Episode 61: A Reservation About Future Reservations
On the surface this probably looks like another article where I rag on Nintendo, but it's not. This article, though related to Nintendo, is actually a stinging indictment on video game stores like GameStop.com and Electronics Boutique. It came to me while standing in line buying a game I'm sure I haven't played in months, there were signs everywhere asking me to put my money on The Legend of Zelda: Revolution. Nearly everything you read in this article was thought of as I listened to the customer talk to the employee, I couldn't wait to get home and flesh this idea out. Forget the game I was going to buy, this article is more important than Advance Wars DS, Burnout Legends, or whatever other game I was buying at the time. While I didn't go out on a limb and predict anything, I do have to say that nearly everything in this article proved accurate. Nintendo has since pushed back that GameCube Zelda game until late summer/early fall, around the time the Revolution will be gearing up for the launch. What are the chances of there being a Zelda game on both the GameCube and the Revolution? I would say zero. So what will all of those people do that reserved the game? I suspect they'll forget about it until sometime in 2009 when they get a call letting them know that their Revolution Zelda is ready to pick up. I guess we'll find out at E3, but I still say that GameStop.com is in the wrong for even trying to get people to reserve a game that hasn't been announced. In Retrospect: A-

Episode 62: Is Nintendo Controlled by George Lucas?
Okay, so here we have a third Nintendo article in a row ... even I'm starting to lose interest in talking about Nintendo. Seeing how we had talked about Zelda on the Revolution in Feud 61 and whether or not Nintendo was out of touch in Feud 62, this 63rd Feud should have been something about Sony or Microsoft or somebody. But it wasn't, it was another story that people took as me bashing Nintendo. But Big N did it to them self. The only reason we're talking about Nintendo is because around the time of this article they announced that some of their older games would be "improved." Remaking classic games is tricky, since you are aiming these products at people who remember the nostalgia of the game. It's just not the same when the graphics have been slightly improved and the game play is tweaked, you just aren't getting the same sensation you got 15 years ago when you first played Super Mario World. This article was our attempt to not only criticize Nintendo for even suggesting they would update their games, but also George Lucas, a movie director I have never admired. Say what you will about Star Wars, but the fact that he keeps going back and adding to it is nothing short of insulting. All artists look at what they created and want to go back and smooth out the imperfections, but George Lucas has taken this to a whole new level. And to make matters worse, you can't even find the original versions of those Star Wars movies anymore ... which makes George Lucas not just a perfectionist, but the jerk that won't let us see Han shoot first. Please Nintendo, don't be a George Lucas! In Retrospect: B+

Episode 63: The Forgettable Game.com
Phew, we're finally past all of those Nintendo topics. The Forgettable Game.com is one of those articles that didn't take long to plot out; it's the type of article that was just waiting to be written by somebody. The moment Pocket Games (a magazine that apparently prides itself on its wide knowledge of all portable game systems) forgot about the Game.com was the moment I knew I had to remind them. How could these people forget about the Game.com, one of the worst systems of all time? The console magazines still bring up the Jaguar as an utter failure, but at least that system had a few good games. The Game.com? Nothing. But then, the Game.com does undermine one of the Nintendo DS' biggest innovations, the touch screen. The Game.com was doing the touch screen long before Nintendo even thought about porting Mario 64 to a portable. Perhaps it was the three Nintendo articles before this one, but after running this story we received a lot of mail suggesting we were against the Nintendo DS. Certainly we aren't, but we do enjoy looking at Nintendo's "innovations" and questioning how innovative they actually are. Hopefully in the future Pocket Games won't forget the classic portables that nobody bought. In Retrospect: B

Episode 64: Remaking Peter Jackson
Remaking Peter Jackson was yet another attempt to get people to go out and watch movies they wouldn't have normally seen. After King Kong and the Lord of the Rings series, Peter Jackson is one popular fellow. But what's even more shocking is how good his recent games have been. Jackson may have disliked what EA did with the Lord of the Rings license, but it's hard to deny that a few of those games were actually well worth playing. King Kong was another fantastic game with good control and a nice sense of style. So if Peter Jackson can have this luck with those movies, why not all of those indie films he did years ago? They'll never make a Dead Alive game, but perhaps this article will light a fire under you to go out and rent it. Bad Taste is another classic gorefest, complete with some of the most grotesque effects you will ever see. Both of these movies would make for great games, but they also make for great movies ... so get out there and support these older Peter Jackson movies. And while you're at it, rent Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson's finest film. After all of those divisive articles it was nice to go back to something light and fun. In Retrospect: B+

Episode 65: How Not to Spell Gizmondo
Speaking of light and fun, How Not to Spell Gizmondo is one of our favorite Feuds about Tiger's failed portable. This Feud came entirely from reading Tiger's E3 2005 Product Guide, a little booklet with a lot of grammatical problems. Thanks to emails I learned that some of the supposed imperfections were in fact just the way the Brits spelled things, so there have been a couple of changes made to this article. But I still think it holds up as a funny article. To this day I wonder why they didn't hire a proof reader to find some of these problems, but I'm glad they didn't because it gave me a chance to write another mean-spirited article about the Gizmondo. You'll notice that this is also one of the only Feuds that features highlighted words, that was something we had played with but ultimately decided again for other articles. Perhaps the best reason to write this article was to get Dan Quayle and Ali G on Defunct Games! In Retrospect: B+

Episode 66: Greek Mythology According to Koei
So this article, Greek Mythology According to Koei, was actually submitted by another person who gave me the idea to write a whole Feud. Now mind you, I am the one that did the writing, but the story concept came from others. Later I would realize that the idea came from an issue of the PlayStation Magazine, which certainly didn't make me feel very good. Ever since this article I have been a little more careful about taking suggestions from other people. Don't get me wrong, I still want to hear from you, but not if you're stealing story ideas from other magazines. This article is riddled with problems, but at this point I'm just going to let it be. Oddly enough only a few people emailed me to tell me I ripped PSM off, but it was enough to make me feel embarrassed and a little used. That will never happen again. In Retrospect: C-

Episode 67: Hard News from an Opinionated Source
At Defunct Games I sometimes wonder if we're making a difference. Judging from the emails I get (and the hits the website gets) the site is extremely popular, but is it actually doing any good? Apparently it is! Hard News from an Opinionated Source was our attempt to curb 1up.com's rampant biased reporting ... and it worked! In this day and age it's sometimes hard to tell what is news and what is opinion, especially if you watch the cable news channels (like Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN). I hate it when I hear people try to pass opinions off as fact, no matter what you're talking about, so this article shouldn't surprise anybody. What surprised me was that very few other sites were tackling 1up's bias. I suspect that a big reason for the lack of outcry was that a lot of people agree with Jane and her opinions. Heck, to some extent I even agreed with Jane, but that isn't the point. If you're going to call yourself a "news" site you are expected to write the full story, not your opinions. We followed this article with a few blog posts (pointing out further examples of the biased reporting), but it only took 1up a month before they took a new direction. On her blog Jane has responded to me calling her the "Fox News of video game journalists," she apparently took it as a personal attack and not a business one. But I have nothing against Jane, heck, I downright expect her to give her opinion on her blogs. But not on a news story, I don't go to 1up.com to hear Jane's take on the PSP, I go there because I'm forced to look at all video game websites. All joking aside, this is one of my favorite articles because after we brought it to everybody's attention something was done about it. If you were one of the thousands who wrote into 1up regarding this issue I want to personally thank you, their site is a far better place now that they aren't spitting out unneeded editorials. In Retrospect: A

Episode 68: Leaving the Light Gun Where it Belongs
Some might be surprised to learn that this article has been in the back of my head since the beginning of Defunct Games, but I just never acted on it. Originally this article was intended to be part of a special feature about the arcade market, but I just couldn't get the rest of the articles to work so this ended up standing on its own. We got a lot of emails from people complaining that they don't want to give up their light guns; people enjoy shooting at their TV screen in the comfort of their own homes. I can certainly respect this opinion, but these days it would probably make more sense for the companies to just leave the guns in the arcade. Why not have a reason to leave the house? These light gun games rarely last more than a few hours, and most people don't play them enough to warrant the higher price. I can only imagine how many more emails I would have received if I suggested that Dance Dance Revolution should stay in the arcades. In Retrospect: B

Episode 69: Hot Coffee, Cold Shower
This Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas-related Feud is by far the most popular episode we've ever done. In a lot of ways this is the sequel to our earlier Feud defending Night Trap, we hit a lot of the same notes as we try to convince people that what you see in GTA is far from pornography. Judging by how angry all of these law makers were you would assume that San Andreas was non-stop nudity, but it's not. In fact, the nudity in San Andreas is so unrealistic that you might as well not call it nudity at all. We're talking about watching a fully dressed man have sex with a woman that looks more like a log than a real lady. In fact, I would go as far as to question CJ's taste in women. But I guess the mere idea of sexuality was enough to piss people off. But of all of the things to complain about in San Andreas, the nudity should probably be at the bottom of the list. If these Senators and Congressmen are indeed more troubled by the idea of sex than violence then you have to wonder if they are the right people to defend us. There are real problems in this world, including the corruption of a number of high ranking officials ... yet its San Andreas they are going after? In my opinion the idea of lying about taking us to war is far more damaging than watching two polygonal characters get it on. Of course the real problem here is that these politicians aren't that offended by this "pornography," it's nothing more than a way to sway voters to their side. As long as the voting public is made up of people who don't play games this will always be a way to drum up fake outrage. Say what you will about Jack Thompson, but he's probably the only person out there that actually believes what he says. In Retrospect: A

Episode 70: Putting Your Trust in the Blender
I'll admit it, I subscribed to Blender for quite a few years. My first exposure to Blender came when I found their "booth" at E3 2002; I picked up several issues and read them on the plane trip home. I was pleasantly surprised how much fun the magazine was, filled with all kinds of write-ups you don't get anywhere else. And the subscription rate could not be beat, I subscribed for three years for no more than $20 (a third of the price of magazines like EGM and GamePro). Although I don't always agree with their reviews, Blender does an excellent job covering the music industry ... but not so much the game industry. Of course, as a music magazine you don't really expect it to have video games. But they do, and that's where this article came from. Every issue they have one or two pages devoted to the game industry, complete with reviews and grades. But are they really reviewing games? Their reviews seem based more on what is on the back of the box than anything else; they rarely look at the full version of the game before giving it a final score. This was apparent when they decided to review SOCOM 3 several months before even the beta versions were sent out. In other cases they suggest that they played the game at E3 and are reviewing what they played. But no matter how you look at it, Blender's shady video game reviews should not be trusted. We expect our magazines to review the finished version of games, not something that was half done at a convention. Perhaps that's why I never re-upped my subscription. In Retrospect: B+

Episode 71: Entertainment Weekly - E3 in 274 Words
If we're going to make fun of Blender then we have to give Entertainment Weekly equal time. Considering that video games make more money than the music industry and the box office you might expect EW to spend some time talking about games. They do, but not very much time. Oh sure, they do special issues where that's all they talk about, but generally video games are given less than a page right next to the Broadway section. I hoped for more from Entertainment Weekly's E3 articles, but all I got was 274 words! I couldn't believe that they were able to summarize the entire event in 274. Actually, I still don't believe it, mostly because they didn't do a very good job of summarizing the event. Let's not forget that their game of the show was, of all things, King Kong. Oddly enough, this is another magazine I no longer have a subscription to. In Retrospect: B

Episode 72: Is Your Neighborhood Best Buy a Hypocrite?
In a word: Yes! Look, I have nothing against Best Buy, but if they are going to say no to adult rated video games then they sure as hell better have that policy for their movies, too. But Best Buy has no problem stocking movies that are wall to wall sex, such as the wonderful foreign film, The Dreamers. So it's okay to stock NC-17 rated movies but NOT okay to stock a game that is AO? It's these little inconsistencies that prove that most companies don't really understand the products they are selling. The truth is that Best Buy, like so many other companies, was just reacting to the media's take on San Andreas. But if there was that kind of outrage over a movie would Best Buy have stood down? I have a hunch they wouldn't have, controversy equals sales. Unfortunately this doesn't change the fact that Best Buy decided to take a stand against something that ended up making them look foolish. This is a fine article, but I worry that people will blame the Best Buy employees rather than the real people who make the buying decisions. Trust me; if we see those people at E3 we will give them a piece of our mind. In Retrospect: B

Episode 73: A Hasty Escape From G-Phoria
I hate G4. It is one of the most useless TV channels currently being pumped into my digital cable box. This should be the type of channel I love, it features video games and has a number of perky hosts ... but I just can't do it, it reminds me of all of the worst things about MTV. For one thing G4 barely has any shows about video games any more, instead featuring reruns of Fastlane, The Man Show, and Anime Unleashed. And don't forget about those car shows that would be a better fit on Spike TV or ESPN2. But just when I thought G4 couldn't get any worse I found myself hitchhiking on the road to G-Phoria! What a completely worthless awards show, the type that has more in common with the People's Choice Awards than the Oscars. Letting viewers vote on the games is no way to pick a winner, it's a way of finding out who the popular kid is. When most people have only played one or two of the nominations does it really matter what they think? They can go ahead and love Halo 2 all they want, but how can they say that's the best game of the year if it's one of the only games they played? This is especially unfair for the smaller games that actually attempted to do new and creative things. There are some things you should not leave up to your viewers, and choosing the awards for your gala event is one of them. In Retrospect: B-

Episode 74: Video Games Catch Falling Stars
Here's an article that seemed like a good idea at the time, but probably isn't as relevant as I thought. This was really a way for me to talk about Lynda Carter, David Duchovny, and even Powers Booth. These were real actors, the type of actors that were getting real parts ... but now they are forced to play on video games for scale. Part of me feels bad for these actors, it's a shame how quickly Hollywood forgets about talented people. But like day time talk shows, video games are here to catch those falling stars. Look back at it now I realize that this article is about games like Oblivion, a game I am hopelessly addicted to at the moment. I had completely forgotten about Lynda Carter's role in that game, but I will definitely listen for it when I play it again. In Retrospect: B-

Episode 75: Redefining Nintendo's DS
Okay, so we're not the first to mention that most DS games seem to have the letters "D" and "S" somewhere in the title. Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Resident Evil: Deadly Silence and Dig Dug: Digging Strike are all examples of this trend. I honestly don't know why I wrote this article, I can only assume that it was because I was running out of time and needed something quick. Or maybe I just wanted to throw Nintendo a bone, so many of these Feuds feature Big N as the butt of my jokes. Either way, this isn't the best article we've done lately, and unless you're a fan of reading articles you can find on other sites, I would just avoid this one all together. In Retrospect: C-

Episode 76: Sex, Lies, and Video Games
Sex, Lies, and Video Games is probably the only video game article to ever make you think about Princess Zelda as a sex symbol. She's hardly the most curvaceous woman in video games and probably the last person you would want to see in Playboy Magazine. Oh, did I mention that this article is actually about Playboy? With a name like that you probably think it's a sequel to a Steven Soderbergh movie, but this really has more to do with Playboy showing off nude versions of video game characters. Look, I know graphics have come a long way but there are still plenty of real women out there that are just looking for their big break. Forget showing me BloodRayne, it's time to bring us some real women ... these naked video game characters are kind of creepy. In Retrospect: B-

Episode 77: When Game Consoles Attack
This Feud actually came about because of all of those news reports about exploding video game systems. Both Sony and Microsoft ended up having to replace power cords because of the risk of fires and other damage. But these recalls happened four years after the systems came out, what took these companies so long? Of course, the PS2 and Xbox weren't the only systems that could hurt you, the PSP can be used as a gun (assuming you don't mind the bullets being UMD discs) and the Virtual Boy was real hard on your eye sight. To this day none of my systems have actually hurt anybody, but the idea that they could was enough to get me to write about it. Just remember, in this new world it's important to have a list of video game accessories next to you: a memory card, an extra control, and a fire extinguisher! In Retrospect: B-

Episode 78: Tiger Doesn't Want You to Buy the Gizmondo
This was actually our third and final Gizmondo story before its untimely death. This was written at the time when Tiger was getting ready to announce a new version of their Gizmondo ... months before the original system had even been released. The new version was a lot sexier and had a much better screen. It really made me ask why anybody would buy the outdated that hadn't come out yet when there was a much improved version just around the corner. Of course, that Gizmondo redux never happened and this article ended up being more speculation than news. But this did give us a chance to bring up the biggest problem with the unit; that you have to watch TV commercials on it in order to play games. If it weren't for this advertising I would have been behind the unit, as it is Defunct Games will probably be reviewing the Gizmondo games sooner than later. I will admit, though, that new Gizmondo we featured was a far better looking unit ... it's a shame they didn't go with that in the first place. In Retrospect: B-

Episode 79: A Fight over Gamers First Amendment Rights
I love the idea that Nintendo is FINALLY giving online gaming a go, but they seem more than a little scared about going in the water. Neither Mario Kart nor Animal Crossing featured voice chat ... or any chat for that matter. Although both games were fun, the online mode felt like I was playing the computer, except that the computer would cheat the entire time. But this article is not completely accurate, no more than a week or two later Sony announced their PSP headset which allowed for voice communication in SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo. These days Nintendo has even given in, but not all the way. Metroid Hunters allows for voice chat, but not during the game. One of these days maybe I'll understand what Nintendo has against communication, but for now I say it's just their inexperience in the field. Let's hope E3 changes all that, I'm not sure if I would be very excited it I learned that the online Revolution games were going to be made so people couldn't communicate. Please Nintendo, take a page out of Microsoft's playbook, being able to formulate plans and work as a team is a good thing, regardless of what you might think. In Retrospect: B

Episode 80: What Has EA Done to our Super Heroes?
After 80 Feuds some people were starting to wonder why I wasn't talking about all of the bad things Electronic Arts has done recently. Although EA is far from my favorite company, I have spent a lot of time in the last five years defending the biggest video game company in America. But something had to be done about EA's recent desire to screw over all of your favorite comic book characters. It's one thing to mess up a game based on that dreadful Catwoman movie, it I'm getting the feeling that EA won't stop until they've ruined every comic book character you grew up with. That Marvel Nemesis game was horrible, the type of product that makes you question why it was even released in the first place. And as bad as the console version was, the DS port is a thousand times worse. Thankfully not all of EA's licenses are that bad, but it does make us worry that this is one company that doesn't understand what goes into a super hero game. Here's hoping that EA gets that Superman game right ... but I can tell you now that I'm not looking forward to it. In Retrospect: B-