everyone has dirty secrets, even Oprah, probably. Already, there are parts of the internet and other celebrities talking about how Oprah running would just start revealing things she’d rather keep hidden.
https://twitter.com/ed_hooley/status/950581485458903041
The British singer Seal has called her a part of the problem, referencing her relations to the human scum trash from the bottom of the smelliest dumpster in the Hollywood slums named Harvey Weinstein. A number of people were connected to Weinstein, and it’s not surprising someone as deep in the industry as Oprah would have worked with him. Weinstein’s, and in a way the entire industry’s, unspeakable atrocities were Hollywood’s worst kept secret for decades, and with some time crazy people on the internet will work to destroy Oprah’s entire image. And that doesn’t just bring down Oprah: that could bring down every sponsor she’s ever worked with. It’s not sensible to do something as dangerous to your career as running for President is. The only reason to risk it is if she feels only she can be able to save the country. Perhaps she can, perhaps she will, but the risk will always be there.
With it all considered....
Donald Trump won the election because he was a champion for a certain section of people within the nation. It may seem a little crazy, but Donald Trump, excessively rich business tycoon, represented people in middle-America who felt they hadn’t been represented during the previous Presidency. Oprah would represent those who aren’t represented under the Trump Presidency. Oprah would be the yin to Trump’s yang, if you will. Oprah would be the elemental counter to Trump, and would probably be a fantastic candidate to run against him. Would she win? Maybe, she has a better chance than any other celebrity being propped up. And, going back to her speech from the Golden Globes, she’s got the oratory chops to be a fantastic politician that isn’t actually a politician. She would either slay hard or bring her opponent down with her. Either way, it’d be amazing to see her run.
Then again, we’d have a talk-show host taking on a reality TV show host for the position of leader of the free world. I feel like that should be scarier than it actually is. Historians will look back on this era and just shake their heads. Assuming humans are even still around in the next 40 years, that is. Get excited, everyone!
Sources: YouTube, The Washington Post, Gamespot, Quartz, The Independent
Images: Twitter, Vox
(12/29/17 11:30pm)
Another year of Byte reviews allowed us to shine a light once again on a wealth of games worth playing. Sure, there were some duds, but the masterpieces far outweighed them. The year 2017 featured improvements on recent installments of the Destiny and Sonic franchises, plus a spectacular first-year showing for the Nintendo Switch including obligatory new beauties in the Mario and Zelda departments. And with Cuphead bringing some mainstream attention to a brand-new indie studio, the future of independent gaming has never looked brighter.
(12/26/17 12:00pm)
by Tanner Kinney
Pokemon is a gigantic franchise. Kids love it, adults love it, and every Pokemon game seems to sell just as well or even better than the previous title. You show an everyday person a silhouette of Pikachu, there’s almost a guarantee they know what it is or, at the very least, that it is that Pokemon thing. There are hundreds of YouTube channels devoted to EXCLUSIVELY Pokemon content, whether it be WiFi battles or Let’s Plays or weird conspiracy videos. Kids grow up with Pokemon everywhere, and enjoy it in whatever way they want to. I definitely grew up with Pokemon Sapphire, the Pokemon Trading Card Game, and the Pokemon Advanced dub by 4Kids with all of Brock’s “jelly filled donuts”. Even then it was massive, now it’s even more prevalent in popular culture.
But Pokemon wasn’t always this huge franchise that had a massive budget behind it. Like all big things in popular culture, it started small: a simple game on Gameboy. The fact that Pokemon even came together and worked (mostly) as intended was truly a miracle of engineering from the geniuses at Game Freak and Nintendo. To celebrate the release of Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon, and to make it so those games would actually be reasonably fresh, I went back and revisited the first generation of Pokemon, Red and Blue version (and Green but also not really). For future reference, once I start talking about the game, I will be talking about Pokemon Blue version, as that’s the one I own.
Whoosh, Flashback, History Time
Now then, let’s head back to 1996. The Super Nintendo’s life cycle was quickly ending as the Ultra 64 (later Nintendo 64) was on the horizon. The Gameboy had been a smash hit handheld with titles like Link’s Awakening and the Super Mario Land series, but lacked the kind of title that made EVERYONE have to buy a Gameboy. The Gameboy still left competitors like the Atari Lynx and the Sega Game Gear in the dust, of course, but it was slowly dying. It needed a jolt of life if Nintendo wanted to keep producing it.
Something developers realized early on was that one specific genre did particularly well on Gameboy: the RPG. With series like Final Fantasy Legends and the Megami Tensei: Last Bible games doing so well (in Japan), it seemed portability favored this genre in particular. While they couldn’t match the spectacle of, say, Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger, the ability to take it anywhere was a huge boon. That is, if you had extra AA batteries with you.
So Nintendo, with the help of Game Freak, decided to throw their own hat in the ring to create a revolutionary new RPG: one where you caught and trained your own party of cute and cuddly monsters. Okay, it wasn’t completely revolutionary, considering recruiting a party of monsters to fight alongside you was the core mechanic of the Shin Megami Tensei series from four years earlier, but Nintendo’s series would make it more personal. These creatures would not only level up and become stronger, but would also evolve and grow with you as your journey progressed. This idea was based on game designer Satoshi Taijiri’s hobby of collecting insects. In his mind, these captured monsters would be like the captured insects except, you know, fight to the death. Oh, excuse me, fight to the “faint.”
And so, after a rather difficult development period and a couple rebrandings, Pocket Monsters: Red and Green were released in Japan. To the surprise of Nintendo and Game Freak, the games were massive successes. They were a perfect fit for the average schoolkid, with portability plus trading and battling with friends through the power of THE LINK CABLE. By 1997, it sold 10.4 MILLION copies in Japan alone. It was so successful that it got its own anime. Strangely enough, the anime actually released in the US before the games did, and led some people to believe the anime led to the game. With the power of the internet though, kids would find that not to be true. The internet would then quickly betray them with uncles from Nintendo talking about how to unlock Luigi in Super Mario 64. L is definitely not real.
Two years after the original release, Pokemon Red and Blue released in the US and most of the world (except Europe). These weren’t exact re-releases of the original Red and Green versions, due to the fact Game Freak had to completely rewrite the source code of the game for the English language. They also were based on the slightly more stable Pocket Monsters: Blue Version, which had updated sprite work and some text changes. Let’s just say that Red and Blue’s source code is held together with toothpicks and tissue paper. It works, but put any stress on it and you get some unexpected results.
Much like in Japan, Pokemon became a smash-hit here in the states, revitalizing the dying Gameboy and bringing a whole new addiction to kids everywhere. The craze was absolutely nuts. I remember some old advertisement on one of my Pokemon VHS tapes of a bus driver cramming all the Pokemon onto a bus, then smashing it into a Gameboy. He caught them all, also probably murdered them but it’s okay. Add the hugely popular anime; the trading card game that launched in December of 1998 to the terror of elementary school administrators just recovering from the Pog epidemic; and a series of increasingly ridiculous myths about secret gardens and Mews under trucks, and you have a recipe for a worldwide craze.
But what about Pokemon Red and Blue made it so great? And does it still hold up, even when compared to later titles within the Pokemon franchise? I was shocked to find out that yeah, this game is still incredibly rad, even if it’s a little broken at parts.
Why the PokeCraze Became the Craze
The game begins with you, a responsible 10-year-old boy (even if you are actually a girl, hardware can’t handle a girl protagonist, something something Ubisoft), leaving your house, heading north, and encountering Professor Oak. He brings you to his lab, and allows you to choose one of three starter Pokemon. You pick your favorite one (Squirtle, for me) and your rival picks the elemental counter. You fight the rival that you named something inappropriate if you’re 12 or mentally 12 like me, do one last tutorial bit to get a Pokedex, and boom, you’re off.
It doesn’t seem like much, but this kind of freedom is a breath of fresh air for me. If you’ve played Pokemon Sun and Moon, or hell even Pokemon X and Y, you know how tutorial ridden those games are. You can’t walk three feet without Lillie or Hau or Serena holding your hand from point A to point B. The world record speedrun for Sun and Moon doesn’t enter the first trial until 51 MINUTES into the game. The full run of the game is 5 hours and 13 minutes. Almost 20% of that run is the starting tutorials, and to be completely honest, tutorials go on for waaaaaaaay longer than that. For comparison, the world record for Pokemon Red beats Brock at 11 minutes in a 1 hour and 48 minute run, and almost none of that is a tutorial. I actually found myself even after starting Ultra Moon switching back to Pokemon Blue because the joy was just so much more immediate. I boot it up, BAM I’m battling Pokemon trainers with my trusty sidekick Smudy the Nidoqueen. No cutscenes, no friendship speeches, no putting Nebby back in the bag, just good ol’ fashioned battling.
The formula has also aged incredibly well. That’s not a surprise though, considering it took literally 20 years for them to shake up the formula with Sun and Moon, and each game leading up to it was great. Catch Pokemon, level them up, battle gyms, get badges, foil a crime syndicate, travel into a void Hell world to battle a being that can tear reality asunder, the usual stuff. Minus the legendary Pokemon, which were all optional in Red and Blue, it’s clear that this is where it all came from. And it’s still great. Game Freak had the winning formula down on the first attempt, and it shows with how wonderful the game still is.
What hasn’t aged well, however, are the individual mechanics. Let’s just say that necessary improvements were made in future installments. Pokemon Red and Blue are fantastic games and marvels of coding when you really study how it all came together to work. They are also broken in so many ways. If you want some good reading material, check out this list of glitches compiled by Bulbapedia. And those are just the ones we know about. If you want a real trip and have 2 hours of free-time, check out the 151 Pokemon speedrun done at Summer Games Done Quick 2015, where the runner collects every single Pokemon on one cartridge in under two hours. These games are broken beyond belief, and even legends like Missingno are easily reproduced by anyone with the knowledge to get them working.
In addition, some actual combat mechanics are really poorly designed. Wrap is the most frustrating move in existence, preventing the target from doing anything until the wrap ends, which can last what feels like an eternity. Psychic types are incredibly strong, not only since the “Special” stat applies to both defense and offense, but also because their two main counters (Bug and Ghost) don’t actually work. Bug’s strongest move is Twineedle, at 25 base power and only learned by Beedrill, and Ghost not only has no moves worth using but also don’t actually affect Psychic types due to bad coding. The “Gen 1 Miss” is in play, where every move (aside from Swift) REGARDLESS OF ACCURACY has a 1/256 chance to miss. This can be especially infuriating during close fights. Critical hits are also based on the speed of your Pokemon, and the high crit moves like Karate Chop or Slash multiply that chance by 8. This means Sandslash and Persian are critting on almost every single Slash without fail. These are just the most major annoyances, not getting into the strange AI and the absolutely horrible level curve, one that requires grinding that the original Final Fantasy would applaud.
Despite some gameplay flaws that can be attributed to the fact it was a pioneer game, the first in the franchise, it’s easily still a fantastic game. It wouldn’t be the mega-franchise it is now without an amazing start, and Red and Blue is just that. If you want to revisit Gen 1 in all of its Gameboy glory though, I would recommend getting Pokemon Yellow Version and a Gameboy Color. The gameplay is all there and even further improved, you can get every starter, and the sprite work actually looks closer to the original Ken Sugimori art and the anime, which are the inspirations for the modern design. Sprite work may seem like a small thing, but just look at some of the original sprites in Pokemon Green Version. It’s wonderful how terrible it all is, particularly Mew, though Wigglytuff and Moltres are pretty close on the bad spectrum. They desperately needed the upgrade.
Pokemon Red and Blue Versions are legendary games, possibly the best-selling RPGs of all time. They were great back then, and they are still great today. While I would still say that Pokemon Emerald or Pokemon Soulsilver are the best Pokemon games, these are still definitely near the top of the table. I enjoyed revisiting them, and got really into it as obvious by this huge essay. So remember to train hard, eat well, and praise the almighty Helix Fossil, and you too can be the very best like no one ever was.
Sources: YouTube, Kotaku, Byte, Bulbapedia
Images: YouTube, Hardcore Gaming 101, atari.io, awkwardzombie.com, KnowYourMeme, Byte, The Spriter's Resource
(12/21/17 2:00pm)
Oh boy oh boy, it’s time for another Star Wars movie release! It’s kind of shocking to actually say that. Even though now it looks like we’ll be getting Star Wars movies from now until the end of human existence, just not even five years ago it seemed the franchise had become dormant from a cinematic perspective. George Lucas managed to drive his beloved franchise so far into the ground that no one wanted to see any more new movies that might make things worse, if that was even possible.
(12/18/17 2:00pm)
by Tanner Kinney
Oh boy oh boy, it’s time for another Star Wars movie release! It’s kind of shocking to actually say that. Even though now it looks like we’ll be getting Star Wars movies from now until the end of human existence, just not even five years ago it seemed the franchise had become dormant from a cinematic perspective. George Lucas managed to drive his beloved franchise so far into the ground that no one wanted to see any more new movies that might make things worse, if that was even possible.
Despite that, novels and games covering the amazing mess of the expanded universe tended to do pretty well. Disney’s Star Wars, unfortunately, seems to have abandoned all the cool planets, alien races, story concepts, and legitimately great world-building to stick with things that are well-known (aka more easily marketable), which is a shame. Star Wars from just the world created by the original trilogy is a little creatively bankrupt, especially if you have to keep forcing in Star Wars things because they are Star Wars in an effort to make people like your film (looking at you, Rogue One).
Not to worry though! I, being an expert in bad fanfiction, know exactly what Star Wars movies Disney can make that the people will definitely love and are not japes. And don’t worry Disney, you don’t need to pay me for these ideas. It’ll be our little secret that only we know about. We can do a little wink at each other when we pass in the supermarket, it’ll be great.
Wicket’s Bad Fur Day
‘Member Ewoks? Those fuzzy little bastards George Lucas shoved into Return of the Jedi because he wanted to make something marketable for the kids? Yeah, a lot of people don’t really like Ewoks that much from my understanding. They still got a TV show, which sure was weird, but there’s a lot of untapped potential in the Ewok market. So I’ve got a great idea: we make an Ewok movie. The marketing campaign can show this light-hearted adventure starring Ewoks doing wacky things on Endor. It’ll be great.
Here’s the twist: the movie has a sneaky R-rating attached to it. Huh? What? Why is that there? Well, this idea takes a little inspiration from the game Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Essentially, we take a script written like it’s from the writers of Deadpool and put Ewoks and other wacky alien creatures over it. It’ll have no real overarching story, and maybe they could style it after British comedy rather than American comedy, because the last time a movie tried the deceptive-kids-movie-thing we got Sausage Party. No one wants another Sausage Party. British comedy is also something you don’t see a lot of over here in the States, and it needs to be seen more. It’ll be bold, shocking, possibly funny, and won’t outlive its welcome as long as it’s paced properly.
Also, just steal Greg the Grim Reaper from Conker and put him in the movie. No one will notice, and everyone will love him. Greg is great.
The Fault in Our Star Destroyers
Who doesn’t love a good love story? Even in movies that don’t have a prominent love element, the internet fills in the blanks in ways no one ever wanted. There aren’t too many good love stories in the Star Wars universe though, at least in the movies. Sure, Leia and Han are great together, but that wasn’t the important part. I want my romance movie, dammit! So, I’ve got a great idea cooked up, piping hot out the brain oven.
A rebel pilot, possibly some kind of lieutenant, is shot down during a skirmish between the New Order and the Resistance. The pilot survives (don’t ask, just accept it), and is captured by the New Order. This may have happened to Poe in The Force Awakens, but don’t worry about that, if they were worried about rehashing ideas then none of The Force Awakens would exist. The thing here is that a higher-ranking Stormtrooper does the interrogation of the rebel pilot. They are initially cold to each other, but eventually they start connecting. The Stormtrooper eventually gets permission to take the rebel out of containment under watch. The pair goes out, travels to a couple of planets, and start to fall in love. I specifically see a bonding scene where they go to a bar and play darts (or darts equivalent). The rebel pilot can’t get a good hit on the board, and the Stormtrooper mocks them by saying, “Wow, you have the aim of a Stormtrooper.”
The movie doesn’t have a happy ending, unfortunately. The rebel starts making progress in getting the Stormtrooper to believe in the rebel cause, but an attack launched by the Resistance on the base they are stationed at gets the rebel killed. In a fury, the Stormtrooper charges in guns blazing, using new techniques they learned from the rebel. The Stormtrooper nearly single-handedly stops the rebel attack like Rambo, but is gravely wounded. In the final moments, the helmetless Stormtrooper crawls across the floor, and finally accepts death once the couple are united in embrace. It’ll be a tear-jerker, I’m crying just thinking about it.
But what kind of romance is it? I dunno, there’s not a lot of lesbian representation in movies, it’s usually gay guys. So make them both women. And maybe the rebel can be an alien race of some sort, like a Twi’lek. It’ll sell like hot cakes.
The Adventures of Jar Jarberry Finn
Here’s an idea I’ve been sitting on for a while. Alright, so, the movie centers around a worker on some trade-freight ship that is also run by a famous bounty hunter. The worker is there unwillingly and just kind of goes through life without much of a care. He was forced to be a worker at a young age, so he doesn’t know better. One day, however, he decides he wants to launch a daring escape. It’s either that or live the rest of his life in a boring job, so he takes the risk. His plan is discovered, however, by a stow-away on the ship. A homeless and terrified stow-away that jumps from ship to ship trying to make his way home without getting caught and sold back to the imperials he escaped from. The worker befriends the stow-away and they escape together, going on a series of wacky adventures that eventually leads to a confrontation between the worker, who is actually attuned to the Force, and the infamous bounty hunter that took him from his home.
The fun thing here is that the stow-away just so happens to be a Gungan, also known as the alien race Jar Jar Binks was a part of. So we have a dull, average worker who can use the Force traveling with a Jar Jar knock-off around the galaxy, getting in some serious hijinks. Essentially, it’s Huckleberry Finn but with Jar Jar Binks and less racism. They could still put some of those critical elements from Mark Twain’s novel and make it about modern race relation issues, if you want to get political. But I don’t want to get political, I want to watch some guy and a Gungan bumble around the galaxy. It’ll be fun! The kids will love it.
Lumpyhood
Finally, the idea that really takes the cake, a coming-of-age story about Chewbacca’s son Lumpy. Who’s Lumpy, you may ask? Well, Lumpy is the canon son of Chewbacca in the revered and well-loved Star Wars Christmas Special. But Lumpy was just a kid then, I want to see Lumpy continue to grow up in the shadow of his father and how that affects him. Lumpy can deal with all of the troubles a growing Wookie would have to deal with: learning to be independent, making friends, and having feelings for girl Wookies. They can even make it a documentary of sorts that takes twelve years to make. I can see this movie getting Oscar nominations, even if it is actually just really boring! It took twelve years to make, it has to be good! Think of the passion the director must’ve had! I’d watch it once for every year it takes to make.
For real though, all of these ideas are terrible, but once the new trilogy is done and they have already made movies about every main character from the original trilogy, they’ll have to start getting desperate for good ideas. Or bad ideas that will make bad movies that are marketable. Then Disney can be the ones to bury Star Wars, instead of George Lucas. Hooray!
Images by Daley Wilhelm
(12/17/17 9:00am)
by Tanner Kinney
Another year, another Game Awards ceremony comes and goes like an unpleasant distant relative with many wrong opinions. The gaming equivalent of the Oscars is quite the event, funded completely by former IGN employee and television presenter Geoff Keighley and is respected by many in the field. Gamers themselves tend to just use the Game Awards as a reason to get angry and complain about corruption and Geoff Keighley being a sellout. I’m not here to argue whether Dorito Pope Keighley is a sellout fraud or whether the Game Awards being two-thirds ads makes the show less legitimate. What I am here to argue about are the results of the Game Awards, analyze the trailers being shown, and relay the good word from Josef “video game Tommy Wiseau” Fares about the Oscars, which you can listen to below.
Images all taken from The Game Awards Youtube.
Trailer Hot Takes
In a time honored tradition, The Game Awards shows EXCLUSIVE WORLD PREMIERE EXCLUSIVE trailers that take up a majority of the show. In previous years, these trailers tended to even overshadow the awards themselves, particularly back during the Spike VGA days. I remember seeing Fortnite announced as a trailer during one of the earlier VGA’s, which finally actually released this year. These days, big publishers sometimes show things off, but it tends to be dominated by more low-key trailers, with one or two massive ones being shown off during the show to keep people watching. Let’s be real here; no one actually cares that much about the awards. They care about the trailers.
This year delivered with a number of big surprises, cool trailers, and enticing teasers. A new Bayonetta game is coming to Nintendo Switch, which is pretty exciting, because Bayonetta is awesome. PUBG is getting an new map, and Fortnite is getting a new game mode. That’s all very… exciting? I think? An awful looking World War Z game got announced which won the award for worst trailer of the night. Second place for worst trailer would probably go to Fade to Silence, but that was more boring than awful. The best trailer of the night (minus the big one, we’ll get to that later) was for a game called Witchfire from the team behind The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The trailer caught me off guard as it started like a walking sim but turned into a fast-paced, stylized FPS. Did you know this team also made Bulletstorm and Painkiller, two of the most insane FPS’s created in the past couple decades? Yeah, apparently they did. I’d say I’m excited for that game to release moreso than any that were announced.
A lot of VR titles had trailers, all of which made me sick thinking about playing them. A new Soul Calibur got announced by the coolest looking man at the event, and that’s pretty exciting because Soul Calibur has always been pretty hype. FromSoftware also teased their new project with a trailer as long as a Vine, and that got people excited. It’s probably that Shadow Tower reboot they were talking about, but who knows? Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had the release trailer for it’s DLC which was good enough, and now Link is on a motorcycle. And Campo Santo, the developer of Firewatch, is making a game about adventurers in Egypt called In the Valley of the Gods. I’m sure that’ll win awards during the 2019 Game Awards.
The trailer we were all looking for, though, was the newest trailer for Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, a game that was originally shown off at the Game Awards last year. Kojima is famous for making insane narratives but also got held back by Konami and logic. So now that Sony has given Kojima a blank check and infinite time to make a game, how is Death Stranding looking now? Well, we now know that Norman Reedus may be playing a man named Sam Porter. And that’s about it.
The Death Stranding trailer somehow both made no sense and all the sense at the same time. I felt like my mind was expanding as I watched the trailer, horribly confused but also enlightened by everything being shown. It looks stunning, and the whole world built from the trailer is definitely very intriguing. The invisible oil/goo monsters have been suspected to be Lovecraftian horrors of some kind, and that’s always fun. Also, Norman Reedus swallows the baby from the last trailer in this one, and to show that it was inside of him, they have the camera zoom into Norman Reedus’s mouth, down his throat, and show the baby giving a thumbs up.
Long story short, watch the Witchfire and Death Stranding trailers, and start mentally preparing yourself to play Death Stranding when it releases in 2022.
The Advertisement Awards
There are always three parts to the Game Awards: exclusive world premiere trailers, some awards, and a whole lot of advertisements. As much as I love to talk about selling out, I’m going to skip that for now. To briefly mention it and give this the authentic Game Awards recap experience, I’m going to emulate it here. Ebay Ebay Ebay, Schick Hydro, McDonalds and UberEats order now, Microsoft Mixer only available on Xbox One, cringey Bethesda advertisement, Nintendo Switch buy now please we’re still trying to make money back from the WiiU, and play Warframe: it’s like Destiny 2, but it won’t punch you in the gut and rob you blind.
Now repeat that to yourself for roughly an hour. Good. Now with that out of the way, I’m really craving some fresh, never frozen beef. That’s why I go to Wendy’s. Eat at Wendy’s today to get all of your food fresh and of the highest quality, because quality matters.
Now onto the awards. For the most part, I had few complaints. My own personal predictions were basically all wrong, except for Cuphead sweeping the indie categories and getting best art direction. Granted, those were predictions for what I wanted to win. My realistic predictions were more accurate, because I’ve watched enough of these shows to get an idea as to what wins: companies with the most money--I MEAN quality games. Any award I don’t talk about didn’t give me enough of a reaction to actually care about it.
The Surprises
The big winner for this year has to be Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. I’ll be honest; I didn’t peg this game to win a single award despite being nominated for 5 awards. It didn’t win Best Narrative or Best Indie, but those were tough categories to begin with. The other categories it was in also seemed very tough. It went up against the two Nintendo titans in Best Audio Design; and in Games for Impact it had to fight a bunch of think-piece games, along with the prequel to previous Games for Impact winner Life is Strange. I’m still salty Life is Strange got that award in 2015. Undertale was robbed, damnit! Despite that, Hellblade cut the competition down and took home three awards, as many as Breath of the Wild and Cuphead. So good job Ninja Theory! I’m glad you took down the competition--mostly just the Games for Impact award though. Good to see actual games winning an award for games. I’m looking at you, Life is Strange: you and your long, melodramatic, interactive movie self.
NieR: Automata taking home Best Score was probably well-deserved, but I personally like Persona 5’s soundtrack more. I’m glad NieR won something, at least, for everyone’s favorite robot waifu 2B. Metroid: Samus Returns winning best handheld surprised me as well, considering Metroid has been dormant for a long time. Then again, it’s competition wasn’t that stacked, only Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valencia and Monster Hunter Stories really stood a chance. The award for Best Student Game existing at all was another surprise and a nice touch for Geoff Keighley to add.
The Non-Surprises I Begrudgingly Complain About
The award for best narrative going to What Remains of Edith Finch did not shock me but did disappoint me. Compared to the uniquely told and captivating narrative of NieR: Automata, along with NieR having some meaty gameplay to work with the narrative flawlessly, I think it was better deserved elsewhere. Despite that, I still figured Edith Finch was going to win. Maybe I just have a bias against walking simulators, but then again I loved Final Fantasy XV (joke). The Last of Us II winning Most Anticipated is also a non-surprise, but I would’ve liked to see the award go elsewhere. Mostly to games not nominated. Fun fact: every game nominated for Most Anticipated is either a PS4 exclusive title OR a game coming onto PS4. Coincidence? Probably. PUBG also won best multiplayer, not that anyone noticed because they forgot to announce it. Too much time (or maybe not enough time) spent with Josef Fares, the most passionate man in gaming.
The Robbed and the Robbers
https://twitter.com/thegameawards/status/938952286872616960
There were fewer awards I actively thought were wrong choices this year, which was a surprise considering how cold and jaded I am. Despite that, I still disagree with some of them. For example, I don’t think Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus deserved Best Action. In a different year, okay, maybe I’d accept it. This year though it was up against Nioh and Cuphead, both stellar actions games with wildly different and fun gameplay. NieR: Automata wasn’t even nominated for this award (but dull Destiny 2 was), and that was one of the best action games of the past decade. Wolfenstein II struggled from some bad level design and not being able to separate itself from its predecessor. Nioh’s unique take on the Souls-like genre definitely deserved more recognition.
The biggest joke of the event though was Overwatch taking two awards in a year it didn’t even release in. How did they do that? Well, it first won Best Esport. Yes, a game that only JUST developed an esports scene and a spectator experience that isn’t complete garbage got it. This is over Dota 2, a game with multi-million dollar prize pools consistently. This is also over League of Legends, which sold-out the largest stadium in China. Hell, even Rocket League deserved it more because Rocket League doesn’t give the viewer a headache trying to follow everything. But no, Blizzard’s barely-an-esport esport takes the crown. Am I saying that Activision-Blizzard bought the award? Maybe. But hey, you can say it was a fan category and the rabid gambling addicts who still play the game voted en masse for it. I can live with that.
Second, Overwatch took home one of the new awards: the Best Ongoing Game award. What does that mean, exactly? Well, it means a game that’s still being updated long after release, like World of Warcraft (not nominated), or League of Legends (also not nominated), or the fantastic Final Fantasy XIV which had an amazing new expansion release this year (take a guess). The nominees were already a joke, with a game released this year being included as an “ongoing game” and the cash-grab money-void GTA: Online getting nominated just in time to advertise their new DLC coming soon. Warframe I can accept, but it’s also been shilled hard on Twitch for the longest time so I don’t buy it. The nominees are all frauds!
So of course Overwatch takes it; it’s the most deserving nominee on the list. It’s like the award was set up specifically to keep giving Overwatch awards every year after it stole Game of the Year last year. You can’t even blame fan vote on it; that award got voted on mostly by the “elite panel of 51 influencers.” Combined with the Game Awards orchestra taking time to play a medley of Overwatch songs during the show instead of, you know, the WINNER FOR BEST SCORE OR ANY OF THOSE NOMINEES, and it starts to reek. Smells like money descending into Geoff Keighley’s pockets. I respect the man’s hustle, but once you start shilling for irrelevant things like Microsoft Mixer and Ebay, I start to doubt your dream of an awards show that’s well-respected.
Huh? Game of the year? Oh, right. Yeah, Zelda deserved it. I would’ve liked to see Super Mario Odyssey or Persona 5 take it because I enjoyed those games more, but Breath of the Wild deserves it just as much. Can’t get angry about that.
Final Thoughts
The Game Awards were better this year than previous years. I’d honestly say this was the best one of all of them. It had enough big reveals, deserving winners, and funny non-cringey jokes to be worth the time. The sellout nature of the whole thing still gets in the way, but it’s less obnoxious, and the crowd jumped on making fun of the sellout-ness. Now, if they could get it down from three hours long so I could get some sleep next time, that would be great. If you don’t have time to watch the show (I don’t blame you), at least check out the greatest interview from any of these god-forsaken shows. Josef Fares is a blessing upon mankind, and I definitely already have 5 copies of A Way Out pre-ordered just for him.
Maybe next year the show will get even better. They’ll include live lootcrates you can purchase and a random game gets an award. Overwatch and The Witcher 3 are commons, and Horizon: Zero Dawn isn’t on the loot drop list. I’ll feel such a sense of pride and accomplishment from it. I kid of course; it’s just fun to hate on the Game Awards. But remember that with all of this hate that there is still one true enemy: the Oscars.
Sources: YouTube
Images: YouTube, Twitter, Don't Feed the Gamers
(11/22/17 5:49pm)
Halloween, then Thanksgiving then Christmas (and other holidays). For three months, all you see on TV is stuff about the holidays. October is devoted to Halloween; then November and December are all devoted to Christmas and Hanukkah, Kwanza, Yule and probably some other obscure holiday roughly eleven and a half people celebrate. Then there’s the unofficial holiday of Black Friday, which is almost now more present in popular culture than Thanksgiving due to Thanksgiving’s questionable history. Where’s the Charlie Brown Black Friday special? I’d watch it. There are countless songs, movies, TV specials, pieces of art and entire fifths of Walmart devoted to the lovely holidays. I remember growing up seeing all of these things, along with the joy and good cheer people had during this time of year.
(11/22/17 8:00am)
by Tanner Kinney
Halloween, then Thanksgiving then Christmas (and other holidays). For three months, all you see on TV is stuff about the holidays. October is devoted to Halloween; then November and December are all devoted to Christmas and Hanukkah, Kwanza, Yule and probably some other obscure holiday roughly eleven and a half people celebrate. Then there’s the unofficial holiday of Black Friday, which is almost now more present in popular culture than Thanksgiving due to Thanksgiving’s questionable history. Where’s the Charlie Brown Black Friday special? I’d watch it. There are countless songs, movies, TV specials, pieces of art and entire fifths of Walmart devoted to the lovely holidays. I remember growing up seeing all of these things, along with the joy and good cheer people had during this time of year.
Keyword there is seeing, because I never actually did any of it myself. Why? Because growing up, I never celebrated holidays. Any of them. I still don’t either.
Now, before the pitchforks are busted out, this was not my parents forcing it on me. I was totally okay with not celebrating holidays. I never missed out on toys and surprises as a kid; they just happened sporadically throughout the year. It’s not like I was missing out on anything that important in terms of candy or gifts or anything like that, but you could say I was missing the spirit of the holiday season: family. And to that I say, "No thanks, I’m good with my small, immediate family." I will say what I did miss is the media cyclone of holiday happenings during this time of year.
An education in disconnection from the holidays
The main thing I remember knowing I was missing out on was holiday celebrations in elementary school. During these times, the teacher would hand out cookies and punch and then play a holiday-relevant movie to shut the class up for all of 80 minutes. As I didn’t celebrate holidays, I was told not to participate in any of the activities that were related to the holidays, which included watching movies. So, during these times, I would get my cookies and punch and then get to sit in a quiet room on my own with a book or a different movie or a coloring book, and I hated coloring books. There are dozens of classic holiday films that my classmates could count on both hands the number of times they’d seen them, and I maybe had seen glimpses of one or two. Even now, I still don’t remember having seen ANY of the Charlie Brown specials, most Christmas movies, the big Thanksgiving specials, because smaller ones were technically historical (but horribly inaccurate to hilarious levels) and just about every Halloween movie.
Then there are the door-to-door aspects that are promoted by the media and schools with these holidays. Typically, my classmates grew up going trick-or-treating or caroling depending on the holiday. I never actually got to experience either of these things, so my experience with it is seeing kids of TV doing it, then not putting much thought into it. I did dress-up as Spider-Man in Kindergarten for school though, but that wasn’t trick-or-treating; it was just dressing up. I remember going into Walmart and seeing these elaborate displays for costumes and, as a kid, thinking it was all very cool but understanding I couldn’t do any of it. Then with caroling, I don’t think I would’ve wanted to do it anyways, but I did see plenty of kids do it in elementary school. I definitely remember my little fourth grade choir class doing Christmas sing-a-long stuff while I sat in the library and wrote an essay on Linkin Park, because my teacher didn’t want me doing nothing. I don’t know who got the worse end of that deal, and I don’t think I ever actually got a grade on my essay. Still waiting on that. I hope I get an A; I need it to pass that class.
No channel is safe from the holidays
I think most people notice how oversaturated television is with the holiday joy, especially during Christmas time but don’t really think much about it. It’s normal to just have a Christmas special on during the last week of November; don’t worry about it. When you REALLY start to notice how overstuffed the season can be is when you are trying to avoid watching holiday specials. I was told by my parents to not watch the holiday specials on TV, or if they didn’t tell me I just assumed I wasn’t supposed to. Try being ten years old and finding a cartoon to watch during the week of Christmas between 7-10 pm. If there wasn’t a holiday special going on, I lucked out and actually got to watch the episode of Spongebob or Danny Phantom or Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. If it was all Christmas specials, well tough luck, you get to watch the Food Network or GSN. Even local channels are loaded with festivities, with annual showings of Frosty, Rudolph or whatever they show. That’s how little I’ve experienced it, I actually don’t know what they show every year. I do remember watching the Ed, Edd, and Eddy Christmas special though. I don’t know why that one specifically, but I do remember it.
Halloween was less bad about this, sticking typically to just the one day in the year where every channel is Halloween and Halloween accessories. I definitely was less good about not watching Halloween specials, because I justified it in my mind as just being “scary monster themed shows, not Halloween!” I loved watching the Scooby-Doo and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends Halloween specials, because they were fantastic. I also watched ghost hunting shows with my brothers around Halloween, because those technically weren’t Halloween specials either. I may have bent the rules a little bit. If it was explicitly Halloween, I avoided it. At the very least, I wouldn’t have gotten killed by the Silver Shamrock jingle in Halloween III. So take that you holiday celebrators.
This is Christmas radio, all holiday jingles all the time
The worst part about not celebrating holidays and avoiding all holiday related material, along with not singing holiday songs, was that I didn’t really listen to holiday music either. You could go up to most kids who grew up in America and quiz them on Christmas songs, and they’d be able to tell you a whole bunch off the top of their head. I would maybe get four or five, and one would just be the entire NSync: Home for Christmas album. There is a radio station around where I live that plays only Christmas music from after Thanksgiving to January. That station played a lot of solid jams, a good mix of the 80’s, 90’s, and the actually listenable pop music from the last decade, so we tuned to it a lot throughout the year. Then Thanksgiving rolls around, and we have to search for a new radio station because it becomes wall-to-wall Christmas. That’s how I discovered that, yes, I hate most pop music, at least back between 2008-2012. To be fair, I was also the kid who wrote an essay on Linkin Park, so my musical taste was very edgy. I blame Christmas music for sending me through my punk phase way sooner than what was normal.
I guess the point of all of this reflection and storytelling is that the holidays are basically all you see in the media around this time of year, at least from my perspective. Most kids grow up with Christmas marked on their calendar, a day of peace and love and many presents. They bask in the glory of the holiday season, diving head first into the jingle bells and figgy pudding. A lot of adults also do that. For me, Christmas was just December 25th, a day where everything was closed, and it was cold outside. Halloween is just October 31st, a day where candy is on huge sales, and it’s a little chilly out. And Thanksgiving commemoration of the horrible, unspeakable things the settlers did to Native Americans; that at least doesn’t change. You could say I missed out on something life-changing as a child or that I didn’t have a childhood altogether. I would respond by saying I had a roof over my head, food in my stomach and a Gameboy Advance with Pokemon Sapphire booted up, so I think I had it perfectly fine.
I did get the special benefit ruining kid’s days by telling them Santa Claus wasn’t real before their parents told them or realizing it themselves. That was a good time. I’m probably still awaiting the karmic payback from that.
Images: ABC11, Mom.me, YouTube, Christmas Specials Wiki, fanart.tv,
(11/21/17 5:13am)
In 2008, now almost 10 years ago, Marvel Studios released Iron Man to the public. This movie was a smash hit, with a fantastic lead in Robert Downey Jr., and a refreshing take on the superhero genre with a hero largely absent from popular culture – apart from that one song which I don’t think had anything to do with Marvel’s Iron Man. People were saying “oh, cool, this will make some nice sequels and become a decent movie series.” No one could’ve predicted Marvel’s scheme, which is pure genius looking back at it. They wanted to create a film universe of superhero movies; one in which each film is at once a separate story and also a piece of a larger puzzle. It was bold to plan a whole series of movies before one even launched, as a single flop would destroy the whole ship. Then, when The Avengers dropped in 2012, it was one of the most amazing cinematic moments in history. All of these iconic heroes (and Hawkeye) on the silver screen together was incredible. I remember seeing that film and being amazed. It was seriously a magical film that created so much hope for the future.
(11/20/17 5:00pm)
by Tanner Kinney
In 2008, now almost 10 years ago, Marvel Studios released Iron Man to the public. This movie was a smash hit, with a fantastic lead in Robert Downey Jr., and a refreshing take on the superhero genre with a hero largely absent from popular culture – apart from that one song which I don’t think had anything to do with Marvel’s Iron Man. People were saying “oh, cool, this will make some nice sequels and become a decent movie series.” No one could’ve predicted Marvel’s scheme, which is pure genius looking back at it. They wanted to create a film universe of superhero movies; one in which each film is at once a separate story and also a piece of a larger puzzle. It was bold to plan a whole series of movies before one even launched, as a single flop would destroy the whole ship. Then, when The Avengers dropped in 2012, it was one of the most amazing cinematic moments in history. All of these iconic heroes (and Hawkeye) on the silver screen together was incredible. I remember seeing that film and being amazed. It was seriously a magical film that created so much hope for the future.
It’s almost 2018 and now, with DC throwing their hat into the ring; Fox trying to keep their film licenses as long as they can; and Sony Pictures flailing around trying to make a hit happen before their studio goes under, there have been a lot of superhero films. It seems like every season of the year we have these superhero movies coming out like clockwork. They are even consistently good too, with no real flops from Marvel’s side of the fence. A Marvel movie is a safe bet if you're going out on a date or alone again on a Friday night and want to drown your sorrows in popcorn butter. But like that delicious butter on a large popcorn, are we perhaps getting too much of a good thing? Are audiences getting burned out on superhero films or is it just cynical critics who don’t want to watch Batman punch a guy for the eighth time this decade?
https://twitter.com/LeeVerdon/status/931766571017687040
From my perspective, I am a little burned out. I tend to go see these movies within the first few weeks of opening with my brothers. I've been doing it this way since The Avengers. I have, however, noticed myself personally getting more and more tired of seeing these films. Marvel films, particularly the origin stories, tend to be very formulaic and suffer from the same problems as previous films without improvement. Bad villains, shallow plots, and using punchlines as a crutch tend to make these films grating over time, regardless of how visually interesting they are. Avengers: Age of Ultron, which I still saw twice because my brothers wanted to, was a huge disappointment in terms of the villain and just how mismanaged the motivations in the film were. More recently, Doctor Strange was one of the most visually interesting films I’ve seen in a long time, but the writing and story structure felt like it was created by a computer.
Then you have a film like Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2, which broke ground by being a complete mess in the writing and visual department and mishandling some real talent. Kurt Russell, one of my favorite actors, was completely wasted in that film and the writing made it seem like it was intended for children. Characters that had a little bit of depth in the previous film were reduced to one-note joke characters – Drax being the worst off on this front. The visuals were also a huge step down from Doctor Strange with some of the CGI in the climactic final battle looking absolutely terrible. This movie was still better than Academy Award winning film Suicide Squad, but it came off as a shock considering Marvel at least has consistently written its the main heroes well.
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I went into Spider-Man: Homecoming with very low expectations and was shocked to find Marvel actually improved a lot of problems in their previous films. The villain, particularly, was an absolutely amazing character played by the stellar Michael Keaton. He brought so much to the villain role besides “I am evil because reasons!” Plus, the twist they pull during the movie was something that genuinely caught me off-guard, which was surprising coming from the relatively formulaic Marvel films. And yet, this film didn’t exactly make me excited for Thor: Ragnarok. Not only because the idea of seeing another Thor film makes me want to hurl myself out a window screaming “I AM THE THUNDER GOD,” but also because I just can’t get excited for these superhero films anymore.
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So why can’t I get excited? I think it’s the inevitability of these films. Seeing Marvel’s huge list of films rolled out at Comic-Con and other events makes me sick rather than excited. It’s like if Thanksgiving dinner happened three nights in a row; by night three you just look at all the food and dread having to eat it. DC’s futile attempts aren’t helping either. Their model has been to rush the Justice League film before establishing most of the characters, who will get their own films afterward (as long as Justice League does well). They have their own stupid charts and plans and, combined with Marvel, it’s starting to look like someone’s serving Thanksgiving turkey and Holiday ham on the same table. At the very least, Fox might have given up and we won’t get a slew of mediocre X-Men films like X-Men: Apocalypse. I personally hope another Wolverine origin story makes its way into Phase 4 of Marvel’s master plan – it worked so well the last time!
But I’m just one hack fraud with a keyboard and an axe to grind; Disney-Marvel couldn’t care less about what I think. Most people couldn’t care less about what I think. So what about the general public? Are they experiencing this fatigue as well? Well, I took the current box office numbers for Thor: Ragnarok and compared them with the numbers of the other Thor films, recent Marvel films, and recent DC films. I didn’t take into account Marvel films that established new characters because those wouldn’t be comparable to Thor 3, so I instead took Iron Man 3 in the place of Doctor Strange. I also considered critic and user scores despite how little scores have to do with how much a film makes or how many Academy Awards it wins. Finally, I included an approximation of the total budget (with production budget multiplied by two to account for marketing), and the total profit the movie made worldwide. The results were as expected.
Thor: Ragnarok released to a very respectable $121 million, higher than both Spider-Man: Homecoming and Wonder Woman, though Wonder Woman had to compete with the staggeringly high Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 on the tail end of its theatrical run. Thor is, once again, eclipsed by the success of Iron Man 3 and Captain America: Civil War, both of which had huge box office openings. The two other DC films, Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Academy Award Winning Film Suicide Squad, also did much better than Thor: Ragnarok’s opening despite the critical bashing both DC two movies received.
Despite the interest in Thor increasing over time, the fact it didn’t do nearly as well as the other major subseries under Marvel’s umbrella or DC films non-Wonder Woman films is a little surprising. The second week drop-off, which has been a huge killer for many blockbusters these past couple years, was actually not so bad for Thor as opposed to the other films on the list. In fact, only Thor and Wonder Woman had lower percentage decreases. Does this mean that the superhero films are going to continue a downward trend in opening week gross?
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Possibly, but it depends on the context of the film in question. Doctor Strange wasn’t included specifically because it grossed so much less than the other films on the list – around Thor: The Dark World’s numbers. I’d chalk Doctor Strange’s underwhelming numbers to the fact he’s an unfamiliar character. Spider-Man: Homecoming’s low numbers break that pattern, but I’d blame the awful Amazing Spider-Man films and Andrew Garfield for that. That same idea can be applied to Thor: Ragnarok because – let’s be real here – the Thor movies were the worst of the Marvel brand. I don’t even blame Thor for that; it’s mostly just that it's bland and no one cares about Thor’s dumb romance plot.
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The Rotten Tomatoes scores for critics are not shocking. Marvel films' ratings are relatively consistent, with only Thor: The Dark World dropping below a 75. The highest scoring films on the list are ones that come out this year as well, with only Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2 deservedly not being that high. If anything, critic scores have only improved over time if you’re looking at the other two Thor films. Of course, the two DC bombs on the end stand out from the rest of the list, but you know who doesn’t have an Academy Award? Marvel, that’s who, so take that Marvel fanboys.
Here, the user scores are actually helpful for judging changes in public opinion. For the most part, they’ve gone up, but tend to actually be LOWER than the critic scores for the highest rated films. They are surprisingly consistent and, for the most part, in line with movies of similar critical reception. Does this mean the public is getting tired of the Marvel movies? I don’t think so. The differences are so small that it’s hard to tell. I have actually overheard conversations about Thor: Ragnarok from the normal people around me and, let me tell you, things aren’t looking good. A number of people said the film was too “weird and comical.” This is obviously anecdotal evidence, but it’s still valuable to see a small section of public opinion about these films turning sour.
Now we arrive at the profit – what really matters to these movies. Obviously, budgets have increased over time, but that’s just the nature of the film industry. The major movies tend to have higher budgets than the smaller ones as well. Obviously, none of these films have made more than The Avengers did when it was released. These films also haven’t made nearly as much profit as Iron Man 3, which came out four years ago. Does that mean the films are failures? Not at all. Captain America: Civil War did fantastically along with Spider-Man: Homecoming. I do expect Thor: Ragnarok to at least make as much of a profit as Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2 – if not more. The DC movies (other than Wonder Woman) made a modest but disappointing profit, but that’s to be expected for their critical reception.
With all these graphs, charts and numbers, what does it all mean? Has the public finally given into superhero fatigue or is it all a lie? Looking at it, I don’t think it’s superhero movies that have the problem. In fact, superhero movies are the exception considering how well they do. The problem isn't from with superheroes, but with Hollywood itself. Budgets get over-inflated beyond the limitations of the product and then flop. The Ghostbusters reboot was an average movie that flopped because Sony put too much money behind it. Then there’s the big loser of last year, Ben-Hur, which lost over 100 million dollars for Paramount. The Mummy was this year’s domestic disaster, only being saved the box office in China. Combine that will all the news from Hollywood right now, and it’s not superhero fatigue that audiences are feeling. It’s blockbuster fatigue, Hollywood fatigue, over-priced popcorn fatigue – whatever you want to call it. The problem lies in the industry, not just superhero films.
I sincerely hope Justice League does well. I’ve always been a fan of the Flash (the best DC superhero by far) and the cast does look pretty stellar. Zack Snyder having to step back due to tragic personal circumstances, though my heart goes out to him, may end up being a blessing for the film. While I have my gripes with professional hypocrite Joss Whedon, his directing ability is admittedly pretty good – as long as the studio stops him from doing creep shots of Gal Gadot. Plus, it’d be nice for Marvel to have competition so they don’t get complacent. We’ll know by next week whether Justice League does well or if superhero fatigue may finally be starting to take some victims.
Update: Now that the movie is out after I originally wrote this conclusion, things aren’t looking good for it. Really, really not good.
Sources: YouTube, Cary's Comic Craze, Reddit, Geek.com, Box Office Mojo
Images: YouTube, CNBC, Rotten Tomatoes, Byte, Washington Post, Variety
(11/14/17 1:21am)
Hollywood has no idea what they are doing. This is a statement most people would widely agree is true, and there’s not much else to add to it. When Hollywood executives aren’t fondling underaged actors and actresses without their consent, those hacks spend their time coming up with the worst ideas known to humanity. Ideas so dumb that most people would be like, “hey wait a minute, that movie sounds awful, who would ever want to watch it.” This is how we get movies like Lucy, where anyone actually USING all of their brains would’ve shot it down. Or the Lone Ranger remake, which no one asked for and bombed horribly. Or the Ben-Hur remake, which no one asked for and bombed horribly. You see the problem here? It’s almost like cheap, awful remakes that no one asked for don’t do well in the box office.
