Check out these sick character creations for Soul Calibur 4. Here’s some more at this Japanese site. That got a Cammy from Street Fighter, Dante from Devil May Cry, The Joker, but by far my favorite is the Ronald McDonald. That’s insane. I’m going to try to make some Atomsplit characters. I’ll post some pictures if I’m successful.

I read on three blogs yesterday there’s an issue where Guillermo Del Toro and the studios wanted to kill Hellboy in the third movie, but Mike Mignola had it planned to run another fifteen years in the comics. I don’t understand why this is an issue at all. Batman and Superman and a ton of other superheroes die all the time in the comics but they still make the movies anyway. Are the Hellboy movies supposed to be canon or something? I don’t see how Hellboy dying in the 3rd movie would make me stop reading the comics or watching the cartoons if they made any more or playing the games. I just don’t see what the big deal is here.

These interactive steampunk statues I found on Boing Boing are grungy like Bioshock and kind of creepy too, but all in all they’re pretty awesome. One of these reminds me of something we’re working on in Atomsplit.

The Goonies 2 talk comes up over and over again from time to time. But Iv’ve seen the a lot of sites lately reporting it’s for real this time. I won’t believe it until I’m in the theater though. I’m kind of like The Movie God over at Geeks Of Doom, I don’t care if it’s the original cast going on a new adventure or if it’s their kid’s going on a new adventure. As long as it has the same spirit as the Goonies then I’m all for it. Speaking of spirit I always heard that Monster House was the spritual successor to The Goonies. It was OK, but if there was a real Goonies 2 coming out that would be way better. In a related note Bloody Disgusting has posted a teeny tiny little article about a Monster Squad remake. Monster Squad is one of my all time favorites. I must have watched it like five billion times and I’ll watch another five billion times. Here’s a trailer for the DVD to refresh your memories on it.

I’m a little late to the Beowulf party, but I finally got to see it last night and it was totally awesome. I think there’s a severe lack of modern Pirate and Viking movies. Pirates and Vikings are essentially the same thing, buccaneers set in different time periods. As of 1990 there’s really only the Pirates Of The Caribbean series that are awesome pirate movies and The 13th Warrior and Beowulf that are awesome Viking movies. I don’t count Pathfinder because that was total trash. I’m also not counting Erik The Viking because that was a comedy and not really a high adventure movie. I’m also not counting Roger Corman’s Viking Women & The Sea Serpent because it was made in the 50’s with claymation and such.  Anyway, The 13th Warrior and Beowulf are essentially the same thing with a guy coming into a Viking village to get rid of a monster or monsters so in that respect they’re really the same movie. I just don’t understand why stories that are so rich with adventurous potential like Pirate and Viking stories always get the shaft when it comes to movies.

So it was Edge leaving  the black roses last week after taking out key memebers of his entourage. Edge is coming apart at the seams due to the Hell In A Cell match Vicki put him in with the Undertaker.  By far the most exciting match up last week on Smackdown was Jeff Hardy and Shelton Benjamin. The most impressive display was Valdimir Koslov. He came out and demand better competition. That’s hardcore! So on to my Summer Slam predictions for this Sunday. It’s hard to predict Summer Slam, but I think I’m going to go with Undertaker over Edge, Jeff Hardy over MVP, Triple H over The Great Khali, and Batista over Cena with a heel turn bonus on that one, but we’ll see. I’ll let you know if I got it right on Monday or not.

I’m nearly at the end of Dot Hack G.U. I’m sad to report. I’ve been playing the trilogy since Memorial Day and it has been one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had. A lot’s happened over the summer and whenever I remember those events like working on our game for Atomsplit I’ll also remember Dot Hack G.U. Dot Hack G.U. put you through the ringer as far as plot twists and turns, but last night was incredible when all my friends and enemies came to my aid and helped fight the monsters plaguing the network and systems. It was great to see everyone I met in the game fighting to secure their liberty to play the game. I know it’s not a real event, but it felt real and that’s the point. I’ll hate to see Dot Hack G.U. finish in a week or so from now, but there’s Soul Calibur 4 on the horizon and Tales of Vesperia after that. Man, Namco/Bandai makes some wonderful games and I hope they make another set of Dot Hack games really really soon!

Twistori is pretty cool. It aggregates twitter posts and divides them up in into six different catagories of love, hate, feel, wish, believe, think. Once you pick a category it will stream posts with those key words so that you can see scrolling,  anonymous, to you anyway, posts about peoples feelings regarding those key words. I wrote on twitter once that I wish Illustrator had an autosave feature. Maybe that appeared on Twistori. In a lot of ways Twistori is like Notemine where it focuses on what people are feeling as opposed to what people are doing. In a related note I hear Notemine is closing. That’s too bad. I liked to go there from time to time and read the random thoughts and feelings floating around on the wires.

So I was watching TNA last night and suddenly the lights go out, Sting’s music plays, and Kurt Angle is holding Sting’s black bat. Oh noes!!! Then all of a sudden the lights go out again and The Phenomenal A.J. Styles is holding Jeff Jarrett’s silver guitar. Oh Noes!!! What is going on? A double turn? Jarrett is turning face and Sting is turning heel? Actually, Jarrett was a face for a second or two last year. Jarrett is an awesome heel and Sting is always an awesome face, and a beloved fan favorite. It’s going to be very very interesting to see how it all plays out.

So I leveled myself up to the cap and took on the grueling hour and a half boss battle at the end of Dot Hack this morning. My strategy was to level up, get powerful, and bring the pain. My strategy was a complete success although it got a little white knuckle towards the end. I won’t tell you which part in case you haven’t played it yet. There’s still a couple of things left to do with around six to eight hours left to go like watching movies and meeting up with all my friends and completing the game within the game,  but the real fight is done and it lasted almost the whole summer. An unforgettable summer, an unforgettable game.