For the last few years, SyFy has had better anime programming than Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. There, I said it. They showed Gurren Lagann and other great anime shows while Williams Street dumped all of its anime programming to the Saturday midnight to 6:00 a.m. block. This has been a trend over the last half decade of Williams Street moving further and further away from anime (and closer and closer to abject shit like Tim and Eric). Cartoon Network cancelled Toonami five years ago, and besides a surprise reappearance for April Fool’s Day last month, it’s been gone from the network.

That’s changing, according to yesterday’s announcement from Cartoon Network. Toonami is coming back.

Anime nerds, stop. Old-school Cartoon Network fans, stop. Cartoon Planet fans, stop. Don’t squee. This isn’t the good news you think it is.

From the press release:

· TOONAMI – Beginning Saturday, May 26, Adult Swim brings back Toonami, the network’s popular block of anime programming. Airing weekly from midnight to 6 a.m. (ET/PT), in addition to the return of previous series featured in Toonami, Adult Swim is also developing new original anime programming for fans.

Toonami is just taking up the Saturday midnight to 6:00 a.m. bitch seat. That’s the block Adult Swim has been using as a dumping ground for its old anime series it can’t completely get rid of because of outrage from fans. Cowboy Bebop has been showing regularly on it. Ghost in the Shell has been showing regularly on it. Big O has been showing regularly on it.

This isn’t Toonami’s return. This is Toonami’s name being slapped on the programming block Williams Street has been using as its obligatory “We have to have some anime or the fans will get pissed” time. Saturday, midnight to 6:00 a.m.

Oh, and of the 16 new shows and pilots planned for Adult Swim, six are live action. SIX. That’s 38%.

Toonami comes back May 26. Me, I’ll be playing Diablo 3.

A few weeks ago, I looked at the Zing Air Zip Bak Bow. It was more of a slingshot than a bow, but it packed a lot of power in its small, inexpensive frame. Zing Air sent me two other weapons, the Z-Curve Bow and ZX Crossbow. They’re larger and slightly more complex than the Zip Bak Bow, but one is much more powerful and the other… is about as useful as a pistol crossbow can be. Read on for the full review.

The Z-Curve bow is a full bow, with no pivoting parts to make it smaller. The bow’s design lets it use much more elastic than the Zip Bak Bow, with the strings stretching all the way from the loops in the center to the very ends of each prod. This means a longer pull and more power. Zing Air says the bow can fire over 125 feet, and in my tests it can easily handle half that with some accuracy. It fires far and hits hard, and because it uses the same huge, dense arrows as the Zip Bak Bow it makes a great artillery weapon. It also makes a pretty dangerous weapon if you’re fighting in an office or around electronics.

Because you pull it back and fire it like a bow, it requires more skill than a Nerf gun. Your wrist position and how you let go of the fletching determines how the arrow flies. Of course, this also means you’ll feel more badass and Hawkeye-like when you get the hang of it. It also also means you’ll look like even more of a dork because you’re using a bow that fires foam arrows. Fortunately, we’re past that.

The ZX Crossbow is the closest of the Zing Air bows to a conventional Nerf gun. It’s also the closest to an actual crossbow. It uses the same elastic slingshot action as the Zip Bak and Z-Curve bows to fire smaller (but still big) bolts, but the bolts have a notch in them that catch on a lever on the back of the crossbow. You hook the bolt on the elastic, pull it back to the lever, and keep the crossbow loaded. Pull a small safety to make the trigger work, then pull the trigger to fire.

The trigger works in theory, but it usually keeps the bolt latched on slightly even if you pull it down. After that, just tapping the crossbow can make it fire. It’s not very reliable to fire like that, but you can consistently shoot if you yank the trigger hard. Of course, this reduces the accuracy because the jerking motion throws off the crossbow. Because the crossbow uses less elastic, it also is less powerful than the Zip Bak Bow and Z-Curve Bow. Still, it’s a crossbow.

If you want to help contribute to keeping Aggrogate running, want to spread the word, or just want some natty threads, your wishes have been answered. Aggrogate now has a gift store! Aggrogate’s CafePress store has logo merchandise and other designs you can pick up for cheapish.

There are logo T’s in both light and dark colors, plus drinkware (beer steins!), mouse pads, and other things. There’s also a line of artsy, minimalist products based on classic and current game controllers, all brought together in the first gaming alchemy circle, a design exclusive to Aggrogate. We’ll have other designs in the future, and we’ll put those up in the store.

We’re also looking for writers. If you’re interested in gaming journalism and want to try it out, send us a message. We’re looking for people who can write news, reviews, and features.

Called it.

3:04 a.m. EST. Battle.net servers busy. I can’t even get into the single player game. I’ll be trying every so often over the next day (in the morning, then when I get home), and updating as I continue to not play Diablo 3. I agree, it is obnoxious.

Update: 3:07 a.m. EST. Gave it another chance, still can’t get in. Will try in the morning. For now, I’m going back to bed.

Update: 3:10 a.m. EST. Okay, one more try. Still busy. Now I’m really going to bed.

Update: 6:44 a.m. EST. Logged in successfully. Created a character and started the single player campaign. I didn’t expect it to be that fast. I owe you a Coke, Blizzard.

Now, will I be able to play this evening, when other people are awake and not getting ready for work? We’ll find out.

Update: 10:52 p.m. EST. Been playing for a few hours. After the first hiccup with the servers, things seem to be running fairly smoothly. I can admit when I’m wrong. I overestimated just how big an issue this always-online thing would be for the Diablo 3 launch. Nice work.

A few months ago, we reported that New York arcade Chinatown Fair was reopening after years of being closed. It finally opened, and we took a tour of it this weekend. The result is a little hope for a future haven of hardcore arcade gamers and a lot of reminders of why arcades didn’t live past the last decade. Read on for a look at the new Chinatown Fair, and some photos of the games.

The arcade, located at 8 Mott Street (take the 6 to Canal Street, walk east for a few block, turn down Mott Street and walk down two blocks), is in the same space as the old Chinatown Fair. It’s L-shaped, covered in kid-friendly light blue paint, and filled with the nostalgic lights and sounds of arcades. Unfortunately, none of those sounds are of games made more than 6 years ago, fighting games, old-school arcade games, or other reasons to use quarters. Also, you can’t use quarters.

The arcade uses a card swipe system like Dave and Buster’s. You pay a machine (it takes cash or credit cards) and it gives you a refillable card with credits on it. The credits are strangely distributed, with several games costing 3.3 or 4.9 credits. I got a $5 card and could play a total of three ticket-offering machines. Three. I know inflation is an issue, but that’s just obscene. You can also get packages of several hours of free play for certain machines at $20 per hour, but for now that means you have an hour to play five decent arcade games and air hockey.

The machines are mostly ticket-dispensing machines, that strange cross between video slot machines and carnival games designed to eat your money and give you a few tickets. There are a few basketball and skee-ball games, but most are the spinning wheel/flashing light/pretend you can affect the outcome by pressing the button games that tempt you with getting some cheap crap after spending hundreds of dollars to get tickets. The most interesting machines are Terminator Salvaztion (the last decent arcade shooter), a few racing games, an ACDC pinball machine, and a Fruit Ninja game.

I’ll be fair: the staff of Chinatown Fair say they’re getting some fighting game machines in the next few weeks. They plan to get Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Tekken 6, King of Fighters 12, and a few others. For now, Chinatown Fair is a disappointing money sink that’s just as inconvenient and offers even less choices than Dave and Buster’s. Hopefully it will become a hot spot for fighting game fans in New York and reclaim its former status as Manhattan’s most famous arcade this summer, when they actually get a good game selection in.

For now, Chinatown Fair reminds gamers how lame arcades currently are. They’re Dake & Busters, or Chuck E. Cheeze, or the crappy little “RCade” on the third floor of Toys R Us Times Square. Few fun games, every game’s expensive, and there isn’t even the fun of using actual quarters. I understand that arcade machines have high maintenance and inflation means quarter games probably aren’t that feasible (though Barcade in Brooklyn can pull it off, with their almost entirely pre-1986 machines and relatively expensive beers), but when we can play more games at home without putting money in every hour, arcades need to make an even harder case.

Chinatown Fair might become New York’s biggest hangout for fighting game fans when they get the games in, but even then it’s a very specialized place. Granted, it’s a very specialized place across the street from a store that sells only collectible card games, so it’s in the right spot, but it’s still specialized. If there were quarter games, or even $0.50 games, from the 90′s, I’d be there every weekend to drop my pocket change on Konami beat-em-ups and old-school fighters. For now, though, it’s an awkward ticket mine for kids.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

GameStop is going to start selling Steam cards next week. This is big news, because it gives PC gamers without credit cards a chance to use Steam, and it makes game trade-ins worth Steam credit if customers want. It’s also big news, because GameStop still has its Impulse service, and while it isn’t giving up on it, it clearly is willing to compromise to make money.

It’s a win-win situation for everyone except Impulse. Steam gets a new source of money. GameStop gets a new product that will fly off the shelves. Gamers get a way to liquidate their collections next time Steam holds a painfully tempting seasonal sale. Of course, GameStop’s digital distribution service will continue to be ignored, and now that even the company is fine with offering alternatives instead of forcing users to install games on it, it will probably slip.

Now, to see if I can get a Steam card at GameStop and use it to buy games on Steam and not just Mann Co. keys in Team Fortress 2.

Ever since the Wii brought motion control to games, we’ve been waiting for a single experience that defines it. No, not sports. We had fun with sports, but we have to move on. No, not waving around a katana or the Master Sword. I’m talking about the lightsaber. For half a decade, we’ve been waiting for a Star Wars game that lets us wave a lightsaber like it was our own toy plastic (or ForceFX replica) one. With the PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect, we got more and more hopeful of actual lightsaber gameplay.

It was a lie. It didn’t happen.

Kinect Star Wars is the final nail in the coffin for lightsaber combat. Remember that game? It came out a few weeks ago and it’s already settled into gamers’ minds as somewhere between “that came out?” and “oh, the Han Solo Dance Central game.” It’s bigger than that, though. It represents the failure of an entire generation of game hardware to live up to its biggest promise, and it’s a failure that’s partly caused by developer pity and our own limitations.

Lightsaber combat never really happened. The entire idea of slashing your way through a game with a glowing sword has almost disappeared, and we never got a satisfying 1:1 combat Star Wars game. Last week, I found a lightsaber Wiimote holder with a glowing blade for $6 at GameStop. When I pulled it down to check the price, it was covered in dust.

Why has there never been a good lightsaber fighting game? The closest we got to it was the promising-sounding but horrible Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels. Spoiler: the lightsaber duels aren’t fun. It seems like it should be such a simple idea, but it never really happened.

I can think of two reasons for this. One is obvious and disappointing. The other is vaguely sinister. The obvious reason is that the technology still isn’t there. We tried the Wiimote. We tried the Wiimote Plus. Neither could handle fast, accurate, precise movements. Every game that used the motion controls felt either awkwardly floaty or used gestures that could have just as easily been mapped to a button. This means one thing: the biggest promise of this generation of console games is a freaking lie.

The PlayStation Move had much better motion controls, but it still couldn’t handle lightsabers. The Kinect went in a different direction, and as Star Wars Kinect proved it didn’t work. Maybe all the gyroscopes, magnetic sensors, and accelerometers stuffed into these devices simply couldn’t handle the techniques of a Jedi. It’s a disappointing realization, but it makes sense.

I don’t think it’s the whole story, though. LucasArts has been trying, in its own messed-up way, to protect us. There’s a dirty secret to swordfighting and lightsaber fighting that developers understand but won’t admit: it’s not that fun. Specifically, it’s not that fun if you’re not actually hitting anything. Lightsabers bounce off each other. They cut through enemies. There is actual resistance and reaction and not just flailing wildly. They hum and glow when turned on, and clash wildly when fighting. Without that feedback, you’re just flailing around.

You’re not a Jedi, you’re the Star Wars Kid. If you fought like a Jedi instead of using gestures or a gamepad, you’d look and feel like a YouTube meme. There’s a difference between “vaguely ridiculous” (Wii Sports, Dance Central) and “completely ridiculous,” and 1:1 swordfighting looks completely ridiculous.

You are not qualified to be this badass.

Okay, let me rephrase that. Gamers 1:1 swordfighting look completely ridiculous. As cool as Jedi in Star Wars look when swordfighting is as not cool as you look trying to emulate them. Both real swordfighting and stage combat (which makes the fight look interesting) are difficult skills you need to learn over years. Lightsaber combat is loosely based on kendo and has been heavily modified and elaborated into seven distinct forms with several sub-forms, and it’s not something you can just do by waving a stick around. You’ll look silly, and you won’t have much fun. If you want to learn lightsaber fighting, you can actually take classes with groups like New York Jedi, who instruct you on stage combat with lightsabers. That’s a nice hobby, but it’s a bit of a time and money investment if you just want to play a video game.

Lightsabers aren’t just cool weapons. They look cool in the hands of Jedi, warrior-monks who use supernatural power to guide their actions. In the hands of a gamer, they just look like giant glowsticks waved by someone having a seizure. We haven’t been given satisfying 1:1 lightsaber combat because we can’t get it. If you duel with Darth Vader on the Wii or with a PlayStation Move controller or on Kinect, you’re not stepping in the shoes of Luke Skywalker as he fights the dark lord of the Sith. You’re stepping in the shoes of you are you flail wildly to hit the dark lord of the Sith, and let’s be honest: he could kick your ass.

LucasArts has been protecting us from the depressing (and toy-lightsaber-sales-dragging) realization that we can’t fight like Jedi. We won’t feel like we’re fighting like Jedi if we’re given the full range of motion and accuracy of a lightsaber. Star Wars: The Old Republic, Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi Knight, and Super Star Wars all were satisfying because they didn’t have you swing the lightsaber. You pressed a button and you watched a Jedi swing it expertly. Put a lightsaber in our hands and don’t give us a long plastic blade to hit our friends with, and we don’t know what to do with it. Even if you give us a long plastic blade, we’re just jackasses hitting our friends with a toy sword, not fighting Sith lords.

Back in the late 90′s, there was a humble video game series that combined racing with violence. Specifically, there was a video game sereies that combined racing with violence besides Twisted Metal. Carmageddon wasn’t quite as much of a car duel game as it was a merciless race-slaughter of pedestrians, and it was awesome. Any game where you can get an “Electro-Bastard Ray” to blow up nearby people like balloons is pretty great. The last game in the series was Carmageddon: TDR 2000, and it wasn’t very good.

Still, 12 years is enough to make a franchise comeback possible (as long as that franchise isn’t Duke Nukem), and that comeback is going to happen through Kickstarter. Carmageddon: Reincarnation is the latest in a series of “let’s bring back that old series” Kickstarters, and it looks like it’s going to happen. The original developers, Stainless Games (who also made Magic: the Gathering: Duel of the Plainwswalkers and the Pocket Bike Racer Burger King game), have gotten the rights back from Square-Enix, and they’re trying to raise $400,000 for the game. It’s already made $75,000 with 29 days left to go, so that’s a good sign.

Contributions start at $15 if you want the game, and awards include a card game at $100, a retail box with a USB stick at $350, and a hand-painted “splattered granny” figure at $500. That’s the figure above. No “zombies” like the N64 version here.

Microsoft has announced that it will be selling Xbox 360s for $99 as part of a pilot program at Microsoft stores. What’s a Microsoft store? Good question. I’ve never actually seen one. If you can find one, though, you can pick up an Xbox 360 and a Kinect for $99. That’s a great deal.

There’s a hitch that makes the deal significantly less great. You have to sign onto a contract with Xbox Live Gold for $15 per month for two years. That’s $360, plus $99 for the Xbox 360, for $459. If you want to cancel, you have to pay an early termination fee of $250, though the fee goes down after the third month.

An Xbox 360 with Kinect is $299. A year-long Xbox Live Gold subscription is $50 in many places. Even if you get it for $60 for the full retail price, you’re still paying $40 less than this deal. So Microsoft’s new pilot program is to sell an Xbox 360 in its few shops for much more than it would be otherwise. A cunning plan has not been thought all the way through.

Don’t worry, there are no spoilers in this review. Just lots of gushing, because The Avengers was freaking awesome. This is one of the most ambitious blockbuster projects in decades, because it’s the culmination of several years’ worth of planting seeds in Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and even The Incredible Hulk. This isn’t a catch-all superhero movie for everyone. This is a catch-all superhero movie who’s caught the last several big superhero movies, or at least knows enough about them. Worse yet, every superhero or villain you add to a movie makes it more risky and more likely to it becoming a nonsensical morass of origin stories and contrivances.

The Avengers pays off several movies’ teases with a superhero group film that actually works. It’s action-packed, exciting, and engaging, and still smart and subtle enough to not be considered a mindless popcorn movie. This isn’t The Dark Knight, but it isn’t Transformers, either. It’s a long, complex superhero movie that embraces its source material (which includes both Earth 616 original and Ultimate Marvel universes) and is accessible enough to be enjoyed even if you’re not a comic book nerd. There is a little bit of homework to do before you see the movie, though.

With five of the six heroes already well-established with four origin movies, Avengers charge on with actually bringing them together and developing their characters without retreading the whole thing. This means you need to have seen the previous movies or at least be aware of the origin stories of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. Thor and Captain America are necessary to understand the villain and the powerful artifact around which the movie focuses, and Iron Man and Iron Man 2 are necessary to understand the erratic behavior of the most complex character in the film, Tony Stark. This isn’t a movie you can jump into unless you’re already a comic book nerd or already saw the previous movies. The Hulk is even weirder, because he’s played by Mark Ruffalo, but his backstory seems to vaguely relate to the Ed Norton Hulk movie (which had a Nick Fury cameo and set up the Avengers). Of course, if you’re okay with Terrence Howard turning into Don Cheadle between Iron Man and Iron Man 2, you should be fine with this.

All of the characters are used expertly, and none are the center of the story. That’s the key to the Avengers, that it’s several superheroes working together and no one standing above the others. This isn’t Thor’s or Iron Man’s movie, this is an Avengers movie, and despite some attempts to steal the scene by Robert Downey Jr. (which fit in with Tony Stark’s character of the showboating genius playboy madman), everyone has a place in the movie. It’s similar to The Dark Knight in that every main character in the movie is given plenty of facetime, and even Nick Fury and Agent Coulson shine as supporting characters with their own compelling scenes. That doesn’t even touch the interrelations of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and Hulk, who all support and antagonize each other in fascinating ways.

Hawkeye and Black Widow stood as the odd men out in the Avengers, but they had their own excellent subplot as the heavy hitters worked, and their actions reflected both the Avengers and the Ultimates in the dynamics of the team. You can’t smash a wall with a scalpel, but you can do much more vital things with it. Hawkeye and Black Widow were that scalpel, and their contributions to the plot were every bit as necessary. The Avengers has always been about an archer being able to fight alongside a god, and in the last act of the movie that’s what happened.

The fights were huge, well-shot (no shaky-cam, no disorienting cuts, no gratuitous 3D), and used every member of the Avengers to their advantage. Without spoiling anything, there are several all-out superhero brawls and felt like they were taken right from the comics. Each character was bright, identifiable, and fought exactly like their comic book counterparts. Thor flew by swinging his hammer and called down thunder. Iron Man used repulsor beams. Captain America used his superior agility to out-fight stronger opponents and threw his shield like a weapon. The Hulk smashed. This was the Avengers fighting on screen, with the action from the comics translated perfectly. When you can have six very different super-powered characters and all of them have clearly thematic and distinct fighting styles, that’s an accomplishment that far outweighs any exploding, indistinguishable robots brawling. Even Hawkeye and Black Widow had their own styles, and the gymnastics and arrow tricks seen were impressive and fit in with the action.

This is a long movie. It’s two and a half hours long, but it’s paced so well it doesn’t feel like it drags. There are enough action sequences to keep the viewer engaged, and when the characters aren’t fighting they’re engaging in subtle bits of character development and play off each other in natural ways. Tony Stark takes Bruce Banner under his wing in his own strange way. Thor and Captain America find some kinship in not being able to follow the ways of modern America. Hawkeye and Black Widow have a complicated history that never becomes a gratuitous romance. This is what makes the Avengers and ensemble films work: the way the characters interact with each other is just as important and interesting as the inevitable conflict between the heroes and the bad guys.

Stay to the end. Not the scene after the CG credits with the main names, where a certain villain is revealed. Stay after the long credits for one of the most surprising and brilliant scenes I’ve seen in a comic book movie. It’s worth it.