Dragon Ball Z MMO

I would have thought this happened already, but perhaps that’s my fond memories of my brief stint with Bid for Power some years back.

BFP is the first thing I thought of when I saw this, but this is an entirely different (and entirely avec Toryiama legit) project. You can create your character as a child from either the Saiyan, Namek or Human races, and the child will grow up as the game progresses.

Seems interesting, but I’ll probably never play it. Chances of it coming to the US are slim, but not impossible. DBZ is still pretty popular in the west, but it’s nowhere near popular enough to make a dent in WoW in the MMO space–or even FFXI for that matter. I won’t be spending money to import it either, despite my efforts to be learning Japanese.

Chun Li Movie Confirmed, Capcom wants more movies

Hollywood Reporter reports that Capcom is “partnering with Hyde Park Entertainment on a new film that focuses on Chung Li (sic), one of the most popular fighters from the game franchise.”

Chung Li? I guess Mr. Gaudiosi is not much of a Street Fighter fan.

While I’m not entirely sure if Capcom had a real hand in the Jean-Claude Van Damme extravaganza of 1994, this time around they will likely be more involved in the process. Focusing on Chun Li seems interesting, she certainly seems to have a lot of potential background story and her adventures in Interpol provide a lot of fodder for a feature.

Who will they get to play Chun Li? Will she be hot? Most importantly, will she be willing to get thigh implants?

Also mentioned in that article is the fact that the bigger Japanese game companies are targeting ‘Hollywood licenses’ to improve their business in the U.S. In otherwords, they need to start making lunchboxes in America to gain ground there. Maybe not so much as making movies out of their games, but making games out of the movies.

As long as these lunchboxes provide the income for great games, I’m all for it. I have absolutely no problem with the endless rehashing of Mega Man and Street Fighter, as long as it brings us brilliance like Okami and Lost Planet.

Lunchbox

You know how several years ago, every show that wanted to be popular had a lunchbox? It seems that this extends to more things now, particularly video games. If you want your show, book, singer, or other random thing to be popular, make a video game about it. Or a movie, but movies have been around forever.

Videogames are the ‘new’ lunchbox.

Thus a category in this blog is born. Whenever something seemingly unnecessary comes about as a marketing ploy to increase popularity and mindshare of a certain property, I will label it as a lunchbox tactic. Toys are normal spawn of media presentations, so those will generally be omitted unless it’s something outstanding.

50 Cent: Bulletproof? Lunchbox.
Viva Pinata? Lunchbox (though they did plan it from the beginning as a multiplatform entertainment product, so it’s a lesser offense.)
The 7 million SpongeBob Squarepants games? Massive spongy Lunchbox.

Now, lunchboxes aren’t all bad. I had a Ninja Turtle lunchbox that was blue and had awesome artwork on it (found a picture of it!). I was heartbroken when the fat kid ‘accidentally’ sat on it and broke it. Some marketing byproducts (the metaphoric lunchbox) can be quite good as well. Pirates of the Caribbean was pretty good (and I bet the ride at Disney got a lot more popular), some TV/Movie/Anime/Book based video games suprise us and are very good. Stil, the see-saw is much heavier on the ‘crap’ end, so the lunchboxes that do shine through should be recognized.

So you get the idea. I thought I’d introduce the idea since I may be using the term now and then and will be labeling some articles as such–like my next post.