Salads

Most shocking event of this show was Regal calling Tanahashi a young man. It must be the hair.

I've seen parts of the internet where people are convinced of the opposite. Schedule is out. In hindsight I'm not sure why I put the groups in spoilers but this is a lot of text. This is predominantly because I never really get excited for G1 group announcements ('yup, that's a list of good wrestlers' is usually how it goes), but I think hoss block A may be the most intriguing G1 block ever for me. 1) I'm amazed they managed to get a whole schedule of fresh matches for Okada despite him working through the pandemic. 2) Fale is going to have to bump more than ever before. 3) Where has big man wrestling been these last few years, huh? Probably some of the many places I haven't been paying attention to, but it feels novel to me.

tHe BiRtH oF oKaDa'S fIrSt ChIlD iS iMpOrTaNt To HiM. Buncha marks! That Bullet Club v Dudes with Attitudes match is one of the best 'get everyone on the card' tags they could have done. Bucks v Hiromu / Shingo is going to be peak and looking forward to El Phantasmo against Sting. EP has the perfect combination of 'can go' and 'can stooge' for that slot.

We have our blocks:

As you say, it requires some credibility, and some faith. Faith that the titles the viewer has never heard of mean something (sometimes they do, sometimes they don't) and faith that these guys are as good as we hear they are. The latter is kind of redundant when we see them in the ring beforehand - if the guy doesn't impress then the words ring hollow, and if they do then we didn't need to be told. In my opinion the 'this guy is great, here is a list of championships he has won' approach, while a no-brainer wore thin after it was used on both Nagata and Kojima and can't be relied on alone. In the case of Tanahashi / Ospreay / Okada when JR describes them as one of the best / top five / whatever in the world it means something, but outside of that they have to differentiate. We need the crib note caricatures on how to tell them apart and what the story is. Eg: Nagata - Why does Moxley want to face him? Because he's a wrestler's wrestler with the likes of Danielson among his admirers. Why isn't this old man afraid of Moxley? Is he an idiot? No he's a vet that has seen it all - he's faced Goldberg in WCW, Kobashi in NOAH, Lesnar in NJPW and Fedor in MMA land (shhhhhh don't mention ANYTHING about the content of those matches). Something like that because we can see he is past his prime and Moxley isn't going to be dropping any titles to him. 'Japanese megastar Yuji Nagata' is crying wolf. Suzuki - He's an old school sadistic SOB who rightfully strikes fear into people. He's teaming up with fellow bully Jericho to participate in one of his favourite hobbies torturing young men as they face Mox's kids. Guevara and Kingston are there to avoid it being too much of a one-sided match-up but that's the story. I'd better buy that show because I want to see those kids not get destroyed hopefully! Ishii - Stone pitbull. Call him the stone pitbull a lot the name is English and perfect. Ospreay - The OC match has a decent build from a story perspective, but I saw more comments picking up on Will's current character from this board than from the commentary team. Why has he got that jacket and that face? Is he an idiot? Yes. We all want to see him lose but unfortunately he's a world class wrestler. He gets to be in charge of United Empire in spite of his lack of leadership skills or judgement because he is really good at wrestling. Imagine Starscream in charge of the Decepticons. O-Khan - Here's your chance JR. The guy is oriental as hell so you know how to sell this. It's a proper gimmick and it never went out of fashion. Tanahashi - 'They call you the Ace' is good but letting us know why he's the Ace would be better. We've been told Moxley has been chasing him for years but again, why? What is the distinction going to be between Tanahashi and this Okada guy who is also great when he shows up? Tanahashi is the Cena - he never gives up or turns turns heel. Hero to women and kids everywhere (because the posing, flowing locks and air guitar might seem a bit odd otherwise). He's been the face of NJPW for what seems like forever which is both why Mox wants him and why he's had to wait so long to get to him. You know what, all those like-for-like matches we saw on booking wishlists leading up to Forbidden Door (Danhausen/Yano, Kenny/Okada, UE/BC, Zack/Bryan, FTR/Aussie Open, Hiromu/Darby etc) may look like they're using EWR stat logic to decide what would get the best match quality percentage, but they have these little simple hooks that don't need a lot of explanation and make people want to see them. If you have time to build you can do better but when you don't that's really useful.

Slowly sinking in that with a couple of weeks to go the dream AEW / NJPW show everyone wanted has a non-zero chance of not featuring Bryan, CM Punk, Omega, Ibushi, Okada or a top title match from either side. Setting my expectations to zero so it can only go up from here. It's like Tony extended the olive branch across the Pacific but ended up catching whatever curse NJPW had during the pandemic that ensured nothing they had lined up went to plan.

Someone described Ospreay as vanilla last week and I was wondering how anyone could look vanilla next to Aussie Open. This week they make their run in wearing plain white t-shirts. I don't know why that stood out so much to me. Lots of logos to choose from guys. Jericho Appreciation Society and Suzuki-Gun don't seem like they should be buddies. Suzuki-Gun presence on Dynamite does ever so slightly open the door for a ZSJ appearance though. If any Bryan interaction is on the cards Zack has never been one to cater his promos to either Japanese or American audiences so I hope he goes all in on Blackpool being a ridiculous place to name an intimidating combat club after. Amazing that Shuta, a guy best known among even devoted fans for his non-speaking (/non-moving?) role in backstage segments from a 2019 Japan-only tournament gets a hearty pop when mentioned. Forbidden Door is a couple of weeks away and short on matches so great to have Switchblade and friends do a segment seemingly unannouncing one. The sensible thought is that they wouldn't be dropping Okada's name all the time if he wasn't going to show (Kazuchikhov's gun?) but in case he isn't I'm down for sowing seeds for an appearance somewhere down the line. A lot of people interested in AEW/NJPW have fantasy booked their own coin drop on Dynamite moment and you don't want to waste that money shot on a last minute tag match. Hell, keep mentioning him for years like he's Columbo's wife then eventually even people who have never seen him might care when the name turns into a dude standing on the ramp.

Don't know whether the original phrase Forbidden Portal was changed to Forbidden Door or whether it's a different choice of translation but I like to think the graphics are a reference to that. This is my take as well. Despite the subdued reaction to the match announcement (how far we've come from freaking out over KENTA on Dynamite) Tana was a great fit for post-comeback Bret-tribute Punk. Tana mentioned that the match should happen at the Tokyo Dome instead. Not sure if that's just talk but we may still get to see it.

This format combined with the BOSJ tour being a largely heavyweight-free zone says to me that they've been taking notes about overworking the roster. So in that way I can't complain but the chaff is going to stand out a lot more when the likes of Yujiro make up one sixth of someone's G1 outing this year. Not an exciting line up but the format and a sneakily good influx of returning talent should mean we avoid too many tired pairings. I love Kodge but the idea of him in this G1 highlights how crazy that result is. His last G1 was FIVE YEARS ago during which he won ONE of his NINE matches.

Dominion developments:

Two new summaries of the Ibushi drama below. Should be noted that there are contradictions between them so both can't be 100% true.

When Majora's Mask came out in February for NSO the whole thing was updated to version 2.0.0 which either fixed or improved a lot of the major issues. Still a work in progress but you mentioned Ocarina and I've seen it said that NSO is the way to go for that game now when before the update it was Wii VC.

Wouldn't take a lot to pass as a fresh line up after the last couple of years, but this is an actually fresh line up. Feels like a few names are going to come out of this bigger than when they went in. Thought BOSJ would be perfect for AEW to send guys that either they aren't using or need seasoning so nuts that they've sent the current hotness over to this thing. Dropping a link to the announcement vid in case anyone likes the whole announcer/mugshot deal like I do:

The first time I've laughed at hearing the KOPW stips, but on reflection also the first time I thought they were actually good. That three falls match particularly. Remember when every junior singles match would open with some amateur exchanges? We could get that again but with a point this time.

Good poster. Dangerous Tekkers as front and centre poster boys and AEW commentary wishes come true with the launch of the lawyer-friendly catchphrase Shingo Takagi PayPay.

Punching the air on behalf of the ring crew seeing all those double/triple headers after watching that Hiromu doc that The Natural linked to. G1 schedule getting kinder for them at least!

There's a full thread of translations from that commentary if anyone else is interested: This is the kind of reaction media I could eat up every week. Don't know if Shingo is going to be a regular but you get a lot of nice little insights with him because he's worked all over the place.

Don't know if it's related but when playing Darkstalkers Chronicle The Chaos Tower (PSP) I frequently found certain special moves to be either undoable or unreliable. Not sure if hardware or software to blame, or in this case whether I misread which move commands applied to the particular ruleset I was playing as. At least there are other Darkstalkers ports out there. Come to think of it Kirby's Dreamland wasn't as easy as I remembered when I went back to it, though it was originally supposed to be as forgiving as possible - 'There are still bottomless pits but you can fly'. Haven't played Triple Deluxe but from Planet Robobot I'd say it's best played as one of the opening levels in a beat em up where the conclusion is a given and the entertainment is drawn from your ability to amuse yourself by mixing up your moves from the options available. Disclaimer: I really liked Epic Yarn so maybe I'm no Kirby expert. I'm the kind of person who rates most games they play and Army of Zin was a struggle for me to put a number to. Can't remember much standing out in my memory about it be it levels, bosses or whatever (couldn't even tell you if there were bosses in fact), but I remember having a bloody good time with it which is the important bit. Maybe in another dimension it's considered an unremarkable example of the 3D slash and jump genre, but because it didn't sell much in this one that genre doesn't exist here so the game is a gem on its own. I rented Doom 64 back in the day and it was the perfect rental because the difficulty ramped up to the point where I didn't have much interest in trying to overcome it but great atmosphere before that point hit. Having seen an increase in 'people only think GoldenEye was innovative because they were on console and couldn't play Half Life' takes over the years it's a pleasant susprise to see Doom 64 of all things getting good press. It's the real Doom 3! Thanks for reminding me about Project 8. After Tony Hawks 3 there aren't as many 'more of the same' options as you'd think considering how many releases there are in the series. I had the same plan about Xenoblade X, but got cold feet because there's a chunky patch you can download which improves loading times which I would consider a must for this type of game but my Wii U storage is full and I didn't want to be in a position of having to juggle what I have on there considering that one day they might pull the plug on the servers. With Elden Ring out I'm seeing the game being mentioned alongside that and BOTW on the subject of best open worlds and now I'm full of regret and hoping for a re-release. Think I've said it before on this board but Pushmo is a proper Rubik's Cube of a puzzler. You rarely get discouraged by being stuck because you can just play around until something comes up. Which makes it sound like a picross-style 'process' puzzler where you inevitably crawl towards the end, but there's still an actual solution to find so you get your eureka moment. I have the Wii U game in my backlog but am surprised that it could be considered the best because it attracted almost zero press in contrast to the first game. Pushmo and BoxBoy are two top end puzzlers that uncharacteristically for Nintendo went the route of a new PS3/360 IP by burning through a whole trilogy in quick succession so they're played out by the time the next gen hits. Picked up a couple of Etrian games in one of the recent Atlus 3DS fire sales. Can't say I've enjoyed anything similar so no hype at all but was fearful of later finding out I liked them and being up against physical pricing as it seems the DS/3DS format is ideal. I've just looked at prices for the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series and looks like a similar thing there. I can only remember complaints about virtual console pricing but they all look decent from a 2022 angle. PS1/2 classics also. Club Nintendo did half price offers on a lot of them also, which I wisely turned down at the time so that I can get them at full price today because I didn't anticipate the selling of games to become such an outdated business model for companies that sell games.

The distinction here would be that while Destiny and Animal Crossing are well recieved neither is being lauded as one of the greatest games of all time. So I think these are likely attacks on the hype rather than the game itself. There's no obligation for anyone to buy or play it but with a metacritic score of 97 it's fair to expect something more universally appealing beyond 'If you like Dark Souls then you'll love Elden Ring'. People who didn't like roguelites were happy to try Hades because its reception painted it as something different / better / more accessible than the norm. People who dive into ER using the same logic might feel disappointed if the same problems that you're tired of hearing people complain about are still there as before - the score suggests something transcendental, not just Dark Souls 5. As someone who wasn't in love with the original Dark Souls I'm trying to work out which of those last two things this is myself.

Street Fighter 3 was also disastrous from a developmental standpoint (and was met with a poor initial reaction) so that could be a good thing. Well, maybe not for Capcom but for me when I get round to playing it years later.

Main takeaway from me is that it's good to see the roster getting back to normal, but some of those byes in the NJ Cup bracket are mental.

Very. The original Mario Strikers was one of Next Level Games' first titles and some of their founding members came from the team that made SSS.

Well that makes me feel old.