Currently Watching - Chivalry of a Failed Knight

One of the few 2015 Anime that I watched this year was Chivalry of A Failed Knight (The Worst One)

A total of 12 episodes and the series follows the usual Shonen/Action Tournament Anime. Follows the life and battles of Kurogane Ikki. He is indeed the titular "Failed Knight"/ The Worst One because among all the students in the school with Sword-magic, he can't enchant his sword with magic. be it elemental or otherwise. The school gives him a student rating of F (the best being an A-rank).
Most of the usual RPG elementals tropes are here (Fire, Water, Lightning).



The art direction for the last two episodes goes really out there as it takes a Grey, Black, and white with hints of red, blue, and yellow in select objects or characters. The actual picture quality of  show goes into a "Grindhouse" mode where you can see more noise and pop in the picture like it was and old film. Something odd to be sure and really got my attention...

J-list asks about the oldest Anime title you have ever seen

Anime then and now. So, what's the oldest anime you've watched?
Posted by J-List on Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Took me a few minutes to think of an answer and the oldest Anime I've ever seen is either a few episodes from the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, or Lupin The Third  series that originally aired back in the early 1970s. I am going off of Anime News Network's date info. 

My opinon on the FF VII Remake gameplay trailer

I just finished watching the first gameplay trailer for the highly-anticipated Final Fantasy VII remake by Square-Enix and here are my main thoughts and hopes for any upcoming trailers.

The graphics looked good. Seems like the team working on FF VII remake is using the same high-end toolbox as the FF XV team. It's going to be fun exploring the slums and Golden Saucer with the new graphics and camera prospective.

The Action RPG like battles are ok with me. It was all about the limit break and Materia System that really stood out to me in the original game anyway. After playing several hours of Kingdom Hearts and FF Dissida, I'm quite alright with a more fluid combat system.  This gameplay trailer didn't really show the Materia system/menu at all. Only showed the first mission, with Cloud and Barret, so view of what Tifa or Red XIII and the rest of the gang look like.

One could hope that there would be another Viewtiful Joe or Okami

もしもぼくが続編を作らせてもらえるとしたらどれがいいですか…？ If II can make a sequel, which one do you want to see?

— 神谷英樹 Hideki Kamiya (@PG_kamiya) November 24, 2015

Hideki Kamiya directed the original Devil May Cry game and the more recent Bayonetta games that Platinum Games has developed. I casted my vote and gave it to Okami but either Okami or Viewtifiul Joe sequel would be ok with me. 

The Legend of Zelda representing video game music on a talk show

Video Game concert tours have been happening outside of Japan since the mid 2000s Thanks to people in the Industry like Tommy Tallarico and Nobuo Uematsu. Today there are big three  video game related concert series that I know of.

• Distant Worlds (Final Fantasy) 
• Video Games Live ( A mix of Japanese and Western developed games) 
• Symphony of the Goddesses (The Legend of Zelda)

Earlier this month The Legend of Zelda music was performed on the CBS Late Show hosted by Stephen Colbert. It's standard length as far as far as late night talk show musical guests go, so it must have been difficult for the arranger of the piece to condense 25 years of musical history with into just 4 minutes. Watch the video after the break.

The Back To The Future adventure game is on sale and Rocket League car DLC

Today is October 21, 2015. Big deal to Back To The Future movie fans.   Steam is having a  75% off sale on Back To the Future:The Game. An adventure game developed by Telltale Games.

Picks up after the end of the movie Trilogy and some of the original actors from the movies do voice work for the game. A.J. LoCascio does an great voice impersonation of Michel J. Fox/ Marty McFly

Rocket League is a competitive sports game where you play International Football aka Soccer by driving cars around a giant field. The Iconic Delorean is now a DLC car in the game! Complete with Flame and light streaks. This might be enough to at least get me to play the game for a few matches.

For Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown the future was today.

One of the Anime Podcasts I listen to has gone into Hiatus

It's kind of sad news to hear especially if you're a long time listener to the main show. Anime-Pulse was one of the main Anime podcasts  I first listened to on a regular basis. The hosting pair chose some good names to go by. Ichigo I'm  guessing from the protagonist of (Tite Kubo's) Bleach, which had been airing in Japan/ "fan subbed" for around a year by that time. The other co-host went by the name Batou which came from (Shirow Masamune's) Ghost in the Shell. I think I started listening to them around their 10th published episode. Been a good run of 10 years talking about Anime.

I was only really subscribed via RSS to the the original show, none of the spinoffs live Manga-Pulse and VG-pulse really appealed to me. This now joins  the other Anime news/review podcast I used to listen to back in the day which was  the"Weekly Anime Review Podcast".

...

Live-Action Angel Heart adaptation? Might watch it

Not to be confused with the Hollywood film from the 1980s, Angel Heart is a Manga series drawn/ written by Tsukasa Hojo and is a sequel to the longer running City Hunter. I enjoy what I've seen of both series but it's actually nice to have are more authentic   take on this world. 

There was a  movie from 90s called City Hunter that starred well-known Action star Jackie Chan. Fun movie even has a few memorable pop culture references in it but not quite faithful to the original work. In 2011 there was that South Korean drama series.

According to this post on Crunchyroll The two major (in my opinion) roles in the Angel Heart story have been cast. Ryo Saeba  and Xiang-Ying. Anyway I hope the streaming rights to this show get picked up by Crunchyroll or it ends up  on Hulu's Asian drama section.

You can buy the older fallout games on GOG once again.

While waiting for Fallout 4 why not play the entries that started the series? Back at the start of 2014 All of the Fallout games were removed from the Good Old Games store.

Goodbyes are not forever (and war never changes). @Fallout is back, fully #DRMfree! http://t.co/DowKmrUEht pic.twitter.com/8dH6yJRBko

— GOG.com (@GOGcom) August 27, 2015

• Fallout 1
• Fallout 2
• Fallout Tactics

 The games have reappeared back in the store and are on sale for the next few days. You can get the 3 games for a mere $10.00. If you don't already own  the games via Steam this would be a good way to go because GOG tries to support newer version of Windows OSes  and DRM free.

http://www.gog.com/promo/bethesda_launch_fallout_bundle_260815

My thoughts after filling out the KONAMI heritage games survey

I don't really care about the possibility of a prize for participating in the survey. It is a good outlet to respectfully request for a Konami game series revival or sequel. A safer way than trying to "spam" their  English Twitter account.

Of all the Konami owned franchises Silent Hill was strangely omitted from the selection screen. Obviously having to due with what happened with Silent Hills/PT.  If you're a fan of Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, Vandal Hearts, Bomberman or in my specific case "Suikoden" or Genso Suikoden. This is the best way to let Konami know just how interested are you. Look I can understand that it's tough to think of 108 characters for each installment and think of an overall theme  but it's been almost a whole decade since Suikoden V was released on the PS2. Thanks konami for finally digitally releasing Suikoden II on PSN.

That's right the series never landed on the last generation consoles (XBOX 360 and PS3)  unless there was a Japan-only release I don't know about. We have yet to see what the series can look like with HD/1080p graphics.

 I'll reiterate some of the points I put on the survey.... What I like about the Suikoden series was the turn-based combat  mixed in with some strategy battles and recruiting those 108 possible characters that hang out at your base. Final Fantasy has Cid and the Suikoden series has that fast-travel character named Viki  This is also one of those RPG series that had co-op/ team up attacks like those found in Chrono Trigger. As for musical soundtrack. The 3rd game has my overall favorite theme music.

The indie game scene has been trying to fill in the void left by Contra with games like Broforce and Mercenary Kings.    




You can fill out the survey for yourself by follwing  http://mobilesurvey.blicx.com/

Humble Bundle store having a sale on Anime, Anime inspired games

Steam is not the only digital download store having a sale on Anime games this week, The Humble (Bundle) store is also taking part.  It's offering up way more than Naruto Shippuden games. Discounted games in the Anime Weekend sale include Anime-inspired games  and Japanese-role playing games

Aside from Dragon Ball Xenoverse which is the game where you can create your own fighter from the most popular races from the Anime. I think all of the Ys games ever released on PC are discounted as well. If fighting games are more your thing then Two Guilty Gear games are also listed.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/animeweekend/
Steam is only having a sale on Naruto games 

What a rocky start for the Street Fighter V Beta tests

The Beta tests for the upcoming Street Fighter V (Five) was supposed to start on July 23rd  but from two Youtube channels I've checked out they either can not get the game to load at all or only get as far as the training room fight ( 1 player vs dummy).
Below is just one tweet from the Official Street Fighter twitter account...

We are aware users are still having issues logging into the SFV beta. We are continuing to work on a fix. Thanks for your patience.

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) July 24, 2015

Note that the game is a console exclusive to Sony's PS4.  Capcom has been trying to make adjustments to their severs and Reboot the servers. If you want to follow the beta thread, I left a link below.

Here's the link to the official Capcom discussion thread  .

Just really disappointing because probably well over 50,000 viewers were watching the game being played at EVO 2015 but this Online multiplayer just doesn't seem to be working.  Most of the thumbnals on Twich.tv page are of error screens and face cameras of frustrated streamers.

Watched some EVO 2015 streams

Evolution 2015 is  the annual gaming tournament going on right now that brings players from all over the world to compete in a variety of fighting games. The matches are being streamed on Twitch like it has been for the past few years. Evo appears to have more channels setup for the tournament.  The last few years were only 3. One main stage and the rest being side games. Now there are 7/Seven whole channels. Wow, even though I've only seen content on 4 of them.  The games that I've seen so far have been

• Ultra Street Fighter IV
• Persona 4 Arena: Ultramax
• Super Smash Bros Wii U 

In previous years I would watch for Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom 3. This year I really wanted to watch "high-level" Persona 4 Arena play. It's been quite exciting.

New Gundam's Exterior revealed

There is going to be a new Gundam series coming and so soon after Gundam Reconguista in G which came out in Japan and online streaming last year. This new Gundam unit reveal has been slow over the past few days since early July with a mere silhouette. As of the twitter post below, The head, shoulders, and chest have details and colors now

The G-Tekketsu Gundam bares its chest today but also pretty much reveals its face. It's looking tough. pic.twitter.com/5G6g65jgR4

— Tom Aznable (@TomAznable) July 13, 2015

I'm going to reiterate what I posted on an Anime from my Twitter account but the Shoulders still remind me of the Talgeese #1 from Gundam Wing. The fully revealed image seems to show a red glow on the shoulders reminding me of Unicorn Gundam.  The rest of the unit  "G-Tekketsu" shows hints of Gundam 00 (chest area).

An Anime convention gets a shoutout from the local news

For some reason I keep on forgetting about this relatively new Anime Con. Anime Midwest  happened this 4th of July Weekend and ABC Chicago gave the event a short nod on the website. This is the newer fan convention that happens in Rosemont, Illinois.  The unique thing about it is that there is a attendance limit of 10,000 fans.  I really should attend this at least once.

Nintendo will be live streaming the 2015 Nintendo World Championships!

The news I was hoping to see and read from Nintendo at some point. Nintendo is live streaming the 2015 Nintendo World Championship Finals  this coming Sunday (6/14).

The #NWC are this Sunday, 6/14! We’ll be kicking off the big event with a Treehouse Live pre-show at 2:35 p.m. PT pic.twitter.com/ErKATxVPfS

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) June 8, 2015

   They had to give out the times in Pacific Time but I live in Illinois so we have to convert this into Central US time. Which ends up being:

4:35 PM for the Treehouse live show
5:00 PM  for the NWC main event

I'm probably going to have watch the pre-show, to find out who the player from Illinois is. Will be rooting for them to win it of course.  

Today was the Qualifiers for the World Nintendo Championships

The Qualifying rounds for the 2015 Nintendo World Championships were held earlier in the day and  while that in itself is noteworthy the reason why I had to  post about it is that one of Best Buy stores hosting the event is the one in Schaumburg, IL

Sadly I couldn't find anyone live tweeting or Blogging from the event but  I did find this one post from  TechnologyTell.com . Includes photos of potential competitors waiting in in a long line. I've been in a line like that before. Waiting for a video game Midnight release.


One of the few times I actually want to read a live event blog and no one does it. Haha. All that left is to wait until June 14th when the finals happen. Hopefully that will be streamed on Nintendo's Youtube channel.

Fans rally together to fund Bloodstained Ritual of the Night in one day

Surprise to no one except to maybe the publisher that said "No" to Mr. Igarashi. I thought it would definitely be funded but I actually didn't expect it to be the single-day raging fire of interest that it has turned into.

It reached the minimum funding goal by around 1 PM Central US time and then when I check on the page again at around 9:30 PM it was just under 1 Million dollars raised.  

The kickstarter promo video reminds me of a video game commerical from the 1990s.  See the video below.

While the game is already been fully funded and the listed stretch goals have been reached you still have 30 days to decide if you want to be a backer . Especially the tiers where you start receiving  a physical copy and other items.

click here to go to the page

Just watched Battlefront trailer

It's no longer just a tease anymore. It's as real as the movie and scheduled to be released just as soon too.

I'll come out and admit to anyone reading this at 1 minute and 42 seconds into the trailer video I cried serious tears of joy. In-atmosphere Starfighter dogfights, Yes! No Outer Space but in the atmosphere you run the risk of crashing into terrain. X-Wings, TIE Fighters. Call in air strikes Y-wings for rebels and probably TIE Bombers for Imperial side.   

Most of the video was actually land-based combat but I would just spawn in the Starfighters most of the time if that turns out to be an option in the game. 


Here's what I noticed...

• Rebellion vs Galactic Empire
• Rebels had more than just human species on the battlefield 
• There will be different player classes. Trailer was more focused on the Rebel side though
• Fear the Imperial Walkers 
• You can play as Hero/Villain characters like in the previous battlefront games
• Endor, Hoth, Tatooine locations 

What I want to know more about

• What kind of force power implementation is there
• There was a Star Destroyer in the sky, will be like Elite Squadron? 

Watch the Battlefront reveal trailer for yourself ...

I certainly hope this November release date isn't some sort of hurried push  to beat The Force Awakens out the gate, which is coming out in theaters in December. DICE/EA has been receiving some bad press for Battlefield Hardline but I truly hope they make this reboot of Star Wars: Battlefront a good one.

#StarWars #Battlefront (Google Plus test)

EA going to release an info update about the new Star Wars game today

Yesterday something very interesting showed up in my inbox and it was Star Wars related.You're probably thinking it was a page or link about the Force Awakens' 2nd trailer but nope It was about the  Revival of the Battlefront series.

As a refresher since I haven't posted about it on this blog EA has tasked DICE (developers of Battlefield shooter series) with bringing back The Star Wars 3rd person shooter back to current generation consoles and PC. The first video they released were still renders and emphasis on how excited the dev team is to work on Star Wars.

Part of me hopes that they will focus on how they plant to implement vehicles and space combat in the game.  Still, Battlefront on the Frosbite game engine sounds so exciting. We'll find out later today.