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 Welcome to ShufflingdeadCast, the Shufflingdead.com podcast! This is going to be a weekly, hour long audio show hosted by Newbs and sulci. Hit the jump for the full show notes. → Continue reading ShufflingdeadCast Episode 1: The iPad and Awkward Silences       
This week’s Magic card is Leatherback Baloth, another new awesome green creature from the Worldwake expansion set. Although they fall slightly behind Elephants in the continuum of creature type honourability, my favourite Magic the Gathering tribe is Beasts. They tend to look like crazed dinosaurs that eat forests for breakfast, and when they team up, they have immense crushing power. Worldwake’s offering of Beasts is pretty minimal, there are just two of them, and one of them is so poor it doesn’t even warrant entry into my Beast collection. The other though, is this mean mother to the left, Leatherback Baloth. Imagine having this dude out on turn three (or two with mana acceleration) as an effective attacker and blocker in the early game, allowing you to build up to more Beasts, the kind that turn this guy into an indestructible, trampling juggernaut.  Yesterday, I reported that Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata had a good laugh about the iPad. Now, Jobs is getting a little wound up about everybody mocking his new device, and doing a little heckling of his own. In a town hall with his employees, Jobs started an angry rant against Google, unhappy that they were invading his company’s smart phone turf. Ever the showman, Jobs capped off his tirade with “This don’t be evil mantra: ‘It’s bullshit.’” “Don’t be evil” is Google’s informal corporate slogan. Jobs’ iPad has received a lot of criticism for not supporting Adobe’s Flash, and now he’s let people know why it doesn’t. He feels “they [Adobe] are lazy… they have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it… Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy.” He added that Flash will soon be dead with the rise of HTML5. Not willing to take things lying down, Adobe has thrown up a collection of what iPads trying to access Flash encrusted sites might look like on their blog. Until Adobe’s blogger got in a bit of trouble for it, this collection included a slice of Bang Bros. The implication, of course: you can’t look at porn on your iPad during meetings, so don’t even bother with the thing.
The Interneter of the Week is Matt Casamassina. He’s the former Editor-in-Chief of the Nintendo channel over at IGN.com, who recently betrayed Nintendo and switched over to being “Editor-at-Large” for the site. Ass-amassina started out as editor of N64.com in 1997, which quickly became the N64 section of IGN. Back then, Matt had a passionate love for Nintendo, the kind of love the company deserves, and he maintained those feelings for many years. His ties to the company grew strong indeed, and culminated with his face winding up on a character in Perfect Dark. He also stalked (now former) Nintendo Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Affairs Perrin Kaplan, and developed a bizarre, slightly sexual, relationship with the woman. As the years wore on, and friendly faces like Kaplan left the company, Matt began to feel his love for Nintendo wane. Despite the masses continually mocking the absence of games present on the N64 and GameCube, their words only got to him with their attacks on the Wii. Matt was converted to the angry masculinity of HD consoles and became Editor at Large for IGN in 2009. Before he went crazy, I regarded Matt as one of my writing heroes. He was someone who turned writing for a fansite into a career, invented fun characters like Ed the rumour mongering Janitor, and always maintained his Nintendo cred. Matt Casamassina, Shufflingdead salutes you for occasionally making the internet a more inspiring place.  We all know of the athletic excellence on display every year at the Nerd Olympics, but does gaming have a place at that other Olympics? Canadian magazine Maclean’s recently pondered that very question in an article entitled “Will there ever be a Olympic medal for ‘Call of Duty’?” The publication spoke with CEO of the Global Gaming League Ted Owen, who claims “gaming has its place in the world stage.” He feels, and rightly so, “it’s the same skills as if you were a hockey player or a baseball player, anything like that.” Owen argues that pro gamers in China and Korea are treated like celebrities, where people have the proper respect for a well-timed Zerg rush. I think he also uses the term “eSports,” but maybe Maclean’s just made that up. In any case, Owen hasn’t gotten very far; the IOC continues to ignore his pleas for Olympic gaming. Superhero and Olympic gold medalist for snowboarding Ross Rebagliati opposes Mr. Owen’s idea. Despite coming up in a time when snowboarding lacked recognition in professional athletics, Rebagliati has no respect for gaming as a sport. He claims “sport has to have some kind of physical act.” I guess Ross never played that game in Mario Party where you have to rotate the joystick really fast.  Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, who has successfully taken over the world with his company’s Wii and DS video game devices, took the time to have a good laugh at Steve Jobs and his magical iPad. Speaking from an undisclosed location, Mr. Iwata chided the iPad tablet as being nothing but a bigger iPod Touch, and added “there were no surprises for me.” Iwata went on to claim that 3D gaming is not the future, downplaying the investment Sony has made in 3D TVs. Having thoroughly destroyed Sony on two fronts this generation, Iwata probably has a better grasp of what consumers want.  Famed creator of dudebro religious icon Gears of War Cliff Bleszinski has utilized The Twitter to make an announcement of an announcement. He started out with a little tease, “Kick ass news soon. VERY soon. Watch this space…” and proceeded to really amp up the hype with “Keep your eyes open for ‘megaton face melting news.’” Bleszinski has previously melted the faces off many broheim with his two Gears of War games, both of which sold to young men doubting their sexuality. Playing as grizzled meat mountain Marcus Fenix reassured bros that video games are not, as they loved to say in their youth, “gay.” Personally, I’m hoping CliffyB has something of merit to announce, like he’s seen the light and is now making shooters exclusively for the Wii, instead of the bland and obvious like Gears of War 3.  The Australian Government is broadening its pornography restrictions to ban small breasts and female ejaculation. Senator Barnaby Joyce has proclaimed that porn featuring small-breasted women has a pedophilic insinuation which promotes the practice. That much of the porn in his country is being produced in the United States, where the age of participants is strictly regulated, is of no consequence. Perhaps the Government of Australia has forgotten that women of all ages have small breasts, including, one would assume, many of the women in Australia. I can’t help but wonder what these politicians think of all the men banging flat-chested women at home, I suppose they’re all a bunch of wannabe-pedophiles, just tiding themselves over with legal (for now) tail. You never know who might be a pedophile; there could be one around any corner! Once Australia’s taken care of the images of small-breasted women, they will really have to consider what to do with the small breasted women themselves. Afterall, they’re out there, just walking around with their small breasts, turning previously upstanding men into deplorable pedophiles. Surely, this cannot be tolerated. Next we’ll be hearing about mandatory breast enlargements at 18 with a C-cup minimum for all women. The Australian government has also directed customs officials to prevent depictions of female ejaculation from entering the country. No specific reason has been given, although it’s probably because someone in power thinks it’s “yucky.” The targeted material is being banned by filing it under current rules in the Classification Guidelines, which outlaw “golden showers” and “abhorrent depictions.” The thought of women enjoying sex is apparently an unwelcome image to some. Australia’s proposed internet filter will have to get a whole lot broader if it’s going to stop people from seeing these two, fairly mundane, facets of human sexuality.  No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle: The sequel to one of my favourite Wii games, Desperate Struggle fixes a lot of what was wrong with the original, but also feels a little hollow. Although the first NMH had a lot of filler, the sequel has essentially none, and the game feels oddly paced because of it. I love the 8-bit mini-games, but now they’re entirely optional, and there don’t seem to be any side-quests. Without the need to make money between boss fights, I feel like I’m just blasting my way through the game instead of taking the time to really enjoy the experience.  A couple months ago, I named General Manager of EA Montreal Alain Tascan a Shameful Human of the Week. That was back when he announced his studio would be giving up on making Wii games, and would instead focus on the 360 and PS3. Well, now Tascan has clarified that he feels part of his studio’s problem was making bad games, but apparently you’re only allowed to make good games for 360 and PS3 because, he feels:
Tascan still shows no interest in developing a Wii game with some effort behind it, and refuses to acknowledge the viability of such a game. That pretty much reveals Tascan’s, EA’s, and third party developer’s opinions in general, doesn’t it? If you make a Wii game, it better be awful shovel-ware that you trick the masses into buying, but if you’re going to be making a 360/PS3 game, then you’d better actually try. |
 
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January 31st, 2010 by 
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