2012: The year of Square-Enix?
2012. The year of dragon. The year of the apocalypse. An Olympic year. An election year. The year that vampires inherit the earth
The Akira Movie Will Suck. I Promise.
They should have just used these guys. It would have been less offensive.
I am making an empirical declaration. There is no way in hell the Akira adaptation isn't going to completely and utterly blow. Now I know that many of you had already drawn this conclusion for yourself, but for those of you still holding out hope for this to be good, I am here to crush that feeble belief. What has me so riled up (other than the bastardization of one of Japan's most seminal works)? The plot synopsis (via Bleeding Cool):
Scientists Can Now Read Your Mind, But Only If You’re Thinking About Movies
Really.
Sorta. Not really.
In a crazy scientific breakthough, scientists at the Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley are showing their new technology that successfully creates video footage of memory. From the Berkeley newsletter:
“Our natural visual experience is like watching a movie,” said Shinji Nishimoto, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher in Gallant’s lab. “In order for this technology to have wide applicability, we must understand how the brain processes these dynamic visual experiences.”
“We built a model for each voxel that describes how shape and motion information in the movie is mapped into brain activity,” Nishimoto said.
The brain activity recorded while subjects viewed the first set of clips was fed into a computer program that learned, second by second, to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity.
Though the tech is now limited to movies, eventually they hope to use it for dream reconstruction, memory access, and decoding visual images. You can read more details of the experiment here on the lab's site.
How You Can Still Sue Sony
As you may have heard, the latest PSN update, among other things, opted you out of any "collective legal action".
"Any dispute resolution proceedings, whether in arbitration or court, will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class or representative action or as a named or unnamed member in a class, consolidated, representative or private attorney general legal action, unless both you and the Sony entity with which you have a dispute specifically agree to do so in writing following initiation of the arbitration. This provision does not preclude your participation as a member in a class action filed on or before August 20, 2011."
What that means is that you can't be a member of any class action lawsuits against Sony if you intend to keep using PlayStation Network. However you are able to opt back into class action law suits and all you'll need is a stamp. In order to opt out of the class action waiver, you need to confirm it with Sony in writing within thirty days. You need to include your name, your address, your PSN account number, and a clear statement that you do not wish to resolve any potential legal disputes with Sony through an arbitrator. The catch is finding your PSN account number. Thus far, no one has located said number; when called, a Sony phone rep said that the email address, PSN ID, and PS3 console serial and model numbers for your PS3. To streamline the process, a PSN forum member made this letter template; all you'll need to do is fill in your info, print and mail the letter to:
SONY NETWORK ENTERTAINMENT INTERNATIONAL LLC
ATTN: Legal Department/Arbitration
6080 Center Dr. 10th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90045
Remember, you have to send your letter within 30 days, else you'll only get to sue Sony by your lonesome.
Red Faction is Dead
Joystiq is reporting that the Red Faction series is over. "Given that that title, now in two successive versions, has just found a niche, we do not intend to carry forward with that franchise in any meaningful way," said THQ CEO Brian Farrell during an investor call today. While the series have only gotten good to middling reviews, it did have a unique environmental destruction feature that persisted through the entire franchise. Farrell also said that the company would be focusing on Guillermo del Toro's project, inSANE.
The State of Gaming: Nintendo
E3 went down a few weeks ago and while there were no real earth shattering announcements (thanks to the ever persistance subculture of everything getting leaked), all in all it was a pretty good show. The rest of the year is looking pretty good indeed, with some of the smaller titles like Child Of Eden
First up: Nintendo.
Can’t Afford Your Monthly MMO fees? Why Not Sell Off Your Children?
At least that's the solution that a Chinese couple came up with. According to the Sanxiang City News, (via ABC News Radio), the couple, who met in an internet cafe, first came up with the idea to sell their baby daughter in 2009. When that worked, they sold their first born as well. And when they had a third kid, guess what happened? Thankfully, the grandmother eventually figured out what was going on and alerted the authorities. When they were asked if they missed their kids, the couple replied "We don’t want to raise them, we just want to sell them for some money.” They also said they were unaware of breaking any laws.
After neglecting their first-born son by leaving him alone to play online games at an Internet cafe 20 miles away, they decided to just sell their kids for money, supposedly to play more online games. How much does a baby girl go for in China? About $500. A baby boy? About $4600. Man, exchange rates are rough. You'd think they could have kept the kids and taught them to gold farm.
Mega Man Legends 3 Cancelled
Andriasang reports that highly anticipated 3DS title Mega Man Legends 3 has been cancelled. This come in spite of the numerous fan contests, promotions, and the planned demo/fund-raising pitch, Mega Man Legends 3 Prototype. According to a message posted on the game's official site, the game was cancelled due to not reaching certain conditions for continuing development, though fan speculation believes that the bigger cause was the desparture of Mega Man creator and Legends 3 project lead Keiji Inafune from Capcom some time ago.
This is quite a blow for the still floundering 3DS, as a number of people, myself included, were looking forward to the return of this franchise considering the second ended with a cliffhanger. It's worth noting that currently, Capcom officially has no Mega Man games in development, so unless Mega Man 11 (or Mega Man X-9) are announced, the franchise might very well be dead.
Top 5 Fan-Made Video Game Web Series
Video game movies suck. Video game television shows suck (except for that one Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon). Basically, if there's a script and acting and it's about video games, it's going to suck... unless the fans are making it. Video game fans have come up with some impressive web series based on their love for different franchises, ranging from anime mash-ups to parodies to epic, episodic dramas. Here are five of the best.
Alas, Poor Sony (‘s Online Service Users)
I know we’re all pissed about the PSN outage, but at some point you gotta feel bad for Sony. Engadget, via Nikkei.com, has confirmed that Sony has had another breach resulting in the release of 12,700 credit cards numbers, with at least 4300 of them being Japanese and unknown number from various other countries. The exposed data is from 2007, so the number of valid credit cards exposed should be limited, but there is the possibility of other info having been leaked as well. In response, SOE’s services were taken offline yesterday. This comes on the heels of Kaz Harai's announcement a few days ago that the PSN breach could had caused the loss of 10 million credit card numbers.
So what does all this mean? Well, if you were playing Everquest, Free Realms, or DC Universe Online, you're SOL. You still can't play games online on your PS3. You can possibly brute force your way into Netflix, if you're lucky. You can't get any PS3 DLC. And if you had a credit card tied to almost any Sony Online services, be it an MMO or PSN, there is a chance it's been compromised...
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