Marginal Gaming - Women Written Wrong

 In his latest article for 8bitfix, Mike Cervantes explores just what went wrong with the Tomb Raider & Hitman Absolution trailers and the "Tropes Vs. Women" controversy. What are we all getting wrong when it comes to portraying female characters in games?

Check it out on 8bitfix.

Thumb Wars - June 2012

It's time for some thumb wars. There are lots of great video game tournaments going on this month.

First up is a Super Smash Bros. tourney at the Doris van Doreen Library on Redd Road on Thurs. June 14th at 3pm. There will be tournaments for both Melee and Brawl. It's free, it's fun and it's educational if you decide to stay and read afterwards. So, dust off that 'cube controller and check it out.

Next up is the Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 tournament at 1 More Level, 1580 George Deiter on Saturday, June 20th at 7-m. One More Level had a good turnout for their last Super Street Fighter IV tournament, but there should be loads more competition at this one. Be sure to BYOC and get those teams all steamed up, because anyone who wins this one is gonna be looked upon as a Marvel.

Finally, don't forget that there are Fighting Game nights every Monday at Tortuga Bar and Sports Lounge, 126 Shadow Mountain, every Tuesday night beginning at 7pm. Warm up for any of these tournaments in a friendly environment where it's okay to drink. Isn't life grand? It is if you're 21 and over....

So, be sure to check out any of these events and stay tuned to Augmented Reality for any updates about future game tournaments.

Marginal Gaming - Putting the Content before the Download

In Mike's latest article for 8bitfix, Mike tackles the issue of on-disc DLC. Do we deserve a product for free just because we learned of a company's unfair attempt at fleecing the consumer?

Check it out on the 8bitfix website.

Tortuga Lounge Fight Club

Got game?? Want to enjoy a few drinks and get into a bar-fight, without trashing the place?? Then come to the Tortuga Lounge for the Tortuga Lounge Fight Club!

The Tortuga Lounge is located on 126 Shadow Mountain Dr, next to Daxie Boy Toys!

Visit the Fight Club here for more details: https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tortuga-Lounge-Bar-Brawls/273246912763221

Marginal Gaming - A Grain of Salt

In Mike's latest article for 8bitfix, Mike takes a moment to consider opinions about gaming on the internet. Which ones are valid? Which ones aren't valid? And most importantly, how can you tell the difference?

Check it out on the 8bitfix website.

...Of the Highest Calibur: Original Creations from Soul Calibur V.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written an actual article entry, what with my introduction being my first, and my Winter*Con article being my second. Needless to say, with Augmented Reality slowly providing material for the contemporary gamer (myself included) I’ve decided to share with you something of my own. It’s not a game, per se, but moreso, original content in one of my favorite Namco titles: Soul Calibur V. I recently bought myself a copy of this title, and I can honestly say I love this game.

What can I say about Soul Calibur V that hasn’t already been said before?? If there’s something that truly attracts me to this title, it’s that Namco has given something to gamers that I look for in a game, a creative outlet. As far as I can remember, I’ve always liked games that give the gamer the option to put one of their own original creations into an established game, like Soul Calibur V. Who wouldn’t want to see Street Fighter’s Chun-Li duke out Siegfried in a match, or your own self-insert take out their frustrations on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Shredder??

After winning a few matches, unlocking several items in Soul Calibur V’s Creator, and reaching level 30, I’ve had a fantastic time, laboring over several custom characters in Soul Calibur V, such as Sonic Man, below.For Sonic Man’s custom, I used a small body-type, and set his body’s values to their lowest setting, since Sonic Man isn’t all that bulky, let alone beefy, or the size of your typical linebacker. Personally, I like how his chest and shoulder armor, breechcloths, boots and cape turned out here. You will notice that Sonic Man’s bodysuit underneath his armor looks shiny and sleek, however, since I have yet to unlock a possible unitard as an item in Creator’s list of custom items, I went for the second best thing: Coloring Sonic Man’s entire skin the same shade of navy-blue, to emulate his skin-tight, formfitting unitard, with a flesh-tone colored sticker on his head, to balance things out, and not leave him with a navy-blue face. You’ll also notice that I did this for Ruben and Sonar Man (an anti-Sonic Man, much like Wario is to Mario) as well, since the two of them wear skin-tight, formfitting unitards as well.Here’s one original character that’s rarely in the limelight. Unity Eastah, Spirit of the Union East Building. Unity Eastah was actually inspired by the 2010 New Student Orientation Committee’s Superhero theme because there was a young lady whose heroine persona represented Union Services, and was named Unity, so I decided to take things further with it. You’ll notice Unity’s matching, oversized sword, as I chose Siegfried’s fight-set. Now, Unity Eastah has a shield, but Pyrrha’s shield (at least in my opinion) is too small, as Unity Eastah’s shield is much larger in size, so I chose Siegfried’s oversized sword instead.

However, while I am a big fan of original characters, not all of my customs are original characters, as illustrated below.Can you tell who this sword-wielding heroine is?? I can sense her Yoki Aura, and it’s strong! That’s right; it’s Clare, from Claymore (a favorite anime of mine.) While this has been done in Soul Calibur V, before, I didn’t like what I saw on YouTube, so I decided to have my own take at creating Clare in Soul Calibur V, and see how well I can pull it off. Granted, she’s not going to be 100% spot-on, but it is recognizable.

For Clare, I gave her an off-white, sleeveless unitard, and the same type of shoulder armor I used for Sonar and Sonic Man, since it was as close as I could get for Clare’s shoulder plates. You’ll notice the black triangle, under her cape. For this, I used three stickers, to emulate that part of her outfit that has her cross-like symbol on her chest. While I couldn’t exactly do that with the limited amount of stickers that Creator allows per item, I simplified it, while still making it identifiable. And speaking of identifiable…Can you guess who this charming chap is?? You’ve seen him play at various anime conventions and cosplay gatherings. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen; it’s our good friend, Shonen Neko Takaya, wielding a staff. Now many have paid homage to the ginger-haired cat, by drawing fan-art and posting it on his wall on FaceBook, and dropping him a line, and this was definitely not an exception. Personally, I love how this turned out as well, as I was going for a more classic anime feel; a story that took place in ancient Japan, when the sword and staff ruled, or maybe something like Ninja Scroll or Ranma½, for nostalgic purposes.
Oh, that reminds me. While not many remember TV’s Mork and Mindy, and while this isn’t exactly Mork, I present to you, my last original character, whom was inspired by Mork and his homeworld, Ork. Valorie Quarto or Quarto as her friends call her comes from a comic series I’ve been working on since, 2005, titled Pleiadian Enterprise, which takes place in the 31st century. Needless to say, while Quarto’s Orkan uniform isn’t 100% spot-on, it isn’t hard to miss. For Quarto, I decided to go with Hilde’s fight-set, since it only seemed as a good option for Quarto’s choice of weapon. Plus, check out that flagged staff! I must say that I can’t wait for Namco’s free balancer, DLC and updates that come out this week, with more on April 3rd, so I can make more original creations to share with all of you!

Aspect Ratio - Soul Calibur V at Chicago's!

Join Ruben Rascon, as he participates and interviews the participants at a unique Soul Calibur V tournament at the Chicago's Street Food, hosted by GameStop.

"I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game" Review

What's up my milleniu- OH MY FREAKING GOD THIS GAME MAKES ME- (section deleting due to strong language) THAT MY EYEBALL VEINS TURN BLUE!!!

Whoooooooooo..... I think I'm calm... Wait a minute NO I'M NOT THIS GAME MAKES WANNA PUNCH BABIES PEOPLE! BABIES! I honestly wish to go into a puppy shelter and start flinging them at the walls! And you guys know me! I'm not that violent! I HATE THIS GAME!!!! Oh you don't believe me?! Here: Go download the game! Play it! You won't even make it past the first screen!!! God knows I didn't! I DARE YOU!!!!

I'll try to control myself but it's damn near impossible! If you've played the game, you KNOW what I'm talking about.

Ok without further ado, let's dive into the flash game: I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game..... Even the name pisses me off

So the story is that the Guy left World and now The Kid wants to be The Guy so he's gonna go out with his gun that The Grandfather The Guy gave him and is going to face The Guy and you really don't give a damn already do you? And I'm not making that up. That's the plot. Don't you love the creative leaps they made with the characters names?

So you have to go out and get these eight items which-

Oh you suck...

Ok so the plot makes no friggin sense, whatever maybe the game play is bett-

FUUUUUUU-!!!!!!

So let me just explain the game play in one word: PRECISION. Every jump, every bullet, every friggin move has to be PRECISE! You can't just barge in there like a brothel. You gotta treat this like your honeymoon and take your time. And I guarantee you won't make it very far before dying unless you've played the whole thing through and memorized every friggin-

GOD DAMN THIS IS SOO HARD!!!! I'm not kidding you, I can't even make it past the first level on medium people, MEDIUM! Now a lot of people praise this game because of its brilliant layout and genius level of difficulty which some people argue is what recent video games lack. Some even think that this game is very reminiscent to games like Megaman and Castlevania because of its difficulty, hell the Kid is Megaman-esque and Dracula from Symphony of the Night makes an appearance as a boss. As a matter of fact, the whole game is a call back to all the memorable games from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. The graphics for the levels are almost exactly like the Mario games. But despite all this, does this make IWBTG a GOOD game? Sure while Megaman and Castlevania were difficult and there are similarities, those games were by far superior in my opinion. The developers actually gave a damn and taught you through the game play, making it so that you can adapt to each level and formulate some sort of plan to fit each obstacle. They made it so that it was justified when you died, because they gave you a far warning of what was going to happen, like the Hammer Joes from Megaman. IWBTG doesn't even bother to teach you. It's really just a guessing game, which might be ok for some gamers, but for me, there should be a fair level of difficulty. There has to be a way to teach the player, not just make the game hard as hell by throwing spikes all over the damn screen and having unexpected obstacles that come out of no where that kill you every damn time you try to OH MY GOD I HATE THIS GAME!

Marginal Gaming - The Incredible Mister Bronx

In my latest article for 8bitfix, I discuss my totally awesome new superhero, Mister Bronx, and the rather less than awesome MMORPG I created him in.

Check it out on the 8bitfix website.

Soul Calibur V Tourney at Chicago's Street Food

Mark your calendars! Friday, February 24th at Chicago's Street Food, 2400 N. Mesa, there will be a Soul Calibur V Tournament. Sign-ups begin at 10PM, and matches begin at 10:30. Chicago's will be offering food and drink specials through the event.

For more information, contact Chicago's at (915) 532-1550.

Marginal Gaming - Waiting to EXPhale

In his latest column for 8bitfix.com, Mike Cervantes discusses what it's like to play DC Universe online. No wait...I mean, what it's like to DOWNLOAD DC Universe online. yeah that's right.

Check it out on 8bitfix.

Marginal Gaming - Introduction

I'm starting a new column on 8bitfix where I discuss what it's like to be a gamer of a certain age, the decisions you have to make as a gamer and how those decisions could lead you into becoming a contributor to gaming as a lifestyle and an art form. Don't quite understand? Take a look at the article.

MAS's Rants under 500 words Double Feature- Mortal Kombat > Capcom & How Collabs and Ideas will work (in the perspective of MAS8705)

How is it going everyone? This is MAS8705 ready to get violent with two franchises that really has made a name for itself. Mortal Kombat: the series that literally started the ESRB and started to label games with a similar rating system you see in movies & Marvel vs. Capcom, which has given us one of the most unique fighters known in recent memory.

Before I start though, I want to go on record to say that while I love to collab with fellow editors, I try very hard as to not take anyone’s topics or ideas away from them. Fellow editor, Cyberpunkish has recently reviewed Mortal Kombat (2011), and while I could easily do that as well, I feel as though I would be taking his ideas away from him and thus make it seem that he isn’t doing anything (or make it seem as though one is more professional or more fun to listen to than the other).

If that is going to be a problem, then why not just do a collab with him on a review instead? Again, while that can be done, I don’t want to start a series of videos of “MAS & Cyber review: ___” because it can get old fast, a duo reviewing a game has been done so much. That and I don’t want to hassle Cyber anymore than I already am (I know he says that he doesn’t mind, but you can say that to someone for so long before you stop saying it. That and I just met Cyber and I don’t want to trouble him anymore than I need to). Don’t get me wrong, me and cyber are planning on doing a collab review for Infamous 2 (stupid moral system, you will be the next to feel my wrath), but this should be reserved to be done like once every so often videos, and for those special games, which isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat isn’t a good game, but I prefer to avoid review something if someone is already planning it. Many sites usually has just one person review something, that guy with the glasses and blistered thumbs are notable examples, and while they do have some editors that review the same thing, they either space it out or they will collab, but they never try to overstep or overtake another editor. Augmented Reality is just like those two sites in the sense that we are a group of people that want to spread the word of games, anime, toys, tv, conventions, and anything that we want to talk about; if we all talked about the exact same thing, the site wouldn’t be all to interesting. This is one of the many reasons why the Captain M Show didn’t seem to take off after a year and a half. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I’m not Mike or Aika-Chan so I can’t say how the site works on their behalf, but that is where I currently stand on how I wish to do my business on Augmented Reality; to work and help others, but not to outperform or even steal ideas from others. So what will I talk about then for Mortal Kombat? Well, I suppose I can quickly explain why Mortal Kombat is better than Marvel vs Capcom 3. That should be interesting talk…

*Start the cou-*

Wait a second… *goes back to count the words in the previous explanation*

495 words!?! Jesus- Well I guess this week’s rant is going to be my first double feature rant then. I don’t plan on making this a habit, but I feel that it is still important to cover my opinions on this. I know you guys probably don’t even care about the rant above, but that is how I work; I don’t want to start discrediting my fellow editors by taking their ideas as my own. Enough of that though, let’s finally talk about these two games.

If you are reading this, you should already know how the two games work; this will be a simple comparison and I’m not going to compare the history between the two series, talk about the gameplay styles, compare roster sizes, the game scores both have received or say character X is cooler looking than Character Y. This will compare the mechanics of the two games. If you look at it from this stand point, you will agree that Mortal Kombat is the better game. Also just to make this clear, I don’t have anything Capcom; I enjoy playing Marvel vs Capcom 3, I currently own it and I am actually quite good (or decent to say the least). I would say more, but I don’t want to start a third rant in the same post, so let’s get to it…

*Start the count!*

So, why exactly am I discussing this topic right now? A rumor has been circulating about that this year’s comic-con that Capcom will have a full panel about the game, and may also announce: “ULTIMATE Marvel vs Capcom 3!” While this isn’t anything new that capcom has pulled (three different kinds of street fighter 2s, 3s, and 4s. and two different Tatsunoko vs capcoms), one can’t help but notice the cheap ploy being done to get more money…

Gamers seem to do this all the time, but you can only trick someone for so long before they catch onto the tricks. If this does happen, that means that a lot of people just wasted 10 dollars on characters that would be seen in the remake. At least, they agree that each character should be five dollars and nothing more. However, after five months, we only see Jill and Shuma-Gorath as downloadable characters, but no one else in planning (except for alternate costumes). This is where Mortal Kombat gets the first edge; within three months, Mortal Kombat already has three characters (the fourth to also be announced at comic-con).

Again, there’s more to a game than the character count and having more doesn’t make it a better game (Insert examples here), but if you look at what each game offered, you will see how Mortal Kombat takes it. When you play online with Mortal Kombat, you have a seemingly well streamed fight (besides the pass you have to buy if you rent or buy used) and others can even rank your fight as they watch it. The online for Marvel vs capcom is also fairly decent, however instead of watching the fight, you get to watch two icons bump against each other as you watch the player’s health bars drop. Street Fighter 4 had no problem letting others watch the fight if they are in the lobby, but for some reason, they left this out in Marvel vs capcom 3. The last point though, should be the one that sells this idea: additional content. Besides the basics, Marvel vs capcom 3 only has a “Ghost battle”- fight harder characters and “Mission”- where you perform 10 moves/combos while Mortal Kombat has the challenge tower- over 300 kinds of unique challenges and story mode, which retells the events of the first three games, not to mention the krypt that gives you much more additional content to view (Heck they even have tutorials! Not even Marvel vs capcom has tutorials!). Even the endings in Mortal Kombat are more engaging (and animated) than the endings you see in Mortal Kombat. These are one of many reasons how I see Mortal Kombat as the better series. This in no way is to say that Marvel vs capcom 3 is a bad game, but if you are looking for a game with great mileage, look no further than Mortal Kombat. I’m MAS8705, and that was… well, both of my rants, each under 500 words.

Word Count: 498

P.S.: Not many references can be made here, but I will give credit to Mr. Angry Joe for his review on Mortal Kombat. In case you would like to have a more in-depth look at the game (beside’s Mr. Rich Guy Cy’s review) I would suggest to check out his review.