The Lollipop Chainsaw game does for Zombies what the Buffy TV show did for Vampires. Rest assured, this is already on my Must Have list!
Yes, it is true; the game is migrating to the small screen. Black Rock Shooter on TV will lead the winter lineup in January on Fuji TV’s set of programming. Hatsune Miku sings the theme song for the series with the musical group Supercell and the composer Ryo, and a one hour OVA was previously put together by Studio Ordet with a release to magazines. As of a few days ago, a game edition of Black Rock Shooter with animation by ufotable also hit the shelves. If you are a fan of the game, keep your eye out for the Anime.
There is a new Sci-Fi MMO coming out called Wildstar from NCsoft and Carbine, and based on the trailer it looks like a world of fun. You get to select whether you want to be an Explorer, Soldier, Scientist, or Settler (three of the four classes are represented in the trailer) and head out for adventure on unknown worlds. At the moment you can sign up to help test the beta version, but I haven’t found a reference to when it goes into live mode. Thanks to the folks at Crunchyroll for the heads up on this one.
If you have been playing games for a while, you have no doubt run across the classic platform shooter Metroid, which has been around since 1986. According to the folks a Crunchyroll, in honor of the games 25th anniversary there has been an album recorded of the themes from various versions of it called Harmony of a Hunter, and released as a free download from ShineSparkers. A lot of the music is in what I think of as the 8 Bit Boogie format but some is in Metal, Chiptune, and Dubstep. Thee is currently no physical media you can buy, but if they get enough response on the download they are considering releasing it on disc. Considering how key to the franchise the game music has been since the beginning, I think this is an excellent tribute. Be aware, if you download the whole side files (which shows just how old school the creators are: each “whole side” disk is the normal 16 or so minutes long of the traditional vynal record album), the songs slide from one into the next with a cross fade between them. If you want the songs as stand alone so you need only add the ones you like to your playlist, you will want to download the individual tracks.
There have been a lot of games converted into movies, most of them have been science fiction, and a lot of them have been bad. Somehow I never visualized the classic board game (later adapted for the computer) Battleships being turned into a movie, nor would I have expected it to be sci-fi. And yet, it appears both of those things are true, at least as far as their first trailer for the film is concerned (some, like Topless Robot, disagree with this conclusion).
They built it in Barcelona, and everyone loved it. The game played just like normal, on a smart phone, but the results were a bit different, and some folks seemed quite surprised. What a hoot; thanks, T-Mobile. And then, just for grins and giggles, the official Angry Birds theme song.