The Best of the Best: Where are the Physical Collections?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/25/14 at 02:29 PM CT
While it is true that I was extremely disappointed with “The Best of PlayStation Network Vol. 1,” my disappointment has little to do with the concept behind the product and everything to do with the execution. Steam and GOG.com have slowly been whittling away my insistence upon possessing a physical product tied to the gaming experience, yet both of those platforms only have a strong presence on PC (making PC much better for it). With digital (mostly Indie) games on consoles, the experience still boils down to paying far too much money for an ephemeral product that will only last as long as the current hardware generation.
What products like “The Best of PlayStation Network” should aim to do is create a more lasting product to stand as a testament to the quality of the Indie and small-budget games from a given time period. Instead of being hideously rare, such compilations should be so numerous as to fill an entire shelf with Internet-independent instances of these games. …
Vaguely Related Review: Game Fuel Redux
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/19/14 at 01:27 PM CT
It has been quite some time since I last had some Mountain Dew Game Fuel on hand way back in 2011. I’ve been well-stocked in Mello Yello and Sun Drop for so long that I haven’t really paid much attention to new Game Fuel releases. And since Game Fuel seems inextricably tied to releases of games I don’t even give half a fig about, I don’t even notice advertisements to let me know the stuff is around again.
Fortunately, I happened to notice a big Game Fuel endcap at my local Russ’ IGA while perusing the extra-buttery popcorn isle. Once again, Game Fuel is tied to the release of a new ‘Call of Duty’ game (I don’t even know – or care – which one… okay, the Game Fuel boxes say ‘Advanced Warfare’ for what it’s worth) and comes in two flavors. Cherry-citrus is back with a vengeance, but the companion flavor is something new and extremely Yellow… like so Yellow it would kill the Green Lantern on contact.
The new Yellow flavor of game fuel is, surprisingly, …
The Death of Saturday Morning Cartoons: Another Shared Experience Lost
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/12/14 at 02:42 PM CT
The first Saturday morning in October 2014 marked a depressing milestone for those of us who grew up and came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. It was the first Saturday morning to be completely bereft of cartoons on every non-cable broadcast network.
Sure, some of the networks still run a mixed block of animated and live-action children’s programming on Saturday mornings, but the majority of these shows are “edutainment” aimed at the pre-school crowd. The last holdouts in running Saturday morning cartoons were, for the most part, running popular shonen animes that are readily available on the cable animation outlet known as Cartoon Network. None of the last dregs of Saturday morning cartoons bear any resemblance to the once-great Saturday morning network exclusives that drove children to wake up insanely early on days when school was not in session.
The last remaining Saturday morning cartoons have been a pale imitation of the Silver Era for a long, long time. Looking back …
Backlog: The Embiggening - October, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/02/14 at 07:18 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. Now that the Summer Game Drought is well and truly past once again, it is time for game publishers to start ramping up the hype for the annual sales onslaught that is the Holiday Shopping Season. With only three short months left to make back all of the outrageous sums of money they gave their development teams to work on “AAA” games, publishers look to be starting with a massive push, as October will have more game releases than the entire Summer season combined.
Of course, when there are a lot of releases, as anyone capable of observing and recognizing patterns will realize, there are a lot of shovelware releases. October has far too many of them, sprayed as so much buckshot into the guts of consumers worldwide. There is a new ‘Alien’ tie-in (despite the lack of an ‘Alien’ movie since “Prometheus”), a “Duck Dynasty” game (because we definitely need a game about religiously backwards duck-call crafters), a port of …
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