Great Scott! Achron: A Time Travel RTS
Imagine playing a real-time strategy game. You're built up a force of tanks and are moving across the field of battle. The other player meets your tanks and by chance they've papered your rock. In swoops some ground attack aircraft and your tanks are gone. Normally you'd curse and build up a new force to counter that tactic. Not the case in Achron, a new RTS coming from Hazardous Software.
Copyright in the Digital Download Era
What follows here is just my thought process on copyright and piracy. I'm not trying to judge, just bring to light the factors at play.
A recent discussion amongst a few of my followed on Twitter brought this question to mind: how did the piracy of copyrighted works evolve to how it is today? Thanks to digital reproductions of digital products, there is rarely any difference between an original licensed work and a pirated copy. When copyright law was envisioned these circumstances can't have been imagined.
NIS America to Publish Anime
NIS America
With the recent losses of some anime publishers in America, it's welcome news that another company will be stepping up. NIS America, a subsidiary of Nippon Ichi Software, is known for bringing quirky niche video game titles like Disgaea to the United States.
In a press release dated February 12, the company has announced their intention to meet the growing demand for Japanese culture in America by releasing anime series on DVD. The "first 4 anime titles" are: "Toradora", "PERSONA -trinity soul-", "PandoraHearts", and "Our Home's Fox Deity".
These four shows seem to span the thematic spectrum. It ranges from the darks of Persona to the high school love of Toradora. I look forward to seeing how well NIS America's efforts do. Their experience in the niche market of RPG and Strategy RPG video games should prepare them well for a similar experience in anime.
East Meets West: Anime and Manga of American Superheroes
I'm Lovin It!
There's more to an art form than the medium itself. Some subject matter lends itself better to a particular style. I'm sure you could do a landscape of a spring meadow with a sculpture, but surely an impressionist watercolor is better suited. That's a bit of a stretch, as different painting styles really can't be segregated that way, and there's an exception to every rule. In the plastic arts (wikipedia) this may not be so clear cut. Even in literature, it becomes difficult to make divisions along the lines of content being paired with style.
Serialized illustrated work seems to have taken an interesting evolutionary path. Compare the American comic book and Japanese Manga industries. While there are standouts, the American comic book is often about a costumed super hero. Sometimes there are secret identities, but more recently they have taken a back seat to the main course: heroes vs. villains. Crazy fights in worldy and other places with amazing powers. All of this done in beautifully drawn and colored artwork. These are amazing to behold.
These are the Voyages
Star Trek Online
The Open Beta for Star Trek Online is finished. Here are a few collections of screen shots I've taken while playing. To end the Open Beta, Cryptic invaded Federation Space with a bunch of Borg! Lot's of fun.
I'm very excited for the upcoming Head Start that begins at 1PM EST on Friday, January 29, 2010.
I'm thinking about going Tactical Officer for my captain in an escort class ship. Full DPS at first. I did Science Officer in an escort in Open Beta and it was a lot of fun. Having the extra DPS in away missions when I'm in a full team of players might be good though!
Free iPhone Games!
It looks like the folks over at the Appvent Calendar hit it big with their promotion. This time they're not associated with any holiday, just making an app free for a day, each day.
This is the second day of the promotion and they've started out strong. The first day was Rope'n'Fly which was pretty popular for a while and today Zombie Pizza. Both are games I've wanted to try in the past but that didn't rank high up enough in my interest to warrant a purchase.
Go take a look at freeappaday.com every day to see what gift is waiting for you!
Crunchyroll – Anime on Your iPhone
Crunchyroll
Wow. Thankfully I was checking out Anime 3000 while listening to my friends over at Reverse Thieves. A3K happens to be hosting their new podcast. Go give it a listen!
Anyway, this is an amazing development and I can't believe I hadn't heard about it till now. For those who don't know, Crunchyroll is a a legal streaming site for anime and live action drama from Asia(Japan and I think Korea). Before Netflix had their streaming, I used Crunchyroll a lot.
Spiderman 4 Cancelled!
Sony has decided to shelve Spiderman 4. Apparently Sam Raimi had some differences with Sony which resulted in him leaving the project. Instead of replacing him, Sony decided to crap the whole film and opted to continue with their planned reboot for the franchise. I grabbed this info from deadline.com
Why is this good? Creative differences between Raimi and Sony is why we ended up with Spiderman 3. *bleh* This also means that he's freed up to work on his next project. One of two planned projects for Raimi is the World of Warcraft movie. Another benefit? The empty space in the release schedule means that the Thor movie is being moved up earlier in the release calendar. Look to see Thor in theaters May 6, 2011.
Player 2 Has Entered the Game
Charging Star!
My friend Ryan Fuerstenburg, the owner of Charging Star Comics, will be joining the blogging "staff" here at SANO. The plan is for a monthly post about the comics of the past month. Look forward to the inaugural Charging Star Comics Update! in the first week of February.
CHARGING STAR!
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