As you may have noticed, the look of the site has changed dramatically. The upgrade has fixed some problems with the site and given us a whole series of new ones to deal with, so please hold on while I hammer out annoying formatting issues and bugs. If the formatting on an article looks like crap, it is because when switching to the new system, we lost a favorable bug that allowed the program we use for the site to not look like complete shit. Now we need extra BR everywhere in order to make things not look like a jumbled mess. Things will be fixed, though. So the ugliness won’t last for long.

Also, we desperately need new writers. We are all about freedom of geek expression here, so whatever you want to write about we will accommodate. Expect a larger presence of videos, fiction, and music reviews among other changes over the next few weeks. We especially need people for the categories that the site was built on, with a strong focus on next-gen gaming, music, television, and movies. As I said, anything is welcome though.

Update 1: You may be seeing IAC v3 soon, as I can’t seem to hammer the bugs out of this one for the life of me. If you see anything weird (like, for instance, entire portions of the website being missing) please leave a comment.

In the ‘I can’t believe we used to think Madden 1995 looked realistic’ category, I figured this needed to be posted. It has been making the rounds on the internet and it is pretty much mind blowing to see.

It is a comparison of allegedly real time in game Crysis screenshots and the reference pictures they are based off of.

And you people wonder why I sink my money into the bottomless pit that is computer gaming.

I guess the PS2 still has a little life left in it after all.This game seriously has so much going for it. This is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games on the system, including some of the graphic favorites of even the most jaded video game fans; hand-painted backgrounds, incredibly detailed and colorful characters, and strikingly smooth animations all combine to put this game up there with Okami in the ‘Gaming as Art’ category.

Graphics don’t exactly make a game though, and we have seen that time and time again. So does Odin Sphere have more to it than a fresh take on graphics? Or is it simply all style and no substance?

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This past week was one of the lightest weeks for new books that I can remember in recent months. The fact that two of my current favorite ongoings shipped new issues softened the blow of not having as much to read as usual. Either way, if this keeps up, I may actually be able to afford to feed myself pretty soon. I don’t care how cliche it is, I don’t care that what few indie-cred points I have might evaporate for saying it, but Captain America was the best read in my pile this week.

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When I saw the shipping list for this week, I thought Diamond was playing a big, fat joke on us. Ultimates #13. All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #5. Even lower-profile books that are several months and/or years late like Sidekick #5 and Blackgas 2 #2. Sure enough, when I got to my shop, all of these books were actually in my pile. They even had like… words and pictures in them and stuff. Anyway it was a good week for blockbuster-type fare, so let’s see how it turned out.

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Yet another weird week for the list. First of all my bill, was less than $60, and second of all, about a half dozen A-list books all shipped on the same day, perhaps (hopefully) trying to capitalize on the post-Spidey/post-FCBD momentum. DC’s new weekly series Countdown kicked off in rousing fashion, and I got new issues of two of my absolute favorite Marvel ongoings. Which is why the absolute weirdest part about this past week’s books is my choice for book of the week. Read on and prepare to leave me snide comments.

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Game: Knight’s Quest
Company: Taito
System: GB
Genre: Traditional RPG
Release Year: 1991

This was actually one of the first RPGs I can remember playing. Surprisingly enough, this game still holds up as a decent and entertaining, if only bitesized, RPG.

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I remember a long time ago, possibly in a far away galaxy, I used to write for my own website. Those days seemed long gone, but now… they return, and in order to appease you all, and punish myself, I bring to you not one…

Not two…

Not three…

Not four…

But FIVE whole ROM reviews.

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Well it was a weird week for the list, that’s all I can really say. I think I sleepwalked through my entire stack. I blame it on the fact that I habitually read my DC’s first, and the end of 52 was kinda lame, Teen Titans is going down the toilet, and Paul Dini and Don Kramer got the month off from Detective duty. I seriously don’t intend this to be my personal DC-bashing soapbox, but I’m spending my money on these comics damnit. On the other side of the street, things are starting to get really interesting in between the proverbial Civil War rock and World War Hulk’s hard place.

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Since 2002, the Spider-Man film “franchise” has been destroying box offices worldwide and opening the floodgates to myriad film producers trying to make a quick buck off whatever marginal comic book property they can afford. If one out of every 10 people who went to see these things bought an issue of Spider-Man on a monthly basis, Marvel would never go bankrupt again. But I digress. I caught a midnight screening this past Thursday, in a giant room full of obnoxious morons. Here’s what I thought.

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To start this review off I should mention one thing: I love Game Boy Advance. Of all the systems I own my GBA gets the most play to this day. When a friend told me that they were going to release a new Game Boy “like a SNES but more powerful” years back, I got as excited as a kid on Christmas. Let me put it this way- I like sprites, I like fun, simple games, and I like handheld systems. Put it all together and GBA is the system for me.

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about Ninja Five-0 since it came out. Usually it’s described as “Shinobi meets Bionic Commando” or something like that. I think many (including me) were turned off when the game came out in 2003 with such an awful name. Why they changed it from the awesome original title NINJA COP is beyond me. Ninjas and cops, is there anything more that you want from a game? The fact that it was released by Konami (and designed by Hudson) made me take notice when the reviews came back pretty good. Soon afterwards it started to get fairly hyped by hardcore gamers. The only problem was that by then it had already vanished from store shelves. Of course this only added to the mystique, and since then I’ve been searching for a copy everytime I log on eBay. Well last month I finally snagged a copy, and I’m ready to share my thoughts with the world. And give xWolfmanx a break from being the lone workhouse of IAC content.

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