These are always funny.

Hello, everyone, Budgetron here.  I have just returned from the 5 day assault that is Comic con and all I have to say is, amidst all the craziness on the floor, I had one moment stand out above all the rest.  And oddly enough, that moment seemed to have taken place in 1988.  I don’t know what asshole at the event that stole Doc Browns patented flux technology, but I’m glad he did.  As most of you can tell by the title of this post, I am here to tell you of the awesome glory of Capcom’s Mega Man 9!  Just so you know how much awesomeness you can be prepared for, here’s the box art!

Now, for any of you bots who played the original back in the day, you realize how awesome this art is, but even for me, the unmitigated retro-ness of it all was not enough to ease my fears.  You see, I have been burned before by a “going back to its roots” style of game called “New Super Mario Bros.”  I felt it was fun the first time through, but the developers forgot what was fun about the old ones, while simultaneously trying to convince us that’s what they were trying to recreate.  The dev team on NSMB forgot the fun that comes from dying a lot and finding the secrets on your own (I hate how all new games treat its players like morons, “here it is, here’s your secret level,  look there!”).  I sold my copy of NSMB quickly after one play through.  So, needless to say I was hesitant to even get my hopes up about Mega Man 9, much less be crushed to tears after playing the demo.

I am here to let you all know it is time to rejoice!   I played through 2 sets of lives and never passed a level.  Now, granted, I was surrounded by other people and felt rushed, but I really do feel that this game is just as fun and difficult as the Meg Man games of the past!  I had a lot of fun, got knocked into pits by birds dropping eggs, fell off of disappearing platforms into an empty abyss, and even missed out on a big energy pill because it got stuck under the floor (bad collision detection included)!  It was so fun playing it, and I am super excited to play a hard platforming game again.  Capcom really seems to have knocked it out of the park, and everyone playing it and watching around me were happy with the product as well.  Yes, we have grown up as an industry, and the graphics have gotten sleeker, but make no mistake, the gameplay is there and your eyes will soon forget it’s looking into an 8-bit time warp, but your brain will feel like a kid again.

As an added bonus to thrifty robots everywhere, this game will be available on wii ware, and that means it’ll probably be 5-10 bucks.  Hooray for cheap thrills.

We’re back again today with coverage of the Watchmen and Spirit panel…

Before comic-con I was easily more excited for the Spirit, but the more I see of it the more worried I get. Whereas with the Watchmen the more I see the more excited I am to see it, except that I am skeptical because I don’t trust the director. The trailer they showed for the Watchmen looked really good. Dave Gibbons the co-creator of the comic book, said that he is really happy for the way things are turning out, which is really encouraging, but I am constantly reminded of how poorly 300 turned out. It looks good, but all I can say is we will see.

The footage for the Spirit doesn’t look very good, I am still going to give it a chance, but I am worried. I don’t know that first time director Frank Miller knows how to direct actors. I just hope what he knows about storytelling and dialog, make up for what he lacks as a director. (I don’t like the kid that they got to play the Spirit, he seems kinda like an idiot, mullet and all.)

During the panel they talked a lot about how true they were being to Will Eisner, but to be honest it doesn’t look to me that they are being all that true to the characters, and that it is definitely “Frank Miller’s The Spirit” and not “Will Eisner’s The Spirit” I hope it is good.

The last panel I went to was a Vertigo panel, that was semi-interesting. They announced a new line they are going to be releasing called “Vertigo crime” The whole line is going to be hard cover black and white books in the crime and noir genre. They are getting some best selling crime novelists to write some of the books. Brian Azzarello is kicking off the new line with a book called “Filthy Rich” I haven’t read to much of his stuff, but I liked his run on Batman, so I am definately interested in his work.

They announced some other cool things, but what I was most interested in was what Bill Willingham had to say about Fables. He said that the series is essentially going to be starting over after issue 75, and that issue 75 is going to be a mad man. 50 pages, all double page spreads. I assume it is all going to be the dirtiest part of the war. Since this issue is mostly about art, he said that he left some of the stuff that happened in the artists hands (Mark Buckingham), he also declared that Mark Buckingham is a sick man, and he shouldn’t be held responsible if everyone’s favorite character dies, and made it sound as if they would.

Well that’s all for my comic-con coverage, I wish I could have been there all week.

Let’s just say, I wasn’t disappointed. When I found out the Ghostbusters booth had a playable demo, I knew where I’d be spending a good portion of my time.

Up front were two laptops to sign up for news coverage (spam). But, the reason to do so was to get a free shirt, laniard, Ecto-1 license plate, and Stay Puft Marshmallow flavored Lip Balm. Seriously cool stuff.

The demo starts off in front of the New York City Library. You, Ray, Egon and Winston stand on the stairs to the Library as a crowd cheers your names. After taking it in for a few seconds, the boys in grey gather around one of the statues up front. They whip out their PKE meters and start scanning. The statue then explodes and two ghosts go flying into the library. The chase is on.

I’m not going to give you a play by play of the rest of the demo. If you want to watch it, Gamespot has a pretty sweet video with Ryan French talking about the game. I’m just going to go over a few highlights.

• Ryan told us they scripted the game so that every 15 feet something funny / fun / or scary would happen. Like in the movie, when you expect something scary to happen, you’ll end up laughing. When you expect to laugh, you’ll end up getting scared.

• In the game, Ray tells Egon he wishes Venkman was there to see help catch the Library ghost. This raises the question, where is Venkman? Did he quit? Is he back on tv with his psychic show? Maybe he ran away with Dana? Or perhaps it didn’t work out with her, so he’s the fallen hero? I dunno.

• The panel for Ghostbusters was cancelled due to a “scheduling conflict,” according to the guy in charge. He said it was their fault, but not his fault. He wasn’t very clear. So instead of having to sit through a panel, he just filled me in on the multiplayer. Probably one of the more exciting tid-bits. With the PC, Xbox and PS3 versions, you’ll be able to link up with 3 friends and playing exclusive co-op missions. You’ll meet up at the firehouse where Janine will take calls and send you out into the field.

There’s still lots more info coming in for the game. I’ll post more as I get it.

UPDATED AGAIN: This site has it.

(As does this one, along with the Tron 2 footage as well).

UPDATE: It’s all gone now.  If anybody has a copy of the video, we’ll gladly put it up here.

Let’s see how long this lasts.

This looks interesting, but Jesus, Gambit sucks.

I went to the comic-con this year for two of the five days, but I got to see some good panels, and got some insight on some projects that I was interested in.

I was about 10 minutes late for the first panel I went into, it was for the movie “Push” all I want to say is that, what I saw of it,  it didn’t look that good. But I only saw one clip that somehow felt like the matrix, and heard Chris Evans talk about why he likes acting.

They cleared the stage, and Alex Proyas came out, for his movie “Knowing“. This movie stars Nicolas Cage.

(Thank god he wasn’t there. Two years ago I saw him there for Ghost Rider, and he is such a doped out rock star using narcissistic quotes such as “This is the part, I was born to play” and “I am Johnny Blaze”)

The trailer for this movie doesn’t look completely bad, but there is a frighteningly bad cliffhanger question that makes me worry a little bit. Alex Proyas talked a lot about the movie, and how that he focuses on quality over quantity when it comes to making movies. I am semi-excited to see this, but only because I trust Alex Proyas as a director. After the trailer, and talking about the movie they opened up the floor for a Q&A (There were only three people that wanted to ask him questions, I was one of them and the other two didn’t seem to know who he was.), I asked about his involvment in the possible Silver Surfer movie, and he confirmed that he was not going to be directing it.

The third part of this particular panel was for a new movie coming out called “Twilight” and so I left.

There were some cool things on the floor, the Warner Brothers booth had a full size owl ship from the set of Watchmen and Marvel had the Iron Monger.

The Capcom and Konami booths had some games I was really excited to try (but didn’t get to) Megaman 9, both of the new Castlevania  releases, and a giant Street Fighter 4 tournament area.

There didn’t seem to be as many costumes this year, but there were definitely some winners……….

I went to another panel with Jim Lee, Mike Mignola, Robert Kirkman, and Grant Morrison, They had some interesting things to say about the differences in comic book storytelling, and Movie storytelling. Mike Mignola had a bit of advice for people trying to get into comic books, which was not to create a character or do a book that you would not want to do forever, don’t do something you don’t want to do unless it is for a paycheck.

An attendee stood up in the panel and let loose on Jim Lee for not finishing the All Star Barman and Robin series fast enough. Mike Mignola jumped to his defense with the point that when he was working for DC with deadlines all his art sucked, because he was just trying to get it out there to fast, but now he does Hellboy when he wants to, and he always makes sure it is his best work before giving it to people. Jim Lee apologized but made it known he is going to give quality work, he also said that the Allstar Batman and Robin series, is going to be 20 issues, it sounded like he was joking but he predicted that it would take 5 years to get 2o done.

Robert Kirkman was asked a question about if his new position as a partner at Image was going to interfere with his work, his reply was that he thinks his work is going to get better because he is going to focus fully on his creator owned books from here on out, and that he is not going to write any more Marvel books, although there are a few series that he is going to finish out before completely dropping Marvel, and he said that his scripts for those are already turned in.

Stay tuned for Part Two which will post tomorrow, where I give rundowns of the Watchmen and Spirit Panels.   Also, we talk about the Vertigo Panel and some cool info about Fables.

Apparantly, there was a solid casting rumor at Comic Con. I got this from ComingSoon.net:

John Barrowman, the star of “Torchwood,” was just asked moments ago at the San Diego Comic-Con panel if there was any possibility that he would be playing Captain America in the upcoming feature film.

He smiled and gave the stock answer that he’d love to play the character and that Captain America has always been his favorite comic book superhero. Clearly, though, the notion did not take him by surprise and he ended up admitting there had been discussions with his agents and meetings on that very issue.

Personally, I’m still rooting for Thomas Jane.

Also, The First Avenger: Captain America looks to have a May 11, 2009 release date. But I’m sure you all knew that.

Sat in on the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles which is currently in production of it’s second season. This coming season should entertaining enough as they’ve announced that they’re gonna kill off some characters and shit. I’ve seen the show once or twice and it’s pretty good, but I will say that I’m gonna watch it a whole lot more as Shirley Manson, of Garbage fame, is gonna be a regular cast member.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season One will hit DVD shelves (in multiple formats) August 18th.

I got this in my inbox and it makes me jealous that I’m not at the con this year.  I’ll be there next year, though.  You can bet your sweet ass on that.

This was at the Sony Party.

Sony and Capcom has announced the release of an upcoming animated feature film to be released straight to DVD chronicling the events following the highly successful (and fun) Resident Evil 4. With a release date sometime before the year is over Resident Evil: Degeneration pairs up Clair Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy for the first time since their first appearance in 1998’s Resident Evil 2.

The film takes place entirely in an airport revolving around a bio terror attack that Clair happens to be at. Leon, who is now a specialist in counter bio terrorism is called in to resolve the situation. The animation looks extremely impressive and it should prove to be a very entertaining film.