What ‘Game of Thrones’ Looks Like in 16 Bits

From the “I wish this were a real game” department:

That mag­nif­i­cent bas­tard  Doc­tor Octoroc , the video game artist and musi­cian who gave the inter­webz such gems as the 8-bit Saved by the Bell game and 8-Bit Break­ing Bad  (among lots of other assorted kick­assery) has done it again with 16-bit Game of Thrones .

The hilar­i­ous YouTube video, which was another mashup orig­i­nally cre­ated for Col­lege Humor, man­ages to cap­ture the 16-bit Super Nin­tendo aes­thetic perfectly:

Beware of MAJOR SPOILERS though if you haven’t yet seen the show or read the books!

‘Turtle Power’ Documentary Coming Soon, Has a Kick-ass Trailer

If you have ever con­sid­ered your­self a TMNT fan in any capac­ity, then this doc­u­men­tary needs to be on your radar.

Tur­tle Power: The Defin­i­tive His­tory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles is an upcom­ing indie doc­u­men­tary from Cana­dian pro­ducer Isaac Elliott-Fisher of i.Productions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with  Faux­Pop TV  that cel­e­brates over 25 years of TMNT history.

“Cur­rently we have col­lected well over 100 hours of con­tent, hun­dreds of stills, and over 60 in-depth inter­views with the peo­ple who cre­ated the Tur­tles, the artists behind the orig­i­nal comics, the design­ers of the toys, the voices and tech­ni­cians of the car­toons, the magic mak­ers of the movies, and the loyal fans world wide.”

It has a totally kick-ass trailer that debuted a few weeks ago, which you can watch right here:

If you’re not even just a lit­tle bit excited after watch­ing that, then clearly you’ve got some­thing shoved up your shell.

One of the most inter­est­ing things about TMNT has always been how it started as a joke and grew into a wildly pop­u­lar world­wide phe­nom­e­non, or as the film puts it, a series of “happy accidents.”

With the Tur­tle Power doc­u­men­tary in the works, Nickelodeon’s new TMNT ani­mated show just around the cor­ner, and a new live-action TMNT film set to hit the­aters in 2013, it’s an awe­some time to be a Ninja Tur­tles fan.

Live-Action Ninja Turtles Return for 2011

In geeky movie news this month that makes me feel like a fifth-grader again, TMNT co-creater Peter Laird con­firmed in Vari­ety rumors of another live-action  Tur­tles  movie planned for 2011.  The announce­ment comes on the heels of  TMNT’s 25th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion.  Other than mak­ing me feel old, I’m also damn excited.  Because in Hol­ly­wood, every­thing I loved grow­ing up in the 1980s is sud­denly cool again.  The new Tur­tles  film will be pro­duced by Scott Med­nick of Leg­endary Pic­tures, who is cur­rently pro­duc­ing the soon to be released Where The Wild Things Are,  another live-action fan­tasy film (which hap­pens to be based on yet another com­pletely awe­some thing from my child­hood).  And if these screen­shots are any indi­ca­tion of what’s in store for the next TMNT , then color me green with excitement.

After the orig­i­nal live-action movie, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles  films went from bad to worse, though 2007’s ani­mated  TMNT  was OK.  Then again, I’m of the opin­ion that the first Tur­tles movie is one of the great­est if under­rated comic book movies of all time—but I may be a lit­tle biased.  I was obsessed with all things Ninja Tur­tles as a kid.  Like  really  obsessed.  If it had a TMNT logo on it, I owned it.  I could quote the movies word for word (prob­a­bly still can).

My wish­list for the new live-action Tur­tles movie:

• Darker, grit­tier, edgier Tur­tles truer to the orig­i­nal Mirage comic books.
• Curse words.  Most TMNT fans have grown up, and so should the movies.
• Sex (if only to sat­isfy my mor­bid curiosity). 
• Real­stic CGI that doesn’t look like CGI.
• Back to basics origins/roots sto­ry­line. (Think Bat­man Begins .)
• April O’Neil, and any­one other than Paige Turco to play her.
• Blood, weapons, and graphic violence.
• Moar Raphael.*

Things I could live with­out:

• Shell-tastic tur­tle puns.
• Any char­ac­ter who exists solely in the Archie comics series.
• No Venus.
• Ran­dom kid-who-meets-the-Turtles char­ac­ter (a’la Keno in Turltes II, and later Yoshi in Tur­tles III).
• Any sto­ry­line involv­ing time travel.
• A Turtles-themed rap song.
• A PG rating.
• Cowabunga.

The sucky part about all this?  Wait­ing two years.

*Raphael is still the coolest tur­tle, and if you don’t agree with me, I’m not shar­ing my Ninja Tur­tles fruit snacks with you.

Rock Band 2: The Perfect Game?

Okay, I know Rock Band 2 has been out for a few months, but after get­ting it for Christ­mas and being com­pletely con­sumed by it ever since, I feel more than a lit­tle com­pelled to declare my love for it.

My pre­vi­ous Rock Band expe­ri­ence had been lim­ited to a one-night stand with Rock Band 1 at a seedy karaoke bar in Bal­ti­more where the gui­tars and drums had seen bet­ter days and the same bunch of drunk douchebags kept get­ting up to play “Wanted Dead Or Alive” over and over and over again.  And know­ing how expen­sive it was to buy the whole out­fit, I fig­ured I’d wait it out and keep myself occu­pied with the Gui­tar Hero series I already owned and loved for PS2.  Besides, I had heard about Rock Band’s hard­ware issues, the drums break­ing, the guitar’s strum­mer suck­ing, and felt fully jus­ti­fied not ever buy­ing it.

So when Rock Band 2 came out and I heard about all its fea­tures, new songs, and improve­ments over the orig­i­nal Rock Band, it imme­di­ately went on my wish­list.  But being some­what broke around that time and try­ing to save money for Christ­mas shop­ping, I held off.

And then I got Rock Band 2 for Christ­mas, and I felt like Ral­phie open­ing his Red Ryder BB gun.

Fun Solo Play

I took it home and set it up imme­di­ately, where it is cur­rently dom­i­nat­ing my liv­ing room.  I cranked the vol­ume on my sur­round sound sys­tem and tried a cou­ple of Quick­play Solos on the gui­tar just to warm things up–I’ve had dif­fi­cutly putting it down ever since.  Since I was already famil­iar with the Gui­tar Hero series, I had no prob­lems play­ing gui­tar for Rock Band 2 and was suprised at the qual­ity of the gui­tar con­troller.  Very smooth, nicely weighted, and realistic-looking.  Next I tried out the drums, which I had never played before, and I admit it took some get­ting used to.  My hand-eye coor­di­na­tion is awe­some, but my foot-eye coor­di­na­tion?  Not so much.  Hit­ting those beats embed­ded in the foot pedal beats were rough, and I’m glad nobody was around on my maiden voy­age of rock to watch me make a com­plete fool of myself.  But still, the drums are FUN.  Sur­pris­ingly so.  And I’m get­ting bet­ter.  Then I tried out the mic and sang for a few songs (again grate­ful that nobody was around) and by that point the sun was com­ing up and I couldn’t tell you where the time went.

Awe­some Mul­ti­player

The next night I invited fam­ily over, anx­ious to try out the mul­ti­player.  I should pref­ace this by say­ing  that except for my brother-in-law, my fam­ily does NOT play video games.  But with a few drinks in them and my sin­cere promise not to laugh, they let loose–on Easy mode, of course.  The game­play is so infec­tious on mul­ti­player since everyone’s try­ing to do their best so they don’t screw up the song for the other peo­ple in the band.  And it helps that the music is great.  I was really impressed how much fun it was for a bunch of non-gamers.  Also, the char­ac­ter cre­ation process was really fun; every­one had a good time with that.

Tour Mode is Addic­tive

Then my boyfriend and I started a band (I’m the drum­mer, he’s the lead gui­tarist) and play­ing through all the venues and rack­ing up fans and cash is super fun.  Although I think some gigs com­pletely whore you–$20 bucks for a 5-star per­for­mance?  Seri­ously, GTFO.  Warn­ing: play­ing Rock Band 2 with your sig­nif­i­cant other will lead to argu­ments.  Like when I want to spend all our money on cute slutty out­fits for my char­ac­ter, and he wants to save up for bet­ter qual­ity instruments.

New to Rock Band period?

Here’s why you should buy Rock Band 2 instead of Rock Band 1:

• Abil­ity to pur­chase lots of addi­tional tracks = unlim­ited replay value
• Improved drum set, com­pat­i­ble with cym­bal kit add-on (sold separately)
• Improved gui­tar with bet­ter strum bar and more real­is­tic feel
• You can import all the songs from Rock Band 1 (for $5/500 points)
• No Fail mode
• Online world tour play

I can’t see any rea­son to even go back and pur­chase Rock Band 1.  Rock Band 2 is really that much better.

Awe­some solo game?  Check.  Awe­some mul­ti­player game?  Check.  Kick­ass music?  Check.  Fun for both gamers and non-gamers?  Check.  Just a few rea­sons why I think Rock Band 2 is the per­fect game.

Awesome RPG Intros

It wasn’t so long ago that RPGs were sim­ple affairs involv­ing a few different-colored pix­els with a sword roam­ing over an end­lessly sim­i­lar land­scape fight­ing other different-colored pix­els to mind-numbingly repet­i­tive music (I’m look­ing at you, Dragon Warrior).

But over the years, as game con­soles have evolved, so too has the game­play and the immer­sive expe­ri­ence we’ve come to expect from RPGs.  With plots and char­ac­ters that com­pletely suck us in as we jour­ney along­side our hero, RPGs have been ele­vated to the level of sto­ry­telling art.  And one of the best ways RPGs plunge us into these vast worlds of might and magic is through the game’s open­ing sequence.

Here are a few of my favorites from sys­tems past and present:

Lunar Sil­ver Star Story Com­plete

Plat­form: Playsta­tion
Year: 1998

A re-make of the orig­i­nal Lunar (Sega CD), Sil­ver Star Story’s open­ing fea­tures a great orig­i­nal song that intro­duces our hero, Alex, and his love inter­est Luna, while giv­ing us a glimpse of all the party char­ac­ters we’ll meet along the way in our quest to become a Drag­on­mas­ter and defeat the evil Ghaleon.

Lunar 2: Eter­nal Blue

Plat­form: Sega CD
Year: 1995

Okay, so I may be a lit­tle biased putting both Lunar games on my list, but this open­ing for the orig­i­nal Lunar 2: Eter­nal Blue was pretty impres­sive for its time, con­sid­er­ing the depth of its sto­ry­telling and the Sega CD’s lim­i­ta­tions.  A lengthy intro­duc­tion that com­bines both story and cred­its, we see Lucia’s awak­en­ing on the Blue Star one thou­sand years after the first game’s events to her omi­nous pre­mo­ni­tion for the world of Lunar.  Beau­ti­ful music and atmos­pheric visu­als, Lunar 2 remains my favorite RPG of all time.

Wild Arms

Plat­form: Playsta­tion
Year: 1996

The Wild Arms open­ing intro­duces Rudy, Jack, and Cecelia, three unlikely heroes whose des­tinies inter­twine to take up ARMs and save the land of Fil­gaia.  A beau­ti­ful intro to an amaz­ing game.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Obliv­ion

Plat­form: PC, Xbox 360
Year: 1996

Emporer Uriel Sep­tim speaks his dying words with a lit­tle help from Patrick Stew­art.  Does it get much more epic than this? A fit­ting intro for one of the most epic RPGs ever made.

The Leg­end of Zelda: Twi­light Princess

Plat­form: Wii
Year: 2006

An under­stated but effec­tive intro that sets the mood for the entire game, the open­ing for Twi­light Princess harkens back to The Oca­rina of Time with Link rid­ing his faith­ful Epona through the twilight-shrouded land­scape of Hyrule.