Gotta troll hard!
The Official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter Account Has Been Trolling CWC!
The Sonic franchise has not been putting its best foot forward for a good long time now, yet even by the mediocre standards of the series Sonic Boom was a colossal flop. Several weeks ago Lusipurr.com reported the news that the reason for the game’s craptastic state was partly because it had been developed for next-gen hardware, but the team was then forced to cram the game onto the Wii U after Sega reached an exclusivity deal with Nintendo. Combined, the the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game sold a little over 400,000 units, making it the worst performing Sonic game to have ever been released. Both in terms of quality and in terms of sales Sonic Boom is handily bested by Sonic [2006], which really serves to put things into perspective. For this reason it is utterly inconceivable that Sega would decide to produce a continuation to their worst selling iteration in the Sonic franchise, yet that is precisely what they have done. Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice!
One person who did not take at all well to Sonic Boom was Christian Weston Chandler [AKA Christine Weston Chandler, AKA CWC, AKA Chris-Chan]. Chris-Chan did not object to the game on qualitative grounds, but rather despised it because Sonic’s arms were blue! While some might have been inclined to shoot an angry email to Sega or perhaps denounce the company over the internet, Chris-Chan instead opted to vandalise a Gamestop Sonic Boom display, and then compounded matters by macing one of their employees on the way out. Chris-Chan is now facing jail time.
Naturally Chris-Chan did not take news of a Sonic Boom sequel lightly:
“Hell No!!! Still with Blue Arms?!!! Ugh! SEGA, Does my Protest and Jail Time And Court Trouble Result NOT resonate with you at all? Don’t Y’all EVER FREAKING LISTEN AND LEARN?!!!
GameStops, Wal-Marts, Targets, Toys “R” Us, and all stores that sells video games, PLEASE DO NOT STOCK, PRESELL, OR SELL THIS GAME!!! SEGA Needs to Listen AND Learn!!! The Protest and Boycott Continues and Resumes!!!”
Given the clusterfuck that this lolcow has made of his life, many developers would be inclined to feign ignorance of his antics, particularly on social media. Happily, those many developers are not the Official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account however. The Official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter is absolutely hilarious, and well worth a follow [at least until Sega reins in their hijinks]. The Official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter also clearly knows about the whole sorry Chris-Chan saga, and his fursona Sonichu:
@Charganium: “Will I be able to play as Sonichu in Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice?”
@sonic_hedgehog: “Maybe, but only if we give Sonichu blue arms, three scarves, and ultimately just redesign him as Big the Cat.”
That is right, Chris-Chan has become such a colossal lolcow that even Sega of America is now pointing at him and laughing! Having a corporate entity respond in such a direct way was so unexpected that some Twitter users began to doubt its veracity until proofs were offered:
@InaneCuttlefish: “are you actually an official sega twitter account because this is priceless.
@sonic_hedgehog: “Look at that blue verified icon. Now back to me. Now back to the blue verified icon. Now back to me. This thread is now diamonds.”
Finally, Lusipurr.com readers may be interested to know that Sonic has finally discredited cruel rumours which had suggested that he had been engaging in inter-species coupling:
@TrevorBurgan: “remember when sonic kissed a princess?”
@sonic_hedgehog: “Nope. Never happened. Nope nope nope.”
If only Denis Dyack would give similar assurances, then we might all be able to move on.
[UPDATE]: It would appear that Chris-Chan is preparing to go to war!
“I protested peacefully and bold; I get banned from the local Four GameStops, and rebanned from Fashion Squarel ended up in jail for a weekend, along with court troubles; someone got a mild amount of pepper spray.
Time healed me some and I was recovering and doing better. Now, ANOTHER BLUE ARMED GAME IS BEING MADE?!!!
#SEGA has ruined a peaceful, pleasant life for me again. It is Payback Time!
#SonicBoom
#FixSonicsArmsImmediatelySEGA”
Minecraft, on the other hand, is a penis haven!
Penises Are the Reason We Have Not Seen More Lego MMOs
Given the popularity of Minecraft and Terraria, both games which essentially mimic the core function of Lego building blocks, one might be given to wonder why Lego has always been so curiously absent from the MMO space. Granted, there was 2010’s Lego Universe, yet that project was curiously short-lived [two years] given how perfect the concept of Lego is as a medium for personal expression. Surely if gamers had a diverse assortment of Lego bricks at their finger tips then they could spend hours expressing themselves in any way they likes. Well yes, that was in fact the case, which is essentially also the problem. Lego was overlooking the very basic fact that whenever you give a group of people the means with which to artistically express themselves they will invariably use it to draw penises. This is why 3DS owners are no longer allowed to send one another picture messages. It is also why Lego Universe is no longer in operation. Because of Lego’s child-friendly brand image it was viewed as absolutely imperative that no penis make it into the game, yet the cost involved in this was overly prohibitive, which resulted in the game being shut down prematurely. This week Megan Fox, the game’s senior graphics coder, took to Twitter in order to divulge some behind-the-scenes information on the logistical nightmare that was cock-blocking Lego Universe.
“Funny story – we were asked to make dong detection software for LEGO Universe too. We found it to be utterly impossible at any scale.
Players would hide the dongs where the filtering couldn’t see, or make them only visible from one angle / make multi-part penis sculptures.
It was all automated, but the human moderators were IIRC the single biggest cost center for LEGO Universe’s operational costs. Or close to.
The moderation costs of LEGO Universe were a big issue in general. They wanted a creative building MMO with a promise of zero penises seen.
They actually had a huge moderation team that got a bunch of screenshots of every model, every property. Entirely whitelist-based building.
YOU could build whatever you wanted, but strangers could never see your builds until we’d had the team do a penis sweep on it.
And “that” is why Trove/etc were able to make better building MMOs. They didn’t have to worry about little kids seeing dongs. We REALLY did.
We even had an employee very nearly fired for building a penis. It was on his own property, but a kid wandered into it during a kid test.
This is a roundabout way of saying ‘never build an online game for kids / I have no idea how Minecraft hasn’t been sued over this yet.”
It really is a funny situation for Lego to be in. It is the perfect property on which to base a construction MMO, yet if the game is made to be flexible enough to be competitive with Minecraft then there really is no containing the dongs which will blight the landscape. Apparently Lego is currently looking to reenter the MMO space that they vacated with the shuttering of Lego Universe, so it will be interesting to see how they intend to counter instances of lewd behaviour.
Will work for food.
Salvaging NES Scrap
This week Arc System Works has announced that they have acquired the rights to classic Technos series Double Dragon, along with the rights to Kunio-kun [which features such NES hits as River City Ransom and Super Dodge Ball]. Arc System Works is a fairly ideal studio for retro properties to end up, as they are one of the few developers who still have in-house artists capable of producing 2D pixel art. Double Dragon going to Arc System Works is one of the few happy endings of the industry, yet for every Arc System Works there is a Konami.
Konami has done a fine job destroying their own gaming properties, such as Castlevania which has recently gone independent in the form of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, cleaning up a massive 5.5 million dollars during its run on Kickstarter. Konami junking their own properties is one thing, but Konami junking another veteran studio’s IP is quite another. In 2011 Konami acquired Hudson Soft, the cherished developer behind Bomber Man and Adventure Island. It is almost as though Konami wanted Hudson Soft for the sake of having them, but had never once stopped to think about what they would do with them. A year after Konami bought Hudson Soft the company was absorbed into Konami, and has done very little of note ever since. Recently the makers of Momotaro Dentetsu have been very open on Twitter about Konami essentially giving them the run-around, with the series creator, Akira Sakuma, stating that the series is essentially dead:
Akira Sakuma: “Konami hasn’t gotten in touch with me at all. This is how they’ve tossed me aside for a while now. I’m announcing here that Momotaro Dentetsu is officially done. Ishikawa at Konami squelched everything.”
Mariko Sakuma: “They told us that we’d get a response in May, so we gave them the weekend, and ended up waiting until June 2nd. But we still haven’t seen any contact. I wonder what happened with Konami’s Mr. Ishikawa.”
Sadly, Capcom properties have not fared much better. Recently some gamers expressed optimism at the news that the Mega Man series has a new producer, however, at the risk of sounding jaded, the guy seems more likely to be the producer responsible for repackaging old Mega Man games into new digital packages than he is to be the producer in charge of resurrecting the series. The Mega Man Legacy Collection appears to be the first step along this path. And then of course there is Devil May Cry producer Hideaki Itsuno, who this week posted an interview to Capcom’s official Japanese website, which stated that if fans wanted a new entry in the Devil May Cry series then they had to buy the HD remaster of Devil May Cry 4. He is essentially saying ‘buy this shitty game else you will not get any of this thing that you actually want.’ Devil May Cry 4 was not a particularly well received game, it was not particularly good, and millions of people have already bought and played the original game on release – so it is difficult to imagine precisely what Itsuno expects from fans.
