Welcome to the June 27th, 2008 edition of

Real Talk with Rubang B

First of all, I wanted to make sure nobody missed these 2 great threads about MGS4.

One of them is a great gem discovered by vaio, and it argues that Solid Snake has no penis, and uses several examples from each game in the series.  Here is a link, and a picture from it to sell you on it if you didn't catch it earlier.

LOL! Solid Snake Has No Penis

Now that's real!

The second one was about an article from BrainyGamer, found by jman8, with a nice comparison between D.W. Griffith and Hideo Kojima, for better and for worse.  I thought it was a great article so I wanted to hype it up here in Real Talk, but apparently it was too intellectual for all the fanboys so nobody came in to flip out about how revolutionary MGS4 cutscenes are for gaming.

Brainy Gamer comments on MGS4 cutscenes

Ok, now let's cut to the real talk:

Mega Man 9

This announcement was just beautiful gold.  They're rocking NES-styled 8-bit sprites (day one purchase confirmed), bringing Dr. Wily back, and they've confessed that they're trying to match the greatness of Mega Man 2, which gained a lot of Ru-Respect™ from me, because to me it's like admitting that everything after 2 was going downhill, which is the truth (although my favorite is 3 simply because it has the bosses from 2 and 3, but 2 has the better music of course).  Also, this game will have some gravity-switching magnetized platforms, similar to the 2-D areas of Galaxy, and I've always loved that in any game, so it should be some grade A grueling platforming with some crazy tricks learned in the 12 years since the shitfest of Mega Man 8.  This is an actual screenshot:

They're keeping it simple and it's beautiful.  This game might even be the one to fulfill my lifelong fantasy: a game that wastes no time on grafyx so they can dump all their time into making 892017519057 levels and enemies and weapons so it takes 29057 hours to beat.  Sadly, this will only have 8 robot masters, but I'm still dreaming it has longer levels and more mini-bosses, and they've already confirmed some classic bosses will return, so it's definitely going in the right direction.  I haven't been this pumped for an 8-bit game since SMB3.

They're basically pulling the same move Konami did when they retconned Contra all the way back to 3 and made Contra 4 on the DS as retro as possible, and made it Contra 3 Part 2.  Hopefully this will work as a Mega Man 2-2.

Castlevania Judgement

Which brings us to Konami, who has gone batshit crazy and announced a Castlevania fighter, in which you still collect hearts and use them for your special weapons.  On the one hand, it has Simon Belmont, understudy for Brawl, so I'm ready to rock, but on the other hand, I'm still in shock.  They did give me Contra 4, so they're on my good side for now.  I actually WELCOME pointless fighter spinoffs.  I liked Mega Man: The Power Battle, Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, and TMNT: Tournament Fighters, which was even made by Konami, and was one of the 3 games I had to master in the Blockbuster World Videogame Championships 1993 (along with NBA Jam and that crappy Judge Dredd platformer, ugh).

GoNintendo revealed the first screen of Simon Belmont uppercutting the hell out of Alucard's nuts, representing the oldschool hypermasculine beefcake Castlevanias nutjabbing the new anime-femme-goth Castlevanias, which is this game's main draw for me.

Now that's real!

More screens are available here at JeuxFrance.

Since it's Konami and they've made fighters before, I do think it will come out better than that Sonic Fighters game and other spinoff fighting crap.

Montana Hatchet: The Real Talk Exclusive Tell-All

This week Rubang B has pulled some strings to bring you an exclusive interview with one of our very own moderators, the man with the plan, the threadlockin' spamknockin' celebri-mod, MontanaHatchet!

RealTalk: What's the first game you remember playing?

MontanaHatchet: Super Mario World!

RT: What's your name?

MH: Noah.

RT: What's your favorite state?

MH: ...Montana.

RT: What's your favorite tool?

MH: Hatchet.

RT: What's your favorite weapon?

MH: Francisca.

RT: What's your favorite food?

MH: Gyros.

RT: How long have you been a mod?

MH: About 9 months.

RT: How does it feel to be a mod?

MH: Proud.

RT: What's your favorite mod power?

MH: Deleting comments/editing posts/locking threads.

RT: Do people hang out in trucks in parking lots in Montana like they do in Arizona?

MH: Not when the grizzly bears are hungry.

RT: Which recent boycott in the forums has been your favorite, and why?

MH: The Beer Boycott, held by RolStoppable. I think it's very noble.

RT: What's the last game you played and loved and why?

MH: Grand Theft Auto IV. Now a lot of people on the internet seem to hate this game, but I love the storyline, mission structure, and friends/hanging out systems. Plus, the amount of depth in this game is amazing. You think you would find a guy called "Cluck Norris" in your average fried chicken joint? Didn't think so!

RT: What's the last game you played and hated and why?

MH: Well, I recently played Team Fortress 2 for the first time. It may have been an unfair judgment, since I was playing on a very small screen. However, the combination of the bobbing, constantly getting owned, and crappy graphics made me nearly vomit (luckily I had Oreos nearby).

Since I believe that judgment might be a little skewed (the screen was pretty small and I was a noob), my next victim is SUPER PAPER MARIO! Who the hell thought of this?!! As if the fact that they completely stretched the formula of the series thin isn't enough, they took out the one thing that made it good: The fact that it was an RPG.

Hell, if I wanted a Platformer I could play the several hundred other Mario games that exist.  I love RPGs, and I wanted to play them with my favorite little Italian. Sadly, the market is so barebones this generation that a platformer with RPG elements can pass for one, and that's just pathetic.

I could rant on and on, but my point is that Nintendo obviously whored out the series for casuals, and sadly, the sales show it.

RT: Did you or did you not have relations with that woman?

MH: No, I did not have sex with that woman Monica Lewinsky!

RT: Well there you have it.  The wisdom comes from G-d to Montana to me to you the viewers.

Now that's real!

We miss you over Joystiq RubangB... forget about Vladimir Cole. You need to post in Joystiq again.

You are full of awesomeness =p

very nice, i hated the interview though, i wish you got someone more funny. j/k

The interview with montana was awesome. I loved it. It was like you were trying to ask all of the questions in a matter of 30 seconds. That was how short the questions and answers were until the last one.

"Ru-Respect™"

That's awesome!

OMFG!!

THE INTERVIEW IS FAKE

MONTANA HATCHET WASNT A MOD FOR 9 MONTHS LIES!!!!

Anyhow nice new feature.

LOL, that was awsome Rubang "The Host whos a ghost", BRILLIANT!!!

Loved the whole read especially your mod interview, this was way too funny

Very nice, good interview, you ask the hard hitting questions the viewers want answers to:

RT: What's your favorite state?

MH: ...Montana.

RT: What's your favorite tool?

MH: Hatchet.


I knew it!!

Chad Warden of Liberty was made on my birthday

I miss the homies over there, but I'm in too deep here at VGC.  I don't want to have multiple forums open and spread myself too thin between them.  I'm really here all day every day, and I really prefer a forum setup where we can have profiles and PMs and friends and start our own threads, rather than duke it out in the comment sections which are all off the first page by the end of the day, never to be found again.  I've gone VGC for life.

Hey did you ever see the piece at GameDaily where Justin McElroy interviewed me about the NDF?  (link)

I liked Super Paper Mario, but I haven't played either of the real Paper Marios yet, so I'm sure that's why.  I have the original on my Wii from the VC, but haven't played it yet.  I have played Super Mario RPG and both Mario & Luigi handheld RPGs and loved them all too.  Are the console Paper Marios that much better than the handheld Mario RPGs?