Tagged: game

Dennis O’Neil’s Gravity

oneil-art-131024-150x178-4099008Has Gravity pulled you in yet?

Okay, that was lame. But at least it served to usher us into the movie that provides this week’s blather. (Did I do it again? Oh, my!)

Gravity is, for the third straight week, the box office champ. Most people, including Mari and I, liked it. Most, but not all. I’m aware of two kinds of criticism, leveled at the film by two of the men I most respect, both of whom shall remain anonymous, not because I’m playing the “unnamed sources” game, but because I can’t quote them exactly.

First criticism was expressed last week by a much lauded novelist and critic.  He had compliments for the filmmaking, but mild complaints about the characters played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Old hat. Too clichéd. The kind of cardboard that the art of cinema should be past by now.

Point taken. But a placid defense: the movie isn’t about the characters; they are devices, vehicles to move the narrative forward, given just enough backstory to save them from being total ciphers. They’re like the characters in old-fashioned detective stories – the lounge lizard, the jealous husband, the kindly vicar, the shrewd amateur sleuth, the scarlet woman. They exist as elements in a puzzle, like the X’s and O’s in a game of tic tac toe. And if that’s the kind of pleasure you’re after, the puzzle solving kind, Mr. X and Miss O will do.

Gravity, I will claim, is about state-of-the-art space travel and filmmaking itself, about the spectacular illusions directors are capable of these days. The story gives them an excuse for being presented in pretty darn fancy theaters and even manages to generate a little suspense. It does its job, and so do Ms. Bullock and Mr. Clooney.

The second criticism, proffered by one of our best public intellectuals, is a bit thornier. Our critic finds fault with the science the movie offers as fact, and, given his credentials and track record, I do not doubt for a second that his disapproval is justified.

When I worked the superhero dodge, I had a rule of thumb: Any acknowledged, verifiable fact must be accurate. So you don’t call a solar system a galaxy or have guys schlep unshielded radioactive ore without suffering consequences, or populate Mars with green hotties who swim in the canals. The idea was to avoid adding to the planet’s burden of misinformation because some folk, somewhere, are likely to believe your nonsense. But made-up technology – time travel, faster-than-light drives – sure, have it do whatever your plot needs it to do. At least until somebody invents time travel or star drives.

A tiny caveat: it’s nice if even your fabricated science has at least a distant acquaintance with something genuine, and the farther shores of speculative physics might provide a writer with a lot of inspiration.

Gravity doesn’t pretend to be a lesson in astrophysics, any more than it pretends to be a probe of the human condition. So, it entertains, and it has done its work. And, arguably, just portraying brainy people as cool and making general audiences aware of physics are services, a task our schools don’t seem to be doing very well. In a recent survey, high schoolers in the United States ranked 25th in math and science among their peers in 34 other nations. Ouch!

So, can we agree? Gravity is good, which should be a load off Isaac Newton’s mind. But I can’t help wishing that they’d gotten their facts straight.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: The Tweeks!

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases!

 

Review: “Pokémon X & Y” bring new dimension to franchise

With nine sets of core games, six generations of characters, and eighteen years of history, one would think that Pokemon might be approaching the end of the tall grass.  But with Pokemon X & Y selling over four million copies worldwide on its premiere weekend, the series show no weakness at all.  The new game, the first to run exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS (and the new low-budget option for new gamers, the 2DS) adds a lot of new characters, new battle formats and a beautiful 3-D design to make it easily the most beautiful game in the series, as well as the busiest.

The basic gameplay remains unchanged – select one of three Pokemon to start your journey around the world, this time the lovely Kalos Region, a land based on the architecture and design of France. Use that Pokemon to catch other wild Pokemon, raise and train them to more powerful levels, allowing you to catch even more powerful creatures, lather, rinse, repeat.  But as with each game, there’s a whole new set of interesting critters to catch and collect, and almost unlimited strategy potential as you choose the most powerful moves for your characters, as well as choosing the most versatile fighting types to meet the challenge of both wild monsters, but other trainers, both in the game and in the real world.  The game is fully rendered in 3-D, taking advantage of the power of the 3Ds to deliver a new view of the characters, no longer the sinple top-down look of past games.  Battles feature sweeping camera angles as the characters battle, much in the style of the Pokemon Coliseum games for the various console systems.  There’s endless little details in the animation – your character drops to one knee when chatting to children, you see them actually pick up found items, and errant breezes make the trees sway and the grass rustle.  For the first time, the circle pad lest you move in diagonals, not the simple four directions of the games with only a D-pad.  Indeed, it’s so easy to move around, it takes some getting used to – you need to take an extra moment to make sure you’re actually lined up with items and characters you want to interact with.

Over and above the basic battle of the game, X & Y give you new ways to train and interact with your Pokemon.  Minigames allow you increase your friendship with your little friends and raise their battle stats.  Pokemon-Amie is a feature to the Nintendogs games, where you can pet your Pokemon, feed him treats and more, via the 3Ds touchpad.  The system’s camera is used for basic facial recognition, allowing you to play “monkey-see monkey-do” with them.  Super Training is a series of minigames designed to increase their battle stats like strength and speed.

About the only hardware feature of the 3DS that isn’t used to its fullest potential is Street and Spot Pass.  The game will receive messages of game updates and promotions from Nintendo in the game via Spotpass through an in-game device called the Holo-Caster, but interaction with other players only happens while the game is in play.  The Player Search Service allows you to interact with friends that you’ve met using friend codes, and if you connect to the Internet, any random players from around the world that are playing at the a moment.  Trading is much faster now, and more flexible.  An upcoming app release, Pokemon Bank, will allow you to store up to 3,000 characters on the Cloud, for a small monthly fee.

Each new Pokemon adventure brings new players and cartoon viewers to the series, and for long time players like me (seriously – the only thing I’ve done uninterrupted in my life that play Pokemon is be married), sparks the excitement of the series anew.  X and Y are easily the best new addition to the franchise in years, and if you were looking for an excuse to pick up or upgrade to a 3DS, you’ve got your reason.

Marc Alan Fishman: The Diamond Exchange

Fishman Art 131005The other day I was conversing with a friend on the ol’ Facebook chat (can I call it the ol’ Facebook chat?), and he lamented to me that he recently took on a pro-bono position designing a video game largely due to the inspiration of me and Unshaven Comics. I was floored. I was touched. I had a hard time not laughing. Not in jest mind you, but because after seven years of making books… it doesn’t feel like I’m in all that different a place. Why? Well, let’s look at the cold hard facts:

Unshaven Comics sells its wares exclusively at conventions. It’s not to increase the collectibility either. It’s because we couldn’t possibly afford to tackle the direct market. At all. Don’t believe me? Well, about the only way one can get their books offered on the racks of the local comic shop is to be in the Previews catalog put out by the Diamond Comic Distributors company. Diamond makes it insanely easy to do this. A publisher simply makes up a preview (heh!) of their issue they want to solicit in the catalog, and submit it, alongside some paperwork, to their headquarters. Then, the publisher sells their stock, wholesale, to Diamond with 60-75% discount off of the cover price. How many issues? Well, Diamond doesn’t say exactly… but you must ultimately meet their sales expectations in enough time in order to continue working with them. And that’s only after they approve your application. Still with me?

It takes roughly six months between the time a publisher first contacts Diamond to when you actually receive monies back from an order. Now, in simplest terms, this means Unshaven Comics would have to have the capital to pay for whatever orders come through the Previews catalog and then wait another month to see about 40% of our cover price come back in the door. And for those not familiar with printing these days, allow me to be blunt: Unless you’re printing thousands of books, your per-book price for a full color, 36 page book, where you charge a fan $5, leaves you with less then half of that coming back as profit. Suffice to say, we put out comics because we love connecting with fans, and are hopeful that it will one day lead to something bigger and better. If we tried to go to Diamond with our current printer, we’d see about twenty-five cents for every comic we sold.

And we haven’t even talked about marketing and promotion! Just because your publishing company is accepted into Diamond does not mean you get a big flashy full-page ad in Previews, enticing comic shops to order. In fact, we would have to sell 2000 books in order to break even with the smallest possible ad. It’s a sad fact: A comic shop in LA, New York, or hell… even our own damn backyard (Chicago, baby) wouldn’t have any clue who we are. We’re not a name to the common comic shop frequenter. While we’ve attended about 40 – 50 conventions in the time we’ve been a company, there’s no chance in hell we’ve saturated even the pit stains of the market. And that translates into the cold hard truth: A comic shop that hasn’t heard of us (even with an ad) is unlikely to purchase anything from Previews from us.

So now, in order to sell to those retailers, we have to market ourselves to them as well. If we took out a small bank loanand marketed ourselves properly, we might just stand a chance.

Are you as excited about all this as I am?

The reality is this: Almost a decade ago, I attended the then-beloved Wizard World Chicago show. I waited until the end of the DC previews panel and boldly walked up to Dan DiDio and asked what it would take in order to write for him and DC. He smiled and said “Well, get noticed. We don’t really look for writers.” I figured a great way to get noticed would be to capture the zeitgeist on my own. Well, seven years later, and that still feels far out of touch.

That being said, Unshaven Comics is not without the teeniest bit of clout. We’ve grown our gross sales by 86% in the past year. And the year before that? 69%. That’s actual calculated growth. We’ve been to the largest conventions in the Midwest, and in another week we’ll be at the second largest convention of the nation – New York Comic Con (at the ComicMix table, nyuck, nyuck, nyuck). We successfully funded our own Kickstarter. All in all, we’re doing pretty well for ourselves, even if we are in fact a spec on a blip on a fart cloud somewhere around the outskirts of the industry we love so much. And we’ve done all of that without tackling the only player in the distribution game.

It’s nothing to hang a beard on, but it’s enough to inspire our friends to do great things. I don’t think we could ask for more.

If you want to help Unshaven Comics, do us a solid by voting for us in the Intuit Small Business Big Game Contest. If we win? We actually get a commercial about us during the Super Bowl! No e-mail hoarding. No registration necessary. Just click here for a vote.

 SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

Martha Thomases: Cosplay Everyday

thomases-art-130927-146x225-3832893I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, it’s Comic-Con everywhere. I’m not just talking about the crowds of people from out of town, the ones who don’t know how to walk down an aisle (or street) in a way that allows for the existence of other pedestrians.

I’m talking about the outfits.

The way I figure, it all started out at Disneyland. First, and from the beginning, it was a place where seemingly mature adults would wear hats that made them look like giant mice. More recently, they have this deal where little girls can spend the day in princess outfits. A little girl arrives in shorts and a t-shirt, complains for a while and gets to change into royal gear. She spends the day on rides, in her gown, and then changes back to her civvies when it’s time to go home.

Once we’ve seen people in formal wear on roller-coasters (and before 6 PM!), what else is there shock us? The geek have inherited the earth.

We control the eyeballs that Hollywood most wants. Look at the fall television line-up. I think most of the new shows have an element of the fantastic, whether it involves witches or zombies or believing Robin Williams could have fathered Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

I don’t particularly want to dress up in a costume. I mean, I wore a uniform in boarding school for four years, so every day, when I get dressed, and I get to choose my own outfits from clothes that weren’t selected by Episcopalians, it feels like a costume. I just went shopping for a dress to wear to a formal event next month, when I will be in costume as a responsible adult, maybe even one with a little skin in the game. That’s enough fantasy for me, thanks.

Cosplay is everywhere, and it’s not just for kids anymore. It’s not even just for nerds anymore. There are reality shows starring cosplayers. There are major Internet arguments about who is and who isn’t the real deal.

So cosplay has gone mainstream. Maybe no one is going down the street dressed like Wonder Woman, but the stuff designers are offering for sale are just as unrealistic. Actually, I take that back. I think Seventh Avenue (the New York fashion industry) and the magazines that rely on Seventh Avenue would go bankrupt if women were encouraged to find our inner Amazon.

Still, at least in New York, people walk down the streets in all kinds of outfits. I’m not surprised that Fox had trouble attracting attention to one of their new shows if this was how they thought they would get attention. A headless horseman? As long as he isn’t wearing a backpack, he’d get no attention at all.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

REVIEW – Scribblenauts Unmasked – a DC Comics Adventure

REVIEW – Scribblenauts Unmasked – a DC Comics Adventure

After months of anticipation the latest Scribblenauts adventure is out, taking the popular series in a new direction, namely into the DC Universe. Series hero Maxwell and his twin sister Lily have a debate over who’s the better hero, batman or Superman, and decide the best way to find out is to go there and find out.  So with the help of Maxwell’s magic notepad that can create anything he writes in it, and Lily’s magic globe that can transport them anywhere they like, they head for Gotham City, where things…so not go smoothly.

To answer the most important question first, the library of DC Characters the game can create is outrageously exhaustive. No Watchmen and no Milestone characters, but The Legion and the Substitute Legion, the Doom Patrol, the Challengers of the Unknown, the All-Star Squadron, and damn near member of the Justice League you can think of is in there – and yes, that means Ted Kord – all three Blue Beetles, in fact.  It’s not perfectly complete: Eyeful Ethel, a failed Legion of Super Heroes candidate didn’t make the cut. And while Ralph Dibny, The Elongated Man, is in there, his wife didn’t make the cut. Which is odd because Jean Loring, in Eclipso form, did. While I found a few characters who weren’t in there, I was far more impressed with the ones who were.

The Big Bad in the game is Maxwell’s long-time enemy, Doppleganger, an evil version of Maxwell who sides with the DC Villains. In a happy change from past adventures, Maxwell’s sister Lily plays an active, albeit support role, providing Maxwell with news and assistance from the Batcave.

While the game is adorable to see, the characters chosen are not all cutesy-tootsie.  One of your first missions in Gotham is to transport serial killer Mr. Zsasz to a prison helicopter. Oh, the fun as I had to explain to The Kid who he was and how he came to be…

The mechanics of the game are largely the same as usual for the series – presented with a number of puzzles to solve, you must surmount obstacles by creating items with your magic notepad.  So, if standing before a cliff to have to scale, you could write “ladder” and a ladder would appear. Similarly, you could write “Grappling Hook,” “Jet pack” (at which point it would ask if you wanted Adam Strange‘s jetpack, Space Ranger’s, or a choice of several others), all of which would get you up the cliff equally successfully.  Special bonus missions with special limitations offer extra bonuses.  More than anything else, the game rewards creativity, both in the point values, and the sheer joy of success when you need to call for a doctor, and Dr. Mid-Nite appears.

In this game, a lot of the challenges are more combat based. Random villains will be causing mischief, and you are required to either arm yourself, or crate a hero to combat the spandex-clad menaces. The game has hundred of mini-missions to beat, and the missions change every time you enter a new location.

And WHAT locations – Starting in Gotham City, you slowly earn the chance to travel to Metropolis, Central city, Atlantis, and even Oa.  More and more characters and props become available as you pregress, allowing you to wear gear and costumes of dozens of heroes.

The story is the same in both the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game, with small gameplay differences on each platform. The Wii U version allows other players to interact with the game by using a Wii Remote while the main player uses the Gamepad. The 3Ds version uses streetpass, allowing players to unlock special uniforms and gear by exchanging data with other players automatically, just while walking around.

An already fun game series will get an introduction to a whole new audience who will not be disappointed with the story, or the selection of characters. Easy to pick up, and just as easy to stop and save when the real world beckons.Well worth your time.

 

CineFix Celebrates Batman Month on YouTube

CineFix Celebrates Batman Month on YouTube

CineFix, the ultimate destination for true movie buffs & filmmakers on YouTube, is celebrating the Caped Crusader with“Batman Month,” a month long series of original programming throughout September that includes swedded remakes of iconic Batman scenes, 8-bit video game recreations, countdown lists, contests to win The Dark Knight Trilogy and more!

Batman was recently named the most popular superhero ever on YouTube with over 3 billion views of 71,000 hours of video.

For example, check out the newest video that launched today on CineFix at:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOpIVQ1iyYA&list=PL1AXWu-gGX6Jto21cZ4vrtBZ4fW6s6Vkz&index=1[/youtube]

Other Batman Month Programming on CineFix includes:

8 Bit Cinema – Batman The Dark Knight

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5uDcj3mMd8&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL1AXWu-gGX6JMQywOErmWJCsY0m8RD3Zj[/youtube]

Hottest Batman Girls

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3S3z2itb6A&list=PL1AXWu-gGX6JMQywOErmWJCsY0m8RD3Zj&index=8[/youtube]

Conspiracy Cinema – Ben Affleck Lands Batman by Flexing Irish Mob Muscle

[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPAOiTNZQQw&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL1AXWu-gGX6JMQywOErmWJCsY0m8RD3Zj[/youtube]

Tune in on Friday, September 27 when “CineFix Now: Best Batman Villans” goes live.

REVIEW: The Fly

FlyWhile growing up, I among the last generation that got to watch classic black and white and early color horror films day and night. Before talk and game shows became cheap fare, New York stations would run movies before dinner and throughout the evening. Some were cheesy, even to my pre-adolescent eyes, but others were just downright scary. Among the latter was the effectively creepy The Fly. 20th Century Home Entertainment has just released this beloved classic on Blu-ray and it has been nicely transferred to enthrall a new generation.

Of course, many of the readers here probably only know the fun and weird remake by David Cronenberg, which does nicely stand on its own, but the original is well worth a loo, too.

Released in 1958, it was one of Fox’s truly great horror/sci-fi offerings after decades of inferior efforts. The film is based on the forgotten George Langelaan short story of the same name which first appeared in the June 1957 edition of Playboy. Fox quickly snapped up the rights and assigned the script chores to Shogun’s James Clavell. Despite its brevity, he whittled away elements of the story and focused squarely on the doomed Andre (David Hedison, pre-Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), a scientist cursed by his own lab work.

Told partly in flashback, the movie has Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) recount how and why she killed her husband Andre as her confession to her brother- in- law Francois (Vincent Price) and Inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall). Essentially, Andre was building a transporter device and of course decided to test it on himself without any assistance or witnesses. As he stepped into the beam, an innocent fly also entered the streaming energy and, well, things happened.

There’s a sense of creeping menace as the film slowly unfolds its tale even though it somewhat telegraphs that clearly some body parts got mixed up. But it also builds up a nice sense of tension until the big reveal, when the cloth covering is removed and we see the giant fly head where Hedison’s handsome face should be. It’s a measured approach, letting things build without a lot of melodrama or screeching violins. We’re sold on believing this tale thanks to Owens’ strong performance with a nice turn from Price. Hedison is underrated here considering how much he has to do without speaking or having his face shown.

Of course, that’s saved for the great final shot, which horrified me as a kid and still brings backs strong memories.

Fox gets credits for the fine transfer of this CinemaScope classic, retaining some of the color and sprucing up the rest. The sound is similarly strong, letting the sound effects come through nicely. The new edition also comes with an interesting and amusing Commentary with Actor David Hedison and Film Historian David Del Valle. There’s a repeat of Biography: Vincent Price from 1997 (44:03); Fly Trap: Catching a Classic (11:30), which explores not only this but the two unnecessary sequels; Fox Movietone News (:54) recapping the film’s premiere in San Francisco; and, the original Theatrical Trailer (1:59)

REVIEW: The Wonderful 101 – One-credible

The Wonderful 101 has been a year coming – it’s been part of Nintendo’s many show reels for the Wii U system since its release, and it was one of the most popular demos at last year’s New York Comic Con.  And it has been worth every minute.

Conquering alien horde Geathjerk has set its sights on Earth, and the secret army of the Centinels, code named “The Wonderful 100” is out last hope against with you leading them, the “101st”.  The team saves citizens, and then quickly deputizes them into duty, using them like building blocks to form weapons and tools to fight the rampaging monsters.

Another work from  Hideki Kamiya, produced by Atsushi Inaba, it’s got a lot in common with their Viewtiful Joe series for the Game Cube.  If Viewtiful Joe was a love letter to the Kamen Rider series, Wonderful 101 is a love letter to the Super Sentai series, the shows they use to bring us Power Rangers.  Like Joe before it, the game is rife with fourth-wall breaking comedy, over the top action and magnificent character design.

Also like its predecessor, the game is VERY complex.  With dozens, potentially hundreds of heroes and villains on screen at once, things can get very small very quickly, combine that with a control system that at various times uses all the buttons of the Wii U Game Pad, including drawing on the screen, the playing is required to do quite a lot, quite often.  Reasonable progress can be made with button mashing (and a very welcome “very easy” mode) but there’s enough opportunity for impressive combos and innovative gameplay to keep a dedicated gamer engrossed.  With a hundred hidden characters to find and many times that in hidden items, the replay value of the game is vast.  It takes advantage of the Wii U Game Pad to deliver a new playing mechanic.

The work pays off, as the story is filled with many twists and turns, skewering the tropes of tokusatsu while it tributes them.  The character design alone will keep you laughing for days. (Wonder Beer? Wonder Toilet?).  The theme song, “Heroes’ March” that plays under the action, is a wacky ditty that sounds like what would happen of John Philip Sousa did the theme for a Power Rangers show, orchestrated by Jim Steinman.

The complexity may make it the kind of game that might turn a casual player off, but for the hardcore gamer (not to mention fans of Japanese science-fiction) it’s a treat.

Features, Evolutions and Cool Stuff Coming for “Pokémon X and Y”

  • News
  • September 5, 2013

The newest entries in the popular Nintendo franchise aren’t due out until October 12th, but Pokémon X and Y have kept both in the news and the gamers’ zone of attention by a steady series of announcements about new features, and now new apps designed to work with the new releases.

Pokémon X and Y are the first games designed specifically for the Nintendo 3DS (as well as the newly announced 2DS, designed without the 3-D functionality for younger players), and will feature not only scores of new collectible creatures, but new forms of classic beasts.  New in this game is the Mega-Evolution, a new super-powered state of a Pokémon’s mature form.  Several classic Pokémon have been announced to be returning with Mega-forms including Mewtwo, Kangashkan, and just announced on the 4th, the original starters Blastoise, Venusaur and Charizard.  With the help of a new stone and a device called the Mega Ring, Pokémon who have formed a special bond with their trainers will gain access to this new form through events in the game.

Following up on the downloadable apps released with the last games, Pokémon Black and White, X and Y users will be able to download Pokemon Bank, an app that will allow users to upload their captured Pokemon to the cloud, with room for over 3,000 little monsters.  This will allow trainers to save captures not only from X and Y, but from both Black and White games as well, a process that could be quite time-consuming in past games.

The app and service is similar to Pokemon Box, a game and memory card released for the Game Cube for use with the Game Boy Advance releases, Ruby and Sapphire. Wii users could also upload their Pokemon captured in Diamond and Pearl to My Pokemon Ranch, a game that allowed you to raise and play with your monsters in a new way on a farm environment.  Unlike those games, since this app includes cloud storage of your data, the service will have an annual fee.  Details of pricing has not been released, tho the app will feature a trial period before payment will be required.

For those who haven’t picked up a 3DS yet (and let’s face it, even for those who have), Nintendo will add to its series of custom model systems with both a red and blue system with custom Pokemon graphics featuring the games’ legendary Pokémon, Xerneas and Yveltal.  The custom systems will be released on September 27th for $199.99, the system’s standard list price.  The price and the early date suggest the systems will not come with the new Pokémon games included.

[[[Pokémon X and Y]]] will be released on October 12th.  As that’s the same weekend as New York Comic Con, there’s some speculation that Nintendo will hold an event in New York to tie into the release.

REVIEW: “Duck Tales Remastered” – Ah-HOO-oo!

Duck Tales Remastered is out, and it is glorious perfection.

The original gameplay of the original Capcom NES classic (largely considered the finest platformer on the system) is reproduced perfectly.  Nothing has been “improved”, nor need it be.Yes, there are difficulty settings now, but if you want to reproduce the original in its infuriating awesomeness, it is there for you.

Note that I only said the gameplay had not been improved.  The rest has been catapulted into the 21st century by spectacular game developers WayForward, makers of the Mighty Switch Force series, and also just reinvigorated Shantae.  The graphics are still 2-D, but they are as sharp as the animation from the series, and thanks to the advances in technology, includes voiced narration and dialogue…by the original cast, wherever possible. Almost everyone is back; June Foray as Magica deSpell, Chuck McCann as Duckworth and half the Beagle Clan, and Frank Welker as the other half of the Beagle Boys,  Hal Smith, original voice of Flintheart Glomgold, passed some years back – voice and character actor Brian George has stepped in expertly, and Eric Bauza steps in for the late Hamilton Camp as Fenton Crackshell, AKA Gizmoduck.

And as for the hero of the game…I will not lie to you, once again hearing Alan Young as Scrooge McDuck brought tears to my eyes.  There have been others to voice the world’s richest duck, but none so often, and as long as the illustrious Mr. Young.  It’s a voice he’s used often, most famously in The Time Machine as various members of the Filby family.

I look forward to hours of maddeningly reliving the frustration of my…well, not quite my youth, more like my early married days.  I beat this thing one, I can do it again.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N0PzqF9gWY[/youtube]

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