Virtual Fools

We’re comin’ at you quickly with another podcast. And guess what? J’s back! And what does that mean? It means we get to discuss potato chips and beer. Oh, and some video games too, I suppose.

Newsflash: J LOVES POINTS. Tune in to hear him talk about his misadventures with Avatar: The Last Airbender and Madden 06.

Though we’ve played a few demos and some Geometry Wars 2, this week is really all about Braid. With about 40 minutes … Continue Reading

Hanging out at the Jersey shore, Bobby is joined by Kevin and Jimmy of the Virtual Fools to discuss their recent gaming habits and talk about their history with the boardwalks of New Jersey, including the trip they took that day to Seaside Heights to play classic arcade games.

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Coming off of a big news week, J and Bobby tone it down and discuss the new Giant Bomb.com, five weeks of Xbox Live Arcade releases, Bobby playing games on Live, game pricing, downloadable content, and some stuff they’ve been playing.

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Awesome music by virt

Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer recently pointed readers to the Versus CluClu Land blog run by Iroquois Pliskin (Metal Gear?!). Both of these authors write intelligent pieces about videogames—something I used to do often but have slowed down on while doing game studies in grad school and juggling all sorts of other outside projects. Every so often I read a post that sparks me to respond and I wanted to share one of those with you today.

Iroquois Pliskin writes about moral rewards in games and points to an article from Patrick Klepek on … Continue Reading

Fresh off of two days of intense media coverage of this year’s E3 Media and Business summit, J and Bobby discuss Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony’s press conferences and take some E3 questions on the air.

Their opinions? “Eh.” “Yay.” and “Meh.” Listen to figure out which presentation earned which sound.

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Awesome music by virt

Bobby and J are back after a long break from their first podcast series the Gamers Club Podcast.

Come join the audio entertainment as Bobby and J discuss Grand Theft Auto IV, recent game announcements, price drops, Spore, some cool gaming images they found on the innernet, videogame reviews from the future, and the games they’ve been playing.

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Awesome music by virt

Show Notes:
Square’s iPod Game: Song Summoner: The Unsung Hero

Old School Revivals:
Chrono … Continue Reading

Good friend of the Virtual Fools J (aka the letter J) forwared to me a link to a Rolling Stones article online that asks if Grand Theft Auto IV is the Best Popcorn Movie of the Summer?. I’m sure 5/8s of the population cried out “no, wait, that’s a game!!” before reading the article but the rest of us looked to see how author Peter Travers was going to draw parallels between the game and a movie. It’s a nice review of some of the narrative and plot and he purposely says that’s he’s not going to talk … Continue Reading

You may recall the name “J” as a Virtual Fools writer who contributed a few years back. J is IDKMYBFF from college and though we live several states apart we still talk games every chance we get. So it’s no surprise that the day after the Grand Theft Auto IV launch hits we’re sharing our initial impressions. We’ve both only been able to put a few hours into it, but those first few hours make a huge difference. When J IMed me this morning to give me his little review, I decided I needed to share it … Continue Reading

The Virtual Fools are proud to present the “best” of 2007. The judging criteria has been quite rigorous: “pick your favorites of the good stuff that you actually got to watch/read/hear/play/experience.” Read on!

Best Film

Kevin - The most touching film I saw this year was The Savages (directed by Tamara Jenkins). Despite the fact that it virtually oozed “indie” and felt similar to many recent vintage pop-indie films during key scenes (especially Little Miss Sunshine), it was by turns serious and funny. This will probably go down as the year of Philip Seymour Hoffman - though each … Continue Reading

What I am about to write will be slightly dripped in self-congratulatory language and somewhat overblown reasoning. Before I get too deep into it, let it be known that one of the reasons why I waited as long as I did had to do with money. Cold, hard cash. Video games require wayyyyyy too much of the stuff. Constantly owning new games for new systems requires a strictly apportioned amount of one’s income, not to mention free time. Further, the massive costs involved in gaming are not simply an obstacle preventing preteens from owning their … Continue Reading

I’ve decided that it’s okay to purchase games for my iPod so long as they are a natural fit with the iPod control mechanism. The click-wheel doesn’t allow for a lot of movement, but it works for a few things. It’s good for moving things left to right, like a paddle controller from the days of yore. I saw that Peggle was ported to the iPod, and being that it’s so damn good, I figured I’d give it a whirl for five bucks.

If you have not played Peggle … Continue Reading

If you’re looking for GameSpot staff members’ blog links, scroll down a bit. Please be aware that this single article is changing with the release of news.

There’s a lot to be said regarding what has led up to this story, and I will let you do most of that legwork yourself because other people have written it much better than I. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, please click the links as you read along (I have these links set to open in new windows for your convenience).

It began Thursday night when a rumor about Jeff Gerstmann … Continue Reading

I have played the Castlevania franchise since 1988. While I

can’t quite claim a true genesis - I was not around for the Haunted Castle arcade unit or Vampire Killer for the MSX - I have been actively playing, trying, or watching people play each of the available U.S. iterations. For an American player, primary fascination with the series rests in its artful combination of, on the one hand, the legacy of English Gothic fiction (The Monk, The Castle Of Otranto, later Dracula, and many more besides), and on the other, that … Continue Reading

Within a period of a few weeks gaming audiences everywhere will be inundated with two giant rhythm game releases — Guitar Hero III and Rock Band. And somewhere in between Harmonix, the company that passed the Guitar Hero torch onto Neversoft and Activision and went on to develop Rock Band with MTV Games and EA, had a little extra time to develop an iPod game called Phase.

Before today, I had never had any desire to play an iPod game. There was nothing that I wanted to play on my iPod: Tetris’s controls are too imprecise, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man’s … Continue Reading

Today I was in a Best Buy and saw that they had a Rock Band demo setup. “How could pass this up?” I asked myself. I’ll tell you how they almost caused me to — putting the Rock Band demo right next to the Guitar Hero demo. The geniuses at Best Buy didn’t seem to understand that there could be a conflict there. So I’m trying to drum along to Black Hole Sun and the dude next to me is wailing out some Paradise City on the 360 next to me. Fortunately I wasn’t in a … Continue Reading

I rushed home from class and the bank this afternoon to get in a good hour of Portal before I plunged back into my reading for my evening class. We all know how that story goes.

So three and a half hours later I looked up from my computer with the Portal credits rolling along the screen and a funny feeling in my belly. Week old leftover pizza, perhaps? No. It’s that void you get when you finish something that you don’t want to end. Portal is awesome. Portal is also really short. My 3.5 hour completion time … Continue Reading

I visit GameFAQs every day to vote in their poll. Not because I want my voice to be heard, but rather because I like choosing a simple answer from a list and clicking a button. Some days this proves rather difficult, however. Take today’s poll for example: “Do you plan on getting the seventh Harry Potter book tomorrow?”

Simple enough question, right? Right. But GameFAQs is limited to five answers and one important one is missing. I don’t plan on buying Harry … Continue Reading

X-Strike Studios, a group of rogue/underground filmmakers dedicated to ending the tyranny of Uwe Boll and his followers over the video-game-to-film market, have always been incredibly willing to share their work even at the roughest stages of production. Perhaps their ascendancy first came at MAGFest 2.0 in Williamsburg, VA in the Fall of 2003, when they unexpectedly blew the collective minds of people who almost certainly didn’t quite know what to make of a group of actors, technicians and creative talents all so engrossed in River … Continue Reading

A Response to Are Games Getting Easier?”

“Mark Raby’s article, on TwitchGuru, asks if games are easier compared to older games like in the 1980s.”

Actually, he doesn’t so much ask as bemoan the loss of the “good ol’ days” of gaming. The problem with Raby’s logic is that it doesn’t allow room for evolution and doesn’t frame the days of more difficult gaming in anything but a positive context. In response, I will proceed through his argument point-by-point and explain the possible flaws.

1) “In spite of the rapid growth in technology and the ability to make games more intricate, game … Continue Reading

The other day I took my girlfriend out on a classic Dante Hicks Dinner and a Movie date. We went to a matinee showing of The Break-Up, the new sorta-romantic comedy with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Anniston. In it, Gary (Vaughn) and Brooke (Aniston) get into a bad argument that terminates their relationship. The catch? Both refuse to leave the apartment and attempt to split it in half like a bad sit-com (though executed well here). Not a bad film. Good dialogue, funny writing, Vince Vaughn delivers a perfect Vice-Vaughny performance, and there’s a great supporting cast. But I’m not … Continue Reading

So now E3 has come and gone and I would feel bad if I didn’t put down my two cents here on this blog.

Best Showing:
The Nintendo Wii really won over my heart and mind this year. Watching Nintendo’s press conference - in which they basically just said “hey, you want to see how this works with games? Let’s do it!” - was a great experience. We saw Zelda, Red Steel, WiiSports Tennis… all of which were fully playable demos. In fact, Nintendo suprised us all by telling us that there were 27 games for show at this E3. Had Nintendo … Continue Reading

The fourth Music and Games Festival has concluded and I’m leaving a happy man. Much more smoothly run than M3, MAGFest 4 showed how things were supposed to come together last year. I’ll first begin with the Saturday through Sunday events that I hadn’t covered before.

Saturday was the day Kevin had to leave the festival to see his friend get married, as you saw in his last blog post. Jimmy left to watch the Redskins game, so I manned the Virtual Fools table myself. I attended Robert V. Aldrich’s panel discussion on what he considered to be the top … Continue Reading

At around 6PM X-Strike Studios premiered the new film Project: Snake (Low Budget Espionage), and let me be one of the first to announce on the Internet that it was awesome. Based on Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid, Project: Snake was a hilarious spoof (and not at the expense of the story). They did have a few technical glitches (i.e. a bunch of their audio tracks dropped out in the last part of the movie), but it didn’t detract from the overall high production values. This is certainly X-Strike’s best movie to date.

Writer and … Continue Reading

Holla from MAGFest! We’re posting from the exhibitors hall across from the game room. Kevin is chatting it up with Chad of X-Strike Studios while some dude is playing Super Smash TV on SNES at the table.

Chair-Con Brendan (Bad Picture)

Opening ceremonies concluded not to long ago, and we’re totally stoked about this weekend’s events. The bands are already downstairs in the concert room performing their sound checks, which means that they’re actually going to be going on stage on time this year! The first concert is at 7PM. Right now there’s a … Continue Reading

A woefully small five hours of sleep are all that comes between last night and this morning. Saturday has historically been the big day at MAGFest, which is part of why yesterday was such a pleasent surprise. Our judging of the “Name that Tune ” contest, run by Zeiram and Tim Ekkebus, lasted just about until when Nth Mile started. Fittingly, after a heated effort, Shael Riley (along with Devon, one of the men responsible for the film’s music) took home the win as World Champion of Name-that-Tune, dethroning last year’s champ Rory O’Boyle.

After conducting a podcast earlier in the … Continue Reading

We each picked a number of different categories to write on, some the same, some completely different. But here’s stuff from 2005 that Virtual Fools believes is worth getting a mention on the Internet.

Jimmy’s Picks
Best Movie: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” I’ll be honest: when I look back, it seems like I didn’t watch that many new movies in 2005. But of the ones I did see, I feel like I saw the best. “Hitchhiker’s Guide” gets top honors because it’s fun, it’s hilarious, it managed to breathe new life into a long-running and much-abused franchise etc. Plus, I … Continue Reading

Hilary Clinton (D-NY), as of late, has been the big name behind the push for government controlled video game regulation. Before her, Joesph Lieberman (D-Conn) was the face of over-reactions. Today they have joined forces.

If you hadn’t read already, Hilary Clinton announced that she has written a bill entitled the “Family Entertainment Protection Act,” which proposes federal regulation on the sale of Mature and AO rated video games to minors (what a trite/misleading name, too). Effectively, this bill states that sale of these games would be illegal, on which fines could be levied for infringments. The “FEPA” would … Continue Reading

As cliche as it may be to say: The Force is strong with this one.

I know this is an old game, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth writing about. I played this at the end of last semester and beat it (one of the four games I’ve beaten this entire year…) Proud of my accomplishment, I figured I might as well give it a good solid review.

Knights of the Old Republic is an exciting romp through the Star Wars universe, with a fun combat system, a memorable story, and always something to do. It does have a few … Continue Reading

The deal is that every Tuesday I am supposed to blog with something related to video games. Kevin as films on Sunday, James has TV on Thursday, and J will try to fit in comics on Wednesday. So lemme tell you about an amazing game that I played for the first time last night.

Over the weekend J picked up the newest crazy-peripheral music game: Guitar Hero. It was developed by Harmonix, the people that brought you Amplitude and Frequency as well as Karaoke Revolution. Think of it as a cross between Amplitude, Donkey Konga, and ROCKING OUT. You buy the … Continue Reading

I am working on getting a scan of it soon, but I’ve had a “thing” for this game ever since it was in the 1990 Warner Brothers catalog, a rare little magazine-sized wares-list containing all sorts of overpriced stuff…modeled by Warners stars, including THE CHARACTERS FROM FULL HOUSE! Nary a vacation went by between 1990 and 1993 that I did not bring that dog-eared catalog on car rides. To this day I have no clue as to why I cared about that thing so much.

There was, however, one item contained within that endlessly intrigued me. New at … Continue Reading

This was game scholarship paper that I wrote for one of my classes in Fall 2004. It’s based off of the book Textual Poachers written by Dr. Henry Jenkins of MIT. The book is about how television fans appropriate material from the shows they watch and apply it to life outside of the show. It discusses the theory, motivations, and modes of production for these fans. Through the lens of video game academics, topics from the book can be applied to video game fandom. For this case study I chose the website Starmen.net, an … Continue Reading

You can find it elsewhere on this site, but 1985 was a flagship year for gaming (and therefore the world). After a fairly successful test marketing of the Nintendo Entertainment System in select areas of the country, most notibly the tough-to-crack New York area, Nintendo was ready to launch their beauty on the country. Consumers had been wary of video games since the market had been flooded but scant years before. To many, home console games were just weak knock-offs of their arcade counterparts…the Atari 2600’s port of Pac-Man is just a … Continue Reading

The purpose of the Retro-spective is to delve into what made the great ‘retro’ games so awesome. Think of it as a review not just of game play… but of influence, what distinguishes it from other games, and why it has stood the test of time. To kick everything off, it seemed only appropriate to pick one of my favorite games of all time: Mega Man 2.

Anybody who is anybody has played this game. Released in 1988, it’s generally considered the first “real” Mega Man game… since it established in a … Continue Reading

Console translation of the popular 2002 PC release Mafia falls short of the original’s excellence.

<<2/5 Stars>>

Mafia for the PlayStation 2, developed by Illusion Softworks, tells the story of cab driver Tommy Angelo’s rise to power in the 1930’s city of Lost Haven. A series of unfortunate circumstances places Tommy in service of the Mafia, where he is taken in with open arms. Tommy through a 3D environment as he accepts jobs, travels around the city, and participates in wholesome mob activities.

Tommy’s missions and the storyline are delivered in packages of cutscenes with … Continue Reading

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to bring you what I consider to be one of the most worthwhile “things” to ever grace the Virtual Fools server. Since hearing about Lucky Wander Boy, I’ve wanted to get a chance to talk with the man who was able to marry the heretofore un-combinable worlds of contemporary fiction and video game culture. Well, I did have a chance to have some correspondence with D.B. Weiss, and I bring to you the results of that dialogue. With a text as rich as Lucky Wander Boy, there was certainly … Continue Reading

Chris Kohler is a freelance video game journalist. He has lived/studied in Japan and has been published in Wired Magazine, Nintendo Magazine UK, Animerica and many others, as well as the academic journal Kyoto Journal. He is currently writing Super Mario Nation, which he discusses in the interview. Originally recorded on November 2nd at the tail end of MAGFest, Chris was nice enough to sit down and talk with me about games, the Fulbright program, being published and the nature of being a video game journalist. Links … Continue Reading

Presented here, for the first time anywhere, is an interview with the proprieters of River City Rumble, X-Strike Studios. Conducted in the early morning hours of 11/02/03, shortly following THE CONCERT at MAGFest, this interview seeks to probe deep into the group’s collective psyche and ask the big questions that matter - or something equally impressive sounding.

Preliminary notes for River City Rumble: Written and directed Tim Ekkebus. Music by Mustin and others. The guys who were present at the interview, and their role(s) in the film:
Chad Williams - Slick, … Continue Reading

Ye Olde River City Ransome
In accordance with the specified procedures, and owing to the fact that this site focuses excessively on video games, I hereby dictate that this site shall have a portion of its 0’s and 1’s devoted entirely to one of the most beautiful results of the human creative spirit, River City Ransom.

Throw that tire!
The Nintendo Entertainment System, which was largely fleshed out in 1984, and which debuted in 1985, would undergo a steady maturing as a unit of hardware. The initial outpouring of games were … Continue Reading

As a self proclaimed “Video Game Scholar” I feel that it is my right to eventually write a book about video games. Whether I write about them as art, their roles in society, or whatever the hell, I know that I’ll definitely have a lot to say. Unfortunately the gap is closing for new material to be introduced about the subject. Most every aspect has obviously already been covered by authors and journalists and the media and I’m worried that these sources will find their way to the top of “Important Writings on Gaming”. While I do … Continue Reading

Wherever something is developed it is naturally going to take on the influences of the culture whose product it is. A majority of the video games released in America have Japanese developers; especially for the story-writing process. A popular genre that involves heavy story telling during the play of the game is the Role-Playing Game (commonly abbreviated as RPG). The narratives of these games feature themes of impending crisis, a character’s personal development, life, death, the search for wisdom, and the struggle for truth and meaning in a chaotic world. These themesare often expressed in terms of existing philosophies and … Continue Reading

(If you have no attention span/dislike satire, scroll to the bottom.)

Imminent French theorist Roland Barthes once said that “culture is a noble, universal thing, placed outside social choices: culture has no weight.” Despite his uncanny ability to personalize and synthesize culture, the man had never played American Gladiators for the life-asserting Nintendo Entertainment System. You see, this particularly ugly element of fairly contemporary modern culture is endowed with a very POWERFUL weight. I dare say that neither Frodo, nor his faithful Samwise would be able to truly bear this weight. As … Continue Reading

NEStravaganza!!! Due to a recent kick to the head so to speak, I have once again realized that my life, sad as it may sound, means nothing without the NES. I hadnt played in about a month, but, after acquiring several games that I had been looking for for a looonnggg time (Pool of Radiance especially, which took me approximately 5 years to locate), I am now dedicated at least an hour a day playing “the” system. Here a few quick reviews for games that I have either played on emulator or for the system, games that … Continue Reading

So there we were, walking around Seaside Heights, NJ, one of the junkiest and most god-forlorn places in the most junky and god-forlorn state. We had gorged on gigantic portions of boardwalk food, had walked a bit, seen the amusement parks, discussed whether or not the beginning of Dogma was filmed there, etc. It was high time to find something real to do. So we wandered into an arcade- looked harmless enough at first, but my life was about to take a drastic turn. It was a huge shock to me, to the point where I can … Continue Reading

You bastards. Video Gamers today are so spoiled. Want fighting games? You have too many to choose from: Mortal Kombat 4, Marvel vs. Capcom, Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Soul Edge, the list goes on…Back in the day, yeah I mean THE day, there was one non-arcade fighting game to choose from. That game, ladies and gents, was URBAN CHAMPIONS! This gem is one of the original series NES games, and made it’s debut as part of the Action Series. Want complexities? This game has none. Want realism? None either. Want cool moves, … Continue Reading