Eoae

Finished Super Mario Galaxy last night. Enjoyed it quite a bit. Probably will go back and play it on the Wii at some point. I'm kinda amused that I thought it was a brilliant game and it still might be my least favorite 3D Mario title. Well, home console 3D game, anyway. I'd put Super Mario Land below it, but i don't like handheld consoles. Galaxy is brilliant and more ambitious than Super Mario 3D World but 3D World is still an outstanding game and I enjoyed it more. If i was a reviewer, I'd probably say Galaxy is better than Sunshine by a smallish margin, but Sunshine is a personal favorite of mine. Kinda meh about the 3D All-Stars collection as a whole. It's fine, but Nintendo could have done more with both games and bonuses. And I generally don't like remasters. I also kinda hate to reward Nintendo creating an artificial scarcity- especially with the digital edition. I'm ok with a timed retail release for collectors, but the games should be made available at least digitally to everyone. I'm hoping Nintendo re-releases the games separately to the eShop, but that would be sort of disingenuous and not really fair to people who thought they had to rush out and grab a copy by March 2021. The games themselves are easy to recommend, though I'd still suggest Sunshine be played on the GameCube. No good way to replicate the FLUDD pressure control on the Switch.

Apparently, a lot of people bought Xbox One's by mistake yesterday. Presumably parents and grandparents trying to pre-order Xbox Series X's and getting confused by the too similar branding. On Amazon.com, sales of Xbox One X consoles were up over 747% . Not sure if that's daily sales, weekly, or what. Anybody know? (The actual figure was 2,804 units, up from 331.)

I completely forgot there was a special ep of Dynamite on tonight. Thanks. I may check it out.

I probably be for it But I like console exclusives and generally end up purchasing all the major consoles in a generation anyway. I was the only kid in my neighborhood with both a SNES and a Sega Genesis. The funny part is that I don't even think of myself as a hardcore gamer. Been playing more this year, but generally I only play a couple hours a week and would much rather talk game design than play the game. I dunno how some of you sit and play for hours at a stretch. I can very rarely do that. I'm going to be sad if console exclusivity falls completely out of favor and consoles are distinguished largely by multimedia applications and visual fidelity. It'll be good for players, if that happens, but I have a feeling it will be less than idea for at least one of the Big Three and ultimately not benefit consumers as much as we think it will. I'm curious to see what Microsoft does with console exclusivity going forward. If their endgame is really increasing Game Pass and becoming the equivalent of Netflix, it might be worth it to work with Nintendo and Sony on certain IPs. Cutting out Sony is a good idea in theory, but it leaves an awful lot of money on the table. I wonder if they'd consider timed release windows on other platforms or maybe keeping digital rights to themselves and allowing retail editions to be published for PlayStation or Switch (again, probably as a timed exclusive).

There is a rumor going around that WWE is going to turn Keith Lee heel and reveal him as the leader of Retribution. That.... sounds like a terrible idea, but then again, it may be the only way to save the Retribution angle. But, it's WWE so it would probably drag down everyone involved even further. I'm kinda amused that after weeks of skulking around in ski masks and black sweats, Retribution unmasked to reveal.... even worse looking masks and ring gear.

Was it confirmed that Santana and Ortiz were cosplaying Dead Presidents? I was guessing The Warriors (which seems a little more applicable given the context) and I've seen a few other guesses. I know Tony said Dead Presidents, but I thought he was just guessing (though it sounds more like a line he was fed than something he'd come up with on his own).

I saw some stuff on that this morning, but there's probably nothing to it. It's not even a rumor, really. More like speculation from fans (as opposed to news outlets). Microsoft's been rumored to be buying Sega since the Dreamcast days.

At some point early on, someone connected with the show described it as Wanda using her powers to give herself and Vision the American Dream - and going loopy in the process. That sounds quite a bit like a rewrite of King's series, with Wanda standing in for the family. Couldn't tell from the trailers, but I'm hoping that's the direction they went. I'm skeptical the show is going to be a lighthearted sitcom even though that's how the trailer made it seem. It'll all depend on the writing, but I'm on board for the season now. Had zero interest in the show until I saw the trailer.

That's Lana's new character: crash test dummy whose husband is on a competing show,

Anyone actually playing this? It seems like another bomb. I have yet to see a good review. I'm seen a couple reviews that were amusingly scathing.

I'm getting a "Mortal Kombat DLC Pack No One Wants" vibe from Retribution now. They've got dime store Bane, a discount Predator, and Jackson VorHayes. Can Tommy Cage be far behind? Only watched bits and pieces of the show (around football), but what I saw was... not good. And Metlzer's recap sounded worse. I've never seen anything from Vega to make me think she's ready for this spot. It should take Asuka less than 60 secs to kick her head off. Am I the only one who wonders why Rey agrees to do this sh*t? I'll give him a pass on the first parentage angle and blame Vince, but I dunno what to think now.

All Japan now has an official English-language Twitter account.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Betheda news because it's hopefully another sign that Microsoft is serious about getting its first-party support on par with Sony and Nintendo. I've been wanting to like Microsoft more than I do since the original Xbox debut. I've been a fan of the Xbox hardware since the first console and Microsoft's argugbly been the most forward-thinking company of the big three over the past 15 years. But the games haven't been there. I'm a big fan of the 360 and think the 360's first-party/exclusive library is surprisingly good, but it didn't really compare to the PS3's first-party exclusives. First-party support for the Xbox One pretty much fell off a cliff. I doubt things will change much this generation, but hopefully Microsoft can close the gap to a respectable degree. I was in a games store a few days ago and a couple people were discussing games of the year (2020). Someone asked what contenders the Xbox had and Ori and the Will of the Wisps was mentioned, followed by an awkward silence. Lol, that sums it up, I guess. I'm assuming November and December will bring some goty candidates to Xbox (Cyberpunk maybe?), but most of the games I've really liked this year haven't been on Microsoft platforms. TLOU II, Ghost of Tsushima, Dreams, FF VII Remake, Animal Crossing. Off the top of my head, I've bought one Xbox One game this year (Ori). I'm probably forgetting something, but still, the number is less than four.

I mean, there's a precedent for that. My main issue with Flair being the Black Scorpion a few years earlier is... why would Flair go to all that trouble just to mess with Sting's head yet again. There were much easier ways to mess with Sting. In the 80's, Flair and the Horsemen were Al Capone types doing things the Chicago Way ("He pulls a knife, you pull a gun; he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue."). Piss off Flair or get in his way and you could expect to get a beat down from the Horsemen. Somehow, in the 90's, Flair became a James Bond villain and started concocting overly-elaborate schemes to mess with people. Sting's lucky he didn't get strapped to a rocket that launched him into the sun after a mouse ran through a maze and ate a piece of cheese, activating a tripwire that somehow started the rocket's propulsion system. I'm guessing morphing into a super-villain is what drove Flair crazy and landed him in the asylum.

Definitely less annoying for me. I don't quite love the controls, but they don't detract from my enjoyment of the game. Galaxy and Galaxy 2 were day one purchases for me, but I've never played much of either. I bounced off SMG fairly quickly because of the controls and never went back. And, since I didn't finish the first game, I never tried to play the sequel. It's a fair bet I'll get through Galaxy this week and maybe play through Galaxy 2 before year's end.

Ok? I’ll defer to you on this one, but I apparently haven’t read whatever thread this came up in. Here’s one of James Beard’s comments from the WrestlingClassics board: posted 07-22-2007 07:12 AM I worked with Tito in Japan quite a few times and he pretty much worked the same way he did in the states and the Japanese fans usually accepted him as a baby. He did work against some Japanese wrestlers in both singles and tag matches and he would step it up a bit in getting rough, but he was never an out and out heel type.

Apparently not. That question used to come up on Kayfabe Memories and the Wrestling Classics board. Supposedly, Tito never turned heel anywhere he worked. Even in Japan, he was allowed to work the same style he worked in the States and the fans accepted him as a babyface (according to James Beard, who worked with Tito in Japan). Tito supposedly went to Vince a couple times about turning heel later in his WWF run, but Vince didn't want to turn him. I'm kinda curious what Tully Blanchard was like as a babyface. He debuted as a fiery babyface for Southwest Champion Wrestling. In an interview a while back, Tully said he never had any desire to be a face and stayed a heel the rest of his career. I know he wad the promoter's son and promoter's kids are usually faces, but it's hard to believe even his dad thought people wanted to cheer Tully. Tully was everything a promoter wants from a heel. The only thing more punchable than his face was his personality.

Power and Glory was Roma and Hercules Hernandez. They teamed after the Young Stallions broke up.

That time a member of the Insane Clown Posse almost died on live TV.

Roma was a face for most of his time in WWF. Maybe all his time. He mostly worked heels and a jobber, then he formed a babyface tag team with Jim Powers called the Young Stallions.

Iron Sheik, maybe? I can't remember the Sheik gimmick being a babyface anywhere, though Khosrow worked face at the very beginning of his career? I don't think Baron Corbin's ever been a babyface. IIRC, he's never wrestled anywhere except the WWE system and I don't remember him ever being a face in NXT. KInda surprising, considering almost everyone turns at some point in the WWE. Who was never a heel? Steamboat?. He debuted as a babyface and he supposedly got his ring name because Eddie Graham thought his "Richard Blood" was a heel name. I don't think he ever worked heel in Florida or for Crockett (or WWF). Did Bruno work heel anywhere? Not that I can remember. It seems like Rey should have been a lifelong face but I can think of at least two heel runs (Promo Azteca and WCW briefly when he joined the Flithy Animals). Cena was a heel when he did the Prototype gimmick, wasn't he?

I absolutely hate the Wii control scheme for the Galaxy games (Wiimote in one hand, nunchuk in the other. No support for the classic controller). So I'm kinda thrilled that being able to play Galaxy with better controls. Been playing it this weekend. I prefer Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube. No good way to emulate the pressure triggers from the original control scheme. Omitting SMG2 still feels odd. I've heard rumors that the company didn't really want to do a sequel to to Galaxy but Miyamoto wanted a sequel and used his clout to get 2 greenlit, so maybe that's it? Dunno.

Owww. I don’t think spines are really supposed to bend that way.

Yuke's announced in May 2019 that it was working on developing a new, unlicensed wrestling game. No idea who owns the rights to the engine.