Evening, pilgrim! Take a load off, stay a while. This is the Sunday News Round-up, the weekly feature that takes the big posts of the week, and adds some colorful insight. It’s the news you know and love, with the personality you didn’t ask for!
Hot off the presses of the Wii U launch is Nintendo’s slimmer, weirder looking Wii revision. The aptly named Wii Mini is on sale right now for our Canadian friends for $100. What does 100 Canuck-Bucks buy you in a Wii Mini? A Wii with no online capabilities or Gamecube emulation, that’s what. To me, this just seems like a dumb idea. Why waste time and money implementing R&D and manufacturing building a smaller Wii when the Wii U is all anyone cares about? Nintendo, I’d plead with you to not waste your time on a device like this, but why would you listen to a writer on the internet who just Photoshopped his face onto Billy the Kid? …I think I just answered my own question.
Speaking of console manufacturing, our old pal Michael “P-Money” Pachter has just been quoted as saying that the PlayStation 4 will be released as early as October 2013. It’s a realistic guess, but it all comes down to this next E3 conference. If Sony doesn’t come out of the gates with more than plans for the next-gen, don’t expect a PS4 until 2014. Though Pachter does make a good point in that Sony can’t be beaten to the punch again by Microsoft. And if everyone in Redmond is gearing up for a Holiday 2013 launch for the next Xbox…
Have you played The Binding of Isaac yet? Well, why not?! It’s been on sale countless times for just a couple of dollars, and it’s some of the best rougelike gameplay you’ll ever experience. Huh? You don’t play PC games? You’re waiting for a console version? Well, this is for you, lone hold-out! The game’s creator, Edmund McMillen, recently wrote about the future of the game, and his plans to get it on consoles. I’m absolutely ecstatic that the game will be playable on a console by next year. It’s one of those games that everyone everywhere needs to play for at least a little while. Here’s hoping that the powers that be at the Big Three accept the game on their platforms; the game’s story is a pretty great criticism of modern religion.
Lastly, one of my favorite games of the year is Hotline Miami. The surreal vibe of the 80’s, a bit of the old ultra-violence, and good old fashioned paranoia, this game has it all. But the promise of a sequel wets my whistle quicker than a bottle of your finest sarsaparilla. Cactus (one of the game’s designers), always said that any DLC would be about as long as the base game, so it makes sense that the DLC we expected morphed into a sequel we didn’t see coming. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish the first game.
Well, time for me to hit that old dusty trail. If you liked what you read, inflate my ego down in the comments, or over in our forum. Happy trails, pardner. And if you haven’t yet, throw some money to the LA Game Space. These are the last few days of fundraising, and these guys need all the help they can get. If it gets funded, I’ll do something stupid on a webcam for everyone’s amusement.