Videogames highlights - April 2009
It’s pretty interesting, from the perspective of someone steadily busy in revisiting old videogaming myths and old computer stuff in general, to immerse once a mouth in a stream of promotional stuff from the upcoming or recently published games. You can get a rather effective idea of how much time have passed since you secretly believed to be one of the few “chosen” people to know about this thing called “videogame”, and how much historical consciousness is precious to fully enjoy the wonders the market offers nowadays.
Naruto: Shippūden episode 111 - Shattered Promise
From what I can see in the new episode of Naruto Shippuuden released on-line by the BinKanTeam, who makes fillers for this anime is a little bit dull (to be kind): before the booooring story of Guren, Yuukimaru and the Three-Tailed Beast the Tailed Beasts had been depicted as true forces of nature against which even an entire squad of legendary ninjas couldn’t had stood an half chance, contrariwise now this poor amphibious is beaten by everybody barely reacting to it.
Marco Travaglio - L’insostenibile impunità di Berlusconi
Marco Travaglio’s speciality is judiciary report, and when he must deal with this kind of questions the Italian journalist unpleasant to the rulers under investigation undoubtedly gives his best. If furthermore he must dig into the dirty conscience of Silvio Berlusconi and his empire built upon bribes, corruption and other crimes even worse the performance bonus doubles. Unfortunately there isn’t that much to rejoice for because at the heart of everything there is the rot ruling this country since 20 years and dragging down everybody toward the abyss.
The P2P psychodrama between The Pirate Bay and three strike law
Surely 2009 is the most sensitive year for peer-to-peer and the industry crusade against free on-line contents sharing. In Italy we have the previously discussed issues with the incompetence and obscene servility of our representatives, and moving the attention toward Europe things get even worse if possible. Two in particular are the noticeable questions of these weeks in Europe, the conviction of The Pirate Bay crew and the approval in France of the Sarkozy doctrine also known as three strike law or HADOPI law.
Naruto: Shippūden episode 110 - Memory of Guilt
Once again a filler for Naruto Shippuuden in episode 110 of the series, where Naruto and Guren (escaped from the body of the Three-Tailed Beast) come to help Yuukimaru just while a disguised Kabuto tries to exploit the boy’s power to take the monster away from the control of Konoha’s seal squad. It’s a rather ugly episode, I must say, frankly I don’t know how this kind of “fillig” operation is welcomed in Japan but I really can’t hold all this silly and pathetic sentimentalism. For more information: Wikipedia; previous episodes.
Ron Gilbert’s DeathSpank, what we know so far
In an industry inclined to release an even excessive amount of contents on the upcoming videogames, the next, awaited creation of mythological game designer Ron Gilbert continues to be a mystery as for gameplay, visual style, interface and everything. Despite this chronic lack of material to admire (or to criticize to death), the information currently available on DeathSpank are at least more than those followed to the official game presentation during 2008 edition of Penny Arcade Expo.
Marco Travaglio - Chi è Stato: nessuno
For the new installment of his column Passaparola, Travaglio deals with what in my opinion are the most interesting topics of Italy recent history. Political murders, diversionary manoeuvres, deviated secret services, mysteries of the “second state” that rules the country of Masonic lodge P2, the mafioso hostler of Arcore working for Silvio Berlusconi and the magistrates made blown up to reconcile mafia and authorities, so giving green light to the foundation of the “Seconda Repubblica” (Second Republic). That mozzarella of President Napolitano surely is a person aware of the facts, having been a communist when in Italy the communists were strictly tied with the USSR soviet regimen.
Italy vs. Internet, the impotence of reason against the ruling of indecency
The past weeks have marked an unparalleled escalation of the well known inadequacy and inability of the Italian institutions to deal with the Internet, to live their relation with digital technologies by following logic and rationality rather then emotionalism and violence. Conversely our “dear” rulers and members of Parliament have recently shot out a series of amendments, law drafts and opinions to make you goggle if you believe in the importance of Internet as a democratic tool.
Naruto: Shippūden episode 109 - Counterattack of the Curse Mark
Available on-line the new episode of Naruto Shippuuden, which features the continuation of the fight between the ninjas of the Leaf and the Orochimaru’s lackeys to gain control of the Three-Tailed Beast. While the “seal squad” retries to confine the powerful amphibious monster, the Leaf foes resurface to prevent the sensitive operation this time powered by Orochimaru’s forbidden knowledge.
Marco Travaglio - Zoo Italia
Marco Travaglio has recently gained the free journalism award delivered by the German reporters association Djv, and as for myself he deserves all the possible consideration being one of the few voices in Italy that dare to disagree with the chorus of servants, courtiers and whores in the pay of Silvio Berlusconi. Therefore starting from this week I will report the installments of his column Passaparola, airing every Monday on the blog Voglio Scendere.
Capcom best selling series mark the history of videogames
Established in 1979 as Japan Capsule Computers in Osaka, Capcom has always been one of the leading companies in videogames market with the arcades first and on domestic systems then. Starting from Vulgus, the first arcade title released in 1984 and going up to now, the Japanese developer and publisher created some of the most beloved and successful franchises ever made as the same data revealed by the company demonstrate.
Noi Robot, hopeless steel giants
Waiting to make comics as a full-time job, Stefano “TheSparker” Conte is doing other things and has widely slowed down the time devoted to the creation of his funny comic strips. Nevertheless the author doesn’t forget the fondness that paper characters need and returns, from time to time, to update his series with the usual mocking verve and the will to rag the childhood myths of who grew up in front of the TV screen during the Seventies and the Eighties.
KarmaKula chapter 3: “Harvesting the Ohas”
KarmaKula, the new episodic series from the Ninjai Gang expressly developed for the web goes on as scheduled. On the last Friday the Gang has released the third chapter, Harvesting the Ohas, with which the series has shown yet another trait after the splatter ninjitsu of The Ninjas and the spaghetti western The Frog in the Well. The new episode features horror elements and Eastern mysticism, acting more like an introduction for the events to come than like a self-finishing tale as the two previous chapters.
Naruto: Shippūden episode 108 - Guidepost of the Camellia
With today’s post I start proposing the weekly episodes of Naruto: Shippūden, the anime from the second part of the homonymous manga by Masashi Kishimoto. In Japan Naruto is aired every Thursday on TV Tokyo, while it’s freely available with English subtitles on Viz Media site a week later. Of course these are contents unavailable to us Italians, but since Internet is a wonderful place we don’t give a fuck and enjoy the BinKanTeam fansubs on YouTube instead.
DOSBox project of the month on SourceForge.net. Waiting for the next release
DOSBox, the emulator designed to run DOS games on modern operating systems (and not necessarily on a PC), has been chosen as project of the month for May 2009 on the open source platform SourceForge.net. It’s the latest award granted to a software that “simply does what it is supposed to do“, as the authors state, and that after having summed up more than 10 millions downloads is ready for an update awaited since almost two years.
MAME 0.131 brings good news for 3D emulation and ROM dumping
MAME is surely one of the most active emulators out there. After more than 10 years since its first release the development work continues at a sustained pace, the coders contributing to the project are so many for they are Legion and almost every week there is an intermediate version (marked by the “u” suffix) before the next main release. Since January 2009, the month in which version 0.129u1 has been distributed with support for two new lasergames, in these days MAME has arrived to release 0.131 that, among the other things, shows some advancements in the emulation of a powerful 3D arcade system.
A bugfix plethora for the new ScummVM version
Apparently spring affected the ScummVM coders in a positive manner, because after a waiting of six months between release 0.12.0 and the 0.13.0 one only two months more were enough to see a new version coming, namely the 0.13.1 one available on the official servers since a few days. The short period intervened since the previous release justifies the lack of new supported games, as this time the focus is bugs correction and the improvement of consoles and portable platforms versions.
-
· Subscribe to Sir Arthur's Den ·
-
· © Some Rights Reserved ·
The exclusive contents of Sir Arthur's Den are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License, and must be ascribed to Alfonso Maruccia as the sole owner of the related copyrights.
