The redesign process took a bit longer than expected since I had some random CSS problems (always fun) and worked on it in chunks, but all should be all working fine now. I spent some time fine-tuning the CSS so it appears pixel perfect in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera, and having quickly thrown it through iCapture it appears to be the case for Safari too. Don’t say I don’t love you.

Since there’s now a sidebar I’ve thrown a bunch of stuff on there that you may or may not find useful. Having those links should help new readers to find my various content easily, and hopefully lure them in permanently! Other than that the site is very much the same as before, and I’ve intentionally kept the design quite similar.

One thing you guys are likely to appreciate more than me is that there’s once again no ads, which means the site has gone back to making nothing. Not that I’m too upset or anything, but I was really hoping I’d have been able to get a copy of Mint for $30 rather than relying on third-party hosted solutions for bot-free stats tracking. If you feel really awesome, any and all PayPal donations to paypal@ryanjohnwilliams.com would be highly appreciated. I promise it’ll go towards Mint.

Anyway, updates should resume appearing every day or two now that stuff is sorted out on the design/WordPress end. If anyone would like to do a ‘blogroll’ exchange which means nothing more than that we exchange sidebar links, leave a comment and as long as the site is video game related and updated frequently (once or twice a week) I’ll add it.

Oh, and the header image will change depending upon what tickles my fancy at the moment.

Joining McDonalds’ Super Mario Bros parody and Coca Cola’s Grand Theft Auto parody, Honda has decided to advertise its new vehicle by parodying one of the most well known games in the world, Tetris. I don’t think this is quite as superb as the two aforementioned ads, but it’s certainly a good try.

Fortunately for those who aren’t German such as myself, the ad has pretty much no text or speech, relying on the hugely recognisable Tetris tune and the visual imitation of the game’s simple but addictive gameplay to do the business. It is basically a bloke loading the back of his car with luggage, with said luggage being inserted like Tetris pieces to slot in perfectly.

There’s not much to say about this ad since it is what it is. There’s no underlying irony or a dual-parody as with McDonalds’ effort; it’s simply a real-life implementation of Tetris, complete with music and sound effects. Top stuff — thanks to Aeropause for pointing this beauty out.

Update #1:
It looks like we might have a dual-parody on our hands after all! Gay Gamer point outs that The Simpsons ran a very similar scene during an episode, and upon watching the video it’s quite clear that the inspiration could easily have originated from there.

There’s a rather clever commercial running on US TV right now, advertising those terrible McDonalds Nintendo toys I wrote about last week. Although the toys are indeed not a good thing, the self-depreciating ad is surprisingly inspired. It’s inspired not only because it’s obviously a transformation of the first level of Super Mario Bros into a shirt real-life acted video, but also because it’s seemingly parodying a popular internet video that hit the rounds a few months ago, showing a college play with an extremely similar style. Watch both and you’ll immediately see the similarities.

I’m always a fan of good video game related advertisement on TV, so it’s good to see another notch added to the belt of success in said arena, even if Kotaku is typically as needlessly critical as always. But hey, when you have a fan base that loves the whole faux asshole routine, what do you expect? They know they love the ad really.

As for the downtime mentioned in the headline, at some point during the next few days I’m going to redevelop the design of the blog slightly. I had a lot of traffic and new readers during August (18,226 of you, actually — thanks so much for the support!), and I noticed from my statistics that a lot of people aren’t finding my older posts and such too easily. So, I’m going to bring back the sidebar and rework the design somewhat so it continues to fit onto 800×600, used by a whopping 4% of you. It might be a day or two of downtime depending on how many issues I run into. I know it being down isn’t going to wreck your day or anything, but I just thought I’d throw out a note about it.

Anyone who’s played Zelda: Ocarina of Time is probably aware of the fact that it is one damn good game. I personally rank it in the top few of all time; it felt incredibly epic back in 1998 with a massive world, almost endless gameplay, and generally astounding quality on every front. It is a masterpiece, and many think that its Nintendo 64 sequel Majora’s Mask is of similar or even superior quality.

Although a GameCube Zelda was released in 2003, it wasn’t really that much of a spiritual sequel like Majora’s Mask was. While the gameplay was very similar and all the hallmark Zelda elements were there, it felt very different from Ocarina of Time. Gone was the realistic graphical style, replaced with cell shaded cartoon-like imagery. Hyrule, the land that Ocarina of Time was set in, was nowhere to be found for the vast majority of the game. And of course the locations were a series of islands in a massive sea (which was boring to cross) rather than spread throughout a reasonably interesting land like in Ocarina of Time. I of course speak of none other than Zelda: The Wind Waker.

While a good game overall, Wind Waker was not the sequel many were expecting — especially after an early video showed what looked like a more Ocarina of Time-esque style. And of course, the storyline itself was set long after the events of Ocarina of Time transpired, with a completely different world and no recognisable places or faces (with the exception of a very short part of the game; those who’ve played it know what I mean).

Fortunately Twilight Princess is nearly upon us, and it indeed a spiritual sequel to Ocarina of Time in every way. Back is the realistic style, now more so than ever before. We’re also back in Hyrule, with many locations that’re loosely familiar, including a farm that has subtle segments of the Lon Lon Ranch music worked into the soundtrack for maximum nostalgic impact. Gone is all that piratey nonsense; we’re back in the fantastical world that Ocarina of Time laid out but only gave us a glimpse of. And the storyline is set between Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker.

Now, getting back to the original point of this post, an article has appeared on IGN which looks at a bunch of upcoming Wii games, and under the Twilight Princess part it’s revealed that Hyrule (which is traditionally an overworld) will take a whopping 45 minutes to cross — even on horseback! Now at first that may seem ridiculous, and I am slightly suspicious about the number, but the fact that we’re even up in that area has gotten me a bit excited. After all, Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule overworld was massive back in its day, and that took a few minutes to cross. Add eight years of technology and having such a massive world doesn’t seem so ridiculous.

After all, Nintendo has had around three years on this, and possibly even longer if development overlapped Wind Waker’s (which isn’t an unreasonable assumption considering that several handheld Zelda games have been/are being developed, including the upcoming Wind Waker sequel). Zelda games have traditionally been very long, and it looks like Twilight Princess will be no exception. If this game ends up being as good and as relatively long as Ocarina of Time, well… I’ll see you in a year!

Yeah, Bethesda had their fun with Oblivion, but Zelda’s where it’s really at. Twilight Princess still remains at the very top of my “most anticipated” list, and I have a very strong hunch that it’s going to tear up other games that release around the same time. Heck, the fishing side of the game will be worth the price by itself!

Does anyone else want to share my massive tangent and express how much they’re looking forward to this game?

Now this is what I like to see: the trailer for an unofficial movie adaption of Half-Life. It’s got the atmosphere, it’s got the characters, and it’s even got some basic CGI. The downside? According to the author comments it was simply produced as a class project and will not be a full production. Damnit.

Half-Life is one movie I’d really like to see done properly, though I’m sure there’s many who’d rather the risk not be taken considering the poor history of game-to-movie adaption. Still, just think about the potential for a second. The entire movie is practically already there: a scientist in a top-secret, remote, gigantic, underground facility goes to work; things go wrong; he has to get out while avoiding the many menaces along the way. The only difference is it’d be from a third-person perspective rather than first, and I’m sure there’d have to be a scientist or two that lasts a bit longer than thirty seconds. But hell, it could be superb. The entire premise of Half-Life is, for lack of a better word, cool.

In other news, I’m doing some writing over here throughout September and possibly beyond, so head over there if you’re interested in seeing more of my writing handiwork. The style is a little different to here, but hopefully you’ll enjoy it just the same. I’ll continue doing my regular posts here though, so don’t worry about losing me.

A lot of people were worried when the E3 information onslaught hit the web. Red Steel, a sword/gun thriller to be released exclusively on the Wii, did not have fully dynamic sword action. To clarify, that’s where the sword in the game would follow how you’re holding your Wiimote, making your real life actions literally translate to the game.

Instead, it was set up so that the game would interpret rough positions of the Wiimote and turn them into ingame actions. For example, swinging the Wiimote forward would trigger a generic “lunge forward with sword” animation, basically the same as pressing A in a Zelda game. There was no physical relationship between the sword in the game and your Wiimote.

But that’s no longer the case. According to a post on the IGN forums that is in turn a translation of a German Nintendo site’s interview, Red Steel will in fact have fully dynamic Wiimote sword action. Yes, now the sword really will follow exactly how you hold your Wiimote. I just hope there aren’t any silly restrictions in place. How cool would it be to be able to hold the sword horizontally in front of your face in a silly cinematic fashion? Very cool. Useless from a gameplay perspective, but simply being able to do that kind of thing makes all the difference to the player experience.

Other tidbits revealed in the interview are that the graphics have been upgraded a lot since E3, and that there’ll be no loading times and instead a special streaming system — probably similar to Metroid Prime, where what’s behind the next door is loaded as you approach it, and the previous room unloaded.

According to 4color rebellion’s translation, Red Steel will not launch with online play (it’s implied that this could somehow change later; possibility of patching using the Wii Wifi system?), and the Wiimote’s speaker will be used for immersive sound effects.

Overall, Red Steel is shaping up to be a pretty damn stellar game. If they can nail the sword action then it’ll definitely add a very interesting slant to the first-person shooter mechanic, as long as it can be backed up by actually being a fun FPS. Here’s hoping that the Ubisoft magic which ocassionally rubs off onto its games (read: Beyond Good and Evil) will come into play here.

Unfortunately no good for the non-US readers and myself, McDonalds is to unleash a bunch of Nintendo themed toys in America to complement their “Happy Meals”. As typically cheap as ever, the toys don’t really look that faithful to their subject matter and Yoshi looks downright freakish. Still, those of you in the US might want to order their ‘kids’ some Happy Meals regardless so you can add them to your collections.

There are six toys in total: a Mario ball, a Mario Tennis mallet (?), a Donkey Kong holding two wheels (??), a Donkey Kong inside a wheel (???), a Yoshi hugging thin air, and a Mario Golf Yoshi that spits a golf ball into the air. Nothing particularly exciting, then. Why not capitalise on something that’s actually widely associated with Nintendo, such as a Mario mushroom or some Yoshi eggs? Why a picture of Donkey Kong in the middle of a wheel? Meaningless is what it is.